"No, 'tis nothing. You see, I have brought round for our use my best birch bark canoe. I have rowed her fifty miles a day round the lakes many a time. We shall bound over the lake in almost no time, and the rapids, which are the only drawback, can soon be surmounted, by oar or setting-pole, or, what may be cheapest, carrying the canoe round those most difficult of passage. The boat does not weigh an hundred. I could travel with it a mile on my head, as fast as you would wish to walk without a pound of luggage. So, in with you, and I'll show you how it is done." Accordingly they launched forth in their primitive craft, which, as before intimated, was the once noted birch bark canoe built by the hunter agreeably to the exact rules of Indian art. Few, who have never seen and observed the process of constructing this canoe, which, for thousands of years before the advent of the white man, was the only craft used by the aborigines in navigating the interior waters, have any idea how, from such seemingly fragile materials, and with no other tools than a hatchet, knife, and perhaps a bone needle, the Indian can construct a canoe so extremely light and at the same time so tough and durable. In building his canoe, which is one of the greatest efforts of his mechanical skill, the Indian goes to work systematically. He first peels his bark from a middle-sized birch tree, and cuts it in strips five or six inches wide, and twelve, fifteen, or twenty feet long, according to the length and size of the designed canoe. He then dries them thoroughly in the sun, after which he nicely scrapes and smooths off the outside. He next proceeds to soak these strips, which are thus made to go through a sort of tanning process, to render them tough and pliable, as well as to obviate their liability to crack by exposure to the sun. After the materials are thus prepared, he smooths off a level piece of ground, and drives around the outside a line of strong stakes, so that the space within shall describe the exact form of the boat in contemplation. Inside of these stakes he places and braces up the wet and pliable pieces of bark, beginning at the bottom and building up and bending into form the sides and ends, till the structure has attained the required height. In this situation it is left till it is again thoroughly dried and all the pieces become fixed in shape. A light inside framework is then constructed, resembling the skeleton of a fish, and of dimensions to fit the canoe already put in form in the manner we have described. The pieces of cured material are then numbered and taken down; when the architect, beginning at the bottom, lapping and sewing together the different pieces, proceeds patiently in his work, till the sides are built, the ends closed nicely up, and each piece lashed firmly to the framework, which, though of surprising lightness, is made to serve as keel, knees, and ribs of the boat. Every seam and crevice is then filled with melted pitch.