32 FOSSIL MEN. 



rience have seene. All their viands and meats are 

 without any taste or savour of salt at all. They sleepe 

 upon barkes of trees laide all along upon the ground 

 being over- spread with the skinnes of certaine wilde 

 Beastes, wherewith they also clothe and cover them- 

 selves, namely of the Dormouse,* Beaver, Martin, 

 Fox, Wild Cat, Deer, Stag, and other wild beasts, but 

 the greater part of them go almost naked (during 

 the summer) . The thing most precious that they have 

 in all the world they call Esurgny ; which is white and 

 which they take in the said river in Cornibots,f in the 

 manner following. When any one hath deserved 

 death, or that they take any of their enemies in 

 warres, first they kill him, then with certain knives 

 they give great slashes and strokes upon their but- 

 tocks, flankes, thighs and shoulders j then they cast 

 the same bodie so mangled downe to the bottome of 

 the river, in a place where the said Esurgny is, and 



* Query, musk-rat. 



f This word seems to have puzzled the translators. It is 

 probably a vulgar local name for some shell supposed to re- 

 semble that of which these Indians made their wampum. I 

 would suggest that it may be derived from cornet, which is used 

 by old French writers as a name for the shells of the genus 

 Valuta, and is also a technical term in conchology. In this 

 case it is likely that the Esurgny was made of the shells of 

 some of our species of Melania or Paludina, just as the Indians 

 on the coast used for beads and ornaments the shells of Pur- 

 pura lapillus and of Dentalium, etc. It is just possible that 

 Cartier may have misunderstood the mode of procuring these 

 shells, and that the statement may refer to some practice of 

 making criminals and prisoners dive for them in the deeper 

 parts of the river. 



