mountain: “Hornstone, which will answer for flints, occurs in various
parts of the State, where trap-rocks have acted upon silicious slate.
The largest mass of this stone known in the world is Mount Kineo, upon
Moosehead Lake, which appears to be entirely composed of it, and rises
seven hundred feet above the lake level. This variety of hornstone I
have seen in every part of New England in the form of Indian
arrowheads, hatchets, chisels, etc., which were probably obtained from
this mountain by the aboriginal inhabitants of the country.” I have
myself found hundreds of arrowheads made of the same material. It is
generally slate-colored, with white specks, becoming a uniform white
where exposed to the light and air, and it breaks with a conchoidal
fracture, producing a ragged cutting edge. I noticed some conchoidal
hollows more than a foot in diameter. I picked up a small thin piece
which had so sharp an edge that I used it as a dull knife, and to see
what I could do, fairly cut off an aspen one inch thick with it, by
bending it and making many cuts; though I cut my fingers badly with
the back of it in the meanwhile.
[Illustration: _Moosehead Lake, from Mount Kineo_]
From the summit of the precipice which forms the southern and eastern
sides of this mountain peninsula, and is its most remarkable feature,
being described as five or six hundred feet high, we looked, and
probably might have jumped, down to the water, or to the seemingly
dwarfish trees on the narrow neck of land which connects it with the
main. It is a dangerous place to try the steadiness of your nerves.
Hodge says that these cliffs descend “perpendicularly ninety feet”
below the surface of the water.
The plants which chiefly attracted our attention on this mountain were
the mountain cinquefoil (_Potentilla tridentata_), abundant and in
bloom still at the very base, by the waterside, though it is usually
confined to the summits of mountains in our latitude; very beautiful
harebells overhanging the precipice; bear-berry; the Canada blueberry
(_Vaccinium Canadense_), similar to the _V. Pennsylvanicum_, our
earliest one, but entire-leaved and with a downy stem and leaf (I have
not seen it in Massachusetts); _Diervilla trifida_; _Microstylis
ophioglossoides_, an orchidaceous plant new to us; wild holly
(_Nemopanthes Canadensis_); the great round-leaved orchis
(_Platanthera orbiculata_), not long in bloom; _Spiranthes cernua_, at
the top; bunchberry, reddening as we ascended, green at the base of
the mountain, red at the top; and the small fern _Woodsia ilvensis_,
growing in tufts, now in fruit. I have also received _Liparis
liliifolia_, or tway-blade, from this spot. Having explored the
wonders of the mountain, and the weather being now entirely cleared
up, we commenced the descent. We met the Indian, puffing and panting,
about one third of the way up, but thinking that he must be near the
top, and saying that it took his breath away. I thought that
superstition had something to do with his fatigue. Perhaps he believed
that he was climbing over the back of a tremendous moose. He said that
he had never ascended Kineo. On reaching the canoe we found that he
had caught a lake trout weighing about three pounds, at the depth of
twenty-five or thirty feet, while we were on the mountain.
When we got to the camp, the canoe was taken out and turned over, and
a log laid across it to prevent its being blown away. The Indian cut
some large logs of damp and rotten hard wood to smoulder and keep fire
through the night. The trout was fried for supper. Our tent was of
thin cotton cloth and quite small, forming with the ground a
triangular prism closed at the rear end, six feet long, seven wide,
and four high, so that we could barely sit up in the middle. It
required two forked stakes, a smooth ridge-pole, and a dozen or more
pins to pitch it. It kept off dew and wind, and an ordinary rain, and
answered our purpose well enough. We reclined within it till bedtime,
each with his baggage at his head, or else sat about the fire, having
hung our wet clothes on a pole before the fire for the night.
As we sat there, just before night, looking out through the dusky wood,
the Indian heard a noise which he said was made by a snake. He imitated
it at my request, making a low whistling note,--_pheet_--_pheet_,--two
or three times repeated, somewhat like the peep of the hylodes, but
not so loud. In answer to my inquiries, he said that he had never seen
them while making it, but going to the spot he finds the snake. This,
he said on another occasion, was a sign of rain. When I had selected
this place for our camp, he had remarked that there were snakes
there,--he saw them. “But they won’t do any hurt,” I said. “Oh, no,”
he answered, “just as you say; it makes no difference to me.”
