4 
THE MAINE WOODS. 
of men there seems to be, like so many busy demons, to 
drive the forest all out of the country, from every soli¬ 
tary beaver-swamp and mountain-side, as soon as pos¬ 
sible. 
At Oldtown we walked into a batteau-manufactory. 
The making of batteaux is quite a business here for the 
supply of the Penobscot River. We examined some on 
the stocks. They are light and shapely vessels, calcu¬ 
lated for rapid and rocky streams, and to be carried over 
long portages on men’s shoulders, from twenty to thirty 
feet long, and only four or four and a half wide, sharp 
at both ends like a canoe, though broadest forward 
on the bottom, and reaching seven or eight feet over the 
water, in order that they may slip over rocks as gently 
as possible. They are made very slight, only two boards 
to a side, commonly secured to a few light maple or 
other hard-wood knees, but inward are of the clearest 
and widest white-pine stuff, of which there is a great 
waste on account of their form, for the bottom is left per¬ 
fectly flat, not only from side to side, but from end to 
end. Sometimes they become “ hogging ” even, after 
long use, and* the boatmen then turn them over and 
straighten them by a weight at each end. They told us 
that one wore out in two years, or often in a single trip, 
on the rocks, and sold for from fourteen to sixteen dol¬ 
lars. There was something refreshing and wildly musi¬ 
cal to my ears in the very name of the white man’s 
canoe, reminding me of Charlevoix and Canadian Voya- 
geurs. The batteau is a sort of mongrel between the 
canoe and the boat, a fur-trader’s boat. 
The ferry here took us past the Indian island. As 
we left the shore, I observed a short, shabby, washer¬ 
woman-looking Indian — they commonly have the woe- 
