64 A TASTE OF MAINE BIRCH. 



brigLt 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." 1 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 

 &rout, 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 SID 

 weight, comes to our basket in the future. 



