threatening punishment to any who should injure them; and early in the
same year, William Cull, the same person who has been spoken of, with
six others, and two Micmacs, set out upon the river Exploits, then
frozen over, in quest of their residence in the interior of the
country. On the fourth day, having travelled 60 miles, they discovered
a building on the bank of the river, about 40 or 50 feet long, and
nearly as wide. It was constructed of wood, and covered with the rinds
of trees, and skins of deer. It contained large quantities of venison,
estimated to have been the choicest parts of at least 100 deer--the
flesh was in junks, entirely divested of bone, and stored in boxes
made of birch and spruce rinds--each box containing about two cwt. The
tongues and hearts were placed in the middle of the packages. In this
structure, says the celebrated William Cull, we saw three lids of tin
tea kettles, which he believed to be the very same given by Governor
Gambier to the Indian woman he was entrusted to restore to her tribe.
Whether Cull, by this very opportune discovery, removed the suspicion
that attached itself to the manner in which he discharged the trust
committed to him, does not appear. On the opposite bank of the river
stood another store-house considerably larger than the former, but the
ice being bad across the river, it was not examined. Two Indians were
seen, but avoided all communication with the Whites. The two
store-houses stood opposite each other, and from the margin of the
river on each side there extended for some miles into the country,
high fences erected for the purpose of conducting the deer to the
river, and along the margin of the lake in the neighbourhood of those
store-houses, were also erected extensive fences, on each side, in
order to prevent the deer when they had taken the water from landing.
It would appear that as soon as a herd of deer, few or many, enter the
water, the Indians who are upon the watch, launch their canoes, and
the parallel fences preventing the re-landing of the deer, they become