Riverside Literature Series 
 
 THOREAU'S 
 Katahdin and 
 Chesuncook 
 
 Houghton Mrfflin Co.
 
 A MAINE WOODS HIGHWAY
 
 HitoeraiDe literature 
 
 KATAHDIN 
 AND CHESUNCOOK 
 
 BT 
 
 HENRY D. THOREAU 
 
 FBOM 
 
 "THE MAINE WOODS" 
 
 ABRIDGED AND EDITED BY 
 
 / 
 
 CLIFTON JOHNSON 
 
 HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY 
 
 Boston : 4 Park Street ; New York : 85 Fifth A vena* 
 Chicago : 378-388 Wabaah Avenue 
 
 Cftc Hibrrsi&c press Cambrtbge
 
 COPYRIGHT 1909 BY HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY 
 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 A MAINE WOODS HIGHWAY .... Frontispiece 
 
 A BATEAU 2 
 
 KATAHDIN FROM AMBEJIJIS LAKE 20 
 
 WINTER LOGGING 26 
 
 RIVER-DRIVERS AT WORK 26 
 
 POLING UP-STREAM . 30 
 
 RUNNING DOWN-STREAM 30 
 
 SUMMIT OF KATAHDIN 42 
 
 A LOGGERS' CAMP 68 
 
 A Cow MOOSE 68 
 
 A BACKWOODS FARM 78 
 
 2217810
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 THOREAU'S The Maine Woods is a forest classic an idyl 
 of the wilderness. It is a record of three journeys to the bor- 
 ders of civilization and beyond into almost pathless forests, 
 seldom visited at that time except by loggers and a few hunt- 
 ers and Indians, and retaining nearly intact their primeval 
 loneliness. 
 
 Perhaps no writer has ever lived who was better fitted than 
 Thoreau to enjoy such a region and to transmit his enjoy- 
 ment of it to others. For while he was a person of culture and 
 refinement, with a college education, and had for an intimate 
 friend so rare a man as Ralph Waldo Emerson, he was half 
 wild in many of his tastes and impatient of the restraints and 
 artificiality of the ordinary social life of the towns and cities. 
 He liked especially the companionship of men who were in 
 close contact with nature. To talk with some rude farmer 
 or fisherman or hunter gave him real delight. Thus, in The 
 Maine Woods, we find him lingering fondly over the char- 
 acteristics and casual remarks of the loggers, explorers, and 
 other pioneers; and most of all he seems to have been fas- 
 cinated by the Indians, who still retained many of their abo- 
 riginal instincts and ways. 
 
 As the years pass, Thoreau's literary fame steadily in- 
 creases. He was a careful and accurate observer, more at 
 home in the fields and woods than in village and town, and 
 having a gift of piquant originality in recording his impres- 
 sions. The play of his imagination is keen and nimble ; yet 
 his fancy is so well balanced by his native common sense 
 that it does not run away with him, and his genuineness and 
 the truth of what he relates have never been questioned. 
 
 It is to be noted also that he was no hunter, that his in- 
 quisitiveness into the ways of the wild creatures carried with 
 it no desire to shoot them, and that to his mind the killing of 
 game for mere sport was akin to butchery. Indeed, the kindly
 
 vi INTRODUCTION 
 
 and sympathetic spirit constantly manifest in his pages is very 
 attractive, and the fellowship one gains with him through his 
 written words is to a young reader a distinct help in character- 
 building. 
 
 The Maine Woods was, of course, not written for young 
 people, and in its complete form it contains much that would 
 have but little interest for them ; yet the charm of the subject, 
 and the fact that Thoreau was himself in most ways simple 
 and childlike in his enjoyment of nature, make a great deal 
 of the book exceptionally attractive to youthful readers. The 
 text as here presented omits the portions an average boy or 
 girl would find difficult or dull, and the resulting narrative is 
 both lively and informing. It covers two of Thoreau's three 
 expeditions into the woods one made in a logger's bateau 
 with two experienced frontiersmen for guides; the second in 
 a birch-bark canoe under the guidance of its Indian owner. 
 The account is practically complete, for in cutting down the 
 original book nothing really essential has been sacrificed. 
 The omissions consist largely of meditations which have no- 
 thing to do with the main story, and of some of the multiplicity 
 of details that Thoreau recorded. But while much has been 
 eliminated, the text is still Thoreau's own, and is in no wise 
 rewritten. Only at rare intervals has a minor word or two 
 been supplied to make connections where portions have been 
 omitted. 
 
 I think the student will find the narrative as it now stands 
 clear and delightful, and that this presentation of experiences 
 on the streams and lakes and in the forests of the primitive 
 American wilderness will be perused not as a task, but as a 
 pleasure. The author was one of the world's master writers 
 in his chosen field, and in what he says he stimulates a love not 
 only for nature, but for simple ways of living, and for all that 
 is sincere and unaffected in human life wherever found. 
 
 CLIFTON JOHNSON. 
 
 HADLEY, MASSACHUSETTS.
 
 MAP OF 
 
 THOREAU'S 
 
 MAINE WOODS 
 
 Bancrc
 
 KATAHDIN l 
 
 ON the 31st of August, 1846, 1 left Concord in Mas- 
 sachusetts for Bangor and the backwoods of- Maine, 
 intending to accompany a relative of mine engaged in 
 the lumber trade, as far as a dam on the West Branch 
 of the Penobscot. 2 From this place, which is about one 
 hundred miles by the river above Bangor and five 
 miles beyond the last log hut, I proposed to make ex- 
 cursions to Mount Katahdin, 3 and to some of the lakes 
 of the Penobscot. It is unusual to find a camp so far in 
 the woods at that season, when lumbering operations 
 have ceased, and I was glad to avail myself of the cir- 
 cumstance of a gang of men being employed there at 
 that time in repairing the injuries caused by the great 
 freshet in the spring. I was fortunate also in the season 
 of the year, for in the summer myriads of black flies, 
 mosquitoes, and midges, or, as the Indians call them, 
 "no-see-ems," make traveling in the woods almost 
 impossible; but now their reign was nearly over. 
 
 Tuesday, September 1, 1 started with my compan- 
 ion in a buggy from Bangor for "up river," expecting 
 to be overtaken the next day night at Mattawamkeag 4 
 Point, some sixty miles off, by two more Bangoreans, 
 who had decided to join us in a trip to the mountain. 
 
 1 Thoreau used the less familiar form " Ktaadn " for the name of 
 the mountain and the title of this paper, a spelling which is supposed 
 to represent the Indian pronunciation more accurately than that now 
 more commonly in use. The word is an Indian one, of course, and, as 
 Thoreau notes, is said to mean " highest land." 
 
 2 Pe-nob'skot. 3 Ka-tah'din. 4 Mat-a-wam'keg.
 
 2 KATAHDIN 
 
 Within a dozen miles of Bangor we passed through 
 the village of Oldtown, at the falls of the Penobscot. 
 These falls furnish the principal power by which the 
 Maine woods are converted into lumber. Here is a 
 close jam at all seasons ; and then the once green tree 
 becomes lumber. Here your inch, your two and your 
 three inch stuff begin to be, and Mr. Sawyer marks off 
 those spaces which decide the destiny of so many pros- 
 trate forests. Through this steel riddle is the arrowy 
 Maine forest relentlessly sifted, till it comes out boards, 
 clapboards, laths, and shingles. Think how stood 
 the white-pine tree on the shore of Chesuncook, 1 its 
 branches soughing with the four winds, and every in- 
 dividual needle trembling in the sunlight think how 
 it stands with it now sold, perchance, to the New 
 England Friction-Match Company! There were in 
 1837, as I read, two hundred and fifty sawmills on the 
 Penobscot and its tributaries above Bangor. To this 
 is to be added the lumber of the Kennebec, Androscog- 
 gin, Passamaquoddy, 2 and other streams. No wonder 
 that we hear so often of vessels which are becalmed off 
 our coast, being surrounded a week at a time by float- 
 ing lumber from the Maine woods. The mission of 
 men there seems to be, like so many busy demons, to 
 drive the forest all out of the country, from every soli- 
 tary beaver-swamp and mountain-side, as soon as 
 possible. 
 
 At Oldtown we walked into a bateau-manufactory. 
 The making of bateaux is quite a business here. They 
 are light and shapely vessels, from twenty to thirty feet 
 long, and only four or four and a half wide, sharp at 
 
 1 Chft-sun'kook. 
 
 2 KSn-e-bgk', An-drO-skog'in, P&s-a-mi-kw5d'i.
 
 KATAHDIN 3 
 
 both ends, and reaching seven or eight feet over the 
 water, in order that they may slip over rocks as gently 
 as possible. They are made very slight; only two 
 boards to a side, commonly secured to a few light 
 maple or other hard-wood knees. The bottom is left 
 perfectly flat. They told us that one wore out in two 
 years, or often in a single trip. 
 
 The ferry here took us past the Indian island. As 
 we left the shore, I observed a short, shabby-looking 
 Indian, just from "up river," land on the Oldtown 
 side, and, drawing up his canoe, take out a bundle of 
 skins in one hand, and an empty keg in the other, and 
 scramble up the bank with them. The island seemed 
 deserted to-day, yet I observed some new houses 
 among the weather-stained ones ; but generally they 
 have a very forlorn and cheerless look, being all back 
 side and woodshed, not homesteads. The church is 
 the only trim-looking building. 
 
 We landed in Milford, and rode along the east side 
 of the Penobscot, having a more or less constant view 
 of the river, and the Indian islands in it, for they re- 
 tain all the islands as far up as the mouth of the East 
 Branch. The river seemed shallow and rocky, and 
 interrupted by rapids, rippling and gleaming in the 
 sun. Everywhere we saw signs of the great freshet 
 this house standing awry, and that where it was not 
 founded, and that other with a waterlogged look, as 
 if it were still airing and drying its basement, and logs 
 with everybody's marks upon them, and sometimes the 
 marks of their having served as bridges, strewn along 
 the road. At sundown, leaving the river road awhile, 
 we went by way of Enfield, where we stopped for the 
 night.
 
 4 KATAHDIN 
 
 The next morning we drove along through a high 
 and hilly country, and came into the Houlton * road at 
 Lincoln. Learning that there were several wigwams 
 here, on one of the Indian islands, we left our horse 
 and wagon and walked through the forest half a mile to 
 the river, to procure a guide to the mountain. It was 
 not till after considerable search that we discovered 
 their habitations small huts, in a retired place, where 
 the scenery was unusually soft and beautiful, and the 
 shore skirted with pleasant meadows and graceful 
 elms. We paddled ourselves across to the island in a 
 canoe which we found on the shore. Near where we 
 landed sat an Indian girl, ten or twelve years old, on 
 a rock, washing, and humming a song meanwhile. A 
 salmon-spear, made wholly of wood, lay on the shore, 
 such as they might have used before white men came. 
 It had an elastic piece of wood fastened to one side of 
 its point, which slipped over and closed upon the fish, 
 somewhat like the contrivance for holding a bucket at 
 the end of a well-pole. As we walked up to the nearest 
 house, we were met by a sally of a dozen wolfish-look- 
 ing dogs. The occupant soon appeared, with a long 
 pole in his hand, with which he beat off the dogs 
 while he parleyed with us a stalwart, but dull and 
 greasy-looking fellow, who told us that there were In- 
 dians going " up river " he and one other. And who 
 was the other ? Louis Neptune, who lives in the next 
 house. Well, let us go over and see Louis together. 
 The same doggish reception, and Louis Neptune 
 makes his appearance a small, wiry man, with 
 puckered and wrinkled face. The same questions were 
 put to Louis, and the same information obtained, 
 
 1 H&l't'n.
 
 KATAHDIN 5 
 
 while the other Indian stood by. It appeared that they 
 were going to start by noon, with two canoes, to go 
 up to Chesuncook to hunt moose to be gone a 
 month. " Well, Louis, suppose you get to the Five 
 Islands, just below Mattawamkeag, to camp, we walk 
 on up the West Branch to-morrow four of us and 
 wait for you at the dam, or this side. You overtake us 
 to-morrow or next day, and take us into your canoes. 
 We pay you for your trouble." "Ye'," replied Louis; 
 "maybe you carry some provision for all some 
 pork some bread and so pay." These men were 
 slightly clad in shirt and pantaloons. They did not 
 invite us into their houses, but met us outside. We left 
 the Indians, thinking ourselves lucky to have secured 
 such guides and companions. 
 
 There were very few houses along the road, yet they 
 did not altogether fail. There were even the germs of 
 one or two villages just beginning to expand. The 
 beauty of the road itself was remarkable. The vari- 
 ous evergreens delicate and beautiful specimens of 
 the larch, arbor-vita?, ball spruce, and fir-balsam, from 
 a few inches to many feet in height lined its sides ; 
 while it was but a step on either hand to the grim, un- 
 trodden wilderness, whose tangled labyrinth of living, 
 fallen, and decaying trees only the deer and moose, the 
 bear and wolf, can easily penetrate. 
 
 About noon we reached the Mattawamkeag, and 
 put up at a house where the Houlton stage stops. After 
 dinner we strolled down to the "Point," formed by the 
 junction of the two rivers, which is said to be the scene 
 of an ancient battle between the Eastern Indians and 
 the Mohawks, and searched there carefully for relics, 
 but we found only some flakes of arrowhead stone,
 
 6 KATAHDIN 
 
 some points of arrowheads, one small leaden bullet, and 
 some colored beads, the last to be referred, perhaps, 
 to early fur-trader days. The Mattawamkeag, though 
 wide, was a mere river's bed, full of rocks and shallows 
 at this time, so that you could cross it almost dry-shod 
 in boots. 
 
 Before our companions arrived, we rode on up the 
 Houlton road seven miles to Molunkus, 1 where the 
 Aroostook 2 road comes into it, and where there is a 
 spacious public house in the woods. There was no 
 other evidence of man but this huge shingle palace in 
 this part of the world; but sometimes even this is filled 
 with travelers. I looked off the piazza round the cor- 
 ner of the house up the Aroostook road, on which there 
 was no clearing in sight. There was a man just adven- 
 turing upon it this evening in a rude, original wagon 
 a mere seat with a wagon swung under it. Here, 
 too, was a small trader who kept a store in a box over 
 the way, behind the Molunkus sign-post. I saw him 
 standing in his shop door. His shop was so small, that, 
 if a traveler should make demonstrations of entering, 
 he would have to go out by the back way and confer 
 with his customer through a window about his goods. 
 
 I think that there was not more than one house on 
 the road to Molunkus. At that place we got over the 
 fence into a new field, planted with potatoes, where 
 the logs were still burning between the hills; and, pull- 
 ing up the vines, found good-sized potatoes, nearly 
 ripe. The mode of clearing and planting is, to fell the 
 trees, and burn once what will burn, then cut them up 
 into suitable lengths, roll into heaps, and burn again ; 
 then, with a hoe, plant potatoes where you can come at 
 
 1 Mi-lunk'us. 2 A-robs'took.
 
 KATAHDIN 7 
 
 the ground between the stumps and charred logs. For 
 a first crop the ashes suffice for manure, and no hoeing 
 is necessary the first year. In the fall cut, roll, and burn 
 again, and so on, till the land is cleared ; and soon it is 
 ready for grain. Let those talk of poverty and hard 
 times who will in the towns and cities; cannot the 
 emigrant who can pay his fare to New York or Boston 
 pay five dollars more to get here, and be as rich as 
 he pleases, where land virtually costs nothing, and 
 houses only the labor of building, and he may begin 
 life as Adam did ? 
 
 We returned to the Mattawamkeag, where shortly 
 afterward our companions arrived. 
 
 Early the next morning we had mounted our packs, 
 and prepared for a tramp up the West Branch, my 
 companion having turned his horse out to pasture, 
 thinking that a bite of fresh grass and a taste of run- 
 ning water would do him as much good as backwoods 
 fare and new country influences his master. Leaping 
 over a fence, we began to follow an obscure trail up the 
 northern bank of the Penobscot. There was now no 
 road further, the river being the only highway, and 
 but half a dozen log huts to be met with for thirty 
 miles. On either hand, and beyond, was a wholly un- 
 inhabited wilderness, stretching to Canada. Neither 
 horse nor cow, nor vehicle of any kind, had ever passed 
 over this ground ; the cattle, and the few bulky articles 
 which the loggers use, being got up in the winter on the 
 ice, and down again before it breaks up. The evergreen 
 woods had a decidedly sweet and bracing fragrance; 
 the air was a sort of diet-drink, and we walked on 
 buoyantly in Indian file, stretching our legs. Occa- 
 sionally there was a small opening on the bank, made
 
 8 KATAHDIN 
 
 for the purpose of log-rolling, where we got a sight of 
 the river always a rocky and rippling stream. The 
 roar of the rapids, the note of a whistler duck on the 
 river, of the jay and chickadee around us, and of the 
 pigeon woodpecker in the openings, were the sounds 
 that we heard. This was what you might call a brand- 
 new country ; the only roads were of Nature's making, 
 and the few houses were camps. 
 
 There are three classes of inhabitants who either 
 frequent or inhabit the country which we had now en- 
 tered : first, the loggers, who for the winter and spring 
 are far the most numerous, but in the summer, except 
 a few explorers for timber, completely desert it; sec- 
 ond, the few settlers I have named, the only perma- 
 nent inhabitants, who live on the verge of it, and 
 help raise supplies for the former; third, the hunters, 
 mostly Indians, who range over it in their season. 
 
 We crossed one tract, on the bank of the river, of more 
 than a hundred acres of heavy timber, which had just 
 been felled and burnt over, and was still smoking. Our 
 trail lay through the midst of it, and was well-nigh 
 blotted out. The trees lay at full length, four or five 
 feet deep, and crossing each other in all directions, 
 black as charcoal, but perfectly sound within, still 
 good for fuel or for timber. Soon they would be cut 
 into lengths and burnt again. Here were thousands 
 of cords, enough to keep the poor of Boston and New 
 York amply warm for a winter, which only cumbered 
 the ground and were in the settler's way. And the 
 whole of that solid and interminable forest is doomed 
 to be gradually devoured thus by fire and no man be 
 warmed by it. At Crocker's log hut, at the mouth of 
 Salmon River, seven miles from the Point, one of the
 
 KATAHDIN 9 
 
 party commenced distributing a store of small cent 
 picture-books among the children to teach them to 
 read, and also newspapers, more or less recent, among 
 the parents, than which nothing can be more accept- 
 able to a backwoods people. I walked through Salmon 
 River with my shoes on, it being low water, but not 
 without wetting my feet. A few miles farther we came 
 to ' Mann Howard's," at the end of an extensive clear- 
 ing, where there were two or three log huts in sight at 
 once. 
 
