e the cheek of an
Indian maiden. Then its supple curves and swells, its sinewy stays
and thwarts, its bow-like contour, its tomahawk stem and stern rising
quickly and sharply from its frame, were all vividly suggestive of the
race from which it came. An old Indian had taught Uncle Nathan the art,
and the soul of the ideal red man looked out of the boat before us.
Uncle Nathan had spent two days ranging the mountains looking for a
suitable tree, and had worked nearly a week on the craft. It was
twelve feet long, and would seat and carry five men nicely. Three trees
contribute to the making of a canoe besides the birch, namely, the white
cedar for ribs and lining, the spruce for roots and fibres to sew its
joints and bind its frame, and the pine for pitch or rosin to stop its
seams and cracks. It is hand-made and home-made, or rather wood-made,
in a sense that no other craft is, except a dug-out, and it suggests a
taste and a refinement that few products of civilization realize. The
design of a savage, it yet looks like the thought of a poet, and its
grace and fitness haunt the imagination. I suppose its production was
the inevitable result of the Indian's wants and surroundings, but that
does not detract from its beauty. It is, indeed, one of the fairest
flowers the thorny plant of necessity ever bore. Our canoe, as I have
intimated, was not yet finished when we first saw it, nor yet when we
took it up, with its architect, upon our metaphorical backs and bore it
to the woods. It lacked part of its cedar lining and the rosin upon its
joints, and these were added after we reached our destination.

Though we were not indebted to the birch-tree for our guide, Uncle
Nathan, as he was known in all the country, yet he matched well these
woodsy products and conveniences. The birch-tree had given him a large
part of his tuition, and kneeling in his canoe and making it shoot
noiselessly over the water with that subtle yet indescribably expressive
and athletic play of the muscles of the back and shoulders, the boat and
the man seemed born of the same spirit. He had been a hunter and trapper
for over forty years; he had grown gray in the woods, had ripened and
matured there, and everything about him was as if the spirit of the
woods had had the ordering of it; his whole make-up was in a minor
and subdued key, like the moss and the lichens, or like the protective
coloring of the game,--everything but his quick sense and penetrative
g