The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 by Various
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Various >> The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858
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20 THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY
A MAGAZINE OF LITERATURE, ART, AND POLITICS
CONTENTS
American Tract Society, The
Ann Potter's Lesson
Asirvadam the Brahmin
Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table, The
Autocrat's Landlady, A Visit to the
Autocrat, The, gives a Breakfast to the Public
Birds of the Garden and Orchard, The
Birds of the Pasture and Forest, The
Bulls and Bears
Bundle of Irish Pennants, A
Catacombs of Rome, The
Catacombs of Rome, Note to the
Chesuncook
Colin Clout and the Faëry Queen
Crawford and Sculpture
Daphnaïdes,
Denslow Palace, The
Dot and Line Alphabet, The
Eloquence
Evening with the Telegraph-Wires, An
Farming Life in New England
Faustus, Doctor, The German Popular Legend of
Gaucho, The
Great Event of the Century, The
Her Grace, the Drummer's Daughter
Hour before Dawn, The
Ideal Tendency, The
Illinois in Spring-time
Jefferson, Thomas
Kinloch Estate, The
Language of the Sea, The
Leibnitz, Gottfried Wilhelm von
Letter-Writing
Loo Loo
Mademoiselle's Campaigns
Metempsychosis
Minister's Wooing, The
Miss Wimple's Hoop
New World, The, and the New Man
Obituary
Old Well, The
Our Talks with Uncle John
Perilous Bivouac, A
Physical Courage
Pintal
Pocket-Celebration of the Fourth, The
President's Prophecy of Peace, The
Prisoner of War, A
Punch
Railway-Engineering in the United States
Rambles in Aquidneck
Romance of a Glove, The
Salons de Paris, Les
Sample of Consistency, A
Singing-Birds and their Songs, The
Songs of the Sea
Subjective of it, The
Suggestions
Three of Us
Water-Lilies
What are we going to make?
Whirligig of Time, The
Youth
POETRY
All's Well
Beatrice
Birth-Mark, The
"Bringing our Sheaves with us"
Cantatrice, La
Cup, The
Dead House, The
Discoverer of the North Cape, The
Evening Melody, An
Fifty and Fifteen
House that was just like its Neighbors, The
Jolly Mariner, The
Keats, the Poet
Last Look, The
Marais du Cygne, Le
My Children
Myrtle Flowers
Nature and the Philosopher
November
November.--April
Shipwreck
Skater, The
Spirits in Prison
Swan-Song of Parson Avery, The
Telegraph, The
To -----
Trustee's Lament, The
Waldeinsamkeit
"Washing of the Feet," The, on Holy Thursday, in St. Peter's
What a Wretched Woman said to me
Work and Rest
LITERARY NOTICES.
American Cyclopedia, The New
Annual Obituary Notices, by N. Crosby
Aquarium, The, by P. H. Gosse
Belle Brittan on a Tour
Bigelow, Jacob, Brief Expositions of Rational Medicine by
Black's Atlas of North America
Chapman's American Drawing-Book
Church and Congregation, The, by C. A. Bartel
Crosby's Annual Obituary, for 1857
Curiosities of Literature, by Disraeli
Cyclopedia of Drawing, The, by W. E. Worthen
Cyclopaedia, The New American
Dana's Household Book of Poetry
Disraeli's Curiosities of Literature
Drawing-Book, The American, by J.G. Chapman
Drawing, The Cyclopedia of
Ewbank, Thomas, Thoughts on Matter and Force by
Exiles of Florida, The, by J. E. Giddings
Fitch, John, Westcott's Life of
Giddings, Joshua R., The Exiles of Florida by
Goadby, Henry, A Text-Book of Animal and Vegetable Physiology by
Gray's Botanical Series
Household Book of Poetry, by C. A. Dana
Inductive Sciences, History of the, by Whewell
Journey due North, A, by G. A. Sala
Kingsley, Charles, Sir Walter Raleigh and his Time, with other Papers by
Library of Old Authors
Life beneath the Waters
New Priest in Conception Bay, The
Pascal, Études sur, par M. Victor Cousin
Pellico, Silvio, Lettres de
Physiology, Animal and Vegetable, by Henry Goadby
Poe's Poetical Works
Raleigh, Sir Walter, and his Time, with other Papers, by C. Kingsley
Rational Medicine, Brief Expositions of, by Jacob Bigelow
Robertson, Rev. F. W., Sermons by
Sea-Shore, Common Objects of the, by J. G. Wood
Stephenson, George, Smiles's Life of
Summer Time in the Country
Thoughts on Matter and Force, by Thomas Ewbank
Vocabularies, A Volume of, by T. Wright
Webster, John, Dramatic Works of
Whewell's History of the Inductive Sciences
Wright, Thomas, A Volume of Vocabularies by
THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY.
