[13]A List is contained in the [Appendix], of the different articles of Esquimaux manufacture which were presented, by the Author, to the University Library at Cambridge; accompanied, also, by a List of things of a similar nature brought to Russia by Commodore Billings, from the N. W. coast of America.
[14]This gallant officer lost his arm in the attack on Java, by a cannon-ball. The seamen seeing him knocked backwards by the shock, and lying senseless, conjectured that he had been killed outright; but as they were bearing him off the field, the Captain recovered his senses, and feeling the hot beams of a vertical sun striking directly on his face and head (his hat having rolled off when he fell), he immediately exclaimed to one of his men, “Damme, Sir! fetch me my hat.”
[15]Some of the arrows brought to England by the Author were barbed flint, and exactly resemble the arrow-heads found in the Tomb of the Athenians in the Plain of Marathon.
[16]See the Plate.
[17]See Hearne’s “Journey to the Northern Ocean,” p. 154, London, 1795.
[18]This practice was common to almost all the antient world; especially to the Celtic and Gothic tribes, as manifested by the antiquities now found in their sepulchres. Possibly, therefore, the Asiatic origin of the Esquimaux may hence be deduced. The same custom also exists among the Greenlanders; who are, in fact, a branch of the Esquimaux. “They like,” says Crantz, “to make the grave in some remote high place, laying a little moss upon the bare ground (for the rock admits of no digging), and spread a skin upon it. . . . . Near the burying spot they deposit the kajak and darts of the deceased, and the tools he daily used.”—See Crantz’s Greenland, vol. I. p. 237. London, 1767.
[19]Moschetos are considered as among the winged agents of the Evil Spirit, by some of the North-American tribes.
[20]See the [Sketch] of this remarkable Cape, taken on the tops.
[21]Hearne’s Journey to the Northern Ocean, p. 224. Lond. 1795.
[22]See the Voyages of Frobisher, Davies, and others.