stolid expression of face, as if barely awake to what was going on.
Again I was struck by the peculiar vagueness of his replies when
addressed in the stage, or at the taverns. He really never said
anything on such occasions. He was merely stirred up, like a wild
beast, and passively muttered some insignificant response. His answer,
in such cases, was never the consequence of a positive mental energy,
but vague as a puff of smoke, suggesting no _responsibility_, and if
you considered it, you would find that you had got nothing out of him.
This was instead of the conventional palaver and smartness of the
white man, and equally profitable. Most get no more than this out of
the Indian, and pronounce him stolid accordingly. I was surprised to
see what a foolish and impertinent style a Maine man, a passenger,
used in addressing him, as if he were a child, which only made his
eyes glisten a little. A tipsy Canadian asked him at a tavern, in a
drawling tone, if he smoked, to which he answered with an indefinite
“Yes.” “Won’t you lend me your pipe a little while?” asked the other.
He replied, looking straight by the man’s head, with a face singularly
vacant to all neighboring interests, “Me got no pipe;” yet I had seen
him put a new one, with a supply of tobacco, into his pocket that
morning.
Our little canoe, so neat and strong, drew a favorable criticism from
all the wiseacres among the tavern loungers along the road. By the
roadside, close to the wheels, I noticed a splendid great purple
fringed orchis with a spike as big as an epilobium, which I would fain
have stopped the stage to pluck, but as this had never been known to
stop a bear, like the cur on the stage, the driver would probably have
thought it a waste of time.
When we reached the lake, about half past eight in the evening, it was
still steadily raining, and harder than before; and, in that fresh,
cool atmosphere, the hylodes were peeping and the toads ringing about
the lake universally, as in the spring with us. It was as if the
season had revolved backward two or three months, or I had arrived at
the abode of perpetual spring.
We had expected to go upon the lake at once, and, after paddling up
two or three miles, to camp on one of its islands; but on account of
the steady and increasing rain, we decided to go to one of the taverns
for the night, though, for my own part, I should have preferred to
camp out.
About four o’clock the next morning (July 24), though it was quite
cloudy, accompanied by the landlord to the water’s edge, in the
twilight, we launched our canoe from a rock on the Moosehead Lake.
When I was there four years before, we had a rather small canoe for
three persons, and I had thought that this time I would get a larger
one, but the present one was even smaller than that. It was 18¼ feet
long by 2 feet 6½ inches wide in the middle, and one foot deep within,
so I found by measurement, and I judged that it would weigh not far
from eighty pounds. The Indian had recently made it himself, and its
smallness was partly compensated for by its newness, as well as
stanchness and solidity, it being made of very thick bark and ribs.
Our baggage weighed about 166 pounds, so that the canoe carried about
600 pounds in all, or the weight of four men. The principal part of
the baggage was, as usual, placed in the middle of the broadest part,
while we stowed ourselves in the chinks and crannies that were left
before and behind it, where there was no room to extend our legs, the
loose articles being tucked into the ends. The canoe was thus as
closely packed as a market-basket, and might possibly have been upset
without spilling any of its contents. The Indian sat on a cross-bar in
the stern, but we flat on the bottom, with a splint or chip behind our
backs, to protect them from the cross-bar, and one of us commonly
paddled with the Indian. He foresaw that we should not want a pole
till we reached the Umbazookskus River, it being either deadwater or
down-stream so far, and he was prepared to make a sail of his blanket
in the bows if the wind should be fair; but we never used it.
It had rained more or less the four previous days, so that we thought
we might count on some fair weather. The wind was at first
southwesterly.
Paddling along the eastern side of the lake in the still of the
morning, we soon saw a few sheldrakes, which the Indian called
_Shecorways_, and some peetweets, _Naramekechus_, on the rocky shore;
we also saw and heard loons, _Medawisla_, which he said was a sign of
wind. It was inspiriting to hear the regular dip of the paddles, as if
they were our fins or flippers, and to realize that we were at length
fairly embarked. We who had felt strangely as stage-passengers and
tavern-lodgers were suddenly naturalized there and presented with the
freedom of the lakes and the woods. Having passed the small rocky
isles within two or three miles of the foot of the lake, we had a
short consultation respecting our course, and inclined to the western
shore for the sake of its lee; for otherwise, if the wind should rise,
it would be impossible for us to reach Mount Kineo, which is about
midway up the lake on the east side, but at its narrowest part, where
probably we could recross if we took the western side. The wind is the
chief obstacle to crossing the lakes, especially in so small a canoe.