VOL. II.--JUNE, 1858.--NO. VIII.
CHESUNCOOK.
At 5 P.M., September 13th, 185-, I left Boston in the steamer for
Bangor by the outside course. It was a warm and still night,--warmer,
probably, on the water than on the land,--and the sea was as smooth
as a small lake in summer, merely rippled. The passengers went
singing on the deck, as in a parlor, till ten o'clock. We passed a
vessel on her beam-ends on a rock just outside the islands, and some
of us thought that she was the "rapt ship" which ran
"on her side so low
That she drank water, and her keel ploughed air,"
not considering that there was no wind, and that she was under bare
poles. Now we have left the islands behind and are off Nahant. We
behold those features which the discoverers saw, apparently unchanged.
Now we see the Cape Ann lights, and now pass near a small
village-like fleet of mackerel fishers at anchor, probably off
Gloucester. They salute us with a shout from their low decks; but I
understand their "Good evening", to mean, "Don't run against me, Sir."
From the wonders of the deep we go below to get deeper sleep. And
then the absurdity of being waked up in the night by a man who wants
the job of blacking your boots! It is more inevitable than
seasickness, and may have something to do with it. It is like the
ducking you get on crossing the line the first time. I trusted that
these old customs were abolished. They might with the same propriety
insist on blacking your face. I heard of one man who complained that
somebody had stolen his boots in the night; and when he found them,
he wanted to know what they had done to them,--they had spoiled them,--
he never put that stuff on them; and the boot-black narrowly escaped
paying damages.
Anxious to get out of the whale's belly, I rose early, and joined
some old salts, who were smoking by a dim light on a sheltered part
of the deck. We were just getting into the river. They knew all
about it, of course. I was proud to find that I had stood the voyage
so well, and was not in the least digested. We brushed up and
watched the first signs of dawn through an open port; but the day
seemed to hang fire. We inquired the time; none of my companions had
a chronometer. At length an African prince rushed by, observing,
"Twelve o'clock, gentlemen!" and blew out the light. It was moon-rise.
So I slunk down into the monster's bowels again.
The first land we make is Manheigan Island, before dawn, and next St.
George's Islands, seeing two or three lights. Whitehead, with its
bare rocks and funereal bell, is interesting. Next I remember that
the Camden Hills attracted my eyes, and afterward the hills about
Frankfort. We reached Bangor about noon.
When I arrived, my companion that was to be had gone up river, and
engaged an Indian, Joe Aitteon, a son of the Governor, to go with us
to Chesuncook Lake. Joe had conducted two white men a-moose-hunting
in the same direction the year before. He arrived by cars at Bangor
that evening, with his canoe and a companion, Sabattis Solomon, who
was going to leave Bangor the following Monday with Joe's father, by
way of the Penobscot, and join Joe in moose-hunting at Chesuncook,
when we had done with him. They took supper at my friend's house and
lodged in his barn, saying that they should fare worse than that in
the woods. They only made Watch bark a little, when they came to the
door in the night for water, for he does not like Indians.
The next morning Joe and his canoe were put on board the stage for
Moosehead Lake, sixty and odd miles distant, an hour before we
started in an open wagon. We carried hard bread, pork, smoked beef,
tea, sugar, etc., seemingly enough for a regiment; the sight of
which brought together reminded me by what ignoble means we had
maintained our ground hitherto. We went by the Avenue Road, which is
quite straight and very good, north-westward toward Moosehead Lake,
through more than a dozen flourishing towns, with almost every one
its academy,--not one of which, however, is on my General Atlas,
published, alas! in 1824; so much are they before the age, or I
behind it! The earth must have been considerably lighter to the
shoulders of General Atlas then.
It rained all this day and till the middle of the next forenoon,
concealing the landscape almost entirely; but we had hardly got out
of the streets of Bangor before I began to be exhilarated by the
sight of the wild fir and spruce tops, and those of other primitive
evergreens, peering through the mist in the horizon. It was like the
sight and odor of cake to a schoolboy. He who rides and keeps the
beaten track studies the fences chiefly. Near Bangor, the fence-posts,
on account of the frost's heaving them in the clayey soil, were not
planted in the ground, but were mortised into a transverse horizontal
beam lying on the surface. Afterwards, the prevailing fences were
log ones, with sometimes a Virginia fence, or else rails slanted
over crossed stakes,--and these zigzagged or played leap-frog all
the way to the lake, keeping just ahead of us. After getting out of
the Penobscot Valley, the country was unexpectedly level, or
consisted of very even and equal swells, for twenty or thirty miles,
never rising above the general level, but affording, it is said, a
very good prospect in clear weather, with frequent views of Katadin,--
straight roads and long hills. The houses were far apart, commonly
small and of one story, but framed. There was very little land under
cultivation, yet the forest did not often border the road. The stumps
were frequently as high as one's head, showing the depth of the snows.
