INDIANS OF NOVA SCOTIA — GILPIN. 279 



descendants, now named Dinneys, the beautiful epithet for a Red 

 warrior's grave has passed into a name for himself. 



To further illustrate the Indians, I will give a sketch of a visit 

 to St. Francis Xavier settlement, Beaver River, the most success- 

 ful of all the experiments to attach them to the soil, made in July, 

 1877. It was formed by the late Mr. Justice Wiswell, acting 

 under government, who called to his assistance the Abbe Segoigne, 

 a French clergyman of great devotion and simplicity of habit, in 

 1828. A reserve of one thousand acres was divided into thirty- 

 acre lots, and one lot given to each head of family, upon certain 

 conditions, and not on fee simple. At present about twenty-five 

 families reside upon it, each in its own house. A road about a 

 mile and a half long and fairly enclosed by stone dyke or rail fence 

 runs through it. A few potato patches, pot herbs and garden 

 bits about each house are the only signs of cultivation. All the 

 fields were in hay lands or in pasturage. The houses were small 

 frame ones, Avith glazed windows, shingled, and each with a porch. 

 Inside they had good floors, chimney, cook-stove, "table, but few 

 chairs, and walls not plaistered, though some were papered with. 

 Illustrated London News. A porch and single room formed the 

 lower floor, but there was an upper loft, approached by a ladder, 

 which formed sleeping apartments. 



In the whole settlement there was but one barn. Other fields 

 were grown up by alders and birches, with Indian paths leading 

 by devious routes to other houses, — to the chapel, or to the square 

 lodge-like house, where had dwelt the Chief and his family for these 

 fifty years. The chapel, a plain, square building, with porch and 

 square windows, stands in an enclosure, guarded by many a rude 

 grave with ruder head-stone, and quaintly carved wooden cross 

 sticking through the coarse matted grass. These two buildings are 

 by the charity of a descendant of Selina the famous Countess of 

 Huntington, who was moved thereby by James Meuse, the Chief, 

 visiting England about eighteen hundred and twenty-five. A print 

 portrait of the lady still hangs upon the dingy walls. Though as 

 an agricultural settlement, this is a failure, though each house stands 

 bald, no barn or out-house standing by, with pig or chick or cow, 



