Indian; and the Governor, being so old and deaf, permitted himself to
be ignored, while we asked questions about him. The former said that
there were two political parties among them,--one in favor of schools,
and the other opposed to them, or rather they did not wish to resist
the priest, who was opposed to them. The first had just prevailed at
the election and sent their man to the legislature. Neptune and
Aitteon and he himself were in favor of schools. He said, “If Indians
got learning, they would keep their money.” When we asked where Joe’s
father, Aitteon, was, he knew that he must be at Lincoln, though he
was about going a-moose-hunting, for a messenger had just gone to him
there to get his signature to some papers. I asked Neptune if they had
any of the old breed of dogs yet. He answered, “Yes.” “But that,” said
I, pointing to one that had just come in, “is a Yankee dog.” He
assented. I said that he did not look like a good one. “Oh, yes!” he
said, and he told, with much gusto, how, the year before, he had
caught and held by the throat a wolf. A very small black puppy rushed
into the room and made at the Governor’s feet, as he sat in his
stockings with his legs dangling from the bedside. The Governor rubbed
his hands and dared him to come on, entering into the sport with
spirit. Nothing more that was significant transpired, to my knowledge,
during this interview. This was the first time that I ever called on a
governor, but, as I did not ask for an office, I can speak of it with
the more freedom.
An Indian who was making canoes behind a house, looking up pleasantly
from his work,--for he knew my companion,--said that his name was Old
John Pennyweight. I had heard of him long before, and I inquired after
one of his contemporaries, Joe Four-pence-ha’penny; but alas! he no
longer circulates. I made a faithful study of canoe-building, and I
thought that I should like to serve an apprenticeship at that trade
for one season, going into the woods for bark with my “boss,” making
the canoe there, and returning in it at last.
While the batteau was coming over to take us off, I picked up some
fragments of arrowheads on the shore, and one broken stone chisel,
which were greater novelties to the Indians than to me. After this, on
Old Fort Hill, at the bend of the Penobscot, three miles above Bangor,
looking for the site of an Indian town which some think stood
thereabouts, I found more arrowheads, and two little dark and
crumbling fragments of Indian earthenware, in the ashes of their
fires. The Indians on the island appeared to live quite happily and to
be well treated by the inhabitants of Oldtown.
We visited Veazie’s mills, just below the island, where were sixteen
sets of saws,--some gang saws, sixteen in a gang, not to mention
circular saws. On one side, they were hauling the logs up an inclined
plane by water-power; on the other, passing out the boards, planks,
and sawed timber, and forming them into rafts. The trees were
literally drawn and quartered there. In forming the rafts, they use
the lower three feet of hard-wood saplings, which have a crooked and
knobbed butt-end, for bolts, passing them up through holes bored in
the corners and sides of the rafts, and keying them. In another
apartment they were making fence-slats, such as stand all over New
England, out of odds and ends; and it may be that I saw where the
picket-fence behind which I dwell at home came from. I was surprised
to find a boy collecting the long edgings of boards as fast as cut
off, and thrusting them down a hopper, where they were ground up
beneath the mill, that they might be out of the way; otherwise they
accumulate in vast piles by the side of the building, increasing the
danger from fire, or, floating off, they obstruct the river. This was
not only a sawmill, but a gristmill, then. The inhabitants of Oldtown,
Stillwater, and Bangor cannot suffer for want of kindling stuff,
surely. Some get their living exclusively by picking up the driftwood
and selling it by the cord in the winter. In one place I saw where an
Irishman, who keeps a team and a man for the purpose, had covered the
shore for a long distance with regular piles, and I was told that he
had sold twelve hundred dollars’ worth in a year. Another, who lived
by the shore, told me that he got all the material of his outbuildings
and fences from the river; and in that neighborhood I perceived that
this refuse wood was frequently used instead of sand to fill hollows
with, being apparently cheaper than dirt.
I got my first clear view of Ktaadn, on this excursion, from a hill
about two miles northwest of Bangor, whither I went for this purpose.
After this I was ready to return to Massachusetts.
