which our houses are built, grew, but that on this and a previous excursion into another part of Maine I had found it a scarce tree; and I asked him where I must look for it.  With a smile, he answered, that he could hardly tell me.  However, he said that he had found enough to employ two teams the next winter in a place where there was thought to be none left.  What was considered a “tip-top” tree now was not looked at twenty years ago, when he first went into the business; but they succeeded very well now with what was considered quite inferior timber then.  The explorer used to cut into a tree higher and higher up, to see if it was false-hearted, and if there was a rotten heart as big as his arm, he let it alone; but now they cut such a tree, and sawed it all around the rot, and it made the very best of boards, for in such a case they were never shaky.

One connected with lumbering operations at Bangor told me that the largest pine belonging to his firm, cut the previous winter, “scaled” in the woods four thousand five hundred feet, and was worth ninety dollars in the log at the Bangor boom in Oldtown.  They cut a road three and a half miles long for this tree alone.  He thought that the principal locality for the white-pine that came down the Penobscot now was at the head of the East Branch and the Allegash, about Webster Stream and Eagle and Chamberlain Lakes.  Much timber has been stolen from the public lands. (Pray, what kind of forest-warden is the Public itself?) I heard of one man who, having discovered some particularly fine trees just within the boundaries of the public lands, and not daring to employ an accomplice, cut them down, and by means of block and tackle, without cattle, tumbled them into a stream, and so succeeded in getting off with them without the least assistance.  Surely, stealing pine-trees in this way is not so mean as robbing hen-roosts.

We reached Monson that night, and the next day rode to Bangor, all the way in the rain again, varying our route a little.  Some of the taverns on this road, which were particularly dirty, were plainly in a transition state from the camp to the house.

* * * * *

The next forenoon we went to Oldtown.  One slender old Indian on the Oldtown shore, who recognized my companion, was full of mirth and gestures, like a Frenchman.  A Catholic priest crossed to the island in the same bateau with us.  The Indian houses are framed, mostly of one story, and in rows one behind another, at the south end of the island, with a few scattered ones.  I counted about forty, not including the church and what my companion called the council-house.  The last, which I suppose is their town-house, was regularly framed and shingled like the rest.  There were several of two stories, quite neat, with front-yards inclosed, and one at least had green blinds.  Here and there were moose-hides stretched and drying about them.  There were no cart-paths, nor tracks of horses, but foot-paths; very