Woodcraft Part 7

To prove the strength theory, take a cedar (or pine) strip eight feet long and six inches wide. Bend it to a certain point by an equal strain on each end and carefully note the result. Next strip it lengthwise with the rip saw, lap the two halves an inch and nail the lap as in boat building. Test it again and you will find it has gained in strength about twenty per cent. That is the clinker of it.

Now work the laps down until the strip is of uniform thickness its entire length and test it once more; you will find it much weaker than on first trial. That is the smooth skin, sometimes called lapstreak.

They, the clinker canoes, are easily tightened when they spring a leak through being rattled over stones in rapids. It is only to hunt a smooth pebble for a clinch head and settle the nails that have started with the hatchet, putting in a few new ones if needed. And they are put together, at least by the best builders, without any cement or white lead, naked wood to wood, and depending only on close work for waterproofing. And each pair of strips is cut to fit and lie in its proper place without strain, no two pairs being alike, but each pair, from garboards to upper streak, having easy, natural form for its destined position.

The veneered canoes are very fine, for deep water; but a few cuts on sharp stones will be found ruinous; and if exposed much to weather they are liable to warp. The builders understand this and plainly say that they prefer not to build fine boats for those who will neglect the proper care of them.

The paper boat, also, will not stand much cutting on sharp stones, and it is not buoyant when swamped, unless fitted with watertight compartments, which I abhor.

The canvas is rather a logy, limp son of craft, to my thinking and liable to drown her crew if swamped.

But each and all have their admirers, and purchasers as well, while each is good in its way and I only mention a few reasons for my preference of the cedar.

When running an ugly rapid or crossing a stormy lake, I like to feel that I have enough light, seasoned wood under me to keep my mouth and nose above water all day, besides saving the rifle and knapsack, which, when running into danger, I always tie to the ribbing with strong linen line, as I do the paddle also, giving it about line enough to just allow free play.

I am not--to use a little modern slang--going to "give myself away" on canoeing, or talk of startling adventure. But, for the possible advantage of some future canoeist, I will briefly relate what happened to me on a certain windy morning one summer. It was on one of the larger lakes--no matter which--between Paul Smith's and the Fulton Chain. I had camped over night in a spot that did not suit me in the least, but it seemed the best I could do then and there. The night was rough and the early morning threatening. However, I managed a cup of coffee, "tied in," and made a slippery carry of two miles a little after sunrise. Arrived on the sh.o.r.e of the lake, things did not look promising. The whirling, twirling clouds were black and dangerous looking, the crisp, dark waves were crested with spume, and I had a notion of just making a comfortable camp and waiting for better weather. But the commissary department was reduced to six Boston crackers, with a single slice of pork, and it was twelve miles of wilderness to the nearest point of supplies, four miles of it carries, included. Such weather might last a week, and I decided to go. For half an hour I sat on the beach, taking weather notes. The wind was northeast; my course was due west, giving me four points free. Taking five feet of strong line, I tied one end under a rib next the keelson and the other around the paddle. Stripping to shirt and drawers, I stowed everything in the knapsack and tied that safely in the fore peak. Then I swung out. Before I was a half mile out, I fervently wished myself back. But it was too late. How that little, corky, light canoe did bound and snap, with a constant tendency to come up in the wind'e eye, that kept me on the qui vive every instant. She shipped no mater; she was too buoyant for that. But she was all the time in danger of pitching her crew overboard. It soon came to a crisis. About the middle of the lake, on the north side, there is a sharp, low gulch that runs away back through the hills, looking like a level cut through a railroad embankment. And down this gulch came a fierce thunder gust that was like a small cyclone. It knocked down trees, swept over the lake and caught the little canoe on the crest of a wave, right under the garboard streak. I went overboard like a shot; but I kept my grip on the paddle. That grip was worth a thousand dollars to the "Travelers' Accidental" and another thousand to the "Equitable Company" because the paddle, with its line, enabled me to keep the canoe in hand and prevent her from going away to leeward like a dry leaf. When I once got my nose above water and my hand on her after stem, I knew I had the whole business under control. Pressing the stem down, I took a look inboard. The little jilt! She had not shipped a quart of water. And there was the knapsack, the rod, the little auxiliary paddle, all just as I had tied them in; only the crew and the double-blade had gone overboard. As I am elderly and out of practice in the swimming line, and it was nearly half a mile to a lee sh.o.r.e, and as I was out of breath and water logged, it is quite possible that a little forethought and four cents' worth of fishline saved the insurance companies two thousand dollars.

