Page:The first and last journeys of Thoreau - lately discovered among his unpublished journals and manuscripts 2.djvu/107

 Thoreau would hardly have been more particular in describing the form and furniture of an Indian hut or a Minnesota lumberman’s shanty. He next attends to that foe of the wild pigeon and the lake fish, the woodcutter:

Lumberers came here this evening to spear fish. They tell me that the lumber in the forest above is more knotty than that cut in Maine; but the river is nothing, for rapids, compared to the Penobscot. One foot of snow here (which is about the average on a level, so that they never have to shovel out) makes better sledding in the Minnesota pine woods than the four feet of the Maine woods, this country is so much more level.

These men cut the larch for fish-poles. In this night a thunder-shower at distance. The next day, June 7, reptiles claimed his attention, as well as plants. He saw a snapping turtle, and a day or two later a soft-shelled turtle worth describing:

It had a shell that was brown, spotted with darker brown, and with a lighter-brown edge;