some thread. Whereupon, without looking up at the trees overhead, he
began to grub in the ground, instantly distinguishing the black spruce
roots, and cutting off a slender one, three or four feet long, and as
big as a pipe-stem, he split the end with his knife, and, taking a
half between the thumb and forefinger of each hand, rapidly separated
its whole length into two equal semicylindrical halves; then giving me
another root, he said, “You try.” But in my hands it immediately ran
off one side, and I got only a very short piece. In short, though it
looked very easy, I found that there was a great art in splitting
these roots. The split is skillfully humored by bending short with
this hand or that, and so kept in the middle. He then took off the
bark from each half, pressing a short piece of cedar bark against the
convex side with both hands, while he drew the root upward with his
teeth. An Indian’s teeth are strong, and I noticed that he used his
often where we should have used a hand. They amounted to a third hand.
He thus obtained, in a moment, a very neat, tough, and flexible
string, which he could tie into a knot, or make into a fish-line even.
It is said that in Norway and Sweden the roots of the Norway spruce
(_Abies excelsa_) are used in the same way for the same purpose. He
said that you would be obliged to give half a dollar for spruce root
enough for a canoe, thus prepared. He had hired the sewing of his own
canoe, though he made all the rest. The root in his canoe was of a
pale slate-color, probably acquired by exposure to the weather, or
perhaps from being boiled in water first.
He had discovered the day before that his canoe leaked a little, and
said that it was owing to stepping into it violently, which forced the
water under the edge of the horizontal seams on the side. I asked him
where he would get pitch to mend it with, for they commonly use hard
pitch, obtained of the whites at Oldtown. He said that he could make
something very similar, and equally good, not of spruce gum, or the
like, but of material which we had with us; and he wished me to guess
what. But I could not, and he would not tell me, though he showed me a
ball of it when made, as big as a pea, and like black pitch, saying,
at last, that there were some things which a man did not tell even his
wife. It may have been his own discovery. In Arnold’s expedition the
pioneers used for their canoe “the turpentine of the pine, and the
scrapings of the pork-bag.”
Being curious to see what kind of fishes there were in this dark,
deep, sluggish river, I cast in my line just before night, and caught
several small somewhat yellowish sucker-like fishes, which the Indian
at once rejected, saying that they were _michigan_ fish (_i. e._,
_soft_ and _stinking_ fish) and good for nothing. Also, he would not
touch a pout, which I caught, and said that neither Indians nor whites
thereabouts ever ate them, which I thought was singular, since they
are esteemed in Massachusetts, and he had told me that he ate
hedgehogs, loons, etc. But he said that some small silvery fishes,
which I called white chivin, which were similar in size and form to
the first, were the best fish in the Penobscot waters, and if I would
toss them up the bank to him, he would cook them for me. After
cleaning them, not very carefully, leaving the heads on, he laid them
on the coals and so broiled them.
Returning from a short walk, he brought a vine in his hand, and asked
me if I knew what it was, saying that it made the best tea of anything
in the woods. It was the creeping snowberry (_Chiogenes hispidula_),
which was quite common there, its berries just grown. He called it
_cowosnebagosar_, which name implies that it grows where old prostrate
trunks have collapsed and rotted. So we determined to have some tea
made of this to-night. It had a slight checkerberry flavor, and we
both agreed that it was really better than the black tea which we had
brought. We thought it quite a discovery, and that it might well be
dried, and sold in the shops. I, for one, however, am not an old
tea-drinker, and cannot speak with authority to others. It would have
been particularly good to carry along for a cold drink during the
day, the water thereabouts being invariably warm. The Indian said that
they also used for tea a certain herb which grew in low ground, which
he did not find there, and ledum, or Labrador tea, which I have since
found and tried in Concord; also hemlock leaves, the last especially
in the winter, when the other plants were covered with snow; and
various other things; but he did not approve of arbor-vitæ, which I
said I had drunk in those woods. We could have had a new kind of tea
every night.
