UP THE LAKES.
Mr. Killgrove, slayer of forests, became the pilot of our voyage up Lake
Moosetocmaguntic. We shoved off in a _bateau_, while Joseph Bourgogne,
sad at losing us, stood among the stumps, waving adieux with a
dish-clout. We had solaced his soul with meed of praise. And now, alas!
we left him to the rude jokes and half-sympathies of the lumbermen. The
artist-cook saw his appreciators vanish away, and his proud dish-clout
drooped like a defeated banner.
"A fine lake," remarked Iglesias, instituting the matutinal conversation
in a safe and general way.
"Yes," returned Mr. Killgrove, "when you come to get seven or eight feet
more of water atop of this in spring, it is considerable of a puddle."
Our weather seemed to be now bettering with more resolution. Many days
had passed since Aurora had shown herself,--many days since the rising
sun and the world had seen each other. But yesterday this sulky
estrangement ended, and, after the beautiful reconciliation at sunset,
the faint mists of doubt in their brief parting for a night had now no
power against the ardors of anticipated meeting. As we shot out upon the
steaming water, the sun was just looking over the lower ridges of a
mountain opposite. Air, blue and quivering, hung under shelter of the
mountain-front, as if a film from the dim purple of night were hiding
there to see what beauty day had, better than its own. The gray fog, so
dreary for three mornings, was utterly vanquished; all was vanished,
save where "swimming vapors sloped athwart the glen," and "crept from
pine to pine." These had dallied, like spies of a flying army, to watch
for chances of its return; but they, too, carried away by the
enthusiasms of a world liberated and illumined, changed their
allegiance, joined the party of hope and progress, and added the grace
of their presence to the fair pageant of a better day.
Lake Moosetocmaguntic is good,--above the average. If its name had but
two syllables, and the thing named were near Somewhere, poetry and
rhetoric would celebrate it, and the world would be prouder of itself
for another "gem." Now nobody sees it, and those who do have had their
anticipations lengthened leagues by every syllable of its sesquipedalian
title. One expects, perhaps, something more than what he finds. He finds
a good average sheet of water, set in a circlet of dark forest,--forests
sloping up to wooded hills, and these to wooded mountains. Very good and
satisfactory elements, and worth notice,--especially when the artistic
eye is also a fisherman's eye, and he detects fishy spots. As to
wilderness, there can be none more complete. At the upper end of the
lake is a trace of humanity in a deserted cabin on a small clearing.
There a hermit pair once lived,--man and wife, utterly alone for fifteen
years,--once or twice a year, perhaps, visited by lumbermen. Fifteen
years alone with a wife! a trial, certainly,--not necessarily in the
desponding sense of the word; not as Yankees have it, making trial a
misfortune, but a test.
Mr. Killgrove entertained us with resinous-flavored talk. The voyage was
unexcitingly pleasant. We passed an archipelago of scrubby islands, and,
turning away from a blue vista of hills northward, entered a lovely
curve of river richly overhung with arbor-vitae, a shadowy quiet reach
of clear water, crowded below its beautiful surface with reflected
forest and reflected sky.
"Iglesias," said I, "we divined how Mollychunkamug had its name; now, as
to Moosetocmaguntic,--hence that elongated appellative?"
"It was named," replied Iglesias, "from the adventure of a certain
hunter in these regions. He was moose-hunting here in days gone by. His
tale runs thus:--'I had been four days without game, and naturally
without anything to eat except pine-cones and green chestnuts. There was
no game in the forest. The trout would not bite, for I had no tackle and
no hook. I was starving. I sat me down, and rested my trusty, but futile
rifle against a fallen tree. Suddenly I heard a tread, turned my head,
saw a Moose,--took--my--gun,--tick! he was dead. I was saved. I feasted,
and in gratitude named the lake Moosetookmyguntick.' Geography has
modified it, but the name cannot be misunderstood."
We glided up the fair river, and presently came to the hut of Mr. Smith,
fisherman and misogynist. And there is little more to be said about Mr.
Smith. He appears in this chronicle because he owned a boat which became
our vehicle on Lake Oquossok, Aquessok, Lakewocket, or Rangeley. Mr.
