316 REMARKS AND OPINIONS. 



We became acquainted with the Tscliukutskoi 

 at the same place where Cook and Billing had been 

 before us. We found their accounts of the manners 

 and customs of this people, as far as we became 

 acquainted with them, very accurate, but must 

 contradict them only in one point ; namely, in 

 respect to the advantages ascribed to them above 

 other tribes, in cultivation, strength, a superior 

 stature, and particularly in more European fea- 

 tures. We recognized in them only the Esqui- 

 maux of the opposite coast, to whom we even 

 thought them inferior in ingenuity. Only some 

 of them might, perhaps, be distinguished by a 

 higher stature. 



The Tschukutskoi acknowledge, indeed, the 

 Russian supremacy ; but the tribute, which they 

 voluntarily bring to Russian trading places, is only 

 like a duty by which they obtain access to them, 

 and they enjoy the advantages of trade, while their 

 independence remains unimpaired. 



As the island of St. Lawrence lies between the 

 two continents, its inhabitants seem to keep a me- 

 dium between the Tschukutskoi and Americans, 

 but to be more nearly related to the latter. They 

 do not appear to burn their dead as the Tschukuts- 

 koi do. We have found skulls on the plateau of 

 the island, and in the fragments of rocks at the 

 foot of the montains, but not the monuments 

 made of drift-wood, which are erected on the 

 American coast, to mark the burial place of the 



