The raisers of these refuse mounds were, we may judge, pre-eminently fishers; and not generally fishers of that adventurous kind who seek their treasure in the depths of the ocean. They lived chiefly upon those smaller fish and shell-fish which could be caught without much difficulty or danger. Yet not only on these; for the bones of some deep-sea fish have also been discovered, whence we know that these mound-raisers were possessed of the art of navigation, though doubtless in a most primitive form. Among remains believed to be contemporary with the shell mounds are found canoes not built of planks, as our boats and as most canoes are nowadays, but merely hollowed out of the trunks of trees; sometimes these canoes are quite straight fore and aft, just as the trunk was when it was cut, sometimes a little bevelled from below, like a punt of the present day; but we believe they are never found rounded or pointed at the prow. Here, then, we see another discovery which has been of the greatest use to mankind, whereof the first traces come to us from these northern shell mounds. That ‘heart with oak and bronze thrice bound,’ the man who first ventured to sea in the first vessel, had lived before this time. Whoever he was, we cannot, if we think of it, refuse to endorse the praise bestowed upon him by the poet; it required no mean courage to venture out to sea on such a strange make-shift as was the first canoe. Perhaps the earliest experiment was an involuntary one, made by some one who was washed away upon a large log or felled tree. We can fancy how thence would arise the notion of venturing again a little way, then of hollowing a seat in the middle of the trunk, until the primitive canoes, such as we find, came into existence.
In these imperfect vessels men gradually ventured further and further into the ocean; and, judging of the extent of their voyages by the deep-sea remains, we may be certain that their bravery was fatal to many. This is in all probability the history of the discovery or re-discovery of the art of navigation among savage people generally; in all cases does the canoe precede the regular boat. I say ‘re-discovery’ because a nation which has settled long inland might very easily lose the art even if their ancestors had possessed it. For it is a fact that people rarely begin attempts at ship-building before they come to live near the sea. As long as they can range freely on land, their rivers do not tempt them to any dangerous experiments. But the vast plain of the sea is too important, and makes too great an impression on their imagination for its charm to be long withstood. Sooner or later, with much risk of life, men are sure to try and explore its solitudes, and navigation takes its rise. This art of seafaring, then, is amongst the most noticeable of the belongings of the fishermen of the shell mounds. Considering that they had none but rude stone implements, the felling and hollowing of trees must have been an affair of no small labour, and very likely occupied a great deal of their time when they were not actually seeking their food, even though the agency of fire supplemented the ineffectual blows of their stone weapons. They probably used nets for their sea-fishing, made most likely of twisted bark or grass. And they were hunters as well as fishers, for it has been said that the remains of various animals have been discovered on the shell mounds. From these remains we see that the age of the post-glacial animals has by this time quite passed away; no mammoth, woolly rhinoceros, or cave lion or bear is found; even the reindeer, which in palæolithic days must have ranged over France and Switzerland, has retired to the north.