Maine Woods — The Allegash & East Branch, Section 24

Having paddled several miles up the Umbazookskus, it suddenly contracted to a mere brook, narrow and swift, the larches and other trees approaching the bank and leaving no open meadow, and we landed to get a black spruce pole for pushing against the stream.

This was the first occasion for one.

The one selected was quite slender, cut about ten feet long, merely whittled to a point, and the bark shaved off.

The stream, though narrow and swift, was still deep, with a muddy bottom, as I proved by diving to it.

Beside the plants which I have mentioned, I observed on the bank here the _Salix cordata_ and _rostrata_, _Ranunculus recurvatus_, and _Rubus triflorus_ with ripe fruit.

While we were thus employed, two Indians in a canoe hove in sight round the bushes, coming down stream.

Our Indian knew one of them, an old man, and fell into conversation with him in Indian.

He belonged at the foot of Moosehead.

The other was of another tribe.

They were returning from hunting.

I asked the younger if they had seen any moose, to which he said no; but I, seeing the moose-hides sticking out from a great bundle made with their blankets in the middle of the canoe, added, “Only their hides.

” As he was a foreigner, he may have wished to deceive me, for it is against the law for white men and foreigners to kill moose in Maine at this season.

But perhaps he need not have been alarmed, for the moose-wardens are not very particular.

I heard quite directly of one who being asked by a white man going into the woods what he would say if he killed a moose, answered, “If you bring me a quarter of it, I guess you won’t be troubled.

” His duty being, as he said, only to prevent the “indiscriminate” slaughter of them for their hides.

I suppose that he would consider it an _indiscriminate_ slaughter when a quarter was not reserved for himself.

Such are the perquisites of this office.

We continued along through the most extensive larch wood which I had seen,--tall and slender trees with fantastic branches.

But though this was the prevailing tree here, I do not remember that we saw any afterward.

You do not find straggling trees of this species here and there throughout the wood, but rather a little forest of them.

The same is the case with the white and red pines, and some other trees, greatly to the convenience of the lumberer.

They are of a social habit, growing in “veins,” “clumps,” “groups,” or “communities,” as the explorers call them, distinguishing them far away, from the top of a hill or a tree, the white pines towering above the surrounding forest, or else they form extensive forests by themselves.

I should have liked to come across a large community of pines, which had never been invaded by the lumbering army.

We saw some fresh moose-tracks along the shore, but the Indian said that the moose were not driven out of the woods by the flies, as usual at this season, on account of the abundance of water everywhere.

The stream was only from one and one half to three rods wide, quite winding, with occasional small islands, meadows, and some very swift and shallow places.

When we came to an island, the Indian never hesitated which side to take, as if the current told him which was the shortest and deepest.

It was lucky for us that the water was so high.

We had to walk but once on this stream, carrying a part of the load, at a swift and shallow reach, while he got up with the canoe, not being obliged to take out, though he said it was very strong water.

Once or twice we passed the red wreck of a batteau which had been stove some spring.

While making this portage I saw many splendid specimens of the great purple fringed orchis, three feet high.

It is remarkable that such delicate flowers should here adorn these wilderness paths.

Having resumed our seats in the canoe, I felt the Indian wiping my back, which he had accidentally spat upon.

He said it was a sign that I was going to be married.

The Umbazookskus River is called ten miles long.

Having poled up the narrowest part some three or four miles, the next opening in the sky was over Umbazookskus Lake, which we suddenly entered about eleven o’clock in the forenoon.

It stretches northwesterly four or five miles, with what the Indian called the Caucomgomoc Mountain seen far beyond it.

It was an agreeable change.

This lake was very shallow a long distance from the shore, and I saw stone-heaps on the bottom, like those in the Assabet at home.

The canoe ran into one.

The Indian thought that they were made by an eel.

Joe Aitteon in 1853 thought that they were made by chub.

We crossed the southeast end of the lake to the carry into Mud Pond.

Umbazookskus Lake is the head of the Penobscot in this direction, and Mud Pond is the nearest head of the Allegash, one of the chief sources of the St. John.

Hodge, who went through this way to the St. Lawrence in the service of the State, calls the portage here a mile and three quarters long, and states that Mud Pond has been found to be fourteen feet higher than Umbazookskus Lake.

