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 



