A TASTE OF MAINE BIRCH. 49 
act of bringing that fiery eye to bear upon you, and 
vigilance and power stamped upon every lineament. 
The loon is to the fishes what the hawk is to the 
birds; he swoops down to unknown depths upon 
them, and not even the wary trout can elude him. 
Uncle Nathan said he had seen the loon disappear, 
and in a moment come up with a large trout, which 
he would cut in two with his strong beak, and swal- 
low piecemeal. Neither the loon nor the otter can 
bolt a fish under the water; he must come to the sur- 
face to dispose of it. (1 once saw a man eat a cake 
under water in London.) Our guide told me he had 
seen the parent loon swimming with a single young 
one upon its back. When closely pressed it dove, or 
“div ’’ as he would have it, and left the young bird 
sitting upon the water. Then it too disappeared, and 
when the old one returned and called, it came out from 
the shore. On the wing overhead, the loon looks not 
unlike a very large duck, but when it alights it 
ploughs into the water like a bombshell. It probably 
eannot take flight from the land, as the one Gilbert 
White saw and describes in his letters was picked up 
in a field, unable to launch itself into the air. 
From Pleasant Pond we went seven miles through 
the woods to Moxie Lake, following an overgrown 
lumberman’s “tote”? road, our canoe and. supplies, 
etc., hauled on a sled’ by the young farmer with his 
three-year-old steers. I doubt if birch-bark ever made 
a rougher voyage than that. As I watched it above 
the bushes, the sled and the luggage being hidden, it 
appeared as if tossed in the wildest and most tempest- 
uous sea. When the bushes closed above it I felt as 
if it had gone down, or been broken into a hundred 
pieces. Billows of rocks and logs, and chasms of 