* * * * *
Humboldt has written an interesting chapter on the primitive forest,
but no one has yet described for me the difference between that wild
forest which once occupied our oldest townships, and the tame one
which I find there to-day. It is a difference which would be worth
attending to. The civilized man not only clears the land permanently
to a great extent, and cultivates open fields, but he tames and
cultivates to a certain extent the forest itself. By his mere
presence, almost, he changes the nature of the trees as no other
creature does. The sun and air, and perhaps fire, have been
introduced, and grain raised where it stands. It has lost its wild,
damp, and shaggy look; the countless fallen and decaying trees are
gone, and consequently that thick coat of moss which lived on them is
gone too. The earth is comparatively bare and smooth and dry. The most
primitive places left with us are the swamps, where the spruce still
grows shaggy with usnea. The surface of the ground in the Maine woods
is everywhere spongy and saturated with moisture. I noticed that the
plants which cover the forest floor there are such as are commonly
confined to swamps with us,--the _Clintonia borealis_, orchises,
creeping snowberry, and others; and the prevailing aster there is the
_Aster acuminatus_, which with us grows in damp and shady woods. The
asters _cordifolius_ and _macrophyllus_ also are common, asters of
little or no color, and sometimes without petals. I saw no soft,
spreading, second-growth white pines, with smooth bark, acknowledging
the presence of the woodchopper, but even the young white pines were
all tall and slender rough-barked trees.
Those Maine woods differ essentially from ours. There you are never
reminded that the wilderness which you are threading is, after all,
some villager’s familiar wood-lot, some widow’s thirds, from which her
ancestors have sledded fuel for generations, minutely described in
some old deed which is recorded, of which the owner has got a plan,
too, and old bound-marks may be found every forty rods, if you will
search. ’Tis true, the map may inform you that you stand on land
granted by the State to some academy, or on Bingham’s purchase; but
these names do not impose on you, for you see nothing to remind you of
the academy or of Bingham. What were the “forests” of England to
these? One writer relates of the Isle of Wight, that in Charles the
Second’s time “there were woods in the island so complete and
extensive, that it is said a squirrel might have traveled in several
parts many leagues together on the top of the trees.” If it were not
for the rivers (and he might go round their heads), a squirrel could
here travel thus the whole breadth of the country.
We have as yet had no adequate account of a primitive pine forest. I
have noticed that in a physical atlas lately published in
Massachusetts, and used in our schools, the “wood land” of North
America is limited almost solely to the valleys of the Ohio and some
of the Great Lakes, and the great pine forests of the globe are not
represented. In our vicinity, for instance, New Brunswick and Maine
are exhibited as bare as Greenland. It may be that the children of
Greenville, at the foot of Moosehead Lake, who surely are not likely
to be scared by an owl, are referred to the valley of the Ohio to get
an idea of a forest; but they would not know what to do with their
moose, bear, caribou, beaver, etc., there. Shall we leave it to an
Englishman to inform us, that “in North America, both in the United
States and Canada, are the most extensive pine forests in the world”?
The greater part of New Brunswick, the northern half of Maine, and
adjacent parts of Canada, not to mention the northeastern part of New
York and other tracts farther off, are still covered with an almost
unbroken pine forest.
But Maine, perhaps, will soon be where Massachusetts is. A good part
of her territory is already as bare and commonplace as much of our
neighborhood, and her villages generally are not so well shaded as
ours. We seem to think that the earth must go through the ordeal of
sheep-pasturage before it is habitable by man. Consider Nahant, the
resort of all the fashion of Boston,--which peninsula I saw but
indistinctly in the twilight, when I steamed by it, and thought that
it was unchanged since the discovery. John Smith described it in 1614
as “the Mattahunts, two pleasant isles of groves, gardens, and
cornfields;” and others tell us that it was once well wooded, and even
furnished timber to build the wharves of Boston. Now it is difficult
to make a tree grow there, and the visitor comes away with a vision of
Mr. Tudor’s ugly fences, a rod high, designed to protect a few pear
shrubs. And what are we coming to in our Middlesex towns? A bald,
staring town-house, or meeting-house, and a bare liberty-pole, as
leafless as it is fruitless, for all I can see. We shall be obliged to
import the timber for the last, hereafter, or splice such sticks as we
have. And our ideas of liberty are equally mean with these. The very
willow-rows lopped every three years for fuel or powder, and every
sizable pine and oak, or other forest tree, cut down within the memory
of man! As if individual speculators were to be allowed to export the
clouds out of the sky, or the stars out of the firmament, one by one.
