the opposite side, but on account of the roar of the water it was
difficult to communicate with him. He kept along the shore westward to
his canoe, while we stopped at the angle where the stream turned
southward around the precipice. I again said to my companion that we
would keep along the shore and keep the Indian in sight. We started to
do so, being close together, the Indian behind us having launched his
canoe again, but just then I saw the latter, who had crossed to our
side, forty or fifty rods behind, beckoning to me, and I called to my
companion, who had just disappeared behind large rocks at the point
of the precipice, three or four rods before me, on his way down the
stream, that I was going to help the Indian a moment. I did
so,--helped get the canoe over a fall, lying with my breast over a
rock, and holding one end while he received it below,--and within ten
or fifteen minutes at most I was back again at the point where the
river turned southward, in order to catch up with my companion, while
Polis glided down the river alone, parallel with me. But to my
surprise, when I rounded the precipice, though the shore was bare of
trees, without rocks, for a quarter of a mile at least, my companion
was not to be seen. It was as if he had sunk into the earth. This was
the more unaccountable to me, because I knew that his feet were, since
our swamp walk, very sore, and that he wished to keep with the party;
and besides this was very bad walking, climbing over or about the
rocks. I hastened along, hallooing and searching for him, thinking he
might be concealed behind a rock, yet doubting if he had not taken the
other side of the precipice, but the Indian had got along still faster
in his canoe, till he was arrested by the falls, about a quarter of a
mile below. He then landed, and said that we could go no farther that
night. The sun was setting, and on account of falls and rapids we
should be obliged to leave this river and carry a good way into
another farther east. The first thing then was to find my companion,
for I was now very much alarmed about him, and I sent the Indian along
the shore down-stream, which began to be covered with unburnt wood
again just below the falls, while I searched backward about the
precipice which we had passed. The Indian showed some unwillingness
to exert himself, complaining that he was very tired, in consequence
of his day’s work, that it had strained him very much getting down so
many rapids alone; but he went off calling somewhat like an owl. I
remembered that my companion was near-sighted, and I feared that he
had either fallen from the precipice, or fainted and sunk down amid
the rocks beneath it. I shouted and searched above and below this
precipice in the twilight till I could not see, expecting nothing less
than to find his body beneath it. For half an hour I anticipated and
believed only the worst. I thought what I should do the next day if I
did not find him, what I _could_ do in such a wilderness, and how his
relatives would feel, if I should return without him. I felt that if
he were really lost away from the river there, it would be a desperate
undertaking to find him; and where were they who could help you? What
would it be to raise the country, where there were only two or three
camps, twenty or thirty miles apart, and no road, and perhaps nobody
at home? Yet we must try the harder, the less the prospect of success.
I rushed down from this precipice to the canoe in order to fire the
Indian’s gun, but found that my companion had the caps. I was still
thinking of getting it off when the Indian returned. He had not found
him, but he said that he had seen his tracks once or twice along the
shore. This encouraged me very much. He objected to firing the gun,
saying that if my companion heard it, which was not likely, on account
of the roar of the stream, it would tempt him to come toward us, and
he might break his neck in the dark. For the same reason we refrained
from lighting a fire on the highest rock. I proposed that we should
both keep down the stream to the lake, or that I should go at any
rate, but the Indian said: “No use, can’t do anything in the dark;
come morning, then we find ’em. No harm,--he make ’em camp. No bad
animals here, no gristly bears, such as in California, where he’s
been,--warm night,--he well off as you and I.” I considered that if he
was well he could do without us. He had just lived eight years in
California, and had plenty of experience with wild beasts and wilder
men, was peculiarly accustomed to make journeys of great length; but
if he were sick or dead, he was near where we were. The darkness in
the woods was by this so thick that it alone decided the question. We
must camp where we were. I knew that he had his knapsack, with
blankets and matches, and, if well, would fare no worse than we,
except that he would have no supper nor society.
This side of the river being so encumbered with rocks, we crossed to
the eastern or smoother shore, and proceeded to camp there, within two
or three rods of the falls. We pitched no tent, but lay on the sand,
putting a few handfuls of grass and twigs under us, there being no
evergreen at hand. For fuel we had some of the charred stumps. Our
various bags of provisions had got quite wet in the rapids, and I
arranged them about the fire to dry. The fall close by was the
principal one on this stream, and it shook the earth under us. It was
a cool, because dewy, night; the more so, probably, owing to the
nearness of the falls. The Indian complained a good deal, and thought
afterward that he got a cold there which occasioned a more serious
illness. We were not much troubled by mosquitoes at any rate. I lay
awake a good deal from anxiety, but, unaccountably to myself, was at
length comparatively at ease respecting him. At first I had
apprehended the worst, but now I had little doubt but that I should
find him in the morning. From time to time I fancied that I heard his
voice calling through the roar of the falls from the opposite side of
the river; but it is doubtful if we could have heard him across the
stream there. Sometimes I doubted whether the Indian had really seen
his tracks, since he manifested an unwillingness to make much of a
search, and then my anxiety returned.
