42 



FOREST AND STREAM. 



[Feb. 5, 1891. 



IN THE REGION ROUND NICATOWIS. 



POVEETY, KINDLING WOOD AND PHILOSOPHY. 



PENOBSCOT BROOK enters Fourth Lake a little to 

 the left of its head, Fifth Lake Stream a little to the 

 right. The two would meet almost Diouth to mouth were 

 it not for an island of a few acres which stands hetween 

 them; and the island itself would have been a point still 

 further separating the streams, had not the land behind 

 sunk in times past so that now there is only a wilderness 

 of moose-ear above water. In former times this island 

 had been Father's favorite camp-ground, and he did not 

 like to pass without seeing it again. He and Sebattis had 

 camped there; he and John Spearen also; there Sebattis 

 had lost his necklace of turtle's claws, and there Lonz as 

 he stood on the shore fishing woidd swing his pickerel 

 almost into the frying pan or make them run up the 

 beach their whole length after the bait. 



We turned out of our course to view the place, but Jot 

 and I having no personal associations to be revived 

 remained in the canoe, occasionally swinging the buel 

 toward the rush bed in front a.nd thinking what an alto- 

 gether dismal place is Fourth Lake. A hurricane of last 

 year had uprooted the piiies along the shore of the island 

 forming a barricade of brush, and on his return Father 

 reported that the cleared space behind was much more 

 extended than formerly and the facilities for camping 

 correspondingly less. Still the old spot looked so familiar 

 and inviting that, although it was not yet a o'clock and 

 the lake was calm, he decided to camp. 



The fact is that five years before he had hidden here 

 some favoi-ite kindling wood, fat pine the like of which 

 never had been seen in all the countrv, so black without, 

 so yellow within, so pitch-imbrued that even the heat of 

 the sun drew from it great resinous drops; and he had 

 always wanted to go back just to burn that wood. With 

 such an attraction there was nothing to do but to camp. 

 And yet it is my strong impression that before work was 

 begun Father disappeared among the fallen pine brush 

 and drew forth a piece of the shell of an old pine, live feet 

 long perhaps and an inch or two thick, black and mossy 

 and as heavy as if it had lain at the bottom of the lake for 

 the last century. He was proud of it, but a more unpre- 

 possessing piece of timber never was seen. 

 _ If we camped on account of so small a matter as kind- 

 ling wood facilities, the decision never was regretted. 

 Four days and a half we stayed there in rain and wind, 

 and yet the elements did not touch us nor the supply 

 of "creatures with bones" fail us. Thus speaks the jour- 

 nal: "i^ricZa?/ — Eained. Lazy, Ate pickerel. Duck stew- 

 for dinnei*. Killed spiders. 'Had a cold caught on the 

 carry. Saturday— hen it rains one can eat and sleep, 

 but there is no time to write journal. It rained a down- 

 pour all night and blew like a piper. Father went out in 

 it to see that the canoe was tied so that she could not 

 blow away. It leaked a little through the tent, but none 

 ran under us. My cold took most oif my attention. * * 

 We washed a little, read a little, fed a little and fished 

 pickerel until the pole broke. Sunday— Clear and beau- 

 tiful; even after two days' confinement we enjoy staying, 

 jifonday— Still rams. * * * As provisions are likely to 

 run low before we get back, Father and Jot went over to 

 Shaw's on Dobsy to get potatoes, sugar, salt, flour, etc, I 

 s^Jayed at home mending. When they came back they 

 brought two wood ducks which Father had shot. Staved 

 in the tent all the P. M. and fought flies. Tuesday— 8ti\\ 

 foul weather, but we shall wear it out yet," 



But we enjoyed our camp here, although every rainy 

 day shortened our vacation and put our desired end 

 further out of reach, diminished our scanty store of 

 provisions and increased the probability that the hidden 

 stores at Nicatowis and Gassobeeis were spoiling. But 

 present ease counts for considei-able; with good wood to 

 burn, a tent sheltered from the winds, a Soil so porous 

 that no amount of rain could saturate it and a never-fail- 

 ing supply of fish just off the landing, there was nothing 

 desperate in the situation. Like our kindling wood, it 

 looked a good deal worse on the outside than it really 

 was. 



