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canot allège
Hist.
DCHP-1 (pre-1967)
Entry from the DCHP-1 (pre-1967)
This entry may contain outdated or offensive information, terms, and examples.
a fast light canoe (def. 1) used by the fur-traders for speedy delivery of officials, communications, correspondence, and special goods.
Quotations
1850
Our canoe was thirty-six feet long, sharp at each end, six feet wide in the middle, and made of birch bark, in sheets sewn together with vegetable fibre, and the seams gummed up close. The sides are strengthened and steadied by four or six cross-bars lashed to the rim of the canoe, and the inside is protected by slender ribs of a light wood, but the bottom by only a few loose poles. It is called a light canoe, or "canot lâche"; because intended to go swiftly, and to carry only provisions and personal baggage. Its usual complement is nineteen--that is, fifteen paddle-men and four gentlemen passengers: the latter sitting each on his rolled-up bed in the middle compartment.
1860
The principal distinction I heard the Voyageurs make was between canots à lége and canots de charge.
1942
The most celebrated voyageur canoe . . . was the . . . canot allege--unburdened or express canoe.