John S. Sewall

This 1858 travelogue describes a journey made by a group from the Bangor Theological
Seminary to the top of Mt. Katahdin, the highest peak in Maine, nearly 200 miles away. For
more information about the author, refer to this issue's From the Librarian section.

Up in the woods a hundred miles from here, there dwelt, in the latter part of June 1857, a giant mountain, Katahdin by name. He dwells there still, and is worthy a visit; for he has many rare things and thoughts for his guests. To visit him it is necessary to travel. Therefore, we traveled; at first switched along a dozen miles at the tail of a fire dragon [1] on Veazie's railroad; then trundled up the rapids of the Penobscot in a steam wheelbarrow [2] from Old Town to Piscataquis; then around the falls, over the jolts of a two-mile horse railroad to another river monster which wriggled its way up over the tide by Lincoln, Enfield, Bradley, and other populous cities of the backwoods, occasionally poking its crocodile snout up in the mud on either bank, to rid itself of some passenger Jonah, or get a bunch of cordwood for its feverish stomach--and so on to Mattawamkeag; then all the rest of the way into the wilderness by vigorous ply of bone and muscle.

Our Bangor party numbered twelve--our Old Town boatmen six--our batteaux [3] three--our hopes and victuals countless. As for the last, our victuals--we carried a boatful up--were gone ten days--and the boat came back empty. As for our hopes--we went, hearts swelled, with glowing anticipations--came back, heads swelled with mosquito bites. As for the batteaux--one, I said, carried our provisions, and got to itself thereby the Indian title of "womgin"--which you can perceive by its etymology means provision-boat. The other two carried the party--each propelled by two boatmen with paddle or pole. As for the party itself, we all went for "good men and true"--and like a Dutchman equally able to eat or fight, though perhaps set more by our depraved wills and huge appetites to the former. Externally, too, were we prepared for the wilderness tramp. Could the "forest primeval" bide such things as standing collars, snowy shirts, glistening boots? Had we donned such uniform, then had all the briars and twigs combined to tear off the social instruments of torture; every splatter of spray had made a special attack on the starch; every quagmire had put an extra coat on our understandings. No, we left civilisation and our go-to-city clothes behind us with our theology, in Bangor. Instead thereof we rigged in flannel frocks, red, white, or blue--coarse heavy pants that had seen their best days and were now of course on their last legs--hats that were "shocking bad"--boots, moccasins, brogans, commodious enough for several families like that of the severe old matron memorialized in Mother Goose's Melodies.[4] In such garb we started--and the skies smiled on our starting. Smiled? Yes--laughed outright--and no wonder, to see such a motley crew--laughed till they cried--and we, poor shiverers, were drenched by the pelting tears. It rained all day; but we had at night the half-comfort of being by mutual aid wrung out like a dishcloth and hung up to dry before the roaring fires of our camp.

Did you ever see a lumberman's camp? To describe it--had you all been so happy as to get your bringing-up in the country--I should simply remind you of the old-fashioned tin kitchen or baker, in which our mothers (Heaven bless them!) browned the supper biscuit before the blazing fire in "Auld Lang Syne." Very much alike are these two--the tin kitchen, the canvass camp--for art, like nature, has her analogies. It was with no little toil we lugged our stuff up the high bank opposite Mattawamkeag, and pitched our tent on a level table at the edge of the woods. When it was all done, there stood a gray canvass shed--twenty feet long--eight feet high--in the rear the eaves coming down to the ground--the front all open to the genial amount of two huge fires, fed without grudge from the neighboring woods. Then came supper; and what a relief the day's travel and toil gave to our blazed herring--none can tell who has not known the sweets of hungry labor. After supper went up to heaven in a chorus of voices, a song of Zion, which waked the echoes: "And the sounding aisles of the dim woods rung / with our hymnals of lofty cheer."[5]

