Aug. 2, 1913. 
FOREST AND STREAM 
137 
Two Weeks Under King Katahdin 
By WILLIAM S. THOMAS, M.D. 
T HE holiday spirit saturated us, and all three 
dripped with enthusiasm as we started on 
Friday, the 13th of June, for our wilder¬ 
ness outing up the West Branch of the Penob¬ 
scot River, in Northern Maine. Shortly after 
boarding the train, Tom opened his satchel and 
found a large, long sticky angleworm touring 
among his toilet articles. He made haste to 
throw the doomed wretch out of the car window 
and searched for more escapes from the tin 
boxes while we laughed at him. Transporting 
worms 600 miles, to be used as bait, is perhaps 
not often done, but after our former experi¬ 
ences we had decided to take a supply on this 
trip, and in the end were not sorry we had done 
so. They are so rarely found in the wilderness 
that even the earliest of birds must find other 
nourishment there. We expected to use the 
crawlers in catching chub for lake trout or togue 
bait, and in trolling for pickerel or square-tailed 
trout. 
The Connecticut River interested us as we 
sped along by its broad and shallow reaches. 
Rivers have interesting personalities, and this 
one could tell interesting tales of the Indians, 
the coming of the white man, the border wars, 
and later of the old lumbering days when the 
surrounding country was wilder than that for 
which we were bound. 
Ned sat reading “Captains Courageous’’ at 
one time. Suddenly he shut the book, leaned 
over toward me, and solemnly remarked: “Say, 
Will, to-morrow morning we’ll hear this.” And 
he whistled the notes of the peabody bird or 
white-throated sparrow. “Wabeepee,” the In¬ 
dians of Maine call him. To us this little bird 
embodies the spirit of the wild Northern woods, 
and at frequent intervals our ears are cheered 
with his song from the time of our arrival at 
the jumping-off place until we board the train 
for home again. On the rare occasions when 
we hear his notes in Central Park in the early 
spring migration, our spirits are transported to 
those regions where first we came to know him 
years ago. 
After changing cars at Boston, the night 
journey northward began warm. All retired 
early, and I opened the windows by my berth 
and discarded the blanket. Awakening shortly 
before dawn, I found that I had been sleeping 
under a deluge of cinders, which had blackened 
the bedding, but were thickest in my hair and 
ears. The daylight came and showed from the 
car windows that we were again in the en¬ 
chanted country. On every side was the forest, 
though near the railroad track, where repeated 
lumbering operations and fires had depleted the 
woods, there was little but half grown birch 
and other hardwood. Among these trees, how¬ 
ever, was a sprinkling of spruces, trim and 
steeple-like, and taller than the lighter green 
deciduous growth. 
Tom rushed to me from the dressing room 
of the sleeper as I was writing in the early 
morning to say, “Did you hear him?” He had 
heard during a stop of the train the notes of 
our little friend wabeepee. On alighting from 
the cars at the frontier station of Norcross, we 
saw a high blue day with a strong northwest 
wind blowing white cottony clouds across the 
sky. Looking out over the large North Twin 
Lake, which we were soon to cross, we admired 
the deep blue of distant mountains, contrasted 
with the fresh emerald green of the nearby foli¬ 
age. Here we had our first glimpse of Mount 
Katahdin off to the northwest. We were com¬ 
ing back to our old red god to submit gladly to 
his pervading rule, for he was to be in our 
thoughts during all our stay in the region. 
Norcross looked a little less backyard-like 
than in former years. Here we encountered 
delay by reason of the fact that our guides had 
failed to take our food supplies up-river as had 
been arranged. Old Joe Francis, the Indian, 
had promised that he would go peejeedo with 
our outfit. His translation of this phrase upon 
ANTICIPATION AND REALIZATION. 
former occasions had been, “Man go ahead and 
make camp ready.” We secured the supplies 
from the express ' agent and took them along 
with us on the asthmatic steamboat with the 
hopeful name of Rainbow to the head of Ambe- 
jijis Lake, where the guides met us with the 
canoes. But before the departure of the Rain¬ 
bow, there was a wait of three hours or more, 
so that after our pack-bags were filled, their 
harnesses placed, and after we had changed city 
clothes for those adapted to the woods—stout 
wool, from top to toe—we ate breakfast and 
strolled about where we could find foot room 
amid the tangled underbrush and blow-downs 
about the hotel and railroad station clearing. 
