are a cluster of islands, of which some account has been given under the word Kuril, in the Encyclopaedia. In addition to that article, the following particulars are worthy of notice: Of the 21 islands belonging to Russia, which are distinguished from each other, not by names, but by numbers, four only are inhabited, viz., those which are called the first, the second, the thirteenth, and the fourteenth. The last two may indeed be counted only as one, because the inhabitants all pass the winter upon No. 14, and return to No. 13 to pass the summer months. The others are entirely uninhabited, the islanders only landing there occasionally from their canoes for the sake of hunting foxes and otters. Several of these last mentioned islands are no better than large rocks, and there is not a tree on any one of them. The currents are very violent between the islands, particularly at the entrance of the channels, several of which are blocked up by rocks on a level with the sea. The population of the four inhabited islands amounts at most to 1,400 souls. The inhabitants are very hairy, wear long beards, and live entirely upon seals, fish, and the produce of the chase. When visited by M. Perouse, they had just been exempted for ten years from the tribute usually paid to Russia, because the number of otters on their islands is very much diminished. These poor people are good, hospitable, and docile, and have all embraced the Christian religion. The more southern and independent islanders sometimes pass in canoes the channels that separate them from the Russian Kuriles, in order to give some of the commodities of Japan in exchange for peltries.

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ABDASSEBA, a tribe of savage Arabs who inhabit the desert of Sahara in Africa. They are the most powerful of all those tribes except the Ouadellins; and they resemble these so much in every thing, that we shall give an account of the manners of both under the title Ouadellins, and of their country under that of Sahara.