natural haven between some rocks, and drew her out on the sand. This
camping-ground McCauslin had been familiar with in his lumbering days,
and he now struck it unerringly in the moonlight, 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 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 another. It is as well for cheerfulness as for warmth and
dryness. It forms one side of the camp; one bright side at any rate.
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 evening the wind carried the sparks on to the
tent and burned it. So we hastily drew up the batteau 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 more or less 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, and finding ourselves in so convenient a posture for
studying the heavens, with the moon and stars shining in our faces,
our conversation naturally turned upon astronomy, and we recounted by
turns the most interesting discoveries in that science. But at length
we composed ourselves seriously to sleep. It was interesting, when
awakened at midnight, to watch the grotesque and fiend-like forms and
motions of some one of the party, who, not being able to sleep, had
got up silently to arouse the fire, and add fresh fuel, for a change;
now stealthily lugging a dead tree from out the dark, and heaving it
on, now stirring up the embers with his fork, or tiptoeing about to
observe the stars, watched, perchance, by half the prostrate party in
breathless silence; so much the more intense because they were awake,
while each supposed his neighbor sound asleep. Thus aroused, I, too,
brought fresh fuel to the fire, and then rambled along the sandy shore
in the moonlight, hoping to meet a moose come down to drink, or else a
wolf. The little rill tinkled the louder, and peopled all the
wilderness for me; and the glassy smoothness of the sleeping lake,
laving the shores of a new world, with the dark, fantastic rocks
rising here and there from its surface, made a scene not easily
described. It has left such an impression of stern, yet gentle,
wildness on my memory as will not soon be effaced. Not far from
midnight we were one after another awakened by rain falling on our
extremities; and as each was made aware of the fact by cold or wet, he
drew a long sigh and then drew up his legs, until gradually we had all
sidled round from lying at right angles with the boat, till our bodies
formed an acute angle with it, and were wholly protected. When next we
awoke, the moon and stars were shining again, and there were signs of
dawn in the east. I have been thus particular in order to convey some
idea of a night in the woods.
We had soon launched and loaded our boat, and, leaving our fire
blazing, were off again before breakfast. 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, of which we hear so much on smoky days in
Massachusetts. 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, or thoroughfare, we rowed a mile across the foot of
Pamadumcook Lake, which is the name given on the map to this whole
chain of lakes, as if there was but one, though they are, in each
instance, distinctly separated by a reach of the river, with its
narrow and rocky channel and its rapids. This lake, which is one of
the largest, stretched northwest ten miles, to hills and mountains in
the distance. McCauslin pointed to some distant, and as yet
inaccessible, forests of white pine, on the sides of a mountain in
that direction. The Joe Merry Lakes, which lay between us and
Moosehead, on the west, were recently, if they are not still,
“surrounded by some of the best timbered land in the State.” By
another thoroughfare we passed into Deep Cove, a part of the same
lake, which makes up two miles, toward the northeast, and rowing two
miles across this, by another short thoroughfare, entered Ambejijis
Lake.
At the entrance to a lake we sometimes observed what is technically
called “fencing-stuff,” or 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. But it was always startling to
discover so plain a trail of civilized man there. I remember that I
was strangely affected, when we were returning, by the sight of a
ring-bolt well drilled into a rock, and fastened with lead, at the
head of this solitary Ambejijis Lake.
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 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, shutting his eyes, as if to bid farewell to the existing
state of things, 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
Orono Mills. Every log is marked with the owner’s name, cut in the
sapwood 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. They have quite an alphabet of their own,
which only the practiced can read. One of my companions read off from
his memorandum book some marks of his own logs, among which there were
crosses, belts, crow’s feet, girdles, etc., as, “Y--girdle--crowfoot,”
and various other devices. When the logs have run the gauntlet of
innumerable rapids and falls, each on its own account, with more or
less jamming and bruising, those bearing various owners’ marks being
mixed up together,--since all must take advantage of the same
freshet,--they are collected together at the heads of the lakes, and
surrounded by a boom fence of floating logs, to prevent their being
dispersed by the wind, and are thus towed all together, like a flock
of sheep, across the lake, where there is no current, by a windlass,
or boom-head, such as we sometimes saw standing on an island or
headland, and, if circumstances permit, with the aid of sails and
oars. Sometimes, notwithstanding, 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
muskrat. He uses a few efficient tools,--a lever commonly of rock
maple, six or seven feet long, with a stout spike in it, strongly
ferruled on, 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. Sometimes the logs are thrown up on
rocks in such positions 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
freezing 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.[4] I quote Michaux on Lumbering on the Kennebec, then the
source of the best white pine lumber carried to England. “The persons
engaged in this branch of industry are generally emigrants from New
Hampshire.... In the summer they unite in small companies, and
traverse these vast solitudes in every direction, to ascertain the
places in which the pines abound. After cutting the grass and
converting it into hay for the nourishment of the cattle to be
employed in their labor, they return home. In the beginning of the
winter they enter the forests again, establish themselves in huts
covered with the bark of the canoe-birch, or the arbor-vitæ; and,
though the cold is so intense that the mercury sometimes remains for
several weeks from 40° to 50° [Fahr.] below the point of congelation,
they persevere, with unabated courage, in their work.” According to
Springer, the company consists of choppers, swampers,--who make
roads,--barker and loader, teamster, and cook. “When the trees are
felled, they cut them into logs from fourteen to eighteen feet long,
and, by means of their cattle, which they employ with great dexterity,
drag them to the river, and, after stamping on them a mark of
property, roll them on its frozen bosom. At the breaking of the ice,
in the spring, they float down with the current.... The logs that are
not drawn the first year,” adds Michaux, “are attacked by large worms,
which form holes about two lines in diameter, in every direction; but,
if stripped of their bark, they will remain uninjured for thirty
years.”
