.M38 
 
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 
 
 cxy. 3 '6 
 
 Chap..!..'.: Copyright No.. 
 
 UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 
 
5port [^^sl 
 
 I Warrant You! 
 
 ■Ticcljth Night. 
 
 THOMAS MARTINDALE. 
 
 PRICE, ONE DOIvLAR. \\^0' 
 

 PRESS OF 
 
 H . W. SHAW CO. , 
 
 PHILADELPHIA. 
 
 COPYRIGHTED 1897 
 
 BV 
 
 THOMAS MARTINDALE 
 
THOMAS MARTINDALE. 
 
APOLOGETIC. 
 
 IF it be true that "good wine needs no bush,'" it ought 
 to be true that a good book needs no apology. " But,' ' 
 my reader may ask, " is your book a good one, or does 
 its goodness rest only on the modest opinion of its 
 author?" Dear reader, I may safely say, without stretch- 
 ing the bounds of modesty, that any book whose aim is 
 to lengthen and make better the life of the American bus- 
 iness man and to show him the most enjoyable way to do 
 it, must be a good book. " But why the American busi- 
 ness man rather than another?" Because he is the man 
 whose manner of life affords the broadest room for 
 improvement. He is the man who in his fierce chase 
 after the almighty dollar forgets that there are such things 
 as health and happiness and personal comfort, or if he 
 remembers them it is only to see that they step to the side 
 and not stand in the way of his chase. To stop for rest 
 or recreation would be extravagance, especially as he 
 knows no need of either. A knowledge of the need, 
 however, is sure to come, and when it does he may thank 
 his stars if it hasn't come too late. You cannot teach an 
 old dog new tricks nor can you disentangle the habits of 
 a lifetime from their worry and care and weave the worn 
 threads into youthful toggery. 
 Too late ! Too late ! 
 
 I am aware of the dangers that lie in wait for the 
 book-writer. "Oh, that mine adversary had written a 
 book !" was the burden of Job's prayer, 3,500 years ago, 
 and it is doubtful whether the roll of passing ce;)turies 
 has as yet flattened out the peril. Flattering myself, 
 however, that I am no man's adversary, I will take the 
 risk and launch my little volume, hoping for it fair 
 weather, favoring gales, and a broad harbor from which 
 to spread its wholesome freight wherever it may do the 
 most good. THOS. M. 
 
TO A. B. F. KINNEY. 
 
 *1% FRIEND of thirty years' acquaintance, and the best 
 i/Y all-around sportsman I have ever met; a man 
 * \ equally expert with rifle, gun or fly rod; who has 
 killed game of every species that the American 
 Continent affords, from the grizzly bear to the ubiquitous 
 rabbit, from the wild goose and its rival in migratory flight 
 — the mysterious brant to the solitude-loving woodcock, 
 and who is besides what the world affectionately calls " a 
 royal good fellow." To him this book is respectfully 
 dedicated by his sincere friend, 
 
 Thomas Martixdale. 
 
MOOSEHEAD LAKE. 
 
 This way lies the game. 
 
 — King Hen>y VI. 
 
 WE left Philadelphia Saturday night, September 12th, 
 at 6.50, b\' the Boston express. It was hot, close and 
 miserably uncomfortable. The sleeping car felt like 
 an oven and we turned in before New York was reached, 
 as that was the coolest thing to do. Sunday in Boston 
 was rainy, raw and cold.- On Monday morning, in Ban- 
 gor, we had to put on heavy flannels and get out overcoats. 
 It was election day in Maine; yet, although it was 
 expected that the Republican ticket would be elected by 
 30,000 majority, we saw no excitement along the railroad 
 in our ride from Bangor to Greenville, at the head of Moose- 
 head Lake. No bands, no men around the polling places, 
 with badges on. An occasional flag floated in the frosty 
 air but that was all. Yet there was a silent unseen some- 
 thing betokening an enormous Republican vote. (We're 
 in the woods now and have heard nothing of the result as 
 yet.) During our ride in the car a prophetic native sitting 
 behind us broke loose in this fashion: "Darned if I 
 wouldn't bet a dollar that the State would go u-nan- 
 i-mus for Powers, if it weren't for the fac' that some 
 ornery cuss would hear of my bet and go and vote for 
 t'other fellow, just so as I would lose it." 
 
There are a number of little steamboats on Moose- 
 head Lake, which ply backwards and forwards, carrying 
 freight and passengers. Upon a time card, a sort of 
 " free and easy, go as you please schedule,' ' we were told 
 our boat would leave promptly at six in the morning. So 
 on Tuesday we were up before five o'clock to see to our 
 stores, baggage and hunting outfit being aboard on time, 
 had breakfast in a hurry, first asking the landlord to tell 
 the captain of the boat that we would be aboard at six and 
 not to start without us. At six we were pacing the deck 
 of the steamer, listening to the captain and pilot swearing 
 at the engineer, who had not yet put in an appearance, 
 and the boat couldn't well go without the engineer. Half 
 after six came and we still waited ; the whistle was blown 
 repeatedly, but no sign of the man who handled the stop- 
 cocks. At eighteen minutes to seven the "knight of the 
 stopcocks" was seen leisurely coming down a hillside as 
 calmly as if he were an hour ahead of time. Then we 
 made a start and crossed to another landing, where we 
 took in tow a scow with four horses, a party of ladies and 
 some lumbermen. At a quarter to eight we were off for the 
 " Northeast Carry," where we arrived about an hour and 
 a half late, which hour and a half caused us an exciting 
 time. 
 
 Northeast Carry is so called because it is a road or 
 " carry" at the northeast end of the lake: it is two miles 
 long, and the other end of the "carry" lands you on the 
 banks of the Penobscot River. As we were loading our 
 canoes a party landed from down the river. In the 
 centre of one of their canoes a lady was seated on a 
 throne-like chair covered with costly Persian rugs. 
 
 8 
 
PENOBSCOT RIVER; LOADING CANOES FOR A TRIP INTO THE 
 
 Luxurious air cushions supported " my lady's" back, and 
 formed a rest for her feet. An oriental robe, tinted with 
 all the hues of the rainbow, was gracefully thrown around 
 her dainty limbs, mingling its colors with those of the 
 autumn leaves which were strung in garlands about the 
 bow of the boat. A pretty scene indeed, but yet imperfect. 
 It needed a dusky Indian maiden, with no clothes on to 
 speak of, waving a peacock fan. Then the picture might 
 pass, on a pinch, for that of the proud Cleopatra as she 
 sailed up the Cydnus to tickle the fancy and catch the 
 heart of her love-sick Anton}'. 
 
 Precisely at two o'clock Tuesday, the fifteenth, we 
 paddled away from Northeast Carry. We had a glorious 
 run to the ' ' half-way house, " (ten miles down). The river 
 was bewitchingly beautiful . The first frosts had delicately 
 colored the leaves of the maple and beech, while the 
 great waving masses of ferns that fringe the river's edge 
 
 i 
 
had changed their greens tor various shades of yellow 
 and brown, and spreading their dainty texture along the 
 banks seemed anxious to show what nature could do in 
 the way of embroidery. 
 
 Everything looked radiant and happy — save our 
 three guides who were taciturn and troubled. The rea- 
 son was plain. It was half-past four in the afternoon when 
 we reached the "half-way house." We had stated that 
 we desired particularly to be at Chesuncook Lake (twenty 
 miles down the river) that night, and there would have 
 been no trouble in doing the journey in daylight if the 
 steamer Comet had only been more prompt in starting 
 from Greenville. Now, below us, six miles down, is a 
 great stretch of rapids called the ' ' Rocky Rtps, ' ' a mile 
 and a half long. Below these rapids come the Pine 
 Stream Falls, half a mile long. 
 
 Our three canoes were deeplj^ loaded. Should we 
 or should we not risk the run ? It was finally decided to 
 risk it, and away we went, paddling for all we were 
 worth, but it was dark when we reached the head of the 
 "Rips," and we were "in for it." 
 
 'Tis a beautiful sight in daylight to see the canoes 
 on these rapids, rushing one after the other from shore to 
 shore, dodging this rock, sliding over that shelf, or doub- 
 ling around some intruding ledge, all the while striving 
 to keep in the channel, which in some places is not more 
 than four or five feet wide. At night, however, the sight 
 is not quite so captivating, especially if the night be a 
 dark one and you happen to make up a part of the 
 canoe's cargo. 
 
We got through, however, without any greater mis- 
 hap than breaking the rib of one canoe and shipping some 
 water into another. A few minutes after emerging from 
 the boiling " Rocky Rips" we heard the roar of the falls 
 about a mile further down. The sound was grand, 
 and we thought we were going to have another exciting 
 run, but the guides said that we (the sports) would have 
 to get out, walk through the woods to the bottom of the 
 falls, (about a half a mile.) This was to lighten the 
 
 PENOBSCOT RIVER; BATEAU ON THE RAPIDS AT "hALF-WAY" HOUSE. 
 
 canoes. They then rearranged the loads and started 
 down the falls by water while we went down by land, and 
 It was darker in the woods than it was on the river. We 
 stumbled and tripped over roots and logs, while the 
 guides stumbled and tripped over rocks. We got through 
 all right and so did they — after a fashion. One man had 
 
to jump out of his canoe to save it and another man 
 brought his canoe down leaking. Neither man seemed 
 exactl)' happy. However, there's ver}' little pure hap- 
 piness in this world and perhaps the adulterated article 
 tastes all the better for its mixture with a little miser}'. 
 In a few minutes the loads were changed and we 
 were off again down the river. After a run of about an 
 hour we saw the lights of the Chesuncook House looming 
 up bright and cheery in the distance, and in a little while 
 we stood within its hospitable doors. We found it chock 
 full of guides and "sports," and among the latter was a 
 goodly proportion of " lady sports." No less than four 
 of the "short skirt" variety, who, with their "little'' 
 rifles, their " little " boots, their "little" jerseys, their 
 "little" fishing rods and their "little" fellers, made the 
 scene an interesting and we might say (although hanging 
 should be the penalty for such a pun) an amooseing one. 
 
CUPID IN THE WILDERNESS. 
 
 This love will undo us all. O, Cupid ! Cupid ! Cupid ! 
 
 — Troiliis and Ctessida. 
 
 Y 1 UMAN nature is the same the world over, and Cupid, 
 pj sl}^ dog that he is, appears to know that the wild 
 * 1 woods and lakes and rivers of Maine are no excep- 
 tion to the rule. Ah me, if these same woods and lakes and 
 rivers had tongues and knew how to use them what queer 
 tales they could tell, and what incidents would come to 
 light that now slide into the past unstoried and unrecorded! 
 Here, in this very wilderness, hunting, fishing and 
 pleasure parties yearly congregate, and among the latter 
 is plenty of fit food for Cupid's powder. Young and 
 beautiful girls with enough will, skill and ingenuity to 
 paddle their own canoe and make love at the same time — 
 if their chaperones are sleepy enough to permit the per- 
 formance of such a double barreled programme. 
 
 These fishing and pleasure parties remain no longer 
 than the middle or latter part of September, but while 
 they're here the crafty littlewinged god is up to his chin 
 in business, and to be hit with Cupid's arrow is as com- 
 mon as trouble. Ah, 
 
 " Cupid is a knavish lad 
 
 Thus to make poor females mad." 
 
 But, with all due respect to William Shakespeare I 
 would remind him that it is not from out the female sex 
 
alone that Cupid chooses his candidates for the mad- 
 house. The "knavish lad" is no respecter of persons or 
 sex, as the immortal William would soon discover, if his 
 canonized bones could burst their cerements, quit their 
 narrow bed and revisit the glimpses of the moon that 
 overlights this summer habitat of the curly-headed god. 
 Now I come to think of it, William's bones needn't 
 go to all that trouble. The sad, lamenting tone of the 
 words, 
 
 "O, love's bow shoots buck and doe," 
 
 proves that he knew the omnisexability of Cupid's tricks 
 quite as well as he seems to have known everything else. 
 
 AN OLD TOTE" ROAD ALONG THE PEN03SCOT IN EARL 
 
 Funny indeed are some of the doings and undoings 
 of engaged couples. Here is an instance which I hope 
 the interesting couple witli " a single heart which beats 
 as one" will pardon me for giving away. They made 
 
 14 
 
the sad discovery that their canoe was too small to hold 
 an embryo bride and her best young man at the same 
 time ; but love that "laughs at locksmiths" surely would 
 not cry at a less serious emergency. Its resources are 
 much too ready for that. They placed two canoes side 
 by side, anchored them together with a pair of encircling 
 arms and with a guide to paddle in the stern of each 
 "love-laden vessel," went on their way rejoicing. 
 
 Now these guides while they know how to paddle 
 know quite as well how to tattle, and tattle, in truth, 
 
 they do 
 
 Of the doings and the wooings, 
 Of the bilHngs and the cooings. 
 Of the kissings and the huggings of the pair ; 
 Of the lovings, of the scoldings. 
 Of the rapturous enfoldings— 
 Oh, Paradise with lots of fun to spare ! 
 
 Of course, the guides are only mortals, and as all 
 this takes place within easy reach of their eye and ears 
 they would be more than mortals— or less— if they didn't 
 tattle. Bless your heart, the amount of it they have re- 
 tailed to me would more than fill a book the size of Web- 
 ster's Unabridged. You shall have the benefit of it some 
 day, as I intend to pick out a few of the best, the very 
 best of their stories and print them. Then, oh then, look 
 out for something rich, rare and racy: but not now. 
 We'll first give these turtle doves a chance to get married. 
 
 A new crowd of visitors have appeared in the Maine 
 woods and waters. Visitors who are bent on killing the 
 succulent deer, the solitude-loving caribou and the lordly 
 moose (the noblest Roman of them all ; 
 
The visitors, by the force of circumstances, are 
 obliged to have guides whose particular policy it is to 
 "speed the parting 'sport' and welcome the coming 
 one." In the various places where these guides meet, 
 Greenville, Kineo, Northeast Carry, Chesuncook House, 
 Mud Carry, Eagle Lake or Churchill Lake and hundreds 
 of other places, there's a great comparing of notes of the 
 many things said and the many things done by the de- 
 parted guests. As I have already hinted, I may at some 
 future time give you the pith of a few of these notes. 
 
 It is surprising how many Philadelphians there are 
 already in the woods for the fall hunting, which started 
 October ist, and how many more we hear of that are 
 coming. Every hotel register is well sprinkled with 
 names of residents of our Quaker Cit}-, more, I think, 
 than from any other place. One of my guides liurt his 
 knee, so that the limb swelled to double its natural size. 
 I was considering how I could send him home (a journey 
 by canoe, of over five days, which, with five more days, 
 for the return of the guide who took him out, made the 
 matter a verj' serious one). He relieved my mind, how- 
 ever, by telling me he had heard of a doctor who was 
 camped at the head of a bog a few miles awa}^ I put my 
 man at once into a canoe and paddled up to the tent of 
 the Esculapian disciple whom I found to l)e an eminent 
 one and a Philadelphian. After looking at the man's 
 damaged limb, he said : " Well, I am an expert, or con- 
 sidered so, on insanity, and perhaps on one or two other of 
 natures' calamities, but I am not an expert on swelled legs. 
 However, this is what I advise you to do." And he told 
 him. The doctor's advice seems to have been — what a 
 
 ]6 
 
doctor's advice sometimes is not — the proper thing, for 
 the leg. got well. But before the man could call again to 
 return his thanks and tell the good doctor of the cure, 
 that individual had vanished further into the wilderness, 
 and I've not seen him since. 
 
 PENOBSCOT RIVER 
 
 ITS FIRST COAT OF ICE; OCTOSER 
 
 The natives hereabout are, in money matters, what 
 the Scotch call "canny." And canny enough, some of 
 them are, to give any Scotchman points and beat him 
 with ease. Listen to this. A storekeeper, " a native 
 here and to the manner born," had a mother. I don't 
 wish you to infer, however, that he differed in this par- 
 ticular from any other storekeeper. He was a dutiful 
 son, and doated on his mother, showing her every mark 
 of filial affection. This was, of course, very commendable 
 in him, but she deserved it all, for report says she was a 
 "grand w^oman." In the course of human events, the 
 old lady became "worrited." Life's cares and troubles 
 came so thick and fast they began to choke up the oil in 
 
 17 
 
her lamp of life. It commenced to flicker and grow dim 
 and needed only a puff of apoplexy to put it out entirely. 
 When the end came the son's grief was touching, and the 
 more .so as there was no place he could obtain a coffin 
 nearer than a town three days journey away. How to 
 get there and back in time to bury the old lady decently 
 troubled his mind, and the indecency of burying her in 
 one of their common pine receptacles was more shocking 
 to his delicate sense of propriety than planting her in a 
 dry goods box. At this juncture a man who had long 
 known and revered the departed woman volunteered his 
 services to fetch a coffin. With sturdy strokes of his 
 paddle in the "dead " waters of the river and the deft use 
 of the pole ia pushing up over the "quick" waters he 
 hurried on. After reaching a "carry" he almost ran 
 across it (two miles) to catch the first boat to the town 
 where coffins were for sale, made his purchase and speeded 
 back to the "carry." Putting the coffin in his canoe he 
 started down the river as rapidly as elbow grease and 
 paddle could drive him. When he landed, the son of the 
 deceased asked him what his charge would be for the trip. 
 The man replied that he would make no charge, that the 
 deceased had alwa3-s been kind to him, and what he had 
 done was little enough to show the good will and respect 
 he had for her, and that he was glad to have been able to 
 make the trip as he had done. "But" h^ said, "I 
 . wouldn't mind having a plug of tobacco ; mine was all 
 used up on the trip.' ' The dutiful son handed him a plug 
 from behind the counter and in the most kind-hearted 
 tone said: "Ten cents, please." This he said and 
 nothing more. 
 
 i8 
 
CALLING THE MOOSE. 
 
 sport Roj'al, I warraut you ! 
 
 — T-welfth Night. 
 
 IN the latter days of September and the early weeks 
 of October the mammoth deer known as the moose is 
 mating. Then it is that the woods of Maine, Nova 
 Scotia and New Brunswick are traversed by thousands 
 of sportsmen with their guides all in search of one. thing 
 — a chance to kill a bull-moose. Now the female moose, 
 in one particular, is very like some other females of the 
 animal kingdom ; she is coy and capricious, leading her 
 lover "a merry dance o'er moss and fell," through bog 
 and swamp, along the margins of lakes and ponds and 
 lagoons or " logans " as the latter are called in this 
 region. At night she comes down to the water to feed 
 on the roots and tops of the lily pad which grows so 
 abundantly in sluggish waters. If her mate be her 
 escort, he usually stands on the bank, eyeing his spouse 
 tenderly as she feeds, and, with ears cocked, is ever ready 
 to protect her from all danger, real or fancied. 
 
