382 



FOREST AND STREAM. 



{Nov. 36, 1891. 



Proposed Sail Plan fou Singlehandee. 

 20ft. 6is. over all, 16ft. L.W.L., 4ft. Beam, Ift. Draft. 



Canoe Yawl "Madcap." Sail Plan and Details.^ 



COOPER'S POINT CORINTHIAN Y. C.-Tliis club haa ordered 

 three 16ft. racing boats from Mr. .lames Collins. Four cabin 

 yachts and three tnckups have been added to the fleet and the 

 membership is rapidly Increasing. 



Canvas Canoes and hoio to Build Them. By Parker B. Field. 

 Price SO cenis. Canoe and Boat Building. By W. P. Stephens. 

 Price ^.00. Canoe Handling. By C. B. Vaux. Price $1. Canoe 

 and Camera. By T. S. Steele. Price 1.50. Four Months in a Sneak- 

 box. By jSr. H. Bishop. Price $1.50. Canoe and Camp Cookeru. 

 Bv "Seneca." Price $1. 



Secretaries of canoe clubs are requested to send to Forest and 

 Stream their addresses, with name, membership, signal, etc., of 

 their clubs, and also notices in advance of meetings and races, and 

 report of the same. Canoeists and all interested in canoeing are 

 requested to forward to Forest and Stream their addresses, with 

 logs of cruises, maps, and information concerning their local 

 waters, drawings or descriptions of boats and fittings, and all 

 items relating to the sport. 



RIGS FOR SMALL CRUISERS, 



Editor Forest and Stream: 



For two siimmers I have been locked up, so to speak, in an in- 

 land town, and have done little yachting or sailing, but I have 

 enjoyed none the less the weekly arrival of the Forest and 

 STREAJyi, and have done always a little sketching and designing 

 from time to time. This last summer my camp has been pitched 

 on. the shores of one of the great lakes, and I took the opportunity 

 to rig up a little cruiser which, while not all I could wish owing to 

 lack of time and money, has performed so remarkably well 

 that I think a description of her maia characteristics may be 

 interesting to some of your readers. 



Looking about for something in which to disport myself, I at 

 last found a 16ft.X42iu.Xl4in. skllf with two fine, well-modeled 

 ends, both alike, which fmite de mieux I bought ready made and 

 proceeded to deck in for some 5ft. forward and iil. aft, with a 9in. 

 waterway all around. I rigged her with two leg-of-mutton sails, 

 one right in the eyes and one smaller one aft, much after the 

 fashion of the modern sailing canoe, except that both are plain 

 leg-of-muttons without battens, and about as eflEective and handy 

 sails as I have ever used. The centerboard is a "drop" plate of 

 %m. iron weighing 901bs. and is an embodiment of the value of low 

 weights. 1 tried a light wooden board for experimental purposes 

 and found that in light airs there was no perceptible difCerence in 

 speed, while in a breeze the heavy board kept her on her feet and 

 to windward in a remarkable way. 



Finding that the boat carried a strong weather helm, and being 

 averse to carrying a jib, I conceived the idea of putting on a 

 very large and heavy rudder, and got one cut out of a boiler 

 plate weighing about 301 bs. Tb.e success of the experiment was 

 complete, the big rudder acting as ballast, steering apparatus 

 and after dead wood all at the same time: and I recommend the 

 device most heartily to all canoemen who are looking for some 

 means of increasing the size of their mizens without increasing 

 the draft and weight of their canoes by deep keels and drags. 



Madcap, with her 135ft. of sail has beaten everything anywhere 

 near her size in these waters, including some 23ft. sloops of con- 

 siderable beam and power, and which had been previously con- 

 aidered fast, and this not only in light airs and smooth water, but 

 in fre=h breezes and pretty heavy chops, and with only her skip- 

 per on board on the weather rail. Her stitfness is remarkable, 

 as is also her steadiness in running off the wind in lumpy water, 

 due to the power of the big rudder. For the hull I should prefer 

 something with a little more deadrise and with overhanging 

 counter like the Forest and Stream cruiser you figured three or 

 four years ago; but for rig and equipment I can scarcelv suggest 

 any improvement except in putting a batten across both sails 

 about 18in. up to aid in quick reefing. 



I hope next summer to carry the same governing ideas into a 

 slightly larger craft of better model. I have been very much 

 pleased with Mr. Dyer's design for a deep canoe, and think her 

 depth and rockered keel are a great step in advance, but I hanker 

 myself after a I'ttle more beam. 



My chief interest is in single-hand ers of a more comfortable 

 type than the standard 30in. canoe. There are many like myself, 

 who are fond of sailing and like to have an occasional tussle with 

 another boat, but we don't care to balance ourselves outboard on a 

 crazy sliding seat 3ft. outside the wale, and we look for something 

 in which we can smoke our pipes in comfort and still keep the 

 fast fellows in sight. 



