Productions.
Account, o f the.
Inhabitants.
ductions are bilberries, cranberries, wortleberries, and
■ wild lily-roots. Kadyak likewife yields willows and alders,
which circumftance affords the ftrongeft proof that
it lies at no great diftance from the continent of America.
The extent of Kadyak cannot be exactly afeertained,
as the Ruffians, through apprehenfion of the natives, did
not venture to explore the country.
The inhabitants, like thofe of the .Aleutian and nearer
iflands, make holes in the under-lips and through the
griftle of the nofe, in which they infert the bones of
birds and animals worked into the form of teeth. Their
clothes are made of the fkins of birds, foxes, fea-otters,
young rein-deer, and marmofets; they few them together
with finews. They wear alfo fur-ftockings of rein-deer
fkins, but no breeches. Their arms are bows, arrows,
and lances, whofe points, as well as their fmall hatchets,
are of ffiarp flint: fome few make knives and lance
points o f rein-deer bones. Their wooden fhields are
called kuyaky, which amongft the Greenlanders fignifies
a fmall canoe. Their manners are altogether rude.
They have not the leaf! difpofition to give a courteous
reception to ftrangers: nor does there appear amongft
themfelves any kind of deference or fubmiffion from
one to another.
Their canoes are fome of them fo fmall as to contain
only one or two perfons; others are large baidars fimilar
i to
to the women’s boats of the Greenlanders. Their food
confifts chiefly of raw and dried fiffi, partly caught at
fea with bone hooks, and partly in rivulets, in bag-nets
made of finews platted together. They call themfelves
Kanagift, a name that has no fmall refemblance to
Karalit; by which appellation, the Greenlanders and Efqui-
maux on the coaft of Labradore diftinguifh themfelves :
the difference between thefe two denominations is occa-
fioned perhaps by a change o f pronunciation, or by a
miftake of the Ruffian failors, who may have given it
this variation. Their numbers feem very confiderable
on that part of the ifland, where they had their fixed
habitations.
The ifland Kadyak* makes,with Aghunalafhka, Umnak,
and the fmall iflands lying between them, a continued
Archipelago, extending N. E. and E. N. E. towards America
: it lies by the fhip’s reckoning in 230 degrees of
longitude ; fo that it cannot be far diftant from that
part of the American coaft which Beering formerly
touched at.
The large ifland Alakfu, lying Northward from Kadyak
where Puilikaref t wintered, muft be ftill nearer the
* Kadyak is not laid down upon any chart o f the new difeovered
iflands : for we have no chatt o f Glottoff’s voyage ; and no other Ruffian
navigator touched at that ifland.
■ j- See Chap. VI.
yr
I
continent: