138 
FOREST AND STREAM 
Aug. 2, 1913. 
than on former trips, and throughout our stay 
in the woods we saw deer but three times. We 
climbed again toward the camp in order to hear 
better the evening hymn of a hermit thrush sing¬ 
ing up on the hillside. The song of this bird 
resembles nothing else which I ever heard. To 
be sure, there is a quality in the timber of the 
veery’s voice which faintly suggests his cousin- 
ship to that holy chorister, but there the simi¬ 
larity ceases. The notes of the hermit thrush 
are nothing short of spiritual, though quite in¬ 
capable of being described understanding^ to 
one who has never heard them. The notes seem 
to run in a spiral stairway up to the gates of 
heaven, and leave the listener soothed in spirit 
and exalted in mind. 
When the night fell, we sat upon the covered 
porch of the main camp high above the lake on 
the steep, wooded hillside, with the bright moon 
half way up the hill of heaven before us, and 
listened to the distant murmur of the waves 
breaking against the rocky shore below. 
We noticed but few changes in the country 
after six years’ absence. There were two gaso¬ 
lene motor boats on the big lake near the rail¬ 
road, where we had expected to find dozens per¬ 
haps, and the level of that body of water with 
that of the connecting lakes — South Twin, 
Pemadumcook and Ambejijis—had been raised 
some twelve or fourteen feet by a new lumber¬ 
man’s dam at the outlet, so that Ambejijis Falls 
were obliterated, and with them one portage in 
the journey of the West Branch. There were 
a few new permanent camps here and there, but 
the country generally appeared as it had fifteen 
or more years before, and we were accordingly 
surprised and pleased. The number of hunters 
entering this region through Norcross grows 
less each year as the game becomes scarcer, but 
in the summer months, and especially in August, 
many campers invade the silent places. Old Joe 
declared that on one day last August he had 
seen thirty canoes pass before his camping spot 
on the river. He said that so much traffic had 
reminded him of Broadway in New York when 
he had attended the sportsmen’s show there. 
Broadway, with thirty vehicles a day passing 
one spot! 
“They're so thick this morning that you 
just have to let ’em bite,” said he the next morn¬ 
ing as we started off at 6 o’clock on our ten-mile 
journey to our permanent camp on Foss and 
Knowlton Pond. On the portages the fine sixty- 
eight-year-older lugged his own canoe, and then 
returned for another load of supplies. When I 
told him that there ought to be a law against 
his doing such hard work, he replied good 
naturedly that when he was not able to carry 
his canoe, he’d quit guiding and stay out of the 
woods. 
We encountered a large porcupine soon 
after leaving the Debsconeag camp before arriv¬ 
ing at the river. He almost invited us to whack 
him; he was so lumbering and slow about get¬ 
ting under way. The blackflies were out in 
great numbers and managed to get a nibble or 
two at each of us in spite of our precautions 
with the fly dope smeared over faces and hands. 
Once in the canoes we sports paddled in the 
bows while passing through the deadwaters. On 
encountering quickwater, we walked along the 
tote road by the river, while the guides paddled 
or poled the laden canoes up stream. For all 
that, there was work enough for us tenderfeet, 
and we were sharp-set when we took out at 
the mouth of the brook which drains Foss and 
Knowlton lakes and tumbles down hill two miles 
into the river two and a half miles below the 
mouth of Sourdnahunk Stream. We lunched at 
eleven among alders a little way up the brook, 
and enjoyed our first taste of trout in a good- 
sized pair which we had taken with the fly under 
the falls at the Pockwockamus Portage on the 
way up-river. Old Joe got to talking about 
suckers during the meal, and held that they 
were smart and lively fish, for all what most 
folks thought of them. “It hain’t on’y salmon 
and trout can climb falls,” he declared. “I’ve 
LOOKING BACKWARD. 
seen suckers goin’ up Sourdnahunk Falls, at that 
there Niagara place. There’s a smooth rock 
ledge the water runs over half way up, an’ I’ve 
seen a hull slew o’ suckers hanging fast to that 
ledge in the swift water, while they rested a 
bit and got their wind.” I asked him how they 
managed to hold on to the rock. “What do you 
suppose they got them bugle mouths for?” was 
his answer. 