Just before night we saw a _musquash_ (he did not say muskrat), the
only one we saw in this voyage, swimming downward on the opposite side
of the stream. The Indian, wishing to get one to eat, hushed us,
saying, “Stop, me call ’em;” and, sitting flat on the bank, he began
to make a curious squeaking, wiry sound with his lips, exerting
himself considerably. I was greatly surprised,--thought that I had at
last got into the wilderness, and that he was a wild man indeed, to be
talking to a musquash! I did not know which of the two was the
strangest to me. He seemed suddenly to have quite forsaken humanity,
and gone over to the musquash side. The musquash, however, as near as
I could see, did not turn aside, though he may have hesitated a
little, and the Indian said that he saw our fire; but it was evident
that he was in the habit of calling the musquash to him, as he said.
An acquaintance of mine who was hunting moose in those woods a month
after this, tells me that his Indian in this way repeatedly called the
musquash within reach of his paddle in the moonlight, and struck at
them.
The Indian said a particularly long prayer this Sunday evening, as if
to atone for working in the morning.
* * * * *
MONDAY, July 27.
Having rapidly loaded the canoe, which the Indian always carefully
attended to, that it might be well trimmed, and each having taken a
look, as usual, to see that nothing was left, we set out again
descending the Caucomgomoc, and turning northeasterly up the
_Umbazookskus_. This name, the Indian said, meant Much Meadow River.
We found it a very meadowy stream, and deadwater, and now very wide on
account of the rains, though, he said, it was sometimes quite narrow.
The space between the woods, chiefly bare meadow, was from fifty to
two hundred rods in breadth, and is a rare place for moose. It
reminded me of the Concord; and what increased the resemblance was one
old musquash-house almost afloat.
In the water on the meadows grew sedges, wool-grass, the common blue
flag abundantly, its flower just showing itself above the high water,
as if it were a blue water-lily, and higher in the meadows a great
many clumps of a peculiar narrow-leaved willow (_Salix petiolaris_),
which is common in our river meadows. It was the prevailing one here,
and the Indian said that the musquash ate much of it; and here also
grew the red osier (_Cornus stolonifera_), its large fruit now
whitish.
Though it was still early in the morning, we saw nighthawks circling
over the meadow, and as usual heard the pepe (_Muscicapa Cooperi_),
which is one of the prevailing birds in these woods, and the robin.
It was unusual for the woods to be so distant from the shore, and
there was quite an echo from them, but when I was shouting in order to
awake it, the Indian reminded me that I should scare the moose, which
he was looking out for, and which we all wanted to see. The word for
echo was _Pockadunkquaywayle_.
A broad belt of dead larch trees along the distant edge of the meadow,
against the forest on each side, increased the usual wildness of the
scenery. The Indian called these juniper, and said that they had been
killed by the backwater caused by the dam at the outlet of Chesuncook
Lake, some twenty miles distant. I plucked at the water’s edge the
_Asclepias incarnata_, with quite handsome flowers, a brighter red
than our variety (the _pulchra_). It was the only form of it which I
saw there.
Having paddled several miles up the Umbazookskus, it suddenly
contracted to a mere brook, narrow and swift, the larches and other
trees approaching the bank and leaving no open meadow, and we landed
to get a black spruce pole for pushing against the stream. This was
the first occasion for one. The one selected was quite slender, cut
about ten feet long, merely whittled to a point, and the bark shaved
off. The stream, though narrow and swift, was still deep, with a muddy
bottom, as I proved by diving to it. Beside the plants which I have
mentioned, I observed on the bank here the _Salix cordata_ and
_rostrata_, _Ranunculus recurvatus_, and _Rubus triflorus_ with ripe
fruit.
While we were thus employed, two Indians in a canoe hove in sight
round the bushes, coming down stream. Our Indian knew one of them, an
old man, and fell into conversation with him in Indian. He belonged at
the foot of Moosehead. The other was of another tribe. They were
returning from hunting. I asked the younger if they had seen any
moose, to which he said no; but I, seeing the moose-hides sticking out
from a great bundle made with their blankets in the middle of the
canoe, added, “Only their hides.” As he was a foreigner, he may have
wished to deceive me, for it is against the law for white men and
foreigners to kill moose in Maine at this season. But perhaps he need
not have been alarmed, for the moose-wardens are not very particular.
