Ducks, Gulls,
Bald Eagles, And Jays Are The Commonest Birds Hereabouts.
A flock of
swans flew past, sounding their startling human-like cry which seemed
yet more striking in this lonely wilderness.
The Indians said that
geese, swans, cranes, etc., making their long journeys in regular
order thus called aloud to encourage each other and enable them to
keep stroke and time like men in rowing or marching (a sort of "Row,
brothers, row," or "Hip, hip" of marching soldiers).
October 18 was about half sunshine, half rain and wet snow, but we
paddled on through the midst of the innumerable islands in more than
half comfort, enjoying the changing effects of the weather on the
dripping wilderness. Strolling a little way back into the woods when
we went ashore for luncheon, I found fine specimens of cedar, and
here and there a birch, and small thickets of wild apple. A hemlock,
felled by Indians for bread-bark, was only twenty inches thick at the
butt, a hundred and twenty feet long, and about five hundred and
forty years old at the time it was felled. The first hundred of its
rings measured only four inches, showing that for a century it had
grown in the shade of taller trees and at the age of one hundred
years was yet only a sapling in size. On the mossy trunk of an old
prostrate spruce about a hundred feet in length thousands of
seedlings were growing. I counted seven hundred on a length of eight
feet, so favorable is this climate for the development of tree seeds
and so fully do these trees obey the command to multiply and
replenish the earth.
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