After the journey of fourteen miles up the 
lakes, we were met at Head of the Lake by our 
old friends and guides, Joe Francis, known and 
beloved of many; Joe Dennis, his son-in-law, ex¬ 
perienced in woodcraft and best of cooks; and 
the latter’s son, Joe, Jr., then serving apprentice¬ 
ship in woodcraft. Indians all of them, old Joe 
a. full-blood, and the others with some white 
blood in their veins, but all sterling men who 
knew their business and were ashamed to look 
no man in the face. We divided up our supplies 
and selves among three canoes and started off 
up the West Branch with adverse current and 
the strong wind in our faces. Joe, Jr.—Sonny, 
as he was known—and Tom, the youngsters of 
the party, soon forged ahead and held the lead 
in the procession up the lonely reaches of the 
tea-colored, forest-lined river. It was a hard 
pull, and I was particularly puzzled to find that 
paddle as hard as I might, our canoe lagged be¬ 
hind sadly. Was old Joe in the stern getting 
to be so weak nowadays? But it afterward ap¬ 
peared that our canoe, which was a new one, 
had had but one coat of paint over its rough 
canvas bottom, and this felt like sandpaper to 
the touch. When we arrived at Joe Dennis’s 
camp on the Debsconeag Deadwater and ex¬ 
changed ours for a canoe with a smoother bot¬ 
tom, I realized that the yachtsmen whom I had 
seen polishing the underbodies of their racing 
craft did not work in vain. 
The first stage of the journey up-river was 
delayed by two portages, one of three-eights of 
a mile around the Passamagamock Falls, and the 
other, a shorter one, around a section of the 
river which was choked with logs on their jour¬ 
ney to the pulp mills. Heavily laden as we were, 
each portage or carry required two or three 
trips back and forth in order to transport canoes 
and duffle from the taking-out place to the put¬ 
ting-in place. However, we were only pleas¬ 
antly tired when we arrived at 4 o’clock at the 
upper end of Debsconeag Deadwater among the 
many wooded islands. In the language of that 
section, portions of the river, whose surface is 
smooth and their current not particularly swift, 
are called deadwaters. Anything resembling a 
rapids or falls is called a pitch. Rapids which 
are not too turbulent or dangerous to allow a 
canoe to be poled up them are known as quick- 
waters. At many places along the deadwaters 
occur deep indentations in the river banks which 
appear like inlets of streams or even like con¬ 
tinuations of the river itself. These go by the 
curious name of logans; short for pokelogan. 
While the guides either went on to the next 
portage with some of the supplies against to¬ 
morrow’s journey, or off to Joe Francis’ camp 
to prepare for our coming, we kept one canoe, 
and from it cast the spoon or trolled for pickerel 
in favorable spots in the vicinity. I caught a 
lively two-pounder, and it seemed good again 
to feel a tight and throbbing line. We walked 
for supper and the night’s rest back from the 
river, a half mile to the extensive camps on 
First Debsconeag Lake, formerly used by a club, 
but now owned by Joe Francis, whose family of 
interesting aboriginals live there during the sum¬ 
mers. As we sat at our supper of good things, 
we could hear the rather soft and pleasant- 
sounding Indian language filtering through the 
log walls from the kitchen. The log buildings, 
which compose the camp, are comfortably built 
and commodious, and at the time of our visit 
were appreciated as much by the mosquitoes as 
by us. Thousands sought our acquaintance there, 
and it was not a monotonous task to write the 
diary and fight them off. Strolling down by the 
water after supper, we scanned the further shore 
with the binoculars, but were not rewarded by 
the sight of deer or moose. Game was scarcer 
