before been descended by a white man in a boat. Rafts of pine and
hemlock timber are run down on the spring and fall freshets, but of
pleasure-seekers in boats I appeared to be the first. Hence my
advent was a surprise to most creatures in the water and out. I
surprised the cattle in the field, and those ruminating leg-deep in
the water turned their heads at my approach, swallowed their
unfinished cuds, and scampered off as if they had seen a spectre. I
surprised the fish on their spawning-beds and feeding-grounds; they
scattered, as my shadow glided down upon them, like chickens when a
hawk appears. I surprised an ancient fisherman seated on a spit of
gravelly beach, with his back upstream, and leisurely angling in
a deep, still eddy, and mumbling to himself. As I slid into the
circle of his vision his grip on the pole relaxed, his jaw dropped,
and he was too bewildered to reply to my salutation for some
moments. As I turned a bend in the river I looked back, and saw
him hastening away with great precipitation. I presume he had
angled there for forty years without having his privacy thus
intruded upon. I surprised hawks and herons and kingfishers. I
came suddenly upon muskrats, and raced with them down the rifts,
they having no time to take to their holes. At one point, as I
rounded an elbow in the stream, a black eagle sprang from the top
of a dead tree, and flapped hurriedly away. A kingbird gave
chase, and disappeared for some moments in the gulf between the
great wings of the eagle, and I imagined him seated upon his back
delivering his puny blows upon the royal bird. I interrupted two
or three minks fishing and hunting alongshore. They would dart
under the bank when they saw me, then presently thrust out their
sharp, weasel-like noses, to see if the danger was imminent. At
one point, in a little cove behind the willows, I surprised some
schoolgirls, with skirts amazingly abbreviated, wading and playing