The inhabitants of the Archipelago and excellent swimmers and divers. According to
Thevenot, they are trained to the practice of bringing up goods which have been sunk into the sea;
and that in the island of Samos, a young man has no chance of obtaining a wife, unless he can dive
eight, and Dapper says twenty, fathoms. The latter adds, that in some of the islands, as in Nicaria,
they have a strange custom of speaking to each other at a distance, and that their voices are so
strong, that when a quarter of a league, nay even a whole league asunder, they maintain a
conversation, though not without long intervals, as after a question is asked, the answer does not
arrive for several seconds.
The Greeks, Neapolitans, Sicilians, Corsicans, Sardinians, and Spaniards, being situated
nearly under the same line, are uniform in point of complexion. Those people are more swarthy
than the English, French, Germans, Polanders,4 Moldavians, Circassians, and all the other inhabitants
of the north of Europe, till we advance to Lapland; where, as already observed, we find another
race of men. In travelling through Spain, we begin to perceive a difference of colour even at
Bayonne. There
4 Poles [Meijer]the