 The next house was Fisk's, ten miles from the Point 
 at the mouth of the East Branch. Our course here 
 crossed the Penobscot. One of the party, who entered 
 the house in search of some one to set us over, reported 
 a very neat dwelling, with plenty of books, and a new 
 wife, just imported from Boston. Having with some 
 difficulty discovered the trail again, we kept up the 
 south side of the West Branch, or main river, passing 
 by some rapids, the roar of which we heard through 
 the woods, and, shortly after, some empty loggers' 
 camps. Though we saw a few more afterward, I will 
 make one account serve for all. These were such 
 houses as the lumberers of Maine spend the winter in. 
 There were the camps and the hovels for the cattle, 
 hardly distinguishable, except that the latter had 
 no chimney. These camps were about twenty feet 
 long by fifteen wide, built of logs, hemlock, cedar, 
 spruce, or yellow birch one kind alone, or all to- 
 gether, with the bark on; two or three large ones 
 first, one directly above another, and notched together 
 at the ends, to the height of three or four feet, then of 
 smaller logs resting upon transverse ones at the ends, 
 each of the last successively shorter than the other, to
 
 10 KATAHDIN 
 
 form the roof. The chimney was an oblong hole in the 
 middle, three or four feet in diameter, with a fence of 
 logs as high as the ridge. The interstices were filled 
 with moss, and the roof was shingled with long splints 
 of cedar, or spruce, or pine, rifted with a sledge and 
 cleaver. The fireplace was in shape like the chimney, 
 and directly under it, defined by a log fender on the 
 ground and aheap of ashes, with solid benches of split 
 logs running round it. Here the fire usually melts the 
 snow and dries the rain before it can descend to quench 
 it. The faded beds of arbor-vitse leaves extended under 
 the eaves on either hand. There was the place for the 
 water-pail, pork-barrel, and wash-basin, and generally 
 a dingy pack of cards left on a log. These houses are 
 made comfortable by huge fires. Usually the scenery 
 about them is drear and savage ; and the logger's camp 
 is as completely in the woods as a fungus at the foot of 
 a pine in a swamp ; no outlook but to the sky overhead ; 
 no more clearing than is made by cutting down the 
 trees of which it is built, and those which are necessary 
 for fuel. If only it be well sheltered and convenient 
 to his work, and near a spring, he wastes no thought 
 on the prospect. They are very proper forest houses, 
 the stems of the trees collected together and piled up 
 around a man to keep out wind and rain made of 
 living green logs, hanging with moss and lichen, and 
 with the curls and fringes of the yellow birch bark, 
 and dripping with resin, fresh and moist, and redolent 
 of swampy odors, with that sort of vigor and peren- 
 nialness about them that toadstools suggest. The 
 logger's fare consists of tea, molasses, flour, pork 
 (sometimes beef), and beans, A great proportion of 
 the beans raised in Massachusetts find their market
 
 KATAHDIN 11 
 
 here. On expeditions it is only hard-bread and pork, 
 often raw, slice on slice, with tea or water, as the case 
 may be. 
 
 The primitive wood is always and everywhere damp 
 and mossy, so that I traveled constantly with the im- 
 pression that I was in a swamp ; and only when it was 
 remarked that this or that tract, judging from the qual- 
 ity of the timber on it, would make a profitable clear- 
 ing, was I reminded, that if the sun were let in it would 
 make a dry field. The woods hereabouts abounded in 
 beech and yellow birch, spruce, cedar, fir, and hem- 
 lock ; but we saw only the stumps of the white pine, 
 some of them of great size, these having been already 
 culled out. Only a little spruce and hemlock had been 
 logged. The Eastern wood which is sold for fuel in 
 Massachusetts all comes from below Bangor. It was 
 the pine alone that had tempted any but the hunter 
 to precede us on this route. 
 
 Eighteen miles from the Point brought us in sight of 
 McCauslin's, or " Uncle George's," as he was famil- 
 iarly called by my companions, to whom he was well 
 known, where we intended to break our long fast. His 
 house was in the midst of an extensive clearing on the 
 opposite bank of the Penobscot. So we collected on a 
 point of the shore, that we might be seen, and fired our 
 gun as a signal, which brought out his dogs forthwith, 
 and thereafter their master, who in due time took us 
 across in his bateau. This clearing was bounded ab- 
 ruptly, on all sides but the river, by the naked stems of 
 the forest, as if you were to cut only a few feet square 
 in the midst of a thousand acres of mowing, and set 
 down a thimble therein. He had a whole heaven and 
 horizon to himself, and the sun seemed to be journey-
 
 12 KATAHDIN 
 
 ing over his clearing only the livelong day. Here we 
 concluded to wait for the Indians. 
 
 McCauslin had been a waterman twenty-two years, 
 and had driven on the lakes and headwaters of the 
 Penobscot five or six springs in succession, but was 
 now settled here to raise supplies for the lumberers 
 and for himself. He entertained us a day or two with 
 true Scotch hospitality, and would accept no recom- 
 pense for it, a man of a dry wit and shrewdness, and 
 a general intelligence which I had not looked for in 
 the backwoods. In fact, the deeper you penetrate into 
 the woods, the more intelligent, and, in one sense, 
 less countrified do you find the inhabitants ; for always 
 the pioneer has been a traveler, and, to some extent, 
 a man of the world ; and, as the distances with which 
 he is familiar are greater, so is his information more 
 general and far reaching than the villager's. If I were 
 to look for a narrow, uninformed, and countrified 
 mind, as opposed to the intelligence and refinement 
 which are thought to emanate from cities, it would be 
 among the rusty inhabitants of an old-settled country, 
 on farms all run out and gone to seed with life-ever- 
 lasting, in the towns about Boston, and not in the 
 backwoods of Maine. 
 
 Supper was got before our eyes in the ample kitchen, 
 by a fire which would have roasted an ox. Many 
 whole logs, four feet long, were consumed to boil our 
 tea-kettle birch, or beech, or'maple; and the dishes 
 were soon smoking on the table, late the armchair, 
 against the wall, from which one of the party was 
 expelled. The arms of the chair formed the frame on 
 which the table rested; and when the round top was 
 turned up against the wall, it formed the back of the
 
 KATAHDIN , 13 
 
 chair and was no more in the way than the wall itself. 
 This, we noticed, was the prevailing fashion in these 
 log houses, in order to economize in room. There 
 were piping-hot wheaten cakes, the flour having been 
 brought up the river in bateaux, and ham, eggs, and 
 potatoes, and milk and cheese, the produce of the 
 farm; and also shad and salmon, tea sweetened with 
 molasses, and sweet cakes, in contradistinction to the 
 hot cakes not sweetened, the one white, the other 
 yellow, to wind up with. Such we found was the 
 prevailing fare, along this river. Mountain cranber- 
 ries, stewed and sweetened, were the common dessert. 
 Everything here was in profusion, and the best of its 
 kind. Butter was in such plenty that it was commonly 
 used, before it was salted, to grease boots with. 
 
 In the night we were entertained by the sound of 
 raindrops on the cedar splints which covered the roof, 
 and awaked the next morning with a drop or two in 
 our eyes. It rained and drizzled and gleamed by 
 turns, the livelong day. What we did there would per- 
 haps be idle to tell ; how many times we buttered our 
 boots, and how often a drowsy one was seen to sidle 
 off to the bedroom. When it held up, I strolled up 
 and down the bank, and gathered the harebell and 
 cedar berries ; or else we tried by turns the long-han- 
 dled axe on the logs before the door. One while we 
 walked over the farm and visited his well-filled barns 
 with McCauslin. There were one other man and two 
 women only here. He kept horses, cows, oxen, and 
 sheep. The potato-rot had found him out the previous 
 year and got half or two thirds of his crop. Oats, 
 grass, and potatoes were his staples; but he raised, 
 also, a few carrots and turnips, and " a little corn for
 
 14 KATAHDIN 
 
 the hens," for this was all that he dared risk, for fear 
 that it would not ripen. Melons, squashes, sweet corn, 
 beans, tomatoes, and many other vegetables could 
 not be ripened there. 
 
 The few settlers along this stream were obviously 
 tempted by the cheapness of the land mainly. When 
 I asked McCauslin why more settlers did not come in, 
 he answered that one reason was they could not buy 
 the land, it belonged to individuals or companies who 
 were afraid that their wild lands would be settled, 
 and so incorporated into towns, and they be taxed 
 for them ; but to settling on the State's land there was 
 no such hindrance. For his own part, he wanted no 
 neighbors he did n't wish to see any road by his 
 house. Neighbors, even the best, were a trouble and 
 expense, especially on the score of cattle and fences. 
 They might live across the river, perhaps, but not on 
 the same side. 
 
 The chickens here were protected by the dogs. As 
 McCauslin said, " The old one took it up first, and she 
 taught the pup, and now they had got it into their 
 heads that it would n't do to have anything of the bird 
 kind on the premises." A hawk hovering over was not 
 allowed to alight, but barked off by the dogs circling 
 about underneath; and a pigeon, or a "yellow-ham- 
 mer," as they called the pigeon woodpecker, on a dead 
 limb or stump, was instantly expelled. It was the 
 main business of their day, and kept them constantly 
 coming and going. One would rush out of the house 
 on the least alarm given by the other. 
 
 The house, which was a fair specimen of those on 
 this river, was built of huge logs, which peeped out 
 everywhere, and were chinked with clay and moss.
 
 KATAHDIN 15 
 
 It contained four or five rooms. There were no sawed 
 boards, or shingles, or clapboards about it ; and scarcely 
 any tool but the axe had been used in its construction. 
 The partitions were made of long clapboard-like 
 splints, of spruce or cedar, turned to a delicate salmon- 
 color by the smoke. The roof and sides were covered 
 with the same, instead of shingles and clapboards, and 
 some of a much thicker and larger size were used for 
 the floor. These were all so straight and smooth that 
 they answered the purpose admirably, and a careless 
 observer would not have suspected that they were not 
 sawed and planed. The chimney and hearth were of 
 vast size, and made of stone. The broom was a few 
 twigs of arbor-vitse tied to a stick ; and a pole was 
 suspended over the hearth, close to the ceiling, to dry 
 stockings and clothes on. I noticed that the floor was 
 full of small, dingy holes, as if made with a gimlet, 
 but which were, in fact, made by the spikes, nearly 
 an inch long, which the lumberers wear in their boots 
 to prevent their slipping on wet logs. Just above Mc- 
 Causlin's, there is a rocky rapid, where logs jam in 
 the spring; and many "drivers" are there collected, 
 who frequent his house for supplies. These were their 
 tracks which I saw. 
 
 The next morning, the weather proving fair enough 
 for our purpose, we prepared to start, and, the Indians 
 having failed us, persuaded McCauslin to accompany 
 us in their stead, intending to engage one other boat- 
 man on the way. A strip of cotton cloth for a tent, a 
 couple of blankets, which would suffice for the whole 
 party, fifteen pounds of hard bread, ten pounds of 
 pork, and a little tea, made up " Uncle George's " pack. 
 The last three articles were calculated to be provision
 
 16 KATAHDIN 
 
 enough for six men for a week, with what we might 
 pick up. A tea-kettle, a frying-pan, and an axe, to be 
 obtained at the last house, would complete our outfit. 
 
 We were soon out of McCauslin's clearing and in the 
 evergreen woods again. The obscure trail made by the 
 two settlers above, which even the woodman is some- 
 times puzzled to discern, ere long crossed a narrow 
 open strip in the woods overrun with weeds, where a 
 fire had raged formerly. At the end of three miles we 
 reached Shad Pond. Thomas Fowler's house is four 
 miles from McCauslin's, on the shore of the pond, at 
 the mouth of the Millinocket * River. Fowler was just 
 completing a new log hut, and was sawing out a win- 
 dow through the logs when we arrived. He had begun 
 to paper his house with spruce bark turned inside out. 
 As we stood on the pile of chips by the door, fish hawks 
 were sailing overhead. Tom pointed away over the 
 lake to a bald eagle's nest, which was plainly visible 
 more than a mile off, on a pine, high above the sur- 
 rounding forest, and was frequented from year to 
 year by the same pair. There were these two houses 
 only there, his low hut and the eagle's airy cartload 
 of fagots. 
 
 Thomas Fowler was persuaded to join us, for two 
 men were necessary to manage the bateau, which was 
 to be our carriage. Tom's pack was soon made, for 
 he had not far to look for his waterman's boots and 
 a red flannel shirt. Red is the favorite color with lum- 
 bermen ; and red flannel is reputed to possess some 
 mysterious virtues, to be most healthful and convenient 
 in respect to perspiration. In every gang there will be 
 a large proportion of red birds. We took here a poor 
 
 i AKM-nok'gt.
 
 KATAHDIN 17 
 
 and leaky bateau, and began to pole up the Millinocket 
 two miles to the elder Fowler's, in order to avoid 
 the Grand Falls of the Penobscot, intending to ex- 
 change our bateau there for a better. The Millinocket 
 is a small, shallow, and sandy stream, full of what I 
 took to be lamprey eels' or suckers' nests, and lined 
 with musquash l cabins, but free from rapids, accord- 
 ing to Fowler, excepting at its outlet from the lake. He 
 was at this time engaged in cutting the native grass 
 rush-grass and meadow-clover, as he called it on 
 the meadows and small, low islands of this stream. We 
 noticed flattened places in the grass on either side, 
 where, he said, a moose had laid down the night before. 
 Old Fowler's is the last house. Here our new bateau 
 was to be carried over the first portage of two miles 
 round the Grand Falls, on a horse-sled made of sap- 
 lings to jump the numerous rocks in the way ; but we 
 had to wait a couple of hours for them to catch the 
 horses, which were pastured at a distance amid the 
 stumps, and had wandered still farther off. The last 
 of the salmon for this season had just been caught, and 
 were still fresh in pickle, from which enough was ex- 
 tracted to fill our empty kettle. The week before, they 
 had lost nine sheep here by the wolves. The surviving 
 sheep came round the house, and seemed frightened, 
 which induced them to go and look for the rest, when 
 they found seven dead and two still alive. These last 
 they carried to the house, and, as Mrs. Fowler said, 
 they were merely scratched in the throat and had no 
 more visible wound than would be produced by the 
 prick of a pin. She sheared off the wool from their 
 throats, and washed them, and put on some salve, and 
 
 1 The Indian name for the muskrat.
 
 18 KATAHDIN 
 
 turned them out, but in a few moments they were miss- 
 ing and had not been found since. In fact, they were 
 all poisoned, and those that were found swelled up at 
 once, so that they saved neither skin nor wool. 
 
 At length, after we had dined, the horses arrived, 
 and we hauled our bateau out of the water and lashed 
 it to its wicker carriage, and, throwing in our packs, 
 walked on before, leaving the boatmen and driver, 
 who was Tom's brother, to manage the concern. The 
 route, which led through the wild pasture where the 
 sheep were killed, was in some places the roughest 
 ever traveled by horses, over rocky hills where the 
 sled bounced and slid along like a vessel pitching in 
 a storm ; and one man was necessary to stand at the 
 stern, to prevent the boat from being wrecked. When 
 the runners struck a rock three or four feet high, the 
 sled bounced back and upwards at the same time ; but, 
 as the horses never ceased pulling, it came down on 
 the top of the rock, and so we got over. This portage 
 probably followed the trail of an ancient Indian carry 
 round these falls. By two o'clock we, who had walked 
 on before, reached the river above the falls, and waited 
 for the bateau. We had been here but a short time when 
 a thunder-shower was seen coming up from the west, 
 and soon the heavy drops began to patter on the leaves 
 around us. I had just selected the prostrate trunk of a 
 huge pine, five or six feet in diameter, and was crawling 
 under it, when, luckily, the boat arrived. It would 
 have amused a sheltered man to witness the manner 
 in which it was unlashed and whirled over, while the 
 first waterspout burst on us. It was no sooner adjusted 
 than we might have been seen all stooping to its shelter 
 and wriggling under like so many eels. When all were
 
 KATAHDIN 19 
 
 under we propped up the lee side, and busied ourselves 
 whittling thole-pins for rowing; and made the woods 
 ring, between the claps of thunder, with such boat- 
 songs as we could remember. The horses stood sleek 
 and shining with the rain, drooping and crestfallen, 
 while deluge after deluge washed over us ; but the bot- 
 tom of a boat may be relied on for a tight roof. After 
 two hours' delay, a streak of fair weather appeared 
 in the northwest, promising a serene evening for our 
 voyage ; and the driver returned with his horses, while 
 we made haste to launch our boat, and commence our 
 voyage in good earnest. 
 
 There were six of us, including the two boatmen. 
 With our packs heaped up near the bows, and ourselves 
 disposed as baggage to trim the boat, with instructions 
 not to move in case we should strike a rock, we pushed 
 out into the first rapid. With Uncle George in the stern 
 and Tom in the bow, each using a spruce pole about 
 twelve feet long, pointed with iron, and poling on the 
 same side, we shot up the rapids, the water rushing 
 and roaring around, so that only a practiced eye could 
 distinguish a safe course, or tell what was deep water 
 and what rocks, frequently grazing the latter, with 
 a hundred narrow escapes. I, who had had some 
 experience in boating, had never experienced any 
 half so exhilarating before. We were lucky to have 
 exchanged our Indians for these men, who, together 
 with Tom's brother, were reputed the best boatmen 
 on the river, and were at once indispensable pilots 
 and pleasant companions. The canoe is smaller, more 
 easily upset, and sooner worn out ; and the Indian is 
 said not to be so skillful in the management of the 
 bateau. He is, for the most part, less to be relied on,
 
 20 KATAHDIN 
 
 and more disposed to sulks and whims. The utmost 
 familiarity with dead streams, or with the ocean, would 
 not prepare a man for this peculiar navigation; and 
 the most skillful boatman anywhere else would here 
 be obliged to take out his boat and carry round a hun- 
 dred times, still with great risk, as well as delay, where 
 the practiced bateau-man poles up with comparative 
 ease and safety. The hardy " voyageur" pushes with 
 incredible perseverance and success quite up to the foot 
 of the falls, and then only carries round some perpen- 
 dicular ledge, and launches again to struggle with the 
 boiling rapids above. The Indians say that the river 
 once ran both ways, one half up and the other down, 
 but that, since the white man came, it all runs down, 
 and now they must laboriously pole their canoes 
 against the stream, and carry them over numerous 
 portages. In the summer, all stores the grindstone 
 and the plow of the pioneer, flour, pork, and uten- 
 sils for the explorer must be conveyed up the river 
 in bateaux; and many a cargo and many a boatman 
 is lost in these waters. In the winter, however, which is 
 very equable and long, the ice is the great highway, 
 and the logger's team penetrates even two hundred 
 miles above Bangor. Imagine the solitary sled-track 
 running far up into the snowy and evergreen wilder- 
 ness, hemmed in closely for a hundred miles by the 
 forest, and again stretching straight across the broad 
 surfaces of concealed lakes ! 
 
 We were soon in the smooth water of the Qua- 
 kish 1 Lake, and took our turns at rowing and paddling 
 across. It is a small, irregular, but handsome lake, 
 shut in on all sides by the forest, and showing no traces 
 
 1 Kwa'kish.
 
 KATAHDIN 21 
 
 of man but some low boom in a distant cove, reserved 
 for spring use. The spruce and cedar on its shores, 
 hung with gray lichens, looked at a distance like the 
 ghosts of trees. Ducks were sailing here and there on 
 its surface, and a solitary loon laughed and frolicked 
 for our amusement. Joe Merry Mountain appeared in 
 the northwest, and we had our first view of Katahdin, 
 its summit veiled in clouds, like a dark isthmus con- 
 necting the heavens with the earth. After two miles of 
 smooth rowing, we found ourselves in the river again, 
 which was a continuous rapid for one mile, to the dam, 
 requiring all the strength and skill of our boatmen to 
 pole up it. 
 
 This dam is a quite important and expensive work 
 for this country, raising the whole river ten feet, and 
 flooding some sixty square miles by means of the innu- 
 merable lakes with which the river connects. It is 
 a lofty and solid structure, with sloping piers, some 
 distance above, made of frames of logs filled with 
 stones, to break the ice. 
 