We shall be reduced to gnaw the very crust of the earth for
nutriment.
They have even descended to smaller game. They have lately, as I hear,
invented a machine for chopping up huckleberry bushes fine, and so
converting them into fuel!--bushes which, for fruit alone, are worth
all the pear trees in the country many times over. (I can give you a
list of the three best kinds, if you want it.) At this rate, we shall
all be obliged to let our beards grow at least, if only to hide the
nakedness of the land and make a sylvan appearance. The farmer
sometimes talks of “brushing up,” simply as if bare ground looked
better than clothed ground, than that which wears its natural
vesture,--as if the wild hedges, which, perhaps, are more to his
children than his whole farm beside, were dirt. I know of one who
deserves to be called the Tree-hater, and, perhaps, to leave this for
a new patronymic to his children. You would think that he had been
warned by an oracle that he would be killed by the fall of a tree, and
so was resolved to anticipate them. The journalists think that they
cannot say too much in favor of such “improvements” in husbandry; it
is a safe theme, like piety; but as for the beauty of one of these
“model farms,” I would as lief see a patent churn and a man turning
it. They are, commonly, places merely where somebody is making money,
it may be counterfeiting. The virtue of making two blades of grass
grow where only one grew before does not begin to be superhuman.
Nevertheless, it was a relief to get back to our smooth but still
varied landscape. For a permanent residence, it seemed to me that
there could be no comparison between this and the wilderness,
necessary as the latter is for a resource and a background, the raw
material of all our civilization. The wilderness is simple, almost to
barrenness. The partially cultivated country it is which chiefly has
inspired, and will continue to inspire, the strains of poets, such as
compose the mass of any literature. Our woods are sylvan, and their
inhabitants woodmen and rustics; that is _selvaggia_, and the
inhabitants are _salvages_. A civilized man, using the word in the
ordinary sense, with his ideas and associations, must at length pine
there, like a cultivated plant, which clasps its fibres about a crude
and undissolved mass of peat. At the extreme north, the voyagers are
obliged to dance and act plays for employment. Perhaps our own woods
and fields,--in the best wooded towns, where we need not quarrel about
the huckleberries,--with the primitive swamps scattered here and there
in their midst, but not prevailing over them, are the perfection of
parks and groves, gardens, arbors, paths, vistas, and landscapes. They
are the natural consequence of what art and refinement we as a people
have,--the common which each village possesses, its true paradise, in
comparison with which all elaborately and willfully wealth-constructed
parks and gardens are paltry imitations. Or, I would rather say, such
_were_ our groves twenty years ago. The poet’s, commonly, is not a
logger’s path, but a woodman’s. The logger and pioneer have preceded
him, like John the Baptist; eaten the wild honey, it may be, but the
locusts also; banished decaying wood and the spongy mosses which feed
on it, and built hearths and humanized Nature for him.
But there are spirits of a yet more liberal culture, to whom no
simplicity is barren. There are not only stately pines, but fragile
flowers, like the orchises, commonly described as too delicate for
cultivation, which derive their nutriment from the crudest mass of
peat. These remind us, that, not only for strength, but for beauty,
the poet must, from time to time, travel the logger’s path and the
Indian’s trail, to drink at some new and more bracing fountain of the
Muses, far in the recesses of the wilderness.
The kings of England formerly had their forests “to hold the king’s
game,” for sport or food, sometimes destroying villages to create or
extend them; and I think that they were impelled by a true instinct.
Why should not we, who have renounced the king’s authority, have our
national preserves, where no villages need be destroyed, in which the
bear and panther, and some even of the hunter race, may still exist,
and not be “civilized off the face of the earth,”--our forests, not to
hold the king’s game merely, but to hold and preserve the king himself
also, the lord of creation,--not for idle sport or food, but for
inspiration and our own true recreation? or shall we, like the
villains, grub them all up, poaching on our own national domains?
