The paddles used by the modern canoeist are like that represented on the cover of this book. They are very light, being made usually of spruce, an inch and a half in diameter at the largest part of the shaft. For a wide canoe a nine foot paddle is desirable, but for narrower craft one seven and a half feet or even seven feet long is sufficient. A common ferule joint in the middle facilitates close packing. Two joints dividing the paddle in three parts, do not work well in practice. Rubber rings, or the two halves of a three inch rubber ball cut to slip over the shafts prevent the water from dripping inboard.
The squadron had sailed thus far without beholding any of the picturesque which is peculiarly French, but now it hoped that at landing, the essence of Acadia would be visible. It seemed for a few moments as if this hope was about to be realized, for as the boats approached their prospective landing, two quaintly dressed boys stood observantly and quietly upon the bank, instead of dancing and hooting like savages, or casting stones and objurgations at the squadron, as almost any brace of boys in the United States would have done under similar circumstances.
"Note the respectful ways engendered by monarchical institutions," observed the Commodore.
"Rather the absence of the spirit which the heavy hand of despotism has crushed out," replied the Vice.
As the boats were beached, the boys timidly approached them. The Vice, forgetting his first encounter of the picturesque, accosted them in French, and was somewhat confused by their replies until he learned that the youths were of English parentage, and that they lisped.
The boys were soon reinforced by their father, a tall, modest, but self-reliant looking man, who eyed the camping preparations of the party with an interest which was greater than curiosity, and which was explained afterward by the discovery that he had been of the Argonauts of '49.
The Vice, in his capacity of Statesman, knew the honest farmer as a type, only as the principal element of mass-meetings which he sometimes addressed; the Commodore, when in his editorial chair, knew him principally as a subscriber to be secured; the Cook, when playing scribbler, found the farmer-type useful to contrast with other types, and the Purser, when in his studio, knew him only as an occasional adjunct to a pastoral composition.