Page:Athletics and Manly Sport (1890).djvu/302

Rh bacon. We had tin cups, a little alcohol stove, and a bottle of very old Jamaica (for the malaria).

We had two canoes of the "Shadow" model, Mr. Smith's, a Rushton, decked and hatched; mine without hatches, and built by Partelow, of Riverside, Mass.,—both good boats of their kind, from good builders. But the "Shadow" is not a good kind of canoe for river work. Her keel is too long and too deep. This makes her heavy in turning sharp curves; and, when she runs on a stone,—even a round or flat one,—the keel throws her on one side; and this is really a canoe's unpardonable sin. A canoe should have no keel. The "Shadow" model is really not a canoe at all, but simply a light boat.

The Indian round-bottomed, birch-bark canoe is the best model for American rivers; and it is a pity that our builders do not keep it as their radical study. It should be modified and improved, of course; narrowed for double paddling, and shortened and lightened for portage; but its first principle, of a bottom that can run on or over a stone without capsizing, ought never to be forgotten. In my opinion, paper will win against lapstreak in the canoe of the future; all that is needed to insure this is a method of patching the wound on a paper bottom.

Never have I seen river-water so clear and