have been known to destroy one another, with such an
exterminating rage on both sides, that few have been left alive on
either; and to say the truth, they were, generally speaking, mere
cannibals. It was rarely the case that they did not devour some limbs,
at least, of the prisoners they made upon one another, after torturing
them to death in the most cruel and shocking manner: but they never
failed of drinking their blood like water; it is now, some time, that
our Micmakis especially are no longer in the taste of exercising such
acts of barbarity. I have, yet, lately myself seen amongst them some
remains of that spirit of ferocity; some tendencies and approaches to
those inhumanities; but they are nothing in comparison to what they used
to be, and seem every day wearing out. The religion to which we have
brought them over, and our remonstrances have greatly contributed to
soften that savage temper, and atrocious vindictiveness that heretofore
reigned amongst them. But remember, Sir, that as to this point I am now
only speaking, upon my own knowlege, of the Micmakis and Mariquects,
who, though different in language, have the same customs and manners,
and are of the same way of thinking and acting.

But to arrive at any tolerable degree of conjecture, whence these people
derive their origin own myself at a loss: possibly some light might be
got into it, by discovering whether there was any affinity or not
between their language, and that of the Orientalists, as the Chinese or
Tartars. In the mean time, the abundance of words in this language
surprized, and continues to surprize me every day the deeper I get into
it. Every thing is proper in it; nothing borrowed, as amongst us. Here
are no auxiliary verbs. The prepositions are in great number. This it is
that gives great ease, fluency, and richness to the expression of
whatever you require, when you are once master enough to join them to
the verbs. In all their absolute verbs they have a dual number. What we
call the imperfect, perfect, and preter-perfect tenses of the indicative
mood, admits, as with us, of varied inflexions of the terminations to
distinguish the person; but the difference of the three tenses is
express, for the preter-perfect by the preposition _Keetch_; for the
preter-pluperfect by _Keetch Keeweeh_: the imperfect is again
distinguished from them by having no preposition at all.

They have no feminine termination, either for the verbs or nouns. This
g