KTAADN. 
15 
to Canada. Neither horse nor cow, nor vehicle of any 
kind, had ever passed over this ground; the cattle, and 
the few bulky articles which the loggers use, being got 
up in the winter on the ice, and down again before it 
breaks up. The evergreen woods had a decidedly sweet 
and bracing fragrance; the air was a sort of diet-drink, 
and we walked on buoyantly in Indian file, stretching 
our legs. Occasionally there was a small opening on 
the bank, made for the purpose of log-rolling, where we 
got a sight of the river, — always a rocky and rippling 
stream. The roar of the rapids, the note of a whistler- 
duck on the river, of the jay and chickadee around us, 
and of the pigeon-woodpecker in the openings, were the 
sounds that we heard. This was what you might call 
a bran-new country; the only roads were of Nature’s 
making, and the few houses were camps. Here, then, 
one could no longer accuse institutions and society, but 
must front the true source of evil. 
There are three classes of inhabitants who either fre¬ 
quent or inhabit the country which we had now entered;— 
first, the loggers, who, for a part of the year, the winter 
and spring, are far the most numerous, but in the sum¬ 
mer, except a few explorers for timber, completely desert 
it; second, the few settlers I have named, the only per¬ 
manent inhabitants, who live on the verge of it, and help 
raise supplies for the former; third, the hunters, mostly 
Indians, who range over it in their season. 
At the end of three miles, we came to the Mattaseunk 
stream and mill, where there was even a rude wooden 
railroad running down to the Penobscot, the last railroad 
we were to see. We crossed one tract, on the bank of 
the river, of more than a hundred acres of heavy timber, 
which had just been felled and burnt over, and was still 
