The Writings of Henry David Thoreau
In Twenty Volumes
VOLUME III
Manuscript Edition
Limited to Six Hundred Copies
Number ----
[Illustration: _Snowberry_ (_page 227_)]
[Illustration: _Moosehead Lake, from Mount Kineo_]
The Writings of Henry David Thoreau
THE MAINE WOODS
Boston and New York
Houghton Mifflin and Company
MDCCCCVI
Copyright 1864 by Ticknor and Fields
Copyright 1892, 1893, and 1906 by Houghton, Mifflin & Co.
All rights reserved
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTORY NOTE
KTAADN
CHESUNCOOK
THE ALLEGASH AND EAST BRANCH
APPENDIX
I. TREES
II. FLOWERS AND SHRUBS
III. LIST OF PLANTS
IV. LIST OF BIRDS
V. QUADRUPEDS
VI. OUTFIT FOR AN EXCURSION
VII. A LIST OF INDIAN WORDS
INDEX
ILLUSTRATIONS
SNOWBERRY, _Carbon photograph_
MOOSEHEAD LAKE, FROM MOUNT KINEO,
MAINE WILDERNESS
PINE TREE, BOAR MOUNTAIN
SQUAW MOUNTAIN, MOOSEHEAD LAKE
MOOSEHEAD LAKE, FROM MOUNT KINEO
MOUNT KINEO CLIFF
INTRODUCTORY NOTE
The Maine Woods was the second volume collected from his writings
after Thoreau’s death. Of the material which composed it, the first
two divisions were already in print. “Ktaadn and the Maine Woods” was
the title of a paper printed in 1848 in _The Union Magazine_, and
“Chesuncook” was published in _The Atlantic Monthly_ in 1858. The book
was edited by his friend William Ellery Channing.
It was during his second summer at Walden that Thoreau made his first
visit to the Maine woods. It was probably in response to a request
from Horace Greeley that he wrote out the narrative from his journal,
for Mr. Greeley had shown himself eager to help Thoreau in putting his
wares on the market. In a letter to Emerson, January 12, 1848, Thoreau
writes: “I read a part of the story of my excursion to Ktaadn to quite
a large audience of men and boys, the other night, whom it interested.
It contains many facts and some poetry.” He offered the paper to
Greeley at the end of March, and on the 17th of April Greeley
responded: “I inclose you $25 for your article on Maine scenery, as
promised. I know it is worth more, though I have not yet found time to
read it; but I have tried once to sell it without success. It is
rather long for my columns, and too fine for the million; but I
consider it a cheap bargain, and shall print it myself if I do not
dispose of it to better advantage. You will not, of course, consider
yourself under any sort of obligation to me, for my offer was in the
way of business, and I have got more than the worth of my money.” But
this generous, high-minded friend was thinking of Thoreau’s business,
not his own, for in October of the same year he writes, “I break a
silence of some duration to inform you that I hope on Monday to
receive payment for your glorious account of ‘Ktaadn and the Maine
Woods,’ which I bought of you at a Jew’s bargain and sold to _The
Union Magazine_. I am to get $75 for it, and as I don’t choose to
_exploiter_ you at such a rate, I shall insist on inclosing you $25
more in this letter, which will still leave me $25 to pay various
charges and labors I have incurred in selling your articles and
getting paid for them,--the latter by far the most difficult portion
of the business.”
The third of Thoreau’s excursions in the Maine woods was made very
largely for the purpose of studying Indian life and character in the
person of his guide. He had all his life been interested in the
Indians, and Mr. Sanborn tells us--what is also evident from his
journal--that it was his purpose to expand his studies into a separate
work on the subject, for which he had collected a considerable amount
of material from books as well as from his own observations. After his
return from the Allegash and East Branch he wrote as follows to Mr.
Blake under date of August 18, 1857: “I have now returned, and think I
have had a quite profitable journey, chiefly from associating with an
intelligent Indian.... Having returned, I flatter myself that the
world appears in some respects a little larger, and not as usual
smaller and shallower for having extended my range. I have made a
short excursion into the new world which the Indian dwells in, or is.
