APPENDIX TO CASE OF GREAT BRITAIN. 307 



by Saner "infinitely superior to tliose of any otlier island." Still 

 another navigator declares tbera to be " the best means yet discovered 

 to go from place to place, either ujion the deepest or shallowest water, 

 in the quickest, easiest, and safest manner possible." (LangsdorPs 

 " Voyage," vol. i, p. 43.) These illustrate their nature, which is finer 

 than that of their neighbours. They are at home on the water, and excite 

 admiration by the skill with whicli they manage their elegant craft, so 

 that Admiral Liitke recognized them as Cossacks of the sea. 



Ounalaska is the i^rincipal of these islands, and, from the time they 

 were first visited, seems to have excited a peculiar interest. Captain 

 Cook painted it kindly; so have succeeding navigators. And here have 

 lived the highlauders who seem to have given to navigators a new 

 experience. Alluding especially to them, tiie reporter of Billings' voy- 

 age says: "The capacity of the natives of these islands infinitely sur- 

 passes every idea that 1 had formed of the abilities of savages" (p. 273). 

 There is another remark of this authority which shows how they had 

 yielded, even in their favourite dress, to the demands of commerce. 

 After saying that formerly they had worn garments of sea-otter, he 

 pathetically adds, "but not since the Russians have had any inter- 

 course with them" (p. 155). Poor islanders! Exchanging choice furs, 

 once their daily wear, for meaner skins. 



(3) The Kenaians, numbering as many as 25,000, take their common 

 name from the Peninsula of Kenay, with Cook's Inlet on the north and 

 Prince William Sound on the south. Numerous beyond any other 

 family in Russian America, they belong to a widespread and teeming 

 Indian race, which occupies all tlie northern interior of the continent, 

 stretching from Hudson Bay in the east to the Esquimaux in the west. 

 This is the great nation called sometimes Athabascan, or from the 

 native name of the Rocky Mountains, on whose flanks they live, Che- 

 pewyan, but more properly designated as Tinneh, with branches in 

 Southern Oregon and ISTorthern California, and then again with other 

 offshoots, known as the Apaches and Navajoes, in Arizona, New Mex- 

 ico, and Chihuahua, more than thirty parallels of latitude Irom the 

 parent stem. Of this extended race, the north-western branch, known 

 to travellers as Loucheux, and in their own tongue as Kutchin, after 

 occupying the inner portion of Russian America on the Youkon and the 

 Porcupine, reached the sea-coast at Cook's Inlet, where it appears under 

 the name of Kenaians. The latter are said to bear about the same rela- 

 tion in language and intellectual development to the entire group as the 

 islanders of Kodiak bear to the Esquimaux. 



The Kenaians call themselves in their own dialect by yet another 

 name, Thnainas, meaning men, thus by a somewhat boastful designa- 

 tion asserting manhood. Their features and complexion associate them 

 with the red men of America, as does their speech. The first to visit 

 them was Cook, and he was struck by the largeness of their 

 08 heads, which seemed to him disproportioned to the rest of the 

 body. They were strong- chested also, with thick short necks, 

 spreading faces, eyes inclined to be small, white teeth, black hair, and 

 thin beard. Their persons seemed to be clean and decent without 

 grease or dirt. In dress they were thought to resemble the people of 

 Oreenland. Their boats had a similar adinity. But in these particulars 

 they were not unlike the other races I have already described. They 

 were clothed in the skins of animals with the fur outward, or some- 

 times in the skins of birds, over which, as a protection against rain, 

 was worn a frock made from the intestines of the whale, and resend>iing 

 the gold-beater leaf, as was observed by Behring in his early voyage. 



