The Indians hew down a huge pine tree, and when I say it is done
without the use of axes, then you will wonder how the timber can be
felled. Well, when one of the savages desires to build him a boat, he
selects the tree from which it is to be made, and builds a little fire
around the trunk close to the ground. As fast as the flames char the
wood, he scrapes it away with a sharp rock, or a thick seashell, and
thus keeps scraping the burning wood until the tree falls.
[Illustration]
Then he cuts off ten or twelve feet in length by burning and scraping
exactly as before, and this is the length of the boat he would build;
but it is simply a solid log. Now he sets about building a fire along
the top, charring the wood and scraping it away until, after what
must surely be a wonderful amount of labor, he has hollowed out that
huge log into a shell. The bark is then stripped from the outside, and
the ends fashioned by burning until they are smooth, and the ship is
completed.