He begins where we leave off. It is worth the while to detect new
faculties in man, he is so much the more divine; and anything that
fairly excites our admiration expands us. The Indian who can find his
way so wonderfully in the woods possesses so much intelligence which
the white man does not, and it increases my own capacity as well as
faith to observe it. I rejoice to find that intelligence flows in
other channels than I knew. It redeems for me portions of what seemed
brutish before. It is a great satisfaction to find that your oldest
convictions are permanent. With regard to essentials I have never had
occasion to change my mind. The aspect of the world varies from year
to year as the landscape is differently clothed, but I find that the
_truth_ is still _true_, and I never regret any emphasis which it may
have inspired. Ktaadn is there still, but much more surely my old
conviction is there, resting with more than mountain breadth and
weight on the world, the source still of fertilizing streams, and
affording glorious views from its summit if I can get up to it again.”
THE MAINE WOODS
KTAADN
On the 31st of August, 1846, I left Concord in Massachusetts for
Bangor and the backwoods of Maine, by way of the railroad and
steamboat, intending to accompany a relative of mine, engaged in the
lumber trade in Bangor, as far as a dam on the West Branch of the
Penobscot, in which property he was interested. From this place, which
is about one hundred miles by the river above Bangor, thirty miles
from the Houlton military road, and five miles beyond the last log
hut, I proposed to make excursions to Mount Ktaadn, the second highest
mountain in New England, about thirty miles distant, and to some of
the lakes of the Penobscot, either alone or with such company as I
might pick up there. 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 circumstance of a gang of men being employed
there at that time in repairing the injuries caused by the great
freshet in the spring. The mountain may be approached more easily and
directly on horseback and on foot from the northeast side, by the
Aroostook road, and the Wassataquoik River; but in that case you see
much less of the wilderness, none of the glorious river and lake
scenery, and have no experience of the batteau and the boatman’s life.
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.
Ktaadn, whose name is an Indian word signifying highest land, was
first ascended by white men in 1804. It was visited by Professor J. W.
Bailey of West Point in 1836; by Dr. Charles T. Jackson, the State
Geologist, in 1837; and by two young men from Boston in 1845. All
these have given accounts of their expeditions. Since I was there, two
or three other parties have made the excursion, and told their
stories. Besides these, very few, even among backwoodsmen and hunters,
have ever climbed it, and it will be a long time before the tide of
fashionable travel sets that way. The mountainous region of the State
of Maine stretches from near the White Mountains, northeasterly one
hundred and sixty miles, to the head of the Aroostook River, and is
about sixty miles wide. The wild or unsettled portion is far more
extensive. So that some hours only of travel in this direction will
carry the curious to the verge of a primitive forest, more
interesting, perhaps, on all accounts, than they would reach by going
a thousand miles westward.
The next forenoon, Tuesday, September 1, I started with my companion
in a buggy from Bangor for “up river,” expecting to be overtaken the
next day night at Mattawamkeag Point, some sixty miles off, by two
more Bangoreans, who had decided to join us in a trip to the mountain.
We had each a knapsack or bag filled with such clothing and articles
as were indispensable, and my companion carried his gun.
Within a dozen miles of Bangor we passed through the villages of
Stillwater and Oldtown, built at the falls of the Penobscot, which
furnish the principal power by which the Maine woods are converted
into lumber. The mills are built directly over and across the river.
Here is a close jam, a hard rub, at all seasons; and then the once
green tree, long since white, I need not say as the driven snow, but
as a driven log, becomes lumber merely. 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 prostrate forests. Through
this steel riddle, more or less coarse, is the arrowy Maine forest,
from Ktaadn and Chesuncook, and the head-waters of the St. John,
relentlessly sifted, till it comes out boards, clapboards, laths, and
shingles such as the wind can take, still, perchance, to be slit and
slit again, till men get a size that will suit. Think how stood the
white pine tree on the shore of Chesuncook, its branches soughing with
the four winds, and every individual 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, the greater part of them in this immediate neighborhood, and
they sawed two hundred millions of feet of boards annually. To this is
to be added the lumber of the Kennebec, Androscoggin, Saco,
Passamaquoddy, 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 floating 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 solitary beaver swamp and mountain-side, as
soon as possible.
