i 
182 THE MAINE WOODS. 
fruit. I have also received Liparis liliifolia , or tway- 
blade, from this spot. Having explored the wonders of 
the mountain, and the weather being now entirely cleared 
up, we commenced the descent. We met the Indian, 
puffing and panting, about one third of the way up, but 
thinking that he must be near the top, and saying that it 
took his breath away. I thought that superstition had 
something to do with his fatigue. Perhaps he believed 
that he was climbing over the back of a tremendous 
moose. He said that he had never ascended Kineo. 
On reaching the canoe we found that he had caught a 
lake trout weighing about three pounds, at the depth of 
twenty-five or thirty feet, while we were on the moun¬ 
tain. 
When we got to the camp, the canoe was taken out 
and turned over, and a log laid across it to prevent its 
being blown away. The Indian cut some large logs of 
damp and rotten hard wood to smoulder and keep fire 
through the night. The trout was fried for supper. Our 
tent was of thin cotton cloth and quite small, forming 
with the ground a triangular prism closed at the rear end, 
six feet long, seven wide, and four high, so that we could 
barely sit up in the middle. It required two forked 
stakes, a smooth ridge-pole, and a dozen or more pins to 
pitch it. It kept off dew and wind, and an ordinary 
rain, and answered our purpose well enough. We re¬ 
clined within it till bedtime, each with his baggage at 
his head, or else sat about the fire, having hung our wet 
clothes on a pole before the fire for the night. 
As we sat there, just before night, looking out through 
the dusky wood, the Indian heard a noise which he said 
was made by a snake. He imitated it at my request, 
making a low whistling note,— pheet — pheet, — two or 