My friend Mr. Tyson thinks his flying proa, with a little atten- 

 dant canoe sailing alongside and keeping him from turning 

 bottom up. is the true solution of the difficulty, and will fill the 

 required void, but while admitting the excellent qualities of the 

 proa, I see several drawbacks, among which are the awkward- 

 ness of the outrigger in coming into the house, the drag on the lee 

 side on one tack and on the weather side on the other, making it 

 impossible to so place the center of efEortthat the boatshall at all 

 times carry an easy weather helm. I prefer on the whole the cat- 

 amaran to the proa, but I think a properly modeled boat of 4^ 

 beams or so, a perfected and enlarged "Mersey canoe," will fill 

 the bill for a perfect single-hander much more nearly than 

 either. Henry K. Wioksteed. 



COBUBG, Ont., Nov, 1. 



[The single-hander sketched by Mr. Wioksteed is very similar 

 in sheer plan to the latest type of Englisb. canoe vawl, such as 

 Snake and Torpedo.] 



A. C. A. MEMBERSHIP.- Atlantic Division: Newell Martin, 

 R. L. McDuffee, Wm. D. Hobart, Hugh Stevenson. New York! A, 

 ^chroeder, Evert O. Newman, Brooklyn. 



CANOEING ON THE PACIFIC. 



Editor Forest and Stream: 



The Seattle C. C, of Seattle, Washington, was reorganized and 

 incorporated on Oct. 19 with a capital stock of $1,500; divided into 

 100 shares of $15 each. From the board of trustees the following 

 officers were elected: Com., Geo. B. Riley; Vice-Corn.. R. T. Engel- 

 brecht; Sec'y. W. N. Redfleld; Purser, H. M. Lawrence. Have our 

 own house, situated on Lake Washington, on the terminus grounds 

 of the Madison Street Cable Railway Co., two story house, 30x50ft., 

 containing large club room, dressing room, lockers and work 

 room up stairs; down stairs the entire floor is devoted to canoes; a 

 large veranda projects from each floor overlooking the lake, have 

 now 25 members, and at the present rate of application will have 

 our full quota by spring. Lake Washington is 28 miles in length, 

 varymg in width from one to five miles, it is fresh water and 

 partly inside the city limits; il4 miles from club house, and also 

 connected by Black River with the lake is Paget Sound, a fine body 

 of salt water for the cruisinsr canoe man, with its 2,000 miles of 

 shore line. With such natural advantages we are confident of a 

 large and flouris^hing club. The courtesy of the club is at all times 

 extended to A. C. A., W. C. A., and Pacific coast canoe men. 



Seattle, Wash., Nov. 7. Geo. B. Riley. 



CANOES AND CANOE-YAWLS.— The racing of the season at 

 Hendon again showed that, lengths being equal, the SOin. beam 

 canoe, with small sails, can hold her own with canoe-yawls of 4ft. 

 to oft. beam, especially when the crews are equal; but the decisive 

 test which was hoped for in the competition between the Snake 

 (yawl) and the canoes, and in which it was bv some expected that 

 the past experience would be upset, unfortunately did not come 

 off. There is little doubt to our mind that a canoe-yawl, such as 

 Snake, of 18ft. length, oft. beam, and 166ft. of sail, manned by a 

 crew of two men, ought to beat a canoe of 16ft. length, 3ft. 6in. 

 beam, and 113ft. of sail, manned by one man, in almost any 

 weather; and it is hardly fair racing to cause them to sail in the 

 same race without time allowance. The two boats would rate 

 respectively 0 5 and 0 3, and on the 6-mile course the yawl would 

 give a time allowance of 4m. STs. under the Y. R. A. scale.— Field. 



PHOTOS OF THE MEET.-Mr. Stoddard has now ready a verv 

 handsome collection of 35 views of the 1891 meet at Willaborough 

 Point. As his vi.sit was made on two very windy days the views 

 afloat show some rough water, and made excellent pictures. The 

 great Sea-vey Serpent shows to good effect in one view. No 

 edition of the "Glimpses" will be issued this year. 



THE LABRADOR COAST. 



The Labrador Coast: A Jotirnal of Two Summer Cruises to 

 that Region, with Notes on its Early Discovery, on the Eskimo, 

 on its Physical Geography, Geoloey and Natural History. By 

 Alpheus Spring Packard, M.D., Ph.D. N. D. C. Hodges, New 

 York, publisher. 

