ans had no iron or
steel axes), then cutting off the top in the same manner, then burning
out part of the interior, then burning and scraping and shaping it
without and within, could make one of these dugouts in three weeks. The
Indians at Onondaga still make the wooden mortars they use in the same
tedious way.

When the white men came to America in great ships, the Indians marvelled
much at the size, thinking they were hollowed out of tree-trunks as were
the dugouts, and wondered where such vast trees grew.

The Swedish scientific traveller, Kalm, who was in America in 1748, was
delighted with the Indian canoes and dugouts. He found the Swede
settlers using them constantly to go long distances to market. He
said:--

"They usually carry six persons who however by no means must be
unruly, but sit at the bottom of the canoe in the quietest manner
possible lest the boat upset. They are narrow, round below, have no
keel and may be easily overset. So when the wind is brisk the
people make for the land. Larger dugouts were made for war-canoes
which would carry thirty or forty savages."

These boats usually kept close to the shore, both in calm and windy
weather, though the natives were not afraid to go many miles out to sea
in the dugouts.

The lightness of the birch-bark canoe made it specially desirable where
there were such frequent overland transfers. It was and is a beautiful
and perfect expression of natural and wild life; as Longfellow wrote:--

"... the forest's life was in it,
All its mystery and magic,
All the lightness of the birch tree,
All the toughness of the cedar,
All the larch's supple sinews,
And it floated on the river
Like a yellow leaf in autumn."

The French governor and missionaries all saw and admired these
birch-bark canoes. Father Charlevoix wrote a beautiful and vivid
description of them. All the early travellers noted their ticklish
balance. Wood, writing in 1634, said, "In these cockling fly-boats an
Englishman can scarce sit without a fearful tottering," and Madam
Knights a century later said in her vivid English of a trip in one:--

"The Cannoo was very small and shallow, which greatly terrify'd me
and caused me to be very circumspect, sitting with my hands fast on
each side, my eyes steady, not daring so much as to lodge my tongue
a hair's bredth more on one side of my mouth than tother, nor so
m