Page:Travels to Discover the Source of the Nile - In the Years 1768, 1769, 1770, 1771, 1772, and 1773 volume 1.djvu/395

Rh odd children; of whom, as I remember, above 50 were daughters.

may be objected, that Dr Arbuthnot, in quoting the bills of mortality for twenty years, gave most unexceptionable grounds for his opinion, and that my single assertion of what happens in a foreign country, without further foundation, cannot be admitted as equivalent testimony; and I am ready to admit this objection, as bills of mortality there are none in any of these countries. I shall therefore say in what manner I attained the knowledge which I have just mentioned. Whenever I went into a town, village, or inhabited place, dwelt long in a mountain, or travelled journies with any set of people, I always made it my business to inquire how many children they had, or their fathers, their next neighbours, or acquaintance. This not being a captious question, or what any one would scruple to answer, there was no interest to deceive; and if it had been possible, that two or three had been so wrong-headed among the whole, it would have been of little consequence.

asked my landlord at Sidon, (suppose him a weaver,) how many children he has had? He tells me how many sons, and how many daughters. The next I ask is a smith, a tailor, a silk-gatherer, the Cadi of the place, a cow-herd, a hunter, a fisher, in short every man that is not a stranger, from whom I can get proper information. I say, therefore, that a medium of both sexes arising from three or four hundred families indiscriminately taken, shall be the proportion in which one differs from the other; and this, I am confident, will give the remit to be three women