University of Virginia Library

8. CHAPTER VIII.
PENOBSCOT.

It was now five o'clock of an August evening.
Our work-day was properly done. But we were
to camp somewhere, “anywhere out of the world”
of railroads. The Penobscot glimmered winningly.
Our birch looked wistful for its own element. Why
not marry shallop to stream? Why not yield to
the enticement of this current, fleet and clear, and
gain a few beautiful miles before nightfall? All
the world was before us where to choose our bivouac.
We dismounted our birch from the truck,
and laid its lightness upon the stream. Then we
became stevedores, stowing cargo. Sheets of
birch-bark served for dunnage. Cancut, in flamboyant
shirt, ballasted the after-part of the craft.
For the present, I, in flamboyant shirt, paddled in
the bow, while Iglesias, similarly glowing, sat à la
Turque midships among the traps. Then, with a
longing sniff at the caldron of Soggysampcook, we
launched upon the Penobscot.

Upon no sweeter stream was voyager ever

launched than this of our summer-evening sail.
There was no worse haste in its more speed; it
went fleetly lingering along its leafy dell. Its current,
unripplingly smooth, but dimpled ever, and
wrinkled with the whirls that mark an underflow
deep and shady, bore on our bark. The banks
were low and gently wooded. No Northern forest,
rude and gloomy with pines, stood stiffly and
unsympathizingly watching the graceful water, but
cheerful groves and delicate coppices opened in
vistas where level sunlight streamed, and barred
the river with light, between belts of lightsome
shadow. We felt no breeze, but knew of one,
keeping pace with us, by a tremor in the birches
as it shook them. On we drifted, mile after mile,
languidly over sweet calms. One would seize his
paddle, and make our canoe quiver for a few spasmodic
moments. But it seemed needless and impertinent
to toil, when noiselessly and without any
show of energy the water was bearing us on, over
rich reflections of illumined cloud and blue sky,
and shadows of feathery birches, bearing us on so
quietly that our passage did not shatter any fair
image, but only drew it out upon the tremors of
the water.

So, placid and beautiful as an interview of first
love, went on our first meeting with this Northern
river. But water, the feminine element, is so mobile
and impressible that it must protect itself by
much that seems caprice and fickleness. We
might be sure that the Penobscot would not always

flow so gently, nor all the way from forests
to the sea conduct our bark without one shiver of
panic, where rapids broke noisy and foaming over
rocks that showed their grinding teeth at us.

Sunset now streamed after us down the river.
The arbor-vitæ along the banks marked tracery
more delicate than any ever wrought by deftest
craftsman in western window of an antique fane.
Brighter and richer than any tints that ever poured
through painted oriel flowed the glories of sunset.
Dear, pensive glooms of nightfall drooped from the
zenith slowly down, narrowing twilight to a belt
of dying flame. We were aware of the ever fresh
surprise of starlight: the young stars were born
again.

Sweet is the charm of starlit sailing where no
danger is. And in days when the Munki Mannakens
were foes of the pale-face, one might dash
down rapids by night in the hurry of escape. Now
the danger was before, not pursuing. We must
camp before we were hurried into the first “rips”
of the stream, and before night made bush-ranging
and camp-duties difficult.

But these beautiful thickets of birch and alder
along the bank, how to get through them? We
must spy out an entrance. Spots lovely and damp,
circles of ferny grass beneath elms offered themselves.
At last, as to patience always, appeared
the place of wisest choice. A little stream, the
Ragmuff, entered the Penobscot. “Why Ragmuff?”
thought we, insulted. Just below its

mouth two spruces were propylœa to a little glade,
our very spot. We landed. Some hunters had
once been there. A skeleton lodge and frame of
poles for drying moose-hides remained.

Like skilful campaigners, we at once distributed
ourselves over our work. Cancut wielded the axe;
I the match-box; Iglesias the batterie de cuisine.
Ragmuff drifted one troutling and sundry chubby
chub down to nip our hooks. We re-roofed our
camp with its old covering of hemlock-bark, spreading
over a light tent-cover we had provided. The
last glow of twilight dulled away; monitory mists
hid the stars.

Iglesias, as chef, with his two marmitons, had,
meanwhile, been preparing supper. It was dark
when he, the colorist, saw that fire with delicate
touches of its fine brushes had painted all our
viands to perfection. Then, with the same fire
stirred to illumination, and dashing masterly glows
upon landscape and figures, the trio partook of the
supper and named it sublime.

Here follows the carte of the Restaurant Ragmuff,
— woodland fare, a banquet simple, but elegant:
—

Poisson.

Truite. Meunier.

Entrées.

Porc frit au naturel.

Côtelettes d'Élan.

Rôti.

Tetrao Canadensis.

Dessert.

Hard-Tack. Fromage.

Vins.

Ragmuff blanc. Penobscot mousseux.

