University of Virginia Library

4. CHAPTER IV.
UMBAGOG.

Rain ends, as even Noah and the Arkites discovered.
The new sensation of tickling frogs
could entertain us for one day; bounteous Nature
provided other novelties for the next. We were
at the Umbagog chain of lakes, and while it rained
the damster had purveyed us a boat and crew. At
sunrise he despatched us on our voyage. We
launched upon the Androscoggin, in a bateau of
the old Canadian type. Such light, clincher-built,
high-nosed, flat-bottomed boats are in use wherever
the fur-traders are or have been. Just such boats
navigate the Saskatchawan of the North, or Frazer's
River of the Northwest; and in a larger
counterpart of our Androscoggin bark I had three
years before floated down the magnificent Columbia
to Vancouver, bedded on bales of beaver-skins.

As soon as sunrise wrote itself in shadows over
the sparkling water, as soon as through the river-side
belt of gnarled arbor-vitæ sunbeams flickered,
we pushed off, rowed up-stream by a pair of stout
lumbermen. The river was a beautiful way, admitting
us into the penetralia of virgin forests. It
was not a rude wilderness: all that Northern
woods have of foliage, verdurous, slender, delicate,
tremulous, overhung our shadowy path, dense as
the vines that drape a tropic stream. Every giant

tree, every one of the Pinus oligarchy, had been
lumbered away: refined sylvan beauty remained.
The dam checked the river's turbulence, making it
slow and mirror-like. It merited a more melodious
name than harsh Androscoggin.

Five miles of such enchanting voyage brought
us to Lake Umbagog. Whiffs of mist had met us
in the outlet. Presently we opened chaos, and
chaos shut in upon us. There was no Umbagog to
be seen, — nothing but a few yards of gray water
and a world of gray vapor. Therefore I cannot
criticise, nor insult, nor compliment Umbagog.
Let us deem it beautiful. The sun tried at the fog,
to lift it with leverage of his early level beams.
Failing in this attempt to stir and heave away the
mass, he climbed, and began to use his beams as
wedges, driving them down more perpendicularly.
Whenever this industrious craftsman made a successful
split, the fog gaped, and we could see for a
moment, indefinitely, an expanse of water, hedged
with gloomy forest, and owning for its dominant
height a wild mountain, Aziscohos, or, briefer, Esquihos.

But the fog was still too dense to be riven by
slanting sunbeams. It closed again in solider phalanx.
Our gray cell shut close about us. Esquihos
and the distance became nowhere. In fact, ourselves
would have been nowhere, except that a
sluggish damp wind puffed sometimes, and, steering
into this, we could guide our way within a few
points of our course.

Any traveller knows that it is no very crushing
disappointment not to see what he came to see.
Outside sights give something, but inside joys are
independent. We enjoyed our dim damp voyage
heartily, on that wide loneliness. Nor were our
shouts and laughter the only sounds. Loons would
sometimes wail to us, as they dived, black dots in
the mist. Then we would wait for their bulbous
reappearance, and let fly the futile shot with its
muffled report, — missing, of course.

No being has ever shot a loon, though several
have legends of some one who has. Sound has no
power to express a profounder emotion of utter
loneliness than the loon's cry. Standing in piny
darkness on the lake's bank, or floating in dimness
of mist or glimmer of twilight on its surface, you
hear this wailing note, and all possibility of human
tenancy by the shore or human voyaging is annihilated.
You can fancy no response to this signal
of solitude disturbed, and again it comes sadly
over the water, the despairing plaint of some companionless
and incomplete existence, exiled from
happiness it has never known, and conscious only
of blank and utter want. Loon-skins have a commercial
value; so it is reported. The Barabinzians
of Siberia, a nation “up beyond the River Ob,”
tan them into water-proof paletots or aquascutums.
How they catch their loon, before they skin their
loon, is one of the mysteries of that unknown
realm.

Og, Gog, Magog, Memphremagog, all agog,

Umbagog, — certainly the American Indians were
the Lost Tribes, and conserved the old familiar
syllables in their new home.

