244 
THE MAINE WOODS. 
Indian peeping out from beneath his canoe to see what 
had become of the rain. When we had taken our respec¬ 
tive places thus once or twice, the rain not coming down 
in earnest, we commenced rambling about the neighbor¬ 
hood, for the wind had by this time raised such waves 
on the lake that we could not stir, and we feared that we 
should be obliged to camp there. We got an early sup¬ 
per on the dam and tried for fish there, while waiting for 
the tumult to subside. The fishes w T ere not only few, 
but small and worthless, and the Indian declared that 
there were no good fishes in the St. John’s waters; that 
we must wait till we got to the Penobscot waters. 
At length, just before sunset, we set out again. It 
was a wild evening when we coasted up the north side 
of this Apmoojenegamook Lake. One thunder-storm 
was just over, and the waves which it had raised still 
running w r ith violence, and another storm was now seen 
coming up in the southwest, far over the lake; but it 
might be worse in the morning, and we wished to get as 
far as possible on our way up the lake while we might. 
It blowed hard against the northern shore about an 
eighth of a mile distant on our left, and there w r as just as 
much sea as our shallow canoe would bear, without our 
taking unusual care. That which we kept off, and toward 
which the waves were driving, was as dreary and har¬ 
borless a shore as you can conceive. For half a dozen 
rods in width it was a perfect maze of submerged trees, 
all dead and bare and bleaching, some standing half their 
original height, others prostrate, and criss-across, above 
or beneath the surface, and mingled with them were loose 
trees and limbs and stumps, beating about. Imagine 
the wharves of the largest city in the world, decayed, 
and the earth and planking washed away, leaving the 