 This book is attractive reading at this time, when a popular 

 interest in Labrador has been reawakened by the return of one of 

 those anomalous students' expeditions which for the past thirty 

 years have periodically visited that repulsive region during sum- 

 mer vacations, in the character of explorers. But beyond this it 

 is especially valuable and important because it covers scientific- 

 ally, as aptly set forth in the title, a field of analytical investiga- 

 tion which has long been neglected or overlooked. The economic 

 possibilities of the country are, moreover, duly weighed and pre- 

 sented. The distinguished author has modestly entitled his work 

 "The Coast of Labrador," but it really includes abundant inform- 

 ation about the interior as well, with its flora, fauna, minerals, 

 natural products and resident peoples, much of which, of course, 

 has been known to laymen for three centuries or more, as attested 

 by a voluminous bibliography of no less than 198 titles printed at 

 the end of his volume, besides 24 charts and hydrographic surveys, 

 not including ancient maps and charts of early voyagers, dating 

 back to the year 1503. 



Critical readers, to whom considerable portions of Labrador 

 have become familiar by personal acquaintance, might take 

 exceptions because the professor does not suWcieutly recognize 

 otherwise than incidentally, perhaps, the value of the contribu- 

 tions to the general fund of information which many writers 

 have made since long ago: and they may reasonably marvel why 

 the observations of old wood runners and voyageurs should be set 

 aside in order to give place to the so-called "discoveries" of recent 

 investigators who happen to have a scientific tag attached to their 

 credentials. By some such discrimination the credit of the dis- 

 covery of the courses of the Mississippi River has been awarded 

 to Henry Schoolcraft, when the identical regions had been trapped 

 over by Allan Morrison, his guide, tor more than thirty vears 

 previous. But. of course, it is the official stamp which give's value 

 to the guinea. The halo of the discoverer gives the glory to the 

 discovery. 



As a matter of fact Labrador was one of the earliest discovered 

 parts of the continent. Its streams, watersheds, mountain 

 ranges, forests and cdast lines were pretty thoroughly traced 

 more than two centuries ago, while many of its natural features 

 were known ia detail. Cartier Espejo, Jefi:ery8 and Hackitt, iu 

 the fifteenth century, and Fathers Laure and Albanel, in the six- 

 teenth, traced most of its interior water courses and divides. In 

 the seventeenth the navigators Chabert, Charlevoix, Coats and 

 Cook, added much to what was already known of the coast. 

 Andre Michaux, the botanist, looked it over in 1792. The Mor- 

 avians have occupied the northern coast for one hundred and 

 twenty years, and David Cranz, their historian, wrote volumin- 

 ously and accurately of Labrador and its peoples from 1765 to 1789. 

 The Hudson Bay Company have trapped all over it for a still 

 longer period, and Peter Cartrigbt and John McLean, two of its 

 factors, added a great deal to the current fund of information 

 during their incumbency of sixteen and twenty-five years re- 

 spectively. It was John McLean who discovered the High Falls 

 of the Northwest River (which empties into Hamilton Inlet), in 

 im. In 1817 Dr. Edward Chapped wrote very fully of nb? Indian 



tribes. In 1813 Davles described the Hamilton Inlet, which is also 

 known by the several names of Groswater Bay, Eskimo Bay, and 

 Mouktoke Inlet. , In 1860 Dr. Elliott Coues contributed a list of 

 164 birds which he collected in that year, and Charles Hallock 

 furnished a serips of photographs of the coast and interior for 

 Harper's Magazine, giving portraits of the Montaignais Indians 

 and Eskimo found at Hamilton Inlet, with a full ethnography 

 of the former, and contributing many Interesting utensils 

 and relics of the tribe to the museum of the Long Island 

 Historical SociPty in Brooklyn. In 1868 Prof. Hind presented ex- 

 tensive researches throughout the interior, and from 1860 to 1891 

 Prof. Packard, the author of the book tmder review, has made 

 Labrador his especial study, describing not only its mammals and 

 avifauna, of which he finds twenty-eight and one hundred and 

 ninety-eight species respectively, but its insects, invertebrates and 

 its glacial and drift phenomena, as fully set forth in the text. 

 Mr. John Macoun, the Canadian naturalist, has also compiled a 

 catalogue of some 3,000 plants reported bv various travelers as 

 growing on the coast of Labrador. In 1853 Mr. Joe Gondy, who 

 was for half a century a voyageur in the service of the Hudson 

 Bay Company, traveled from Fort Nasquapee in central Labrador 

 to tort Garry (now Winnipeg), a distance of 3,1(X) miles, on snow 

 shoes. He and Antoine Michelet, another employee, were unre- 

 mitting explorers. In 1860 H. M. Surveying steamer Bulldog, 

 under the celebrated navigator Capt. McClintock, charted Hamil- 

 ton Inlet throughout its entire length of 120 miles, going up as far 

 as the Nor'west River post, and into the Grand or Hamilton and 

 Tom Liscom rivers at the head of the Bay, a region which has been 

 a rendezvous and principal fur entrepot of the Hudson Bay 

 Company for the southern district of Labrador since the begin- 

 ning of the century. During the period extending from the year 

 18<4 to date, the Dominion Survey of Canada, under Dr. Robert 

 Bell, has covered thf> greater part of the interior region, locating 

 the water sheds and timber belts, of which the principal one was 

 discovered to have a width of 800 miles, and finding spruce trees 

 4ft. in diameter where only a stunted growth was suspected. 



