98 
THE MAINE WOODS. 
also paddled by turns in the bows, now sitting with our 
legs extended, now sitting upon our legs, and now rising 
upon our knees; but I found none of these positions en¬ 
durable, and was reminded of the complaints of the old 
Jesuit missionaries of the torture they endured from 
long confinement in constrained positions in canoes, in 
their long voyages from Quebec to the Huron country; 
but afterwards I sat on the cross-bars, or stood up, and 
experienced no inconvenience. 
It was dead water for a couple of miles. The river 
had been raised about two feet by the rain, and lumber¬ 
ers were hoping for a flood sufficient to bring down the 
logs that were left in the spring. Its banks were seven 
or eight feet high, and densely covered with white and 
black spruce, — which, I think, must be the commonest 
trees thereabouts, — fir, arbor-vitas, canoe, yellow, and 
black birch, rock, mountain, and a few red maples, 
beech, black and mountain ash, the large-toothed aspen, 
many civil looking elms, now imbrowned, along the 
stream, and at first a few hemlocks also. We had not 
gone far before I was startled by seeing what I thought 
was an Indian encampment, covered with a red flag, on 
the bank, and exclaimed, “ Camp ! 99 to my comrades. I 
was slow to discover that it was a red maple changed 
by the frost. The immediate shores were also densely 
covered with the speckled alder, red osier, shrubby- 
willows or sallows, and the like. There were a few 
yellow-lily-pads still left, half-drowned, along the sides, 
and sometimes a white one. Many fresh tracks of 
moose were visible where the water was shallow, and 
on the shore, and the lily-stems were freshly bitten off 
by them. 
After paddling about two miles, we parted company 
