This Tract Comprehends The Country Interior From New Bay, Badger Bay, Seal Bay, &C.; These Being Minor Bays, Included In Green Or Notre Dame Bay, At The North-East Part Of The Island, And Well Known To Have Been Always Heretofore The Summer Residence Of The Red Indians.

On the fourth day after our departure, at the east end of Badger Bay-Great Lake, at a portage known by the name of the Indian Path, we found traces made by the Red Indians, evidently in the spring or summer of the preceding year.

Their party had had two canoes; and here was a canoe-rest, on which the daubs of red-ochre, and the roots of trees used to fasten or tie it together appeared fresh. A canoe-rest is simply a few beams, supported horizontally, about five feet from the ground, by perpendicular posts. A party with two canoes, when descending from the interior to the sea-coast, through such a part of the country as this, where there are troublesome portages, leave one canoe resting, bottom up, on this kind of frame, to protect it from injury by the weather, until their return. Among other things which lay strewed about here, were a spear-shaft, eight feet in length, recently made and ochred; parts of old canoes, fragments of their skin-dresses, &c. For some distance around, the trunks of many of the birch, and of that species of spruce pine called here the Var (Pinus balsamifera), had been rinded; these people using the inner part of the bark of that kind of tree for food.

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