The Bark Canoe. 29 



Having dined, and for lialf an hour rested our 

 wearj limbs, ve shouldered our traps and marclied 

 on : about tliree o'clock we found ourselves at Eagged 

 Lake, — as beautiful a sheet of water as ever poet sang 

 of, or enthusiast described. On this lake we found no 

 boat ; few amateur fishermen have had the courage to 

 visit its seclusion ; and the hunter, as he ranges the 

 wilderness, finds no use for a water craft. But my 

 guide was a man of experience, and of vast resource 

 in all that related to wood craft. " We will," said he, 

 '* coast this lake as we have done the rest, and that in 

 a vessel of our own construction." 



In the neigliborhood of the lake are scattered fir 

 trees of large growth, one of which my guide selected 

 for his purpose, and with his axe felled it to the 

 ground. From the bark stripped from the trunk of 

 this tree, we had, long before sundown, constructed a 

 canoe which, by the exercise of great caution, and by 

 keeping " our chew of tobacco precisely in the middle 

 of the mouth," enabled us to navigate the lake. 

 It was a curiosity in its wa}^, — small saplings or 

 "staddles," as my guide termed them, cut first some 

 six feet in length, then being nearly severed in the 

 middle, were bent together like clamps, confined and 



