256 HOW INDIANS EXPAND A CANOE. 



differ from the Nianirnos as the Nianimos differ 

 from the Fort Rupert, Queen Charlotte Islanders, 

 and the various coast Indians. 



Making a ' dug-out ' requires great skill and 

 patience. She must float evenly, be right in her 

 lines, not too thick or too thin, and bilged at the 

 sides to give breadth and sufficiency of beam. A 

 small kind of steel adze is used nowaday, but 

 in old times the Indians had only stone imple- 

 ments or tools, and with these managed to chop 

 down trees, hew them into planks, and make 

 canoes ('dugouts') as they make them now in the 

 iron age. When the canoe is hollowed and shaped, 

 it has then to be widened at the sides. This the 

 savages ingeniously accomplish by first filling the 

 canoe with water, then plunging red-hot stones into 

 the water until it reaches to near the boiling-point ; 

 then sticks are forced in betwixt the sides, and 

 the canoe allowed to cool; a second time the 

 process is repeated, and so on again and again, 

 until the desired expansion is accomplished. 



I saw canoes at Fort Rupert ('dug outs') 

 seventy feet long, that would carry thirty fighting 

 men over a moderately rough sea as safely as a 

 boat. The canoes and paddles are all painted 

 with bright colours, red predominating ; the device 

 being generally the ' arms,' if I may so express 



