500 



HISTORY OF THE SEA. 



and customs of these people, their habitations, weapons, food, 

 domestic animals, language, and religious views, and concludes 

 by remarking that they differ so essentially in every respect 

 from the inhabitants of the various Pacific islands that it is 



HABITATIONS IN NOOTKA SOUND. 



impossible to suppose their respective progenitors were united 

 in the same tribe, or had any intimate connection when they 

 emigrated from their original settlements into the places where 

 their descendants were now found. 



Cook left Nootka Sound on the 26th of April, and early in 

 May entered a deep inlet, to which he gave the name of Prince 

 William's Sound. Proceeding on his course, as he supposed, 

 toward Behring's Strait, he was surprised to find various in- 

 dications that he was no longer in the sea, but ascending a wide 

 and rapidly-flowing river. He was, however, encouraged to 

 proceed by finding the water as salt as that of the ocean. 

 Having traced the stream a distance of two hundred miles 

 from its entrance, without seeing the least appearance of its 

 source, and despairing of finding a passage through it to the 

 Northern seas, Cook determined to return. Mr. King, one of 

 the officers, was sent on shore to display the flag and take 

 possession of the country and river in his majesty's name, and 

 to bury in the ground a bottle containing some pieces of Eng- 

 lish coin of the year 1772. The vessels left the river — after- 

 ward named, by order of Lord Sandwich, Cook's River — on the 

 5th of June. 