The Indian remarked several times that he did not like to cross the
lakes “in littlum canoe,” but nevertheless, “just as we say, it made
no odds to him.” He sometimes took a straight course up the middle of
the lake between Sugar and Deer islands, when there was no wind.
Measured on the map, Moosehead Lake is twelve miles wide at the widest
place, and thirty miles long in a direct line, but longer as it lies.
The captain of the steamer called it thirty-eight miles as he steered.
We should probably go about forty. The Indian said that it was called
“_Mspame_, because large water.” Squaw Mountain rose darkly on our
left, near the outlet of the Kennebec, and what the Indian called
Spencer Bay Mountain, on the east, and already we saw Mount Kineo
before us in the north.
Paddling near the shore, we frequently heard the _pe-pe_ of the
olive-sided flycatcher, also the wood pewee, and the kingfisher, thus
early in the morning. The Indian reminding us that he could not work
without eating, we stopped to breakfast on the main shore, southwest
of Deer Island, at a spot where the _Mimulus ringens_ grew abundantly.
We took out our bags, and the Indian made a fire under a very large
bleached log, using white pine bark from a stump, though he said that
hemlock was better, and kindling with canoe birch bark. Our table was
a large piece of freshly peeled birch bark, laid wrong side up, and
our breakfast consisted of hard-bread, fried pork, and strong coffee,
well sweetened, in which we did not miss the milk.
While we were getting breakfast, a brood of twelve black dippers, half
grown, came paddling by within three or four rods, not at all alarmed;
and they loitered about as long as we stayed, now huddled close
together, within a circle of eighteen inches in diameter, now moving
off in a long line, very cunningly. Yet they bore a certain proportion
to the great Moosehead Lake on whose bosom they floated, and I felt as
if they were under its protection.
Looking northward from this place it appeared as if we were entering a
large bay, and we did not know whether we should be obliged to diverge
from our course and keep outside a point which we saw, or should find
a passage between this and the mainland. I consulted my map and used
my glass, and the Indian did the same, but we could not find our place
exactly on the map, nor could we detect any break in the shore. When I
asked the Indian the way, he answered, “I don’t know,” which I thought
remarkable, since he had said that he was familiar with the lake; but
it appeared that he had never been up this side. It was misty dog-day
weather, and we had already penetrated a smaller bay of the same kind,
and knocked the bottom out of it, though we had been obliged to pass
over a small bar, between an island and the shore, where there was
but just breadth and depth enough to float the canoe, and the
Indian had observed, “Very easy makum bridge here,” but now it seemed
that, if we held on, we should be fairly embayed. Presently, however,
though we had not stirred, the mist lifted somewhat, and revealed a
break in the shore northward, showing that the point was a portion of
Deer Island, and that our course lay westward of it. Where it had
seemed a continuous shore even through a glass, one portion was now
seen by the naked eye to be much more distant than the other which
overlapped it, merely by the greater thickness of the mist which still
rested on it, while the nearer or island portion was comparatively
bare and green. The line of separation was very distinct, and the
Indian immediately remarked, “I guess you and I go there,--I guess
there’s room for my canoe there.” This was his common expression
instead of saying “we.” He never addressed us by our names, though
curious to know how they were spelled and what they meant, while we
called him Polis. He had already guessed very accurately at our ages,
and said that he was forty-eight.
[Illustration: _Squaw Mountain, Moosehead Lake_]
After breakfast I emptied the melted pork that was left into the lake,
making what sailors call a “slick,” and watching to see how much it
spread over and smoothed the agitated surface. The Indian looked at it
a moment and said, “That make hard paddlum thro’; hold ’em canoe. So
say old times.”
