me kind of
alliance had been struck up between the Beothiks--a nation of
hunters--and the wolf packs which followed in their tracks; and the
Newfoundland wolves were on the way to becoming domesticated "dogs".
Later on it was realized that the island _did_ produce a special
breed--the celebrated Newfoundland dog--the original type of which was
much smaller than the modern type, nearly or entirely black in colour,
with a sharper muzzle and less pendulous ears. But its feet were as
strongly webbed and its habits as aquatic as those of the
"Newfoundland" of the modern breed. Some people have noticed the
resemblance between the farmers' dogs in Norway and the Newfoundland
type, and have thought that the latter may not be altogether of wolf
extraction, but be descended from the dogs brought from Norway and
Iceland by the Norse adventurers who visited Newfoundland in the tenth
and eleventh centuries.]

On the Pacific coast there were other types of domestic dog,
resembling greatly breeds that are found in eastern Asia and the
Pacific islands. Some of these were naked, and others grew silky hair,
which was woven by the natives into cloth (see p. 323). The Eskimo dog
almost certainly has been derived from northern Asia, and is closely
related to the well-known Chinese breed--the chow dog--and the
domestic breeds of ancient Europe. Even the commonest type of house
dog in the Roman Empire was very much like an Eskimo or a chow in
appearance. There is a true wild dog, however, in the Yukon province
of the Canadian Dominion and in Alaska--_Canis pambasileus_--a dark,
blackish-brown in colour. This may have been a parent of the Eskimo
dog, but it is also doubtless closely allied to the original (extinct)
wild dog of northern Asia, from which the chow and many other breeds
are directly descended. The Eskimo never under ordinary circumstances
ate their dogs; on the other hand, the Amerindians were fond of dog's
flesh, and in some tribes simply bred dogs for the table.

When Europeans first reached America all these Amerindian tribes, and
also the Eskimo, were still, for all practical purposes, in the Stone
Age. Those who lived in the north had discovered the use of copper and
had shaped for themselves knives and spear blades out of copper, but
not even this metal was in use to any great extent, and for the most
part they relied, down to the end of the eighteenth century, for their
implements and weapons, on polished and sharpened st