The mast was secured by a thwart pegged, or nailed, across the gunwale caps. Sometimes, the thwart was also notched over the caps, so that the side-thrust caused by the leverage of the mast would not shear the fastenings. The crossbar for the sheet was sometimes similarly fastened and fitted, with its ends projecting outboard of the gunwales. The heel of the mast was sometimes stepped into a block, which was usually about 5 inches square and 1½ inches thick, nailed or pegged to the center bottom board, or sometimes it was merely stepped into a hole in the center bottom board. The bottom boards, usually three in number were of wide, thin stock and were clamped in place over the ribs by three or four false frames driven under the thwarts, just as were the canoe ribs under the gunwales. [Illustration: Figure 59 DETAILS OF MICMAC CANOES, INCLUDING MAST AND SAIL.] The canoes could not sail close-hauled, as a rule, though some Indians learned to use a leeboard in the form of a short plank hung vertically over the lee side and secured by a lanyard to a thwart, the board being shifted in tacking. An alternate was to have a passenger hold a paddle vertically on the lee side. There seems to have been no fixed proportions to the area of sail used; the actual areas appear to have been somewhere between 50 and 100 square feet, depending upon the size of the canoe. Joseph Dadaham, a Micmac, stated in 1925 that he used "24 yards" in the sail of a "rough-water canoe" 20 feet long and about 44 inches beam, while one 18 feet long and about 36 inches extreme beam carried "16 to 18 yards"; it is obvious that the "yards" are of narrow sail cloth and not square yards of finished sail. In the last days of sailing bark canoes, mast hoops and a halyard block were fitted so that the sail could be lowered instead of having to be furled around the mast (to accomplish this the "crew" had to stand). Dadaham also stated that for his sheet belay he used a jamb-hitch which could be released quickly when the canoe was found to be overpowered by the wind. It appears that during the last era of these bark canoes the rig had been improved to fit it for open-water sailing. The paddles used by the Micmac appear to have varied in shape. If the canoe shown in Chapter 1 (p. 12) was indeed a Micmac canoe as supposed, the paddle shown there is quite different from the later tribal forms illustrated above, and it is possible that the top grips shown in the more modern forms were never used in prehistoric times, when the pole handle shown with the old canoe may have been standard.