Fig. 16.-FRAGMENT OF EARTHEN VESSEL, HOCHELAGA (NATURAL SIZE). Showing points of the human finger. of 1642 were conducted by the Indians who professed to be survivors of the Hochelagans, was the front of the escarpment of Mount Royal, the same with that occupied by Cartier, their Indian informants would have at their very feet the old residence of their fathers, and their remarks as to its soil and exposure would be naturally called forth by the view before them. The story of the Jesuit fathers is that the two aged Indians who accompanied Maisonneuve to the mountain top after the ceremony of founding the new town, said that they were descendants of the original inhabitants; that their tribe had at one time inhabited all the surrounding country even to the south of the river, possessing many populous villages; that the Hurens, who at that time were hostile to them, had expelled them; that some of them had taken refuge among the Abenaquis, others among the Iroquois, others among the Hurons themselves. They were associated with a band of Algonquins from the Ottawa. Their grandfathers had cultivated their corn in the very spot at their feet, but they had been driven to become migratory hunters. now The only other probable explanation of the remains would be that they belong to the more recent settlement of the Indians above referred to when invited by the French to return. This, however, was a very temporary occupation, not sufficient to give so large an amount of remains. Further, at a time when the Indians were in constant association with the French, and when missionaries were labouring among them, it is probable that their place of residence would afford some indication of intercourse with Europeans, and would be nearer to the French fort. With reference to the extent of the remains, may state that my own private collection contains fragments belonging to from 150 to 200 distinct carthen vessels, and these are of course only a very I clay, where they may some day serve to convince | limits, were skeletons which have been buried in enthusiastic believers in the antiquity of man that our species existed in Canada at the time of the marine Post-pliocene. At length attention was directed to the subject, and a somewhat rich harvest Fig. 14.-MODE OF SUSPENDING EARTHEN POTS. Outside of angle of mouth of vessel. was obtained of relics-which are now preserved in public and private collections. It will be interesting here to note what actually remained to indicate the site. The wooden walls described by Cartier and the bark houses were no doubt burned at the time of the final capture of the town, which was probably taken by a sudden surprise and assault, and its inhabitants butchered, with the exception of those who could escape by flight, while all portable articles of value would be taken away; and this would especially apply to the implements and trinkets left by the French, the report of whose vast value and rarity may perhaps have stimulated the attack. In a dry sandy soil and in an extreme climate, wooden structures rapidly decay, and such parts of the buildings as the fire may have spared would soon be mingled with the soil. No trace of them was seen in the modern excavations except a few marks of the spots where posts or stakes may have been sunk in the earth. When the sod was removed, the position of a dwelling was marked merely by its hearth, a shallow excavation filled with ashes and calcined stones, and having the soil for some little distance around reddened by heat. Around and in these hearths might be found fragments of earthenware pots and of tobacco pipes, broken stone implements and chips of flint, bones of wild animals, charred grains of corn, stones of the wild plum, and other remains of vegetable food, and occasional bone bodkins and other implements. In depressed places, and on the borders of the small brooks and creeks which traversed or bounded the town, were accumulations of kitchen-midden stuff, in some places two or three feet in thickness, and of a black colour. This was full of fragments of pottery and bones, and occasionally yielded interesting specimens of stone and bone implements. Around the outskirts of the town, and in some cases within its shallow graves in a crouching position and lying on their sides, and over each skeleton could usually be detected the ashes and burned soil of the funeral feast. The soil being dry, all vestiges of hair and of the skins in which the bodies had probably been wrapped had perished, and the bones had lost their animal matter, had become porous and brittle, and were stained of a rusty colour like the sand in which they lay. With regard to the evidence that the site referred to is actually that of the town described by Cartier, I may mention the following additional points. A map or plan of Hochelaga, purporting to have been taken on the spot or from memory, is given in Ramusio's Italian version of Cartier's Voyages (1560). It shows that the village was situated at the base of Mount Royal, on a terrace between two small streams. It enables us to understand the dimensions assigned to the houses in the narrative, which evidently refer not to individual dwellings, but to common edifices inhabited by several families, each having its separate room. It gives as the diameter of the circular enclosure or fort about one hundred and twenty yards, and for each side of the square in the centre about thirty yards. This Corresponds with the space occupied by the remains above referred to. It is to be understood, however, that the fort or city, which was quite similar to those occupied by most of the agricultural American tribes, was intended merely to accommodate the whole population in times of danger or in the severity of winter, and to contain their winter supplies of provisions, but that in summer the people would be much scattered in temporary cabins or wigwams in the fields, or along the rivers and streams. Further, according to the description of the old navigator, the town was four or five miles distant from the place where Cartier landed, and nearer the mountain than the river, and the oak-forest and the cornfields which surrounded it must have been on the terrace of Post-pliocene sand now occupied by the upper streets of the modern city, and about one hundred feet above the river. If the village was destroyed by fire before 1603, the date of Champlain's visit, no trace of it might remain in 1642, when the present city was founded, and the ground it occupied would probably be overgrown with shrubs Fig. 16.