MA-YA BUILDS A CANOE
FOR a long time after Ka-Ma and his wife came to live beside the sea,
his children and his children's children continued to use rafts, made
of logs tied together, for floating on the waters of the river. They
never ventured on the ocean with these rafts, because of the heavy
waves, and surf. Once or twice a raft was swept from the river into the
sea, but the waves dashed over it, washing the men upon it into the
water, and finally tossed it like a cork through the foaming surf and
left it, battered and broken, on the beach. Some of the sea people were
drowned in this way, and this made them very careful when they used
their rafts upon the river.
There was a young man in the tribe named Ma-Ya, who used to sit for
hours on the beach, looking out across the ocean, and wondering what
was on the other side. He thought the ocean was a very wide river, too
wide for him to see across, but he believed that if he could find some
way of reaching the other side, he might find a new country, filled
with strange adventures. The early men who lived by the sea always
felt this call to cross its wide surface, and find new lands. It was
the spirit which drove the early Norsemen, the Vikings, to Iceland,
and later on, all the way across the Atlantic to the shores of North
America, many centuries before Columbus made his first voyage. It sent
these same Norsemen southward, around the shores of Spain to the coast
of Africa, and into the Mediterranean Sea until they came to Italy, and
even to the shores of Asia. But all this was thousands of years later,
when man had learned how to build stout ships out of wooden planks,
driven by long rows of oars, and sails.
Ma-Ya, sitting on the beach, made up his mind that some day he would
cross the Great Water, and see what was on the other side. He believed
there was land there, because he often saw flocks of birds winging
their way inland from the sea, and he felt sure that in the place from
which they came there must be food for them to eat, and trees for them
to nest in, just as there were in his own country. But he knew he could
never venture to make such a voyage on a clumsy raft.
One day, while fishing along the banks of the river, he saw, floating
in the water, a dry leaf. A caterpillar had spun his cocoon in it, and
with his web had drawn together the ends and sides of the leaf in such
a way that it took the form of a perfect little canoe. When Ma-Ya saw
it, it was gliding rapidly down the stream, dancing over the little
waves like a bit of thistledown. In the centre of it lay the single
passenger, the caterpillar in his cocoon.
Ma-Ya thought how nice it would be if he had such a boat to ride in.
He thought about this a great deal, and finally an idea came into his
head. Why could he not make himself a boat shaped like that, large
enough to carry him and one of his companions upon the surface of the
water? But it was a long time before he found a way to do it.
The sea people had learned a great deal from twisting and weaving
rushes and reeds together to form the roofs and framework of their
huts. Ma-Ya thought that in this way he might use reeds to make the
framework of a boat.
So he got a great pile of reeds and wove them into a large round
basket, shaped something like a bowl, and big enough to hold him. Then
he covered the basket with the skin of a sea animal he had killed,
tying the edges of the skin to the rim or edge of the wicker bowl. When
he put his new boat in the water, it floated very nicely, but it had a
bad habit of turning round and round, no matter which way he paddled.
Still, it was much lighter than a raft, and could be used to cross the
river in, or to fish from in quiet pools. But Ma-Ya was not satisfied
with it; he wanted a boat which would be longer and narrower, with
pointed ends, so that it could be more easily driven through the water.
So he kept on thinking and thinking.
These round basket-work boats were called coracles, and sometimes,
instead of being covered with skins, they were made by plastering all
over the basket-work surface a kind of pitch that the early people
found oozing from the ground. They were not very useful boats,
however, and that was why Ma-Ya made up his mind to build a better one.
At last, after thinking about the matter for a long time, he found a
way. First he took two long, stout poles of seasoned wood, such as the
tribe used for making the handles of their spears. These two wooden
poles he laid side by side on the ground, and then bound their ends
tightly together with leather thongs. When this was done, he pulled the
two poles apart in the middle, bending them like two bows until they
were about three feet apart. A stick of this length, placed between
the two poles in the middle, kept them apart. He now had a strong
framework, very much the shape of a long, narrow leaf, pointed at each
end, and widest in the middle.
When this was done, Ma-Ya got another pole about three feet longer than
the framework, and bent the two ends of it upward at right angles to
the main part of the pole. These bent ends, which were about eighteen
inches long each, did not bend upward sharply, like the upright leg
of the letter "L," but sloped upward on a curve, like the sides of
the letter "U." Then he fastened the two uprights to the ends of his
framework, with the straight part of the pole eighteen inches below it.
