Page:Travels to Discover the Source of the Nile - In the Years 1768, 1769, 1770, 1771, 1772, and 1773 volume 2.djvu/575

Rh debilitate the savage. In Arabia and Turkey, where the whole businefs of man's life is the devoting himself to domestic pleasure, men remain constantly in a sedentary life, eat heartily, avoiding every manner of exercise, or expence of animal spirits by sweats. Their countries, too, are colder than that of the Shangalla, who, living sparingly under a burning sun, and obliged to procure food by laborious hunting, of consequence deprive themselves of that quantity of animal spirits necessary to lead them to any extreme of voluptuousness. And that this is the case is seen in the constitution of the Shangalla women, even though they are without fatigue.

A woman, upon bearing a child or two, at 10 or 11 years old, sees her breast fall immediately down to near her knees. Her common manner of suckling her children is by carrying them upon her back, as our beggars do, and giving the infant the breast over her shoulders. They rarely are mothers after 22, or begin child-bearing before they are 10; so that the time of child-bearing is but 12 years. In Europe, very many examples there are of women bearing children at 14, the civil law fixes puberty at 12, but by an inuendo seems to allow it may be something earlier. Women sometimes in Europe bear children at 50. The scale of years of child-bearing between the savage and the European is, therefore, as 12 is to 38. There can be little doubt but their desires are equal to their strength and constitution; but a Shangalla at 22 is more wrinkled and