The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858

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At mid-afternoon we embarked on the Penobscot. Our birch was
nineteen and a half feet long by two and a half at the widest part,
and fourteen inches deep within, both ends alike, and painted green,
which Joe thought affected the pitch and made it leak. This, I think,
was a middling-sized one. That of the explorers was much larger,
though probably not much longer. This carried us three with our
baggage, weighing in all between five hundred and fifty and six
hundred pounds. We had two heavy, though slender, rock-maple paddles,
one of them of bird's-eye maple. Joe placed birch bark on the bottom
for us to sit on, and slanted cedar splints against the cross-bars
to protect our backs, while he himself sat upon a cross-bar in the
stern. The baggage occupied the middle or widest part of the canoe.
We also paddled by turns in the bows, now sitting with our legs
extended, now sitting upon our legs, and now rising upon our knees;
but I found none of these positions endurable, and was reminded of
the complaints of the old Jesuit missionaries of the torture they
endured from long confinement in constrained positions in canoes, in
their long voyages from Quebec to the Huron country; but afterwards I
sat on the cross-bars, or stood up, and experienced no inconvenience.

It was dead water for a couple of miles. The river had been raised
about two feet by the rain, and lumberers were hoping for a flood
sufficient to bring down the logs that were left in the spring. Its
banks were seven or eight feet high, and densely covered with white
and black spruce,--which, I think, must be the commonest trees
thereabouts,--fir, arbor-vitae, canoe, yellow, and black birch, rock,
mountain, and a few red maples, beech, black and mountain ash, the
large-toothed aspen, many civil-looking elms, now imbrowned, along
the stream, and at first a few hemlocks also. We had not gone far
before I was startled by seeing what I thought was an Indian
encampment, covered with a red flag, on the bank, and exclaimed,
"Camp!" to my comrades. I was slow to discover that it was a red
maple changed by the frost. The immediate shores were also densely
covered with the speckled alder, red osier, shrubby willows or
sallows, and the like. There were a few yellow-lily-pads still left,
half drowned, along the sides, and sometimes a white one. Many fresh
tracks of moose were visible where the water was shallow, and on the
shore, and the lily-stems were freshly bitten off by them.

After paddling about two miles, we parted company with the explorers,
and turned up Lobster Stream, which comes in on the right, from the
south-east. This was six or eight rods wide, and appeared to run
nearly parallel with the Penobscot. Joe said that it was so called
from small fresh-water lobsters found in it. It is the Matahumkeag of
the maps. My companion wished to look for moose signs, and intended,
if it proved worth the while, to camp up that way, since the Indian
advised it. On account of the rise of the Penobscot, the water ran up
this stream quite to the pond of the same name, one or two miles.
The Spencer Mountains, east of the north end of Moosehead Lake, were
now in plain sight in front of us. The kingfisher flew before us,
the pigeon woodpecker was seen and heard, and nuthatches and
chickadees close at hand. Joe said that they called the chickadee
_kecunnilessu_ in his language. I will not vouch for the spelling
of what possibly was never spelt before, but I pronounced after him
till he said it would do. We passed close to a woodcock, which stood
perfectly still on the shore, with feathers puffed up, as if sick.
This, Joe said, they called _nipsquecohossus_. The kingfisher was
_skuscumonsuck_; bear was _wassus_; Indian Devil, _lunxus_; the
mountain-ash, _upahsis_. This was very abundant and beautiful.
Moose-tracks were not so fresh along this stream, except in a small
creek about a mile up it, where a large log had lodged in the spring,
marked "W-cross-girdle-crow-foot." We saw a pair of moose-horns on
the shore, and I asked Joe if a moose had shed them; but he said
there was a head attached to them, and I knew that they did not shed
their heads more than once in their lives.