At Oldtown, we walked into a batteau-manufactory. The making of
batteaux is quite a business here for the supply of the Penobscot
River. We examined some on the stocks. They are light and shapely
vessels, calculated for rapid and rocky streams, and to be carried
over long portages on men’s shoulders, from twenty to thirty feet
long, and only four or four and a half wide, sharp at both ends like a
canoe, though broadest forward on the bottom, 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,
but inward are of the clearest and widest white pine stuff, of which
there is a great waste on account of their form, for the bottom is
left perfectly flat, not only from side to side, but from end to end.
Sometimes they become “hogging” even, after long use, and the boatmen
then turn them over and straighten them by a weight at each end. They
told us that one wore out in two years, or often in a single trip, on
the rocks, and sold for from fourteen to sixteen dollars. There was
something refreshing and wildly musical to my ears in the very name of
the white man’s canoe, reminding me of Charlevoix and Canadian
Voyageurs. The batteau is a sort of mongrel between the canoe and the
boat, a fur-trader’s boat.
The ferry here took us past the Indian island. As we left the shore, I
observed a short, shabby, washerwoman-looking Indian,--they commonly
have the woebegone look of the girl that cried for spilt milk,--just
from “up river,” land on the Oldtown side near a grocery, and, drawing
up his canoe, take out a bundle of skins in one hand, and an empty keg
or half-barrel in the other, and scramble up the bank with them. This
picture will do to put before the Indian’s history, that is, the
history of his extinction. In 1837 there were three hundred and
sixty-two souls left of this tribe. The island seemed deserted to-day,
yet I observed some new houses among the weather-stained ones, as if
the tribe had still a design upon life; but generally they have a very
shabby, forlorn, and cheerless look, being all back side and woodshed,
not homesteads, even Indian homesteads, but instead of home or
abroad-steads, for their life is _domi aut militiæ_, at home or at
war, or now rather _venatus_, that is, a hunting, and most of the
latter. The church is the only trim-looking building, but that is not
Abenaki, that was Rome’s doings. Good Canadian it may be, but it is
poor Indian. These were once a powerful tribe. Politics are all the
rage with them now. I even thought that a row of wigwams, with a dance
of powwows, and a prisoner tortured at the stake, would be more
respectable than this.
We landed in Milford, and rode along on the east side of the
Penobscot, having a more or less constant view of the river, and the
Indian islands in it, for they retain all the islands as far up as
Nicketow, at the mouth of the East Branch. They are generally
well-timbered, and are said to be better soil than the neighboring
shores. The river seemed shallow and rocky, and interrupted by rapids,
rippling and gleaming in the sun. We paused a moment to see a fish
hawk dive for a fish down straight as an arrow, from a great height,
but he missed his prey this time. It was the Houlton road on which we
were now traveling, over which some troops were marched once towards
Mars’ Hill, though not to Mars’ _field_, as it proved. It is the main,
almost the only, road in these parts, as straight and well made, and
kept in as good repair as almost any you will find anywhere.
Everywhere we saw signs of the great freshet,--this house standing
awry, and that where it was not founded, but where it was found, at
any rate, the next day; 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. We crossed the Sunkhaze, a
summery Indian name, the Olemmon, Passadumkeag, and other streams,
which make a greater show on the map than they now did on the road. At
Passadumkeag we found anything but what the name implies,--earnest
politicians, to wit,--white ones, I mean,--on the alert to know how
the election was likely to go; men who talked rapidly, with subdued
voice, and a sort of factitious earnestness you could not help
believing, hardly waiting for an introduction, one on each side of
your buggy, endeavoring to say much in little, for they see you hold
the whip impatiently, but always saying little in much. Caucuses they
have had, it seems, and caucuses they are to have again,--victory and
defeat. Somebody may be elected, somebody may not. One man, a total
stranger, who stood by our carriage in the dusk, actually frightened
the horse with his asseverations, growing more solemnly positive as
there was less in him to be positive about. So Passadumkeag did not
look on the map. At sundown, leaving the river road awhile for
shortness, we went by way of Enfield, where we stopped for the night.
