Ahoriginal Antiquities found at Montreal. 369 



it may be well perhaps to give the hospitable entertainers of 

 Cartier the benefit of the doubt. 



2. Beads or Wampum. — Only a single specimen of the shell 

 wampum, or " Esurguy" as Cartier calls it, has been found. It 

 is represented in Fig. 1, and is of small size, neatly formed, and 

 the material is apparently the pearly shell of a Unio, probably 

 U. ventricosus.* Such beads, from their small size and the labour 

 required in their manufacture, must have been very valuable, 

 while their pearly lustre would render them more beautiful than 

 the wampum of the coast Indians. If this single specimen really 

 represents the beads to which Cartier alludes, it accords with his 

 statement that the material was obtained in the river, but does 

 not explain his curious account of the mode in which it was 

 procured. 



Fig. 1. Fig. 2. 



Many examples have been found by Mr. Murphy and myself, 

 of discs of baked clay, rudely ornamented and perforated through 

 the centre, as in Fig. 2. These seem to have been a cheaper and 

 commoner kind of beads. 



' 3. Bone Implements. — These are very numerous and of various 

 forms. Fig. 3 represents the point of a barbed fish spear ; Fig. 

 4 may have been a spear point or arrow head, and Fig. 5 repre- 

 sents a bone needle. A great number of pointed implements, 

 perhaps daggers, spear heads or skewers, have been found, some 

 of them very neatly formed, but without any attempt at orna- 

 mental carving. Bone stamps for impressing patterns on pottery 

 are not uncommon, and numerous examples have been found of 

 objects of unknown use formed of bones of the feet of quadrupeds, 

 ground flat on one side and hollowed in a peculiar manner, with 



a small hole bored in one end. Bone seems to have been largely 

 used by these people for implements of various kinds, and the 



* Or U. Canadensis of Lea, which is perhaps only a variety of the spe- 

 cies named in the text. 

 Can. Nat. 2 Vol. VI. No. 5. 



