54 
THE MAINE WOODS. 
as he stood over them, that these jewels should have 
swam away in that Aboljacknagesic water for so long, 
so many dark ages ; — these bright fluviatile flowers, 
seen of Indians only, made beautiful, the Lord only 
knows why, to swim there ! I could understand better, 
for this, the truth of mythology, the fables of Proteus, 
and all those beautiful sea-monsters, — how all history, 
indeed, put to a terrestrial use, is mere history; but 
put to a celestial, is mythology always. 
But there is the rough voice of Uncle George, who 
commands at the frying-pan, to send over what you Ve 
got, and then you may stay till morning. The pork 
sizzles, and cries for fish. Luckily for the foolish race, 
and this particularly foolish generation of trout, the 
night shut down at last, not a little deepened by the 
dark side of Ktaadn, which, like a permanent shadow, 
reared itself from the eastern bank. Lescarbot, writing 
in 1609, tells us that the Sieur Champdore, who, with 
one of the people of the Sieur de Monts, ascended some 
fifty leagues up the St. John in 1608, found the fish so 
plenty, “ qu’en mettant la chaudiere sur le feu ils en avoi- 
ent pris sutfisamment pour eux disner avant que feau fust 
chaude.” Their descendants here are no less numerous. 
So we accompanied Tom into the woods to cut cedar- 
twigs for our bed. While he went ahead with the axe, 
and lopt off the smallest twigs of the flat-leaved cedar, 
the arbor-vitse of the gardens, we gathered them up, 
and returned with them to the boat, until it was loaded. 
Our bed was made with as much care and skill as a 
roof is shingled; beginning at the foot, and laying the 
twig end of the cedar upward, we advanced to the 
head, a course at a time, thus successively covering the 
stub-ends, and producing a soft and level bed. For us 
