In Greenville, New Hampshire, a small town in the southern part
of the state, Henri Vaillancourt makes birch-bark canoes in the
same manner and with the same tools that the Indians used. The
Survival of the Bark Canoe is the story of this ancient craft
and of a 150-mile trip through the Maine woods in those graceful
survivors of a prehistoric technology. It is a book squarely in
the tradition of one written by the first tourist in these
woods, Henry David Thoreau, whose The Maine Woods recounts
similar journeys in similar vessel. As McPhee describes the
expedition he made with Vaillancourt, he also traces the
evolution of the bark canoe, from its beginnings through the
development of the huge canoes used by the fur traders of the
Canadian North Woods, where the bark canoe played the key role
in opening up the wilderness. He discusses as well the differing
types of bark canoes, whose construction varied from tribe to
tribe, according to custom and available materials. In a style
as pure and as effortless as th