62 



FOREST AND STREAM. 



[Feb. is, 1891. 



IN THE REGION ROUND NICATOWIS. 



■VIU.— THE FOURTH LAKE HORSEBACK. 



IF anything about Fourth Lake is worthy of special 

 notice it is the "horseback," as kames, or the 

 moraines left by glaciers are called from their shape, 



Kames are so common here that we have ceased to 

 regard them as curiosities, and wonder equally that 

 strangers should see anything remarkable in them, and 

 that they should fail to recognize as quickly as ourselves 

 any trace of them. Kames usually show as rounded 

 ridges, in appearance sometimes like an old railroad em- 

 bankment, at other times a long, low hill, varying in 

 height from a few feet to a hundred, of sand or loose 

 gravel either clear or bearing pebbles and boulders, 

 usually of granite and sometimes of great size. They 

 cross the country every few miles, usually flowing south- 

 east, some barely traceable, some interrupted, others like 

 the Whale's Back of Aurora continuous for miles, a con^ 

 spicuous feature of the landscape. Some can be dis- 

 tinctly ti'aced for more than a hundred miles, at their 

 lower ends most spread out into kame-plains, of which 

 the great blueberry plains of Cherrylield are an example. 

 The presence of ice-worn pebbles and disintegrated soil, 

 usually sand or gravel, are enough to show even the tyro 

 the road that the glacier used to travel: and on the tops 

 of the mountains, northwest and southeast, almost as 

 exact as the compass itself, are the scratches of the nails 

 in the glacier's shoes. 



The Fourth Lake horseback follows the left shore of 

 the lake most of the way from one end to the other; at 

 the upper end it crosses the lake— our island was a part 

 of it—and reappearing, follows up the side of Fifth Lake 

 Stream; at the lower end it turns at the carry to Dobsy 

 Lake (for the very good reason that if it didn't turn there 

 the carry would have been somewhere else) and runs in 

 a double ridge across to Dobsy: thence it follows up the 

 shore of the lake for half a mile to the end of Norway 

 Point. Whether it still continues up the lake or across it 

 to Pocumpcus and the Machias system of kames must be 

 determined by those who know the country; as also 

 whether the other end goes down past Fifth Lake to the 

 Pleasant Eiver system. But its general course is of less 

 interest than its action about Fourth Lake. Here it does 

 something peculiar: it flows in a westerly or northwest- 

 erly dii-ectioh for about three miles. Kames rarely take 

 this com-se, and when they do so, unless compelled by 

 some local cause, they flow from west to east. But this 

 apparently flowed from east to west— for it is probable 

 that it belongs to the Pleasant Eiver system. What 

 makes it vary from the normal direction? It would not 

 be surprising if some things concerning the courses of 

 glaciers yet remain to be explained, for wherever I have 

 noticed the west and east horsebacks, as on the way from 

 the West Branch to Katahdin about Middle Joe Mary 

 Lake there seems to have been no obstacle in the way 

 sufiicient to have forced them out of their natural south- 

 easterly course. And here at Fourth Lake there is no 

 apparent cause for a deflection, much less for such an 

 unusual westering: if ever a glacier had an opportunity 

 to run just where it wished to it ought to be in this flat 

 country, with nothing to oppose or turn it aside. Exact 

 observations may prove the real deviation to be less than 

 I think; but the course of this horseback, if carefully 

 studied, should throw some additional light on the causes 

 of the direction of glacial movements. 



The Fourth Lake horseback is from thirty to forty feet 

 in mean height, composed of fine materials, sand, gravel 

 and small stones. In places its whole side is laid open to 

 the weather almost back to the line of its greatest height; 

 at other points the side is just beginning to slip, and again 

 the rounded top is entirely unbroken. Many kames are 

 in worse condition, but I do not remember one which 

 seems doomed to destruction in so short a time, from 

 natural causes only. Father says that within the years he 

 has been there his island has worn away perceptibly, 

 although it is only a few feet above water. How much 

 faster will the rain and melting snow wash down the loose 

 drift of the main kame, and the undermined trees tear 

 away with them great masses of its substance. When 

 once the kame is laid open to its main axis, the work will 

 go on with quintupled rapidity. It is only a matter of 

 time for this horseback to be reduced to a bar of pebbles 

 and gravel. Then what? On a lake without a dam it 

 might not be so easy to predict; but where a dam alters 

 the level of the water many feet during the year, so that 

 at one season it washes the top of a bar and at another it 

 mines its roots, changes go on much faster than under 

 ordinary conditions. We can depend upon men to keep 

 dams wherever there is a good water power or logs to be 

 driven out. To go back a little, the sunken land of this 

 lake was undoubtedly caused by the flowage of the dam, 

 which killed all the trees on what was once a flat cedar 

 swamp, washed them away and planted moose-ear in their 

 places; and, at whatever time the snow and rains shall 

 succeed in carrying off all the fine materials of the horse- 

 back, the dam and the ice will combine to remove the 

 gravel bar left behind, and high water and ice together, 

 in no long geologic future, but in time measured by cen- 

 turies if not by scores of years, will scour out the sunken 

 land of the unknown, behind what was once the horse- 

 back, until Fourth Lake will occupy a position nearly at 

 right angles to its greatest length at the present day." 



