Maine Woods — The Allegash & East Branch, Section 29

After a moment’s breathing-space, while I held his canoe, he was soon out of sight again around another bend, and we, shouldering our packs, resumed our course.

We did not at once fall into our path again, but made our way with difficulty along the edge of the river, till at length, striking inland through the forest, we recovered it.

Before going a mile we heard the Indian calling to us.

He had come up through the woods and along the path to find us, having reached sufficiently smooth water to warrant his taking us in.

The shore was about one fourth of a mile distant, through a dense, dark forest, and as he led us back to it, winding rapidly about to the right and left, I had the curiosity to look down carefully, and found that he was following his steps backward.

I could only occasionally perceive his trail in the moss, and yet he did not appear to look down nor hesitate an instant, but led us out exactly to his canoe.

This surprised me; for without a compass, or the sight or noise of the river to guide us, we could not have kept our course many minutes, and could have retraced our steps but a short distance, with a great deal of pains and very slowly, using a laborious circumspection.

But it was evident that he could go back through the forest wherever he had been during the day.

After this rough walking in the dark woods it was an agreeable change to glide down the rapid river in the canoe once more.

This river, which was about the size of our Assabet (in Concord), though still very swift, was almost perfectly smooth here, and showed a very visible declivity, a regularly inclined plane, for several miles, like a mirror set a little aslant, on which we coasted down.

This very obvious regular descent, particularly plain when I regarded the water-line against the shores, made a singular impression on me, which the swiftness of our motion probably enhanced, so that we seemed to be gliding down a much steeper declivity than we were, and that we could not save ourselves from rapids and falls if we should suddenly come to them.

My companion did not perceive this slope, but I have a surveyor’s eyes, and I satisfied myself that it was no ocular illusion.

You could tell at a glance on approaching such a river which way the water flowed, though you might perceive no motion.

I observed the angle at which a level line would strike the surface, and calculated the amount of fall in a rod, which did not need to be remarkably great to produce this effect.

It was very exhilarating, and the perfection of traveling, quite unlike floating on our dead Concord River, the coasting down this inclined mirror, which was now and then gently winding, down a mountain, indeed, between two evergreen forests, edged with lofty dead white pines, sometimes slanted half-way over the stream, and destined soon to bridge it.

I saw some monsters there, nearly destitute of branches, and scarcely diminishing in diameter for eighty or ninety feet.

As we thus swept along, our Indian repeated in a deliberate and drawling tone the words “Daniel Webster, great lawyer,” apparently reminded of him by the name of the stream, and he described his calling on him once in Boston, at what he supposed was his boarding-house.

He had no business with him, but merely went to pay his respects, as we should say.

In answer to our questions, he described his person well enough.

It was on the day after Webster delivered his Bunker Hill oration, which I believe Polis heard.

The first time he called he waited till he was tired without seeing him, and then went away.

The next time, he saw him go by the door of the room in which he was waiting several times, in his shirt-sleeves, without noticing him.

He thought that if he had come to see Indians, they would not have treated him so.

At length, after very long delay, he came in, walked toward him, and asked in a loud voice, gruffly, “What do you want?

” and he, thinking at first, by the motion of his hand, that he was going to strike him, said to himself, “You’d better take care; if you try that I shall know what to do.

” He did not like him, and declared that all he said “was not worth talk about a musquash.

” We suggested that probably Mr. Webster was very busy, and had a great many visitors just then.

Coming to falls and rapids, our easy progress was suddenly terminated.

The Indian went alongshore to inspect the water, while we climbed over the rocks, picking berries.

The peculiar growth of blueberries on the tops of large rocks here made the impression of high land, and indeed this was the Height-of-Land Stream.

When the Indian came back, he remarked, “You got to walk; ver strong water.

” So, taking out his canoe, he launched it again below the falls, and was soon out of sight.

At such times he would step into the canoe, take up his paddle, and, with an air of mystery, start off, looking far down-stream, and keeping his own counsel, as if absorbing all the intelligence of forest and stream into himself; but I sometimes detected a little fun in his face, which could yield to my sympathetic smile, for he was thoroughly good-humored.

We meanwhile scrambled along the shore with our packs, without any path.

This was the last of _our_ boating for the day.

The prevailing rock here was a kind of slate, standing on its edges, and my companion, who was recently from California, thought it exactly like that in which the gold is found, and said that if he had had a pan he would have liked to wash a little of the sand here.

The Indian now got along much faster than we, and waited for us from time to time.

I found here the only cool spring that I drank at anywhere on this excursion, a little water filling a hollow in the sandy bank.

It was a quite memorable event, and due to the elevation of the country, for wherever else we had been the water in the rivers and the streams emptying in was dead and warm, compared with that of a mountainous region.

It was very bad walking along the shore over fallen and drifted trees and bushes, and rocks, from time to time swinging ourselves round over the water, or else taking to a gravel bar or going inland.

