88 
THE MAINE WOODS. 
chiefly. 'Near Bangor, the fence-posts, on account of 
the frost’s heaving them in the clayey soil, were not 
planted in the ground, but were mortised into a trans¬ 
verse horizontal beam lying on the surface. After¬ 
wards, the prevailing fences were log ones, with some¬ 
times a Virginia fence, or else rails slanted over crossed 
stakes, —- and these zigzagged or played leap-frog all 
the way to the lake, keeping just ahead of us. After 
getting out of the Penobscot Valley, the country was 
unexpectedly level, or consisted of very even and equal 
swells, for twenty or thirty miles, never rising above the 
general level, but affording, it is said, a very good pros¬ 
pect in clear weather, with frequent views of Ktaadn, — 
straight roads and long hills. The houses were far 
apart, commonly small and of one story, but framed. 
There was very little land under cultivation, yet the forest 
did not often border the road. The stumps were fre¬ 
quently as high as one’s head, showing the depth of 
the snows. The white hay-caps, drawn over small 
stacks of beans or corn in the fields, on account of the 
rain, were a novel sight to me. We saw large flocks of 
pigeons, and several times came within a rod or two of 
partridges in the road. My companion said, that, in 
one journey out of Bangor, he and his son had shot sixty 
partridges from his buggy. The mountain-ash was now 
very handsome, as also the wayfarer’s-tree or hobble- 
bush, with its ripe purple berries mixed with red. The 
Canada thistle, an introduced plant, was the prevailing 
weed all the way to the lake, — the road-side in many 
places, and fields not long cleared, being densely filled 
with it as with a crop, to the exclusion of everything 
else. There were also whole fields full of ferns, now 
rusty and withering, which in older countries are com- 
