THE ALLEGASH AND EAST BRANCH. 
225 
the howl of a wolf, or the scream of a panther; but 
when you get fairly into the middle of one of these grim 
forests, you are surprised to find that the larger inhabit¬ 
ants are not at home commonly, but have left only a puny 
red squirrel to bark at you. Generally speaking, a howl- 
ing wilderness does not howl: it is the imagination of 
the traveller that does the howling. I did, however, see 
one dead porcupine; perhaps he had succumbed to the 
difficulties of the way. These bristly fellows are a very 
suitable small fruit of such unkempt wildernesses. 
Making a logging-road in the Maine woods is called 
66 swamping it,” and they who do the work are called 
“ swampers.” I now perceived the fitness of the term. 
This was the most perfectly swamped of all the roads I 
ever saw. Nature must have co-operated with art here. 
However, I suppose they would tell you that this name 
took its origin from the fact that the chief work of road- 
makers in those woods is to make the swamps passable. 
We came to a stream where the bridge, which had been 
made of logs tied together with cedar bark, had been 
broken up, and we got over as we could. This proba¬ 
bly emptied into Mud Pond, and perhaps the Indian 
might have come up it and taken us in there if he had 
known it. Such as it was, this ruined bridge was the 
chief evidence that we were on a path of any kind. 
We then crossed another low rising ground, and I, 
who wore shoes, had an opportunity to wring out my 
stockings, but my companion, who used boots, had found 
that this was not a safe experiment for him, for he might 
not be able to get his wet boots on again. He went over 
the whole ground, or water, three times, for which rea¬ 
son our progress was very slow; beside that the water 
softened our feet, and to some extent unfitted them for 
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