280 
THE MAINE WOODS. 
going on the same errand that you do, they have cut 
large chips from a tall white-pine stump for their fire. 
While we were pitching the camp and getting supper, 
the Indian cut the rest of the hair from his moose-hide, 
and proceeded to extend it vertically on a temporary 
frame between two small trees, half a dozen feet from the 
opposite side of the fire, lashing and stretching it with 
arbor-vitse bark, which was always at hand, and in this 
case was stripped from one of the trees it was tied to. 
^Vsking for a new kind of tea, he made us some, pretty 
good, of the checkerberry ( Gaultheria procumbens ), 
which covered the ground, dropping a little bunch of it 
tied up with cedar bark into the kettle ; but it was not 
quite equal to the Chiogenes. We called this therefore 
Checkerberry-tea Camp. 
I was struck with the abundance of the Linncea bore - 
alls , checkerberry, and Chiogenes hispidula , almost every¬ 
where in the Maine woods. The wintergreen ( Chima - 
phila umbellata) was still in bloom here, and Clintonia 
berries were abundant and ripe. This handsome plant 
is one of the most common in that forest. We here first 
noticed the moose-wood in fruit on the banks. The pre¬ 
vailing trees were spruce (commonly black), arbor-vitas, 
canoe-birch, (black ash and elms beginning to appear,) 
yellow birch, red maple, and a little hemlock skulking in 
the forest. The Indian said that the white-maple punk 
was the best for tinder, that yellow-birch punk was pretty 
good, but hard. After supper he put on the moose tongue 
and lips to boil, cutting out the septum . He showed me 
how to write on the under side of birch bark, with a 
black spruce twig, which is hard and tough and can be 
brought to appoint. 
The Indian wandered off into the woods a short dis- 
