DANGER OF WANDERING FROM CAMP.—AN EXPERIENCE ON LAKE SUPERIOR.—THE FALLS OF THE EAST BRANCH.—STAIR FALLS.—INCIDENTS OF CAMP LIFE.—AN ENCHANTED BOWER.—HUNT’S FARM.—AN ARTIST’S CANOE.—THE ASCENT OF HUNT’S MOUNTAIN.—A REVERIE.—WHETSTONE FALLS.—DISCOVERY OF JASPER ON LEDGE FALLS.—DAWN OF CIVILIZATION.—MATTAWAMKEAG.—THE EAST BRANCH CANVAS-ED.
I often thought how easily one could stray from camp, and, if without a compass, be lost in this wilderness. While hunting on Lake Superior one autumn, some years since, I endured such an experience, and the bitterness of it has always remained fresh in my memory. While passing over the corduroy road of thirteen and a half miles which lies between the town of Ontonagon, Mich., and the Minnesota copper mines, my attention was allured from the road by the melodious whir-r-r-r, whir-r-r-r of a brace of partridges. Stepping aside into the thicket, I followed as fast as possible the retreating sound, and after a tedious tramp through briers and swamp I finally brought them to bag. In the excitement of the chase, I had given little or no heed to the path, or to the clouds that were fast gathering overhead.
Starting back in the direction I supposed the road, I traveled, it seemed to me, double the distance that would have revealed it, but no familiar path did I find. In fact, I was amazed in discovering that I was back on the same ground on which I had started. There was no reason in the thing,—no reasoning against it. The points of the compass had been as clear in my head as if I saw the needle, but the moment I was back, all seemed to be wrong. The sun, which occasionally revealed itself, shone out of the wrong part of the heavens. I climbed one of the tall trees, but the very stillness of the landscape on which I gazed seemed to mock me.
I was not a novice in woodcraft, and could follow a trail readily. I examined the bark of the trees to see which side was the roughest, and then, singling out a number, judged of the points of the compass by the way the majority leaned, and plunging into the thicket made another and another attempt.
I well knew the danger of losing my self-control, and, sitting down on a log, I covered my face with my hands and waited until I felt calm and self-possessed again. I have no idea how long it was, but when I arose the sun was nearly obliterated by the clouds, which soon began to discharge their contents in sympathy for my ill luck, and to reach my destination I must make all speed.
I immediately struck a “bee line” in the direction which my reveries had designated as the right path, blazing the trees with my hunting-knife as I hastened along. Soon I espied an opening, and, dashing onward, what was my joy to find the old corduroy road, which never looked more welcome in its life.
From Grand lake to the junction of the East with the West branch of the Penobscot it is sixty to seventy-five miles, the river being shut in on all sides by lofty mountains, or heavy belts of grand old forests, through which the swift river tumbles, with only an occasional suggestion of the lumberman’s axe.
There are eleven conspicuous falls in this interval, varying from twenty to sixty feet in height, while the charming cascades are too numerous to mention. The abrupt descents bear the names of Stair, Haskell Rock, Grand, Pond Pitch, Hulling Machine, Bowling, Spring Brook Gravel Bed, Whetstone, Grindstone, Crowfoot, and Ledge Falls, their names, in many cases, suggesting their wild and rugged formation.
ON THE EAST BRANCH.