Gatscbet.] 410 [May 7, 



Bay, in the south of the island. On his expedition, Mr. Cormack saw 

 Micmac Indians in the south-west between King George the Fourth's Pond 

 and St. George's Bay. Although the Micmacs resided chiefly on the west 

 side, there were many points on which they came in hostile (or friendly?) 

 contact with the Red Indians, whose most frequented haunts seem to 

 have been in the east and north of the island. 



ADDITIONAL NOTES BY MR. HOWLEY. 



In various books about Newfoundland many misstatements were pub- 

 lished about Shanandithit and her family. The facts are as follows : 

 Shanandithit in 1823 took refuge with the white people, with her mother 

 and sister, and at that time was about twenty-three years old. She learnt 

 what she knew of English from Peyton's family, in whose house she 

 staid at St. John's. Her sister died shortly after coming to St. John's, 

 and her mother, who is described as a morose old hag, died a year or two 

 after, about fifty years old, having never returned to her tribe. Only 

 during the last winter of her life (1828-29), Shanandithit lived in Mr. 

 Cormack's house. The emblems or figures drawn by her (represented in 

 Article First) were called mythological emblems by Cormack, perhaps 

 without sufficient reasons ; Dr. Dawson regards them all as the totems of 

 gentes. 



The blue jay, whose feathers served for striking sparks, was not the 

 Corvus canadensis, but Cyanocilta cristata, quite common on the west 

 side of the island. 



The puffin or sea parrot is the Fratercula arctica of Linne. 



The sea pigeon is the black guillemot, Urea grylle [The Amer. Ornith. 

 Union Check List of 1886, has Cepplms grylle, or Black Guillemot]. 



Blackbird. The robin, T'urdus migratorius, is there called blackbird. 



Capelan, a fish, is Mallotus villosus. 



Ticklas is the kittiwake gull : liissa tridactyla. 



(Cibo, local name near Cape Breton, is the Micmac term : shibu river.) 



REMARKS ON THE VOCABULARIES. 



The precarious condition in which the words of the Beothuk language 

 have come down to us, is due to several causes which have to be fully 

 recognized before inquiries upon the language itself can be undertaken 

 and variant readings reduced to their original forms. This confusion has 

 had the following causes : 



Indistinct handwriting has caused the uncertainty which in many words 

 exists between n and h, r (ct.fork), v and r, g and y, b and t (cf. trap), 

 ck and ek, t and/ (in: botomet), between the capitals B and R (cf. six) 

 and the final -k and -t in Leigh's vocabulary. Even among us, people of 

 a low degree of education always write n like u, and the same thing was 

 done by some copyists of the Beothuk vocabularies. Faulty copying was 

 the immediate consequence of indistinct chirography. 



