At last the sun shone bright upon the silky ripples of the lake. Mr. Toothaker provided two buggies,--one for himself and our traps, one for Iglesias and me. We rattled away across county and county. And so at full speed we drove all day, and, with a few hours' halt, all night,--all a fresh, starry night,--until gay sunrise brought us to Skowhegan, on the road to Moosehead Lake. As we had travelled all night, breakfast must be our substitute for slumber. Repletion, instead of repose, must restore us. Two files of red-shirted lumbermen, brandishing knives at each other across a long table, only excited us to livelier gymnastics; and when we had thus hastily crammed what they call in Maine beefsteak, and what they infuse down East for coffee, we climbed to the top of a coach of the bounding-billow motion, and went pitching northward. Two facts we learned from our coachman: one, that we were passing that day through a "pretty sassy country"; also, that the same region was "only meant to hold the world together." Personal "sassiness" is a trait of which every Yankee is proud; Iglesias and I both venture to hope that we appreciate the value of that quality, and have properly cultivated it. Topographical "sassiness," unmodified by culture and control, is a rude, rugged, and unattractive trait; and New England is, on the whole, "sassier" than I could wish. Let the dullish day's drive, then, be passed over dumbly. In the evening, we dismounted at Greenville, at the foot of Moosehead Lake. CHAPTER VI. THE BIRCH. The rivers of Maine, as a native observed to me, "olluz spread 'mselves inter bulges." Mollychunkamug and her fellows are the bulges of the Androscoggin; Moosehead, of the Kennebec. Sluggish streams do not need such pauses. Peace is thrown away upon stolidity. The torrents of Maine are hasty young heroes, galloping so hard when they gallop, and charging with such rash enthusiasm when they charge, hurrying with such Achillean ardor toward their eternity of ocean, that they would never know the influence, in their heart of hearts, of blue cloudlessness, or the glory of noonday, or the pageantries of sunset,--they would only tear and rive and shatter carelessly. Nature, therefore, provides valleys for the streams to bulge in, and entertain celestial reflections. Nature, arranging lake-spots as educational episodes for the Maine rivers, disposes them also with a view to utility. Mr. Killgrove and his fellow-lumbermen treat lakes as log-puddles and raft-depots. Moosehead is the most important of these, and keeps a steamboat for tugging rafts and transporting raftsmen.