750 
FOREST AND STREAM 
June 15, 1912 
STARTING ON WEST BRANCH. 
clothing and ponchos, hut all provisions and 
cooking utensils, including two Dutch ovens. 
These made of tin are placed in front of the 
camp-fire and bake by reflected heat. Our little 
flotilla, however, had beside its si.x-passenger 
canoes with a guide, one passenger and a fair 
share of baggage in each boat, a seventh canoe 
for extra baggage, and the guide who managed 
that, a strong, sturdy fellow', we called the ' bag¬ 
gage man.” 
We must have been a picturesque sight, our 
seven graceful canoes gliding along lake, stream 
and river, sometimes abreast, sometimes in single 
file and sometimes each one following its own 
sw'eet will. 
‘■.\nd so we followed the waterways of 
Northern ]\faine in our canoes all the way from 
Moosehead Lake to Fort Kent on the Canadian 
line, every foot of this journey of over 200 
miles by water, wdth the except'on of two 
‘carries' less than five miles in all where the 
lakes and streams do not connect.” 
The skill of our guides inspired in us such 
confidence that even the mad rushes through the 
“quick water” of the rapids, which sometimes 
dashed water and spray into our canoes and all 
over ourselves, were only an exhilarating form 
of intoxication to us, for they had proved their 
skill and judgment over and over again. Shall 
we, who witnessed it, ever forget that breath¬ 
less moment w'hen, “snubbing” his canoe in the 
angry rapids, just above the dangerous Allegash 
Falls, Black Hawdc's paddle snapped in two near 
a treacherous rock, and how, with rare presence 
of mind he, wdthout a moment's hesitation, flung 
the useless paddle aside and sprang to his “set¬ 
ting pole” in time to gain control of his canoe and 
keep it from drifting into the current heading 
toward the brink of the falls? And so compe¬ 
tent had they shown themselves, so thoroughly 
at home with pole or paddle in hand, that we 
were confident that any one of the seven would 
have met such an emergency with equal pres¬ 
ence of mind, d'hcy had taken us out of a 
pocket formed by a floating log as we were pass¬ 
ing through a jam in the river, and in a strong 
current had guided our canoes safely around 
and through narrow passages in a jam of logs, 
when to strike would mean a crushed canoe. 
I shall never forget one exciting rush through 
an open race-way at 
the head of the Cau- 
cumgomac, in a dash 
of foam and spray and 
with a delicious catch 
of the breath, as the 
canoe made the. first 
downward plunge, cov¬ 
ering me with spray, 
and filling the sleeves 
of my slicker with 
w'ater to the elbow, 
and my soul with a 
reckless longing to go 
back and try it all over 
again. And, oh! the 
joy of canoeing down 
the tumbling, bubbling 
waters of these musi¬ 
cal little mountain 
brooks of the jMaine 
woods ! There is noth¬ 
ing in the world like 
it. You know that 
the only danger in overturning is a good w'et- 
ting, for the brook is not deep enough to en¬ 
danger your life, but each time the rush of the 
current sends your canoe straight for a big rock 
in midstream, you thrill with excitement lest you 
strike it, and each time your guide swings the 
bow around just in time to avert disaster and 
heads directly for a still more dangerous, be¬ 
cause hidden, rock, you thrill w'ith admiration 
for the keen eye, quick hand, and almost unerr¬ 
ing judgment which sees ahead the only channel 
in the shallow stream deep enough to take your 
boat through without scraping the bottom. Some¬ 
times you do strike bottom, and sometimes, in 
very shallow water you feel the ribs bend and 
strain under you as the frail shell of a boat is 
forced over the pebbles at the bottom of the 
stream, making you feel, as you sit low in the 
bottom of the canoe, what a thin partition sepa¬ 
rates you from a w'atery bed, but giving you a 
delightful intimate sense of being a part of it 
all: and over and through it all is the enchant¬ 
ment of all the sw'eet swells of the woods, and 
that delicious, rippling music of the water run¬ 
ning merrily over the moss-covered stones, to 
which is added at intervals the sweet note of 
some wood bird, perhaps a swamp robin, a “pee- 
be-dee'’ or a hermit thrush. 