-FRAGMENT OF EARTHEN VESSEL, HOCHELAGA (NATURAL SIZE). Showing points of the human finger. of 1642 were conducted by the Indians who professed to be survivors of the Hochelagans, was the front of the escarpment of Mount Royal, the same with that occupied by Cartier, their Indian informants would have at their very feet the old residence of their fathers, and their remarks as to its soil and exposure would be naturally called forth by the view before them. The story of the Jesuit fathers is that the two aged Indians who accompanied Maisonneuve to the mountain top after the ceremony of founding the new town, said that they were descendants of the original inhabitants; that their tribe had at one time inhabited all the surrounding country even to the south of the river, possessing many populous villages; that the Hurons, who at that time were hostile to them, had expelled them; that some of them had taken refuge among the Abenaquis, others among the Iroquois, others among the Hurons themselves. They were associated with a band of Algonquins from the Ottawa. Their grandfathers had cultivated their corn in the very spot at their feet, but they had been driven to become migratory hunters. now The only other probable explanation of the remains would be that they belong to the more recent settlement of the Indians above referred to when invited by the French to return. This, however, was a very temporary occupation, not sufficient to give so large an amount of remains. Further, at a time when the Indians were in constant association with the French, and when missionaries were labouring among them, it is probable that their place of residence would afford some indication of intercourse with Europeans, and would be nearer to the French fort. With reference to the extent of the remains, I may state that my own private collection contains fragments belonging to from 150 to 200 distinct carthen vessels, and these are of course only a very peans which I have yet found, are an iron nail without the head, and with the point rounded so as to form a sort of bodkin, a piece of iron shaped into a rude knife or chisel, a small piece of sheet brass about half an inch long by a quarter wide, and apparently cut roughly from a larger piece. These were, I think, mixed among the débris from one of the kitchens. as the earliest settlers in the plain of Shinar must have done. The European settlers in Eastern America have adopted houses of wood as their usual habitations. Neither antiquity, therefore, nor culture are marked by any particular material for building. But the material used will make a vast difference with reference to the remains left. A nation, however rude or ancient, that has been able to use caverns for habitation or to build of stone, will leave some permanent, nay, indestructible evidences of its presence preserved in cave POT. surface of the ground. A nation that has built of clay will leave merely mounds. The nations that built habitations of clay in the alluvial plain of Mesopotamia, or the valley of the Mississippi, were not necessarily less civilised than those who built with stone in Peru or Egypt. The New England villager who lives in a neat wooden house and worships in a wooden church, is not necessarily less civilised than the people who built magnificent stone edifices in Yucatan, though if the New England village were deserted, no trace of it, except in a little broken pottery, or a few hearth and chimney stones, might remain in a century or two. Nations living by river-sides, and whose only remains are a few indestructible flint implements, may have been, and probably were, more highly civilised than those whose débris preserved in caves I quote here from a notice published in 1861, when the details were fresh in my memory, a few additional facts bearing on the above points. "In a limited area, not exceeding two imperial acres, twenty skeletons have been disinterred within twelve months, and the workmen state that many parts of the ground excavated in former years were even more rich in such remains. Hundreds of old fireplaces, and indications of at least ten or twelve huts or lodges, have also been found, and in a few instances Fig. 18.-HEAD FROM ANOTHER earth, or rising from the these occur over the burial-places, as if one generation had built its huts over the graves of another. Where habitations have stood, the ground is in some places, to the depth of three feet, a black mass saturated with carbonaceous matter, and full of bones of wild animals, charcoal, pottery, and remains of implements of stone or bone. Further, in such places the black soil is laminated, as if deposited in successive layers on the more depressed parts of the surface. The length of time during which the site was occupied is also indicated by the very different states of preservation of the bones and bone implements; some of those in the deeper parts of the deposit being apparently much older than those nearer the surface. Similar testimony is afforded by the great quantity and various patterns of the pottery, as well as by the abundance of the remains of animals used as food throughout the area above mentioned. All these indications point to a long residence of the aborigines on this spot, while the almost entire absence of articles of European manufacture in the undisturbed portions of the ground, implies a date coeval with the discovery of the country. The few objects of this kind found in circumstances which prevented the supposition of mere superficial intermixture, are just sufficient to show that the village existed until the appearance of Europeans on the stage." On the whole, the situation and the remains found not only establish the strongest probability that this is the veritable site, but serve to vindicate Cartier's narration from the doubts cast upon it by subsequent explorers, who visited the country after Hochelaga had disappeared. Since the days when Cain went forth as the first emigrant and built a city, defence and shelter have ranked among the primary wants of man. The means by which they are secured depend partly on the state of civilisation which may have been reached and partly on the materials at hand, but chiefly on the latter. In rocky regions, caverns and overhanging ledges afford the most convenient shelter, and stones afford the materials of cyclopean walls for defence. On treeless alluvial plains the nomad makes his tent of skin, and when he becomes settled has recourse to earthen walls or sun-dried brick. In forest countries wood or bark forms the most