THE ALLEGASH AND EAST BRANCH
I started on my third excursion to the Maine woods Monday, July 20,
1857, with one companion, arriving at Bangor the next day at noon. We
had hardly left the steamer, when we passed Molly Molasses in the
street. As long as she lives, the Penobscots may be considered extant
as a tribe. The succeeding morning, a relative of mine, who is well
acquainted with the Penobscot Indians, and who had been my companion
in my two previous excursions into the Maine woods, took me in his
wagon to Oldtown, to assist me in obtaining an Indian for this
expedition. We were ferried across to the Indian Island in a batteau.
The ferryman’s boy had got the key to it, but the father, who was a
blacksmith, after a little hesitation cut the chain with a cold-chisel
on the rock. He told me that the Indians were nearly all gone to the
seaboard and to Massachusetts, partly on account of the smallpox--of
which they are very much afraid--having broken out in Oldtown, and it
was doubtful whether we should find a suitable one at home. The old
chief Neptune, however, was there still. The first man we saw on the
island was an Indian named Joseph Polis, whom my relative had known
from a boy, and now addressed familiarly as “Joe.” He was dressing a
deer-skin in his yard. The skin was spread over a slanting log, and he
was scraping it with a stick held by both hands. He was stoutly built,
perhaps a little above the middle height, with a broad face, and, as
others said, perfect Indian features and complexion. His house was a
two-story white one, with blinds, the best-looking that I noticed
there, and as good as an average one on a New England village street.
It was surrounded by a garden and fruit-trees, single cornstalks
standing thinly amid the beans. We asked him if he knew any good
Indian who would like to go into the woods with us, that is, to the
Allegash Lakes, by way of Moosehead, and return by the East Branch of
the Penobscot, or vary from this as we pleased. To which he answered,
out of that strange remoteness in which the Indian ever dwells to the
white man, “Me like to go myself; me wants to get some moose;” and
kept on scraping the skin. His brother had been into the woods with my
relative only a year or two before, and the Indian now inquired what
the latter had done to him, that he did not come back, for he had not
seen nor heard from him since.
At length we got round to the more interesting topic again. The
ferryman had told us that all the best Indians were gone except Polis,
who was one of the aristocracy. He to be sure would be the best man we
could have, but if he went at all would want a great price; so we did
not expect to get him. Polis asked at first two dollars a day, but
agreed to go for a dollar and a half, and fifty cents a week for his
canoe. He would come to Bangor with his canoe by the seven o’clock
train that evening,--we might depend on him. We thought ourselves
lucky to secure the services of this man, who was known to be
particularly steady and trustworthy.
I spent the afternoon with my companion, who had remained in Bangor,
in preparing for our expedition, purchasing provisions, hard-bread,
pork, coffee, sugar, etc., and some india-rubber clothing.
We had at first thought of exploring the St. John from its source to
its mouth, or else to go up the Penobscot by its East Branch to the
lakes of the St. John, and return by way of Chesuncook and Moosehead.
We had finally inclined to the last route, only reversing the order of
it, going by way of Moosehead, and returning by the Penobscot,
otherwise it would have been all the way upstream and taken twice as
long.
At evening the Indian arrived in the cars, and I led the way while he
followed me three quarters of a mile to my friend’s house, with the
canoe on his head. I did not know the exact route myself, but steered
by the lay of the land, as I do in Boston, and I tried to enter into
conversation with him, but as he was puffing under the weight of his
canoe, not having the usual apparatus for carrying it, but, above all,
was an Indian, I might as well have been thumping on the bottom of his
birch the while. In answer to the various observations which I made by
way of breaking the ice, he only grunted vaguely from beneath his
canoe once or twice, so that I knew he was there.
