WAYS AND MEANS 



wet canoe, mouth down. The waterproof- 

 ing you can best attend to yourself. Let 

 the fabric have just so much boiled linseed- 

 oil as it will take up; after which it should 

 be hung in the air and sun for some days to 

 dry. This is important, because cotton 

 cloth thus treated will heat and ignite if 

 rolled up before the free oil has dried out. 

 The same dose makes a flour-sack, or the 

 lightest tent, quite impervious to water. 

 Where a canoe was wrecked at an ugly 

 corner, we picked up its load of bags in the 

 pool some hundreds of yards below, not a 

 penny the worse for running the last half 

 of the rapid on their own. 



Many years' traffic with that poetic 

 craft, the birch-bark, does not hinder one 

 from welcoming the modern canvas- 

 covered canoe. I recall a whole day lost 

 in repairs; and again, a long run through 

 bad water, where, under the most expert 

 of handling, we had to land, unload, dry, 

 and gum the barks five times; canvas 

 would have come through unscathed. (A 

 dab of boot-grease caulks a slight leak in 

 it.) The canvas craft has the free-board, 

 sheer and capacity of the birch, which are 

 not found in wooden canoes of the same 

 length; moreover the builders of the latter 

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