July 19, '1895.] 



SCIENCE. 



63 



bought. The Marchesa party also obtained 

 a sea-otter bow and arrow, a figure of the 

 latter being given on p. 225. 



On p. 229 Dr. Guillemard says as follows : 

 " We could make out nothing about the 

 nationality of the people of this village. 

 We had been told that some Aleuts from 

 the Bering group had settled in this neigh- 

 borhood, but it seems that the Kurile is- 

 landers have also passed northward, and 

 established themselves on the coast near 

 Cape Lopatka. To us it appeared that they 

 did not differ appreciably fi-om the Kam- 

 chatdale type, but the opinion of a mere 

 passer-by on these mattei's is usually value- 

 less." 



Notwithstanding the caution with which 

 Dr. Guillemard has expressed himself, the 

 impression which his account leaves is that 

 the people he met were Kuriles and that 

 the skin-canoe is a Km-ile apparatus. 



The fact is that these natives were Aleuts 

 pure and simple, former inhabitants of the 

 Aleutian Islands (not even by way of Be- 

 ring Island, I believe). The history of 

 their location near Cape Lopatka, in Kam- 

 chatka, and the consequent appearance of 

 the baidarka, or skin-canoe, on that penin- 

 sula is as follows : 



The Eussian authorities, in order to j)rose- 

 cute the sea-otter hunt in the Kurile Islands 

 at the time when these still belonged to the 

 Eussian crown, transferred a number of 

 noted Aleutian sea-otter hunters, with their 

 families, to the Kuriles. At the time of the 

 cession of these islands to Japan it was 

 stipulated that such of the inhabitants as 

 preferred to return to theii* homes should 

 be allowed to do so. The Aleutian Islands 

 having in the meantime been ceded to the 

 United States, and the Aleuts living in the 

 Kuriles having declared their desire of re- 

 maining Eussian subjects, they were trans- 

 ferred to Kamchatka at the expense of the 

 Eussian government and provisionallj' lo- 

 cated a few miles from Petropaulovski, on 



the road between this port and Aratcha. 

 Here they lived for several years in extreme 

 poverty and squalor, and, as there was no 

 way of employing them, the government 

 had to feed them to prevent them from 

 starving to death. The ease with which 

 thej' could obtain rool-a at Petropaulovski 

 tended to further degrade them and render 

 their total extinction a question of time 

 only, if allowed to continue living in that 

 neighborhood. It having been decided by 

 the authorities to change their habitation, 

 the present site of their village near Cape 

 Loi^atka was selected, as it offered a fair 

 prospect of making them self-supporting by 

 hunting and fishing. 



These were the natives which Dr. Guille- 

 mai"d and his party met, and thus it came 

 to i^ass that skin canoes were in use in the 

 Kuriles and in southern Kamchatka. 



The illustration of the three-hole baid- 

 arka given by Dr. Guillemard on page 226, 

 and the description of a sea-otter bow and 

 arrow, the latter with figure, on page 225, 

 serve as additional proof of the correctness 

 of the above. They are in every detail 

 identical with specimens in the National 

 Museum from Alaska. 



Leonhard Stejnegee. 



U. S. National Museum. 



THE HISTORY OF NAVIGATION IN SPAIN. 



Although Navarrete's Historia de la 

 Ndutiea, published at Madrid in 1846, is now 

 almost half a century old, very little use 

 has been made of it in recent biographies of 

 Columbus. In order to thoroughly iinder- 

 stand the greatness of the discovery made 

 by the Genoese navigator, it is essential to 

 be acquainted with the progress of naval 

 science up to his time, and that is what is 

 described in the Spanish scholar's book. 

 He begins by giving a short sketch of sea- 

 manship among the Ancients. As a great 

 deal has been done to elucidate the subject 



