acres or more, there was a log camp of the usual construction, with
something more like a house adjoining, for the accommodation of the
carry-man’s family and passing lumberers. The bed of withered fir
twigs smelled very sweet, though really very dirty. There was also a
store-house on the bank of the river, containing pork, flour, iron,
batteaux, and birches, locked up.
We now proceeded to get our dinner, which always turned out to be tea,
and to pitch canoes, for which purpose a large iron pot lay
permanently on the bank. This we did in company with the explorers.
Both Indians and whites use a mixture of rosin and grease for this
purpose, that is, for the pitching, not the dinner. Joe took a small
brand from the fire and blew the heat and flame against the pitch on
his birch, and so melted and spread it. Sometimes he put his mouth
over the suspected spot and sucked, to see if it admitted air; and at
one place, where we stopped, he set his canoe high on crossed stakes,
and poured water into it. I narrowly watched his motions, and listened
attentively to his observations, for we had employed an Indian mainly
that I might have an opportunity to study his ways. I heard him swear
once, mildly, during this operation, about his knife being as dull as
a hoe,--an accomplishment which he owed to his intercourse with the
whites; and he remarked, “We ought to have some tea before we start;
we shall be hungry before we kill that moose.”
At mid-afternoon we embarked on the Penobscot. Our birch was nineteen
and a half feet long by two and a half at the widest part, and
fourteen inches deep within, both ends alike, and painted green, which
Joe thought affected the pitch and made it leak. This, I think, was a
middling-sized one. That of the explorers was much larger, though
probably not much longer. This carried us three with our baggage,
weighing in all between five hundred and fifty and six hundred pounds.
We had two heavy, though slender, rock-maple paddles, one of them of
bird’s-eye maple. Joe placed birch-bark on the bottom for us to sit
on, and slanted cedar splints against the cross-bars to protect our
backs, while he himself sat upon a cross-bar in the stern. The baggage
occupied the middle or widest part of the canoe. We also paddled by
turns in the bows, now sitting with our legs extended, now sitting
upon our legs, and now rising upon our knees; but I found none of
these positions endurable, and was reminded of the complaints of the
old Jesuit missionaries of the torture they endured from long
confinement in constrained positions in canoes, in their long voyages
from Quebec to the Huron country; but afterwards I sat on the
cross-bars, or stood up, and experienced no inconvenience.
It was deadwater for a couple of miles. The river had been raised
about two feet by the rain, and lumberers were hoping for a flood
sufficient to bring down the logs that were left in the spring. Its
banks were seven or eight feet high, and densely covered with white
and black spruce,--which, I think, must be the commonest trees
thereabouts,--fir, arbor-vitæ, canoe, yellow and black birch, rock,
mountain, and a few red maples, beech, black and mountain ash, the
large-toothed aspen, many civil-looking elms, now imbrowned, along the
stream, and at first a few hemlocks also. We had not gone far before I
was startled by seeing what I thought was an Indian encampment,
covered with a red flag, on the bank, and exclaimed, “Camp!” to my
comrades. I was slow to discover that it was a red maple changed by
the frost. The immediate shores were also densely covered with the
speckled alder, red osier, shrubby willows or sallows, and the like.
There were a few yellow lily pads still left, half-drowned, along the
sides, and sometimes a white one. Many fresh tracks of moose were
visible where the water was shallow, and on the shore, the lily stems
were freshly bitten off by them.
After paddling about two miles, we parted company with the explorers,
and turned up Lobster Stream, which comes in on the right, from the
southeast. This was six or eight rods wide, and appeared to run nearly
parallel with the Penobscot. Joe said that it was so called from small
fresh-water lobsters found in it. It is the Matahumkeag of the maps.
