stands nearest to it, and understands its nature best? Is it the
tanner who has barked it, or he who has boxed it for turpentine, whom
posterity will fable to have been changed into a pine at last? No! no!
it is the poet; he it is who makes the truest use of the pine, who
does not fondle it with an axe, nor tickle it with a saw, nor stroke
it with a plane, who knows whether its heart is false without cutting
into it, who has not bought the stumpage of the township on which it
stands. All the pines shudder and heave a sigh when that man steps on
the forest floor. No, it is the poet, who loves them as his own shadow
in the air, and lets them stand. I have been into the lumber-yard, and
the carpenter’s shop, and the tannery, and the lampblack factory, and
the turpentine clearing; but when at length I saw the tops of the
pines waving and reflecting the light at a distance high over all the
rest of the forest, I realized that the former were not the highest
use of the pine. It is not their bones or hide or tallow that I love
most. It is the living spirit of the tree, not its spirit of
turpentine, with which I sympathize, and which heals my cuts. It is as
immortal as I am, and perchance will go to as high a heaven, there to
tower above me still.
Ere long, the hunters returned, not having seen a moose, but, in
consequence of my suggestions, bringing a quarter of the dead one,
which, with ourselves, made quite a load for the canoe.
After breakfasting on moose meat, we returned down Pine Stream on our
way to Chesuncook Lake, which was about five miles distant. We could
see the red carcass of the moose lying in Pine Stream when nearly half
a mile off. Just below the mouth of this stream were the most
considerable rapids between the two lakes, called Pine Stream Falls,
where were large flat rocks washed smooth, and at this time you could
easily wade across above them. Joe ran down alone while we walked over
the portage, my companion collecting spruce gum for his friends at
home, and I looking for flowers. Near the lake, which we were
approaching with as much expectation as if it had been a
university,--for it is not often that the stream of our life opens
into such expansions,--were islands, and a low and meadowy shore with
scattered trees, birches, white and yellow, slanted over the water,
and maples,--many of the white birches killed, apparently by
inundations. There was considerable native grass; and even a few
cattle--whose movements we heard, though we did not see them,
mistaking them at first for moose--were pastured there.
On entering the lake, where the stream runs southeasterly, and for
some time before, we had a view of the mountains about Ktaadn
(_Katahdinauquoh_ one says they are called), like a cluster of blue
fungi of rank growth, apparently twenty-five or thirty miles distant,
in a southeast direction, their summits concealed by clouds. Joe
called some of them the Sowadnehunk Mountains. This is the name of a
stream there, which another Indian told us meant “running between
mountains.” Though some lower summits were afterward uncovered, we got
no more complete view of Ktaadn while we were in the woods. The
clearing to which we were bound was on the right of the mouth of the
river, and was reached by going round a low point, where the water was
shallow to a great distance from the shore. Chesuncook Lake extends
northwest and southeast, and is called eighteen miles long and three
wide, without an island. We had entered the northwest corner of it,
and when near the shore could see only part way down it. The principal
mountains visible from the land here were those already mentioned,
between southeast and east, and a few summits a little west of north,
but generally the north and northwest horizon about the St. John and
the British boundary was comparatively level.
Ansell Smith’s, the oldest and principal clearing about this lake,
appeared to be quite a harbor for batteaux and canoes; seven or eight
of the former were lying about, and there was a small scow for hay,
and a capstan on a platform, now high and dry, ready to be floated and
anchored to tow rafts with. It was a very primitive kind of harbor,
where boats were drawn up amid the stumps,--such a one, methought, as
the Argo might have been launched in. There were five other huts with
small clearings on the opposite side of the lake, all at this end and
visible from this point. One of the Smiths told me that it was so far
cleared that they came here to live and built the present house four
years before, though the family had been here but a few months.
I was interested to see how a pioneer lived on this side of the
country. His life is in some respects more adventurous than that of
his brother in the West; for he contends with winter as well as the
wilderness, and there is a greater interval of time at least between
him and the army which is to follow. Here immigration is a tide which
may ebb when it has swept away the pines; there it is not a tide, but
an inundation, and roads and other improvements come steadily rushing
after.
