122 Russian Expedition to Japav. 



mixed with dough. When Joseph heard that this wonld 

 destroy rats, he asked if it would kill men also. Having 

 answered in the affirmative, he requested nie to give him 

 some of it. On asking him what he meant to do with it, 

 he replied, that when he returned to Nukahivah and ate with 

 any of the natives, he would mix it privatelv with the food, 

 so that the person should die. When I represented to him 

 the atrocity of this idea, and told him that he might perhaps 

 poison us also, he replied, that it would he highly criminal 

 to poison us, hut that in Nukahivah it was nothing; the 

 natives, he said, bewitched each other in such a manner 

 that they must die, and poisoning was not worse. 



It is mentioned in Cook's Voyages that he frequently 

 interchanged names with some of the kings or chiefs. Cook, 

 in all probabilitv, was taaboocd by assuming the king's 

 nan)e ; and the king took Cook's name in order to be 

 taaboocd against the English. But Cook, perhaps, laboured 

 under a nustake; for Ketenuc gave his name to captain 

 Krusenstern, but assumed none m return. The same cus- 

 tom prevails in almost all the islands of the South Sea : it is 

 to be supposed that Cook and other navigators must neces- 

 sarily have fallen into many mistakes ; for of this circum- 

 stance we should have been entirely ignorant, had it not 

 been for the information given to us by Joseph and Roberts. 

 There have been English missionaries at Otaheite, Santa 

 Christina, and even in Nukahivah. The one who was in 

 Nukahivah was called Crook, and had the nanie of Kete- 

 ime's son : he was not able, however, tcx convert any of the 

 natives, and soon quitted the island. These missionaries 

 ■will have it in their power to communicate the most certain 

 information respecting the natives of the islands in the 

 South Sea, for some of the accounts given by others are 

 contradictory. 



I have had an opportunity of making a very droll observa- 

 tion. Wherever ve touched where we did not understand 

 the language, each person endeavoured to remedy that de- 

 fect by the language of which he understood the least. One 

 of our naturalists spoke Russian to the Inhabitants of Nu- 

 kahivah ; the saiU>rs spoke Portuguese : but in Brasil they 

 had spoken English and Danish. A droll fellow, of the 

 name of Kurganon, endeavoin-ed to make his way with 

 Gcrnjan, of wlreh he understood only two words : fJollen 

 ■iie ? \\'in vou ? 



Tlie Kamtehatdales of Paratunka are said to have had the 

 vcUow fever. The under surgeon here called it Febrh Ame- 

 rica im 



