They are extreamly vindictive, of which I shall give you one example.
Mons. _Daunay_, a French captain, with a servant, being overset in a
canoe, within sight of some savages, they threw themselves into the
water to save them, and the servant was actually saved. But the savage,
who had pitched upon Mons. _Daunay_, seeing who it was, and remembering
some blows with a cane he had a few days before received from him, took
care to souse him so often in the water, that he drowned him before he
got ashore.
It is remarked, that in proportion as the Europeans have settled in this
country, the number of the savages considerably diminishes. As they live
chiefly upon their hunting, the woods that are destroyed to cultivate
the country, must in course contract the district of their chace, and
cause a famine amongst them, that must be fatal to them, or compel them
to retire to other countries. The English, sensible of this effect, and
who seemed to place their policy in exterminating these savage nations,
have set fire to the woods, and burnt a considerable extent of them. I
have myself crossed above thirty leagues together, in which space the
forests were so totally consumed by fire, that one could hardly at night
find a spot wooded enough to afford wherewithal to make an extempore
cabbin, which, in this country, is commonly made in the following
manner: Towards night the travellers commonly pitch upon a spot as near
a rivulet or river as they can; and as no one forgets to carry his
hatchet with him, any more than a Spanish don his toledo, some cut down
wood for firing for the night; others branches of trees, which are stuck
in the ground with the crotch uppermost, over which a thatching is laid
of fir-boughs, with a fence of the same on the weather-side only.
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