IX.— FORWARD. 



If it had not been that our ultimate point on the Ma- 

 chias, the old Hemenway Farm on Fletcher Brook, and 

 the climb of Fletcher Mountain for a view of Fifth Lake, 

 required two consecutive days of fair weather, one for 

 drying the bushes, the other for the trip, it would have 

 taken worse weather than this to keep us four days on an 

 island. But on Tuesday, although it was foggy and 

 foul, we caught a few more pickerel, packed up our 

 goods and started down the lake, determined either to 

 run into better weather or to make it come after us. 



The dam at the foot of Fourth Lake is not in good con- 

 dition; and as some logs had been left side-boomed into 

 the outlet there was a poor chance to unload our goods 

 and take the canoe by. As we crossed the dam to look at it, 

 a great blue heron that had seen the advantages for fish- 

 ing aiforded by a stream which had forced its way under 

 the shore end of the dam, rose within 10ft. of us. His 

 neck was drawn back behind his shoulders, his head ex- 

 tended a Uttle beyond the breast, wings only three- 



fourths unfolded and legs trailing, not dangling ner 

 stretched out behind as in full flight, but held just as 

 they had been when he had sprung upward— precisely 

 the attitude in which the Japanese paint cranes rising to 

 fly, a striking confirmation of the spirit and exactness of 

 their pictures. 



There is a carry of a quarter of a mile past the quick 

 water below the dam, and we lugged one turn across; 

 but as the carry had not been much used of late and 

 bark-peelers had fa.llen hemlock logs across the path 

 during the summer, Jot declared that rather than carry 

 the second turn, "he guessed he would run it past," 

 which he did, affli'ming that "the water was just nothing 

 at all." It might not be weU for the inexperienced water 

 man to take Jot's word for this, though no one in camp 

 ever doubted it even in the eleventh degree. On the way 

 across we came upon a flock of four partridges and shot 

 all of them. 



Below the carry the stream is very pretty, resembling 

 stretches of the East Branch Penobscot, notably that just 

 above Stair Falls. Gnarled swamj) maples, just turning- 

 red, and ash trees grew among the meadow jjrasscs, and 

 by the water's edge Osmunda regalis spectahilU with its 

 masses of tropical foliage, atid scarlet cardinals, as we call 

 the red lobelia, reduplicating its redness in our speech 

 just ae in nature it is always doubled by its own reflection 

 m the stream. There were bits of meadow, some current 

 and rocks in places. At the head of an island was a 

 gravel bed, which we had to walk past, and not far below 

 we heard the noise of a smart little fall, which Jot ran. 

 Then we came into the flowage of Third Lake, like that 

 about Fourth Lake, a long stretch of moose-ear and dry 

 kyle. 



A mile or two down the lake we landed on a sandy 

 beach on the right side where a sea-wall is forming, and 

 had our usual feast of pickerel. Jot said that he was 

 getting ashamed to look a pickerel in the face. A log cock 

 {Ceophlvens pilecdus) flew by cackling, the only one I re- 

 member hearing on the cruise, and little maple seedlings 

 were growing in the crevices of the drift-wood. 



We had hoped that it would clear off by noon; instead, 

 it began to rain and blow hard in our faces, smiting us 

 with heavy gusts whenever we came out from the lee of 

 a point or an island. But we put on our rubber clothes 

 and called it the best weather we had seen, since it could 

 not keep us back. Third Lake, though seven miles long, 

 is narrow and has islands in it, so that it is impossible to 

 raise a dangerous sea, and the shore, being rocky, bold 

 and good, without sunken rocks, is a safe one for'cauoe- 

 ing. Granite predominates, but it alternates with trap, 

 with such abrupt lines of demarcation that if I only knew 

 something of geology I think I might tell a jjretty story 

 about it. The islands in the lake are small and pretty. 

 At one place they make narrows only about one-fourth 

 the average width of the lake, undoubtedly a great cross- 

 ing place for animals, especially for bears. On the right 

 the shore growth is cedar, signifying a swamp behind, 

 the left has considerable birch growth, pretty beaches and 

 the look of a shore that affords good camping places. 



