which another Indian told us meant “Running between mountains.”  Though some lower summits were afterward uncovered, we got no more complete view of Katadn while we were in the woods.  The clearing to which we were bound was on the right of the mouth of the river, and was reached by going round a low point, where the water was shallow to a great distance from the shore.  Chesuncook Lake extends northwest and southeast, and is called eighteen miles long and three wide, without an island.  We had entered the northwest corner of it, and when near the shore could see only part way down it.  The principal mountains visible from the land here were those already mentioned, between southeast and east, and a few summits a little west of north, but generally the north and northwest horizon about the St. John and the British boundary was comparatively level.

Ansell Smith’s, the oldest and principal clearing about this lake, appeared to be quite a harbor for bateaux and canoes; seven or eight of the former were lying about, and there was a small scow for hay, and a capstan on a platform, now high and dry, ready to be floated and anchored to tow rafts with.  It was a very primitive kind of harbor, where boats were drawn up amid the stumps,—­such a one, methought, as the Argo might have been launched in.  There were five other huts with small clearings on the opposite side of the lake, all at this end and visible from this point.  One of the Smiths told me that it was so far cleared that they came here to live and built the present house four years before, though the family had been here but a few months.

I was interested to see how a pioneer lived on this side of the country.  His life is in some respects more adventurous than that of his brother in the West; for he contends with winter as well as the wilderness, and there is a greater interval of time at least between him and the army which is to follow.  Here immigration is a tide which may ebb when it has swept away the pines; there it is not a tide, but an inundation, and roads and other improvements come steadily rushing after.

As we approached the log-house, a dozen rods from the lake, and considerably elevated above it, the projecting ends of the logs lapping over each other irregularly several feet at the corners gave it a very rich and picturesque look, far removed from the meanness of weather-boards.  It was a very spacious, low building, about eighty feet long, with many large apartments.  The walls were well clayed between the logs, which were large and round, except on the upper and under sides, and as visible inside as out, successive bulging cheeks gradually lessening upwards and tuned to each other with the axe, like Pandean pipes.  Probably the musical forest-gods had not yet cast them aside; they never do till they are split or the bark is gone.  It was a style of architecture not described by Vitruvius, I suspect, though possibly hinted at in the biography of Orpheus; none of your