Maine Woods — The Allegash & East Branch, Section 20

He said that he had fifty acres of grass, potatoes, etc. , somewhere above Oldtown, besides some about his house; that he hired a good deal of his work, hoeing, etc. , and preferred white men to Indians, because “they keep steady, and know how.

” After dinner we returned southward along the shore, in the canoe, on account of the difficulty of climbing over the rocks and fallen trees, and began to ascend the mountain along the edge of the precipice.

But a smart shower coming up just then, the Indian crept under his canoe, while we, being protected by our rubber coats, proceeded to botanize.

So we sent him back to the camp for shelter, agreeing that he should come there for us with his canoe toward night.

It had rained a little in the forenoon, and we trusted that this would be the clearing-up shower, which it proved; but our feet and legs were thoroughly wet by the bushes.

The clouds breaking away a little, we had a glorious wild view, as we ascended, of the broad lake with its fluctuating surface and numerous forest-clad islands, extending beyond our sight both north and south, and the boundless forest undulating away from its shores on every side, as densely packed as a rye-field, and enveloping nameless mountains in succession; but above all, looking westward over a large island, was visible a very distant part of the lake, though we did not then suspect it to be Moosehead,--at first a mere broken white line seen through the tops of the island trees, like hay-caps, but spreading to a lake when we got higher.

Beyond this we saw what appears to be called Bald Mountain on the map, some twenty-five miles distant, near the sources of the Penobscot.

It was a perfect lake of the woods.

But this was only a transient gleam, for the rain was not quite over.

Looking southward, the heavens were completely overcast, the mountains capped with clouds, and the lake generally wore a dark and stormy appearance, but from its surface just north of Sugar Island, six or eight miles distant, there was reflected upward to us through the misty air a bright blue tinge from the distant unseen sky of another latitude beyond.

They probably had a clear sky then at Greenville, the south end of the lake.

Standing on a mountain in the midst of a lake, where would you look for the first sign of approaching fair weather?

Not into the heavens, it seems, but into the lake.

Again we mistook a little rocky islet seen through the “drisk,” with some taller bare trunks or stumps on it, for the steamer with its smoke-pipes, but as it had not changed its position after half an hour, we were undeceived.

So much do the works of man resemble the works of nature.

A moose might mistake a steamer for a floating isle, and not be scared till he heard its puffing or its whistle.

If I wished to see a mountain or other scenery under the most favorable auspices, I would go to it in foul weather, so as to be there when it cleared up; we are then in the most suitable mood, and nature is most fresh and inspiring.

There is no serenity so fair as that which is just established in a tearful eye.

Jackson, in his Report on the Geology of Maine, in 1838, says of this mountain: “Hornstone, which will answer for flints, occurs in various parts of the State, where trap-rocks have acted upon silicious slate.

The largest mass of this stone known in the world is Mount Kineo, upon Moosehead Lake, which appears to be entirely composed of it, and rises seven hundred feet above the lake level.

This variety of hornstone I have seen in every part of New England in the form of Indian arrowheads, hatchets, chisels, etc. , which were probably obtained from this mountain by the aboriginal inhabitants of the country.

” I have myself found hundreds of arrowheads made of the same material.

It is generally slate-colored, with white specks, becoming a uniform white where exposed to the light and air, and it breaks with a conchoidal fracture, producing a ragged cutting edge.

I noticed some conchoidal hollows more than a foot in diameter.

I picked up a small thin piece which had so sharp an edge that I used it as a dull knife, and to see what I could do, fairly cut off an aspen one inch thick with it, by bending it and making many cuts; though I cut my fingers badly with the back of it in the meanwhile.

[Illustration: _Moosehead Lake, from Mount Kineo_] From the summit of the precipice which forms the southern and eastern sides of this mountain peninsula, and is its most remarkable feature, being described as five or six hundred feet high, we looked, and probably might have jumped, down to the water, or to the seemingly dwarfish trees on the narrow neck of land which connects it with the main.

It is a dangerous place to try the steadiness of your nerves.

Hodge says that these cliffs descend “perpendicularly ninety feet” below the surface of the water.

The plants which chiefly attracted our attention on this mountain were the mountain cinquefoil (_Potentilla tridentata_), abundant and in bloom still at the very base, by the waterside, though it is usually confined to the summits of mountains in our latitude; very beautiful harebells overhanging the precipice; bear-berry; the Canada blueberry (_Vaccinium Canadense_), similar to the _V.

