BOATS. 189 



a keel. The bow and stern were both pointed, and not unlike in their general 

 outlines, the latter being more blunt than the former. At the top the sides were 

 rather more than half an inch in thickness, increasing, however, as they 

 descended and curved below the water-line. 



" When cleaned and dried, this canoe weighed sixty pounds, and could be 

 transported with the greatest facility by a single individual. The agency of fire 

 had obviously been invoked in the construction of this little boat. While there 

 were no marks of sharp cutting-tools, the evidence appeared conclusive that the 

 charred portions of the wood, both within and without, had been carefully 

 removed by rude incisive implements, probably of shell or stone. The plan of 

 felling the tree and of hollowing out the log, as perpetuated in one of De Bry's 

 illustrations, seems to have been observed in this instance. Regarding the 

 regularity with which the outlines and the relative thicknesses of the sides of 

 this boat had been preserved, one could but admire the care and skill with which 

 that dangerous element, fire, had been made subservient to the uses of the 

 primitive boat'-builder. It is entirely probable that the ordinary stone celts, 

 chisels, gouges, scrapers, or simple shells, were the only implements at command 

 for the removal of the charred surface, as the cypress-tree was by degrees con- 

 verted into the convenient dug-out. 



" This canoe had evidently lain for a very long time in its present position, 

 and seemed to have settled gradually. There was an accumulation of forty 

 inches of mud and soil above it, and around lay the rotting trunks, arms, and 

 roots of forest-trees, which, during the lapse of years, had died and become 

 intermingled with the debris of the swamp. Above the spot were growing 

 cypress-trees as large and seemingly as old as any in the surrounding forest. 



" It is difficult to form a satisfactory estimate of the age of this relic. That 

 embedded cypress is, for an almost indefinite period, well-nigh indestructible by 

 ordinary agencies, is capable of proof. We have but to instance the salt-marshes 

 along the line of the Georgia coast, in not a few of which, at the depth of several 

 feet below the surface, may still be found the clearly-defined and well-preserved 

 traces of cypress-forests, consisting-of limbs, trunks, knees, and roots. In 

 former years, at least some of these salt-marshes must have been fresh -water 

 swamps ; and, without the violent intervention of some marked convulsion of 

 nature, of which we have no record, and for which no plausible reason can be 

 assigned, centuries must have elapsed before a gradual settling of the coast 

 could have occurred to such an extent as to have admitted the influx of tidal 

 waves converting cypress-swamps into extensive, uniform salt-marshes, destroy- 

 ing the original growth, and finally covering the fallen forests with mud to the 

 depth of several feet. 



" We are not aware that a sufficiently accurate record has been kept of the 

 annual deposit of mud from the overflowing waters of the Savannah River, to 