 We filed into the rude loggers' camp at this place, 
 without ceremony, and the cook, at that moment the 
 sole occupant, at once set about preparing tea for his 
 visitors. His fireplace, which the rain had converted 
 into a mud-puddle, was soon blazing, and we sat down 
 on the log benches around it to dry us. On the well- 
 flattened and somewhat faded beds of arbor-vitae 
 leaves, which stretched on either hand under the eaves 
 behind us, lay an odd leaf of the Bible, and we found 
 Emerson's Address on West India Emancipation, 
 also an odd number of the Westminster Review and 
 a pamphlet entitled " History of the Erection of the 
 Monument on the Grave of Myron Holly." This was
 
 22 KATAHDIN 
 
 the reading-matter in a lumberers' camp in the Maine 
 woods, thirty miles from a road, which would be given 
 up to the bears in a fortnight. These things were well 
 thumbed and soiled. This gang was necessarily com- 
 posed of men not bred to the business of dam-building, 
 but who were jacks-at-all-trades, handy with the axe 
 and other simple implements, and well skilled in wood 
 and water craft. We had hot cakes for our supper 
 even here, white as snowballs, but without butter, 
 and the never-failing sweet cakes, with which we 
 filled our pockets, foreseeing that we should not soon 
 meet with the like again. Such delicate puff balls 
 seemed a singular diet for backwoodsmen. There 
 was also tea without milk, sweetened with molasses. 
 When we had returned to the shore, we made haste to 
 improve the little daylight that remained. This camp 
 was the last human habitation of any kind in this di- 
 rection. Beyond there was no trail ; and the river and 
 lakes, by bateaus and canoes, was considered the only 
 practicable route. We were about thirty miles by the 
 river from the summit of Katahdin, though not more 
 than twenty, perhaps, in a straight line. 
 
 It being about the full of the moon, and a warm and 
 pleasant evening, we decided to row by moonlight to 
 the head of the North Twin Lake, lest the wind should 
 rise on the morrow. After one mile of river, or what 
 the boatmen call " thoroughfare," we entered the lake 
 just after sundown. This is a noble sheet of water. 
 There was the smoke of no log hut nor camp of any 
 kind to greet us, still less was any traveler watching 
 our bateau from the distant hills. Not even the Indian 
 hunter was there, for he hugs the river like ourselves. 
 No face welcomed us but the fine fantastic sprays of
 
 KATAHDIN 23 
 
 free and happy evergreen trees, waving one above 
 another in their ancient home. At first the red clouds 
 hung over the western shore as gorgeously as if over a 
 city, and the lake lay open to the light with even a civ- 
 ilized aspect, as if expecting trade and commerce, and 
 towns and villas. The shores rose gently to ranges of 
 low hills covered with forests; and though the most 
 valuable white pine timber had been culled out, this 
 would never have been suspected by the voyager. 
 
 We were on a high table-land between the States 
 and Canada, the northern side of which is drained by 
 the St. John and Chaudiere, 1 the southern by the 
 Penobscot and Kennebec. There was no bold, moun- 
 tainous shore, but only isolated hills and mountains. 
 The country is an archipelago of lakes. Their lev- 
 els vary but a few feet, and the boatmen by short 
 portages, or by none at all, pass easily from one to 
 another. They say that at very high water the Penob- 
 scot and the Kennebec flow into each other, or at any 
 rate, that you may lie with your face in the one and 
 your toes in the other. 
 
 None of our party but McCauslin had been above 
 this lake, so we trusted to him to pilot us, and we could 
 not but confess the importance of a pilot on these 
 waters. While it is river, you will not easily forget 
 which way is up-stream, but when you enter a lake, the 
 river is completely lost, and you scan the distant shores 
 in vain to find where it comes in. A stranger is, for the 
 tune at least, lost, and must set about a voyage of 
 discovery to find the river. To follow the windings of 
 the shore when the lake is ten miles, or even more, 
 in length, and of an irregularity which will not soon be 
 
 i Sho'dySr'.
 
 24 KATAHDIN 
 
 mapped, is a wearisome voyage, and will spend his time 
 and his provisions. They tell a story of a gang of ex- 
 perienced woodmen sent to a location on this stream, 
 who were thus lost in the wilderness of lakes. They 
 cut their way through thickets, and carried their bag- 
 gage and their boats over from lake to lake, sometimes 
 several miles. They carried into Millinocket Lake, 
 which is on another stream, and is ten miles square, 
 and contains a hundred islands. They explored its 
 shores thoroughly, and then carried into another, and 
 another, and it was a week of toil and anxiety before 
 they found the Penobscot River again, and then their 
 provisions were exhausted, and they were obliged to 
 return. 
 
 While Uncle George steered for a small island near 
 the head of the lake, we rowed by turns swiftly over its 
 surface. The shores seemed at an indefinite distance 
 in the moonlight. Occasionally we rested on our oars, 
 while we listened to hear if the wolves howled, for this 
 is a common serenade, and my companions affirmed 
 that it was the most dismal and unearthly of sounds, 
 but we heard none this time. Only some utterly un- 
 civilized, big-throated owl hooted loud and dismally 
 in the drear and boughy wilderness, plainly not ner- 
 vous about his solitary life, nor afraid to hear the 
 echoes of his voice there. 
 
 About nine o'clock we reached the river, and ran our 
 boat into a natural haven between some rocks, and 
 drew her out on the sand. This camping-ground Mc- 
 Causlin had been familiar with in his lumbering days, 
 and we heard the sound of the rill which would supply 
 us with cool water emptying into the lake. The first 
 business was to make a fire, an operation which was a
 
 KATAHDIN 25 
 
 little delayed by the wetness of the fuel and the ground, 
 owing to the heavy showers of the afternoon. The fire 
 is the main comfort of the camp, whether in summer or 
 winter, and is about as ample at one season as at an- 
 other. It is as well for cheerfulness as for warmth and 
 dryness. Some were dispersed to fetch in dead trees 
 and boughs, while Uncle George felled the birches 
 and beeches which stood convenient, and soon we had 
 a fire some ten feet long by three or four high, which 
 rapidly dried the sand before it. This was calculated 
 to burn all night. We next proceeded to pitch our tent; 
 which operation was performed by sticking our two 
 spike-poles into the ground in a slanting direction, 
 about ten feet apart, for rafters, and then drawing our 
 cotton cloth over them and tying it down at the ends, 
 leaving it open in front, shed-fashion. But this even- 
 ing the wind carried the sparks on to the tent. So we 
 hastily drew up the bateau just within the edge of 
 the woods before the fire, and propping up one side 
 three or four feet high, spread the tent on the ground 
 to lie on ; and with the corner of a blanket, or what 
 we could get to put over us, lay down with our heads 
 and bodies under the boat, and our feet and legs on 
 the sand toward the fire. 
 
 At first we lay awake, talking of our course. But 
 at length we composed ourselves seriously to sleep. It 
 was interesting when awakened at midnight to watch 
 the motions of some one of the party, who had got up 
 to arouse the fire and add fresh fuel; now lugging a 
 dead tree from out the dark, and heaving it on, now 
 stirring up the embers, or tiptoeing about to observe 
 the stars. Thus aroused, I too brought fresh fuel to 
 the fire, and then rambled along the sandy shore
 
 26 KATAHDIN 
 
 in the moonlight. The little rill tinkled and peopled 
 all the wilderness for me ; and the glassy smoothness 
 of the sleeping lake, laving the shores, with the dark, 
 fantastic rocks rising here and there from its surface, 
 made a scene not easily described. Later, we were 
 one after another awakened by rain falling on our ex- 
 tremities ; and as each was made aware of the fact by 
 cold or wet, he drew up his legs, until gradually we had 
 all sidled round so that our bodies were wholly pro- 
 tected. When next we awoke, the moon and stars were 
 shining again, and there were signs of dawn in the east. 
 
 We had soon launched and loaded our boat, and, 
 leaving our fire blazing, were off again before break- 
 fast. The lumberers rarely trouble themselves to put 
 out their fires, such is the dampness of the primitive 
 forest ; and this is one cause, no doubt, of the frequent 
 fires in Maine. The forests are held cheap after the 
 white pine has been culled out ; and the explorers and 
 hunters pray for rain only to clear the atmosphere of 
 smoke. The woods were so wet to-day, however, that 
 there was no danger of our fire spreading. After poling 
 up half a mile of river, we rowed across the foot of 
 Pamadumcook 1 Lake, and passed into Deep Cove, a 
 part of the same lake, and, rowing across this, by an- 
 other short thoroughfare entered Ambejijis 2 Lake. 
 
 At the entrance to a lake we sometimes observed the 
 unhewn timbers of which booms are formed, either 
 secured together in the water, or laid up on the rocks 
 and lashed to trees, for spring use. It was easy to see 
 that driving logs must be an exciting as well as arduous 
 and dangerous business. All winter long the logger 
 goes on piling up the trees which he has trimmed and 
 
 1 Pam-A-dum'kook. 2 Am-b6-je'jls.
 
 Copyright, 1909, by William Lyman Underwood 
 
 WINTER LOGGING 
 
 Copyright, 1U09, by William Lyman Underwood 
 
 KIVER-DKIVEKS AT WORK
 
 KATAHDIN 27 
 
 hauled in some dry ravine at the head of a stream, and 
 then in the spring he stands on the bank and whistles 
 for Rain and Thaw, ready to wring the perspiration 
 out of his shirt to swell the tide, till suddenly, with 
 a whoop and halloo from him, a fair proportion of 
 his winter's work goes scrambling down the country, 
 followed by his faithful dogs, Thaw and Rain and 
 Freshet and Wind, the whole pack in full cry, toward 
 the mills. Every log is marked with the owner's name, 
 cut with an axe or bored with an auger, so deep as not 
 to be worn off in the driving, and yet not so as to injure 
 the timber; and it requires considerable ingenuity to 
 invent new and simple marks where there are so many 
 owners. When the logs have run the gauntlet of in- 
 numerable rapids and falls, with more or less jamming 
 and bruising, those bearing various owners' marks be- 
 ing mixed up together, since all must take advantage 
 of the same freshet, they are collected at the heads of 
 the lakes and surrounded by a boom to prevent their 
 being dispersed by the wind. Then they are towed 
 across the lake by a windlass, and, if circumstances 
 permit, with the aid of sails and oars. Sometimes, not- 
 withstanding, the logs are dispersed over many miles 
 of lake surface in a few hours by winds and freshets, 
 and thrown up on distant shores, where the driver 
 can pick up only one or two at a time and return with 
 them to the thoroughfare ; and before he gets his flock 
 well through Ambejijis or Pamadumcook, he makes 
 many a wet and uncomfortable camp on the shore. 
 He must be able to navigate a log as if it were a 
 canoe, and be as indifferent to cold and wet as a musk- 
 rat. He uses few tools a lever commonly of rock 
 maple, six or seven feet long with a stout spike in it,
 
 28 KATAHDIN 
 
 and a long spike-pole with a screw at the end of the 
 spike to make it hold. The boys along shore learn to 
 walk on floating logs as city boys on sidewalks. Some- 
 times the logs are thrown up on rocks in such posi- 
 tions as to be irrecoverable but by another freshet 
 as high, or they jam together at rapids and falls, and 
 accumulate in vast piles, which the driver must start 
 at the risk of his life. Such is the lumber business, 
 which depends on many accidents, as the early freez- 
 ing of the rivers that the teams may get up in season, 
 a sufficient freshet in the spring to fetch the logs 
 down, and many others. 
 
 Ambejijis struck me as the most beautiful lake we 
 had seen. We rowed to near the head of it, and push- 
 ing through a field of lily-pads, landed, to cook our 
 breakfast, by the side of a large rock. Our breakfast 
 consisted of tea, with hard-bread and pork, and fried 
 salmon, which we ate with forks whittled from alder- 
 twigs off strips of birch-bark for plates. The tea was 
 without milk to color or sugar to sweeten it, and two 
 tin dippers were our teacups. This beverage is as 
 indispensable to the loggers as to any gossiping old 
 women in the land, and they no doubt derive great 
 comfort from it. 
 
 In the next nine miles, we rowed across several 
 small lakes, poled up numerous rapids and thorough- 
 fares, and carried over four portages. 
 
 At the portage around Ambejijis Falls I observed 
 a pork-barrel on the shore, with a hole eight or nine 
 inches square cut in one side. The barrel was set 
 against an upright rock, but the bears, without turning 
 or upsetting it, had gnawed a hole in the opposite side, 
 which looked exactly like an enormous rat-hole, big
 
 KATAHDIN 29 
 
 enough to put their heads in ; and at the bottom of 
 the barrel were still left a few mangled and slabbered 
 slices of pork. It is usual for the lumberers to leave 
 such supplies as they cannot conveniently carry along 
 at carries or camps, to which the next comers do not 
 scruple to help themselves. At this portage there was 
 the roughest path imaginable cut through the woods ; 
 at first up hill, at an angle of nearly forty-five degrees, 
 over rocks and logs without end. We first carried over 
 our baggage, then returning to the bateau, we dragged 
 it up the hill by the painter, and onward, with frequent 
 pauses, over half the portage. But this was a bungling 
 way, and would soon have worn out the boat. Com- 
 monly, three men walk over with a bateau weighing 
 from three to five or six hundred pounds on their heads 
 and shoulders, the tallest standing under the middle of 
 the boat, which is turned over, and one at each end. 
 More cannot well take hold at once. This requires 
 some practice, as well as strength, and is in any case 
 extremely laborious. We were, on the whole, rather an 
 invalid party, and could render our boatmen but little 
 assistance. Our two men at length took the bateau upon 
 their shoulders, and while two of us steadied it, to pre- 
 vent it from rocking and wearing into their shoulders, 
 on which they placed their hats folded, walked bravely 
 over the remaining distance, with two or three pauses. 
 In the same manner they accomplished the other por- 
 tages. With this crushing weight they must climb and 
 stumble along over fallen trees and slippery rocks of all 
 sizes, where those who walked by the sides were con- 
 tinually brushed off, such was the narrowness of the 
 path. But we were fortunate not to have to cut our 
 path in the first place. Before we launched our boat,
 
 30 KATAHDIN 
 
 we scraped the bottom smooth with our knives, where 
 it had rubbed on the rocks, to save friction. 
 
 To avoid the difficulties of the portage, our men de- 
 termined to "warp up" the Passamagamet 1 Falls; so 
 while the rest walked over the portage with the baggage, 
 I remained in the bateau, to assist in warping up. We 
 were soon in the midst of the rapids, which were more 
 swift and tumultuous than any we had poled up, and 
 had turned to the side of the stream for the purpose 
 of warping, when the boatmen, who felt some pride in 
 their skill, and were ambitious to do something more 
 than usual, for my benefit as I surmised, took one more 
 view of the falls, pushed again into the midst of the 
 stream, and began to struggle with the current. I 
 sat in the middle of the boat to trim it, moving slightly 
 to the right or left as it grazed a rock. With an un- 
 certain and wavering motion we wound and bolted 
 our way up, until the bow was actually raised two feet 
 above the stern at the steepest pitch; and then, when 
 everything depended upon his exertions, the bowman's 
 pole snapped in two ; but before he had time to take 
 the spare one, which I reached him, he had saved 
 himself with the fragment upon a rock ; and so we 
 got up by a hair's breadth. Uncle George exclaimed 
 that that was never done before, and he had not tried 
 it if he had not known whom he had got in the bow, 
 nor he in the bow, if he had not known him in the 
 stern. 
 
 I could not sufficiently admire the skill and cool- 
 ness with which they performed this feat, never speak- 
 ing to each other. The bowman, not looking behind, 
 bu,t knowing exactly what the other is about, works as 
 l PSs-d-md-gSm'St.
 
 POLIXG UP-STREAM 
 
 KUXMNG DOWN-STREAM
 
 KATAHDIN 31 
 
 if he worked alone. Now sounding in vain for a bottom 
 in fifteen feet of water, while the boat falls back several 
 rods, held straight only with the greatest skill and 
 exertion ; or, while the sternman obstinately holds his 
 ground, the bowman springs from side to side with 
 wonderful suppleness and dexterity, scanning the 
 rapids and the rocks ; and now, having got a bite at 
 last, with a lusty shove, which makes his pole bend 
 and quiver, and the whole boat tremble, he gains a few 
 feet upon the river. To add to the danger, the poles 
 are liable at any time to be caught between the rocks, 
 and wrenched out of their hands, leaving them at the 
 mercy of the rapids the rocks, as it were, lying in 
 wait, like so many alligators, to catch the poles in their 
 teeth, and jerk them from your hands, before you 
 have stolen an effectual shove. Nothing but the length 
 and lightness, and the slight draught of the bateau, 
 enables them to make any headway. The bowman 
 must quickly choose his course; there is no time to 
 deliberate. Frequently the boat is shoved between 
 rocks where both sides touch, and the waters on either 
 hand are a perfect maelstrom. 
 
 Half a mile above this, two of us tried our hands at 
 poling up a slight rapid, and we were just surmounting 
 the last difficulty when an unlucky rock confounded 
 our calculations; and while the bateau was sweep- 
 ing round irrecoverably amid the whirlpool, we were 
 obliged to resign the poles to more skillful hands. 
 
 The forenoon was serene and placid. We were 
 occasionally startled by the scream of a bald eagle, 
 sailing over the stream in front of our bateau, or of 
 the fish hawks on whom he levies his contributions. 
 There were at intervals small meadows of a few acres
 
 32 KATAHDIN 
 
 on the sides of the streams, waving with uncut grass, 
 which attracted the attention of our boatmen, who 
 regretted that they were not nearer to their clear- 
 ings, and calculated how many stacks they might cut. 
 Two or three men sometimes spend the summer by 
 themselves, cutting the grass in these meadows, to 
 sell to the loggers in the winter, since it will fetch a 
 higher price on the spot than in any market in the 
 State. On a small isle covered with this grass we 
 noticed the recent track of a moose. They are fond 
 of the water, and visit all these island meadows, 
 swimming as easily from island to island as they 
 make their way through the thickets on land. 
 
 The carry around Pockwockomus 1 Falls was ex- 
 ceedingly rough and rocky, the bateau having to be 
 lifted directly from the water up four or five feet on 
 to a rock, and launched again down a similar bank. 
 The rocks on this portage were covered with the dents 
 made by the spikes in the lumberers' boots while 
 staggering over under the weight of their bateaux; 
 and you could see where the surface of some large 
 rocks on which they had rested their bateaux was 
 worn quite smooth with use. We carried over but 
 half the usual portage at this place, and launched our 
 boat in the smooth wave just curving to the fall, pre- 
 pared to struggle with the most violent rapid we had 
 to encounter. The rest of the party walked over the 
 remainder of the portage, while I remained with the 
 boatmen to assist in warping up. One had to hold the 
 boat while the others got in, to prevent it from going 
 over the falls. When we had pushed up the rapids as 
 far as possible, keeping close to the shore, Tom seized 
 
 1 Pok-wok'o-mus.
 
 KATAHDIX 33 
 
 the painter and leaped out upon a rock just visible 
 in the water, but he lost his footing, notwithstanding 
 his spiked boots, and was instantly amid the rapids ; 
 but recovering himself, and reaching another rock, he 
 passed the painter to me, who had followed him, and 
 took his place again in the bows. Leaping from rock 
 to rock in the shoal water, close to the shore, and now 
 and then getting a bite with the rope round an upright 
 one, I held the boat while one reset his pole, and then 
 all three forced it upward. When a part of us walked 
 round at such a place we generally took out the most 
 valuable part of the baggage, for fear of being swamped. 
 
 As we poled up a swift rapid for half a mile above 
 Abol jacarmegus 1 Falls, some of the party read their own 
 marks on the huge logs which lay piled high and dry 
 on the rocks on either hand, the relics probably of a 
 jam which had taken place here in the Great Freshet 
 in the spring. Many of these would have to wait for 
 another great freshet, perchance, if they lasted so 
 long, before they could be got off. It was singular 
 enough to meet with property of theirs which they 
 had never seen, and where they had never been before, 
 thus detained by freshets and rocks when on its way 
 to them. 
 