This, like most of the localities bearing names on this road, was a
place to name which, in the midst of the unnamed and unincorporated
wilderness, was to make a distinction without a difference, it seemed
to me. Here, however, I noticed quite an orchard of healthy and
well-grown apple trees, in a bearing state, it being the oldest
settler’s house in this region, but all natural fruit and
comparatively worthless for want of a grafter. And so it is generally,
lower down the river. It would be a good speculation, as well as a
favor conferred on the settlers, for a Massachusetts boy to go down
there with a trunk full of choice scions, and his grafting apparatus,
in the spring.
The next morning we drove along through a high and hilly country, in
view of Cold-Stream Pond, a beautiful lake four or five miles long,
and came into the Houlton road again, here called the military road,
at Lincoln, forty-five miles from Bangor, where there is quite a
village for this country,--the principal one above Oldtown. 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 side 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 in the water, in the sun, washing,
and humming or moaning a song meanwhile. It was an aboriginal strain.
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-looking dogs, which may have been lineal
descendants from the ancient Indian dogs, which the first voyageurs
describe as “their wolves.” I suppose they were. 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, in his sluggish way, in answer to
our questions, as if it were the first serious business he had to do
that day, that there _were_ Indians going “up river”--he and one
other--to-day, before noon. 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, yet he seemed the
chief man of the two; the same, as I remembered, who had accompanied
Jackson to the mountain in ’37. The same questions were put to Louis,
and the same information obtained, 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 Point (to the Five Islands, just below
Mattawamkeag) to camp, we walk on up the West Branch tomorrow,--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 stop for you,
you stop for us. We pay you for your trouble.” “Ye’,” replied Louis,
“may be you carry some provision for all,--some pork,--some
bread,--and so pay.” He said, “Me sure get some moose;” and when I
asked if he thought Pomola would let us go up, he answered that we
must plant one bottle of rum on the top; he had planted good many; and
when he looked again, the rum was all gone. He had been up two or
three times; he had planted letter,--English, German, French, etc.
These men were slightly clad in shirt and pantaloons, like laborers
with us in warm weather. They did not invite us into their houses, but
met us outside. So 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, as if the law by which men are dispersed over the globe were a
very stringent one, and not to be resisted with impunity or for slight
reasons. There were even the germs of one or two villages just
beginning to expand. The beauty of the road itself was remarkable. The
various evergreens, many of which are rare with us,--delicate and
beautiful specimens of the larch, arbor-vitæ, ball-spruce, and
fir-balsam, from a few inches to many feet in height,--lined its
sides, in some places like a long front yard, springing up from the
smooth grass-plots which uninterruptedly border it, and are made
fertile by its wash; while it was but a step on either hand to the
grim, untrodden wilderness, whose tangled labyrinth of living, fallen,
and decaying trees only the deer and moose, the bear and wolf can
easily penetrate. More perfect specimens than any front-yard plot can
show grew there to grace the passage of the Houlton teams.
About noon we reached the Mattawamkeag, fifty-six miles from Bangor by
the way we had come, and put up at a frequented house still on the
Houlton road, where the Houlton stage stops. Here was a substantial
covered bridge over the Mattawamkeag, built, I think they said, some
seventeen years before. We had dinner,--where, by the way, and even at
breakfast, as well as supper, at the public-houses on this road, the
front rank is composed of various kinds of “sweet cakes,” in a
continuous line from one end of the table to the other. I think I may
safely say that there was a row of ten or a dozen plates of this kind
set before us two here. To account for which, they say that, when the
lumberers come out of the woods, they have a craving for cakes and
pies, and such sweet things, which there are almost unknown, and this
is the _supply_ to satisfy that _demand_. The supply is always equal
to the demand, and these hungry men think a good deal of getting their
money’s worth. No doubt the balance of victuals is restored by the
time they reach Bangor,--Mattawamkeag takes off the raw edge. Well,
over this front rank, I say, you, coming from the “sweet cake” side,
with a cheap philosophic indifference though it may be, have to
assault what there is behind, which I do not by any means mean to
insinuate is insufficient in quantity or quality to supply that other
demand, of men, not from the woods but from the towns, for venison and
strong country fare. 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, though the men at
the bar-room had never heard of such things; but we found only some
flakes of arrowhead stone, 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; and I could hardly believe my
companion, when he told me that he had been fifty or sixty miles up it
in a batteau, through distant and still uncut forests. A batteau could
hardly find a harbor now at its mouth. Deer and caribou, or reindeer,
are taken here in the winter, in sight of the house.
