It was told when I was a boy, but I doubted the story then and I don't
believe it now, that when migrating squirrels, that do not take kindly
to the water, reach a wide stream they secure bits of wood or bark
large enough to float them, then with their tails erect to catch the
wind they sail gaily across.

The natives of North Australia, the most primitive people of whom we
have any knowledge, use logs, singly or lashed together with vines,
to cross rivers and arms of the sea.

CANOES

Our own American Indians were more advanced. Even the rudest of them
had learned before the coming of the white man to hollow out the log
by means of fire and to shape it with stone axes into the form of the
present canoe.

The birch-bark canoe, made by the Indians of the northern rivers and
lakes, is really a work of art. It is a model of lightness, and when
we consider its frailty, and then the way in which it can be managed
in the most turbulent currents, our admiration is divided between the
craft of the maker and the surprising skill of the man who handles the
paddle.

The ancestor of the graceful yacht and of the great ocean steamers,
that carry their thousands with as much comfort as if they were on
shore, is the rude canoe or raft of our own forefathers.

It is from these forefathers that we have inherited our love for