been tormented by parties of Europeans during the last eighteen [Sic:
thirteen] years. Fatal rencounters had on these occasions
unfortunately taken place.

We spent several melancholy days wandering on the borders of the east
end of the lake, surveying the various remains of what we now
contemplated to have been an unoffending and cruelly extirpated
people. At several places, by the margin of the lake, are small
clusters of winter and summer wigwams in ruins. One difference, among
others, between the Boeothick wigwams and those of the other Indians
is, that in most of the former there are small hollows, like nests,
dug in the earth around the fire-place, one for each person to sit in.
These hollows are generally so close together, and also so close to
the fire-place, and to the sides of the wigwam, that I think it
probable these people have been accustomed to sleep in a sitting
position. 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.