After ascending about a mile and a half, to within a short distance
of Lobster Lake, we returned to the Penobscot. Just below the mouth
of the Lobster we found quick water, and the river expanded to
twenty or thirty rods in width. The moose-tracks were quite numerous
and fresh here. We noticed in a great many places narrow and
well-trodden paths by which they had come down to the river, and
where they had slid on the steep and clayey bank. Their tracks were
either close to the edge of the stream, those of the calves
distinguishable from the others, or in shallow water; the holes
made by their feet in the soft bottom being visible for a long time.
They were particularly numerous where there was a small bay, or
_pokelogan_, as it is called, bordered by a strip of meadow, or
separated from the river by a low peninsula covered with coarse grass,
wool-grass, etc., wherein they had waded back and forth and eaten
the pads. We detected the remains of one in such a spot. At one place,
where we landed to pick up a summer duck, which my companion had shot,
Joe peeled a canoe-birch for bark for his hunting-horn. He then
asked if we were not going to get the other duck, for his sharp eyes
had seen another fall in the bushes a little farther along, and my
companion obtained it. I now began to notice the bright red berries
of the tree-cranberry, which grows eight or ten feet high, mingled
with the alders and cornel along the shore. There was less hard wood
than at first.

After proceeding a mile and three quarters below the mouth of the
Lobster, we reached, about sundown, a small island at the head of
what Joe called the Moosehorn Dead-water, (the Moosehorn, in which
he was going to hunt that night, coming in about three miles below),
and on the upper end of this we decided to camp. On a point at the
lower end lay the carcass of a moose killed a month or more before.
We concluded merely to prepare our camp, and leave our baggage here,
that all might be ready when we returned from moose-hunting. Though
I had not come a-hunting, and felt some compunctions about
accompanying the hunters, I wished to see a moose near at hand, and
was not sorry to learn how the Indian managed to kill one. I went as
reporter or chaplain to the hunters,--and the chaplain has been
known to carry a gun himself. After clearing a small space amid the
dense spruce and fir trees, we covered the damp ground with a
shingling of fir-twigs, and, while Joe was preparing his birch-horn
and pitching his canoe,--for this had to be done whenever we stopped
long enough to build a fire, and was the principal labor which he
took upon himself at such times,--we collected fuel for the night,
large wet and rotting logs, which had lodged at the head of the
island, for our hatchet was too small for effective chopping; but we
did not kindle a fire, lest the moose should smell it. Joe set up a
couple of forked stakes, and prepared half a dozen poles, ready to
cast one of our blankets over in case it rained in the night, which
precaution, however, was omitted the next night. We also plucked the
ducks which had been killed for breakfast.

While we were thus engaged in the twilight, we heard faintly,
from far down the stream, what sounded like two strokes of a
woodchopper's axe, echoing dully through the grim solitude. We are
wont to liken many sounds, heard at a distance in the forest, to the
stroke of an axe because they resemble each other under those
circumstances, and that is the one we commonly hear there. When we
told Joe of this, he exclaimed, "By George, I'll bet that was moose!
They make a noise like that." These sounds affected us strangely,
and by their very resemblance to a familiar one, where they probably
had so different an origin, enhanced the impression of solitude and
wildness.

At starlight we dropped down the stream, which was a dead-water for
three miles, or as far as the Moosehorn; Joe telling us that we must
be very silent, and he himself making no noise with his paddle,
while he urged the canoe along with effective impulses. It was a
still night, and suitable for this purpose,--for if there is wind,
the moose will smell you,--and Joe was very confident that he should
get some. The harvest moon had just risen, and its level rays began
to light up the forest on our right, while we glided downward in the
shade on the same side, against the little breeze that was stirring.
The lofty spiring tops of the spruce and fir were very black against
the sky, and more distinct than by day, close bordering this broad
avenue on each side; and the beauty of the scene, as the moon rose
above the forest, it would not be easy to describe. A bat flew over
our heads, and we heard a few faint notes of birds from time to time,
perhaps the myrtle-bird for one, or the sudden plunge of a musquash,
or saw one crossing the stream before us, or heard the sound of a
rill emptying in, swollen by the recent rain. About a mile below the
island, when the solitude seemed to be growing more complete every
moment, we suddenly saw the light and heard the crackling of a fire
on the bank, and discovered the camp of the two explorers; they
standing before it in their red shirts, and talking aloud of the
adventures and profits of the day. They were just then speaking of a
bargain, in which, as I understood, somebody had cleared twenty-five
dollars. We glided by without speaking, close under the bank, within
a couple of rods of them; and Joe, taking his horn, imitated the
call of the moose, till we suggested that they might fire on us.
This was the last we saw of them, and we never knew whether they
detected or suspected us.