 The last half mile carried us to the Sowadnehunk 2 
 Deadwater. Here we decided to camp, about twenty 
 miles from the Dam, at the mouth of Murch Brook 
 and the Aboljacknagesic, 3 mountain streams, broad 
 off from Katahdin, and about a dozen miles from its 
 summit. 
 
 1 A-bol-j&k-a-me'gus. Now commonly abbreviated to Abol (a'bol). 
 
 2 Sou-ad-ne-hunk'. 
 
 8 A-bol-jak-na-gSss'ik. Now, like the above, abbreviated to Abol.
 
 34 KATAHDIN 
 
 We had been told by McCauslin that we should 
 here find trout enough; so, while some prepared the 
 camp, the rest fell to fishing. Seizing the birch poles 
 which some party of Indians, or white hunters, had 
 left on the shore, and baiting our hooks with pork, 
 and with trout as soon as they were caught, we cast 
 our lines into the Aboljacknagesic. Instantly a shoal 
 of white chivin, silvery roaches, or what not, prowling 
 thereabouts, fell upon our bait, and one after another 
 were landed amidst the bushes. Anon their cousins, 
 the trout, took their turn, and alternately the speckled 
 trout and the silvery roaches swallowed the bait as 
 fast as we could throw in ; and the finest specimens 
 of both that I have ever seen, the largest one weighing 
 three pounds, were heaved upon the shore, though 
 at first to wriggle down into the water again, for we 
 stood in the boat ; but soon we learned to remedy this 
 evil, for one of us, who had lost his hook, stood on 
 shore to catch them as they fell in a perfect shower 
 around him sometimes, wet and slippery, full in his 
 face and bosom, as his arms were outstretched to 
 receive them. While yet alive, before their tints had 
 faded, they glistened like the fairest flowers, the pro- 
 duct of primitive rivers, seen of Indians only, made 
 beautiful, the Lord only knows why, to swim there ! 
 
 But there is the rough voice of Uncle George, who 
 commands at the frying-pan. The pork sizzles, and 
 cries for fish. The night shut down at last, not a little 
 deepened by the dark side of Katahdin, which, like a 
 permanent shadow, reared itself from the eastern bank. 
 We accompanied Tom into the woods to cut cedar 
 twigs for our bed. While he went ahead with the axe, 
 and lopped off the smallest twigs of the flat-leaved
 
 KATAHDIN 35 
 
 cedar, the arbor-vitae of the gardens, we gathered them 
 up, and returned with them to the boat, until it was 
 loaded. Our bed was made with as much care and 
 skill as a roof is shingled ; beginning at the foot, and 
 laying the twig end of the cedar upward, we advanced 
 to the head, a course at a time, thus successively cover- 
 ing the stub-ends, and producing a soft and level bed. 
 For us six it was about ten feet long by six in breadth. 
 This time we lay under our tent, having pitched it 
 more prudently with reference to the wind and the 
 flame, and the usual huge fire blazed in front. Supper 
 was eaten off a large log, which some freshet had thrown 
 up. This night we had a dish of arbor-vitae or cedar 
 tea, which the lumberer sometimes uses when other 
 herbs fail, but I had no wish to repeat the experiment. 
 It had too medicinal a taste for my palate. There was 
 the skeleton of a moose here, whose bones some Indian 
 hunters had picked on this very spot. I arose before 
 dawn while my companions were still sleeping. There 
 stood Katahdin with distinct and cloudless outline 
 in the moonlight ; and the rippling of the rapids was 
 the only sound to break the stillness. Standing on the 
 shore, I once more cast my line into the stream. The 
 speckled trout and silvery roach sped swiftly through 
 the moonlight air until daylight brought satiety to 
 my mind, and the minds of my companions, who had 
 joined me. 
 
 By six o'clock, having mounted our packs and a 
 good blanketful of trout, ready dressed, and swung up 
 such baggage and provision as we wished to leave 
 behind on the tops of saplings, to be out of the reach 
 of bears, we started for the summit of the mountain. 
 Uncle George had never been any nearer the mountain
 
 36 KATAHDIN 
 
 than this, and there was not the slightest trace of man 
 to guide us farther. At first, pushing a few rods up the 
 Aboljacknagesic, we fastened our bateau to a tree, 
 and traveled up the north side, through burnt lands, 
 now partially overgrown with young aspens and other 
 shrubbery. Soon, recrossing this stream, upon a jam of 
 logs and rocks, and you could cross it by this means 
 almost anywhere, we struck at once for the highest 
 peak. This course would lead us parallel to a dark 
 seam in the forest, which marked the bed of a tor- 
 rent, and over a slight spur, from whose bare summit 
 we could get an outlook over the country, and climb 
 directly up the peak, which would then be close at 
 hand. Seen from this point, Katahdin presented a 
 different aspect from any mountain I have seen, there 
 being a greater proportion of naked rock rising 
 abruptly from the forest; and we looked up at this 
 blue barrier as if it were some fragment of a wall 
 which anciently bounded the earth in that direction. 
 Setting the compass for a northeast course, we were 
 soon buried in the woods. 
 
 We soon began to meet with traces of bear and 
 moose, and those of rabbits were everywhere visible. 
 The tracks of moose, more or less recent, covered 
 every square rod on the sides of the mountain; and 
 these animals are probably more numerous now there 
 than ever before, being driven into this wilderness, 
 from all sides, by the settlements. The track of a full- 
 grown moose is like that of a cow, or larger. Some- 
 times we found ourselves traveling in faint paths, 
 which they had made, like cow-paths in the woods, 
 only far more indistinct, being rather openings, afford- 
 ing imperfect vistas through the dense underwood,
 
 KATAHDIN 37 
 
 than trodden paths; and everywhere the twigs had 
 been browsed by them, clipped as smoothly as if by 
 a knife. The bark of trees was stripped up by them to 
 the height of eight or nine feet, in long, narrow strips, 
 an inch wide, still showing the distinct marks of their 
 teeth. We expected nothing less than to meet a herd of 
 them every moment, and our Nimrod held his shoot- 
 ing-iron in readiness; but, though numerous, they 
 are so wary that the unskillful hunter might range 
 the forest a long time before he could get sight of one. 
 They are sometimes dangerous to encounter, and will 
 not turn out for the hunter, but furiously rush on him 
 and trample him to death, unless he is lucky enough 
 to avoid them by dodging round a tree. The largest 
 are nearly as large as a horse, and weigh sometimes 
 one thousand pounds ; and it is said that they can step 
 over a five-foot gate in their ordinary walk. They are 
 described as exceedingly awkward-looking animals, 
 with their long legs and short bodies, making a ludi- 
 crous figure when in full run, but making great head- 
 way nevertheless. It seemed a mystery to us how they 
 could thread these woods, which it required all our 
 suppleness to accomplish climbing, stooping, and 
 winding, alternately. They are said to drop their long 
 and branching horns on their backs, and make their 
 way easily by the weight of their bodies. Their flesh, 
 which is more like beef than venison, is common in 
 Bangor market. 
 
 We had proceeded seven or eight miles, till about 
 noon, with frequent pauses to refresh the weary ones, 
 cross ing a considerable mountain stream, which we con- 
 jectured to be Murch Brook, at whose mouth we had 
 camped, all the time in woods, without having once
 
 38 KATAHDIN 
 
 seen the summit, and rising very gradually, when the 
 boatmen beginning to despair a little, and fearing 
 that we were leaving the mountain on one side of us, 
 for they had not entire faith in the compass, McCauslin 
 climbed a tree, from the top of which he could see the 
 peak, when it appeared that we had not swerved from 
 a right line. By the side of a cool mountain rill, amid 
 the woods, where the water began to partake of the 
 purity and transparency of the air, we stopped to cook 
 some of our fishes, which we had brought thus far in 
 order to save our hard-bread and pork. We soon had 
 a fire blazing, and stood around it, under the damp 
 and sombre forest of firs and birches, each with a 
 sharpened stick, three or four feet in length, upon 
 which he had spitted his trout, or roach, previously 
 well gashed and salted, our sticks radiating like the 
 spokes of a wheel from one centre, and each crowd- 
 ing his particular fish into the most desirable exposure. 
 Thus we regaled ourselves, drinking meanwhile at the 
 spring, till one man's pack, at least, was considerably 
 lightened, when we again took up our line of march. 
 
 At length we reached an elevation sufficiently bare 
 to afford a view of the summit, still distant and blue, 
 almost as if retreating from us. A torrent was seen 
 tumbling down in front. But this glimpse at our 
 whereabouts was soon lost, and we were buried in the 
 woods again. The wood was chiefly yellow birch, 
 spruce, fir, mountain-ash, and moose-wood. It was 
 the worst kind of traveling. Bunch-berries were very 
 abundant as well as Solomon's-seal and moose-berries. 
 Blueberries were distributed along our whole route; 
 and in one place the bushes were drooping with the 
 weight of the fruit, still as fresh as ever. Such patches
 
 KATAHDIN 39 
 
 afforded a grateful repast, and served to bait the tired 
 party forward. When any lagged behind, the cry of 
 "blueberries" was most effectual to bring them up. 
 Even at this elevation we passed through a moose- 
 yard, formed by a large flat rock, four or five rods 
 square, where they tread down the snow in winter. At 
 length, fearing that if we held the direct course to the 
 summit, we should not find any water near our camp- 
 ing-ground, we gradually swerved to the west, till, 
 at four o'clock, we struck again the torrent which I 
 have mentioned, and here, in view of the summit, the 
 weary party decided to camp that night. 
 
 While my companions were seeking a suitable spot 
 for this purpose, I improved the little daylight that 
 was left in climbing the mountain alone. We were in 
 a deep and narrow ravine, sloping up to the clouds 
 at an angle of nearly forty-five degrees, and hemmed 
 in by walls of rock, which were at first covered with 
 low trees, then with impenetrable thickets of scraggy 
 birches and spruce trees, and with moss, but at last 
 bare of any vegetation but lichens, and almost con- 
 tinually draped in clouds. Following the course of the 
 torrent, pulling myself up perpendicular falls of twenty 
 or thirty feet, by the roots of firs and birches, and then 
 perhaps walking a level rod or two in the thin stream, 
 for it took up the whole road, ascending by huge steps, 
 as it were, a giant's stairway, down which a river 
 flowed, I had soon cleared the trees and paused to 
 look back over the country. The torrent was from 
 fifteen to thirty feet wide, without a tributary, and 
 seemingly not diminishing in breadth as I advanced ; 
 but still it came rushing and roaring down, with a 
 copious tide, over and amidst masses of bare rock,
 
 40 KATAHDIN 
 
 from the very clouds, as though a waterspout had just 
 burst over the mountain. Leaving this at last, I began 
 to work my way up the nearest peak, at first scram- 
 bling on all fours over the tops of ancient black spruce 
 trees, from two to ten or twelve feet in height, their 
 tops flat and spreading, and their foliage blue and 
 nipped with cold, as if for centuries they had ceased 
 growing upward against the bleak sky. I walked some 
 rods erect upon the tops of these trees, which were 
 overgrown with moss and mountain cranberries. It 
 seemed that in the course of time they had filled up 
 the intervals between the huge rocks, and the cold 
 wind had uniformly leveled all over. There was ap- 
 parently a belt of this kind running quite round the 
 mountain. Once, slumping through, I looked down 
 ten feet, into a dark and cavernous region, and saw 
 the stem of a spruce, on whose top I stood as on a mass 
 of coarse basket-work, fully nine inches in diameter 
 at the ground. These holes were bears' dens, and the 
 bears were even then at home. This was the sort of 
 garden I made my way over, certainly the most treach- 
 erous and porous country I ever traveled. But nothing 
 could exceed the toughness of the twigs not one 
 snapped under my weight, for they had slowly grown. 
 Having slumped, scrambled, rolled, bounced, and 
 walked by turns, over this scraggy country, I arrived 
 upon a side-hill where gray, silent rocks were the 
 flocks and herds that pastured. This brought me to 
 the skirt of a cloud, and bounded my walk that night. 
 When I returned to my companions, they had se- 
 lected a camping-ground on the torrent's edge, and 
 were resting ; one was on the sick list, rolled in a blanket 
 on a damp shelf of rock. It was savage and dreary
 
 KATAHDIN 41 
 
 scenery, so wildly rough that they looked long to find 
 a level and open space for the tent. We could not well 
 camp higher for want of fuel ; and the trees here seemed 
 so evergreen and sappy that we almost doubted if they 
 would acknowledge the influence of fire; but fire 
 prevailed at last and blazed like a good citizen of the 
 world. It was perhaps a more grand and desolate 
 place for a night's lodging than the summit would have 
 been, being in the neighborhood of those wild trees, 
 and of the torrent. Some more aerial and finer-spirited 
 winds rushed and roared through the ravine all night, 
 from time to time arousing our fire and dispersing the 
 embers about. It was as if we lay in the very nest of a 
 young whirlwind. At midnight, one of my bedfellows, 
 being startled in his dreams by the sudden blazing up 
 to its top of a fir-tree, whose green boughs were dried 
 by the heat, sprang up with a cry from his bed, think- 
 ing the world on fire, and drew the whole camp after 
 him. 
 
 In the morning, after whetting our appetite on some 
 raw pork, a wafer of hard-bread, and a dipper of con- 
 densed cloud or waterspout, we began to make our 
 way up the falls ; this time choosing the highest peak, 
 which was not the one I had approached before. But 
 soon my companions were lost to my sight behind the 
 mountain ridge in my rear, and I climbed alone over 
 huge rocks, loosely poised, a mile or more, still edging 
 toward the clouds ; for though the day was clear else- 
 where, the summit was concealed by mist. The moun- 
 tain seemed a vast aggregation of loose rocks, as if 
 some time it had rained rocks, and they lay as they 
 fell, nowhere fairly at rest, but leaning on each other 
 with cavities between. They were the raw materials
 
 42 KATAHDIN 
 
 of a planet dropped from an unseen quarry, which the 
 vast chemistry of nature would anon work up into 
 the smiling and verdant plains and valleys of earth. 
 
 At length I entered within the skirts of the cloud 
 which seemed forever drifting over the summit, and 
 yet would never be gone, but was generated out of 
 that pure air as fast as it flowed away. When I reached 
 the summit of the ridge, which those who have seen 
 it in clearer weather say is about five miles long and 
 contains a thousand acres of table-land, I was deep 
 within the hostile ranks of clouds, and all objects were 
 obscured by them. Now the wind would blow me out 
 a yard of sunlight, wherein I stood ; then a gray, dawn- 
 ing light was all it could accomplish, the cloud-line 
 ever rising and falling with the wind's intensity. Some- 
 times it seemed as if the summit would be cleared in 
 a few moments and smile in sunshine ; but what was 
 gained on one side was lost on another. It was like 
 sitting in a chimney and waiting for the smoke to blow 
 away. It was, in fact, a cloud-factory. Occasionally, 
 when the windy columns broke in to me, I caught 
 sight of a dark, damp crag to the right or left ; the 
 mist driving ceaselessly between it and me. 
 
 Some part of the beholder seems to escape between 
 the loose grating of his ribs as he ascends. He is more 
 lone than you can imagine. Vast, Titanic, inhuman 
 Nature has got him at disadvantage. She does not 
 smile on him as in the plains. She seems to say sternly: 
 "Why came ye here before your time? This ground 
 is not prepared for you. Is it not enough that I smile 
 in the valleys? I have never made this soil for thy 
 feet, this air for thy breathing, these rocks for thy 
 neighbors. I cannot pity nor fondle thee here, but
 
 KATAHDIN 43 
 
 forever relentlessly drive thee hence to where I am 
 kind." 
 
 At length, fearing that my companions would be 
 anxious to reach the river before night, and knowing 
 that the clouds might rest on the mountain for days, 
 I was compelled to descend. Occasionally, as I came 
 down, the wind would blow a vista open, through 
 which I could see the country eastward, boundless 
 forests, and lakes and streams, gleaming in the sun. 
 Now and then some small bird of the sparrow family 
 would flit away before me, unable to command its 
 ' course, like a fragment of the gray rock blown off by 
 the wind. 
 
 I found my companions where I had left them, 
 gathering the mountain cranberries, which filled every 
 crevice between the rocks, together with blueberries, 
 which had a spicier flavor the higher up they grew. 
 From this elevation, just on the skirts of the clouds, 
 we could overlook the country, west and south, for a 
 hundred miles immeasurable forest no clearing, 
 no house ! It did not look as if a solitary traveler had 
 cut so much as a walking-stick there. Countless lakes 
 Moosehead in the southwest, forty miles long by ten 
 wide; Chesuncook, eighteen long by three wide; and 
 a hundred others ; and mountains, also, whose names, 
 for the most part, are known only to the Indians. The 
 forest looked like a firm grass sward, and the effect 
 of these lakes in its midst has been well compared to 
 that of a "mirror broken into a thousand fragments, 
 and wildly scattered over the grass, reflecting the full 
 blaze of the sun." 
 
 Setting out on our return to the river, still at an early 
 hour in the day, we decided to follow the course of the
 
 44 KATAHDIN 
 
 torrent as long as it would not lead us too far out of 
 our way. We thus traveled about four miles in the 
 very torrent itself, continually crossing and recrossing 
 it, leaping from rock to rock, and jumping with the 
 stream down falls of seven or eight feet, or sometimes 
 sliding down on our backs in a thin sheet of water. 
 This ravine had been the scene of an extraordinary 
 freshet in the spring, apparently accompanied by a 
 slide from the mountain. For a rod or two, on either 
 side of its channel, the trees were barked and splin- 
 tered up to their tops, the birches bent over, twisted, 
 and sometimes finely split, like a stable-broom; some,' 
 a foot in diameter, snapped off, and whole clumps 
 of trees bent over with the weight of rocks piled on 
 them. In one place we noticed a rock, two or three 
 feet in diameter, lodged nearly twenty feet high in 
 the crotch of a tree. For the whole four miles we saw 
 but one rill emptying in, and the volume of water 
 did not seem to be increased from the first. At one 
 place we were startled by seeing, on a little sandy 
 shelf by the side of the stream, the fresh print of a 
 man's foot; but at last we remembered that we had 
 struck this stream on the way up, and one had de- 
 scended into the ravine for a drink. 
 
 After leaving the torrent, being in doubt about our 
 course, Tom threw down his pack at the foot of the 
 loftiest spruce tree at hand, and shinned up the bare 
 trunk some twenty feet, and then climbed through 
 the green tower, lost to our sight, until he held the 
 topmost spray in his hand. " Where away does the 
 summit bear? where the burnt lands? "we cried. 
 
 The last he could only conjecture ; he descried, how- 
 ever, a little meadow and pond, lying probably in our
 
 KATAHDIN 45 
 
 course, which we concluded to steer for. On reaching 
 this secluded meadow, we found fresh tracks of moose 
 on the shore of the pond, and the water was still 
 unsettled as if they had fled before us. A little far- 
 ther, in a dense thicket, we seemed to be still on their 
 trail. Pursuing this course, we soon reached the open 
 land, which went sloping down some miles toward 
 the Penobscot. 
 
 Perhaps I most fully realized that this was primeval, 
 untamed, and forever untamable Nature, while coming 
 down this part of the mountain. We were passing 
 over " Burnt Lands," though they showed no recent 
 marks of fire, hardly so much as a charred stump, 
 but looked rather like a natural pasture for the moose 
 and deer, exceedingly wild and desolate, with occa- 
 sional strips of timber crossing them, and low poplars 
 springing up, and patches of blueberries here and 
 there. 
 