Thé. Chocolat de Bogotá.

Petit verre de Cognac.

At that time I had a temporary quarrel with the
frantic nineteenth century's best friend, tobacco,
— and Iglesias, being totally at peace with himself
and the world, never needs anodynes. Cancut,
therefore, was the only cloud-blower.

We two solaced ourselves with scorning civilization
from our vantage-ground. We were beyond
fences, away from the clash of town-clocks, the
clink of town-dollars, the hiss of town-scandals.
As soon as one is fairly in camp and has begun to
eat with his fingers, he is free. He and truth are
at the bottom of a well, — a hollow, fire-lighted
cylinder of forest. While the manly man of the
woods is breathing Nature like an Amreeta draught,
is it anything less than the summum bonum?

“Yet some call American life dull.”

“Ay, to dullards!” ejaculated Iglesias.

Moose were said to haunt these regions. Toward
midnight our would-be moose-hunter paddled
about up and down, seeking them and finding
not. The waters were too high. Lily-pads were
drowned. There were no moose looming duskily
in the shallows, to be done to death at their
banquet. They were up in the pathless woods,
browsing on leaves and deappetizing with bitter

bark. Starlight paddling over reflected stars
was enchanting, but somniferous. We gave up
our vain quest and glided softly home, — already
we called it home, — toward the faint embers of
our fire. Then all slept, as only woodmen sleep,
save when for moments Cancut's trumpet-tones
sounded alarums, and we others awoke to punch
and batter the snorer into silence.

In due time, bird and cricket whistled and chirped
the reveille. We sprang from our lair. We dipped
in the river and let its gentle friction polish us more
luxuriously than ever did any hair-gloved polisher
of an Oriental bath. Our joints crackled for themselves
as we beat the current. From bath like this
comes no unmanly kief, no sensuous, slumberous,
dreamy indifference, but a nervous, intent, keen,
joyous activity. A day of deeds is before us, and
we would be doing.

When we issue from the Penobscot, from our
baptism into a new life, we need no valet for elaborate
toilet. Attire is simple, when the woods are
the tiring-room.

When we had taken off the water and put on our
clothes, we simultaneously thought of breakfast.
Like a circle of wolves around the bones of a banquet,
the embers of our fire were watching each
other over the ashes; we had but to knock their
heads together and fiery fighting began. The
skirmish of the brands boiled our coffee and fried
our pork, and we embarked and shoved off. A thin
blue smoke, floating upward, for an hour or two,

marked our bivouac; soon this had gone out, and
the banks and braes of Ragmuff were lonely as if
never a biped had trodden them. Nature drops
back to solitude as easily as man to peace; — how
little this fair globe would miss mankind!

The Penobscot was all asteam with morning
mist. It was blinding the sun with a matinal oblation
of incense. A crew of the profane should not
interfere with such act of worship. Sacrilege is
perilous, whoever be the God. We were instantly
punished for irreverence. The first “rips” came
up-stream under cover of the mist, and took us by
surprise. As we were paddling along gently, we
suddenly found ourselves in the midst of a boiling
rapid. Gnashing rocks, with cruel foam upon their
lips, sprang out of the obscure, eager to tear us.
Great jaws of ugly blackness snapped about us, as
if we were introduced into a coterie of crocodiles.
Symplegades clanged together behind; mighty
gulfs, below seducing bends of smooth water,
awaited us before. We were in for it. We spun,
whizzed, dashed, leaped, “cavorted”; we did
whatever a birch running the gantlet of whirlpools
and breakers may do, except the fatal finality
of a somerset. That we escaped, and only escaped.
We had been only reckless, not audacious; and
therefore peril, not punishment, befell us. The
rocks smote our frail shallop; they did not crush
it. Foam and spray dashed in our faces; solid
fluid below the crest did not overwhelm us. There
we were, presently, in water tumultuous, but not

frantic. There we were, three men floating in a
birch, not floundering in a maelstrom, — on the water,
not under it, — sprinkled, not drowned, — and
in a wild wonder how we got into it and how we
got out of it.

Cancut's paddle guided us through. Unwieldy
he may have been in person, but he could wield his
weapon well. And so, by luck and skill, we were
not drowned in the magnificent uproar of the rapid.
Success, that strange stirabout of Providence, accident,
and courage, were ours. But when we
came to the next cascading bit, though the mist
had now lifted, we lightened the canoe by two
men's avoirdupois, that it might dance, and not
blunder heavily, might seek the safe shallows,
away from the dangerous bursts of mid-current,
and choose passages where Cancut, with the setting-pole,
could let it gently down. So Iglesias
and I plunged through the labyrinthine woods, the
stream along.

Not long after our little episode of buffeting, we
shot out again upon smooth water, and soon, for it
is never smooth but it is smoothest, upon a lake,
Chesuncook.