166 
THE MAINE WOODS. 
to find, on talking with him in the course of the day’s 
journey, that he was a hunter at all, — for his gun was 
not much exposed, — and yet more to find that he was 
probably the chief white hunter of Maine, and was 
known all along the road. He had also hunted in some 
of the States farther south and west. I afterwards 
heard him spoken of as one who could endure a great 
deal of exposure and fatigue without showing the effect 
of it; and he could not only use guns, but make them, 
being himself a gunsmith. In the spring, he had saved 
a stage-driver and two passengers from drowning in the 
backwater of the Piscataquis in Fox croft on this road, 
having swum ashore in the freezing water and made a 
raft and got them off, — though the horses were drowned, 
-— at great risk to himself, while the only other man who 
could swim withdrew to the nearest house to prevent 
freezing. He could now ride over this road for nothing. 
He knew our man, and remarked that we had a good In¬ 
dian there, a good hunter; adding that he was said to be 
worth $ 6,000. The Indian also knew him, and said to 
me, “ the great hunter.” 
The former told me that he practised a kind of still 
hunting, new or uncommon in those parts, that the cari¬ 
bou, for instance, fed round and round the same meadow, 
returning on the same path, and he lay in wait for them. 
The Indian sat on the front seat, saying nothing to 
anybody, with a stolid expression of face, as if barely 
awake to what was going on. Again I was struck by 
the peculiar vagueness of his replies when addressed in 
the stage, or at the taverns. He really never said any¬ 
thing on such occasions. He was merely stirred up, like 
a wild beast, and passively muttered some insignificant 
response. His answer, in such cases, was never the con- 
