Canoeing in the wilderness

that nothing was left, we set out again, descending the Caucomgomoc, and turning northeasterly up the Umbazookskus. This name, the Indian said, meant Much Mea

owing itself above the high water, as if it were a blue water-lily, and higher in the meadows a great ma

ho from them, but when I was shouting in order to awake it, the Indian reminded me that

d other trees approaching the bank and leaving no open meadow. We landed to get a black spruce pole for pushing against th

ation with him. 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

rdens are not very particular. I heard 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 trouble

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, f

ed Sq

sland 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 th

reat purple fringed orchis, three feet high. It is remarkable th

ext opening in the sky was over Umbazookskus Lake, which we suddenly entered about eleven o'clock in the fore

t 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

it, found to be occupied by a Canadian and his family, and that the man had been blind for a year. This was the first

re we went leaping from rock to rock and from side to side in the vain attempt to keep out of the water and mud. It was on this carry that the white hunter whom I met in the stage, as he told me, had shot two

ibed as "covered with the greatest abundance of pine," but now this appeared to me, comparatively, an uncommo

westward, it being better walking, and, at my suggestion, he agreed to leave a bough in the regular carry at that place that

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 dryer road than the regular carry which we had l

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 rubber bag containing our bread and a blanket, swung on a paddle, in all about

at by a wider and more than usually doubtful fork in this dark forest path. 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 ins

me, and hopped down the limbs inquisitively to within seven or eight feet. Fish hawks from the lake uttered t

been blazed, and the letters "Chamb. L." written on it with red chalk. This I knew t

es. The trail was almost obliterated, being no more than 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

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. The Indian was greatly surprised that we should

e Indian had never been through this way and knew nothing about it. In the meanwhile he would go back and finish carrying over his canoe and bundle to Mud Pond, cross that, and go down its outlet and up Chamberlain Lake, and trus

o the Indian, is the only squirrel found in those woods, except a very few striped ones. It must have a solitary time in that dark evergreen forest, where there is so little life, seventy-five miles from a road as we had come. I wondered how he could call any particular tree there his home, and yet he would run up the stem of one out of the myriads, as if it were an old ro

Concord very well." But my overtures were vain, for he would withdraw by hi

o on. In many places the canoe would have run if it had not been for the fallen timber. Again it would be more open, but equally wet, too wet for trees to grow. It was a mossy swamp, which it required the long legs of a moose to traverse, and it is very likely that we scared some of them in our transit, though we saw none. It was ready to echo the growl of a bear, the howl of a wolf, or the scream of a panther; but when you get fairly into the middle of

ture must have co?perated with art here. However, I suppose they would tell you that this name took its origin from the fact that the chief work of roadmakers in those woods is to make the swamps passable. We came to a str

ad found that this was not a safe experiment for him, for he might not be able to get his wet boots on again. He went over the whole ground, or wat

ncertain how far the lake might be, even if we were on the right course, and in what part of the world we should find ourselves at nightfall, I proposed that I should push thr

half on our path. If he had not come back to meet us, we probably should not have found him that night, for the path branched once or twice before reaching this particular part of the lake. So he went back for my companion and his bag. Having waded through another stream,

snow is four feet deep, it is no doubt a tolerable path to a footman. If you want an exact recipe for making such a road, take one part Mud Pond, and dilute it with equal parts of Umbazook

re, encumbered with bleached logs and trees. We were rejoiced to see such dry things in that part of the world. But at first we

about midway its length on the south side. We could see the only clearing in these parts, called the "Chamberlain Farm," with two or three log buildings close together, on the opposite shore, some two and a half miles distant. The sm

the Indian arranged over the fire, we ate our supper, and lay down on the pebbly shore with o

s edge, for it is a kind of sand-fly. You would not observe them but for their light-colored wings. They a

on the carries by day, and sometimes in narrower parts of the stream; third, moose-flies, stout brown flies much like a horsefly. They can bite smartly, according to Polis, but are easily avoide

his journey more than either of us. He regularly tied up his face in his handkerchief, and buried it in his blanket, and he now finally lay down on the sand between us and t

. When camping in such a wilderness as this, you are prepared to hear sounds from some of its inhabitants which will give voice to its wildness. Some idea of bears, wolves, or panthers runs in your head naturally, and when this note is first heard very far off at midnight, as you lie with your ear

hich, if any, would make your hair stand on end,-and all was still again. It lasted but a moment, and you'd have thought there were twenty of them, when probably there were only two or three. They heard it twice only, an

actly like it when breathing heavily through my own nostrils, half awake at ten at night, suggesting my affinity to the loon; as if its language were but a dialect of my own, after all. Formerly, when lying awake at midnight in those woods, I had listene

loon, flapping by close over my head along the shore. So, turning th