I2O SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 59 



the places and nesting times for razor-billed auks, American eider 

 ducks and herring gulls, all quite near him, 500 to 1,000 eggs of the 

 last-named being still collected annually from one islet before the 

 brief open season ends. After that they are rigidly preserved. See 

 also Packard s account already cited of the multitudinous nesting 

 gannets and lesser birds on rocky islands in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, 

 and Cartwright s and Cartier s as to like conditions on Funk Island 

 off the Newfoundland Atlantic shore. 



It is a curious but easily explainable fact that our white people have 

 largely followed Indian paths and settled in numbers on Indian 

 village sites. The same conveniences, obstacles and allurements affect 

 both alike, to a certain point, in the simpler matters of existence. 

 There may be a special illustration of this in the established and 

 ancient habit of the Passamaquoddy Indians, to cross and recross 

 the strait annually in their canoes, having their home astride of it, 

 so to speak, and obtaining supplies from both shores. They no longer 

 maintain a permanent village on the island, having withdrawn for 

 superstitious reasons (it is said) but the habit of annual or more fre 

 quent migrations across Grand Manan Channel for sport and food is 

 hardly yet abandoned. The Norsemen did likewise and for like 

 reasons, the resources being enumerated in the saga. It is perhaps 

 a case where the usual procedure had been reversed, the Indian 

 following the white man, for that region seems to have been empty 

 of inhabitants on their arrival and during the three years (once inter 

 rupted) of their occupancy, as Strachey declares the lower course of 

 the Susquehanna to have been, or as some parts of Kentucky perhaps 

 were, or lower Greenland at the time of Eric s settlement; indeed, 

 until after 1300, according to Dr. Rink 1 and Dr. Storm. It is a 

 common phenomenon in the case of a sparse native population, not 

 deeply anchored. 



The Indians of the region at the time of our first knowledge con 

 cerning them were the Micmac or Souriquois of Nova Scotia, extend 

 ing west of the head of the Bay of Fundy into Northern New Bruns 

 wick, the Malicete or Milicete of the western side of the bay and the 

 Passamaquoddy, often referred to on Grand Manan as the American 

 Indians. The Maguaquadevic Indians about St. George and the neigh 

 boring lakes are the border tribe of Malicete on the Passamaquoddy 

 side. There is said to be a portrait of one in the Illustrated London 

 News of Sept. 5, 1863. They were notable for at least one dolmen- 



H. A. Rink: Tales and Traditions of the Eskimo, p. 74. 