 Ere long we recognized some rocks and other features 
 in the landscape, and, quickening our pace, by two 
 o'clock we reached the bateau. Here we had expected 
 to dine on trout, but in this glaring sunlight they were 
 slow to take the bait, so we were compelled to make 
 the most of the crumbs of our hard-bread and our 
 pork, which were both nearly exhausted. 
 
 About four o'clock, the same afternoon, we com- 
 menced our return voyage, which would require but 
 little if any poling. In shooting rapids the boatmen 
 use large and broad paddles, instead of poles, to guide 
 the boat with. Though we glided so swiftly, and often 
 smoothly, down, where it had cost us no slight effort 
 to get up, our present voyage was attended with far more 
 danger, for if we fairly struck one of the thousand
 
 46 KATAHDIN 
 
 rocks by which we were surrounded, the boat would 
 be swamped in an instant. When a boat is swamped 
 under these circumstances, the boatmen commonly 
 find no difficulty in keeping afloat at first, for the cur- 
 rent keeps both them and their cargo up for a long 
 way down the stream ; and if they can swim, they have 
 only to work their way gradually to the shore. The 
 greatest danger is of being caught in an eddy behind 
 some large rock, and being carried round and round 
 under the surface till they are drowned. McCauslin 
 pointed out some rocks which had been the scene of 
 a fatal accident of this kind. Sometimes the body 
 is not thrown out for several hours. In shooting the 
 rapids, the boatman has this problem to solve: to 
 choose a safe course amid a thousand sunken rocks, 
 scattered over a quarter or half a mile, at the same 
 time that he is moving steadily on at the rate of fifteen 
 miles an hour. Stop he cannot; the only question is, 
 where will he go ? The bowman chooses the course 
 with all his eyes about him, striking broad off with his 
 paddle, and drawing the boat by main force into her 
 course. The sternman faithfully follows the bow. 
 
 We were soon at the Aboljacarmegus Falls. Anxious 
 to avoid the delay, as well as the labor, of the portage 
 here, our boatmen went forward first to reconnoitre, 
 and concluded to let the bateau down the falls, carry- 
 ing the baggage only over the portage. Jumping from 
 rock to rock until nearly in the middle of the stream, 
 we were ready to receive the boat arid let her down 
 over the first fall, some six or seven feet perpendicular. 
 The boatmen stand upon the edge of a shelf of rock 
 in from one to two feet of rapid water, one on each 
 side of the boat, and let it slide gently over, till the
 
 KATAHDIN 47 
 
 bow is run out ten or twelve feet in the air ; then, let- 
 ting it drop squarely, while one holds the painter, the 
 other leaps in, and his companion following, they are 
 whirled down the rapids to a new fall, or to smooth 
 water. In a very few minutes they had accomplished 
 a passage in safety, which would be as foolhardy for 
 the unskillful to attempt as the descent of Niagara 
 itself. 
 
 Having carried round Pockwockomus Falls, our 
 oars soon brought us to the Katepskonegan * Carry, 
 where we decided to camp, leaving our bateau to be 
 carried over in the morning. One shoulder of each 
 of the boatmen showed a red spot as large as one's 
 hand, worn by the bateau on this expedition; and 
 this shoulder, as it did all the work, was perceptibly 
 lower than its fellow, from long service. 
 
 The drivers are accustomed to work in the cold 
 water in the spring, rarely ever dry ; and if one falls in 
 all over, he rarely changes his clothes till night, if 
 then even. McCauslin said soberly that he had seen 
 where six men were wholly under water at once, at a 
 jam, with their shoulders to handspikes. If the log 
 did not start, then they had to put out their heads 
 to breathe. The driver works as long as he can see, 
 from dark to dark, and at night has not time to eat 
 his supper and dry his clothes fairly, before he is 
 asleep on his cedar bed. We lay that night on the very 
 bed made by such a party, stretching our tent over 
 the poles which were still standing, but re-shingling 
 the damp and faded bed with fresh leaves. 
 
 In the morning we carried our boat over and 
 
 1 Ka-tep-sko-ne'gan. Now commonly called Debsconeag (deb-sko- 
 neg').
 
 48 KATAHDIN 
 
 launched it, making haste lest the wind should rise. 
 The boatmen ran down Passamagamet, and soon 
 after Ambejijis Falls, while we walked round with the 
 baggage. We made a hasty breakfast at the head of 
 Ambejijis Lake, on the remainder of our pork, and 
 were soon rowing across its smooth surface, under a 
 pleasant sky, the mountain being now clear of clouds 
 in the northeast. Taking turns at the oars, we shot 
 rapidly across Deep Cove, the foot of Pamadumcook, 
 and the North Twin, at the rate of six miles an hour, 
 the wind not being high enough to disturb us, and 
 reached the Dam at noon. The boatmen went through 
 one of the log sluices in the bateau, where the fall was 
 ten feet at the bottom, and took us in below. Here 
 was the longest rapid in our voyage. Now amid the 
 eddies, now darting to this side of the stream, now to 
 that, gliding swift and smooth near to our destruction, 
 or striking broad off with the paddle and drawing 
 the boat to right or left with all our might, in order 
 to avoid a rock, we soon ran through this mile, and 
 floated in Quakish Lake. 
 
 After such a voyage, the troubled and angry waters, 
 which once had seemed terrible and not to be trifled 
 with, appeared tamed and subdued ; they had been 
 bearded and worried in their channels, pricked and 
 whipped into submission with the spike-pole and pad- 
 dle, gone through and through with impunity, and all 
 their spirit and their danger taken out of them, and 
 the most swollen and impetuous rivers seemed but 
 playthings henceforth. I began, at length, to under- 
 stand the boatman's familiarity with, and contempt 
 for, the rapids. "Those Fowler boys," said Mrs. Mc- 
 Causlin, " are perfect ducks for the water." They had
 
 KATAHDIN 49 
 
 run down to Lincoln, according to her, thirty or forty 
 miles, in a bateau, in the night, for a doctor, when it 
 was so dark they could not see a rod before them, 
 and the river was swollen so as to be almost a con- 
 tinuous rapid, so that the doctor cried, when they 
 brought him up by daylight, " Why, Tom, how did you 
 see to steer?" "We did n't steer much only kept 
 her straight." And yet they met with no accident. 
 
 When we reached the Millinocket opposite to Tom's 
 house, and were waiting for his folks to set us over, 
 for we had left our bateau above the Grand Falls, 
 we discovered two canoes, with two men in each, turning 
 up this stream from Shad Pond, one keeping the oppo- 
 site side of a small island before us, while the other ap- 
 proached the side where we were standing, examining 
 the banks carefully for muskrats as they came along. 
 The last proved to be Louis Neptune and his com- 
 panion, on their way up to Chesuncook after moose; 
 but we hardly knew them. At a little distance they 
 might have been taken for Quakers, with their broad- 
 brimmed hats, and overcoats with broad capes, seeking 
 a settlement in this Sylvania or, nearer at hand, for 
 fashionable gentlemen the morning after a spree. Met 
 face to face, these Indians in their native woods looked 
 like the sinister and slouching fellows whom you meet 
 picking up strings and paper in the streets of a city. 
 There is, in fact, a remarkable and unexpected resem- 
 blance between the degraded savage and the lowest 
 classes in a great city. The one is no more a child of 
 nature than the other. Neptune at first was only anx- 
 ious to know what we "kill," seeing some partridges 
 in the hands of one of the party, but we had assumed 
 too much anger to permit of a reply. We thought
 
 50 KATAHDIN 
 
 Indians had some honor before. But " Me been 
 sick. Oh, me unwell now. You make bargain, then 
 me go." They had in fact been delayed by a drunken 
 frolic, and had not yet recovered from its effects. 
 They had some young musquash in their canoes, 
 which they dug out of the banks with a hoe, for food. 
 So they went on up the Millinocket, and we kept down 
 the bank of the Penobscot, leaving Tom at his home. 
 
 Thus a man shall lead his life away here on the edge 
 of the wilderness, in a new world ; shall live, as it were, 
 in the primitive age of the world, a primitive man. 
 He lives three thousand years deep into time. Can 
 you well go further back in history than this ? Ay ! 
 ay ! for there turns up but now into the mouth of 
 Millinocket Stream a still more ancient and primitive 
 man. In a bark vessel sewn with the roots of the 
 spruce, with hornbeam paddles, he dips his way along. 
 He builds no house of logs, but a wigwam of skins. 
 He eats no hot bread and sweet cake, but musquash 
 and moose-meat and the fat of bears. He glides up 
 the Millinocket and is lost to my sight, as a more dis- 
 tant and misty cloud is seen flitting by behind a nearer, 
 and is lost in space. So he goes about his destiny. 
 
 After having passed the night, and buttered our boots 
 for the last time, at Uncle George's, whose dogs almost 
 devoured him for joy at his return, we kept on down 
 the river the next day about eight miles on foot, and 
 then took a bateau, with a man to pole it, to Matta- 
 wamkeag, ten more. At the middle of that very night, 
 we reached Oldtown, where we heard the confused 
 din and clink of a hundred saws, which never rest, 
 and at six o'clock the next morning one of the party 
 was steaming his way to Massachusetts.
 
 KATAHDIN 51 
 
 What is most striking in the Maine wilderness is the 
 continuousness of the forest. Except the burnt lands, 
 the narrow intervals on the rivers, the bare tops of the 
 high mountains, and the lakes and streams, the forest 
 is uninterrupted. It is even more grim and wild than 
 you had anticipated, a damp and intricate wilderness. 
 The aspect of the country, indeed, is universally stern 
 and savage, excepting the distant views of the for- 
 est from hills, and the lake prospects. The lakes are 
 something which you are unprepared for ; they lie so 
 exposed to the light, and the forest is diminished to a 
 fine fringe on their edges. These are riot the artificial 
 forests of an English king. Here prevail no forest laws 
 but those of nature. The aborigines have never been 
 dispossessed, nor nature disforested. 
 
 It is a country full of evergreen trees, of silver birches 
 and watery maples, the ground dotted with insipid 
 small, red berries, and strewn with moss-grown rocks 
 a country diversified with innumerable lakes and 
 rapid streams, peopled with trout, salmon, shad, 
 pickerel, and other fishes ; the forest resounding at rare 
 intervals with the note of the chickadee, the blue jay, 
 and the woodpecker, the scream of the fish hawk and 
 the eagle, the laugh of the loon, and the whistle of 
 ducks along the solitary streams; at night, with the 
 hooting of owls and howling of wolves; in summer, 
 swarming with myriads of black flies and mosquitoes, 
 more formidable than wolves to the white man. Such 
 is the home of the moose, the bear, the caribou, the 
 wolf, the beaver, and the Indian. Who shall describe 
 the inexpressible tenderness and immortal life of the 
 grim forest, where the decaying trees seem to enjoy a 
 perpetual youth; and Nature, like a serene infant, is
 
 52 KATAHDIN 
 
 too happy to make a noise, except by a few tinkling, 
 lisping birds and trickling rills? 
 
 I am reminded by my journey how exceedingly new 
 this country still is. We have advanced by leaps to the 
 Pacific, and left many a lesser Oregon and California 
 unexplored behind us. Though the railroad and the 
 telegraph have been established on the shores of Maine, 
 the Indian still looks out from her interior mountains 
 to the sea. There stands the city of Bangor, fifty miles 
 up the Penobscot, at the head of navigation, the prin- 
 cipal lumber depot on this continent, like a star on the 
 edge of night, still hewing at the forests of which it 
 is built, already overflowing with the luxuries and re- 
 finement of Europe, and sending its vessels to Spain, 
 to England, and to the West Indies for its groceries 
 and yet only a few axemen have gone " up river," into 
 the howling wilderness which feeds it. Twelve miles 
 in the rear is the Indian island, the home of the Penob- 
 scot tribe, and then commence the bateau and the 
 canoe ; and sixty miles above, the country is virtually 
 unmapped and unexplored, and there still waves the 
 virgin forest of the New World.
 
 CHESUNCOOK 
 
 AT five P. M., September 13, 1853, 1 left Boston, in the 
 steamer for Bangor. It was a warm and still night, 
 and the sea was as smooth as a small lake in summer, 
 merely rippled. The passengers went singing on the 
 deck till ten o'clock. Now we see the Cape Ann lights, 
 and now pass near a small village-like fleet of mackerel- 
 fishers at anchor. From the wonders of the deep we go 
 below to yet deeper sleep. And then the absurdity of 
 being waked up in the night by a man who wants the 
 job of blacking your boots! I trusted that these old 
 customs were abolished. They might with the same 
 propriety insist on blacking your face. I heard of one 
 man who complained that somebody had stolen his 
 boots in the night ; and when he had found them, he 
 wanted to know what they had done to them they 
 had spoiled them he never put that stuff on them ; 
 and the bootblack narrowly escaped paying damages. 
 
 Anxious to get out of tha whale's belly, I rose early, 
 and joined some old salts who were smoking by a dim 
 light on a sheltered part of the deck. I was proud 
 to find that I had stood the voyage so well. We 
 watched the first signs of dawn through an open port ; 
 but the day seemed to hang fire. At length an Afri- 
 can prince rushed by, observing, "Twelve o'clock, 
 gentlemen!" and blew out the light. It was moon- 
 rise. So I slunk down into the monster's bowels 
 again. 
 
 We reached Bangor about noon. When I arrived,
 
 54 CHESUNCOOK 
 
 my companion that was to be had gone up river, and 
 engaged an Indian, Joe Aitteon, a son of the Governor, 
 to go with us to Chesuncook Lake. Joe arrived by cars 
 at Bangor that evening, with his canoe and a compan- 
 ion who was going to join him in moose-hunting at 
 Chesuncook when we had done with him. They took 
 supper at my friend's house and lodged in his barn. 
 
 The next morning, Joe and his canoe were put on 
 board the stage for Moosehead Lake, sixty and odd 
 miles distant, an hour before we started in an open 
 wagon. We carried hard-bread, pork, smoked beef, 
 tea, sugar, etc., seemingly enough for a regiment. 
 
 It rained all day and till the middle of the next fore- 
 noon, concealing the landscape almost entirely ; but we 
 had hardly got out of the streets of Bangor before I 
 began to be exhilarated by the sight of the wild fir and 
 spruce tops, and those of other primitive evergreens, 
 peering through the mist in the horizon. It was like 
 the sight and odor of cake to a schoolboy. 
 
 He who rides and keeps the beaten track studies the 
 fences chiefly. Near Bangor, the fence-posts, on ac- 
 count of the frost's heaving them in the clayey soil, 
 were not planted in the ground, but were mortised into 
 a beam lying on the surface. Afterwards the prevailing 
 fences were log ones, with sometimes a Virginia fence, 
 or else rails slanted over crossed stakes ; and these 
 zigzagged or played leap-frog all the way to the lake, 
 keeping just ahead of us. The houses were far apart, 
 commonly small and of one story. There was very 
 little land under cultivation, yet the forest did not often 
 border the road. We saw large flocks of pigeons, and 
 several times came within a rod or two of partridges in 
 the road. My companion said that in one journey out
 
 CHESUNCOOK 55 
 
 of Bangor he and his son had shot sixty partridges 
 from his buggy. 
 
 The mountain-ash was now very handsome, as also 
 the hobble-bush, with its ripe purple berries mixed 
 with red. The Canada thistle was the prevailing 
 weed, the roadside in many places, and fields not long 
 cleared, being densely filled with it as with a crop, to 
 the exclusion of everything else. There were also 
 whole fields full of ferns, now rusty and withering. 
 There were many late buttercups, and fire-weed com- 
 monly where there had been a burning, and the pearly 
 everlasting. I noticed occasionally very long troughs 
 which supplied the road with water, and my compan- 
 ion said that three dollars annually were granted by 
 the State to one man in each school-district, who 
 provided and maintained a suitable water-trough by 
 the roadside for the use of travelers. Maine is banish- 
 ing bar-rooms from its highways and conducting the 
 mountain springs thither. 
 
 At a fork in the road about twenty miles from Moose- 
 head Lake, I saw a guide-post surmounted by a pair 
 of moose-horns, with the word "Monson" painted 
 on one blade, and the name of some other town on the 
 other. They are sometimes used for ornamental hat- 
 trees, in front entries. We reached Monson after dark. 
 
 At four o'clock the next morning, still in the rain, 
 we pursued our journey. In many places the road 
 was in that condition called repaired, having just been 
 whittled into the required semi-cylindrical form with 
 the shovel and scraper, with all the softest inequalities 
 in the middle, like a hog's back with the bristles up. 
 As you looked off each side of the bare sphere into 
 the horizon, the ditches were awful to behold.
 
 50 CHESUNCOOK 
 
 At a tavern hereabouts the hostler greeted our horse 
 as an old acquaintance, though he did not remember 
 the driver. He said that he had taken care of that 
 little mare for a short time a year or two before at the 
 Mount Kineo l House, and thought she was not in as 
 good condition as then. Every man to his trade. I am 
 not acquainted with a single horse in the world, not 
 even the one that kicked me. 
 
 We got our first view of Moosehead Lake a 
 suitably wild-looking sheet of water, sprinkled with 
 small, low islands, which were covered with shaggy 
 spruce and other wild wood seen over the infant 
 port of Greenville. There was no summer road any 
 farther in this direction, but a winter road, that is, one 
 passable only when deep snow covers its inequalities, 
 up the east side of the lake about twelve miles. 
 
 I was here first introduced to Joe. He had ridden 
 all the way on the outside of the stage, the day before, 
 in the rain, and was well wetted. He was a good- 
 looking Indian, twenty-four years old, short and stout, 
 with a broad face and reddish complexion. He had 
 worked a good deal as a lumberman. 
 
 At eight o'clock the steamer, with her bell and 
 whistle, scaring the moose, summoned us on board. 
 She is chiefly used by lumberers for the transportation 
 of themselves, their boats, and supplies. There were 
 but few passengers : a St. Francis Indian, two explorers 
 for lumber, three men who landed at Sandbar Island, 
 and a gentleman who lives on Deer Island, eleven 
 miles up the lake ; these, I think, were all beside our- 
 selves. 
 
 The lake is much broken by islands, and the scenery 
 1 Kin'e-o.
 
 CHESTJNCOOK 57 
 
 is varied and interesting. Mountains were seen on all 
 sides but the northwest, their summits now lost in the 
 clouds. You see but three or four houses for the whole 
 length of the lake, or about forty miles, and the shore 
 is an unbroken wilderness. The prevailing wood 
 seemed to be spruce, fir, birch, and rock maple. You 
 could easily distinguish the hard wood from the soft, 
 or " black growth," as it is called, at a great distance, 
 the former being smooth, round-topped, and light 
 green, with a bowery and cultivated look. 
 
 Mount Kineo, at which the boat touched, is a 
 peninsula with a narrow neck, about midway the lake 
 on the east side. The precipice on the land side of this 
 is so high and perpendicular that you can jump from 
 the top, many hundred feet, into the water, which 
 makes up behind the point. 
 
 We reached the head of the lake about noon. The 
 weather had in the meanwhile cleared, though the 
 mountains were still capped with clouds. The steamer 
 here approached a long pier projecting from the 
 northern wilderness, and built of some of its logs, 
 and whistled, where not a cabin nor a mortal was to 
 be seen. At length a Mr. Hinckley, who has a camp 
 at the other end of the " carry," appeared with a 
 truck drawn by an ox and a horse over a rude log-rail- 
 way through the woods. The next thing was to get 
 our canoe and effects over the carry into the Penobscot 
 River. This railway from the lake to the river occu- 
 pied the middle of a clearing two or three rods wide 
 and perfectly straight through the forest. We walked 
 across while our baggage was drawn behind. 
 
