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44 A TASTE OF MAINE BIRCH. 
art, and the soul of the ideal red man looked out of 
the boat before us. Uncle Nathan had spent two 
days ranging the mountains looking for a suitable 
tree, and had worked nearly a week on the craft. It 
was twelve feet long, and would seat and carry five 
men nicely. Three trees contribute to the making of 
a canoe besides the birch, namely, the white cedar for 
ribs and lining, the spruce for roots and fibres to sew 
its joints and bind its frame, and the pine for pitch 
or rosin to stop its seams and cracks. It is hand-made 
and home-made, or rather wood-made, in a sense that 
no other craft is, except a dug-out, and it suggests a 
taste and a refinement that few products of civilization 
realize. The design of a savage, it yet looks like the 
thought of a poet, and its grace and fitness haunt the 
imagination. I suppose its production was the inev- 
itable result of the Indian’s wants and surroundings, 
but that does not detract from its beauty. It is, in- 
deed, one of the fairest flowers the thorny plant of 
necessity ever bore. Our canoe, as I have intimated, 
was not yet finished when we first saw it, nor yet 
when we took it up, with its architect, upon our met- 
aphorical backs and bore it to the woods. It lacked 
part of its cedar lining and the rosin upon its joints, 
and these were added after we reached our destination. 
Though we were not indebted to the birch-tree for 
our guide, Uncle Nathan, as he was known in all the 
country, yet he matched well these woodsy products 
and conveniences. The birch-tree had given him a 
large part of his tuition, and kneeling in his canoe 
and making it shoot noiselessly over the water with 
that subtle yet indescribably expressive and athletic 
play of the muscles of the back and shoulders, the 
boat and the man seemed born of the same spirit. 
Ee ee 
