34 
THE MAINE WOODS. 
made two converts to the Liberty party here , as I was told ; 
also, an odd number of the Westminster Review, for 
1834, and a pamphlet entitled History of the Erection 
of the Monument on the grave of Myron Holly. This 
was the readable, or reading matter, in a lumberer’s 
camp in the Maine woods, thirty miles from a road, 
which would be given up to the bears in a fortnight. 
These things were well thumbed and soiled. This gang 
was headed by one John Morrison, a good specimen of a 
Yankee ; and was necessarily composed of men not bred 
to the business of dam-building, but who were Jacks-at- 
all-trades, handy with the axe, and other simple imple¬ 
ments, and well skilled in wood and water craft. We 
had hot cakes for our supper even here, white as snow¬ 
balls, but without butter, and the never-failing sweet 
cakes, with which we filled our pockets, foreseeing that 
we should not soon meet with the like again. Such 
delicate puff-balls seemed a singular diet for backwoods** 
men. There was also tea without milk, sweetened with 
molasses. And so, exchanging a word with John Mor¬ 
rison and his gang when we had returned to the shore, 
and also exchanging our batteau for a better still, w.e 
made haste to improve the little daylight that remained. 
This camp, exactly twenty-nine miles from Mattawamr 
keag Point, by the way we had come, and about one 
hundred from Bangor by the river, was the last human 
habitation of any kind in this direction. Beyond, there 
was no trail; and the river and lakes, by batteaux and 
canoes, was considered the only practicable route. We 
were about thirty miles by the river from the summit 
of Ktaadn, which was in sight, though not more than 
twenty, perhaps, in a straight line. 
It being about the full of the moon, and a warm and 
