Maine Woods — The Allegash & East Branch, Section 30

This side of the river being so encumbered with rocks, we crossed to the eastern or smoother shore, and proceeded to camp there, within two or three rods of the falls.

We pitched no tent, but lay on the sand, putting a few handfuls of grass and twigs under us, there being no evergreen at hand.

For fuel we had some of the charred stumps.

Our various bags of provisions had got quite wet in the rapids, and I arranged them about the fire to dry.

The fall close by was the principal one on this stream, and it shook the earth under us.

It was a cool, because dewy, night; the more so, probably, owing to the nearness of the falls.

The Indian complained a good deal, and thought afterward that he got a cold there which occasioned a more serious illness.

We were not much troubled by mosquitoes at any rate.

I lay awake a good deal from anxiety, but, unaccountably to myself, was at length comparatively at ease respecting him.

At first I had apprehended the worst, but now I had little doubt but that I should find him in the morning.

From time to time I fancied that I heard his voice calling through the roar of the falls from the opposite side of the river; but it is doubtful if we could have heard him across the stream there.

Sometimes I doubted whether the Indian had really seen his tracks, since he manifested an unwillingness to make much of a search, and then my anxiety returned.

It was the most wild and desolate region we had camped in, where, if anywhere, one might expect to meet with befitting inhabitants, but I heard only the squeak of a nighthawk flitting over.

The moon in her first quarter, in the fore part of the night, setting over the bare rocky hills garnished with tall, charred, and hollow stumps or shells of trees, served to reveal the desolation.

* * * * * THURSDAY, July 30. I aroused the Indian early this morning to go in search of our companion, expecting to find him within a mile or two, farther down the stream.

The Indian wanted his breakfast first, but I reminded him that my companion had had neither breakfast nor supper.

We were obliged first to carry our canoe and baggage over into another stream, the main East Branch, about three fourths of a mile distant, for Webster Stream was no farther navigable.

We went twice over this carry, and the dewy bushes wet us through like water up to the middle; I hallooed in a high key from time to time, though I had little expectation that I could be heard over the roar of the rapids, and, moreover, we were necessarily on the opposite side of the stream to him.

In going over this portage the last time, the Indian, who was before me with the canoe on his head, stumbled and fell heavily once, and lay for a moment silent, as if in pain.

I hastily stepped forward to help him, asking if he was much hurt, but after a moment’s pause, without replying, he sprang up and went forward.

He was all the way subject to taciturn fits, but they were harmless ones.

We had launched our canoe and gone but little way down the East Branch, when I heard an answering shout from my companion, and soon after saw him standing on a point where there was a clearing a quarter of a mile below, and the smoke of his fire was rising near by.

Before I saw him I naturally shouted again and again, but the Indian curtly remarked, “He hears you,” as if once was enough.

It was just below the mouth of Webster Stream.

When we arrived, he was smoking his pipe, and said that he had passed a pretty comfortable night, though it was rather cold, on account of the dew.

It appeared that when we stood together the previous evening, and I was shouting to the Indian across the river, he, being near-sighted, had not seen the Indian nor his canoe, and when I went back to the Indian’s assistance, did not see which way I went, and supposed that we were below and not above him, and so, making haste to catch up, he ran away from us.

Having reached this clearing, a mile or more below our camp, the night overtook him, and he made a fire in a little hollow, and lay down by it in his blanket, still thinking that we were ahead of him.

He thought it likely that he had heard the Indian call once the evening before, but mistook it for an owl.

He had seen one botanical rarity before it was dark,--pure white _Epilobium angustifolium_ amidst the fields of pink ones, in the burnt lands.

He had already stuck up the remnant of a lumberer’s shirt, found on the point, on a pole by the waterside, for a signal, and attached a note to it, to inform us that he had gone on to the lake, and that if he did not find us there, he would be back in a couple of hours.

If he had not found us soon, he had some thoughts of going back in search of the solitary hunter whom we had met at Telos Lake, ten miles behind, and, if successful, hire him to take him to Bangor.

But if this hunter had moved as fast as we, he would have been twenty miles off by this time, and who could guess in what direction?

It would have been like looking for a needle in a haymow, to search for him in these woods.

He had been considering how long he could live on berries alone.

We substituted for his note a card containing our names and destination, and the date of our visit, which Polis neatly inclosed in a piece of birch bark to keep it dry.

This has probably been read by some hunter or explorer ere this.

We all had good appetites for the breakfast which we made haste to cook here, and then, having partially dried our clothes, we glided swiftly down the winding stream toward Second Lake.

