Page:The Red Man and the White Man in North America.djvu/187

Rh Indian. When we read of La Salle as contriving to transport an anvil, as well as the essentials of a forge and many of the heavy and bulky materials for building a vessel, from Quebec to the mouth of the Illinois River in one or more canoes, we put a high estimate upon the capacity of the craft, as also of the paddlers. The shore of lake or river afforded the ready means in bark and pitch for repairing damages if the canoe sprang a leak, or was bruised or perforated by a sharp rock.

But the lighter the bark was when on its own element it carried its owner, the more easy was its burden when in turn it had to be borne on his own back or shoulder over a stretch of the tangled forest, or round the rough rocks of a cascade, by the portages. Its freight would be transported on one transit, itself by another, or by several successive trampings. The canoe as a product of wilderness art and ingenuity is to be judged not only by its own adaptations, but also by the resources at hand for materials and the scanty tools available for its construction and repair. Some curious conflicts of testimony as to the ventures and discoveries of early navigators along our coasts and into our bays depend upon the accounts given us of the style and material of the skiffs seen in use by the natives, — whether they were birch canoes, or so-called “dug-outs.” The birchen boats were always preferred by the Indian where the trees furnished the bark, as most readily fashioned, the most light and strong, and the most easily repaired. The laminations of the bark, of any size and thickness desired, were bended around a simple frame-work of light and stiff slits of any hard wood well seasoned; they were firmly bound and held by fibrous roots and animal sinews, and made impervious to water by a compound of pitch and grease. A fracture or leak was, as just stated, at once repaired by pulling the canoe to the shore or the beach and drawing on the stores of the woods. Fitly does Longfellow give to it life and motion in his picturing lines: —