At last I _did_ succeed in producing a nondescript, ridiculous thing which bore a remote resemblance to a snow-shoe, and, anxious to test its practicability before attempting to make its mate, I placed it on the snow outside my door and stepped cautiously upon it. For a moment it supported me upon the surface of the snow, and I was just commencing to congratulate myself upon my success when, without warning, the frame doubled up, the netting collapsed, and my foot plunged into the snow, throwing me sprawling in the drift. Floundering about, I extricated myself, fished up the wrecked thing upon which I had spent so much toil, and re-entered the cabin, heartily sick of snow-shoe making.
But as I busied myself preparing a meal my thoughts constantly reverted to the snow-shoes, for I realized that they were a real necessity, and I strove to reason out the causes for my failure and to devise some method of overcoming the difficulties. My experience with stone arrow-heads had taught me a lesson and had showed me how simple an apparently difficult thing may be, once you discover the secret of doing it properly, and I had little doubt that to make a serviceable pair of snow-shoes would prove very easy, if I only knew how.
I decided that the main difficulty lay in making a network which was strong enough to support my weight and which brought an equal strain upon all sides of the frame. Then I began to wonder why a net was really necessary and why an unbroken flat center would not serve the purpose as well or even better. The Norwegian skees, I knew, were merely narrow, flat boards, and yet they supported men upon the snow, and if this was the case why shouldn’t any flat object of the same area support my weight, regardless of its form? This led me to enumerate the objects which were within my reach and which would present a broad, flat surface to the snow, and I thought of birch bark. This, however, I felt sure, was too soft and pliable for the purpose, and I bent all my energies to devising some method of stiffening the bark and keeping it spread flat.
I thought of lashing sticks across it, but I realized that unless the bark was crisscrossed by a number of sticks such a method would be useless, and that so many sticks would make the shoes far too heavy. Then it occurred to me that the bark might be lashed within a frame, but this idea I also discarded, as I knew the bark would split and break under my feet, and then, like a flash of light, I thought of skins. Why was it not feasible to cut a piece of stout hide to the proper form, lash it within an oval frame to hold it taut, and thus make snow-shoes without the labor and difficulties of weaving a netting?