To be short, I believe that this was the land that God allotted to Cain.' From time to time the explorers had caught sight of painted savages, with heads adorned with bright feathers and with bodies clad in the skins of wild beasts.

They were roving upon the shore or passing in light boats made of bark among the island channels of the coast.

'They are men,' wrote Cartier, 'of an indifferent good stature and bigness, but wild and unruly.

They wear their hair tied on the top like a wreath of hay and put a wooden pin within it, or any other such thing instead of a nail, and with them they bind certain birds' feathers.

They are clothed with beasts' skins as well the men as women, but that the women go somewhat straighter and closer in their garments than the men do, with their waists girded.