THE ASPEN. 105 



when carefully prepared, may be used as a substitute 

 for paper. The thicker plates are made into car.oes 

 by the Indians, which are particularly light and 

 buoyant, and entirely impervious to water. One of 

 these, constructed to accommodate four persons with 

 their baggage, it is said, will weigh only 40 or 50 

 pounds. Their lightness renders them peculiarly 

 serviceable in navigating rivers where the stream is 

 often interrupted by rocky rapids or cascades, as they 

 may be readily carried around them by land, and 

 again launched in the water below. 



In the settlements of the Hud- 

 son's Bay Company, we are told 

 this tree sometimes measures 18 

 or 20 feet in circumference at 

 the base; the bark is used in 

 building tents, it being cut in 

 pieces 12 feet long, and 4 feet 

 wide; these are sewed together 

 with the long pliable roots of the 

 Spruce, and so rapidly is the 

 work done, that, a tent of 20 feet in diameter, and 10 

 feet high, does not, it is said, occupy more than half 

 an hour in pitching. 



No small quantity of Birch-wood was used by the 

 School-masters of the Olden-time, as a means of in- 

 stilling sound views and correct principles into the 

 minds of their pupils ; but thanks to the progress of 

 civilization, that practice is almost obsolete, and the 

 once-dreaded birch is again consigned to those uses 

 for which it was originally created. 



