If indeed Shaw-na-dith-it’s statement is to be taken as of unquestionable authority, and is not to be subjected to any scrutiny, then indeed but slight hopes can be entertained of the existence of any of her race; but if the information she supplied be compared with that conveyed to us through various other sources, then a very different conclusion may be most legitimately reached.

And first let Shaw-na-dith-it’s recital of the circumstances connected with Captain Buchan’s visit to the Great Lake in the winter of 1810 and 1811 be contrasted with that gentleman’s own statement of the same facts.

Shaw-na-dith-it when entering into the particulars of the condition of her tribe at the period just referred to, said it consisted of no more than seventy two persons, and whom she thus further described:  In the principal encampment, that which Captain Buchan surprised, there were in one mamaseek or wigwam four men, five women and six children—­in a second mamaseek there were four men, two women and six children—­in a third mamaseek there were three men, five woman, and seven children—­in the whole forty-two persons.  In the second encampment there were thirteen persons, and in the third seventeen persons, making in the whole seventy-two; the two smaller encampments being several miles distant from the larger one.  Now, compare this account with what Captain Buchan saw, bearing in mind that it was only the larger encampment he surprised,—­of the two smaller ones, it does not appear that he was at all aware, Shaw-na-dith-it states the encampment contained forty-two persons, of whom nineteen were children.  Captain Buchan asserts in his official Report, that it contained seventy-five persons, and it is by no means clear that in this number he included any of the women or children, as in another part of his report, he estimates the number of the Red Indians as consisting at least of three hundred persons—­an opinion formed solely from the appearances which the one encampment presented.  Then we have the testimony of a writer, an anonymous one it is true, yet it is evidently the testimony of a person who was present at the scenes he describes, and he tells us that in 1819 he estimated the number of Indians he saw, at from three to four hundred, including women and children.  Then again, we find Mr. Cormack, in 1827, declaring “that hundreds of Indians must have been in existence not many years ago,” otherwise it would be impossible to account for the great extent of deer fences which he found so late as the period above-named, yet in being.  And lastly, we have the opinions of the Micmacs, who are so satisfied of the continued existence of the Red Indian tribe, that they can with difficulty be made to comprehend that it is possible to entertain a doubt of a fact, which to them appears so palpable.  Their opinion is that the whole tribe of Boeothicks passed over to the Labrador some twenty or twenty-five years since, and the place of their final embarkation, as they allege, is yet plainly discernable.