THE ALLEGASH AND EAST BRANCH. 
207 
John one not far north. He finds the eggs of this gull, 
sometimes twenty together, as big as hen’s eggs, on rocky 
ledges on the west side of Millinocket River, for instance, 
and eats them. 
Now I thought I would observe how he spent his Sun¬ 
day. While I and my companion were looking about at 
the trees and river, he went to sleep. Indeed, he im¬ 
proved every opportunity to get a nap, whatever the day. 
Rambling about the woods at this camp, I noticed that 
they consisted chiefly of firs, black spruce, and some 
white, red maple, canoe-birch, and, along the river, the 
hoary alder, Alnus incana . I name them in the order of 
their abundance. The Viburnum nudum was a common 
shrub, and of smaller plants, there were the dwarf-cornel, 
great round-leaved orchis, abundant and in bloom (a 
greenish-white flower growing in little communities), 
Uvularia grandijlora , whose stem tasted like a cucumber, 
Pyrola secunda , apparently the commonest Pyrola in those 
woods, now out of bloom, Pyrola elliptica , and Chiogenes 
Mspidula. The Clintonia borealis , with ripe berries, was 
very abundant, and perfectly at home there. Its leaves, 
disposed commonly in triangles about its stem, were just 
as handsomely formed and green, and its berries as blue 
and glossy, as if it grew by some botanist’s favorite path. 
I could trace the outlines of large birches that had 
fallen long ago, collapsed and rotted and turned to soil, 
by faint yellowish-green lines of feather-like moss, 
eighteen inches wide and twenty or thirty feet long, 
crossed by other similar lines. 
I heard a Maryland yellow-throat’s midnight strain, 
wood-thrush, kingfisher (tweezer bird), or parti-colored 
warbler, and a night-hawk. I also heard and saw red 
squirrels, and heard a bull-frog. The Indian said that 
he heard a snake. 