I heard quite directly of one who being asked by a white man going
into the woods what he would say if he killed a moose, answered, “If
you bring me a quarter of it, I guess you won’t be troubled.” His duty
being, as he said, only to prevent the “indiscriminate” slaughter of
them for their hides. I suppose that he would consider it an
_indiscriminate_ slaughter when a quarter was not reserved for
himself. Such are the perquisites of this office.
We continued along through the most extensive larch wood which I had
seen,--tall and slender trees with fantastic branches. But though this
was the prevailing tree here, I do not remember that we saw any
afterward. You do not find straggling trees of this species here and
there throughout the wood, but rather a little forest of them. The
same is the case with the white and red pines, and some other trees,
greatly to the convenience of the lumberer. They are of a social
habit, growing in “veins,” “clumps,” “groups,” or “communities,” as
the explorers call them, distinguishing them far away, from the top of
a hill or a tree, the white pines towering above the surrounding
forest, or else they form extensive forests by themselves. I should
have liked to come across a large community of pines, which had never
been invaded by the lumbering army.
We saw some fresh moose-tracks along the shore, but the Indian said
that the moose were not driven out of the woods by the flies, as usual
at this season, on account of the abundance of water everywhere. The
stream was only from one and one half to three rods wide, quite
winding, with occasional small islands, meadows, and some very swift
and shallow places. When we came to an island, the Indian never
hesitated which side to take, as if the current told him which was the
shortest and deepest. It was lucky for us that the water was so high.
We had to walk but once on this stream, carrying a part of the load,
at a swift and shallow reach, while he got up with the canoe, not
being obliged to take out, though he said it was very strong water.
Once or twice we passed the red wreck of a batteau which had been
stove some spring.
While making this portage I saw many splendid specimens of the great
purple fringed orchis, three feet high. It is remarkable that such
delicate flowers should here adorn these wilderness paths.
Having resumed our seats in the canoe, I felt the Indian wiping my
back, which he had accidentally spat upon. He said it was a sign that
I was going to be married.
The Umbazookskus River is called ten miles long. Having poled up the
narrowest part some three or four miles, the next opening in the sky
was over Umbazookskus Lake, which we suddenly entered about eleven
o’clock in the forenoon. It stretches northwesterly four or five
miles, with what the Indian called the Caucomgomoc Mountain seen far
beyond it. It was an agreeable change.
This lake was very shallow a long distance from the shore, and I saw
stone-heaps on the bottom, like those in the Assabet at home. The
canoe ran into one. The Indian thought that they were made by an eel.
Joe Aitteon in 1853 thought that they were made by chub. We crossed
the southeast end of the lake to the carry into Mud Pond.
Umbazookskus Lake is the head of the Penobscot in this direction, and
Mud Pond is the nearest head of the Allegash, one of the chief sources
of the St. John. Hodge, who went through this way to the St. Lawrence
in the service of the State, calls the portage here a mile and three
quarters long, and states that Mud Pond has been found to be fourteen
feet higher than Umbazookskus Lake. As the West Branch of the
Penobscot at the Moosehead carry is considered about twenty-five feet
lower than Moosehead Lake, it appears that the Penobscot in the upper
part of its course runs in a broad and shallow valley, between the
Kennebec and St. John, and lower than either of them, though, judging
from the map, you might expect it to be the highest.
Mud Pond is about halfway from Umbazookskus to Chamberlain Lake, into
which it empties, and to which we were bound. The Indian said that
this was the wettest carry in the State, and as the season was a very
wet one, we anticipated an unpleasant walk. As usual he made one large
bundle of the pork-keg, cooking-utensils, and other loose traps, by
tying them up in his blanket. We should be obliged to go over the
carry twice, and our method was to carry one half part way, and then
go back for the rest.
Our path ran close by the door of a log hut in a clearing at this end
of the carry, which the Indian, who alone entered it, found to be
occupied by a Canadian and his family, and that the man had been blind
for a year. He seemed peculiarly unfortunate to be taken blind there,
where there were so few eyes to see for him. He could not even be led
out of that country by a dog, but must be taken down the rapids as
passively as a barrel of flour. This was the first house above
Chesuncook, and the last on the Penobscot waters, and was built here,
no doubt, because it was the route of the lumberers in the winter and
spring.
