Canoeing in the wilderness

by Henry David Thoreau

I thought he meant that while he ran down the rapids I should keep along the shore, and be ready to assist him from time to time, as I had done before; but as the walking would be very bad, I answered, “I suppose you will go too fast for me, but I will try.”

But I was to go by the path, he said. This I thought would not help the matter, I should have so far to go to get to the riverside when he wanted me. But neither was this what he meant. He was proposing a race over the carry, and asked me if I thought I could keep along with him by the same path, adding that I must be pretty smart to do it. As his load, the canoe, would be much the heaviest and bulkiest, I thought that I ought to be able to do it, and said that I would try. So I proceeded to gather up the gun, axe, paddle, kettle, frying-pan, plates, dippers, carpets, etc., and while I was thus engaged he threw me his cowhide boots. “What, are these in the bargain?” I asked.

“Oh, yer,” said he; but before I could make a bundle of my load I saw him disappearing over a hill with the canoe on his head.

Hastily scraping the various articles together, I started on the run, and immediately went by him in the bushes, but I had no sooner left him out of sight in a rocky hollow than the greasy plates, dippers, etc., took to themselves wings, and while I was employed in gathering them up, he went by me; but, hastily pressing the sooty kettle to my side, I started once more, and, soon passing him again, I saw him no more on the carry. I do not mention this as anything of a feat, for it was but poor running on my part, and he was obliged to move with great caution for fear of breaking his canoe as well as his neck. When he made his appearance, puffing and panting like myself, in answer to my inquiries where he had been, he said, “Locks cut ’em feet,” and, laughing, added, “Oh, me love to play sometimes.”

He said that he and his companions when they came to carries several miles long used to try who would get over first; each perhaps with a canoe on his head. I bore the sign of the kettle on my brown linen sack for the rest of the voyage.

As we approached the mouth of the East Branch we passed two or three huts, the first sign of civilization after Hunt’s, though we saw no road as yet. We heard a cowbell, and even saw an infant held up to a small square window to see us pass. On entering the West Branch at Nicketow, Polis remarked that it was all smooth water hence to Oldtown, and he threw away his pole which was cut on the Umbazookskus.

We camped about two miles below Nicketow, covering with fresh twigs the withered bed of a former traveler, and feeling that we were now in a settled country, especially when in the evening we heard an ox sneeze in its wild pasture across the river. Wherever you land along the frequented part of the river you have not far to go to find these sites of temporary inns, the withered bed of flattened twigs, the charred sticks, and perhaps the tent-poles. Not long since, similar beds were spread along the Connecticut, the Hudson, and the Delaware, and longer still ago, by the Thames and Seine, and they now help to make the soil where private and public gardens, mansions, and palaces are. We could not get fir twigs for our bed here, and the spruce was harsh in comparison, having more twig in proportion to its leaf, but we improved it somewhat with hemlock.

After the regular supper we attempted to make a lily soup of the bulbs which I had brought along, for I wished to learn all I could before I got out of the woods. Following the Indian’s directions, I washed the bulbs carefully, minced some moose meat and some pork, salted and boiled all together, but we had not the patience to try the experiment fairly, for he said it must be boiled till the roots were completely softened so as to thicken the soup like flour; but though we left it on all night, we found it dried to the kettle in the morning and not yet boiled to a flour. Perhaps the roots were not ripe enough, for they commonly gather them in the fall. The Indian’s name for these bulbs was sheepnoc.