As the shores became flatter with frequent gravel and sand-bars, and the stream more winding in the lower land near the lake, elms and ash trees made their appearance; also the wild yellow lily (_Lilium Canadense_), some of whose bulbs I collected for a soup.

On some ridges the burnt land extended as far as the lake.

This was a very beautiful lake, two or three miles long, with high mountains on the southwest side, the (as our Indian said) _Nerlumskeechticook_, _i.

e. _, Deadwater Mountain.

It appears to be the same called Carbuncle Mountain on the map.

According to Polis, it extends in separate elevations all along this and the next lake, which is much larger.

The lake, too, I think, is called by the same name, or perhaps with the addition of _gamoc_ or _mooc_.

The morning was a bright one, and perfectly still and serene, the lake as smooth as glass, we making the only ripple as we paddled into it.

The dark mountains about it were seen through a glaucous mist, and the brilliant white stems of canoe birches mingled with the other woods around it.

The wood thrush sang on the distant shore, and the laugh of some loons, sporting in a concealed western bay, as if inspired by the morning, came distinct over the lake to us, and, what was more remarkable, the echo which ran round the lake was much louder than the original note; probably because, the loon being in a regularly curving bay under the mountain, we were exactly in the focus of many echoes, the sound being reflected like light from a concave mirror.

The beauty of the scene may have been enhanced to our eyes by the fact that we had just come together again after a night of some anxiety.

This reminded me of the Ambejijis Lake on the West Branch, which I crossed in my first coming to Maine.

Having paddled down three quarters of the lake, we came to a standstill, while my companion let down for fish.

A white (or whitish) gull sat on a rock which rose above the surface in mid-lake not far off, quite in harmony with the scene; and as we rested there in the warm sun, we heard one loud crushing or crackling sound from the forest, forty or fifty rods distant, as of a stick broken by the foot of some large animal.

Even this was an interesting incident there.

In the midst of our dreams of giant lake trout, even then supposed to be nibbling, our fishermen drew up a diminutive red perch, and we took up our paddles again in haste.

It was not apparent where the outlet of this lake was, and while the Indian thought it was in one direction, I thought it was in another.

He said, “I bet you four-pence it is there,” but he still held on in my direction, which proved to be the right one.

As we were approaching the outlet, it being still early in the forenoon, he suddenly exclaimed, “Moose!

moose!

” and told us to be still.

He put a cap on his gun, and, standing up in the stern, rapidly pushed the canoe straight toward the shore and the moose.

It was a cow moose, about thirty rods off, standing in the water by the side of the outlet, partly behind some fallen timber and bushes, and at that distance she did not look very large.

She was flapping her large ears, and from time to time poking off the flies with her nose from some part of her body.

She did not appear much alarmed by our neighborhood, only occasionally turned her head and looked straight at us, and then gave her attention to the flies again.

As we approached nearer she got out of the water, stood higher, and regarded us more suspiciously.

Polis pushed the canoe steadily forward in the shallow water, and I for a moment forgot the moose in attending to some pretty rose-colored Polygonums just rising above the surface, but the canoe soon grounded in the mud eight or ten rods distant from the moose, and the Indian seized his gun and prepared to fire.

After standing still a moment, she turned slowly, as usual, so as to expose her side, and he improved this moment to fire, over our heads.

She thereupon moved off eight or ten rods at a moderate pace, across a shallow bay, to an old standing-place of hers, behind some fallen red maples, on the opposite shore, and there she stood still again a dozen or fourteen rods from us, while the Indian hastily loaded and fired twice at her, without her moving.

My companion, who passed him his caps and bullets, said that Polis was as excited as a boy of fifteen, that his hand trembled, and he once put his ramrod back upside down.

This was remarkable for so experienced a hunter.

Perhaps he was anxious to make a good shot before us.

The white hunter had told me that the Indians were not good shots, because they were excited, though he said that we had got a good hunter with us.

The Indian now pushed quickly and quietly back, and a long distance round, in order to get into the outlet,--for he had fired over the neck of a peninsula between it and the lake,--till we approached the place where the moose had stood, when he exclaimed, “She is a goner!

” and was surprised that we did not see her as soon as he did.

There, to be sure, she lay perfectly dead, with her tongue hanging out, just where she had stood to receive the last shots, looking unexpectedly large and horse-like, and we saw where the bullets had scarred the trees.

Using a tape, I found that the moose measured just six feet from the shoulder to the tip of the hoof, and was eight feet long as she lay.