The white hay-caps, drawn over small stacks of beans or corn in the
fields, on account of the rain, were a novel sight to me. We saw
large flocks of pigeons, and several times came within a rod or two
of partridges in the road. My companion said, that, in one journey
out of Bangor, he and his son had shot sixty partridges from his
buggy. The mountain-ash was now very handsome, as also the
wayfarer's-tree or hobble-bush, with its ripe purple berries mixed
with red. The Canada thistle, an introduced plant, was the
prevailing weed all the way to the lake,--the road-side in many
places, and fields not long cleared, being densely filled with it as
with a crop, to the exclusion of everything else. There were also
whole fields full of ferns, now rusty and withering, which in older
countries are commonly confined to wet ground. There were very few
flowers, even allowing for the lateness of the season. It chanced
that I saw no asters in bloom along the road for fifty miles, though
they were so abundant then in Massachusetts,--except in one place
one or two of the aster acuminatus,--and no golden-rods till within
twenty miles of Monson, where I saw a three-ribbed one. There were
many late buttercups, however, and the two fire-weeds, erechthites
and epilobium, commonly where there had been a burning, and at last
the pearly everlasting. I noticed occasionally very long troughs
which supplied the road with water, and my companion said that three
dollars annually were granted by the State to one man in each
school-district, who provided and maintained a suitable water-trough
by the road-side, for the use of travellers,--a piece of
intelligence as refreshing to me as the water itself. That
legislature did not sit in vain. It was an Oriental act, which made
me wish that I was still farther down East,--another Maine law,
which I hope we may get in Massachusetts. That State is banishing
bar-rooms from its highways, and conducting the mountain-springs
thither.
The country was first decidedly mountainous in Garland, Sangerville,
and onwards, twenty-five or thirty miles from Bangor. At Sangerville,
where we stopped at mid-afternoon to warm and dry ourselves, the
landlord told us that he had found a wilderness where we found him.
At a fork in the road between Abbot and Monson, about twenty miles
from Moosehead Lake, I saw a guide-post surmounted by a pair of
moose-horns, spreading four or five feet, with the word "Monson"
painted on one blade, and the name of some other town on the other.
They are sometimes used for ornamental hat-trees, together with
deers' horns, in front entries; but, after the experience which I
shall relate, I trust that I shall have a better excuse for killing
a moose than that I may hang my hat on his horns. We reached Monson,
fifty miles from Bangor, and thirteen from the lake, after dark.
At four o'clock the next morning, in the dark, and still in the rain,
we pursued our journey. Close to the academy in this town they have
erected a sort of gallows for the pupils to practise on. I thought
that they might as well hang at once all who need to go through such
exercises in so new a country, where there is nothing to hinder
their living an outdoor life. Better omit Blair, and take the air.
The country about the south end of the lake is quite mountainous,
and the road began to feel the effects of it. There is one hill which,
it is calculated, it takes twenty-five minutes to ascend. In many
places the road was in that condition called _repaired_, having just
been whittled into the required semi-cylindrical form with the
shovel and scraper, with all the softest inequalities in the middle,
like a hog's back with the bristles up, and Jehu was expected to
keep astride of the spine. As you looked off each side of the bare
sphere into the horizon, the ditches were awful to behold,--a vast
hollowness, like that between Saturn and his ring. At a tavern
hereabouts the hostler greeted our horse as an old acquaintance,
though he did not remember the driver. He said that he had taken
care of that little mare for a short time, a year or two before, at
the Mount Kineo House, and thought she was not in as good condition
as then. Every man to his trade. I am not acquainted with a single
horse in the world, not even the one that kicked me.
Already we had thought that we saw Moosehead Lake from a hill-top,
where an extensive fog filled the distant lowlands, but we were
mistaken. It was not till we were within a mile or two of its south
end that we got our first view of it,--a suitably wild-looking
sheet of water, sprinkled with small low islands, which were covered
with shaggy spruce and other wild wood,--seen over the infant port
of Greenville, with mountains on each side and far in the north, and
a steamer's smoke-pipe rising above a roof. A pair of moose-horns
ornamented a corner of the public-house where we left our horse, and
a few rods distant lay the small steamer Moosehead, Captain King.
