ra 



VOYAGE TO THE PACIFIC OCEAN. 73 



most westerly station in Davis's Strait. Their being 

 the same tribe who now actually inhabit the islands 

 and coasts on the west side of North America, 

 opposite Kamtschatka, was a discovery, the comple- 

 tion of which was reserved for Captain Cook. The 

 reader of the following work will find them at 

 Norton Sound, and at Oonalashka, and Prince 

 William's Sound; that is, near 1500 leagues distant 

 from their stations in Greenland, and on the Labra- 

 dore coast. And lest similitude of manners should 

 be thought to deceive us, a table exhibiting proofs of 

 affinity of language, which was drawn up by Captain 

 Cook, and is inserted in this work*, will remove 

 every doubt from the mind of the most scrupulous 

 inquirer after truth. 



There are other doubts of a more important kind, 

 which it may be hoped will now no longer perplex 

 the ignorant, or furnish matter of cavil to the ill- 

 intentioned. After the great discovery, or at least the 

 full confirmation of the great discovery of the vici- 

 nity of the two continents of Asia and America, we 

 trust that we shall not be anv more ridiculed, for 

 believing that the former could easily furnish its in- 

 habitants to the latter. And thus, to all the various 

 good purposes already enumerated, as answered by 

 our late voyages, we may add this last, though not 

 the least important, that they have done service to 

 religion, by robbing infidelity of a favourite objection 

 to the credibility of the Mosaic account of the 

 peopling of the earth, t 



* See Appendix, No. 6. The Greenlanders, as Crantz tells us, 

 call themselves Karalit ; a word not very unlike Kanagyst, the 

 name asumed by the inhabitants of Kodiack, one of the Schumagin 

 islands, as Staehlin informs us. 



f A contempt of revelation is generally the result of ignorance, 

 conceited of its possessing superior knowledge. Observe how the 

 Author of Recherches Philosophiques sitr les Americains, expresses 

 himself on this very point. " Cette distance que Mr. Antermony 

 " veut trouver si peu importante, est a-peu-pres de huit cent lieues 

 " Gauloises au travers d'nn ocean jyerilleax, et impossible a franchir 

 " avec des canots aussi chetifs et aussi fragiles que le sont, au rap- 



