190 
THE MAINE WOODS. 
go round and round where w r e ? ve been, but go straight. 
He said, I can’t do that, I don’t know where I am. 
Where you think camp ? I asked. He pointed so. 
Then I laugh at him. I take the lead and go right off 
the other way, cross our tracks many times, straight 
camp.” “ How do you do that ? ” asked I. “ O, I can’t 
tell you” he replied. “ Great difference between me 
and white man.” 
It appeared as if the sources of information were so 
various that he did not give a distinct, conscious attention 
to any one, and so could not readily refer to any when 
questioned about it, but he found his way very much 
as an animal does. Perhaps what is commonly called 
instinct in the animal, in this case is merely a sharpened 
and educated sense. Often, when an Indian says, “I 
don’t know,” in regard to the route he is to take, he does 
not mean what a white man would by those words, for 
his Indian instinct may tell him still as much as the 
most confident white man knows.- He does not carry 
things in his head, nor remember the route exactly like 
a white man, but relies on himself at the moment. Not 
having experienced the need of the other sort of knowl¬ 
edge, all labelled and arranged, he has not acquired it. 
The white hunter with whom I talked in the stage 
knew some of the resources of the Indian. He said that 
he steered by the wind, or by the limbs of the hemlocks, 
which were largest on the south side; also sometimes, 
when he knew that there was a lake near, by firing his 
gun and listening to hear the direction and distance of 
the echo from over it. 
The course we took over this lake, and others after¬ 
ward, was rarely direct, but a succession of curves from 
point to point, digressing considerably into each of the 
