The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 02, No. 08, June 1858: A Magazine of Literature, Art, and PoliticsVarious
General
The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 02, No. 08, June 1858: A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics
Various
American periodicals
After ascending about a mile and a half, to within a short distance
of Lobster Lake, we returned to the Penobscot. Just below the mouth
of the Lobster we found quick water, and the river expanded to
twenty or thirty rods in width. The moose-tracks were quite numerous
and fresh here. We noticed in a great many places narrow and
well-trodden paths by which they had come down to the river, and
where they had slid on the steep and clayey bank. Their tracks were
either close to the edge of the stream, those of the calves
distinguishable from the others, or in shallow water; the holes
made by their feet in the soft bottom being visible for a long time.
They were particularly numerous where there was a small bay, or
_pokelogan_, as it is called, bordered by a strip of meadow, or
separated from the river by a low peninsula covered with coarse grass,
wool-grass, etc., wherein they had waded back and forth and eaten
the pads. We detected the remains of one in such a spot. At one place,
where we landed to pick up a summer duck, which my companion had shot,
Joe peeled a canoe-birch for bark for his hunting-horn. He then
asked if we were not going to get the other duck, for his sharp eyes
had seen another fall in the bushes a little farther along, and my
companion obtained it. I now began to notice the bright red berries
of the tree-cranberry, which grows eight or ten feet high, mingled
with the alders and cornel along the shore. There was less hard wood
than at first.
After proceeding a mile and three quarters below the mouth of the
Lobster, we reached, about sundown, a small island at the head of
what Joe called the Moosehorn Dead-water, (the Moosehorn, in which
he was going to hunt that night, coming in about three miles below),
and on the upper end of this we decided to camp. On a point at the
lower end lay the carcass of a moose killed a month or more before.
We concluded merely to prepare our camp, and leave our baggage here,
that all might be ready when we returned from moose-hunting. Though
I had not come a-hunting, and felt some compunctions about
accompanying the hunters, I wished to see a moose near at hand, and
was not sorry to learn how the Indian managed to kill one. I went as
reporter or chaplain to the hunters,--and the chaplain has been
known to carry a gun himself. After clearing a small space amid the
dense spruce and fir trees, we covered the damp ground with a
shingling of fir-twigs, and, while Joe was preparing his birch-horn
and pitching his canoe,--for this had to be done whenever we stopped
long enough to build a fire, and was the principal labor which he
took upon himself at such times,--we collected fuel for the night,
large wet and rotting logs, which had lodged at the head of the
island, for our hatchet was too small for effective chopping; but we
did not kindle a fire, lest the moose should smell it. Joe set up a
couple of forked stakes, and prepared half a dozen poles, ready to
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