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Report of Mr. W. E. Cormack's journey in search of the Red Indians in Newfoundland by W. E. (William Epps) Cormack
page 5 of 17 (29%)
At Hall's Bay we got no useful information from the three (and the
only) English families settled there. Indeed we could hardly have
expected any; for these, and such people, have been the unchecked and
ruthless destroyers of the tribe, the remnant of which we were in
search of. After sleeping one night in a _house_, we again struck into
the country to the westward.

In five days we were on the high lands south of White Bay, and in
sight of the high lands east of the Bay of Islands, on the west coast
of Newfoundland. The country south and west of us was low and flat,
consisting of marshes, extending in a southerly direction more than
thirty miles. In this direction lies the famous Red Indians' Lake. It
was now near the middle of November, and the winter had commenced
pretty severely in the interior. The country was everywhere covered
with snow, and, for some days past, we had walked over the small ponds
on the ice. The summits of the hills on which we stood had snow on
them, in some places many feet deep. The deer were migrating from the
rugged and dreary mountains in the north to the low mossy barrens and
more woody parts in the south; and we inferred, that if any of the Red
Indians had been at White Bay during the past summer, they might be at
that time stationed about the borders of the low tract of country
before us, at the _deer-passes_, or were employed somewhere else in
the interior, killing deer for winter provision. At these passes,
which are particular places in the migration lines of path, such as
the extreme ends of, and straights in, many of the large lakes,--the
foot of valleys between high or rugged mountains,--fords in the large
rivers, and the like,--the Indians kill great numbers of deer with
very little trouble, during their migrations. We looked out for two
days from the summits of the hills adjacent, trying to discover the
smoke from the camps of the Red Indians; but in vain. These hills
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