Before our companions arrived, we rode on up the Houlton road seven
miles to Molunkus, where the Aroostook road comes into it, and where
there is a spacious public house in the woods, called the “Molunkus
House,” kept by one Libbey, which looked as if it had its hall for
dancing and for military drills. 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
corner of the house up the Aroostook road, on which there was no
clearing in sight. There was a man just adventuring upon it this
evening in a rude, original, what you may call Aroostook wagon,--a
mere seat, with a wagon swung under it, a few bags on it, and a dog
asleep to watch them. He offered to carry a message for us to anybody
in that country, cheerfully. I suspect that, if you should go to the
end of the world, you would find somebody there going farther, as if
just starting for home at sundown, and having a last word before he
drove off. Here, too, _was_ a small trader, whom I did not see at
first, who kept a store,--but no great store, certainly,--in a small
box over the way, behind the Molunkus sign-post. It looked like the
balance-box of a patent hay-scales. As for his house, we could only
conjecture where that was; he may have been a boarder in the Molunkus
House. I saw him standing in his shop door,--his shop was so small,
that, if a traveler should make demonstrations of entering in, _he_
would have to go out by the back way, and confer with his customer
through a window, about his goods in the cellar, or, more probably,
bespoken, and yet on the way. I should have gone in, for I felt a real
impulse to trade, if I had not stopped to consider what would become
of him. The day before, we had walked into a shop, over against an inn
where we stopped, the puny beginning of trade, which would grow at
last into a firm copartnership in the future town or city,--indeed, it
was already “Somebody & Co.,” I forget who. The woman came forward
from the penetralia of the attached house, for “Somebody & Co.” was in
the burning, and she sold us percussion-caps, canalés and smooth, and
knew their prices and qualities, and which the hunters preferred. Here
was a little of everything in a small compass to satisfy the wants and
the ambition of the woods,--a stock selected with what pains and care,
and brought home in the wagon-box, or a corner of the Houlton team;
but there seemed to me, as usual, a preponderance of children’s
toys,--dogs to bark, and cats to mew, and trumpets to blow, where
natives there hardly are yet. As if a child born into the Maine woods,
among the pine cones and cedar berries, could not do without such a
sugar-man or skipping-jack as the young Rothschild has.
I think that there was not more than one house on the road to
Molunkus, or for seven miles. 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, pulling up the vines, found good-sized
potatoes, nearly ripe, growing like weeds, and turnips mixed with
them. 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 the ground between the stumps and charred logs; for a first
crop the ashes sufficing for manure, and no hoeing being 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, and to be laid
down. 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,--I paid three, all told,
for my passage from Boston to Bangor, two hundred and fifty
miles,--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? If he will still remember the distinction of poor and
rich, let him bespeak him a narrower house forthwith.
When we returned to the Mattawamkeag, the Houlton stage had already
put up there; and a Province man was betraying his greenness to the
Yankees by his questions. Why Province money won’t pass here at par,
when States’ money is good at Fredericton,--though this, perhaps, was
sensible enough. From what I saw then, it appears that the Province
man was now the only real Jonathan, or raw country bumpkin, left so
far behind by his enterprising neighbors that he didn’t know enough to
put a question to them. No people can long continue provincial in
character who have the propensity for politics and whittling, and
rapid traveling, which the Yankees have, and who are leaving the
mother country behind in the variety of their notions and inventions.
The possession and exercise of practical talent merely are a sure and
rapid means of intellectual culture and independence.
