[Footnote 12:  See p. 150.]

There were four very well marked types of canoe or boat in British North America.  There was the already-described Eskimo kayak, made of leather stretched over a framework of wood or bone; the Amerindians of the Dominion, south of the Eskimo and east of the Rocky Mountains, used the familiar “birch-bark” canoe;[13] the peoples of the Pacific coast belt possessed something more like a boat, made out of a hollowed tree trunk and built up with planks; and the tribes of the Upper Mississippi used round coracles.  Here are descriptions of all three kinds of Amerindian canoe from the pens of eighteenth-century pioneers:  The birch-bark canoe used on the Great Lakes was about thirty-three feet long by four and a half feet broad, and formed of the smooth rind or bark of the birch tree fastened outside a wooden framework.  It was lined with small splints of juniper cedar, and the vessel was further strengthened with ribs of the same wood, of which the two ends were fastened to the gunwales.  Several bars rather than seats were laid across the canoe from gunwale to gunwale, the small roots of the spruce fir afforded the fibre with which the bark was sewn or stitched, and the gum of the pine tree supplied the place of tar and oakum.  Bark, some spare fibre, and gum were always carried in each canoe for repairs, which were constantly necessary (one continually reads in the diaries of the pioneers of “stopping to gum the canoe").  The canoes were propelled with paddles, and occasionally a sail.

[Footnote 13:  In the far north-west, on the rivers of the Pacific slope, the natives used spruce-fir bark instead of birch.]

The aborigines of Newfoundland—­the Beothiks—­are said to have known the birch-bark canoe, framework canoe, but to have employed “dug-outs”—­hollowed tree trunks.  The canoes of the Mandans of the upper Missouri basin were like coracles, of circular form, made of a framework of bent willow branches over which was stretched a raw bison-hide with the hair inside.  This was sewn tightly round the willow rim.  In lieu of a paddle they use a pole about five feet long, split at one end to admit a piece of board about two feet long and half a foot broad, which was lashed to the pole and so formed a kind of cross.  There was but one for each canoe.  The paddler of this coracle made directly for the opposite shore; every stroke he gave turned his “dish” almost entirely round; to recover his position and go on his intended route, he must give a stroke on the other side, which brought him up again; and so on till he got over, not without drifting down sometimes nearly a mile.