Maine Woods — Chesuncook, Section 12

The moose venture out to the riverside to feed and drink at night.

Earlier in the season the hunters do not use a horn to call them out, but steal upon them as they are feeding along the sides of the stream, and often the first notice they have of one is the sound of the water dropping from its muzzle.

An Indian whom I heard imitate the voice of the moose, and also that of the caribou and the deer, using a much longer horn than Joe’s, told me that the first could be heard eight or ten miles, sometimes; it was a loud sort of bellowing sound, clearer and more sonorous than the lowing of cattle, the caribou’s a sort of snort, and the small deer’s like that of a lamb.

At length we turned up the Moosehorn, where the Indians at the carry had told us that they killed a moose the night before.

This is a very meandering stream, only a rod or two in width, but comparatively deep, coming in on the right, fitly enough named Moosehorn, whether from its windings or its inhabitants.

It was bordered here and there by narrow meadows between the stream and the endless forest, affording favorable places for the moose to feed, and to call them out on.

We proceeded half a mile up this as through a narrow, winding canal, where the tall, dark spruce and firs and arbor-vitæ towered on both sides in the moonlight, forming a perpendicular forest-edge of great height, like the spires of a Venice in the forest.

In two places stood a small stack of hay on the bank, ready for the lumberer’s use in the winter, looking strange enough there.

We thought of the day when this might be a brook winding through smooth-shaven meadows on some gentleman’s grounds; and seen by moonlight then, excepting the forest that now hems it in, how little changed it would appear!

Again and again Joe called the moose, placing the canoe close by some favorable point of meadow for them to come out on, but listened in vain to hear one come rushing through the woods, and concluded that they had been hunted too much thereabouts.

We saw, many times, what to our imaginations looked like a gigantic moose, with his horns peering from out the forest edge; but we saw the forest only, and not its inhabitants, that night.

So at last we turned about.

There was now a little fog on the water, though it was a fine, clear night above.

There were very few sounds to break the stillness of the forest.

Several times we heard the hooting of a great horned owl, as at home, and told Joe that he would call out the moose for him, for he made a sound considerably like the horn; but Joe answered, that the moose had heard that sound a thousand times, and knew better; and oftener still we were startled by the plunge of a musquash.

Once, when Joe had called again, and we were listening for moose, we heard, come faintly echoing, or creeping from far through the moss-clad aisles, a dull, dry, rushing sound with a solid core to it, yet as if half smothered under the grasp of the luxuriant and fungus-like forest, like the shutting of a door in some distant entry of the damp and shaggy wilderness.

If we had not been there, no mortal had heard it.

When we asked Joe in a whisper what it was, he answered, “Tree fall.

” There is something singularly grand and impressive in the sound of a tree falling in a perfectly calm night like this, as if the agencies which overthrow it did not need to be excited, but worked with a subtle, deliberate, and conscious force, like a boa-constrictor, and more effectively then than even in a windy day.

If there is any such difference, perhaps it is because trees with the dews of the night on them are heavier than by day.

Having reached the camp, about ten o’clock, we kindled our fire and went to bed.

Each of us had a blanket, in which he lay on the fir twigs, with his extremities toward the fire, but nothing over his head.

It was worth the while to lie down in a country where you could afford such great fires; that was one whole side, and the bright side, of our world.

We had first rolled up a large log some eighteen inches through and ten feet long, for a backlog, to last all night, and then piled on the trees to the height of three or four feet, no matter how green or damp.

In fact, we burned as much wood that night as would, with economy and an air-tight stove, last a poor family in one of our cities all winter.

It was very agreeable, as well as independent, thus lying in the open air, and the fire kept our uncovered extremities warm enough.

The Jesuit missionaries used to say, that, in their journeys with the Indians in Canada, they lay on a bed which had never been shaken up since the creation, unless by earthquakes.

It is surprising with what impunity and comfort one who has always lain in a warm bed in a close apartment, and studiously avoided drafts of air, can lie down on the ground without a shelter, roll himself in a blanket, and sleep before a fire, in a frosty autumn night, just after a long rain-storm, and even come soon to enjoy and value the fresh air.

I lay awake awhile, watching the ascent of the sparks through the firs, and sometimes their descent in half-extinguished cinders on my blanket.

They were as interesting as fireworks, going up in endless, successive crowds, each after an explosion, in an eager, serpentine course, some to five or six rods above the tree-tops before they went out.

We do not suspect how much our chimneys have concealed; and now air-tight stoves have come to conceal all the rest.

In the course of the night, I got up once or twice and put fresh logs on the fire, making my companions curl up their legs.

When we awoke in the morning (Saturday, September 17), there was considerable frost whitening the leaves.

We heard the sound of the chickadee, and a few faintly lisping birds, and also of ducks in the water about the island.

I took a botanical account of stock of our domains before the dew was off, and found that the ground-hemlock, or American yew, was the prevailing undershrub.

