LORD KAIMS.
Henry Home, otherwise called Lord Kaims, the author of the "Elements of Criticism," and of "Six Sketches on the History of Man," has, in the latter work, written eighty years ago, the following statements respecting the inhabitants of the torrid zone:
"We have no evidence that either the hunter or shepherd state were ever known there. The inhabitants at present subsist upon vegetable food, and probably did so from the beginning."
In speaking of particular nations or tribes of this zone, he tells us that "the inhabitants of Biledulgerid and the desert of Sahara, have but two meals a day—one in the morning and one in the evening;" and "being temperate," he adds, "and strangers to the diseases of luxury and idleness, they generally live to a great age."[19] Sixty, with them, is the prime of life, as thirty is in Europe. "Some of the inland tribes of Africa," he says, "make but one meal a day, which is in the evening." And yet "their diet is plain, consisting mostly of rice, fruits, and roots. An inhabitant of Madagascar will travel two or three days without any other food than a sugar-cane." So also, he might have added, will the Arab travel many days, and at almost incredible speed, with nothing but a little gum-arabic; and the Peruvians and other inhabitants of South America, with a little parched corn. But I have one more extract from Lord Kaims:
"The island of Otaheite is healthy, the people tall and well made; and by temperance—vegetables and fish being their chief nourishment—they live to a good old age, with scarcely an ailment. There is no such thing known among them as rotten teeth; the very smell of wine or spirits is disagreeable; and they never deal in tobacco or spiceries. In many places Indian corn is the chief nourishment, which every man plants for himself."