94 THE ROYAL SOCIETY OF CANADA 



only ones our aboriginal tribes possessed, and especially to polish the 

 curved slope to the profile, would have been difficult to the point of 

 impossibility, and time-consuming beyond all bounds of aboriginal 

 patience. Further, an Indian would have carved a type familiar to 

 him, but there is nothing in this profile in the least suggestive of Indian 

 features, which in the tribes of this region markedly approximate 

 the Mongolian rather than the Roman type, while the treatment 

 of the hair is as remote as possible from the styles which all early 

 records indicate as prevalent in these parts. Indian affirmations of 

 manufacture by their ancestors can hardly have weight against the 

 testimony of the stone itself, and are neutralized by statements of 

 other Indians, who, according to Mr. McGowan, said the medallion 

 was made by the French. The claim that it stood at the grave of a 

 chief, may however, have some basis, as will soon appear. 



Extinct Race. This suggestion, already mentioned, is adduced 

 by no less an authority than W. J. [Sir William] Dawson, the geologist 

 and archaeologist, in explanation of certain "carved stones . . . found 

 in New Brunswick . . . unlike anything executed by the more modern 

 tribes". The plural is evidently intended to cover the medallion, 

 though it is not mentioned, and a conglomerate boulder, crudely 

 carved at one end with a human head, which he describes and pictures 

 {Acadian Geology, second edition, 1868, 43-45). This stone, found 

 beside the Kennebecasis River, was, however, later examined critic- 

 ally by G. F. Matthew, also a geologist and archaeologist, whose 

 picture shows a less finished product than Dawson's, and whose 

 description states that "The artist has apparently seized upon a 

 rude semblance of the human face presented (by natural protuber- 

 ances) and worked out the finer lineaments to correspond," while 

 further details throw doubt upon the complete genuineness of the 

 relic {Report of the Smithsonian Institution for 1881, page 672). This 

 stone, formerly in the Museum of the Mechanics Institute at St. 

 John, has disappeared and its fate is unknown. In any case, the 

 descriptions show a work in every way so inferior to the Utopia 

 medallion as not only to place it in a different class, but to bring it 

 within the possibility of fabrication by unskilled workers with the 

 simplest tools. On no better basis that a guess inspired by our 

 ignorance of the real origin of these two stones rests the whole case 

 for an extinct race; and in truth it is not much. 



Norse. This origin is also a guess, without supporting evidence. 

 No other traces attributable to Norsemen have been found in this 

 region, the nearest being the very doubtful rune-like markings found 

 on two stones near Yarmouth, Nova Scotia, one of which has been 



