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extremely narrow. The sides of the tree were left in their 

 natural state untouched by tools, but at each end they had 

 cut away from the under part, and left part of the upper 

 side overhanging. The inside also was not badly hollowed, 

 and the sides tolerably thin. We had many times an op- 

 portunity of seeing what burthen it was capable of carrying. 

 Three people, or at most four, were as many as dare venture 

 in it ; and if any others wanted to cross the river, which in 

 that place was about half a mile broad, one of these would 

 take the canoe back and fetch them. 



This was the only piece of workmanship which I saw 

 among the New Hollanders that seemed to require tools. 

 How they had hollowed her out or cut the ends I cannot 

 guess, but upon the whole the work was not ill done. 

 Indian patience might do a good deal with shells, etc., 

 without the use of stone axes, which, if they had them, 

 they would probably have used to form her outside. That 

 such a canoe takes much time and trouble to make may be 

 concluded from our seeing so few, and still more from the 

 moral certainty which we have that the tribe which visited 

 us, consisting to our knowledge of twenty-one people, and 

 possibly of several more, had only one such belonging to 

 them. How tedious it must be for these people to be 

 ferried over a river a mile or two wide by threes and fours 

 at a time ; how well, therefore, worth the pains for them to 

 stock themselves better with boats if they could do it. 



I am inclined to believe that, besides these canoes, the 

 northern people make use of the bark canoe of the south. 

 I judge from having seen one of the small paddles left by 

 them upon a small island where they had been fishing for 

 turtle : it lay upon a heap of turtle shells and bones, trophies 

 of the good living they had had when there. With it lay 

 the broken staff of a turtle peg and a rotten line, tools 

 which had been worn out, I suppose, in the service of catch- 

 ing them. We had great reason to believe that at some 

 season of the year the weather is much more moderate than 

 we found it, otherwise the Indians could never have 

 ventured in any canoes that we saw half so far from the 



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