A large part of the colonial shipbuilding was confined to New England, the _Blessing of the Bay_ being but a leader in a long line. Within two years a ship as large as the _Mayflower_ was built at Boston, and another twice as large at Salem. Within thirty-five years Boston had one hundred and thirty sail on the sea. New York built fewer but larger ships. Philadelphia was a leading shipbuilding town, and many vessels were constructed in the Carolinas. The activity of the colonists in thus providing means for travel by water was not limited to ocean shipbuilding. The rivers, the inland roads, already prepared by nature, were used from the very beginning. As the settlements grew, both in population and in numbers, travel between them became more and more necessary, and the rivers and streams came more and more into use. The settlers were wise enough to follow the example of the Indians and to make themselves at once familiar with canoes and small boats of every description. The earliest form of water travel was, perhaps, the raft. It was usually made of floating logs or bundles of brush tied together. To-day, even, rafts of single logs, merely pointed at the ends, are found in Australia, as well as rafts of reeds. On the coast of Peru rafts seventy feet long and twenty feet broad are common,--large enough to use sails as well as paddles. The next step was to use the single log, made hollow by gradually burning it out or by slowly chipping away pieces with some sharp implement. On the Atlantic coast the most common form of canoe was the dugout, made from the cedar log; and singularly enough the same tree was most frequently used on the shores of the Pacific Ocean, especially near Puget Sound. These Western boats were frequently of great size, some on the Alaskan coast being ninety feet in length and propelled by forty paddles. The Indians had found these dugouts very serviceable, and as the European colonists began to travel over the same rivers and streams they patterned their river craft after those of the red men. [Illustration: A BIRCH-BARK CANOE.] The lighter form of the canoe was preferred, where serviceable, to the dugout. This was made of a light but strong framework covered by bark or skins. That used by the Esquimaux was of sealskin stretched over whalebone. But the more common form was the Indian birch-bark canoe, which rapidly became very popular among the colonial hunters and trappers. No better description of the birch canoe can be found than that which the children's poet, Longfellow, gives in "Hiawatha." "'Give me of your bark, O Birch Tree! Of your yellow bark, O Birch Tree! Growing by the rushing river, Tall and stately in the valley! I a light canoe will build me, Build a swift Cheemaun for sailing, That shall float upon the river, Like a yellow leaf in Autumn, Like a yellow water-lily!