“But, mother, it just tells what it is; a trunk of a tree, hollowed or dug out in the shape of a boat. But see how pretty that bark canoe is! Don’t you remember we were reading about it in Hiawatha; how he girdled the birch-tree just above its roots, and just below its lower branches, then cut it from top to bottom, and stripped it, unbroken, from the tree with a wooden wedge?”
“Well, what did he do then?”
“He made a framework of cedar-boughs, like two bended bows, and then he sewed the bark together with the roots of the larch-tree; bound it to the framework, and stopped up all the seams and crevices with resin from the fir-tree. And then he embroidered it with porcupine quills.”
“You remember pretty well how the canoe was made, Norman. I wish you could recall some of those lines about the birch canoe you were so fond of repeating.”
“I think I can, mother,” said Norman; “at any rate I will repeat what I remember:”
“Thus the birch canoe was builded
In the valley, by the river,
In the bosom of the forest;
And the forest’s life was in it,
All its mystery, and its magic,