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Columljia. Aiul to-day its derivative, the cedar or basswood canoe, 
still carries out the same role by conveying prospectors, surveyors, and 
explorers into regions far beyond the reach of our railways and gaso- 
line launches. 
Ojibwa Indians in a birch-bark canoe. (Reprodneerl, through the courtesy of the 
J^ublic Archives of Canada, from a painting by hrteghoff .) 
Birch bark does not readily strip from the tree until early sum- 
mer, and the construction of an ordinary canoe required the combined 
labour of a man and woman for about two weeks. In the early 
spring, therefore, when the Indians of the Maritime Provinces wished 
to convey their winter catch of furs down to the coast, they often 
covered a crude canoe-frame with moose hides instead of bark, and 
discarded the frame when they reached their destination.^ An ob- 
scure band of Nahani Indians living at the head of Keele river west 
of Great Bear lake makes use of similar boats to visit Norman each 
summer, and after selling the moose hides at the trading-post, returns 
to the mountains on foot. The Eskimo, who lived in a treeless region 
beyond the limits of the birch, spruce, and pine, used nothing except 
skin to cover their craft, preferably the skin of the large bearded seal, 
Erignathiis barbatus. Their boats were of two kinds, the umiak, a 
large, open, travelling vessel something like a whaleboat, that was 
^ Tpor similar reasons the Ojibwa often used an elm-bark canoe, whicli would last two or three 
years and could be made by one man in a .lay. 
