The favorite material for boat-building in the United States is white cedar (Cupressus thyoides), which grows in dense forests in the swamps along the coast of New Jersey, as well as in other parts of North America.  The wood is both white and brown, soft, fine-grained, and very light and durable.  No wood used in boat-building can compare with the white cedar in resisting the changes from a wet to a dry state, and vice versa.  The tree grows tall and straight.  The lower part of the trunk with the diverging roots furnish knee timbers and carlines for the sneak-box.  The ribs or timbers, and the carlines, are usually 1 1/4 x 1 1/4 inches in dimension, and are placed about ten inches apart.  The frame above and below is covered with half-inch cedar sheathing, which is not less than six inches in width.  The boat is strong enough to support a heavy man upon its deck, and when well built will rank next to the seamless paper boats of Mr. Waters of Troy, and the seamless wooden canoes of Messrs. Herald, Gordon & Stephenson, of the province of Ontario, Canada, in freedom from leakage.

During a cruise of twenty-six hundred miles not one drop of water leaked through the seams of the Centennial Republic.  Her under planking was nicely joined, and the seams calked with cotton wicking, and afterwards filled with white-lead paint and putty.  The deck planks, of seven inches width, were not joined, but were tongued and grooved, the tongues and grooves being well covered with a thick coat of white-lead paint.

The item of cost is another thing to be considered in regard to this boat.  The usual cost of a first-class canoe of seventy pounds’ weight, built after the model of the Rob Roy or Nautilus, with all its belongings, is about one hundred and twenty-five dollars; and these figures deter many a young man from enjoying the ennobling and healthful exercise of canoeing.  A first-class sneak-box, with spars, sail, oars, anchor, &c., can be obtained for seventy-five dollars, and if several were ordered by a club they could probably be bought for sixty-five dollars each.  The price of a sneak-box, as ordinarily built in Ocean County, New Jersey, is about forty dollars.  The Centennial Republic cost about seventy-five dollars, and a city boat-builder would not duplicate her for less than one hundred and twenty-five dollars.  The builders of the sneak-boxes have not yet acquired the art of overcharging their customers; they do not expect to receive more than one dollar and fifty cents or two dollars per day for their labor; and some of them are even so unwise as to risk their reputation by offering to furnish these boats for twenty-five dollars each.  Such a craft, after a little hard usage, would leak as badly as most cedar canoes, and would be totally unfit for the trials of a long cruise.

[Diagram of Sneak-Box “Centennial Republic”]