As we approached the log house, a dozen rods from the lake, and
considerably elevated above it, the projecting ends of the logs
lapping over each other irregularly several feet at the corners gave
it a very rich and picturesque look, far removed from the meanness of
weather-boards. It was a very spacious, low building, about eighty
feet long, with many large apartments. The walls were well clayed
between the logs, which were large and round, except on the upper and
under sides, and as visible inside as out, successive bulging cheeks
gradually lessening upwards and tuned to each other with the axe, like
Pandean pipes. Probably the musical forest gods had not yet cast them
aside; they never do till they are split or the bark is gone. It was a
style of architecture not described by Vitruvius, I suspect, though
possibly hinted at in the biography of Orpheus; none of your frilled
or fluted columns, which have cut such a false swell, and support
nothing but a gable end and their builder’s pretensions,--that is,
with the multitude; and as for “ornamentation,” one of those words
with a dead tail which architects very properly use to describe their
flourishes, there were the lichens and mosses and fringes of bark,
which nobody troubled himself about. We certainly leave the handsomest
paint and clapboards behind in the woods, when we strip off the bark
and poison ourselves with white-lead in the towns. We get but half the
spoils of the forest. For beauty, give me trees with the fur on. This
house was designed and constructed with the freedom of stroke of a
forester’s axe, without other compass and square than Nature uses.
Wherever the logs were cut off by a window or door, that is, were not
kept in place by alternate overlapping, they were held one upon
another by very large pins, driven in diagonally on each side, where
branches might have been, and then cut off so close up and down as not
to project beyond the bulge of the log, as if the logs clasped each
other in their arms. These logs were posts, studs, boards, clapboards,
laths, plaster, and nails, all in one. Where the citizen uses a mere
sliver or board, the pioneer uses the whole trunk of a tree. The house
had large stone chimneys, and was roofed with spruce-bark. The windows
were imported, all but the casings. One end was a regular logger’s
camp, for the boarders, with the usual fir floor and log benches. Thus
this house was but a slight departure from the hollow tree, which the
bear still inhabits,--being a hollow made with trees piled up, with a
coating of bark like its original.
The cellar was a separate building, like an ice-house, and it answered
for a refrigerator at this season, our moose meat being kept there. It
was a potato hole with a permanent roof. Each structure and
institution here was so primitive that you could at once refer it to
its source; but our buildings commonly suggest neither their origin
nor their purpose. There was a large, and what farmers would call
handsome, barn, part of whose boards had been sawed by a whip-saw; and
the saw-pit, with its great pile of dust, remained before the house.
The long split shingles on a portion of the barn were laid a foot to
the weather, suggesting what kind of weather they have there. Grant’s
barn at Caribou Lake was said to be still larger, the biggest ox-nest
in the woods, fifty feet by a hundred. Think of a monster barn in that
primitive forest lifting its gray back above the tree-tops! Man makes
very much such a nest for his domestic animals, of withered grass and
fodder, as the squirrels and many other wild creatures do for
themselves.
There was also a blacksmith’s shop, where plainly a good deal of work
was done. The oxen and horses used in lumbering operations were shod,
and all the iron-work of sleds, etc., was repaired or made here. I saw
them load a batteau at the Moosehead Carry, the next Tuesday, with
about thirteen hundredweight of bar iron for this shop. This reminded
me how primitive and honorable a trade was Vulcan’s. I do not hear
that there was any carpenter or tailor among the gods. The smith seems
to have preceded these and every other mechanic at Chesuncook as well
as on Olympus, and his family is the most widely dispersed, whether he
be christened John or Ansell.
Smith owned two miles down the lake by half a mile in width. There
were about one hundred acres cleared here. He cut seventy tons of
English hay this year on this ground, and twenty more on another
clearing, and he uses it all himself in lumbering operations. The barn
was crowded with pressed hay, and a machine to press it. There was a
large garden full of roots,--turnips, beets, carrots, potatoes, etc.,
all of great size. They said that they were worth as much here as in
New York. I suggested some currants for sauce, especially as they had
no apple trees set out, and showed how easily they could be obtained.
