with this instrument; which is struck into the shoal, and the fish are caught either upon or between the teeth.  Their hooks are made of bone and wood, and rather inartificially; but the harpoon, with which they strike the whales and lesser sea-animals, shew a great reach of contrivance.  It is composed of a piece of bone, cut into two barbs, in which is fixed the oval blade of a large muscle-shell, in which is the point of the instrument.  To this is fastened about two or three fathoms of rope; and to throw this harpoon, they use a shaft of about twelve or fifteen feet long, to which the line or rope is made fast; and to one end of which the harpoon is fixed, so as to separate from the shaft, and leave it floating upon the water as a buoy, when the animal darts away with the harpoon.

We can say nothing as to the manner of their catching or killing land-animals, unless we may suppose that they shoot the smaller sorts with their arrows, and engage bears, or wolves and foxes, with their spears.  They have, indeed, several nets, which are probably applied to that purpose;[3] as they frequently threw them over their heads, to shew their use, when they brought them to us for sale.  They also, sometimes, decoy animals, by covering themselves with a skin, and running about upon all-fours, which they do very nimbly, as appeared from the specimens of their skill, which they exhibited to us, making a kind of noise, or neighing, at the same time; and on these occasions, the masks or carved heads, as well as the real dried heads of the different animals, are put on.

[Footnote 3:  One of the methods of catching sea-otters, when ashore at Kamptschatka, is with nets.—­See Coxe’s Russian Discoveries, p. 13.—­D.]

As to the materials, of which they make their various articles, it is to be observed, that every thing of the rope kind is formed either from thongs of skins and sinews of animals, or from the same flaxen substance of which their mantles are manufactured.  The sinews often appeared to be of such a length, that it might be presumed they could be of no other animal than the whale.  And the same may be said of the bones of which they made their weapons already mentioned; such as their bark-beating instruments, the points of their spears, and the barbs of their harpoons.

Their great dexterity in works of wood, may, in some measure, be ascribed to the assistance they receive from iron tools.  For, as far as we know, they use no other; at least we saw only one chisel of bone.  And though originally their tools must have been of different materials, it is not improbable that many of their improvements have been made since they acquired a knowledge of that metal, which now is universally used in their various wooden works.  The chisel and the knife are the only forms, as far as we saw, that iron assumes amongst them.  The chisel is a long flat piece, filled into a handle of wood.  A stone serves for a mallet, and a piece of fish-skin