 If the bull-moose has no cow of his own but is 
 merely ranging and scouring the country to find a sweet- 
 heart that suits his fancy, then is the time he is apt to fall 
 into a trap and a very sure one. On a still night (and, 
 mind you, the night must be still) around every lake, 
 pond and river where the moose frequents and feeds, the 
 
 19 
 
bull hears the sounds of sweetest melody ; sounds filled 
 with such plaintive, loving, caressing, lonely, forsaken, 
 "come-to-my-arms " sort of cadence that he cannot resist 
 the appeals. These loving sounds, termed the "call" 
 with their ascending and descending notes are produced 
 by the guides, their instrument being a birch bark horn. 
 If the "call" be well made it will be heard b_v the bull 
 miles and miles away. Pricking up his ears he will start 
 on the run, thrashing through the brake, barking, bellow- 
 ing, grunting and in his own affectionate manner answer- 
 ing the impassioned notes of his counterfeit mistress. 
 When he reaches the edge of the wood he grows wary 
 and suspicious. He will steal up and down among the 
 bushes listening and scenting in a " she-may-be-fooling- 
 me" sort of way, and sometimes it takes many nights to 
 convince him that he is the identical gentlemau the lady 
 moose is "stuck on,'' and for whom she is so lovingly 
 calling. Alas, how many a bull-moose Lothario falls a 
 victim to his own vanity and the bewitching notes of a 
 birch bark horn ! 
 
 Although the bull-moose is a thoroughbred Mormon, 
 having sometimes as many as five wives in his harem, 
 yet when he has one of them specially under his protec- 
 tion he will hardly leave "a bird in hand for one in the 
 bush." I have myself heard him answer a "call" while 
 engaged in his protective duty, and then make a start, 
 which in this instance was for two miles; but the loving 
 voice of the real moose called the wanderer back to his 
 protectorate duties and the family bosom. I heard and 
 saw all this. Saw him approach the water, step into it 
 and splash it with his feet, meanwhile looking cautiously 
 
around as if he scented danger. And there was danger 
 and a good deal of it in the air. In the front of a canoe 
 sat a hunter— one of the "sports," — with rifle readj^ 
 cocked, and heart throbbing and thumping as though it 
 would burst the buttons off" his coat. A moment of hold- 
 your-breath suspense, and then bang ! goes the 45-90 car- 
 tridge, the report sounding and resounding through the 
 woods and over the waters for miles around. There was 
 another bang and yet another, but whether it was the 
 uncertain light or the excitement which interfered with 
 the hunter's aim, or whether it was due to his sitting for 
 hours "still as a mouse" and in an atmosphere with the 
 thermometer at freezing point, I can't say. But I can 
 say that the moose escaped unharmed, untouched by the 
 bullet that might have forever put an end to his Mormon 
 habits and Don Juanish journeys. 
 
 The sport of moose hunting is one that requires a 
 great deal of patience and perseverance under such trying 
 difficulties as exposure to cold and loss of sleep. But 
 your reward is ample — plenty of excitement, and if suc- 
 cessful, a magnificent antlered head as a trophy of your 
 prowe.ss. 
 
 Last night my guide and I set out to paddle up the 
 inlet of a little lake we are encamped upon, with the 
 intention of "calling" if it should be still enough 
 to do so. There was some wind on the lake, but we 
 thought there might be little or none in the forest- shel- 
 tered inlet. I was tucked down in the front of the canoe 
 with blankets, to keep my legs warm (for it is cold, very 
 cold, up here), with heav}^ woolen socks drawn over my 
 boots and a woolen cap down over my ears. We paddled 
 
about a mile and found the wind worse than it was on the 
 lake below, and so strong as to make it hard canoeing. 
 In a big bog on the right-hand side we heard a branch 
 break. We stopped and listened. A deer, we both 
 thought, as another and another branch broke. Then 
 came the sound of heavy footfalls and we knew a moose 
 was "coming to the water." We listened intently, so 
 intently that I could hear the ticking of my watch, 
 though it was buried under a sweater, a coat and an 
 overcoat; nay, more, I heard — perhaps it may have been 
 fancy — the stretching of my elastic suspenders as I 
 breathed. Soon we distinguished through the dark of 
 the moonless night a great object, big as a hippopotamus, 
 move down the bank and step into the w^ater. The guide 
 pushed the canoe up deftly and silently, but the wMud was 
 at its worst at this time and blew the canoe diagonally 
 against a tree top sticking out of the water on the other 
 shore. This made a noise, little it is true, but yet it 
 sounded, oh, how great! Just then we saw another huge 
 object on the bank. Now, up to this time, we could not 
 make out whether the monster in the water was a bull or 
 a cow-moose (and it was rather important to know which, 
 as a fine of $ioo and three months imprisonment is the 
 penalty imposed for shooting a cow.) 
 
 It was so dark I couldn't see whether the big object 
 had horns or not ; but the guide settled the problem with 
 "be quick! that's him on the bank — now down him!" 
 I raised mv^ rifle, aimed for what I believed to be his 
 shoulder, and pulled the trigger, but, horror of horrors, 
 the hammer wouldn't budge ; again I sighted and pulled, 
 and yet again, but all to no purpose. My rifle was more 
 
harmless than a pocket pistol loaded with Jersey applejack. 
 The cow soon took alarm, floundered up the bank and in 
 the twinkling of an eye they were both gone, he bellow- 
 ing and barking through the alders, crashing down every- 
 thing before him in his mad rage and fury, and she 
 silently stealing away in the darkness and seclusion. 
 
 There were two very disgusted men that night — one 
 because the other didn't shoot and the other because his 
 rifle wouldn't shoot. On coming into camp I made an 
 examination of the trouble and found that on account of 
 several days' steady rain the lock of the rifle had become 
 so rusty (although greased every day) that it would not 
 work, and thereby the life of a bull-moose was probably 
 saved. A job also awaits a gunsmith, if one can be 
 found, capable of taking a rifle apart and fixing it so that 
 it will obey the trigger, at least one time out of three. 
 
 We have now been in the woods in the northern part 
 of Maine for over three weeks. In that time, I think, 
 we've had but two fine days, the rest being made up of 
 wind, rain, snow and ice ; winds from all points of the 
 compass ; winds strong, to the strength of a gale, then 
 softening down to a zephyr, but still they were winds ; 
 cold winds, warm winds, moist winds, dry winds (3'ou 
 see we're "moose calling," and you cannot call moose 
 successfully in windy weather; that is the reason we notice 
 the wind). Rains ? Yes, of all degrees and conditions ; 
 soft rains and hard rains, gentle rains and furious down- 
 pours—one of which is now having things its own way 
 as I write this. My guides are building a break -rain, 
 break- weather, break- water (or whatever you may please 
 to call it) of fir trees. They are planning where to put 
 
the ' ' door, ' ' but as the rain seems to blow from ever}'- 
 where, it will probabh^ result in carrying the fir grove 
 clear around the camp. 
 
 During this miserable rainy spell I have watched the 
 game with some interest (what little of it I've been able 
 to see) to learn how they relish the damp pranks of 
 Jupiter Pluvius. They seem to fancy it no more than do 
 their enemies the human bipeds. 
 
 Yesterday I observed some partridges huddled under 
 a big log, with feathers wet and all their glory of color 
 and fluffy sleekness departed. The cock bird looked 
 woe-begone and cheap and ragged — a dripping melancholy 
 shadow and I thought of the poet's lament: 
 
 " Shades of the mighty can it be 
 That this all remains of thee ?" 
 
 To-day I started a deer' from out of a clump of young 
 pines, where he had been sheltering himself. Again I 
 came across an old doe standing under a couple of big 
 cedar trees, and after she had "lit out" I went and sat 
 down in her "arbor.'' Although the rain was coming 
 down in streams, yet none fell on me and I spent there a 
 couple of happ3^ hours watching the capers of the only 
 living things that had the courage to brave the storm — 
 the red squirrels. They were busily occupied in laying 
 up their winter stores which seemingly were to consist of 
 pine cones, as each had one of these in his mouth. I 
 noticed, though, they took good care to run along the 
 ground under the logs, and not on top of them. 
 
 We take the weather philosophically, because we're 
 well prepared for it, having plenty of dry clothes, a big 
 
 24 
 
camp to come to, a roaring fire, an abundance of the finest 
 game in the world to eat, clear spring water (a mineral 
 spring at that) to drink, good appetites and rugged 
 strength to go out upon a big tramp every da}', no matter 
 whether the weather is what it ought to be or whether it 
 isn't. 
 
 It is asserted that at least fifteen hundred sportsmen 
 are now in the Maine woods. If so, there'll be fully two 
 thousand guides, making an arm}' of say three thousand 
 five hundred people, many of them with only a week or 
 ten da}'s' time at their disposal, and some of them accom- 
 panied by ladies. So, while it is bad for us it is much 
 worse for "the other fellers," whose short supply of time 
 won't allow them to wait for the glad sunshine to come. 
 Why, therefore should we complain ? 
 
AN UNEXPECTED TREAT. 
 
 who comes here? My doe? 
 
 — Metiv Wives. 
 
 '7T COUPLE of evenings since we had a quiet spell for a 
 LY few hours, and my guide and I started out moose 
 ^ \ "calling." We pushed our canoe very cautiouslj' 
 up the inlet of the little lake we're camped on, paddling 
 as lightly as possible, stopping frequently to listen, peer- 
 ing with expectant eyes into every bunch of alders, every 
 clump of young pines, hoping against hope that we might 
 see a moose " coming to water/' It was about five in the 
 afternoon, and the scenery along the brook was clothed in 
 beauty beyond the poets fancy or the painter's palate. 
 The brown and green tints of the frosted and unfrosted 
 ferns ; the tufts of waving grasses with their green blades 
 tipped with yellow; the alders just beginning to put on 
 their autumn brown ; the red maple, the 5^ellow birch, the 
 dark green pines, the stately juniper, the sad cypress, and 
 all mirrored in the tawny stream that flowed lazily 
 beneath, without a ripple to disturb or fret the reigning 
 silence. 
 
 Silence ? Yes ! Nature seemed to be up to her neck 
 in the depths of the hush as the guide shoved our canoe 
 on a pine root to anchor it. After he did so, he took up 
 his birch bark horn and gave the three "calls" of the 
 cow-moose. First, the short, tremulous wail; then the 
 
 26 
 
more urgent and commanding one, and lastly, the long, 
 resonant, loving, coaxing, beseeching appeal, which no 
 living bull-moose with any bowels of compassion can 
 resist. To produce this call the guide winds the horn 
 around in continued circles, the motion giving the sound 
 that trembling, undulating effect which the genuine 
 article always has. 
 
 Immediately after the "call "we heard a branch 
 break in the woods to the right of us, a hundred yards, 
 perhaps, away. I took up my field-glass and watched 
 until I saw a couple of bewitching eyes, a pair of ears, 
 erect and vigilant, and the peculiarly graceful neck which 
 I knew could belong only to the doe deer. She stood 
 between two cedars and for a while watched us intently, 
 then stole carefully up the stream to where it turned sharp 
 to the left and where a bank covered with marsh grass 
 made a pretty foreground for the picture. Here she 
 planted herself, rigid, with nostrils dilated, ears standing 
 straight up, eyes fixed on us, and with every other indica- 
 tion that w'e were the only object that at present occu- 
 pied her attention and curiosity. The guide gave the 
 moose "calls' ' every few minutes and they could be heard 
 miles away, yet there she stood, truly, ' ' a thing of beauty" 
 if not a joy forever. 
 
 The day waned, the sun sank behind a mass of 
 clouds, twilight came and went, still there she stood, 
 motionless, entranced, bewitched, silhouetted against the 
 evening sky like a graceful statue. And when the cloak 
 of night shut us from her sight then her curiosity seemed 
 to become uncontrollable. We could not see, but heard 
 her cross the brook softlv, then steal down the left bank, 
 
picking her wa}- daintil_y behind the alders and cedar trees 
 until she was abreast of us. A few minutes of silence 
 and we could almost imagine her letting loose her curi- 
 osity : "Who can these mortals be? Are they living 
 creatures? And what heavenly music that was! Poor 
 things, how can they sit so long on the water and keep so 
 st!ll ! And what are they after anyway?" She no doubt 
 thought all this if she didn't sa}^ it. Then she stepped 
 out into the open, and came so close to the canoe we 
 could almost have hit her wdth a paddle. Did we shoot? 
 No, sir ! No thought had we of killing that trusting, 
 unsuspecting creature, whose beautj^ and grace of form 
 and pose had for an hour entranced our sense with a 
 vision of loveliness we can never forget. Venison? Why 
 we would have gone without the dainty dish for many a 
 da}^ rather than have gotten it by the foul murder of tliat 
 gentle, soft-eyed, gazelle-like doe of Chesuncook L,ake. 
 
 '^ifc^^.eikJ^ 
 
 28 
 
KILLING THE CARIBOU. 
 
 Here's spcit indeed ! 
 
 — Cynibeline. 
 
 WE had been semi-prisoners for about three weeks, 
 with rains and high winds, which effectually pre- 
 vented the hunting of big game successfully in 
 the location of our camp. Early on the morning of 
 Monday, October 5th, my guide said to me "suppose we 
 go and try to hunt that dam." We had heard a great 
 many stories al^out a dam at the head of the stream 
 which forms the inlet to our little lake but were 
 inclined to think some of tliese stories Munchausenish. 
 None of our guides had ever seen the dam and had 
 only hear.-ay for its location and distance. One 
 maintained it was 1)ut five miles away; another six. 
 and the third one vowed it was a good eight miles off; 
 besides there are two branches to the stream, and no one 
 knew on which branch the dam was placed. So the guide 
 and I started in light hunting order, with a few bouillon 
 capsules which were to serve us for dinner and supper 
 and possibly breakfast, if we shouldn't get back ihat 
 night. We found a "spotted" path through the woods 
 that led to an old " tote ' ' road up which we went splash- 
 ing through the water accumulated by weeks of rain ; up 
 to our very knees in nuid sometimes, slipping, falling and 
 stumbling over cedar roots, climbing over and under 
 
windfalls, until we reached an old lumber camp, which 
 the guide went down to investigate. No Maine guide 
 can pass an old camp for the first time without having a 
 ' ' look in " to see if any thing's been left that he can make 
 use of. Before he reached the buildings three deer, one 
 of them a big buck, jumped out of some raspberry bushes, 
 and bounded away over the creek and into the woods 
 beyond. 
 
 I started for them and stalked them for nearly an 
 hour, until I came within shooting distance of the does ; 
 but although I heard the buck I could not get my eyes 
 upon him, and the does I did not want; so I returned to 
 the road. We now had a journey of three and a half 
 miles over a road probably as bad as could be found any- 
 where ; that is, if mud, water, alders, alder roots, cedar 
 roots, windfalls and slippery rocks could make it so. 
 There's an end to all things, however, and the road 
 finally led us to a "landing"' on the brook where a large 
 number of logs were left high and drj' from the last drive. 
 Some of them, in fact, looked as if they had been there 
 for years. There were probably half a million feet 
 in and near this spot. We crossed the brook and found 
 a logging road, which we followed for a mile or more, 
 but no signs of a dam. We heard an occasional deer 
 cracking a dry limb in the dense wood or thicket of small 
 pines, which bordered the roadway on either side, but 
 couldn't get a sight of them. Here the guide said we'd 
 better turn back, as we were going in the wrong direction, 
 but I proposed walking at any rate half a mile further,, 
 and probably we might find something worth shooting at. 
 We made one turn in the road when we heard a branch 
 
break in front of ns. We stopped to listen, and soon a 
 calf caribou came out from the right hand side. 
 
 It looked up and down, saw us, but moved into the 
 forest on the other side (which was here open and filled 
 with stunted spruce trees, growing in a thick bed of 
 moss). The calf was followed a minute later by a cow. 
 The guide whispered, "now look out for horns." But 
 still another cow came out and crossed the road, followed 
 by a sight I shall never forget. A pair of monster antlers 
 were very slowly pu.shed out into the road, and after them 
 the head and neck of as grand a caribou bull as sun ever 
 shone upon. It was fully a second later before the animal 
 came into full view. 
 
 The guide whispers, "Hit him in the sliouldei ; l)e 
 steady and sure." And I was sure, for when I fired my 
 45-go rifle almost at the same instant the caribou dropped 
 in his tracks. He hadn't moved an inch afier being hit. 
 The ball had pa.ssed through his left shoulder and out at 
 the neck. We soon covered the hundred yards or more 
 of distance which separated us from his lordship, whom we 
 found down on his knees unable to ri.se. And then a bat- 
 tle royal started between Lon Barnes, the guide, and the 
 bull. Barnes wanted to finish him with the back of the 
 ax, and in order to do so, he would angle around him, 
 trying to get in a blow on the forehead. The caribou, 
 however, although unable to raise himself to his feet, 
 could, and did, swing his great head and antlers around 
 in every direction with vicious and lightning-like move- 
 ment. Had he caught the guide with his "frontlets" or 
 antlers it would have been a sorry day for that individual. 
 Another shot from my rifle, however, settled the matter. 
 
THE "SPORT" AND HIS NOBLE PRIZE. 
 
We then elevated his head and shoulders upon some skids 
 that were in the road so as to keep him in good shape, 
 and then tramped back to our camp, a walk of fully six 
 miles. Next day our three guides, my son and I went 
 back, taking a camera with us, and, although the morn- 
 ing was rainy and squally, we obtained a fairly good 
 picture of him. As he was frozen pretty stiff, the men 
 raised him up on his feet, and, fastening a rope from each 
 antler to a couple of trees on both sides of the road (so 
 as to hold his head up, and thus steady the whole car- 
 cass), the photographer (my young son) was enabled to 
 take him in a standing position. 
 
 The guides skinned him, taking his head off 
 unskinned. The next da}', in order to incur no risk of 
 having the head spoiled by the wet weather or careless 
 skinning, I sent a guide with it to Greenville (a three 
 days' journey there and back.) The bull was fourteen 
 years old. The antlers are thirty-two inches long from 
 the base of skull to the tips, and have thirteen points 
 on each side. 
 
 The taxidermist to whom the head was sent said "it 
 was the finest he had ever seen and the largest he had 
 any record of." On the night of the fifth of October, 
 although very tired and badly used up with our fright- 
 fully hard walk, neither the guide (Barnes) nor I slept 
 much. The caribou would haiuit our sleep. We could 
 see him almost every minute of the night and even now 
 the memory of the scene is as fresh and vivid as it was 
 on that day, and I am sure will be for many moons to 
 come. 
 
MORE OF THE MOOSE. 
 
 The Paragou of Animals. 
 
 — Hamlet. 
 