There was the usual long-handled axe of the primitive woods by the
door, three and a half feet long,--for my new black-ash rule was in
constant use,--and a large, shaggy dog, whose nose, report said, was
full of porcupine quills. I can testify that he looked very sober.
This is the usual fortune of pioneer dogs, for they have to face the
brunt of the battle for their race, and act the part of Arnold
Winkelried without intending it. If he should invite one of his town
friends up this way, suggesting moose meat and unlimited freedom, the
latter might pertinently inquire, “What is that sticking in your
nose?” When a generation or two have used up all the enemies’ darts,
their successors lead a comparatively easy life. We owe to our fathers
analogous blessings. Many old people receive pensions for no other
reason, it seems to me, but as a compensation for having lived a long
time ago. No doubt our town dogs still talk, in a snuffling way, about
the days that tried dogs’ noses. How they got a cat up there I do not
know, for they are as shy as my aunt about entering a canoe. I
wondered that she did not run up a tree on the way; but perhaps she
was bewildered by the very crowd of opportunities.
Twenty or thirty lumberers, Yankee and Canadian, were coming and
going,--Aleck among the rest,--and from time to time an Indian touched
here. In the winter there are sometimes a hundred men lodged here at
once. The most interesting piece of news that circulated among them
appeared to be, that four horses belonging to Smith, worth seven
hundred dollars, had passed by farther into the woods a week before.
The white pine tree was at the bottom or farther end of all this. It
is a war against the pines, the only real Aroostook or Penobscot war.
I have no doubt that they lived pretty much the same sort of life in
the Homeric age, for men have always thought more of eating than of
fighting; then, as now, their minds ran chiefly on the “hot bread and
sweet cakes;” and the fur and lumber trade is an old story to Asia and
Europe. I doubt if men ever made a trade of heroism. In the days of
Achilles, even, they delighted in big barns, and perchance in pressed
hay, and he who possessed the most valuable team was the best fellow.
We had designed to go on at evening up the Caucomgomoc, whose mouth
was a mile or two distant, to the lake of the same name, about ten
miles off; but some Indians of Joe’s acquaintance, who were making
canoes on the Caucomgomoc, came over from that side, and gave so poor
an account of the moose-hunting, so many had been killed there lately,
that my companions concluded not to go there. Joe spent this Sunday
and the night with his acquaintances. The lumberers told me that there
were many moose hereabouts, but no caribou or deer. A man from Oldtown
had killed ten or twelve moose, within a year, so near the house that
they heard all his guns. His name may have been Hercules, for aught I
know, though I should rather have expected to hear the rattling of his
club; but, no doubt, he keeps pace with the improvements of the age,
and uses a Sharp’s rifle now; probably he gets all his armor made and
repaired at Smith’s shop. One moose had been killed and another shot
at within sight of the house within two years. I do not know whether
Smith has yet got a poet to look after the cattle, which, on account
of the early breaking up of the ice, are compelled to summer in the
woods, but I would suggest this office to such of my acquaintances as
love to write verses and go a-gunning.
After a dinner at which apple-sauce was the greatest luxury to me, but
our moose meat was oftenest called for by the lumberers, I walked
across the clearing into the forest, southward, returning along the
shore. For my dessert, I helped myself to a large slice of the
Chesuncook woods, and took a hearty draught of its waters with all my
senses. The woods were as fresh and full of vegetable life as a lichen
in wet weather, and contained many interesting plants; but unless they
are of white pine, they are treated with as little respect here as a
mildew, and in the other case they are only the more quickly cut down.
The shore was of coarse, flat, slate rocks, often in slabs, with the
surf beating on it. The rocks and bleached drift-logs, extending some
way into the shaggy woods, showed a rise and fall of six or eight
feet, caused partly by the dam at the outlet. They said that in winter
the snow was three feet deep on a level here, and sometimes four or
five,--that the ice on the lake was two feet thick, clear, and four
feet including the snow-ice. Ice had already formed in vessels.
We lodged here this Sunday night in a comfortable bedroom, apparently
the best one; and all that I noticed unusual in the night--for I still
kept taking notes, like a spy in the camp--was the creaking of the
thin split boards, when any of our neighbors stirred.