He lay on the right side of the tent, because, as he said, he was
partly deaf in one ear, and he wanted to lie with his good ear up. As
we lay there, he inquired if I ever heard “Indian sing.” I replied
that I had not often, and asked him if he would not favor us with a
song. He readily assented, and, lying on his back, with his blanket
wrapped around him, he commenced a slow, somewhat nasal, yet musical
chant, in his own language, which probably was taught his tribe long
ago by the Catholic missionaries. He translated it to us, sentence by
sentence, afterward, wishing to see if we could remember it. It proved
to be a very simple religious exercise or hymn, the burden of which
was, that there was only one God who ruled all the world. This was
hammered (or sung) out very thin, so that some stanzas well-nigh meant
nothing at all, merely keeping up the idea. He then said that he would
sing us a Latin song; but we did not detect any Latin, only one or two
Greek words in it,--the rest may have been Latin with the Indian
pronunciation.
His singing carried me back to the period of the discovery of America,
to San Salvador and the Incas, when Europeans first encountered the
simple faith of the Indian. There was, indeed, a beautiful simplicity
about it; nothing of the dark and savage, only the mild and infantile.
The sentiments of humility and reverence chiefly were expressed.
It was a dense and damp spruce and fir wood in which we lay, and,
except for our fire, perfectly dark; and when I awoke in the night, I
either heard an owl from deeper in the forest behind us, or a loon
from a distance over the lake. Getting up some time after midnight to
collect the scattered brands together, while my companions were sound
asleep, I observed, partly in the fire, which had ceased to blaze, a
perfectly regular elliptical ring of light, about five inches in its
shortest diameter, six or seven in its longer, and from one eighth to
one quarter of an inch wide. It was fully as bright as the fire, but
not reddish or scarlet, like a coal, but a white and slumbering light,
like the glow-worm’s. I could tell it from the fire only by its
whiteness. I saw at once that it must be phosphorescent wood, which I
had so often heard of, but never chanced to see. Putting my finger on
it, with a little hesitation, I found that it was a piece of dead
moose-wood (_Acer striatum_) which the Indian had cut off in a
slanting direction the evening before. Using my knife, I discovered
that the light proceeded from that portion of the sap-wood immediately
under the bark, and thus presented a regular ring at the end, which,
indeed, appeared raised above the level of the wood, and when I pared
off the bark and cut into the sap, it was all aglow along the log. I
was surprised to find the wood quite hard and apparently sound, though
probably decay had commenced in the sap, and I cut out some little
triangular chips, and, placing them in the hollow of my hand, carried
them into the camp, waked my companion, and showed them to him. They
lit up the inside of my hand, revealing the lines and wrinkles, and
appearing exactly like coals of fire raised to a white heat, and I saw
at once how, probably, the Indian jugglers had imposed on their people
and on travelers, pretending to hold coals of fire in their mouths.
I also noticed that part of a decayed stump within four or five feet
of the fire, an inch wide and six inches long, soft and shaking wood,
shone with equal brightness.
I neglected to ascertain whether our fire had anything to do with
this, but the previous day’s rain and long-continued wet weather
undoubtedly had.
I was exceedingly interested by this phenomenon, and already felt paid
for my journey. It could hardly have thrilled me more if it had taken
the form of letters, or of the human face. If I had met with this
ring of light while groping in this forest alone, away from any fire,
I should have been still more surprised. I little thought that there
was such a light shining in the darkness of the wilderness for me.
The next day the Indian told me their name for this
light,--_artoosoqu’_--and on my inquiring concerning the
will-o’-the-wisp, and the like phenomena, he said that his “folks”
sometimes saw fires passing along at various heights, even as high as
the trees, and making a noise. I was prepared after this to hear of
the most startling and unimagined phenomena, witnessed by “his folks;”
they are abroad at all hours and seasons in scenes so unfrequented by
white men. Nature must have made a thousand revelations to them which
are still secrets to us.
