Leaks
Water is placed inside, and the leaky places marked, to be stopped when dry. A can of rosin is usually carried in the canoe, and when a leak occurs, the canoe is taken out of the water, the leak discovered by sucking, the place dried with a torch of wood or birch bark, and the pitch applied.
Fig. 101½.—From photograph of Indian building a birch-bark canoe.
Paddles are made of rock maple, and sometimes of birch and even cedar. Bow paddles are usually longer and narrower in the blade than stern paddles ([Fig. 101]).
Bottom Protection
Sometimes the canoe is shod with "shoes," or strips of cedar, laid lengthwise and tied to the outside of the bark with ash splits that pass through holes in the cedar shoes, and are brought up around the sides of the canoe and tied to each cross-bar. This protects the bottom of the boat from the sharp rocks that abound in some rapid streams.
All canoes are of the general shape of the one described, though this is considerably varied in different localities, some being built with high rolling bows, some slender, some wider, some nearly straight on the bottom, others decidedly curved.
Besides the two paddles the canoe should carry a pole ten feet long, made of a slender spruce, whittled so as to be about one and three-fourths inch in diameter in the middle and smaller at either end, and having at one end either a ring and a spike or else a pointed cap of iron. The pole is used for propelling the canoe up swift streams. This, says Tappan Adney, "is absolutely indispensable." The person using the pole stands in one end, or nearer the middle if alone, and pushes the canoe along close to the bank, so as to take advantage of the eddies, guiding the canoe with one motion, only to be learned by practice, and keeping the pole usually on the side next the bank. Where the streams have rocky and pebbly bottoms poling is easy, but in muddy or soft bottoms it is tiresome work; muddy bottoms, however, are not usually found in rapid waters.