As the West Branch of the Penobscot at the Moosehead carry is considered about twenty-five feet lower than Moosehead Lake, it appears that the Penobscot in the upper part of its course runs in a broad and shallow valley, between the Kennebec and St. John, and lower than either of them, though, judging from the map, you might expect it to be the highest.

Mud Pond is about halfway from Umbazookskus to Chamberlain Lake, into which it empties, and to which we were bound.

The Indian said that this was the wettest carry in the State, and as the season was a very wet one, we anticipated an unpleasant walk.

As usual he made one large bundle of the pork-keg, cooking-utensils, and other loose traps, by tying them up in his blanket.

We should be obliged to go over the carry twice, and our method was to carry one half part way, and then go back for the rest.

Our path ran close by the door of a log hut in a clearing at this end of the carry, which the Indian, who alone entered it, found to be occupied by a Canadian and his family, and that the man had been blind for a year.

He seemed peculiarly unfortunate to be taken blind there, where there were so few eyes to see for him.

He could not even be led out of that country by a dog, but must be taken down the rapids as passively as a barrel of flour.

This was the first house above Chesuncook, and the last on the Penobscot waters, and was built here, no doubt, because it was the route of the lumberers in the winter and spring.

After a slight ascent from the lake through the springy soil of the Canadian’s clearing, we entered on a level and very wet and rocky path through the universal dense evergreen forest, a loosely paved gutter merely, where we went leaping from rock to rock and from side to side, in the vain attempt to keep out of the water and mud.

We concluded that it was yet Penobscot water, though there was no flow to it.

It was on this carry that the white hunter whom I met in the stage, as he told me, had shot two bears a few months before.

They stood directly in the path, and did not turn out for him.

They might be excused for not turning out there, or only taking the right as the law directs.

He said that at this season bears were found on the mountains and hillsides in search of berries, and were apt to be saucy,--that we might come across them up Trout Stream; and he added, what I hardly credited, that many Indians slept in their canoes, not daring to sleep on land, on account of them.

Here commences what was called, twenty years ago, the best timber land in the State.

This very spot was described as “covered with the greatest abundance of pine,” but now this appeared to me, comparatively, an uncommon tree there,--and yet you did not see where any more could have stood, amid the dense growth of cedar, fir, etc. It was then proposed to cut a canal from lake to lake here, but the outlet was finally made farther east, at Telos Lake, as we shall see.

The Indian with his canoe soon disappeared before us; but ere long he came back and told us to take a path which turned off westward, it being better walking, and, at my suggestion, he agreed to leave a bough in the regular carry at that place, that we might not pass it by mistake.

Thereafter, he said, we were to keep the main path, and he added, “You see ’em my tracks.

” But I had not much faith that we could distinguish his tracks, since others had passed over the carry within a few days.

We turned off at the right place, but were soon confused by numerous logging-paths, coming into the one we were on, by which lumberers had been to pick out those pines which I have mentioned.

However, we kept what we considered the main path, though it was a winding one, and in this, at long intervals, we distinguished a faint trace of a footstep.

This, though comparatively unworn, was at first a better, or, at least, a drier road than the regular carry which we had left.

It led through an arbor-vitæ wilderness of the grimmest character.

The great fallen and rotting trees had been cut through and rolled aside, and their huge trunks abutted on the path on each side, while others still lay across it two or three feet high.

It was impossible for us to discern the Indian’s trail in the elastic moss, which, like a thick carpet, covered every rock and fallen tree, as well as the earth.

Nevertheless, I did occasionally detect the track of a man, and I gave myself some credit for it.

I carried my whole load at once, a heavy knapsack, and a large india-rubber bag, containing our bread and a blanket, swung on a paddle; in all, about sixty pounds; but my companion preferred to make two journeys, by short stages, while I waited for him.

We could not be sure that we were not depositing our loads each time farther off from the true path.

As I sat waiting for my companion, he would seem to be gone a long time, and I had ample opportunity to make observations on the forest.

I now first began to be seriously molested by the black fly, a very small but perfectly formed fly of that color, about one tenth of an inch long, which I first felt, and then saw, in swarms about me, as I sat by a wider and more than usually doubtful fork in this dark forest path.

The hunters tell bloody stories about them,--how they settle in a ring about your neck, before you know it, and are wiped off in great numbers with your blood.