 There was a very slight rise above the lake and at 
 length a gradual descent to the Penobscot, which I
 
 58 CHESUNCOOK 
 
 was surprised to find here a large stream from twelve 
 to fifteen rods wide. 
 
 At the north end of the carry, in the midst of a 
 clearing of sixty acres or more, there was a log camp 
 with a house adjoining, for the accommodation of the 
 carry-man's family and passing lumberers. 
 
 We now proceeded to get our dinner and to pitch 
 the canoe. Joe took a small brand from the fire and 
 blew the heat and flame against the pitch on his 
 birch, and so melted and spread it. Sometimes he put 
 his mouth over the suspected spot and sucked, to see 
 if it admitted air ; and at one place where we stopped 
 he set his canoe high on crossed stakes, and poured 
 water into it. I heard him swear once, during this 
 operation, about his knife being as dull as a hoe. 
 
 At mid-afternoon we embarked. Our birch was 
 nineteen and a half feet long by two and a half at the 
 widest part, and fourteen inches deep, and painted 
 green. This carried us three with our baggage. We 
 had two heavy, though slender, rock-maple paddles. 
 Joe placed birch-bark on the bottom for us to sit on, 
 and slanted cedar splints against the cross-bars to pro- 
 tect our backs, while he himself sat upon a cross-bar 
 in the stern. The baggage occupied the middle of the 
 canoe. We also paddled by turns in the bows, now 
 sitting with our legs extended, now sitting upon our 
 legs, and now rising upon our knees ; but I found none 
 of these positions endurable, and was reminded of the 
 complaints of the old Jesuit missionaries of the torture 
 they endured from long confinement in constrained 
 positions in canoes, in their voyages from Quebec to 
 the Huron country ; but afterwards I sat on the cross- 
 bars, or stood up, and experienced no inconvenience.
 
 CHESUNCOOK 59 
 
 It was deadwater for a couple of miles. The 
 river had been raised about two feet by the rain, and 
 lumberers were hoping for a flood sufficient to bring 
 down the logs that were left in the spring. Its banks 
 were seven or eight feet high and densely covered 
 with spruce, fir, arbor-vitse, birch, maple, beech, ash, 
 aspen, many civil-looking elms, now imbrowned, 
 along the stream, and at first a few hemlocks. The 
 immediate shores were also densely covered with 
 alder, willows, and the like. There were a few lily-pads 
 along the sides. Many fresh tracks of moose were 
 visible where the water was shallow and on the shore, 
 and the lily-stems were freshly bitten off by them. 
 
 After paddling about two miles, we turned up 
 Lobster Stream, which comes in from the southeast. 
 Joe said that it was so called from small fresh-water 
 lobsters found in it. My companion wished to look 
 for moose signs, and intended, if it proved worth the 
 while, to camp up that way. The kingfisher flew be- 
 fore us, the pigeon woodpecker was seen and heard, 
 and nuthatches and chickadees close at hand. We 
 saw a pair of moose-horns on the shore, and I asked 
 Joe if a moose had shed them ; but he said there was 
 a head attached to them, and I knew that they did not 
 shed their heads more than once in their lives. 
 
 After ascending about a mile and a half, we re- 
 turned to the Penobscot. Just below the mouth of 
 the Lobster we found quick water, and the river ex- 
 panded to twenty or thirty rods in width. The moose- 
 tracks were quite numerous and fresh here. We 
 noticed in a great many places narrow and well-trod- 
 den paths by which they had come down to the river, 
 and where they had slid on the steep and clayey bank.
 
 60 CHESUNCOOK 
 
 Their tracks were either close to the edge of the stream 
 or in shallow water ; the holes made by their feet in the 
 soft bottom being visible for a long time. They were 
 particularly numerous where there was a small bay 
 bordered by a strip of meadow, or separated from the 
 river by a low peninsula covered with grass, wherein 
 they had waded back and forth and eaten the pads. 
 At one place, where we landed to pick up a duck, 
 which my companion had shot, Joe peeled a canoe 
 birch for bark for his hunting-horn. He then asked if 
 we were not going to get the other duck, for his sharp 
 eyes had seen another fall in the bushes a little farther 
 along, and my companion obtained it. 
 
 We reached, about sundown, a small island at the 
 head of what Joe called the Moosehorn Deadwater 
 (the Moosehorn, in which he was going to hunt that 
 night, coming in about three miles below), and on the 
 upper end of this we decided to camp. After clearing 
 a small space amid the dense spruce and fir trees, we 
 covered the damp ground with a shingling of fir-twigs, 
 and, while Joe was preparing his birch horn and pitch- 
 ing his canoe, for this had to be done whenever 
 we stopped long enough to build a fire, and was the 
 principal labor he took upon himself at such times, 
 we collected fuel for the night, large wet and rotting 
 logs, which had lodged at the head of the island, for 
 our hatchet was too small for effective chopping; but 
 we did not kindle a fire lest the moose should smell it. 
 Joe set up a couple of forked stakes, and prepared 
 half a dozen poles, ready to cast one of our blankets 
 over in case it rained in the night. We also plucked 
 the ducks which had been killed for breakfast. 
 
 While we were thus engaged in the twilight, we
 
 CHESUNCOOK 61 
 
 heard faintly from far down the stream, what sounded 
 like two strokes of a woodchopper's axe, echoing dully 
 through the grim solitude. When we told Joe of this 
 he exclaimed, " By George, I'll bet that was a moose! 
 They make a noise like that." 
 
 At starlight we dropped down the stream as far as 
 the Moosehorn, Joe telling us that we must be very 
 silent, and he himself making no noise with his paddle 
 while he urged the canoe along with effective impulses. 
 It was a still night and suitable for this purpose, 
 for if there is wind the moose will smell you, and 
 Joe was very confident that he should get some. The 
 harvest moon had just risen, and its level rays began 
 to light up the forest on our right, while we glided 
 downward in the shade on the same side, against the 
 little breeze that was stirring. The lofty, spiring tops 
 of the spruce and fir were very black against the sky, 
 close bordering this broad avenue on each side; and 
 the beauty of the scene, as the moon rose above the 
 forest, it would not be easy to describe. A bat flew over 
 our heads, arid we heard a few faint notes of birds 
 from time to time, or the sudden plunge of a musquash, 
 or saw one crossing the stream before us, or heard the 
 sound of a rill emptying in, swollen by the recent rain. 
 About a mile below the island, when the solitude 
 seemed to be growing more complete every moment, 
 we suddenly saw the light and heard the crackling of 
 a fire on the bank, and discovered the camp of the two 
 explorers; they standing before it in their red shirts 
 and talking of the adventures of the day. We glided 
 by without speaking, close under the bank, within a 
 couple of rods of them ; and Joe, taking his horn, imi- 
 tated the call of the moose, till we suggested that they
 
 62 CHESUNCOOK 
 
 might fire on us. This was the last we saw of them, 
 and we never knew whether they detected or sus- 
 pected us. 
 
 I have often wished since that I was with them. 
 They search for timber over a given section, climbing 
 hills and often high trees to look off ; explore the 
 streams by which it is to be driven, and the like; spend 
 five or six weeks in the woods, they two alone, a hun- 
 dred miles or more from any town, roaming about, and 
 sleeping on the ground where night overtakes them, 
 depending chiefly on the provisions they carry with 
 them, though they do not decline what game they 
 come across; and then in the fall they return and 
 make report to their employers. Experienced men get 
 three or four dollars a day for this work. It is a solitary 
 and adventurous life. 
 
 This discovery accounted for the sounds we had 
 heard, and destroyed the prospect of seeing moose 
 yet awhile. At length, when we had left the explorers 
 far behind, Joe laid down his paddle, drew forth his 
 birch horn, a straight one about fifteen inches long 
 and three or four wide at the mouth, tied round with 
 strips of the same bark, and, standing up, imitated 
 the call of the moose ugh-ugh-ugh, or oo-oo-oo-oo, 
 and then a prolonged oo-o-o-o-o-o-o-o, and listened 
 attentively for several minutes. We asked him what 
 kind of noise he expected to hear. He said that if 
 a moose heard it, he guessed we should find out ; we 
 should hear him coming half a mile off ; he would come 
 close to, perhaps into, the water, and my companion 
 must wait till he got fair sight, and then aim just 
 behind the shoulder. 
 
 The moose venture out to the riverside to feed and
 
 CHESUNCOOK 63 
 
 drink at night. Earlier in the season the hunters do 
 not use a horn to call them out, but steal upon them 
 as they are feeding along the sides of the stream, and 
 often the first notice they have of one is the sound of 
 the water dropping from its muzzle. An Indian whom 
 I heard imitate the voice of the moose, and also that 
 of the caribou and the deer, using a much longer 
 horn than Joe's, told me that the first could be heard 
 eight or ten miles, sometimes; it was a loud sort of 
 bellowing sound, clearer and more sonorous than the 
 lowing of cattle, the caribou's a sort of snort, and the 
 small deer's like that of a lamb. 
 
 At length we turned up the Moosehorn. This is a 
 very meandering stream, only a rod or two in width, 
 but comparatively deep, fitly enough named Moose- 
 horn, whether from its windings or its inhabitants. 
 It was bordered here and there by narrow meadows 
 between the stream and the endless forest, affording 
 favorable places for the moose to feed, and to call 
 them out on. We proceeded half a mile up this, as 
 through a narrow, winding canal, where the tall, dark 
 spruce and firs and arbor-vitae towered on both sides 
 in the moonlight, forming a perpendicular forest-edge 
 of great height. In two places stood a small stack of 
 hay on the bank, ready for the lumberer's use in the 
 winter, looking strange enough there. 
 
 Again and again Joe called the moose, placing the 
 canoe close by some favorable point of meadow, but 
 listened in vain to hear one come rushing through the 
 woods, and concluded that they had been hunted too 
 much thereabouts. We saw, many times, what to our 
 imaginations looked like a gigantic moose, with his 
 horns, peering from out the forest-edge, but we saw
 
 64 CHESUNCOOK 
 
 the forest only, and not its inhabitants, that night. So 
 at last we turned about. There was now a little fog 
 on the water, though it was a fine clear night above. 
 Several times we heard the hooting of a great horned 
 owl, and told Joe that he would call out the moose for 
 him, for he made a sound considerably like the horn. 
 But Joe answered that the moose had heard that sound 
 a thousand times and knew better; and oftener still 
 we were startled by the plunge of a musquash. Once, 
 when we were listening for moose, we heard come 
 faintly echoing from far through the moss-clad aisles 
 a dull, dry, rushing sound with a solid core to it, yet 
 as if half smothered under the grasp of the luxu- 
 riant and fungus-like forest, like the shutting of a door 
 in some distant entry of the damp and shaggy wilder- 
 ness. When we asked Joe in a whisper what it was, 
 he answered, "Tree fall." 
 
 There is something singularly grand and impressive 
 in the sound of a tree falling in a perfectly calm night 
 like this, as if the agencies which overthrow it did not 
 need to be excited, but worked with a subtle, deliberate, 
 and conscious force, like a boa-constrictor, and more 
 effectively then than even in a windy day. If there is 
 any such difference, perhaps it is because trees with the 
 dews of the night on them are heavier than by day. 
 
 Having reached the camp, about ten o'clock, we 
 kindled our fire and went to bed. Each of us had 
 a blanket, in which he lay on the fir-twigs with his 
 extremities toward the fire. It was worth the while 
 to lie down in a country where you could afford such 
 great fires. We had first rolled up a large log, some 
 eighteen inches through and ten feet long, for a back- 
 log, to last all night, and then piled on the trees to the
 
 CHESUNCOOK 65 
 
 height of three or four feet, no matter how green or 
 damp. In fact, we burned as much wood that night 
 as would, with economy and an air-tight stove, last a 
 poor family in one of our cities all winter. It was very 
 agreeable, as well as independent, thus lying in the 
 open air, and the fire kept our uncovered extremities 
 warm enough. The Jesuit missionaries used to say 
 that in their journeys with the Indians in Canada they 
 lay on a bed which had never been shaken up since the 
 creation, unless by earthquakes. It is surprising with 
 what impunity and comfort one who has always lain 
 in a warm bed in a close apartment, and studiously 
 avoided draughts of air, can lie down on the ground 
 without a shelter, roll himself in a blanket, and sleep 
 before a fire, in a frosty autumn night, just after a 
 long rain-storm, and even come to enjoy and value 
 the fresh air. ' 
 
 I lay awake awhile, watching the ascent of the 
 sparks through the firs, and sometimes their descent 
 in half-extinguished cinders on my blanket. They were 
 as interesting as fireworks, going up in endless, suc- 
 cessive crowds, each after an explosion, in an eager, 
 serpentine course, some to five or six rods above the 
 treetops before they went out. 
 
 When we awoke in the morning, there was consid- 
 erable frost whitening the leaves. We heard the sound 
 of the chickadee and a few faintly lisping birds, and 
 also of ducks in the water about the island. 
 
 Before the fog had fairly cleared away, we paddled 
 down the stream again. These twenty miles of the 
 Penobscot between Moosehead and Chesuncook lakes 
 are comparatively smooth, but from time to time the 
 water is shallow and rapid, with rocks or gravel-beds
 
 66 CHESUNCOOK 
 
 where you can wade across. I looked very narrowly 
 at the vegetation as we glided along close to the shore, 
 and frequently made Joe turn aside for me to pluck a 
 plant. Horehound, horsemint, and the sensitive fern 
 grew close to the edge, under the willows and alders 
 and wool-grass on the islands. It was too late for 
 flowers, except a few asters, goldenrods, etc. In sev- 
 eral places we noticed the slight frame of a camp amid 
 the forest by the riverside, where some lumberers or 
 hunters had passed a night, and sometimes steps cut 
 in the muddy or clayey bank in front of it. 
 
 We stopped to fish for trout at the mouth of a small 
 stream called Ragmuff. Here were the ruins of an old 
 lumbering-camp, and a small space which had for- 
 merly been cleared and burned over was now densely 
 overgrown with the red cherry and raspberries. While 
 we were trying for trout, Joe wande'red off up the 
 Ragmuff on his own errands, and when we were ready 
 to start, was far beyond call. So we were compelled to 
 make a fire and get our dinner here, not to lose time. 
 Some dark-reddish birds, with grayer females, and 
 myrtle-birds hopped within six or eight feet of us and 
 our smoke. Perhaps they smelled the frying pork. 
 They suggested that the few small birds found in the 
 wilderness are on more familiar terms with the lumber- 
 man and hunter than those of the orchard and clearing 
 with the farmer. I have since found the Canada jay 
 and partridges equally tame there, as if they had not 
 yet learned to mistrust man entirely. 
 
 Joe at length returned, after an hour and a half, and 
 said that he had been two miles up the stream explor- 
 ing and had seen a moose. As we continued down 
 the stream I asked him how the ribs of the canoe
 
 CHESUNCOOK 67 
 
 were fastened to the side rails. He answered, " I don't 
 know, I never noticed." 
 
 Talking with him about subsisting wholly on what 
 the woods yielded, game, fish, berries, etc., I sug- 
 gested that his ancestors did so; but he answered that 
 he had been brought up in such a way that he could 
 not do it. "Yes," said he, "that's the way they got 
 a living, like wild fellows, wild as bears. By George ! 
 I shan't go into the woods without provision hard- 
 bread, pork, etc." He had brought on a barrel of 
 hard-bread and stored it at the carry for his hunting. 
 However, though he was a Governor's son, he had not 
 learned to read. 
 
 My eyes were all the while on the trees, distinguish- 
 ing between the black and white spruce and the fir. 
 You paddle along in a narrow canal through an end- 
 less forest, and the vision I have in my mind's eye, still, 
 is of the small, dark, and sharp tops of tall fir and 
 spruce trees, and pagoda-like arbor-vitses, crowded 
 together on each side, with various hard woods inter- 
 mixed. At one place we saw a small grove of slen- 
 der sapling white pines, the only collection of pines 
 that I saw on this voyage. Here and there, however, 
 was a full-grown, tall, and slender, but defective 
 one. All the rest of the pines had been driven off. 
 
 How far men go for the material of their houses ! 
 The inhabitants of the most civilized cities, in all ages, 
 send into far, primitive forests, beyond the bounds of 
 their civilization, where the moose and bear and sav- 
 age dwell, for their pine boards. And, on the other 
 hand, the savage soon receives from cities iron arrow- 
 points, hatchets, and guns, to point his savageness 
 with.
 
 68 CHESUNCOOK 
 
 The solid and well-defined fir-tops, like sharp and 
 regular spearheads, black against the sky, gave a pe- 
 culiar dark and sombre look to the forest. The spruce- 
 tops have a similar but more ragged outline. I was 
 struck by this universal spiring upward of the forest 
 evergreens. Not only the spruce and fir, but even the 
 arbor-vitse and white pine, all spire upwards, lifting 
 a dense spearhead of cones to the light and air, while 
 their branches straggle after as they may. 
 
 About six miles below Ragmuff we turned up a 
 small branch called Pine Stream to look for moose 
 signs. We soon reached a small meadow which was 
 for the most part densely covered with alders. As we 
 were advancing along the edge of this, I heard a slight 
 crackling of twigs deep in the alders, and turned Joe's 
 attention to it ; whereupon he began to push the canoe 
 back rapidly. We had receded thus half a dozen rods 
 when we spied two moose standing just on the edge of 
 the open part of the meadow which we had passed, not 
 more than six or seven rods distant, looking round 
 the alders' at us. They made me think of rabbits, 
 with their long ears and half-inquisitive, half-fright- 
 ened looks, the true denizens of the forest, filling a 
 vacuum which now first I discovered had not been 
 filled for me. 
 
 Our Nimrod hastily stood up, and, while we ducked, 
 fired over our heads one barrel at the foremost ; where- 
 upon this one dashed across the meadow and up a high 
 bank. At the same instant the other, a young one, but 
 as tall as a horse, leaped out into the stream in full 
 sight, and there stood for a moment and uttered two 
 or three trumpeting squeaks. The second barrel was 
 leveled at the calf, and when we expected to see it drop,
 
 A LOGGERS CAMP 
 
 A COW MOOSE
 
 CHESUNCOOK 69 
 
 after a little hesitation it, too, got out of the water, and 
 dashed up the hill. From the style in which they went 
 off, and the fact that our hunter was not used to stand- 
 ing up and firing from a canoe, I judged that we should 
 not see anything more of them. The Indian said that 
 they were a cow and her calf a yearling, or perhaps 
 two years old. It was but two or three rods across the 
 meadow to the foot of the bank, which, like all the 
 world thereabouts, was densely wooded ; but as soon 
 as the moose had passed beyond the veil of the woods 
 there was no sound of footsteps to be heard from the 
 soft, damp moss which carpets that forest, and long 
 before we landed perfect silence reigned. Joe said, 
 "If you wound 'em moose, me sure get 'em." 
 
 We all landed at once. My companion reloaded ; the 
 Indian fastened his birch, threw off his hat, adjusted 
 his waistband, seized the hatchet, and set out. He told 
 me afterward that before we landed he had seen a drop 
 of blood on the bank when it was two or three rods off. 
 He proceeded rapidly through the woods with a pe- 
 culiar elastic and stealthy tread, looking to right and left 
 on the ground, and stepping in the faint tracks of the 
 wounded moose, now and then pointing in silence to 
 a single drop of blood on the handsome shining leaves 
 of the Clintonia borealis, which on every side covered 
 the ground, or to a dry fern-stem freshly broken, all the 
 while chewing some leaf or else the spruce gum. After 
 following the trail about forty rods in a pretty direct 
 course, stepping over fallen trees and winding between 
 standing ones, he at length lost it, for there were many 
 other moose-tracks there, and returning once more to 
 the last blood-stain, traced it a little way and lost it 
 again, and gave it up entirely. He traced a few steps,
 
 70 CHESUNCOOK 
 
 also, the tracks of the calf; but, seeing no blood, soon 
 relinquished the search. 
 