 THK same morning of the caribou hunt, we left the 
 old bull lying in the road, and started back upon 
 our tracks, at about eleven o'clock, to prosecute our 
 search for the dam we had originally started out to find. 
 Upon reaching the brook we followed it upward some 
 distance, until the guide, who was quite "done up," said 
 he'd make a fire and boil some hot water in a tin dipper for 
 m}^ dinner. I decided, however, to push on until I found 
 that dam, telling him to stay where he was until my 
 
 return . 
 
 The stream here 
 
 was choked up with 
 cut logs, which made 
 it nice and easy walk- 
 ing, or easy jump- 
 ing from log to log. 
 Twenty minutes of 
 this sort of travel 
 and I reached the 
 
 BARNES, THE GUIDE, " DONE UP '• ON A CARIBOU HUNT, - 1 1 1 r 1 
 
 DRAWS COMFORT FROM HIS PIPE. long-looked ' lor daui . 
 
Climbing on top of it my eye caught the view of as lovely 
 a spot for big game to feed in as could well be imagined. 
 The water had been drawn off during the late spring, 
 and a luxurious growth of swale grass, cranberry bushes 
 and young alder shoots had sprung up in wild and wanton 
 profusion. 
 
 I sat me down on the dam and let my senses wallow 
 in the sight. A stiff breeze was blowing, swaying the 
 tall grasses into waves of graceful motion and bringing to 
 my ear a gentle rustling sound — o. twiti&r'mg pianissimo, 
 as it were, in one of Nature's pastorales, and which all 
 lovers of her rural melodies will recognize and appreciate. 
 
 After my fancy had plaj-ed awhile it ran up against 
 the thought : ' ' What a tempting sanctuary is this for 
 big game! Surely it won't be long without its antlered 
 heads and arched necks." Instinctively, I crept behind 
 some bushes and watched and waited. Fifteen or twenty 
 minutes passed and without my expectations being filled. 
 Then I thought of my tin cup of bouillon, and, fearing it 
 would be spoiled, reluctantly left the enticing spot and 
 traveled back over the logs to where the guide was wait- 
 ing for me. 
 
 After drinking my bouillon I told the guide how 
 near the dam was ; what a wonderfully attractive spot for 
 game it must be, told him to take my rifle and go up and 
 look at some big moose tracks that I had found, and I 
 would boil another cup of water for his dinner while he 
 was gone. The fire had burned down low. I put on 
 more wood and sat and watched the roaring blaze, and 
 whistled while supreme contentment oozed out of me 
 
from every pore. My reverie lasted till broken by Barnes, 
 who rushed in with hardly enough wind left to shape his 
 words. He told me that just as he got to the dam a 
 5'oung bull-moose, with a monstrously big cow- moose, had 
 come out of the woods and were feeding in the open close 
 to the dam. It didn't take long for us to get back to that 
 dam. We jumped like gymnasts across the logs and 
 made some leaps that might have caused the kangaroo 
 to blush and hide her head in her pouch. 
 
 We approached the dam itself, however, very care- 
 fully, and peered over the edge of it to the open space 
 beyond. The bull was not in sight and the cow was more 
 than five hundred yards away. They, no doubt, had 
 scented the smoke from our fire, although the wind was 
 ver}^ nearly directly in our favor. But we soon saw that 
 the cow was uneasy and suspicious. She would raise her 
 mane up and then elevate her head in the air, holding it 
 there for a minute or so, and then start feeding again. 
 This she did three times, and then she gave a call that 
 was almost instantly answered by the bull, who came 
 rushing out of the woods to the back and to the right of 
 her, as she ran to meet him. Then they wheeled about, 
 threw up their great heads, and with dilating nostrils, 
 both sniffed the suspicious scent which had alarmed the 
 cow so much. They were at this moment full}' six to 
 seven hundred yards ofi", and would soon make a dash for 
 the woods, for every moment seemed to increase their 
 alarm . 
 
 I said to Barnes: "What do you think about it? 
 Can I down that bull at this distance?" 
 
 36 
 
"I don't think you can, but there's no telling what 
 a 45-90 rifle can do. If you're going to try it you'd bet- 
 ter begin, as they'll soon be off." 
 
 I decided to try the shot, and still keeping under the 
 edge of the dam, I fired, aiming for the bull's shoulder. 
 My shot was a clean miss. Then we saw a scene that 
 illustrated the amount of human nature that underlies the 
 instinct of the moose. As the report of the rifle rang out 
 and echoed around the edges of the forest encircling the 
 open space, the cow-moose ran here and there in every 
 direction, as if fear had entirely dethroned her courage 
 and prudence. But the bull stood still, rigid, erect, his 
 mane up, while every hair on his body bristled defiance. 
 
 I fired cartridge No. 2, making another miss, and a 
 repetition of the scene just described, followed, the bull 
 standing still as ever. I reasoned that the strong quar- 
 tering wind to the right, was deflecting the bullets, so I 
 aimed a third time a little more to the left, and fired. 
 
 You should have seen the sight that followed. The 
 bullet had struck the bull and he started with a rush and 
 a crash like a locomotive off the rails. Away he went, 
 straight for the woods to the left. The guide and I then 
 sprang upon the top of the dam and watched the cow who 
 was still running about in the open, thoroughly panic 
 struck. A couple of minutes elapsed and then the bull, 
 although wounded, ran back out of his stronghold of 
 timber to get the cow in out of danger. This gave me a 
 chance to fire three more shots at him. While he was 
 circling around the cow to lead her into the safe seclusion 
 of the woods, he seemed to say : "You can shoot at me 
 
all 3'ou like, and kill me if you can, but I 11 save my frou 
 or perish in the attempt ! ' ' 
 
 And just as soon as she was headed and started 
 right, then he got away also, both entering the woods to 
 the left. 
 
 And then the question was: What shall we do? 
 Barnes said : "Let's go back to camp and give him a 
 chance to lie down. If he's mortally wounded we'll 
 find him, but I fear you've given him only a flesh 
 wound." We stopped at our fire for Barnes to drink his 
 bouillon which now was cold, and then commenced our 
 eight- mile journey to our tent. On the road down, before 
 we reached the logging camp, where we had started the 
 buck deer and the two does the day before, I crept along 
 very cautiously, hoping to catch a sight of the big buck. 
 The road that led by the old camp had a path in which 
 were several long logs leading lengthwise from the road 
 right to the camp, and walking on these logs with rubber 
 boots made no noise at all. Suddenly I came upon no 
 less than six deer feeding in and around a lot of rasp- 
 berry bushes. Four of them were so bunched at one 
 time I could have placed a bullet that would have gone, 
 possibly through four of them, certainly through three. 
 But they were all does ; the buck wasn't there and I stole 
 back to the " tote " road without even alarming them. 
 
 It was dark when we reached camp. We were tired, 
 very tired. The excitement of the day had been so great 
 that neither guide nor ' ' sport ' ' could sleep. The caribou, 
 and the moose, and the six deer kept marching in proces- 
 sion through our mind, followed b\' the queries: "Will 
 
 38 
 
we find the moose? Is he killed? Will anything get at 
 the caribou during the night and mutilate him ?" In our 
 mind's eye we saw the old fellow dropping in his tracks. 
 Saw the bull-moose rushing from the woods to coax the 
 wife of his bosom back from the reach of bullets and into 
 a place of safety. 
 
 And thus the day's adventures would reenact them- 
 selves with vividness and over and over again till daylight 
 broke. Then ready and eager to solve our caribou queries, 
 if they were solvable, all the guides (three), my son and 
 myself had breakfast, shouldered camera, axes, rifles and 
 ropes and started off with the intention first to photograph 
 and skin the caribou and secure his head and then to trail 
 the wounded moose. It was half past one when we reached 
 the dam, and in a few minutes we found the trail of the 
 bull by discovering a pool of blood in the swale grass and 
 another considerable pool on the edge of the woods. 
 After that the trail of the cow-moose and the bull were 
 so intermixed that it was hard to unravel them But 
 there were five of us, and each would every minute or 
 two discover a trace, a splash of blood on the side of a 
 tree, or a drop on a leaf, or a streak of it on some dead- 
 fall the wounded moose had stepped over. At one place 
 he had passed between two trees, which had been a tight 
 fit, as it showed the blood from where he was struck (on 
 the left hip.) down his leg as far as the knee. At another 
 place he had stopped and quite a circle of blood was 
 formed. But nowhere was there any sign that he had 
 lain down. Nowhere was there blood enough to show 
 that he had been mortally hit. We followed his trail for 
 over two hours and then reluctantly concluded that our 
 
 39 
 
moose would live and prosper perhaps for many a year to 
 come, as he would always in future be duly careful to 
 keep as far aw^ay from the range of a rifle as his haunts 
 and habits would permit, and he would never, never 
 again feed in a meadow in daylight during the open 
 season, for a moose only needs to be shot at once to 
 make him forever after the most careful animal that roams 
 the wild, wild woods. 
 
 >^ 
 
THE GREAT NORTHWEST. 
 
 Well hast thou lessou'd us. 
 
 — Tilus Andotiicus. 
 
 THE first thing that struck 1113- attention on my trip, 
 was Canada's nagging policy in regard to American 
 travel. 
 
 I had two guns and a case of shells on which duty 
 was claimed. These, I explained, had been in use over 
 six years, and that I was only going to shoot a few days 
 in Canada and then would return with them across the 
 borders, but my explanation had no weight. The shells 
 were counted and duty at the rate of 35 per cent, exacted 
 upon them, with conditions that if I took the guns back 
 out of Canada within two months they would refund the 
 duty, but not if they should be kept a day over that limit. 
 Such is international courtes}' between two countries with 
 a border line of four thousand miles. 
 
 I passed through the famous "Soo" Canal, where 
 our Government is enforcing its "retaliation policy" 
 against Canada. It was therefore interesting to hear the 
 conversations of the Canadians and Americans on the ves- 
 sel and along the canal. We were detained there four 
 hours in getting an entrance to the lock. The Canadians 
 point out the fact that their own canal, which is now in 
 course of construction, will be finished in two years, and 
 then will come their time to retaliate by putting up the 
 
tolls to i\merican vessels in the Welland and other Cana- 
 dian water-ways. They say it was a small, petty thing 
 for a great country like the United States to do, and that 
 Canada will more than get even in the long run. 
 
 The Americans, on the other hand, say it serves the 
 Canadians right, for they are always nagging and bullying 
 us behind England on the fisheries, the Behring Sea and 
 other questions, and it is time to teach them a lesson. 
 The commerce passing through this canal in Canadian 
 bottoms is ver}- small, last year being only a little over 4 
 per cent, of the whole. Out of an almost continuous pro- 
 cession of steamers, tugs and sailing vessels which we 
 passed in the " Soo " River only one was Canadian, and 
 she was a small fishing smack. So, pecuniarily, the 
 retaliation policy don't amount to much ; it is the sting 
 and smart of it that counts. American craft go through 
 free and Canadian craft pay 20 cents per ton toll. 
 
 It is said that more tonnage passes through the 
 " Soo " Canal than through the famous Suez Canal. The 
 " Soo " Canal is open only about seven months in the 
 year, and it is totally inadequate for the immense traffic 
 passing through it ; therefore our Government is building 
 a new canal, with a lock 800 feet long, 80 feet wide and 
 21 feet deep. The present lock is 515 feet in length, with 
 a 60 foot entrance, 80 foot inside and about 14 foot 6 in 
 depth. The Canadian Government is making theirs 1000 
 feet long and 60 feet wide throughout, but if they do not 
 put on an increased force of workmen it will be five years 
 before it can be completed. The United States Canal is 
 reasonably sure of completion within two years. 
 
 42 
 
There is no object lesson equal to this canal for 
 demonstrating the enormous resources of the great North- 
 west. As far as the eye could reach in both directions 
 was an unending procession of vessels bound both up the 
 lakes and down ; those passing down being loaded to the 
 deep water line with iron ore, grain, lumber, etc. ; those 
 passing up, with coal and general merchandise. And so 
 it is every day while navigation is open. 
 
 What a lot of people with diversified pursuits our 
 Canadian Pacific steamer was carrying ! Sitting opposite 
 to me at table was a typical Englishman, formerly a cof- 
 fee planter in Ceylon, but now a large land proprietor in 
 Manitoba. Another Englishman had been out to the 
 East Indies elephant shooting, and was on his way to the 
 Rocky Mountains to tr}' his hand on the grizzly bear. 
 He was a strenuous advocate of the Martini-Henry rifle 
 for large game, and wouldn't think of shooting a Win- 
 chester (probably because it is American). A number of 
 passengers were going to shoot prairie chickens, ducks, 
 etc., others were on their way to buy land near Winni- 
 peg. One wanted to sell land up there, and wanted to 
 sell it badl3^ Merchants were returning from England, 
 Montreal and Toronto, having bought their fall and win- 
 ter stock : others were journeying across the continent 
 en route to Japan and China. 
 
 Coming up the " Soo " (or Sault Ste Marie) River, 
 out of Georgian Bay, on Sunday last, I was profoundly 
 impressed with the magnitude of the resources of the 
 great Northwest. An almost continuous string of grain 
 or ore laden schooners, steamers, barges and "whale- 
 backs" kept passing us for miles and miles, and on 
 
 43 
 
arriving at the mouth of the canal, which is but a mile 
 long, we were detained five hours waiting our turn to get 
 through its one lock. The vessel in front of us was the 
 largest steamer on the lakes — the Mariposa — over 4000 
 tons burthen, and while the lock comfortably accommo- 
 dated four large schooners at one lockage, this steamer 
 just about filled the lock, so that no other vessel could 
 enter. She belonged to Ashtabula, O., and was going 
 up with a light cargo of coal and would load iron ore for 
 her return trip. The Canadians seem to think that our 
 Government made a mistake in enforcing the retaliation 
 policy on this canal, but don't care very much about it, 
 now that the astonishment and surprise at the action have 
 worn away. The Canadian Pacific Railway is the prin- 
 cipal and about the only suflFerer, and they cannot be very 
 severly hit, as the total Canadian tonnage passing through 
 the canal last year was, as I have said, but a fraction over 
 4 per cent, of the whole. 
 
 On reaching Fort William (an old Hudson Bay 
 Company's fort), the very first thing to attract my notice 
 was a big wagon load of fine French clarets, brandies 
 and Canadian whiskies, marked ' ' Hudson Bay Company. ' ' 
 I know not how strong the proof of the liquors may have 
 been, but I do know that the load itself was to me proof 
 strong as Holy Writ, that the people up this way have 
 expensive tastes and the wherewithal to gratify them. 
 From an unusually intelligent and well informed conmier- 
 cial traveler, Robert Atkinson, of London, Canada, I 
 learned that the head offices of the Hudson Bay Company 
 for this district are at Winnipeg, and that on his last trip 
 to that town there were no less than thirty-two drummers 
 
 44 
 
at the principal hotel ; that these represented the dry goods 
 and ready-made clothing interests alone, and that the buy ers 
 for these departments of the Hudson Bay Company looked 
 at every man's samples before they bought a dollar's 
 worth. Now, as this company also sells groceries, wines, 
 crockery, hardware, drugs, stoves and tinware, guns, 
 ammunition, etc., the reader will easily see what an 
 enormous trade they still monopolize up here. 
 
 At Fort William the C. P. R. R. has three big grain 
 elevators, which at the present time are full to the roof, 
 and yet they are shipping by lake and through the 
 canal as fast as they can get boats loaded. The capacity 
 of these elevators is 1,250,000 bushels. The train we 
 met at Fort William was the trans-continental express. 
 It had eleven cars, two of which were filled with 
 Chinese passengers ticketed through from New York 
 to China. Two cars of colonists were going out to 
 settle at different points on the line. The cars were clean 
 and comfortable looking, and were used at night as sleep- 
 ers, having the same arrangement as to berths as the 
 Pullmans, without, of course, the luxurious appoint- 
 ments which characterize the latter. There is but one 
 through train a day, and this averages about twenty-two 
 miles an hour. 
 
 The road is a single track, w^ell ballasted, has splen- 
 did rolling stock and good motive power. I am informed 
 that the management of the line contemplates bestowing 
 the same attentions on the through first -class passengers 
 as the trans-Atlantic steamship companies do, such as 
 passing fresh fruit, beef tea, lemonade, etc., around to the 
 passengers frequently during the day. This will be an 
 
 45 
 
innovation that other lines would do well to follow. The 
 Michigan Central already has commenced to present 
 bouquets of flowers to passengers on reaching a certain 
 station. Such little attentions do not cost much and they 
 make a good advertisement. 
 
 The city of Winnipeg, with a population of 25,000, 
 was a veritable surprise to me. It has broad streets, half 
 as wide again as our Market Street, four lines of street 
 car tracks, electric lights, electric railways, opera house 
 (with Margaret Mather now playing there), fine stores, and 
 a hotel that would put to shame any we have in Philadel- 
 phia. It has a frontage on the main street of 216 feet, is 
 seven stories high, with a rotunda forty by ninety feet, a 
 dining-hall fift}' feet wide, ninety feet long and twenty six 
 feet high, grandly lighted by three copper electroliers, 
 aided by a blaze of w^all fixtures. Then there are massive 
 stone fire-places and also a balcony at one end, where an 
 orchestra enlivens the dinner hour. 
 
 The hotel has Turkish and ordinary baths, private 
 supper and dining-rooms, is heated by steam and lighted 
 throughout b}' an elaborate electric plant. The charges 
 are from $3 to $7 per day, and the hotel is well supported. 
 This hotel, this city, this Canadian Pacific Railroad, with 
 its progressive management, are indexes of the enterprise 
 of the Canadian Northwest. Here the "star of empire 
 may well hold its sway;'' here future provinces and 
 cities will rise from the level table land of the prairies, 
 by the limpid waters of the Assiniboine and Red Rivers, 
 and become rich, prosperous and happy in the lavish and 
 generous returns from the tillage of the fruitful soil. 
 Future colonies will leave their mother country, where 
 
 46 
 
the "dry hvisks of poverty " are their support to find here 
 a glorious paradise of plenty. Here will grow up a 
 strong-lunged, magnetic generation, which must wield a 
 beneficient influence upon the rest of Canada, and why 
 not upon sections of our own country that must surely 
 come in contact with its almost boundless agricultural 
 wealth and resources? 
 
 As we were about leaving Winnipeg yesterday, a 
 banker of that lively town, in speaking of the boundless 
 expanse of rich wheat lands around Winnipeg, said : 
 ' ' While the land in the neighborhood of Winnipeg raises 
 fine wheat and lots of it, one thousand miles further north 
 they raise just as much wheat to the acre and just as 
 good." One thousand miles further north. Think of it ! 
 I do not know and could not find out in what latitude 
 Winnipeg is situated. I asked the clerk at the Manitoba 
 House, among others. He said he really couldn't tell, 
 but one thing sure, it is an awful cold latitude. The 
 railway guide says it is one thousand four hundred and 
 twenty-four miles from Montreal, and 3^et good lands 
 are being cultivated a thousand miles still further north. 
 This fact helps to explain the enormous quantities of 
 freight the Canadian Pacific Railroad is sending down, 
 both by rail and water, to the lakes and through the St. 
 Lawrence River. 
 
