moose, summoned us on board. She was a well-appointed little boat,
commanded by a gentlemanly captain, with patent life-seats, and
metallic life-boat, and dinner on board, if you wish. She is chiefly
used by lumberers for the transportation of themselves, their boats,
and supplies, but also by hunters and tourists. There was another
steamer, named Amphitrite, laid up close by; but, apparently, her
name was not more trite than her hull. There were also two or three
large sail-boats in port. These beginnings of commerce on a lake in
the wilderness are very interesting,--these larger white birds that
come to keep company with the gulls. There were but few passengers,
and not one female among them: a St. Francis Indian, with his canoe
and moose-hides, two explorers for lumber, three men who landed at
Sandbar Island, and a gentleman who lives on Deer Island, eleven
miles up the lake, and owns also Sugar Island, between which and the
former the steamer runs; these, I think, were all beside ourselves.
In the saloon was some kind of musical instrument, cherubim or
seraphim, to soothe the angry waves; and there, very properly, was
tacked up the map of the public lands of Maine and Massachusetts, a
copy of which I had in my pocket.

The heavy rain confining us to the saloon awhile, I discoursed with
the proprietor of Sugar Island on the condition of the world in Old
Testament times. But at length, leaving this subject as fresh as we
found it, he told me that he had lived about this lake twenty or
thirty years, and yet had not been to the head of it for twenty-one
years. He faces the other way. The explorers had a fine new birch on
board, larger than ours, in which they had come up the Piscataquis
from Howland, and they had had several messes of trout already. They
were going to the neighborhood of Eagle and Chamberlain Lakes, or
the head-waters of the St. John, and offered to keep us company as