"A giant tree was felled, and day and night the men toiled over
its construction into the most stupendous canoe the world has ever
known. Not an hour, not a moment, but many worked, while the
toil-wearied ones slept, only to awake to renewed toil. Meanwhile,
the women also worked at a cable--the largest, the longest, the
strongest that Indian hands and teeth had ever made. Scores of
them gathered and prepared the cedar-fibre; scores of them plaited,
rolled, and seasoned it; scores of them chewed upon it inch by inch
to make it pliable; scores of them oiled and worked, oiled and
worked, oiled and worked it into a sea-resisting fabric. And still
the sea crept up, and up, and up. It was the last day; hope of life
for the tribes, of land for the world, was doomed. Strong hands,
self-sacrificing hands, fastened the cable the women had made--one
end to the giant canoe, the other about an enormous boulder, a vast
immovable rock as firm as the foundations of the world--for might
not the canoe, with its priceless freight drift out, far out, to sea,
and when the water subsided might not this ship of safety be leagues
and leagues beyond the sight of land on the storm-driven Pacific?

"Then, with the bravest hearts that ever beat, noble hands lifted
every child of the tribe into this vast canoe; not one single baby
was overlooked. The canoe was stocked with food and fresh water,
and lastly, the ancient men and women of the race selected as
guardians to these children the bravest, most stalwart, handsomest
young man of the tribes, and the mother of the youngest baby in the
camp--she was but a girl of sixteen, her child but two weeks old;
but she, too, was brave and very beautiful. These two were placed,
she at the bow of the canoe to watch, he at the stern to guide,
and all the little children crowded between.