3 August 1857 – 9 August 1857

Monday. This was the midst of the rasp- berry season. We found them abundant on every carry on the East Branch and below, and children were carry- ing them from all sides into Bangor. I observed that they were the prominent dish on the tables, once a low scarlet mountain, garnishing the head of the table in a dish two feet across. Earlier the strawberries are equally abundant, and we even found a few still deep in the grass. Neither of these abound about Boston, and we saw that they were due to the peculiar air of this higher latitude. Though for six weeks before leav- ing home we had been scarcely able to lie under more than a single sheet, we experienced no hot weather in Maine. ‘The air was uniformly fresh and bracing like that of a mountain to us, and, though the inhabitants like to make it out that it is as warm there as in Massa- chusetts, we were not to be cheated. It is so much the more desirable at this season to breathe the raspberry air of Maine. P. wanted to sell us his canoe. Said it would last seven or eight years, or, with care, perhaps ten. It was P. who commonly reminded us that it was dinner-time on this excursion, sometimes by turning the prow to the shore. He once made an indirect but lengthy apology, by saying that we might think it strange, but one who worked hard all day was very particular to have his dinner in good season.

Tuesday. A. M.— Rode to Pushaw Lake with Thatcher and Hoar. Duck-meat, apparently a new kind, there. T. thinks there ’s little if any red cedar about Bangor.

Thursday. A. M.— To the high hill and ponds in Bucksport, some ten or more miles out. A withdrawn, wooded, and somewhat mountainous country. There was a little trout-pond just over the highest hill, very muddy, surrounded by a broad belt of yellow lily pads. Over this we pushed with great difficulty on a rickety raft of small logs, using poles thirty feet long, which stuck in the mud. The pond was about twenty-five feet deep in the middle, and our poles would stick up there and hold the raft. There was no apparent inlet, but a small outlet. The water was not clear nor particularly cold, and you would have said it was the very place for pouts, yet T. said that the only fish there caught were brook trout, at any time of day. You fish with a line only, sinking twenty feet from the raft. The water was full of in- sects, which looked very much like the little brown chips or bits of wood which make coarse sawdust, with legs, running over the submerged part of the raft, etc. I suppose this pond owed its trout to its elevation and being fed by springs. It seems they do not require swift or clear water, sandy bottom, etc. Are caught like pouts without any art. We had many bites and caught one.

Friday. P. M.— Take cars for Portland, and at evening the boat for Boston. A great deal of cat-tail flag by railroad between Penobscot and Ken- nebec. Fine large ponds about Belgrade.

Saturday. Get home at 8.30 A. M. I find that B. M. Watson sent me from Plymouth, July 20th, six glow-worms, of which two remain, the rest having escaped. He says they were found by his’ family on the evenings of the 18th and 19th of July. “They are very scarce, these being the only ones we have found as yet. They were mostly found on the way from the barn to James’s cottage, under the wild cherry trees on the right hand, in the grass where it was very dry, and at considerable distance from each other. We have had no rain for a month.”

Sunday. I see the blackbirds flying in flocks (which did not when I went away July 20th) and hear the shrilling of my alder locust.