United States or Chad ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Their construction greatly resembles that of the pirogues of the Polynesians, or the kayaks of the Greenlanders. One of the most ancient, now in the Berlin Provincial Museum, was taken from a peat-bog of Brandenburg. It is 27 feet long and scarcely 16 inches wide.
Two pirogues were at anchor in the bay, and on the shore was the frame of a vessel which had evidently been a long while on the stocks, for the weeds and bushes near the keel were six or eight feet high, and a portion of the timbers were decayed. Carts and sleds drawn by buffaloes were in use, and everything gave it the appearance of a thriving village.
that is, in pursuit of and shooting at the iguanas, a large species of lizard, measuring from five to six feet long, which infest the rocks on the borders of the lake. Tired of firing without being obliged to show any skill, our chasseurs would re-embark in their pirogues and row in search of new amusement, this was, to shoot at the eagles that came hovering over their heads.
One of these mounds has been used for many years as the grave-yard, and to-day we saw attenuated cows lying against the marble tomb-stones, chewing their cud in contentment, after a meal of corn furnished by General York. Here, as below, the remarkable skill of the women and girls in the management of the smaller pirogues was noticed.
The ubas and the pirogues, dividing the work among them, limited the field of their researches to the extreme edge of the eddy, and from the circumference to the center the crews' long poles left not a single point unexplored. But no amount of sounding discovered the body of the adventurer, neither among the clumps of reeds nor on the bottom of the river, whose slope was then carefully examined.
This was a heavy blow to Cortés, but there was no time for hesitation. He laid the matter fully before his soldiers, and all declared their readiness to follow him. On June 24, 1520, the army reached the same causeway by which they had before entered the capital; but now no crowds lined the roads, and no pirogues swarmed upon the lake; a death-like stillness brooded over the scene.
Past the camps of the Chickamaugans who were retreating farther and farther down the twisting flood, seeking a last standing ground in the giant caves by the Tennessee these white voyagers had steered their pirogues.
There were canoes, pirogues, skiffs, rafts, dugouts, scows, galleys, arks, keelboats, flatboats, barges, "broadhorns," "sneak-boxes," and eventually ocean-going brigs, schooners, and steamboats. The canoe served the early explorer and trader, and even the settler whose possessions had been carried over the Alleghanies on a single packhorse.
Out of these the Indians wrought their great canoes and pirogues. At one part of the river, they passed, on the northern side, an isolated rock, about one hundred and fifty feet high, rising from a low marshy soil, and totally disconnected with the adjacent mountains. This was held in great reverence by the neighboring Indians, being one of their principal places of sepulture.
From here, the army marched up the east bank of the river, crossing the deep water near the present site of Montezuma, Indiana, and erecting a block house on the west bank, about three miles below the mouth of the Vermilion river, for a base of supplies. Corn and provisions for the army were taken in boats and pirogues from Fort Harrison up the river, and unloaded at this block house.
Word Of The Day