How much poetry and romance the words, birch-bark canoe, suggest to our mind! the grand old forests have more tender associations when one is paddled through their lights and shadows in a birch canoe; there are thoughts and reveries which make themselves felt as one examines their construction—a natural fitness of things to the regions in which they are used.
The delicate-colored bark stripped from a prominent tree is cut at the ends and gathered up into uniform bow and stern, cut and then brought together again at the sides alternately to lift the lines fore and aft; this gives a surface to meet the waves, producing that buoyancy so pleasing to the craft. Then a gunwale, of strips of wood, is affixed, sewed with spruce roots or rattan, and the whole lined from stem to stern with thin strips of wood called “knees.” A birch canoe will weigh from eighty-five to one hundred and fifteen pounds when averaging eighteen to twenty feet; but I have occasionally seen those that weighed three times that amount, and had a longitude of twenty-eight to thirty feet.
My portable canvas canoe made for this special occasion was fifteen feet long with a weight of only forty-five pounds, when the fish-rod-like stretcher was inserted. This canoe could be collapsed at a moment’s notice, placed in a bag seventeen by thirty-eight inches, and carried on the shoulders with ease by one person, while it would float eight hundred and fifty pounds.
HOME APPETITE.
Before the month’s journey was completed, I found I could leap falls and rapids more safely than in a birch-bark canoe, and although I often paid for my audacity by cutting its surface, it was easily sewed, waterproofed, and I continued my way. On account of its convenient construction and weight it could be easily transported through the woods to the small bodies of water off our main course, and explorations made not accessible to a birch canoe.
CAMP APPETITE.
As we were to pass through a country uninhabited we were obliged to provide ourselves from the start with food sufficient for the entire thirty days’ sojourn, and it may be interesting to the reader to know the quantity and variety of the supplies, should he ever undertake a similar enterprise. We did not rely upon the game or fish of the country we were canoeing; like excursions in the past had taught us that these articles were more incidental surprises, than an excess of the daily menu. Very few tourists to Maine select this, the hardest of routes, and we found, afterwards, that we were the first party who had passed down the East Branch of the Penobscot river during the year 1879. A “camp appetite” is something entirely different from what one enjoys at home. One would turn in aversion from the plainness of the fare were it placed on the table. But the surroundings and the daily vigorous exercise seem to make one forget the homely dishes, and articles refused at our own boards are devoured in the woods with avidity. Most of the provisions were packed into wooden pails of various sizes, the balance in canvas bags, and were assorted as follows: thirty-four pounds of hard tack or bread, seventy-three pounds of flour, one bushel of potatoes, twelve pounds of salt pork, four pounds of beans, two packages of baking powders, two and one half pounds of cheese, ten pounds of ham, three pounds of candles, one bottle each of pickles and chow-chow, three cans of potted ham, seven and three-fourths pounds of onions, twelve pounds of canned corned beef, six pounds of maple sugar, one dozen cans of condensed milk, three pounds of tea, seven pounds of coffee, and thirteen pounds of granulated sugar, besides a quart of oil for our lantern, which latter article was one of the most useful of the lot. Sugar, either maple or granulated, always disappears in the woods at an early date, and the immense quantities of luscious blueberries and blackberries to be had at any time along our route greatly facilitated its departure.