41 



CHAPTER IV. 



THE MODEEN FEUIOD— Continued. 

 PRE-HISTORIC MAN RESULTS OP FOREST FIRES. 



In a region whose history extends backward scarce three hundred 

 years, pre-historic times may seem to have little interest, in so far as 

 the human period is concerned. Yet I think that something may be 

 learned, at a time when pre-historic human remains are exciting so 

 much attention in the old world, by referring to the more recent " Stone 

 Age " of Acadia. Those who speculate as to the antiquity of man, and 

 the ages of Stone, Bronze, and Iron in Europe, and who, looking back 

 on the earlier of these periods through the mists of centuries, attach to 

 it a fabulous antiquity, may derive some lessons from a country in 

 which the stone age existed three hundred years ago, and has yet 

 passed away as completely as though it had never been. The Micmac 

 still pitches his rude wigwam of birch bark Avithin sight of the largest 

 cities of Acadia ; but he has entered into the iron age, and the stone 

 weapons of his ancestors are as much objects of curiosity to him as to 

 his neighbours of European origin. When first visited by Europeans, 

 the Micmacs inhabited the coast line of Nova Scotia and New Bruns- 

 wick, the Malicetes the interior of the latter. Both tribes were of the 

 great Algonquin race, speaking cognate dialects of that widely diffused 

 American tongue which extended along the whole northern side of the 

 St Lawrence valley to Lake Superior. Both tribes were hunters and 

 fi-shermen, making their canoes and wigwams, as they still do, of the 

 bark of the white birch, and using weapons and other implements of 

 stone and bone. The bronze age never existed in North America ; 

 but in Nova Scotia, as in Canada, native copper was used for trinkets, 

 though, from its scarcity, only to a very small extent. The stone 

 implements, as in Canada and the New England states, wei'e both 

 chipped and polished. In the former way were made knives, spear- 

 heads, and arrow-heads, of quartz and flinty slate. In the latter way, 

 chisels, axes, and gouges Averc made of greenstone and other crystalline 

 rocks. Both varieties were used at the same period for diUcrcnt pur- 



