Canoeing in the wilderness. Henry David Thoreau
we were getting breakfast a brood of twelve black dippers,[2] half grown, came paddling by within three or four rods, not at all alarmed; and they loitered about as long as we stayed, now huddled close together, now moving off in a long line, very cunningly.
Looking northward from this place it appeared as if we were entering a large bay, and we did not know whether we should be obliged to diverge from our course and keep outside a point which we saw, or should find a passage between this and the mainland. It was misty dog-day weather, and we had already penetrated a smaller bay of the same kind, and knocked the bottom out of it, though we had been obliged to pass over a bar between an island and the shore, where there was but just breadth and depth enough to float the canoe, and the Indian had observed, "Very easy makum bridge here," but now it seemed that if we held on we should be fairly embayed. Presently, however, the mist lifted somewhat and revealed a break in the shore northward. The Indian immediately remarked, "I guess you and I go there."
This was his common expression instead of saying "we." He never addressed us by our names, though curious to know how they were spelled and what they meant. We called him Polis. He had already guessed very accurately at our ages, and said that he was forty-eight.
After breakfast I emptied the melted pork that was left into the lake, making what the sailors call a "slick," and watching to see how much it spread over and smoothed the agitated surface. The Indian looked at it a moment and said, "That make hard paddlum through; hold 'em canoe. So say old times."
We hastily reloaded, putting the dishes loose in the bows, that they might be at hand when wanted, and set out again. The western shore, near which we paddled along, rose gently to a considerable height and was everywhere densely covered with the forest, in which was a large proportion of hard wood to enliven and relieve the fir and spruce.
The Indian said that the lichen which we saw hanging from the trees was called chorchorque. We asked him the names of several birds which we heard this morning. The thrush, which was quite common, and whose note he imitated, he said was called Adelungquamooktum; but sometimes he could not tell the name of some small bird which I heard and knew, but he said, "I tell all the birds about here; can't tell littlum noise, but I see 'em, then I can tell."
I observed that I should like to go to school to him to learn his language, living on the Indian island the while; could not that be done?
"Oh, yer," he replied, "good many do so."
I asked how long he thought it would take. He said one week. I told him that in this voyage I would tell him all I knew, and he should tell me all he knew, to which he readily agreed.
Mount Kineo, which was generally visible, though occasionally concealed by islands or the mainland in front, had a level bar of cloud concealing its summit, and all the mountain-tops about the lake were cut off at the same height. Ducks of various kinds were quite common, and ran over the water before us as fast as a horse trots.
The Indian asked the meaning of reality, as near as I could make out the word, which he said one of us had used; also of interrent, that is, intelligent. I observed that he could rarely sound the letter r, but used l, as also r for l sometimes; as load for road, pickelel for pickerel, Soogle Island for Sugar Island. He generally added the syllable um to his words, as paddlum, etc.
On a point on the mainland where we landed to stretch our legs and look at the vegetation, going inland a few steps, I discovered a fire still glowing beneath its ashes, where somebody had breakfasted, and a bed of twigs prepared for the following night. So I knew not only that they had just left, but that they designed to return, and by the breadth of the bed that there was more than one in the party. You might have gone within six feet of these signs without seeing them. There grew the beaked hazel, rue seven feet high, and red osier, whose bark the Indian said was good to smoke, "tobacco before white people came to this country, Indian tobacco."
The Indian was always very careful in approaching the shore, lest he should injure his canoe on the rocks, letting it swing round slowly sidewise, and was still more particular that we should not step into it on shore, nor till it floated free, and then should step gently lest we should open its seams, or make a hole in the bottom.
After passing Deer Island we saw the little steamer from Greenville, far east in the middle of the lake. Sometimes we could hardly tell her from an island which had a few trees on it. Here we were exposed to the wind from over the whole breadth of the lake, and ran a little risk of being swamped. While I had my eye fixed on the spot where a large fish had leaped, we took in a gallon or two of water; but we soon reached the shore and took the canoe over the bar at Sand-bar Island, a few feet wide only, and so saved a considerable distance.
We crossed a broad bay and found the water quite rough. A very little wind on these broad lakes raises a sea which will swamp a canoe. Looking off from the shore, the surface may appear to be almost smooth a mile distant, or if you see a few white crests they appear nearly level with the rest of the lake, but when you get out so far, you may find quite a sea running, and ere long, before you think of it, a wave will gently creep up the side of the canoe and fill your lap, like a monster deliberately covering you with its slime before it swallows you, or it will strike the canoe violently and break into it. The same thing may happen when the wind rises suddenly, though it were perfectly calm and smooth there a few minutes before; so that nothing can save you, unless you can swim ashore, for it is impossible to get into a canoe when it is upset. Since you sit flat on the bottom, though the danger should not be imminent, a little water is a great inconvenience, not to mention the wetting of your provisions. We rarely crossed even a bay directly, from point to point, when there was wind, but made a slight curve corresponding somewhat to the shore, that we might the sooner reach it if the wind increased.
When the wind is aft, and not too strong, the Indian makes a spritsail of his blanket. He thus easily skims over the whole length of this lake in a day.
The Indian paddled on one side, and one of us on the other, to keep the canoe steady, and when he wanted to change hands he would say, "T' other side." He asserted, in answer to our questions, that he had never upset a canoe himself, though he may have been upset by others.
Think of our little eggshell of a canoe tossing across that great lake, a mere black speck to the eagle soaring above it!
My companion trailed for trout as we paddled along, but, the Indian warning him that a big fish might upset us, for there are some very large ones there, he agreed to pass the line quickly to the stern if he had a bite.
While we were crossing this bay, where Mount Kineo rose dark before us within two or three miles, the Indian repeated the tradition respecting this mountain's having anciently been a cow moose—how a mighty Indian hunter succeeded in killing this queen of the moose tribe with great difficulty, while her calf was killed somewhere among the islands in Penobscot Bay, and, to his eyes, this mountain had still the form of the moose in a reclining posture. He told this at some length and with apparent good faith, and asked us how we supposed the hunter could have killed such a mighty moose as that. An Indian tells such a story as if he thought it deserved to have a good deal said about it, only he has not got it to say, and so he makes up for the deficiency by a drawling tone, long-windedness, and a dumb wonder which he hopes will be contagious.
We approached the land again through pretty rough water, and then steered directly across the lake at its narrowest part to the eastern side, and were soon partly under the lee of the mountain, having paddled about twenty miles. It was now about noon.
We designed to stop there that afternoon and night, and spent half an hour looking along the shore northward for a suitable place to camp. At length, by going half a dozen rods into the dense spruce and fir wood on the side of the mountain almost as dark as a cellar, we found a place sufficiently clear and level to lie down on, after cutting away a few bushes. The Indian cleared a path to it from the shore with his axe, and we then carried up all our baggage, pitched our tent, and made our bed, in order to be ready for foul weather, which then threatened us, and for the night. He gathered a large armful of fir twigs, breaking them off,