Such were the first rude beginnings of a town. They spoke of the
practicability of a winter road to the Moosehead Carry, which would
not cost much, and would connect them with steam and staging and all
the busy world. I almost doubted if the lake would be there,--the
self-same lake,--preserve its form and identity, when the shores
should be cleared and settled; as if these lakes and streams which
explorers report never awaited the advent of the citizen.
The sight of one of these frontier houses, built of these great logs,
whose inhabitants have unflinchingly maintained their ground many
summers and winters in the wilderness, reminds me of famous forts,
like Ticonderoga or Crown Point, which have sustained memorable
sieges. They are especially winter-quarters, and at this season this
one had a partially deserted look, as if the siege were raised a
little, the snowbanks being melted from before it, and its garrison
accordingly reduced. I think of their daily food as rations,--it is
called “supplies;” a Bible and a greatcoat are munitions of war, and a
single man seen about the premises is a sentinel on duty. You expect
that he will require the countersign, and will perchance take you for
Ethan Allen, come to demand the surrender of his fort in the name of
the Continental Congress. It is a sort of ranger service. Arnold’s
expedition is a daily experience with these settlers. They can prove
that they were out at almost any time; and I think that all the first
generation of them deserve a pension more than any that went to the
Mexican war.
Early the next morning we started on our return up the Penobscot, my
companion wishing to go about twenty-five miles above the Moosehead
Carry to a camp near the junction of the two forks, and look for moose
there. Our host allowed us something for the quarter of the moose
which we had brought, and which he was glad to get. Two explorers from
Chamberlain Lake started at the same time that we did. Red flannel
shirts should be worn in the woods, if only for the fine contrast
which this color makes with the evergreens and the water. Thus I
thought when I saw the forms of the explorers in their birch, poling
up the rapids before us, far off against the forest. It is the
surveyor’s color also, most distinctly seen under all circumstances.
We stopped to dine at Ragmuff, as before. My companion it was who
wandered up the stream to look for moose this time, while Joe went to
sleep on the bank, so that we felt sure of him; and I improved the
opportunity to botanize and bathe. Soon after starting again, while
Joe was gone back in the canoe for the frying-pan, which had been
left, we picked a couple of quarts of tree-cranberries for a sauce.
I was surprised by Joe’s asking me how far it was to the Moosehorn. He
was pretty well acquainted with this stream, but he had noticed that I
was curious about distances, and had several maps. He and Indians
generally, with whom I have talked, are not able to describe
dimensions or distances in our measures with any accuracy. He could
tell, perhaps, at what time we should arrive, but not how far it was.
We saw a few wood ducks, sheldrakes, and black ducks, but they were
not so numerous there at that season as on our river at home. We
scared the same family of wood ducks before us, going and returning.
We also heard the note of one fish hawk, somewhat like that of a
pigeon woodpecker, and soon after saw him perched near the top of a
dead white pine against the island where we had first camped, while a
company of peetweets were twittering and teetering about over the
carcass of a moose on a low sandy spit just beneath. We drove the fish
hawk from perch to perch, each time eliciting a scream or whistle, for
many miles before us. Our course being up-stream, we were obliged to
work much harder than before, and had frequent use for a pole.
Sometimes all three of us paddled together, standing up, small and
heavily laden as the canoe was. About six miles from Moosehead, we
began to see the mountains east of the north end of the lake, and at
four o’clock we reached the carry.
The Indians were still encamped here. There were three, including the
St. Francis Indian who had come in the steamer with us. One of the
others was called Sabattis. Joe and the St. Francis Indian were
plainly clear Indian, the other two apparently mixed Indian and white;
but the difference was confined to their features and complexion, for
all that I could see. We here cooked the tongue of the moose for
supper,--having left the nose, which is esteemed the choicest part, at
Chesuncook, boiling, it being a good deal of trouble to prepare it.
We also stewed our tree-cranberries (_Viburnum opulus_), sweetening
them with sugar. The lumberers sometimes cook them with molasses. They
were used in Arnold’s expedition. This sauce was very grateful to us
who had been confined to hard-bread, pork, and moose meat, and,
notwithstanding their seeds, we all three pronounced them equal to the
common cranberry; but perhaps some allowance is to be made for our
forest appetites. It would be worth the while to cultivate them, both
for beauty and for food. I afterward saw them in a garden in Bangor.
