64 A TASTE OF MAINE BIRCH. 
bright blue, bell-shaped corolla shone out from amid 
the dry grass and weeds all along the route. It was 
one of the most delicate roadside flowers I had ever 
seen. 
The only new bird I saw in Maine was the pileated 
woodpecker, or black “log cock,’> called by Uncle 
Nathan “wood cock.” I had never before seen or 
heard this bird, and its loud cackle in the woods about 
Moxie was a new sound to me. It is the wildest and 
largest of our northern woodpeckers, and the rarest. 
Its voice and the sound of its hammer are heard only 
in the depths of the northern woods. It is about as 
large as a crow, and nearly as black. 
We stayed a week at Moxie, or until we became 
surfeited with its trout, and had killed the last Mer- 
ganser duck that lingered about our end of the lake. 
The trout that had accumulated on our hands we had 
kept alive in a large champagne basket submerged in 
the lake, and the morning we broke camp the basket 
was towed to the shore and opened; and after we had 
feasted our eyes upon the superb spectacle, every 
trout, twelve or fifteen in number, some of them two- 
pounders, was allowed to swim back into the lake. 
They went leisurely, in couples and in trios, and were 
soon kicking up their heels in their old haunts. I ex- 
pect that the divinity who presides over Moxie will 
see to it that every one of those trout, doubled in 
weight, comes to our basket in the future. 

