Part 4 (2/2)
As I sat waiting for him it would naturally seem an unaccountable time that he was gone. Therefore, as I could see through the woods that the sun was getting low, and it was uncertain 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 through with what speed I could, leaving boughs to mark my path, and find the lake and the Indian, if possible, before night, and send the latter back to carry my companion's bag.
Having gone about a mile I heard a noise like the note of an owl, which I soon discovered to be made by the Indian, and answering him, we soon came together. He had reached the lake after crossing Mud Pond and running some rapids below it, and had come up about a mile and a 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, where the bridge of logs had been broken up and half floated away, we continued on through alternate mud and water to the sh.o.r.es of Apmoojenegamook Lake, which we reached in season for a late supper, instead of dining there, as we had expected, having gone without our dinner.
It was at least five miles by the way we had come, and as my companion had gone over most of it three times he had walked full a dozen miles.
In the winter, when the water is frozen and the 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 Umbazookskus and Apmoojenegamook; then send a family of musquash through to locate it, look after the grades and culverts, and finish it to their minds, and let a hurricane follow to do the fencing.
We had come out on a point extending into Apmoojenegamook, or Chamberlain Lake, where there was a broad, gravelly, and rocky sh.o.r.e, enc.u.mbered with bleached logs and trees. We were rejoiced to see such dry things in that part of the world. But at first we did not attend to dryness so much as to mud and wetness. We all three walked into the lake up to our middle to wash our clothes.
This was another n.o.ble lake, twelve miles long; if you add Telos Lake, which, since the dam was built, has been connected with it by dead water, it will be twenty; and it is apparently from a mile and a half to two miles wide. We were 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 sh.o.r.e, some two and a half miles distant. The smoke of our fire on the sh.o.r.e brought over two men in a canoe from the farm, that being a common signal agreed on when one wishes to cross. It took them about half an hour to come over, and they had their labor for their pains this time.
After putting on such dry clothes as we had, and hanging the others to dry on the pole which the Indian arranged over the fire, we ate our supper, and lay down on the pebbly sh.o.r.e with our feet to the fire without pitching our tent, making a thin bed of gra.s.s to cover the stones.
Here first I was molested by the little midge called the no-see-em, especially over the sand at the water's edge, for it is a kind of sand-fly. You would not observe them but for their light-colored wings.
They are said to get under your clothes and produce a feverish heat, which I suppose was what I felt that night.
Our insect foes in this excursion were, first, mosquitoes, only troublesome at night, or when we sat still on sh.o.r.e by day; second, black flies (_simulium molestum_), which molested us more or less 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 avoided or killed. Fourth, the no-see-ems. Of all these, the mosquitoes are the only ones that troubled me seriously, but as I was provided with a wash and a veil, they have not made any deep impression.
The Indian would not use our wash to protect his face and hands, for fear that it would hurt his skin, nor had he any veil. He, therefore, suffered from insects throughout this 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 the fire for the sake of the smoke, which he tried to make enter his blanket about his face, and for the same purpose he lit his pipe and breathed the smoke into his blanket.
In the middle of the night we heard the voice of the loon, loud and distinct, from far over the lake. It is a very wild sound, quite in keeping with the place and the circ.u.mstances of the traveler, and very unlike the voice of a bird. I could lie awake for hours listening to it, it is so thrilling. 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 to the ground,--the forest being perfectly still about you, you take it for granted that it is the voice of a wolf or some other wild beast,--you conclude that it is a pack of wolves baying the moon, or, perchance, cantering after a moose. It was the unfailing and characteristic sound of those lakes.
Some friends of mine, who two years ago went up the Caucomgomoc River, were serenaded by wolves while moose-hunting by moonlight. It was a sudden burst, as if a hundred demons had broke loose,--a startling sound enough, which, 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, and they said that it gave expression to the wilderness which it lacked before. I heard of some men, who, while skinning a moose lately in those woods, were driven off from the carca.s.s by a pack of wolves, which ate it up.
This of the loon--I do not mean its laugh, but its looning--is a long-drawn call, as it were, sometimes singularly human to my ear--_hoo-hoo-ooooo_, like the hallooing of a man on a very high key, having thrown his voice into his head. I have heard a sound exactly 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 listened to hear some words or syllables of their language, but it chanced that I listened in vain until I heard the cry of the loon. I have heard it occasionally on the ponds of my native town, but there its wildness is not enhanced by the surrounding scenery.
