cliffs and
islets. So abundant was this bird, and so fat, that its body was
sometimes used as fuel, or as a lamp. In the summertime their fish and
flesh diet could be varied by the innumerable berries growing
wild--strawberries, raspberries, currants, cranberries, and
whortleberries. The _capillaire_ plant yielded a lusciously sweet,
sugary substance.[15]

[Footnote 15: This was the Moxie plum or creeping snowberry
(_Chiogenes hispidula_).]

[Illustration: GREAT AUKS, GANNETS, PUFFINS, AND GUILLEMOTS]

The Beothiks were a tall, good-looking people, with large black eyes
and a light-coloured skin. The early French and Biscayan seamen, who
resorted to the coasts of Newfoundland for the whale fisheries,
reported these "Red Indians" to be "an ingenious and tractable people,
if well used, who were ready to help the white men with great labour
and patience in the killing, cutting-up, and boiling of whales, and
the making of train oil, without other expectation of reward than a
little bread or some such small hire".

Yet from the beginning of the seventeenth century the Beothiks--then
about four thousand in number--were ill-treated by the European
fishermen who frequented the Newfoundland coasts. They soon greatly
decreased in numbers, and became very shy of white men. The French,
when they occupied the south coast of Newfoundland, brought over
Mikmak Indians to chase and kill the Beothiks or "Red" Indians. The
Eskimo attacked them from Labrador. Finally, when Newfoundland became
British in the eighteenth century, the English fishermen settlers and
fur hunters attacked and slew the harmless Beothiks with a wanton
ferocity (described by horror-struck officers of the British navy)
which is as bad as anything attributed to the Spaniards in Cuba and
Hispaniola. By about 1830 they were all extinct. As late as 1823 the
following anecdote is recorded of two English settlers whose names are
hidden behind the initials C and A. "When near Badger Bay they fell in
with an Indian man and woman, who approached, apparently soliciting
food. The man was first killed, and the woman, who was afterwards
found to be his daughter, in despair remained calmly to be fired at,
when she was also shot through the chest and immediately expired. This
was told Mr. Cormack by the man who did the deed." Even English women
in the late eighteenth century were celebrated for their skill "in
shooting Red Indians and seals".

"For a period of nearly two hun