 At Regina, the capital of the province of Assiniboia, 
 we were much interested in the House of Parliament, 
 the Governor's Mansion and the barracks and drill ground 
 of the famous mounted police force. All are equipped 
 with electric lio^hts and other modern conveniences. 
 
The mounted police is said to be the best force 
 of its kind in the world, and numbers over one thousand 
 men. They patrol the whole northwest, including the 
 provinces of Assiniboia, Saskatchewan, Athabasca and 
 Alberta, keeping in order the Indian population as well 
 as the rest of the inhabitants who might be inclined to 
 stray from the right path. 
 
 Canada's treatment of the Indian problem has long 
 been acknowledged as wiser, more humane and more suc- 
 cessful than ours has been, and, as a result, we see the 
 prairies dotted everywhere with Indian tents, the men 
 being occupied with the business of farming or the grazing 
 of cattle. They follow these pursuits contentedly and appar- 
 ently with good financial results. They are well dressed, 
 seemingly prosperous and have overcome their instincti^■e 
 desire for the excitement of the hunter's life. 
 
 What a sad sight is the great square piles of buffalo 
 bones stacked up at different stations awaiting shipment 
 to the East, where they usefully wind up their existence 
 in the sugar refineries and manufactories of phosphates. 
 The men who gather the bones up on the prairies and 
 haul them to the station get six dollars per ton. As an 
 indication of the extent of the business, the quantity sent 
 forward from Moo.sejaw Station alone is counted by the 
 hundred carloads. 
 
 When it is recollected that the few pounds of bleached 
 bones forming one skeleton and bringing perhaps ten 
 cents at the cars, were once the framework of the noblest 
 animal that ever roamed over the continent, and that had 
 he been even slightly protected b}' law, by common sense 
 or by humane feelings, he would have furnished us with the 
 
 48 
 
luxurious robe and succulent meat for years to come, the 
 sight is indeed a sorrowful one. Soon these ghastly piles 
 of bones will be carried awa}^ and nothing left to mark 
 the haunts and history of the buffalo except tradition and 
 the scarred sides of the slopes and valle3'S where he dug 
 out his " wallow.' ' 
 
 The coyote we saw vet)' often after passing Moose- 
 jaw ; also foxes and badgers, and as for gophers, their 
 name is legion. Wild geese, ducks and snipe we also 
 saw on many fresh water ponds and lakes. To-morrow, 
 the 15th, the close season for the prairie chicken expires, 
 and thousands of guns will be cracking away during the 
 day and to the end of the season. We start out at four in 
 the morning and expect to have a chance at a flock of wild 
 geese that settle towards sundown in some wheat stubble 
 a half mile from here. We also intend trying our guns 
 on the plump and gann^ prairie hen. 
 
 This afternoon we were out snipe shooting for a few 
 hours, and on our tramp passed quite a number of Indian 
 tents and villages, but neither the Indians nor their mot- 
 ley variety of dogs paid an}'- attention to us, excepting 
 one old buck with a red blanket thrown over his shoul- 
 ders. This fellow followed us silenth' around, watching 
 us intently, and although sa^dng nothing seemed to be 
 piling up a lot of thinking. 
 
 A party of ladies and gentlemen are expected here 
 to-morrow^ in their private car on a shooting trip to the 
 coast. The}^ eat and sleep in the car, and have been, so 
 far, very successful in shooting and fishing. We passed 
 them twenty miles away this forenoon. They expect to 
 start from here on a side hunt for antelope and bears. 
 
AN OLD TOTE" ROAD! THE AUTHOR WITH HIS RIFLE IN THE DISTANCE. 
 
 50 
 
I am writing this letter sitting down on the broad 
 prairie beside a palace car (where we are luxuriously 
 housed and fed), waiting until the beds are made up and 
 breakfast is prepared. It is something certainly novel as 
 well as very pleasant to sit down in this latitude to a 
 dinner of wild roast goose, teal duck, prairie chicken, 
 fresh peaches, sweet potatoes, ice cream, etc., with plenty 
 of drinkables besides, and served by competent waiters. 
 For all this luxury we are indebted to the Worcester 
 (Mass.) Excursion Company, who are on their twenty- 
 second annual shooting tour, and who have invited us to 
 join them for the season. Seven gentletiien of the party 
 started, with ninteen horses, tents, provisions, etc., for a 
 hunt after antelopes and grizzly bears, their destination 
 being some thirty miles from Maple Creek. They expect 
 to be gone a week, and of course each man will not be 
 satisfied until he bags his antelope or has had a wrestle 
 with a bear; in the meantime, we that are left are content 
 to worry the prairie chicken and mallard duck with our 
 dogs and guns. 
 
 One through train from the Pacific and one from the 
 Atlantic stop here for a few minutes each day, and on 
 their arrival the platform is crowded with Indians dressed 
 up in their best "bib and tucker," which means plenty 
 of feathers, paint and tomahawk. With a special eye to 
 business and the white man's pocket book they come 
 provided with their peculiar wares, such as buffalo horns 
 nicel}^ mounted as hat racks, trinkets of various kinds, 
 pipes, etc. For some reason or other the Indian has a 
 superstition against being photographed. Now almost 
 every train has its kodak fiend, and no sooner does he 
 
 51 
 
catch a glimpse of ' ' Poor Lo ' ' than out comes his box 
 and the fun begins. On Saturday one of these enthusi- 
 astic fiends tried to get a snap shot at an oM "buck " but 
 didn't meet with much success. The moment the old 
 fellow saw the photographer getting ready to point his 
 box he rushed at him with an uplifted stick, jammed him 
 against the car, took possession of his kodak and doubt- 
 less would have wiped up the floor with the picturetaker 
 had the mounted police not interfered and ordered him 
 back into the train. Yet the fiend wasn't satisfied. He 
 went into the car and thrust the camera out of one of the 
 windows. Instantly the alarm was given, and every 
 squaw and brave, to the number of thirty or more, dived 
 under the station platform, leaving the discomfited artist 
 to the jeers and hooting of the crowd. One of the ladies 
 of our hunting car, not knowing of this trait in the 
 Indian's character, saw a bunch of squaws lounging 
 around. She got out her kodak and commenced to fix 
 it for a snap shot, when one of the squaws, in her native 
 tongue, threatened her with violence if she turned 'that 
 eye" on them. The lady didn't understand the panto- 
 mime, and proceeded to take the picture. The squaw 
 very angrily pulled a big stone out from under her blanket 
 and threw it with all her force, hitting her on the wrist, 
 inflicting a painful blow. There will be no furthur use 
 for the kodak on this car for awhile. The telegraph 
 operator here says the Indian is equally afraid of the 
 " ticker,' ' and it is hard work to get them near it. 
 
 On the night of the great prize fight between " Mr. " 
 Sullivan and "Mr." Corbett the cowboys, ranchers, 
 railway men, and in fact all the inhabitants of this 
 
frontier settlement, were in and around the station. The 
 newspapers of Montana, the Dakotas and Nebraska 
 having formed a syndicate to have the news wired to 
 them in detail, it was sent over the Canadian Pacific 
 wires. The operator sat in his office, and in a conver- 
 sational tone read the account of the fight as it passed 
 over the wires, when it would be communicated to the 
 outside crowd. Toward the last, when the "big fellow," 
 "Mr." Sullivan, was getting the worst of it, the excite- 
 ment of the listeners was so great they couldn't keep still. 
 Even the stolid Indian got enthused and grunted his sat- 
 isfaction, and when the last sentence was ticked out, then 
 pandemonium was let loose. The only hotel in the town 
 was besieged with thirsty customers, and all night long 
 the yelpings of the coyote were blended with the yells 
 of excited humanity. 
 
 The Bishop of O'Appell, who is a baronet of Eng- 
 land as well as Bishop, preached a sermon in the little 
 chapel here yesterday that w^as remarkable for its pro- 
 fundity as well as its eloquence. He is the leader in a 
 movement among the Northwest churchmen which is 
 intended to give new life to the Church of England by 
 trying to arouse it from its apparent lethargj^ and by 
 claiming for it the undivided support of the people on the 
 ground of its traditions, history and venerable age. In 
 his discourse he easily disposed of the dissenting churches 
 and then in a learned argument he paid his respects to the 
 Roman Catholic Church and proceeded to show that the 
 Church of England was centuries older than the Roman 
 Church. It seemed a great waste of force to preach such 
 a sermon to the little handful of people he had for an 
 
audience, but as he leaves this countr}- to spend his last 
 days in England, after preaching here for twenty-six 
 years, he no doubt thought it well to give the people 
 something to think about. 
 
 The Canadian Pacific Railway being the most acces- 
 sible route between Alaska and the East, some very val- 
 uable train loads of merchandise pass over its rails. 
 Probably one of the most valuable trains of freight ever 
 hauled in the same number of cars passed through here 
 yesterda3^ It was a train made up of ten cars of seal skins, 
 booked through to London. Each car was valued at over 
 $200,000 — over $2,000,000 in all. The train had a wreck 
 coming down the slopes of the Rocky Mountains. It 
 parted in two ; the back portion ran into the front, smash- 
 ing things up very generall}^ What a calamit}' it would 
 have been — what a rude shock to the American feminine 
 heart had that train and its precious cargo been destroyed 
 by fire! How mau}^ of the "lords of creation" would 
 have been obliged to put their hands a little deeper into 
 their pockets next Christmas if the heart of their better- 
 half should be filled with love for a new seal skin ! But 
 thanks to a providential decree that ordered otherwise, 
 the calamity didn't happen. The train passed in safety 
 and let us hope that its beloved cargo will survive the 
 boisterous gales of the Atlantic and come back to us in the 
 shape of that most beautiful of all the adorning apparel of 
 woman — that warm, glossy, cosy, fascinatingly lovely, but 
 awfulh' expensive, seal skin sack. 
 
 We reached Crane Lake on September 20th. During 
 our ride in the hunting car Yellowstone we had matured 
 our plans for a big day's sport, and we got it. I saw more 
 
 54 
 
sport in that one day — the 21st — than I eveusaw before in 
 a month. To briefly sketch the exciting incidents of the 
 day would, perhaps, prove interesting, as all mankind, 
 particularly the Anglo-saxon part of it, has an instinctive 
 interest, more or less keen, in everything that relates to 
 hunting. 
 
 ROAD ; SIGNS OF COMING 
 
 There were four of us. We got up long before break 
 of day as silently as we could, so as not to disturb the 
 ladies of the party (for, mind you, there are five ladies 
 journeying across the continent and back in the " Yellow- 
 stone"). We got away about "5 o'clock in the morn- 
 ing,' ' just as the geese were commencing to fly from the 
 lake to the neighboring wheat fields. We were posted 
 along a low ridge, with strict orders to lie down quiet and 
 snug in some thorn bushes (to lie " quiet and snug " in a 
 thorn bush requires practice). When a flock came near 
 
 55 
 
we were to jump up, single out a goose and give him 
 some No. i shot. 
 
 The day was breaking in the East and shedding its 
 faint gray light over the prairie. The dainty colors of the 
 wild flowers, their pale yellows, their pinks and their 
 purples were just becoming discernible in Nature's prairie 
 panorama which was soon to spread itself and rapture us 
 with its beauty. 
 
 And now comes the cry of the wild goose : ' ' Honk ! 
 Honk ! Honk ! ' ' Looking up we see a long line of them 
 approaching high overhead. Crack ! go the guns and 
 avvaj^ go the geese leaving none of their compan\- behind. 
 Down we dodge again and another flock comes in sight. 
 As before, another go of the guns and another go of 
 the geese ; and thus flock after flock fly over us in their 
 peculiar wedge-shape order, but all too high. However, 
 we venture another crack at them. This time one is seen 
 to drop down a little, recover himself, get back into the 
 flock, drop again a few yards, and then, to our .surprise, 
 tumble heels over head, striking the earth a quarter of a 
 mile awa}'. A grain of buckshot did the work. 
 
 The morning flight is over and only one goose is 
 bagged. Now we munch a few apples and take the 
 setter dogs and start for the gamy prairie chicken, 
 which out here is really the pin-tailed grouse that goes 
 before civilization, while the regular prairie hen follows 
 civilization. The first bird that is flushed is taken by 
 the youngest shot, my son James, boy of 15 years, and 
 beautifully stopped. The second bird is similarly treated 
 by the same gunner. The birds now are popping up all 
 around, and we all get our share. 
 
 56 
 
We go back to the car, have breakfast, and off we 
 tramp to Crane Lake, about four miles away. Reaching 
 the water, we find it literally covered in places with 
 ducks, snipe, geese, yellow legs, pelicans, curlew and 
 plover. A few shots started the whole aggregation in 
 motion — mallards, plover and Wilson snipe begin to 
 tumble until we are loaded with all we can carry. A 
 gunner away off across the prairie is heard to fire two 
 barrels, then to shout, jump, run, and throw his hands 
 up. No one seemed to know what was disturbing him, 
 but in a moment we see two dogs coming at a furious 
 rate. No ; one is a coyote, the other is a dog in full 
 chase. Four guns are discharged with No. 5 shot at the 
 slinking coyote, bvit he gets out of danger in a few 
 minutes. Then a monster bird comes flapping leisurely 
 around the shore. It is a pelican, and, as if to tease us 
 and waste our shells, he flaps serenely by in front of each 
 gunner several times, each time getting the contents of 
 shells from No. 5 down to buckshot. He is hit from 
 every angle, some twenty-five shells in all having been 
 fired at him. We could hear the shot strike and then 
 drop into the water, and yet Mr. Pelican is still "winking 
 the other e5'e" and will continue to wink it at anything 
 less than a rifle. 
 
 With our game belts loaded to their fullest capacity 
 (mine must have weighed forty pounds, although it felt 
 like a ton), we started back, killing more prairie chickens 
 on the road, and arriving in time for dinner (5 o'clock), 
 having been out just twelve hours. What exhilaration 
 was crowded into those twelve hours ! One who has 
 never been out in this rarified, highly electric atmo.sphere 
 
 57 
 
cannot understand or appreciate the glories of such a 
 hunt on such a day — the sun comfortably warm, with a 
 cool wind waving the rich prairie grass and rippling the 
 water so that it shone from the distance like burnished sil- 
 ver. Along the edges of the sloughs which empty into the 
 lake the green willows, stirred with the wind, were waving 
 their graceful limbs, while the bright prairie flowers and 
 the sage brush did their part toward making a pictiire 
 hard to match and not easy to be forgotten. 
 
 After dinner we had singing, whistling (by as good 
 a whistler as ever "cocked a lip") and piano playing 
 (two of the ladies being good musicians). When our 
 concert was over and we were about retiring, a knock 
 was heard at the car door, and the members of the only 
 family residing within miles of the station were announced 
 as callers. So again the strains of one of Beethoven's 
 immortal sonatas and a nocturne of Chopin's were invoked 
 to entertain the visitors, who were two ladies and a gen- 
 tleman, the latter superintending a ranch of 10,000 acres. 
 The latest fashions, the price of wheat (54 cents a bushel) 
 the climate, the habits of the wild fowl around the lake, 
 were discu-ssed. After a pleasant two hours' entertain- 
 ment the visitors were shown to the car door, saying it 
 was the pleasantest night they had ever spent in their 
 lives, and so ended our day's hunt and pleasure at Crane 
 Lake, Assinaboia Territory. 
 
 For months there was no rain in the regions gunned 
 over by our party and we pursued our sport without alloy 
 or hindrance. When we were on the Frazer River, in 
 Vancouver, six of our party who had started away on a 
 hunt after caribou and bears, returned to the car on 
 
 58 
 
Sunday, after a trip of seven days, during which time they 
 rode 130 miles over an ahnost impenetrable country, and 
 among the mountains some 4500 feet above tide level. 
 For eight miles of that distance the road was so rough 
 that horses could not be taken through, and the camp 
 stuff had to be dragged and pitched over fallen timber, 
 around rocks, under rocks and over rocks. One of the 
 party claims this to be his twenty-second annual hunting 
 trip, and he vows he never saw anything to equal it for 
 roughness and difficulties. They bristled with every step. 
 One caribou and three deer were shot, and as they 
 couldn't drag their game out of the country after killing 
 it, they gave up the hunt as a bad job and returned to 
 the car, having taken three days to go up the mountains 
 and two to return. 
 
 Two of the hunters, Messrs. W. E. Harmon and J. 
 G. Brewer, of Boston, had come out determined to get 
 some big game, even if they had to go alone after it. 
 They hired an Indian guide and a cook, got pack horses 
 and provisions and again started out into the mountains 
 where they proposed hunting big horn sheep up above 
 the snow line. They made their way through from Can- 
 adian territory into the United States, arriving at Spokane, 
 Washington, a distance of 245 miles, camping up in the 
 snow for several days, climbing around snow peaks in 
 moccasins, but always trjnng to keep face to the wind. 
 They finally succeeded in killing four mountain sheep 
 and three deer, but the hardships and exposure they 
 endured, as evidenced by their torn flesh and clothing, 
 will keep them from trying it again for some time at least. 
 As years glide by and civilization approaches nearer and 
 
 59 
 
nearer to the great mountain ranges, the big horns and 
 wild goats of the snow-covered peaks are pushed farther 
 and farther back, so that it will not be long before these 
 nimble-footed and beautiful creatures will follow the fate 
 of the buffalo. 
 
 At Sicamous, a town of about one hundred people, 
 on the main line of the C. P. R. in British Columbia, 
 lives Colonel Forester, who was in China when the great 
 rebellion broke out in which General Gordon won his 
 fame. Colonel Forester was requested by the foreign 
 merchants in China to organize and drill what forces 
 could be hastily gathered up, and to take charge of the 
 defense, vvhich he did so successfully that he was offered 
 supreme command of the forces operating against the 
 rebels. He declined, however, in favor of General Gor- 
 don. He has a large number of decorations, presents and 
 letters testifying to his braver}- and executive ability, and 
 is quietly and modestly living out the remnant of his days 
 in this lonel}^ hamlet. 
 
