78 
THE MAINE WOODS. 
“ Those Fowler boys,” said Mrs. McCauslin, “ are per¬ 
fect ducks for the water.” They had run down to Lin¬ 
coln, according to her, thirty or forty miles, in a batteau, 
in the night, for a doctor, when it was so dark that they 
could not see a rod before them, and the river w r as swol¬ 
len so as to be almost a continuous rapid, so that the 
doctor cried , when they brought him up by daylight, 
“ Why, Tom, how did you see to steer ? ” “ We did n’t 
steer much,— only kept her straight.” And yet they 
met with no accident. It is true, the more difficult 
rapids are higher up than this. 
When we reached the Millinocket opposite to Tom’s 
house, and were waiting for his folks to set us over, for 
we had left our batteau above the Grand Falls, we dis¬ 
covered two canoes, with two men in each, turning up 
this stream from Shad Pond, one keeping the opposite 
side of a small island before us, while the other ap¬ 
proached the side where we were standing, examining 
the banks carefully for muskrats as they came along. 
The last proved to be Louis Neptune and his companion, 
now, at last, on their w r ay up to Chesuncook after moose ; 
but they were so disguised that we hardly knew them. 
At a little distance they might have been taken for 
Quakers, with their broad-brimmed hats, and overcoats 
with broad capes, the spoils of Bangor, seeking a settle¬ 
ment in this Sylvania, — or, nearer at hand, for fashion¬ 
able gentlemen the morning after a spree. Met face to 
face, these Indians in their native woods looked like the 
sinister and slouching fellows whom you meet picking 
up strings and paper in the streets of a city. There is, 
in fact, a remarkable and unexpected resemblance be¬ 
tween the degraded savage and the lowest classes in a 
great city. The one is no more a child of nature than 
