CHESUNCOOK. 
87 
at Bangor that evening, with his canoe and a compan¬ 
ion, Sabattis Solomon, who was going to leave Bangor 
the following Monday with Joe’s father, by way of the 
Penobscot, and join Joe in moose-hunting at Chesun- 
cook, when we had done with him. They took supper 
at my friend’s house and lodged in his barn, saying that 
they should fare worse than that in the woods. They 
only made Watch bark a little, when they came to the 
door in the night for water, for he does not like In¬ 
dians. 
The next morning Joe and his canoe were put on 
board the stage for Moosehead Lake, sixty and odd 
miles distant, an hour before we started in an open 
wagon. We carried hard bread, pork, smoked beef, tea, 
sugar, etc., seemingly enough for a regiment; the sight 
of which brought together reminded me by what ignoble 
means we had maintained our ground hitherto. We 
went by the Avenue Road, which is quite straight and 
very good, north-westward toward Moosehead Lake, 
through more than a dozen flourishing towns, with al¬ 
most every one its academy, — not one of which, how¬ 
ever, is on my General Atlas, published, alas ! in 1824; 
so much are they before the age, or I behind it! The 
earth must have been considerably lighter to the shoul¬ 
ders of General Atlas then. 
It rained all this day and till the middle of the next 
forenoon, concealing the landscape almost entirely; but 
we had hardly got out of the streets of Bangor before I 
began to be exhilarated by the sight of the wild fir and 
spruce-tops, and those of other primitive evergreens, 
peering through the mist in the horizon. It was like 
the sight and odor of cake to a schoolboy. He who 
rides and keeps the beaten track studies the fences 
