148 SEA FOWL IN NOVA SCOTIA—GILPIN. 
Micmacs dwelling in, on the rough shore of the Bay of Fundy. 
They shot from long ducking guns, with buccaneer stocks, (the 
front of stock very convex,) flint locks, and every man meas- 
uring his charge in his palm, from a long curved powder horn ; 
and yet they were good shots ; and on the evening of a soft April 
day, the fog clinging around Brenton’s reef, it was a pleasant 
sight to see them slowly following homeward, with their big 
spaniels and lusty Newfoundlands, two or three horse loads full 
of game, each horse piled high with a feathery pyramid of black 
and grey, gleaming with scarlet bits of leg or bill. It was rare 
then to see four wheeled waggons; a manlier generation used 
horseback, sometimes the old two wheeled chaise. These men 
knew the Labrador duck, now nearly extinct, and taught me to 
identify the Huron scoter, for which I vainly sought in Buona- 
parte’s catalogue, N. Y. Lyceum, and which in after years was 
first scientifically described by Herbert in American wild sports, 
allowed by Baird, but denied by Cones. Whether this sport is 
still carried on, by breech-loaders and patent shell, I know not, 
but must return to our own part of the stream, and the modifica- 
tion time and civilization has wrought in it, not referring 
again to the ancient voyagers. The opinion of those most inter- 
ested in it steadily maintain its rapid decrease, or at all events 
its alteration of route. Wilson speaks of birds now almost ex- 
tinct as found in the markets. M. Audubon, speaking of the 
sea ducks in the Bay of Fundy, says “that by the 10th August 
they (eiders and scoters) are so naked of feathers and destitute 
of quills as to be unable to fly, and are clubbed by the Indians, 
sometimes to the number of two hundred and fifty in one foray, 
being unpaired birds remaining from the previous winter.” With 
a fair knowledge of the southern coasts of the Bay of Fundy, 
and of the Indians about them, I can say these are the stories of 
former days, and that no such hunts are made now. Even in’ 
Labrador their numbers are declining. In the official reports of 
the Dominion of Canada for 1878, it is stated that the Mingan 
Indians, during the summer of that year, were reduced to com- 
parative starvation from the absence of feathered game on the 
sea coasts. We may take the fate of a kindred species, the great 
