When I was last in Canada I had to do a lot of my travelling by canoe,
because the forests there are almost impassable with their thick
undergrowth and boggy soil.
There are lakes and streams everywhere, so it is comparatively easy to
go by water. But there are plenty of adventures to be met with by the
way, in the shape of snags and rocks and rapids, and out on the lakes
gales spring up, with a heavy sea, in a very short time. So a fellow
has to know how to manage a boat and how to face risks if he is going
to get on at all, and it is just as well that he should be able to
swim, as otherwise he is not likely to arrive at the end of his trip
in the way he had intended!
[Illustration: A SEA SCOUT] Well, Jim and Ben and I were paddling in
our birch bark canoe across a good-sized lake where there were a lot
of small islands, when suddenly we scrunched on to a submerged rock,
which brought us to a full stop and bulged in the bottom of our
vessel, so that the water began to run in and flood the floor.
So the canoe was quickly turned, and away we paddled as hard as we
could for the nearest island, and just reached it in time to scramble
ashore before our boat began to sink.
We quickly pulled her up on the rocks, got our baggage out, and rolled
her over, so that the water could run out and we could get at the hole
to repair it. This was done in quite a neat way.
Ben and I scraped away with our knives some of the "gum" or natural
pitch with which the seams of the canoe were caulked. Jim meantime had
made a little fire with driftwood. Then Ben took a bit of rag, which
he had used as a bandage for a wounded hand, and stretched it over the
hole in the boat, and fixed it there with little bits of "gum," which
he melted down with a red-hot stick taken from the fire.
In this way he made a watertight patch over the leak in a very few
minutes, and we soon had the canoe afloat again. We loaded her up, and
within ten minutes of the disaster we were on our way again as happily
as ever, but we kept a sharper look-out than we had done before for
snags and rocks just below the surface of the water.
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