We hastily reloaded, putting the dishes loose in the bows, that they
might be at hand when wanted, and set out again. The western shore,
near which we paddled along, rose gently to a considerable height, and
was everywhere densely covered with the forest, in which was a large
proportion of hard wood to enliven and relieve the fir and spruce.
The Indian said that the usnea lichen which we saw hanging from the
trees was called _chorchorque_. We asked him the names of several
small birds which we heard this morning. The wood thrush, which was
quite common, and whose note he imitated, he said was called
_Adelungquamooktum_; but sometimes he could not tell the name of some
small bird which I heard and knew, but he said, “I tell all the birds
about here,--this country; can’t tell littlum noise, but I see ’em,
then I can tell.”
I observed that I should like to go to school to him to learn his
language, living on the Indian island the while; could not that be
done? “Oh, yer,” he replied, “good many do so.” I asked how long he
thought it would take. He said one week. I told him that in this
voyage I would tell him all I knew, and he should tell me all he knew,
to which he readily agreed.
The birds sang quite as in our woods,--the red-eye, redstart, veery,
wood pewee, etc., but we saw no bluebirds in all our journey, and
several told me in Bangor that they had not the bluebird there. Mount
Kineo, which was generally visible, though occasionally concealed by
islands or the mainland in front, had a level bar of cloud concealing
its summit, and all the mountain-tops about the lake were cut off at
the same height. Ducks of various kinds--sheldrake, summer ducks,
etc.--were quite common, and ran over the water before us as fast as a
horse trots. Thus they were soon out of sight.
The Indian asked the meaning of _reality_, as near as I could make out
the word, which he said one of us had used; also of “_interrent_,”
that is, intelligent. I observed that he could rarely sound the letter
r, but used l, as also r for l sometimes; as _load_ for road,
_pickelel_ for pickerel, _Soogle_ Island for Sugar Island, _lock_ for
rock, etc. Yet he trilled the _r_ pretty well after me.
He generally added the syllable _um_ to his words when he could,--as
paddl_um_, etc. I have once heard a Chippeway lecture, who made his
audience laugh unintentionally by putting _m_ after the word _too_,
which word he brought in continually and unnecessarily, accenting and
prolonging this sound into _m-ah_ sonorously, as if it were necessary
to bring in so much of his vernacular as a relief to his organs, a
compensation for twisting his jaws about, and putting his tongue into
every corner of his mouth, as he complained that he was obliged to do
when he spoke English. There was so much of the Indian accent
resounding through his English, so much of the “bow-arrow tang” as my
neighbor calls it, and I have no doubt that word seemed to him the
best pronounced. It was a wild and refreshing sound, like that of the
wind among the pines, or the booming of the surf on the shore.
I asked him the meaning of the word _Musketicook_, the Indian name of
Concord River. He pronounced it _Muskéeticook_, emphasizing the second
syllable with a peculiar guttural sound, and said that it meant
“deadwater,” which it is, and in this definition he agreed exactly
with the St. Francis Indian with whom I talked in 1853.
On a point on the mainland some miles southwest of Sand-bar Island,
where we landed to stretch our legs and look at the vegetation, going
inland a few steps, I discovered a fire still glowing beneath its
ashes, where somebody had breakfasted, and a bed of twigs prepared for
the following night. So I knew not only that they had just left, but
that they designed to return, and by the breadth of the bed that there
was more than one in the party. You might have gone within six feet of
these signs without seeing them. There grew the beaked hazel, the only
hazel which I saw on this journey, the diervilla, rue seven feet high,
which was very abundant on all the lake and river shores, and _Cornus
stolonifera_, or red osier, whose bark, the Indian said, was good to
smoke, and was called _maquoxigill_, “tobacco before white people came
to this country, Indian tobacco.”
The Indian was always very careful in approaching the shore, lest he
should injure his canoe on the rocks, letting it swing round slowly
sidewise, and was still more particular that we should not step into
it on shore, nor till it floated free, and then should step gently
lest we should open its seams, or make a hole in the bottom. He said
that he would tell us when to jump.
