Read it through once

Another very important factor in savage life was the canoe or piroque necessary for fishing or to cross lakes and rivers. The first chantey of Rudyard Kipling has a probable theory, and is a beautiful account of how man first thought of using a floating log.[16] They hollowed out the log and "dug out" the canoe, by first lighting a fire on it and then scraping away the cinders; then the sides were pressed out, and it was trimmed and straightened to the right shape. All this was the idea of some paleolithic genius far more persevering and ingenious than any marine architect of our own days.