Page:The Red Man and the White Man in North America.djvu/186

166 region which has been described as the wonderful feature of our continent. The proportion which the water-ways bore to land-travel for the routes which the Indian traversed, was at least nine parts out of ten. The lake-shore was skirted, the swamp was cunningly threaded, the river channel was boldly followed, the rapids were shot and leaped, and the mazy stream of shallows and sand-bars was patiently traced in all its sinuosities by the frail skiff. True, the Indian canoe seemed to need an Indian for its most facile use and its safest guidance. The best position for the occupant was to lie flat on his back if he trusted to floating, or to rest still on bended knees if he plied the single paddle with strokes on either side. All uneasy, restless motions, all jerks and sidelings were at the risk of passenger, canoe, and freight. Count Frontenac, when first as Governor of Canada for Louis XIV. he began his experience as a voyager with the natives, expressed in strong terms his disgust at the cramped and listless position to which he was confined in the birch canoe; and the Jesuit missionaries, the most patient and heroic of all Europeans as they met every cross and hardship, were very slowly wonted to it. They give us many piteous narrative touches of the constant risks and the need of a steady eye and of a stiff uniformity of position in the buoyant but ticklish vehicle of transport. When they had in it their own precious sacramental vessels, they needed an ever nervous watchfulness against disaster. Till the passengers had learned to adapt themselves to the exacting conditions, their timidity and anxiety furnished a constant source of ridicule and banter to their native pilots. The merriment was loud and unsympathizing when the passenger tipped himself into the waters, still or foaming, unless at the same time he swamped the canoe with a valuable cargo. Yet when the uses and the craft needed for them were fully appreciated and acquired by French voyageurs, the canoe in their hands became a more favorite and facile thing than it was to the