Joe said that they were called _ebeemenar_.
While we were getting supper, Joe commenced curing the moose-hide, on
which I had sat a good part of the voyage, he having already cut most
of the hair off with his knife at the Caucomgomoc. He set up two stout
forked poles on the bank, seven or eight feet high, and as much
asunder east and west, and having cut slits eight or ten inches long,
and the same distance apart, close to the edge, on the sides of the
hide, he threaded poles through them, and then, placing one of the
poles on the forked stakes, tied the other down tightly at the bottom.
The two ends also were tied with cedar bark, their usual string, to
the upright poles, through small holes at short intervals. The hide,
thus stretched, and slanted a little to the north, to expose its flesh
side to the sun, measured, in the extreme, eight feet long by six
high. Where any flesh still adhered, Joe boldly scored it with his
knife to lay it open to the sun. It now appeared somewhat spotted and
injured by the duck shot. You may see the old frames on which hides
have been stretched at many camping-places in these woods.
For some reason or other, the going to the forks of the Penobscot was
given up, and we decided to stop here, my companion intending to hunt
down the stream at night. The Indians invited us to lodge with them,
but my companion inclined to go to the log camp on the carry. This
camp was close and dirty, and had an ill smell, and I preferred to
accept the Indians’ offer, if we did not make a camp for ourselves;
for, though they were dirty, too, they were more in the open air, and
were much more agreeable, and even refined company, than the
lumberers. The most interesting question entertained at the lumberers’
camp was, which man could “handle” any other on the carry; and, for
the most part, they possessed no qualities which you could not lay
hands on. So we went to the Indians’ camp or wigwam.
It was rather windy, and therefore Joe concluded to hunt after
midnight, if the wind went down, which the other Indians thought it
would not do, because it was from the south. The two mixed-bloods,
however, went off up the river for moose at dark, before we arrived at
their camp. This Indian camp was a slight, patched-up affair, which
had stood there several weeks, built shed-fashion, open to the fire on
the west. If the wind changed, they could turn it round. It was formed
by two forked stakes and a cross-bar, with rafters slanted from this
to the ground. The covering was partly an old sail, partly birch-bark,
quite imperfect, but securely tied on, and coming down to the ground
on the sides. A large log was rolled up at the back side for a
headboard, and two or three moose-hides were spread on the ground
with the hair up. Various articles of their wardrobe were tucked
around the sides and corners, or under the roof. They were smoking
moose meat on just such a crate as is represented by With, in De Bry’s
“Collectio Peregrinationum,” published in 1588, and which the natives
of Brazil called _boucan_ (whence buccaneer), on which were frequently
shown pieces of human flesh drying along with the rest. It was erected
in front of the camp over the usual large fire, in the form of an
oblong square. Two stout forked stakes, four or five feet apart and
five feet high, were driven into the ground at each end, and then two
poles ten feet long were stretched across over the fire, and smaller
ones laid transversely on these a foot apart. On the last hung large,
thin slices of moose meat smoking and drying, a space being left open
over the centre of the fire. There was the whole heart, black as a
thirty-two pound ball, hanging at one corner. They said that it took
three or four days to cure this meat, and it would keep a year or
more. Refuse pieces lay about on the ground in different stages of
decay, and some pieces also in the fire, half buried and sizzling in
the ashes, as black and dirty as an old shoe. These last I at first
thought were thrown away, but afterwards found that they were being
cooked. Also a tremendous rib-piece was roasting before the fire,
being impaled on an upright stake forced in and out between the ribs.
There was a moose-hide stretched and curing on poles like ours, and
quite a pile of cured skins close by. They had killed twenty-two moose
within two months, but, as they could use but very little of the meat,
they left the carcases on the ground. Altogether it was about as
savage a sight as was ever witnessed, and I was carried back at once
three hundred years. There were many torches of birch-bark, shaped
like straight tin horns, lying ready for use on a stump outside.