In
coming home we sailed over a place, not far from the Images, where Mr.
White has, at some time, let down a line four hundred feet without
finding bottom. This seems strange, for he told us, too, that his boat,
as it floated, was only two hundred and fifty feet higher than the boats
in Portland Harbor, and that if the Great Pond was pumped dry, a man
standing on its bottom, just under where we then were, would be more
than one hundred and fifty feet lower than the surface of the water at
the Portland wharves. Coming up the Dingley Bay, had a good view of
Rattlesnake Mountain, and it seemed to me wonderfully beautiful as the
almost setting sun threw over its western crags streams of fiery light.
If the Indians were very fond of this part of the country, it is easy to
see why; beavers, otters, and the finest fish were abundant, and the
hills and streams furnished constant variety. I should have made a good
Indian, if I had been born in a wigwam. To talk like sailors, we made
the old hemlock-stub at the mouth of the Dingley Mill Brook just before
sunset, and sent a _boy_ ashore with a hawser, and was soon safely
moored to a bunch of alders. After we got ashore Mr. White allowed me to
fire his long gun at a mark. I did not hit the mark, and am not sure
that I saw it at the time the gun went off, but believe, rather, that I
was watching for the noise that I was about to make. Mr. Ring said that
with practice I could be a gunner, and that now, with a very heavy
charge, he thought I could kill a horse at eight paces.
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