It Is Unhappy Enough,
That The Unavoidable Consequence Of All Our Voyages Of Discovery Has
Always Been The Loss Of
A number of innocent lives; but this heavy
injury done to the little uncivilized communities which Europeans have
visited, is
Trifling when compared to the irretrievable harm entailed
upon them by corrupting their morals. If these evils were compensated
in some measure by the introduction of some real benefit in these
countries, or by the abolition of some other immoral custom among
their inhabitants, we might at least comfort ourselves, that what they
lost on one hand, they gained on the other; but I fear that hitherto
our intercourse has been wholly disadvantageous to the natives of the
South Seas; and that those communities have been the least injured,
who have always kept aloof from us, and whose jealous disposition did
not suffer our sailors to become too familiar among them, as if they
had perceived in their countenances that levity of disposition, and
that spirit of debauchery, with which they are generally reproached."
A little afterwards, relating a trip over to Long Island, it is said,
"In the afternoon, many of our sailors were allowed to go on shore,
among the natives, where they traded for curiosities, and purchased
the embraces of the ladies, notwithstanding the disgust which their
uncleanliness inspired. Their custom of painting their cheeks with
ochre and oil, was alone sufficient to deter the more sensible from
such intimate connections with them; and if we add to this a certain
stench which announced them even at a distance, and the abundance of
vermin which not only infested their hair, but also crawled on their
clothes, and which they occasionally cracked between their teeth, it
is astonishing that persons should be found, who could gratify an
animal appetite with such loathsome objects, whom a civilized
education and national customs should have taught them to hold in
abhorrence." - G.F.
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