Smith guided us across the carry to the next of the chain of lakes, and
embarked us in a crazy skiff. It was blowing fresh, and, not to be
wrecked, we coasted close to the gnarled arbor-vitae thickets. Smith
sogered along, drawling dull legends of trout-fishing.
"Drefful notional critturs traout be," he said,--"olluz bitin' atwhodger
haänt got. Orful contrairy critturs,--jess like fimmls. Yer can cotch a
fimml with a feather, ef she's ter be cotched; ef she haänt ter be
cotched, yer may scoop ther hul world dry an' yer haänt got her. Jess so
traout."
The misogynist bored us with his dull philosophy. The buffetings of
inland waves were not only insulting, but dangerous, to our leaky punt.
At any moment, Iglesias and I might find ourselves floundering together
in thin fresh water. Joyfully, therefore, at last, did we discern
clearings, culture, and habitations at the lake-head. There was no
tavernous village of Rangeley; that would have been too great a
contrast, after the forest and the lakes, where loons are the only
disturbers of silence,--incongruity enough to overpower utterly the
ringing of woodland music in our hearts. Rangeley was a townless
township, as the outermost township should be. We had, however, learnt
from Killgrove, feller of forests, that there was a certain farmer on
the lake, one of the chieftains of that realm, who would hospitably
entertain us. Smith, wheedler of trout, landed us in quite an ambitious
foamy surf at the foot of a declivity below our future host's farm.
We had now traversed Lakes Umbagog, Weelocksebacook, Allegundabagog,
Mollychunkamug, Moosetocmaguntic, and Oquossok.
We had been compelled to pronounce these names constantly. Of course our
vocal organs were distorted. Of course our vocal nervous systems were
shattered, and we had a chronic lameness of the jaws. We therefore
recognized a peculiar appropriateness in the name of our host.
Toothaker was his name. He dwelt upon the lawn-like bank, a hundred feet
above the lake. Mr. Toothaker himself was absent, but his wife received
us hospitably, disposed us in her guest-chamber, and gratified us with a
supper.
This was Rangeley Township, the outer settlement on the west side of
Maine. A "squire" from England gave it his name. He bought the tract,
named it, inhabited several years, a popular squire-arch, and then
returned from the wild to the tame, from pine woods and stumpy fields to
the elm-planted hedge-rows and shaven lawns of placid England. The local
gossip did not reveal any cause for Mr. Rangeley's fondness for
contrasts and exile.
Mr. Toothaker has been a careful dentist to the stumps of his farm. It
is beautifully stumpless, and slopes verdantly, or varied with yellow
harvest, down to the lake and up to the forest primeval. He has
preserved a pretty grove of birch and maple as shelter, ornament,
partridge-cover, and perpendicular wood-pile. Below his house and barns
is the lovely oval of the lake, seen across the fair fields, bright with
wheat, or green with pasture. A road, hedged with briskly-aspiring young
spruces, runs for a mile northward, making a faint show at attacking the
wilderness. A mile's loneliness is enough for this unsupported pioneer;
he runs up a tree, sees nothing but dark woods, thinks of Labrador and
the North Pole, and stops.
Next morning, Mr. Toothaker returned from a political meeting below
among the towns. It was the Presidential campaign,--stirring days from
pines to prairies, stirring days from codfish to cocoanuts. Tonguey men
were talking from every stump all over the land. Blatant patriots were
heard, wherever a flock of compatriots could be persuaded to listen. The
man with one speech containing two stories was making the tour of all
the villages. The man with two speeches, each with three stories, one of
them very broad indeed, was in request for the towns. The oratorical
Stentorian man, with inexhaustible rivers of speech and rafts of
stories, was in full torrent at mass-meetings. There was no neighborhood
that might not see and hear an M. C. But Rangeley had been the _minus_
town, and by all the speech-makers really neglected; there was danger
that its voters must deposit their ballots according to their own
judgment, without any advice from strangers. This, of course, would
never do. Mr. Toothaker found that we fraternized in politics. He called
upon us, as patriots, to become the orators of the day. Why not? Except
that these seldom houses do not promise an exhilarating crowd. We
promised, however, that, if he would supply hearers, we between us would
find a speaker.
