again. The obscure trail made by the two settlers above, which even
the woodman is sometimes puzzled to discern, ere long crossed a
narrow, open strip in the woods overrun with weeds, called the Burnt
Land, where a fire had raged formerly, stretching northward nine or
ten miles, to Millinocket Lake. At the end of three miles, we reached
Shad Pond, or Noliseemack, an expansion of the river. Hodge, the
Assistant State Geologist, who passed through this on the 25th of
June, 1837, says, “We pushed our boat through an acre or more of
buck-beans, which had taken root at the bottom, and bloomed above the
surface in the greatest profusion and beauty.” Thomas Fowler’s house
is four miles from McCauslin’s, on the shore of the pond, at the mouth
of the Millinocket River, and eight miles from the lake of the same
name, on the latter stream. This lake affords a more direct course to
Ktaadn, but we preferred to follow the Penobscot and the Pamadumcook
lakes. Fowler was just completing a new log hut, and was sawing out a
window through the logs, nearly two feet thick, when we arrived. He
had begun to paper his house with spruce bark, turned inside out,
which had a good effect, and was in keeping with the circumstances.
Instead of water we got here a draught of beer, which, it was allowed,
would be better; clear and thin, but strong and stringent as the cedar
sap. It was as if we sucked at the very teats of Nature’s pine-clad
bosom in these parts,--the sap of all Millinocket botany
commingled,--the topmost, most fantastic, and spiciest sprays of the
primitive wood, and whatever invigorating and stringent gum or essence
it afforded steeped and dissolved in it,--a lumberer’s drink, which
would acclimate and naturalize a man at once,--which would make him
see green, and, if he slept, dream that he heard the wind sough among
the pines. Here was a fife, praying to be played on, through which we
breathed a few tuneful strains,--brought hither to tame wild beasts.
As we stood upon the pile of chips by the door, fish hawks were
sailing overhead; and here, over Shad Pond, might daily be witnessed
the tyranny of the bald eagle over that bird. 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 surrounding forest, and was
frequented from year to year by the same pair, and held sacred by him.
There were these two houses only there, his low hut and the eagles’
airy cart-load of fagots. Thomas Fowler, too, was persuaded to join
us, for two men were necessary to manage the batteau, which was soon
to be our carriage, and these men needed to be cool and skillful for
the navigation of the Penobscot. Tom’s pack was soon made, for he had
not far to look for his waterman’s boots, and a red flannel shirt.
This is the favorite color with lumbermen; 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 and leaky batteau,
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
exchange our batteau 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-cabins, but free from rapids,
according 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, adding,
that there were thousands in these meadows.
Old Fowler’s, on the Millinocket, six miles from McCauslin’s, and
twenty-four from the Point, is the last house. Gibson’s, on the
Sowadnehunk, is the only clearing above, but that had proved a
failure, and was long since deserted. Fowler is the oldest inhabitant
of these woods. He formerly lived a few miles from here, on the south
side of the West Branch, where he built his house sixteen years ago,
the first house built above the Five Islands. Here our new batteau was
to be carried over the first portage of two miles, round the Grand
Falls of the Penobscot, on a horse-sled made of saplings, 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 extracted to fill our empty kettle, and so graduate
our introduction to simpler forest fare. The week before they had lost
nine sheep here out of their first flock, 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 lacerated,
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 turned them out, but in a few moments they were
missing, 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. This realized the old fables of the
wolves and the sheep, and convinced me that that ancient hostility
still existed. Verily, the shepherd-boy did not need to sound a false
alarm this time. There were steel traps by the door, of various sizes,
for wolves, otter, and bears, with large claws instead of teeth, to
catch in their sinews. Wolves are frequently killed with poisoned
bait.
At length, after we had dined here on the usual backwoods fare, the
horses arrived, and we hauled our batteau 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 as necessary
to stand at the stern, to prevent the boat from being wrecked, as a
helmsman in the roughest sea. The philosophy of our progress was
something like this: 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, not far from the outlet of
Quakish Lake, and waited for the batteau to come up. We had been here
but a short time, when a thunder-shower was seen coming up from the
west, over the still invisible lakes, and that pleasant wilderness
which we were so eager to become acquainted with; 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 upon us. It was no
sooner in the hands of the eager company than it was abandoned to the
first revolutionary impulse, and to gravity, to adjust it; and they
might have been seen all stooping to its shelter, and wriggling under
like so many eels, before it was fairly deposited on the ground. When
all were under, we propped up the lee side, and busied ourselves there
whittling thole-pins for rowing, when we should reach the lakes; 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, all drooping and crestfallen, while deluge after deluge
washed over us; but the bottom of a boat may be relied on for a tight
roof. At length, after two hours’ delay at this place, a streak of
fair weather appeared in the northwest, whither our course now lay,
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, more
than so many barrels of pork, we pushed out into the first rapid, a
slight specimen of the stream we had to navigate. With Uncle George in
the stern, and Tom in the bows, each using a spruce pole about twelve
feet long, pointed with iron,[2] and poling on the same side, we shot
up the rapids like a salmon, 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 on
one or both sides, with a hundred as narrow escapes as ever the Argo
had in passing through the Symplegades. I, who had had some experience
in boating, had never experienced any half so exhilarating before. We
were lucky to have exchanged our Indians, whom we did not know, 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 batteau. He is, for the most part, less to be relied
on, 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 hundred times,
still with great risk, as well as delay, where the practiced
batteau-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 perpendicular
ledge, and launches again in
“The torrent’s smoothness, ere it dash below,”
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 utensils for the explorer--must
be conveyed up the river in batteaux; 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 loggers’ team
penetrates to Chesuncook Lake, and still higher up, even two hundred
miles above Bangor. Imagine the solitary sled-track running far up
into the snowy and evergreen wilderness, 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 Quakish Lake, and took our
turns at rowing and paddling across it. It is a small, irregular, but
handsome lake, shut in on all sides by the forest, and showing no
traces 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, like a more living
wave,--a vital spot on the lake’s surface,--laughed and frolicked, and
showed its straight leg, for our amusement. Joe Merry Mountain
appeared in the northwest, as if it were looking down on this lake
especially; and we had our first, but a partial view of Ktaadn, its
summit veiled in clouds, like a dark isthmus in that quarter,
connecting the heavens with the earth. After two miles of smooth
rowing across this lake, 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,
whither cattle and horses cannot penetrate in the summer, raising the
whole river ten feet, and flooding, as they said, some sixty square
miles by means of the innumerable 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.[3]
Here every log pays toll as it passes through the sluices.