Soon after leaving this point we passed the Kennebec, or outlet of the
lake, and heard the falls at the dam there, for even Moosehead Lake is
dammed. After passing Deer Island, we saw the little steamer from
Greenville, far east in the middle of the lake, and she appeared
nearly stationary. Sometimes we could hardly tell her from an island
which had a few trees on it. Here we were exposed to the wind from
over the whole breadth of the lake, and ran a little risk of being
swamped. While I had my eye fixed on the spot where a large fish had
leaped, we took in a gallon or two of water, which filled my lap; but
we soon reached the shore and took the canoe over the bar, at Sand-bar
Island, a few feet wide only, and so saved a considerable distance.
One landed first at a more sheltered place, and walking round caught
the canoe by the prow, to prevent it being injured against the shore.
Again we crossed a broad bay opposite the mouth of Moose River, before
reaching the narrow strait at Mount Kineo, made what the voyageurs
call a _traverse_, and found the water quite rough. A very little wind
on these broad lakes raises a sea which will swamp a canoe. Looking
off from the shore, the surface may appear to be very little agitated,
almost smooth, a mile distant, or if you see a few white crests they
appear nearly level with the rest of the lake; but when you get out so
far, you may find quite a sea running, and ere long, before you think
of it, a wave will gently creep up the side of the canoe and fill your
lap, like a monster deliberately covering you with its slime before it
swallows you, or it will strike the canoe violently, and break into
it. The same thing may happen when the wind rises suddenly, though it
were perfectly calm and smooth there a few minutes before; so that
nothing can save you, unless you can swim ashore, for it is impossible
to get into a canoe again when it is upset. Since you sit flat on the
bottom, though the danger should not be imminent, a little water is a
great inconvenience, not to mention the wetting of your provisions. We
rarely crossed even a bay directly, from point to point, when there
was wind, but made a slight curve corresponding somewhat to the shore,
that we might the sooner reach it if the wind increased.
When the wind is aft, and not too strong, the Indian makes a spritsail
of his blanket. He thus easily skims over the whole length of this
lake in a day.
The Indian paddled on one side, and one of us on the other, to keep
the canoe steady, and when he wanted to change hands he would say, “t’
other side.” He asserted, in answer to our questions, that he had
never upset a canoe himself, though he may have been upset by others.
Think of our little eggshell of a canoe tossing across that great
lake, a mere black speck to the eagle soaring above it!
My companion trailed for trout as we paddled along, but the Indian
warning him that a big fish might upset us, for there are some very
large ones there, he agreed to pass the line quickly to him in the
stern if he had a bite. Besides trout, I heard of cusk, whitefish,
etc., as found in this lake.
While we were crossing this bay, where Mount Kineo rose dark before
us, within two or three miles, the Indian repeated the tradition
respecting this mountain’s having anciently been a cow moose,--how a
mighty Indian hunter, whose name I forget, succeeded in killing this
queen of the moose tribe with great difficulty, while her calf was
killed somewhere among the islands in Penobscot Bay, and, to his eyes,
this mountain had still the form of the moose in a reclining posture,
its precipitous side presenting the outline of her head. He told this
at some length, though it did not amount to much, and with apparent
good faith, and asked us how we supposed the hunter could have killed
such a mighty moose as that,--how we could do it. Whereupon a
man-of-war to fire broadsides into her was suggested, etc. An Indian
tells such a story as if he thought it deserved to have a good deal
said about it, only he has not got it to say, and so he makes up for
the deficiency by a drawling tone, long-windedness, and a dumb wonder
which he hopes will be contagious.
We approached the land again through pretty rough water, and then
steered directly across the lake, at its narrowest part, to the
eastern side, and were soon partly under the lee of the mountain,
about a mile north of the Kineo House, having paddled about twenty
miles. It was now about noon.
We designed to stop there that afternoon and night, and spent half an
hour looking along the shore northward for a suitable place to camp.