I did not regret my not having seen this before, since I now saw it
under circumstances so favorable. I was in just the frame of mind to
see something wonderful, and this was a phenomenon adequate to my
circumstances and expectation, and it put me on the alert to see more
like it. I exulted like “a pagan suckled in a creed” that had never
been worn at all, but was bran-new, and adequate to the occasion. I
let science slide, and rejoiced in that light as if it had been a
fellow creature. I saw that it was excellent, and was very glad to
know that it was so cheap. A scientific _explanation_, as it is
called, would have been altogether out of place there. That is for
pale daylight. Science with its retorts would have put me to sleep; it
was the opportunity to be ignorant that I improved. It suggested to me
that there was something to be seen if one had eyes. It made a
believer of me more than before. I believed that the woods were not
tenantless, but choke-full of honest spirits as good as myself any
day,--not an empty chamber, in which chemistry was left to work alone,
but an inhabited house,--and for a few moments I enjoyed fellowship
with them. Your so-called wise man goes trying to persuade himself
that there is no entity there but himself and his traps, but it is a
great deal easier to believe the truth. It suggested, too, that the
same experience always gives birth to the same sort of belief or
religion. One revelation has been made to the Indian, another to the
white man. I have much to learn of the Indian, nothing of the
missionary. I am not sure but all that would tempt me to teach the
Indian my religion would be his promise to teach me _his_. Long enough
I had heard of irrelevant things; now at length I was glad to make
acquaintance with the light that dwells in rotten wood. Where is all
your knowledge gone to? It evaporates completely, for it has no depth.
I kept those little chips and wet them again the next night, but they
emitted no light.
* * * * *
SATURDAY, July 25.
At breakfast this Saturday morning, the Indian, evidently curious to
know what would be expected of him the next day, whether we should go
along or not, asked me how I spent the Sunday when at home. I told him
that I commonly sat in my chamber reading, etc., in the forenoon, and
went to walk in the afternoon. At which he shook his head and said,
“Er, that is ver bad.” “How do you spend it?” I asked. He said that
he did no work, that he went to church at Oldtown when he was at home;
in short, he did as he had been taught by the whites. This led to a
discussion in which I found myself in the minority. He stated that he
was a Protestant, and asked me if I was. I did not at first know what
to say, but I thought that I could answer with truth that I was.
When we were washing the dishes in the lake, many fishes, apparently
chivin, came close up to us to get the particles of grease.
The weather seemed to be more settled this morning, and we set out
early in order to finish our voyage up the lake before the wind arose.
Soon after starting, the Indian directed our attention to the
Northeast Carry, which we could plainly see, about thirteen miles
distant in that direction as measured on the map, though it is called
much farther. This carry is a rude wooden railroad, running north and
south about two miles, perfectly straight, from the lake to the
Penobscot, through a low tract, with a clearing three or four rods
wide; but low as it is, it passes over the height of land there. This
opening appeared as a clear bright, or light, point in the horizon,
resting on the edge of the lake, whose breadth a hair could have
covered at a considerable distance from the eye, and of no appreciable
height. We should not have suspected it to be visible if the Indian
had not drawn our attention to it. It was a remarkable kind of light
to steer for,--daylight seen through a vista in the forest,--but
visible as far as an ordinary beacon at night.
We crossed a deep and wide bay which makes eastward north of Kineo,
leaving an island on our left, and keeping up the eastern side of the
lake. This way or that led to some Tomhegan or _Socatarian_ stream, up
which the Indian had hunted, and whither I longed to go. The last
name, however, had a bogus sound, too much like sectarian for me, as
if a missionary had tampered with it; but I knew that the Indians were
very liberal. I think I should have inclined to the Tomhegan first.
We then crossed another broad bay, which, as we could no longer
observe the shore particularly, afforded ample time for conversation.
The Indian said that he had got his money by hunting, mostly high up
the West Branch of the Penobscot, and toward the head of the St. John;
he had hunted there from a boy, and knew all about that region. His
game had been beaver, otter, black cat (or fisher), sable, moose, etc.
Loup-cervier (or Canada lynx) were plenty yet in burnt grounds. For
food in the woods, he uses partridges, ducks, dried moose-meat,
hedgehog, etc. Loons, too, were good, only “bile ’em good.” He told us
at some length how he had suffered from starvation when a mere lad,
being overtaken by winter when hunting with two grown Indians in the
northern part of Maine, and obliged to leave their canoe on account of
ice.
Pointing into the bay, he said that it was the way to various lakes
which he knew. Only solemn bear-haunted mountains, with their great
wooded slopes, were visible; where, as man is not, we suppose some
other power to be. My imagination personified the slopes themselves,
as if by their very length they would waylay you, and compel you to
camp again on them before night. Some invisible glutton would seem to
drop from the trees and gnaw at the heart of the solitary hunter who
threaded those woods; and yet I was tempted to walk there. The Indian
said that he had been along there several times.
