The canoe of the Indian has been several times mentioned in these pages, and as it plays a very important part in the career of the savage in question, in times of peace as well as of war, it may not be amiss here to furnish some particulars as to its construction. Of its antiquity there is very little doubt; for being of a simple construction, and the materials for it at hand, we suppose that it would occur to the simplest savage, that if it was necessary to go some distance on the water, he must have something to float upon, and that wood or the lightest part of it--bark--was just the thing that was required. So that if it can exactly be computed how long it is since the North American Indian first took up his abode in those vast regions which he so long possessed undisturbed, and deduct a few years for him to look about his new home, we shall have the exact age of the canoe; at any rate, the discoverers of America found the canoe along with the Indians, and the natives called them _canoas_, which were hollowed out of trees. The way that the tribes belonging to the Algongian stock, who are essentially fishermen and sailors, build their canoes is as follows:-- The birch is the tree selected for the purpose, and the bark is that part of it of which the skeleton of the canoe is built. The Indians select the largest and smoothest trees; so that they can obtain large pieces of bark and prevent too much sewing. The inner side of the bark is scraped with knives, and it is then given over to the women to sew. The men then get ready the framework of the boat, which is of cedar. “They have usually a sort of model, or a frame of the figure and size of a canoe, round which the branches or ribs are bent. In the centre the arches are large, growing smaller towards either end. These ribs are peeled wonderfully thin, because lightness and easy carriage are the chief qualities of a canoe. Between the upper end of the ribs or _rarangues_, as they are called, a thin cross-piece is fastened, to keep them in a horizontal position. This is for the purpose of giving strength to the sides.” These boats have no keel, but the _rarangues_, and _lanes_, or cross-pieces, are tied to a piece of wood at the top.