TRAVEL AND TRANSPORTATION. 221

eight feet wide, and capable of carrying twenty-four men or five tons of
freight. It was made of redwood cedar, and seemed to him a “thing of beauty”,
sitting plumb and lightly on the sea, and so symmetrical that a pound’s
weight on either side would throw it slightly out of trim}.

According to a tradition of the Navahoes, they never had anything better
than rafts for navigation purposes, and even these were used only to cross
tivers. The same account proceeds to describe the building of the first canoe
in that tribe, which is said to have been made of a cottonwood tree hollowed
out by means of fire, which was prevented from burning further than required
by a judicious application of mud”. But, as we already know, that tribe can
easily live and thrive in its arid land without the possession of a single canoe.

Rafts are occasionally used in the north. They are made of three dry
logs bound together, with their larger ends aft, while a slightly tapering
Shape is given their opposite extremities. The logs are fastened together fore
and aft by means of ropes, which, when of truly aboriginal make, are of
twisted strips of willow bark, starting from one end of a cross-bar placed
over them and going round each of the logs and the bar alternately.

Among the Loucheux, these primitive embarcations are often used in con-
junction with regulars canoes. Simpson relates meeting some that served to
descend the Mackenzie, carrying as they drifted along the children, women,
and the family baggage. They consisted of only two logs connected at the
fore-part and joined in the middle by a single bar, in the form of a capital A.
A raised platform whereon the passengers sat was erected near the apex,
and the men escorted these crafts in their bark canoes, which were at times
conveniently secured between the projecting arms of the after-part of the rafts®.

Another means of transportation, packing, will be treated of when we
describe the mechanical contrivances to which it gives rise.

' Cf. H. Hale, “Language as a Test of Mental Capacity”, p. 86. Transact. Roy. Soc. of
Canada, vol. IX, 1891.

2 Cf. Matthews, ‘Navaho Legends”, p. 161.

3 «Narrative of the Discoveries on the N. Coast of America”, pp. 185—186.