Early the next morning (July 23) the stage called for us, the Indian
having breakfasted with us, and already placed the baggage in the
canoe to see how it would go. My companion and I had each a large
knapsack as full as it would hold, and we had two large india-rubber
bags which held our provision and utensils. As for the Indian, all the
baggage he had, beside his axe and gun, was a blanket, which he
brought loose in his hand. However, he had laid in a store of tobacco
and a new pipe for the excursion. The canoe was securely lashed
diagonally across the top of the stage, with bits of carpet tucked
under the edge to prevent its chafing. The very accommodating driver
appeared as much accustomed to carrying canoes in this way as
bandboxes.
At the Bangor House we took in four men bound on a hunting excursion,
one of the men going as cook. They had a dog, a middling-sized
brindled cur, which ran by the side of the stage, his master showing
his head and whistling from time to time; but after we had gone about
three miles the dog was suddenly missing, and two of the party went
back for him, while the stage, which was full of passengers, waited. I
suggested that he had taken the back track for the Bangor House. At
length one man came back, while the other kept on. This whole party of
hunters declared their intention to stop till the dog was found; but
the very obliging driver was ready to wait a spell longer. He was
evidently unwilling to lose so many passengers, who would have taken a
private conveyance, or perhaps the other line of stages, the next day.
Such progress did we make, with a journey of over sixty miles to be
accomplished that day, and a rain-storm just setting in. We discussed
the subject of dogs and their instincts till it was threadbare, while
we waited there, and the scenery of the suburbs of Bangor is still
distinctly impressed on my memory. After full half an hour the man
returned, leading the dog by a rope. He had overtaken him just as he
was entering the Bangor House. He was then tied on the top of the
stage, but being wet and cold, several times in the course of the
journey he jumped off, and I saw him dangling by his neck. This dog
was depended on to stop bears with. He had already stopped one
somewhere in New Hampshire, and I can testify that he stopped a stage
in Maine. This party of four probably paid nothing for the dog’s ride,
nor for his run, while our party of three paid two dollars--and were
charged four--for the light canoe which lay still on the top.
It soon began to rain, and grew more and more stormy as the day
advanced. This was the third time that I had passed over this route,
and it rained steadily each time all day. We accordingly saw but
little of the country. The stage was crowded all the way, and I
attended the more to my fellow-travelers. If you had looked inside
this coach you would have thought that we were prepared to run the
gauntlet of a band of robbers, for there were four or five guns on the
front seat, the Indian’s included, and one or two on the back one,
each man holding his darling in his arms. One had a gun which carried
twelve to a pound. It appeared that this party of hunters was going
our way, but much farther,--down the Allegash and St. John, and thence
up some other stream, and across to the Restigouche and the Bay of
Chaleur, to be gone six weeks. They had canoes, axes, and supplies
deposited some distance along the route. They carried flour, and were
to have new bread made every day. Their leader was a handsome man
about thirty years old, of good height, but not apparently robust, of
gentlemanly address and faultless toilet; such a one as you might
expect to meet on Broadway. In fact, in the popular sense of the word,
he was the most “gentlemanly” appearing man in the stage, or that we
saw on the road. He had a fair white complexion, as if he had always
lived in the shade, and an intellectual face, and with his quiet
manners might have passed for a divinity student who had seen
something of the world. I was surprised to find, on talking with him
in the course of the day’s journey, that he was a hunter at all,--for
his gun was not much exposed,--and yet more to find that he was
probably the chief white hunter of Maine, and was known all along the
road. He had also hunted in some of the States farther south and west.
I afterwards heard him spoken of as one who could endure a great deal
of exposure and fatigue without showing the effect of it; and he could
not only use guns, but make them, being himself a gunsmith. In the
spring, he had saved a stage-driver and two passengers from drowning
in the backwater of the Piscataquis in Foxcroft on this road, having
swum ashore in the freezing water and made a raft and got them
off,--though the horses were drowned,--at great risk to himself, while
the only other man who could swim withdrew to the nearest house to
prevent freezing. He could now ride over this road for nothing. He
knew our man, and remarked that we had a good Indian there, a good
hunter; adding that he was said to be worth $6000. The Indian also
knew him, and said to me, “the great hunter.”
The former told me that he practiced a kind of still-hunting, new or
uncommon in those parts; that the caribou, for instance, fed round and
round the same meadow, returning on the same path, and he lay in wait
for them.