in astronomy, a name given to two constellations, the southern and the northern.

Crown, in geometry, a plane ring included between two parallel or concentric peripheries of unequal circles.

Crown-post, is a post in some buildings standing upright in the middle between two principle rafters; and from which proceed struts or braces to the middle of each rafter. It is otherwise called a king post, or king's piece, or joggle-piece.

La Cruz, an excellent harbour on the north-west coast of America, discovered by the Spaniards in 1779. They were introduced into it by a passage which they called Bucarelli's entrance, and which they placed in 55° 18' N. Lat. and 130° 15' W. Long. from the meridian of Paris. There is no good reason to question the exactness of the latitude of this passage as laid down by the Spaniards; but the editor of Perrouse's voyage justly concludes, from the survey made by our celebrated navigator Captain Cook on the coasts adjacent to the entrance of Bucarelli, that this entrance is about 135° 20' to the west of Paris, or very nearly 133° west of Greenwich.

The Spaniards were not long in the harbour of La Cruz before they received a visit from the inhabitants in its neighbourhood. Bartering took place. The Indians gave their peltry, and various trifles, for glass beads, bits of old iron, &c. By this traffic the Spaniards were enabled to gain a sufficiently exact knowledge of their genius, of their offensive and defensive arms, of their manufactures, &c.

Their colour is a clear olive; many among them have, however, a perfectly white skin: their countenance is well proportioned in all its parts. They are robust, courageous, arrogant, and warlike.

They clothe themselves in one or two undressed skins. Cru

(with the fur apparently); there are the skins of otters, of sea wolves, of benades (a species of deer), of bears, or other animals, which they take in hunting. These dresses cover them from the neck to the middle of the leg; there are, however, many among them who wear boots of smooth skin, resembling English boots, only that those of the Indians open before, and are laced tight with a string. They wear hats woven from the fine bark of trees, the form of which resembles that of a snail or a cone. At the wrists they have bracelets of copper or iron, or for want of these metals the fins of whales; and round the neck, necklaces of small fragments of bones of fishes and other animals, and even copper collars of the bigness of two fingers. They wear in their ears pendants of mother of pearl, or flat pieces of copper, on which is embossed a resin of a topaz colour, and which are accompanied with jet beads.

Their hair is long and thick, and they make use of a comb to hold it together in a small queue from the middle to the extremity; a narrow ribbon of coarse linen, woven for this purpose, serves as a ligament. They wear also as a covering a kind of scarf, woven in a particular manner, something more than a yard and a half long, and about half a yard broad, round which hangs a fringe something more than half a quarter of a yard deep, of which the thread is regularly twisted.

The women give proofs of their modesty and decency by their dress. Their physiognomy is agreeable, their colour fresh, their cheeks vermillioned, and their hair long; they plait it together in one long twist. They wear a long robe of a smooth skin tied round the loins, like that of a nun; it covers them from the neck as low as the feet; the sleeves reach down to the wrists. Upon this robe they put divers skins of otters or other animals to defend themselves from the inclemency of the weather. Better dressed, many of them might dispute charms with the most handsome Spanish women; but dissatisfied with their natural charms, they have recourse to art, not to embellish, but to disfigure themselves. All the married women have a large opening in the under lip, and this opening orifice is filled up by a piece of wood cut in an oval shape, of which the smallest diameter is almost an inch; the more a woman is advanced in years the more this curious ornament is extended; it renders them frightful, the old women especially, whose lip, deprived of its wonted spring, and dragged by the weight of this extraordinary jewel, necessarily hangs in a very disagreeable manner. The girls wear only a copper needle, which crosses the lip in the place where the ornament is intended hereafter to be placed.

These Indians in war make use of cuirasses and shoulder pieces of a manufacture like that of the whalebone stays among the Europeans. Narrow boards or scantlings form, in some sort, the woof of the texture, and threads are the warp: in this manner the whole is very flexible, and leaves a free use to the arms for the handling of weapons. They wear round the neck a coarse and large gorget which covers them as high as below the eyes, and their head is defended by a morion, or skull piece, usually made of the head of some ferocious animal. From the waist downwards, they wear a kind of apron, of the same contexture as their cuirasses. Lastly, a fine skin hangs from their shoulders down to the knee. With this armour, they are invulnerable to the arrows of their enemies; but thus armed, they cannot change position with so much agility as if they were less burdened.

Their offensive arms are arrows; bows, of which the strings are woven like the large cords of our best musical instruments; lances, four yards in length, tongued with iron; knives, of the same metal, longer than European bayonets, a weapon however not very common among them; little axes of flint, or of a green stone, so hard that they cleave the most compact wood without injury to their edge.

