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
round-topped, and light green, with a bowery and cultivated look.
Mount Kineo, at which the boat touched, is a peninsula with a narrow
neck, about midway the lake on the east side. The celebrated
precipice is on the east or land side of this, and is so high and
perpendicular that you can jump from the top many hundred feet into
the water which makes up behind the point. A man on board told us
that an anchor had been sunk ninety fathoms at its base before
reaching bottom! Probably it will be discovered ere long that some
Indian maiden jumped off it for love once, for true love never could
have found a path more to its mind. We passed quite close to the
rock here, since it is a very bold shore, and I observed marks of a
rise of four or five feet on it. The St. Francis Indian expected to
take in his boy here, but he was not at the landing. The father's
sharp eyes, however, detected a canoe with his boy in it far away
under the mountain, though no one else could see it. "Where is the
canoe?" asked the captain, "I don't see it"; but he held on
nevertheless, and by and by it hove in sight.
We reached the head of the lake about noon. The weather had in the
mean while cleared up, though the mountains were still capped with
clouds. Seen from this point, Mount Kineo, and two other allied
mountains ranging with it north-easterly, presented a very strong
family likeness, as if all cast in one mould. The steamer here
approached a long pier projecting from the northern wilderness and
built of some of its logs,--and whistled, where not a cabin nor a
mortal was to be seen. The shore was quite low, with flat rocks on it,
overhung with black ash, arbor-vitae, etc., which at first looked as
if they did not care a whistle for us. There was not a single cabman
to cry "Coach!" or inveigle us to the United States Hotel. At length
a Mr. Hinckley, who has a camp at the other end of the "carry,"
appeared with a truck drawn by an ox and a horse over a rude
log-railway through the woods. The next thing was to get our canoe
and effects over the carry from this lake, one of the heads of the
Kennebec, into the Penobscot River. This railway from the lake to
the river occupied the middle of a clearing two or three rods wide
and perfectly straight through the forest. We walked across while
our baggage was drawn behind. My companion went ahead to be ready
for partridges, while I followed, looking at the plants.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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