I was awakened at midnight by some heavy, low-flying bird, probably a loon, flapping by close over my head along the sh.o.r.e. So, turning the other side of my half-clad body to the fire, I sought slumber again.
VI
TUESDAY, JULY 28
When we awoke we found a heavy dew on our blankets. I lay awake very early and listened to the clear, shrill _ah, te te, te te, te_ of the white-throated sparrow, repeated at short intervals, without the least variation, for half an hour, as if it could not enough express its happiness.
We did some more was.h.i.+ng in the lake this morning, and, with our clothes hung about on the dead trees and rocks, the sh.o.r.e looked like was.h.i.+ng-day at home. The Indian, taking the hint, borrowed the soap, and, walking into the lake, washed his only cotton s.h.i.+rt on his person, then put on his pants and let it dry on him.
I observed that he wore a cotton s.h.i.+rt, originally white, a greenish flannel one over it, but no waistcoat, flannel drawers, and strong linen or duck pants, which also had been white, blue woolen stockings, cowhide boots, and a Kossuth hat.[3] He carried no change of clothing, but, putting on a stout, thick jacket, which he laid aside in the canoe, and seizing a full-sized axe, his gun and ammunition, and a blanket, which would do for a sail or knapsack, if wanted, and strapping on his belt, which contained a large sheath-knife, he walked off at once, ready to be gone all summer. This looked very independent--a few simple and effective tools, and no rubber clothing. He was always the first ready to start in the morning. Instead of carrying a large bundle of his own extra clothing, etc., he brought back the greatcoats of moose tied up in his blanket. I found that his outfit was the result of a long experience, and in the main hardly to be improved on, unless by was.h.i.+ng and an extra s.h.i.+rt. Wanting a b.u.t.ton here, he walked off to a place where some Indians had recently encamped, and searched for one, but I believe in vain.
Having softened our stiffened boots and shoes with the pork fat, the usual disposition of what was left at breakfast, we crossed the lake, steering in a diagonal direction northeastly about four miles to the outlet. The Indian name, Apmoojenegamook, means lake that is crossed, because the usual course lies across and not along it. We did not intend to go far down the Allegash, but merely to get a view of the lakes which are its source, and then return this way to the East Branch of the Pen.o.bscot.
After reaching the middle of the lake, we found the waves pretty high, and the Indian warned my companion, who was nodding, that he must not allow himself to fall asleep in the canoe lest he should upset us; adding, that when Indians want to sleep in a canoe, they lie down straight on the bottom. But in this crowded one that was impossible.
However, he said that he would nudge him if he saw him nodding.
A belt of dead trees stood all around the lake, some far out in the water, with others prostrate behind them, and they made the sh.o.r.e, for the most part, almost inaccessible. This is the effect of the dam at the outlet. Thus the natural sandy or rocky sh.o.r.e, with its green fringe, was concealed and destroyed. We coasted westward along the north side, searching for the outlet, about quarter of a mile distant from this savage-looking sh.o.r.e, on which the waves were breaking violently, knowing that it might easily be concealed amid this rubbish, or by the overlapping of the sh.o.r.e. It is remarkable how little these important gates to a lake are blazoned. There is no triumphal arch over the modest inlet or outlet, but at some undistinguished point it trickles in or out through the uninterrupted forest, almost as through a sponge.
We reached the outlet in about an hour, and carried over the dam there, which is quite a solid structure, and about one quarter of a mile farther there was a second dam. The result of this particular damming about Chamberlain Lake is that the headwaters of the St. John are made to flow by Bangor. They have thus dammed all the larger lakes, raising their broad surfaces many feet, thus turning the forces of Nature against herself, that they might float their spoils out of the country.
They rapidly run out of these immense forests all the finer and more accessible pine timber, and then leave the bears to watch the decaying dams, not clearing nor cultivating the land, nor making roads, nor building houses, but leaving it a wilderness, as they found it. In many parts only these dams remain, like deserted beaver dams. Think how much land they have flowed without asking Nature's leave.
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