222 GILPIN ON THE STONE AGE OF NOVA SCOTIA. 



the stony beaches of the Bay of Fundy, and looking as if they had 

 stood there three hundred years. For defence against his enemies 

 he made a stockade, that is he lashed the boles of contiguous trees 

 together in the form of a square, thickening them with branches 

 and other poles, and raised his wigwams inside the square. For 

 defence of his person in war, he bore a shield doubtless made of 

 wood and skins, and carried a bow, strong but not very fine, on his 

 back, with a quiver filled with long polished arrows feathered with 

 eagles' feathers, and a war club in his hand. 



Two hundred warriors naked to their waist belts, thus armed 

 stepped out before LesCarbot in dancing measure at St. John 

 River. They had come from Gaspe at the command of Member- 

 tou the great Annapolis Sachem, to join the St. John Indians, and 

 his own people in the war they were waging with the tribes beyond 

 the Kenebeck. It is singular there is no mention of scalping in 

 this narrative. Before this, LesCarbot saw them hunting the 

 moose with bow and arrows alone, and in all his narrative there is 

 no mention of spears or javelins, though we find abundant stone 

 heads still. The use of tobacco was universal, using shallow stone 

 pans with quills and reeds stuck in them. This they must have 

 obtained from the tribes west and south of the Kenebeck, as they 

 planted none themselves. There was no planting east or north of 

 the Kenebeck, not from ignorance but rather from idleness as Les- 

 Carbot tells us. They ceased to plant, and to make stone clay 

 pots, w^hen they could obtain kettles and biscuit from the French 

 traders, in barter for furs. 



With the use of tobacco they had also almost consequent to its 

 use, the power of making fire, at all times and places. The dry 

 punk and the bit of agate was always theirs ; but it is probable that 

 the steel and the art were got from the French, who had traded 

 full fifty years before at Canseau. LesCarbot is silent about it. 

 They taught the willing French the use of tobacco, who used it to 

 excess. Thus at the dawn of the iron age in Nova Scotia, we find 

 our stone age man a comely, fairly fed savage, clothed, — a fish and 

 flesh eater, — no toiler of the earth, eating only of that luxuriant 

 berry harvest, to which all our carnivori still hasten, not excepting 

 Saxon man himself, and which seems almost spread as an antidote 



