Note 1 — Chapter VII
Reading edition
When they were making the raft father noticed that one of the logs was sound and the other rotten. They fastened them together by nailing shakes—shingles—from one to the other. Some one remarked that the nails would pull out the first time the raft struck a snag. Then they said they would drive in long wooden pins. But father noticed that the long pins were driven into the sound log, while the ends on the rotten log were only fastened by the nails.