Canoeing in the wilderness

by Henry David Thoreau

We reached the Penobscot about four o’clock, and found there some St. Francis Indians encamped on the bank. They were making a canoe and drying moose meat. Their camp was covered with spruce bark. They had a young moose, taken in the river a fortnight before, confined in a sort of cage of logs piled up cob-fashion, seven or eight feet high. It was quite tame, about four feet high, and covered with moose flies. There was a large quantity of cornel, red maple, and also willow and aspen boughs, stuck through between the logs on all sides, butt ends out, and on their leaves it was browsing. It looked at first as if it were in a bower rather than a pen.

Our Indian said that he used black spruce roots to sew canoes with, obtaining it from high lands or mountains. The St. Francis Indians thought that white spruce roots might be best. But the former said, “No good, break, can’t split ’em.”

I told him I thought that I could make a canoe, but he expressed great doubt of it; at any rate he thought that my work would not be “neat” the first time.

Having reloaded, we paddled down the Penobscot. We saw a splendid yellow lily by the shore, which I plucked. It was six feet high and had twelve flowers, in two whorls, forming a pyramid. We afterward saw many more thus tall along this stream, and on the East Branch. The Indian said that the roots were good for soup, that is, to cook with meat, to thicken it, taking the place of flour. They get them in the fall. I dug some, and found a mass of bulbs pretty deep in the earth, two inches in diameter, looking, and even tasting, somewhat like raw green corn on the ear.

When we had gone about three miles down the Penobscot, we saw through the tree-tops a thunder-shower coming up in the west, and we looked out a camping-place in good season, about five o’clock.

I will describe the routine of camping. We generally told the Indian that we would stop at the first suitable place, so that he might be on the lookout for it. Having observed a clear, hard, and flat beach to land on, free from mud, and from stones which would injure the canoe, one would run up the bank to see if there were open and level space enough for the camp between the trees, or if it could be easily cleared, preferring at the same time a cool place, on account of insects. Sometimes we paddled a mile or more before finding one to our minds, for where the shore was suitable the bank would often be too steep, or else too low and grassy, and therefore mosquitoey. We then took out the baggage and drew up the canoe. The Indian cut a path to the spot we had selected, which was usually within two or three rods of the water, and we carried up our baggage.

One, perhaps, takes birch bark, always at hand, and dead dry wood, and kindles a fire five or six feet in front of where we intend to lie. It matters not, commonly, on which side this is, because there is little or no wind in so dense a wood at that season; and then he gets a kettle of water from the river, and takes out the pork, bread, coffee, etc., from their several packages.

Another, meanwhile, having the axe, cuts down the nearest dead rock maple or other dry hard wood, collecting several large logs to last through the night, also a green stake, with a notch or fork to it, which is slanted over the fire, perhaps resting on a rock or forked stake, to hang the kettle on, and two forked stakes and a pole for the tent.