no 
propelled by oars and steered with a paddle; and the kayak, a narrow, 
one-man, hunting craft not unlike a racing shell, but propelled with 
a double-bladed paddle. The kayak was completely decked except 
for the manhole a little behind the middle, but, notwithstanding its 
decking, it was as light and portable as a birch-bark canoe. It was 
cranky, too, like the racing shell, yet remarkably seaworthy in the 
hands of a skilful paddler, for an oiled jacket drawn tight about his 
neck above, and around the manhole below, prevented any water from 
penetrating the interior; and even if the vessel did overturn the sub- 
merged occupant could often right it again with a single strong sweep 
of the paddle.^ 
The Eskimo were the only people in Canada who used tlie oar, 
for even the Pacific Coast natives employed paddles to propel their 
immense dugouts. Keels were an invention of the Old World that 
never reached pre-Columbian America. As for sails, it is open to 
doubt whether tliey were known north of Mexico before the first 
navigators a]:)peared on the coasts, although both Indians and Eskimo 
freely employed them a few years afterward.- 
Facilities for travel and transport naturally exerted a consider- 
able influence on trade and commerce. In the absence of wheeled 
vehicles and of large pack animals like the camel and the horse, the 
most convenient trade routes were the waterways, where the aborig- 
ines could transport their property in canoes. Trade flourished, there- 
fore, in eastern Canada, where there were innumerable rivers navig- 
able for long distances, and agricultural peoples with an assured food 
supply (in times of peace at least) contiguous to more migratory 
peoples ready to barter the products of the chase. It flourished, too, 
in the fiord region of the Pacific coast, where the geographical con- 
ditions made the sea the natural highway, the giant cedars permitted 
the construction of large ocean-going canoes, and the mild climate and 
abundant food sipiply invited travel for adventure and profit. Else- 
where in Canada the struggle for existence was so hard, and transport 
so difficult, that trade was sporadic and limited. Tribes like the 
plains’ and northern Indians, who movefl continually to new hunting- 
grounds with all their possessions, could not accumulate more prop- 
1 Of the Canadian Eskimo only lljose of Labrador anti of Baffin island eoiilrl perform this feat. It 
was cornmoirly done try King Island Eskimo in Alaska, and i.s still fterfomied by every self-re.specting 
hunter in Greenland. Some of the Greenlanders can right the kayak without the paddle, using only 
an arm. 
^ Cf. p. 412. 