My companion wished to look for moose signs, and intended, if it
proved worth the while, to camp up that way, since the Indian advised
it. On account of the rise of the Penobscot, the water ran up this
stream to the pond of the same name, one or two miles. The Spencer
Mountains, east of the north end of Moosehead Lake, were now in plain
sight in front of us. The kingfisher flew before us, the pigeon
woodpecker was seen and heard, and nuthatches and chickadees close at
hand. Joe said that they called the chickadee _kecunnilessu_ in his
language. I will not vouch for the spelling of what possibly was never
spelt before, but I pronounced after him till he said it would do. We
passed close to a woodcock, which stood perfectly still on the shore,
with feathers puffed up, as if sick. This Joe said they called
_nipsquecohossus_. The kingfisher was _skuscumonsuck_; bear was
_wassus_; Indian devil, _lunxus_; the mountain-ash, _upahsis_. This
was very abundant and beautiful. Moose tracks were not so fresh along
this stream, except in a small creek about a mile up it, where a large
log had lodged in the spring, marked “W-cross-girdle-crow-foot.” We
saw a pair of moose-horns on the shore, and I asked Joe if a moose had
shed them; but he said there was a head attached to them, and I knew
that they did not shed their heads more than once in their lives.
After ascending about a mile and a half, to within a short distance of
Lobster Lake, we returned to the Penobscot. Just below the mouth of
the Lobster we found quick water, and the river expanded to twenty or
thirty rods in width. The moose-tracks were quite numerous and fresh
here. We noticed in a great many places narrow and well-trodden paths
by which they had come down to the river, and where they had slid on
the steep and clayey bank. Their tracks were either close to the edge
of the stream, those of the calves distinguishable from the others, or
in shallow water; the holes made by their feet in the soft bottom
being visible for a long time. They were particularly numerous where
there was a small bay, or pokelogan, as it is called, bordered by a
strip of meadow, or separated from the river by a low peninsula
covered with coarse grass, wool-grass, etc., wherein they had waded
back and forth and eaten the pads. We detected the remains of one in
such a spot. At one place, where we landed to pick up a summer duck,
which my companion had shot, Joe peeled a canoe birch for bark for his
hunting-horn. He then asked if we were not going to get the other
duck, for his sharp eyes had seen another fall in the bushes a little
farther along, and my companion obtained it. I now began to notice the
bright red berries of the tree-cranberry, which grows eight or ten
feet high, mingled with the alders and cornel along the shore. There
was less hard wood than at first.
After proceeding a mile and three quarters below the mouth of the
Lobster, we reached, about sundown, a small island at the head of what
Joe called the Moosehorn Deadwater (the Moosehorn, in which he was
going to hunt that night, coming in about three miles below), and on
the upper end of this we decided to camp. On a point at the lower end
lay the carcass of a moose killed a month or more before. We concluded
merely to prepare our camp, and leave our baggage here, that all might
be ready when we returned from moose-hunting. Though I had not come
a-hunting, and felt some compunctions about accompanying the hunters,
I wished to see a moose near at hand, and was not sorry to learn how
the Indian managed to kill one. I went as reporter or chaplain to the
hunters,--and the chaplain has been known to carry a gun himself.
After clearing a small space amid the dense spruce and fir trees, we
covered the damp ground with a shingling of fir twigs, and, while Joe
was preparing his birch horn and pitching his canoe,--for this had to
be done whenever we stopped long enough to build a fire, and was the
principal labor which he took upon himself at such times,--we
collected fuel for the night, large, wet, and rotting logs, which had
lodged at the head of the island, for our hatchet was too small for
effective chopping; but we did not kindle a fire, lest the moose
should smell it. Joe set up a couple of forked stakes, and prepared
half a dozen poles, ready to cast one of our blankets over in case it
rained in the night, which precaution, however, was omitted the next
night. We also plucked the ducks which had been killed for breakfast.
While we were thus engaged in the twilight, we heard faintly, from far
down the stream, what sounded like two strokes of a woodchopper’s axe,
echoing dully through the grim solitude. We are wont to liken many
sounds, heard at a distance in the forest, to the stroke of an axe,
because they resemble each other under those circumstances, and that
is the one we commonly hear there. When we told Joe of this, he
exclaimed, “By George, I’ll bet that was a moose! They make a noise
like that.” These sounds affected us strangely, and by their very
resemblance to a familiar one, where they probably had so different
an origin, enhanced the impression of solitude and wildness.
