But Bill rested overnight, and in the
morning sought and felled a sizable cedar, and began to hew. Slowly
the thick trunk shaped itself to the form of a boat under the steady
swing of his ax. Hazel had seen the type in use among the coast
Siwashes, twenty-five feet in length, narrow-beamed, the sides cut to a
half inch in thickness, the bottom left heavier to withstand scraping
over rock, and to keep it on an even keel. A rude and tricky craft,
but one wholly efficient in capable hands.
In a week it was finished. They loaded the sack of gold, the bundle of
furs, their meager camp outfit amidships, and swung off into the stream.
The Skeena drops fifteen hundred feet in a hundred miles. Wherefore
there are rapids, boiling stretches of white water in which many a good
canoe has come to grief. Some of these they ran at imminent peril.
Over the worst they lined the canoe from the bank. One or two short
canons they portaged, dragging the heavy dugout through the brush by
main strength. Once they came to a wall-sided gorge that ran away
beyond any attempt at portage, and they abandoned the dugout, to build
another at the lower end. But between these natural barriers they
clicked off the miles in hot haste, such was the swiftness of the
current.
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