How I slowly kicked that canoe ash.o.r.e; how the sun came out bright and hot; how, instead of making the remaining eleven miles, I raised a conflagration and a comfortable camp, dried out and had a pleasant night of it; all this is neither here nor there. The point I wish to make is, keep your duffle safe to float and your paddle and canoe sufficiently in hand to always hold your breathing works above water level. So shall your children look confidently for your safe return, while the "Accidentals" arise and call you a good investment.

There is only one objection to the clinker-built canoe that occurs to me as at all plausible. This is, that the ridge-like projections of her clinker laps offer resistance to the water and r.e.t.a.r.d her speed.

Theoretically, this is correct. Practically, it is not proven. Her streaks are so nearly on her water line that the resistance, if any, must be infinitesimal. It is possible, however, that this element might lessen her speed one or two minutes in a mile race. I am not racing, but taking leisurely recreation. I can wait two or three minutes as well as not. Three or four knots an hour will take me through to the last carry quite as soon as I care to make the landing.

A few words of explanation and advice may not be out of place. I have used the words "boughs" and "browse" quite frequently. I am sorry they are not more in use. The first settlers in the unbroken forest knew how to diagnose a tree. They came to the "Holland Purchase" from the Eastern States, with their families, in a covered wagon, drawn by a yoke of oxen, and the favorite cow patiently leading behind. They could not start until the ground was settled, some time in May, and nothing could be done in late summer, save to erect a log cabin and clear a few acres for the next season. To this end the oxen were indispensable and a cow was of first necessity, where there were children. And cows and oxen must have hay. But there was not a lot of hay in the country. A few hundred pounds of coa.r.s.e wild gra.s.s was gleaned from the margins of streams and small marshes; but the main reliance was "browse." Through the warm months the cattle could take care of themselves; but, when winter settled down in earnest, a large part of the settler's work consisted in providing browse for his cattle. First and best was the ba.s.swood (linden): then came maple, beech, birch and hemlock. Some of the trees would be nearly three feet in diameter, and when felled, much of the browse would be twenty feet above the reach of cattle, on the ends of huge limbs. Then the boughs were lopped off and the cattle could get at the browse. The settlers divided the tree into log, limbs, boughs and browse. Anything small enough for a cow or deer to masticate was browse. And that is just what you want for a camp in the forest.

Not twigs that may come from a thorn, or boughs that may be as thick as your wrist, but browse, which may be used for a mattress, the healthiest in the world.

And now for a little useless advice. In going into the woods, don't take a medicine chest or a set of surgical instruments with you. A bit of sticking salve, a wooden vial of anti-pain tablets and another of rhubarb regulars, your fly medicine and a pair of tweezers will be enough. Of course you have needles and thread.

If you go before the open season for shooting, take no gun. It will simply be a useless inc.u.mbrance and a nuisance.

If you go to hunt, take a solemn oath never to point the shooting end of your gun toward yourself or any other human being.

In still-hunting, swear yourself black in the face never to shoot at a dim, moving object in the woods for a deer, unless you have seen that it is a deer. In these days there are quite as many hunters as deer in the woods; and it is a heavy, wearisome job to pack a dead or wounded man ten or twelve miles out to a clearing, let alone that it spoils all the pleasure of the hunt and is apt to raise hard feelings among his relations.

In a word, act coolly and rationally. So shall your outing be a delight in conception and the fulfillment thereof; while the memory of it shall come back to you in pleasant dreams, when legs and shoulders are too stiff and old for knapsack and rifle.

That is me. That is why I sit here tonight with the north wind and sleet rattling the one window of my little den, writing what I hope younger and stronger men will like to take into the woods with them and read. Not that I am so very old. The youngsters are still not anxious to buck against the muzzleloader in off-hand shooting. But, in common with a thousand other old graybeards, I feel that the fire, the fervor, the steel, that once carried me over the trail from dawn until dark, is dulled and deadened within me.

We had our day of youth and May; We may have grown a trifle sober; But life may reach a wintry way, And we are only in October.

Wherefore, let us be thankful that there are still thousands of cool, green nooks beside crystal springs, where the weary soul may hide for a time, away from debts, duns and deviltries, and a while commune with nature in her undress.

And with kindness to all true woodsmen; and with malice toward none, save the trout-hog, the netter, the cruster and skin-butcher, let us

PREPARE TO TURN IN.