AND THEIR REMAINS — PIERS. 107 



wick, 579 in Quebec Province, and 292 in Prince Edward 

 Island. In 1905, 1,993 were in IS^va Scotia; in 1906, 2,148, 

 and in 1911, 2,026. 



Language. — The language of the Micmacs is a branch of 

 that of the Algonquian tribe. William Jones of the Field 

 Museum of ISTatural History, says that while their neighbours, 

 the Abnaki, have close linguistic relations with the Algonquain 

 tribes of the great lakes, the Micmacs seem to have almost as 

 distant a relation to the group as the Algonquains of the plains. 

 The Micmac, like many, if not all, of the native American 

 languages, is remarkable for its copiousness, its regularity of 

 declension and conjunction, its expressiveness, its simplicity 

 of vocables, and its mellifluence. In all these particulars and 

 others, it is said not to suffer from a comparison with the 

 learned and polished languag'^s of the world. One pecularity 

 is that it is what philologists term holophrastic, a whole sentence 

 being sometimes condensed into a single word. This, while it 

 wonderfully shortens siDeech, greatly multijDlies words. For 

 example, Rand instances the sentence, "I am walking about, 

 candying a beautiful black umbrella over my head," comprising 

 twelve words and twenty-one syllables, all of which can be 

 expressed in a single Micmac word of ten syllables, yale-oole- 

 maktaive-pokose. (See preface to Rand's Dictionary). The 

 usual place for the accent is on the jDenultimate syllable, while 

 a prolongued vowel is of course accented. Micmac words are 

 extremely soft and melodious when pronounced by the Indian, 

 being entirely without the harshness which results when a white 

 man attempts to reproduce them, and even a dictionary tends 

 to harshen them when they are rej^resented by letters of our 

 alphabet. It is this that has often made people think the 

 language an uncouth one. The Micmac names of places are 

 beautifully soft in sound and poetic in idea, and it is the 

 greatest pity that we have not retained more of them instead 

 of the meaningless European names we have too frequently 

 scattered throughout the province. In such Micmac place- 



