middle, panting
and almost stifled with heat and smoke; for the poor creatures being
frightened at the flame keep running continually round, thinking to run
from it, and dare not pass through the fire; by which means they are
brought at last into a very narrow compass. Then the Indians retreat
into the centre, and let fly their arrows at them as they pass round
within the circle; by this means, though they stand often quite clouded
in smoke, they rarely shoot each other. By this means they destroy all
the beasts collected within that circle. They make all this slaughter
chiefly for the sake of the skins, leaving most of the carcasses to
perish in the woods.

Father Verbiast, in his description of the Emperor of China's voyage
into the Eastern Tartary, Anno 1682, gives an account of a way of
hunting the Tartars have, not much unlike this; only whereas the Indians
surround their game with fire, the Tartars do it with a great body of
armed men, who having environed the ground they design to drive, march
equally inwards, which, still as the ring lessens, brings the men nearer
each other, till at length the wild beasts are encompassed with a living
wall.

The Indians have many pretty inventions to discover and come up to the
deer, turkeys and other game undiscerned; but that being an art known to
very few English there, I will not be so accessary to the destruction of
their game as to make it public. I shall therefore only tell you, that
when they go a hunting into the outlands, they commonly go out for the
whole season with their wives and family. At the place where they find
the most game they build up a convenient number of small cabins, wherein
they live during that season. These cabins are both begun and finished
in two or three days, and after the season is over they make no farther
account of them.

Sec. 29. This, and a great deal more, was the natural production of that
country, which the native Indians enjoyed, without the curse of
industry, their diversion alone, and not their labor, supplying their
necessities. The women and children indeed were so far provident as to
lay up some of the nuts and fruits of the earth in their season for
their farther occasions: but none of the toils of husbandry were
exercised by this happy people, except the bare planting a little corn
and melons, which took up only a few days in the summer, the rest being
wholly spent in the pursuit of their pleasures. And indeed all that the