When Uncle Isaac reached home, John’s school had been out a week; but the weather was so rough he could not reach the island; and when he did arrive, Ben and Charlie were just finishing up the flax. The boys now cleared out the camp, scoured the kettles, put fresh mortar on the arch, hauled wood, and prepared for sugar-making. They resolved to tap but few trees at first, in order to have more leisure to work on their boat. The greatest mechanical skill was required to shape the outside. This pertained entirely to Charlie; but the most laborious portion of the work was the digging out such an enormous stick, and removing such a quantity of wood at a disadvantage, as, after they had chopped out about a foot of the surface, it would be difficult to get at, and the work must be done with adze and chisel, and even bored out with an auger at the ends. They decided to remove a portion of it before shaping the outside, as the log would lie steadier. Charlie accordingly marked out the sheer, then put on plumb-spots, and hewed the sides and the upper surface fair and smooth.
He then lined out the shape and breadth of beam, and made an inside line to rough-cut by, and at leisure times they chopped out the inside with the axe, one bringing sap or tending the kettle, while the other worked on the boat.
“John,” said Charlie, stopping to wipe the perspiration from his face, “I’m going to find some easier way than this to make a boat; it’s too much like work.”
“There is no other way. I’ve seen hundreds of canoes made, and this is the way they always do.”
“Don’t you remember when we were clearing land, that we would set our nigger[1] to burning off logs, and when it came night, we would find that he had burned more logs in two than we had cut with the axe?”
“Yes.”
“Uncle Isaac told me one night, that the Indians burned out canoes, and I am going to try it.”
“I thought they always made them of bark.”
“He said they sometimes, especially the Canada Indians, made them of a log, in places where they had a regular camping-ground, and didn’t want to carry them.”