I have often wished since that I was with them. They search for
timber over a given section, climbing hills and often high trees to
look off,--explore the streams by which it is to be driven, and the
like,--spend five or six weeks in the woods, they two alone, a
hundred miles or more from any town,--roaming about, and sleeping on
the ground where night overtakes them,--depending chiefly on the
provisions they carry with them, though they do not decline what game
they come across,--and then in the fall they return and make report
to their employers, determining the number of teams that will be
required the following winter. Experienced men get three or four
dollars a day for this work. It is a solitary and adventurous life,
and comes nearest to that of the trapper of the West, perhaps. They
work ever with a gun as well as an axe, let their beards grow, and
live without neighbors, not on an open plain, but far within a
wilderness.

This discovery accounted for the sounds which we had heard, and
destroyed the prospect of seeing moose yet awhile. At length, when
we had left the explorers far behind, Joe laid down his paddle, drew
forth his birch horn,--a straight one, about fifteen inches long and
three or four wide at the mouth, tied round with strips of the same
bark,--and standing up, imitated the call of the moose,--_ugh-ugh-ugh_,
or _oo-oo-oo-oo_, and then a prolonged _oo-o-o-o-o-o-o-o_, and
listened attentively for several minutes. We asked him what kind of
noise he expected to hear. He said, that, if a moose heard it, he
guessed we should find out; we should hear him coming half a mile off;
he would come close to, perhaps into, the water, and my companion
must wait till he got fair sight, and then aim just behind the
shoulder.

The moose venture out to the riverside to feed and drink at night.
Earlier in the season the hunters do not use a horn to call them out,
but steal upon them as they are feeding along the sides of the stream,
and often the first notice they have of one is the sound of the
water dropping from its muzzle. An Indian whom I heard imitate the
voice of the moose, and also that of the caribou and the deer, using
a much longer horn than Joe's, told me that the first could be heard
eight or ten miles, sometimes; it was a loud sort of bellowing sound,
clearer and more sonorous than the lowing of cattle,--the caribou's
a sort of snort,--and the small deer's like that of a lamb.

At length we turned up the Moosehorn, where the Indians at the carry
had told us that they killed a moose the night before. This is a
very meandering stream, only a rod or two in width, but
comparatively deep, coming in on the right, fitly enough named
Moosehorn, whether from its windings or its inhabitants. It was
bordered here and there by narrow meadows between the stream and the
endless forest, affording favorable places for the moose to feed,
and to call them out on. We proceeded half a mile up this, as
through a narrow winding canal, where the tall, dark spruce and firs
and arbor-vitae towered on both sides in the moonlight, forming a
perpendicular forest-edge of great height, like the spires of a
Venice in the forest. In two places stood a small stack of hay on
the bank, ready for the lumberer's use in the winter, looking
strange enough there. We thought of the day when this might be a
brook winding through smooth-shaven meadows on some gentleman's
grounds; and seen by moonlight then, excepting the forest that now
hems it in, how little changed it would appear!

Again and again Joe called the moose, placing the canoe close by
some favorable point of meadow for them to come out on, but listened
in vain to hear one come rushing through the woods, and concluded
that they had been hunted too much thereabouts. We saw many times
what to our imaginations looked like a gigantic moose, with his
horns peering from out the forest-edge; but we saw the forest only,
and not its inhabitants, that night. So at last we turned about.
There was now a little fog on the water, though it was a fine, clear
night above. There were very few sounds to break the stillness of
the forest. Several times we heard the hooting of a great horned-owl,
as at home, and told Joe that he would call out the moose for him,
for he made a sound considerably like the horn,--but Joe answered,
that the moose had heard that sound a thousand times, and knew better;
and oftener still we were startled by the plunge of a musquash. Once,
when Joe had called again, and we were listening for moose, we heard
come faintly echoing, or creeping from far, through the moss-clad
aisles, a dull, dry, rushing sound, with a solid core to it, yet as
if half smothered under the grasp of the luxuriant and fungus-like
forest, like the shutting of a door in some distant entry of the
damp and shaggy wilderness. If we had not been there, no mortal had
heard it. When we asked Joe in a whisper what it was, he answered,--
"Tree fall." There is something singularly grand and impressive in
the sound of a tree falling in a perfectly calm night like this, as
if the agencies which overthrow it did not need to be excited, but
worked with a subtle, deliberate, and conscious force, like a
boa-constrictor, and more effectively then than even in a windy day.
If there is any such difference, perhaps it is because trees with
the dews of the night on them are heavier than by day.

