210 
THE MAINE WOODS. 
He had discovered the day before that his canoe leaked 
a little, and said that it was owing to stepping into it 
violently, which forced the water under the edge of the 
horizontal seams on the side. I asked him where he 
would get pitch to mend it with, for they commonly use 
hard-pitch, obtained of the whites at Oldtown. He said 
that he could make something very similar, and equally 
good, not of spruce gum, or the like, but of material 
which we had with us; and he wished me to guess what. 
But I could not, and he would not tell me, though he 
showed me a ball of it when made, as big as a pea, and 
like black pitch, saying, at last, that there were some 
things which a man did not tell even his wife. It may 
have been his own discovery. In Arnold’s expedition 
the pioneers used for their canoe “the turpentine of the 
pine, and the scrapings of the pork-bag.” 
Being curious to see what kind of fishes there were 
in this dark, deep, sluggish river, I cast in my line just 
before night, and caught several small somewhat yellow¬ 
ish sucker-like fishes, which the Indian at once rejected, 
saying that they were Michigan fish (i. e. soft and stink- 
fftig fish) and good for nothing. Also, he would not 
touch a pout, which I caught, and said that neither 
Indians nor whites thereabouts ever ate them, which I 
thought was singular, since they are esteemed in Massa¬ 
chusetts, and he had told me that he ate hedgehogs, 
loons, &c. But he said that some small silvery fishes, 
which I called white chivin, which were similar in size 
and form to the first, were the best fish in the Penobscot 
waters, and if I would toss them up the bank to him, he 
would cook them for me. After cleaning them, not very 
carefully, leaving the heads on, he laid them on the coals 
and so broiled them. 
