266 PREHISTORIC FISHING. 



Greenlanders, planting themselves round it, wait till the seals approach in droves 

 to the brink for air, and kill them with their harpoons. Many of these creatures 

 likewise meet with their death while sleeping and snoring in the sun." (Vol. 

 I, page 142, etc.).* 



Lloyd (T. Gr. S.): On the Beothucs, a Tribe of Eed Indians, supposed to be 

 extinct, wliich formerly inhabited, Newfoundland ; Journal of the Anthropological 

 Institute of Great Britain and Ireland ; Vol. IV, 187 '5. .f " The Canoe (Plate III ; 

 here Fig. 362) peculiar to these Indians comes next to be considered. The prin- 

 ciple on which the Red Indian's canoe is constructed is perhaps nowhere else to 

 be met with. It has in a way no bottom at all, the side beginning at the very 

 keel, and from thence running up in a straight line to the edge or gunwale. A 

 transverse section of it at any part whatever makes an acute angle, only that it 

 is not sharpened to a perfect angular point, but is somewhat rounded to take in 

 the slight rod which serves by way of a keel. This rod is thickest in the middle 

 (being in that part about the size of the handle of a common hatchet), tapering 

 each way, and terminating with the slender curved extremities of the canoe. 

 The form of the keel will, then, it is evident, be the same with the outline of the 

 longitudinal section, which, when represented on paper, is nearly, if not exactly, 

 the half of an ellipse, longitudinally divided. Having thus drawn the keel, 

 whose two ends become also similar stems to the canoe, the side may easily be 

 completed after this manner : perpendicular to the middle of the keel, and at 

 two-thirds the height of its extremities, make a point ; between this central and 

 the extreme points, describe each way a catenarian arch, with a free curve, and 

 you will have the form of the side, as well as a section of the canoe, for their 



FIG. 362. Canoe of the Beothucs, Newfoundland. 



* Many of the details here given by Cranz are contained in Hans Egedd's earlier work on Greenland. I have 

 preferred quoting from Cranz, because his descriptions are more elaborate. 



f The substance of this article is taken from a written narrative of an expedition to the district inhabited by 

 the Beothucs, undertaken in the year 1768 by Captain John Cartwright. His original manuscript was in 1875 in 

 the possession of the Protestant Bishop of Newfoundland. Mr. Lloyd obtained permission to transcribe as much 

 of the document as served his purpose. He gives no account of fishing as practised by the Beothucs, probably 

 because Captain Cartwright's manuscript contains none ; but, as I have included in this work descriptions of 

 boats, I thought it proper to insert here that of the remarkable canoes in use among the natives of Newfound- 

 land. The extract from De Laet following next refers to the same subject. 



