THE MONTAGNAIS INDIANS 
could not understand their language, nor they 
mine, with one exception in the case of an 
elderly man, who from time to time ejaculated 
a few words of French, and who appeared to 
understand some of my broken sentences in the 
same language. However, all were pleasant and 
jolly, and there was considerable laughter, 
probably at my expense, a laughter in which 
I joined as I wished to appear sociable and 
was unable to express myself in any other 
way. 
The faces of these people were dark olive 
brown in colour, and glistened in the sun as if 
they had been oiled, — as I suspect was indeed 
the case with some; their noses were aquiline; 
their eyes were black and rather narrow and 
in some set aslant as in the Mongolian type. 
A few showed signs of admixture with the 
white race. 
While the men wore their straight black hair 
rather long about the neck, the women and 
girls had theirs tied up in tight oblong knots 
or rolls wound with black cloth in front of the 
ears, forming a conspicuous and characteristic 
mark of their sex, absent only in very young 
children. The women and girls all wore pic- 
155 
