Of the Algonquins proper who remained on the St. Lawrence, and who are specifically entitled to that name, but a limited number survive. About the middle of the 17th century, they were reduced to a few villages near Quebec, who were then said to be "wasted, and wasting away under the effects of ardent spirits." Subsequently, they were collected, by the Catholic Church, into a mission, and settled at the Lake of Two Mountains, on the Utawas or Grand River of Canada, where they have been instructed in various arts, and effectually civilized. There, their descendants still remain. They are a tall, active, shrewd, lithe, energic race. Parties of them have been engaged as voyagers and hunters, within modern times, and led in the prosecution of the fur trade into the remote forests of the north-west. In these positions, they have manifested a degree of energy, hardihood, and skill in the chase, far beyond that possessed by native, unreclaimed tribes. The Algonquin women, at the Lake of Two Mountains, make very ingenious basket and bead work, in which the dyed quills of the porcupine, and various coloured beads of European manufacture, are employed. They also make finger rings out of moose hair, taken from the breast tuft of this animal, in which mottoes or devices are worked. They have melodious soft voices, in chanting the hymns sung at the mission. This tribe is called Odishkuaguma, that is, People-at-the-end-of-the-waters, by the Odjibwas. They were called Adirondacks, by the Six Nations. The term Algonquin, which we derive from the French, is not of certain etymology. It appears at first to have been a _nom de guerre_, for the particular people, or tribe, whose descendants are now confined to the position at the Lake of Two Mountains. It was early applied to all the tribes of kindred origin. And is now a generic term for a family or primitive stock of tribes in North America, who either speak cognate dialects, or assimilate in the leading principles of their languages.