CHAPTER II.
“A band of hunters were we. All day long
Our feet had trail’d the woods.”—Street.
MOVING ON.—PINE STREAM FALLS.—CHESUNCOOK LAKE AND FARM.—UMBAZOOKUS CARRY.—A DRY GROUND SLEIGHING PARTY.—FURTHER EXPERIENCE WITH THE HORSE.—A GLIMPSE OF DESOLATION.—CHAMBERLIN LAKE.—A VISION.—EAGLE LAKE.—SMITH BROOK.—HAYMOAK FALLS.—TROUT STORIES.
Bright and early the next morning tents were struck, canoes loaded, and soon we were afloat upon the waters of the Penobscot, hoping to reach the mouth of the river by nightfall.
Nightfall?
Perish the fond and audacious expectation. It was not until four days subsequently, after a running battle with difficulties, that we passed the Pine Stream Falls and entered Chesuncook Lake.
CHESUNCOOK LAKE.
There is a farm upon this lake. It consists of a wilderness of ground, and a collection of rickety sheds, clustered like barnacles to a major “pile,” which you suspect to be the homestead.
There is nothing pretentious about the architecture. It is of a rather complex order, and the span of life never seemed to me so short as at the moment I attempted to determine it. Such a view of angles, horizontals, and perpendiculars never before greeted my eyes. It was simply distracting. The designing genius must have suffered with a cast in his eye, or a mind disordered through indigestion.
CHESUNCOOK FARM.
These farm buildings stand alone in a wild, open tract of country. The sight of them strikes you instantly as strange and unaccountable. At first you wonder and half believe yourself in the vicinity of Ararat and a debilitated ark. Then you shudder and give thought to a terrible suspicion—a small-pox hospital, perhaps! Finally, unable to reach a plausible conclusion, you forget you are in Maine, and in generous sympathy with the glory awarded to all the super-dilapidated buildings of the lower states, declare at once that the pile must be the old headquarters of General Washington.
We made a brief stay at this farm, spending most of our time in duck and plover shooting.
We then paddled across the lake and passed up Umbazookus Stream, dragging our canoes most of the way. We landed at a carry on the right bank.
During the previous season, while visiting this region, we had pushed further up the stream to what is known as “Mud Pond Carry,” sacking our entire kit to Mud Pond. But a longing for the almighty dollar has since been aroused in the heart of one Smith, who having erected a house and barn a short distance from the landing, now transports the tourist’s canoe and supplies six miles to Mud Pond, across Umbazookus Carry.
As we neared the house we fired a gun in signal of our approach, and were met by a man and a boy who rushed forth from the adjoining barn. Then
A party through the Maine wilds bound
Cried “Good man, do not tarry;
But tow us o’er the boggy ground
Of Umbazookus Carry.”[A]
[A] Copyrighted 1881.
Whereupon the man and the boy began immediate preparations for the transport.
Hastening to the woods they soon appeared with four bony animals in harness that put one more in mind of the rigging of a clam boat than the trappings of horses. These were attached to two large wooden sleds made of tree branches, upon which were placed our birch canoes, swung by an adjustment of ropes to four stanchions at their sides, while the spaces underneath were occupied by our baggage.
UMBAZOOKUS STREAM.
These clumsy vehicles, with their strangely arranged cargo, presented a novel and picturesque sight, which I thought a good subject for the Tourograph, and “photo’d” before starting. Then, amid the cheering of our guides, the horses were whipped up, and we were soon underway, sliding across the logs, bouncing over the rocks, and pitching along through the mud like a fishing-smack foundering in a storm.
PORTAGE
The Colonel and I strode ahead with our guns, securing partridges by the way, closely followed by Hiram’s team. Soon we heard a shout, and looking back saw his horses rearing and plunging, and the sled stopped short before a tree.
“What’s up?” we cried.
“This left-hand nag here is a Tartar,” replied Hiram, as he tugged and jerked at the reins. “I tried to tack and leave that ’ere tree on the starboard quarter, but I’ll be blamed if he haint sot me into it all kerchunk on the port bow. Say, gineral!” he yelled, turning ferociously toward Smith; “what’s the matter with this here animile of yours?”
“Which one? That one?” asked Smith. “I meant to warn ye consarnin’ him. He must be handled mighty gingerly. Takes an ingineer to run him properly.”
“Why, for sin’s sake?” inquired Hiram.
“He’s cross-eyed, an’ he allers leans hard toward the west.”
“Cross-eyed! Poor crittur,” murmured Hiram, sympathetically, as he laid the lash along the animal’s ribs. “How’d it happen?”
“Don’t know exactly. Born so, I expect; but I heerd say onst that the children o’ the people who had ’im afore me dropped a nail into his feed bag. Don’t know how true it is.”