There was no village, and no summer road any farther in this
direction,--but a winter road, that is, one passable only when deep
snow covers its inequalities, from Greenville up the east side of the
lake to Lily Bay, about twelve miles.
I was here first introduced to Joe. He had ridden all the way on the
outside of the stage the day before, in the rain, giving way to
ladies, and was well wetted. As it still rained, he asked if we were
going to "put it through." He was a good-looking Indian, twenty-four
years old, apparently of unmixed blood, short and stout, with a
broad face and reddish complexion, and eyes, methinks, narrower and
more turned-up at the outer corners than ours, answering to the
description of his race. Beside his under-clothing, he wore a red
flannel shirt, woollen pants, and a black Kossuth hat, the ordinary
dress of the lumberman, and, to a considerable extent, of the
Penobscot Indian. When, afterward, he had occasion to take off his
shoes and stockings, I was struck with the smallness of his feet. He
had worked a good deal as a lumberman, and appeared to identify
himself with that class. He was the only one of the party who
possessed an India-rubber jacket. The top strip or edge of his canoe
was worn nearly through by friction on the stage.
At eight o'clock, the steamer with her bell and whistle, scaring the
moose, summoned us on board. She was a well-appointed little boat,
commanded by a gentlemanly captain, with patent life-seats, and
metallic life-boat, and dinner on board, if you wish. She is chiefly
used by lumberers for the transportation of themselves, their boats,
and supplies, but also by hunters and tourists. There was another
steamer, named Amphitrite, laid up close by; but, apparently, her
name was not more trite than her hull. There were also two or three
large sail-boats in port. These beginnings of commerce on a lake in
the wilderness are very interesting,--these larger white birds that
come to keep company with the gulls. There were but few passengers,
and not one female among them: a St. Francis Indian, with his canoe
and moose-hides, two explorers for lumber, three men who landed at
Sandbar Island, and a gentleman who lives on Deer Island, eleven
miles up the lake, and owns also Sugar Island, between which and the
former the steamer runs; these, I think, were all beside ourselves.
In the saloon was some kind of musical instrument, cherubim or
seraphim, to soothe the angry waves; and there, very properly, was
tacked up the map of the public lands of Maine and Massachusetts, a
copy of which I had in my pocket.
The heavy rain confining us to the saloon awhile, I discoursed with
the proprietor of Sugar Island on the condition of the world in Old
Testament times. But at length, leaving this subject as fresh as we
found it, he told me that he had lived about this lake twenty or
thirty years, and yet had not been to the head of it for twenty-one
years. He faces the other way. The explorers had a fine new birch on
board, larger than ours, in which they had come up the Piscataquis
from Howland, and they had had several messes of trout already. They
were going to the neighborhood of Eagle and Chamberlain Lakes, or
the head-waters of the St. John, and offered to keep us company as
far as we went. The lake to-day was rougher than I found the ocean,
either going or returning, and Joe remarked that it would swamp his
birch. Off Lily Bay it is a dozen miles wide, but it is much broken
by islands. The scenery is not merely wild, but varied and
interesting; mountains were seen, farther or nearer, on all sides
but the north-west, their summits now lost in the clouds; but Mount
Kineo is the principal feature of the lake, and more exclusively
belongs to it. After leaving Greenville, at the foot, which is the
nucleus of a town some eight or ten years old, you see but three or
four houses for the whole length of the lake, or about forty miles,
three of them the public-houses at which the steamer is advertised
to stop, and the shore is an unbroken wilderness. The prevailing
wood seemed to be spruce, fir, birch, and rock-maple. You could
easily distinguish the hard wood from the soft, or "black growth,"
as it is called, at a great distance,--the former being smooth,
round-topped, and light green, with a bowery and cultivated look.
Mount Kineo, at which the boat touched, is a peninsula with a narrow
neck, about midway the lake on the east side. The celebrated
precipice is on the east or land side of this, and is so high and
perpendicular that you can jump from the top many hundred feet into
the water which makes up behind the point. A man on board told us
that an anchor had been sunk ninety fathoms at its base before
reaching bottom! Probably it will be discovered ere long that some
Indian maiden jumped off it for love once, for true love never could
have found a path more to its mind. We passed quite close to the
rock here, since it is a very bold shore, and I observed marks of a
rise of four or five feet on it. The St. Francis Indian expected to
take in his boy here, but he was not at the landing. The father's
sharp eyes, however, detected a canoe with his boy in it far away
under the mountain, though no one else could see it. "Where is the
canoe?" asked the captain, "I don't see it"; but he held on
nevertheless, and by and by it hove in sight.
