A TASTE OF MAINE BIRCH. 115 



result of the Indian's wants and surroundings, but 

 that does not detract from its beauty. It is, indeed, 

 one of the fairest flowers the thorny plant of neces- 

 sity ever bore. Our canoe, as I have intimated, was 

 not yet finished, when we first saw it, nor yet when 

 we took it up, with its architect, upon our meta- 

 phorical baeks and bore it to the woods. It lacked 

 part of its cedar lining and the rosin upon its joints, 

 and these were added after we reached our desti- 

 nation. 



Though we were not indebted to the birch-tree for 

 our guide, Uncle Nathan, as he was known in all that 

 country, yet he matched well these woodsy prod- 

 ucts and conveniences. The birch-tree had given 

 him a large part of his tuition, and kneeling in his 

 canoe and making it shoot noiselessly over the water 

 with that subtle yet indescribably expressive and ath- 

 letic play of the muscles of the back and shoulders, 

 the boat and the man seemed born of the same spirit. 

 He had been a hunter and trapper for over forty 

 years ; he had grown gray in the woods, had ripened 

 and matured there, and everything about him was as 

 if the spirit of the woods had had the ordering of it ; 

 his whole make-up was in a minor and subdued key, 

 like the moss and the lichens, or like the protective 

 coloring of the game, everything but his quick 

 sense and penetrative glance. He was as gentle and 

 modest as a girl ; his sensibilities were like plants 

 that grow in the shade. The woods and the solitudes 

 had touched him with their own softening and refin- 