Hiram struggled desperately with the reins to free the sled, but without success.
To back the craft would have required more than the entire strength of the party, so John Mansell’s axe came into play, the tree was felled, and leaping over its stump the sled was soon bounding on.
After three hours of heavy toil for both horses and men, we completed the six miles, and arrived at the uninteresting sheet of water called Mud Pond.
“Jemima!” cried Hiram, as he surveyed the pond and gauged the depth of the water; “how are we going to get across?”
“Have to dig a channel with our paddles,” said John.
“Me think so—yes!” ejaculated the Indian, as with a miss-step he almost sank from sight in the mud.
A channel was soon made, canoes repacked, and by dint of hard poling we reached deep water, and paddled for the opposite shore a mile distant.
On arriving the same difficulties which prevented our embarking delayed our landing, and at one time it looked as if each man would make his canoe his camp for the night. But just as the sun set we managed to land, and pitched our tents in the dark.
Mud Pond Stream being almost dry, we were forced the next morning to carry our canoes and kit almost a mile, depositing them at last in the stream which flows through the moose barren bordering on Chamberlin Lake.
Here we found ourselves in a wild, desolate country. The stream along which we moved ran through an immense tract of bog, which was dotted here and there with old stumps reaching for a quarter of a mile in every direction. This was bounded in the dim distance by a dead wood forest, which enclosed it completely like a chevaux de frise. Within this was presented a most lugubrious landscape. It was the picture of a region dead to the world and to itself. The old grey stumps scattered about seemed like storm-beaten tombstones which marked the resting-places of perished souls, and the naked, bleached forms of the trees in the palisade like sentinel skeletons guarding a death ground.
OUTLET OF CHAMBERLIN LAKE.
Soon with our three canoes in line we entered the waters of Chamberlin Lake. There we were suddenly startled by hearing a loud splash in the water, and greeted with the vision of an immense bull caribou, which sprang up and instantly disappeared in she woods before we could tender him the slightest compliment at the pleasure of the meeting.
“Confound the luck!” yelled John, throwing aside a rifle in exasperating disappointment.
“Exceedingly impolite of the beast to decamp so suddenly” said the Colonel, as we examined the animal’s tracks; “he would have weighed three hundred pounds, if an ounce!”
CHAMBERLIN FARM.
Chamberlin Lake is eighteen miles long, three miles wide, and is one of the largest bodies of water in Maine. At this point, the preceding year, I turned south through the East Branch of the Penobscot, and landed at Mattawamkeag on the European and North American Railroad. This year our course lay directly to the north.
FACETLÆ.
At Chamberlin Farm we made a brief stay, and purchased an extra supply of hard tack, sugar, and molasses, as our stores were running short. Then turning our backs on the lovely peaks of Mt. Katahdin and the Soudahaunk range, which lay to the southwest, we buffetted the waves of the lake for six miles, landing at the locks which divide its waters from those of Eagle Lake below.
Here we went into camp, and the Tourograph was brought into important requisition while a benign and smiling sun was at its best. And here we were delayed for three days afterwards, through a go-as-you please rain-storm, during which we tried the camera while the aforesaid benign and smiling sun was at its worst, hidden away like an unfortunate trade-dollar during the storm of repudiation.
When the weather grew favorable, we followed the current of Chamberlin River one mile down to Eagle Lake below.
HAYMOAK FALLS.
Some people think of Maine as a state containing only one large lake with an innumerable number of smaller ponds within its borders, but the tourist visiting these regions for the first time is daily surprised by bodies of water which fairly compete with the area of Moosehead. Eagle Lake is thirteen miles long, with an average measurement of three wide. Within its bosom it nurses two islands, while the horizon of its northern extremity is broken by the cone-shaped peak of Soper Mountain.
Our next camp was made at the mouth of a beautiful stream near here, which writhes under the opprobrious title of Smith Brook. This innocent sheet of water, which I am certain has done naught to merit the ignominy it suffers, presents most picturesque beauties in its windings as far as Haymoak Falls.
There we discovered the skull of a large moose, and extracted the great teeth, fearing they would be the only souvenirs we should obtain of that almost extinct animal.
“My!” said the Colonel, as he pried out one of the grinders; “what a surface for a tooth-ache!”
There, also, we had splendid fishing, and captured many large trout.
The day before we broke up camp we had a run of sport that well-nigh astonished us, and that night at the evening meal we had a rare fish feast, served with the following sauce:
“I don’t care whether you believe this yarn I’m goin’ to tell ye or not,” said Hiram, as he added another vertebra to the pile of trout skeletons accumulating by his plate; “but it’s true as gospel, nevertheless an’ notwithstanding, an’ with me the truth is like the stump of a back tooth—it must cum out. You know, Nichols, where the old farm road from Greenville to Dexter crosses the bridge at Spectacle Pond?”
