CANOEING DOWN MOOSE RIVER 
A Trip in Western Maine 
w 
AVING made half a dozen canoe 
I I ti'ips on the waters of the Maine 
woods, I began to look around 
for something new, and upon studying 
Hubbard’s Guide and map to Moose- 
head Lake and northern Maine, I de¬ 
termined that Moose River, which 
flows into the western shore of the 
lake, should give anyone a 
short paddle of interest. The 
usual canoe trips, such as the 
Allagast, Penobscot, St. John, 
lead to the north, east and 
south, but here was a chance 
to go into western Maine. 
The guides to whom I spoke 
about the jaunt were not over- 
enthusiastic, remarking that 
to come down Moose River was 
| a hard trip with a shift at Somerset 
Junction. As I was wondering whether 
or not to press the matter further, who 
should appear at our summer camp at 
i Waring Point, Kineo, Moosehead Lake, 
but Simon Capino, the veteran guide. 
Simon is always ready for adventure, 
and when a paddle down Moose River 
from its headwaters was mentioned, he 
lost no time in saying he was ready to 
go on what he termed a sight-seeing 
tour, especially as he had never been 
up or down the river any further than 
Jackman’s, and then many years ago. 
And now was the time for action, as 
there was a good pitch of water. 
On August 2, 1922, we started, duly 
equipped with the usual camp dunnage, 
and paddled across Moosehead Lake to 
Rockwood, where we took the railroad 
to Somerset Junction, made the short 
shift to the connecting railway and 
thence were on our way to a station 
which would start us well up the river 
and which we determined would be 
Holeb. 
Page 421 
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By PALMER H. LANGDON 
Arriving at our destination in a driz¬ 
zling rain, we lost no time in finding a 
camp site on the banks of the stream, 
a quarter of a mile from the railway 
station. Fred Dion, a town store¬ 
keeper on whose land we camped, gave 
us a friendly greeting, brought us ice- 
water and warned us of the abundant 
crop of mosquitoes that the summer 
rains had produced. Likewise the rail¬ 
road pump engineer was kind enough 
to bring us a mosquito sprayer—and 
we found the advice correct and the 
sprayer useful in fighting this un¬ 
usual early August pest in the Maine 
woods. Fortunately, we had a sheet 
of cheese-cloth with us which we tucked 
under the ridge-pole and fastened with 
safety-pins at each end of the tent or 
the mosquitoes would have stopped any 
possible sleep the first night in camp. 
No extra urging was needed in the 
morning to make a hasty exit from this 
mosquitoville, and we paddled furiously 
down the tiny stream to outrun the 
stingy pests. With the aid of the 
friendly current we were making such 
good time and encountering such slight 
obstructions that we thought we had 
struck a picnic canoe stream and that 
all the talk about Moose River’s being 
a hard trip was drawn from lazy im¬ 
agination—when about noon there sud¬ 
denly hove in sight ahead of us a mass 
of rocks and boulders that were square¬ 
ly set in our way, determined to dispute 
our passage. 
The country was new to Simon and 
the trails around the obstructions were 
overgrown—so after a brief survey of 
the situation he determined that he 
could drag the empty canoe over stones 
with here and there a bit of 
water to help, while I busied 
myself with backing over the 
campage. 
Jumping boulders with a 
pack of some sort on your back 
is not the easiest thoroughfare 
in the world, for a misstep 
might mean broken bones, but 
anyone who goes to the woods 
must be ready for any emer¬ 
gency and bear his burdens lightly, and 
after two hours of lugging in the’ hot¬ 
test time of a hot day, we succeeded 
ln getting over our eleven pieces of im¬ 
pedimenta and were ready to eat and 
go on, when three young campers, who 
were carrying their canoe up-stream, 
appeared on the scene. 
“No use loading your craft,” they 
shouted to us. “Another worse carry 
right ahead of you, and there are five 
carries before you reach Attean Lake.” 
The news fairly wilted us for a mo¬ 
ment, as the only information we had 
gathei ed from those who were supposed 
to know was that we would have to 
carry around Holeb Falls, and we had 
jumped an inoffensive ledge of the early 
morning, supposed to have been the 
Falls, and here were five portages to 
oppose us—a regular obstacle race. 
Sure enough, we had not paddled 
more than 200 feet when we met an¬ 
other roar of water and a mass of ugly- 
looking boulders as far as we could see 
down the curve of the stream. 
Contents Copyrighted by Forest and Stream Pub, Co, 
The evening was radiant with moonlight . . . 
the shore fringes and distant mountains could 
be plainly seen. It was so quiet that the cry of 
the loon, the quack of the duck and the hoot 
of the owl could be heard distinctly during 
the twilight nocturnal hours. 
