THE ALLEGASH AND EAST BRANCH. 
223 
Mud Pond, cross that, and go down its outlet and up 
Chamberlain Lake, and trust to meet us there before 
night. It was now a little after noon. He supposed 
that the water in which we stood had flowed back from 
Mud Pond, which could not be far off eastward, but was 
unapproachable through the dense cedar swamp. 
Keeping on, we were erelong agreeably disappointed 
by reaching firmer ground, and we crossed a ridge where 
the path was more distinct, but there was never any out¬ 
look over the forest. While descending the last, I saw 
many specimens of the great round-leaved orchis, of large 
size ; one which I measured had leaves, as usual, flat on 
the ground, nine and a half inches long, and nine wide, 
and was two feet high. The dark, damp wilderness is 
favorable to some of Ishese orchidaceous plants, though 
they are too delicate for cultivation. I also saw the 
swamp gooseberry (Riles lacustre ), with green fruit, and 
in all the low ground, where it was not too wet, the Ru- 
hus trijlorus in fruit. At one place I heard a very clear 
and piercing note from a small hawk, like a single note 
from a white-throated sparrow, only very much louder, 
as he dashed through the tree-tops over my head. I 
wondered that lie allowed himself to be disturbed by our 
presence, since it seemed as if he could not easily find 
his nest again himself in that wilderness. We also saw 
and heard several times the red squirrel, and often, as 
before observed, the bluish scales of the fir cones which 
it had left on a rock or fallen tree. This, according to 
the Indian, is the only squirrel found in those woods, ex¬ 
cept a very few striped ones. It must have a solitary 
time in that dark evergreen forest, where there is so little 
life, seventy-five miles from a road as we had come. I 
wondered how he could call any particular tree there his 
