194 
THE MAINE WOODS. 
of it; at any rate, he thought that my work would not he 
“neat” the first time. An Indian at Greenville had 
told me that the winter bark, that is, bark taken off 
before the sap flows in May, was harder and much better 
than summer bark. 
Having reloaded, he paddled down the Penobscot, 
which, as the Indian remarked, and even I detected, 
remembering how it looked before, was uncommonly full. 
We soon after saw a splendid yellow lily (Lilium Gana- 
dense) by the shore, which I plucked. It was six feet 
high, and had twelve flowers, in two whorls, forming a 
pyramid, such as I have seen in Concord. We after¬ 
ward saw many more thus tall along this stream, and 
also still more numerous on the East Branch, and, on 
the latter, one which I thought approached yet nearer to 
the Lilium superbum. The Indian asked what we called 
it, and said that the “loots” (roots) were good for soup, 
that is, to cook with meat, to thicken it, taking the place 
of flour. They get them in the fall. I dug some, and 
found a mass of bulbs pretty deep in the earth, two 
inches in diameter, looking, and even tasting, somewhat 
like raw green corn on the ear. 
When we had gone about three miles down the Penob¬ 
scot, we saw through the tree-tops a thunder-shower 
coming up in the west, and we looked out a camping- 
place in good season, about five o’clock, on the west side, 
not far below the mouth of what Joe Aitteon, in ’53, 
called Lobster Stream, coming from Lobster Pond. Our 
present Indian, however, did not admit this name, nor 
even that of Matahumkeag , which is on the map, but 
called the lake Beskabekuk. 
I will describe, once for all, the routine of camping at 
this season. We generally told the Indian that we would 