IE we had a good time here it was not on account of 

 the weather, as has been shown, and certainly not because 

 of any luxuries at our disposal except leisure: three people 

 are seldom incumbei'ed with so little of this world's 

 goods when they can have all they want. Our pillows 

 were our sjjare boots and rubber coats, our candlestick 

 an emyjty cartridge; w^e had nothing to sit on except the 

 bag of potatoes and a box which we had found; we had 

 neither cards nor games, and om- whole library consisted 

 of one Harxjefs Magazine, "Emerson's Essays," and two 

 very thin pamphlets by Thoreau and C. D. Warner. We 

 lacked even our usual copy of the Maine game laws, 

 which we carry because of the satisfaction it gives when 

 we learn that we have done the right thing in the right 

 time. Indeed, we had very little of anything except 

 pickerel and kindling wood, and none the less we were 

 happy. 



There is, of course, no virtue in this self-denial, although 

 it contains a grain of philosophy which may explain our 

 contentment. The secret is that we had nothing to take 

 care of. We had bought our leisure at the price of all 

 our unnecessary possessions and we were satisfied with 

 the bargain. Money is only a convenient fiction, the 

 real purchase is always effected by a barter of time for 

 something which we fancy that we want more. Would 

 you have a new hat or a new book? Then how much 

 time will you give for it? Five dollars does not represent 

 its cost to' you, but the amount of time which you must 

 take from your sleep or from your study to earn the 

 five dollars does. , Increasing our wants, our leisure 

 diminishes; increasing our leisure, many wants must go 

 unsatisfied. All this is very trite and world-old ; the Greek 

 jioet far back in the shades of antiquity sang, "The gods 

 sell all good things at price of toil," hut in order to realize 

 its truth we usually have to get away from our neigh- 

 bors. Living in a world where independence is less com- 

 mon than the boast of it, our ideas of what we cannot 

 live without become super-saturated with our neighbor's 

 opinions of what we must have in order to be respectable. 

 We spend, dress, travel, not to please ourselves nor to 

 give pleasure, but to purchase regard. We are the slaves 

 of our possessions, nay the bond-servants of our con- 

 veniences also. Even the labor-saving contrivance insijiu- 

 ates itself into our lives as cleverly as the camel of the 



fable pushed its way into the tent of its master, it has 

 such good excuses for being there, it will give so much 

 more exactness and leisure; it ends by making life 

 mechanical and ten-fold more burdensome: instead of 

 handwork and free thoiights, the drive of the sewing- 

 machine: instead of the easy-traveling quill, increased 

 correspondence a'nd the galloping typewriter. If bustle, 

 Inirry and push are the best of life it is well to make get- 

 ting the aim of it and use the latest machinery, but if 

 cur leisure seems delightful, why not, mstead of submit- 

 ting to the thraldom and slaving for these our servants, 

 buy them off? We can live without them if we only will 

 think so. Go into the w^oods and let them follow if they 

 dare! For all (Questions concerning the freedom and 

 growth of the individual where can such satisfactory 

 answers be found as in the woods? From this quiet her- 

 mitage the world his a very different aspect, as if we 

 beheld it from the summit of a lofty mountain and saw 

 it spread out below us, all its crooked ways made plain, 

 its rough ones smooth and its jarring din subdued by the 

 distance to a gentle humming. Here we can learn how- a 

 man's life is more than food or raiment and how it con- 

 sisteth not in the abundance of the things which he 

 posesseth. 