Tuesday morning roused us bright and early. Breakfast and other preliminaries settled; our boats and company were underway by half past five. A couple of miles steady poling up the river brought us to the "gravel beds" where all but the boatmen got out and walked, some by an indifferent stage road through the woods, some along the river bank. In due time by rough jogging we came to 'Salmon Brook'--a pert little bulrushy stream which gets its name on the old scholastic principle "lucus a non lucendo"; called 'Salmon Brook' for lack of salmon, and for lack of any reason for calling it anything else.[11] We fished and fished--got not a nibble except from the friendly mosquitoes. So as the fish would not bite, we took a bite ourselves--and after the lunch went on; the boats rowed a bad "circumbendibus" of rapids--we went through the woods again. After the rapids we took to the boats once more, and so by amphibious travelling, got to Nicatow[12] a little after noon. Here must we have our dinner--for men cannot tramp in the woods without eating. So our student cooks kindled the flames and offered thereon a holocaust of savory swine. While the smoke goes up, let us go up too--not in the smoke but on the bow of that hill close by. The view is quite equal to that from the lodgings of Mr. Dick Swiveller--who "commanded an uninterrupted view of--of over the way, and were within one minute's walk of--of the corner of the street."[13] So here at Nicatow was an uninterrupted prospect of woods across the river to the South--woods to the North--woods to the East--and woods to the West, and wherever you might stand you were within one minute's walk of the woods. At Nicatow the East and West branches of the Penobscot unite. Here comes the East branch on your left--mild, placid, maiden-like--here to the right, the rushing West branch--boisterous, masculine. At the foot of the hill they meet, take a liking to each other, marry, and settle down at once in the lumbering business. The Eastern Branch is the easiest and most traveled--therefore we took the Western. So after dinner--a sumptuous meal of pork and hardbread, with dessert of pineapples which we plucked and ate under the trees--(plucked, I mean, from our fruit-box)--after dinner, we started again; and went in the strength of that meat, not as did Elijah of old forty days in the wilderness, but five miles. The road through the rugged forest was romantic. Blossoms of tender herbs nestled around the roots of old trees, as if for protection; and to these their little sisters on the turf, sung birds among the branches overhead a soothing lullaby. Away above all sighed the winds along the drizzly sky; and presently all romance was soaked out of us by a shower. The clouds had met on a 4^th-of-July trial of fire-engines; we the spectators were half drowned--and thereat very much disposed to be, like the fires, put out. When the shower passed, and we emerged from the woods--Katahdin, in massive outline, broke upon us, our first view--and was hailed with such shouts as echoed along the ranks of crusaders when they first came in sight of Mt. Zion.

Our camp that night, at Little Schoodie, gave us comfort after the day's slow progress of eighteen miles. The clouds had cleared away. A fine sunset cheered us--bright fires warmed us--a hearty supper revived us--barefoot games of jumping on the sward took the stiffening out of our weary limbs--the spreading tent sheltered our sleep--and the rapid river made music for us all the night long.

Wednesday--another day of toil-hard pushing on the river, weary muddy travel on the land. Scarce a house now to greet us with memories of civilized life. Here and there a burnt acre or half-acclaimed clearing--all the rest tangled woods echoing the roar of the river.

Shad Pond was our first stage--where the boats took us in and paddled smoothly up the outlet of South Millinocket--a crab-like getting ahead sideways, to avoid an impassable fall in the Penobscot. Two miles up the stream brought us to Fowler's--the last house, and within twenty-five miles of Katahdin. Here a rough hilly portage must be passed to get back to the river--an obstacle full two miles long. They stowed our nest of boats, one within another, on a wood sled; then two yoke of oxen, a boy teamster, some work, and a deal of shouting accomplished the feat--and we were once more beside the hurrying waters of the monarch river. Arrived on the bank what did we do? Why, ate of course; and after the eating, some slept, some fished, some prepared the boats for further voyaging, some caught butterflies, or fought black flies. At four in the afternoon we again embarked--and how did the rapids roar against our puny boats. One the waters twirled against a hidden rock and threatened to capsize. The water spirit--Kühleborn[14]--had strengthened each crest of foam and dash of spray to challenge our passage. We fought the dangers; brawny muscle won the day--and slowly, steadily, climbed our boats up the boiling flume in spite of him. Then were we ushered upon a broad lake full of islands, whose beauty charmed while we sped through the watery labyrinth. At the end another walk for us and work for the boatmen. So we came at last to the great dam across the outlet of the North Twin Lake. How the black flies tortured us while we wound along the stream above--how the waves tried to swamp our laden boats when we opened on the lake itself--how the twilight spread her gray curtain over forest and sky--how hearty a welcome our camp-fires gave us to the little tree-covered point where night befell how all these and diverse other entertaining events came to pass, you would all have seen for yourselves had you been there.

