154 REV. GEO. PATTERSON ON THE BEOTIIIKS 



deceased. There were two small wooden images of a man and woman, no dotibt meant 

 to re^jresent husband and wife ; a small doll, which we .supposed to represent a child (for 

 Mary March had to leave her child here, which died two days after she was taken). 

 Several small models of their canoes, two small models of boats, an iron axe, a bow and 

 quiver of arrows, were placed by the side of Mary March's husband, and two fire-stones 

 (radiated iron-pyrites, from which they produce fire by striking them together) lay at his 

 head. There were also various kinds of culinary utensils, neatly made of birch-rind and 

 ornamented, and many other things, of some of which we did not know the use or meaning. 



" Another mode of sepulture which we saw here was, when the body of the deceased 

 had been wrapped in birch-rind, it was, with his property, placed on a sort of scaffold 

 about i'our feet and a-half from the ground. The scaffold was formed of four posts about 

 seven feet high, fixed perpendicularly in the ground, to sustain a kind of crib, five and 

 a-half feet in length by four in breadth, with a floor made of small square beams laid 

 close together horizontally, and on which the body and property rested. 



" A third mode was when the body, bent together and wrapped in birch-rind, was 

 enclosed in a kind of box in the ground. The box was made of small square posts laid on 

 each other horizontally, and notched at the corners to make them meet close. It was 

 about four feet by three, and two and a-half feet deep and well lined with birch-rind to 

 exclude the weather. from the inside. The body lay on its right side. 



"A fourth and the most common mode of burying among these people has been to 

 wrap the body in birch-rind and cover it over with a heap of stones, on the surface of the 

 earth in some retired spot. Sometimes the body, thus wrapped, is put a foot or two 

 under the surface, and the spot covered with stones. In one place, where the ground was 

 sandy and soft, they appeared to have been buried deeper and no stones placed over their 

 graves. 



" Our only and frail hope now left of seeing the Red Indians lay on the banks of the 

 River Exploits on our return to the sea coast. 



" Down this noble lake the steady perseverance and intrepidity of my Indians car- 

 ried me on rafts in four days. We landed at various places on both banks of the river on 

 our way down, but found no traces of the Red Indians, so recent as those seen at the 

 portage at Badger Bay, G-rand Lake, toward the beginning of our excursion. 



" "What arrests the attention most in gliding down the stream is the extent of the 

 Indian fences to entrap deer. It was melancholy to contemplate the gigantic yet rude 

 efforts of a whole primitive nation, in their anxiety to provide subsistence, forsaken and 

 going to decay. There must have been hundreds of Red Indians, and that not many 

 years ago, to have kept up these fences and pounds. As their numbers were lessened, so 

 was their ability to keep them up for the purposes intended, and now the deer pass the 

 whole line unmolested." 



Though scarce a hope remained of finding a Red Indian, yet the Bœothick Institute 

 placed the Indians who had accompanied Mr. Cormack on their establishment to be em- 

 ployed in farther efforts for that purpose, and in the following summer sent them on an 

 exploratory journey to the northern parts of the island. They were to proceed in a 

 schooner to Croke Harbour, and there putting themselves in communication with the 

 French commandant, endeavour to obtain information as to the existence of Red Indians 

 in that quarter. If they heard of such they were to proceed to and examine the spot. 



