One day, while far up the river in a canoe, he came across a huge log, the trunk of a tree, which had been blown down by the wind. It had drifted along the river from the forests above, and finally stuck on a mud-bank, where it was held by its dead branches.
Ma-Ya climbed up on this log and looked it over carefully. Something about it made him think of a boat. This was because the tree was partly hollow; a long stretch along one side of it had rotted away. Ma-Ya cut at the rotten wood with his stone axe, and found it soft and crumbly. He thought that if he and some of his companions were to dig out the centre of the log with their axes, and roughly chop the two ends to a point, they would have a large and strong boat, which even the waves of the ocean could not harm. It would take a long time, he knew, but he had nothing to do, and some of his friends, to whom he had told his plan to cross the Great Water and see what was on the other side, offered to help him. The next day, with axes and chisels of sharp flint, a little party went up the river to the mud-bank where the log lay, and began work on it.
The pointing of the ends was a long, hard task, but little by little they cut away the dry wood, and after many weeks the outside of the log began to take the shape of a boat. The task of digging out the inside was easy at first, where the wood was soft and rotten, but after a time the rotten wood was all cut away, and then the work became very hard. Knowing that fire would burn away the wood, Ma-Ya told his companions to start little fires all along the surface on which they were working, and when the fires had charred the inside of the log a little, they put them out and chipped away the burned wood. Over and over again they did this, for many weeks, and at last the inside of the log had been cut away until there was room in the new boat for fifteen or twenty men. Its sides were very thick and strong; they did not dare to burn away too much of the wood, for fear they would make a hole right through it. When it came time to push the new craft off the mud into the water, they found it so heavy that they were obliged to call for help. Finally, with thirty or forty men pushing and pulling, the great boat was slid into the water, where it floated almost as well as the lighter canoes. With paddles in their hands, Ma-Ya and a dozen of his friends scrambled aboard, and sent the new craft flying down the river.
Ma-Ya and his friends made many voyages on the ocean in this boat, but although they sometimes paddled for two whole days, they never were able to cross the Great Water. No matter how far they went they could see nothing beyond them but the blue surface of the ocean, stretching as far as the eye could reach. All of Ma-Ya's friends said that there was no other shore to the ocean; that it went on and on until it joined the sky, but Ma-Ya refused to believe this, because of the flocks of birds he watched coming in from the sea. But he never found the other shore of which he dreamed.
One thing, however, he did discover, a very great thing indeed, although Ma-Ya did not know, then, how great it was. He found out how to make the wind move his boat, by using a sail. And like nearly all of the discoveries of the early people, it was made by accident.
Sometimes, in the middle of the summer, the sun on the water became so hot and burning that the men paddling the boat could hardly stand it. It was warmer in summer, in those days, than it is now, and the blazing rays of the sun often made the handles of the paddles so hot the men could scarcely hold them. To keep off the sun, Ma-Ya would lash some upright poles to the sides of the boat and hang from them a cover, or awning, made of grass-cloth. One day, while paddling up the broad mouth of the river, a squall came up behind them, and striking the awning, turned it sideways, like a sail. At once the boat began to fly through the water so fast ahead of the squall that the paddlers found their work of no use, and drew in their paddles. Ma-Ya set up a great shout and pointed to the sail. His companions did not understand at first, but when they saw the boat sailing along without their paddles being used, they too understood, and also began to shout. Not knowing how to stop, they sat doing nothing while the heavy squall carried them far up the river and finally drove them ashore on a sand bar.
Ma-Ya was delighted. He lashed a stronger upright pole near the front of the boat, with another pole across it, from which he hung a large piece of grass matting, and the next time they went out, the wind took them along in fine fashion. Coming back, however, they had to use their paddles, for Ma-Ya did not know how to sail against the wind, nor did the sea people discover how to do this for a very long time.
Ma-Ya was a great inventor. He gave to the sea folk boats and sails. But he was never able to cross the Great Water. When he died, he called his children and grandchildren about him, and told them to keep on trying, and some day they would find the land of the flying birds.