convenient material, whether for savage or civilised nations. The American tribe of the Moquis, in the rocky table-lands of New Mexico, build stone structures as massive as any ordinarily constructed by civilised man. The modern inhabitants of the plain of the Euphrates use brick and sun-dried clay exactly furnishes far more numerous and curious antiques. Our Hochelagans were woodbuilders. Bark peeled from trees in wide sheets, and supported on poles, forms the cheapest and most comfortable abode for dwellers in the forest, and the people of Hochelaga had houses of this kind with several rooms, and an upper story to be used as a granary. They were, possibly, more comfortable and suited to the habits of their builders than the huts of mud and rough stone occupied by thousands of the peasants of modern Europe. Their habitations belonged to a type which seems to have been nearly universal among the more settled populations of America, and which Morgan has shown to be connected with peculiar customs of patriarchal communism akin to those of which traces remain in the tribes and gentes of early Europe and Asia. Cartier's plan of a Hochelagan house as given below (Fig 20), shows a series of rooms surrounding a central hall, in which was a fireplace. Now we know from the customs of the Iroquois and Hurons, as described by Champlain and other early French explorers, that each room was occupied by a family, while all the families in the house had the cooking-place in common, and cultivated their cornfields and went on hunting expeditions in common. In such a community, according to the ancient Fig. 19.-HEAD IN POTTERY. adopted, the necessity was avoided of digging deep holes for the palisades, or of building a rampart of earth about them, and the only danger to which such a structure was exposed, that of fire, was much obviated by the inclined position of the palisades. Still a wall of this kind would perish in no very great number of years, even if it escaped destruction by fire, and if not renewed would soon leave no trace behind. Vessels for collecting provisions and cooking food. are primary requirements of man in every stage of civilisation or barbarism. Here again the material is not characteristic of particular stages so much as of opportunities, and may be perishable or the reverse. In Central America the Spaniards found some nations not very far advanced in civilisation whose ordinary utensils were of gold. On the other hand, many tribes had merely earthen vessels, and some were destitute of these and used baskets or bark Fig. 20.-PLAN OF HOCHELAGAN HOUSE FOR FIVE FAMILIES. (After vessels only. The latter were especially characteristic The winter houses of the Greenlanders are on the same plan, which Nilsson has shown is that also of the "gallery graves" and gallery houses of Sweden. Further, as Morgan has proved, the so-called palaces of Mexico, Yucatan, and Peru, were merely large communistic edifices, each occupied by a whole tribe, whose members lived in common, and were related by a bond of consanguinity dependent on descent through the female line. It seems not impossible that the tradition of the Tower of Babel includes the construction of a huge communistic building on this plan, intended to bind together the early tribes of men in a communistic league, and investigations should be made as to the probability of similar arrangements among the cave-dwellers and other primitive inhabitants of Europe. At this day there remain Pueblos of this kind on the table-lands of New Mexico, where they are inhabited by the Moqui tribes; and ruined edifices of the same type, known to have been occupied by the ancestors of these people at the time of the Spanish conquest, are from 300 to 400 feet in length, with four to seven stories of stone rooms rising in successive terraces, and one of these is said to have been capable of lodging 600 families. When we come to consider the domestic institutions of these people, and to compare them with those of prehistoric Europe, we shall have occasion to return to this subject. Instead of a rampart of earth, perhaps with palisades on top like those of the forts of the Iroquois and the Mound-builders, the Hochelagans had a wall framed of wood, a gigantic public work to be executed by a tribe destitute of metallic tools. If we understand rightly Cartier's description, the rampart of the town consisted of a central support of vertical palisades, with an outer row inclined inwards and resting on this, and a similar inclined row supporting it within. It must have been made, not of planks or boards, but of unhewed logs, each about twenty feet in length, cut with stone hatchets and carried on men's shoulders. By the plan of construction It seems in every way probable that tribes whose families combined to erect such structures as the Swiss lake habitations, retained the primitive tribal communism. Their houses as restored, for example in the papers of Mr. Walker ("Leisure Hour," Nov. 1873), resemble the "long houses" of the Iroquois, and Sir John Lubbock has figured in his "Prehistoric Times" what he regards as a clay model of a lake hamlet, which in the essential features of its plan is similar to the houses of Hochelaga, of nomadic tribes and of parties making long expeditions. People without beasts of burden or conveyances of any kind other than canoes, could not safely or conveniently transport with them heavy and fragile vessels. To them, therefore, the potter's art was unsuited; but so soon as such tribes became settled they would adopt earthenware as the most cheap and convenient vessels. A tribe, therefore, of roving habits, or living in a region where it was necessary to make periodical migrations, might be destitute of pottery, though they might have vessels of wood, basket-work, or bark, more neatly and artificially constructed than the clay pots of more settled tribes. Still, the latter would leave a monument of their art in the débris of their pottery which would be wholly wanting in the case of the former. Further, the pottery of primitive tribes is of a sort which speedily becomes disintegrated in a wet soil or ground up by attrition, so that river-side tribes might leave no sign of it, when it might be met with abundantly in the old residences of cavern and upland tribes. The Hochelagans were potters, and, as we know to have been the case with other tribes, this art was probably practised by the women, and the vessels, formed by hand without the aid of a wheel, were imperfectly baked in a rude oven or fireplace con |