canal being dug was this: according to the treaty of 1842 with Great
Britain, it was agreed that all the timber run down the St. John,
which rises in Maine, “when within the Province of New Brunswick ...
shall be dealt with as if it were the produce of the said Province,”
which was thought by our side to mean that it should be free from
taxation. Immediately, the Province, wishing to get something out of
the Yankees, levied a duty on all the timber that passed down the St.
John; but to satisfy its own subjects “made a corresponding discount
on the stumpage charged those hauling timber from the crown lands.”
The result was that the Yankees made the St. John run the other way,
or down the Penobscot, so that the Province lost both its duty and its
water, while the Yankees, being greatly enriched, had reason to thank
it for the suggestion.
It is wonderful how well watered this country is. As you paddle across
a lake, bays will be pointed out to you, by following up which, and
perhaps the tributary stream which empties in, you may, after a short
portage, or possibly, at some seasons, none at all, get into another
river, which empties far away from the one you are on. Generally, you
may go in any direction in a canoe, by making frequent but not very
long portages. You are only realizing once more what all nature
distinctly remembers here, for no doubt the waters flowed thus in a
former geological period, and, instead of being a lake country, it was
an archipelago. It seems as if the more youthful and impressible
streams can hardly resist the numerous invitations and temptations to
leave their native beds and run down their neighbors’ channels. Your
carries are often over half-submerged ground, on the dry channels of a
former period. In carrying from one river to another, I did not go
over such high and rocky ground as in going about the falls of the
same river. For in the former case I was once lost in a swamp, as I
have related, and, again, found an artificial canal which appeared to
be natural.
I remember once dreaming of pushing a canoe up the rivers of Maine,
and that, when I had got so high that the channels were dry, I kept on
through the ravines and gorges, nearly as well as before, by pushing a
little harder, and now it seemed to me that my dream was partially
realized.
Wherever there is a channel for water, there is a road for the canoe.
The pilot of the steamer which ran from Oldtown up the Penobscot in
1854 told me that she drew only fourteen inches, and would run easily
in two feet of water, though they did not like to. It is said that
some Western steamers can run on a heavy dew, whence we can imagine
what a canoe may do. Montresor, who was sent from Quebec by the
English about 1760 to explore the route to the Kennebec, over which
Arnold afterward passed, supplied the Penobscot near its source with
water by opening the beaver-dams, and he says, “This is often done.”
He afterward states that the Governor of Canada had forbidden to
molest the beaver about the outlet of the Kennebec from Moosehead
Lake, on account of the service which their dams did by raising the
water for navigation.
This canal, so called, was a considerable and extremely rapid and
rocky river. The Indian decided that there was water enough in it
without raising the dam, which would only make it more violent, and
that he would run down it alone, while we carried the greater part of
the baggage. Our provision being about half consumed, there was the
less left in the canoe. We had thrown away the pork-keg, and wrapt its
contents in birch bark, which is the unequaled wrapping-paper of the
woods.
Following a moist trail through the forest, we reached the head of
Webster Pond about the same time with the Indian, notwithstanding the
velocity with which he moved, our route being the most direct. The
Indian name of Webster Stream, of which this pond is the source, is,
according to him, _Madunkchunk_, _i. e._, Height of Land, and of the
pond, _Madunkchunk-gamooc_, or Height of Land Pond. The latter was two
or three miles long. We passed near a pine on its shore which had been
splintered by lightning, perhaps the day before. This was the first
proper East Branch Penobscot water that we came to.
At the outlet of Webster Lake was another dam, at which we stopped and
picked raspberries, while the Indian went down the stream a half-mile
through the forest, to see what he had got to contend with. There was
a deserted log camp here, apparently used the previous winter, with
its “hovel” or barn for cattle. In the hut was a large fir twig bed,
raised two feet from the floor, occupying a large part of the single
apartment, a long narrow table against the wall, with a stout log
bench before it, and above the table a small window, the only one
there was, which admitted a feeble light. It was a simple and strong
fort erected against the cold, and suggested what valiant trencher
work had been done there. I discovered one or two curious wooden
traps, which had not been used for a long time, in the woods near by.
The principal part consisted of a long and slender pole.
We got our dinner on the shore, on the upper side of the dam. As we
were sitting by our fire, concealed by the earth bank of the dam, a
long line of sheldrake, half-grown, came waddling over it from the
water below, passing within about a rod of us, so that we could almost
have caught them in our hands. They were very abundant on all the
streams and lakes which we visited, and every two or three hours they
would rush away in a long string over the water before us, twenty to
fifty of them at once, rarely ever flying, but running with great
rapidity up or down the stream, even in the midst of the most violent
rapids, and apparently as fast up as down, or else crossing
diagonally, the old, as it appeared, behind, and driving them, and
flying to the front from time to time, as if to direct them. We also
saw many small black dippers, which behaved in a similar manner, and,
once or twice, a few black ducks.