The last edition of Greenleaf’s Map of Maine hung on the wall here,
and, as we had no pocket-map, we resolved to trace a map of the lake
country. So, dipping a wad of tow into the lamp, we oiled a sheet of
paper on the oiled table-cloth, and, in good faith, traced what we
afterwards ascertained to be a labyrinth of errors, carefully
following the outlines of the imaginary lakes which the map contains.
The Map of the Public Lands of Maine and Massachusetts is the only one
I have seen that at all deserves the name. It was while we were
engaged in this operation that our companions arrived. They had seen
the Indians’ fire on the Five Islands, and so we concluded that all
was right.
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 for a week or ten days, thinking that a bite of fresh grass
and a taste of running 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, confined to its banks, to be
met with for thirty miles. On either hand, and beyond, was a wholly
uninhabited 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. Occasionally there was a small opening on the bank, made 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 bran-new country; the only roads were
of Nature’s making, and the few houses were camps. Here, then, one
could no longer accuse institutions and society, but must front the
true source of evil.
There are three classes of inhabitants who either frequent or inhabit
the country which we had now entered: first, the loggers, who, for a
part of the year, the winter and spring, are far the most numerous,
but in the summer, except a few explorers for timber, completely
desert it; second, the few settlers I have named, the only permanent
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.
At the end of three miles we came to the Mattaseunk stream and mill,
where there was even a rude wooden railroad running down to the
Penobscot, the last railroad we were to see. 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, all 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, like shavings, 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 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 acceptable to a backwoods people. It was really an
important item in our outfit, and, at times, the only currency that
would circulate. 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 “Marm Howard’s,” at the end of an extensive clearing, where
there were two or three log huts in sight at once, one on the opposite
side of the river, and a few graves even, surrounded by a wooden
paling, where already the rude forefathers of a hamlet lie, and a
thousand years hence, perchance, some poet will write his “Elegy in a
Country Churchyard.” The “Village Hampdens,” the “mute, inglorious
Miltons,” and Cromwells, “guiltless of” their “country’s blood,” were
yet unborn.
“Perchance in this _wild_ spot _there will be_ laid
Some heart once pregnant with celestial fire;
Hands that the rod of empire might have swayed,
Or waked to ecstasy the living lyre.”
The next house was Fisk’s, ten miles from the Point at the mouth of
the East Branch, opposite to the island Nicketow, or the Forks, the
last of the Indian islands. I am particular to give the names of the
settlers and the distances, since every log hut in these woods is a
public house, and such information is of no little consequence to
those who may have occasion to travel this way. Our course here
crossed the Penobscot, and followed the southern bank. 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, wholly new to the woods. We found the East
Branch a large and rapid stream at its mouth and much deeper than it
appeared. 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 called Rock-Ebeeme, the roar of which we heard through the
woods, and, shortly after, in the thickest of the wood, some empty
loggers’ camps, still new, which were occupied the previous winter.
Though we saw a few more afterwards, I will make one account serve for
all. These were such houses as the lumberers of Maine spend the winter
in, in the wilderness. 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
together, 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 form the roof. The chimney was an oblong square
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 and handsome splints of cedar, or
spruce, or pine, rifted with a sledge and cleaver. The fireplace, the
most important place of all, was in shape and size like the chimney,
and directly under it, defined by a log fence or fender on the ground,
and a heap of ashes, a foot or two deep within, 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-vitæ 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. Usually a good deal of
whittling was expended on the latch, which was made of wood, in the
form of an iron one. These houses are made comfortable by the huge
fires, which can be afforded night and day. Usually the scenery about
them is drear and savage enough; and the loggers’ 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
perennialness even about them that toadstools suggest.[1] 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 here. On expeditions it is only hard bread and pork,
often raw, slice upon 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 impression that I was in a swamp; and
only when it was remarked that this or that tract, judging from the
quality of the timber on it, would make a profitable clearing, was I
reminded, that if the sun were let in it would make a dry field, like
the few I had seen, at once. The best shod for the most part travel
with wet feet. If the ground was so wet and spongy at this, the dryest
part of a dry season, what must it be in the spring? The woods
hereabouts abounded in beech and yellow birch, of which last there
were some very large specimens; also spruce, cedar, fir, and hemlock;
but we saw only the stumps of the white pine here, some of them of
great size, these having been already culled out, being the only tree
much sought after, even as low down as this. Only a little spruce and
hemlock beside had been logged here. The Eastern wood which is sold
for fuel in Massachusetts all comes from below Bangor. It was the
pine alone, chiefly the white pine, that had tempted any but the
hunter to precede us on this route.