Rowing into the damp breeze, we by and by
traversed the lake. We had gained nothing but
a fact of distance. But here was to be an interlude
of interest. The “thoro'fare” linking Umbagog
to its next neighbor is no thoro'fare for a
bateau, since a bateau cannot climb through breakers
over boulders. We must make a “carry,” an
actual portage, such as in all chronicles of pioneer
voyages strike like the excitement of rapids into
the monotonous course of easy descent. Another
boat was ready on the next lake, but our chattels
must go three miles through the woods. Yes, we
now were to achieve a portage. Consider it, blasé
friend, — was not this sensation alone worth the
trip?

The worthy lumbermen, and our supernumerary,
the damster's son, staggered along slowly with
our traps. Iglesias and I, having nothing to carry,
enjoyed the carry. We lounged along through the
glades, now sunny for the moment, and dallied
with raspberries and blueberries, finer than any
ever seen. The latter henceforth began to impurple
our blood. Maine is lusciously carpeted
with them.

As we oozed along the overgrown trail, dripping
still with last night's rain, drops would alight
upon our necks and trickle down our backs. A
wet spine excites hunger, — if a pedestrian on a

portage, after voyaging from sunrise, needs any
appetizer when his shadow marks noon. We
halted, fired up, and lunched vigorously on toasted
pork and trimmings. As pork must be the Omega
in forest-fare, it is well to make it the Alpha. Fate
thus becomes choice. Citizens uneducated to forest-life
with much pains transport into the woods
sealed cans of what they deem will dainties be, and
scoff at woodsmen frizzling slices of pork on a
pointed stick. But Experience does not disdain a
Cockney. She broods over him, and will by and by
hatch him into a full-fledged forester. After such
incubation, he will recognize his natural food, and
compactest fuel for the lamp of life. He will take
to his pork like mother's milk.

Our dessert of raspberries grew all along the
path, and lured us on to a log-station by the water,
where we found another bateau ready to transport
us over Lakes Weelocksebacook, Allegundabagog,
and Mollychunkamug. Doubters may smile and
smile at these names, but they are geography.

We do not commit ourselves to further judgment
upon the first, than that it is doubtless worthy of its
name. My own opinion is, that the scenery felt
that it was dullish, and was ashamed to “exhibit”
to Iglesias; if he pronounced a condemnation, Umbagog
and its sisters feared that they would be degraded
to fish-ponds merely. Therefore they veiled
themselves. Mists hung low over the leaden waters,
and blacker clouds crushed the pine-dark hills.

A fair curve of sandy beach separates Weelocksebacook

from its neighbor. There is buried one
Melattach, an Indian chief. Of course there has
been found in Maine some one irreverent enough to
trot a lame Pegasus over this grave, and accuse the
frowzy old red-skin of Christian virtues and delicate
romance.

There were no portages this afternoon. We took
the three lakes at easy speed, persuading ourselves
that scenes fog would not let us see were unscenic.
It is well that a man should think what he cannot
get unworthy of his getting. As evening came,
the sun made another effort, with the aid of west
winds, at the mist. The sun cleft, the breeze
drove. Suddenly the battle was done, victory
easily gained. We were cheered by a gush of
level sunlight. Even the dull, gray vapor became
a transfigured and beautiful essence. Dull and
uniform it had hung over the land; now the plastic
winds quarried it, and shaped the whole mass into
individuals, each with its character. To the cloud-forms
modelled out of formlessness the winds gave
life of motion, sunshine gave life of light, and they
hastened through the lower atmosphere, or sailed
lingering across the blue breadths of mid-heaven,
or dwelt peacefully aloft in the region of the cirri;
and whether trailing gauzy robes in flight, or
moving stately, or dwelling on high where scope
of vision makes travel needless, they were still the
brightest, the gracefullest, the purest beings that
Earth creates for man's most delicate pleasure.

