gouges and chisels, celts or wedges, corn crushers, and pipes; also bone implements such as needles, fish hooks and harpoons, with specimens of rude pottery.

When Champlain first visited our shores the savages had nothing better than stone axes to use in clearing their lands. It is to their credit that with such rude implements they contrived to hack down the trees and, after burning the branches and trunk, planted their corn among the stumps and in the course of time took out the roots. In cultivating the soil they used an implement of very hard wood, shaped like a spade, and their method of raising corn, as described by Champlain, was exactly the same as that of our farmers today. The corn fields at the old Medoctic Fort were cultivated by the Indians many years before the coming of the whites. Cadillac, writing in 1693, says: “The Maliseets are well shaped and tolerably warlike; they attend to the cultivation of the soil and grow the most beautiful Indian corn; their fort is at Medocktek.” Many other choice spots along the St. John river were tilled in very early times, including, probably, the site of the old Government House at Fredericton, where there was an Indian encampment long before the place was dreamed of as the site of the seat of government of the province.

Lescarbot, the historian, who wrote In 1610, tells us that the Indians were accustomed to pound their corn in a mortar (probably of wood) in order to reduce it to meal. Of this they afterwards made a paste, which was baked between two stones heated at the fire. Frequently the corn was roasted on the 10 ear. Yet another method is thus described by the English captive, John Gyles, who lived as a captive with the St. John river Indians in 1689: “To dry the corn when in the milk, they gather it in large kettles and boil it on the ears till it is pretty hard, then shell it from the cob with clam shells and dry it on bark in the sun. When it is thoroughly dry a kernel is no bigger than a pea, and will keep years; and when it is boiled again it swells as large as when on the ear and tastes incomparably sweeter than other corn. When we had gathered our corn and dried it in the way described, we put some of it into Indian barns, that is into hole in the ground lined and covered with bark and then with earth. The rest we carried up the river upon our next winter’s hunting.”

The Indians were a very improvident race, and in this respect the Maliseets were little better than the Micmacs, of whom Pierre Biard writes: “They care little about the future and are not urged on to work except by present necessity. As long as they have anything they are always celebrating feasts and having songs dances and speeches. If there is a crowd of them you certainly need not expect anything else. Nevertheless if they are by themselves and where they may safely listen to their wives, for women are everywhere the best managers, they will sometimes make storehouses for the winter where they will keep smoked meat, roots, shelled acorns, peas, beans, etc.”

Although the Indians living on the St. John paid some attention to the cultivation of the soil there can be no doubt that hunting and fishing were always their chief means of support. In Champlain’s day the implements of the chase were very primitive. Yet they were able to hunt the largest game by taking advantage of the deep snow and making use of their snow-shoes. Champlain says. “They search for the track of animals, which, having found, they follow until they get sight of the creature, when they shoot at it with their bows or kill it by means of daggers attached to the end of a short pike. Then the women and children come up, erect a hut and they give themselves to feasting. Afterwards they proceed in search of other animals and thus they pass the winter. This is the mode of life of these people, which seems to me a very miserable one.”

There can be little doubt that wild game was vastly more abundant in this country, when it was discovered by Europeans, than it is today. In the days of La Tour and Charnisay as many as three thousand moose skins were collected on the St. John in a single year, and smaller game was even more abundant. Wild fowl ranged the coasts and marshes and frequented the rivers in incredible numbers. Biard says that at certain seasons they were so abundant on the islands that by the skilful use of a club right and left they could bring down birds as big as a duck with every blow. Denys speaks of immense flocks of wild pidgeons. But the Indian’s food supply was not limited to these; the rivers abounded with salmon and other fish, turtles were common along the banks of the river, and their eggs, which they lay in the sand, were esteemed a great delicacy, as for the musquash it is regarded as the “Indian’s turkey.”

A careful examination of the relics discovered at the sites of the old camping 11 grounds suffices to confirm the universal testimony of early writers regarding the nomadic habits of the Indians. They were a restless race of people, for ever wandering from place to place as necessity or caprice impelled them. At one time they were attracted to the sea side where clams, fish and sea fowl abounded; at another they preferred the charms of the inland waters. Sometimes the mere love of change led them to forsake one camping place and remove to some other favorite spot. When game was scarce they were compelled by sheer necessity to seek new hunting grounds. At the proper season they made temporary encampments for salmon fishing with torch and spear. Anon they tilled their cornfields on the intervals and islands. They had a saying: “When the maple leaf is as big as a squirrel’s foot it is time to plant corn.” Occasionally the outbreak of some pestilence broke up their encampments and scattered them in all directions. In time of peace they moved leisurely, but in time of war their action was much more vigorous and flotillas of their bark canoes skimmed swiftly over the lakes and rivers bearing the dusky warriors against the enemies of their race. Many a peaceful New England hamlet was startled by their midnight war-whoop when danger was little looked for.

It is a common belief in our day that the Indians were formerly more numerous than they now are. Exactly the same opinion seems to have prevailed when the country was first discovered, but it is really very doubtful whether there were ever many more Indians in the country than there are today. In the year 1611 Biard described them as so few in number that they might be said to roam over rather than to possess the country. He estimated the Maliseets, or Etchemins, as less than a thousand in number “scattered over wide spaces, as is natural for those who live by hunting and fishing.” Today the Indians of Maine and New Brunswick living within the same area as the Etchemins of 1611, number considerably more than a thousand souls. There are, perhaps, as many Indians in the maritime provinces now as in the days of Champlain. As Hannay observes, in his History of Acadia, excellent reasons existed to prevent the Indians from ever becoming very numerous. A wilderness country can only support a limited population. The hunter must draw his sustenance from a very wide range of territory, and the life of toil and privation to which the Indian was exposed was fatal to all but the strongest and most hardy.

One of the most striking Indian characteristics is the keenness of perception by which they are enabled to track their game or find their way through pathless forests without the aid of chart or compass. The Indian captive, Gyles, relates the following incident which may be mentioned in this connection:

“I was once travelling a little way behind several Indians and, hearing them laugh merrily, when I came up I asked them the cause of their laughter. They showed me the track of a moose, and how a wolverene had climbed a tree, and where he had jumped off upon the moose. It so