 The scener}^ along the Frazer River is of the wildest, 
 most interesting and most startling character. Fabulous 
 amounts of money were spent in the construction of this 
 part of the Canadian Pacific Railway. For a great dis- 
 tance it is a succession of tunnels, trestles, bridges and 
 deep rock cuttings, the line clinging to the bald sides of 
 the mountains and overlooking the Frazer River that 
 rushes along seething and foaming, and in some places a 
 thousand feet below. On the opposite side is the old 
 government road, which was made necessarj^ years ago 
 by reason of the gold excitement on this river, and also 
 to facilitate the valuable salmon fishing. The road is 
 
 60 
 
now rapidly going to ruin. We passed thousands of 
 frames of fishing tents left standing by their Indian own- 
 ers. Wherever the river narrowed to a gorge, there they 
 could be seen in the most inaccessible positions and fixed 
 on the rocks like so many barnacles. How the Indians 
 nianao;ed to get there and stav there is hard to imagine. 
 
 
 ALLEGASH RIVER, HEAD WATERS OF RIVER ST. JOHN, CANADA. 
 
 The town of Vancouver is experiencing a real estate 
 fever of a very acute and inflammatory character. This 
 is all owing to its being the terminus of the Canadian 
 Pacific and also of the magnificent line of steamers run- 
 ning to China and Japan. The town has a population of 
 about 15,000, is situated on a fine bay, with a rich min- 
 eral, lumber and agricultural countrj- tributary to it. The 
 grit and enterprise displayed there is such that even Phil- 
 adelphia might copy with advantage. The Northern 
 Pacific Railroad wants to have an entrance there in order 
 to reap a share in the rich Oriental trade pouring through 
 
the town from the great steamers plying to Japan. What 
 did this little town of 15,000 people do to encourage the 
 designs of the railway people ? The}^ put the question to 
 popular vote, and the result was that they decided to give 
 the railroad $300,000 as a bonus to enter the town. 
 
 Think of it, you Philadelphia Councilmen ; you, who 
 voted so often and worked so hard to keep the Baltimore 
 and Ohio out of the city ; you who kept the Philadelphia 
 and Reading bowing and scraping before your committees 
 for years ; you who kept the Belt Line so long out in the 
 cold, and you who fought so long and fierceh' against 
 elevated railroads in our "Traction" ridden city. Ah, 
 there are some profitable lessons that ma}" be learned 
 by getting away from home, and probably there is none 
 that needs a lesson of that sort more than the average 
 Philadelphia Councilman. Let us hope and trust, how- 
 ever, that the Quaker city has got through with her nap 
 and that her eyes are open wide enough to see that when 
 railroads knock at her doors for admission they should be 
 welcomed not repelled. 
 
 We arrived at Morley, Alberta, September 25th. 
 The town consists of one store, three dwellings and the 
 railroad station, having a total population of about 
 twent}'. It is of importance by reason of its being the 
 distributing point for the reservation of the tribe of 
 Stoney Indians. Large herds of cattle are pastured there 
 by the Canadian Government to provide a weekh' supply 
 of meat during the year for the Indians, and the 
 annual payment of five dollars per head is made and 
 blankets distributed in accordance with the treaty stip- 
 ulations. 
 
The Indians are settled along the valle_v of the Bow 
 River, some in tepees, but most of them in substantial and 
 well-built log houses, each family having a small cul- 
 tivated patch of ground on which they raise potatoes, 
 cabbage and other vegetables, while their ponies are hob- 
 bled near by and their cattle range the prairie. They 
 seem to spend a happy, contented life, altogether different 
 from the non-treaty Indians, whose bad traits I observed so 
 markedly in Maple Creek, and whose good qualities were 
 not to be discovered with the naked eye. I talked with 
 a number of those who spoke English, and spoke it quite 
 as well as the majority of white men. They had traveled 
 some, could read and write, treated their wives and fam- 
 ilies with consideration, and, moreover, had accumulated 
 a little wealth outside of the Government allowance. 
 
 One Indian told me that he had not seen his father 
 since he was a boy, until this summer, when his father 
 wrote him a letter asking him to visit him at a point a 
 long distance still further north. He took a team of 
 horses and drove there, the round trip occupying two 
 weeks of traveling. He spent one week with his parents, 
 and spoke of them very affectionately and dutifully. 
 
 The Stoney tribe speak the ' ' Cree ' ' language and 
 belong to that race of brave fighters. A Mr. McDougal, 
 who resides near Morley, has translated the Bible and the 
 new Testament (as well as a book of hymns ) into the Cree 
 characters (which are said to be very simple and easily 
 learned), and he preaches to them and instructs them in 
 their own tongue. He is a wealthy rancher, one of the 
 oldest residents and has seen the prairies when they 
 teemed with roaming herds of buffalo, elk, antelope and 
 
 63 
 
deer. His house contains more stuffed specimens of 
 ' ' animated nature' ' than an}^ other in this territory. 
 
 Some years since an enthusiastic young woman came 
 out here as a missionary from Massachusetts. She was 
 very successful in her work, and among her converts was 
 a "noble Indian." whom she induced to go to college, 
 where he studied faithfully and well, and on graduating 
 was ordained to the ministry. He went back to Morley, 
 made love to the j^oung missionar}'-, was accepted and 
 married her. They are happy, and, while the wife's fam- 
 ily is said to have ostracised her, she seems to be satisfied. 
 
 Thirteen of our party, including four ladies, started 
 on a chicken hunt to a point some twelve miles from this 
 place. x\s the Indians indulge in shooting chickens from 
 the saddles of their ponies, and thus depleting their 
 numbers, it was necessary to take teams and drive this 
 distance before we found the birds which even then were 
 in only limited numbers and as wild as hares. When we 
 arriv^ed on the shooting ground it was nearly noon, and 
 as the birds had finished their morning feeding and were 
 found on the edge of the brush fringing a little stream, 
 we had hard work getting more than a glimpse of them 
 before they would be out of sight. Taking long flights 
 made it slow shooting. However, we made a fairly good 
 bag, and, as it is always the practice of this party of 
 sportsmen and sportswomen to shoot only what they can 
 use to advantage, we gave up the sport and the hard work 
 in good season and enjoyed a glorious ride back, watch- 
 ing the forms and ever-changing shadows of the Rocky 
 Mountains, which, though eighteen miles distant, seemed 
 close enough to be reached in a half-hour's walk. 
 
 64 
 
We were told that at Bow River all we had to do was 
 to throw in our fish lines, and with any sort of a fly we 
 could catch all the speckled trout we could handle, and 
 that Morley was the point on the Bow which gave the 
 best results; but — how often these "buts" come in to 
 upset trout-fishing calculations, and this particular "but" 
 did it effectually — a roadniaster on the Canadian Pacific 
 had been drowned in the treacherous current and the 
 authorities, hoping to bring his body to the surface, 
 exploded dynamite in all the pools up and down the 
 river for five miles. These explosions, though they did 
 
 not raise the body, certainly did raise the d 1 with the 
 
 fish, killing nearly all of them. And thus, once more our 
 fond hopes and fancy of hauling in the speckled beauties 
 on our seven-ounce rods were scattered to the winds. 
 After a whole day's throwing and coaxing with all sorts 
 of flies, minnows and bait we succeeded in landing only a 
 paltry dozen or so. 
 
 Ten persons having lost their lives in the river near 
 here within a few months, the ranchers, cowboys and even 
 the Indians hold it very much in awe. The water is icy 
 cold, from the melting snow and ice rushing down from 
 the Rock}^ Mountains; the current is swift, full of eddies, 
 rapids and whirlpools ; and the stone on the bottom slip- 
 pery as an eel. Woe betide the man who should lose his 
 footing in fording or get over head in it in any shape ; his 
 chances of getting out would be slim indeed. 
 
 We arrived in Banff early in the morning and slipped 
 out before breakfast to see the town and spy out the 
 points of attraction which the Canadian Pacific has set 
 such store by. The town is nil — nein — nix. A few log 
 
 65 
 
huts, a small brick church, a dozen or more frame shanty 
 stores and stumps and fallen trees galore. 
 
 But the attractions are there, and they are attractions, 
 too, with no nonsense about them. "Whatever the com- 
 pany has advertised to perform, that it will perform, or 
 your money refunded," would apply very well. The 
 luxurious C. P. R. R. Hotel, about two miles from the 
 station, newly built, superbly furnished and lighted, 
 spacious, comfortable and well kept, is a "number one " 
 drawing card. A sanitarium, a few pretty, small hotels, 
 glorious drives among glorious mountains, capped with 
 everlasting snow, a park, twenty -six miles long by ten 
 miles wide, embracing parts of the Bow, Spray and Cas- 
 cade Rivers; the Hot Sulphur Springs, the Warm Sul- 
 phur Springs, bridle paths and walks up the various 
 peaks and the unrivaled landscape all aglow with the 
 brilliant tints of its autumn foliage, make a combination 
 of attractions that has already proved strong enough to 
 draw tourists from all parts of this Continent and a great 
 many from Europe as well — a fact that the register at the 
 big hotel fully attests. 
 
 My choice in this list of attractions was to take a 
 warm sulphur bath and then scale a mountain. Now 
 isn't it unique to take a bath in an enclosure open at the 
 top, where the white caps of the mountains are seen all 
 around you and the rain pouring in ? And yet we are 
 swimming in a pool of sulphur water at the natural tem- 
 perature of ninety degrees, and with plenty of room for 
 diving, fancy swimming and frolics generally. 
 
 The mountain climb was equally worthj^ of remem- 
 brance. I wasn't at all ambitious of "going" for one of 
 
 66 
 
the 6000 foot giants. I selected a modest 1200 foot fellow 
 called Tunnel Mountain, and in face of fierce winds and 
 gusts of rain (which on the higher peaks fell in the form 
 of snow) I scaled it in about an hour and a half. The 
 view from the top was as enchanting and ravishing as 
 mortal eye ever rested on. Neither poet nor painter 
 could even faintly describe or picture it. Why should 
 I then, who have not the gift of either, attempt to do 
 what cannot be done? Suffice it to say, it is imprinted 
 on my memory and likely to stay there. 
 
 ONE OF OUR CAMPS. 
 
 Coming down , like numerous other would-be smart 
 ones, I thought it an easy matter to leave the carefully 
 graded path and by traveling straight down save time and 
 distance. Very soon my feet slipped from under me ; 
 down on my back I slid, grasping at shrubs, stones and 
 plants in my rapid descent, which kept up until its 
 
 67 
 
unpleasant speed was stopped by running into a tree. 
 With scratched hands, torn pants, a bruised back and a 
 little more wisdom, I concluded to keep to the path for 
 the remainder of the distance. 
 
 Did it ever strike 3'ou how many difficulties there are 
 to be encountered, the distances to be covered and the 
 obstacles to be surmounted in the search after speckled 
 trout ? It struck us, but not until after we had tried it. 
 We had so many promises of good trout fishing on this 
 trip, with so many disappointments, that when we reached 
 Banff and found that, although there was anj' quantity of 
 trout there, it was close season in the park, and we 
 couldn't fish we were about giving up all idea of ever 
 seeing one. Just then we stumbled over a fellow who 
 told us of a wonderful little lake, recently discovered and 
 only fished in for the first time two months ago, at Castle 
 Mountain, seventeen miles from Banff. 
 
 On the promise that it was full of trout and notwith- 
 standing the warning that he doubted whether we could 
 rough it enough to get there, we determined to go and 
 find out whether he was a fish romancer or not. Our car 
 was pulled there in the early morning. A guide had 
 come with us from Banff, who filled us with bouncing 
 predictions of the luck we were going to have but kept 
 very dark about the difficulties and dangers of the trip. 
 Seven of us started with him, unconscious of what was 
 before us. He had led us along a small creek to a frail 
 crossing on a slippery fallen tree, over which one man 
 promptly tumbled and had to start back for dry clothes. 
 We then came to the Bow River, which here is a 
 raging torrent, deep and treacherous. Stretched across 
 
 68 
 
diagonally was a very long boom, made by strapping a 
 string of two logs together and held to the shore by stout 
 wire cables. It is the only crossing this side of Banff, 
 seventeen miles away. On account of the fierce rush of 
 waters this string of logs was swaying up and down, with 
 the boiling water surging over them here and there, the 
 inner log half covered with slimy, rotten bark, that peeled 
 and slipped off iinder foot. 
 
 The guide had on shoes with sharp-pointed spikes, 
 which enabled him to skip across the logs with the ease 
 and grace of a dancing master ; we had on rubber boots, 
 slippery as glass. There were two logs reaching to the 
 boom and over these the guide, seeing we were not in his 
 ' ' skipping ' ' condition advised us to creep on our hands 
 and knees. 
 
 Four of us started across with our feet placed cross- 
 wise of the logs. On getting about a third of the waj' 
 over the guide halloed at the top of his voice : ' ' Look 
 out you don't slip over; if you do, hang on to the logs 
 like grim death or you're a goner ! No man can swim in 
 this water ; he'd be sucked under and into Davy Jones' 
 locker 'fore he could say Jack Robinson !" 
 
 This cheerful bit of information had the effect of 
 making us doubly cautious. By dint of balancing and 
 poising, and feeling with our feet for the least slimy 
 places we at last got safely over. We then had time to 
 realize what idiotic fools we had been to risk our lives on 
 such a crossing, and, for what? — a few trout. 
 
 We motioned to the three men we left on the other 
 side not to attempt the passage. They signaled " all 
 right," and we started ahead. Afterwards one of the 
 
 69 
 
three made up his mind to try it. He labored along very 
 cautiously until near the middle, then over he went into 
 the deep and icy stream. Fortunately for him, he fell on 
 the inside. He was a strong, athletic young man, and 
 managed to throw an arm around the inside log before his 
 body could be sucked under, and by an almost super- 
 human effort pulled himself on to the boom again. Hav- 
 ing got back safely he went to the car for a change of 
 clothes. To-day he is full of thanks to Providence for 
 his narrow escape, and well he may be, for his chance of 
 life in that cauldron of ice water was — well, one in a 
 hundred. 
 
 CASTING FOR TROUT IN A FAMOUS POOL. 
 
 Shortly after leaving the river we struck a good trail 
 up a mountain side. It ended at an almost impenetrable 
 jungle of fire-swept timber, over, under and around which 
 we panted, perspired and labored for an hour; then sud- 
 
 70 
 
denly, as if by magic, there flashed upon our sight the 
 loveliest little gem of a lake imaginable, circled around 
 by great mountains, with snow reaching nearly down to 
 the water. We at once jointed our rods, and tried "first 
 and last" live grasshoppers, of which we had plenty. 
 Hardly had I struck my line into the water when a 
 speckled beauty took the hook, and then another and 
 another, and for a couple of hours it was nothing but a 
 swish of the line and a battle with the trout. 
 
 Soon we had as many as we could carry. Mean- 
 while, the other three who were left, had, with the assist- 
 ance of the guide, who had returned to help them, resur- 
 rected an old scow and crossed. About two o'clock they 
 appeared with a welcome lunch. The car log book of 
 game credits the party with a catch of some three hun- 
 dred and fifty speckled trout, certainly enough to last us 
 a few days, as we have them carefully packed away in 
 the refrigerator. 
 
 Next morning our car was coupled to the Pacific 
 express and hauled to that wonderful spot, the great 
 "Selkirk Glacier." An excursion was promptly made to 
 the glacier, which is said to be seven miles long, two 
 miles broad and 2000 feet thick, of solid ice. A fine 
 object lesson is here obtained of the resistless power of the 
 ice in crushing, powdering and moving enormous masses 
 of rocks. Avalanches, landslides and terrific storms are 
 of such frequent occurence during the winter and spring 
 that the occupants of the railroad hotel and station are in 
 daily terror of their lives. 
 
 Early this morning a couple of our sportsmen, armed 
 with rifles, started away from the car hoping to get a 
 
sight of a bear. Six of them — two grizzlies and one black 
 bear, each with a cub — were reported to be feeding on 
 berries less than a quarter of a mile away from the station. 
 In a very few minutes three shots were heard, then five 
 in rapid succession, then one shot, and we divined that a 
 bear had surely fallen. Excitement ran high and all were 
 on tip-toe of expectation, until two hunters returned — 
 without the bear. 
 
 It took some time for the truth to gleam through the 
 glamour surrounding that early morning encounter with 
 bruin, and here it is. A railwa}" employee had located 
 the bears and at daylight crept down among the berry 
 bushes where they were expected to feed, and patiently 
 waited with the determination of bringing one down. 
 The track here makes a sharply defined horse shoe curve, 
 and on one arm of this curve is a snow shed a mile long. 
 One of our hunters had climbed on top of this shed and 
 walked along for half its length when he saw a bear come 
 out in an open patch seven hundred yards away. Now, 
 he couldn't get off the shed without going to the end of 
 it and by doing this he feared he might lose sight of the 
 bear. So to lose no time he commenced firing. 
 
 The other hunter saw with his glass a man down in 
 the berry patch and thought hunter number one was 
 shooting at him. The man in the berry patch seemed to 
 think so too, and after his ears had listened to the close 
 whistle of seven or eight bttllets he emerged from the 
 bushes and walking up to hunter number one opened up 
 on him a battery of Western w^ords that fairly smoked 
 with brimstone. I'll omit them here, only saying that 
 they conveyed the idea that the bullets had nearly hit 
 
him. ' ' Besides, ' ' he said, ' ' how the devil do you expect 
 to shoot bears from the top of a snow shed three quarters 
 of a mile away ?" 
 
 It took lots of oily words to smooth out the berry 
 man's waves of indignation. After warning hunter num- 
 ber one that if he valued the integrity of his own hide he 
 had better not try that sort of fun again, but keep his 
 bullets in their pouch, where they evidently belonged, 
 he finally agreed to an armistice and a drink of whiskey. 
 
 Number two had in the meantime followed the bear 
 away down the river but lost the trail and dejectedly 
 returned, adding his opinion to that of the berry bush 
 man : ' ' The idea of a fellow trying to shoot a bear from 
 the top of a snow shed and across a whole county ! ' ' 
 
 And now we come to Lake Okanagan to try our 
 guns on the wild geese and ducks. 
 
 By the way, like the immortal Mrs. O'Brien, who, 
 when she had acquired wealth and position in society in- 
 sisted upon calling herself Mrs. O'Brion. with the accent 
 on the last syllable, Lake Okanagan is not Okanagan at all, 
 but is pronounced Okanawgan, accent on the third sylla- 
 ble. It is named after a tribe of Indians (a branch of the 
 Chinook race). It is about eighty miles long and from 
 two to twelve miles in breadth, well filled with silver 
 trout, salmon trout, chub and lake trout. The growing 
 town of Vernon, with a present population of about four 
 hundred, is five miles from it. The lake is bordered by 
 a remarkably fine piece of ranching and agricultural 
 country, and on account of its manifold attractions — the 
 depth and coldness of its waters, the beauty of the 
 
scenery, the wealth of wild fowl and its wonderful 
 climate — it is destined to become a prominent summer 
 resort for residents of the Pacific coast near Vancouver 
 and Victoria. 
 
