The inhabitants of the Archipelago are excellent swimmers and divers. According to Thevenot, they are trained to the practice of bringing up goods which have been sunk into the sea; and that in the island of Samos, a young man has no chance of obtaining a wife, unless he can dive eight, and Dapper says twenty, fathoms. The latter adds, that in some of the islands, as in Nicaria, they have a strange custom of speaking to each other at a distance, and that their voices are so strong, that when a quarter of a league, nay even a whole league asunder, they maintain a conversation, though not without long intervals, as after a question is asked, the answer does not arrive for several seconds.
The Greeks, Neapolitans, Sicilians, Corsicans, Sardinians, and Spaniards, being situated nearly under the same line, are uniform in point of complexion. Those people are more swarthy than the English, French, Germans, Polanders, Moldavians, Circassians, and all the other inhabitants of the north of Europe, till we advance to Lapland; where, as already observed, we find another race of men. In travelling through Spain, we begin to perceive a difference of colour even at Bayonne. There the women have a complexion more brown, and eyes more brilliant.
The Spaniards are meagre, rather short, yet handsome. They are yellow and swarthy; but their eyes are beautiful, their teeth well ranged, and their features are regular. Their children are born fair and handsome; but as they grow up their complexion changes surprisingly; the air and sun render them yellow and tawny; nor is it difficult to distinguish a Spaniard from a native of any other country in Europe. In some provinces of Spain, as in the environs of the river Bidassoa, it is remarked, the inhabitants have ears of an immoderate size.
Black or brown hair begins to be rather unfrequent in England, Flanders, Holland, and in the northern provinces of Germany; nor is it hardly to be seen in Denmark, Sweden, or Roland. According to Linnæus, the Goths are tail, their hair smooth and white as silver, and the iris of their eye is bluish. The Finlanders are muscular and fleshy; the hair long, and of a yellowish white, and the iris of the eye is of a deep yellow.
In Sweden the women are exceedingly fruitful. Rudbeck says, that they commonly bear 8, 10, or 12 children, and not unoften 18, 20, 24, 28, and even 30. He adds, that the men often live to the age of 100, some to that of 140; that one Swede lived to 156 years, and another to 161.
This author is an enthusiast with regard to his country, and according to him, Sweden is the first country in the world. This fertility in the women does not imply a greater propensity to love. In cold climates the inhabitants are far more chaste than in warm; and though they produce more children in Sweden, the women are less amorous than those of Spain or Portugal. It is universally known, that the northern nations have to so great a degree overrun all Europe, that historians have distinguished the north by the appellation of Officina Gentium.
The author of the “Voyages Historiques de l’Europe,” agrees with Rudbeck, that there are more instances of longevity in Sweden, than in any other European nation; and that he saw several persons who, he was assured, had passed the age of 150. This longevity he attributes to the salubrity of their climate; and of the people of Denmark he makes the same remark; the Danes, he adds, are tall, robust, and of a lively and florid complexion; that the women are likewise very fair, well made, and exceedingly prolific.
Before the reign of Czar Peter I. we are told, the Muscovites had not emerged from barbarism. Born in slavery, they were ignorant, brutal, cruel, without courage and without manners. Men and women bathed promiscuously in stoves heated to a degree intolerable to all persons but themselves; and on quitting this warm bath they plunged, like the Laplanders, into cold water. Their food was homely; and their favourite dishes were cucumbers or melons, brought from Astracan, which in summer they preserved in a mixture of water, flour, and salt. From ridiculous scruples they refrained from the use of several meats, particularly pigeons and veal. Yet even at this period of unrefinement, the women were skilled in the arts of colouring their checks, plucking out their eye-brows, and painting artificial ones. They also adorned themselves with pearls and jewels, and their garments were made of rich and valuable stuffs. From these circumstances does it not appear, that the barbarism of the Muscovites was near a close, and that their sovereign had less trouble in polishing them than some authors have endeavoured to insinuate? They are now a people civilized, commercial, studious Of the arts and sciences, fond of spectacles, and ingenious novelties.
Some authors have said that the air of Muscovy is so salutary, as to prevent its being visited with a pestilence. In the annals of the country, however, it is recorded, that in the year 1741, and during the six subsequent years, the Muscovites were dreadfully afflicted with a contagious distemper, insomuch that even the constitution of their descendants has been altered by it; few of the inhabitants attaining now the age of an 100, whereas before that period numbers lived much beyond it.