Reader, if ever you are tempted to make a similar thoughtless, reckless trip--don't do it.
THE LIGHT CANOE AND DOUBLE BLADE--VARIOUS CANOES FOR VARIOUS CANOEISTS--REASONS FOR PREFERRING THE CLINKER-BUILT CEDAR
The canoe is coming to the front, and canoeing is gaining rapidly in popular favor, in spite of the disparaging remark that "a canoe is a poor man's yacht." The canoe editor of _Forest and Stream_ pertinently says, "we may as properly call a bicycle 'the poor man's express train.'" But, suppose it is the poor man's yacht? Are we to be debarred from aquatic sports because we are not rich? And are we such weak flunkies as to be ashamed of poverty? Or to attempt shams and subterfuges to hide it? For myself, I freely accept the imputation. In common with nine-tenths of my fellow citizens I am poor--and the canoe is my yacht, as it would be were I a millionaire. We are a nation of many millions, and comparatively few of us are rich enough to support a yacht, let alone the fact that not one man in fifty lives near enough to yachting waters to make such an acquisition desirable--or feasible, even. It is different with the canoe. A man like myself may live in the backwoods, a hundred miles from a decent sized inland lake, and much further from the sea coast, and yet be an enthusiastic canoeist. For instance.
Last July I made my preparations for a canoe cruise, and spun out with as little delay as possible. I had pitched on the Adirondacks as cruising ground, and had more than 250 miles of railroads and buckboards to take, before launching the canoe on Moose River. She was carried thirteen miles over the Brown's Tract road on the head of her skipper, cruised from the western side of the Wilderness to the Lower St. Regis on the east side, cruised back again by a somewhat different route, was taken home to Pennsylvania on the cars, 250 miles, sent back to her builder, St. Lawrence County, N.Y., over 300 miles, thence by rail to New York City, where, the last I heard of her, she was on exhibition at the _Forest and Stream_ office. She took her chances in the baggage car, with no special care, and is today, so far as I know, staunch and tight, with not a check in her frail siding.