nd
always behaved with great civility to us. The Russians told us, that
they never had any connections with their women, because they were not
Christians. Our people were not so scrupulous; and some of them had
reason to repent that the females of Oonalashka encouraged their
addresses without any reserve; for their health suffered by a
distemper that is not unknown here. The natives of this island are
also subject to the cancer, or a complaint like it, which those
whom it attacks are very careful to conceal. They do not seem to
be long-lived. I no where saw a person, man or woman, whom I could
suppose to be sixty years of age; and but very few who appeared to
be above fifty. Probably their hard way of living may be the means of
shortening their days.

I have frequently had occasion to mention, from the time of our
arrival in Prince William's Sound, how remarkably the natives, on this
north-west side of America, resemble the Greenlanders and Esquimaux,
in various particulars of person, dress, weapons, canoes, and the
like. However, I was much less struck with this, than with the
affinity which we found subsisting between the dialects of the
Greenlanders and Esquimaux, and those of Norton's Sound and
Oonalashka. This will appear from a table of corresponding words which
I put together.

It must he observed, however, with regard to the words which we
collected on this side of America, that too much stress is not to be
laid upon their being accurately represented; for, after Mr Anderson's
death, we had few who took much pains about such matters; and I have
frequently found, that the same words written down by two or more
persons, from the mouth of the same native, on being compared
together, differed not a little. But still, enough is certain, to
warrant this judgment, that there is great reason to believe, that
all these nations are of the same extraction; and if so, there can be
little doubt of there being a northern communication of some sort,
by sea, between this west side of America and the east side, through
Baffin's Bay, which communication, however, may be effectually shut
up against ships by ice, and other impediments. Such, at least, was my
opinion at this time.[23]

[Footnote 23: This subject has been alluded to in the Introduction,
and will in all probability receive consideration in the course of
this Collection. It is unnecessary, therefore, to enter upon it in
this place. We shall merely mention a few pa