Northern Waterways Reference Collection

Author: Steele, Thomas Sedgwick

Title: Paddle and Portage, from Moosehead Lake to the Aroostook River, Maine

Year: 1882

Publisher: Boston: Estes and Lauriat

Pages: 148

Source: Google Books  

Description: Thomas Steele's second book on photography and canoeing in northern Maine in the 1800s.

"Steele studied art in Paris with Marcius Simonds. Steele traveled to other parts of Europe and North Africa. His exploits in Norway are recounted in the book "A Voyage to Vikingland" (1896) again accompanied by a map and lavish illustrations.

"Steele was a member of the National Academy of Design, Salmagundi Club of New York, and numerous genealogical societies. His style was very realistic and his subjects were mostly recently hooked fish and still life scenes. While he dabbled with impressionism and luminism, he believed that these schools of art would not have significant staying power (1). 

Thomas Sedgwick Steele made two canoe trips with the intention of documenting the region photographically. He displayed his photo-graphs in large exhibitions in New York, and reproduced them in his books ["Canoe and Camera" and "Paddle and Portage"]. His first trip, in 1879, follows a route similar to Henry David Thoreau's in 1857. Indeed, the map accompanying Steele's first book, has been annotated with elements from Thoreau's writing; for example, it shows Thoreau's "Moose Grounds" at Northeast Carry, located at the top of Moosehead Lake (2).