of a fit age for instruction: they were, for the greatest part, chosen
from among their learned men by their chief council, though some studied
it of their own accord. In three years' time they became masters of the
whole language, so that they read the best of the Greek authors very
exactly. I am, indeed, apt to think that they learned that language the
more easily from its having some relation to their own. I believe that
they were a colony of the Greeks; for though their language comes nearer
the Persian, yet they retain many names, both for their towns and
magistrates, that are of Greek derivation. I happened to carry a great
many books with me, instead of merchandise, when I sailed my fourth
voyage; for I was so far from thinking of soon coming back, that I rather
thought never to have returned at all, and I gave them all my books,
among which were many of Plato's and some of Aristotle's works: I had
also Theophrastus on Plants, which, to my great regret, was imperfect;
for having laid it carelessly by, while we were at sea, a monkey had
seized upon it, and in many places torn out the leaves. They have no
books of grammar but Lascares, for I did not carry Theodorus with me; nor
have they any dictionaries but Hesichius and Dioscerides. They esteem
Plutarch highly, and were much taken with Lucian's wit and with his
pleasant way of writing. As for the poets, they have Aristophanes,
Homer, Euripides, and Sophocles of Aldus's edition; and for historians,
Thucydides, Herodotus, and Herodian. One of my companions, Thricius
Apinatus, happened to carry with him some of Hippocrates's works and
Galen's Microtechne, which they hold in great estimation; for though
there is no nation in the world that needs physic so little as they do,
yet there is not any that honours it so much; they reckon the knowledge
of it one of the pleasantest and most profitable parts of philosophy, by
which, as they search into the secrets of nature, so they not only find
this study highly agreeable, but think that such inquiries are very
acceptable to the Author of nature; and imagine, that as He, like the