KTAADN. 
33 
a partial view of Ktaadn, its summit veiled in clouds, 
like a dark isthmus in that quarter, connecting the 
heavens with the earth. After two miles of smooth 
rowing across this lake, we found ourselves in the river 
again, which was a continuous rapid for one mile, to 
the dam, requiring all the strength and skill of our boat¬ 
men to pole up it. 
This dam is a quite important and expensive work 
for this country, whither cattle and horses cannot pene¬ 
trate in the summer, raising the whole river ten feet, 
and flooding, as they said, some sixty square miles by 
means of the innumerable lakes with which the river 
connects. It is a lofty and solid structure, with sloping 
piers some distance above, made of frames of logs filled 
with stones, to break the ice.* Here every log pays toll 
as it passes through the sluices. 
We filed into the rude logger’s camp at this place, 
such as I have described, without ceremony, and the 
cook, at that moment the sole occupant, at once set about 
preparing tea for his visitors. His fireplace, which the 
rain had converted into a mud-puddle, was soon blazing 
again, and we sat down on the log benches around it 
to dry us. On the well-flattened and somewhat faded 
beds of arbor-vitse leaves, which stretched on either 
hand under the eaves behind us, lay an odd leaf of the 
Bible, some genealogical chapter out of the Old Testa¬ 
ment ; and, half buried by the leaves, we found Emer¬ 
son’s Address on West India Emancipation, which had 
been left here formerly by one of our company, and had 
* Even the Jesuit missionaries, accustomed to the St. Lawrence 
and other rivers of Canada, in their first expeditions to the Abena- 
quinois, speak of rivers ferrees de rockers, shod with rocks. See also 
No. 10 Relations, for 1647, p. 185. 
2 * 0 
