26 Field and Forest Rambles. 



national alliances for its prosecution.* Indeed, although the 

 present generation retains scarcely a tradition of any value 

 or accuracy, their old misunderstandings with the Mohawks 

 are still religiously preserved and utilized in many native 

 villages for the purpose of frightening the children into obedi- 

 ence ; moreover, several of the aged entertain an inherited 

 dread of the name, and would fly to the woods at the sight 

 of a Mohawk. 



The Jesuit fathers seem to have been the pioneers of civiliza- 

 tion in New Brunswick, as well as elsewhere in the northern 

 portion of the continent, followed by the white trapper and 

 trader, who exchanged iron tomahawks for furs, when the Stone 

 Age passed away, and with it the decline and decadence of the 

 Indians, so that the entire recollection of the stone and bone 

 weapon days vanished from their minds in the course of a few 

 generations. f But to their forefathers it was a Golden Age, 

 which, however, as time rolled on, was soon forgotten, until, by 

 degrees, they were compelled, in their struggles for existence, 

 to yield inch after inch of their noble forests, and dwindle down 

 to a handful of degenerate beings, preyed on by poverty, 

 disease, and vice, which, in the ordinary course of events, must 

 exterminate the race before another century or two have 

 passed away. 



Referring back to the beginning of the sixteenth century, 

 and the state of civilization in which the early voyagers found 

 them, it appears that the races of this portion of north-eastern 



* " Acadian Geology," p. 42. 



t Nowhere in the province are stone implements met with in such 

 abundance as on the banks of Grand Lake, Queen's County, where the 

 ancient race had evidently large encampments, and the Melicite still hunts 

 the musk rat ; also on the Tobique River above the Grand Falls. I have 

 often deputed native hunters to procure specimens, and on eliciting their 

 impressions thereon usually received a laugh of ridicule at the idea of such 

 weapons being used in the destruction of the large animals ; indeed, some 

 looked on them as children's toys, and in no instance were their real 

 histories guessed, unless by men who had picked up the information from 

 Europeans. 



