“—WOULDN’T TAKE FIFTY DOLLARS FOR IT.”
“I believe I’d give ten dollars a mouthful for another meal like that, ’though its only an appetiser,” said Hiram, arising from the frugal repast.
“Hiram,” remarked the Colonel, “puts me in mind of an Englishman I met some weeks ago at the Tremont Hotel, Boston. The gentleman sat at my table, and for four mornings in succession I had noticed him call for dried herrings and coffee, of which he made his entire meal. I was wonderfully interested, and on the fifth morning, to satisfy my curiosity, I had the audacity to question him; ‘I say, my friend, you must excuse me; but do you eat those herrings from a medicinal motive, or because you really love them?’ ‘Well,’ he answered, with a drawl, ‘I don’t exactly love them, but along about 11 o’clock in the morning there creeps over me such a glorious thirst that I wouldn’t take fifty dollars for it!’”
But this was no time for story telling, and we immediately set to work on the “shoes” for the canoes.
The guides soon felled a number of tall cedars and dragged them into camp.
Then we split them into boards ten feet in length, half an inch in thickness, and tapering from four to two inches in width, the broadest extremities lapping one another at midships.
MANSUNGUN DEADWATER.
Sixteen of these strips were necessary for each of the three canoes, and were fastened to their bottoms by being split at the edges and drawn tightly together with strips of cedar bark which ran through the slits, and passing upward were tied securely to the thwarts. Thus the graceful form of the birch was lost in the rough outline of a boat.
For four days we labored incessantly at our task, and from the splitting of the great logs to the finishing of the wood had as tools only an axe and a penknife.