Xxii INTRODUCTION. 



Landing at Boston, three years before a solitude, let 

 the traveller push northward, pass the River Piscataqua 

 and the Penacooks, and cross the River Saco. Here, a 

 change of dialect would indicate a different tribe, or 

 group of tribes. These were the Abenaquis, found 

 chiefly along the course of the Kennebec and other riv- 

 ers, on whose banks they raised their rude harvests, 

 and whose streams they ascended to hunt the moose and 

 bear in the forest desert of Northern Maine, or descended 

 to fish in the neighboring sea.^ 



Crossing the Penobscot, one found a visible descent in 

 the scale of humanity. Eastern Maine and the whole 

 of New Brunswick were occupied by a race called 

 Etchemins, to whom agriculture was unknown, though 

 the sea, prolific of fish, lobsters, and seals, greatly 

 lightened their miseries. The Souriquois, or Micmacs, 

 of Nova Scotia, closely resembled them in habits and 

 condition. From Nova Scotia to the St. Lawrence, there 

 was no population worthy of the name. From the Gulf 

 of St. Lawrence to Lake Ontario, the southern border 

 of the great river had no tenants but hunters. North- 

 ward, between the St. Lawrence and Hudson's Bay, 

 roamed the scattered hordes of the Papinachois, Bersi- 



in a state of chronic war with the tribes of New Brunswick and Nova 

 Scotia. Champlain, on his voyage of 1603, heard strange accounts of 

 them. The following is literally rendered from the first narrative of that 

 heroic, but credulous explorer. 



" They are savages of shape altogether monstrous : for their heads are 

 small, their bodies short, and their arms thin as a skeleton, as are also 

 their thighs ; but their legs are stout and long, and all of one size, and, 

 when they are seated on their heels, their knees rise more than half a 

 foot above their heads, which seems a thing strange and against Nature. 

 Nevertheless, they are active and bold, and they have the best country on 

 all tlie coast towards Acadia." — Des Sauvages, f. 34. 



This story may match that of the great city of Norembega, on the 

 Penobscot, with its population of dwarfs, as related by Jean Alphonse. 



1 The Tarratines of New-England writers were the Abenaquis, or a 

 portion of them 



