To Katahdin

Book excerpt: With a light boat, a tent, two blankets apiece, a rifle, pistol, fishing apparatus, fifty pounds of flour, twenty pounds of salt pork, and "a sufficient quantity" of sugar, tea, cornmeal, molasses, salt, pepper, beans, and cheese, our four young men traveled to Moosehead Lake, and then began to row and paddle and sail and portage their way towards Katahdin, through rapids, and over the "carrys," before they headed home--down the West Branch when it was still a wild river.