When it cleared, — when it purveyed us a broadening

zone of blue sky and a heavenful of brilliant
cloud-creatures, we were sailing over Lake Mollychunkamug.
Fair Mollychunkamug had not smiled
for us until now; — now a sunny grin spread over
her smooth cheeks. She was all smiling, and presently,
as the breeze dimpled her, all a “snicker”
up into the roots of her hair, up among her foresttresses.
Mollychunkamug! Who could be aught
but gay, gay even to the farcical, when on such a
name? Is it Indian? Bewildered Indian we deem
it, — transmogrified somewhat from aboriginal sound
by the fond imagination of some lumberman, finding
in it a sweet memorial of his Mary far away in
the kitchens of the Kennebec, his Mary so rotund
of blooming cheek, his Molly of the chunky mug.
To him who truly loves, all Nature is filled with
Amaryllidian echoes. Every sight and every sound
recalls her who need not be recalled, to a heart that
has never dislodged her.

We lingered over our interview with Mollychunkamug.
She may not be numbered among
the great beauties of the world; nevertheless, she
is an attractive squaw, — a very honest bit of flat-faced
prettiness in the wilderness.

Above Mollychunkamug is Moosetocmaguntic
Lake. Another innavigable thoro'fare unites them.
A dam of Titanic crib-work, fifteen hundred feet
long, confines the upper waters. Near this we
disembarked. We balanced ourselves along the
timbers of the dam, and reached a huge log-cabin
at its farther end.

Mr. Killgrove, the damster, came forth and
offered us the freedom of his settlement in a tobacco-box.
Tobacco is hospitality in the compactest
form. Civilization has determined that tobacco,
especially in the shape of smoke, is essential
as food, water, or air. The pipe is everywhere
the pipe of peace. Peace, then, and anodyne-repose,
after a day of travel, were offered us by the
friendly damster.

A squad of lumbermen were our new fellow-citizens.
These soldiers of the outermost outpost
were in the regulation-uniform, — red-flannel shirts
impurpled by wetting, big boots, and old felt-hats.
Blood-red is the true soldierly color. All the residents
of Damville dwelt in a great log-barrack,
the Hôtel-de-Ville. Its architecture was of the
early American style, and possessed the high art
of simplicity. It was solid, not gingerbreadesque.
Primeval American art has a rude dignity, far better
than the sham splendors of our mediæval and
transition period.

Our new friends, luxurious fellows, had been
favored by Fate with a French-Canadian cook, himself
a Three of Frères Provinciaux. Such was his
reputation. We saw by the eye of him, and by
his nose, formed for comprehending fragrances,
and by the lines of refined taste converging from
his whole face toward his mouth, that he was one
to detect and sniff gastronomic possibilities in the
humblest materials. Joseph Bourgogne looked
the cook. His phiz gave us faith in him: eyes

small and discriminating; nose upturned, nostrils
expanded and receptive; mouth saucy in the literal
sense. His voice, moreover, was a cook's, —
thick in articulation, dulcet in tone. He spoke as
if he deemed that a throat was created for better
uses than laboriously manufacturing words, — as
if the object of a mouth were to receive tribute,
not to give commands, — as if that pink stalactite,
his palate, were more used by delicacies entering,
than by rough words or sorry sighs going out of
the inner caverns.

When we find the right man in the right place,
our minds are at ease. The future becomes satisfactory
as the past. Anticipation is glad certainty,
not anxious doubt. Trusting our gastronomic
welfare fully to this great artist, we tried for fish
below the dam. Only petty fishlings, weighing
ounces, took the bit between their teeth. We
therefore doffed the fisherman and donned the artist
and poet, and chased our own fancies down the
dark whirlpooling river, along its dell of evergreens,
now lurid with the last glows of twilight.
Iglesias and I continued dreamily gazing down the
thoro'fare toward Mollychunkamug only a certain
length of time. Man keeps up to his highest
elations hardly longer than a danseuse can poise in
a pose. To be conscious of the highest beauty
demands an involuntary intentness of observation
so fanatically eager that presently we are prostrated
and need stimulants. And just as we sensitively
felt this exhaustion and this need, we heard

a suggestive voice calling us from the front-door
of the mansion-house of Damville, and “Supper”
was the cry.

