Canoe and camera

by Thomas Sedgwick Steele

PENKNIFE SOUVENIRS.

While Bowley, our cook, was making bread and coffee, trying salt pork and trout for our evening repast, the resounding blows of Weller’s axe could be heard in the forest, gathering logs for the camp-fire, and Morris was cutting fir boughs for the historic camp bed. It is wonderful how comfortable a bed this makes, while its delightful health-giving odor is so invigorating to the system. Our table outside the tent was usually made of four forked sticks on which we put others crosswise, and on these we laid splits of wood, and for seats rolled into position a convenient log, or used the many wooden pails containing our provisions. On rainy days we sat on the ground in the tent, and used these pails of various sizes and heights as our “extension table,” smiling to think how easily we could conform to any condition in the woods. At the head of the tent a choice position was given to our photographer’s camera and chemicals, together with our traveling-bags, rifles, cartridge-boxes, and books, while at our feet were distributed the pails of provisions, and heavier part of our “kit.” About one and a half feet was allowed to each man for sleeping accommodations, an imaginary line only dividing off the guides, we being arranged somewhat similar to sardines in a box, only our heads were all in one direction.

Immediately after leaving camp the next morning we entered the “rips” or rough water of the river. For about ten miles there was little necessity of paddling, the velocity of the stream sweeping us along without extra effort. These last few miles were very exciting, as, following in the wake of the birch canoes, we guided our canvas craft past boulders and sunken rocks, while the guides, constantly on the alert for our welfare, shouted or waved their hands to warn us of dangerous places. Passing close to the bank on the left of the boisterous water, we shot the Pine Stream Falls and soon rested in the foamy waters below, where our artist at once immortalized the party.

Pine Stream Falls

The amount of strength and activity displayed by the guides in handling their canoes past falls and rapids is astonishing. With their slender “setting poles,” eleven feet in length, armed at one end with a sharp iron spike of six inches, they will steer the canoe with unerring certainty, or hold it quivering in waters that would seem to engulf it.

A hasty lunch, and we soon reached the mouth of the West Branch (eighteen miles from the North East carry), where a scene of special beauty burst upon us in the white capped waves of Chesuncook Lake and distant view of Mt. Katahdin and the Sourdnahunk range. Paddling across the head of Chesuncook Lake, which is seventeen miles in length and three miles in width, we passed the mouth of the Caucomgomoc stream and entered the Umbazooksus River. We had hardly recovered from the exertion in crossing the lake, when we espied in the tall meadow grass on the bank of the stream a large black bear, who, standing on his hind legs, nodded an approving welcome. The quickness with which he dropped on his four feet and plunged into the thicket gave us little opportunity to return the compliment with our rifles.

MUD POND CARRY.

Another camp, and the next day we passed in safety the Umbazooksus stream and lake, and at 8 A. M. arrived at the long dreaded Mud Pond “carry.” This path through the woods to Mud Pond is a little over two miles long, and is detested by tourists and execrated by the guides. Many weeks before my departure for Maine, I had been accosted by a friend (who had made the St. Johns trip), and asked to give him on my return the full particulars of my experience on this “carry.” I was not, therefore, taken by surprise, but was prepared to meet it manfully on its own ground, and fight the battle to the best of my ability. I had provided myself for this special undertaking with long rubber wading pants or stockings, reaching to my hips, and further incased my feet in a heavy pair of canvas hob-nailed shoes, the latter I also found useful in wading streams. Even while selecting our provisions at the Kineo House, this and that luxury had been debated upon, or withdrawn as an article too heavy for transportation on Mud Pond “carry.” Its obstacles to our senses had also been made prominent by the daily conversation of the guides, and our imagination of that “gulf” greatly awakened. On reaching the portage, the canoes were drawn ashore, turned over to dry, goods removed, and, each one selecting what he could support, we started off “Indian file” to make the best of the difficulties. On the right-hand side of the path, within a few rods of the Umbazooksus Lake, will be found a cool and refreshing spring of water, at which we quenched our thirst. At first the path was dry, and only occasional pools of water, easily turned, interrupted our advance; but soon the pools grew thicker and thicker, lengthening to greater extent than before, and, with our loads on our backs, we plunged forward, sinking time and time again to our knees in the soft muddy water. It makes a vast deal of difference, the nature and position of the load on one’s back, and whether it is steady in its place, or has a shifting propensity. I have known a pair of oars dodging about on one’s shoulders to be heavier and more inconvenient than five times that burden in guns and ammunition. I had selected as the task for my left shoulder my shot gun, and attaching to it a broiler, coffee-pot, gridiron, and other impedimenta of camp and cooking utensils, detailed to the right a bag of two hundred shot and rifle cartridges. Picture not only one but six men so loaded, forcing their way through the muddy path, slipping and floundering, first on one side and then on the other, under the conglomerated load of “camp kit.” An opening in the dark hot woods half way across, and our burdens are lowered to the ground, to return to the lake for another cargo. A lunch, and on we go another mile, where the branches lock closer and closer about us, making our load seem double its weight, until with joy we discover from a slight elevation at the end of the “carry” the tranquil surface of Mud Pond. A portion of this course is evidently at some seasons of the year the bed of a brook, and the writer found in a small isolated pool of water only a foot square, a lively trout, four inches in length.