But remembering that I had a wash in my knapsack, prepared by a thoughtful hand in Bangor, I made haste to apply it to my face and hands, and was glad to find it effectual, as long as it was fresh, or for twenty minutes, not only against black flies, but all the insects that molested us.

They would not alight on the part thus defended.

It was composed of sweet oil and oil of turpentine, with a little oil of spearmint, and camphor.

However, I finally concluded that the remedy was worse than the disease.

It was so disagreeable and inconvenient to have your face and hands covered with such a mixture.

Three large slate-colored birds of the jay genus (_Garrulus Canadensis_), the Canada jay, moose-bird, meat-bird, or what not, came flitting silently and by degrees toward me, and hopped down the limbs inquisitively to within seven or eight feet.

They were more clumsy and not nearly so handsome as the bluejay.

Fish hawks, from the lake, uttered their sharp whistling notes low over the top of the forest near me, as if they were anxious about a nest there.

After I had sat there some time, I noticed at this fork in the path a tree which had been blazed, and the letters “Chamb.

L.

” written on it with red chalk.

This I knew to mean Chamberlain Lake.

So I concluded that on the whole we were on the right course, though as we had come nearly two miles, and saw no signs of Mud Pond, I did harbor the suspicion that we might be on a direct course to Chamberlain Lake, leaving out Mud Pond.

This I found by my map would be about five miles northeasterly, and I then took the bearing by my compass.

My companion having returned with his bag, and also defended his face and hands with the insect-wash, we set forward again.

The walking rapidly grew worse, and the path more indistinct, and at length, after passing through a patch of _Calla palustris_, still abundantly in bloom, we found ourselves in a more open and regular swamp, made less passable than ordinary by the unusual wetness of the season.

We sank a foot deep in water and mud at every step, and sometimes up to our knees, and the trail was almost obliterated, being no more than that a musquash leaves in similar places, when he parts the floating sedge.

In fact, it probably was a musquash trail in some places.

We concluded that if Mud Pond was as muddy as the approach to it was wet, it certainly deserved its name.

It would have been amusing to behold the dogged and deliberate pace at which we entered that swamp, without interchanging a word, as if determined to go through it, though it should come up to our necks.

Having penetrated a considerable distance into this, and found a tussock on which we could deposit our loads, though there was no place to sit, my companion went back for the rest of his pack.

I had thought to observe on this carry when we crossed the dividing line between the Penobscot and St. John, but as my feet had hardly been out of water the whole distance, and it was all level and stagnant, I began to despair of finding it.

I remembered hearing a good deal about the “highlands” dividing the waters of the Penobscot from those of the St. John, as well as the St. Lawrence, at the time of the northeast boundary dispute, and I observed by my map, that the line claimed by Great Britain as the boundary prior to 1842 passed between Umbazookskus Lake and Mud Pond, so that we had either crossed or were then on it.

These, then, according to _her_ interpretation of the treaty of ’83, were the “highlands which divide those rivers that empty themselves into the St. Lawrence from those which fall into the Atlantic Ocean.

” Truly an interesting spot to stand on,--if that were it,--though you could not sit down there.

I thought that if the commissioners themselves, and the King of Holland with them, had spent a few days here, with their packs upon their backs, looking for that “highland,” they would have had an interesting time, and perhaps it would have modified their views of the question somewhat.

The King of Holland would have been in his element.

Such were my meditations while my companion was gone back for his bag.

It was a cedar swamp, through which the peculiar note of the white-throated sparrow rang loud and clear.

There grew the side-saddle flower, Labrador tea, _Kalmia glauca_, and, what was new to me, the low birch (_Betula pumila_), a little round-leafed shrub, two or three feet high only.

We thought to name this swamp after the latter.

After a long while my companion came back, and the Indian with him.

We had taken the wrong road, and the Indian had lost us.

He had very wisely gone back to the Canadian’s camp, and asked him which way we had probably gone, since he could better understand the ways of white men, and he told him correctly that we had undoubtedly taken the supply road to Chamberlain Lake (slender supplies they would get over such a road at this season).

The Indian was greatly surprised that we should have taken what he called a “tow” (_i.

e. _, tote or toting or supply) road, instead of a carry path,--that we had not followed his tracks,--said it was “strange,” and evidently thought little of our woodcraft.