Perish the fond and audacious expectation. It was not until four days subsequently, after a running battle with difficulties, that we passed the Pine Stream Falls and entered Chesuncook Lake.
CHESUNCOOK LAKE.
There is a farm upon this lake. It consists of a wilderness of ground, and a collection of rickety sheds, clustered like barnacles to a major “pile,” which you suspect to be the homestead.
There is nothing pretentious about the architecture. It is of a rather complex order, and the span of life never seemed to me so short as at the moment I attempted to determine it. Such a view of angles, horizontals, and perpendiculars never before greeted my eyes. It was simply distracting. The designing genius must have suffered with a cast in his eye, or a mind disordered through indigestion.
CHESUNCOOK FARM.
These farm buildings stand alone in a wild, open tract of country. The sight of them strikes you instantly as strange and unaccountable. At first you wonder and half believe yourself in the vicinity of Ararat and a debilitated ark. Then you shudder and give thought to a terrible suspicion—a small-pox hospital, perhaps! Finally, unable to reach a plausible conclusion, you forget you are in Maine, and in generous sympathy with the glory awarded to all the super-dilapidated buildings of the lower states, declare at once that the pile must be the old headquarters of General Washington.
We made a brief stay at this farm, spending most of our time in duck and plover shooting.
We then paddled across the lake and passed up Umbazookus Stream, dragging our canoes most of the way. We landed at a carry on the right bank.