We took out all our baggage at one place in vain, it being too rocky
and uneven, and while engaged in this search we made our first
acquaintance with the moose-fly. At length, half a mile farther north,
by going half a dozen rods into the dense spruce and fir wood on the
side of the mountain, almost as dark as a cellar, we found a place
sufficiently clear and level to lie down on, after cutting away a few
bushes. We required a space only seven feet by six for our bed, the
fire being four or five feet in front, though it made no odds how
rough the hearth was; but it was not always easy to find this in those
woods. The Indian first cleared a path to it from the shore with his
axe, and we then carried up all our baggage, pitched our tent, and
made our bed, in order to be ready for foul weather, which then
threatened us, and for the night. He gathered a large armful of fir
twigs, breaking them off, which he said were the best for our bed,
partly, I thought, because they were the largest and could be most
rapidly collected. It had been raining more or less for four or five
days, and the wood was even damper than usual, but he got dry bark for
the fire from the under side of a dead leaning hemlock, which, he
said, he could always do.
This noon his mind was occupied with a law question, and I referred
him to my companion, who was a lawyer. It appeared that he had been
buying land lately (I think it was a hundred acres), but there was
probably an incumbrance to it, somebody else claiming to have bought
some grass on it for this year. He wished to know to whom the grass
belonged, and was told that if the other man could prove that he
bought the grass before he, Polis, bought the land, the former could
take it, whether the latter knew it or not. To which he only answered,
“Strange!” He went over this several times, fairly sat down to it,
with his back to a tree, as if he meant to confine us to this topic
henceforth; but as he made no headway, only reached the jumping-off
place of his wonder at white men’s institutions after each
explanation, we let the subject die.
He said that he had fifty acres of grass, potatoes, etc., somewhere
above Oldtown, besides some about his house; that he hired a good deal
of his work, hoeing, etc., and preferred white men to Indians, because
“they keep steady, and know how.”
After dinner we returned southward along the shore, in the canoe, on
account of the difficulty of climbing over the rocks and fallen trees,
and began to ascend the mountain along the edge of the precipice. But
a smart shower coming up just then, the Indian crept under his canoe,
while we, being protected by our rubber coats, proceeded to botanize.
So we sent him back to the camp for shelter, agreeing that he should
come there for us with his canoe toward night. It had rained a little
in the forenoon, and we trusted that this would be the clearing-up
shower, which it proved; but our feet and legs were thoroughly wet by
the bushes. The clouds breaking away a little, we had a glorious wild
view, as we ascended, of the broad lake with its fluctuating surface
and numerous forest-clad islands, extending beyond our sight both
north and south, and the boundless forest undulating away from its
shores on every side, as densely packed as a rye-field, and enveloping
nameless mountains in succession; but above all, looking westward over
a large island, was visible a very distant part of the lake, though we
did not then suspect it to be Moosehead,--at first a mere broken white
line seen through the tops of the island trees, like hay-caps, but
spreading to a lake when we got higher. Beyond this we saw what
appears to be called Bald Mountain on the map, some twenty-five miles
distant, near the sources of the Penobscot. It was a perfect lake of
the woods. But this was only a transient gleam, for the rain was not
quite over.
Looking southward, the heavens were completely overcast, the mountains
capped with clouds, and the lake generally wore a dark and stormy
appearance, but from its surface just north of Sugar Island, six or
eight miles distant, there was reflected upward to us through the
misty air a bright blue tinge from the distant unseen sky of another
latitude beyond. They probably had a clear sky then at Greenville, the
south end of the lake. Standing on a mountain in the midst of a lake,
where would you look for the first sign of approaching fair weather?
Not into the heavens, it seems, but into the lake.
Again we mistook a little rocky islet seen through the “drisk,” with
some taller bare trunks or stumps on it, for the steamer with its
smoke-pipes, but as it had not changed its position after half an
hour, we were undeceived. So much do the works of man resemble the
works of nature. A moose might mistake a steamer for a floating isle,
and not be scared till he heard its puffing or its whistle.
If I wished to see a mountain or other scenery under the most
favorable auspices, I would go to it in foul weather, so as to be
there when it cleared up; we are then in the most suitable mood, and
nature is most fresh and inspiring. There is no serenity so fair as
that which is just established in a tearful eye.