ser
for all sorts of inland waters. One like this, but built of basswood,
proved quite serviceable after more than ten years' work, in the course
of which it covered several thousand miles along the Lower St Lawrence,
where the seas are often rough and the low-tide landings always hard.

But all similar craft, though looking like canoes afloat, are no more
like the true canoes and kayaks in their constructional detail than a
bird is like a butterfly. The keel makes all the difference.
Everything in naval architecture springs from and is related to the
keel. 'Laying the keel' means beginning the ship in the only possible
way, and 'two keels to one' is an expression which every one
understands as meaning a naval preponderance in that proportion. The
keel is to the ribs of a ship exactly what the backbone is to the ribs
of a man, and any craft built up from a keel, no matter how small and
simple it may be, belongs to the third and apparently final type of
craft, which is as far ahead of the canoe type as that is ahead of the
dug-out, raft, and log.

An intermediate type that once did much service, and still does a
little, is the white man's flat-bottomed boat, which could be {27}
paddled, rowed, or sailed, according to build and circumstances. The
common punt is the best known form of it; the dory by far the handiest
all round; the cargo barge the biggest; and the old-fashioned 'bateau'
the most characteristically Canadian. The modern 'bateau' is to be
found only among keeled sailing craft. But the old 'bateau,' which
Wolfe's local transport officers spelt _battoe_, was more of a rowboat.
It was sharp at both ends, wall-sided, and fitted with oars, poles, and
a square sail. The bottom had some sheer--that is, it was curved up at
each end--but less than the top. Four men rowed, the fifth steered,
and three tons of miscellaneous goods or thirty-five barrels of flour
made a fair cargo. Bateaux like this were the craft in which the
United Empire Loyalists went up the St Lawrence to settle Upper Canada.
Afterwards the size and crew were increased till the average cargo
amounted to about four tons and a half. But the Durham boat,
introduced by American traders from the Mohawk valley, soon became a
successful rival, which was not itself supplanted till canals enabled
still larger craft to pass from one open water to another. The Durham
was larger than the bateau; long, light, and shallow. It had a not
quite flat {2