Fig. 40.
The advance-guard of modern civilization is the lumberman, and following close on his heels comes the all-devouring saw-mill. This fierce creature has an abnormal appetite for logs, and it keeps an army of men, boys, and horses busy in supplying it with food. While it supplies us with lumber for the carpenter, builder, and cabinet-maker, it at the same time, in the most shameful way, fills the trout streams and rivers with great masses of sawdust, which kills and drives away the fish. But near the saw-mill there is always to be found material for a
Slab Canoe
which consists simply of one of those long slabs, the first cut from some giant log ([Fig. 43]).
These slabs are burned or thrown away by the mill-owners, and hence cost nothing; and as the saw-mill is in advance of population, you are most likely to run across one on a hunting or fishing trip.
Near one end, and on the flat side of the slab ([Fig. 40]), bore four holes, into which drive the four legs of a stool made of a section of a smaller slab ([Fig. 41]), and your boat is ready to launch. From a piece of board make a double or single paddle ([Fig. 42]), and you are equipped for a voyage. An old gentleman, who in his boyhood days on the frontier frequently used this simple style of canoe, says that the speed it makes will compare favorably with that of many a more pretentious vessel. See [Fig. 43] for furnished boat.
The Dugout
Although not quite as delicate in model or construction as the graceful birch-bark canoe, the "dugout" of the Indians is a most wonderful piece of work, when we consider that it is carved from the solid trunk of a giant tree with the crudest of tools, and is the product of savage labor.