or ST CROIX, one of the Caribbee islands, situated about 60 miles south-east of Porto Rico, and subject to Denmark. From being a perfect desert, it has begun to flourish exceedingly, being made a free port, and receiving great encouragement from government. W. Long, 64°. N. Lat. 17°. 30'.

LA CRUZ, an excellent harbour on the north-west coast of America, which was 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 139°. 15' W. Long, from the meridian of Paris. The latitude of this passage as laid down by the Spaniards seems to be correct; but the editor of Perou's voyage concludes, from the survey made by Captain Cook on the coasts adjacent to the entrance of Bucarelli, that this entrance is about 135° 20' to the west of Paris, or near 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 glads 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 (with the fur apparently); these are the skins of otters, of sea-wolves, of benades (a species of deer), of bears, or other animals. These dresses cover them from the neck to the middle of the leg; some, however, among them 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, which is formed into the shape of a funnel 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 bignefs 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 tress. 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. All the married women have a large opening in the under lip, and this opening or 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 crofts 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 flays 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 cuirass. 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 belt 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 their 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 with 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 La Cruz, the same linen which might match with that of the Spanish officers matresses; skeins 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 swees, 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 neck, and bracelets of iron for the wrist, 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 merchandises 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 on board, not having the necessary means for extracting the metal they might contain.

The inhabitants of La Cruz feed upon fish, fresh or dry, boiled or roasted; herbs and roots which their mountains yield 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, seeing the number of dogs they keep for this purpose.

They 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 is 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