TANS OF TRANSPORTATION.
Man surpasses all other land animals in the perfection of his natural means of locomotion. Though many surpass him for short distances in speed, they are sure to yield in endurance. He can walk clown the deer and wear out the horse, as has been repeatedly shown in long overland journeys. He is far more indifferent than any other animal to changes in climate and elevation. The traveller in crossing the Andes must change horses several times, those of a lower altitude not being able to bear the rarefied air of the upper levels. But the Alpine tourist for mere amusement scrambles to a far greater height than even the chamois ventures.
With practice, man becomes scarcely less at home on the water. Some of the South Sea islanders have been known to spend a clay and a half in the ocean, floating and swimming- by turns. This natural facility he learned, while still in the rudiments of culture, greatly to increase. Bladders and light woods aided him in swimming ; to prevent his limbs sinking in the soft deep snow he invented the snowshoe, or, as in Norway, the long straight runners they call ; while the shifting sands of the Landes of France suggested the use of stilts, which, for some unknown reason, were also in vogue with the Mayas of Yucatan and are portrayed in their manuscripts.
The native habitat of man was along the shores and watercourses. The Darwinians, indeed, will have it that he is the descendant of some amphibious, seal-like ancestor. At any rate, the streams and lakes fur nished him both food and drink, and thus came to be the highways of his migration.
Hider early in his life man must have essayed some plans of navigation. Beginning, like the Australian savage of to-day, with a simple log, on which he was seated astride and which lie propelled with his hands, the next step would be to tie two or more logs together and thus form the raft. This elementary craft is still in use in many parts of the world. The balsas of the Peruvian coast arc formed of five or six logs lashed together with \\idles. They are floored with bamboos or split palms, upon which huts are built, and there the family live all the year round. In the interior of that country, on the cold and lofty plateau around Lake Titicaca, there are no trees suitable for the balsas ; so, instead of logs, the natives tie the rushes which grow along the shores into long bundles, lash them together, and thus have floats sometimes large enough to accommodate fifty or sixty persons. Indeed,
many of the ancient inhabitants lived altogether on these reed-rafts, moving them from place to place on the lake as their fancy dictated (Herrera). The maritime Feejeeans and other tribes who were more desi rous to accomplish their journeys than to live on their crafts, discovered that two logs connected by a raised platform could be impelled through the water more swiftly than a solid raft of the same breadth, and thus laid the foundation for the invention of the catamaran and the outrigger.
The canoe or " dug-out " is merely the log hollowed out. The obser vation that a concave and water-tight object of any material will float on water could not escape the least acute savage. Hence the canoe may be supposed to have been invented independently in many localities. Its original construction was simple: a trunk, felled by the wind, was burned across in two places ; small fires were built upon it ; the charred wood scraped off with stones ; and the process repeated until the excavation was sufficient. The perfection of canoe-building was reached by the natives of the north-west coast of America, a region abounding in mag nificent timber. Some of their canoes, hewn out of a single trunk, measure over fifty feet in length and will carry a hundred persons.
Where trees were scarce or where other materials offered themselves, the canoe was of some water-tight substance stretched over a frame. Birch bark is admirably suited to the purpose, and the light and graceful birch canoe of the Iroquois and Algonkins is an ancient proof of their skill. The Eskimo's kayak is made of the skins of marine animals stretched over a frame of whalebone, and in it he can with safety ride out the most violent storm of the Arctic seas. Much more rude is the pelota of the Patagonian—a skin of a guanaco stretched on a square wooden frame. On it he places his portable property, and pushes it before him as he swims the streams. The Welsh coracle was also a leathern boat, in which the adventurous fisherman fared boldly out to sea.