[Footnote 12: See p. 150.]
There were four very well marked types of canoe or boat in British
North America. There was the already-described Eskimo _kayak_, made of
leather stretched over a framework of wood or bone; the Amerindians of
the Dominion, south of the Eskimo and east of the Rocky Mountains,
used the familiar "birch-bark" canoe;[13] the peoples of the Pacific
coast belt possessed something more like a boat, made out of a
hollowed tree trunk and built up with planks; and the tribes of the
Upper Mississippi used round coracles. Here are descriptions of all
three kinds of Amerindian canoe from the pens of eighteenth-century
pioneers: The birch-bark canoe used on the Great Lakes was about
thirty-three feet long by four and a half feet broad, and formed of
the smooth rind or bark of the birch tree fastened outside a wooden
framework. It was lined with small splints of juniper cedar, and the
vessel was further strengthened with ribs of the same wood, of which
the two ends were fastened to the gunwales. Several bars rather than
seats were laid across the canoe from gunwale to gunwale, the small
roots of the spruce fir afforded the fibre with which the bark was
sewn or stitched, and the gum of the pine tree supplied the place of
tar and oakum. Bark, some spare fibre, and gum were always carried in
each canoe for repairs, which were constantly necessary (one
continually reads in the diaries of the pioneers of "stopping to gum
the canoe").
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