At starlight we dropped down the stream, which was a deadwater for
three miles, or as far as the Moosehorn; Joe telling us that we must
be very silent, and he himself making no noise with his paddle, while
he urged the canoe along with effective impulses. It was a still
night, and suitable for this purpose,--for if there is wind, the moose
will smell you,--and Joe was very confident that he should get some.
The Harvest Moon had just risen, and its level rays began to light up
the forest on our right, while we glided downward in the shade on the
same side, against the little breeze that was stirring. The lofty,
spiring tops of the spruce and fir were very black against the sky,
and more distinct than by day, close bordering this broad avenue on
each side; and the beauty of the scene, as the moon rose above the
forest, it would not be easy to describe. A bat flew over our heads,
and we heard a few faint notes of birds from time to time, perhaps the
myrtle-bird for one, or the sudden plunge of a musquash, or saw one
crossing the stream before us, or heard the sound of a rill emptying
in, swollen by the recent rain. About a mile below the island, when
the solitude seemed to be growing more complete every moment, we
suddenly saw the light and heard the crackling of a fire on the bank,
and discovered the camp of the two explorers; they standing before it
in their red shirts, and talking aloud of the adventures and profits
of the day. They were just then speaking of a bargain, in which, as I
understood, somebody had cleared twenty-five dollars. We glided by
without speaking, close under the bank, within a couple of rods of
them; and Joe, taking his horn, imitated the call of the moose, till
we suggested that they might fire on us. This was the last we saw of
them, and we never knew whether they detected or suspected us.
I have often wished since that I was with them. They search for timber
over a given section, climbing hills and often high trees to look off;
explore the streams by which it is to be driven, and the like; spend
five or six weeks in the woods, they two alone, a hundred miles or
more from any town, roaming about, and sleeping on the ground where
night overtakes them, depending chiefly on the provisions they carry
with them, though they do not decline what game they come across; and
then in the fall they return and make report to their employers,
determining the number of teams that will be required the following
winter. Experienced men get three or four dollars a day for this work.
It is a solitary and adventurous life, and comes nearest to that of
the trapper of the West, perhaps. They work ever with a gun as well as
an axe, let their beards grow, and live without neighbors, not on an
open plain, but far within a wilderness.
This discovery accounted for the sounds which we had heard, and destroyed
the prospect of seeing moose yet awhile. At length, when we had left
the explorers far behind, Joe laid down his paddle, drew forth his
birch horn,--a straight one, about fifteen inches long and three or
four wide at the mouth, tied round with strips of the same bark,--and,
standing up, imitated the call of the moose,--_ugh-ugh-ugh_, or
_oo-oo-oo-oo_, and then a prolonged _oo-o-o-o-o-o-o-o_, and listened
attentively for several minutes. We asked him what kind of noise he
expected to hear. He said that if a moose heard it, he guessed we
should find out; we should hear him coming half a mile off; he would
come close to, perhaps into, the water, and my companion must wait
till he got fair sight, and then aim just behind the shoulder.
The moose venture out to the riverside to feed and drink at night.
Earlier in the season the hunters do not use a horn to call them out,
but steal upon them as they are feeding along the sides of the stream,
and often the first notice they have of one is the sound of the water
dropping from its muzzle. An Indian whom I heard imitate the voice of
the moose, and also that of the caribou and the deer, using a much
longer horn than Joe’s, told me that the first could be heard eight or
ten miles, sometimes; it was a loud sort of bellowing sound, clearer
and more sonorous than the lowing of cattle, the caribou’s a sort of
snort, and the small deer’s like that of a lamb.
At length we turned up the Moosehorn, where the Indians at the carry
had told us that they killed a moose the night before. This is a very
meandering stream, only a rod or two in width, but comparatively deep,
coming in on the right, fitly enough named Moosehorn, whether from its
windings or its inhabitants. It was bordered here and there by narrow
meadows between the stream and the endless forest, affording favorable
places for the moose to feed, and to call them out on. We proceeded
half a mile up this as through a narrow, winding canal, where the
tall, dark spruce and firs and arbor-vitæ towered on both sides in the
moonlight, forming a perpendicular forest-edge of great height, like
the spires of a Venice in the forest. In two places stood a small
stack of hay on the bank, ready for the lumberer’s use in the winter,
looking strange enough there. We thought of the day when this might be
a brook winding through smooth-shaven meadows on some gentleman’s
grounds; and seen by moonlight then, excepting the forest that now
hems it in, how little changed it would appear!
