We partook decorously, with controlled elbows, endeavoring to
appear as if we were accustomed to sit at tables and manage plates. The
men, women, and children of Millinoket were hospitable and delighted to
see strangers, and the men, like all American men in the summer before
a Presidential election, wanted to talk politics. Katahdin's last
full-bodied appearance was here; it rises beyond a breadth of black
forest, a bulkier mass, but not so symmetrical as from the southern
points of view. We slept that night on a feather-bed, and took cold for
want of air, beneath a roof.

By the time we had breakfasted, Cancut arrived with Birch on an
ox-sledge. Here our well-beloved west branch of the Penobscot, called
of yore Norimbagua, is married to the east branch, and of course by
marriage loses his identity, by-and-by, changing from the wild, free,
reckless rover of the forest to a tamish family-man style of river,
useful to float rafts and turn mills. However, during the first moments
of the honeymoon, the happy pair, Mr. Penobscot and Miss Milly Noket,
now a unit under the marital name, are gay enough, and glide along
bowery reaches and in among fair islands, with infinite endearments and
smiles, making the world very sparkling and musical there. By-and-by
they fall to romping, and, to avoid one of their turbulent frolics,
Cancut landed us, as he supposed, on the mainland, to lighten the canoe.
Just as he was sliding away down-stream, we discovered that he had left
us upon an island in the midst of frantic, impassable rapids. "Stop,
stop, John Gilpin!" and luckily he did stop, otherwise he would have
gone on to tidewater, ever thinking that we were before him, while we,
with our forest appetites, would have been glaring hungrily at each
other, or perhaps drawing lots for a cannibal doom. Once again, as we
were shooting a long rapid, a table-top rock caught us in mid-current.
We were wrecked. It was critical. The waves swayed us perilously this
way and that. Birch would be full of water, or overturned, in a moment.
Small chance for a swimmer in such maelstroems! All this we saw, but had
no time to shudder at. Aided by the urgent stream, we carefully and
delicately--for a coarse movement would have been death--wormed our boat
off the rock and went fleeting through a labyrinth of new perils, onward
with a wild exhilaration, like galloping through prairie on fire. Of all
the high distinctive national pleasures of America, chasing