This gave him the main framework of his boat. Then he took many strong
slender reeds and bent them U-shaped, fastening the middle or bottom of
the "U" to the bottom pole, and the two ends to the two upper or side
poles. Because these side poles were widest apart in the middle, the
U-shaped reeds were wide and flat there, but toward the two ends of the
boat, the "U" shapes became narrower and narrower until at the ends
they were shaped like a narrow "V." These bent reeds formed the ribs of
the boat, and were held in place by wrappings of strong cord.
When they were all in place, Ma-Ya took more reeds and wove them in
and out lengthwise of the boat, between the ribs, making a coarse
basket-work, just as he had done in making his coracle. The framework
of the boat, when done, looked like a coarse wicker basket made in the
shape of a canoe.
For a covering, Ma-Ya used the back part of the hide of a great walrus
he and some of his companions had killed upon the rocks. This hide,
while still moist and soft, was placed upon the wicker framework and
drawn over the upper edges, or gunwales, of the boat and fastened with
thongs. At either end the hide was stretched tightly upward, and bound
to the tops of the two posts or uprights at stem and stern. There were
no openings or seams in the hide whatever, so that there could be no
leaks. When the hide had become dry, it stretched tightly over the
frame, and became very hard and tough, yet the canoe was so light that
Ma-Ya could lift it in his two hands.
He placed it in the water, and with a paddle such as the sea people
used for their rafts, climbed aboard.
It did not take him long to find out that his canoe was very easily
upset. If he leaned too much to one side or the other, it would turn
over, and leave him to drag it ashore and empty the water out of it
before trying again. After a while, however, he got used to the new
boat, and found that with a few strokes of his paddle he could send
it through the water at great speed. His companions, who had laughed
at it, at first, soon saw that Ma-Ya had made something that would be
very useful in fishing, and in getting about on the water, and they too
began to build boats of wicker-work, covered with skins. Up to now, the
sea people had found it very hard to paddle their heavy rafts up the
river, owing to the strong current, but in the swift, light canoes they
could go wherever they pleased.
Ma-Ya's idea, however, was not to go up the river, so much as it was
to sail on the ocean. As soon as he had learned how to manage his new
craft, he allowed the current to sweep him through the river mouth
and out on the broad surface of the sea. It was a quiet day, with no
wind blowing, and Ma-Ya found that his little craft rode the long
ocean swells as lightly as a cork. He paddled about for several hours,
delighted with his success, and then drove his new boat back into the
river mouth and pulled it up on the shore.
The next day he told one of his brothers of his plan to try to cross
the Great Water and see what was on the other side, and the two
adventurers placed provisions, and some jars of water, in the canoe,
and started out.
This time, however, there was a strong wind blowing from the ocean,
making its surface very rough. What had seemed to be only tiny waves,
from the shore, turned out to be dangerous white-caps, which swept over
the frail craft ready to fill it with water. The wind, too, became
stronger, so that Ma-Ya and his companion could hardly paddle against
it. Stronger and stronger grew the gale, and more and more weary grew
the arms of the two paddlers. Soon they saw that instead of making any
headway, they were being slowly driven back toward the shore. Their
water jars had been upset by the plunging of the boat as it tossed in
the waves, and more and more spray came aboard with every gust of wind.
Ma-Ya became afraid, and told his companion they must try to paddle
back to the mouth of the river.
This, however, they soon found they could not do. The gale had driven
them a mile or more down the beach, and they could not force the boat
back against it. Light as it was, and floating on the surface of the
water like a leaf, it was at the mercy of the wind. In a few moments
the two voyagers saw that they were being driven right toward the surf
which thundered on the sandy beach. They paddled furiously, trying to
keep the bow of the canoe pointed toward the shore, and waited to see
what would happen. The great breakers lifted the tiny craft in their
arms as though it had been a speck of foam, and hurled it round and
round toward the beach. In the twinkling of an eye it was filled with
water, upset, and Ma-Ya and his companion were left struggling in the
waves. Luckily they were strong and fearless swimmers, and after a long
fight, managed to make their way through the surf, almost battered to
pieces. The sea folk, who were gathered on the shore watching them, ran
down into the water and pulled them up on the beach. The little canoe
was washed in and out again for many minutes, rolling over and over in
the boiling surf like a huge fish, but at last it too came tumbling
upon the sands, crushed and broken. The sea people pulled it up out
of reach of the waves, and Ma-Ya gazed at it sadly. He knew now that
while his frail craft was good enough for sailing on the river, it
would never do for crossing the Great Water. So he made up his mind to
think of something else.
