bled tribe, by two individuals in the disguise of wolf-skins. Men, women, and children,-all dressed in their plainest manner, with red fillets about their heads, and rueful gravity in their faces,-assemble soon afterwards at Maquina's house; where they spend the greater part of both day and night in chanting mournful psalmody to the jingle of the great rattle, and the music, or rather noise, of a rude hollow instrument, upon which the king is said very truly to beat time. During the seven days they eat but seldom, and extremely little,— retire very late and get up very early. It was formerly the practice to close the celebration by sacrificing a man in honour of Quahootze; but of late they have adopted the more humane custom of wafting a boy about the house by means of three bayonets thrust into the flesh on each side of his body. Some of the neighbouring tribes are then invited to the village: a great feast is prepared; and the abstinence of a whole week is recompensed by the gluttony of a few hours.-We may observe in passing that the above ceremony could never have been seen by a transient visitor;-inasmuch as the first time of its performance our two captives were sent into the woods, with a threat of certain death if they returned before the expiration of seven days; nor would they have been permitted to witness it the following year unless Maquina had considered their long captivity as equivalent to naturalization.

The Nootkians have a few other superstitious observances which we may as well notice under this head. When they have taken a bear, he is erected in the king's house upon his hinder feet, dressed and decorated like a phylarch, and has placed before him a bountiful tray of provisions. He proves contumacious of course;-and his captors proceed, accordingly, to skin and to cook him,-the intermediate operation of dressing being in a great measure dispensed with. A royal feast is given:--and one bear will supply the whole tribe; as the penalty of tasting the flesh is rigorous abstinence from fish,-their common food, during the two subsequent months. What is typified in the first part of the ceremony, we cannot undertake to determine; unless, indeed, we suppose it to be the Nootkian method of demonstrating that man is the lord of creation. The vindicative part of the regulation may admit of a more plausible explanation; since it would be impossible for one bear to feast the whole nation, unless the impendence of some penalty should be sufficient to make the greatest part contented with merely seeing the remainder eat.--The animal is caught in rude traps located on the banks of rivers, near the shallow places where he is accustomed to watch and take salmon:--and the Nootkians pretend, that the fish would dis

continue coming, if those who had eaten the meat were for two months afterwards permitted to taste of fish.

They have an equally ridiculous superstition about the birth of twins. The parents live in a hut built expressly for themselves and isolated from those of the village. They abstain during two years from all kinds of meat and of fresh fish; appear uniformly thoughtful and gloomy; have the red fillet of humiliation about their heads,-and hold no communication with the other inhabitants. The husband is never invited to any feasts, except such as are made up of dried provision; at which, however, let his ordinary rank be what it will,--he is always treated with the same respect as a tyee. It is his daily prac tice to retire into the woods with a chief's rattle in his hand, for the purpose, Maquina said, of praying to Quahootze that he would fill their waters with fish. The Nootkians consider him as a sacred character; and he is always employed to sing and pray and incantate over their sick. It would be idle to think of tracing the origin of such notions. Perhaps, however, the birth of two children at once and from the same parent is looked upon as a dangerous increase of population; and the rigorous abstinence of the father and mother for two years may be intended to anticipate the loss of provision which must be occasioned by the future consumption of their children. But, at all events, we see that the Nootkian superstitions have every one some reference to the capture of fish;--and as they eat very little of any other food, and as all their religion is merely sublunary, we may conclude generally, that their institutions of this sort had a common foundation in the desire of increasing, in some way or other; their stock of provisions.

The institution of marriage in this, as in most other savage nations, is extremely simple. Polygamy is allowed, and Maquina himself has seven wives; but in the acquisition of a helpmate there are no long courtships or tedious nuptials. Society has advanced far in the progress of civilization, when men and women begin to be considered as something more than bare merchandise, and we find that, during the whole of the savage and barbarous periods, not only is marriage a matter of bargain and sale,--but an appropriate price or manbote is affixed to every individual in the community. A wife among the Nootkians is the mere creature of parental negociation. After our captives had been two years in their society the chiefs came to a determination, that Jewitt should be married (they knew better than to think of savagizing Thompson); and accordingly the king made it known to the half-naturalized armourer, that he must consent to take a wife, or himself and his comrade be put to immediate death. Reduced to this sad extremity (says

VOL. IX.

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the poor fellow), with death on one side and matrimony on the other, I thought proper to choose what appeared to me the least of two evils, and consent to be married, on condition, that as I did not fancy any of the Nootka women, I should be permitted to make my choice of one from some other tribe.' There was no objection to this proviso; and the next day, accordingly, the king started in two canoes, manned with fifty men and loaded with cloth, blankets, and skins, in order to purchase for his fastidious captive an Aitizzartan spouse. Their arrival at the village created a general alarm; but the cause was soon explained; and a messenger dressed in his best apparel was sent to invite Maquina to land and feast at the king's house. Each visitor was shown to his appointed place; and, when all were seated, his Nootkian majesty asked Jewitt if he saw any female who suited his fancy. He answered in the affirmative; and pointed out Eu-stoch-ee-exqua, the daughter of Upquesta, the phylarch. The presents were then delivered amidst the shouts of klack-ko-tyee'—' thank ye chief;' and when the assembly had resumed their seats, Maquina rose, and, in a speech of about thirty minutes, endeavoured to convince the Aitizartan chief that he had by no means made an unprofitable bargain. The general topics of his argument were,-that Jewitt was as good as any of them,-only that he was white; that he had already performed, and would continue to perform, the most important services in the administration of the Nootkian government; that he made the best of fish-hooks, daggers, and harpoons; and that, in short, without the co-operation of John, his neighbours would become intrusive, his subjects rebellious, the whales untractable, and the salmon shy. He hoped, therefore, his brother tyee would see the manifold advantages which must accrue to the Aitizzarts by a consummation of the proposed union. Upquesta followed; and, in a speech of equal length, set off the accomplishments and virtues of his daughter. He could not, at first, even think of parting with his beloved Eu-stoch-ee-exqua; but he began to grow a little more concessive towards the end; and finally he did not much care if, upon promise of kind treatment, the suitor should make her his bride. When the chief began to use expressions of consent, Kinniclimmets vociferated, wocash! wocash!'-' good! good!' and continued to spin on his heel and exhibit his usual buffoonery to the close of the

