30 ALL AFLOAT 



farther and farther, from waterway to water- 

 way, at first before the white man's boat with 

 oars and sails, and now before his steamer. 

 But in distant or secluded wilds it lingers still — 

 the same craft to-day that it was when the Celtic 

 coracles were paddled on the Thames before the 

 Romans ever heard of England — the horse, the 

 ship, the moving home of those few remaining 

 nomads whose life is dying with its own. 



The great historic age of inland small craft — 

 the age of dug-out, bateau, and canoe ; the 

 age of Indian, pioneer, and voyageur — was the 

 eighteenth century, when fresh-water sailing 

 craft were few, when steamers were unknown, 

 and when savage and civilized men and 

 methods were mingled with each other in the 

 fur trade over a larger area than they used in 

 common either before that time or since. The 

 seventeenth century saw the slow beginnings of 

 this age after Champlain had founded Quebec 

 in 1608 and had taken the warpath with the 

 Hurons against the Iroquois. The nineteenth 

 century saw its almost equally slow decline, 

 which began in 181 5, at the close of the war 

 with the United States, and may be said to 

 have been practically completed with the 

 two North- West Rebellions of 1870 and 

 1885. The latter year, indeed, closed a real 



