THE MAINE WOODS. 
hornbeam paddles, be dips his way along. He is but 
dim and misty to me, obscured by the asons that lie be¬ 
tween the bark-canoe and the batteau. He builds no 
house of logs, but a wigwam of skins. He eats no hot 
bread and sweet cake, but musquash and moose-meat 
and the fat of bears. He glides up the Millinocket and 
is lost to my sight, as a more distant and misty cloud is 
seen flitting by behind a nearer, and is lost in space. 
So he goes about his destiny, the red face of man. 
After having passed the night, and buttered our boots 
for the last time, at Uncle George’s, whose dogs almost 
devoured him for joy at his return, we kept on down the 
river the next day, about qight miles on foot, and then 
took a batteau, with a man to pole it* to Mattawamkeag, 
ten more. At the middle of that very night, to make 
a swift conclusion to a long story, we dropped our 
buggy over the half-finished bridge at Oldtown, where 
we heard the confused din and clink of a hundred 
saws, which never rest, and at six o’clock the next 
morning one of the party was steaming his way to Mas¬ 
sachusetts. 
What is most striking in the Maine wilderness is the 
continuousness of the forest, with fewer open intervals 
or glades than you had imagined. Except the few 
burnt-lands, the narrow intervals on the rivers, the bare 
tops of the high mountains, and the lakes and streams, 
the forest is uninterrupted. It is even more grim and 
wild than you had anticipated, a damp and intricate 
wilderness, in the spring everywhere wet and miry. 
The aspect of the country, indeed, is universally stern 
and savage, excepting the distant views of the forest 
from hills, and the lake prospects, which are mild and 