We breakfasted on tea, hard-bread, and ducks.

Before the fog had fairly cleared away we paddled down the stream again, and were soon past the mouth of the Moosehorn.

These twenty miles of the Penobscot, between Moosehead and Chesuncook lakes, are comparatively smooth, and a great part deadwater; but from time to time it is shallow and rapid, with rocks or gravel beds, where you can wade across.

There is no expanse of water, and no break in the forest, and the meadow is a mere edging here and there.

There are no hills near the river nor within sight, except one or two distant mountains seen in a few places.

The banks are from six to ten feet high, but once or twice rise gently to higher ground.

In many places the forest on the bank was but a thin strip, letting the light through from some alder swamp or meadow behind.

The conspicuous berry-bearing bushes and trees along the shore were the red osier, with its whitish fruit, hobble-bush, mountain-ash, tree-cranberry, choke-cherry, now ripe, alternate cornel, and naked viburnum.

Following Joe’s example, I ate the fruit of the last, and also of the hobble-bush, but found them rather insipid and seedy.

I looked very narrowly at the vegetation, as we glided along close to the shore, and frequently made Joe turn aside for me to pluck a plant, that I might see by comparison what was primitive about my native river.

Horehound, horse-mint, and the sensitive fern grew close to the edge, under the willows and alders, and wool-grass on the islands, as along the Assabet River in Concord.

It was too late for flowers, except a few asters, goldenrods, etc. In several places we noticed the slight frame of a camp, such as we had prepared to set up, amid the forest by the riverside, where some lumberers or hunters had passed a night, and sometimes steps cut in the muddy or clayey bank in front of it.

We stopped to fish for trout at the mouth of a small stream called Ragmuff, which came in from the west, about two miles below the Moosehorn.

Here were the ruins of an old lumbering-camp, and a small space, which had formerly been cleared and burned over, was now densely overgrown with the red cherry and raspberries.

While we were trying for trout, Joe, Indian-like, wandered off up the Ragmuff on his own errands, and when we were ready to start was far beyond call.

So we were compelled to make a fire and get our dinner here, not to lose time.

Some dark reddish birds, with grayer females (perhaps purple finches), and myrtle-birds in their summer dress, hopped within six or eight feet of us and our smoke.

Perhaps they smelled the frying pork.

The latter bird, or both, made the lisping notes which I had heard in the forest.

They suggested that the few small birds found in the wilderness are on more familiar terms with the lumberman and hunter than those of the orchard and clearing with the farmer.

I have since found the Canada jay, and partridges, both the black and the common, equally tame there, as if they had not yet learned to mistrust man entirely.

The chickadee, which is at home alike in the primitive woods and in our wood-lots, still retains its confidence in the towns to a remarkable degree.

Joe at length returned, after an hour and a half, and said that he had been two miles up the stream exploring, and had seen a moose, but, not having the gun, he did not get him.

We made no complaint, but concluded to look out for Joe the next time.

However, this may have been a mere mistake, for we had no reason to complain of him afterwards.

As we continued down the stream, I was surprised to hear him whistling “O Susanna” and several other such airs, while his paddle urged us along.

Once he said, “Yes, sir-ee.

” His common word was “Sartain.

” He paddled, as usual, on one side only, giving the birch an impulse by using the side as a fulcrum.

I asked him how the ribs were fastened to the side rails.

He answered, “I don’t know, I never noticed.

” Talking with him about subsisting wholly on what the woods yielded,--game, fish, berries, etc. ,--I suggested that his ancestors did so; but he answered that he had been brought up in such a way that he could not do it.

“Yes,” said he, “that’s the way they got a living, like wild fellows, wild as bears.

By George!

I shan’t go into the woods without provision,--hard-bread, pork, etc. ” He had brought on a barrel of hard-bread and stored it at the carry for his hunting.

However, though he was a Governor’s son, he had not learned to read.

At one place below this, on the east side, where the bank was higher and drier than usual, rising gently from the shore to a slight elevation, some one had felled the trees over twenty or thirty acres, and left them drying in order to burn.

This was the only preparation for a house between the Moosehead Carry and Chesuncook, but there was no hut nor inhabitants there yet.

The pioneer thus selects a site for his house, which will, perhaps, prove the germ of a town.

My eyes were all the while on the trees, distinguishing between the black and white spruce and the fir.

You paddle along in a narrow canal through an endless forest, and the vision I have in my mind’s eye, still, is of the small, dark, and sharp tops of tall fir and spruce trees, and pagoda-like arbor-vitæs, crowded together on each side, with various hard woods intermixed.

Some of the arbor-vitæs were at least sixty feet high.

The hard woods, occasionally occurring exclusively, were less wild to my eye.

I fancied them ornamental grounds, with farmhouses in the rear.

The canoe and yellow birch, beech, maple, and elm are Saxon and Norman, but the spruce and fir, and pines generally, are Indian.