An Indian at Oldtown had told us that we should be obliged to carry
ten miles between Telos Lake on the St. John and Second Lake on the
East Branch of the Penobscot; but the lumberers whom we met assured us
that there would not be more than a mile of carry. It turned out that
the Indian, who had lately been over this route, was nearest right, as
far as we were concerned. However, if one of us could have assisted
the Indian in managing the canoe in the rapids, we might have run the
greater part of the way; but as he was alone in the management of the
canoe in such places, we were obliged to walk the greater part. I did
not feel quite ready to try such an experiment on Webster Stream,
which has so bad a reputation. According to my observation, a batteau,
properly manned, shoots rapids as a matter of course, which a single
Indian with a canoe carries round.
My companion and I carried a good part of the baggage on our
shoulders, while the Indian took that which would be least injured by
wet in the canoe. We did not know when we should see him again, for he
had not been this way since the canal was cut, nor for more than
thirty years. He agreed to stop when he got to smooth water, come up
and find our path if he could, and halloo for us, and after waiting a
reasonable time go on and try again,--and we were to look out in like
manner for him.
He commenced by running through the sluiceway and over the dam, as
usual, standing up in his tossing canoe, and was soon out of sight
behind a point in a wild gorge. This Webster Stream is well known to
lumbermen as a difficult one. It is exceedingly rapid and rocky, and
also shallow, and can hardly be considered navigable, unless that may
mean that what is launched in it is sure to be carried swiftly down
it, though it may be dashed to pieces by the way. It is somewhat like
navigating a thunder-spout. With commonly an irresistible force urging
you on, you have got to choose your own course each moment, between
the rocks and shallows, and to get into it, moving forward always with
the utmost possible moderation, and often holding on, if you can, that
you may inspect the rapids before you.
By the Indian’s direction we took an old path on the south side,
which appeared to keep down the stream, though at a considerable
distance from it, cutting off bends, perhaps to Second Lake, having
first taken the course from the map with a compass, which was
northeasterly, for safety. It was a wild wood-path, with a few tracks
of oxen which had been driven over it, probably to some old camp
clearing, for pasturage, mingled with the tracks of moose which had
lately used it. We kept on steadily for about an hour without putting
down our packs, occasionally winding around or climbing over a fallen
tree, for the most part far out of sight and hearing of the river;
till, after walking about three miles, we were glad to find that the
path came to the river again at an old camp ground, where there was a
small opening in the forest, at which we paused. Swiftly as the
shallow and rocky river ran here, a continuous rapid with dancing
waves, I saw, as I sat on the shore, a long string of sheldrakes,
which something scared, run up the opposite side of the stream by me,
with the same ease that they commonly did down it, just touching the
surface of the waves, and getting an impulse from them as they flowed
from under them; but they soon came back, driven by the Indian, who
had fallen a little behind us on account of the windings. He shot
round a point just above, and came to land by us with considerable
water in his canoe. He had found it, as he said, “very strong water,”
and had been obliged to land once before to empty out what he had
taken in. He complained that it strained him to paddle so hard in
order to keep his canoe straight in its course, having no one in the
bows to aid him, and, shallow as it was, said that it would be no
joke to upset there, for the force of the water was such that he had
as lief I would strike him over the head with a paddle as have that
water strike him. Seeing him come out of that gap was as if you should
pour water down an inclined and zigzag trough, then drop a nutshell
into it, and, taking a short cut to the bottom, get there in time to
see it come out, notwithstanding the rush and tumult, right side up,
and only partly full of water.
After a moment’s breathing-space, while I held his canoe, he was soon
out of sight again around another bend, and we, shouldering our packs,
resumed our course.
We did not at once fall into our path again, but made our way with
difficulty along the edge of the river, till at length, striking
inland through the forest, we recovered it. Before going a mile we
heard the Indian calling to us. He had come up through the woods and
along the path to find us, having reached sufficiently smooth water to
warrant his taking us in. The shore was about one fourth of a mile
distant, through a dense, dark forest, and as he led us back to it,
winding rapidly about to the right and left, I had the curiosity to
look down carefully, and found that he was following his steps
backward. I could only occasionally perceive his trail in the moss,
and yet he did not appear to look down nor hesitate an instant, but
led us out exactly to his canoe. This surprised me; for without a
compass, or the sight or noise of the river to guide us, we could not
have kept our course many minutes, and could have retraced our steps
but a short distance, with a great deal of pains and very slowly,
using a laborious circumspection. But it was evident that he could go
back through the forest wherever he had been during the day.
