Penobscot Bay, Maine.
1896
July 15
(No 3)
  We next drove to Frost's Pond or at least to within
about a quarter of a mile of it walking the last part
of the way through a wood road which descended a
steep hillside. We had stopped at one of the last houses
and secured as guide a native who was familiar
with the pond and who knew where the only boat
on it was hidden. He also assured us that he could
take us to a place where there had been a Loon's
nest every season for the past 15 or 20 years.
  The pond proved to be about a mile long by half a mile
broad. It was surrounded by woods, chiefly second growth
birches, maples etc with a good many spruces & balsams.
A shallow creek which emptied into it wound back for
half-a-mile or more through an extensive bog sprinkled
with young larches.
  We found the boat easily and embarking rowed directly
to the Loon's nest which to our delight contained two
eggs. It was on a floating island or "hassock" less than
a yard square & formed (ie the "hassack" was) of interlaced
roots of grasses and small bushes, chiefly sweet gale.
On this vegetable raft the Loons had built a nearly
circular structure composed almost if not quite wholly of tuft-like
bunches of grass roots and measuring across from edge to
edge just 2 ft. In the middle was a depression 12 inches
across and about 2 inches deep in which lay the two eggs
not side by side but arranged thus [illus]. They were
so nearly of the general color of the mud-soaked surface
on which they rested that it would have been easy to
overlook them. The nest of grass roots beneath them was
damp but not really wet. The distance from the outer edges
of the nest to the water was about a foot on every side