It was the most wild and desolate region we had camped in, where, if
anywhere, one might expect to meet with befitting inhabitants, but I
heard only the squeak of a nighthawk flitting over. The moon in her
first quarter, in the fore part of the night, setting over the bare
rocky hills garnished with tall, charred, and hollow stumps or shells
of trees, served to reveal the desolation.
* * * * *
THURSDAY, July 30.
I aroused the Indian early this morning to go in search of our
companion, expecting to find him within a mile or two, farther down
the stream. The Indian wanted his breakfast first, but I reminded him
that my companion had had neither breakfast nor supper. We were
obliged first to carry our canoe and baggage over into another stream,
the main East Branch, about three fourths of a mile distant, for
Webster Stream was no farther navigable. We went twice over this
carry, and the dewy bushes wet us through like water up to the
middle; I hallooed in a high key from time to time, though I had
little expectation that I could be heard over the roar of the rapids,
and, moreover, we were necessarily on the opposite side of the stream
to him. In going over this portage the last time, the Indian, who was
before me with the canoe on his head, stumbled and fell heavily once,
and lay for a moment silent, as if in pain. I hastily stepped forward
to help him, asking if he was much hurt, but after a moment’s pause,
without replying, he sprang up and went forward. He was all the way
subject to taciturn fits, but they were harmless ones.
We had launched our canoe and gone but little way down the East
Branch, when I heard an answering shout from my companion, and soon
after saw him standing on a point where there was a clearing a quarter
of a mile below, and the smoke of his fire was rising near by. Before
I saw him I naturally shouted again and again, but the Indian curtly
remarked, “He hears you,” as if once was enough. It was just below the
mouth of Webster Stream. When we arrived, he was smoking his pipe, and
said that he had passed a pretty comfortable night, though it was
rather cold, on account of the dew.
It appeared that when we stood together the previous evening, and I
was shouting to the Indian across the river, he, being near-sighted,
had not seen the Indian nor his canoe, and when I went back to the
Indian’s assistance, did not see which way I went, and supposed that
we were below and not above him, and so, making haste to catch up, he
ran away from us. Having reached this clearing, a mile or more below
our camp, the night overtook him, and he made a fire in a little
hollow, and lay down by it in his blanket, still thinking that we were
ahead of him. He thought it likely that he had heard the Indian call
once the evening before, but mistook it for an owl. He had seen one
botanical rarity before it was dark,--pure white _Epilobium
angustifolium_ amidst the fields of pink ones, in the burnt lands. He
had already stuck up the remnant of a lumberer’s shirt, found on the
point, on a pole by the waterside, for a signal, and attached a note
to it, to inform us that he had gone on to the lake, and that if he
did not find us there, he would be back in a couple of hours. If he
had not found us soon, he had some thoughts of going back in search of
the solitary hunter whom we had met at Telos Lake, ten miles behind,
and, if successful, hire him to take him to Bangor. But if this hunter
had moved as fast as we, he would have been twenty miles off by this
time, and who could guess in what direction? It would have been like
looking for a needle in a haymow, to search for him in these woods. He
had been considering how long he could live on berries alone.
We substituted for his note a card containing our names and
destination, and the date of our visit, which Polis neatly inclosed in
a piece of birch bark to keep it dry. This has probably been read by
some hunter or explorer ere this.
We all had good appetites for the breakfast which we made haste to
cook here, and then, having partially dried our clothes, we glided
swiftly down the winding stream toward Second Lake.