I asked him how he guided himself in the woods. “Oh,” said he, “I can
tell good many ways.” When I pressed him further, he answered,
“Sometimes I lookum side-hill,” and he glanced toward a high hill or
mountain on the eastern shore, “great difference between the north and
south, see where the sun has shone most. So trees,--the large limbs
bend toward south. Sometimes I lookum locks” (rocks). I asked what he
saw on the rocks, but he did not describe anything in particular,
answering vaguely, in a mysterious or drawling tone, “Bare locks on
lake shore,--great difference between north, south, east, west,
side,--can tell what the sun has shone on.” “Suppose,” said I, “that I
should take you in a dark night, right up here into the middle of the
woods a hundred miles, set you down, and turn you round quickly twenty
times, could you steer straight to Oldtown?” “Oh, yer,” said he, “have
done pretty much same thing. I will tell you. Some years ago I met an
old white hunter at Millinocket; very good hunter. He said he could go
anywhere in the woods. He wanted to hunt with me that day, so we
start. We chase a moose all the forenoon, round and round, till middle
of afternoon, when we kill him. Then I said to him, ‘Now you go
straight to camp. Don’t go round and round where we’ve been, but go
straight.’ He said, ‘I can’t do that, I don’t know where I am.’
‘Where you think camp?’ I asked. He pointed so. Then I laugh at him. I
take the lead and go right off the other way, cross our tracks many
times, straight camp.” “How do you do that?” asked I. “Oh, I can’t
tell you,” he replied. “Great difference between me and white man.”
It appeared as if the sources of information were so various that he
did not give a distinct, conscious attention to any one, and so could
not readily refer to any when questioned about it, but he found his
way very much as an animal does. Perhaps what is commonly called
instinct in the animal, in this case is merely a sharpened and
educated sense. Often, when an Indian says, “I don’t know,” in regard
to the route he is to take, he does not mean what a white man would by
those words, for his Indian instinct may tell him still as much as the
most confident white man knows. He does not carry things in his head,
nor remember the route exactly, like a white man, but relies on
himself at the moment. Not having experienced the need of the other
sort of knowledge, all labeled and arranged, he has not acquired it.
The white hunter with whom I talked in the stage knew some of the
resources of the Indian. He said that he steered by the wind, or by
the limbs of the hemlocks, which were largest on the south side; also
sometimes, when he knew that there was a lake near, by firing his gun
and listening to hear the direction and distance of the echo from over
it.
The course we took over this lake, and others afterward, was rarely
direct, but a succession of curves from point to point, digressing
considerably into each of the bays; and this was not merely on account
of the wind, for the Indian, looking toward the middle of the lake,
said it was hard to go there, easier to keep near the shore, because
he thus got over it by successive reaches and saw by the shore how he
got along.
The following will suffice for a common experience in crossing lakes
in a canoe. As the forenoon advanced, the wind increased. The last bay
which we crossed before reaching the desolate pier at the Northeast
Carry was two or three miles over, and the wind was southwesterly.
After going a third of the way, the waves had increased so as
occasionally to wash into the canoe, and we saw that it was worse and
worse ahead. At first we might have turned about, but were not willing
to. It would have been of no use to follow the course of the shore,
for not only the distance would have been much greater, but the waves
ran still higher there on account of the greater sweep the wind had.
At any rate it would have been dangerous now to alter our course,
because the waves would have struck us at an advantage. It will not do
to meet them at right angles, for then they will wash in both sides,
but you must take them quartering. So the Indian stood up in the
canoe, and exerted all his skill and strength for a mile or two, while
I paddled right along in order to give him more steerage-way. For more
than a mile he did not allow a single wave to strike the canoe as it
would, but turned it quickly from this side to that, so that it would
always be on or near the crest of a wave when it broke, where all its
force was spent, and we merely settled down with it. At length I
jumped out on to the end of the pier, against which the waves were
dashing violently, in order to lighten the canoe, and catch it at the
landing, which was not much sheltered; but just as I jumped we took in
two or three gallons of water. I remarked to the Indian, “You managed
that well,” to which he replied, “Ver few men do that. Great many
waves; when I look out for one, another come quick.”
