Ourselves, we extinguished our own fire
always some length of time before day-light.
Our only and frail hope now left of seeing the Red Indians lay on the
banks of the River Exploits, on our return to the sea-coast.
The Red Indians' Lake discharges itself about three or four miles from
its north-east end, and its waters from the River Exploits. From the
lake to the sea-coast is considered about seventy miles; and down this
noble river the steady perseverance and intrepidity of my Indians
carried me on rafts in four days, to accomplish which otherwise, would
have required, probably, 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 ponds. 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 November we were 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.
