A HARE OLD BOAT. 
350 
This boat, ■which the headman was so fearful of 
injuring, is well worthy of a passing notice. 
Ill the first place, she was built entirely of the skins ol 
wild animals, and long, withe-like poles, — the former 
being sewed together with water-proof stitches, while 
the latter were joined to each other, and twisted, and 
bent, and rctwisted, and doubled back, and finally tied 
into something that looked very much like the frame of 
an ordinary boat that is ready for planking. In sewing 
these skins together they used sharpened pieces of bone 
for needles, and fibres of the sinews of wild animals 
for thread ; and the regularity of the stitches thus made 
was really astonishing. When they had thus connected 
together some forty or fifty skins in one immense sheet, 
they encased the frame in it, and allowed it to dry ; and, 
in drying, it hardened like raw hide ; after which, they 
o-ave us to understand that it never became loose or soft 
any more as long as they took proper care of it. Of 
course, that part forming the bottom of the boat became 
soft after she had been in the w^ater any length of time ; 
hut that did not matter, as they stepped upon the withes 
when moving about in her. 
This particular boat "was from forty to fifty feet in 
length, some seven or eight in breadth, drew only about 
an inch of water when no one was in her, and carried 
her gunwales some three or four feet out of the watt^\ 
Singular to say, she did not seem at all “ top-heavy,’' A 
dozen or more two-inch poles that were lashed from gun- 
wale to gunwale were the only things in the shape of 
seats that she offered ; atid on these sat the oarsmen, 
having under them a thick piece of bear-skiu to guard 
