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Updated: June 16, 2025
Was he the guardian imp, the legendary Eft of Katahdin, scoffing already at us as verdant, and warning that he would make us unhappy, if we essayed to appear in demon realms and on Brocken heights without initiation? "A terrible pooty mountain," Cancut observed; and so it is.
I, the novice, had acquired such entire confidence in his stability of character that I treated him with careless ease, and never listened to the warnings of my comrades that he would serve me a trick. Cancut navigated Birch through some white water below the dam, and Birch went curveting proudly and gracefully along, evidently feeling his oats.
Cancut sustained our a priori, that trout were waiting for us over by the Aybol. By this time the tree-shadows, so stiff at noon, began to relax and drift down stream, cooling the surface. The trout could leave their shy lairs down in the chilly deeps, and come up without fear of being parboiled. Besides, as evening came, trout thought of their supper, as we did of ours.
Hereupon I had a new sensation. We made ready our flies and our rods, and embarked, as I supposed, to be ferried across and fish from terra firma. But no. Cancut dropped anchor very quietly opposite the Aybol's mouth. Iglesias, the man of Maine experience, seemed nought surprised.
The trappers of muskrats were charmingly brotherly. They guided us across the carry; they would not hear of our being porters. "Pluck the superabundant huckleberry," said they, "while we, suspending your firkin and your traps upon the setting-pole, tote them, as the spies of Joshua toted the grape-clusters of the Promised Land." Cancut, for his share, carried the canoe.
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
Leaving our plunder on the beach, beyond the reach of plunderers, whose great domain we were about to enter, we walked on toward the first house, compelled at parting to believe, that, though we did not love barbarism less, we loved civilization more. In the morning, Cancut should, with an ox-cart, bring Birch and our traps over the three miles of the carry.
Cancut was a jolly fatling, almost too fat, if he will pardon me, for sitting in the stern of the imponderable canoe. Cancut, though for this summer boatman or bircher, had other strings to his bow. He was taking variety now, after employment more monotonous. Last summer, his services had been in request throughout inhabited Maine, to "peddle gravestones and collect bills."
Fog condensed into water, and water submitting to its destiny went cascading down through a wild defile where no birch could follow. The Ripogenus carry is three miles long, a faint path through thickets. "First half," said Cancut, "'s plain enough; but after that 't would take a philosopher with his spectacles on to find it." This was discouraging.
Cancut at once proceeded to bonnet himself with the trickling birch. Iglesias and I took up the packs and hurried on with minds intent on berries. Berries we always found, blueberries covered with a cloudy bloom, blueberries pulpy, saccharine, plenteous. Often, when a portage was not quite necessary, a dangerous bit of white water would require the birch to be lightened.
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