“Ilama (says he) a four-footed Creature, furnishes its Master with Meat and Clothing, and supplies the office of a Beast for Burthens, and at no charge for Hay nor Provender, well satisfi’d with what he finds in the Ways or Mountains. But the Ilama’s are of two sorts, either woolly, or shorthair’d: the first go by the Name Pacos, the other Moromoro, being not much less than a Calf, with a long Neck like a Camel, but of several colours; for some are white, some black, and others speckled, having an odd Look, especially when they are ty’d, and stand still without any motion, staring with goggle-eyes on their Owners: Sometimes in a moody humor, upon a sudden taking a freak, they run up to the top of almost inaccessible Mountains, where both the frantick Beast and his Burthen are lost. The Pacos sometimes likewise takes sudden Pets, and fustian Fits, often doing the forward Supersalt, tumbling over and over with their Goods, and will not be rais’d, their moodiness continuing, with beating, nay though they cut them to pieces: but the best way is to sit down by them, and wait some hours till their humor being spent they rise again of their own accords. These Beasts are much inclin’d to a Disease call’d Carashe or the Mange, of which they generally die: and because the Disease is very catching, they straight bury the infected alive, so the better to preserve the rest.”
Grotius also mistakes, when he compares the Mexican Peke with the Dutch Beke; for though many Mexican Places, Mountains, and Rivers, terminate in Peke, yet it signifies not a Brook or Rivulet, for that they call Atlauhtli.
De Orig. Gentium Americ.
John de Laet tells also, That with great diligence he found a Mexican Dictionary, Printed by the Spaniards in Mexico, to find if there were any words in it which agreed with any of those European Languages that he understood, but found not one.
It is the same case with the Customs and Constitutions between the Norwegians and Northern Americans: for what concerns Hunting, how many People have formerly liv’d by it? The antient Germans, and to this day the Tartars make it their whole business, excelling in that Art all other Nations. Besides, that the more serious sort of the Mexicans many Ages since scorn’d to derive themselves from a Hunting Ancestry, but affirm that they found the Chichimecen in those Countreys, who were great Venators.
Customs of the Americans.
Their Clothing.
The accounting of Time by the Nights, extracted from the Hebrews, is observ’d by divers Eastern People: and although the Germans dipt and wash’d their children in cold Rivers, or Brooks, so soon as they were born, yet the Mexicans never did it, but the Mother lays the Child on the fourth day after its Birth, in an open place of the House, in the middle whereof stands a Pot full of Water cover’d with Broom, in which they wash the Infant. Neither are the Americans so much addicted to the Vice of Gaming as other Nations, so that Grotius taxeth them too severely as to that point: as on the contrary, he too much clears them of Polygamy, whereas the Mexicans Marry as many Wives as they please, or are able to maintain. Father Martyn Perez relates the same of the Cinaloans, and other Americans; as also Quarterius of the Natives in Nova Francia, which lie nearest to Norway. And what need the Americans have the Germans their Teachers, to make Dams and Banks against Floods, since Nature and Necessity it self instructs it? and where are any People so ignorant, as to ascribe the same event to Men and Beasts after death? ’Tis true, their manner of eating in America is several, because the People do not much converse together: but they did not go naked; for the Spaniards found them not onely neatly Habited, but had a proper Name for every thing they wore. The Virginians us’d long Shirts; the Floridans Skins of wild Beasts; and towards the North they cover’d themselves from Head to Foot in hairy and undress’d Hydes. The sacrificing of Men was in former Ages spreading far and near over the World, and how far it was practis’d here, hath been already declar’d at large. Lastly, all the Americans are not guilty of eating of Man’s-flesh, but that salvageness is confin’d to the Southern America.
Thus much we have said, to prove that the Norwegians had no hand in planting the Northern America, we shall now proceed to enquire who planted the Southern Parts, from the Straights between Panama and Nombre de Dios, to the Straights of Magellan.
The Peruvians, possessing a large Tract of Land along the Coast of the South-Sea, Grotius would thus derive from China: