Canoeing in the wilderness

e-te-te, te-te-te, te-te-te, so sharp and piercing, was as distinct to the ear as the passage of a spark of fire shot into the darkest of the forest wo

d weather at last. A few swallows flitted over the water, we heard Maryland yellow-throats along the shore

he, "We come here lookum things, look all round, but co

and at every meal. Come Sunday, they stop 'em, no go at all that day-keep still-preach all day-first one, then another, just like church. Oh, ver' good men. One day going along a river, they came to the body of a man in

as a camp-meeting, and that they wanted an opportu

d he suppose that if he no takum pay for what he do Sunday then ther's no harm, but if he takum pay then wrong. I told h

the camp, morning and evening-sometimes scrambling up in haste when he had forgotten this, and saying t

e grass bent where a moose came out the night before, and the Indian said that he could smell one as far as he could see him, but he added that if he should se

and he, asking if I knew what it was, imitated very we

night and was taken off in the morning. There were magnificent great purple fringed orchises on this carry and the neighboring shores. I measured the largest canoe birch which I saw in this journey near the end of the carry. It was fourteen and one half

en going up and down the stream, for while we were working our way back a quarter of a mile, we should have gone down a mile and half at least. So we landed, and while he and the Indian were gone back

is hunting thereabouts, and something more interesting about himself. It appeared that he had represented his tribe at Augusta, and once at Washington. He had a gr

traveler in the forest. To look down, in this case, over eighteen miles of water was liberating and civilizing even. The lakes also reveal the mountains, and give ample scope and range to our thought. Already there were half a dozen log huts about this end of th

lf a mile farther up the Caucomgomoc, we went thither. So quickly we changed the civilizing sky of Chesuncook for the dark wood of the Caucomgomoc. On reaching the Indian's camping-ground on the south side, where the bank was about a dozen feet high, I read on the trunk of a fir tree blazed by an axe an inscription in charcoal whi

of a bear

ly

8

as

one J

is

is

a

Ol

ke

ht

am

ly

8

as

ed now

8

ly

Po

times stretched his moose-hides on the sunny north

our fire, almost exactly on the site of the Indian's las

ould not shake it perceptibly, and, therefore, seemed inclined to disregard it, and my companion expressed his willingness to run the risk. But it seemed to me that we should be fools to lie under it, for though the lower part was firm, the top, for au

d blankets, hard-bread and pork, perhaps for a hundred miles of the way, and jumped off at the wildest place on the road, where he was at once at home, and every rod was a tavern-site for him. Then, after a short journey through the woods, he would build a spruce-bark canoe in one day, putting but few rib

een it pitched it was surprising how quickly he would find and prepare the pole and forked stakes to pitch it with, cutting

companion were looking about at the trees and river he went to sleep

, the hoary alder. I could trace the outlines of large birches that had fallen long ago, collapsed and rotted and turned to soil, by

man industry. The waterfalls which I heard were not without their dams and mills to my imagination; and several times I found that I had been regarding the steady rushing sound of t

in a sheath from his belt; but the bark broke at the corners when he bent it up, and he said it was not go

he could see them. As the two twigs appeared very much alike, my companion asked the Indian to point out the difference; whereupon the latter, taking the twigs, instantly remarked, as he passed his hand over them s

ishing the black spruce roots, and cutting off a slender one, three or four feet long, and as big as a pipestem, he split the end with his knife, and taking a half bet

He then took off the bark from each half, pressing a short piece of cedar bark against the convex side with both hands, while he drew the root upward with his teeth. An Indian's teeth are strong, and I noticed that he used his often where we should have used a hand. T

se hard pitch, obtained of the whites at Oldtown. He said that he could make something very similar, and equally good, of material which we had with us; and he wished me to guess what. But I could

y were good for nothing. Also, he would not touch a pout, which I caught, and said that neither Indians nor whites thereabouts ever ate them. But he said that some small silvery fishes, which I called white chivin, were

sh

or, and we both agreed that it was really better than the black tea which we had brought. We thought it quite a discovery, and that it might well be dried and sold in the shops. I for one, however, am not an old tea-drinker and cannot speak with authority to others. The Indian said th

tly surprised-thought that I had at last got into the wilderness, and that he was a wild man indeed, to be talking to a musquash! I did not know which of the two was the strangest to me. He seemed suddenly to have quite forsaken humanity, and gone over to the musquash side. The musquash, however, as near as I could see, did not turn aside,

prayer this Sunday evening, as if