THE ALLEGASH AND EAST BRANCH. 
193 
gle remained tied to the crossbar throughout the voyage, 
was always ready for the carries, and also served to pro¬ 
tect the back of one passenger. 
We were obliged to go over this carry twice, our load 
was so great. But the carries were an agreeable variety, 
and we improved the opportunity to gather the rare 
plants which we had seen, when we returned empty- 
handed. 
We reached the Penobscot about four o’clock, and 
found there some St. Francis Indians encamped on the 
bank, in the same place where I camped with four 
Indians four years before. They were making a canoe, 
and, as then, drying moose-meat. The meat looked very 
suitable to make a black broth at least. Our Indian said 
it was not good. Their camp was covered with spruce- 
bark. They had got a young moose, taken in the river 
a fortnight before, confined in a sort of cage of logs piled 
up cob-fashion, seven or eight feet high. It was quite 
tame, about four feet high, and covered with moose-flies. 
There was a large quantity of cornel (O. stolonifera ), 
red maple, and also willow and aspen boughs, stuck 
through between the logs on all sides, but-ends out, and 
on their leaves it was browsing. It looked at first as if 
it were in a bower rather than a pen. 
Our Indian said that he used black spruce-roots to sew 
canoes with, obtaining it from high lands or mountains. 
The St. Francis Indian thought that white spruce-roots 
might be best. But the former said, “ No good, break, 
can’t split ’em ”; also that they were hard to get, deep 
in ground, but the black were near the surface, on higher 
land, as well as tougher. He said that the white spruce 
was subekoondark , black, skusk. I told him I thought 
that I could make a canoe, but he expressed great doubt 
9 
M 
