CHAPTER VIII.

PENOBSCOT.

It was now five o’clock of an August evening.  Our work-day was properly done.  But we were to camp somewhere, “anywhere out of the world” of railroads.  The Penobscot glimmered winningly.  Our birch looked wistful for its own element.  Why not marry shallop to stream?  Why not yield to the enticement of this current, fleet and clear, and gain a few beautiful miles before nightfall?  All the world was before us where to choose our bivouac.  We dismounted our birch from the truck, and laid its lightness upon the stream.  Then we became stevedores, stowing cargo.  Sheets of birch-bark served for dunnage.  Cancut, in flamboyant shirt, ballasted the after-part of the craft.  For the present, I, in flamboyant shirt, paddled in the bow, while Iglesias, similarly glowing, sat a la Turque midships among the traps.  Then, with a longing sniff at the caldron of Soggysampcook, we launched upon the Penobscot.

Upon no sweeter stream was voyager ever launched than this of our summer-evening sail.  There was no worse haste in its more speed; it went fleetly lingering along its leafy dell.  Its current, unripplingly smooth, but dimpled ever, and wrinkled with the whirls that mark an underflow deep and shady, bore on our bark.  The banks were low and gently wooded.  No Northern forest, rude and gloomy with pines, stood stiffly and unsympathizingly watching the graceful water, but cheerful groves and delicate coppices opened in vistas where level sunlight streamed, and barred the river with light, between belts of lightsome shadow.  We felt no breeze, but knew of one, keeping pace with us, by a tremor in the birches as it shook them.  On we drifted, mile after mile, languidly over sweet calms.  One would seize his paddle, and make our canoe quiver for a few spasmodic moments.  But it seemed needless and impertinent to toil, when noiselessly and without any show of energy the water was bearing us on, over rich reflections of illumined cloud and blue sky, and shadows of feathery birches, bearing us on so quietly that our passage did not shatter any fair image, but only drew it out upon the tremors of the water.

So, placid and beautiful as an interview of first love, went on our first meeting with this Northern river.  But water, the feminine element, is so mobile and impressible that it must protect itself by much that seems caprice and fickleness.  We might be sure that the Penobscot would not always flow so gently, nor all the way from forests to the sea conduct our bark without one shiver of panic, where rapids broke noisy and foaming over rocks that showed their grinding teeth at us.

Sunset now streamed after us down the river.  The arbor-vitae along the banks marked tracery more delicate than any ever wrought by deftest craftsman in western window of an antique fane.  Brighter and richer than any tints that ever poured through painted oriel flowed the glories of sunset.  Dear, pensive glooms of nightfall drooped from the zenith slowly down, narrowing twilight to a belt of dying flame.  We were aware of the ever fresh surprise of starlight:  the young stars were born again.