From these abundant facts it may be concluded that Labrador 

 is neither a desert nor a terra incognita, for a country cannot be 

 wholly inhospitable to support, such an abundance and variety of 

 plant and animal life:* and it seems strange to an old traveler to 

 read in the published newspaper reports that a party of students 

 from Bovvdoin College are credited with having discovered a race 

 of Indians "hitherto unknown to white men." as well as a high 

 fall whose existence has hitherto been problematical. I am there- 

 fore surprised to see that Prof. Packard has dignified the work of 

 this party by the assertion in the appendix of his book, that they 

 have achieved "the most important geographical discovery which 

 has been made in the interior of Labrador." Of course due im- 

 portance must attach to accurate measurements, and all that. 

 It is the impression, however, of Dr. Robt. Bell, chief of the 

 Dominion Survey, of whom I have made inquiry, that the falls 

 visited by these gentlemen were really the High S alls of Nor'west 

 River, and not of the so-called Grand River, which is locally 

 known as the Hamilton River, the description of the chain of 

 lakes, the portages, the distances, and the tracking, answering 

 quite accurately to the former, which is the route annually 

 traversed by the fur brigade in July. There is no analogous chain 

 of lakes on the Hamilton River, though there is a high fall some 

 fifty miles from its mouth. The high falls of the Nor'west River 

 are just oft' the regular thoroughfare from Nor'west River Post to 

 Fort Nasquapee, at the Heights of Land, and a detour of twenty 

 miles has to be made by the brigade to flank them. The distance 

 from Fort Rigolet to Nasquapee is 300 miles. No less than twenty 

 falls and rapids are passed on the journey, and the trip occupies 

 a month. 



Doubtless the fur collectors and the wood runners {coureurs dch 

 Mis) of the Hudson Bay Company acquired a very intimate knowl 

 edge of the interior of the country. That this knowledge was not 

 imparted to cartographers is due to the reticent policy of the com- 

 pany, as well as to the fact that the interior Indians (Montaignais) 

 were naturally jealous of intrusion upon their trapping lines. 

 With the exception of agents and employees at the posts, no 

 white men were allowed to trespass on the Indian territory, and 

 therefore no whites ever visited the interior except upon business 

 emergency. Settlers along the coast held no communication with 

 the interior beyond the edge of the timber belt to which they re- 

 sort for shelter in winter. The Nasqnapees are strictly coast In- 

 dians, but have often been confounded with the Mountaineers. 

 Eskimo are seldom seen south of Rigolet, in latitude 55deg. The 

 Red Indians are extinct since thirty years ago. The entire Indian 

 population of Labrador is about 6.000. Charles Hallock. 



*The fur product of Labrador is of itself worth I 

 to the Hudson B ay Company. 



ANSWERS TO CORRESPONDENTS- 



F. R. S., Boston.— A collection of all the best "cat noems" in the 

 English language is now being made by Mrs. Grahana B Tomison. 

 It will be illustrated. 



T. W. L., Fond du Lac, Wis,— A thin loixture of white lead and 

 turpentine is used for waterproofing canvas. The addition of 

 lamp black would make it black without injuring its other quali- 

 ties. 



Kennedy Smith, well knowa to sportsmen as the man 

 who has done much to develop the sportsmen's resorts in 

 the Dead River region, has in his possession an old powder 

 horn, the history of which if known would doubtless be as 

 interesting as a fairy tale. It is finely carved by a rude but 

 nevertheless artistic hand, in designs of birds,'fish, deer, a 

 full rigged ship, etc., and bears the following words: "John 

 Shanan, hisihorn. Made at Ticonderoga, Sept. ye 22. 1760." 

 The horn was found in an old deserted house in the Dead 

 River region, near the spot where the bullets were found 

 this fall, and which, it was supposed, were left there by 

 Benedict Arnold's expedition. xMany think that this old 

 horn wasleft behind by some soldier of Arnold's army. To 

 look at it would be to easily believe that it had seen service 

 in the Revolutionary war at least and may have furnished 

 powder to kill not onlv Britishers, but T^.dsirina as •vv'^ll 



10,000 per year 