A call to the table may quell and may awaken
romance. When, in some abode of poetized
luxury, the “silver knell” sounds musically six,
and a door opens toward a glitter that is not pewter
and Wedgewood, and, with a being fair and
changeful as a sunset cloud upon my arm, I move
under the archway of blue curtains toward the
asphodel and the nectar, then, O Reader! O Friend!
romance crowds into my heart, as color and fragrance
crowd into a rose-bud. Joseph Bourgogne,
cook at Damville on Moosetocmaguntic, could not
offer us such substitute for æsthetic emotions. But
his voice of an artist created a winning picture
half veiled with mists, evanescent and affectionate,
such as linger fondly over Pork-and-Beans.

Fancied joy soon to become fact. We entered
the barrack. Beneath its smoky roof-tree was a
pervading aroma; near the centre of that aroma,
a table dim with wefts of incense; at the innermost
centre of that aroma and that incense,
and whence those visible and viewless fountains
streamed, was their source, — a Dish of Pork-and-Beans.

Topmostly this. There were lesser viands, buttresses
to this towering triumph. Minor smokes
from minor censers. A circle of little craterlings
about the great crater, — of little fiery cones about
that great volcanic dome in the midst, unopened,

but bursting with bounty. We sat down, and
one of the red-shirted boldly crushed the smoking
dome. The brave fellow plunged in with a spoon
and heaped our plates.

A priori we had deduced Joseph Bourgogne's
results from inspection of Joseph. Now we could
reason back from one experimentum crucis cooked
by him. Effect and cause were worthy of each
other.

The average world must be revenged upon Genius.
Greatness must be punished by itself or
another. Joseph Bourgogne was no exception to
the laws of the misery of Genius. He had a distressing
trait, whose exhibition tickled the dura
ilia of the reapers of the forest. Joseph, poet-cook,
was sensitive to new ideas. This sensitiveness
to the peremptory thought made him the
slave of the wags of Damville. Whenever he had
anything in his hands, at a stern, quick command
he would drop it nervously. Did he approach the
table with a second dish of pork-and-beans, a yellow
dish of beans, browned delicately as a Sèvres vase,
then would some full-fed rogue, waiting until Joseph
was bending over some devoted head, say
sharply, “Drop that, Joseph!” — whereupon down
went dish and contents, emporridging the poll and
person of the luckless wight beneath. Always,
were his burden pitcher of water, armful of wood,
axe dangerous to toes, mirror, or pudding, still
followed the same result. And when the poet-cook
had done the mischief, he would stand shuddering

at his work of ruin, and sigh, and curse his too
sensitive nature.

In honor of us, the damster kept order. Joseph
disturbed the banquet only by entering with new
triumphs of Art. Last came a climax-pie, — contents
unknown. And when that dish, fit to set
before a king, was opened, the poem of our supper
was complete. J. B. sailed to the Parnassus
where Ude and Vattel feast, forever cooking immortal
banquets in star-lighted spheres.

Then we sat in the picturesque dimness of the
lofty cabin, under the void where the roof shut off
the stars, and talked of the pine-woods, of logging,
measuring, and spring-drives, and of moose-hunting
on snow-shoes, until our mouths had a wild
flavor more spicy than if we had chewed spruce-gum
by the hour. Spruce-gum is the aboriginal
quid of these regions. Foresters chew this tenacious
morsel as tars nibble at a bit of oakum,
grooms at a straw, Southerns at tobacco, or
school-girls at a slate-pencil.

The barrack was fitted up with bunks. Iglesias
rolled into one of these. I mummied myself in my
blankets and did penance upon a bench. Pineknots
in my pallet sought out my tenderest spots.
The softer wood was worn away about these projections.
Hillocky was the surface, so that I beat
about uneasily and awoke often, ready to envy
Iglesias. But from him, also, I heard sounds of
struggling.