two weeks. We landed at various places on both banks of the river on our
way down, but found no traces of the Red Indians so recent as those seen at
the portage at Badger Bay-Great Lake, towards the beginning of our
excursion. During our descent, we had to construct new rafts at the
different waterfalls. Sometimes we were carried down the rapids at the rate
of ten miles an hour, or more, with considerable risk of destruction to the
whole party, for we were always together on one raft."
"What arrests the attention most, while gliding down the stream, is the
extent of the Indian fences to entrap the deer. They extend from the lake
downwards, continuous, on the banks of the river, at least thirty miles.
There are openings left here and there in them, for the animals to go
through and swim across the river, and at these places the Indians are
stationed, and kill them in the water with spears, out of their canoes, as
at the lake. Here, then, connecting these fences with those on the
north-west side of the lake, is at least forty miles of country, easterly
and westerly, prepared to intercept all the deer that pass that way in
their periodical migrations. It was melancholy to contemplate the gigantic,
yet feeble, efforts of a whole primitive nation, in their anxiety to
provide subsistence, forsaken and going to decay."
"There must have been hundreds of the Red Indians, and that not many years
ago, to have kept up these fences and pounds. As their numbers were
lessened so was their ability to keep them up for the purposes intended;
and now the deer pass the whole line unmolested."
"We infer, that the few of these people who yet survive have taken refuge
in some sequestered spot, still in the northern part of the island, and
where they can procure deer to subsist on."
"On the 29th of November we had again returned to the mouth of the River
Exploits, in thirty days after our departure from thence, after having made
a complete circuit of about 200 miles in the Red Indian territory."
"In conclusion, I congratulate the institution on the acquisition of
several ingenious articles, the manufacture of the _Boeothicks_, or Red
Indians, some of which we had the good fortune to discover on our recent
excursion;--models of their canoes, bows and arrows, spears of different
kinds, &c.; and also a complete dress worn by that people. Their mode of
kindling fire is not only original, but, as far as we at present know, is
peculiar to
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