22 FOSSIL MEN. 



winter they retired into the interior and hunted the 

 elk and reindeer. They still exist in a semi-civilized 

 state, and we shall have more to say of them in the 

 sequel. In the time of Cartier they were a nation of 

 hunters and fishermen, destitute of agriculture, fabri- 

 cating very rude pottery, making their wigwams and 

 canoes of birch bark, and their weapons and imple- 

 ments of chipped and polished stone, knowing no 

 metal but native copper, and employing this ap- 

 parently merely for ornamental purposes, but having 

 for their chief ornament and currency the strings of 

 wampum made from the shell of the quahog (Venus 

 mercenaries). These people were shy and threatening 

 in their first approaches to the French, but soon 

 opened an exchange of skins for knives, hatchets, and 

 trinkets, and manifested great eagerness to become 

 possessed of these new and precious treasures. Per- 

 haps these were the least advanced in the arts of life 

 of any of the peoples that Cartier met with, yet it is 

 interesting to observe that with these, as all others, 

 the idea of bartering property already existed, and 

 that they at once understood the importance to them 

 of the improved implements of the strangers, whom 

 they evidently recognised as men like themselves, to 

 be treated with on terms of equality, and to be re- 

 ceived in a hostile or friendly manner as their inten- 

 tions might seem to warrant. 



The ancient traditions of the Micmacs, as collected 

 by Mr. Kand, an able missionary worker among them, 

 show that they recognised the Baie des Chaleurs, Mowe- 



