ab PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. [aNNO 1770. 



markably clever in repartees ; but seem to have very little genius for arts or 

 science. They lead an erratic life, living in tents, as all people must do whose 

 subsistence depends entirely on hunting. 



• 'They are not without some notion of religion, but it is a very limited one. They 

 acknowledge two Beings; one the author of all good, the other of all evil. The 

 former they call Ukkemah, which appellation they give also to their chiefs ; and 

 the latter they call Wittikah. They pay some sort of adoration to both, though 

 it is difficult to say what. Their opinion of the origin of mankind is, that 

 Ukkemah made the first men and women out of the earth, 3 in number of each ; 

 that those, whom we Europeans sprang from, were made from a whiter earth 

 than what their progenitors were, and that there was one pair of still blacker 

 earth than they. They have likewise an imperfect traditional account of the 

 deluge; only they substitute a beaver for the dove. 



With respect to the soil and its produce of the vegetable kind, Mr. W. can 

 add very little to what was said on his first coming on shore. . As to corn, he is 

 well convinced, that about Churchill it will produce none, except oats : those, 

 from a trial which he had seen, he believes might be brought to some tolerable de- 

 gree of perfection in time, and with proper culture. Its internal contents are, 

 he believes, chiefly rocks; they are, however, many of them marble, and some 

 very fine. He had also specimens of copper, copper ore, mundic, spars, talc, 

 (different from the Muscovite) and several pyrites. 



The air in this country is very seldom, if ever, clear for 24 hours together; 

 but they were not so much troubled with fogs as he expected from the accounts 

 he had read of the country, and from what was experienced in the voyage out. 



There is a haze continually found near the horizon here. This he apprehends 

 is the cause why the sun's rising is always preceded by two long streams of red 

 light, one on each side of him, and about 20° distant from him. These rise as 

 the sun rises ; and as they grow longer, begin to be inflected towards each other, 

 till they meet directly over the sun, just as he rises, forming there a kind of 

 parhelion, or mock-sun. These two streams of light seem to have their source 

 in two other parhelia, which rise with the true sun ; and in the winter season, 

 when the sun never rises out of the above-mentioned haze, all three accompany 

 him the whole day, and set with him in the same manner that they rose. Mr. 

 W. had once or twice seen a 4th parhelion directly under the true sun; but this 

 is not common. 



The aurora-borealis, which has been represented as very extraordinary in those 

 parts, bears, in his opinion, no comparison to what he had seen in the north 

 parts of England. It is always of the same form here, and consists of a narrow, 

 steady stream of a pale straw-coloured light, which rises out of the horizon, 



