simply perforated, and a piece of copper wire introduced, to prevent the aperture from closing; "the aperture afterwards is lengthened, from time to time, in a line parallel with the mouth; and the wooden ornaments are enlarged in proportion, till they are frequently increased to three, or even four inches in length, and nearly as wide; but this generally happens, when the matron is advanced in years, and consequently the muscles are relaxed; so that, possibly, old age may obtain greater respect from this very singular ornament *.' Captain Chanal and surgeon Roblet do not agree with the editor of Dixon's voyage as to the period at which the women can aspire to the privilege of wearing the lip-ornament: they say that the operation is begun from the most tender infancy; and they saw girls at the breast who already had their lip slit, and adorned with a wooden skewer. But it is possible that these voyagers may not be at variance: the acquaintance which the women of Tchinkitanay have made with Europeans, must have improved among them the art of pleasing; and, perhaps, since Dixon quitted them, they have decided that they could not, too early in life, cause all their sex to enjoy an ornament that embellishes the attractions which nature has so prodigally dealt out to them.

"As youth always inspires interest and indulgence, the French voyagers assert that the young girls are neither so ugly nor so disgusting as the women; yet they acknowledge, that they saw not a single one who was tolerably pretty. We must believe seamen, without

hesitation, when they say that the women whom they have met with in their excursions deserved not their homage.

"The individuals of both sexes, children, whether young or old, are covered with vermin. They assiduously hunt those devouring animals, but in order to devour them themselves. The furs which they sell to strangers are so infested with them, that whatever pains be taken to rid the skins of those insects, they soon increase to such an excess, that it becomes impossible for the crew of a ship to escape their pursuit and voracity. It may be said, that, in taking a cargo of furs, a vessel takes a cargo of lice.

"It cannot be doubted that the small-pox has been introduced into the countries which border on Tchinkitânay Bay; for several individuals of both sexes bear unequivocal marks of it; and they explained very clearly to surgeon Roblet, who questioned them concerning the cause of these marks, that they proceeded from a disorder which made the face swell, and covered the body with virulent pustules that occasioned violent itchings. They even remarked that the French must be well ac quainted with it, since some of them also bore the marks of it. In 1787, captain Portlock was witness of the ravages which it had made some years before, and of the depopulation that had been the consequence of it, in the harbour to which he has given his name, and which is situated at no great distance to the north-west of Tchinkitànay, towards the latitude of 57° 50'. From the information that he was able to procure, he thinks,

What seems most probable is, that these necklaces, fabricated in some of the European settlements of the interior, come to them ready made, from tribe to tribe, through the channel of the intermediate nations. Both sexes make use of a small bat, made of bark, plaited, and in the form of a cone, truncated at a fourth or a third of its height: but most frequently the men have the head bare; their thick hair, mixed with ochre and down of birds, forms a natural head-dress, which, in ordinary weather, must be sufficient to protect their head from the injury of the air. It might be imagined, from the preference which they at this day give to jackets and trowsers, that they find the use of them more convenient than that of their former clothes; yet I should rather think that, not being able to acquire, but by the sacrifice of their furs, the European utensils, the utility of which they have discovered, and which have made them know wants, eager to procure themselves to new commodities, new enjoyments, they have accommodated themselves to our dress: for it must be admitted that a Frenchman who should be condemned to pass a winter amid the frozen forests of the north-west coast of America, in 57° north latitude, would prefer to our woollen cloths those thick furs which nature seems to have, designedly, lavished on the countries where the severity of the cold demands the use of them.

"Independently of their everyday clothing, the men have another, which may be called their holiday suit, or habit of ceremony. As this dress differs from the masquerade, or war dresses, in which the natives

of Nootka sometimes muffle themselves up, and which captain Cook, who has described them with the greatest minuteness, calls their monstrous decorations*, it may not be useless to make known that of the Tchinkitânayans. To add a chapter to the history of dresses is to add one to that of the extravagancies of the privileged animal, so proud of his reason, who styles himself the King of Nature.

"As far as we are able to judge, the dress of which captain Chanal gives us the description is reserved by the natives of Tchinkitânay for particular ceremonies or functions, for characters of buffoons or jugglers: to the object of war it appears to be quite foreign. It is remarked, however, that the use of this dress is not confined to old men; for the American to whom the French addressed themselves to see one of these dresses of character appeared not to be more than twenty-five years of age. It was not without some difficulty that they prevailed on him to display part of his wardrobe, which he kept carefully put by in a little box; and in which, through great condescension towards strangers, he was pleased to muffle himself up in their presence. The first piece of this whimsical attire is a sort of grenadier's cap, or rather the fore part of a mitre, which is placed on the forehead, and fastened by strings tied behind the head. The sides of it are bordered with long hair of men and beasts. On the exterior part of this headdress are represented figures of men, quadrupeds, and birds, painted in a grotesque manner; and braids, composed of hair of beasts, and filaments of tree or shrub-bark, like

