“My uncle is making a canoe in the wood now,” said Gaithel. “He has been at work on it for weeks and weeks. Shall we go and see him at it?”
So they went together into the wood where Gaithel’s uncle was at work. He had felled a stout oak tree and had got a portion of the trunk cut off. This was to be his canoe, and he had already begun to shape it fore and aft and to hollow it out. He had a little fire of dry chips and sticks burning in one place on the top of the log; and in another place, where he had had the fire burning the day before, he was hacking away at the charred wood with his stone axe. There was another man at work with him, and this man was hacking at the bows of the canoe; but his axe would not make a deep cut in the hard oak wood, and he was getting on very slowly.
Gaithel’s uncle left off work to speak to Tig. He stood up and wiped his face which was all hot and grimy.
“My boat will be a beauty when she is finished;” he said, “a rare one! Have you any like her in your village?”
“We haven’t any boats in our village,” said Tig.
“What--no boats? How do you do to get on the water then?”
“We haven’t any water,” said Tig, “at least not a lake--only a pond.”
“Well, yours must be a strange village! No lake and no boats! However, your men must be spared some heavy work if they don’t make dug-outs; though, look you, a man may make five or six bark canoes or wicker canoes in less time than it takes him to make one dug-out. But then a log canoe will outlast you four of the other, let alone being a deal more comfortable. So never mind the labour and the sweat, say I; make a good dug-out.”
Then he took up his axe and went to work again.
Then Gaithel took Tig back to the lake, and they got into a canoe and rowed on the lake. In the canoe was a spear with a long, fine-pointed head made of bone, barbed on both sides. This, Gaithel said, was a fish-spear; and he showed Tig how it was used in spearing large fish when the Lake People used their drag-net. The nets were kept at home, so that the women might see that they were kept properly mended.
“But when we are fishing,” said Gaithel, “we have the net weighted at the bottom with stones to sink it, and the one end is held up in one canoe and the other in another, and the canoes paddle in ashore, dragging the net between them. Then some of us wade out into the water, and spear the fish or catch them with our hands if we can, and then the net is drawn in closer until we get the rest, but sometimes some of them get away.”