Ambejijis, this quiet Sunday morning, struck me as the most beautiful
lake we had seen. It is said to be one of the deepest. We had the
fairest view of Joe Merry, Double Top, and Ktaadn, from its surface.
The summit of the latter had a singularly flat, table-land appearance,
like a short highway, where a demigod might be let down to take a turn
or two in an afternoon, to settle his dinner. We rowed a mile and a
half to near the head of the lake, and, pushing through a field of
lily-pads, landed, to cook our breakfast, by the side of a large rock,
known to McCauslin. Our breakfast consisted of tea, with hard-bread
and pork, and fried salmon, which we ate with forks neatly whittled
from alder twigs, which grew there, off strips of birch-bark for
plates. The tea was black tea, without milk to color or sugar to
sweeten it, and two tin dippers were our tea cups. 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. Here was the
site of an old logger’s camp, remembered by McCauslin, now overgrown
with weeds and bushes. In the midst of a dense underwood we noticed a
whole brick, on a rock, in a small run, clean and red and square as in
a brick-yard, which had been brought thus far formerly for tamping.
Some of us afterward regretted that we had not carried this on with us
to the top of the mountain, to be left there for our mark. It would
certainly have been a simple evidence of civilized man. McCauslin said
that large wooden crosses, made of oak, still sound, were sometimes
found standing in this wilderness, which were set up by the first
Catholic missionaries who came through to the Kennebec.
In the next nine miles, which were the extent of our voyage, and which
it took us the rest of the day to get over, we rowed across several
small lakes, poled up numerous rapids and thoroughfares, and carried
over four portages. I will give the names and distances, for the
benefit of future tourists. First, after leaving Ambejijis Lake, we
had a quarter of a mile of rapids to the portage, or carry of ninety
rods around Ambejijis Falls; then a mile and a half through Passamagamet
Lake, which is narrow and river-like, to the falls of the same
name,--Ambejijis stream coming in on the right; then two miles through
Katepskonegan Lake to the portage of ninety rods around Katepskonegan
Falls, which name signifies “carrying-place,”--Passamagamet stream
coming in on the left; then three miles through Pockwockomus Lake, a
slight expansion of the river, to the portage of forty rods around the
falls of the same name,--Katepskonegan stream coming in on the left;
then three quarters of a mile through Aboljacarmegus Lake, similar to
the last, to the portage of forty rods around the falls of the same
name; then half a mile of rapid water to the Sowadnehunk deadwater,
and the Aboljacknagesic stream.
This is generally the order of names as you ascend the river: First,
the lake, or, if there is no expansion, the deadwater; then the falls;
then the stream emptying into the lake, or river above, all of the
same name. First we came to Passamagamet Lake, then to Passamagamet
Falls, then to Passamagamet Stream, emptying in. This order and
identity of names, it will be perceived, is quite philosophical, since
the deadwater or lake is always at least partially produced by the
stream emptying in above; and the first fall below, which is the
outlet of that lake, and where that tributary water makes its first
plunge, also naturally bears the same name.
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, which
was set against an upright rock; but the bears, without turning or
upsetting the barrel, had gnawed a hole in the opposite side, which
looked exactly like an enormous rat-hole, big 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 with them
at carries or camps, to which the next comers do not scruple to help
themselves, they being the property, commonly, not of an individual,
but a company, who can afford to deal liberally.
I will describe particularly how we got over some of these portages
and rapids, in order that the reader may get an idea of the boatman’s
life. At Ambejijis Falls, for instance, 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. This was
the manner of the portage. We first carried over our baggage, and
deposited it on the shore at the other end; then, returning to the
batteau, 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. Commonly, three men walk over
with a batteau 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, or else there are
two at the bows. More cannot well take hold at once. But this requires
some practice, as well as strength, and is in any case extremely
laborious, and wearing to the constitution, to follow. We were, on the
whole, rather an invalid party, and could render our boatmen but
little assistance. Our two men at length took the batteau upon their
shoulders, and, while two of us steadied it, to prevent 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 portages.
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 continually 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, we scraped the bottom smooth
again, with our knives, where it had rubbed on the rocks, to save
friction.
