250 
impression on the immigrants who invaded and occui^ied their terri- 
tories. The early French-Canadian settlers came from a land inter- 
sected with splendid highways which the mild climate rendered ser- 
viceable for wheeled vehicles at every season of the year; and quiet 
rivers linked together by a network of canals permitted the safe and 
easy transport of freight in cumbersome barges. The new land of 
which they took possession had no roads at all, and the rivers were 
so swift, and so full of cataracts and rapids necessitating portages, 
that barges were totally impracticable and even a light row-boat a 
very unsatisfactory craft. In winter the rivers and lakes were frozen 
over, and the land buried under a mantle of soft snow that impeded 
the movements of men and animals alike. For his own preservation 
the settler had to adopt the methods of travel and transportation 
evolved long before by the Indian, to use in winter the snow-shoe 
and the toboggan, in summer the birch-bark canoe. With these he 
borrowed also the moccasin so convenient for travelling in deep snow, 
fur mittens, fur caps (or capotes), and sometimes the moose-skin 
legging. In Greenland about the same period, Danish colonists were 
accustoming themselves to the Eskimo dog-sled, which later became 
the orthodox means of transport along the shores of the Canadian 
Arctic. 
The Indians contributed also to the food sup]>ly of the early settlers. 
Wheat, especially the older varieties, did not thrive in the ^Maritime 
Provinces or on the lower St. Lawrence, but the farmer soon found 
a satisfactory substitute in the Indian’s maize. To this he added 
other aboriginal farm products, the bean, the pumpkin, and the 
squash. He borrowed, also, tobacco, which, though not a food, spread 
with amazing rapidity into every corner of the globe, and to-day is 
grown for commercial purposes in several districts of eastern Canada. 
For tobacco was indigenous to America, and unknown to the world 
before the discoveries of Columbus and his successors. The Spaniards 
in Mexico, the English in the United States, and the French in 
Canada, all learned its use almost simultaneously from the Indians. 
These may seem no small contributions from primitive savages,^ 
but they tell only half the story. The Indians taught the settlers 
woodcraft anti the habits of the strange game with which the forests 
1 Tlio coiitrilnitlons from llm Piitire Aiiiei'ifiin hcniisphern wore, of couise, far more extensive, 
C/. Kordenskiold , E,: “The American Indian as an Inventor”; Jour., Roval .\nthronoloEieal Inst, 
vol. lix, pp. 273-307 (London, 1!)2!)). 