As the shores became flatter with frequent gravel and sand-bars, and
the stream more winding in the lower land near the lake, elms and ash
trees made their appearance; also the wild yellow lily (_Lilium
Canadense_), some of whose bulbs I collected for a soup. On some
ridges the burnt land extended as far as the lake. This was a very
beautiful lake, two or three miles long, with high mountains on the
southwest side, the (as our Indian said) _Nerlumskeechticook_, _i.
e._, Deadwater Mountain. It appears to be the same called Carbuncle
Mountain on the map. According to Polis, it extends in separate
elevations all along this and the next lake, which is much larger. The
lake, too, I think, is called by the same name, or perhaps with the
addition of _gamoc_ or _mooc_. The morning was a bright one, and
perfectly still and serene, the lake as smooth as glass, we making the
only ripple as we paddled into it. The dark mountains about it were
seen through a glaucous mist, and the brilliant white stems of canoe
birches mingled with the other woods around it. The wood thrush sang
on the distant shore, and the laugh of some loons, sporting in a
concealed western bay, as if inspired by the morning, came distinct
over the lake to us, and, what was more remarkable, the echo which ran
round the lake was much louder than the original note; probably
because, the loon being in a regularly curving bay under the mountain,
we were exactly in the focus of many echoes, the sound being reflected
like light from a concave mirror. The beauty of the scene may have
been enhanced to our eyes by the fact that we had just come together
again after a night of some anxiety. This reminded me of the Ambejijis
Lake on the West Branch, which I crossed in my first coming to Maine.
Having paddled down three quarters of the lake, we came to a
standstill, while my companion let down for fish. A white (or whitish)
gull sat on a rock which rose above the surface in mid-lake not far
off, quite in harmony with the scene; and as we rested there in the
warm sun, we heard one loud crushing or crackling sound from the
forest, forty or fifty rods distant, as of a stick broken by the foot
of some large animal. Even this was an interesting incident there. In
the midst of our dreams of giant lake trout, even then supposed to be
nibbling, our fishermen drew up a diminutive red perch, and we took up
our paddles again in haste.
It was not apparent where the outlet of this lake was, and while the
Indian thought it was in one direction, I thought it was in another.
He said, “I bet you four-pence it is there,” but he still held on in
my direction, which proved to be the right one. As we were approaching
the outlet, it being still early in the forenoon, he suddenly
exclaimed, “Moose! moose!” and told us to be still. He put a cap on
his gun, and, standing up in the stern, rapidly pushed the canoe
straight toward the shore and the moose. It was a cow moose, about
thirty rods off, standing in the water by the side of the outlet,
partly behind some fallen timber and bushes, and at that distance she
did not look very large. She was flapping her large ears, and from
time to time poking off the flies with her nose from some part of her
body. She did not appear much alarmed by our neighborhood, only
occasionally turned her head and looked straight at us, and then gave
her attention to the flies again. As we approached nearer she got out
of the water, stood higher, and regarded us more suspiciously. Polis
pushed the canoe steadily forward in the shallow water, and I for a
moment forgot the moose in attending to some pretty rose-colored
Polygonums just rising above the surface, but the canoe soon grounded
in the mud eight or ten rods distant from the moose, and the Indian
seized his gun and prepared to fire. After standing still a moment,
she turned slowly, as usual, so as to expose her side, and he improved
this moment to fire, over our heads. She thereupon moved off eight or
ten rods at a moderate pace, across a shallow bay, to an old
standing-place of hers, behind some fallen red maples, on the opposite
shore, and there she stood still again a dozen or fourteen rods from
us, while the Indian hastily loaded and fired twice at her, without
her moving. My companion, who passed him his caps and bullets, said
that Polis was as excited as a boy of fifteen, that his hand trembled,
and he once put his ramrod back upside down. This was remarkable for
so experienced a hunter. Perhaps he was anxious to make a good shot
before us. The white hunter had told me that the Indians were not good
shots, because they were excited, though he said that we had got a
good hunter with us.
The Indian now pushed quickly and quietly back, and a long distance
round, in order to get into the outlet,--for he had fired over the
neck of a peninsula between it and the lake,--till we approached the
place where the moose had stood, when he exclaimed, “She is a goner!”
and was surprised that we did not see her as soon as he did. There, to
be sure, she lay perfectly dead, with her tongue hanging out, just
where she had stood to receive the last shots, looking unexpectedly
large and horse-like, and we saw where the bullets had scarred the
trees.
Using a tape, I found that the moose measured just six feet from the
shoulder to the tip of the hoof, and was eight feet long as she lay.
Some portions of the body, for a foot in diameter, were almost covered
with flies, apparently the common fly of our woods, with a dark spot
on the wing, and not the very large ones which occasionally pursued us
in midstream, though both are called moose-flies.
