FOREST AND STREAM 
219 
The Crankiness of the Bark Canoe 
It Isn’t Half as Dangerous as Imagined, Providing You Follow a Few Directions—Keep Your 
Head Level and the Canoe Will Also Stay Straight 
OU probably have often admired 
the skill with which your 
guide handled a canoe, and 
marveled how easy it seemed 
to be for him to keep the 
shaky boat upright while per¬ 
forming apparently difficult 
stunts with it. But your guide 
was not performing stunts to show off for your 
benefit, nor was he doing anything dangerous. 
He had grown so accustomed, to his work that 
instinctively he had learned the secret of balance, 
just as a man learns to ride a bicycle; his body 
responded to every impulse of gravitation—the 
gravitation process being nothing more or less 
than the law which sends you into the water if 
you are not careful. 
It may take the occasional canoe user and the 
ordinary woods tourist years to acquire what is 
second nature to the guide, but the novice can 
learn the secret easily if he will only keep in 
mind the few almost intuitive rules about canoe 
handling. 
It may take the occasional canoe user and the 
noticed that when the guide shifts his position in 
the canoe, or when he prepares to stand up or 
step out, he always begins by laying the paddle 
across the gunwales on either side and exerts 
an even pressure on both sides of the canoe with 
his hands, while he pulls himself to his feet. This 
is about the only secret in the whole operation, 
for he maintains an equal disposition of weight 
on both sides. Once on his feet, the matter is 
different, but you also have noted probably that 
he either keeps his paddle in the water or if he is 
poling he is always ready to support himself by 
holding the ironshod end of the pole on the 
bottom. 
Never stand up in a canoe unless you are 
thoroughly familiar with the act of balancing. It 
is better to sit on the bottom, and even then it 
is safer to keep your hands inside and not out¬ 
side the canoe. This applies more particularly 
to the average bark canoe. Most of the canvas 
canoes are built to stay straight with the paddler 
or the idler at either end sitting on the cane seats 
which are built on a level with the gunwales. 
But if everybody followed the usual pictured 
summer resort style, as shown in illustrations of 
a white-flanneled young man directing a canoe 
from one end, while his best girl, sitting high up 
at the other end, plays the mandolin to cheer him 
on his way, or mayhap is leaning far over one 
side pulling water lilies, we would have more 
canoe accidents than are recorded every season, 
and heaven knows we have too many now, arising 
through ignorance and carelessness. 
A canoe is as safe as a scow if you know how 
to handle it and it is so easy to learn that acci¬ 
dents ninety-nine times out of a hundred are in¬ 
excusable. There ought to be some sort of law 
By “Tippecanoe.” 
to hold the ignorant canoe paddler responsible 
for the accidents he causes, just as there is or 
should be, a law against pointing firearms or 
attempting to run automobiles without training. 
In fishing from a canoe, unless the latter be a 
large one, it is always best to sit on the bottom 
and safer, of course, to remember that in hand¬ 
ling a fish, you are not standing on dry land. 
The whole secret is to keep the balance as near 
a center line from the bow to the stern as pos¬ 
sible. How simple it sounds to say this, but how 
few people remember it. 
Another thing that seems startling until one 
grows rather accustomed to the novelty of the 
fact, is that many of the best canoemen in the 
world cannot swim. Hundreds of men in the 
lumber country who do stunts in running logs 
through rapids and down rivers and lakes, are 
unable to swim a stroke, and it is these same men 
as a rule who are experts in canoeing. It is well 
before trusting your life or that of members of 
your family to guides to ascertain whether they 
are at home in the water as well as out of it. 
The chances are nine hundred and ninety-nine in 
one thousand that they will not upset the canoe 
for they do know their business, but it does not 
harm at least to learn in advance whether in case 
an upset does occur, the guide will be of assist¬ 
ance or only an added. danger. 
I remember a few years since, going over 
rather suddenly in a canoe while fishing with a 
guide, a huge musky having made a most unex¬ 
pected and disconcerting move at the end of the 
line. The accident was not serious, or at least I 
did not think so, but when I came to the top of 
the water I found the guide with the whitest 
face that could be shown under his coat of tan 
and smoke, hanging to the side of the canoe, his 
eyes having the look of one facing eternity. I 
swam around and threw a few floating things 
into the submerged canoe and we kicked it 
ashore. The guide was trembilng so much when 
he struck terra firma that he could scarcely 
stand. I thought for a moment that he was 
afraid that his long record of good service might 
have been marred by the fact that he had drown¬ 
ed a “sport,” and remarked to him that he need 
not exhibit so much concern, for I was able to 
swim. “Yes, I know you can,” he said, “but I 
can’t.” 
The poor fellow was really in great danger 
and added to this he was also afraid that I was 
in the same boat, or rather out of the same boat, 
and that we both were doomed to go to the bot¬ 
tom. Why these north country men in so many 
cases cannot swim I do not know. Probably the 
weather conditions are against them, and the 
opportunity is not always present, but of one 
thing I am certain—no man ought to take any 
party into the woods or rather on the water in 
anything like the craft used in hunting and fish¬ 
ing expeditions, unless he can swim. Perhaps if 
people refused to hire guides who cannot swim, 
more of them would learn how. 
Another thing that the novice wants to learn 
as early as possible and which knowledge it is 
more pleasant to acquire without a wetting, is 
how to step out of a canoe. Do not lift one foot 
from the canoe until the other foot is planted 
solidly on terra firma. Otherwise you are apt to 
give an imitation of a “Colossus bestriding” act 
that may be perfect in its way, but anything but 
pleasant to you. Do not imagine that you can 
spring like a bounding gazelle from a tottering 
canoe to dry land and get away with it, unless 
you have practiced the feat a long time. So far 
from being admired for your gazelle-like agility 
you are apt to furnish an illustration of a gazelle 
being changed miraculously into one of the hippo¬ 
potamus family coming ashore. Also, this is not 
only not nice so far as you are concerned—it is 
dangerous for the guides, for many an honest 
guide has sustained serious injury from the strain 
of trying to keep from laughing while he hauls 
his too confident and impetuous passenger and 
boss out of the w'ater. 
In stepping into a canoe the same rule applies 
as in getting out of it. You are safe as long as 
you keep the hands gripping either side, kneeling 
or stooping as low as possible, but the guide 
usually steadies the craft by holding one end of 
it while you dispose yourself and your belongings 
comfortably. 
You will often see guides making running 
jumps into canoes and out of them, but this is 
simply to excite admiration. I have seen them 
myself stand on their heads in a floating canoe 
but there is nothing practical in such navigation 
nor is there any reason why you should learn it 
unless you are training for the circus. 
If your canoe does upset, what then? It 
usually goes over like lightning and bobs up about 
as quickly. Also as a rule it stays in the spot 
where it goes over, merely drifting with the 
wind. Keep your wits about you. If you can 
swim, the danger is not overly great, but do not 
try to crawl into the canoe by grabbing the sides. 
You will simply roll it over again and push it 
away from you. ‘Work your way in the water to 
either end of the canoe. If you are somewhat 
expert you can, by a sudden flip, throw most of 
the water out of it and then can spring in over 
the end. But assuming that you are not expert 
enough to do this, and assuming also that you 
cannot swim, the only thing is to hang on to the 
canoe near one end, keeping as much of your 
body submerged as possible—for as is well 
known, the weight of the body under water is 
almost negligible—and kick for the nearest shore. 
As long as you hold to the canoe and keep your 
body under water you will not drown. If you 
have a companion with you the same rule 