After this rough walking in the dark woods it was an agreeable change
to glide down the rapid river in the canoe once more. This river,
which was about the size of our Assabet (in Concord), though still
very swift, was almost perfectly smooth here, and showed a very
visible declivity, a regularly inclined plane, for several miles, like
a mirror set a little aslant, on which we coasted down. This very
obvious regular descent, particularly plain when I regarded the
water-line against the shores, made a singular impression on me, which
the swiftness of our motion probably enhanced, so that we seemed to be
gliding down a much steeper declivity than we were, and that we could
not save ourselves from rapids and falls if we should suddenly come to
them. My companion did not perceive this slope, but I have a
surveyor’s eyes, and I satisfied myself that it was no ocular
illusion. You could tell at a glance on approaching such a river which
way the water flowed, though you might perceive no motion. I observed
the angle at which a level line would strike the surface, and
calculated the amount of fall in a rod, which did not need to be
remarkably great to produce this effect.
It was very exhilarating, and the perfection of traveling, quite
unlike floating on our dead Concord River, the coasting down this
inclined mirror, which was now and then gently winding, down a
mountain, indeed, between two evergreen forests, edged with lofty dead
white pines, sometimes slanted half-way over the stream, and destined
soon to bridge it. I saw some monsters there, nearly destitute of
branches, and scarcely diminishing in diameter for eighty or ninety
feet.
As we thus swept along, our Indian repeated in a deliberate and
drawling tone the words “Daniel Webster, great lawyer,” apparently
reminded of him by the name of the stream, and he described his
calling on him once in Boston, at what he supposed was his
boarding-house. He had no business with him, but merely went to pay
his respects, as we should say. In answer to our questions, he
described his person well enough. It was on the day after Webster
delivered his Bunker Hill oration, which I believe Polis heard. The
first time he called he waited till he was tired without seeing him,
and then went away. The next time, he saw him go by the door of the
room in which he was waiting several times, in his shirt-sleeves,
without noticing him. He thought that if he had come to see Indians,
they would not have treated him so. At length, after very long delay,
he came in, walked toward him, and asked in a loud voice, gruffly,
“What do you want?” and he, thinking at first, by the motion of his
hand, that he was going to strike him, said to himself, “You’d better
take care; if you try that I shall know what to do.” He did not like
him, and declared that all he said “was not worth talk about a
musquash.” We suggested that probably Mr. Webster was very busy, and
had a great many visitors just then.
Coming to falls and rapids, our easy progress was suddenly terminated.
The Indian went alongshore to inspect the water, while we climbed over
the rocks, picking berries. The peculiar growth of blueberries on the
tops of large rocks here made the impression of high land, and indeed
this was the Height-of-Land Stream. When the Indian came back, he
remarked, “You got to walk; ver strong water.” So, taking out his
canoe, he launched it again below the falls, and was soon out of
sight. At such times he would step into the canoe, take up his paddle,
and, with an air of mystery, start off, looking far down-stream, and
keeping his own counsel, as if absorbing all the intelligence of
forest and stream into himself; but I sometimes detected a little fun
in his face, which could yield to my sympathetic smile, for he was
thoroughly good-humored. We meanwhile scrambled along the shore with
our packs, without any path. This was the last of _our_ boating for
the day.
The prevailing rock here was a kind of slate, standing on its edges,
and my companion, who was recently from California, thought it exactly
like that in which the gold is found, and said that if he had had a
pan he would have liked to wash a little of the sand here.
The Indian now got along much faster than we, and waited for us from
time to time. I found here the only cool spring that I drank at
anywhere on this excursion, a little water filling a hollow in the
sandy bank. It was a quite memorable event, and due to the elevation
of the country, for wherever else we had been the water in the rivers
and the streams emptying in was dead and warm, compared with that of a
mountainous region. It was very bad walking along the shore over
fallen and drifted trees and bushes, and rocks, from time to time
swinging ourselves round over the water, or else taking to a gravel
bar or going inland. At one place, the Indian being ahead, I was
obliged to take off all my clothes in order to ford a small but deep
stream emptying in, while my companion, who was inland, found a rude
bridge, high up in the woods, and I saw no more of him for some time.
I saw there very fresh moose tracks, found a new goldenrod to me
(perhaps _Solidago thyrsoidea_), and I passed one white pine log,
which had lodged, in the forest near the edge of the stream, which was
quite five feet in diameter at the butt. Probably its size detained
it.