Such roving life makes new vigor. How had three days journeying already toughened our limbs, quickened our thoughts! Little had we known before of the wilderness. Few words had we ever before got from Dame Nature; now she talked all the while; taught us as a mother her children. Is much study of books a weariness to the flesh? She had a study--not writ in words but pictured in things--a study wherein the scholar never tires, but gets fresh impulse of grateful curiosity. And withal a strong sense of independence; (so he can shake his fist at books and men, saying, I am no longer a babe--I walk alone; nature solves my riddles herself, without interpreter.) Life in the woods to be sure, is no panacea for all "ills flesh is heir to";[15] nor of all mountain streams and clear brooks is there one that springs from the fabled fountain of immortal youth; yet is bushranging an admirable specific for dyspepsia, bodily and mental. Hunting, boating, swimming, fishing; have each an office of nurture; and such training will make athletes, of body and mind. To the Christian, "there is a pleasure in the trackless woods"[16] of a higher sort. To him, in all things shines the presence of God--as in the burning bush, to Moses; not simply God the fashioner, but God the friend--who hath led him a puny explorer among the wonders of the unknown--and there hath taught him what and how to enjoy.

Thursday gave us a brisk wind, a sumptuous breakfast, an early start. Will you follow us through its "labors, dangers, and sufferings"? Then look out for hard names, and harder battles with insect foes. First will I introduce you to Pemadumcook--a big water trough among the hills, where thirsty clouds come to drink. Rather was it this morning a great trough of dough, wherein the sturdy wind with sleeves tucked up, kneaded waves--wherefore we needed shelter. We found it, on a gravel beach where the saltless billows broke in noisy foam. But alas, while our "womgin" with luscious stores of ham and herring took the Eastern shore, our gravel beach, whither stress of weather drove us, was on the Western. So away went our stores--and hunger stayed behind with us. As shipwrecked sailors watch the vanishing sail, so through the long morning hours did our hungry eyes follow the retreating "womgin." Noon came and went. No "womgin"--no dinner. By our fire we dozed on the sand--or roamed the woods, whose spreading trees "--against the sky / Their giant branches tossed";[17] or we dipped in the rolling breakers--or sketched the huge outlines of overgrown Katahdin, now only separated from us by a few more lakes and hills and miles of forest. To one of our party, whose bark of life had been wafted by fostering gales--this being storm-bound for a few hours in the land of hunger was a sad privation; and he wonderingly asked whether lumbermen ever suffered such hardships? Late in the afternoon the absent boat returned. We thought to inflict summary vengeance for the desertion. So with guns and paddles, and such feeble war whoops as dinnerless men could make--down from the bushes over rocks and sand our famished battalion charged the foe. A parley ensued. The "womgin"--shouting "the guard dies but never surrenders!"--capitulated. So we did not in anger rifle the boatmen--but in hunger rifled the boat--seized ham, beef, hardtack--and such condiments as, like the slate chips in a stone wall, could fill in the more hearty viands--and then such a meal! It was well worth starving for! Nor could we scold while eating, because too busy; nor yet after eating, because too amiable. They say blessings, like wild geese, never travel alone. While our dinner went down, the wind went down too--and left Pemadumcook a placid sheet, emblem of our own gastronomic quietude.

Again underway by six; and we found as we advanced the scenery grew in beauty. Deep bays unfolded to our right and left. Green islets stood guard at their entrance. Trees hung over the water and were pictured on its mirror-surface with clouds and sky. Three or four miles of such voyaging--then a narrow winding channel launched us on the glassy bosom of Ambejejus, just as the sun wrapped us in a canopy of rosy curtains and bade us good night. Nature loves music--has music all day long, and all the still night. But nature, poor dame, has no rhymes, set to sharps and flats, fixed in prim clefs and bars and minims.[18] So we gave her some civilized stuff; and long the rough tones echoed across the calm waters of Ambejejus. Nature thanked us, and furnished the chorus herself. We listened; it was the distant roar of cascades; we were again entering the Penobscot.

After dark poling up black waters through black woods--so late was it when we reached our camping ground, that we raised no tent; we built rousing fires, drank boiling tea, and then, after prayers, under the starry roof turned in, or rather turned out, to sleep. We had achieved a triumph when we could rest on a layer of brush with a soft pine log for a pillow--only a blanket and the skies above us. Colds and rheumatism we had left at home.

Friday was a day of foaming rapids, hard luggage through pathless woods--trout catching and trout eating. We began it ravenously on a breakfast of hedgehog and a 'pretty kettle of fish.' The mosquitoes and black flies began it ravenously on us. Here we left a boat, with such stores and baggage as were no more needed. Then shouldering the rest, off we marched through the wilderness, across "Ambejejus Carry"--our two boats by hard labor scrambling upward over rocks and roam. Above we found a calm bright stretch of the narrowing river--then another hard portage--with as hard a name--"Tipscaneak Carry"--and then with poling and paddling we rounded a point and floated on the ripples of Lake Pascumgamook. The scenery was exceedingly rich. We knew not what most to admire, the green hills and gray cliffs, the forest and drifting clouds--or the picture of them all on the crystal surface of that inland sea framed by the winding shores and rocky headlands. A little cove with a circling sandy beach invited us to stay. We stayed; and with such charms profusely piled around us, what could we do? Cultivated our taste--by eating. So, having lunched we launched again--and once more pushed our steady way up the tide--winning our progress as thirty years ago the battle of Ostrolenka was not won--by the Poles.[19] We were now almost under the very shadow of the huge mountain we had come to visit. What masses! What steep crags! What bold outlines and rough peaks! What a shaggy sackcloth of fir and pine had the primeval giant wrapped around his loins. We were confronting one of the miracles of God--and in the presence of that greatness, how puny we!

