having ladders up to them, and on these scaffolds there are large heaps of stones, ready for defending the place against an enemy.  The town consisted of about fifty large houses, each of them about fifty paces long and twelve broad, all built of wood and covered with broad strips of bark, like boards, nicely joined.  These houses are divided within into many rooms, and in the middle of each there is a court or hall, in which they make their fire.  Thus they live in communities, each separate family having a chamber to which the husband, wife, and children retire to sleep.  On the tops of their houses they have garrets or granaries, in which they store up the maize of which their bread is made, which they call caracouny, and which is made in this manner.  They have blocks of wood hollowed out, like those on which we beat hemp, and in these they beat their corn to powder with wooden beetles.  The meal is kneaded into cakes, which they lay on a broad hot stone, covering it up with other heated stones, which thus serve instead of ovens.  Besides these cakes, they make several kinds of pottage from their maize, and also of beans and pease, both of which they have in abundance.  They have also a variety of fruits, such as musk-melons and very large cucumbers.  They have likewise large vessels in all their houses, as big as butts or large hogsheads, in which they store up their fish for winter provision, having dried them in the sun during summer for that purpose, and of these they lay up large stores for their provision during winter.  All their victuals, however, are without the smallest taste of salt.  They sleep on beds made of the bark of trees spread on the ground, and covered over with the skins of wild beasts; with which likewise their garments are made.

[Footnote 50:  This description of the manner in which the ramparts of Hochelega were constructed, taken literally from Hakluyt, is by no means obvious or intelligible.  Besides it seems rather ridiculous to dignify the village of a horde of savages with the name of city.—­E.]

That which they hold in highest estimation among all their possessions, is a substance which they call esurgny or cornibotz, which is as white as snow, and which is procured in the following manner.  When any one is adjudged to death for a crime, or when they have taken any of their enemies during war, having first slain the person, they make many deep gashes on the buttocks, flanks, thighs, and shoulders of the dead body, which is then sunk to the bottom of the river, in a certain place where the esurgny abounds.  After remaining 10 or 12 hours, the body is drawn up, and the esurgny or cornibotz is found in the gashes.  Of this they make beads, which they wear about their necks as we do chains of gold and silver, accounting it their most precious riches.  These ornaments, as we have proved by experience, have the power to staunch bleeding at the nose[51].  This nation devotes itself entirely to husbandry and fishing for subsistence, having no care for any other wealth or commodity, of which they have indeed no knowledge, as they never travel from their own country, as is done by the natives of Canada and Saguenay; yet the Canadians and the inhabitants of eight or ten other villages on the river, are subject to the people of Hochelega.