19 September 1853 – 25 September 1853

Monday. I looked very narrowly at the vegetation as we glided along close to the shore, and it At, etc.” This is probably a more correct spelling than the Aitteon of the book. Mrs. Fannie Hardy Eckstorm in The Penobscot Man (Boston, 1904) gives a considerable account of this man and his exploits and spells his name “Attien.”’] now and then made Joe turn aside for me to pluck a plant, that I might see what was primitive about our Concord River.

Tuesday. About Hinckley’s camp I saw the: Fringilla hyemalis; also a bird a little smaller, maybe, brownish and yellowish, with some white tail-feathers, which I think makes the tull-lull sound, hopping on the wood-pile. Is not this the myrtle-bird? Their note interested me because I formerly had many a chase in a spring morning in the direction of this sound, in vain, to identify the bird. ‘The lumberers said it came round the camps, and they gave it a vulgar name. Also, about the carry, a chubby sparrow with dark-brown or black stripes on the head. Saw a large and new woodpecker, probably the red-headed, mak- ing a noise like the pigeon woodpecker. There was one woman on board, who got in at the Kineo House, who looked oddly in the one saloon for gentlemen and ladies, amid the red shirts of the lumbermen. It rained very hard while we were aboard the steamer. We had a small sloop in tow, and an- other stopped to speak with us, to inquire after a man who was missing. A fortnight before, he had left his horse and carriage at Sawyer’s, saying that he was going to get a moose and should be back in two days. He set out in a birch alone from the south end of the lake. At length they had sent the horse home, which brought on his friends, who were now looking for him and feared that he was lost in the lake. It 1853) BY STAGE BACK TO BANGOR = 47 was not very wise to set out in a canoe from the south end of the lake to kill a moose in two days. They thought that if he had fallen in with one Whitton, a hunter, he was safe enough.

Started at 7 a. M., Wednesday. In Guil- ford I went into a clapboard-mill on the Piscataquis. In this town we took a new route, keeping the north side of the Piscataquis at first, through Foxcroft, Dover (quite a town), Garland, Charleston, East Corinth, Levant, Glenburn, and Hermon, to Bangor. Saw robins in flocks going south. Rode in the rain again. A few oaks near Bangor. Rained all day, which prevented the view of Ktaadn, otherwise to be seen in very many places. Stumps cut high, showing the depth of the snows. Straight roads and long hills. ‘The country was level to the eye for twenty or thirty miles toward the Penobscot Valley. Most towns have an academy. Even away up to- ward the lake we saw a sort of gallows erected near one for the pupils to exercise upon.’ I had not dreamed of such degeneracy so hard upon the primi- tive wilderness. The white pines near Bangor perfectly parti-colored and falling to-day. Reached Bangor at dark.

