INTO THE TERRA-NOVA COUNTRY 17 



the glassy river, and, after shaking herself like a great dog, 

 wandered up into the timber right past the very spot where 

 we were to make our home for a week. 



There is little doubt that a family party of Micmacs came 

 annually to this corner of the lake, and trapped during the 

 winter. Next morning Saunders and I, poking about in the 

 forest close at hand, came on their house, which had been 

 used during the past season. It was a carefully constructed 

 "tepee" of spruce poles, beautifully lined inside with birch 

 bark and quite impervious to rain or snow. We saw here, 

 too, a large hollowed pine which had been cut out for a 

 trough, in which tanning had been made for curing caribou 

 skins. Those skins had been then sewn together, and used 

 as a covering for a canoe. Saunders assumed that these 

 were some of the regular hunting Indians, which come all 

 the way from the south coast in the late fall. 



Later on in this work I give an account of the Micmacs, 

 but a word or two about their predecessors may not be 

 out of place. Recorded history enables us to go back as 

 far only as the first appearance of European explorers, who 

 visited the island about four hundred years ago. The " Red 

 Indians," or Beothicks, were then the occupants of the soil, 

 and they were said to resemble in every respect the indigenous 

 tribes of North America, and were probably of the same stock 

 as the Algonquins. 



The Beothicks had straight black hair, high cheek bones, 

 small black eyes, and a copper-coloured skin. In hunting 

 and fishing modes they also resembled the natives of the 

 neighbouring continent, and their weapons, wigwams, and 

 domestic utensils were also similar. Ethnologists are not 

 quite agreed as to the nature of their language, but it is 

 generally accepted that they were probably a small branch 



