1770 CANOES 321 
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 
Y 
