“You'll see smaller timber than this Cousin Frank, before we reach the end of our voyage.”
This remark was made by Norman, who knew that, as they proceeded northward, the trees would be found decreasing in size until they would appear like garden shrubbery.
“But come,” continued he, “if we can't build a craft to carry us from one tree, perhaps we can do it out of three.”
“With three!” echoed François. “I should like to see a canoe made from three trees! Is it a raft you mean, Cousin Norman?”
“No,” responded the other; “a canoe, and one that will serve us for the rest of our voyage.”
All three—Basil, Lucien, and François—looked to their cousin for an explanation.
“You would rather not go back up the river?” he inquired, glancing from one to the other.
“We wish to go on—all of us,” answered Basil, speaking for his brothers as well.
“Very well,” assented the young fur-trader; “I think it is better as you wish it. Out of these trees I can build a boat that will carry us. It will take us some days to do it, and some time to find the timber, but I am tolerably certain it is to be found in these woods. To do the job properly I want three kinds; two of them I can see from where I sit; the third I expect will be got in the hills we saw this morning.”
As Norman spoke he pointed to two trees that grew among many others not far from the spot. These trees were of very different kinds, as was easily told by their leaves and bark. The nearer and more conspicuous of them at once excited the curiosity of the three Southerners. Lucien recognised it from its botanical description. Even Basil and François, though they had never seen it, as it is not to be found in the hot clime of Louisiana, knew it from the accounts given of it by travellers. The tree was the celebrated “canoe-birch,” or as Lucien named it, “paper-birch,” celebrated as the tree out of whose bark those beautiful canoes are made that carry thousands of Indians over the interior lakes and rivers of North America; out of whose bark whole tribes of these people fashion their bowls, their pails, and their baskets; with which they cover their tents, and from which they even make their soup-kettles and boiling-pots! This, then, was the canoe birch-tree, so much talked of, and so valuable to the poor Indians who inhabit the cold regions where it grows.