The diagram given of the Centennial Republic will enable the reader of aquatic proclivities to understand the general principles upon which these boats are built.  As they should be rated as third-class freight on railroads, it is more economical for the amateur to purchase a first-class boat at Barnegat, Manahawken, or West Creek, in Ocean County, New Jersey, along the Tuckerton Railroad, than to have a workman elsewhere, and one unacquainted with this peculiar model, experiment upon its construction at the purchaser’s cost, and perhaps loss.

One bright morning, in the early part of the fall of 1875, I trudged on foot down one of the level roads which lead from the village of Manahawken through the swamps to the edge of the extensive salt marshes that fringe the shores of the bay.  This road bore the euphonious name of Eel Street,—­so named by the boys of the town.  When about half-way from its end, I turned off to the right, and followed a wooded lane to the house of an honest surf-man, Captain George Bogart, who had recently left his old home on the beach, beside the restless waves of the Atlantic, and had resumed his avocation as a sneak-box builder.

The house and its small fields of low, arable land were environed on three sides by dense cedar and whortleberry swamps, but on the eastern boundary of the farm the broad salt marshes opened to the view, and beyond their limit were the salt waters of the bay, which were shut in from the ocean by a long, narrow, sandy island, known to the fishermen and wreckers as Long Beach,—­the low, white sand-dunes of which were lifted above the horizon, and seemed suspended in the air as by a mirage.  Across the wide, savanna-like plains came in gentle breezes the tonic breath of the sea, while hundreds, aye, thousands of mosquitoes settled quietly upon me, and quickly presented their bills.

In this sequestered nook, far from the bustle of the town, I found “Honest George,” so much occupied in the construction of a sneak-box, under the shade of spreading willows, as to be wholly unconscious of the presence of the myriads of phlebotomists which covered every available inch of his person exposed to their attacks.  The appropriate surroundings of a surf-man’s house were here, scattered on every side in delightful confusion.  There were piles of old rigging, iron bolts and rings, tarred parcelling, and cabin-doors,—­in fact, all the spoils that a treacherous sea had thrown upon the beach; a sea so disastrous to many, but so friendly to the Barnegat wrecker,—­who, by the way, is not so black a character as Mistress Rumor paints him.  A tar-like odor everywhere prevailed, and I wondered, while breathing this wholesome air, why this surf-man of daring and renown had left his proper place upon the beach near the life-saving station, where his valuable experience, brave heart, and strong, brawny arms were needed to rescue from the ocean’s grasp the poor victims of misfortune whose dead bodies are washed upon the hard strand of the Jersey shores every year from the wrecks of the many vessels which pound out their existence upon the dreaded coast of Barnegat?  A question easily answered,—­political preferment.  His place had been filled by a man who had never pulled an oar in the surf, but had followed the occupation of a tradesman.