We held to the right, although if^ was the lee shore, 

 because this is straight, while the left is broken by deep 

 bays and pockets and a long arm at the lovper end. Father 

 had told us this at the start, advising us to face the ^viad 

 rather than take the longer cruise under the lee of the 

 other shore. He had been here once only, twenty-three 

 years before, when he had come up the lake guided by 

 another canoe and had retixrned by a different route; yet 

 now, after all this lapse of years, retracing the course in 

 reverse order, his memory did not fail even details. The 

 outlet is blind. Usually one sees a break in the woods, a 

 bit of low shore, the gates of a dam, or some sign of river 

 driving which serves as a guide; but here all these were 

 lacking at the real outlet, and at its right is a logau which 

 has every aj)pearance of the natural exit from a lake. 

 The real outlet lies under a point almost entirely con- 

 cealed by a long spit of sand which runs out from the 

 right shore almost across to the point, so that one is 

 tempted to sheer away thinking that the shore is continu- 

 ous. Originally a narrow stream must have flowed 

 quietly out of the lake between wooded banks, but as 

 there was no chance to shore a dam at the outlet, the dam 

 was placed about half a mile down on the stream. Its 

 flowage makes a large pool which the sand spit already 

 mentioned divides from the lake. 



It was stiU raining when we landed above the dam, 

 raining so hard that the camp stuff and myself were tem- 

 porarily deposited xmder a river- driver's shelter of hem- 

 lock bark, which we shared with a large spider until the 

 tent was ready. I tried to keep the water off' the guns 

 and to observe the spider; but she curled up her legsaiad 

 observed me, the usual way with wild creatures when 

 one has time to watch them. 



Our larder was well supplied this night — one dxick, foui 

 partridges, five good pickerel. Why then the tempta- 

 tion which came to Father when he took his gun and 

 followed the road along the stream to look out the 

 councry? In the yard of a lumber camp, feeding among 

 the grass and sxjrouts, was a two-year-old deer. He saw 

 the deer iirst; as it was raining, the deer did not smell 

 him, nor see him until they were not more than two rods 

 apart; even then he lay so low, hat off, only his rubber 

 coat showing, that the deer showed no alarm but con- 

 tinued to pluck grass and chew it slowly with one end 

 sticking out of the corner of his mouth as he gazed 

 curiously over his shoulder at the unnatural object in 

 the hollow. He went away unmolested. Even when 

 there is no novelty or excitement in shooting game most 

 people would like to know whether the giin would go 

 or miss fire, or, at least, what would happen if they 

 pulled the trigger. It was not from respect for the law 

 that this deer saved his life, nor from fear of the war- 

 dens, but because he was a pretty wild creature and there 

 were those four partridges, the duck and the pickerel to 

 be disposed of. When Father told the story he met with 

 our approval, which is m^re than good deeds sometimes 

 receive. 



X.— WHEN IT RAINS, 



The journal says nothing about it but I have an im- 

 pression that it rained that night. At least, one of 

 Father's rubber boots had been carelessly left leaning 

 against the tent and in the morning it was partly full of 

 water, as Father discovered when he put it on. I know 

 that it rained in the morning, for the journal mentions it 

 casually. 



Even in fair weather Third Lake Dam must be about 

 as dull as a sanitarium, but in a rainstorm there is posi- 

 tively nothing for ^ -vyorftan to do iinless the fire burns 



holes in the family clothing or the men wear out their 

 stockings. The men tried fishing which amused them 

 and did the fish no hiut, they caught but one in two days. 

 They also hunted for cranberries, but the water had been 

 kept on so late that the cranberries were just in bloom 

 and they found but a pint. 



In the afternoon Jot came up to the tent lugging a 

 great mud-turtle wliich he had seen asleej) in the sluice- 

 way, crawled up to and captured. His turtleship was 

 highly indignant; bepawed and kicked, and bit at every- 

 thing that was held out toward him; nor was he any bet- 

 ter pleased when he found himself tethered to a stake in 

 the dooryard, tied by the tail, as that part of his anatomy 

 best suited for such a use. He tramped about his limited 

 course with the vigor of a thoroughly enraged fat man, 

 looking ridiculously like a small elephant as he lumbered 

 along with a swinging but uncertain stride, lifting him- 

 self high on those club-footed legs that were as loosely 

 enveloped in skin as the true elephant's. His shell was 

 about 13in. long, smoothly plated, of a greenish color, 

 narrow beneath. Jot called" him a "toad turtle." Hence- 

 forward Old Turk, as we named him, was a fixture in the 

 dooryard; that is, as nearly a fixture as anything can be 

 that several times in the day pulls its tail out of the 

 nooses, hitches, knots and combinations by which he is 

 successively made fast, or failing in this jerks up stake 

 and all and walks off with it. Turtles know just where 

 to go in order to reach water, but Turk always marched 

 off into the bushes and crouched there with his head up, 

 ugly and belligerent, when one of us followed up the trail. 