Again and again Joe called the moose, placing the canoe close by some
favorable point of meadow for them to come out on, but listened in
vain to hear one come rushing through the woods, and concluded that
they had been hunted too much thereabouts. We saw, many times, what to
our imaginations looked like a gigantic moose, with his horns peering
from out the forest edge; but we saw the forest only, and not its
inhabitants, that night. So at last we turned about. There was now a
little fog on the water, though it was a fine, clear night above.
There were very few sounds to break the stillness of the forest.
Several times we heard the hooting of a great horned owl, as at home,
and told Joe that he would call out the moose for him, for he made a
sound considerably like the horn; but Joe answered, that the moose had
heard that sound a thousand times, and knew better; and oftener still
we were startled by the plunge of a musquash. Once, when Joe had
called again, and we were listening for moose, we heard, come faintly
echoing, or creeping from far through the moss-clad aisles, a dull,
dry, rushing sound with a solid core to it, yet as if half smothered
under the grasp of the luxuriant and fungus-like forest, like the
shutting of a door in some distant entry of the damp and shaggy
wilderness. If we had not been there, no mortal had heard it. When we
asked Joe in a whisper what it was, he answered, “Tree fall.” There is
something singularly grand and impressive in the sound of a tree
falling in a perfectly calm night like this, as if the agencies which
overthrow it did not need to be excited, but worked with a subtle,
deliberate, and conscious force, like a boa-constrictor, and more
effectively then than even in a windy day. If there is any such
difference, perhaps it is because trees with the dews of the night on
them are heavier than by day.
Having reached the camp, about ten o’clock, we kindled our fire and
went to bed. Each of us had a blanket, in which he lay on the fir
twigs, with his extremities toward the fire, but nothing over his
head. It was worth the while to lie down in a country where you could
afford such great fires; that was one whole side, and the bright side,
of our world. We had first rolled up a large log some eighteen inches
through and ten feet long, for a backlog, to last all night, and then
piled on the trees to the height of three or four feet, no matter how
green or damp. In fact, we burned as much wood that night as would,
with economy and an air-tight stove, last a poor family in one of our
cities all winter. It was very agreeable, as well as independent, thus
lying in the open air, and the fire kept our uncovered extremities
warm enough. The Jesuit missionaries used to say, that, in their
journeys with the Indians in Canada, they lay on a bed which had never
been shaken up since the creation, unless by earthquakes. It is
surprising with what impunity and comfort one who has always lain in a
warm bed in a close apartment, and studiously avoided drafts of air,
can lie down on the ground without a shelter, roll himself in a
blanket, and sleep before a fire, in a frosty autumn night, just after
a long rain-storm, and even come soon to enjoy and value the fresh
air.
I lay awake awhile, watching the ascent of the sparks through the
firs, and sometimes their descent in half-extinguished cinders on my
blanket. They were as interesting as fireworks, going up in endless,
successive crowds, each after an explosion, in an eager, serpentine
course, some to five or six rods above the tree-tops before they went
out. We do not suspect how much our chimneys have concealed; and now
air-tight stoves have come to conceal all the rest. In the course of
the night, I got up once or twice and put fresh logs on the fire,
making my companions curl up their legs.
When we awoke in the morning (Saturday, September 17), there was
considerable frost whitening the leaves. We heard the sound of the
chickadee, and a few faintly lisping birds, and also of ducks in the
water about the island. I took a botanical account of stock of our
domains before the dew was off, and found that the ground-hemlock, or
American yew, was the prevailing undershrub. We breakfasted on tea,
hard-bread, and ducks.