Shortly after this I overtook the Indian at the edge of some burnt
land, which extended three or four miles at least, beginning about
three miles above Second Lake, which we were expecting to reach that
night, and which is about ten miles from Telos Lake. This burnt region
was still more rocky than before, but, though comparatively open, we
could not yet see the lake. Not having seen my companion for some
time, I climbed, with the Indian, a singular high rock on the edge of
the river, forming a narrow ridge only a foot or two wide at top, in
order to look for him; and, after calling many times, I at length
heard him answer from a considerable distance inland, he having taken
a trail which led off from the river, perhaps directly to the lake,
and was now in search of the river again. Seeing a much higher rock,
of the same character, about one third of a mile farther east, or
down-stream, I proceeded toward it, through the burnt land, in order
to look for the lake from its summit, supposing that the Indian would
keep down the stream in his canoe, and hallooing all the while that my
companion might join me on the way. Before we came together I noticed
where a moose, which possibly I had scared by my shouting, had
apparently just run along a large rotten trunk of a pine, which made
a bridge, thirty or forty feet long, over a hollow, as convenient for
him as for me. The tracks were as large as those of an ox, but an ox
could not have crossed there. This burnt land was an exceedingly wild
and desolate region. Judging by the weeds and sprouts, it appeared to
have been burnt about two years before. It was covered with charred
trunks, either prostrate or standing, which crocked our clothes and
hands, and we could not easily have distinguished a bear there by his
color. Great shells of trees, sometimes unburnt without, or burnt on
one side only, but black within, stood twenty or forty feet high. The
fire had run up inside, as in a chimney, leaving the sap-wood.
Sometimes we crossed a rocky ravine fifty feet wide, on a fallen
trunk; and there were great fields of fire-weed (_Epilobium
angustifolium_) on all sides, the most extensive that I ever saw,
which presented great masses of pink. Intermixed with these were
blueberry and raspberry bushes.
Having crossed a second rocky ridge like the first, when I was
beginning to ascend the third, the Indian, whom I had left on the
shore some fifty rods behind, beckoned to me to come to him, but I
made sign that I would first ascend the highest rock before me, whence
I expected to see the lake. My companion accompanied me to the top.
This was formed just like the others. Being struck with the perfect
parallelism of these singular rock hills, however much one might be in
advance of another, I took out my compass and found that they lay
northwest and southeast, the rock being on its edge, and sharp edges
they were. This one, to speak from memory, was perhaps a third of a
mile in length, but quite narrow, rising gradually from the northwest
to the height of about eighty feet, but steep on the southeast end.
The southwest side was as steep as an ordinary roof, or as we could
safely climb; the northeast was an abrupt precipice from which you
could jump clean to the bottom, near which the river flowed; while the
level top of the ridge, on which you walked along, was only from one
to three or four feet in width. For a rude illustration, take the half
of a pear cut in two lengthwise, lay it on its flat side, the stem to
the northwest, and then halve it vertically in the direction of its
length, keeping the southwest half. Such was the general form.
There was a remarkable series of these great rock-waves revealed by
the burning; breakers, as it were. No wonder that the river that found
its way through them was rapid and obstructed by falls. No doubt the
absence of soil on these rocks, or its dryness where there was any,
caused this to be a very thorough burning. We could see the lake over
the woods, two or three miles ahead, and that the river made an abrupt
turn southward around the northwest end of the cliff on which we
stood, or a little above us, so that we had cut off a bend, and that
there was an important fall in it a short distance below us. I could
see the canoe a hundred rods behind, but now on the opposite shore,
and supposed that the Indian had concluded to take out and carry round
some bad rapids on that side, and that that might be what he had
beckoned to me for; but after waiting a while I could still see
nothing of him, and I observed to my companion that I wondered where
he was, though I began to suspect that he had gone inland to look for
the lake from some hilltop on that side, as we had done. This proved
to be the case; for after I had started to return to the canoe, I
heard a faint halloo, and descried him on the top of a distant rocky
hill on that side. But as, after a long time had elapsed, I still saw
his canoe in the same place, and he had not returned to it, and
appeared in no hurry to do so, and, moreover, as I remembered that he
had previously beckoned to me, I thought that there might be something
more to delay him than I knew, and began to return northwest, along
the ridge, toward the angle in the river. My companion, who had just
been separated from us, and had even contemplated the necessity of
camping alone, wishing to husband his steps, and yet to keep with us,
inquired where I was going; to which I answered that I was going far
enough back to communicate with the Indian, and that then I thought we
had better go along the shore together, and keep him in sight.