[Illustration: FIG. 26—Seri marlinspikes.]
The finished balsa is notably light and buoyant. The Boca Infierno
specimen was estimated to weigh about 250 pounds (113 kilograms) when
thoroughly dry, and little more than 300 pounds (126 kilograms)
when completely wet; so that it could easily be picked up by three
or four, or even by two, strong men and carried ashore to be hidden
in the fog-shrubbery skirting the coast. The craft floated high with
one man aboard, rode better with two, carried three without much
difficulty even in a fairly heavy sea, and would safely bear four
adults aggregating 600 pounds (272 kilograms) in moderate water. The
most striking features of the craft afloat are its graceful movement
and its perfect adaptation to variable seas and loads. The lines are
symmetric and of great delicacy, as indicated even by the photographs
out of its element; the reed-bundles are yielding, partly by resilience
and partly in the way of set, so that the body of the craft curves to
fit the weight and distribution of the load and to meet the impact of
swells and breakers. In smooth water a lightly laden balsa may appear
heavy and logy, but with a heavier load and stronger sea each tapering
end rises strongly and then recurves slightly in a Hogarthian line
graceful as the neck of a swan, while the whole craft skims the waves
or glides sinuously over their crests in a lightsome way, recalling
the easy movement of gull or petrel. A suggestion of its effect is
shown in figure 27, a composite drawn largely from photographs; another
suggestion is shown, in figure 28, reproduced in facsimile from a
drawing by the artist of the U. S. S. _Narragansett_ in 1873,[288] the
only known picture of the craft antecedent to the 1895 expedition.
[288] Publication No. 56, U. S. Hydrographic Office, Bureau of
Navigation, 1880, plate XV, p. 136.
[Illustration: FIG. 27—The balsa afloat.]
Almost equally striking features of the balsa are its efficiency and
safety under the severe local conditions. Carrying twice its weight
of (chiefly) living freight, it breasts gales and rides breakers and
stems tiderips that would crush a canoe, swamp a skiff, or capsize a
yawl; while if caught in currents or surf and cast ashore it is seldom
wrecked, but drops lightly on beach or rocks, to be pushed uninjured
by the broken wave-tips beyond the reach of pounding rollers, even if
it is not at once caught up by its passengers and carried to complete
safety. The strength of the craft is amazing, especially in view of
the slenderness of the cords used in construction; in fact, the outer
layers of canes are so ingeniously interlocked by the insertion of
their butts into interstices that each bundle holds itself together
with slight aid from the exterior cording, while even the bundles
themselves are held in proper relative position by the secure terminal
tying rather than by the intertwined cording of the body of the craft.
And the entire construction exemplifies the compartment principle to
perfection; a slight injury may affect but a single joint of one out
of several thousand canes, while even a severe fall on sharp rocks
seldom injures more than a few score canes, and these in a few joints
only. The most objectionable feature of the balsa lies in the fact
that it affords little protection from the wet. The water rises freely
through the reed bundles to a height depending on the load, and not
only the spray but the whitecaps and combers as well dash freely
over the unprotected body of the craft; but this defect is of little
consequence to the hardy and nearly nude navigators, or to their scanty
and practically uninjurable freight.
[Illustration: FIG. 28—Seri balsa as seen by _Narragansett_ party.]
The gracefulness and efficiency of the balsa itself stand in strong
contrast with the crude methods of propulsion. According to Mashém,
the craft is commonly propelled by either one or two women lying prone
on the reeds and paddling either with bare hands or with large shells
held in the hands; according to Hardy, the harpoon main shaft is used
by turtle fishermen for paddling (and probably for poling, also);
according to the Dewey picture (figure 28), the vessel is driven by
a woman with a double-end paddle like that used in connection with
the conventional canoe; while the expedition of 1895 found on Isla
Tiburon four or five paddles rudely wrought from flotsam boards and
barrel-staves, and partly hafted with rough sticks 3 or 4 feet long,
but partly without handles and evidently designed to be grasped
directly, like the shells of Mashém’s descriptions. No trace of oars,
rowlocks, sculls, rudders, or masts were found, and there is nothing
to indicate the faintest notion of sails and sailing. On the whole
there is no trace of well differentiated propelling devices—i. e., the
craft is perfected only as a static device and not at all as a dynamic
mechanism.
Despite their poverty in propelling devices, the Seri navigate their
waters successfully and extensively. Perhaps the commonest function
of the craft is that exercised in connection with the turtle fishery,
though its chief office as a factor of general industrial economy is
that of bridging El Infiernillo at the will of the roving clans. It is
by means of this craft, also, that the semiceremonial pelican feasts
on Tiburon are consummated; it is by the same means that Isla Patos,
Isla Turner, Roca Foca, and other insulated sources of food-supply
are habitually reached; and both Mashém’s accounts and the Jesuits’
records indicate that occasional voyages are pushed to San Esteban, San
Lorenzo, Angel de la Guarda, and even to the Baja California coast.
Concordantly with the tribal customs, little freight is carried.
The traveling family transport their poor possessions to the shore,
bring out the balsa from its hiding place in the thick and thorny
fog-shrubbery, launch it, lade it with a filled olla and the weapons
of a man and implements of a woman, besides any chance food and
clothing, and embark lightly to enjoy the semirepose of drifting before
the breeze—until the rising gale brings labor still more arduous
than that of scouring the spall-strewn slopes or sandy stretches of
their hard motherland. Commonly the terminus of the trip is fixed
largely by the chance of wind and tide; and when it is reached the
party carry the craft inshore, conceal it shrewdly, and then take up
their birdskin bed and walk forth in search of fresh water and meat.
The successful fishing trips of course end in orgies of gorging, and
when the voyage is the climax of a foray to the mainland frontier for
stock-stealing, the quarters and paunches and heads hastily thrown
aboard at the mainland side of the strait are carried to the rancherias
for consumption at leisure; and this has happened so often that equine
hoofs and bovine bones are common constituents of the middens on
Tiburon.
Although measurably similar to Central American and South American
types of water-craft, the Seri balsa is a notably distinct type for its
region. The California natives, as well as those of the mainland of
Mexico south of Rio Yaqui, used rafts made either of palm trunks or of
other logs lashed alongside rather than balsas; while the far-traveling
tribes used either sails or well-differentiated paddles for propulsion.
* * * * *
Briefly, the Seri balsa is remarkable for perfect adaptation to those
needs of its makers shaped by their distinctive environment. It seems
to approach the ideal of industrial economy—the acme of practicality—in
the adjustment of materials and forces to the ends of a lowly culture;
and, like the olla and harpoon and arrow, it affords an impressive
example of the adjustment of artifacts to environment through the
intervention of budding intelligence. Yet the chief significance of the
craft would seem to reside in its vestigial character as a survival of
that orarian stage in the course of human development in which men
lived alongshore and adjusted themselves to maritime conditions rather
than to terrestrial environments; a stage evidently but barely passed
by the Seri, since they still subsist mainly on sea food, still retain
their suggestive navigation, and still view their stormy straits and
bays as the nucleus and noblest portion of their province.