Having reached the camp, about ten o'clock, we kindled our fire and
went to bed. Each of us had a blanket, in which he lay on the
fir-twigs, with his extremities toward the fire, but nothing over his
head. It was worth the while to lie down in a country where you
could afford such great fires; that was one whole side, and the
bright side, of our world. We had first rolled up a large log some
eighteen inches through and ten feet long, for a back-log, to last
all night, and then piled on the trees to the height of three or
four feet, no matter how green or damp. In fact, we burned as much
wood that night as would, with economy and an air-tight stove, last
a poor family in one of our cities all winter. It was very agreeable,
as well as independent, thus lying in the open air, and the fire
kept our uncovered extremities warm enough. The Jesuit missionaries
used to say, that, in their journeys with the Indians in Canada,
they lay on a bed which had never been shaken up since the creation,
unless by earthquakes. It is surprising with what impunity and
comfort one who has always lain in a warm bed in a close apartment,
and studiously avoided drafts of air, can lie down on the ground
without a shelter, roll himself in a blanket, and sleep before a fire,
in a frosty autumn night, just after a long rain-storm, and even come
soon to enjoy and value the fresh air.

I lay awake awhile, watching the ascent of the sparks through the
firs, and sometimes their descent in half-extinguished cinders on my
blanket. They were as interesting as fireworks, going up in endless
successive crowds, each after an explosion, in an eager serpentine
course, some to five or six rods above the tree-tops before they
went out. We do not suspect how much our chimneys have concealed;
and now air-tight stoves have come to conceal all the rest. In the
course of the night, I got up once or twice and put fresh logs on
the fire, making my companions curl up their legs.

When we awoke in the morning, (Saturday, September 17,) there was
considerable frost whitening the leaves. We heard the sound of the
chickadee, and a few faintly lisping birds, and also of ducks in the
water about the island. I took a botanical account of stock of our
domains before the dew was off, and found that the ground-hemlock,
or American yew, was the prevailing undershrub. We breakfasted on tea,
hard bread, and ducks.

Before the fog had fairly cleared away, we paddled down the stream
again, and were soon past the mouth of the Moosehorn. These twenty
miles of the Penobscot, between Moosehead and Chesuncook Lakes, are
comparatively smooth, and a great part dead-water; but from time to
time it is shallow and rapid, with rocks or gravel-beds, where you
can wade across. There is no expanse of water, and no break in the
forest, and the meadow is a mere edging here and there. There are no
hills near the river nor within sight, except one or two distant
mountains seen in a few places. The banks are from six to ten feet
high, but once or twice rise gently to higher ground. In many places
the forest on the bank was but a thin strip, letting the light
through from some alder-swamp or meadow behind. The conspicuous
berry-bearing bushes and trees along the shore were the red osier,
with its whitish fruit, hobble-bush, mountain-ash, tree-cranberry,
choke-cherry, now ripe, alternate cornel, and naked viburnum.
Following Joe's example, I ate the fruit of the last, and also of
the hobble-bush, but found them rather insipid and seedy. I looked
very narrowly at the vegetation, as we glided along close to the
shore, and frequently made Joe turn aside for me to pluck a plant,
that I might see by comparison what was primitive about my native
river. Horehound, horsemint, and the sensitive fern grew close to
the edge, under the willows and alders, and wool-grass on the islands,
as along the Assabet River in Concord. It was too late for flowers,
except a few asters, golden-rods, etc. In several places we noticed
the slight frame of a camp, such as we had prepared to set up, amid
the forest by the river-side, where some lumberers or hunters had
passed a night,--and sometimes steps cut in the muddy or clayey bank
in front of it.

We stopped to fish for trout at the mouth of a small stream called
Ragmuff, which came in from the west, about two miles below the
Moosehorn. Here were the ruins of an old lumbering-camp, and a small
space, which had formerly been cleared and burned over, was now
densely overgrown with the red cherry and raspberries. While we were
trying for trout, Joe, Indian-like, wandered off up the Ragmuff on
his own errands, and when we were ready to start was far beyond call.
So we were compelled to make a fire and get our dinner here, not to
lose time. Some dark reddish birds, with grayer females, (perhaps
purple finches,) and myrtle-birds in their summer dress, hopped
within six or eight feet of us and our smoke. Perhaps they smelled
the frying pork. The latter bird, or both, made the lisping notes
which I had heard in the forest. They suggested that the few small
birds found in the wilderness are on more familiar terms with the
lumberman and hunter than those of the orchard and clearing with the
farmer. I have since found the Canada jay, and partridges, both the
black and the common, equally tame there, as if they had not yet
learned to mistrust man entirely. The chickadee, which is at home
alike in the primitive woods and in our wood-lots, still retains its
confidence in the towns to a remarkable degree.

