290 cook's VOYAGE TO APRIL, 



buckets to hold water and other things, round 

 wooden cups and bowls, and small shallow wooden 

 troughs about two feet long, out of which they eat 

 their food, and baskets of twigs, bags of matting, 

 &c. Their fishing implements and other things also, 

 lie or hang up in different parts of the house, but 

 without the least order, so that the whole is a com- 

 plete scene of confusion ; and the only places that do 

 not partake of this confusion are the sleeping- 

 benches, that have nothing on them but the mats, 

 which are also cleaner or of a finer sort than those 

 they commonly have to sit on in their boats. 



The nastiness and stench of their houses are, how- 

 ever, at least equal to the confusion ; for, as they 

 dry their fish within doors, they also gut them there, 

 which, with their bones and fragments thrown down 

 at meals, and the addition of other sorts of filth, lie 

 every where in heaps, and are, I believe, never car- 

 ried away till it becomes troublesome, from their 

 size, to walk over them. In a word, their houses are 

 as filthy as hog-sties, every thing in and about them 

 stinking offish, train-oil, and smoke. 



But, amidst all the filth and confusion that are 

 found in the houses, many of them are decorated with 

 images. These are nothing more than the trunks of 

 very large trees four or five feet high, set up singly or 

 by pairs at the upper end of the apartment, with the 

 front carved into a human face, the arms and hands 

 cut out upon the sides and variously painted ; so that 

 the whole is a truly monstrous figure. The general 

 name of these images is Klumma, and the names of 

 two particular ones which stood abreast of each other, 

 three or four feet asunder in one of the houses, were 

 JSfatchkoa and Matseeta, Mr. Webber's view of the 

 inside of a Nootka house in which these images are 

 represented, will convey a more perfect idea of them 

 than any description. A mat, by way of curtain, for 

 the most part hung before them, which the natives 

 were not willing at all times to remove ; and when 



