Evan Smith
12-08-2003, 20:37
Hello, this is my Great-great grandfathers account of his 1836 ascent of Mt. Katahdin, when he was 20 years old. I hope it is of interest to you.
The account is taken from pgs. 25-29 in Henry Boynton Smith, His Life and Works, E. L. (Mrs. H. B.) Smith, (A.C. Armstrong & Son, New York, 1881), (foot notes added in 2003 by me) This book can be found at the Union and Bangor Theological Seminary libraries:
http://library.uts.columbia.edu/search/a?SEARCH=Smith%2C+Henry+Boynton
http://ursus2.ursus.maine.edu/search/aSmith,+Henry+B./asmith+henry+b/1,2,8,B/exact&FF=asmith+henry+boynton+1815+1877&1,7,
To his parents: (1)
BANGOR, July 13, 1836
…“The weather is very pleasant and I have been rejoicing in it. I have scrambled among the rocks and over the burnt ground, and have been round studying nature, and thence returned to my studies theological with fresh alacrity. Sometimes the mere feeling of animal existence is a positive enjoyment. There is no specific like the open air and the exercise of the body. I have always been an excellent theorist.”
Henry Boynton Smiths 1836 ascent of Mt. Katahdin
To Prof. D. R. Goodwin: (2)
SACCARAPPA, September 14,1836.
Soon after I received your last letter I started on a foot expedition to Mount Katahdin, in company with Weston and Blake.(3) We were absent sixteen days, and in every variety of weather and condition. Each day brought its novelties, its new fatigues, or rather new modes of being fatigued, and its new calls for ingenuity, enterprise, and perseverance. We first ascended the Penobscot sixty-four miles, to a place called Mattawamkeag, and there all regular road ceased, and no more villages did we find for many days. Twelve miles further is a place called Nicketo;(4) for that we started, and our accouterments would have called a smile upon your face, if not a hearty laugh from your mouth. We supplied ourselves with ten days' provisions, that is, half a barrel of hard bread and a dozen pounds of pork; these two in packs upon our backs. We also carried a gun, hatchet, spy-glass, etc. And above our packs a blanket was strung, in front was suspended a little dipper for making tea. I should think we had at least twenty pounds upon our backs, apiece, besides a heavy gun. I said it was twelve miles to Nicketo. There is a path through the woods, a mere footpath which those accustomed to such things might find; but, as for us, we could no more keep it than we could the trail of an Indian, so constantly was it intersected by other paths; and so we wandered about the woods for two days before we got to Nicketo, I should think we traversed a piece of country ten miles square. One time we were up three miles at some mills not knowing how we got there; at another we found ourselves three miles up a little stream, and not knowing how else to do we jumped into it and waded down, sure in this way of reaching the Penobscot. The Penobscot was our constant landmark, and when we found ourselves in danger we plunged through cedar swamps and forests to reach it. At Nicketo the river divides into the east and west branches; the latter we took, and followed it up twenty-four miles further to Great Falls, Our mode of going, for we had learned wisdom by experience, was to follow the river up, by leaping from stone to stone, on its banks, a very slow but still a sure fashion. Great Falls is truly a great spectacle. (5) The immediate fall is only about twelve feet, yet the wildness of the whole scene and the peculiar characteristics of the river, make it impressive. The bed of the stream appears as though hewn out of a solid ledge of slatestone. Just opposite the falls, on either side, the banks are very precipitous, at least thirty feet, and thus they continue for twenty rods, not a regular precipice, but forming deep notches in the bank and then jutting out in a bold bluff into the river. Three such deep recesses you see on each side, and in them the water, after leaping over the precipice, eddies and foams and crosses itself in divers currents. Please imagine the rest. At Great Falls we took a bateau with two men, to go through the chain of lakes, of which the greater part of this western branch is composed. This is a most remarkable and distinctive feature. For sixty miles this branch is thus formed: a wide-spread lake, miles in length and breadth, and then a rapid of from a quarter to three miles in length, and so on, lake and rapid, in unvarying succession. As a sample of their names let me give you, Quaquogamus, Abalajakomegus, Quakish-Sowadehunk and Sowadehunk Aumokziz. (6) Through a chain of lakes thus named we sped our way. Would that I could tell you of the peculiarities of our boatmen, of their dexterity, perseverance, and hardihood, especially of their individualities and specialities. Would that I could paint for you the living beauties of the scenery through which we passed, inimitable and unsurpassed by any which Maine or New England can present. It was in all its glory and strength when we saw it, the wide-spreading lake, the hills thick set with innumerable trees, whose tops only were visible, the mountain, " old Ktaadn" beyond, frowning upon us, "grand, gloomy and peculiar"" the most striking of all the natural objects which I have ever seen. Alone it stands, a vast mass, in nothing but its hugeness comparable with any other hill. The little summits which peep up in its neighborhood are only foils to its greatness. It meets you at every turn; you cannot, you would not, get rid of its impressiveness and obtrusiveness. As you sail along, it approaches nearer and nearer, huger and huger, vaster and more mighty than any pyramid of man. . It is the masonry of Jehovah, solid and impenetrable and unshaken.