Waite’s farm, thirteen miles from the Point, is an extensive and
elevated clearing, from which we got a fine view of the river,
rippling and gleaming far beneath us. My companions had formerly had a
good view of Ktaadn and the other mountains here, but to-day it was so
smoky that we could see nothing of them. We could overlook an immense
country of uninterrupted forest, stretching away up the East Branch
toward Canada on the north and northwest, and toward the Aroostook
valley on the northeast; and imagine what wild life was stirring in
its midst. Here was quite a field of corn for this region, whose
peculiar dry scent we perceived a third of a mile off, before we saw
it.
Eighteen miles from the Point brought us in sight of McCauslin’s, or
“Uncle George’s,” as he was familiarly 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 or intervale, at the
mouth of the Little Schoodic River, on the opposite or north 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 batteau. This clearing was bounded abruptly, 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 journeying over his clearing only
the livelong day. Here we concluded to spend the night, and wait for
the Indians, as there was no stopping-place so convenient above. He
had seen no Indians pass, and this did not often happen without his
knowledge. He thought that his dogs sometimes gave notice of the
approach of Indians half an hour before they arrived.
McCauslin was a Kennebec man, of Scotch descent, who 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 recompense for it. A man of a dry wit and shrewdness, and a
general intelligence which I had not looked for in the back woods. 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-everlasting, in the towns about Boston, even on the
high-road in Concord, and not in the back woods 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, the same
summer and winter; and the dishes were soon smoking on the table, late
the arm-chair, 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 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 batteaux,--no
Indian bread, for the upper part of Maine, it will be remembered, is a
wheat country,--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, ordinary and extraordinary, along this
river. Mountain cranberries (_Vaccinium Vitis-Idæa_), 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 rain-drops on the
cedar splints which covered the roof, and awaked the next morning with
a drop or two in our eyes. It had set in for a storm, and we made up
our minds not to forsake such comfortable quarters with this prospect,
but wait for Indians and fair weather. It rained and drizzled and
gleamed by turns, the livelong day. What we did there, how we killed
the time would perhaps 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, which grew there; or else we
tried by turns the long-handled axe on the logs before the door. The
axe-helves here were made to chop standing on the log,--a primitive
log of course,--and were, therefore, nearly a foot longer than with
us. 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. I think he said that he
was the first to bring a plow and a cow so far; and he might have
added the last, with only two exceptions. The potato-rot had found him
out here, too, the previous year, and got half or two thirds of his
crop, though the seed was of his own raising. Oats, grass, and
potatoes were his staples; but he raised, also, a few carrots and
turnips, and “a little corn for 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 very 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
didn’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 wouldn’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 underneath; and a pigeon, or a
“yellow-hammer,” 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.
When it rained hardest, we returned to the house, and took down a
tract from the shelf. There was the “Wandering Jew,” cheap edition,
and fine print, the “Criminal Calendar,” and “Parish’s Geography,” and
flash novels two or three. Under the pressure of circumstances, we
read a little in these. With such aid, the press is not so feeble an
engine, after all. This 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. 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-vitæ 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
McCauslin’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.
At sundown McCauslin pointed away over the forest, across the river,
to signs of fair weather amid the clouds,--some evening redness there.
For even there the points of compass held; and there was a quarter of
the heavens appropriated to sunrise and another to sunset.
The next morning, the weather proving fair enough for our purpose, we
prepared to start, and, the Indians having failed us, persuaded
McCauslin, who was not unwilling to revisit the scenes of his driving,
to accompany us in their stead, intending to engage one other boatman
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 “clear” pork, and a little tea, made up “Uncle George’s”
pack. The last three articles were calculated to be provision 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.