Portable Boats. 



263 



detailed to bail them out. Captain Hall carried with him 

 on his last ill-fated expedition in the Polaris, a canvas boat ; 

 but this, like all the others, had its heavy, cumbersome 

 and bulky frame. Paper boats, of fine construction, have 

 been made in the neighboring city of Troy, and have 

 proved good for racing purposes. It is almost unnecessary 

 to state that they are permanent in character, and rigid 

 and constant in frame. The Rob-Roy canoe, in which Mr. 

 MacGregor explored so many of the waters of Europe, 

 had a permanent frame. (The remarkable life-dress of 

 Captain Boy n ton, cannot be considered a true boat, nor 

 would it serve the purpose of one for ordinary use. Life 

 preservers, cork jackets and the valuable canvas life rafts, 

 of tubes, now used on ships, cannot be termed boats, being 

 properly called floats.) All these differ from my boat, for 

 which it is not necessary to carry any frame in any region 

 this side of Arctic and Ant-arctic circles. Even on our 

 great western plains, I have not seen a stream, whether it 

 be the Platte, the Cache La-Poudre, or the Smoky Hill or 

 Republican forks of the Kaw, which had not along its 

 banks sufficient brush or timber from which to construct 

 all the frame that my boat requires. There is hardly an 

 arroyo of the habitable west whose shores have not some 

 margining of brush, sufficient for my boat frame. 



The peculiarities, then, of the boat which I place before 

 you to-night, are the means by which I so readily attach 

 a frame within the canvas boat exterior. 



The canoe exhibited is twelve feet long and four feet 

 wide; the portion of the boat which is carried weighs ten 

 pounds eight ounces (leaving out the light leathern pieces 

 which receive the corners of keelson and gunwales) ; and 

 when compactly folded it occupies the space of less than 

 864 cubic inches, or less than half a cubic foot. It has 

 carried, in a heavy storm, far from land, a burden of seven 

 hundred pounds, and will probably, in smooth water, convey 

 a much greater burden. The prows, as seen, are guarded 



