The men frequently paint their faces of a bright red, and of a black colour, and sometimes of a blue, or leaden colour, but not in any regular figure; and the women, in some measure, endeavoured to imitate them, by puncturing or staining the chin with black, that comes to a point in each cheek; a practice very similar to which is in fashion amongst the females of Greenland, as we learn from Crantz.  Their bodies are not painted, which may be owing to the scarcity of proper materials; for all the colours which they brought to sell in bladders, were in very small quantities.  Upon the whole, I have no where seen savages who take more pains than these people do, to ornament, or rather to disfigure, their persons.

Their boats or canoes are of two sorts, the one being large and open, and the other small and covered.  I mentioned already, that in one of the large boats were twenty women, and one man, besides children.  I attentively examined and compared the construction of this, with Crantz’s description of what he calls the great, or women’s boat in Greenland, and found that they were built in the same manner, parts like parts, with no other difference than in the form of the head and stern; particularly of the first, which bears some resemblance to the head of a whale.  The framing is of slender pieces of wood, over which the skins of seals, or of other larger sea-animals, are stretched, to compose the outside.  It appeared also, that the small canoes of these people are made nearly of the same form, and of the same materials with those used by the Greenlanders and Esquimaux; at least the difference is not material.  Some of these, as I have before observed, carry two men.  They are broader in proportion to their length, than those of the Esquimaux, and the head or fore-part curves somewhat like the head of a violin.

The weapons, and instruments for fishing and hunting, are the very same that are made use of by the Esquimaux and Greenlanders; and it is unnecessary to be particular in my account of them, as they are all very accurately described by Crantz.  I did not see a single one with these people that he has not mentioned, nor has he mentioned, one that they have not.  For defensive armour they have a kind of jacket, or coat of mail, made of thin laths, bound together with sinews, which makes it quite flexible, though so close as not to admit an arrow or dart.  It only covers the trunk of the body, and may not be improperly compared to a woman’s stays.

As none of these people lived in the bay where we anchored, or where any of us landed, we saw none of their habitations, and I had not time to look after them.  Of their domestic utensils, they brought in their boats some round and oval shallow dishes of wood, and others of a cylindrical shape much deeper.  The sides were made of one piece, bent round, like our chip-boxes, though thick, neatly fastened with thongs, and the bottoms fixed in with small wooden pegs.  Others were smaller, and of a more elegant