Evidently many who go into the woods have not 

 learned this. From the tin cans and empty bottles left 

 behind it is plain to be seen that they could not feel 

 themselves happy without everything that could be 

 lugged, dragged or in any wise conveyed up stream and 

 across carries. The only limit to their wants is the in- 

 feriority of man flesh to horse flesh. Of course it is no 

 more commendable for Socrates to be proud of the holes 

 in his pockets than it is for Alcibiades to be proud of his 

 new coat; he that hath not a kerosene lantern ought not to 

 despise him that hath one. But to insist on having all 

 the accustomed comforts, to imagine that one's greatest 

 pleasure lies in ingrafting upon the woods life a manner 

 of living not adapted to the situation, shows how little 

 sympathy for the woods is in the man, and foreshadows 

 his almost certain disappointment. The possession or 

 relinquishment of the things themselves is significant 

 only as it reveals the man. He who will not trust the 

 native balsam to give sleep and healing, clings to his inflat- 

 able rubber bed. He never learns anything about the woods, 

 though he will talk most feelingly on the "hardships'" of 

 camping out. The criminal lawyer, who is one degree 

 more cautious, carries a straw bed with him, and this is 

 his verdict: "It may do— for young folks— but there is— 

 little pleasure— in it. The antici— pations— ex— ceed the 

 real— izations. There are aouts a— baout it. The beds 

 are not what they should be — and the — cooking — is not — 

 always — cle-an." But the two college students whom we 

 knew only as "the plucky boys," who had crossed Moose- 

 head and run down the whole West Branch — fair run- 

 ning, too; not wading — knowing nothing of canoeing, ex- 

 cept what experience had taught them on the trip, though 

 alone and witli scarcely a handful of baggage apiece, and 

 no food to speak of, said not a word about hardships and 

 "outs," but insisted that they had a good time. This is a 

 life of extreme individualism and self-dependence, and he 

 enjoys it most keenly who has most faith in his own re- 

 sources and who depends upon himself rather than on 

 the baggage which he carries. 



On the one hand then, our contentment in the woods 

 depends an our freedom to invent and imagine, and we 

 declare with honest pride that no boughten article could 

 be half so fine as our rather unsteady makeshift, which 

 requires a. little private propping; on the other, having 

 few possessions, each acquires a higher value in our eyes, 

 The empty box which we always expect to find near 

 every camping place and which serves as a table, chair, 

 and wash bench, is a finer acquisition than the most in- 

 tricate folding camp-stool. The kindling wood which we 

 had on the island was more satisfactory property than 

 government securities. It had given us the pleasure of 

 anticipation in the winter evenings at home when Father 

 told us how he had hidden it against his ever going there 

 again — he has many a cache of that kind or some other 

 through the State, and many of them mouldered years 

 ago, though he could still find the places; then the pleas- 

 ure of discovery, to find it still there after these years; of 

 satisfaction because it was better than had been boasted; 

 of pure aj^thetic gratification because it had so much 

 beauty looked up in it. Whether, if we had gone in well 

 supplied with patent kindlers, distrusting the existence of 

 our own wood or our power of finding it, those four rainy 

 days on the island would have been equally enjoyable, 

 cannot be told, but it ia not improbable that such faint- 

 heartedness would have destroyed our good hope and 

 marked the time as a "hardship" of the sort at which 

 guides curl the lip a little. Our wood, however, was 

 something more than an old black slab which started the 

 fire in the morning and hastened the cooking; it had in 

 it a powerful genie — for genii are made from the fire 

 element, you know— which came out whenever a bit of 

 the wood was laid in the fireplace, and not only busied 

 itself about the humble tasks which were expected of it, 

 but quite transformed our meagre belongings with the 

 graciousness of its company, cheered us by its geniality, 

 took to philosophizing occasionally on its own account, and 

 sometimes lectured on life, art, and ethics, to those of us 

 who cared to listen. We burned it sparingly, not stingily, 

 because we liked to see the genie, but as if its right to 

 existence was as good as our ovra; watched the dense, 

 black smoke, the fierce, yellow flame and the pitch frying 

 out of it, watched it and spoke often of its beauty and 

 good qualities, and no one ever hinted that the remark 

 had not all the charm of novelty. 



