blanket. They were as interesting as fireworks, going up in endless
successive crowds, each after an explosion, in an eager serpentine
course, some to five or six rods above the tree-tops before they
went out. We do not suspect how much our chimneys have concealed;
and now air-tight stoves have come to conceal all the rest. In the
course of the night, I got up once or twice and put fresh logs on
the fire, making my companions curl up their legs.

When we awoke in the morning, (Saturday, September 17,) there was
considerable frost whitening the leaves. We heard the sound of the
chickadee, and a few faintly lisping birds, and also of ducks in the
water about the island. I took a botanical account of stock of our
domains before the dew was off, and found that the ground-hemlock,
or American yew, was the prevailing undershrub. We breakfasted on tea,
hard bread, and ducks.

Before the fog had fairly cleared away, we paddled down the stream
again, and were soon past the mouth of the Moosehorn. These twenty
miles of the Penobscot, between Moosehead and Chesuncook Lakes, are
comparatively smooth, and a great part dead-water; but from time to
time it is shallow and rapid, with rocks or gravel-beds, where you
can wade across. There is no expanse of water, and no break in the
forest, and the meadow is a mere edging here and there. There are no
hills near the river nor within sight, except one or two distant
mountains seen in a few places. The banks are from six to ten feet
high, but once or twice rise gently to higher ground. In many places
the forest on the bank was but a thin strip, letting the light
through from some alder-swamp or meadow behind. The conspicuous
berry-bearing bushes and trees along the shore were the red osier,
with its whitish fruit, hobble-bush, mountain-ash, tree-cranberry,