Joe at length returned, after an hour and a half, and said that he
had been two miles up the stream exploring, and had seen a moose, but,
not having the gun, he did not get him. We made no complaint, but
concluded to look out for Joe the next time. However, this may have
been a mere mistake, for we had no reason to complain of him
afterwards. As we continued down the stream, I was surprised to hear
him whistling "O Susanna," and several other such airs, while his
paddle urged us along. Once he said, "Yes, Sir-ee." His common word
was "Sartain." He paddled, as usual, on one side only, giving the
birch an impulse by using the side as a fulcrum. I asked him how
the ribs were fastened to the side rails. He answered, "I don't know,
I never noticed." Talking with him about subsisting wholly on what
the woods yielded, game, fish, berries, etc., I suggested that his
ancestors did so; but he answered, that he had been brought up in
such a way that he could not do it. "Yes," said he, "that's the way
they got a living, like wild fellows, wild as bears. By George! I
shan't go into the woods without provision,--hard bread, pork, etc."
He had brought on a barrel of hard bread and stored it at the carry
for his hunting. However, though he was a Governor's son, he had not
learned to read.

At one place below this, on the east side, where the bank was higher
and drier than usual, rising gently from the shore to a slight
elevation, some one had felled the trees over twenty or thirty acres,
and left them drying in order to burn. This was the only preparation
for a house between the Moosehead carry and Chesuncook, but there
was no hut nor inhabitants there yet. The pioneer thus selects a
site for his house, which will, perhaps, prove the germ of a town.

My eyes were all the while on the trees, distinguishing between the
black and white spruce and the fir. You paddle along in a narrow
canal through an endless forest, and the vision I have in my mind's
eye, still, is of the small dark and sharp tops of tall fir and
spruce trees, and pagoda-like arbor-vitaes, crowded together on each
side, with various hard woods intermixed. Some of the arbor-vitaes
were at least sixty feet high. The hard woods, occasionally
occurring exclusively, were less wild to my eye. I fancied them
ornamental grounds, with farm-houses in the rear. The canoe and
yellow birch, beech, maple, and elm are Saxon and Norman; but the
spruce and fir, and pines generally, are Indian. The soft engravings
which adorn the annuals give no idea of a stream in such a wilderness
as this. The rough sketches in Jackson's Reports on the Geology of
Maine answer much better. At one place we saw a small grove of
slender sapling white-pines, the only collection of pines that I saw
on this voyage. Here and there, however, was a full-grown, tall, and
slender, but defective one, what lumbermen call a _kouchus_ tree,
which they ascertain with their axes, or by the knots. I did not
learn whether this word was Indian or English. It reminded me of the
Greek [Greek: kogchae], a conch or shell, and I amused myself with
fancying that it might signify the dead sound which the trees yield
when struck. All the rest of the pines had been driven off.

[To be continued.]

* * * * *

LA CANTATRICE.

By day, at a high oak desk I stand,
And trace in a ledger line by line;
But at five o'clock yon dial's hand
Opens the cage wherein I pine;
And as faintly the stroke from the belfry peals
Down through the thunder of hoofs and wheels,
I wonder if ever a monarch feels
Such royal joy as mine!

Beatrice is dressed and her carriage waits;
I know she has heard that signal-chime;
And my strong heart leaps and palpitates,
As lightly the winding stair I climb
To her fragrant room, where the winter's gloom
Is changed by the heliotrope's perfume,
And the curtained sunset's crimson bloom,
To love's own summer prime.

She meets me there, so strangely fair
That my soul aches with a happy pain;--
A pressure, a touch of her true lips, such
As a seraph might give and take again;
A hurried whisper, "Adieu! adieu!
They wait for me while I stay for you!"
And a parting smile of her blue eyes through
The glimmering carriage-pane.

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