Besides the supreme God Kutka, they had a host of inferior deities, installed by their imaginations in the forests, the mountains, and the floods. They adored them when their wishes were fulfilled, and insulted them when their affairs went amiss; like the lower class of Italians, who, when any disaster befalls them, take off their cap, enumerate into it as many saints' names as they can call to mind, and then trample it under foot. Two wooden household deities, Aschuschok and Hontai, were held in particular estimation. The former, in the figure of a man, officiated in scaring away the forest spirits from the house; for which service he was remunerated in food, his head being daily anointed with fish-soup. Hontai was half man, half fish, and on every anniversary of the purification from sin, a new one was introduced and placed beside his predecessors, so that the accumulated number of Hontais showed how many years the inhabitants had occupied their house. The Kamtschatkans believed in their own immortality, and in that of the brute creation; but they expected in a future state to depend upon their labour for subsistence, as in the present life; they only hoped that the toil would be lightened, and its reward more abundant, that they might never suffer hunger. This idea of itself sufficiently proves, that the fisheries sometimes fail in their produce. The several races of Kamtschatkans frequently waged war with each other; caused either by the forcible abduction of the women, or a deficiency in hospitality on their occasional interchange of visits, which was considered an insult to the guest, demanding a bloody revenge. Their wars were seldom carried on openly; they preferred stratagem and artifice; and the conquerors practised the greatest cruelties on the conquered. If a party was so beleaguered as to lose all hope of effectual resistance, or of securing their safety by flight, knowing that no mercy would await a surrender, their warlike spirit did not desert them; they first murdered their women and children, and then rushed furiously on the enemy, to sell their lives as dearly as possible. Their weapons were lances, and bows and poisoned arrows. To treat a guest with the utmost politeness, and leave no cause for hostility, the host was expected to heat his subterranean dwelling till it became almost insupportable: both parties then cast off all their attire, an enormous quantity of food was placed before the guest, and the fire was continually fed. When the visitor declared that he could no longer eat, or endure the heat of the place, all that courtesy required had been done, and the host expected a present in return for his hospitality.