Four ---- At the Bangor House we took in four men bound on a hunting excursion, one of the men going as cook. This party of four probably paid nothing for the dog's ride, nor for his run, while our party of three paid two dollars — and were charged four — for the light canoe which lay still on the top. If you had looked inside you would have thought that we were prepared to run the gantlet of a band of robbers, for there were four or five guns on the front seat and one or two on the back one, each man holding his darling in his arms. About four o'clock the next morning, though it was quite cloudy, accompanied by the landlord to the water's edge, in the twilight, we launched our canoe from a rock on Moosehead Lake. We had a rather small canoe for three persons, eighteen and one fourth feet long by two feet six and one half inches wide in the middle, and one foot deep within. While we were getting breakfast a brood of twelve black dippers, half grown, came paddling by within three or four rods, not at all alarmed; and they loitered about as long as we stayed, now huddled close together, now moving off in a long line, very cunningly. It had been raining more or less for four or five days, and the wood was even damper than usual, but he got dry bark from the under side of a dead leaning hemlock, which he said he could always do. Our tent was of thin cotton cloth and quite small, forming with the ground a triangular prism closed at the rear end, six feet long, seven wide, and four high, so that we could barely sit up in the middle. I noticed that part of a decayed stump within four or five feet of the fire, an inch wide and six inches long, soft and shaking wood, shone with equal brightness. This carry is a rude wooden railroad running north and south about two miles, perfectly straight, from the lake to the Penobscot through a low tract, with a clearing three or four rods wide. He took a cedar shingle or splint eighteen inches long and four or five wide, rounded at one end, that the corners might not be in the way, and tied it with cedar bark by two holes made midway, near the edge on each side, to the middle crossbar of the canoe. We reached the Penobscot about four o'clock, and found there some St. Francis Indians encamped on the bank. It was quite tame, about four feet high, and covered with.

Numbers in Canoeing in the Wilderness by Henry David Thoreau

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730

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