But leaving such glimpses of oceanic migration, there is another aspect in which the ingenuity of the primitive boat-builder of the New World is exhibited, which is highly characteristic in itself; and also worthy of notice from some of its elements of comparison with the primeval ingenuity of the ancient world. Throughout the islands of the American archipelago, and among the southern tribes, where large and freely navigable rivers abound, the native canoe was made of various sizes, but invariably of the trunk of a tree hollowed out, and reduced to the required shape. Such appears to be the normal type of the primitive mariner’s craft; but where obstacles interfere with its accomplishment, the rudest races devise means to obviate the difficulty. The Californian canoe is a mere float made of rushes, in the form of a lashed-up hammock; while those of the Navigator Islands, in the Pacific,—so called by La Perouse, their first discoverer, owing to the graceful shape and superior workmanship of their canoes,—are formed of pieces of wood sewed together by means of a raised margin. In this the skilful carpenter is guided rather by utility or taste, than by necessity, for the Navigator Islands are fertile and populous, and clothed to the summits of their lofty hills with luxuriant forests and richly laden fruit-trees. But across the wide area of the northern continent of America, which stretches from the Gulf of the St. Lawrence to the Pacific, a different combination of circumstances has given bent to the development of native ingenuity in the art of boat-building. In the St. Lawrence itself, and throughout all its principal tributaries, navigation is constantly impeded by waterfalls or rapids, which constitute an insurmountable barrier to ordinary navigation. In like manner the country along the northern and southern shores of Lake Ontario, the valley of the Ottawa, reaching towards the Georgian Bay and Lake Superior, and much of the route between that and the Rocky Mountains, is a chain of lakes or interrupted river navigation. Hence all the principal routes of travel consist of lines of lake and river united by “portages,” or carrying-places, over which the canoe and all its contents have to be borne by the native boatmen, or voyageurs, as the French Canadians and Half-breeds of the traders and Hudson’s Bay Company are called. For such mode of transport the wooden canoe would be all but impracticable; and accordingly, probably ages before voyageurs of European descent had learned to handle such canoes, the native Indian devised for himself his light and graceful bark-boat, made from the rind of the _Betula papyracea_, or canoe-birch, which grows in great abundance, and where the soil is good often acquires a height of seventy feet.