Page:An account of a voyage to establish a colony at Port Philip in Bass's Strait.djvu/91

( 66 ) climates, for there the wants of man, being supplied by nature almost spontaneously, he has leisure to cultivate the soft impressions which the surrounding scenery creates, and by observing the harmonies of nature, he becomes a poet and musician. Dancing is a very favourite amusement, in which the ladies perform with extraordinary grace; besides national and English country dances, the native dance of the Indians is sometimes performed, the figures and motions of which are very little superior, in point of delicacy, to those of the Otaheitean timoradee.

The estimated proportion of the sexes at Rio is eleven women to two men; this may be attributed to physical as well as moral causes, for it is a demonstrable fact,