THE ALLEGASH AND EAST BRANCH. 
221 
and mud at every step, and sometimes up to our knees, 
and the trail was almost obliterated, being no more than 
that a musquash leaves in similar places, when he parts 
the floating sedge. In fact, it probably was a musquash 
trail in some places. We concluded that if Mud Pond 
was as muddy as the approach to it was wet, it certainly 
deserved its name. It would have been amusing to 
behold the dogged and deliberate pace at which we 
entered that swamp, without interchanging a word, as if 
determined to go through it, though it should come up 
to our necks. Having penetrated a considerable distance 
into this, and found a tussuck on which we could deposit 
our loads, though there was no place to sit, my com¬ 
panion went back for the rest of his pack. I had thought 
to observe on this carry when we crossed the dividing 
line between the Penobscot and St. John, but as my feet 
had hardly been out of water the whole distance, and it 
was all level and stagnant, I began to despair of finding 
it. I remembered hearing a good deal about the “ high¬ 
lands ” dividing the waters of the Penobscot from those 
of the St. John, as well as the St. Lawrence, at the time 
of the northeast boundary dispute, and I observed by 
my map, that the line claimed by Great Britain as the 
boundary prior to 1842 passed between Umbazookskus 
Lake and Mud Pond, so that we had either crossed or 
were then on it. These, then, according to her inter¬ 
pretation of the treaty of ’83, were the “ highlands which 
divide those rivers that empty themselves into the St. 
Lawrence from those which fall into the Atlantic Ocean.” 
Truly an interesting spot to stand on, — if that were it, — 
though you could not sit down there. I thought that if 
the commissioners themselves, and the king of Holland 
with them, had spent a few days here, with their packs 