After leaving the boat we pressed through thicket and wood, guided by the compass alone, sixteen miles further to this mountain, and about five o'clock one fine evening were two-thirds up its side. A slide about twenty years ago made a favorable pathway, disemboweling the mountain, and showing its internal resources, here and there exposing to view the solid granite.(7) And then the vast prospect beyond, the interminable masses of forest, the lakes interspersed to give variety and life, and the rivers intersecting the whole region in their fantastic windings. The whole was spread out like a map below. . There we camped, that is, we made up a fire, toasted our pork, made our tea, and ate our crackers; and then, between some rocks which gave a partial shelter, lay down and threw our blankets over us before a fire, and tried to sleep. By snatches we took our naps, the night becoming colder and colder, until about two hours before morning, when it began to rain. We stretched a blanket and took the pelting until daylight, when we roused ourselves, thoroughly drenched, and began to finish the ascent, determined still to reach the top. We climbed, we scrambled, we went on all fours, and at last stood on the summit, six thousand feet above the place from which we started. (8) The thermometer was at 45°, we were in a dense cloud, the rain was pouring, the wind was fiercely blowing, and there we were, with fingers numb, with mouths parched, without shelter or comfort. It is said that there are nearly eight hundred acres on top of the mountain, but we did not dare start from the spot on which we stood, for fear of losing ourselves in the fog. You may suppose we were not long in determining to descend. Our average prospect, instead of being forty or fifty miles, was three or four rods. (9) From that point I suppose we may be said to have begun our homeward journey, which we pursued in another direction, and came out at the foot of Moosehead Lake, (10) having traversed forty miles of forest without an inhabitant before we reached that point. We "swamped" it through the wood, and" farmed" it up the rivers, and" sacked" it round the lakes. We tore ourselves and our clothes, so that when again we came within the sound of civilization our plight was most deplorable. What was still worse, we spent our last cent just as we got among inhabitants: three bowls of milk, a shilling apiece, and just forty-nine and a half cents in the party. It was a somewhat hazardous expedition, full of peril and incident" by flood and field; " fatigued we were, beyond what I thought myself capable of euduring, but I now know what virtue is in my muscles and frame. Five times we were completely drenched by storms, eight times we forded streams, five times we camped out with no shelter but our enormous fire, for which our hatchets and the woods supplied fuel, in perils often but not in fastings, gorged on pork and trout and bread. Nothing ever tasted so sweet or satisfying as did our rudely-roasted slices of pork; the flavor remains with me yet. Ours was a pleasure expedition, but everyone thought that we were speculators, except one man who took us for U. S. troops returned from fighting the Indians. We traversed two hundred and fifty miles, and most hale and hearty were we on our return, though severely exhausted. I thought for the first two or three nights after our return I should sleep myself away. The recollection of this expedition is most pleasant to me. I love to go over all we felt and saw, and to think of the merciful protection of God in the midst, not only of the perils which we saw, but of those of which we were unmindful. How many times was his hand between us and death!…
Notes
(1) Written from Bangor Theological Seminary.
(2) Professor of Modern Languages in Bowdoin College.
(3) Class mates at Bowdoin. Probably D.C. or G.M. Weston (class of ‘34) and Joseph Blake (class of ‘35)
http://library.bowdoin.edu/arch/archives/classcl.shtml
(4) Now called Nicatou Island off present day Medway.
(5) Grand Falls,” between Shad Pond and Quakish Lake.
(6) Probably among the present day Quakish, Elbow, North Twin, Pemadumcook [Passamagamut], Ambajejus and Debsconeag lakes. There is also a Nesowadnehunk Falls and Nesowadnehunk stream on the Penobscots West branch just upstream from where the Appalachian Trail turns from west to north, away from the west branch and into Baxter State Park.
(7) The Abol Slide, which occurred about 1816. (This information courtesy of editor, publisher, registered Maine guide and freelance writer, Mike Everett).
(8) We now know Mt. Katahdin is 5,267 ft high. Thoreau made it up as high as the Krumholtz, or "crooked wood" which grows above the tree line, but he turned around before reaching the summit.