 The lake and the town of Vernon are reached by a 
 branch of the Canadian Pacific Railroad fifty-one miles 
 long. This branch, though in operation but a short time 
 (it was opened on the twenty-fifth of last June) is said to 
 be already paying handsomely. Previous to the building 
 of the C. P. R. R. main line all merchandise had to be 
 transported on pack horses a distance of two hundred and 
 fifty miles from Fort Hope, on the Frazer River. The 
 item of freight was then a very serious one, as it amounted 
 to eleven cents per pound on sugar, nails, hardware, 
 coffee and all heavy articles, and a proportionately higher 
 rate on more bulky merchandise. It must be from this 
 reason then, that, although the railroad has been opened 
 over three months and the freight charges are very mod- 
 erate, the merchants have not got used to the changed 
 condition of affairs. 
 
 Everything is absurdly high. You are charged 
 twenty-five cents for a shave, fifty cents for a pint bottle 
 of apollinaris or Bass' ale, and corresponding prices for 
 everything else. But the livery stable men are the real 
 Shylocks of the town. A physician was dilating upon the 
 qualities of a very good young mare he had just bought 
 for ten dollars, and assured me he could buy any number 
 of them at that price. I thought, as horse flesh was so 
 cheap, I should be able to enjoy many drives and see the 
 country without injuring my pocket. The thought was 
 hardly a sound one. At my first trial of it, the stable 
 
 74 
 
man charged me five dollars for a very sorry looking 
 horse and a dilapidated buggy whose years might have 
 equaled those of the "Deacon's one horse shay." The 
 charge for a pair of similar looking animals and a similar 
 looking wagon I found to be ten dollars. Such modesty 
 is rare. 
 
 We have been here a week, and, while there are 
 three livery stables, all doing a rushing trade, we have 
 
 never been able to 
 see the proprietor 
 of one of them to 
 know whether the 
 charges exacted 
 from us are war- 
 ranted or not, as 
 each of them seems 
 to be more inter- 
 ested in shooting 
 or horse racing than in looking after his business. 
 
 This is truly a wonderful belt of country, the most 
 fertile we have yet seen. The presbyterian minister here 
 (lately preaching at Rutledge, Pa.) tells us that the soil 
 in places is fully fifteen feet deep and of the richest black 
 loam. The wheat averages over thirty bushels to the 
 acre and weighs sixty-five to sixty-six pounds to the 
 bushel. They make no rotation in planting. It is wheat 
 and wheat year after year. We saw a field just harvested 
 that produced thirty-two bushels to the acre which had 
 been sown with wheat for twenty-three consecutive years, 
 and another field of forty acres that last year had not been 
 sown, but simply ploughed under, with the previous 
 
 PULLING THE CANOE OVER SHALLOW WATER. 
 
year's stubble on it, that netted its owner (a half-breed 
 Indian) $700. Fruits, hops and vegetables are equally 
 prolific. 
 
 The climate is dr}', with hot days, cold nights and 
 few sudden changes. Even now the days are as hot as in 
 July and the nights cold enough for November. The 
 only doctor in the neighborhood says he never saw nor 
 did he ever read of such a healthy district. Children 
 don't get sick. People eat well, sleep well and live long, 
 and the only business on which a doctor can earn his 
 living comes from accidents or from practice incidental to 
 the natural increase in the population. 
 
 The Earl of Aberdeen, Governor-General of Canada, 
 has a ranch four miles from here, which is managed by his 
 brother-in-law, the Hon. Major Majoribanks. He also 
 has another ranch of several thousand acres at Mission, a 
 settlement at the other end of Lake Okanagan. His lord- 
 ship owns almost countless herds of cattle and sheep and 
 droves of horses and pigs. A couple of young men, rela- 
 tives of the Duke of Argyle, are now here shooting. 
 So, between the noble Earl's adherents and his Grace 
 the Duke's relatives, the little town is full of fuss and 
 feathers. It's "Me Lud " this and his "Grace the 
 Duke" that on every side. The Earl's lower ranch, at 
 Mission, is to be irrigated and rented out in plots of 
 twenty acres or more to fruit farmers, for which it is said 
 to be peculiarly adapted. 
 
 Four of us have been having good sport during the 
 past week, shooting prairie chickens, ruffled grouse and 
 wild geese. A little lake four miles away is almost cov- 
 ered during daytime with the geese and ducks. The 
 
 76 
 
geese leave the lake every morning and evening to feed 
 on the stubble left standing in the wheat fields, and on 
 their passage to and fro comes the only chance to shoot 
 them. On arriving here the chief hunter now left with 
 our car, Mr. A. B. F. Kinney, of Worcester, Mass., 
 selected favorable locations for sinking pits to shoot from, 
 and we all went to work digging with spades and a rail- 
 road crowbar. After the ploughed surface was removed 
 the earth was found to be almost solid black loam, which 
 reached down as far as we went, nearly five feet, and 
 awfully hard digging it was, as our blistered hands gave 
 proof. When the pits were dug a couple of dozen sheet- 
 iron decoy geese were set out; then we covered the 
 edges of the pits with wheat straw, hiding every lump 
 of fresh-turned earth, so that nothing could be seen 
 which would excite the suspicion of the geese. We 
 had scarcely finished our task when we heard their first 
 "honk! honk!" Down into the pits we tumbled like 
 gophers, and crouching together with scarcely breathing 
 room, we saw flock after flock sail over without giving 
 much attention to our painted sham geese. Then another 
 flock came which had more curiosity. To and fro they 
 sailed by us, circling around to find out if things were 
 "on the square," each circle bringing them lower and 
 lower until we were satisfied they were within gunshot. 
 Then up we jumped and blazed away. And the geese 
 — well, nothing seemed to have happened to them, they 
 flew off apparently untouched, but only apparently; we 
 saw one of them lag behind, then drop a little, then rise 
 to the flock, and in a second or two tumble headlong a 
 quarter of a mile away. Another faltered and fell a half 
 
 77 
 
a mile awa3^ We found the first with the aid of a dog, 
 hidden in a bunch of grass ; the other, for which we 
 searched in vain, was found by a cowboy two days after. 
 
 Thus early in the morning and evening we have been 
 in the pits enjoying this most exciting sport, and have 
 bagged enough geese to supply us with all we can use, 
 and an occasional one to give away. At this season of 
 the year they are fat and delicious eating. 
 
 Six gentlemen of our party started on Monda}- of last 
 week on a "big game hunt" into the district of the Gold 
 range of mountains abounding in caribou, grizzly and 
 black bear, Rocky Mountain goats and mountain sheep. 
 They took with them three Indian guides, a white cook 
 and a squaw to cook for the guides. As their camp outfit 
 had to be carried on pack horses sixty -five miles, when 
 they started off they made a very respectable cavalcade. 
 The roads, as well as the hunting ground, are said to be 
 of the roughest description, so whatever game they 
 bring back they will surely earn, particularly when it is 
 said that before leaving they were compelled to take out 
 a license to shoot deer, costing $50 each. As far as we 
 can learn this license or tax is only levied on Americans 
 (Yankees we are called here) while Englishmen, French- 
 men or men of any other nationalitj' are never required to 
 take out a license. If this be really so, it is only another 
 proof of Canada's vexatious and nagging policy towards 
 her big and wealthy neighbor. It also proves how short- 
 sighted they are, as such a policy wall never bring recip- 
 rocity, which all Canadians sigh for, but retaliation, which 
 they can ill afford, and which is as unseemly among 
 nations as it is amone; men. 
 
While in the ticket office at Vancouver, British 
 Columbia, we were much amused at a party of three 
 Englishmen belonging to the nobility of England, who 
 were trying to engage a compartment on one of the 
 C. P. R. R.'s first-class cars. They couldn't "you 
 know" travel in a car with ordinary people; but the 
 ticket man assured them there was nothing else for them 
 to do, as there were no compartments, and the company 
 could not arrange one before the train started, no matter 
 how important it might be to them. 
 
 They agreed to pay an extra fare if the smoking end 
 of the car could be reserved for them and they authorized 
 the conductor to tell the passengers that they were cholera 
 suspects or small-pox patients or anything he liked in 
 order to keep the "common people" away from them. 
 But all to no purpose. There was but one alternative — 
 take their "medicine" or stay behind. 
 
 It was somewhat amusing to hear their criticisms on 
 Uncle Sam's "frightfully vulga' country and beastly 
 traveling don't you know." 
 
 The route from Vancouver, in British Columbia, to 
 Seattle, Wash., lies through a rough, heavily timbered 
 district, where the trees measure anywhere from three 
 feet to six feet in diameter. These are of the red cedar 
 variety and are being rapidly sawed down and cut into 
 lumber and shingles. 
 
 Why it is I cannot tell, but it certainly is neverthe- 
 less — I mean that the railway is literally lined with a row 
 of bursted booming towns; each with a bladder-like 
 name, a big hotel, a public hall, maybe, and lots of 
 saloons flaring suggestive signs, such as the "Blazing 
 
Stump Saloon," "New Idea Saloon," "Three of a Kind 
 Saloon," " Let her go Gallagher Saloon," etc., etc. 
 
 Convincing evidence of "bustedness" looms up every- 
 where. Streets deserted, dwellings vacated and closed, 
 and no visible sign of life, except it be the shingle mills 
 and the woodchoppers' shanties that lie on the outskirts 
 and away from the "avenues" and "boulevards" that 
 grace these silent towns. 
 
 A CAMP WITH COOK-HOUSE TO THE 
 
 DINING TABLE TO THE RIGHT. 
 
 A dealer in real estate in Seattle told us that the 
 growth of that town had been very much curtailed b}^ 
 heavy investments in those mushroom growths which 
 offer little or no chance of any returns. Seattle and 
 Tacoma are less than forty miles apart, and as both are 
 ambitious, growing towns, there is necessarily great busi- 
 ness rivalry and bitter jealousy. Each city claims the 
 largest population, business and wealth ; each claims the 
 
brightest prospects for the future, and each also delights 
 to decry the boasted advantages of the other. Our 
 candid and unprejudiced opinion is that Seattle is by all 
 odds the most enterprising and promising of the two. 
 Certainly there is much more life there than in Tacoma, 
 and more public spirit. 
 
 Tacoma seems to have been nursed and coddled so 
 much by the Northern Pacific that, in a measure, she has 
 lost her independence. On the other hand Seattle has 
 had to scratch and fight for her railroad favors, and 
 fought so well that she has fairly compelled the Northern 
 Pacific to come off its "Tacoma perch" and hustle for 
 its share of the trade. The Great Northern Railway is 
 expected to be opened to Seattle in a few months, and 
 then the difference will be still more marked. 
 
 We have been enjoying the luxury of trolling for 
 salmon in Puget Sound, both at Seattle and Tacoma, 
 with fairly good success, as all our party save one (and 
 he was the professional ' ' lone fisherman ' ' of the party) 
 caught one or more salmon. While the sport was very 
 exciting, I confess I was disappointed at the tame fight 
 they make when hooked. There is a good deal more 
 fight and fun in a four pound bass than you can get out 
 of a sixteen pound salmon. But they are beauties; and 
 when you have them safely landed and lying in the 
 bottom of the boat, they are certainly a " joy forever." 
 Our fifteen-year-old sportsman was not to be outdone 
 by the older hands, for he not only hooked and landed 
 his salmon, but he also landed a trout with the trolling 
 line and spoon, a feat which none of us had ever heard 
 of before. 
 
It is needless to say that the catching and canning of 
 the salmon is a very large and profitable industry. The 
 number of people dependent upon his ' ' iridescent high- 
 ness," the lordly salmon, for a living and the number 
 too, in all civilized portions of the globe, who find eco- 
 nomical and delicious nourishment in his red and juicy 
 steaks, would be beyond the ken of man to tell. Yet it 
 is safe to say that no one product of our Western Hemis- 
 phere serves to advertise and popularize the country more 
 than the canned salmon. Millions of tins are annually 
 shipped east or exported to Europe and sold at such 
 prices that ' ' canned salmon ' ' is now rightly considered 
 the handiest, the cheapest, and the most nutritious 
 cooked food of the century. 
 
 82 
 
NORTH DAKOTA. 
 
 A sportsman's paradise, in truth, is this 
 Where nothing mars or meddles with his bliss ; 
 Nimrod himself might envy such a spot, 
 Nor find his game unworthy of his shot. 
 
 — IV/iilloti. 
 
 f-N OUBTLESS, North Dakota is the "paradise of 
 
 I I the sportsman " but I am not so sure it contains 
 
 1/ nothing to " meddle with his bUss." Indeed I 
 
 have strong evidence to the contrary which I will spread 
 
 before the reader a little further on. 
 
 We wound up our excursion in a blaze of magnificent 
 sport at Dawson, in this state. The proximity of the 
 place to enormous wheatfields and innumerable sloughs, 
 ponds and lakes causes all kinds of aquatic game birds to 
 congregate here and in the greatest abundance. All the 
 duck tribe, including the red head, the mallard, the 
 widgeon, teal, black, and bald pate; the Canadian gray 
 goose, the beautiful white goose, sandhill cranes, and the 
 plump, solid- meated prairie chicken, all these are here 
 and many others, awaiting the pleasure of the sportsmen. 
 The latter come from all parts of the country— but par- 
 ticularly from St. Paul and Chicago— with their lo-bores 
 and i2-bores, their retrieving spaniels and their Irish 
 setters. 
 
 83 
 
The town hasn't over two hundred inhabitants, but 
 it boasts of a large hotel, which is now reaping its 
 harvest from the pockets of the lots of men who know 
 how to shoot as well as the lots that don't. 
 
 The migrator)^ wild fowl are now making their way- 
 down from the far North in countless multitudes, feeding 
 on the wheat fields and ponds in the early morning and 
 late evening, and resting in the centre of some lake large 
 enough to keep them from out the reach of the deadly 
 breech-loader during the day. 
 
 The flights of geese are something wonderful, and it 
 is more wonderful still that so very few of them are shot. 
 There is no more wary or suspicious bird than the Canada 
 goose. They will not settle anywhere without first care- 
 fully looking the ground over. From the height at which 
 they fly and in the rarefied atmosphere of the prairies they 
 can see for miles, and they carefully avoid any moving 
 object, particularly if it be that of the human form. 
 
 We had spent several days there before we were able 
 to discover the fields they were feeding on. When we did 
 find the place it was literally sprinkled with their droppings 
 and breast feathers. We selected a suitable spot, dug two 
 luxurious pits, fixed the edges up with wheat stubble as 
 carefully as possible, set our decoys and jumped in to 
 await the coming of the "honkers." We had been in 
 the pits only a few minutes when we saw away ofi" on the 
 prairie what appeared to be a man with a dog. The man 
 seemed demented, jumping and running around, and lying 
 down on his back, then jumping up again and repeating 
 his operations in the most eccentric manner. We held a 
 whispered consultation from pit to pit as to what was best 
 
 H 
 
to be done. It was folly to think that the geese would 
 come down from the clouds for the purpose of getting a 
 closer view of his capers. Oh no, we knew they were 
 not such geese as that ; so it was decided that I should 
 be the Ambassador Plenipo with full power to coax, drive, 
 persuade or kick the funny intruder off the prairie. 
 When I reached him I found, not a man, but a stubby, 
 little, barefooted German boy, whose feet were sore from 
 walking over the sharp-pointed wheat stubble. Hence 
 his tears, I thought, for he was crying. But I was mis- 
 taken. His grief was not of the sore-footed sort. He 
 was only a " little Bo-Peep ' ' of the prairie variet}', and he 
 had lost his sheep and didn't know where to find 'em. 
 
 With more ingenuity than veracity, and a very ragged 
 attempt to handle his mother-tongue, I told him when 
 and where I had seen them and if he would only hurry 
 away in the direction which I pointed out he would soon 
 overtake their tails. 
 
 Watching him till well out of sight and pluming 
 myself on my diplomacy I returned to the pit. I had 
 been there but a short time, when the screaming and 
 "honking" of the first flight was heard, and peeping over 
 the edges of the pit I saw a great moving cloud coming 
 straight for us. But, horrible to relate, there was some- 
 thing else coming, and something that promised to 
 "meddle with our bliss" most effectually. An old black 
 horse with a girl on his back wabbled towards us and 
 getting near enough the girl stopped and yelled at the top 
 of her voice : " Where did ye say ye see my she-e-e-p ?" 
 "Oh, for Heaven's sake," I said, "get out of this! 
 Move on ! Don't 5'ou see you're knocking our .sport 
 
 85 
 
into smithereens ?" But she didn't or couldn't or wouldn't 
 see, until one of our men threatened to put a charge of 
 shot into the old horse unless she hurried him out of the 
 way. The threat seemed to improve her eyesight, for at 
 once she commenced whipping up old " Rosinante " and 
 in a little while both had disappeared in the distance. 
 And so had the geese. The flock on seeing her had 
 swerved by us a quarter of a mile away, and nothing now 
 could be done but wait for the next and largest flight, 
 which in fifteen minutes we heard coming toward us, 
 fully a couple of miles off". We had just time to ask our- 
 selves whether there was going to be au}^ further meddling 
 with our bliss when the answer showed up for itself. 
 This time it was in the shape of a woman, evidently 
 Bo-peep's mother, accompanied by the rider of the black 
 horse. The girl had ridden home, told her mother we 
 had threatened to shoot her, and now the old lady was 
 here, with the martial fires of her fatherland burning 
 fiercely within her and herb)lood up to the boiling point. 
 When she got within shouting distance she opened her 
 batteries. She would listen to neither explanation nor 
 defence, and actually charged us with having frightened 
 her sheep away by having a retriever with us, and vowed 
 vengeance. We entreated her, implored her to leave us, 
 to go away, anywhere, so the geese wouldn't see her; 
 that after they had passed she might come back again and 
 we would try to accommodate her with all the ven- 
 geance she wanted. But no, there she stood, working 
 her jaws and hurling her brimstone at us, and waving 
 her arms that flew around her head like the sails of a 
 windmill. 
 
 86 
 
The geese passed over and away out of range and 
 sight. Then her arms resumed their equilibrium, and 
 with a few more hot words and a farewell shake of her 
 fist she turned and slowly disappeared over a knoll. 
 And we? Well, we got out of our pits and with spade 
 and shovel silently filled them up again; then, hardly 
 daring to trust ourselves to speak, we got into the wagon 
 and drove to the train, for this was our last hunt for the 
 season of 1892. 
 
 87 
 
BRANT SHOOTING. 
 
 This sport, well carried, shall he chronicled. 
 
 — ifidsziinmer-Ntgki's Dream. 
 
