Book V: Chapter 1 - Page 2

children. become the booty of the conqueror. Even the greater
part of those who survive the action are obliged to submit to him
for the sake of immediate subsistence. The rest are commonly
dissipated and dispersed in the desert.

The ordinary life, the ordinary exercise of a Tartar or Arab,
prepare him sufficiently for war. Running, wrestling,
cudgel-playing, throwing the javelin, drawing the bow, etc. are
the common pastimes of those who live in the open air, and are
all of them the images of war. When a Tartar or Arab actually
goes to war, he is maintained by his own herds and flocks, which
he carries with him, in the same manner as in peace. His chief or
sovereign (for those nations have all chiefs or sovereigns) is at
no sort of expense in preparing him for the field ; and when he
is in it, the chance of plunder is the only pay which he either
expects or requires.

An army of hunters can seldom exceed two or three hundred men.
The precarious subsistence which the chace affords, could seldom
allow a greater number to keep together for any considerable
time. An army of shepherds, on the contrary, may sometimes amount
to two or three hundred thousand. As long as nothing stops their
progress, as long as they can go on from one district, of which
they have consumed the forage, to another, which is yet entire;
there seems to be scarce any limit to the number who can march on
together. A nation of hunters can never be formidable to the
civilized nations in their neighbourhood; a nation of shepherds
may. Nothing can be more contemptible than an Indian war in North
America; nothing, on the contrary, can be more dreadful than a
Tartar invasion has frequently been in Asia. The judgment of
Thucydides, that both Europe and Asia could not resist the
Scythians united, has been verified by the experience of all
ages. The inhabitants of the extensive, but defenceles plains of
Scythia or Tartary, have been frequently united under the
dominion of the chief of some conquering horde or clan; and the
havock and devastation of Asia have always signalized their
union. The inhabitants of the inhospitable deserts of Arabia, the
other great nation of shepherds, have never been united but once,
under Mahomet and his immediate successors. Their union, which
was more the effect of religious enthusiasm than of conquest, was
signalized in the same manner. If the hunting nations of America
should ever become shepherds, their neighbourhood would be much
more dangerous to the European colonies than it is at present.

In a yet more advanced state of society, among those nations of
husbandmen who have little foreign commerce, and no other
manufactures but those coarse and household ones, which almost
every