(9) Too bad they had no view! Thoreau wrote, “Like ourselves, neither Bailey (also an 1836 ascent) nor Jackson (1837) had obtained a clear view from the summit.”
(10) Logic might have it that HBS meant the southern end of the lake as opposed to where it empties out in the west, specifically, arriving at the southeastern shore, somewhere between Lily Bay and Greenville. I’m guessing that they “got among inhabitants” and had their milk in Greenville…where he returned 24 years later…(pages 225-226 of HBS his life and work)…
Henry David Thoreau wrote in “Ktaadn”:
“Ktaadn, whose name is an Indian word signifying highest land, was first ascended by white men in 1804. It was visited by Professor J. W. Bailey of West Point in 1836; by Dr. Charles T. Jackson, the State Geologist, in 1837; and by two young men from Boston in 1845. All these have given accounts of their expeditions. Since I was there, two or three other parties have made the excursion, and told their stories. Besides these, very few, even among backwoodsmen and hunters, have ever climbed it, and it will be a long time before the tide of fashionable travel sets that way.”
Henry Boynton Smith was 20 years old and eight years younger than Thoreau in 1836 when he ascended the dam-free Penobscot to Katahdin, predating Thoreau’s similar route by 10 years time. http://eserver.org/thoreau/memap.html
This was one year before Thoreau started his journal and 16 years after Maine separated from Massachusetts and joined the union. HBS set out on this trek 1 year after George W. Coffin published his "Plan of the Public Lands in the State of Maine" map; Thoreau used Coffin's Map for his 1853 and 1857 trips through the Moosehead Lake region. About this map he says “(it) is the only one I have seen that at all deserves the name,” but for his trek to Katahdin, “we had no pocket map.”
I wonder if HBS had a copy.
Before the Civil War, few travelers sought the “wilderness experience” of northern Maine but John Way's 1874 book, with its map, helped change that. This was the first guide for sportsmen to Moosehead Lake and the surrounding region, followed shortly in 1879 by Lucius L. Hubbard’s similar work. HBS and company preceded most “tourists” in the area by at least 40 years and Maine’s final interior topographic surveys by 90 years!
More on HBS at these websites:
http://famousamericans.net/henryboyntonsmith/
http://26.1911encyclopedia.org/S/SM/SMITH_HENRY_BOYNTON.htm
http://cdl.library.cornell.edu/cgi-bin/moa/moa-cgi?notisid=ABQ0722-0040-121
Best,
Evan Smith
The account is taken from pgs. 25-29 in Henry Boynton Smith, His Life and Works, E. L. (Mrs. H. B.) Smith, (A.C. Armstrong & Son, New York, 1881), (foot notes added in 2003 by me) This book can be found at the Union and Bangor Theological Seminary libraries:
http://library.uts.columbia.edu/search/a?SEARCH=Smith%2C+Henry+Boynton
http://ursus2.ursus.maine.edu/search/aSmith,+Henry+B./asmith+henry+b/1,2,8,B/exact&FF=asmith+henry+boynton+1815+1877&1,7,
To his parents: (1)
BANGOR, July 13, 1836
…“The weather is very pleasant and I have been rejoicing in it. I have scrambled among the rocks and over the burnt ground, and have been round studying nature, and thence returned to my studies theological with fresh alacrity. Sometimes the mere feeling of animal existence is a positive enjoyment. There is no specific like the open air and the exercise of the body. I have always been an excellent theorist.”
Henry Boynton Smiths 1836 ascent of Mt. Katahdin
To Prof. D. R. Goodwin: (2)
SACCARAPPA, September 14,1836.
