Maine are hasty young heroes, galloping so hard when they gallop, and charging with such rash enthusiasm when they charge, hurrying with such Achillean ardor toward their eternity of ocean, that they would never know the influence, in their heart of hearts, of blue cloudlessness, or the glory of noonday, or the pageantries of sunset, — they would only tear and rive and shatter carelessly. Nature, therefore, provides valleys for the streams to bulge in, and entertain celestial reflections.
Nature, arranging lake-spots as educational episodes for the Maine rivers, disposes them also with a view to utility. Mr. Killgrove and his fellow-lumbermen treat lakes as log-puddles and raft-depots. Moosehead is the most important of these, and keeps a steamboat for tugging rafts and transporting raftsmen.
Moosehead also provides vessels far dearer to the heart of the adventurous than anything driven by steam. Here, mayhap, will an untravelled traveller make his first acquaintance with the birch-bark canoe, and learn to call it by the affectionate diminutive, “Birch.” Earlier in life there was no love lost between him and whatever bore that name. Even now, if the untravelled one’s first acquaintance be not distinguished by an unlovely ducking, so much the worse. The ducking must come. Caution must be learnt by catastrophe. No one can ever know how unstable a thing is a birch canoe, unless he has felt it slide away from under his misplaced feet. Novices should take