 If he had not had this disposition to stop and fight, we 

 might never have seen him again after some of his nightly 

 escapades; for in a stern chase it was not easy to over- 

 take the old fellow. He was not a flyer, but he had a 

 good, long stride, and attended strictly to the business of 

 getting away until he reached the cover of the bushes, 

 if anyone thinks that the hare of the fable had a long 

 nap that day when the tortoise passed under the wire fii-st, 

 it shows that he doesn't understand the paces of a turtle 

 that knows where he is going. As for our keeping Turk, 

 it was positively necessary. Having refused to eat deer 

 meat when we might have had it, we were going to eat 

 mud turtle when we had nothing else. 



T hursday morning was misty, but I could get down to 

 the shore to wash, which was an improvement on ablu - 

 tions in the camp-kettle cover, that cover being pointed 

 and unable to stand straight unless propped up by all the 

 spare boots. But just after breakfast the rain remembered 

 what was expected of it, and came dov^n in torrents. In 

 half an hour over aninch of water was caughtin a straight- 

 edged basin. We streaked the tent, and streaked it to 

 make the water run down the sides and still it leaked. 

 Then streams began to run in under the sides of 

 the tent and to make little lakes in the middle of 

 the bed. The blankets were snatched np, table knives 

 seiiied and the overflow soon l ednced through a channel 

 which was called Case-knife Sluice, which may be de- 

 scribed as rising in a bed of fir boughs and flowing directly 

 into a fire-place. 



Itrained all the rest of the day,the only vai'iety being Old 

 Turk's occasional escajies and recaptures and speculations 

 as to what kind of a stew he would make. Six meals had 

 made a decided hole in our four partridges, six pickerel 

 and one duck, btifc the pickerel were of good size, and b?" 

 making the birds into stews wo had been well fed, and 

 had supper and breakfast insured before Turk's life was 

 endangered. A stew is a very economical form of living 

 in the woods. It is really a meat chowder, into which goes 

 all the spare victuals you have, to be cooked together in a 

 very black kettle. The advantages are that everything 

 tastes of the meat in it and there is only one cooking dish 

 to wash, Stews are prime favorites with woodsmen, who 

 sometimes call them by the lumbermen'.s name, swagan. 

 and sometimes by the Indian term cosoinbo. 



In the aftemoon Father went down stream a,nd reported 

 a foot of water in the road where there had been none 

 the day before. He thought that by wading to the hips 

 one might get down as far as the logan on the stream. 

 Altogether, our prospects of seeing Fletcher Brook and 

 mountain were no brighter than the weather, That night 

 we heard a mill whistle clear and distinct, and knowing 

 that it must be the tannery on Grand Lake Stream we set 

 our watches at half-past tiVe. A little later we heard a 

 gun fired somewhere on the eastern arm of the lake. It 

 seemed strange to hear these evidences of man's presence 

 when all around everything looked so solitary and remote. 



After the supper dishes were washed it was our habit 

 to spread down the blankets, and reclining on them look 

 at the fire and talk as the mood came upon us. We did 

 not meddle with general themes, but many were the 

 stories of deer, moose and caribou, of hunters and lum- 

 bermen, and of points of woodcraft which would have 

 made Thoreau forget all his lofty philosophy in undis- 

 ' guised envy of the material that there went to waste. 

 Father had his own store of good things, and Jot's expe- 

 rience had been wider and more varied than falls to the 

 lot of many. Everythuig had an interest for him. He 

 had noticed and remembered with the instinct of a born 

 naturalist. He told me that the gray land turtles eat 

 strawberries; he had seen them in fields with their faces 

 red with strawberry juice. When I asked what ate the 

 turtles he answered that he knew nothing that did except 

 bears. He told how he had seen a small hawk take five 

 young kingbirds from the nest at one swoop, two in each 

 claw and one in her bill jjerhaps, he could not tell the ar- 

 rangement, but he knew fact. He brought me the 

 Ejriphegus virgiidana. which I never had seen, and told 

 me that the root was good for canker. It had never oc- 

 cuired to me that it was any harder for young sheldrake 

 to get out of their lofty 'neat than for young robins, 

 although I knew that the young ducks had no quills for 

 a long time, I had always supposed that they tumbled 

 out with the heedlessness of the robin. But Jot told me 

 —he had seen it— that the mother duck got them upon 

 her back and flew down with them, leaving a string of 

 ducklings behind her as she touched the water and they 

 slid off!. From the first they could run and slapper on 

 the water just like the old birds; when they were tired 

 they climbed upon their mother's back again. Of coiarse 

 some one will doubt this. Perhaps the books do not tell 

 this— I have taken particular pains not to see what they 

 do tell— but Jot said so, and if the books disagree, they, 

 like the maps and the compass, are wrong. The ducka may 

 do something else; it is certain that they do this also, for 

 it is an impossibility to doubt the word of an intelligent 

 hunter when you know anything about woods' matters 

 yourself. To doubt it argues, ^es aa4 proves, your ovm 