Soon after I received your last letter I started on a foot expedition to Mount Katahdin, in company with Weston and Blake.(3) We were absent sixteen days, and in every variety of weather and condition. Each day brought its novelties, its new fatigues, or rather new modes of being fatigued, and its new calls for ingenuity, enterprise, and perseverance. We first ascended the Penobscot sixty-four miles, to a place called Mattawamkeag, and there all regular road ceased, and no more villages did we find for many days. Twelve miles further is a place called Nicketo;(4) for that we started, and our accouterments would have called a smile upon your face, if not a hearty laugh from your mouth. We supplied ourselves with ten days' provisions, that is, half a barrel of hard bread and a dozen pounds of pork; these two in packs upon our backs. We also carried a gun, hatchet, spy-glass, etc. And above our packs a blanket was strung, in front was suspended a little dipper for making tea. I should think we had at least twenty pounds upon our backs, apiece, besides a heavy gun. I said it was twelve miles to Nicketo. There is a path through the woods, a mere footpath which those accustomed to such things might find; but, as for us, we could no more keep it than we could the trail of an Indian, so constantly was it intersected by other paths; and so we wandered about the woods for two days before we got to Nicketo, I should think we traversed a piece of country ten miles square. One time we were up three miles at some mills not knowing how we got there; at another we found ourselves three miles up a little stream, and not knowing how else to do we jumped into it and waded down, sure in this way of reaching the Penobscot. The Penobscot was our constant landmark, and when we found ourselves in danger we plunged through cedar swamps and forests to reach it. At Nicketo the river divides into the east and west branches; the latter we took, and followed it up twenty-four miles further to Great Falls, Our mode of going, for we had learned wisdom by experience, was to follow the river up, by leaping from stone to stone, on its banks, a very slow but still a sure fashion. Great Falls is truly a great spectacle. (5) The immediate fall is only about twelve feet, yet the wildness of the whole scene and the peculiar characteristics of the river, make it impressive. The bed of the stream appears as though hewn out of a solid ledge of slatestone. Just opposite the falls, on either side, the banks are very precipitous, at least thirty feet, and thus they continue for twenty rods, not a regular precipice, but forming deep notches in the bank and then jutting out in a bold bluff into the river. Three such deep recesses you see on each side, and in them the water, after leaping over the precipice, eddies and foams and crosses itself in divers currents. Please imagine the rest. At Great Falls we took a bateau with two men, to go through the chain of lakes, of which the greater part of this western branch is composed. This is a most remarkable and distinctive feature. For sixty miles this branch is thus formed: a wide-spread lake, miles in length and breadth, and then a rapid of from a quarter to three miles in length, and so on, lake and rapid, in unvarying succession. As a sample of their names let me give you, Quaquogamus, Abalajakomegus, Quakish-Sowadehunk and Sowadehunk Aumokziz. (6) Through a chain of lakes thus named we sped our way. Would that I could tell you of the peculiarities of our boatmen, of their dexterity, perseverance, and hardihood, especially of their individualities and specialities. Would that I could paint for you the living beauties of the scenery through which we passed, inimitable and unsurpassed by any which Maine or New England can present. It was in all its glory and strength when we saw it, the wide-spreading lake, the hills thick set with innumerable trees, whose tops only were visible, the mountain, " old Ktaadn" beyond, frowning upon us, "grand, gloomy and peculiar"" the most striking of all the natural objects which I have ever seen. Alone it stands, a vast mass, in nothing but its hugeness comparable with any other hill. The little summits which peep up in its neighborhood are only foils to its greatness. It meets you at every turn; you cannot, you would not, get rid of its impressiveness and obtrusiveness. As you sail along, it approaches nearer and nearer, huger and huger, vaster and more mighty than any pyramid of man. . It is the masonry of Jehovah, solid and impenetrable and unshaken.
After leaving the boat we pressed through thicket and wood, guided by the compass alone, sixteen miles further to this mountain, and about five o'clock one fine evening were two-thirds up its side. A slide about twenty years ago made a favorable pathway, disemboweling the mountain, and showing its internal resources, here and there exposing to view the solid granite.(7) And then the vast prospect beyond, the interminable masses of forest, the lakes interspersed to give variety and life, and the rivers intersecting the whole region in their fantastic windings. The whole was spread out like a map below. . There we camped, that is, we made up a fire, toasted our pork, made our tea, and ate our crackers; and then, between some rocks which gave a partial shelter, lay down and threw our blankets over us before a fire, and tried to sleep. By snatches we took our naps, the night becoming colder and colder, until about two hours before morning, when it began to rain. We stretched a blanket and took the pelting until daylight, when we roused ourselves, thoroughly drenched, and began to finish the ascent, determined still to reach the top. We climbed, we scrambled, we went on all fours, and at last stood on the summit, six thousand feet above the place from which we started. (8) The thermometer was at 45°, we were in a dense cloud, the rain was pouring, the wind was fiercely blowing, and there we were, with fingers numb, with mouths parched, without shelter or comfort. It is said that there are nearly eight hundred acres on top of the mountain, but we did not dare start from the spot on which we stood, for fear of losing ourselves in the fog. You may suppose we were not long in determining to descend. Our average prospect, instead of being forty or fifty miles, was three or four rods. (9) From that point I suppose we may be said to have begun our homeward journey, which we pursued in another direction, and came out at the foot of Moosehead Lake, (10) having traversed forty miles of forest without an inhabitant before we reached that point. We "swamped" it through the wood, and" farmed" it up the rivers, and" sacked" it round the lakes. We tore ourselves and our clothes, so that when again we came within the sound of civilization our plight was most deplorable. What was still worse, we spent our last cent just as we got among inhabitants: three bowls of milk, a shilling apiece, and just forty-nine and a half cents in the party. It was a somewhat hazardous expedition, full of peril and incident" by flood and field; " fatigued we were, beyond what I thought myself capable of euduring, but I now know what virtue is in my muscles and frame. Five times we were completely drenched by storms, eight times we forded streams, five times we camped out with no shelter but our enormous fire, for which our hatchets and the woods supplied fuel, in perils often but not in fastings, gorged on pork and trout and bread. Nothing ever tasted so sweet or satisfying as did our rudely-roasted slices of pork; the flavor remains with me yet. Ours was a pleasure expedition, but everyone thought that we were speculators, except one man who took us for U. S. troops returned from fighting the Indians. We traversed two hundred and fifty miles, and most hale and hearty were we on our return, though severely exhausted. I thought for the first two or three nights after our return I should sleep myself away. The recollection of this expedition is most pleasant to me. I love to go over all we felt and saw, and to think of the merciful protection of God in the midst, not only of the perils which we saw, but of those of which we were unmindful. How many times was his hand between us and death!…
Notes
(1) Written from Bangor Theological Seminary.