ON THE MEAN ESTATE OF FOURTH LAKE. 



Fourth Lake is about four miles long by a little less 

 than half as broad, and as uninteresting as a butter statue. 

 It has no features to speak of; three streams are connected 

 with it, too sluggish to be called tributaries, and a horse- 

 back walls the eastern shore. Of sand theshore, the steep 

 bank of sand too and of gravel bi-ought here ages ago by 

 the ice — about all the solid land to be found: the land 

 which was always here, miles and miles of it, is largely 

 under w^ater. A few small islands in the lake on a founda- 

 tion of solid ledge, by contrast with the main ahoi-e, 

 strengthen the impression of mistaken economy and 

 general ruin resulting; as if the bottom had dropped out 

 of the region some ages since for lack of good underpin- 

 ning. Fourth Lake is so unlike the rest of the world that 

 it makes one feel as if he were his own antipode and 

 boimd to stand on his head in order- to keep up .the illusion. 



Any one vrho has lived " on clean Penobscot waters, 



where there is good slate and granite under all, doesn't 

 know what to do with such a Dutch country, and hasn't 

 even a name by which to curse it. Bog it is not, nor 

 swamp, nor marsh, nor meadow, but literally "'sunken 

 land;" we of the Penobscot have nothing, unless on the 

 Mattawamkeag, which is not known to me, like this flat 

 desolation of moose-ear, traversed by dead streams of 

 labyrinthine crookedness and overhimgof mornings with 

 thick mists and the smell of rotting vegetation, The 

 water is brandy-colored, full of suspended black particles, 

 probably washed from the decaying moose-ear; not fit to 

 use until it has been boiled. 



The maps say that Fourth Lake lies north and south, 

 with its outlet to the north; but I beg leave to differ. In 

 September the sun doesn't rise in the north, and by the 

 sun that lake lies about northwest and southeast, with the 

 outlet in the latter direction. We didn't set a compass to 

 determine it, but there are things which one knows with- 

 out the help of the dictionary; and north is in every good 

 woodsman's head so firmly fixed that he will believe his 

 own instinct against map and compass, disregarding both 

 if they don't agree with him. "Map's wrong," he says, 

 and off he goes following north in his head, as true as the 

 wild goose. He doesn't stop to look at the branches of the 

 trees and the moss on the rocks and the other signs of the 

 story books, he himself is a magnet. But it makes very 

 little difference if the maps of this region are not correct 

 as to direction, for thpre is no direction to anything here. 

 Even the water doesn't know which way to rim; you can 

 paddle up Unknown for the better part of twohoirrs", facing 

 every point on the card, and then not get where you can 

 see out of the moose-ear, or put foot on dry land, or get 

 to any place where, if the year is wet like this year, you 

 can swim, wade or walk ashore. 



Unknown is the third stream which connects with 

 Fourth Lake, the largest, longest, dreariest of them all. 

 It winds down from the Unlxuown Lakes, the crookedest 

 stream in the world, unless perhaps Thoroughfflre Brook 

 on the AUegash; and, after neglecting two or three gaps 

 in the horseback by which it might have forced a passage 

 to the lake, enters on the left side about half-way down. 

