BOUNTY-CATCHERS 135 



Two other very diverse memories of impressions had on this 

 journey remain with me. One is of a great fire which ravaged 

 a primeval forest of pines near the shore, which I saw from our 

 boat. The flames rose for at least fifty feet above the tops of the 

 tall trees, and, fanned by a strong wind, marched with great 

 rapidity, so that in an hour or two an area of some hundred 

 acres was swept away, leaving only the headless charred trunks 

 standing amid the smoke. Since then I have seen the fire of 

 battlefields and a city in flames, but there was a solemnity in 

 this burning of a great wood, a sense of personal loss, keener 

 than they aroused. 



The other impression is that of a preposterous fleet of ancient 

 ships, locally called "bounty-catchers," sheltered from all the 

 dangers of the deep in a well-landlocked harbor. It was a 

 strange-looking lot of archaic craft, some of them of obsolete 

 shapes, that could only by care be kept from falling to pieces. 

 In good weather these queer things would be led forth into the 

 more open water, but not to the deep sea, to go through the 

 pretence of fishing, all this in order to earn the bounty then 

 paid to fishing vessels, so much for each ton of their inca- 

 pacity. This was the first of the many processes of cheating 

 the government I had ever seen. For at the government post 

 whereabout my early days were passed, there was always a 

 strict economy and diligent care for the mint the officers had in 

 their hands. 



During the autumn of the same year, in the Thanksgiving 

 recess which then existed in the University, I went with Foley 

 to the Umbagog Lakes in Maine, a journey of ten days or so. 

 Many of the incidents of this outing stay clearly in mind. In 

 Portland, where we had to wait for some hours, we bethought 

 ourselves that we might need some whiskey. There being no 

 evident bar-rooms, we went into an apothecary's and asked for 

 a little of it, to be told that we needed a physician's prescrip- 

 tion to obtain any kind of alcoholic stuff. Not to be balked, we 

 entered another shop, where I handed the attendant the needed 



