14 
THE MAINE WOODS. 
enough to put a question to them. No people can long 
continue provincial in character who have the propensity 
for politics and whittling, and rapid travelling, which the 
Yankees have, and who are leaving the mother country 
behind in the variety of their notions and inventions. 
The possession and exercise of practical talent merely 
are a sure and rapid means of intellectual culture and 
independence. 
The last edition of Greenleaf’s Map of Maine hung 
on the wall here, and, as we had no pocket-map, we re¬ 
solved to trace a map of the lake country. So, dipping 
a wad of tow into the lamp, we oiled a sheet of paper 
on the oiled table-cloth, and, in good faith, traced what 
we afterwards ascertained to be a labyrinth of errors, 
carefully following the outlines of the imaginary lakes 
which the map contains. The Map of the Public Lands 
of Maine and Massachusetts is the only one I have seen 
that at all deserves the name. It was while we were 
engaged in this operation that our companions arrived. 
They had seen the Indians’ fire on the Five Islands', and 
so we concluded that all was right. 
Early the next morning we had mounted our packs, 
and prepared for a tramp up the West Branch, my com¬ 
panion having turned his horse out to pasture for a week 
or ten days, thinking that a bite of fresh grass, and a 
taste of running water, would do him as much good as 
backwoods fare and new country influences his master. 
Leaping over a fence, we began to follow an obscure 
trail up the northern bank of the Penobscot. There 
was now no road further, the river being the only high¬ 
way, and but half a dozen log-huts confined to its banks, 
to be met with for thirty miles. On either hand, and 
beyond, was a wholly uninhabited wilderness, stretching 