After a slight ascent from the lake through the springy soil of the
Canadian’s clearing, we entered on a level and very wet and rocky path
through the universal dense evergreen forest, a loosely paved gutter
merely, where we went leaping from rock to rock and from side to side,
in the vain attempt to keep out of the water and mud. We concluded
that it was yet Penobscot water, though there was no flow to it. It
was on this carry that the white hunter whom I met in the stage, as he
told me, had shot two bears a few months before. They stood directly
in the path, and did not turn out for him. They might be excused for
not turning out there, or only taking the right as the law directs.
He said that at this season bears were found on the mountains and
hillsides in search of berries, and were apt to be saucy,--that we
might come across them up Trout Stream; and he added, what I hardly
credited, that many Indians slept in their canoes, not daring to sleep
on land, on account of them.
Here commences what was called, twenty years ago, the best timber land
in the State. This very spot was described as “covered with the
greatest abundance of pine,” but now this appeared to me,
comparatively, an uncommon tree there,--and yet you did not see where
any more could have stood, amid the dense growth of cedar, fir, etc.
It was then proposed to cut a canal from lake to lake here, but the
outlet was finally made farther east, at Telos Lake, as we shall see.
The Indian with his canoe soon disappeared before us; but ere long he
came back and told us to take a path which turned off westward, it
being better walking, and, at my suggestion, he agreed to leave a
bough in the regular carry at that place, that we might not pass it by
mistake. Thereafter, he said, we were to keep the main path, and he
added, “You see ’em my tracks.” But I had not much faith that we could
distinguish his tracks, since others had passed over the carry within
a few days.
We turned off at the right place, but were soon confused by numerous
logging-paths, coming into the one we were on, by which lumberers had
been to pick out those pines which I have mentioned. However, we kept
what we considered the main path, though it was a winding one, and in
this, at long intervals, we distinguished a faint trace of a
footstep. This, though comparatively unworn, was at first a better,
or, at least, a drier road than the regular carry which we had left.
It led through an arbor-vitæ wilderness of the grimmest character. The
great fallen and rotting trees had been cut through and rolled aside,
and their huge trunks abutted on the path on each side, while others
still lay across it two or three feet high. It was impossible for us
to discern the Indian’s trail in the elastic moss, which, like a thick
carpet, covered every rock and fallen tree, as well as the earth.
Nevertheless, I did occasionally detect the track of a man, and I gave
myself some credit for it. I carried my whole load at once, a heavy
knapsack, and a large india-rubber bag, containing our bread and a
blanket, swung on a paddle; in all, about sixty pounds; but my
companion preferred to make two journeys, by short stages, while I
waited for him. We could not be sure that we were not depositing our
loads each time farther off from the true path.
As I sat waiting for my companion, he would seem to be gone a long
time, and I had ample opportunity to make observations on the forest.
I now first began to be seriously molested by the black fly, a very
small but perfectly formed fly of that color, about one tenth of an
inch long, which I first felt, and then saw, in swarms about me, as I
sat by a wider and more than usually doubtful fork in this dark forest
path. The hunters tell bloody stories about them,--how they settle in
a ring about your neck, before you know it, and are wiped off in great
numbers with your blood. But remembering that I had a wash in my
knapsack, prepared by a thoughtful hand in Bangor, I made haste to
apply it to my face and hands, and was glad to find it effectual, as
long as it was fresh, or for twenty minutes, not only against black
flies, but all the insects that molested us. They would not alight on
the part thus defended. It was composed of sweet oil and oil of
turpentine, with a little oil of spearmint, and camphor. However, I
finally concluded that the remedy was worse than the disease. It was
so disagreeable and inconvenient to have your face and hands covered
with such a mixture.
Three large slate-colored birds of the jay genus (_Garrulus
Canadensis_), the Canada jay, moose-bird, meat-bird, or what not, came
flitting silently and by degrees toward me, and hopped down the limbs
inquisitively to within seven or eight feet. They were more clumsy and
not nearly so handsome as the bluejay. Fish hawks, from the lake,
uttered their sharp whistling notes low over the top of the forest
near me, as if they were anxious about a nest there.