We filed into the rude loggers’ camp at this place, such as I have
described, 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 again, and we sat down on the log benches around it to dry us.
On the well-flattened and somewhat faded beds of arbor-vitæ leaves,
which stretched on either hand under the eaves behind us, lay an odd
leaf of the Bible, some genealogical chapter out of the Old Testament;
and, half buried by the leaves, we found Emerson’s Address on West
India Emancipation, which had been left here formerly by one of our
company, and _had made two converts to the Liberty party_ here, as I
was told; also, an odd number of the _Westminster Review_, for 1834,
and a pamphlet entitled “History of the Erection of the Monument on
the Grave of Myron Holly.” This was the readable or reading matter in
a lumberer’s 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 headed by one John Morrison, a good
specimen of a Yankee; and was necessarily composed 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 puffballs seemed a singular diet
for backwoodsmen. There was also tea without milk, sweetened with
molasses. And so, exchanging a word with John Morrison and his gang
when we had returned to the shore, and also exchanging our batteau for
a better still, we made haste to improve the little daylight that
remained. This camp, exactly twenty-nine miles from Mattawamkeag Point
by the way we had come, and about one hundred from Bangor by the
river, was the last human habitation of any kind in this direction.
Beyond, there was no trail, and the river and lakes, by batteaux and
canoes, was considered the only practicable route. We were about
thirty miles by the river from the summit of Ktaadn, which was in
sight, 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 five miles 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,”--for the river becomes
at length only the connecting link between the lakes,--and some slight
rapid which had been mostly made smooth water by the dam, we entered
the North Twin Lake just after sundown, and steered across for the
river “thoroughfare,” four miles distant. This is a noble sheet of
water, where one may get the impression which a new country and a
“lake of the woods” are fitted to create. There was the smoke of no
log hut nor camp of any kind to greet us, still less was any lover of
nature or musing traveler watching our batteau from the distant hills;
not even the Indian hunter was there, for he rarely climbs them, but
hugs the river like ourselves. No face welcomed us but the fine
fantastic sprays of 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 civilized aspect, as if expecting trade and
commerce, and towns and villas. We could distinguish the inlet to the
South Twin, which is said to be the larger, where the shore was misty
and blue, and it was worth the while to look thus through a narrow
opening across the entire expanse of a concealed lake to its own yet
more dim and distant shore. The shores rose gently to ranges of low
hills covered with forests; and though, in fact, the most valuable
white-pine timber, even about this lake, had been culled out, this
would never have been suspected by the voyager. The impression, which
indeed corresponded with the fact, was, as if we were upon a high
table-land between the States and Canada, the northern side of which
is drained by the St. John and Chaudière, the southern by the
Penobscot and Kennebec. There was no bold, mountainous shore, as we
might have expected, but only isolated hills and mountains rising here
and there from the plateau. The country is an archipelago of
lakes,--the lake-country of New England. Their levels 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
Penobscot 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. Even
the Penobscot and St. John have been connected by a canal, so that the
lumber of the Allegash, instead of going down the St. John, comes down
the Penobscot; and the Indian’s tradition, that the Penobscot once ran
both ways for his convenience, is, in one sense, partially realized
to-day.
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 time at least, lost,
and must set about a voyage of discovery first of all 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 mapped, is a wearisome voyage, and will spend his time and his
provisions. They tell a story of a gang of experienced 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 baggage
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, now just visible, like a speck on the water, we rowed by turns
swiftly over its surface, singing such boat songs as we could
remember. The shores seemed at an indefinite distance in the
moonlight. Occasionally we paused in our singing and 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. If we did
not _hear_, however, we did _listen_, not without a reasonable
expectation; that at least I have to tell,--only some utterly
uncivilized, big-throated owl hooted loud and dismally in the drear
and boughy wilderness, plainly not nervous about his solitary life,
nor afraid to hear the echoes of his voice there. We remembered also
that possibly moose were silently watching us from the distant coves,
or some surly bear or timid caribou had been startled by our singing.
It was with new emphasis that we sang there the Canadian boat song,--
“Row, brothers, row, the stream runs fast,
The rapids are near and the daylight’s past!”
which describes precisely our own adventure, and was inspired by the
experience of a similar kind of life,--for the rapids were ever near,
and the daylight long past; the woods on shore looked dim, and many an
Utawas’ tide here emptied into the lake.
“Why should we yet our sail unfurl?
There is not a breath the blue wave to curl!
But, when the wind blows off the shore,
Oh, sweetly we’ll rest our weary oar.”
“Utawas’ tide! this trembling moon
Shall see us float o’er thy surges soon.”
At last we glided past the “green isle,” which had been our landmark,
all joining in the chorus; as if by the watery links of rivers and of
lakes we were about to float over unmeasured zones of earth, bound on
unimaginable adventures,--
“Saint of this green isle! hear our prayers,
Oh, grant us cool heavens and favoring airs!”