THE ALLEGASH AND EAST BRANCH. 
241 
acquired such knowledge in his youth from a wise old 
Indian with whom he associated, and he lamented that 
the present generation of Indians “ had lost a great deal.” 
He said that the caribou was a “ very great runner,” 
that there was none about this lake now, though there 
used to be many, and pointing to the belt of dead trees 
caused by the dams, he added, “ No likum stump, — when 
he sees that he scared.” 
Pointing southeasterly over the lake and distant for¬ 
est, he observed, “ Me go Oldtown in three days.” I 
asked how he would get over the swamps and fallen trees. 
“ 0,” said he, “in winter all covered, go anywhere on snow- 
shoes, right across lakes.” When I asked how he went, 
he said, “First I go Ktaadn, west side, then I go Milli- 
nocket, then Pamadumcook, then Nickatou, then Lincoln, 
then Oldtown,” or else he went a shorter way by the 
Piscataquis. What a wilderness walk for a man to take 
alone ! None of your half-mile swamps, none of your 
mile-wide woods merely, as on the skirts of our towns, 
without hotels, only a dark mountain or a lake for guide- 
board and station, over ground much of it impassable in 
summer! 
It reminded me of Prometheus Bound. Here was 
travelling of the old heroic kind over the unaltered face 
of nature. From the Allegash, or Hemlock River, and 
Pongoquahem Lake, across great Apmoojenegamook, and 
leaving the Nerlumskeechticook Mountain on his left, he 
takes his way under the bear-haunted slopes of Souneunk 
and Ktaadn Mountains to Pamadumcook and Millinocket’s 
inland seas, (where often gulls’-eggs may increase his 
store,) and so on to the forks of the Nickatou, (nia soseb 
“we alone Joseph ” seeing what our folks see,) ever 
pushing the boughs of the fir and spruce aside, with his 
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