—­[This is the famous passage which Shakespeare, through Florio’s
     version, 1603, or ed. 1613, p. 102, has employed in the “Tempest,”
     ii. 1.]

How much would he find his imaginary Republic short of his perfection?

“Viri a diis recentes.”

          ["Men fresh from the gods.”—­Seneca, Ep., 90.]

“Hos natura modos primum dedit.”

          ["These were the manners first taught by nature.” 
          —­Virgil, Georgics, ii. 20.]

As to the rest, they live in a country very pleasant and temperate, so that, as my witnesses inform me, ’tis rare to hear of a sick person, and they moreover assure me, that they never saw any of the natives, either paralytic, bleareyed, toothless, or crooked with age.  The situation of their country is along the sea-shore, enclosed on the other side towards the land, with great and high mountains, having about a hundred leagues in breadth between.  They have great store of fish and flesh, that have no resemblance to those of ours:  which they eat without any other cookery, than plain boiling, roasting, and broiling.  The first that rode a horse thither, though in several other voyages he had contracted an acquaintance and familiarity with them, put them into so terrible a fright, with his centaur appearance, that they killed him with their arrows before they could come to discover who he was.  Their buildings are very long, and of capacity to hold two or three hundred people, made of the barks of tall trees, reared with one end upon the ground, and leaning to and supporting one another at the top, like some of our barns, of which the covering hangs down to the very ground, and serves for the side walls.  They have wood so hard, that they cut with it, and make their swords of it, and their grills of it to broil their meat.  Their beds are of cotton, hung swinging from the roof, like our seamen’s hammocks, every man his own, for the wives lie apart from their husbands.  They rise with the sun, and so soon as they are up, eat for all day, for they have no more meals but that; they do not then drink, as Suidas reports of some other people of the East that never drank at their meals; but drink very often all day after, and sometimes to a rousing pitch.  Their drink is made of a certain root, and is of the colour of our claret, and they never drink it but lukewarm.  It will not keep above two or three days; it has a somewhat sharp, brisk taste, is nothing heady, but very comfortable to the stomach; laxative to strangers, but a very pleasant beverage to such as are accustomed to it.  They make use, instead of bread, of a certain white compound, like coriander seeds; I have tasted of it; the taste is sweet and a little flat.  The whole day is spent in dancing.  Their young men go a-hunting after wild beasts with bows and arrows; one part of their women are employed in preparing their drink the while, which is their chief employment.  One of