The latter half of the carry up the hill to 
our home pond was like climbing a rickety stair¬ 
way over rotten corduroy road and boulders, and 
our packs grew pretty much heavier than the 
thirty or forty pounds which they weighed on 
leaving the river. Joe, Jr., lugged a canoe and 
the rest of us the food, bedding and personal 
articles, fishing tackle, paddles, axe, etc. At 
the top of a steep rise, Ned, Tom and I sat to 
rest with old Joe who had been staggering under 
a pack which held at least a hundred weight. 
Here we enjoyed the breeze, the trees, the rocks, 
the mosses and the wild flowers. The Indian 
pointed out a rotted stump which had been torn 
to bits by a bear in search of ants. He told us 
of the trout in the upper waters of Sourdnahunk 
Stream above the big falls. He declared that 
“all the fish that got up above them falls had 
leetie snub noses like a bulldog, on’y a leetle 
mite of a nose out beyent their eyes because 
they’d all been bumped so ag’in the ledges.” 
Then he told how he had dreamed that a feller 
was a-tryin’ to sell him a gasolene gun. “She 
was an automatic piece,” he said, “and once you 
started her goin’, she’d keep on firin’ for seven 
days without reloadin’. All you had to do was 
to aim across a deer path, and if he come by 
that way inside of a week, you had him 
sure.” 
At the end of the climb it was with much 
pleasure that we saw stretched before us once 
more our favorite camping lake, Foss and 
Knowlton, named for two landowners of fifty 
years ago. There was great Katahdin as be¬ 
fore, rising like a wall across the sky beyond 
the nearer forested hillsides. While the guides 
were toiling up with their second loads from 
the river, we opened the log camp, shed our 
garments, and plunged again and again into the 
clear, cold water of the lake. Strangely enough, 
the black flies and mosquitoes kept off for a 
while, and allowed us to dry our clothing and 
our bodies in the breeze and sunshine. By 
twenty minutes later they arrived ready for duty 
and did not neglect their work again, save when 
the wind blew strongly throughout our stay. 
During the afternoon we cast our flies from the 
canoes about the lake and found the trout to 
be larger and pinker fleshed apparently than 
they had been on previous trips. The usual size 
was about three-quarters of a pound, many at¬ 
taining a pound and more in weight. We in¬ 
sisted upon their being skinned, and eaten in 
this condition they never cloy upon the taste. 
After feasting upon them and many other crea¬ 
tions of Joe Dennis’ craft as a cook, we sat 
about the porch in the twilight, smoking and 
listening to some of the tall tales of old Joe. 
One was about a bear which visited a lumber 
camp at Ripogenus, where with other supplies 
was a half barrel of molasses. A man was left 
there to watch the supplies till the crew of river 
drivers came that way again. The bear man¬ 
aged to get his head down into the partly-filled 
half barrel, but the splinters caught his neck 
when he tried to pull it out, and he stuck in it 
and cut himself. “He just stumbled around 
there, a-clawin’ and rollin’ over and over. Finally 
he did get his head out, and by-y George, there 
he was, all over blood and molasses, and how 
he did light out from there!” “But didn’t the 
watchman shoot him?” I inquired. “Naw; the 
feller was a-laffin’ so’s he couldn’t interfere at 
all,” explained Joe. Then he told how a river 
driver named George Mann took a hand at 
cooking. “He wa’nt no cook at all, but he tried 
to cook for some fellers once, and he put ten 
pounds of rice in a big pot on the stove to bile. 
Pretty soon he began fillin’ things with it. He 
used up all the pots and pans he c'd lay his 
hands on, and then by-y George, he had to p’ti- 
tion off one end of a canoe and fill that with 
the rice, and he filled that up. ‘There, now, I 
guess they’ll have enough rice to eat,’ sez 
he.” 
[continued NEXT WEEK.] 