“Me know,” said the Indian, scarcely raising his eyes from the fire.
“Wall, I was guiding for Doctor L. and Squire B. one day in that region, which happened, by the way, to be a pet fishin’ ground o’ their’n. As we were gittin’ along to the bridge, the Doctor, all of a sudden, says to the Squire, ‘If you’ve no objections, Rufe, I’ll slip ahead of you and cast my flies under that bridge, for ten to one I’ll strike a big fish, as I saw some mighty fine trout there the other day while crossing to see my patient in the old farm beyond.’ The Squire told him to go by all means, but to have some mercy for the sport of other people an’ not to altogether clean the brook. With that the Squire turned around, an’ began to amuse himself at pistol practice with my old hat that I’d set up for a target on a tree, an’ the Doctor, he pegged down the road like mad toward the bridge. I stood an’ watched him jest for fun, for he was a comical old duck, an’ so nervus an’ fussy that I ’spected like’s not to see him tumble overboard. Reaching the spot he made a dozen or so wild casts, but at last succeeded in landin’ his flies under the bridge, when he took a seat on a projectin’ beam, an’ let the current sweep ’em out. Quicker’n ye could say Jack Robinson, I heard a shout; the Doctor’s rod almost bent double, an’ he begun reeling in for dear life. ‘I’ve got him, Mansell; I’ve got him. Come, quick! he’s the biggest fellow I ever hooked.’ Grabbin’ the landin’ net, I ran over the bank to help him. It looked for all the world as if he’d ketched a shark, but as soon as I reached the other side an’ saw the game a flappin’ on the surface, I give a shout that almost blew me to pieces, an’ rollin’ down on the bank, I roared until every ’tarnal rib was sore. What d’ye guess had hold of the old fellow’s line? Why, nothin’ less than a big Shanghai rooster! The animile, as I found out after, belonged to the farm near by. It had been hatched and raised with a brood of ducks, an’ bein’ quite a water-nimp, as they call it, had strolled into the stream to have a pick at the Doctor’s flies. I tell ye what, so long as he lives the Doctor’ll never forgit that bite, for the shock of the discovery knocked him clean off the beam into the water, where I clapped the landin’ net on his old bald head an’ fished him out like a drowned rat. I don’t know how true it is, but they say that ever since he took that bath ther’ hain’t been another trout seen about the brook.”
GOOD SPORT.
“Which puts me in mind of another fish story, in which I and an old schoolmaster friend of mine are concerned,” said the Colonel, as Hiram concluded. “Out trouting once we suddenly met on our way to the brook a dog, which sneaked out from a patch of woods and began to follow in a close trot at our heels. We were taken somewhat by surprise at his appearance, because of the loneliness of the country, for there was no house within miles of us, and we were puzzled to think where he had come from. He looked the picture of starvation. His skin was literally hanging on him, and the body was so thin and sunken that we almost heard his ribs playing a bone chorus as he jogged behind us. We fed him with a portion of our lunch, which he devoured greedily. Finding himself favored, he followed us to the trouting ground. Spying out a beautiful quiet brook we sat down on the bank and cast our flies. The sport was instantaneous, and for a while continued and exciting, during which time the Professor had the good fortune to capture some half-dozen trout, which equalled in weight and beauty anything I had ever seen. When the luck was on the wane we reeled in our lines, and turned about to gather together our ‘catch,’ which during the sport we had thrown behind us on the grass. Suddenly the Professor gave a gasp. ‘Great heavens!’ he cried; ‘My half-dozen beauties! Where are they?’ We searched the bank, but they could not be found. ‘Is it possible that any one is prowling about these parts and has crept behind us and stolen them?’ he said. ‘I don’t think that likely,’ I replied. At the same time my attention was attracted to an object lying at the base of a tree. It was our dog—thin, starved and miserable-looking no longer, but swelled out as fat as a potato-bag, and wagging his tail, and smacking his jaws in heavenly transport. ‘Professor,’ said I; ‘look!’ ‘What! Another dog!’ gasped the Professor. ‘No, the same dog with variations,’ I said, ‘thanks to the expansive properties of trout, a little rosier in health.’ The Professor guessed the truth and gave a groan. He danced about like a lunatic and kicked the dog until it began to snap at his legs. Then with a heavy heart he packed his traps and we left the animal at the tree enjoying its siesta. ‘Fate could not harm him—he had dined that day.’”
Rare treats, these fish feasts. Rare tack, these fish stories. But, reader, beware of bones.
