carry nine men, and ride with safety over the most stormy sea. It
was always from the first a great object of interest with the
discoverers of the northerly parts of the coast, which they
manifested by taking them back to Europe, as curiosities. Aubert
carried one of them to Dieppe in 1508, and Captain Martin Fringe,
who was one of the first to visit the shores of Cape Cod, took one,
in 1603, thence to Bristol, which he thus describes, as if he saw no
other kind.

"Their boats whereof we brought one to Bristoll, were in proportion
like a wherrie of the river of Thames, seventeene foot long and
foure foot broad, made of the barke of a birch tree, farre exceeding
in bignesse those of England: it was sowed together with strong and
tough oziers or twigs, and the seames covered over with rozen or
turpentine little inferiour in sweetnesse to frankincense, as we
made triall by burning a little thereof on the coales at sundry
times after our comming home: it was also open like a wherrie, and
sharpe at both ends, saving that the beake was a little bending
roundly upward. And though it carried nine men standing upright, yet
it weighed not at the most, above sixtie pounds in weight, a thing
almost incredible in regard of the largenesse and capacitie thereof.
Their oares were flat at the end like an oven peele, made of ash or
maple, very light and strong, about two yards long wherewith they
row very swiftly." [Footnote: Purchas, IV. 1655.]

The silence of the letter in regard to this species of the canoe is
the more remarkable, as it is in connection with the natives of the
harbor where they spent fifteen days, that mention is made in it a
second time of the manner of making their boats out of single logs,
as if it were a subject of importance, and worthy of remark. The