There Was One Wooden Building Constructed For Drying And
Smoking Venison In, Still Perfect; Also A Small Log-House, In
A
dilapidated condition, which we took to have been once a store-house.
The wreck of a large handsome birch-
Rind canoe, about twenty-two feet
in length, comparatively new, and certainly very little used, lay
thrown up among the bushes at the beach. We supposed that the violence
of a storm had rent it in the way it was found, and that the people
who were in it had perished; for the iron nails, of which there was no
want, all remained in it. Had there been any survivors, nails being
much prized by these people, they never having held intercourse with
Europeans, such an article would most likely have been taken out for
use again. All the birch trees in the vicinity of the lake had been
rinded, and many of them and of the spruce fir or var (Pinus
balsamifera, Canadian balsam tree) had the bark taken off, to use the
inner part of it for food, as noticed before.
Their wooden repositories for the dead are what are in the most
perfect state of preservation. These are of different constructions,
it would appear, according to the character or rank of the persons
entombed. In one of them, which resembled a hut, ten feet by eight or
nine, and four or five feet high in the centre, floored with squared
poles, the roof covered with rinds of trees, and in every way well
secured against the weather inside and the intrusion of wild beasts,
there were two grown persons laid out at full length on the floor, the
bodies wrapped round with deer-skins.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 8 of 19
Words from 1957 to 2243
of 5074
