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HISTORY OF MARINE ARCHITECTURE.

sharp at each end, and about twenty inches broad, tapering to a point; their depthin the center, where the man sits, is about twenty inches. The canoes of thismake, extend from the streights of the two continents along the coast as faras Cape Edgecumbe. Some of them are made to carry three persons; but ingeneral not more than one or two. The frame is composed of very thin slips ofthe pine-wood, fastened together with whale sinews, and is then covered withthe skin of the seal or sea-cow, which is previously stripped of its hair. Thebottom of the skin frock which the natives wear, ties over the hoie of thecanoe, where the man sits, and prevents the smallest drop of water from gettingin. These vessels are paddled at a prodigious rate, and go out in any weather.”

What advantages might not be expected from the ingenuity of this uncul-tivated artist, capable of displaying such contrivances as the foregoing, were henot unhappily placed by Providence in a situation, and under a climate, whichmost imperiously forbids all improvement, or extension of his natural genius ?

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