 I observed, while he was tracking the moose, a cer- 
 tain reticence or moderation in him. He did not com- 
 municate several observations of interest which he 
 made, as a white man would have done. At another 
 time, when we heard a slight crackling of twigs and 
 he landed to reconnoitre, he stepped lightly and grace- 
 fully, stealing through the bushes with the least pos- 
 sible noise, in a way in which no white man does 
 as it were, finding a place for his foot each time. 
 
 We pursued our voyage up Pine Stream, and soon 
 coming to a part which was very shoal and also rapid, 
 we took out the baggage and proceeded to carry it 
 round, while Joe got up with the canoe alone. We were 
 just completing our portage when Joe found the cow 
 moose lying dead in the middle of the stream, which 
 was so shallow that it rested on the bottom with hardly 
 a third of its body above water. It had run about a 
 hundred rods and sought the stream, cutting off a 
 slight bend. No doubt a better hunter would have 
 tracked it to this spot at once. My companion went 
 in search of the calf again. I took hold of the ears of 
 the moose, while Joe pushed his canoe down-stream 
 toward a favorable shore, and so we made out, though 
 with some difficulty, its long nose frequently sticking 
 in the bottom, to drag it into still shallower water. 
 It was a brownish black, or a dark iron-gray, on the 
 back and sides, but lighter beneath and in front. 
 The extreme length was eight feet and two inches. 
 Another cow moose, which I have since measured in 
 those woods, was six feet from the tip of the hoof to 
 the shoulders, and eight feet long.
 
 CHESUNCOOK 71 
 
 A white hunter told me that the male was sometimes 
 nine feet high to the top of the back, and weighed a 
 thousand pounds. Only the male has horns, and they 
 rise two feet or more above the shoulders, which would 
 make him in all, sometimes, eleven feet high ! 
 
 The moose is singularly grotesque and awkward 
 to look at. It reminded me of the camelopard, high 
 before and low behind, and no wonder, for like it, it 
 is fitted to browse on trees. The upper lip projected 
 two inches beyond the lower for this purpose. 
 
 Joe proceeded to skin the moose with a pocket-knife; 
 and a tragical business it was to see the ghastly 
 naked red carcass appearing from within its seemly 
 robe. At length Joe had stripped off the hide and 
 dragged it to the shore. He cut off a large mass of the 
 meat to carry along, and another, together with the 
 tongue and nose, he put with the hide on the shore to 
 lie there all night, or till we returned. I was surprised 
 that he thought of leaving this meat thus exposed by 
 the side of the carcass, not fearing that any creature 
 would touch it; but nothing did. 
 
 This stream was so withdrawn, and the moose- 
 tracks were so fresh, that my companions, still bent on 
 hunting, concluded to go farther up it and camp, and 
 then hunt up or down at night. Half a mile above this, 
 as we paddled along, Joe, hearing a slight rustling 
 amid the alders and seeing something black, jumped 
 up and whispered, " Bear ! " but before the hunter had 
 discharged his piece, he corrected himself to " Beaver! 
 Hedgehog ! " The bullet killed a large hedgehog 
 more than two feet and eight inches long. After about 
 a mile of still water, we prepared our camp just at the 
 foot of a considerable fall. Little chopping was done
 
 72 CHESUNCOOK 
 
 that night, for fear of scaring the moose. We had 
 moose-meat fried for supper. It tasted like tender 
 beef, with perhaps more flavor. 
 
 After supper, the moon having risen, we proceeded 
 to hunt a mile up this stream, first "carrying" about 
 the falls. We launched the canoe from the ledge over 
 which the stream fell, but after half a mile of still water 
 suitable for hunting, it became rapid again, and we were 
 compelled to make our way along the shore, while Joe 
 endeavored to get up in the birch alone, though it was 
 very difficult for him to pick his way amid the rocks in 
 the night. We on the shore T^und the worst of walking, 
 a perfect chaos of fallen and drifted trees, and of bushes 
 projecting far over the water, and now and then we 
 made our way across the mouth of a small tributary on 
 a network of alders. So we went tumbling on in the 
 dark, being on the shady side, effectually scaring all 
 the moose and bears that might be thereabouts. At 
 length we came to a standstill, and Joe went forward to 
 reconnoitre ; but he reported that it was a continuous 
 rapid as far as he went, with no prospect of improve- 
 ment. So we turned about, hunting back to the camp 
 through the still water. I got sleepy as it grew late, 
 and fairly lost myself in sleep several times ; but all 
 at once I would be aroused by the sound of Joe's 
 birch horn in the midst of all this silence calling the 
 moose, ugh, ugh, oo-oo-oo-oo-oo-oo, and I prepared 
 to hear a furious moose come rushing and crashing 
 through the forest, and see him burst out on to the 
 little strip of meadow by our side. 
 
 But I had had enough of moose-hunting. I had been 
 willing to learn how the Indian manoeuvred ; but one 
 moose killed was as good, if not as bad, as a dozen.
 
 CHESUNCOOK 73 
 
 The afternoon's tragedy, and my share in it, destroyed 
 the pleasure of my adventure. I think that I could 
 spend a year in the woods, fishing and hunting just 
 enough to sustain myself, with satisfaction. This would 
 be next to living like a philosopher on the fruits of the 
 earth which you had raised. But this hunting of the 
 moose merely for the satisfaction of killing him, not 
 even for the sake of his hide, without making any 
 extraordinary exertion or running any risk yourself, 
 is too much like going out by night to some woodside 
 pasture and shooting your neighbor's horses. These 
 are God's own horses, poor, timid creatures, that will 
 run fast enough as soon as they smell you, though they 
 are nine feet high. Joe told us of some hunters who 
 a year or two before had shot down several oxen 
 by night, somewhere in the Maine woods, mistaking 
 them for moose. And so might any of the hunters, 
 and what is the difference in the sport, but the name ? 
 In the former case, having killed one of God's oxen, 
 you strip off its hide, because that is the common 
 trophy, and, moreover, you have heard that it may be 
 sold for moccasins, cut a steak from its haunches, 
 and leave the huge carcass to smell to heaven for you. 
 It is no better than to assist at a slaughter-house. 
 
 This afternoon's experience suggested to me how 
 base or coarse are the motives which commonly carry 
 men into the wilderness. The explorers and lumberers 
 generally are all hirelings, paid so much a day for their 
 labor, and as such they have no more love for wild 
 nature than wood-sawyers have for forests. Other 
 white men and Indians who come here are for the most 
 part hunters, whose object is to slay as many moose 
 and other wild animals as possible. But could not
 
 74 CHESUNCOOK 
 
 one spend some weeks or years in the solitude of this 
 vast wilderness with other employments than these 
 employments perfectly sweet and innocent and 
 ennobling? I already, and for weeks afterward, felt 
 my nature the coarser for this part of my woodland 
 experience, and was reminded that our life should be 
 lived as tenderly and daintily as one would pluck a 
 flower. 
 
 With these thoughts, when we reached our camping- 
 ground, I decided to leave my companions to continue 
 moose-hunting down the stream, while I prepared the 
 camp, though they requested me not to chop much 
 nor make a large fire, for fear I should scare their 
 game. In the midst of the damp fir wood, high on the 
 mossy bank, about nine o'clock of this bright moon- 
 light night, I kindled a fire, when they were gone, 
 and, sitting on the fir-twigs, within sound of the falls, 
 wrote down some of the reflections which I have 
 here expanded. As I sat there, I remembered how far 
 on every hand that wilderness stretched, before you 
 came to cleared or cultivated fields, and wondered if 
 any bear or moose was watching the light of my fire. 
 
 Strange that so few ever come to the woods to see 
 how the pine lives and grows and spires, lifting its 
 evergreen arms to the light to see its perfect success. 
 Most are content to behold it in the shape of many 
 broad boards brought to market, and deem that its 
 true success. But the pine is no more lumber than 
 man is; and to be made into boards and houses is no 
 more its true and highest use than the truest use of a 
 man is to be cut down and made into manure. Can he 
 who has discovered only some of the values of whale- 
 bone and whale-oil be said to have discovered the true
 
 CHESUNCOOK 75 
 
 use of the whale ? Can he who slays the elephant for 
 his ivory be said to have " seen the elephant " ? These 
 are petty and accidental uses; just as if a stronger 
 race were to kill us in order to make buttons and 
 flageolets of our bones; for everything may serve a 
 lower as well as a higher use. Every creature is better 
 alive than dead, men and moose and pine-trees, and 
 he who understands it aright will rather preserve its 
 life than destroy it. 
 
 Is it the lumberman, then, who is the friend and 
 lover of the pine, stands nearest to it, and understands 
 its nature best ? No ! no ! it is the poet ; who does not 
 fondle it with an axe, nor tickle it with a saw, nor 
 stroke it with a plane, who knows whether its heart is 
 false without cutting into it, who has not bought the 
 stumpage of the township on which it stands. All the 
 pines shudder and heave a sigh when that man steps 
 on the forest floor. I have been into the lumber-yard, 
 and the carpenter's shop, and the lampblack-factory, 
 and the turpentine clearing ; but when at length I saw 
 the tops of the pines waving and reflecting the light at 
 a distance high over all the rest of the forest, I realized 
 that the former were not the highest use of the pine. 
 It is not their bones or hide or tallow that I love most. 
 It is the living spirit of the tree, not its spirit of tur- 
 pentine, with which I sympathize and which heals my 
 cuts. 
 
 Ere long the hunters returned, not having seen a 
 moose, but bringing a quarter of the dead one, which, 
 with ourselves, made quite a load for the canoe. 
 
 After breakfasting on moose-meat, we returned 
 down Pine Stream on our way to Chesuncook Lake. 
 Just below the mouth of this stream were the rapids
 
 76 CHESUNCOOK 
 
 called Pine Stream Falls. Joe ran down alone while 
 we walked over the portage, my companion collecting 
 spruce gum for his friends at home, and I looking 
 for flowers. Near the lake were islands, and a low, 
 meadowy shore with scattered trees slanted over the 
 water. There was considerable grass ; and even a few 
 cattle were pastured there. 
 
 On entering the lake we had a view of the moun- 
 tains about Katahdin, like a cluster of blue fungi of 
 rank growth, apparently twenty-five or thirty miles 
 distant, their summits concealed by clouds. The clear- 
 ing to which we were bound was reached by going 
 round a low point. Chesuncook Lake is called eighteen 
 miles long and three wide. 
 
 Ansell Smith's, the principal clearing about this 
 lake, appeared to be quite a harbor for bateaux and 
 canoes, and there was a small scow for hay. There 
 were five other huts with small clearings on the oppo- 
 site side of the lake. One of the Smiths told me that 
 they came here to live four years before. 
 
 As we approached the log house, a dozen rods from 
 the lake and considerably elevated above it, the pro- 
 jecting ends of the logs lapping over each other irreg- 
 ularly several feet at the corners gave it a very rich 
 and picturesque look. It was a low building, about 
 eighty feet long, with many large apartments. The 
 walls were well clayed between the logs, which were 
 large and round, except on the upper and under sides, 
 and as visible inside as out, successive bulging cheeks 
 gradually lessening upward. As for ornamentation, 
 there were the lichens and mosses and fringes of bark. 
 We certainly leave the handsomest paint and clap- 
 boards behind in the woods, when we strip off the
 
 CHESUNCOOK 77 
 
 bark. For beauty, give me trees with the fur on. This 
 house was designed and constructed with the freedom 
 of stroke of a forester's axe, without other compass and 
 square than Nature uses. Wherever the logs were cut 
 off by a window or door, that is, were not kept in 
 place by alternate overlapping, they were held one 
 upon another by very large pins, driven in diagonally 
 on each side and then cut off so as not to project 
 beyond the bulge of the log, as if the logs clasped 
 each other in their arms, These logs were posts, studs, 
 boards, clapboards, laths, plaster, and nails, all in 
 one. Where the citizen uses a mere sliver or board, 
 the pioneer uses the whole trunk of a tree. The house 
 had large stone chimneys, and was roofed with spruce- 
 bark. One end was a loggers' 'camp, for the boarders, 
 with the usual fir floor and log benches. Thus this 
 house was but a slight departure from the hollow 
 tree, which the bear still inhabits being a hollow 
 made with trees piled up, with a coating of bark like 
 its original. 
 
 The cellar was a separate building, like an ice-house, 
 and it answered for a refrigerator at this season, our 
 moose-meat being kept there. There was a large barn, 
 part of whose boards had been sawed by a whip-saw ; 
 and the saw-pit, with its great pile of dust, remained 
 before the house. 
 
 There was also a blacksmith's shop, where plainly 
 a good deal of work was done. The oxen and horses 
 used in lumbering operations were shod, and all the 
 iron-work of sleds, etc., was repaired or made here. 
 
 Smith owned two miles down the lake by half a 
 mile in width. There were about one hundred acres 
 cleared. He cut seventy tons of hay this year on this
 
 78 CHESUNCOOK 
 
 ground, and twenty more on another clearing, and 
 he uses it all himself in lumbering operations. There 
 was a large garden full of roots, turnips, beets, car- 
 rots, potatoes, etc. They said that they were worth as 
 much here as in New York. 
 
 There was the usual long-handled axe of the primi- 
 tive woods by the door, and a large, shaggy dog, whose 
 nose, report said, was full of porcupine quills. I can 
 testify that he looked very sober. This is the usual 
 fortune of pioneer dogs, for they have to face the brunt 
 of the battle for their race. If he should invite one of 
 his town friends up this way, suggesting moose-meat 
 and unlimited freedom, the latter might pertinently 
 inquire, " What is that sticking in your nose ? " When 
 a generation or two have used up all the enemies' 
 darts, their successors lead a comparatively easy life. 
 No doubt our town dogs still talk, in a snuffling way, 
 about the days that tried dogs' noses. 
 
 How they got a cat up there I do not know, for they 
 are as shy as my aunt about entering a canoe. I 
 wondered that she did not run up a tree on the way ; 
 but perhaps she was bewildered by the very crowd of 
 opportunities. 
 
 Twenty or thirty lumberers, Yankee and Canadian, 
 were coming and going, and from time to time an 
 Indian touched here. In the winter there are some- 
 times a hundred men lodged here at once. 
 
 The white pine tree was at the bottom or farther 
 end of all this. It is a war against the pines. I have 
 no doubt that they lived pretty [much the same sort of 
 life in the Homeric age, for men have always thought 
 more of eating than of fighting. Then, as now, their 
 minds ran chiefly on the " hot bread and sweet cakes " ;
 
 CHESUNCOOK 79 
 
 and the fur and lumber trade is an old story to Asia 
 and Europe. I doubt if men ever made a trade of 
 heroism. 
 
 After a dinner at which apple-sauce was the greatest 
 luxury to me, but our moose-meat was oftenest called 
 for by the lumberers, I walked across the clearing 
 into the forest, southward, returning along the shore. 
 For my dessert, I helped myself to a large slice of the 
 Chesuncook woods, and took a hearty draught of its 
 waters with all my senses. The shore was of coarse, 
 flat, slate rocks, often in slabs, with the surf beating on 
 it. They said that in winter the snow was three feet 
 deep on a level here that the ice on the lake was two 
 feet thick clear, and four feet including the snow-ice. 
 We lodged here Sunday night in a comfortable bed- 
 room. 
 
 The sight of one of these frontier houses built of 
 great logs, whose inhabitants have unflinchingly main- 
 tained their ground many summers and winters in the 
 wilderness, reminds me of famous forts, like Ticon- 
 deroga or Crown Point, which have sustained mem- 
 orable sieges. They are especially winter-quarters, 
 and at this season this one had a partially deserted 
 look, as if the siege were raised a little, the snow-banks 
 being melted from before it, and its garrison accord- 
 ingly reduced. I think of their daily food as rations; 
 a Bible and a greatcoat are munitions of war, and a 
 single man seen about the premises is a sentinel on 
 duty. 
 
 Early the next morning we started on our return up 
 the Penobscot. Our host allowed us something for the 
 quarter of the moose which we had brought, and which 
 he was glad to get. Two explorers from Chamberlain
 
 80 CHESUNCOOK 
 
 Lake started at the same time that we did. Red flannel 
 shirts should be worn in the woods, if only for the fine 
 contrast which this color makes with the evergreens 
 and the water. Thus I thought when I saw the forms 
 of the explorers in their birch, poling up the rapids be- 
 fore us, far off against the forest. We stopped to dine 
 at Ragmuff. My companion wandered up the stream 
 to look for moose while Joe went to sleep on the bank, 
 and I improved the opportunity to botanize and bathe. 
 Soon after starting again, while Joe was gone back 
 in the canoe for the frying-pan, which had been left, 
 we picked a couple of quarts of tree-cranberries for a 
 sauce. 
 
 I was surprised by Joe's asking me how far it was to 
 the Moosehorn. He was pretty well acquainted with 
 this stream, but he had noticed that I was curious about 
 distances and had several maps. He, and Indians gen- 
 erally with whom I have talked, are not able to de- 
 scribe dimensions or distances in our measures with 
 any accuracy. He could tell, perhaps, at what time we 
 should arrive, but not how far it was. We saw a few 
 wood ducks, sheldrakes, and black ducks. We also 
 heard the note of one fish hawk, and soon after saw 
 him perched near the top of a dead white pine, while 
 a company of peetweets were twittering and teeter- 
 ing about over the carcass of a moose on a low sandy 
 spit just beneath. We drove the fish hawk from perch 
 to perch, each time eliciting a scream or whistle, for 
 many miles before us. Our course being up-stream, 
 we were obliged to work much harder than before, and 
 had frequent use for a pole. Sometimes all three of us 
 paddled together, standing up. About six miles from 
 Moosehead, we began to see the mountains east of the
 
 CHESUNCOOK 81 
 
 north end of the lake, and at four o'clock we reached 
 the carry. 
 
 Three Indians were encamped here, including the 
 St. Francis Indian who had come in the steamer with 
 us. One of the others was called Sabattis. 1 Joe and 
 the St. Francis Indian were plainly clear Indian, the 
 other two apparently mixed Indian and white. We here 
 cooked the tongue of the moose for supper having 
 left the nose, which is esteemed the choicest part, at 
 Chesuncook, it being a good deal of trouble to prepare 
 it. We also stewed our tree-cranberries, sweetening 
 them with sugar. This sauce was very grateful to 
 us who had been confined to hard-bread, pork, and 
 moose-meat. 
 
 While we were getting supper, Joe commenced cur- 
 ing the moose-hide, on which I had sat a good part of 
 the voyage, he having already cut most of the hair off 
 with his knife. He set up two stout forked poles on the 
 bank, seven or eight feet high, and as much asunder, 
 and having cut slits eight or ten inches long, and the 
 same distance apart, close to the edge, on the sides of 
 the hide, he threaded poles through them, and then, 
 placing one of the poles on the forked stakes, tied 
 the other down tightly at the bottom. The two ends 
 were tied with cedar-bark to the upright poles, through 
 small holes at short intervals. The hide, thus stretched 
 and slanted a little to the north, to expose its flesh side 
 to the sun, measured eight feet long by six high. 
 