Polis, preparing to skin the moose, asked me to help him find a stone
on which to sharpen his large knife. It being all a flat alluvial
ground where the moose had fallen, covered with red maples, etc., this
was no easy matter; we searched far and wide, a long time, till at
length I found a flat kind of slate-stone, and soon after he returned
with a similar one, on which he soon made his knife very sharp.
While he was skinning the moose, I proceeded to ascertain what kind of
fishes were to be found in the sluggish and muddy outlet. The greatest
difficulty was to find a pole. It was almost impossible to find a
slender, straight pole ten or twelve feet long in those woods. You
might search half an hour in vain. They are commonly spruce,
arbor-vitæ, fir, etc., short, stout, and branchy, and do not make good
fish-poles, even after you have patiently cut off all their tough and
scraggy branches. The fishes were red perch and chivin.
The Indian, having cut off a large piece of sirloin, the upper lip,
and the tongue, wrapped them in the hide, and placed them in the
bottom of the canoe, observing that there was “one man,” meaning the
weight of one. Our load had previously been reduced some thirty
pounds, but a hundred pounds were now added,--a serious addition,
which made our quarters still more narrow, and considerably increased
the danger on the lakes and rapids, as well as the labor of the
carries. The skin was ours according to custom, since the Indian was
in our employ, but we did not think of claiming it. He being a
skillful dresser of moose-hides would make it worth seven or eight
dollars to him, as I was told. He said that he sometimes earned fifty
or sixty dollars in a day at them; he had killed ten moose in one day,
though the skinning and all took two days. This was the way he had got
his property. There were the tracks of a calf thereabouts, which he
said would come “by, by,” and he could get it if we cared to wait, but
I cast cold water on the project.
We continued along the outlet toward Grand Lake, through a swampy
region, by a long, winding, and narrow dead water, very much choked up
by wood, where we were obliged to land sometimes in order to get the
canoe over a log. It was hard to find any channel, and we did not know
but we should be lost in the swamp. It abounded in ducks, as usual. At
length we reached Grand Lake, which the Indian called _Matungamook_.
At the head of this we saw, coming in from the southwest, with a sweep
apparently from a gorge in the mountains, Trout Stream, or
_Uncardnerheese_, which name, the Indian said, had something to do
with mountains.
We stopped to dine on an interesting high rocky island, soon after
entering Matungamook Lake, securing our canoe to the cliffy shore. It
is always pleasant to step from a boat on to a large rock or cliff.
Here was a good opportunity to dry our dewy blankets on the open sunny
rock. Indians had recently camped here, and accidentally burned over
the western end of the island, and Polis picked up a gun-case of blue
broadcloth, and said that he knew the Indian it belonged to, and would
carry it to him. His tribe is not so large but he may know all its
effects. We proceeded to make a fire and cook our dinner amid some
pines, where our predecessors had done the same, while the Indian
busied himself about his moose-hide on the shore, for he said that he
thought it a good plan for one to do all the cooking, _i. e._, I
suppose, if that one were not himself. A peculiar evergreen overhung
our fire, which at first glance looked like a pitch pine (_P.
rigida_), with leaves little more than an inch long, spruce-like, but
we found it to be the _Pinus Banksiana_,--“Banks’s, or the Labrador
Pine,” also called scrub pine, gray pine, etc., a new tree to us.
These must have been good specimens, for several were thirty or
thirty-five feet high. Richardson found it forty feet high and upward,
and states that the porcupine feeds on its bark. Here also grew the
red pine (_Pinus resinosa_).
I saw where the Indians had made canoes in a little secluded hollow in
the woods, on the top of the rock, where they were out of the wind,
and large piles of whittlings remained. This must have been a favorite
resort for their ancestors, and, indeed, we found here the point of an
arrowhead, such as they have not used for two centuries and now know
not how to make. The Indian, picking up a stone, remarked to me, “That
very strange lock (rock).” It was a piece of hornstone, which I told
him his tribe had probably brought here centuries before to make
arrowheads of. He also picked up a yellowish curved bone by the side
of our fireplace and asked me to guess what it was. It was one of the
upper incisors of a beaver, on which some party had feasted within a
year or two. I found also most of the teeth, and the skull, etc. We
here dined on fried moose-meat.
One who was my companion in my two previous excursions to these woods,
tells me that when hunting up the Caucomgomoc, about two years ago, he
found himself dining one day on moose-meat, mud turtle, trout, and
beaver, and he thought that there were few places in the world where
these dishes could easily be brought together on one table.