Before the fog had fairly cleared away we paddled down the stream
again, and were soon past the mouth of the Moosehorn. These twenty
miles of the Penobscot, between Moosehead and Chesuncook lakes, are
comparatively smooth, and a great part deadwater; but from time to
time it is shallow and rapid, with rocks or gravel beds, where you can
wade across. There is no expanse of water, and no break in the forest,
and the meadow is a mere edging here and there. There are no hills
near the river nor within sight, except one or two distant mountains
seen in a few places. The banks are from six to ten feet high, but
once or twice rise gently to higher ground. In many places the forest
on the bank was but a thin strip, letting the light through from some
alder swamp or meadow behind. The conspicuous berry-bearing bushes and
trees along the shore were the red osier, with its whitish fruit,
hobble-bush, mountain-ash, tree-cranberry, choke-cherry, now ripe,
alternate cornel, and naked viburnum. Following Joe’s example, I ate
the fruit of the last, and also of the hobble-bush, but found them
rather insipid and seedy. I looked very narrowly at the vegetation, as
we glided along close to the shore, and frequently made Joe turn aside
for me to pluck a plant, that I might see by comparison what was
primitive about my native river. Horehound, horse-mint, and the
sensitive fern grew close to the edge, under the willows and alders,
and wool-grass on the islands, as along the Assabet River in Concord.
It was too late for flowers, except a few asters, goldenrods, etc. In
several places we noticed the slight frame of a camp, such as we had
prepared to set up, amid the forest by the riverside, where some
lumberers or hunters had passed a night, and sometimes steps cut in
the muddy or clayey bank in front of it.
We stopped to fish for trout at the mouth of a small stream called
Ragmuff, which came in from the west, about two miles below the
Moosehorn. Here were the ruins of an old lumbering-camp, and a small
space, which had formerly been cleared and burned over, was now
densely overgrown with the red cherry and raspberries. While we were
trying for trout, Joe, Indian-like, wandered off up the Ragmuff on his
own errands, and when we were ready to start was far beyond call. So
we were compelled to make a fire and get our dinner here, not to lose
time. Some dark reddish birds, with grayer females (perhaps purple
finches), and myrtle-birds in their summer dress, hopped within six or
eight feet of us and our smoke. Perhaps they smelled the frying pork.
The latter bird, or both, made the lisping notes which I had heard in
the forest. They suggested that the few small birds found in the
wilderness are on more familiar terms with the lumberman and hunter
than those of the orchard and clearing with the farmer. I have since
found the Canada jay, and partridges, both the black and the common,
equally tame there, as if they had not yet learned to mistrust man
entirely. The chickadee, which is at home alike in the primitive woods
and in our wood-lots, still retains its confidence in the towns to a
remarkable degree.
Joe at length returned, after an hour and a half, and said that he
had been two miles up the stream exploring, and had seen a moose, but,
not having the gun, he did not get him. We made no complaint, but
concluded to look out for Joe the next time. However, this may have
been a mere mistake, for we had no reason to complain of him
afterwards. As we continued down the stream, I was surprised to hear
him whistling “O Susanna” and several other such airs, while his
paddle urged us along. Once he said, “Yes, sir-ee.” His common word
was “Sartain.” He paddled, as usual, on one side only, giving the
birch an impulse by using the side as a fulcrum. I asked him how the
ribs were fastened to the side rails. He answered, “I don’t know, I
never noticed.” Talking with him about subsisting wholly on what the
woods yielded,--game, fish, berries, etc.,--I suggested that his
ancestors did so; but he answered that he had been brought up in such
a way that he could not do it. “Yes,” said he, “that’s the way they
got a living, like wild fellows, wild as bears. By George! I shan’t go
into the woods without provision,--hard-bread, pork, etc.” He had
brought on a barrel of hard-bread and stored it at the carry for his
hunting. However, though he was a Governor’s son, he had not learned
to read.
At one place below this, on the east side, where the bank was higher
and drier than usual, rising gently from the shore to a slight
elevation, some one had felled the trees over twenty or thirty acres,
and left them drying in order to burn. This was the only preparation
for a house between the Moosehead Carry and Chesuncook, but there was
no hut nor inhabitants there yet. The pioneer thus selects a site for
his house, which will, perhaps, prove the germ of a town.