THE ALLEGASH AND EAST BRANCH. 
I started on my third excursion to the Maine woods 
Monday, July 20th, 1857, with one companion, arriving 
at Bangor the next day at noon. We had hardly left 
the steamer, when we passed Molly Molasses in the 
street. As long as she lives the Penobscots may be con- 
sidered extant as a tribe. The succeeding morning, a 
relative of mine, who is well acquainted with the Penob¬ 
scot Indians, and who had been my companion in my 
two previous excursions into the Maine woods, took me 
in his wagon to Oldtown, to assist me in obtaining an 
Indian for this expedition. We were ferried across to 
the Indian Island in a batteau. The ferryman’s boy had 
got the key to it, but the father who was a blacksmith, 
after a little hesitation, cut the chain with a cold-chisel 
on the rock. He told me that the Indians were nearly 
all gone to the seaboard and to Massachusetts, partly on 
account of the small-pox, of which they are very much 
afraid, having broken out in Oldtown, and it was doubt¬ 
ful whether we should find a suitable one at home. The 
old chief Neptune, however,, was there still. The first 
man we saw on the island was an Indian named Joseph 
Polis, whom my relative had known from a boy, and now 
addressed familiarly as “Joe.” He was dressing a deer¬ 
skin in his yard. The skin was spread over a slanting 
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