The superstitious practices observed at their funerals, and their transient grief at the loss of persons the most dear to them, are in my opinion an evident proof of their indifference to life, the brevity of which neither astonishes nor afflicts them. Their religious system deadens them apparently to the consoling hope of a protracted existence. Death is in their eyes but the passage to another life; and in quitting the world, they do not imagine that their pleasures terminate, but that other enjoyments are reserved for them. This flattering prejudice, which I mentioned in my conversation with Oumiavin, sufficiently accounts for his religious perplexities, and the ferocious courage of his countrymen. But their absurd dogmas are entitled to a more particular relation, though the worship upon which they are founded is very simple, and what is marvellous in it by no means attractive. The following account contains the whole theogony of the Koriacs[30]. They acknowledge a supreme being, the creator of all things. He inhabits the sun, whose burning orb they consider as the throne or palace of the lord of nature, whom they probably confound with that celestial fire, which is supposed to be his dwelling. I am led to believe this, as they neither fear, nor worship him. They address no prayer to him: goodness, they say, is his essence; all the good that exists in the world proceeds from him; and it is impossible he should do an injury. May we not conclude from this statement, that the view of the constant and universal benefits conferred by this king of the celestial orbs which gives life, action, and power to all things terrestrial, while it taught them to consider this luminary of the world as their tutelary divinity, imbued them with the blind confidence I have described?