 We decided to stop here, my companion intending 
 to hunt down the stream at night. The Indians invited 
 us to lodge with them, but my companion inclined to 
 go to the log-camp on the carry. This camp was close
 
 82 CHESUNCOOK 
 
 and dirty, and had an ill smell, and I preferred to ac- 
 cept the Indians' offer, if we did not make a camp for 
 ourselves; for though they were dirty too, they were 
 more in the open air and were much more agreeable, 
 and even refined, company than the lumberers. The 
 most interesting question at the lumberers' camp was, 
 which man could " handle " any other on the carry. So 
 we went to the Indians' camp or wigwam. 
 
 It was rather windy, and therefore Joe concluded to 
 hunt after midnight if the wind went down. The two 
 mixed-bloods, however, went off up the river for moose 
 at dark. This Indian camp was a slight, patched-up 
 affair, which had stood there several weeks, built shed- 
 fashion, open to the fire on the west. If the wind 
 changed, they could turn it round. It was formed by 
 two forked stakes and a cross-bar, with rafters slanted 
 from this to the ground. The covering was partly an 
 old sail, partly birch-bark securely tied on, and coming 
 down to the ground on the sides. A large log was rolled 
 up at the back, and two or three moose-hides were 
 spread on the ground with the hair up. Various articles 
 of their wardrobe were tucked around the sides and 
 corners, or under the roof. They were smoking moose- 
 meat in front of the camp over the usual large fire. 
 Two stout forked stakes, four or five feet apart and 
 five feet high, were driven into the ground at each end, 
 and then two poles ten feet long were stretched across 
 over the fire, and smaller ones laid on these a foot apart. 
 On the last hung large, thin slices of moose-meat 
 smoking and drying, a space being left open over the 
 centre of the fire. They said that it took three or four 
 days to cure this meat, and it would keep a year or 
 more. Refuse pieces lay about on the ground in differ-
 
 CHESUNCOOK 83 
 
 ent stages of decay, and some pieces also in the fire, 
 half buried and sizzling in the ashes, as black and dirty 
 as an old shoe. These last I at first thought were 
 thrown away, but afterwards found that they were being 
 cooked. A tremendous rib-piece was roasting before 
 the fire, being impaled on an upright stake forced in 
 and out between the ribs. There was a moose-hide 
 stretched and curing on poles, and quite a pile of cured 
 skins close by. They had killed twenty-two moose 
 within two months, but, as they could use very little 
 of the meat, they left the carcasses on the ground. 
 Altogether it was about as savage a sight as was ever 
 witnessed. There were many torches of birch-bark, 
 shaped like straight tin horns, lying ready for use on a 
 stump outside. 
 
 For fear of dirt we spread our blankets over their 
 hides so as not to touch them anywhere. The St. 
 Francis Indian and Joe alone were there at first, and 
 we lay on our backs talking with them till midnight. 
 They were very sociable, and, when they did not talk 
 with us, kept up a steady chatting in their own lan- 
 guage. 
 
 While lying there listening to the Indians, I amused 
 myself with trying to guess at their subject by their 
 gestures, or some proper name introduced. It was a 
 purely wild and primitive American sound and I could 
 not understand a syllable of it. These were the sounds 
 that issued from the wigwams of this country before 
 Columbus was born. I felt that I stood, or rather lay, 
 as near to the primitive man of America that night as 
 any of its discoverers ever did. 
 
 Meanwhile, Joe was making and trying his horn, to 
 be ready for hunting after midnight. The St. Francis
 
 84 CHESUNCOOK 
 
 Indian also amused himself with sounding it, or rather 
 calling through it ; for the sound is made with the voice, 
 and not by blowing through the horn. The latter ap- 
 peared to be a speculator in moose-hides. He bought 
 my companion's for two dollars and a quarter, green. 
 Its chief use is for moccasins. One or two of these In- 
 dians wore them. The St. Francis Indian could write 
 his name very well, Tahmunt Swasen. 
 
 I asked Sabattis, after he came home, if the moose 
 never attacked him. He answered that you must not 
 fire many times, so as to mad him. "I fire once and 
 hit him in the right place, and in the morning I find 
 him. He won't go far. But if you keep firing, you 
 mad him. I fired once five bullets, every one through 
 the heart, and he did not mind 'em at all ; it only made 
 him more mad." 
 
 I asked him if they did not hunt them with dogs. He 
 said that they did so in winter, but never in the sum- 
 mer, for then it was of no use ; they would run right 
 off straight and swiftly a hundred miles. 
 
 Another Indian said that the moose, once scared, 
 would run all day. A dog will hang to their lips and 
 be carried along till he is swung against a tree and 
 drops off. They cannot run on a "glaze," though they 
 can run in snow four feet deep ; but the caribou can 
 run on ice. They commonly find two or three moose 
 together. They cover themselves with water, all but 
 their noses, to escape flies. An Indian, whom I met after 
 this at Oldtown, told me that the moose were very easily 
 tamed, and would come back when once fed, and so 
 would deer. The Indians of this neighborhood are 
 about as familiar with the moose as we are with the ox, 
 having associated with them for so many generations.
 
 CHESUNCOOK 85 
 
 There were none of the small deer up there ; they are 
 more common about the settlements. One ran into the 
 city of Bangor two years before, and jumped through 
 a window of costly plate glass, and then into a mirror, 
 where it thought it recognized one of its kind , and out 
 again, and so on, leaping over the heads of the crowd, 
 until it was captured. This the inhabitants speak of 
 as the deer that went a-shopping. 
 
 I had put the ears of our moose, which were ten 
 inches long, to dry with the moose-meat over the fire, 
 wishing to preserve them ; but Sabattis told me that I 
 must skin and cure them, else the hair would all come 
 off. I asked him how he got fire, and he produced a 
 little box of friction matches. He also had flints and 
 steel and some punk. " But suppose you upset, and all 
 these and your powder get wet." "Then," said he, 
 " we wait till we get to where there is some fire." I pro- 
 duced from my pocket a little vial containing matches, 
 stoppled water-tight, and told him that though we 
 were upset, we should still have some dry matches, at 
 which he stared without saying a word. 
 
 Late at night the other two Indians came home from 
 moose-hunting, not having been successful, aroused 
 the fire, lighted their pipes, smoked awhile, took some- 
 thing strong to drink, ate some moose-meat, and, find- 
 ing what room they could, lay down on the moose- 
 hides ; and thus we passed the night, two white men 
 and four Indians side by side. 
 
 When I awoke in the morning the weather was driz- 
 zling. One of the Indians was lying outside, rolled in 
 his blanket, on the opposite side of the fire, for want of 
 room. Joe had neglected to awake my companion and 
 he had done no hunting that night. The Indians baked
 
 86 CHESUNCOOK 
 
 a loaf of flour bread in a spider on its edge before the 
 fire for their breakfast ; and while my companion was 
 making tea, I caught a dozen sizable fishes in the 
 Penobscot. After we had breakfasted by ourselves, 
 one of our bedfellows, who had also breakfasted, came 
 along, and, being invited, took a cup of tea, and finally, 
 taking up the common platter, licked it clean. 
 
 The rain prevented our continuing any longer in 
 the woods ; so, giving some of our provisions and uten- 
 sils to the Indians, we took leave of them. This being 
 the steamer's day, I set out for the lake at once. 
 
 I walked over the carry alone and waited at the head 
 of the lake. I noticed at the landing, when the steamer 
 came in, one of our bedfellows, who had been moose- 
 hunting the night before, now very sprucely dressed in 
 a clean white shirt and fine black pants, a true Indian 
 dandy, who had evidently come over the carry to show 
 himself to any arrivers on the north shore of Moose- 
 head Lake. 
 
 Midway the lake we took on board two middle-aged 
 men, with their bateau, who had been exploring for six 
 weeks as far as the Canada line. I talked with one of 
 them, telling him that I had come all this distance 
 partly to see where the white pine, the Eastern stuff of 
 which our houses are built, grew, but that I had found 
 it a scarce tree; and I asked him where I must look 
 for it. With a smile he answered that he could hardly 
 tell me. However, he said that he had found enough to 
 employ two teams the next winter. What was consid- 
 ered a "tip-top" tree now was not looked at twenty 
 years ago, when he first went into the business. 
 
 One connected with lumbering operations at Ban- 
 gor told me that the largest pine belonging to his firm,
 
 CHESUNCOOK 87 
 
 cut the previous winter, " scaled " in the woods four 
 thousand five hundred feet, and was worth ninety 
 dollars in the log at the boom in Oldtown. They cut 
 a road three and a half miles long for this tree alone. 
 We reached Monson that night, and the following 
 day rode to Bangor. The next forenoon we went to 
 Oldtown. A Catholic priest crossed to the island in the 
 same bateau with us. The Indian houses are framed, 
 mostly of one story, and in rows one behind another 
 at the south end of the island, with a few scattered 
 ones. I counted about forty, not including the church 
 and what my companion called the council-house. 
 The last was regularly framed and shingled like the 
 rest. There were several of two stories, quite neat, 
 with front yards inclosed , and one at least had green 
 blinds. Here and there were moose-hides stretched 
 and drying about them. There were.no cart-paths, 
 nor tracks of horses, but footpaths; very little land 
 cultivated, but an abundance of weeds, indigenous and 
 naturalized ; more introduced weeds than useful vege- 
 tables, as the Indian is said to cultivate the vices rather 
 than the virtues of the white man. Yet this village 
 was cleaner than I expected. The children were not 
 particularly ragged nor dirty. The little boys met us 
 with bow in hand and arrow on string and cried, " Put 
 up a cent." Verily the Indian has but a feeble hold 
 on his bow now, but the curiosity of the white man 
 is insatiable, and from the first he has been eager 
 to witness this forest accomplishment. Alas for the 
 Hunter Race ! the white man has driven off their 
 game, and substituted a cent in its place. I saw an 
 Indian woman washing at the water's edge. She stood 
 on a rock, and after dipping the clothes in the stream,
 
 88 CHESUNCOOK 
 
 laid them on the rock, and beat them with a short 
 club. The graveyard was crowded with graves and 
 overrun with weeds. 
 
 We called on Governor Neptune, who lived in a 
 little "ten-footer," one of the humblest of them all. 
 When we entered the room, which was one half of the 
 house, he was sitting on the side of the bed. There 
 was a clock hanging in one corner. He had on a black 
 frock coat, and black pants, much worn, white cotton 
 shirt, socks, a red silk handkerchief about his neck, 
 and a straw hat. His black hair was only slightly 
 grayed. He was no darker than many old white men. 
 He told me that he was eighty-nine ; but he was going 
 moose-hunting that fall, as he had been the previous 
 one. Probably his companions did the hunting. We 
 saw various squaws dodging about. One sat on the 
 bed by his side and helped him out with his stories. 
 They were remarkably corpulent, with smooth, round 
 faces, apparently full of good-humor. While we were 
 there, one went over to Oldtown, returned, and cut 
 out a dress, which she had bought, on another bed in 
 the room. The Governor said that he could remem- 
 ber when the moose were much larger; that they did 
 not use to be in the woods, but came out of the water, 
 as all deer did. " Moose was whale once. Away down 
 Merrimac way, a whale came ashore in a shallow 
 bay. Sea went out and left him, and he came up on 
 land a moose." 
 
 But we talked mostly with the Governor's son-in- 
 law; and the Governor, being so old and deaf, per- 
 mitted himself to be ignored while we asked questions 
 about him. The former said that there were two polit- 
 ical parties among them one in favor of schools and
 
 CHESUNCOOK 89 
 
 the other opposed to them. The first had just pre- 
 vailed at the election and sent their man to the legis- 
 lature. Neptune and Aitteon and he himself were in 
 favor of schools. He said, "If Indians got learning, 
 they would keep their money." 
 
 A very small black puppy rushed into the room and 
 made at the Governor's feet, as he sat in his stockings 
 with his legs dangling from the bedside. The Governor 
 rubbed his hands and dared him to come on, entering 
 into the sport with spirit. 
 
 An Indian was making canoes behind a house and 
 I made a faithful study of canoe-building. I thought 
 that I should like to serve an apprenticeship at that 
 trade for one season, going into the woods for bark 
 with my " boss," making the canoe there, and returning 
 in it at last. 
 
 While the bateau was coming over to take us off, 
 I picked up some fragments of arrowheads on the 
 shore, and one broken stone chisel, which were greater 
 novelties to the Indians than to me. The Indians on 
 the island appeared to live quite happily and to be 
 well treated by the inhabitants of Old town. 
 
 We visited Veazie's mills, just below the island, 
 where were sixteen sets of saws. On one side they were 
 hauling the logs up an inclined plane by water-power ; 
 on the other, passing out the boards, planks, and 
 sawed timber, and forming them into rafts. I was 
 surprised to find a boy collecting the long edgings of 
 boards as fast as cut off, and thrusting them down a 
 hopper, where they were ground up beneath the mill, 
 that they might be out of the way ; otherwise they 
 accumulate in vast piles by the side of the building, 
 increasing the danger from fire, or, floating off, they
 
 90 CHESUNCOOK 
 
 obstruct the river. This was not only a sawmill, but 
 a gristmill, then. The inhabitants of Oldtown and 
 Bangor cannot suffer for want of kindling stuff, surely. 
 Some get their living exclusively by picking up the 
 driftwood and selling it by the cord in the winter. In 
 one place I saw where an Irishman, who keeps a team 
 and a man for the purpose, had covered the shore for 
 a long distance with regular piles, and I was told that 
 he had sold twelve hundred dollars' worth in a year. 
 Another, who lived by the shore, told me that he got 
 all the material of his out-buildings and fences from 
 the river; and in that neighborhood I perceived that 
 this refuse wood was frequently used instead of sand 
 to fill hollows with, being apparently cheaper than dirt. 
 No one has yet described for me the difference be- 
 tween that wild forest which once occupied our oldest 
 townships and the tame one which I find there to-day. 
 The civilized man not only clears the land permanently 
 to a great extent, and cultivates open fields, but he 
 tames and cultivates to a certain extent the forest itself. 
 By his mere presence, almost, he changes the nature of 
 the trees as no other creature does. The sun and air, 
 and perhaps fire, have been introduced. It has lost its 
 wild, damp, and shaggy look ; the countless fallen and 
 decaying trees are gone, and consequently that thick 
 coat of moss which lived on them is gone too. The 
 earth is comparatively bare and smooth and dry. The 
 most primitive places left with us are the swamps. 
 The surface of the ground in the Maine woods is every- 
 where spongy and saturated with moisture. I noticed 
 that the plants which cover the forest floor there are 
 such as are commonly confined to swamps with us 
 orchises, creeping snowberry, and others.
 
 CHESUNCOOK 91 
 
 The greater part of New Brunswick, the northern 
 half of Maine, and adjacent parts of Canada, not to 
 mention the northeastern part of New York and other 
 tracts farther off, are still covered with an almost 
 unbroken pine forest. But a good part of Maine is 
 already bare and commonplace. We seem to think 
 that the earth must go through the ordeal of sheep- 
 pasturage before it is habitable by man . Every sizable 
 pine and oak, or other forest tree, cut down within the 
 memory of man ! As if individual speculators were to 
 be allowed to export the clouds out of the sky, or the 
 stars out of the firmament, one by one. We shall be 
 reduced to gnaw the very crust of the earth for nutri- 
 ment. 
 
 At this rate, we shall all be obliged to let our beards 
 grow, if only to hide the nakedness of the land and 
 make a sylvan appearance. The farmer sometimes 
 talks of "brushing up," as if bare ground looked 
 better than that which wears its natural vesture as 
 if the wild hedges, which perhaps are more to his 
 children than his whole farm besides, were dirt. I 
 know of one who deserves to be called the Tree-hater. 
 You would think that he had been warned by an 
 oracle that he would be killed by the fall of a tree, and 
 so was resolved to anticipate them. The journalists 
 think that they cannot say too much in favor of such 
 "improvements" in husbandry; but these "model 
 farms " are commonly places merely where somebody 
 is making money. 
 
 Nevertheless, it was a relief to get back to our 
 smooth, but still varied landscape. For a permanent 
 residence, it seemed to me that there could be no 
 comparison between this and the wilderness, necessary
 
 92 CHESUNCOOK 
 
 as the latter is for a resource and a background, the 
 raw material of all our civilization. The wilderness 
 is simple, almost to barrenness. The partially culti- 
 vated country it is which chiefly has inspired, and will 
 continue to inspire, the strains of poets. Perhaps our 
 own woods and fields, with the primitive swamps 
 scattered here and there in their midst, but not pre- 
 vailing over them, are the perfection of parks and 
 groves, gardens, arbors, paths, vistas, and landscapes. 
 They are the natural consequence of what art and 
 refinement we as a people have the common which 
 each village possesses, its true paradise, in compari- 
 son with which all elaborately and willfully wealth- 
 constructed parks and gardens are paltry imitations. 
 The poet's, commonly, is not a logger's path, but a 
 woodman's. The logger and pioneer have preceded 
 him, like John the Baptist; eaten the wild honey, 
 it may be, but the locusts also; banished decaying 
 wood and the spongy mosses which feed on it, and 
 built hearths and humanized Nature for him. 
 
 But there are spirits of a yet more liberal culture, to 
 whom no simplicity is barren. There are not only 
 stately pines, but fragile flowers, like the orchises, 
 commonly described as too delicate for cultivation, 
 which derive their nutriment from the crudest mass 
 of peat. These remind us that, not only for strength 
 but for beauty, the poet must from time to time travel 
 the logger's path and the Indian's trail, to drink at 
 some new and more bracing fountain of the Muses, 
 far in the recesses of the wilderness. 
 
 The kings of England formerly had their forests 
 " to hold the king's game," for sport or food, some- 
 times destroying villages to create or extend them ; and
 
 CHESUNCOOK 93 
 
 I think that they were impelled by a true instinct. 
 Why should not we have our national preserves, in 
 which the bear and panther, and some even of the 
 hunter race, may still exist, and not be "civilized 
 off the face of the earth," our forests, not for idle 
 sport or food, but for inspiration and our own true 
 recreation? or shall we grub them all up, poaching 
 on our own national domains?
 
 PRONOUNCING VOCABULARY OF INDIAN 
 
 NAMES 
 
 Aboljacarmegus ; a-b51-j5k-a-me'gus. 
 Aboljacknagesic ; a-bol-j&k-na-gesslk. 
 
 These two words are now usually abbreviated to Abol (aT)ol). 
 Ambejijis ; 5m-b6-je'jis. 
 Androscoggin ; Sn-dro-skogln. 
 Aroostook ; a-rdbs'tdok. 
 Chesuncook; Ch&-sun'ko6k. 
 Katahdin, Ka-tah'din. 
 Katepskonegan ; Ka-tSp-sko-ne'gan ; now commonly called Debsco 
 
 neag (dSb-k&-neg'). 
 Kennebec ; Kfcn-6-bSk'. 
 Kineo ; kin'e-o. 
 
 Mattawamkeag ; mSt-a-w&m'keg. 
 Millinocket ; mil-i-n5k'St. 
 Molunkus ; mo-lunk'us. 
 Pamadumcook ; pSm-a-dum'kook. 
 Passamagamet ; pSs-a-ma-gXm'St. 
 Passamaquoddy ; pas-a-ma-kw5d'i. 
 Penobscot ; p6-n5b'sk5t. 
 Pockwockomua ; pok-wok'6-mus. 
 Quakish ; kwa'kish. 
 Sabattis ; sa-baf!a. 
 Sowadnehunk ; sou-ad-ne-h&nk'.
 
 CAMBRIDGE . MASSACHUSETTS 
 U . S . A
 
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