PACIFIC AND BEERING'S STRAIT. 35 



towards the game ; and if it arrests the wood in such 

 a manner that it falls upon the spear, two is reckoned. 

 It is a sport well calculated to improve the art of 

 throwing the spear: but the game requires more 

 practice to play it well than the Indians usually 

 bestow upon it. 



At some of the missions they pursue a custom said 

 to be of great antiquity among the aborigines, and 

 which appears to afford them much enjoyment. A 

 mud house, or rather a large oven, called temeschal 

 by the Spaniards, is built in a circular form, with a 

 small entrance, and an aperture in the top for the smoke 

 to escape through. Several persons enter this place 

 quite naked and make a fire near the door, which 

 they continue to feed with wood as long as they can 

 bear the heat. In a short time they are thrown into 

 a most profuse perspiration, they wring their hair, 

 and scrape their skin with a sharp piece of wood or 

 an iron hoop, in the same manner as coach horses 

 are sometimes treated when they come in heated ; and 

 then plunge into a river or pond of cold water, which 

 they always take care shall be near the temeschal. 



A similar practice to this is mentioned by Shelekoff 

 as being in use among the Konaghi, a tribe of Indians 

 near Cook's River, who have a method of heating the 

 oven with hot stones, by which they avoid the discom- 

 fort occasioned by the wood smoke ; and, instead of 

 scraping their skin with iron or bone, rub themselves 

 with grass and twigs. 



Formerly the missions had small villages attached to 

 them, in which the Indians lived in a very filthy state; 

 these have almost all disappeared since Vancouver's 

 visit, and the converts are disposed of in huts as before 

 described ; and it is only when sickness prevails to a 



d2 