 30 let me chronicle the story of a week's sport — 
 " well carried, " I think — on Monomo}' Island, 
 Cape Cod, Mass. A week of atmospheric somer- 
 siults; a week of rain, snow, hail, sleet, thunder with 
 vivid lightning, and extreme cold. And yet in spite of 
 the exposure — twice a day wading a thousand j^ards to 
 our shooting boxes, (guided by stakes a hundred yards 
 apart, while we couldn't see from one to the other through 
 the fog or sleeting snow) sitting in the box, at times over 
 our knees in water, the waves dashing over it and slap- 
 ping down the back of our neck, with the thermometer 
 hugging close to the freezing point — I say, despite all 
 this, it was a week that will be fondly fastened in ni}- 
 memory ; a week full of adventure and novelt}' ; any 
 quantity of ozone ; plenty of superbly prepared sea food 
 for sustenance, and a superbly prepared appetite and 
 digestion to handle it. It was also a week of total blank 
 so far as any news of the outside world was concerned. 
 No letters, no newspapers, no telegrams to side-track our 
 attention or upset our equanimity. For once, business 
 
and the shop might go to the — well, "Hades. ' ' Song, story 
 and jest held high carnival. Dull care was banished and 
 his woeful face never permitted to enter the portals of the 
 old club house so long as we held possession. For one 
 week at least he was a stranger, a melancholy tramp, 
 jobless and with no abiding place on the sands of 
 Monomoy Island or the waters thereof. 
 
 "Hello! there's branters, " said a native of Cape 
 Cod, as we left the little mixed freight and passenger 
 train at Chatham, Mass., on the morning of April 4th. 
 "There be nine on 'em," he said, counting our noses by 
 mental arithmetic ; and he was right. There were nine 
 of us, with guns, woolen clothes, rubber clothes, canvas 
 clothes, oil clothes, with leather boots, rubber boots, 
 rubber hats, with crates of onions, boxes of loaded shells, 
 cases of canned goods, mysterious looking "stun jugs" 
 and ' ' sich . ' ' 
 
 Nine of us from Boston, Worcester, Quincy, Dor- 
 chester, Florida and Philadelphia, all drawni together by 
 the Freemasonry of sport, and the shibboleth was 
 "Brant." The day before I left Philadelphia I told a 
 prominent Market Street merchant that I was going 
 shooting for a short time. He asked what I was going 
 to shoot at this time o' year. "Brant," I replied. 
 
 "Well," he said, "when I was a boy I used to shoot 
 squirrels with a rifle, and got so that I could shoot them 
 back of the head every time." (How far back he didn't 
 say.) 
 
 "Well," I answered, "brant are much harder to 
 shoot than squirrels, for they run faster than rabbits 
 and are much bigger." "Well, I declare," he said, 
 
 89 
 
and then relapsed into silence, perfectly satisfied that 
 he knew all about it. 
 
 For the information of this Market Street merchant 
 I will say that the brant is smaller than a goose, and at this 
 time of year is on his way Northward, merrily helped along 
 by hundreds of guns belching forth No. 3 to No. i shot 
 from all sorts of innocent looking shooting boxes, sur- 
 rounded with decoys, both artificial and natural. 
 
 The brant is here in countless numbers. 
 
 It is a bird of beautiful plumage and graceful form ; 
 plump and fat, swift of wing and wary and suspicious of 
 anything and everything that bears the slightest semblance 
 of danger. There is also a mystery surrounding it which 
 has bothered the scientists for ages and is still bothering 
 them — namely, the wherabouts of its breeding habitat. 
 The late Professor Spencer Baird worried himself more, 
 perhaps, than any other savant over this undiscovered 
 territory. No living man, it is said, has ever seen the 
 nest or egg of the brant, and no matter how far explorers 
 have forced their way Northward, the brant has always 
 been seen winging on still further North. Therefore the 
 guides out here (some of whom have grown gray in the 
 pursuit of "brantin'") claim that there surely must be 
 an open Polar Sea where the weather is warm enough to 
 hatch out their eggs, and where food is plenty and nutri- 
 tious, for they come down in the fall of the year fat and 
 sleek as a pullet. The young birds come South strong of 
 wing and as cunning as — well, I might say of them, as 
 Buckingham said of the little Duke of York. " So cun- 
 ning and so young is wonderful ! ' ' 
 
 90 
 
Monomoy Island lies off the mainland in the ocean 
 a few miles from Chatham, Mass. Between the island 
 and the mainland the succulent sea grass waves gracefully 
 to the gentle swell of the tide or the fierce ' ' Northeaster, ' ' 
 which, by the way, has been blowing a gale since we 
 arrived. 
 
 Sea grass is the natural food of the ' ' brant. ' ' The 
 stretch of sheltered water here is large enough to leave 
 the birds plenty of room to move around in swinging 
 columns without coming within range of the sink boxes, 
 and it is only when the tides and wands are favorable that 
 the birds are brought within the line of danger. The 
 
 "Monomoy Brant- 
 ing Club ' ' (the only 
 one, I believe, on the 
 continent) has a 
 couple of comfort- 
 able houses built on 
 a bluff or sand dune, 
 with artistically con- 
 structed sink boxes 
 
 HOMEWARD BOUND; ON CHESUNCOOK LAKE. 
 
 placed at the most 
 favorable points and a large stock of wooden decoys. Live 
 brant with clipped wings help to lure their brethren into 
 danger, and with as much apparent satisfaction and enjoy- 
 ment as the setter dog takes in flushing grouse or quail. 
 The club is formed mostly of Eastern gentlemen, all, of 
 course, enthusiasts in sporting, and whose number is 
 limited to twenty, each member being entitled to invite 
 one guest. Four members only are permitted to be here 
 at one time, and, as the shooting lasts five weeks, each set 
 
with their guests have one week's fun. At dinner in the 
 little hotel at Chatham we met the party who had pre- 
 ceded us, returning to the "Hub" with seventy-four 
 "brant," bronzed cheeks and ravenous appetites. 
 
 Four guides are engaged by the club. They are men 
 who thoroughly know the habits of the birds, understand 
 the tides and currents, and handling of boats, and know 
 how to shoot besides. 
 
 One of them has been continuously at the business of 
 "guidin' " for thirty-one years, during all that time only 
 missing two days — one when he had to go to a funeral 
 and the other when he had to go to court. The care of 
 family, the tender offices of friends, the seductions ot 
 courtship, the excitement of the play or the circus, none 
 of these has any allurement for these weather-beaten, 
 blue-eyed and kindly men when once the branting season 
 opens. During the rest of the year they earn a comfort- 
 able but precarious living by fishing and wrecking. They 
 watch the shifting sands, the gloomy fogs and the blind- 
 ing snow storms with earnest solicitude, for this is truly 
 a dangerous place for the unwary mariner. Close by the 
 island lies the wreck of the yacht Alva, which all the 
 wealth of its owner, Mr. Vanderbilt, could not save. 
 Right on the beach lie the keel, the ribs and spars of the 
 good ship Altamah, while her cargo of lumber is strewn 
 on the shore for a long distance, the drifting sand now 
 covering it up as with a winding sheet. This vessel 
 struck the wreck of the Alva, opening a huge rent in 
 her bow, and the lashing surf did the rest. During the 
 winter the fine steamer Cottage City, from Portland, Me., 
 to New York, struck in about fourteen feet of water. 
 
She held fast until thousands of boxes of merchan- 
 dise were thrown overboard, when, with the aid of a tug 
 and a high tide, she was gotten off, and without rudder 
 or sternpost was towed to New York. 
 
 Our friends, the guides, lament the fact that most of 
 the jettisoned cargo floated out to sea, but with the re- 
 mainder, which was weighty enough to sink, they have 
 been engaged for some weeks grappling in fifteen feet 
 of water, and bringing their find to the surface and shore. 
 Of course, some "odd" lots have been brought up. 
 Among them was a case of 2500 little boxes of split leaden 
 bullets for fish line sinkers and several cases of white, flinty 
 rock, consigned to a Trenton pottery, which the wreckers 
 are much out of heart about, because of their weight and 
 also because no one down here can tell whether they are 
 worth the freight to Trenton or not. 
 
 These wreckers, branters and fishermen live a happy 
 life and are as full of content as an egg is of meat. No 
 fluctuations in stocks ; no frills of fashion ; no telephone 
 reduced rates ; no silver craze — in fact nothing under the 
 sun or above it can knock the bottom out of a " branter's' ' 
 content, give him but the favoring tide and howling gust 
 that bring the brant "in plenty" to his decoys. This 
 it is that warms up his imagination, cheers his heart, 
 and fills his pocket with "the coin of the realm." 
 
THE QUAINT CAPE CODDERS. 
 
 Ah, what a life were this ! 
 
 — Henry P'l. 
 
 ON my journey down here, via the Old Colony Rail- 
 road, I was much impressed by the evidences on 
 every hand of the bitter struggle the sturdy Cape 
 Cod people have to wage at all times to provide the 
 rude shelter and homely fare which their existence in 
 these barren stretches of sand dunes, pine forests and 
 cranberry bogs demands. We can, without any trouble, 
 read in their faces the story of scanty crops, growai on 
 poor soil ; of continued exposure to wind and weather in 
 the pursuit of the finny tribe that swim in the numerous 
 bays and channels as well as in the dangerous regions of 
 the " Grand Banks " and Block Island, or in the laborious 
 and patience-trying business of raising cranberries. 
 
 The Old Colony Railroad, whose stock is held largely 
 by the natives of Cape Cod, and who look upon it as the 
 great railroad of the world, has a time-honored custom of 
 giving to its stockholders on the Cape a free ticket to 
 Boston and return, in order that they maj^ attend the 
 Road's annual meeting in that city. A man owning one 
 share has this privilege in conmion with his more wealthy 
 
 94 
 
neighbor. Therefore, if a Cape Codder has five shares 
 you may rest assured they will be entered singly for each 
 member of his family so all of them may make the annual 
 tour to the " Hub." Of course, this was always a great 
 day, requiring the whole equipment of the Road to handle 
 the crowd with safety and dispatch. 
 
 Now there are grave stories told that, as the control 
 of the road has changed, this great free excursion is to be 
 done away with, and there are loud murmurings of dis- 
 content among the people at the abolition of this old-time 
 custom . 
 
 Spicy tales are told of the Cape Codder and his 
 church-mouse poverty, and some of these are sharpened 
 to a poetic point : 
 
 There was a young lady of Truro, 
 
 Who sighed for a 'hogauy bureau ; 
 
 But her pa said " Great God ! 
 
 All the men in Cape Cod 
 
 Couldn't pay for a 'hogany bureau !" 
 
 But, we are here to shoot "brant" not mahogany 
 bureaus, and therefore I will now describe to you a sight 
 I saw yesterday, and one that will linger in my memory 
 as an instance of the wonderful instinct and weather- 
 wisdom of migrating sea fowl. 
 
 For days strong Nor'easters have blown fiercely, 
 accompanied by snow, sleet, rain, thunder and lightning, 
 and through these the brant could have made but little 
 headway had they tried to proceed on their journey 
 Northwards. But they didn't try. They knew better 
 than "Old Probs" what the weather was going to be. 
 Yesterday afternoon there was a lull in the storm, a fog 
 
 95 
 
set in, and the brant congregated in long columns, flap- 
 ping their wings and making the most deafening outcries. 
 Our guides said : ' ' The birds are preparing to start. The 
 weather will settle by morning;" but after the fog came a 
 furious gale, with vivid flashes of lightning, loud peals of 
 thunder and down-pouring of rain. This condition of 
 affairs lasted all night, and for once our confidence in the 
 brant's wisdom and judgment was shaken. But lo and 
 behold, this morning the sun arose bright and warm, with 
 a Southwest wind, and up and away the brant were flying 
 Northward. First a serits of swooping circles, rising 
 higher and higher in the air, a pause, then off they go by 
 the thousands, in flocks of from three to five hundred, 
 carefully marshaled and efficiently led by some old gander, 
 who will allow his followers no rest for the soles of their 
 feet until the Bay of Fundy or Prince Edward's Island is 
 reached. 
 
 This afternoon, no doubt, other flocks equally as 
 large will reach here from the South, stopping to rest 
 and to feed before they again resume their journey to 
 their m^^sterious and unknown nesting place. As the 
 one conversation, the one aim (f the "nine on us'' is 
 brant, we have become saturated with the theme, and we 
 think brant, dream brant, talk brant and shoot brant. 
 One of the party has been worked upon so much by the 
 excitement that at the card table — for there's a pack 
 down here — he will throw down his hand and wildly 
 exclaim: "I want to shoot a brant!" In bed he will 
 toss wearily from side to side as the others sit and watch 
 him, and he will moan, " I want to shoot a brant." After 
 a while a little tiny snore is heard, then a faint murmur, 
 
" I want to shoot" — another louder snore and a whisper 
 — " a brant," and then he has reached the land of dreams 
 banging away at the birds right and left, jumping out of 
 the sink box to retrieve them from the swift-flowing tide, 
 wearily carrying them back to the shanty, past ten one 
 hundred yard stakes — one thousand yards of deep wading 
 — and then awakening to the crushing truth " 'tis but a 
 dream. ' ' But we are all getting our share of the shooting 
 and even our brant enthusiast will soon have enough to 
 quiet his excited mind and cool his heated imagination. 
 
 A BIG DEER KILLED BY JAMES J. MARTINDALE, SON OF THE AUTHOR. 
 
 The cooking at the club house on Monomoy Island 
 deserves a warm word of tribute. There are two chefs — 
 Sam Josephs and Frank Rogers — who revel in producing 
 dishes peculiar to the Cape and Island that are at once 
 enticing, nourishing and appetizing. Some of their 
 productions dfey my faint power to depict, but I will long 
 
cherish the recollections of their huge bowl of delicious 
 stewed scallops, their quahog stews, quahog pies, quahog 
 fritters, clam chowders, steamed clams, boiled clams, 
 fresh boiled cod, fish balls with the accompaniment of 
 thin slices of raw Bermuda onions, fresh cucumbers, the 
 finest of butter, Java coffee, and water that made my heart 
 thump when I tasted it to think how long, oh, how long 
 it will be before we can hope to see an American city 
 supplied with such sparkling aqua pura ! Now, to this 
 magnificent bill of fare, please add ravenous appetites for 
 one and all of us from our open air exercise, and what 
 wonder then that when we turn into our bunks sweet 
 sleep, sleep without bromides, sleep withotit hop pillows, 
 or without any other soporific spur, at once embraces us, 
 and in spite of the pounding of the surf at our very 
 doors, in spite of the storm and its thunder pounding in 
 the sky above us, we awake not until Alonzo, the guide, 
 says: "Gentlemen, gentlemen, the tide's aflowin' in," 
 and everybody gets up. 
 
 '^ife;^.fe;fcJ^ 
 
 98 
 
THE WRECKER. 
 
 A brave fellow ! He keeps his tides well. 
 
 — Timon of Athens. 
 
 ON the barren and inhospitable sand dune of four 
 miles long by one-quarter of a mile broad, which 
 formerly was laid down on the old charts as 
 "Malabar" Island, but now, for some reason, I know 
 not what, is called Monomoy Island, a number of profes- 
 sional wreckers ply their risky, exciting and speculative 
 calling. I have always associated, in my mind, wreckers 
 with pirates, thinking that the terms were synonymous. 
 On the contrary, I have found that the wrecker is a man 
 who risks his very existence to save propert}^ both of 
 vessel and cargo, as well as human life; that in the pur- 
 suit of his calling he shows rare bravery, great nerve, 
 hardihood of no common character, shrewd wisdom and 
 cunning in disposing of his "flotsam and jetsam" and a 
 knowledge of law relating to maritime affairs that often 
 outwits the keenest Cape Cod barrister. 
 
 For a week I have been with four of these rugged 
 sea dogs, all of them seasoned with more than half a 
 century (one of them 70 years of age), and yet when the 
 winds are fierce, the fogs dense, the snows blinding, they 
 are one and all on the qtti vive for the signals of 
 
distress from some unfortunate coaster, or steamer, or full 
 rigged ship, as the case may be. To-day I have walked 
 for miles along the beach, threading my way over and 
 among a cargo of Southern hard pine lumber of over two 
 hundred thousand feet, which is piled high and dry on 
 the sand from the wreck of the Altamaha, a Scotch 
 vessel, built forty -five years ago. This lumber was sold 
 a few days since for $2.75 and $2.25 per thousand feet, as 
 it lies, and men- are now at work removing the coverlet 
 of sand from it, and measuring and marking it. Then 
 the purchaser will have his hands full in getting it to the 
 Boston market and to solve the question, not how much 
 profit he will reap, but, how much will he lose on the 
 purchase. 
 
 Close by the island lies the wreck of Mr. Vanderbilt's 
 famous yacht, Alva, whose walnut fixtures and trimmings 
 are even yet coming dail}^ to shore. A contractor is now, 
 and has been for some time, at work endeavoring to blow 
 her to pieces and removing the obstruction, the Govern- 
 ment having awarded him the contract for about $9000, 
 (only half the amount the next lowest bidder asked for 
 doing the same work.) The contractor brought a little 
 steamer down from Brooklyn, (she is so slow, even under 
 full steam as I saw her this morning, that I mistook her 
 for a stationary light ship), and when the tide is at its 
 lowest ebb he is able to get about half an hour's work on 
 the wreck each day, as it then lies in fourteen feet of 
 water. It is thought he will not make a fortune out of 
 the job. 
 
 The owners of the valuable steamer Cottage City, 
 which came ashore here, the vessel and cargo valued at 
 
$130,000, sent the captain of the life-saving crew, who 
 had given vital assistance to the vessel in getting her o£F 
 the shoals after she had jettisoned a large portion of her 
 cargo, the munificent sum of $5 for each man of his crew. 
 The captain promptly returned the donation, with the 
 assertion that he himself could easily afford to give his 
 crew that much without seriously hurting his bank 
 account. The owners of a small coaler that was helped 
 off by the same crew promptly sent the men $25 each, 
 which was a distinction with a difference. 
 
 Since I arrived here a vessel of 500 tons burden has 
 gone to the bad on the Handkerchief Shoals, which are 
 a few miles from the Island. A fleet of small craft is 
 daily making visits to the wreck, buying and laying in a 
 generous supply of coal for the winter's fires of the resi- 
 dents of Harwich, Dennis and Chatham at varying prices 
 of from $1 per ton to a lump price for what the dory, 
 sloop, cat boat or yacht can hold. 
 
 Some time since a vessel showed signals of distress 
 off the island in a moderate storm. The daring wreckers 
 were soon aboard of her, and found the captain, with his 
 wife and children, anxious to be taken ofi". The vessel 
 had five and a half feet of water in the hold. The captain 
 was half owner. She was well insured, and he did not 
 care what became of her so that she was beached and 
 the crew, himself and family taken off in safety. The 
 wreckers, together with the life-saving service, manned 
 the three pumps, got her under way and into the calm 
 waters of the bay, where she.was sold by the underwriters, 
 the wreckers' share of the " treasure; trove " being about 
 $40 per man. 
 
