42 PICTURE-WRITING OF THE AMERICAN INDIANS. 
For examples of other copies printed from the rocks at Kejimkoojik 
lake, see Figs. 549, 550, 654, 655, 656, 657, 658, 717, 718, 739, 740, 741, 
1254, 1255, and 1262. These offer intrinsic evidence of the Micmac 
origin of the early class of engravings. 
The presence of French names and styles of art in the drawings is 
explained by a story which was communicated by Louis Labrador, 
whose great-grandfather, old Ledore, according to his account, guided 
a body of French Acadians who, at the time of the expulsion, were not 
shipped off with the majority. They escaped the English in 1756 and 
traveled from the valley of Annapolis to Shelbourne, at the extreme 
southeast of the peninsula. During that passage they halted for a 
considerable time to recruit in the beautiful valley along the Kejim- 
koojik lake, on the very ground where these markings appear, which 
also was on the ancient Indian trail. Another local tradition, told by 
a resident of the neighborhood, gives a still earlier date for the French 
work. He says that after the capture of Port Royal, now Annapolis, 
in 1710, a party of the defeated Frenchmen, with a number of Indians 
as guides, went with their cattle to the wide meadows upon Kejimkoojik 
lake and remained there for a long time. It is exceedingly probable 
that the French would have been attracted to scratch on this fascinat- 
ing smooth slate surface whether they had observed previous markings 
or not, but it seems evident that they did scratch over such previous 
markings. The latter, at least, antedated the beginning of the eight- 
eenth century. 
A general remark may be made regarding the Kejimkoojik drawings, 
that the aboriginal art displayed in them did not differ in any impor- 
tant degree from that shown in other drawings of the Miemacs and the 
Abnaki in the possession of the Bureau of Ethnology. Also that the 
rocks there reveal pictographic tendencies and practices which sug- 
gest explanations of similar work in other regions where less evidence 
remains of intent and significance. The attractive material of the 
slates and their convenient situation tempted past generations of In- 
dians to record upon them the images of their current thoughts and 
daily actions. Hence the pictographic practice went into operation 
at this locality with unusual vigor and continuity. Although at Ke- 
jimkoojik lake there is an exceptional facility for determining the rela- 
tive dates of the several horizons of scratchings, the suggestion there 
evoked may help to ascertain similar data elsewhere. 
ONTARIO. 
Mr Charles Hallock kindly communicates information concerning 
pictographs on Nipigon bay, which is a large lake in the province of On- 
tario, 30 miles northwest of Lake Superior, with which it is connected 
by Nipigon river. He says: 
The pictographs, which are principally of men and animals, occupy a zone some 60 
feet long and 5 feet broad, about midway of the face of the rock; they are painted 
in blood-red characters, much darker than the color of the cliff itself. 
