* * * * * We saw in this place some five to six hundred savages, all naked except their sexual parts, which they cover with a small piece of doe or seal-skin. The women are also naked, and, like the men, cover theirs with skins or leaves. They wear their hair carefully combed and twisted in various ways, both men and women, after the manner of the savages of Choüacoet. [220] Their bodies are well-proportioned, and their skin olive-colored. They adorn themselves with feathers, beads of shell, and other gewgaws, which they arrange very neatly in embroidery work. As weapons, they have bows, arrows, and clubs. They are not so much great hunters as good fishermen and tillers of the land. In regard to their police, government, and belief, we have been unable to form a judgment; but I suppose that they are not different in this respect from our savages, the Souriquois and Canadians, who worship neither the moon nor the sun, nor any thing else, and pray no more than the beasts. [221] There are, however, among them some persons, who, as they say, are in concert with the devil, in whom they have great faith. They tell them all that is to happen to them, but in so doing lie for the most part. Sometimes they succeed in hitting the mark very well, and tell them things similar to those which actually happen to them. For this reason, they have faith in them, as if they were prophets; while they are only impostors who delude them, as the Egyptians and Bohemians do the simple villagers. They have chiefs, whom they obey in matters of war, but not otherwise, and who engage in labor, and hold no higher rank than their companions. Each one has only so much land as he needs for his support. Their dwellings are separate from each other, according to the land which each one occupies. They are large, of a circular shape, and covered with thatch made of grasses or the husks of Indian corn. [222] They are furnished only with a bed or two, raised a foot from the ground, made of a number of little pieces of wood pressed against each other, on which they arrange a reed mat, after the Spanish style, which is a kind of matting two or three fingers thick: on these they sleep. [223] They have a great many fleas in summer, even in the fields. One day as we went out walking, we were beset by so many of them that we were obliged to change our clothes. All the harbors, bays, and coasts from Choüacoet are filled with every variety of fish, like those which we have before our habitation, and in such abundance that I can confidently assert that there was not a day or night when we did not see and hear pass by our barque more than a thousand porpoises, which were chasing the smaller fry. There are also many shell-fish of various sorts, principally oysters. Game birds are very plenty.