Canoeing in the wilderness

by Henry David Thoreau

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.