At one place, the Indian being ahead, I was obliged to take off all my clothes in order to ford a small but deep stream emptying in, while my companion, who was inland, found a rude bridge, high up in the woods, and I saw no more of him for some time.

I saw there very fresh moose tracks, found a new goldenrod to me (perhaps _Solidago thyrsoidea_), and I passed one white pine log, which had lodged, in the forest near the edge of the stream, which was quite five feet in diameter at the butt.

Probably its size detained it.

Shortly after this I overtook the Indian at the edge of some burnt land, which extended three or four miles at least, beginning about three miles above Second Lake, which we were expecting to reach that night, and which is about ten miles from Telos Lake.

This burnt region was still more rocky than before, but, though comparatively open, we could not yet see the lake.

Not having seen my companion for some time, I climbed, with the Indian, a singular high rock on the edge of the river, forming a narrow ridge only a foot or two wide at top, in order to look for him; and, after calling many times, I at length heard him answer from a considerable distance inland, he having taken a trail which led off from the river, perhaps directly to the lake, and was now in search of the river again.

Seeing a much higher rock, of the same character, about one third of a mile farther east, or down-stream, I proceeded toward it, through the burnt land, in order to look for the lake from its summit, supposing that the Indian would keep down the stream in his canoe, and hallooing all the while that my companion might join me on the way.

Before we came together I noticed where a moose, which possibly I had scared by my shouting, had apparently just run along a large rotten trunk of a pine, which made a bridge, thirty or forty feet long, over a hollow, as convenient for him as for me.

The tracks were as large as those of an ox, but an ox could not have crossed there.

This burnt land was an exceedingly wild and desolate region.

Judging by the weeds and sprouts, it appeared to have been burnt about two years before.

It was covered with charred trunks, either prostrate or standing, which crocked our clothes and hands, and we could not easily have distinguished a bear there by his color.

Great shells of trees, sometimes unburnt without, or burnt on one side only, but black within, stood twenty or forty feet high.

The fire had run up inside, as in a chimney, leaving the sap-wood.

Sometimes we crossed a rocky ravine fifty feet wide, on a fallen trunk; and there were great fields of fire-weed (_Epilobium angustifolium_) on all sides, the most extensive that I ever saw, which presented great masses of pink.

Intermixed with these were blueberry and raspberry bushes.

Having crossed a second rocky ridge like the first, when I was beginning to ascend the third, the Indian, whom I had left on the shore some fifty rods behind, beckoned to me to come to him, but I made sign that I would first ascend the highest rock before me, whence I expected to see the lake.

My companion accompanied me to the top.

This was formed just like the others.

Being struck with the perfect parallelism of these singular rock hills, however much one might be in advance of another, I took out my compass and found that they lay northwest and southeast, the rock being on its edge, and sharp edges they were.

This one, to speak from memory, was perhaps a third of a mile in length, but quite narrow, rising gradually from the northwest to the height of about eighty feet, but steep on the southeast end.

The southwest side was as steep as an ordinary roof, or as we could safely climb; the northeast was an abrupt precipice from which you could jump clean to the bottom, near which the river flowed; while the level top of the ridge, on which you walked along, was only from one to three or four feet in width.

For a rude illustration, take the half of a pear cut in two lengthwise, lay it on its flat side, the stem to the northwest, and then halve it vertically in the direction of its length, keeping the southwest half.

Such was the general form.

There was a remarkable series of these great rock-waves revealed by the burning; breakers, as it were.

No wonder that the river that found its way through them was rapid and obstructed by falls.

No doubt the absence of soil on these rocks, or its dryness where there was any, caused this to be a very thorough burning.

We could see the lake over the woods, two or three miles ahead, and that the river made an abrupt turn southward around the northwest end of the cliff on which we stood, or a little above us, so that we had cut off a bend, and that there was an important fall in it a short distance below us.

I could see the canoe a hundred rods behind, but now on the opposite shore, and supposed that the Indian had concluded to take out and carry round some bad rapids on that side, and that that might be what he had beckoned to me for; but after waiting a while I could still see nothing of him, and I observed to my companion that I wondered where he was, though I began to suspect that he had gone inland to look for the lake from some hilltop on that side, as we had done.

This proved to be the case; for after I had started to return to the canoe, I heard a faint halloo, and descried him on the top of a distant rocky hill on that side.

But as, after a long time had elapsed, I still saw his canoe in the same place, and he had not returned to it, and appeared in no hurry to do so, and, moreover, as I remembered that he had previously beckoned to me, I thought that there might be something more to delay him than I knew, and began to return northwest, along the ridge, toward the angle in the river.

My companion, who had just been separated from us, and had even contemplated the necessity of camping alone, wishing to husband his steps, and yet to keep with us, inquired where I was going; to which I answered that I was going far enough back to communicate with the Indian, and that then I thought we had better go along the shore together, and keep him in sight.

When we reached the shore, the Indian appeared from out the woods on 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.