flax, hang down behind as a long trailing tail. The breast is covered with a sort of plastron or cuirass, made of a tissue of spun-hair, and trimmed with slip's of skin, which are shaped like the skirts of a corset, the lower extremities of which are cut out into little fringes, which are suspended, in infinite numbers, small shells, spurs and bills of birds. On the middle of this plastron are painted various irregular figures. On each thigh and knee are placed pieces nearly similar; with this difference, that that of the knee presents a grotesque head with a wooden nose, moveable and hooked, three or four inches in length. These last-mentioned pieces are, like the cuirass, garnished with shells and dried extremities of birds; which, by striking against each other in the motions of the body, imitate, though very imperfectly, the sound of our little bells. The Tchinkitanayan, muffled up in this garb, holds in one hand a hoop of platted osier, eight or nine inches in diameter, the radii and circumference of which are decorated with the same gew-gaws as the other parts of the dress. In the other hand he carries the representation, made with osier or bark, of a human head, terminated in a point, and fixed at the end of a stick about eight inches in length. This head is filled with dried and sonorous seeds, and may be compared, though on a large scale, to those wicker-rattles which the village-nurses shake in the ears of their nursling. As soon as the actor had finished his toilet, the piece began. It neither was long nor overcharged with incidents: in it the three unities were perfectly observed; he confined himself to agitating his body in every way, and to endeavouring, by a

universal contortion of his limbs, to find motions that might multiply the shocks of the sonorous gewgaws with which his dress was loaded, in order to increase and diversify their sounds. At the same time he made horrible grimaces, which Callot might have employed with success in his Temptation of Saint Anthony cannot be said that he was the more ugly on that account; but he produced varieties in his ugliness. It may well be supposed that it was impossible for the spectators to divine the subject of the piece; they were obliged to content themselves with admiring the elegance of the costume, and the suppleness of the actor of the pantomime.

"This character-dress was not the only one that he possessed; his wardrobe contained a great number, no doubt for different parts, and was remarked above all for a varied collection of caps. It may be imagined that national vanity had induced him to display, to the eyes of strangers, the dress to which he attached the most importance, and which seemed to him the best calculated to excite their admiration; they were, however, very desirous to see the others, but he would not permit them to be examined; and whatever entreaty they made, whatever price they offered, they could never prevail on him to part with any articles of his wardrobe.

"The population of Tchinkitanay Bay, like that of all the northwest coast of America, is not numercus. We may suppose that the greater part, and almost the whole of the natives who occupy the skirts of the bay, with the ex ception of the old men and the infirm, presented themselves round the ship; and our voyagers could F 2

never

never reckon more than two hundred individuals, including women and children: but, as the number of the men always exceeded that of the women, we may suppose that some of the latter had remained in the habitations, in order to give their attention to the family concerns, and to the children at the breast. In Dixon's Journal, we find that the greatest number ever seen about his ship, at one time, was a hundred and seventy-five, including women and children. The editor of his Voyage says, Were I to 'estimate these at half the number who live here, it would perhaps be not far from the truth; but supposing an allowance to be made for the aged and infirm, and for those who were absent, engaged in hunting, fishing, &c. I think four hundred and fifty people will be the whole of the natives found here, taking the computation in its utmost extent, ' and including men, women, and

children.'

"We must not be astonished to find a feeble population on lands whose forests, perhaps as ancient as the soil that nourishes them, cover all the surface which is not reached by the tempests of the ocean. The man, who, to secure his subsistence, has only the chances of hunting and fishing, can scarcely provide for himself: culture alone can call forth population; and a few cultivated acres of one of those islands placed between the tropics, must afford a living to a greater number of men, than whole countries where the land exhausts its fecundity in re-producing incessantly useless forests.

"The principal food of the natives of Tchinkitânay is fish, fresh or smoked; the dried spawn of fish, of which they make a sort of cake;

and the flesh of the animals that they kill: to these they add, in the intervals of their meals and in their excursions, the use of a farinaceous legume, the taste of which may be compared to that of the sweet potatoe, and which surgeon Roblet believes to be the saranne. Wild fruits, and berries which are found in abundance in the woods, with the tender root of the fern, likewise afford them an occasional supply. We know not what was their peculiar manner of preparing their aliments: at this day, they dress fish and meat in the pots and kettles which they have obtained by trade; but, taught by experience, they no longer expose to the fire the tin and pewter vessels which they have received from the Europeans; they gave the French to understand that the former were unsoldered, and the latter melted: they make use of both for serving up their food when dressed; and they employ them jointly with the wooden dishes and bowls which they manufacture themselves. Their travelling utensils are become much more cumbersome than they were before their intercourse with strangers: they begin to experience the embarrassment of riches.

"They always mix train-oil with their broth. This oil, the strong and tart smell of which makes us reject it from our cookery, excites not the same repugnance among the North Americans and the other nations that occupy the regions bordering on the poles: the Greenlander swallows a glass of train-oil as the European would swallow a glass of tokay. Fish-oil, in general, is a liquor of which the inhabitant of the frozen climates, settled on the borders of the sea, and living on its productions, makes a habitual and necessary use: it de

velopes