‘% 
A TASTE OF MAINE BIRCH. 43 
and sweeten it a little, and I think birch bark will do 
it. In camp Uncle Nathan often drank his tea and 
coffee from a bark cup; the china closet in the birch- 
tree was always handy, and our vulgar tin ware was gen- 
erally a good deal mixed, and the kitchen-maid not at 
all particular about dish-washing. We all tried the 
oatmeal with the maple syrup in one of these dishes, 
and the stewed mountain cranberries, using a birch- 
bark spoon, and never found service better. Uncle 
Nathan declared he could boil potatoes in a bark ket- 
tle, and I did not doubt him. Instead of sending our 
soiled napkins and table-spreads to the wash, we rolled 
them up into candles and torches, and drew daily upon 
our stores in the forest for new ones. 
But the great triumph of the birch is of course the 
bark canoe. When Uncle Nathan took us out under 
his little wood-shed, and showed us, or rather modestly 
permitted us to see, his nearly finished canoe, it was 
like a first glimpse of some new and unknown genius 
of the woods or streams. It sat there on the chips 
and shavings and fragments of bark like some shy, 
delicate creature just emerged from its hiding-place, 
or like some wild flower just opened. It was the first 
boat of the kind I had ever seen, and it filled my eye 
completely. What woodcraft it indicated, and what 
a wild free life, sylvan life, it promised! It had such 
a fresh, aboriginal look as I had never before seen in 
any kind of handiwork. Its clear yellow-red color 
would have become the cheek of an Indian maiden. 
Then its supple curves and swells, its sinewy stays 
and thwarts, its bow-like contour, its tomahawk stem 
and stern rising quickly and sharply from its frame, 
were all vividly suggestive of the race from which it 
eame. An old Indian had taught Uncle Nathan the 
