Canoeing in the Wilderness
Copyright© 2024 by Henry David Thoreau
Chapter 8: Thursday, July 30
I aroused the Indian early to go in search of our companion, expecting to find him within a mile or two, farther down the stream. The Indian wanted his breakfast first, but I reminded him that my companion had had neither breakfast nor supper. We were obliged first to carry our canoe and baggage over into another stream, the main East Branch, about three fourths of a mile distant, for Webster Stream was no farther navigable. We went twice over this carry, and the dewy bushes wet us through like water up to the middle. I hallooed from time to time, though I had little expectation that I could be heard over the roar of the rapids.
In going over this portage the last time, the Indian, who was before me with the canoe on his head, stumbled and fell heavily once, and lay for a moment silent as if in pain. I hastily stepped forward to help him, asking if he was much hurt, but after a moment’s pause, without replying, he sprang up and went forward.
We had launched our canoe and gone but little way down the East Branch, when I heard an answering shout from my companion, and soon after saw him standing on a point where there was a clearing a quarter of a mile below, and the smoke of his fire was rising near by. Before I saw him I naturally shouted again and again, but the Indian curtly remarked, “He hears you,” as if once was enough.
It was just below the mouth of Webster Stream. When we arrived he was smoking his pipe, and said that he had passed a pretty comfortable night, though it was rather cold, on account of the dew. It appeared that when we stood together the previous evening, and I was shouting to the Indian across the river, he, being nearsighted, had not seen the Indian nor his canoe, and when I went back to the Indian’s assistance, did not see which way I went, and supposed that we were below and not above him, and so, making haste to catch up, he ran away from us. Having reached this clearing, a mile or more below our camp, the night overtook him, and he made a fire in a little hollow, and lay down by it in his blanket, still thinking that we were ahead of him.
He had stuck up the remnant of a lumberer’s shirt, found on the point, on a pole by the waterside for a signal, and attached a note to it to inform us that he had gone on to the lake, and that if he did not find us there he would be back in a couple of hours. If he had not found us soon he had some thoughts of going back in search of the solitary hunter whom we had met at Telos Lake, ten miles behind, and, if successful, hire him to take him to Bangor. But if this hunter had moved as fast as we, he would have been twenty miles off by this time, and who could guess in what direction? It would have been like looking for a needle in a haymow to search for him in these woods. He had been considering how long he could live on berries alone.
We all had good appetites for the breakfast which we made haste to cook here, and then, having partially dried our clothes, we glided swiftly down the winding stream toward Second Lake.
As the shores became flatter with frequent sandbars, and the stream more winding in the lower land near the lake, elms and ash trees made their appearance; also the wild yellow lily, some of whose bulbs I collected for a soup. On some ridges the burnt land extended as far as the lake. This was a very beautiful lake, two or three miles long, with high mountains on the southwest side. The morning was a bright one, and perfectly still, the lake as smooth as glass, we making the only ripple as we paddled into it. The dark mountains about it were seen through a glaucous mist, and the white stems of canoe birches mingled with the other woods around it. The thrush sang on the distant shore, and the laugh of some loons, sporting in a concealed western bay, as if inspired by the morning, came distinct over the lake to us. The beauty of the scene may have been enhanced to our eyes by the fact that we had just come together after a night of some anxiety.
Having paddled down three quarters of the lake, we came to a standstill while my companion let down for fish. In the midst of our dreams of giant lake trout, even then supposed to be nibbling, our fisherman drew up a diminutive red perch, and we took up our paddles.
It was not apparent where the outlet of the lake was, and while the Indian thought it was in one direction, I thought it was in another. He said, “I bet you fourpence it is there,” but he still held on in my direction, which proved to be the right one.
As we were approaching the outlet he suddenly exclaimed, “Moose! moose!” and told us to be still. He put a cap on his gun, and, standing up in the stern, rapidly pushed the canoe straight toward the shore and the moose. It was a cow moose, about thirty rods off, standing in the water by the side of the outlet, partly behind some fallen timber and bushes, and at that distance she did not look very large. She was flapping her large ears, and from time to time poking off the flies with her nose from some part of her body. She did not appear much alarmed by our neighborhood, only occasionally turned her head and looked straight at us, and then gave her attention to the flies again. As we approached nearer she got out of the water, stood higher, and regarded us more suspiciously.
Polis pushed the canoe steadily forward in the shallow water, but the canoe soon grounded in the mud eight or ten rods distant from the moose, and the Indian seized his gun. After standing still a moment she turned so as to expose her side, and he improved this moment to fire, over our heads. She thereupon moved off eight or ten rods at a moderate pace across a shallow bay to the opposite shore, and she stood still again while the Indian hastily loaded and fired twice at her, without her moving. My companion, who passed him his caps and bullets, said that Polis was as excited as a boy of fifteen, that his hand trembled, and he once put his ramrod back upside down.
The Indian now pushed quickly and quietly back, and a long distance round, in order to get into the outlet, —for he had fired over the neck of a peninsula between it and the lake, —till we approached the place where the moose had stood, when he exclaimed, “She is a goner!”
There, to be sure, she lay perfectly dead, just where she had stood to receive the last shots. Using a tape, I found that the moose measured six feet from the shoulder to the tip of the hoof, and was eight feet long.
Polis, preparing to skin the moose, asked me to help him find a stone on which to sharpen his large knife. It being flat alluvial ground, covered with red maples, etc., this was no easy matter. We searched far and wide a long time till at length I found a flat kind of slate stone, on which he soon made his knife very sharp.
While he was skinning the moose I proceeded to ascertain what kind of fishes were to be found in the sluggish and muddy outlet. The greatest difficulty was to find a pole. It was almost impossible to find a slender, straight pole ten or twelve feet long in those woods. You might search half an hour in vain. They are commonly spruce, arbor-vitæ, fir, etc., short, stout, and branchy, and do not make good fishpoles, even after you have patiently cut off all their tough and scraggy branches. The fishes were red perch and chivin.
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