Mr. Toothaker called a nephew, and charged him to boot and saddle, and
flame it through the country-side that two "Men from New York" were
there, and would give a "Lecture on Politics," at the Red School-House,
at five, that evening.
And to the Red School-House, at five, crowded the men, ay, and the women
and children, of Rangeley and thereabout. They came as the winds and
waves come when forests and navies are rended and stranded. Horse, foot,
and charioteers, they thronged toward the rubicund fountain of
education. From houses that lurked invisible in clearings suddenly burst
forth a population, an audience ardent with patriotism, eager for
politics even from a Cockney interpreter, and numerous enough to stir
electricity in a speaker's mind. Some of the matrons brought bundles of
swaddled infants, to be early instructed in good citizenship; but too
often these young patriots were found to have but crude notions on the
subject of applause, and they were ignominiously removed, fighting
violently for their privilege of free speech, doubling their unterrified
fists, and getting as red in the face as the school-house.
Mr. Toothaker, in a neat speech, introduced the orator, who took his
stand in the schoolmaster's pulpit, and surveyed his stalwart and gentle
hearers, filling the sloping benches and overflowing out-of-doors.
Gaffer and gammer, man and maiden, were distributed, the ladies to the
right of the aisle, the gentlemen to the left. They must not be in
contact,--perhaps because gaffer will gossip with gammer, and youth and
maid will toy. Dignity demanded that they should be distinct as the
conservative Right and radical Left of a French Assembly, Convenient,
this, for the orator; since thus his things of beauty, joys forever, he
could waft, in dulcet tones, over to the ladies' side, and his things of
logic, tough morsels for life-long digestion, he could jerk, like bolts
from an arbalist, over at the open mouths of gray gaffer and robust man.
I am not about to report the orator's speech. Stealing another's thunder
is an offence punishable condignly ever since the days of Salmoneus.
Perhaps, too, he may wish to use the same eloquent bits in the present
Olympiad; for American life is measured by Olympiads, signalized by
nobler contests than the petty States of Greece ever knew.
The people of Rangeley disappeared as mysteriously as they had emerged
from the woods, having had their share of the good or bad talk of that
year of freedom. If political harangues educate, the educated class was
largely recruited that that summer.
Next day, again, was stormy. We stayed quietly under shelter, preparing
for our real journey after so much prelude. The Isaac Newton's
steam-whistle had sent up the curtain; the overture had followed with
strains Der-Frei-schutzy in the Adirondacks, pastoral in the valleys of
Vermont and New Hampshire, funebral and andante in the fogs of
Mollychunkamug; now it was to end in an allegretto gallopade, and the
drama would open.
At last the sun shone bright upon the silky ripples of the lake. Mr.
Toothaker provided two buggies,--one for himself and our traps, one for
Iglesias and me. We rattled away across county and county. And so at
full speed we drove all day, and, with a few hours' halt, all
night,--all a fresh, starry night,--until gay sunrise brought us to
Skowhegan, on the road to Moosehead Lake.
As we had travelled all night, breakfast must be our substitute for
slumber. Repletion, instead of repose, must restore us. Two files of
red-shirted lumbermen, brandishing knives at each other across a long
table, only excited us to livelier gymnastics; and when we had thus
hastily crammed what they call in Maine beefsteak, and what they infuse
down East for coffee, we climbed to the top of a coach of the
bounding-billow motion, and went pitching northward.
Two facts we learned from our coachman: one, that we were passing that
day through a "pretty sassy country"; also, that the same region was
"only meant to hold the world together." Personal "sassiness" is a trait
of which every Yankee is proud; Iglesias and I both venture to hope that
we appreciate the value of that quality, and have properly cultivated
it. Topographical "sassiness," unmodified by culture and control, is a
rude, rugged, and unattractive trait; and New England is, on the whole,
"sassier" than I could wish. Let the dullish day's drive, then, be
passed over dumbly. In the evening, we dismounted at Greenville, at the
foot of Moosehead Lake.