Our advance was marked by event. That afternoon in Lake Pocwocamus we found the body of a poor lumberman, drowned while driving logs on the river. On the bank we made him a grave--and there he rests beneath a tree, which is fixed with a rude carving of his name and age on a fragment of slate.

Half a mile above Pocwocamus we halted at a rocky fall. There in clouds of misty spray and denser clouds of hungry flies, we roosted on the rocks with hook and line, studying practical ichthyology (the only theology, by the way, which we carried), and drawing splendid fish from the foaming waters. There, in consequence, we dined on golden trout. There we left one of our two boats--and with sweating toil got the other by a crooked path among bushes and granite boulders, to the stream above. Then, some in the boat, some in the woods, we straggled a mile further to Aboll's Falls, where within four miles of the mountain we pitched our camp. An alderman's supper of river turtle crowned the day's toils; and late in the evening two of our hunters having returned from an unsuccessful dally for moose, to them was served the sixth and last meal of the day. Then under the shadow of great Katahdin we slept.

Next morning--Saturday--at half past three--"When, like a lobster boiled, the morn / From black to red began to turn"[20]--the daybreak, or the cooks, roused us again. Would you be told of the various preparations for travel--the big kettle of pork and beans baked overnight in a ground oven, and which came to us in the morning "hot from Tartarus"--the sumptuous meal therefrom--the stowing of shoulder packs with two days rations of bread and herring--and finally the departure for the mountain? Our camp was left standing--with all luggage we did not need; and we trusted that though open to the rummaging of bears and other aboriginal filibusters, yet on our return should we find what we had left all right; and so would the proverb be true, "Whatever is, is right"[21] though left. Our long ragged train straggled in single file behind the Indian guide--struggled, rather--for every inch of the way was hotly contested by Vandal hordes of insects. It was a toilsome march. We rested often; and the clear cold streams bubbling down through the woods furnished us a Katahdin cordial most refreshing. A weary tramp of four hours brought us out on one of the slides our guide had chosen as best for the ascent. Another rest--another refreshing of the inner man of food--and then we scrambled upward on Katahdin's face, as did the black flies on ours. A mile of such knee-work brought us singly or in groups to the top.

I know not what emotions might stir the souls of the right-honorable ladies and gentlemen present--were they to stand 5 or 6,000 feet above this lower earth--in sight of myriad square miles of hill and forest, dotted with half a hundred lakes and channeled with rivers. The first sensation to even a poet, would undoubtedly be fatigue. The second might be a shiver; for the wind blows chill so high among the clouds. What further emotions might chafe his mental quiet, could have better rendered by the Poet of the evening, had he been there. I'll not attempt it--for I find that true which was said by a better man, "The mind has some thoughts that words won't hold." Do you still insist I shall give you testimony to the noble fancies that dwell on such a pinnacle of contemplation? Few of the party recorded their thoughts; so I have been able to get scarce a fragment of the precious stuff. In the "Katahdin drive" were some honest Eloquostreon[22] brothers--whose emotions you may well think were highly credible to that learned society. First man on the summit was the Grand Mufti of the Eloquostreon. Now the Grand Mufti is officially a guardian of the peace; and his reflections on the mountain-top, most naturally took that turn. As he looked, he fancied old Katahdin resuming the gymnastic throes and geologic sports by which his youth had got such stalwart size; then reckoned the Grand Mufti how large a constabulary posse would be necessary to put down such a rising of the mass; or, should the mountain crack in the struggle, what force could keep the peace; and besides, the Grand Mufti counted up the fine to be imposed should the mountain (like our boys in winter) take to sliding. Then there was our Drum Major--whose inner soul, ever bubbling over with the concord of sweet sounds, now in the upper air doubly appreciated the whistling of the winds and the "music of the spheres."[23] Our Esculapius[24] too was there--he the mighty man of drugs and tourniquet; like a true disciple of Galen,[25] he roved in medical paths (wherein, by the way, he sprained his ankle). When he beheld the vast expanse of forest beneath, swarming with myriad clouds of insects, he thought how much better irritants were black flies than Spanish flies; and then reviewed his mental pharmacopoeia to find in case the mountain turned volcano, what plaster would best allay the eruption. From the Bivalvular Purveyor[26]--an honored and (so far as I know) honest officer of the aforesaid Eloquostreon, I could get no special communication; but seeing him flat on his face looking over the edge of the frightful basin in the rear of the mountain, I could but guess (and truly guess) he was calculating how many bivalves could stow and stew in an oyster-pot 2,000 feet deep; or possibly--dropping the official--he might have been thinking how the ego would feel, should it get a tumble into that profound abyss of the non-ego.

