THE ALLEGASH AND EAST BRANCH. 
171 
whether we should be obliged to diverge from our course 
and keep outside a point which we saw, or should find a 
passage between this and the mainland. I consulted my 
map and used my glass, and the Indian did the same, 
but we could not find our place exactly on the map, nor 
could we detect any break in the shore. When I asked 
the Indian the way, he answered “ I don’t know,” which 
I thought remarkable, since he had said that he was fa¬ 
miliar with the lake; but it appeared that he had never 
been up this side. It was misty dog-day weather, and we 
had already penetrated a smaller bay of the same kind, 
and knocked the bottom out of it, though we had been 
obliged to pass over a small bar, between an island and 
the shore, where there was but just breadth and depth 
enough to float the canoe, and the Indian had observed, 
“Very easy makum bridge here,” but now it seemed 
that, if we held on, we should be fairly embayed. Pres¬ 
ently, however, though we had not stirred, the mist lifted 
somewhat, and revealed a, break in the shore northward, 
showing that the point was a portion of Deer Island, 
and that our course lay westward of it. Where it had 
seemed a continuous shore even through a glass, one 
portion was now seen by the naked eye to be much more 
distant than the other which overlapped it, merely by 
the greater thickness of the mist which still rested on it, 
while the nearer or island portion was comparatively 
bare and green. The line of separation was very dis¬ 
tinct, and the Indian immediately remarked, “ I guess 
you and I go there, —I guess there ’s room for my canoe 
there.” This was his common expression instead of say¬ 
ing we. He never addressed us by our names, though 
curious to know how they were spelled and what they 
meant, while we called him Polis. He had already 