We reached the head of the lake about noon. The weather had in the
mean while cleared up, though the mountains were still capped with
clouds. Seen from this point, Mount Kineo, and two other allied
mountains ranging with it north-easterly, presented a very strong
family likeness, as if all cast in one mould. The steamer here
approached a long pier projecting from the northern wilderness and
built of some of its logs,--and whistled, where not a cabin nor a
mortal was to be seen. The shore was quite low, with flat rocks on it,
overhung with black ash, arbor-vitae, etc., which at first looked as
if they did not care a whistle for us. There was not a single cabman
to cry "Coach!" or inveigle us to the United States Hotel. At length
a Mr. Hinckley, who has a camp at the other end of the "carry,"
appeared with a truck drawn by an ox and a horse over a rude
log-railway through the woods. The next thing was to get our canoe
and effects over the carry from this lake, one of the heads of the
Kennebec, into the Penobscot River. This railway from the lake to
the river occupied the middle of a clearing two or three rods wide
and perfectly straight through the forest. We walked across while
our baggage was drawn behind. My companion went ahead to be ready
for partridges, while I followed, looking at the plants.
This was an interesting botanical locality for one coming from the
South to commence with; for many plants which are rather rare, and
one or two which are not found at all, in the eastern part of
Massachusetts, grew abundantly between the rails,--as Labrador tea,
kalmia glauca, Canada blueberry, (which was still in fruit, and a
second time in bloom,) Clintonia and Linnĉa Borealis, which last a
lumberer called _moxon_, creeping snowberry, painted trillium,
large-flowered bell-wort, etc. I fancied that the aster radula,
diplopappus umbellatus, solidago lanceolatus, red trumpetweed, and
many others which were conspicuously in bloom on the shore of the
lake and on the carry, had a peculiarly wild and primitive look there.
The spruce and fir trees crowded to the track on each side to
welcome us, the arbor-vitĉ with its changing leaves prompted us to
make haste, and the sight of the canoe-birch gave us spirits to do so.
Sometimes an evergreen just fallen lay across the track with its
rich burden of cones, looking, still, fuller of life than our trees
in the most favorable positions. You did not expect to find such
_spruce_ trees in the wild woods, but they evidently attend to
their toilets each morning even there. Through such a front-yard did
we enter that wilderness.
There was a very slight rise above the lake,--the country appearing
like, and perhaps being, partly a swamp,--and at length a gradual
descent to the Penobscot, which I was surprised to find here a large
stream, from twelve to fifteen rods wide, flowing from west to east,
or at right angles with the lake, and not more than two and a half
miles from it. The distance is nearly twice too great on the Map of
the Public Lands, and on Colton's Map of Maine, and Russell Stream
is placed too far down. Jackson makes Moosehead Lake to be nine
hundred and sixty feet above high water in Portland harbor. It is
higher than Chesuncook, for the lumberers consider the Penobscot,
where we struck it, twenty-five feet lower than Moosehead,--though
eight miles above it is said to be the highest, so that the water
can be made to flow either way, and the river falls a good deal
between here and Chesuncook. The carry-man called this about one
hundred and forty miles above Bangor by the river, or two hundred
from the ocean, and fifty-five miles below Hilton's on the Canada
road, the first clearing above, which is four and a half miles from
the source of the Penobscot.
At the north end of the carry, in the midst of a clearing of sixty
acres or more, there was a log camp of the usual construction, with
something more like a house adjoining, for the accommodation of the
carryman's family and passing lumberers. The bed of withered
fir-twigs smelled very sweet, though really very dirty. There was
also a store-house on the bank of the river, containing pork, flour,
iron, bateaux, and birches, locked up.
We now proceeded to get our dinner, which always turned out to be tea,
and to pitch canoes, for which purpose a large iron pot lay
permanently on the bank. This we did in company with the explorers.
Both Indians and whites use a mixture of rosin and grease for this
purpose,--that is, for the pitching, not the dinner. Joe took a
small brand from the fire and blew the heat and flame against the
pitch on his birch, and so melted and spread it. Sometimes he put
his mouth over the suspected spot and sucked, to see if it admitted
air; and at one place, where we stopped, he set his canoe high on
crossed stakes, and poured water into it. I narrowly watched his
motions, and listened attentively to his observations, for we had
employed an Indian mainly that I might have an opportunity to study
his ways. I heard him swear once mildly, during this operation,
about his knife being as dull as a hoe,--an accomplishment which he
owed to his intercourse with the whites; and he remarked, "We ought
to have some tea before we start; we shall be hungry before we kill
that moose."
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