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Show CANOEING IN THE UNITED STATES. When John Macgregor, of the Inner Temple, published his entertaining account of the Rob Roy's thousand-mile voyage on the lakes and rivers of Europe, he established canoeing as a summer pastime. The idea was not new; it was older than authentic history, but he gave it an overhauling and brushing up that brought it out in a form that was wonderfully attractive. The Rob Roy was so diminutive that her captain was able to transport her on horseback, but what she accomplished made her quite as famous as any ship of her Majesty's navy. The English canoe fleet was soon numbered by hundreds. The crank Rob Roy was superseded, as a sailing canoe, by the Nautilus, and many voyages, under an endless variety of conditions, have since been accomplished. Canoe clubs were organized, and in a incredibly brief time canoeing became in Great Britain a national pastime. The introduction of canoeing in the United States may be said to have taken place in 1870, when the New York Canoe Club was founded by William L. Alden. The Indian birch and dugout, it is true, belong to the canoe group, but they are, at best, rude craft unfit for general cruising, and had long before gone into disuse, and come to be valued only as relics of an uncivilized condition. Americans have enthusiastically adopted the pastime, and it is only a question of time when canoes will be as frequently seen on our bays, lakes, and rivers as sail and row boats. Besides our long coastline, we have an immense system of inland waters, a great part of which is as yet unexplored, and can not for years be explored by any other craft than the light and easily portaged canoe. There is no one of the States in which long cruises may not be made. It has been stated upon authority, that summer cruises may be made upon the waters of Wisconsin alone for thirty years without retracting or exhausting the territory. In the northern portion of the State there are almost numberless unexplored lakes, some of large size, that are connected by rivers and smaller streams. A canoe may, for instance, be launched upon Powaukee Lake, a beautiful sheet of water about twenty miles west of Milwaukee, and then follow a winding course through a delightful country, through lake to rivulet, and from rivulet to lake, the lakes varying in length from three to eight miles, and in width from one to four miles. Leaving the lakes, the canoe may follow Rock River, and passing many beautiful towns and villages, strike the Mississippi at Rock Island, Illinois. Many of the Western (notably Minnesota and Michigan), Eastern and Middle States offer equally attractive fields for summer cruising. Canada is as yet almost unmapped. Twenty-five miles to the northward of Quebec the exploring canoeist is beyond the bounds of civilization, and at the entrance to a region of picturesque lakes, that, with their connecting streams, form a chain almost unbroken, save by rapids and falls, to either the Hudson Bay country or the Saguenay, and the little known territory still to the northward. Long cruises have been made by Americans. The Kleine Fritz (A. H. Siegfried) has followed the course of the Mississippi from the extreme headwaters to Book Island. This [line unreadable] Maria Theresa (N. H. Bishop) has cruised by inland waters from Lansingbury, New York, to the mouth of the Suwannee River, the Bubble (Charles E. Chase) in 1878 cruised from New York to Quebec by connecting waterways, thence by portage, through the valley of the Chaudiere, to the headwaters of and down the Connecticut River, to and through Long Island Sound, to New York. Mr. C. H. Farnham has recently completed a Canadian voyage embracing the Saguenay, its tributaries, and other water courses. In 1879 Mr. Frank Zibler made a cruise of about 1,200 miles, from Racine, Wisconsin, to New Orleans. Many less extended cruises have been made, and clubs have been organized, in the larger cities.-C. E. Chase, in Harper's Magazine for August. |