We certainly get nothing from that quarter but piercing winds and snow-storms. Elsewhere, however, the appearance of the country is very pleasing, and in many [13] places inviting to the settler and quite promising; and, as experience has shown, it is not unfruitful if cultivated. The natives are not numerous. The Etheminqui number less than a thousand, the Algonquins and the Montagnais together would not amount to much more, the Soriquois would not amount to two thousand. Thus four thousand Indians at most roam through, rather than occupy, these vast stretches of inland territory and sea-shore. For they are a nomadic people, living in the forests and scattered over wide spaces, as is natural for those who live by hunting and fishing only. They are nearly all beardless and of average stature, or even a little shorter and more slender than we, but not degraded nor ill-favored in appearance; their color is not very swarthy; they commonly paint their faces, and, when in mourning, blacken them. They love justice and hate violence and robbery, a thing really remarkable in men who have neither laws nor magistrates; for, among them, each man is his own master and his own protector. They have Sagamores, that is, leaders in war; but their authority is most precarious, if, indeed, that may be called authority to which obedience is in no wise obligatory. The Indians follow them through the persuasion of example or of custom, [14] or of ties of kindred and alliance; sometimes even through a certain authority of power, no doubt. They wage war as a tribe on account of wrongs done to a private individual. The whole race is very revengeful and, after the fashion of savages, insolent in victory, carrying about the heads of their captives as trophies and spoils of victory. Et quidem dicuntur humanis carnibus non abstinuisse, ídque etiamnum perhibentur & Excommunicati & Armonchiqui facere: verum ab ijs, quorum est cum Gallis consuetudo, tantum scelus procul abest. They are even said to have been addicted to the eating of human flesh, and the Excommunicated and Armouchiquois tribes are said to have the same practice even now. Those, however, who are intimate with the French are far from being guilty of so great a crime.