The pronunciation of their language is extremely difficult; they speak from the throat, with a movement of the tongue against the palate. The little use the women make of the inferior lip greatly injures the distinctiveness of their language. The Spaniards could neither pronounce nor write the words which they heard.

From the vivacity of spirit in these Indians, and from their attention amply to furnish the market established in the harbour, it may be concluded that they are pretty laborious. They continually brought stuffs well woven and shaded by various colours, the skins of land and sea wolves, of otters, bears, and other smaller animals; of these some were raw, and others dressed. There were to be found at this market also coverlets of coarse cloth, shaded with white and brown colours, very well woven, but in small quantities; large ribbons of the same linen which might match with that of the Spanish officers' mattresses; skins of thread such as this cloth was made of; wooden plates or bowls neatly worked; small boats, or canoes, painted in various colours, the figures of which represented heads with all their parts; frogs in wood, nicely imitated, which opened like tobacco boxes, and which they employed to keep their trinkets in: boxes made of small planks, of a cubical form, being three quarters of a yard on each side, with figures well drawn, or carved on the outside, representing various animals; the covers fabricated like Flanders etcaves, with rabbed edges, formed so as to shut into the body of the box; animals in wood, as well those of the earth as of the air; figures of men of the same material, with skull-caps representing the heads of various fierce animals; snares and nets for fishing; copper collars for the necks, and bracelets of iron for the wrists, but which they would not part with except at a very high price; beak-like instruments, from which they drew sounds as from a German flute. The principal officers took such of these merchandizes as were most agreeable to them, and left the remainder to the ships crews.

As the Indians discovered that the Spaniards were very dainty in their fish, they did not let them want for choice: the greatest abundance was in salmon, and a species of sole or turbot three yards and a quarter long, broad and thick in proportion: cod and pilchards were also brought to market, and fishes resembling trout. From all this it may be inferred, that this gulf is full of fish; the banks too are covered with shells.

The quantity of mother-of-pearl that these Indians cut to pieces for making ear-rings awakened the curiosity of the Spaniards: they tried to discover whether these people had not in their possession, or whether their country did not produce pearls, or some precious stones: their researches were fruitless, they only found some stones which they judged to be metallic, and which they carried. carried on board, not having the necessary means for extracting the metal they might contain.

These Indians feed upon fish, fresh or dry, boiled or roasted; herbs and roots which their mountains yielded them, and particularly that which in Spain is called sea parsley; and, lastly, upon the flesh of animals which they take in hunting: the productions of the chase are undoubtedly abundant, feeding the number of dogs they keep for this purpose.

These Indians appeared to the Spaniards to worship the sun, the earliest and most natural of all idolatrous worship; and they paid a decent respect to the remains of their dead. Don Maurelle, one of the Spanish officers, in an expedition round the gulf, found in two islands three dead bodies laid in boxes of a similar form to those which have been described above, though considerably larger, and decked in their furs. These biers were placed in a little hut upon a platform, or raised floor, made of the branches of trees.

The country is very hilly, the mountains are lofty, and their slope extends almost everywhere to the sea. The soil, lime-stone; it is nevertheless covered with an impenetrable forest of tall fir trees, very large and very straight. As these trees cannot strike very deep into the earth, the violence of the wind often tears them up by the roots: they rot and become a light mould, upon which grows a bushy thicket; and in this are found nettles, camomiles, wild celery, anise, a species of cabbage, celandine, elder, wormwood, forget-me-nots; and without doubt there are other plants along the rivers.

The Spaniards saw ducks, gulls, divers, kites, ravens, geese, storks, gold-finches, and other little birds unknown to them.

The commerce between the Spaniards and the Indians was quite undisturbed; and so desirous were the latter to obtain iron, cloth, and other stuffs, that they sold their children for broken iron hoops and other wares. The Spaniards in this manner bought three young lads, one from five to six years old, another of four, and the third from nine to ten, not to make slaves, but Christians of them; they hoped besides to derive useful information from them as to the nature of the country and its inhabitants. These youths were too contented in being with the Spaniards, that they hid themselves when their parents came on board, from the apprehension of being again restored to them. Two young girls were also purchased with the same view; one very ugly, seven years of age; the other younger, better made, but fickle, and almost at the gates of death.

At the full and change of the moon, the sea rises in the harbour of La Cruz seventeen feet three inches English; it is then high water at a quarter after 12 at noon: the lowest tides are fourteen feet three inches; the night tides exceed by one foot nine inches those of the day.