The Malecite, particularly the Passamaquoddy, were especially skillful in decorating bark canoes, as can be seen from the illustrations (pp. 81-87). Sometimes they used scraped winter bark decoration just along the gunwales; occasionally the whole canoe was decorated in this manner above the normal load waterline as described on page 87. Usually, however, the bark decoration was confined to a long panel just below the gunwales and to the ends of the canoe. The personal "mark" of the owner-builder would usually be on the flaps near the ends, the _wulegessis_, meaning the outside bark of a tree or a child's diaper, but in canoe nomenclature used to indicate the protective cover which it formed for the gunwale-end lashings. Sometimes the Malecite placed his mark in the gunwale decoration. Sometimes he placed a picture or a sign on each side of the ends below the _wulegessis_, in about the position used for insignia on the canvas "Indian" canoe. The swastika was used by the Passamaquoddy in a war canoe in colonial times and has been used later. The Passamaquoddy mark for an exceptional canoe (such as a war canoe that won the race home) was often on the _wulegessis_, and on a relatively modern canoe this mark, or _gogetch_, was a picture of "a funny-looking kind of doll." A common form of decoration in Passamaquoddy canoes was the fiddlehead curve which resembles the top of young fern shoots. This appears in numerous combinations; often double and back to back, joined with a long bar, or "cross." This particular combination is known as the "fiddlehead and cross" or as the "fire steel"; the latter because of a fancied resemblance of the form to the shape of the old fire-making steels of colonial times. A zigzag line appears to represent lightning to most Indians. A series of half-circles along the gunwales, with the rounded side down and just touching one another at the top, having a small circle in the center of each, represents "clouds passing over the moon." A similar series of half-circles without the center circles might mean the canoe was launched during a new moon; the number of half-circles shown would indicate the month. [Illustration: Figure 75 MALECITE CANOE DETAILS AND DECORATIONS.] Yet there is not full agreement among Indians about the meaning of decorative forms; the crooked or zigzag line might also mean camps or the crooked score stick used in a Malecite game. The circle could mean sun or moon or month. A half-moon form might also be "a woman's earring," or a new moon. A circle with a very small one inside might be a "brooch," as well as "money." Right triangles, in a closely spaced series along the gunwales, apparently meant "door cloth," or tent door ("what you lift with your hand"). Shown on pages 84 and 85 are some Indian marks on the _wulegessis_, based upon the statements of old Malecites or upon their sketches.