How much more was felt and thought by the Katahdin guests, I cannot say; but I do know the unwritten emotions were quite as ecstatic as those my learned chronicle had thus recorded for future generations.

The summit of Mt. Katahdin is an irregular plateau, some half a mile square, rising to a narrow ridge which leads your dizzy steps the Eastern- and topmost peak. Have a care how you tread the ragged causeway--it is a "bridge over chaos"--and a false step would land you hundreds of feet below on either side in a wild confusion of rocky fragments. At the extreme of the ridge you stand on the highest point in Maine. The wilderness view repays the toil and danger. Do you see how the outspread forests and hills, clear and vivid around the base of the mountain fade away into the dim far-off horizon? Do you see how the dark shadows of fleeing clouds chase each other across the wide field and how the patches of sunlight brighten the trees and sparkle on the lakes? Can you follow the windings of the Penobscot, ribbed here and there with silver rapids whose distant roar can no longer reach your ear? Do you see far off to the west the sunny waters of Moosehead with its green islets and overhanging Kineo?[27] And nearer, Chesuncook and Caribou?[28] All as God left them--unchanged. It is primitive nature--never yet touched by man. You feel the presence of the Maker, nearer than ever before. His marks are all around you. Art has not tried to efface them.

We lingered till near night--some drinking in at their eyes the glories of our lofty vision, and sketching on the mental canvass many a scene never to be forgotten--others, more matter of fact sort of people, drinking Adam's ale from the hollows of the mossy turf, or feasting on the last year's cranberries with which the plateau was sparsely strewn. At last, when there were no more sights and no more cranberries--we imitated the Western sun and went down, only the sun set, while we crawled.

On the margin of the slide about a thousand feet from the brow, we built a wigwam of green boughs, and there spent our Sabbath. A holy day--calm, bright, happy--a Sabbath among the clouds; long to be remembered as most like to the Sabbath above the clouds! There were songs of Zion and meetings--even a sermon--in our gipsy camp. Had we climbed so far toward heaven, yet not to get a glimpse of the pearly gates? God took our prayers and praises--and of them made a ladder to reach all the way, whereon our souls went up many times that day from the earthly wilderness to the city of the Heavenly king; and down the same ladder the King sent many an angel fetching holy thoughts and joyful mementos of the upper home; thoughts not since lost, but inlaid like mosaic on the inner walls of the soul. Katahdin was to us as were the Delectable Mountains to Christian and Hopeful--whence with the vision of faith could be seen some of the splendor of the Celestial City.[29] "Our granite hills are altars all / To lift our souls to heaven."[30] So the Sabbath passed; and after many an evening hymn from thankful hearts, again we slept--far up there with the clouds, and "visited all night by troops of stars."[31]

Morning came--not, in those wilds, ushered in by "cock's shrill clarion"[32] or hum of waking life; but heralded by the silent beams of early dawn that steal along with noiseless tread and brush your eyelids with soft pencils of faint light while yet closed in sleep. We were roused. The day of rest was gone--now was a time for deeds. Three days retraced the steps of six. Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday--how they flew--and how flew we down the swift current! You have seen a brood of chickens scared by a hawk? Then you can fancy our eighteen ragged men scurrying homeward as if chased by the furies or the fates--every man, like he of La Mancha, a "knight of the sorrowful figure."[33] Such were we--and so we fled--racing down streams we had painfully toiled up--shooting rapids--scrambling down falls--lifting boats over dams--now paddling in still channels overarched by trees--now thundering down waste-flumes, neck-and-neck with ugly waves of foam; one night kindling our campfires on one of the three hundred isles of Lake Millinocket--the next night pitching our tent for the last time on the self-same spot where fun and flies disturbed the first encampment of our river-life--the next night the whole flock who had been for ten days "let loose in the woods," safely housed once more under the brooding wings of the maternal coop. Such was our Hegira[34] from the wilderness--such our restoration to the fostering care of our Alma Mater. And so ends the chronicle of the "Katahdin Drive."

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