A TASTE OF MAINE BIRCH. 49 



act o£ 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. (I 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 

 cannot 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 



