North-West Continent of America, 267 



cupine ; whether this be their custom throughout the 

 year, or only during the season of the salmon fishery ; or, 

 whether there were any casts of them, as in India, I can- 

 not pretend to determine. It is certain, however, that 

 they are not hunters, and I have already mentioned the 

 abhorrence they expressed at some venison which we 

 brought to their village. During our former visit to these 

 people, they requested us not to discharge our fire-arms, 

 iest the report should frighten away the salmon, but now 

 they expressed a wish that I should explain the use and 

 management of them. Though their demeanour to us 

 was of the most friendly nature, and they appeared with- 

 out any arms, except a few who accidentally had their dag- 

 gers, I did not think it altogether prudent to discharge our 

 pieces ; I therefore fired one of my pistols at a tree mark- 

 ed for the purpose, when I put four out of five buck shot, 

 with which it was loaded, into the circle, to their extreme 

 astonishment and admiration. 



These people were in general of the middle stature, 

 well-set, and better clothed with fiesh than any of the na- 

 tives of the interior country. Their faces are round, with 

 high cheek bones, and their complexion between the olive 

 and the copper. They have small grey eyes with a tinge 

 of red ; they have wedge heads, and their hair is of a dark 

 brown colour, inclining to black. Some wear it long, keep 

 it well combed, and let it hang loose over their shoulders, 

 while they divide and tie it in knots over the temples. Others 

 arrange its plaits, and bedawb it with brown earth, so as 

 to render it impervious to the comb ; they, therefore, carry 

 a bodkin about them to ease the frequent irritation, which 

 may be supposed to proceed from such a state of the head. 

 The women are inclined to be fat, wear their hair short, 

 and appear to be very subject to swelled legs; a malady 

 that, probably, proceeds from the posture in which they 

 are always sitting: as they are chiefly employed in the 

 domestic engagements of spinning, weaving, preparing the 

 fish, and nursing their children, which did not appear to 

 be numerous. Their cradle differed from any that I had 

 seen ; it consisted of a frame fixed round a board of suf- 

 ficient length, in which the child, after it has been swathed, 

 is placed on a bed of moss, and a conductor contrived to 

 carry off the urinary discharge. They are slung over one 

 shoulder by means of a cord fastened under the other, so 

 that the infant is always in a position to be readily applied 



