434 
BULLETIN OF THE NATURAL HISTORY SOCIETY 
last. Such results as I found of interest are recorded below, and 
are further illustrated on the accompanying map. 
The development of our knowledge of the river may be briefly 
traced. Its name, which perhaps was extended to the river from 
the region of its mouth by the whites, is Micmac Indian, meaning, 
probably, “camping-ground,” descriptive of the extensive occu- 
pancy of Tracadie by the Indians in early times. It is first 
mentioned, not as a river but as a place or port, by Champlain in 
1604; and thereafter it appears upon substantially all maps down 
to the present day. No attempt however was made on the early 
maps to represent the river, except by an occasional crude and 
conventional sketch, until after it was surveyed in 1838 by David 
Sadler, whose large-scale plan in the Crown Land Office, show- 
