hout being any the worse.
If in addition you can get hold of one made of the winter cut of bark,
the outside shell will be as good as possible. Try to purchase a new
canoe. Should this be impossible, look well to the _watap_, or roots,
used in the sewing, that they are not frayed or burst. The frames should
lie so close together as fairly to touch. Such a canoe, "two fathoms,"
will carry two men and four hundred pounds besides. It will weigh about
fifty to seventy pounds, and should cost new from six to eight dollars.

[Illustration: Getting ready for another day of it]

[Sidenote: Cedar and Basswood]

A wooden canoe, of some sort, is perhaps better for all smooth and
open-water sailing, and all short trips nearer home. It will stand a
great deal of jamming about, but is very difficult to mend if ever you
do punch a hole in it. You will need to buy a longer craft than when
getting a birch. The latter will run from twelve to fourteen feet. A
wood canoe of that length would float gunwhale awash at half you would
wish to carry. Seventeen or eighteen feet is small enough for two men,
although I have cruised in smaller. Cedar is the lighter material--and
the more expensive--but splits too readily. Basswood is heavier, but is
cheaper and tougher.

[Sidenote: The Folding Canvas]

The folding canvas boat is an abomination. It is useful only as a craft
from which to fish in an inaccessible spot. Sooner or later it sags and
gives, and so becomes logy.

[Sidenote: Canvas Covered]

A canoe is made, however, and much used by the Hudson's Bay Company,
exactly on the frame of a birch bark, but covered with tightly stretched
and painted canvas. It is a first-rate craft, combining an approach
to the lightness of the birch bark with the sweeter lines of the wooden
canoe. All ordinary small tears in its bottom are easily patched by the
gum method. Its only inferiority to the birch rests in the facts that it
is more easily torn; that a major accident, such as the smashing of an
entire bow, cannot be as readily mended; and that it will not carry
quite so great a weight. All in all, however, it is a good and
serviceable canoe.

[Sidenote: Portaging]

In portaging, I have always had pretty good luck with the primitive
Indian fashion--the two paddles lengthwise across the thwarts and
resting on the shoulders, with perhaps a sweater or other padding to
relieve the pressure. It is possible, however, to buy cushions which
just fit, an