THE ASPEN. 105 
when carefully prepared, may be used as a substitute 
for paper. The thicker plates are made into caroes 
by the Indians, which are particularly light and 
buoyant, and entirely impervious to water. One of 
these, constructed to accommodate four persons with 
their baggage, it is said, will weigh only 40 or 50 
pounds. Their lightness renders them peculiarly 
serviceable in navigating rivers where the stream is 
often interrupted by rocky rapids or cascades, as they 
may be readily carried around them by land, and 
again launched in the water below. 
In the settlements of the Hud- 
son’s Bay Company, we are told 
this tree sometimes measures 18 
or 20 feet in circumference at 
the base; the bark is used in 
building tents, it being cut in 
pieces 12 feet long, and 4 feet 
wide; these are sewed together 
with the long pliable roots of the 
Spruce, and so rapidly is the 
work done, that, a tent of 20 feet in diameter, and 10 
feet high, does not, it is said, occupy more than half 
an hour in pitching. 
No small quantity of Birch-wood was used by the 
School-masters of the Olden-time, as a means of in- 
stilling sound views and correct principles into the 
minds of their pupils; but thanks to the progress of 
civilization, that practice is almost obsolete, and the 
once-dreaded birch is again consigned to those uses 
for which it was originally created. 
Aspen. 
