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Big freight sampans float past, propelled by oars if going down-stream, and by the combined efforts of tow-line and poles if against the current. The propelling poles are fitted with neatly carved "crutch-trees" to fit the shoulder; the polers, sometimes numbering as many as a dozen, walk back and forth along side-planks and encourage themselves with cries of "ha-i, ha-i, ha-i."
On the 28th, we went ashore upon an island that lies to the left hand of the entrance of the bay, where we saw the largest canoe that we had yet met with: She was sixty-eight feet and a half long, five broad, and three feet six high; she had a sharp bottom, consisting of three trunks of trees hollowed, of which that in the middle was the longest: The side-planks were sixty-two feet long in one piece, and were not despicably carved in bas relief; the head also was adorned with carving still more richly.
Above us floated products of all kinds, heaped up among these brownish plants; trunks of trees torn from the Andes or the Rocky Mountains, and floated by the Amazon or the Mississippi; numerous wrecks, remains of keels, or ships' bottoms, side-planks stove in, and so weighted with shells and barnacles that they could not again rise to the surface.
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