146 
THE MAINE WOODS. 
He did not know, but began to conjecture. He asked 
what those great ships were called that carried soldiers, 
“ Men-of-war,” we answered. “Well,” he said, “when 
the English ships came up the river, they could not go 
any farther, it was so narrow there ; they must go back, 
— go-back, — that’s Que-bec.” I mention this to show 
the value of his authority in the other cases. 
Late at night the other two Indians came home from 
moose-hunting, not having been successful, aroused the 
fire again, lighted their pipes, smoked awhile, took some¬ 
thing strong to drink, and ate some moose-meat, and, 
finding what room they could, lay down on the moose- 
hides ; and thus we passed the night, two white men and 
four Indians, side by side. 
When I awoke in the morning the weather was driz¬ 
zling. One of the Indians was lying outside, rolled in 
his blanket, on the opposite side of the fire, for want of 
room. Joe had neglected to awake my companion, and 
he had done no hunting that night. Tahmunt was mak¬ 
ing a cross-bar for his canoe with a singularly shaped 
knife, such as I have since seen other Indians using. 
The blade was thin, about three quarters of an inch wide, 
and eight or nine inches long, but curved out of its plane 
into a hook, which he said made it more convenient to 
shave with. As the Indians very far north and north¬ 
west use the same kind of knife, I suspect that it was 
made according to an aboriginal pattern, though some 
white artisans may use a similar one. The Indians 
baked a loaf of flour bread in a spider on its edge before 
the fire for their breakfast; and while my companion was 
making tea, I caught a dozen sizable fishes in the Pe¬ 
nobscot, two kinds of sucker and one trout. After we 
had breakfasted by ourselves, one of our bedfellows, who 
