upon these grubs. The lumbermen were and are a hardy, virile race.
The Hon. Charles Knapp, of Deposit, now eighty-three years of age,
but with the look and step of a man of sixty, told me he had stood
nearly all one December day in the water to his waist,
reconstructing his raft, which had gone to pieces on the head of an
island. Mr. Knapp had passed the first half of his life in
Colchester and Hancock, and, although no sportsman, had once taken
part in a great bear hunt there. The bear was an enormous one, and
was hard pressed by a gang of men and dogs. Their muskets and
assaults upon the beast with clubs had made no impression. Mr.
Knapp saw where the bear was coming, and he thought he would show
them how easy it was to dispatch a bear with a club, if you only
knew where to strike. He had seen how quickly the largest hog
would wilt beneath a slight blow across the "small of the back."
So, armed with an immense handspike, he took up a position by a
large rock that the bear must pass. On she came, panting and nearly
exhausted, and at the right moment down came the club with great
force upon the small of her back. "If a fly had alighted upon her,"
said Mr. Knapp, "I think she would have paid just as much attention
to it as she did to me."

Early in the afternoon I encountered another boy, Henry Ingersoll,
who was so surprised by my sudden and unwonted appearance that he
did not know east from west. "Which way is west?" I inquired, to
see if my own head was straight on the subject.

"That way," he said, indicating east within a few degrees.

"You are wrong," I replied. "Where does the sun rise?"