o rough and brittle for the bottom of a
canoe. It made dull paddling and never lasted the whole of a hard
season, unlike the birch-bark, which sometimes had a life of six or
seven years. The most modern material is canvas, which is generally
painted red or green. It is light, easily repaired, and has much to
recommend it, though trappers think it gives a taint which scares their
game away. The paddles were and are of all shapes and sizes, long and
short, broad and narrow, spoon-blade and square; and they were and are
made of all kinds of wood, from the lightest spruce to the much heavier
but handsomer bird's-eye maple. Sails were and are only used with
light winds dead aft, and not often in birch-barks even then, because
there is no 'stiffness' without a keel.

There were skin as well as bark canoes among the Indians. But the
typical skin canoe is the Eskimo kayak. This is a shuttle-shaped
craft, about fifteen feet long and just wide enough to let its single
paddler sit flat on the bottom. It differs from the Indian canoe in
being entirely decked over. The skin of the grey seal, when that best
of canoe skins can be found, is carefully sewn, so as to be quite {25}
waterproof, and then stretched as tightly as a drumhead all over the
frame, except for the little 'well' where the Eskimo sits with his
double-bladed paddle. As he tucks himself in so closely that water
cannot enter he does not fear to be capsized, for he can right himself
with a sweep of his paddle. Kayaks are very light and handy, as the
frame is made either of whalebone or spruce. The oomiak is the
Eskimo's family boat and cargo carrier, flat-bottomed, not decked in,
and sometimes big enough for twenty people with their gear. It is made
of much the same materials.

The white man's canoes, so well known--outside of Canada--as 'Canadian
canoes,' are partly true canoes and partly a cross between canoes and
boats. The fact that the skin is not made of bark or hide, but of
canvas, wood, or metal, and the further innovation that machinery is
freely used, make no essential difference, provided always that there
is no semblance of a keel. But once the keel is introduced the whole
constructional idea is changed and the ways of savages are left behind.
A first-rate keeled canoe, built of white cedar, brass shod and copper
fastened, fitted with air tanks and life-line, a lateen sail and
portage handles, is the very perfection {26} of a handy little crui