SUNDAY, JULY 26
The note of the white-throated sparrow was the first heard in the morning, and with this all the woods rang. Though commonly unseen, their simple ah, te-te-te, te-te-te, te-te-te, so sharp and piercing, was as distinct to the ear as the passage of a spark of fire shot into the darkest of the forest would be to the eye. We were commonly aroused by their lively strain very early. What a glorious time they must have in that wilderness, far from mankind!
I told the Indian that we would go to church to Chesuncook this morning, some fifteen miles. It was settled weather at last. A few swallows flitted over the water, we heard Maryland yellow-throats along the shore, the notes of the chickadee, and, I believe, redstarts. Moose-flies of large size pursued us in midstream.
The Indian thought that we should lie by on Sunday. Said he, “We come here lookum things, look all round, but come Sunday look up all that, and then Monday look again.”
He spoke of an Indian of his acquaintance who had been with some ministers to Katahdin and had told him how they conducted. This he described in a low and solemn voice. “They make a long prayer every morning and night, and at every meal. Come Sunday, they stop ’em, no go at all that day—keep still—preach all day—first one, then another, just like church. Oh, ver’ good men. One day going along a river, they came to the body of a man in the water, drowned good while. They go right ashore—stop there, go no farther that day—they have meeting there, preach and pray just like Sunday. Then they go back and carry the body with them. Oh, they ver’ good men.”
I judged from this account that their every camp was a camp-meeting, and that they wanted an opportunity to preach somewhere more than to see Katahdin.
However, the Indian added, plying the paddle all the while, that if we would go along he must go with us, he our man, and he suppose that if he no takum pay for what he do Sunday then ther’s no harm, but if he takum pay then wrong. I told him that he was stricter than white men. Nevertheless, I noticed that he did not forget to reckon in the Sundays at last.
He appeared to be a very religious man, and said his prayers in a loud voice, in Indian, kneeling before the camp, morning and evening—sometimes scrambling up in haste when he had forgotten this, and saying them with great rapidity. In the course of the day he remarked, “Poor man rememberum God more than rich.”
We soon passed the island where I had camped four years before. The deadwater, a mile or two below it, the Indian said was “a great place for moose.” We saw the grass bent where a moose came out the night before, and the Indian said that he could smell one as far as he could see him, but he added that if he should see five or six to-day close by canoe he no shoot ’em. Accordingly, as he was the only one of the party who had a gun, or had come a-hunting, the moose were safe.
Just below this a cat owl flew heavily over the stream, and he, asking if I knew what it was, imitated very well the common hoo, hoo, hoo, hoorer, hoo, of our woods.