274' ABORIGINES OF NEWFOUNDLAND.

cept all the deer that pass that way in their periodi- cal migrations. It was melancholy to contemplate the gigantic, yet rude, efforts of a Whole primitive nation, in their anxiety to provide subsistence, for-

saken and going to decay. “ There must have been hundreds of 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 may yet survive, have taken refuge in some sequestered spot, in the northern part of the island, where they can procure deer to subsist on.

“ On the 29th of November, we again arrived at the mouth of the river Exploits, thirty days after our departure from thence, after having made a complete circuit of 220 miles in the Red Indian territory.

“ The materials collected on this, as well as on my excursion across the interior a few years ago, and on other occasions, put me in possession of a general knowledge of the natural condition and productions of Newfoundland ; and, as a member of an institu- tion formed to protect the aboriginal inhabitants of the country in which we live, and to prosecute enquiry into the moral character of man in his primitive state, I can, at this early stage of our institution, assert, trusting to nothing vague, that we already possess more information concerning these people, than has been obtained during the two centuries and a half