Connecticut western news., 1877-06-08
Running Rapid in a Birch Canoe.

In this sort of surf, half stone, half water, a common wooden boat would be bumped to pieces in five minutes. The only thing that can float in it, the birch canoe, is one of those marvels of clever adaptation that look like genius. Such a canoe is really nothing but a basket with pointed ends and stiffened sides. You sit, float, and toss in her as you would ill a basket, and without most watchful perpendicularity and tiresome tension of nerves in balance you tip out of her as you would out of a basket. She is a mere single skin of bark sewed together with deer sinews, trimmed with slight ash or birch strips, and connected across at the top by five slender thwarts, or "bords," modelled in all her lines so that the deepest point is along the middle bottom, and she turns in the water every way as on pivot. The draft, with two men aboard, is three to four inches. Buoy ant, of elastic frame, unsteady to the lightest touch, endways or sideways, she answers to skil1ful control like a sentient thing, and throws clumsy rider like a mustang. With her light grace and delicate color she is the lady of water craft. The skill of these canoe men is wonderful, only gained by long practice from early childhood. Nearing the foot of the rapid, while yet in still water, the guide drops the paddle, stands erect with his setting-pole in the ex- treme stern, his boy in the same attitude at the point of the bow, and studies the eddies and stones intently. In a mo- ment she is swung alongside rock, hel stream-then with mighty drive iron the poles she darts diagonally through the torrent and whirls her tail dowr stream, under the lee of another rock ; few feet higher up. She is again helt hugging the granite by main force, anC edging forward till the beat of the wa ter boiling up astern of her center helps to lift her on, and with another power full send she shoots across upward agai1 to the next covering point. She threads her intricate way among the bowlder by repetition of these zigzag dashes sometimes missing the aim and crashing back against rock, sometimes beate1 aside by the pole slipping on the bottom with the guides eye quick at every turn and his muscles steadily braced. The mems pose, alertness strength form ; study. At times she must be thrust uI by sheer power against. the dead rusl of the torrent, gaining inch by inch David's cries to his boy rise above thu noise of the water-"P Pousse! arrete lance redu! hale Peou! autre bord! DOuSSe pousse au loinr' Accidents occur, bu seldom from miscalculation. If a pole should snap while the stress of the f1ooC beats on her, the canoe may be whirleC broadside on, and capsized. Ther there is rolling and tumbling among the rocks, struggling for foot 1 ing, sometimes with hard bruises,-o if near the foot of the rapid, one may be swept into deep water and mus keep clutch on the point of the canoe | till she drifts into shallows. Except il the largest rivers, there is not much danger of drowning. The guides pre- fer ascending to going down rapid, al the risk of the canoe getting beyond their control is much less when the wa ter drives against her in sight. They are very cautious too, to avoid strainins or bruising the boat. ''You act as il this canoe belonged to you," Davic would reproach his boy at a careless | movement.