Some portions of the body, for a foot in diameter, were almost covered with flies, apparently the common fly of our woods, with a dark spot on the wing, and not the very large ones which occasionally pursued us in midstream, though both are called moose-flies.

Polis, preparing to skin the moose, asked me to help him find a stone on which to sharpen his large knife.

It being all a flat alluvial ground where the moose had fallen, covered with red maples, etc. , this was no easy matter; we searched far and wide, a long time, till at length I found a flat kind of slate-stone, and soon after he returned with a similar one, on which he soon made his knife very sharp.

While he was skinning the moose, I proceeded to ascertain what kind of fishes were to be found in the sluggish and muddy outlet.

The greatest difficulty was to find a pole.

It was almost impossible to find a slender, straight pole ten or twelve feet long in those woods.

You might search half an hour in vain.

They are commonly spruce, arbor-vitæ, fir, etc. , short, stout, and branchy, and do not make good fish-poles, even after you have patiently cut off all their tough and scraggy branches.

The fishes were red perch and chivin.

The Indian, having cut off a large piece of sirloin, the upper lip, and the tongue, wrapped them in the hide, and placed them in the bottom of the canoe, observing that there was “one man,” meaning the weight of one.

Our load had previously been reduced some thirty pounds, but a hundred pounds were now added,--a serious addition, which made our quarters still more narrow, and considerably increased the danger on the lakes and rapids, as well as the labor of the carries.

The skin was ours according to custom, since the Indian was in our employ, but we did not think of claiming it.

He being a skillful dresser of moose-hides would make it worth seven or eight dollars to him, as I was told.

He said that he sometimes earned fifty or sixty dollars in a day at them; he had killed ten moose in one day, though the skinning and all took two days.

This was the way he had got his property.

There were the tracks of a calf thereabouts, which he said would come “by, by,” and he could get it if we cared to wait, but I cast cold water on the project.

We continued along the outlet toward Grand Lake, through a swampy region, by a long, winding, and narrow dead water, very much choked up by wood, where we were obliged to land sometimes in order to get the canoe over a log.

It was hard to find any channel, and we did not know but we should be lost in the swamp.

It abounded in ducks, as usual.

At length we reached Grand Lake, which the Indian called _Matungamook_.

At the head of this we saw, coming in from the southwest, with a sweep apparently from a gorge in the mountains, Trout Stream, or _Uncardnerheese_, which name, the Indian said, had something to do with mountains.

We stopped to dine on an interesting high rocky island, soon after entering Matungamook Lake, securing our canoe to the cliffy shore.

It is always pleasant to step from a boat on to a large rock or cliff.

Here was a good opportunity to dry our dewy blankets on the open sunny rock.

Indians had recently camped here, and accidentally burned over the western end of the island, and Polis picked up a gun-case of blue broadcloth, and said that he knew the Indian it belonged to, and would carry it to him.

His tribe is not so large but he may know all its effects.

We proceeded to make a fire and cook our dinner amid some pines, where our predecessors had done the same, while the Indian busied himself about his moose-hide on the shore, for he said that he thought it a good plan for one to do all the cooking, _i.

e. _, I

suppose, if that one were not himself.

A peculiar evergreen overhung our fire, which at first glance looked like a pitch pine (_P.

rigida_), with leaves little more than an inch long, spruce-like, but we found it to be the _Pinus Banksiana_,--“Banks’s, or the Labrador Pine,” also called scrub pine, gray pine, etc. , a new tree to us.

These must have been good specimens, for several were thirty or thirty-five feet high.

Richardson found it forty feet high and upward, and states that the porcupine feeds on its bark.

Here also grew the red pine (_Pinus resinosa_).

I saw where the Indians had made canoes in a little secluded hollow in the woods, on the top of the rock, where they were out of the wind, and large piles of whittlings remained.

This must have been a favorite resort for their ancestors, and, indeed, we found here the point of an arrowhead, such as they have not used for two centuries and now know not how to make.

The Indian, picking up a stone, remarked to me, “That very strange lock (rock).

” It was a piece of hornstone, which I told him his tribe had probably brought here centuries before to make arrowheads of.

He also picked up a yellowish curved bone by the side of our fireplace and asked me to guess what it was.

It was one of the upper incisors of a beaver, on which some party had feasted within a year or two.

I found also most of the teeth, and the skull, etc. We here dined on fried moose-meat.

One who was my companion in my two previous excursions to these woods, tells me that when hunting up the Caucomgomoc, about two years ago, he found himself dining one day on moose-meat, mud turtle, trout, and beaver, and he thought that there were few places in the world where these dishes could easily be brought together on one table.