38 LAKE SUPERIOR. 



sewed with pine-roots. It is said that after the materials are cut out 

 and fitted, two men to put them together, with six women to sew, 

 can make two seven-fathom canoes in two days. While on the lake 

 the canoes are not usually paddled, but rowed, the same number of 

 men exerting greater force with oars than with paddles. By doub- 

 ling the number of men, putting two on a seat, more of course can 

 be accomplished with paddles. The gunnel of a canoe is too slight 

 to allow of the cutting of rowlocks, or the insertion of thole-pins : so 

 a fiat strip from a tree, with a branch projecting at right angles, is 

 nailed to the gunnel, and a loop of raw hide attached, through 

 which the oar is passed. 



Our boats were stowed as follows : On the bottom were laid set- 

 ting-poles and a spare paddle or two, (to prevent the inexperienced 

 from putting their boot-heels through the birch-bark,) and over these, 

 in the after part, a tent was folded. This formed the quarter-deck 

 for the bourgeois, (as they called us,) and across it was laid the 

 bedding, which had previously been made up into bolster-like pack- 

 ages, covered with buifalo-robes, or with the matting of the country, 

 a very neat fabric of some fine reed which the Indians call paquah. 

 These bolsters served for our seats, and around them were disposed 

 other articles of a soft nature, to form backs or even pillows to 

 our sitting couches. The rest of the luggage was skilfully distrib- 

 uted in other parts of the canoe, leaving room for the oarsmen 

 to sit, on boards suspended by cords from the gunnel, and a 

 place in the stern for the steersman. The cooking utensils were 

 usually disposed in the bow, with a box of gum for mending the 

 canoe and a roll or two of bark by way of ship-timber. Our canoe 

 was distinguished by a frying-pan rising erect over the prow as 

 figure-head, an importance very justly conferred on the culinary 

 art in this wilderness, where nature provides nothing that can be 

 eaten raw except blueberries. 



The voyageurs (some ten or twelve in number,) Avere mostly half- 

 breeds, with a few Canadian French and one or two Indians. All 

 except the Indians spoke French, and most of them more or less 

 English, but there were only two who spoke English as well as they 

 did French. The half-breeds were in general not much if at all 

 lighter in complexion than the Indians, but their features were more or 

 less Caucasian, and the hair inclining sometimes to brown. They were 



