several days delay, I unwillingly changed my line of route.

On the 31st of October 1828 [Sic: 30th of October 1827] last, we
entered the country at the mouth of the River Exploits, on the north
side, at what is called the Northern Arm. We took a north-westerly
direction to lead us to Hall's Bay, which place we reached through an
almost uninterrupted forest, over a hilly country, in eight days. 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. Some of the cuts in the trees