﻿NO. 19 NORSE VISITS TO NORTH AMERICA BABCOCK 121 



like stone erection 1 with an oval roof-tablet, supposed to have been set 

 up by them but now long overturned, and perhaps for the stone 

 medallion already mentioned, which was found in their territory. 



Right there was the meeting- point of two streams of Indian 

 migration, as it had been previously the border of Norse occupancy, 

 or at least the scene of daily Norse excursions after game. The 

 Micmac, and presumably the rather more nearly related Malicete, 

 followed down the St. Lawrence valley, while the Penobscot and 

 their kindred the Passamaquoddy appear to have worked on up the 

 Atlantic. All these people were of the ancient Algonquian stem, but 

 the two branches had been long separated when fate thus drew them 

 again together ; for even yet the languages 2 of the Malicete and 

 Passamaquoddy borderers differ considerably and the Micmac use a 

 very different pattern of canoe (upturned at both ends) from that of 

 the " American Indians," although occasionally visiting, from near 

 Digby, the same island of Grand Manan. 



We do not know when this first meeting took place ; but, as before 

 emphasized, the Norse date (say 1003) is very early. If we suppose 

 that the movement down the St. Lawrence valley had not yet reached 

 the site of Monckton nor the upper waters of the St. John and that the 

 movement up the Atlantic coast had not yet passed the Kennebec, 

 we shall have the requisite Indian vacuum. There is nothing to sug- 

 guest that any Eskimo ever crossed the Maritime Provinces in those 

 days or skirted their eastern border, no reason to suppose that the 

 Beothuk extended so far down the coast, and we cannot assume any 

 other native occupants for this corner of the Bay of Fundy shore. 



Any one who will mount Battery Hill above Eastport and look 

 about him will understand " there were mountains around " ; the 

 country is " fine " still and the hay crop both on the mainland and 

 Grand Manan — for we were there in the height of that season — is 

 really remarkable. They must have found excellent grazing. Excel- 

 lent hunting, too, for the resources are not yet exhausted. We were 

 told of a moose which had recently visited the bay shore near East- 

 port and were offered in that city the skins of seals shot by Indians 

 very recently on or near Grand Manan. A whale had entered within 

 a few days the cove of that name, beside which we were lodged on the 

 island, just as another came into the hands of Thorfinn's people, to 

 their temporary discomfiture. They would be likely to establish them- 



1 Jack: Stone Found in New Brunswick. Smithsonian Rep. for 1881. before 

 cited. 



2 Trans. Royal Soc. Canada, 1904, p. 20. 



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