

BOATS AND PONTONS. 373 



were intended to be used in the Mexican Campaign. The first 

 manufacture, as might be expected from the nature of the gum, 

 was unsuccessful, and the practical utility of the latter, which 

 were made to be filled with air only, may be considered equally 

 doubtful. 



Different attempts have also been made to make portable boats 

 with folding wooden frames of various kinds ; but none of these 

 seem to have succeeded further than as curious specimens, or so 

 far as to be used to any considerable extent. 



A good portable boat, and particularly one that shall form a 

 life-boat, is obviously a thing much needed. In portable boats 

 savage tribes seem to have succeeded far better than civilized na- 

 tions. The skill and ingenuity displayed by the native Indians of 

 North America in the construction of the birch canoe may well 

 claim the admiration of the best boat builder, and what is more, 

 this canoe answers perfectly to his wandering propensities. A 

 perfect model for speed, it is so strong that it will carry him over 

 rivers, and lakes, and rapids, with its heaviest ladings, and yet so 

 light that he carries it around dangerous rapids and falls, or from one 

 river to another, apparently with as little effort as the bark carries 

 him when launched. His skill in managing these canoes is even 

 more surprising than that which he displays in building them. 

 While they are so buoyant and unsteady as to render it unsafe, 

 even with the greatest caution, for the most experienced seaman 

 who is unacquainted with them to enter one, yet under the elas- 

 tic step, and artfully-plied paddle of the Indian, it is controlled 

 and moved with astonishing swiftness, as steadily as the sailors 

 long boat.* 



Little less deserving of notice is the boat made of skins by the 

 Esquimaux of Labrador, which answers his purpose equally 



* This fact is strikingly illustrated in the porpoise shooting of a tribe of Naragansetts atEastport, 

 Maine. They will shoot with the rifle and take into their canoes, in a rough sea, a number of por- 

 poises weighing hundreds each. The fish sink so soon after shooting that no white man can per- 

 form the feat of reaching one in time, to say nothing of shipping him into a birch canoe. The 

 Indians hunt these fish in .summer, for the oil which they often exchange with their white neigh- 

 bors for dried codfish in winter, when with the same amount of labor they might catch twenty times 

 the quantity offish with the hook. The same preference for hunting, leads them to spearing sal- 

 mon at night, instead of catching fish with the hook, an occupation which they are said to despise. 



-C^t§^ 



