Will Last for Years
and is a good boat for paddling on inland streams and small bodies of water; and when you are through with it for the night, all that is necessary is to remove the stretchers by springing the poles from the notches in the spreaders, roll up the canvas around the poles, put it on your shoulder, and carry it home or to camp, as shown in [Fig. 78].
To put your canoe together again put in the moulds, fit the poles in their places, and the umbrella is raised, or, rather, the canoe is, if we can use such an expression in regard to a boat.
CHAPTER VI
THE BIRCH-BARK
How to Build a Real Birch-Bark Canoe or a Canvas Canoe on a "Birch-Bark" Frame—How to Mend a Birch-Bark
Although the Indian was the first to build these simple little boats, some of his white brothers are quite as expert in the work. But the red man can outdo his white brother in navigating the craft. The only tools required in building a canoe are a knife and awl, a draw-shave and a hammer. An Indian can do all of his work with a knife.
Several years ago canvas began to be used extensively in canoe-building, instead of birch bark, and it will eventually entirely supersede birch, although nothing can be found that bends so gracefully. There are several canvas-canoe factories in Maine, and the canoes made of canvas have both the symmetry and the durability of the birches. They are also a trifle cheaper, but if the real thing and sentiment are wanted, one should never have anything but a bark craft.
If properly handled, a good canoe will safely hold four men. Canoes intended for deep water should have considerable depth. Those intended for shoal water, such as trout-fishers use, are made as flat as possible. Up to the time when canoeing was introduced the materials for building craft of this kind could be found all along the rivers. Big birch-trees grew in countless numbers, and clear, straight cedar was quite as plentiful within a few feet of the water's edge. Now one must go miles back into the dense forests for such materials, and even then seldom does it happen that two suitable trees are found within sight of one or the other. Cedar is more difficult of the two to find.