the Portland wharves. Coming up the Dingley Bay, had a good view of
Rattlesnake Mountain, and it seemed to me wonderfully beautiful as the
almost setting sun threw over its western crags streams of fiery light.
If the Indians were very fond of this part of the country, it is easy to
see why; beavers, otters, and the finest fish were abundant, and the
hills and streams furnished constant variety. I should have made a good
Indian, if I had been born in a wigwam. To talk like sailors, we made
the old hemlock-stub at the mouth of the Dingley Mill Brook just before
sunset, and sent a _boy_ ashore with a hawser, and was soon safely
moored to a bunch of alders. After we got ashore Mr. White allowed me to
fire his long gun at a mark. I did not hit the mark, and am not sure
that I saw it at the time the gun went off, but believe, rather, that I
was watching for the noise that I was about to make. Mr. Ring said that
with practice I could be a gunner, and that now, with a very heavy
charge, he thought I could kill a horse at eight paces. Mr. White went
to Uncle Richard's for the night, and I went home and amused my mother
with telling how pleasantly the day had passed. When I told her what Mr.
Ring said about my killing a horse, she said he was making fun of me. I
had found that out before.

"Mr. March Gay killed a rattlesnake yesterday not far from his house,
that was more than six feet long and had twelve rattles. This morning
Mr. Jacob Mitchell killed another near the same place, almost as long.
It is supposed that they were a pair, and that the second one was on the
track of its mate. If every rattle counts a year, the first one was
twelve years old. Eliak Maxfield came down to mill to-day and told me
about the snakes.

"Mr. Henry Turner of Otisfield took his axe and went out between
Saturday and Moose ponds to look at some pine-trees. A rain had just