The soft engravings which adorn the annuals give no idea of a stream in such a wilderness as this.

The rough sketches in Jackson’s Reports on the Geology of Maine answer much better.

At one place we saw a small grove of slender sapling white pines, the only collection of pines that I saw on this voyage.

Here and there, however, was a full-grown, tall, and slender, but defective one, what lumbermen call a _konchus_ tree, which they ascertain with their axes, or by the knots.

I did not learn whether this word was Indian or English.

It reminded me of the Greek κόγχη, a conch or shell, and I amused myself with fancying that it might signify the dead sound which the trees yield when struck.

All the rest of the pines had been driven off.

How far men go for the material of their houses!

The inhabitants of the most civilized cities, in all ages, send into far, primitive forests, beyond the bounds of their civilization, where the moose and bear and savage dwell, for their pine boards for ordinary use.

And, on the other hand, the savage soon receives from cities iron arrow-points, hatchets, and guns, to point his savageness with.

The solid and well-defined fir-tops, like sharp and regular spearheads, black against the sky, gave a peculiar, dark, and sombre look to the forest.

The spruce-tops have a similar but more ragged outline, their shafts also merely feathered below.

The firs were somewhat oftener regular and dense pyramids.

I was struck by this universal spiring upward of the forest evergreens.

The tendency is to slender, spiring tops, while they are narrower below.

Not only the spruce and fir, but even the arbor-vitæ and white pine, unlike the soft, spreading second-growth, of which I saw none, all spire upwards, lifting a dense spearhead of cones to the light and air, at any rate, while their branches straggle after as they may; as Indians lift the ball over the heads of the crowd in their desperate game.

In this they resemble grasses, as also palms somewhat.

The hemlock is commonly a tent-like pyramid from the ground to its summit.

After passing through some long rips, and by a large island, we reached an interesting part of the river called the Pine Stream Deadwater, about six miles below Ragmuff, where the river expanded to thirty rods in width and had many islands in it, with elms and canoe-birches, now yellowing, along the shore, and we got our first sight of Ktaadn.

Here, about two o’clock, we turned up a small branch three or four rods wide, which comes in on the right from the south, called Pine Stream, to look for moose signs.

We had gone but a few rods before we saw very recent signs along the water’s edge, the mud lifted up by their feet being quite fresh, and Joe declared that they had gone along there but a short time before.

We soon reached a small meadow on the east side, at an angle in the stream, which was, for the most part, densely covered with alders.

As we were advancing along the edge of this, rather more quietly than usual, perhaps, on account of the freshness of the signs,--the design being to camp up this stream, if it promised well,--I heard a slight crackling of twigs deep in the alders, and turned Joe’s attention to it; whereupon he began to push the canoe back rapidly; and we had receded thus half a dozen rods, when we suddenly spied two moose standing just on the edge of the open part of the meadow which we had passed, not more than six or seven rods distant, looking round the alders at us.

They made me think of great frightened rabbits, with their long ears and half-inquisitive, half-frightened looks; the true denizens of the forest (I saw at once), filling a vacuum which now first I discovered had not been filled for me,--_moose_-men, _wood-eaters_, the word is said to mean,--clad in a sort of Vermont gray, or homespun.

Our Nimrod, owing to the retrograde movement, was now the farthest from the game; but being warned of its neighborhood, he hastily stood up, and, while we ducked, fired over our heads one barrel at the foremost, which alone he saw, though he did not know what kind of creature it was;

whereupon this one dashed across the meadow and up a high bank on the northeast, so rapidly as to leave but an indistinct impression of its outlines on my mind.

At the same instant, the other, a young one, but as tall as a horse, leaped out into the stream, in full sight, and there stood cowering for a moment, or rather its disproportionate lowness behind gave it that appearance, and uttering two or three trumpeting squeaks.

I have an indistinct recollection of seeing the old one pause an instant on the top of the bank in the woods, look toward its shivering young, and then dash away again.

The second barrel was leveled at the calf, and when we expected to see it drop in the water, after a little hesitation, it, too, got out of the water, and dashed up the hill, though in a somewhat different direction.

All this was the work of a few seconds, and our hunter, having never seen a moose before, did not know but they were deer, for they stood partly in the water, nor whether he had fired at the same one twice or not.

From the style in which they went off, and the fact that he was not used to standing up and firing from a canoe, I judged that we should not see anything more of them.

The Indian said that they were a cow and her calf,--a yearling, or perhaps two years old, for they accompany their dams so long; but, for my part, I had not noticed much difference in their size.

It was but two or three rods across the meadow to the foot of the bank, which, like all the world thereabouts, was densely wooded; but I was surprised to notice, that, as soon as the moose had passed behind the veil of the woods, there was no sound of footsteps to be heard from the soft, damp moss which carpets that forest, and long before we landed, perfect silence reigned.

Joe said, “If you wound ’em moose, me sure get ’em.

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