ceremony.

Whatever is purchased will, of course, be considered as property; and accordingly the wife of a Nootkian is unconditionally at the disposal of her husband. It must often happen, too, that a woman is sold to one person, while her affections are fixed upon another; but, among the Nootkians, no very serious con

sequences follow from such a state of things; for as the least deformity in a female is esteemed an insuperable objection to her marriage, whenever a wife is unfaithful, or stubborn, the husband inflicts on her some mark of disfiguration, and sends her home to her parents. A little before the end of our captives' second year, Yealthlower, the king's elder brother, had purchased a new wife; and upon her refusal of sleeping with him, he one day called in John and had his teeth filed sharp; concealing the object he had in view, till the operation was over, and then assuring the operator, that, if his wife persisted in refusing to sleep with him, he should certainly bite off her nose and order her home. Jewitt endeavoured to dissuade him from so savage a resolution; but he was flint and adamant to persuasion; and the next morning the face of his wife exhibited too unequivocal a proof of the fidelity with which her husband had adhered to his promise. Yet we are told, that this same husband was an amiable, good-natured sort of a man,—and that he went about the deformation of his wife,not as a matter of revenge merely, but as a thing of course and of duty. Where wives are liable to be thus rendered outcasts for life at the pleasure of their husbands, it must seldom happen that they prove unfaithful, or contumacious; and Jewitt tells us, that Yealthlower's spouse was the only one, who, during the three years of his captivity, had her nose bit off, or her person disfigured in any other way.

To one another the Nootkians are affable and neighbourly; and indeed the juxta-position of their houses, as well as the infrequency with which they are separated from each other in the chase, or in any other such occupation, must necessarily tend to rub off the corners of the savage character, and to make them capable of lying by the side of each other without much opposition or disagreement. Nor must it be concluded from what we said about their religion, that they are altogether without a sense of right and wrong. Maquina felt a perpetual consciousness of guilt for his capture of the Boston;-and more than a year after the event, when he one day saw Jewitt writing in his journal, he snatched the book out of his hand and threatened to throw it in the fire the very next time he caught him in such business. Jewitt expostulated, by assuring the king that he was only keeping a memorandum of daily occurrences; but Maquina shook his head, and added, that he was unquestionably writing an account of the manner in which the ship was taken. But the capture had the most powerful effect upon Tootoosch, the first warrior of the tribe. It was always present to his mind; and six months after the affair, while in the enjoyment of perfect health, he was seized with a fit of delirium, and said

he saw Hall and Wood, two of the crew whom he despatched with his own hand, perpetually before his eyes. When food was offered him, he reached forth his hand to take it,—but suddenly recoiled upon himself, and said Hall and Wood would kill him if he touched it. Maquina was greatly troubled; and thanked himself repeatedly that he had not imbrued his hands in the blood of either of the crew: for Nootkian logic would not carry him to the conclusion that the blood of the whole was upon his own head. He was at first inclined to believe that his two captives were the causes of Tootoosch's delirium; and he accordingly asked the warrior, in their presence, whether it was not John and Thompson, instead of Hall and Wood, who were perpetually before his eyes? Wik (no, said he), John klushish-Thompson klushish'-John good-Thompson good: and, patting the former on the shoulder, invited him to eat, Maquina then endeavoured to laugh him out of his madness; but when he saw his jokes pass off without effect, he grew extremely serious, and asked Jewitt, what was the manner in which such disorders were cured among the people with whom he formerly lived? Imprisonment and violent whipping, answered Jewitt:-and after considerable deliberation, the king said he believed Tootoosch must submit to the specific. Thompson was, of course, appointed to administer it; and, as nothing could please him better than to flog an Indian with impunity, he provided himself with several stout whips of beach, and stood ready to wear them all out on the back of Tootoosch, while they were tying him to receive the chastisement. The poor tyee kicked, and bit, and foamed in the most violent manher; but Thompson only whipped him the harder; and, for aught we know, would have ended his life, if Maquina had not interfered, and protested that he had rather see the patient die of the disease than be killed by the remedy.-Tootoosch had lost a son and a daughter a short time before the advent of his delirium, and he died himself not many months afterwards.

Like all other savages, the Nootkians are very hostile to their friends, and very amiable to their enemies. In the deliyery of a present, for example, they look fiercely and menacingly in the face of the recipient, and then throw the article towards him with an air of stern defiance:--while, on the contrary, when they are about to attack an individual, or a tribe, their faces are perpetually in smiles, and, to appearance, their whole deportment is ominous of any thing but war. They make no proclamations, send no tomahawks, or other hostile weapons, as the signals of war to the people against whom they intend to go:-but keep the time and object of the expedition a profound