After the almost incessant rapids and falls of the Madunkchunk
(Height-of-Land, or Webster Stream), we had just passed through the
dead water of Second Lake, and were now in the much larger dead water
of Grand Lake, and I thought the Indian was entitled to take an extra
nap here. Ktaadn, near which we were to pass the next day, is said to
mean “Highest Land.” So much geography is there in their names. The
Indian navigator naturally distinguishes by a name those parts of a
stream where he has encountered quick water and forks, and again, the
lakes and smooth water where he can rest his weary arms, since those
are the most interesting and more arable parts to him. The very sight
of the _Nerlumskeechticook_, or Deadwater Mountains, a day’s journey
off over the forest, as we first saw them, must awaken in him pleasing
memories. And not less interesting is it to the white traveler, when
he is crossing a placid lake in these out-of-the-way woods, perhaps
thinking that he is in some sense one of the earlier discoverers of
it, to be reminded that it was thus well known and suitably named by
Indian hunters perhaps a thousand years ago.
Ascending the precipitous rock which formed this long narrow island, I
was surprised to find that its summit was a narrow ridge, with a
precipice on one side, and that its axis of elevation extended from
northwest to southeast exactly like that of the great rocky ridge at
the commencement of the Burnt Ground, ten miles northwesterly. The
same arrangement prevailed here, and we could plainly see that the
mountain ridges on the west of the lake trended the same way. Splendid
large harebells nodded over the edge and in the clefts of the cliff,
and the blueberries (_Vaccinium Canadense_) were for the first time
really abundant in the thin soil on its top. There was no lack of them
henceforward on the East Branch. There was a fine view hence over the
sparkling lake, which looked pure and deep, and had two or three, in
all, rocky islands in it. Our blankets being dry, we set out again,
the Indian as usual having left his gazette on a tree. This time it
was we three in a canoe, my companion smoking. We paddled southward
down this handsome lake, which appeared to extend nearly as far east
as south, keeping near the western shore, just outside a small island,
under the dark Nerlumskeechticook Mountain. For I had observed on my
map that this was the course. It was three or four miles across it. It
struck me that the outline of this mountain on the southwest of
the lake, and of another beyond it, was not only like that of the huge
rock waves of Webster Stream, but in the main like Kineo, on Moosehead
Lake, having a similar but less abrupt precipice at the southeast end;
in short, that all the prominent hills and ridges hereabouts were
larger or smaller Kineos, and that possibly there was such a relation
between Kineo and the rocks of Webster Stream.
[Illustration: _Mount Kineo Cliff_]
The Indian did not know exactly where the outlet was, whether at the
extreme southwest angle or more easterly, and had asked to see my plan
at the last stopping-place, but I had forgotten to show it to him. As
usual, he went feeling his way by a middle course between two probable
points, from which he could diverge either way at last without losing
much distance. In approaching the south shore, as the clouds looked
gusty and the waves ran pretty high, we so steered as to get partly
under the lee of an island, though at a great distance from it.
I could not distinguish the outlet till we were almost in it, and
heard the water falling over the dam there.
Here was a considerable fall, and a very substantial dam, but no sign
of a cabin or camp. The hunter whom we met at Telos Lake had told us
that there were plenty of trout here, but at this hour they did not
rise to the bait, only cousin trout, from the very midst of the
rushing waters. There are not so many fishes in these rivers as in the
Concord.
While we loitered here, Polis took occasion to cut with his big knife
some of the hair from his moose-hide, and so lightened and prepared it
for drying. I noticed at several old Indian camps in the woods the
pile of hair which they had cut from their hides.
Having carried over the dam, he darted down the rapids, leaving us to
walk for a mile or more, where for the most part there was no path,
but very thick and difficult traveling near the stream. At length he
would call to let us know where he was waiting for us with his canoe,
when, on account of the windings of the stream, we did not know where
the shore was, but he did not call often enough, forgetting that we
were not Indians. He seemed to be very saving of his breath,--yet he
would be surprised if we went by, or did not strike the right spot.
This was not because he was unaccommodating, but a proof of superior
manners. Indians like to get along with the least possible
communication and ado. He was really paying us a great compliment all
the while, thinking that we preferred a hint to a kick.
At length, climbing over the willows and fallen trees, when this was
easier than to go round or under them, we overtook the canoe, and
glided down the stream in smooth but swift water for several miles. I
here observed again, as at Webster Stream, and on a still larger scale
the next day, that the river was a smooth and regularly inclined plane
down which we coasted. As we thus glided along we started the first
black ducks which we had distinguished.