and they have a natural eloquence, they never having had the use of letters.  They love eating, and the English have taught many of them to drink strong liquors, which, when they do, they are miserable sights.  They have no manufactures but what each family makes for its own use; they seem to despise working for hire, and spend their time chiefly in hunting and war; but plant corn enough for the support of their families and the strangers that come to visit them.  Their food, instead of bread, is flour of Indian corn boiled, and seasoned like hasty-pudding, and this called hommony.  They also boil venison, and make broth; they also roast, or rather broil their meat.  The flesh they feed on is buffalo, deer, wild turkeys and other game; so that hunting is necessary to provide flesh; and planting for corn.  The land[1] belongs to the women, and the corn that grows upon it; but meat must be got by the men, because it is they only that hunt:  this makes marriage necessary, that the women may furnish corn, and the men meat.  They have also fruit-trees in their gardens, namely, peaches, nectarines, and locust, melons, and water-melons, potatoes, pumpkins, onions, &c. in plenty; and many kinds of wild fruits, and nuts, as persimons, grapes, chinquepins, and hickory nuts, of which they make oil.  The bees make their combs in the hollow trees, and the Indians find plenty of honey there, which they use instead of sugar.  They make, what supplies the place of salt, of wood ashes; use for seasoning, long-pepper, which grows in their gardens; and bay-leaves supply their want of spice.  Their exercises are a kind of ball-playing, hunting, and running; and they are very fond of dancing.  Their music is a kind of drum, as also hollow cocoa-nut shells.  They have a square in the middle of their towns, in which the warriors sit, converse, and smoke together; but in rainy weather they meet in the King’s house.  They are a very healthy people, and have hardly any diseases, except those occasioned by the drinking of rum, and the small pox.  Those who do not drink rum are exceedingly long-lived.  Old BRIM emperor of the Creeks, who died but a few years ago, lived to one hundred and thirty years; and he was neither blind nor bed-rid, till some months before his death.  They have sometimes pleurisies and fevers, but no chronical distempers.  They know of several herbs that have great virtues in physic, particularly for the cure of venomous bites and wounds.

[Footnote 1:  That is the homestead.]

The native animals are, first the urus or zoras described by Caesar, which the English very ignorantly and erroneously call the buffalo.  They have deer, of several kinds, and plenty of roe-bucks and rabbits.  There are bears and wolves, which are small and timorous; and a brown wild-cat, without spots, which is very improperly called a tiger; otter, beavers, foxes, and a species of badger which is called raccoon.  There is great abundance of wild fowls, namely, wild-turkey,