After I had sat there some time, I noticed at this fork in the path a
tree which had been blazed, and the letters “Chamb. L.” written on it
with red chalk. This I knew to mean Chamberlain Lake. So I concluded
that on the whole we were on the right course, though as we had come
nearly two miles, and saw no signs of Mud Pond, I did harbor the
suspicion that we might be on a direct course to Chamberlain Lake,
leaving out Mud Pond. This I found by my map would be about five miles
northeasterly, and I then took the bearing by my compass.
My companion having returned with his bag, and also defended his face
and hands with the insect-wash, we set forward again. The walking
rapidly grew worse, and the path more indistinct, and at length, after
passing through a patch of _Calla palustris_, still abundantly in
bloom, we found ourselves in a more open and regular swamp, made less
passable than ordinary by the unusual wetness of the season. We sank a
foot deep in water and mud at every step, and sometimes up to our
knees, and the trail was almost obliterated, being no more than that a
musquash leaves in similar places, when he parts the floating sedge.
In fact, it probably was a musquash trail in some places. We concluded
that if Mud Pond was as muddy as the approach to it was wet, it
certainly deserved its name. It would have been amusing to behold the
dogged and deliberate pace at which we entered that swamp, without
interchanging a word, as if determined to go through it, though it
should come up to our necks. Having penetrated a considerable distance
into this, and found a tussock on which we could deposit our loads,
though there was no place to sit, my companion went back for the rest
of his pack. I had thought to observe on this carry when we crossed
the dividing line between the Penobscot and St. John, but as my feet
had hardly been out of water the whole distance, and it was all level
and stagnant, I began to despair of finding it. I remembered hearing a
good deal about the “highlands” dividing the waters of the Penobscot
from those of the St. John, as well as the St. Lawrence, at the time
of the northeast boundary dispute, and I observed by my map, that the
line claimed by Great Britain as the boundary prior to 1842 passed
between Umbazookskus Lake and Mud Pond, so that we had either crossed
or were then on it. These, then, according to _her_ interpretation of
the treaty of ’83, were the “highlands which divide those rivers that
empty themselves into the St. Lawrence from those which fall into the
Atlantic Ocean.” Truly an interesting spot to stand on,--if that were
it,--though you could not sit down there. I thought that if the
commissioners themselves, and the King of Holland with them, had spent
a few days here, with their packs upon their backs, looking for that
“highland,” they would have had an interesting time, and perhaps it
would have modified their views of the question somewhat. The King of
Holland would have been in his element. Such were my meditations while
my companion was gone back for his bag.
It was a cedar swamp, through which the peculiar note of the
white-throated sparrow rang loud and clear. There grew the side-saddle
flower, Labrador tea, _Kalmia glauca_, and, what was new to me, the
low birch (_Betula pumila_), a little round-leafed shrub, two or three
feet high only. We thought to name this swamp after the latter.
After a long while my companion came back, and the Indian with him. We
had taken the wrong road, and the Indian had lost us. He had very
wisely gone back to the Canadian’s camp, and asked him which way we
had probably gone, since he could better understand the ways of white
men, and he told him correctly that we had undoubtedly taken the
supply road to Chamberlain Lake (slender supplies they would get over
such a road at this season). The Indian was greatly surprised that we
should have taken what he called a “tow” (_i. e._, tote or toting or
supply) road, instead of a carry path,--that we had not followed his
tracks,--said it was “strange,” and evidently thought little of our
woodcraft.
Having held a consultation, and eaten a mouthful of bread, we
concluded that it would perhaps be nearer for us two now to keep on to
Chamberlain Lake, omitting Mud Pond, than to go back and start anew
for the last place, though the Indian had never been through this way,
and knew nothing about it. In the meanwhile he would go back and
finish carrying over his canoe and bundle to Mud Pond, cross that, and
go down its outlet and up Chamberlain Lake, and trust to meet us there
before night. It was now a little after noon. He supposed that the
water in which we stood had flowed back from Mud Pond, which could not
be far off eastward, but was unapproachable through the dense cedar
swamp.