ChB ASP Man RP elev as 
THE YU-ROK. 
This large tribe inhabit the Klamath, from the junction of the Trinity 
to the mouth, and the coast from Gold Bluff up to a point about six miles 
above the mouth of the Klamath. Their name is of Karok origin; they 
themselves have only names for separate villages, as Ri-kwa, Mi-ta, Pek’-wan, 
Sri’-gon, Wait’-spek:. 
Living nearer the coast, they are several shades darker than the Karok, 
frequently almost black ; and they are not so fine a race, having lower fore- 
heads and more projecting chins. On the coast they incline to be pudgy 
in stature, though on the Klamath there are many specimens of splendid 
savagery. Like all California women, their mohelas (a Spanish word of 
general use) are rather handsome in their free and untoiling youth, but 
after twenty-five or thirty they break down under their heavy burdens and 
become ugly. Both Karok and Yurok plant their feet in walking nearly as 
broadly as Americans. They have the same tattooing and much the same 
customs as their up-river neighbors, but a totally different language. They 
usually learn each other’s language, and two of them will sit and patter 
gossip for hours, each speaking in his own tongue. A white man listening 
may understand one, but never a word of the other. 
The Yurok is notable for its gutturalness, and there are words and 
syllables which contain no perceptible vowel sounds, as mrh-prh, “nose” ; 
chlek'-chih, “earth” ; wrh'-yen-eks, “child”. A Welshman told me he had 
detected in the language the peculiar Welsh sound of “Il”, which is inex- 
pressible in English. In conversation they terminate many words with a 
strong aspiration, which is imperfectly indicated by the letter “h”—a sort 
of catching of the sound, immediately followed by a letting out of the 
residue of the breath with a quick little grunt. This makes their speech 
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