42 THE MODERN PERIOD. 



poses. The implements represented in Fig. 10 are specimens of the 

 first class, and will serve to show their resemblance to the pre-historic 

 remains of Europe. The large weapon in the middle is the head of a 

 spear or javelin made of hard jaspery slate or fine-grained fissile 

 quartzite. On either side of it are two knives made of a similar 

 material. All three are believed to have been used in a skirmish 

 between the Micmacs and the French, in the early colonization of 

 Nova Scotia. The arrow-head is a beautiful and symmetrical little 

 weapon of pure milky quartz, found in a ploughed field, and of 

 uncertain age. These are good specimens of the Micmac stone imple- 

 ments of the chipped style, and are all of native rocks found in the 

 metamorphic districts of the country. Their implements of polished 

 stone are principally oval or wedge-shaped axes or adzes, often of 

 large size and admirably shaped and smoothed. It would appear 

 from the traditions of these people, as well as from a few historical 

 notices preserved by their earlier visitors, that they carried on wars 

 with the natives of Newfoundland on the north, and of Maine on the 

 south, and with the Mohawks or Iroquois of the St Lawrence; 

 and that, though divided into small tribes, they could form great 

 national leagues for the prosecution of these wai - s. Their armies 

 were organized under generals and subordinate leaders, and their 

 camps, when in the field, were regularly planned and fortified with 

 palisades interwoven with boughs. The now dwindled remnant of 

 the Micmacs, according to Mr Rand, recall the memory of this stone 

 age of their forefathers as if it were their golden age. Then they 

 were numerous, independent, and powerful. They had fish, game, 

 and clothing in abundance. Their dense forests sheltered them from 

 the winter cold and summer heat. Poverty, want, and disease were 

 comparatively unknown. 



How long had this stone age continued ? Tradition and history 

 are silent on this point, and, in the nature of the case, monumental 

 evidence, fails to give dates. Certain it is, that no discoveries have 

 yet been made pointing to the residence of man in that later Post- 

 Pliocene period in which the Mastodon flourished ; and it is probable 

 that the origin of the long-headed or Dolichocephalic race of Eastern 

 America, to which the Micmacs and Malicetes belong, is to be sought 

 for in an ancient immigration from Northern Africa or Europe. The 

 reasons advanced in favour of this view by Retzius,* based on the 

 form of the skull, as compared with that in the Guanches of the 

 Canaries, and the Copts, Moors, etc., are strengthened by the large 

 number of root-words identical with those of the Indo-European 

 * Archives des Sciences, Geneva, 1860. 



