572 
VOYAGE TO THE 
CHAP. 
XIX. 
Oct. 
1827. 
and even there the arrangement differs. It is remarkable that the 
practice with them is confined to the women, while in the tribe to 
the northward it is limited to the men. It is also singular, that 
this barbarous custom of the males is confined to so small a portion of 
the coast, while that by which the females are distinguished extends 
from Greenland, along the northern and western shores of America, 
down to California. 
Nasal ornaments, so common with the tribes to the southward of 
Oonalaska, were seen by us in one instance only, and w'ere then worn 
by the females of a party whose dialect differed from that in general 
use with the tribe to the westward of Point Barrow. The custom dis- 
appears to the northward of Alaska, and occurs again in the tribe 
near the Mackenzie Eiver. A similar break in the link of fashion in 
the same nation may be traced in the practice of shaving the crown of 
the head, which is general with the Western Esquimaux, ceases at 
the Mackenzie Kiver, and appears again in Hudson’s Bay, and among 
a tribe of Greenlanders, who, when they were discovered by Captain 
Ross, had been so long excluded from intercourse with any other people, 
that they imagined themselves the only living human beings upon the 
face of the globe *. 
It was remarked that the inhabitants of Point Barrow had copper 
kettles, and were in several respects better supplied with European 
articles than the people who resided to the southward. Captain 
Franklin found among the Esquimaux near the Mackenzie several of 
these kettles, and other manufactures, which were so unlike those sup- 
plied by the North-west Company, as to leave no doubt of their being 
obtained from the westward. Connecting these facts with the beha- 
viour of the natives who visited us off Wainwright Inlet, and the in- 
formation obtained by Augustus, the interpreter, it is very probable 
that between the Mackenzie River and Point Barrow there is an 
agent who receives these articles from the Asiatic coast, and parts 
with them in exchange for furs. Augustus learned from the Esqui- 
maux that the people from whom these articles were procured resided 
* See a letter from Captain Edward Sabine, Journal of Science, vol. vii. 