To avoid the difficulties of the portage, our men determined to “warp
up” the Passamagamet Falls; so while the rest walked over the portage
with the baggage, I remained in the batteau, 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
rapids, or rather the falls; and, in answer to our question, whether
we couldn’t get up there, the other answered that he guessed he’d try
it. So we 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
uncertain 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; and 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. At this place there was a regular
portage cut through the woods, and our boatmen had never known a
batteau to ascend the falls. As near as I can remember, there was a
perpendicular fall here, at the worst place of the whole Penobscot
River, two or three feet at least. I could not sufficiently admire the
skill and coolness with which they performed this feat, never speaking
to each other. The bowman, not looking behind, but knowing exactly
what the other is about, works as 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, like a turtle,
the bowman springs from side to side with wonderful suppleness and
dexterity, scanning the rapids and the rocks with a thousand eyes; 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 them in their teeth, and
jerk them from your hands, before you have stolen an effectual shove
against their palates. The pole is set close to the boat, and the prow
is made to overshoot, and just turn the corners of the rocks, in the
very teeth of the rapids. Nothing but the length and lightness, and
the slight draught of the batteau, 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 batteau was
sweeping round irrecoverably amid the whirlpool, we were obliged to
resign the poles to more skillful hands.
Katepskonegan is one of the shallowest and weediest of the lakes, and
looked as if it might abound in pickerel. The falls of the same name,
where we stopped to dine, are considerable and quite picturesque. Here
Uncle George had seen trout caught by the barrelful; but they would
not rise to our bait at this hour. Halfway over this carry, thus far
in the Maine wilderness on its way to the Provinces, we noticed a
large, flaming, Oak Hall handbill, about two feet long, wrapped round
the trunk of a pine, from which the bark had been stripped, and to
which it was fast glued by the pitch. This should be recorded among
the advantages of this mode of advertising, that so, possibly, even
the bears and wolves, moose, deer, otter, and beaver, not to mention
the Indian, may learn where they can fit themselves according to the
latest fashion, or, at least, recover some of their own lost garments.
We christened this the Oak Hall carry.
The forenoon was as serene and placid on this wild stream in the
woods, as we are apt to imagine that Sunday in summer usually is in
Massachusetts. We were occasionally startled by the scream of a bald
eagle, sailing over the stream in front of our batteau; or of the fish
hawks on whom he levies his contributions. There were, at intervals,
small meadows of a few acres on the sides of the stream, waving with
uncut grass, which attracted the attention of our boatmen, who
regretted that they were not nearer to their clearings, 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 kind of rush, or cut-grass, on which we landed to consult about
our further course, we noticed the recent track of a moose, a large,
roundish hole in the soft, wet ground, evincing the great size and
weight of the animal that made it. 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. Now and
then we passed what McCauslin called a pokelogan, an Indian term for
what the drivers might have reason to call a poke-logs-in, an inlet
that leads nowhere. If you get in, you have got to get out again the
same way. These, and the frequent “runrounds” which come into the
river again, would embarrass an inexperienced voyager not a little.
The carry around Pockwockomus Falls was exceedingly rough and rocky,
the batteau 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 batteaux; and you could see where the surface of some large
rocks on which they had rested their batteaux was worn quite smooth
with use. As it was, we had carried over but half the usual portage at
this place for this stage of the water, and launched our boat in the
smooth wave just curving to the fall, prepared 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 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 by good luck, 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 against any rapid. This was
“warping up.” When a part of us walked round at such a place, we
generally took the precaution to take 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 Aboljacarmegus
Falls, some of the party read their own marks on the huge logs which
lay piled up 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. Methinks that must be
where all my property lies, cast up on the rocks on some distant and
unexplored stream, and waiting for an unheard-of freshet to fetch it
down. O make haste, ye gods, with your winds and rains, and start the
jam before it rots!
The last half mile carried us to the Sowadnehunk Deadwater, so called
from the stream of the same name, signifying “running between
mountains,” an important tributary which comes in a mile above. Here
we decided to camp, about twenty miles from the Dam, at the mouth of
Murch Brook and the Aboljacknagesic, mountain streams, broad off from
Ktaadn, and about a dozen miles from its summit, having made fifteen
miles this day.
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 mouth of the
Aboljacknagesic, a clear, swift, shallow stream, which came in from
Ktaadn. Instantly a shoal of white chivin (_Leuciscus pulchellus_),
silvery roaches, cousin-trout, or what not, large and small, prowling
thereabouts, fell upon our bait, and one after another were landed
amidst the bushes. Anon their cousins, the true 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 in vain, to
wriggle down into the water again, for we stood in the boat; but soon
we learned to remedy this evil; for one, 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 product
of primitive rivers; and he could hardly trust his senses, as he stood
over them, that these jewels should have swam away in that
Aboljacknagesic water for so long, so many dark ages;--these bright
fluviatile flowers, seen of Indians only, made beautiful, the Lord
only knows why, to swim there! I could understand better for this, the
truth of mythology, the fables of Proteus, and all those beautiful
sea-monsters,--how all history, indeed, put to a terrestrial use, is
mere history; but put to a celestial, is mythology always.