have leggings and shoes made of moose skin, but the shoes, the uppers as well as the soles, are as pliable as a glove. Their faces are usually painted red or grayish brown, and this is done in different styles, according to the fancy of the women, who paint their husbands and children, whose hair they also oil with bear or moose grease. The men are no more bearded than the women; they pull their beards out in order to be more agreeable to the women. I have seen only three or four who had not done so, and this but recently in imitation of the French; yet they did not have beards. The color of their skin is strongly inclined to black; not one is seen whose skin is white, and yet nothing is so white as their teeth. They go upon the rivers in light birch-bark canoes, very neatly made; the smallest of them can hold 4 or 5 persons and leave room for their little baggage. The oars are proportioned to the canoes, one at the bow and one at the stern; ordinarily, the woman holds the one at the stern, and consequently steers. These poor women are real pack mules, enduring all hardships. When delivered of a child, they go to the woods two hours later to replenish the fire of the cabin.[41] In the Winter, when they break camp, the women drag the heaviest loads over the snow; in short, the men seem to have as their share only hunting, war, and trading. Apropos of [9] trading, I have as yet said nothing, and it is also the last thing which remains to be said in regard to the Savages. All of their wealth consists in the furs of different animals, but principally of the Beaver. Before the time of the association of those Gentlemen to whom the King gave this trade for a certain time in consideration of certain conditions mentioned in the Articles,[21] the Savages were visited by many people, to such an extent that an Old Man told me he had seen as many as twenty ships in the port of Tadoussac. But now since this business has been granted to the association, which to-day has a monopoly over all others, we see here not more than two ships which belong to it, and that only once a year, about the beginning of the month of June. These two ships bring all the merchandise which these Gentlemen use in trading with the Savages; that is to say, the cloaks, blankets, nightcaps, hats, shirts, sheets, hatchets, iron arrowheads, bodkins, swords, picks to break the ice in Winter, knives, kettles, prunes, raisins, Indian corn, peas, crackers or sea biscuits, and tobacco; and what is necessary for the sustenance of the French in this country besides. In exchange for these they carry back hides of the moose, lynx, fox, otter, black ones being encountered occasionally, martens, badgers, and muskrats; but they deal principally in Beavers, in which they find their greatest profit. I was told that during one