62 A TASTE OF MAINE BIRCH. 
berries and blueberries or huckleberries. We were 
soon so absorbed in gathering the latter that we were 
quite oblivious of the grandeurs about us. It is these 
blueberries that attract the bears. In eating them, 
Uncle Nathan said, they take the bushes in their 
mouths, and by an upward movement strip them clean 
of both leaves and berries. We were constantly on 
the lookout for the bears, but failed to see any. Yet 
a few days afterward, when two of our party returned 
here and encamped upon the mountain, they saw five 
during their stay, but failed to get a good shot. The 
rifle was in the wrong place each time. The man 
with the shot-gun saw an old bear and two cubs lift 
themselves from behind a rock and twist their noses 
around for his scent, and then shrink away. They 
were too far off for his buckshot. I must not forget 
the superb view that lay before us, a wilderness of 
woods and waters stretching away to the horizon on 
every hand. Nearly a dozen lakes and ponds could 
be seen, and in a clearer atmosphere the foot of Moose- 
head Lake would have been visible. The highest and 
most striking mountain to be seen was Mount Bige- 
low, rising above Dead River, far to the west, and its 
two sharp peaks notching the horizon like enormous 
saw-teeth. We walked around and viewed curiously 
a huge bowlder on the top of the mountain that had 
been split in two vertically, and one of the halves 
moved a few feet out of its bed. It looked recent 
and familiar, but suggested gods instead of men. The 
force that moved the rock had plainly come from the 
north. I thought of a similar bowlder I had seen not 
long before on the highest point of the Shawangunk 
Mountains, in New York, one side of which is propped 
up with a large stone, as wall-builders prop up a rock 
A a OE 
