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400 COOK S VOYAGE TO JULY, 



acquainted with people like us : they knew not the use 

 of tobacco ; nor was any foreign article seen in their 

 possession, unless a knife maybe looked upon as such. 

 This, indeed, was only a piece of common iron fitted 

 in a wooden handle, so as to answer the purpose of 

 a knife. They, however, knew the value and use 

 of this instrument so well, that it seemed to be the 

 only article they wished for. Most of them had their 

 hair shaved, or cut short off, leaving only a few locks 

 behind, or on one side. For a covering for the head 

 they wore a hood of skins, and a bonnet which ap- 

 peared to be of wood. One part of their dress, 

 which we got from them, was a kind of girdle, very 

 neatly made of skin, with trappings depending from 

 it, and passing between the legs, so as to conceal the 

 adjoining parts. By the use of such a girdle, it 

 should seem that they sometimes go naked, even in 

 this high latitude ; for they hardly wear it under their 

 ot er c lothing. 



The canoes were made of skins, like all the others 

 we had lately seen ; only with this difference, that 

 these were broader, and the hole in which the man 

 sits was wider than in any I had before met with. 

 Our boats returning from sounding seemed to alarm 

 them ; so that they all left us sooner than probably 

 they would otherwise have done. 



It was the 22d, in the evening, before we got clear 

 of these shoals, and then I durst not venture to steer 

 to the westward in the night, but spent it off Cape 

 Newenham, and at day-break next morning steered 

 to the north-west, ordering the Discovery to lead. 

 Before we had run two leagues, our depth of water 

 decreased to six fathoms. Fearing, if we continued 

 this course, that we should find less and less water, 

 I hauled to the southward, the wind being at east, a 

 fresh breeze. This course brought us gradually into 

 eighteen fathoms ; and having that depth I ventured 

 to steer a little westerly, and afterward west, when 

 we at last found twenty-six fathoms water. 



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