132 
THE MAINE WOODS. 
hear the rattling of his club; but, no doubt, he keeps 
pace with the improvements of the age, and uses a 
Sharpe’s rifle now; probably he gets all his armor made 
and repaired at Smith’s shop. One moose had been 
killed and another shot at within sight of the house 
within two years. I do not know whether Smith has yet 
got a poet to look after the cattle, which, on account of 
the early breaking up of the ice, are compelled to sum¬ 
mer in the woods, but I would suggest this office to such 
of my acquaintances as love to w r rite verses and go a- 
gunning. 
After a dinner, at which apple-sauce was the greatest 
luxury to me, but our moose-meat was oftenest called for 
by the lumberers, I walked across the clearing into the 
forest, southward, returning along the shore. For my 
dessert, I helped myself to a large slice of the Chesun- 
cook woods, and took a hearty draught of its waters with 
all my senses. The woods were as fresh and full of 
vegetable life as a lichen in wet weather, and contained 
many interesting plants ; but unless they are of white 
pine, they are treated with as little respect here as a 
mildew, and in the other case they are only the more 
quickly cut down. The shore was of coarse, flat, slate 
rocks, often in slabs, with the surf beating on it. The 
rocks and bleached drift-logs, extending some way into 
the shaggy woods, showed a rise and fall of six or eight 
feet, caused partly by the dam at the outlet. They said 
that in winter the snow was three feet deep on a level 
here, and sometimes four or five, — that the ice on the 
lake was two feet thick, clear, and four feet including 
the snow-ice. Ice had already formed in vessels. 
We lodged here this Sunday night in a comfortable 
bedroom, apparently the best one; and all that I noticed 