Pennsylvanicum_, our earliest one, but entire-leaved and with a downy stem and leaf (I have not seen it in Massachusetts); _Diervilla trifida_; _Microstylis ophioglossoides_, an orchidaceous plant new to us; wild holly (_Nemopanthes Canadensis_); the great round-leaved orchis (_Platanthera orbiculata_), not long in bloom; _Spiranthes cernua_, at the top; bunchberry, reddening as we ascended, green at the base of the mountain, red at the top; and the small fern _Woodsia ilvensis_, growing in tufts, now in fruit.

I have also received _Liparis liliifolia_, or tway-blade, from this spot.

Having explored the wonders of the mountain, and the weather being now entirely cleared up, we commenced the descent.

We met the Indian, puffing and panting, about one third of the way up, but thinking that he must be near the top, and saying that it took his breath away.

I thought that superstition had something to do with his fatigue.

Perhaps he believed that he was climbing over the back of a tremendous moose.

He said that he had never ascended Kineo.

On reaching the canoe we found that he had caught a lake trout weighing about three pounds, at the depth of twenty-five or thirty feet, while we were on the mountain.

When we got to the camp, the canoe was taken out and turned over, and a log laid across it to prevent its being blown away.

The Indian cut some large logs of damp and rotten hard wood to smoulder and keep fire through the night.

The trout was fried for supper.

Our tent was of thin cotton cloth and quite small, forming with the ground a triangular prism closed at the rear end, six feet long, seven wide, and four high, so that we could barely sit up in the middle.

It required two forked stakes, a smooth ridge-pole, and a dozen or more pins to pitch it.

It kept off dew and wind, and an ordinary rain, and answered our purpose well enough.

We reclined within it till bedtime, each with his baggage at his head, or else sat about the fire, having hung our wet clothes on a pole before the fire for the night.

As we sat there, just before night, looking out through the dusky wood, the Indian heard a noise which he said was made by a snake.

He imitated it at my request, making a low whistling note,--_pheet_--_pheet_,--two or three times repeated, somewhat like the peep of the hylodes, but not so loud.

In answer to my inquiries, he said that he had never seen them while making it, but going to the spot he finds the snake.

This, he said on another occasion, was a sign of rain.

When I had selected this place for our camp, he had remarked that there were snakes there,--he saw them.

“But they won’t do any hurt,” I said.

“Oh, no,” he answered, “just as you say; it makes no difference to me.

” He lay on the right side of the tent, because, as he said, he was partly deaf in one ear, and he wanted to lie with his good ear up.

As we lay there, he inquired if I ever heard “Indian sing.

” I replied that I had not often, and asked him if he would not favor us with a song.

He readily assented, and, lying on his back, with his blanket wrapped around him, he commenced a slow, somewhat nasal, yet musical chant, in his own language, which probably was taught his tribe long ago by the Catholic missionaries.

He translated it to us, sentence by sentence, afterward, wishing to see if we could remember it.

It proved to be a very simple religious exercise or hymn, the burden of which was, that there was only one God who ruled all the world.

This was hammered (or sung) out very thin, so that some stanzas well-nigh meant nothing at all, merely keeping up the idea.

He then said that he would sing us a Latin song; but we did not detect any Latin, only one or two Greek words in it,--the rest may have been Latin with the Indian pronunciation.

His singing carried me back to the period of the discovery of America, to San Salvador and the Incas, when Europeans first encountered the simple faith of the Indian.

There was, indeed, a beautiful simplicity about it; nothing of the dark and savage, only the mild and infantile.

The sentiments of humility and reverence chiefly were expressed.

It was a dense and damp spruce and fir wood in which we lay, and, except for our fire, perfectly dark; and when I awoke in the night, I either heard an owl from deeper in the forest behind us, or a loon from a distance over the lake.

Getting up some time after midnight to collect the scattered brands together, while my companions were sound asleep, I observed, partly in the fire, which had ceased to blaze, a perfectly regular elliptical ring of light, about five inches in its shortest diameter, six or seven in its longer, and from one eighth to one quarter of an inch wide.

It was fully as bright as the fire, but not reddish or scarlet, like a coal, but a white and slumbering light, like the glow-worm’s. I could tell it from the fire only by its whiteness.

I saw at once that it must be phosphorescent wood, which I had so often heard of, but never chanced to see.

Putting my finger on it, with a little hesitation, I found that it was a piece of dead moose-wood (_Acer striatum_) which the Indian had cut off in a slanting direction the evening before.

Using my knife, I discovered that the light proceeded from that portion of the sap-wood immediately under the bark, and thus presented a regular ring at the end, which, indeed, appeared raised above the level of the wood, and when I pared off the bark and cut into the sap, it was all aglow along the log.