 It is a wilderness of moose ear, a mile wide at least, 

 fenced with dry kyle— that is, standing dead trees— and 

 fish-hawks' nests. Sebattis used to call it "his farm," it 

 is so flat and wide. The moose-ear, by way of explana- 

 tion, is the Pontederia oordata, better known elsewhere 

 as "pickerel weed;" but as with us the Brassenia peltata 

 and the various kinds of Potamogeton are called "pick- 

 erel weed," it seemed best to retain the huntei'.s name, 

 bestowed because the leaves resemble the long, narrow 

 ears of the moose, both as more exact and more apt; for 

 the Pontederia is not, commonly speaking, a weed. In 

 single specimens the moose-ear is a beautiful plant, and 

 as it grows on the margins of ponds in clumps of shining 

 green, as clean and crisp as a calla, with spikes of purple 

 bloom dotted with gold, and played round by sportive in- 

 sects, it is a pleasant, summery sight; but hundreds of 

 acres of it, left on slimy flats by subsiding waters, or half 

 submerged by the rising floods, browned at the tips and 

 twisted by frost, looking (as Jot used to say) "as if it had 

 been struck by the Spanish mildew," are enough to make 

 one hate a place. Fourth Lake is the rubbish dump of 

 creation; all the world stuff left over after the work was 

 finished was dropped here— all the quag, dead wood, 

 moose-ear, horsebacks and odds and ends not used in pol- 

 ishing that artistically uninhabitable country between 

 Ujiion River and the Machias; only here instead of bogs, 

 barrens and boulders we have the impassable sunken 

 lands of Fifth Lake Stream, Penobscot Brook, the outlet, 

 and chief of all— of Unknown. 



There is a hungry, swallowing look about Fourth Lake; 

 like some of the monsters of which we read it seems to be 

 trying to cover its victims with slime, after which the 

 swallowing may be taken as a matter of course. It is en- 

 tirely in keeping that it should be the greatest rendezvous 

 for sea serpents in the State. 



AccorcUng to the newspapers the sea serpent — he is 

 always called the sea serpent, because he could n't possibly 

 be one— swarms about this lake; his chief business is to 

 keep its waters boiling with his gyrations and to exhibit 

 for the benefit of chance spectators. He is seldom less 

 than 30 or 40ft, long by the time the story gets to the 

 Portland papers, and as he roils out of water he leaves a 

 wake behind him proportionate in length to the credulity 

 of the onlooker. He has a way also of raising his head 

 3 or 4ft. above water, and no one ever fails to tell how it 

 shines in the sun. In one of the back numbers "of For- 

 1 EST AND Stream he crossed to a neighboring lake and 

 carried off the body of a lumberman, breaking a 2in. 

 hawser. At times he goes on shore and gorges himself on 

 deer, and his track has been seen on the snow in winter 

 when he came out to frolic on the land ! The length of 

 the tales and the veracity of the observer are always 

 I equal, according to the newspapers. Even though experi- 

 enced hunters smile and say that the Fourth Lake sea 

 serpent wears an otter skin and that his more common 

 antics are precisely those of three or four otters playing 

 together, the serpent has now been on duty for bo long a 

 time that be should be relieved and suffered to share the 

 honorable retirement of the dingmaul, the side linger and 

 the walrus which used to frisk and gambol in the neighbor- 

 hood of Chesuncook in the dimly historic period of thirty 

 years ago. 



A premium might safely be put on Fourth Lake as the 

 most unattractive piece of scenery in the State, to which 

 not even the efforts of the sea serpent have been sufficient 

 to draw a crowd. Any one not professedly a pot-hunter 

 has no reason for going there. But that is just why we 

 were there; our first and chief est care was to get some- 

 thing to put in the kettle, and that can always be pro- 

 vided here. In the summer there must be many deer in 

 the moose-ear land; in the old days, what a paradise for 

 moose. The lake is full of eels, great ones, that come up 

 to the water's edge during the night and carry off all the 

 refuse they find, of white perch with usually blue throats, 

 and of pickerel to tell of whose excellence would require 

 a separate chapter. We had expected to get all the 

 ducks we wanted, but the water was so high that even a 

 woodduck could see all over the country, so that it was 

 impossible to paddle up to them. And, besides, they are 

 scarce, having been drawn north, we were told, by the 

 wild rice planted on Mattagoodus and other Mattawam- 

 keag waters. In the old days, in four successive morn- 

 ings, Father once shot and saved twenty-eight ducks, 

 which . was all they could eat or give awaj^, although 

 . :Sebatti8 had. a "^^7 P^^**?" ^^culty for puttjng a great 

 Seal of good' victual where' "the bags don't got Mm," A 