You feel intensely thankful that you are 
alive and privileged to be in the midst of such 
beautiful things. It is well for us that we first 
learned confidence in the skill of our guides on 
the smaller streams, for later, on the Allegash 
River we found rapids exciting enough to satisfy 
any but the most reckless craving for adventure. 
Here is no rippling, singing music of a moun¬ 
tain brook, but a broad, steep pathway of turbu¬ 
lent, boiling water, which hurries along with such 
force that to be swept on to one of the many 
wicked looking rocks in its pathway would mean 
not only an upset, but a broken canoe. Our 
guides said the water in the Allegash was much 
higher than is usual at that time of the year, 
but that was so much the better for us. We 
found it wildly exhilarating even to the point 
of intoxication; first a smooth downhill path- 
W'ay with a glimpse ahead of white water, which, 
as we neared it, was seen to be a rushing, swirl¬ 
ing mass of foam, so set with big, ugly rocks 
that we wondered how so frail a craft as our 
canoe could ever live through it, but the quick¬ 
ness and de.xterity of our boatmen in making 
the many sharp turns necessary to avoid these 
dangers carried us safely through, and we knew 
that when we came to rapids where it was un¬ 
safe to take a risk, they would make us get out 
and walk along the bank, while they took the 
boats through alone, as at Chase’s Carry, where 
‘the stones is jest as' thick as they ken be 
planted.” It is impossible to describe the sen¬ 
sation that comes to you as you reach the head 
of one of the many steep pitches on this stream, 
which vary' in length from eighty rods to nearly 
two miles of rushing, boiling, white water, and 
look down on the broad downhill sweep of the 
pathway ahead, so steep that you wonder what 
prevents the water from rushing down even 
faster than it does. At one place, near “The 
Devil’s Elbow,” a sudden turn of the river makes 
it look as if we were certain to strike head on 
the steep side of the wooded cliff straight ahead. 
I am sure that ten years hence I can shut my 
eyes and see it all again as vividly as now. 
"Lest we forget” was not one of our watch¬ 
words on this journey, for how can we ever 
forget these things? 
Our beloved Allegash bore us relentlessly 
on into the larger, broader St. John’s River, 
which has a much greater volume of water, 
flowing now in smooth stretches, and then in 
dangerous looking rapids which we approached 
with a quickened breath and a tightening of our 
grip on the canoe rail. Though larger, deeper 
and stronger than iiTthe Allegash, the rapids in 
this river, formidable as they seem, are really 
no more dangerous, as there are fewer hidden 
rocks to threatent disaster. 
Flow we resented the signs of civilization as 
they appeared on the river banks in occasional 
farm buildings and cultivated fields, for w'e loved 
our swift-flowing, turbulent Allegash with its 
wooded banks of spruce and fir, and this is truly 
“the country of the pointed firs.” 
When the little toy village of St. Francis 
came in view on the Canadian side of the St. 
John's River, we knew that our “little journey 
to nature'’ was nearly finished, and w'e tried to 
stifle our longing to set back the calendar, con¬ 
soling oursehes with the thought that the 
memory of all these dear, delightful things 
w'ould always remain with us. 
How can we ever forget our first sight of 
a moose, after several unsuccessful “moose 
hunts,'’ or the excitement of wakening in the 
night to hear the peculiar breathy w'histle of a 
deer just outside our tent door, or the night we 
were wakened just at midnight to see, through 
the open tent door, our friendly moon just set¬ 
ting over the edge of the lake, or the evening 
a frightened rabbit bounded by close to our 
tents, or the dainty little does who ventured into 
our camp on Round Pond so close to us that 
we could plainly see the beautiful markings about 
her eyes and ears? 
We came so intimately in contact with the 
life of the woods, the downy-headed ducks 
swimming with their broods of little ones, the 
wood-birds, the loons, and the beaver villages; 
and one day we visited Gull Island, a tiny rock 
of an island on Churchill Lake, dotted with the 
nests of the fresh water gulls, and shall we ever 
forget the soft feel of the tiny baby gulls and 
the beat of their hearts against our hands as we 
held the pretty little balls of spotted gray down 
