THE ALLEGASH AND EAST BRANCH. 
249 
We landed on a rocky point on the northeast side, to 
look at some Bed Pines (Finns resinosci ), the first we 
had noticed, and get some cones, for our few which grow 
in Concord do not bear any. 
The outlet from the lake into the East Branch of the 
Penobscot is an artificial one, and it was not very appar¬ 
ent where it was exactly, but the lake ran curving far 
up northeasterly into two narrow valleys or ravines, as 
if it had for a long time been groping its way toward the 
Penobscot waters, or remembered when it anciently 
flowed there ; by observing where the horizon was lowest, 
and following the longest of these, we at length reached 
the dam, having come about a dozen miles from the last 
camp. Somebody had left a line set for trout, and the 
jackknife with which the bait had been cut on the dam 
beside it, an evidence that man was near, and on a de¬ 
serted log close by a loaf of bread baked in a Yankee- 
baker. These proved the property of a solitary hunter, 
whom we soon met, and canoe and gun and traps 
were not far off. He told us that it was twenty miles 
farther on our route to the foot of Grand Lake, where 
you could catch as many trout as you wanted, and that 
the first house below the foot of the lake, on the East 
Branch, was Hunt’s, about forty-five miles farther; though 
there was one about a mile and a half up Trout stream, 
some fifteen miles ahead, but it was rather a blind route 
to it. It turned out that, though the stream was in our 
favor, we did not reach the next house till the morning 
of the third day after this. The nearest permanently in¬ 
habited house behind us was now a dozen miles distant, 
so that the interval between the two nearest houses on 
our route was about sixty miles. 
This hunter, who was a quite small, sunburnt man, 
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