226 GILPIN ON THE STONE AGE OF NOVA SCOTIA. 



US remembar that with their dying hand they presented the world 

 with two things, which from their universal use, and from the 

 influence they have excited in the policies, nay, in the very exis- 

 tence of nations, may mark hereafter an age for themselves — 

 Tobacco, and the Potato. The greedy Frenchmen sucked in the 

 new and intoxicating weed till they became insane, and LesCarbot 

 had not seen but heard of a marvellous root like small loaves, hang- 

 ing even to forty on one root, but of rare flavour. 



We have now seen our men of the Stone age, let us look for a 

 moment on their country. Dense forests crowned the whole Pro- 

 vince to the water's edge. Meagher's Beach, the Thrum caps, and 

 Devil's Island, now sandy spits, were wooded headlands to the 

 water's verge. Such an excessive animal life filled the forest, filled 

 the air, filled the sea, nay, even the bottom of the sea, that no one 

 may conceive it, or believe it. The beaver abounded on every 

 stream ; the moose came out in sight to browse on the great mea- 

 dows, which then as now were the great features of the Annapolis 

 valley ; sea birds covered the waters and darkened the air ; and 

 every spring brought fish innumerable, with their attendant pursu- 

 ers, dolphins, whales, seals, and walrus, whilst the sands were 

 paved by scallops and clams. Such war as can be made by a stone 

 arrow, or bone hook, did our prehistoric man make upon this army 

 of animal flesh. He seems to have asked nothing of veo:etable life 

 save the luxuriant berry harvest, which even yet spreads its purple 

 profusion on our barrens, and whose autumnal stores must have 

 been of incalculable benefit to the satiated flesh eater of the past 

 year. 



Again, we often read of dominant races destroying by violence 

 the weaker of the age of Bronze thus dominating over the Stone, 

 by supposition as it were, and to account for these changes. But 

 we read in the history of our own stone men, that there was no 

 violence ; that the doom was velvety ; if it was inevitable ; that it 

 begun with the belly ; the Indians ceasing to mould stone pots, 

 when they got iron kettles ; and that it was indirect. The first iron 

 axe was laid, not at their necks, but at the wood of the trees ; the 

 ploughshare entered not their souls, but the broad breast of the^ 



