The same curiosity that had brought them in such crowds to the shore, now induced Drake, and some of his company, to travel up into the country, which they found, at some distance from the coast, very fruitful, filled with large deer, and abounding with a peculiar kind of conies, smaller than ours, with tails like that of a rat, and paws such as those of a mole; they have bags under their chin, in which they carry provisions to their young.

The houses of the inhabitants are round holes dug in the ground, from the brink of which they raise rafters, or piles, shelving towards the middle, where they all meet, and are crammed together; they lie upon rushes, with the fire in the midst, and let the smoke fly out at the door.

The men are generally naked; but the women make a kind of petticoat of bulrushes, which they comb like hemp, and throw the skin of a deer over their shoulders.  They are very modest, tractable, and obedient to their husbands.

Such is the condition of this people; and not very different is, perhaps, the state of the greatest part of mankind.  Whether more enlightened nations ought to look upon them with pity, as less happy than themselves, some skepticks have made, very unnecessarily, a difficulty of determining.  More, they say, is lost by the perplexities than gained by the instruction of science; we enlarge our vices with our knowledge, and multiply our wants with our attainments, and the happiness of life is better secured by the ignorance of vice, than by the knowledge of virtue.

The fallacy by which such reasoners have imposed upon themselves, seems to arise from the comparison which they make, not between two men equally inclined to apply the means of happiness in their power to the end for which providence conferred them, but furnished in unequal proportions with the means of happiness, which is the true state of savage and polished nations; but between two men, of which he to whom providence has been most bountiful, destroys the blessings by negligence or obstinate misuse; while the other, steady, diligent, and virtuous, employs his abilities and conveniences to their proper end.  The question is not, whether a good Indian or bad Englishman be most happy; but, which state is most desirable, supposing virtue and reason the same in both.

Nor is this the only mistake which is generally admitted in this controversy, for these reasoners frequently confound innocence with the mere incapacity of guilt.  He that never saw, or heard, or thought of strong liquors, cannot be proposed as a pattern of sobriety.

This land was named, by Drake, Albion, from its white cliffs, in which it bore some resemblance to his native country; and the whole history of the resignation of it to the English was engraven on a piece of brass, then nailed on a post, and fixed up before their departure, which being now discovered by the people to be near at hand, they could not forbear perpetual lamentations.  When the English, on the 23rd of July, weighed anchor, they saw them climbing to the tops of hills, that they might keep them in sight, and observed fires lighted up in many parts of the country, on which, as they supposed, sacrifices were offered.