Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: May 29, 2025
These large canoes are calculated to carry sixty packages of skins weighing ninety pounds each, and provisions amounting to one thousand pounds' weight. They are paddled by eight men, each of whom has a bag weighing forty pounds. Every canoe also carries a quantity of bark, wattap, gum, and pine for heating the gum, an axe, and some small articles necessary for repairing her.
Akoko looked for spruce trees that had been blown down by the storm, but found none, so she stopped under some standing spruce, at a place with no underbrush and said: "See, Nagami, here we dig for wattap." The spruce roots or "wattap" were near the surface and easily found, but not easily got out, because they were long, tangled and criss-crossed.
On a hillside a little way from the river grew a number of pines; the pitch which exuded from them we wanted for covering the seams. The wood of the cedar was required for forming the frame of the canoe, while the slender and flexible roots of the young spruce trees would afford us what is called "wattap" threads for sewing the bark on to the gunwale and securing it to the ribs.
Martin having before taken his measurements, the bark exactly fitted the centre part of the canoe, being also very nearly of the required shape. We now sewed it on with the wattap. This was a long operation, as every hole had to be carefully bored. Another piece of somewhat less width formed the bows, easily conforming itself to the required shape.
As Martin got better he employed himself in making some small nets of wattap, of which we obtained a plentiful supply. He had also manufactured another spear, and he proposed, as soon as he was able to go out, to attempt catching some fish.
At the same time he soaked with it a bundle of wattap, or long fibrous roots of the white spruce, also gathered before the frost came, with a view to canoe repairs in the spring. While these were softening in the hot water, he cut a couple of long splints of birch, as nearly as possible half an inch wide and an eighth of an inch thick, and put them to steep with the bark.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking