ABORIGINAL USE OF WOOD IN NEW YORK 



145 



vent these from slipping. When left by the tide, something of the 

 kind might have proved very useful. Pictures and descriptions, how- 

 ever, usually represent a heavy and clumsy boat, useful but neither 

 handsome nor swift, with straight sides and sloping ends, rather a 

 trough than anything else. Capt. John Smith gave an account of 

 these which is much like that of Williams : 



These they make of one tree by burning and scratching away the 

 coales with stones and shels, til they have made it in forme of a 

 Trough. Some of them are an elne deep, and fortie or fiftie foote in 

 length, and some will beare 40 men, but the most ordinary are 

 smaller, and will bear 10, 20, or 30, according to their bignesse. lu- 

 sted of Oares they vse Paddles and stickes, with which they row 

 faster than our Barges. Smith, Captain 



It is evident that these would not be carried over land, and their 

 speed argues a better form than pictures show. Whatever the form 

 of the later Onondaga dugout, it differed in some unrecorded way 

 from many used in Pennsylvania. Zeisberger and Frey spent some 

 days at the fishery at Jack's reef on the Seneca river in 1753. Aug. 

 17 they went with the Onondaga chief " into the woods to find a tree 

 for a canoe." Having found one suitable, they worked at this till 

 the 26th, when they " finished the canoe and launched it ; they were 

 much pleased and said that there had never been a canoe of that 

 kind in the neighborhood." As a consequence they had to make a 

 similar one for another chief on their return to Onondaga. They had 

 come up the Susquehanna in one made by themselves, but did not 

 describe its peculiarities. 



Figure 86 is a pine dugout of the modern type, quite narrow and 

 of good form. Figure 24 shows the principal features of De Bry's 

 picture of canoe-making in Virginia, slightly altered for convenience 

 of illustration, and giving every process of the work. Dr Charles 

 Rau's translation of his description follows : 



Having first selected a thick and high tree, corresponding to the 

 size of the boat they intend to make, they light on the surface of the 

 ground close to its roots, and all around it, a fire, using well-dried 

 tree-moss, ana rousing the fire gradually by means of chips of wood, 

 lest the flame might ascend too high and diminish the length of the 

 tree. When the tree is nearly burned and threatens to fall, they light 

 a new fire, which they allow to burn until the tree comes down by 



