CHAPTER VII.
MOOSEHEAD.
Moosehead Lake is a little bigger than the Lago di Guarda, and therefore, according to our American standard; rather more important. It is not very grand, not very picturesque, but considerably better than no lake, — a meritorious mean; not pretty and shadowy, like a thousand lakelets all over the land, nor tame, broad, and sham-oceanic, like the tanks of Niagara. On the west, near its southern end, is a well-intended blackness and roughness called Squaw Mountain. The rest on that side is undistinguished pine woods.
Mount Kinneo is midway up the lake, on the east. It is the show-piece of the region, — the best they can do for a precipice, and really admirably done. Kinneo is a solid mass of purple flint rising seven hundred feet upright from the water. By the side of this block could some Archimedes appear, armed with a suitable “pou stô” and a mallet heavy enough, he might strike fire to the world. Since percussion-guns and friction cigar-lighters came in, flint has somewhat lost its value; and Kinneo is of no practical use at present. We cannot allow inutilities in this world. Where is the Archimedes? He could make a handsome thing of it by flashing us off with a spark into a new system of things.