Thursday. He? had made speeches at the Legislature. He and a companion were once put into the bootblacks’ room at the hotel in Portland, when attending the Legislature. In the morning they walked off in disgust to see the Governor of the State. He asked what was the matter. They said they could not stay there; there was too much boot there; In- dians did not like boot any more than white man. The Governor saw the matter righted. Behind one house, an Indian had nearly finished one canoe and was just beginning another, outdoors. I looked very narrowly at the process and had already carefully examined and measured our birch. We asked this Indian his name. He answered readily and plea- santly, “My name is Old John Pennyweight.”* Said he got his bark at the head of Passadumkeag, fifty miles off. Took him two days to find one tree that was suitable; had to look very sharp to be sure the bark was not imperfect. But once he made two birches out of one tree. Took the bark off with a shovel made of rock maple, three or four inches wide. It took him a fortnight or three weeks to complete a canoe after he had got the materials ready. They sometimes made them of spruce bark, and also of skins, but they were not so good as birch. Boats of three hides were quicker made. This was the best time to get the birch bark. It would not come off in the winter. (I had heard Joe say of a-certain canoe that it was made of summer bark.) ‘They scrape all the inner bark off, and in the canoe the bark is wrong side outward. | He had the ribs of a canoe, all got out of cedar, — the first step in making a canoe, after materials [have been] brought together,— and each one shaped for the particular place it was to hold in the canoe. As both ends are alike, there will be two ribs alike. These two were placed close together, and the next in suc- cession each way were placed next on each side, and thus tied up in bundles of fourteen to sixteen till all — were made. In the bundle I examined, they were two and a half inches wide in the middle and nar- rowing to the ends. He would untie a bundle, take out the inmost, or longest, or several, and place them on their ends in a very large iron kettle of hot water over a fire, turning them from time to time. Then, taking one of the inmost or longest ones, he bent and shaped it with much labor over his knee, giving it with his eyes the shape it was to have in the canoe. It was then tied firmly and held in that shape with the reddish cedar bark. Sometimes he was obliged to tie a straight piece of wood on tangent- wise to the rib, and, with a bark tie, | e-* w draw out a side of the rib to that. 8 Then each succeeding smaller rib in one half the bundle is forced into this. The first bundles of fourteen or sixteen making two bundles of steamed and bent and tied-up ribs; and thus all are left to dry in that shape. I was sorry that I could not be there to witness the next step in making a canoe, for I was much struck by the method of this work, and the process deserves to be minutely described,—as much, at least, as most of the white man’s arts, accounts of which now fill the journals. I do not know how the bark is made to hug so tightly the ribs, unless they are driven into place somewhat like a hoop. One of the next things must be to make the long, thin sheathing of cedar, less than half an inch thick, of pieces half the length of the birch, reaching each way close together be- neath the ribs, and quite thin toward the edges of the canoe. However, I examined the canoe that was nearly done with minuteness. The edge or taffrail is composed first of two long strips of cedar, rather stout, one on each side. Four narrow hardwood (rock maple) cross-bars, artfully shaped so that no strength may be wasted, keep these apart, give firmness to the whole, and answer for seats. The ends of the ribs come up behind or outside this taffrail and are nailed to it with a single nail. Pennyweight said they formerly used wooden pegs.* The edge of the bark is brought up level with this, and a very Sl slender triangular cleat of cedar is nailed on over it and flush with the surface of the taffrail. Then there are ties of split white spruce bark (looking like split bamboo) through the bark, between the ribs, and around these two strips of cedar, and over the two strips one flat and thin strip covering the ties, making smooth work and coming out flush with the under strips. - Thus the edge of the canoe is completed. ed” Owing to the form of the canoe, there must be some seams near the edge on the sides about eighteen inches apart, and pieces of bark are put under them. The edges of the bark are carefully sewed together at the ends 4.4 with the same spruce roots, and, in our canoe, a — strip of can- vas covered with pitch was laid (doubled) over the edge. They use rosin now, but pitch formerly. Canoe is So Se . bottom—straight in principle—and not so rounded the other way as is supposed. g - Vide this section in middle. The sides Cd) bulge out an inch or so beyond the rail. ‘There is an additional piece of bark, four or five inches wide, along each side in the middle for four or five feet, for ee protection, and a similar protecting strip for eighteen inches on each side at the ends. The canoe rises about one foot in the last five or six feet. There is an oval piece of cedar fy for stiffness inside, within a foot of each end, () and near this the ribs are bent short to breaking. Beyond there are not ribs, but sheaths and a small keel-like piece, and the hollow is filled with shavings. Light- ness, above all, is studied in the construction. Nails and rosin were all the modern things I noticed. The maker used one of those curved knives, and worked very hard at bending the knees. Went into a batteau manufactory. Said they made knees of almost anything; that they were about worn out in one trip up river. Were worth fourteen or sixteen dollars, lumber being high. Weigh three hun- dred (?) [pounds], just made, though he did n’t know exactly about it. Long spike poles, with a screw in the spike to make it hold.

Friday. Walked down the riverside this forenoon to the hill where they were using a steam- shovel at the new railroad cut, and thence to a hill three quarters of a mile further. Saw Aster undulatus, Solidago nemoralis, fragrant everlasting, silvery cinque- foil, small white birch, Lobelia inflata, both kinds of primrose, low cudweed, lactuca, Polygonum cilinode (apparently out of bloom), yellow oxalis. I returned across the fields behind the town, and over the high- est hill behind Bangor, and up the Kenduskieg, from which I saw the Ebeeme Mountains in the north- west and hills we had come by. The arbor-vite is the prevailing shrub.

Saturday. Saw Ktaadn from a hill about two miles northwest of Bangor on the road to Pushaw. It is about eighty miles from Bangor. This was the nearest point from which we made out to see it. In the afternoon, walked up the Kenduskieg. White golden- rod, fall dandelion, hog peanut, Solidago arguta' and altissima, Aster macrophyllus (?), and red maple (?). Witch-hazel well out. Epilobium coloratum, Solidago squarrosa, S. latifolia, Aster cordifolius (?).

Sunday. Dined with Lowell. Said the largest pine Goddard’s men cut last winter scaled in the woods forty-five hundred feet board measure, and was worth ninety dollars at the Bangor boom, Oldtown. They cut a road three miles and a half for this alone. They do not make much of a path, however. From L. I learned that the untouched white pine timber which comes down the Penobscot waters is to be found at the head of the East Branch and the head waters of the Allegash, about Eagle Lake and Chamberlain, etc., and Webster Stream. But Goddard had bought the stumpage in eight townships in New Brunswick. They are also buying up town- ships across the Canada line. Sept. 26 and 27. Monday and Tuesday I was com- ing to Boston and Concord. Aboard the steamer Boston were several droves of sheep and oxen and a great crowd of passengers.