I

was surprised to find the wood quite hard and apparently sound, though probably decay had commenced in the sap, and I cut out some little triangular chips, and, placing them in the hollow of my hand, carried them into the camp, waked my companion, and showed them to him.

They lit up the inside of my hand, revealing the lines and wrinkles, and appearing exactly like coals of fire raised to a white heat, and I saw at once how, probably, the Indian jugglers had imposed on their people and on travelers, pretending to hold coals of fire in their mouths.

I also noticed that part of a decayed stump within four or five feet of the fire, an inch wide and six inches long, soft and shaking wood, shone with equal brightness.

I neglected to ascertain whether our fire had anything to do with this, but the previous day’s rain and long-continued wet weather undoubtedly had.

I was exceedingly interested by this phenomenon, and already felt paid for my journey.

It could hardly have thrilled me more if it had taken the form of letters, or of the human face.

If I had met with this ring of light while groping in this forest alone, away from any fire, I should have been still more surprised.

I little thought that there was such a light shining in the darkness of the wilderness for me.

The next day the Indian told me their name for this light,--_artoosoqu’_--and on my inquiring concerning the will-o’-the-wisp, and the like phenomena, he said that his “folks” sometimes saw fires passing along at various heights, even as high as the trees, and making a noise.

I was prepared after this to hear of the most startling and unimagined phenomena, witnessed by “his folks;”

they are abroad at all hours and seasons in scenes so unfrequented by white men.

Nature must have made a thousand revelations to them which are still secrets to us.

I did not regret my not having seen this before, since I now saw it under circumstances so favorable.

I was in just the frame of mind to see something wonderful, and this was a phenomenon adequate to my circumstances and expectation, and it put me on the alert to see more like it.

I exulted like “a pagan suckled in a creed” that had never been worn at all, but was bran-new, and adequate to the occasion.

I

let science slide, and rejoiced in that light as if it had been a fellow creature.

I saw that it was excellent, and was very glad to know that it was so cheap.

A scientific _explanation_, as it is called, would have been altogether out of place there.

That is for pale daylight.

Science with its retorts would have put me to sleep; it was the opportunity to be ignorant that I improved.

It suggested to me that there was something to be seen if one had eyes.

It made a believer of me more than before.

I believed that the woods were not tenantless, but choke-full of honest spirits as good as myself any day,--not an empty chamber, in which chemistry was left to work alone, but an inhabited house,--and for a few moments I enjoyed fellowship with them.

Your so-called wise man goes trying to persuade himself that there is no entity there but himself and his traps, but it is a great deal easier to believe the truth.

It suggested, too, that the same experience always gives birth to the same sort of belief or religion.

One revelation has been made to the Indian, another to the white man.

I have much to learn of the Indian, nothing of the missionary.

I am not sure but all that would tempt me to teach the Indian my religion would be his promise to teach me _his_.

Long enough I had heard of irrelevant things; now at length I was glad to make acquaintance with the light that dwells in rotten wood.

Where is all your knowledge gone to?

It evaporates completely, for it has no depth.

I kept those little chips and wet them again the next night, but they emitted no light.

* * * * * SATURDAY, July 25. At breakfast this Saturday morning, the Indian, evidently curious to know what would be expected of him the next day, whether we should go along or not, asked me how I spent the Sunday when at home.

I told him that I commonly sat in my chamber reading, etc. , in the forenoon, and went to walk in the afternoon.

At which he shook his head and said, “Er, that is ver bad.

” “How do you spend it?

” I asked.

He said that he did no work, that he went to church at Oldtown when he was at home;

in short, he did as he had been taught by the whites.

This led to a discussion in which I found myself in the minority.

He stated that he was a Protestant, and asked me if I was.

I did not at first know what to say, but I thought that I could answer with truth that I was.

When we were washing the dishes in the lake, many fishes, apparently chivin, came close up to us to get the particles of grease.

The weather seemed to be more settled this morning, and we set out early in order to finish our voyage up the lake before the wind arose.

Soon after starting, the Indian directed our attention to the Northeast Carry, which we could plainly see, about thirteen miles distant in that direction as measured on the map, though it is called much farther.

This carry is a rude wooden railroad, running north and south about two miles, perfectly straight, from the lake to the Penobscot, through a low tract, with a clearing three or four rods wide; but low as it is, it passes over the height of land there.

This opening appeared as a clear bright, or light, point in the horizon, resting on the edge of the lake, whose breadth a hair could have covered at a considerable distance from the eye, and of no appreciable height.

We should not have suspected it to be visible if the Indian had not drawn our attention to it.

It was a remarkable kind of light to steer for,--daylight seen through a vista in the forest,--but visible as far as an ordinary beacon at night.