260 
THE MAINE WOODS. 
such times, he would step into the canoe, take up his 
paddle, and, with an air of mystery, start off, looking far 
down stream, and keeping his own counsel, as if absorb¬ 
ing all the intelligence of forest and stream into himself; 
but I sometimes detected a little fun in his face, which 
could yield to my sympathetic smile, for he was thor¬ 
oughly good-humored. We meanwhile scrambled along 
the shore with our packs, without any path. This was 
the last of our boating for the day. 
The prevailing rock here was a kind of slate, standing 
on its edges, and my companion, who was recently from 
California, thought it exactly like that in which the gold 
is found, and said that if he had had a pan he would have 
liked to wash a little of the sand here. 
The Indian now got along much faster than we, and 
waited for us from time to time. I found here the only 
cool spring that I drank at anywhere on this excursion, 
a little water filling a hollow in the sandy bank. It was 
a quite memorable event, and due to the elevation of the 
country, for wherever else we had been the water in the 
rivers and the streams emptying in was dead and warm, 
compared with that of a mountainous region. It was 
very bad walking along the shore over fallen and drifted 
trees and bushes, and rocks, from time to time swinging 
ourselves round over the water, or else taking to a gravel 
bar or going inland. At one place, the Indian being 
ahead, I was obliged to take off all my clothes in order 
to ford a small but deep stream emptying in, while my 
companion, who was inland, found a rude bridge, high up 
in the woods, and I saw no more of him for some time. 
I saw there very fresh moose tracks, found a new golden- 
rod to me (perhaps Solidago thyrsoidea ), and I passed 
one white-pine log, which had lodged, in the forest near 