While the Indian went to get cedar bark, etc., to carry his canoe
with, we cooked the dinner on the shore, at this end of the carry, in
the midst of a sprinkling rain.
He prepared his canoe for carrying in this wise. He took a cedar
shingle or splint eighteen inches long and four or five wide, rounded
at one end, that the corners might not be in the way, and tied it with
cedar bark by two holes made midway, near the edge on each side, to
the middle cross-bar of the canoe. When the canoe was lifted upon his
head bottom up, this shingle, with its rounded end uppermost,
distributed the weight over his shoulders and head, while a band of
cedar bark, tied to the cross-bar on each side of the shingle, passed
round his breast, and another longer one, outside of the last, round
his forehead; also a hand on each side-rail served to steer the canoe
and keep it from rocking. He thus carried it with his shoulders, head,
breast, forehead, and both hands, as if the upper part of his body
were all one hand to clasp and hold it. If you know of a better way, I
should like to hear of it. A cedar tree furnished all the gear in this
case, as it had the woodwork of the canoe. One of the paddles rested
on the cross-bars in the bows. I took the canoe upon my head and found
that I could carry it with ease, though the straps were not fitted to
my shoulders; but I let him carry it, not caring to establish a
different precedent, though he said that if I would carry the canoe,
he would take all the rest of the baggage, except my companion’s. This
shingle remained tied to the cross-bar throughout the voyage, was
always ready for the carries, and also served to protect the back of
one passenger.
We were obliged to go over this carry twice, our load was so great.
But the carries were an agreeable variety, and we improved the
opportunity to gather the rare plants which we had seen, when we
returned empty handed.
We reached the Penobscot about four o’clock, and found there some St.
Francis Indians encamped on the bank, in the same place where I camped
with four Indians four years before. They were making a canoe, and, as
then, drying moose-meat. The meat looked very suitable to make a
_black_ broth at least. Our Indian said it was not good. Their camp
was covered with spruce bark. They had got a young moose, taken in the
river a fortnight before, confined in a sort of cage of logs piled up
cob-fashion, seven or eight feet high. It was quite tame, about four
feet high, and covered with moose-flies. There was a large quantity of
cornel (_C. stolonifera_), red maple, and also willow and aspen
boughs, stuck through between the logs on all sides, butt ends out,
and on their leaves it was browsing. It looked at first as if it were
in a bower rather than a pen.
Our Indian said that _he_ used _black_ spruce roots to sew canoes
with, obtaining it from high lands or mountains. The St. Francis
Indian thought that _white_ spruce roots might be best. But the former
said, “No good, break, can’t split ’em;” also that they were hard to
get, deep in ground, but the black were near the surface, on higher
land, as well as tougher. He said that the white spruce was
_subekoondark_, black, _skusk_. I told him I thought that I could make
a canoe, but he expressed great doubt of it; at any rate, he thought
that my work would not be “neat” the first time. An Indian at
Greenville had told me that the winter bark, that is, bark taken off
before the sap flows in May, was harder and much better than summer
bark.
Having reloaded, we paddled down the Penobscot, which, as the Indian
remarked, and even I detected, remembering how it looked before, was
uncommonly full. We soon after saw a splendid yellow lily (_Lilium
Canadense_) by the shore, which I plucked. It was six feet high, and
had twelve flowers, in two whorls, forming a pyramid, such as I have
seen in Concord. We afterward saw many more thus tall along this
stream, and also still more numerous on the East Branch, and, on the
latter, one which I thought approached yet nearer to the _Lilium
superbum_. The Indian asked what we called it, and said that the
“loots” (roots) were good for soup, that is, to cook with meat, to
thicken it, taking the place of flour. They get them in the fall. I
dug some, and found a mass of bulbs pretty deep in the earth, two
inches in diameter, looking, and even tasting, somewhat like raw green
corn on the ear.
When we had gone about three miles down the Penobscot, we saw through
the tree-tops a thunder-shower coming up in the west, and we looked
out a camping-place in good season, about five o’clock, on the west
side, not far below the mouth of what Joe Aitteon, in ’53, called
Lobster Stream, coming from Lobster Pond. Our present Indian, however,
did not admit this name, nor even that of _Matahumkeag_, which is on
the map, but called the lake _Beskabekuk_.