(2) Professor of Modern Languages in Bowdoin College.
(3) Class mates at Bowdoin. Probably D.C. or G.M. Weston (class of ‘34) and Joseph Blake (class of ‘35)
http://library.bowdoin.edu/arch/archives/classcl.shtml
(4) Now called Nicatou Island off present day Medway.
(5) Grand Falls,” between Shad Pond and Quakish Lake.
(6) Probably among the present day Quakish, Elbow, North Twin, Pemadumcook [Passamagamut], Ambajejus and Debsconeag lakes. There is also a Nesowadnehunk Falls and Nesowadnehunk stream on the Penobscots West branch just upstream from where the Appalachian Trail turns from west to north, away from the west branch and into Baxter State Park.
(7) The Abol Slide, which occurred about 1816. (This information courtesy of editor, publisher, registered Maine guide and freelance writer, Mike Everett).
(8) We now know Mt. Katahdin is 5,267 ft high. Thoreau made it up as high as the Krumholtz, or "crooked wood" which grows above the tree line, but he turned around before reaching the summit.
(9) Too bad they had no view! Thoreau wrote, “Like ourselves, neither Bailey (also an 1836 ascent) nor Jackson (1837) had obtained a clear view from the summit.”
(10) Logic might have it that HBS meant the southern end of the lake as opposed to where it empties out in the west, specifically, arriving at the southeastern shore, somewhere between Lily Bay and Greenville. I’m guessing that they “got among inhabitants” and had their milk in Greenville…where he returned 24 years later…(pages 225-226 of HBS his life and work)…
Henry David Thoreau wrote in “Ktaadn”:
“Ktaadn, whose name is an Indian word signifying highest land, was first ascended by white men in 1804. It was visited by Professor J. W. Bailey of West Point in 1836; by Dr. Charles T. Jackson, the State Geologist, in 1837; and by two young men from Boston in 1845. All these have given accounts of their expeditions. Since I was there, two or three other parties have made the excursion, and told their stories. Besides these, very few, even among backwoodsmen and hunters, have ever climbed it, and it will be a long time before the tide of fashionable travel sets that way.”
Henry Boynton Smith was 20 years old and eight years younger than Thoreau in 1836 when he ascended the dam-free Penobscot to Katahdin, predating Thoreau’s similar route by 10 years time. http://eserver.org/thoreau/memap.html
This was one year before Thoreau started his journal and 16 years after Maine separated from Massachusetts and joined the union. HBS set out on this trek 1 year after George W. Coffin published his "Plan of the Public Lands in the State of Maine" map; Thoreau used Coffin's Map for his 1853 and 1857 trips through the Moosehead Lake region. About this map he says “(it) is the only one I have seen that at all deserves the name,” but for his trek to Katahdin, “we had no pocket map.”
I wonder if HBS had a copy.
Before the Civil War, few travelers sought the “wilderness experience” of northern Maine but John Way's 1874 book, with its map, helped change that. This was the first guide for sportsmen to Moosehead Lake and the surrounding region, followed shortly in 1879 by Lucius L. Hubbard’s similar work. HBS and company preceded most “tourists” in the area by at least 40 years and Maine’s final interior topographic surveys by 90 years!
More on HBS at these websites:
http://famousamericans.net/henryboyntonsmith/
http://26.1911encyclopedia.org/S/SM/SMITH_HENRY_BOYNTON.htm
http://cdl.library.cornell.edu/cgi-bin/moa/moa-cgi?notisid=ABQ0722-0040-121
Best,
Evan Smith