256 HOW INDIANS EXPAND A CANOE. 
differ from the Nianimos 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 (‘dug outs’) 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 
