Trout fishing in Maine.

August 6. 

Thursday. A. M. — To the high hill and ponds in Bucksport, some ten or more miles out.

AUGUST 6, 2017

 A withdrawn, wooded, and somewhat mountainous country. There was a little trout-pond just over the highest hill, very muddy, surrounded by a broad belt of yellow lily pads. 

Over this we pushed with great difficulty on a rickety raft of small logs, using poles thirty feet long, which stuck in the mud. The pond was about twenty-five feet deep in the middle, and our poles would stick up there and hold the raft.

There was no apparent inlet, but a small outlet. The water was not clear nor particularly cold, and you would have said it was the very place for pouts, yet T. said that the only fish there caught were brook trout, at any time of day. You fish with a line only, sinking twenty feet from the raft. 

The water was full of insects, which looked very much like the little brown chips or bits of wood which make coarse sawdust, with legs, running over the submerged part of the raft, etc. 

I suppose this pond owed its trout to its elevation and being fed by springs. It seems they do not require swift or clear water, sandy bottom, etc. Are caught like pouts without any art. 

We had many bites and caught one.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, August 6, 1857

I suppose this pond owed its trout to its elevation and being fed by springs. Compare August 24, 1860 ("How much this varied temperature must have to do with the distribution of the fishes”)

August 6. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, August 6

 

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau

"A book, each page written in its own season,

out-of-doors, in its own locality.” 

~edited, assembled and rewritten by zphx © 2009-2021 

The bog cranberry on the dinner table

August 5. 

Wednesday. 

To my surprise found on the dinner-table at Thatcher's the Vaccinium Oxycoccus. T. did not know it was anything unusual, but bought it at such a rate per bushel of Mr. Such-a-one, who brought it to market. They call it the "bog cranberry." I did not perceive that it differed from the common, unless that it was rather more skinny. 

T. has four rude pictures which belonged to Reuben Brown, on which is printed, "A. Doolittle sculpt," and these titles : — 
"Plate I. The Battle of Lexington April 19, 1775.” 
"Plate II. A View of the Town of Concord.” 
"Plate III. The Engagement at the North Bridge in Concord.” 
"Plate IV. A View of the South Part of Lexington.” 

Plate II is like that at Mr. Brooks's. In Plate III (you look westward) what appears to be the old Buttrick house has the upper story projecting over the lower. The French (Hoar's) house appears on the left. Another house is seen on the right of Buttrick's (?), perhaps Jarvis's. There is a wall on the south or town side of the road, where the British stood, and a large upright tree on the south side there, at the Bridge. 

P. M. — Rode to Old Fort Hill at the bend of the Penobscot some three miles above Bangor, to look for the site of the Indian town, — perhaps the ancient Negas? [Willis puts it on the Kenduskeag.] Found several arrowheads and two little dark and crumbling fragments of Indian earthenware, like black earth.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, August 5, 1857

To my surprise found on the dinner-table at Thatcher's the Vaccinium Oxycoccus. See August 30, 1856 ("I have come out this afternoon a-cranberrying, chiefly to gather some of the small cranberry, Vaccinium Oxycoccus . . .“); August 23, 1854 (“I find a new cranberry on the sphagnum amid the A. calyculata, — V. Oxycoccus . . .It has small, now purplish-dotted fruit, flat on the sphagnum, some turned scarlet partly, on terminal peduncles, with slender, thread-like stems and small leaves strongly revolute on the edges.”

August 5. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, August 5

 

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau

"A book, each page written in its own season,

out-of-doors, in its own locality."

~edited, assembled and rewritten by zphx © 2009-2021

Rode to Pushaw Lake

August 4.

August 4, 2013

Tuesday. A. M. — Rode to Pushaw Lake with Thatcher and Hoar.

Duck-meat, apparently a new kind, there. 

T. thinks there 's little if any red cedar about Bangor.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, August 4, 1857

Rode to Pushaw. See September 24, 1853 ("Saw Ktaadn from a hill about two miles northwest of Bangor on the road to Pushaw.")

T. thinks there 's little if any red cedar about Bangor. See September 21, 1853 ("A few oaks near Bangor."); September 21, 1853 ("The white pines near Bangor")

August 4. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau,  August 4 

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau,

"A book, each page written in its own season,

out-of-doors, in its own locality.”

~edited, assembled and rewritten by zphx © 2009-2025

A Maine guide and outfitter.

July 22. 

Wednesday. 

I am struck by the appearance of large canoe birch trees, even about houses, as an ornamental tree, and they are very enlivening, their trunks white as if whitewashed, though they rarely escape being barked and so disfigured more or less by mischievous fingers. Their white boles are in keeping with the fresh, cool air. 

At a mile and a half north of Bangor, passed the spot, at Treat's Falls, where the first settler and fur-trader, one Treat, lived. . . . 

We wanted to get one who was temperate and reliable, an older man than we had before, well skilled in Indian lore. I was warned not to employ an Indian on account of their obstinacy and the difficulty of understanding one another, and on account of their dirty habits in cooking, etc., but it was partly the Indian, such as he was, that I had come to see. The difficulty is to find one who will not get drunk and detain you wherever liquor is to be had. Some young white men of Oldtown named Pond were named as the very ones for us. But I was bent on having an Indian at any rate. 

While we were talking with Polis, a young, very dark- complexioned Indian, named something like Nicholai Orson, came up, and Polis said, "He go with you." We found that the latter wanted to go very much, said he knew the country and all about it. But I said, " We don't know you." He was too dark-colored, as if with African blood, — P. said they did not mix with them, — and too young for me. 

While I was talking with him, Thatcher took Polis aside and in quired the other's character, when P. frankly told him that he wouldn't do for us at all, that he was a very good fellow except that he would get drunk whenever he had a chance. . . . T. said he would get away from Nicholai with as few words as possible. So T. saying to N. that if we wanted him we would call again in a couple of hours, we departed. . . 

A light india-rubber coat is useful, but you cannot work in it in warm weather, for your underclothes will be just as wet with perspiration as if dipped in water before you know it, and, beside, I wore off the rubber against the cross-bars behind my back. You could not wear india-rubber pants in addition unless you sat perfectly still in cool weather. The only india-rubber bags we could find in Bangor were no better than a canvas bag, the rubber rapidly cracking and peeling off, letting in water and dirtying the contents. They would have been an imposition if the seller had not admitted that they would not hold water, and asserted that he could not make one that would. Doubted; far better ones could be home-made of good india-rubber cloth. 

Called on a Mr. Coe, part proprietor (?) of the Chamberlain Farm, so called, on Chamberlain Lake (spoke of it as "our farm"), who gave us some advice as to our outfit. Said he should like to have the making up of our packs, thinking we should take too many things. Told of one who, having to walk a few days through the woods, began by loading himself with some fifteen pounds of shot. The rule is to carry as little as possible. Advised us to go on foot, carry but few supplies, and replenish at the different camps we might find. 

He hastily scribbled this memorandum for us : —

“Axe 

Canoe 

Blankets 

Fry-pan 

Teakettle 

Dippers 

Tea 

Salt 

Hard-bread and pork 

Pepper 

Matches 

Ammunition and lines and hooks 

Camphor “

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, July 22,1857

He hastily scribbled this memorandum. See July 19, 2018 (“For such an excursion as the above, carry and wear: . . .”)

July 22. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, July 22

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau

"A book, each page written in its own season,

out-of-doors, in its own locality."

~edited, assembled and rewritten by zphx © 2009-2024