It was many years before Ma-Ya made his next boat, and this time it was
of wood.
He knew that the shape of his little canoe had been right, but that
to stand the waves of the Great Water it would have to be made of
something much stronger and more solid than wicker, covered with skin.
The only thing he knew of was wood, yet his brain, which was only just
beginning to think, told him no way in which he could make a boat out
of wood.
One day, while far up the river in a canoe, he came across a huge log,
the trunk of a tree, which had been blown down by the wind. It had
drifted along the river from the forests above, and finally stuck on a
mud-bank, where it was held by its dead branches.
Ma-Ya climbed up on this log and looked it over carefully. Something
about it made him think of a boat. This was because the tree was
partly hollow; a long stretch along one side of it had rotted away.
Ma-Ya cut at the rotten wood with his stone axe, and found it soft and
crumbly. He thought that if he and some of his companions were to dig
out the centre of the log with their axes, and roughly chop the two
ends to a point, they would have a large and strong boat, which even
the waves of the ocean could not harm. It would take a long time, he
knew, but he had nothing to do, and some of his friends, to whom he had
told his plan to cross the Great Water and see what was on the other
side, offered to help him. The next day, with axes and chisels of sharp
flint, a little party went up the river to the mud-bank where the log
lay, and began work on it.
The pointing of the ends was a long, hard task, but little by little
they cut away the dry wood, and after many weeks the outside of the log
began to take the shape of a boat. The task of digging out the inside
was easy at first, where the wood was soft and rotten, but after a time
the rotten wood was all cut away, and then the work became very hard.
Knowing that fire would burn away the wood, Ma-Ya told his companions
to start little fires all along the surface on which they were working,
and when the fires had charred the inside of the log a little, they put
them out and chipped away the burned wood. Over and over again they did
this, for many weeks, and at last the inside of the log had been cut
away until there was room in the new boat for fifteen or twenty men.
Its sides were very thick and strong; they did not dare to burn away
too much of the wood, for fear they would make a hole right through
it. When it came time to push the new craft off the mud into the
water, they found it so heavy that they were obliged to call for help.
Finally, with thirty or forty men pushing and pulling, the great boat
was slid into the water, where it floated almost as well as the lighter
canoes. With paddles in their hands, Ma-Ya and a dozen of his friends
scrambled aboard, and sent the new craft flying down the river.
Ma-Ya and his friends made many voyages on the ocean in this boat, but
although they sometimes paddled for two whole days, they never were
able to cross the Great Water. No matter how far they went they could
see nothing beyond them but the blue surface of the ocean, stretching
as far as the eye could reach. All of Ma-Ya's friends said that there
was no other shore to the ocean; that it went on and on until it joined
the sky, but Ma-Ya refused to believe this, because of the flocks of
birds he watched coming in from the sea. But he never found the other
shore of which he dreamed.
One thing, however, he did discover, a very great thing indeed,
although Ma-Ya did not know, then, how great it was. He found out how
to make the wind move his boat, by using a sail. And like nearly all of
the discoveries of the early people, it was made by accident.
Sometimes, in the middle of the summer, the sun on the water became so
hot and burning that the men paddling the boat could hardly stand it.
It was warmer in summer, in those days, than it is now, and the blazing
rays of the sun often made the handles of the paddles so hot the men
could scarcely hold them. To keep off the sun, Ma-Ya would lash some
upright poles to the sides of the boat and hang from them a cover, or
awning, made of grass-cloth. One day, while paddling up the broad mouth
of the river, a squall came up behind them, and striking the awning,
turned it sideways, like a sail. At once the boat began to fly through
the water so fast ahead of the squall that the paddlers found their
work of no use, and drew in their paddles. Ma-Ya set up a great shout
and pointed to the sail. His companions did not understand at first,
but when they saw the boat sailing along without their paddles being
used, they too understood, and also began to shout. Not knowing how to
stop, they sat doing nothing while the heavy squall carried them far up
the river and finally drove them ashore on a sand bar.
Ma-Ya was delighted. He lashed a stronger upright pole near the front
of the boat, with another pole across it, from which he hung a large
piece of grass matting, and the next time they went out, the wind took
them along in fine fashion. Coming back, however, they had to use their
paddles, for Ma-Ya did not know how to sail against the wind, nor did
the sea people discover how to do this for a very long time.
Ma-Ya was a great inventor. He gave to the sea folk boats and sails.
But he was never able to cross the Great Water. When he died, he called
his children and grandchildren about him, and told them to keep on
trying, and some day they would find the land of the flying birds.