Another vessel was abandoned here some years ago 
 which, when the wreck was broken up, was found to 
 have two huge plugs in her side below the water line, 
 showing conclusively that the captain, in order to reap 
 the insurance, had deliberately filled her with water. 
 Then, finding she was sinking too fast, he had driven the 
 plugs home so as to enable the crew to get ashore without 
 danger. 
 
 One of the narrators of these "tales of shipwreck" 
 waddles along with one leg bent out from him like a 
 drawn bow. He has had it broken three times, and now, 
 while it will bear his "heft," as he calls it, he can carry 
 but little addition to it without severe physical distress. 
 The first time it was broken was aboard a shipwrecked 
 vessel that he had agreed to stay by — all alone — w^hile a 
 tug towed her into a haven of rest. The wind was blow- 
 ing a gale. The hawser being drawn so tight as to have 
 little or no ' ' bight, " " he had become fearful that the strain 
 causing it to fray by rubbing on the sides of the ' ' eye 
 through which it passed, might part it. While he was ex- 
 amining it the the iron plating of the "eye" snapped and 
 crumbling like an egy^ shell under the strain, one of the 
 pieces struck him on his leg below the knee, breaking it 
 in three places. He was just able to signal the tug, 
 which was soon along side. A consultation between the 
 injured man and the captain resulted in the latter taking 
 him into Hyannis, Mass., where he was driven to the 
 station in time to take a train for New Bedford, the 
 nearest place, in those days, to obtain efficient surgical aid. 
 
 The railroad service at that time was primitive, the 
 time slow, and the track rough as a corduroy road to the 
 
crippled wrecker. The journey in the cars alone lasted 
 just eight hours, and during the whole of this excruciat- 
 ing journey he had to hold his knee tightly with his 
 hands. The doctor who set it complimented him on his 
 wonderful exhibition of pluck and grit, kept him in bed 
 eight weeks and sent him home with, as he described it, 
 the "best bad leg" he had ever seen. In these days of 
 anesthetics and improved railroad facilities such a trip 
 would be of rare occurrence. 
 
 Among the Cape's quaint customs I find the old 
 Scottish one known as "bundling. " But this, like other 
 of her quaint customs, is slowly yielding to the march of 
 the newspaper, the telegraph, the telephone, and the rail- 
 road. I scarcely believed that this custom still existed 
 or, indeed, ever had a foothold on this continent, but I 
 soon found indubitable proof of it. "Bundling," you 
 must know, is a method of courtship based on motives 
 of economy, (the saving of light and fire). It is still 
 practiced in Scotland though gradually dying out there, 
 as increasing prosperity affords broader scope for comfort 
 and less necessity for economy. 
 
 >J^ 
 
 103 
 
A WARY BIRD. 
 
 We'll make a solemn wager on your cunnings. 
 
 — Hamlet. 
 
 *7f MAN, to be successful in brant shooting must be a 
 \jX sportsman of the most enthusiastic type and a fair 
 ^ \ shot. Moreover, he must possess a good constitu- 
 tion, plenty of patience, and plenty of ability to defy cold, 
 wet and exposure. He must expect many disappoint- 
 ments and a great deal of waiting, for the birds are so 
 wary and so seldom deceived it is rarely he will find 
 them within the range of his heaviest charges of powder 
 and shot. When the chance of a shot is obtained and he 
 downs his bird, the excitement is over quick as a flash 
 and he wonders how it all happened. L,et me describe 
 how it is done. 
 
 During the early spring the guides have sunk boxes 
 large enough to hold three men. The boxes are placed 
 either out on the bay in shallow water, piling up around 
 them hundreds of wheelbarrowfuls of sand at low tide 
 (covering the same and neatl}' fastening it down with a 
 sail cloth, so that the rushing tides cannot carry it away) 
 to represent a sand bar ; or they are fixed on some jutting 
 point of land in the bay, always using plenty of sand, 
 behind which the gunners are to sit with bowed heads, 
 
but with watchful eyes and ears. Out in front of these 
 boxes wooden decoys are fixed on a framework like the 
 letter V, five on each frame, all strung together, so that 
 they turn with the tide and wind, and look natural 
 enough to deceive the oldest gander in the flock. 
 
 Then two gunners with the guide wend their way to 
 the boxes when the tide is flowing in, the gunners encased 
 in hip rubber boots, two or three pairs of stockings, a 
 heavy suit (flannel shirts, sweaters, overcoats), and lastly 
 an oilskin suit, if the weather be rough. The gunners 
 get in the boxes, arrange their pipes and shells and bail 
 the water out, while the guide takes from a basket a pair 
 of brant with clipped wings w^hich he deftly harnesses 
 together like a span of horses. The yokes, made with 
 leather thongs, are put on their feet not their necks. They 
 are allowed to swim or wade out quite a distance, being 
 secured by a cord, which is kept on a reel in the sink box. 
 
 The particular offices these birds are to perform are 
 (when the brant are flying or swumming anywhere near) 
 to flap their wings and "honk" their wild relatives into 
 danger among the decoys ; and it is amazing how intel- 
 ligent they are in their work ; how they get away out of 
 range when the wild birds are being covered by the deadly 
 breech-loader, and how they chatter to themselves with 
 seeming satisfaction when the battery has been unmasked 
 and the fallen birds retrieved. When all is ready the 
 guide gets into the box, and then the trials of endurance, 
 patience and expectancy begin. There is no lack of 
 birds in sight — thousands of them — and their cries at 
 times are deafening, but they keep provokingly far 
 enough off to make you feel as if your head must never 
 
 105 
 
again be raised. You soon get cramped, numbed with 
 the cold wind or, maybe rain, or snow or sleet blowing 
 and pelting in your face. But you must not get up. 
 
 SHOT BY MOONLIGHT, AND AS WE FOUND HIM NEXT DAY. 
 
 Once I sat for over five hours in a box, with rain, 
 snow and sleet driving in my teeth, and occasionally 
 the water from the high tide washing over my back and 
 down my neck, patiently waiting for ni}^ reward. It 
 came at last. Up like a flash and within range came five 
 birds, flying down the wind with the speed of a carrier 
 pigeon. We got a shot apiece; three were left behind, 
 while the other two were soon miles away, and our long 
 wait and exposure forgotten. We say: " How did those 
 two birds get away ? " "I'll bet they're crippled!" "Watch 
 them!" "They're going down!" "No, they're not!" 
 "Yes, they are!" and so on, but the birds are not ours, 
 that is a sure thing. So you never know when out of the 
 
 1 06 
 
haze, or the clear sky, like a meteor from behind you, or 
 straight on, a bunch of birds may come, deceived by your 
 pair of live " honkers ' ' and your bunch of wooden shams. 
 Or again, a flock may be feeding and unconsciously drift- 
 ing with the inflowing tide towards your box, occasionally 
 giving a quick, suspicious look, swimming back a little, 
 then onward again, and, of course, to raise the tip of 3'our 
 hat above the brim of the sand bank or to get up to stretch 
 yourself is tantamount to a speedy departure of the 
 "mysterious bird of the North." Therefore it is the 
 man who can stand this sort of work the best who is 
 likely to make the biggest bag. But a great deal depends 
 upon the wind as well, for if the currents of air should 
 be blowing off shore there is not much chance of success- 
 ful shooting, as the wind constantly drifts them away 
 from the decoys, while they are feeding, and if any should 
 get shot and drop down at long range, they are apt to get 
 out of reach before they can be retrieved. 
 
 We were seven days on Monomoy Island, and we 
 had a fierce Nor'easter blowing nearly the whole time, so 
 that what success we had (thirty-six brant,) was solely 
 attributable to lots of patience and perseverance against 
 hard conditions. 
 
 But the sport compels you to be out in the open air, 
 to inhale the ozone and the ocean breezes, those twin bene- 
 f-ctors that bring to the hunter his proverbial appetite. 
 And, Oh that appetite ! You have it and a digestion to 
 wait on it that might tackle a brick pile without getting 
 out of order. There is another thing you have, which is 
 not to be sneezed at — the gratification of knowing that 
 with your trusty gun, your hidden retreats, your enticing 
 
decoys and your unwearied patience j^ou are more than a 
 match for this the grandest and most wary of all game 
 birds. 
 
 " Nor on the surges of the boundless air, 
 Though borne triumphant, are they safe ; the gun, 
 Glanc'd just, and sudden, from the gunner's eye, 
 O'ertakes their sounding pinions ; and again. 
 Immediate brings them from the towering wing. 
 Dead to the ground ; or drives them wide dispersed, 
 Wounded and wheeling various, down the wind." 
 
 This season the brant arrived in great numbers at 
 Monomoy as early as February, but finding their natural 
 food — the eel grass — sealed in ice, they were forced to 
 wing their way backward, after many attempts to get at 
 their feeding grounds ; the cold weather thus compelling 
 them to make trips of hundreds of miles to the Southward 
 before they could obtain their sustenance. But they are 
 grand "flyers" and a few hundred miles of flight is only 
 like a morning walk for them, and they don't seem to worry 
 the least bit about it ; but as soon as the ice melted and the 
 succulent eel grass was exposed to view, then they arrived 
 in countless numbers. Some saj' that between the fifth 
 and tenth of April more birds were at the Island than ever 
 were seen before at one time. But the wrecks and wreck- 
 age there, drew all manner of sail boats to the scene to get 
 coal and litmber, and thus the birds were continually dis- 
 turbed in their feeding. They were occasionally fired on 
 at long range from these sail boats, which harassed and 
 frightened them, keeping them for hours on the move. 
 This, together with unfavorable winds and storms, reduced 
 the total bag for the season to one-hundred and ninety- 
 
 108 
 
seven brant. Such was the result of the work of seven 
 weekly parties, aggregating fifty-seven sportsmen, with an 
 average of twenty-eight to each party, and, as our party 
 bagged thirty-six, we have no reason to complain. Of the 
 one-hundred and ninety -seven killed, one-hundred and 
 three were young birds and ninety-four old birds. This 
 proportion of young birds ought to have made the shooting 
 better, as the young birds (in the language of the president 
 of the club, Mr. W. Hapgood) "are less wary, more social 
 and more easily decoyed, and will carry off less lead than 
 the tough old birds, and then it often happens that the 
 elders are led by unsuspicious youth into places of danger 
 where it would be impossible to coax them when separated, 
 therefore the presence of so many juvenile visitors is 
 always a joy to the heart of the sportsman. " 
 
 '^^ 
 
A GLIMPSE AT THE ** WHITE.'' 
 
 I'll drop me now the current of my sport 
 To loll awhile in Fashion's giddy court. 
 
 — Anon. 
 
 Y f AVING for years made an annual pilgrimage to the 
 |N| White Sulphur Springs — the ' ' Saratoga of the 
 ^ A South ' ' — it has gradually dawned upon me that 
 few portions of the globe furnish so much material for 
 the pen of the novelist and the pencil of the artist. The 
 scenerj^ is so varied, so romantically beautiful in its 
 wealth of valleys teeming with fruitful crops, and luxur- 
 iant foliage that holds half hid in its bosom the modest 
 cabin of some former slave, while here and there the 
 roof of the more pretentious home peeks through the 
 green as if to greet the sun and sniff the bracing air. 
 All this and in a frame of rugged mountains enchanting 
 in their wildness, and the picture is complete. 
 So much for the artist. 
 
 The novelist will find it a great gathering place of 
 the wealth and beauty of the South, with daily and 
 nightly scenes of revelry, amusement, flirting, and love 
 making. He may witness the excitement and seduction 
 of the "green baize table," in a neighborhood rife with 
 stories of the war, which raged in and about the ' ' White ' ' 
 during the whole time the direful strife was in progress. 
 The hotel at one time was used as a hospital for the 
 
Northern troops ; at another as a stable and resting place 
 for the Confederates. Being only five miles from the Vir- 
 ginia line, this West Virginia watering place came to be 
 looked upon as neutral territory. Here Presidents from 
 the earliest days of the nineteenth century have been wont 
 to spend their holidays and hold court and dispense official 
 patronage beneath the old oaks that lift their stately heads 
 above the famous lawn. Senators, Representatives, 
 bankers and Governors have discussed measures of Nat- 
 ional and State policy on the porches of the hotel or 
 under the roofs of its one-hundred cottages. 
 
 A Southern colonel who had lost everything during 
 the war — except his love for whisky — came to sojourn at 
 the "White." Now he was never known to have any 
 money, but was mostly always flitting around the bar, 
 waiting for the refrain "come and take suthin' , Colonel," 
 which invitation, by the way, he was never known to 
 refuse. In consequence of these eccentricities he was 
 looked upon with suspicion by the manager of the house, 
 who promptly sent him his bill at the end of the week, 
 with the request to pay up. The Colonel put the bill in 
 his pocket and promised to attend to it. A couple of 
 days passed and the manager stirred him up again, this 
 time sending the message that he must either pay the bill 
 or leave. The Colonel asked "Did the manager send 
 you to me with such a message?" glaring at the clerk 
 with a fierce I'U-run-you-through look. The clerk tim- 
 orously said that he had. "Well," said the Colonel, 
 "tell the manager that I'll leave at once, for that is only 
 faar, and I believe in bein' faar." And he left the hotel. 
 It need hardly be added that he left the hotel bill too. 
 
The Chesapeake and Ohio Railroad, on account, I 
 presume, of its being a rather out-of-the-way route to 
 Chicago, has succeeded in getting the Trunk Line 
 Association to grant it the privilege of selling through 
 tickets to Chicago, with the right to stop off at any station 
 on the line. This gave me a practical opportunity ot 
 studying the great value of such a concession. As a 
 number of European tourists have been attracted to this 
 line by reason of the concession, I interviewed several of 
 them and found that all of them had selected the route 
 because they could "break the journey as often as they 
 pleased." So they are jogging along leisurely, stopping 
 at such points as they think will interest them, and there- 
 by getting a much better idea of the varied interests and 
 scenery of the country. All of them had stopped in 
 Philadelphia, some for a few hours, some for a couple 
 of days. They said they were more pleased with Phila- 
 delphia than any other city they had seen, and were 
 astonished at its size, its Public Buildings, its Park and 
 its stores. Astonished, because they had "never cared 
 much about Philadelphia, don't you know," as explained 
 by one Englishman, whose complexion showed the blush 
 of forty years acquaintance with Bass' ale. 
 
 They were pleased apparentl}' with everything but 
 the condition of the streets ; the cobble paving exciting 
 their ridicule, and our roads their commiseration. I said 
 that they must not expect a city which covered more 
 ground than London, — with only one fourth of its popula- 
 tion, — which was constantly growing and expanding, 
 which furnished comfortable homes first and streets and 
 street paving after, to be so well paved as a city over two 
 
thousand years old, on whose streets Roman Emperors 
 have walked, and whose roads were planned and built by 
 Roman engineers before the time of the Saviour. The 
 Englishman said: "Bless my eyes, I never thought of 
 that; it puts a new light on things here, for, come to 
 think of it, this is a new country, and of course the cities 
 must be new, too." 
 
 Oh, but won't these European tourists have wonderful 
 stories to tell on their return ! Many and many will be 
 the imitations of Dickens' "American Notes," and many 
 and many will be the foolish criticisms made upon and 
 about us. But our visitors will be profoundly impressed 
 with the extent of the country, with the variety of its 
 climate and scenery, with the restless, irresistible push and 
 nerve of the people, with their material welfare and their 
 prosperity, and they will return with broader views of 
 humanity and the world than they ever dreamt of. In 
 this respect the World's Fair will prove a blessing and a 
 grand advertisement for the nation. 
 
 Yea, verily as I have said the novelist might find 
 here plenty of food for his fancy, full of richness flavored 
 with facts and seasoned with all the spice of romance. 
 
 The genial Southern gentleman who is superinten- 
 dent of the hotel, and known far and wide as "The 
 Major," could if he would, unwind many a yarn on the 
 late ' ' unpleasantness. ' ' He might, for instance, tell of the 
 time when he, with a troop of Confederate cavalry, was 
 commanding the bridge over the Green Briar River, six 
 miles below here. When from the opposite hills was seen 
 an immense force of the " Boys in Blue" defiling down the 
 long road. When the Major and his troop were discovered, 
 
how the " Yanks" put spurs to their horses and how the 
 "Johnnies" started for safer quarters. How they came 
 flying past the Grecian columns of the great hotel with 
 the "Yanks" close after them. How they plunged 
 through "Dry Creek," "up hill and down dale," right 
 over the Allegheny Mountains to Old Sweet Springs, a 
 ride of about twenty miles, before the pursuit and flight 
 was over. But the Major and his command w^ere safe ; 
 not a man was lost. 
 
 The Major's tales are always full of powder. 
 
 Eleven miles from here is Lewisburg, W. Va., the 
 county town of Greenbriar county. To reach it a high 
 mountain has to be overcome, or overgone, on the higher 
 points of which is a stretch of utterly worthless land. 
 The soil, what little there is, is red, stony and incapable 
 of producing anything better than an occasional thistle or 
 a stunted, sickly little pine shrub. An old time stage 
 coach was one hot day toiling slowly and painfully up 
 the long hill, filled with passengers who were making 
 merry over the "pore land," one man venturing the 
 remark ' ' that the man who owned that land must be a 
 
 d d fool." Thereupon a long, lanky, West Virginian 
 
 rose up and confronted the speaker in an angry and defiant 
 manner and asserted "that he owned that land, but he 
 
 wasn't such a d d fool as they took him for, as he 
 
 only owned half on it." 
 
 Coming down from a horseback ride on Kate Moun- 
 tain, one of West Virginia's giant hills, my young son 
 said to me, "Ain't these West Virginia mountaineers 
 quaint people?" I readily answered that they were. I 
 have never seen their quaintness and a few of their other 
 
peculiarities equaled. Old-fashioned fellows, homely, 
 frugal, careless of dress and the proprieties of life gener- 
 ally, eternal chewers of tobacco, iron-clad swearers, and 
 chronically hardup. The current incidents of time have 
 no claims on their attention unless they relate to the 
 triumph of Democracy or the success of the "season " at 
 the "White." The latter more particularly, for on it is 
 based their sole hope of seeing some ready cash during 
 the year. This famous resort furnishes employment to 
 about five hundred "help" in the summer and maybe 
 fifty or more the rest of the year, and thus it becomes the 
 distributing source of a goodly number of thousands of 
 dollars annually. It would be hard to compute the 
 amount the liverymen, florists, photographers, doctors, 
 musicians and the gentlemen who so seductively preside 
 over the fortunes of the "green table" rake in from 
 the army of guests who patronize this ' ' Saratoga of the 
 South." Speaking of liverymen one of them, an abom- 
 inable swearer, promised me he would abandon the habit, 
 which I told him I abhorred. It seems, however, he 
 forgot his promise. Here is his letter to me verbatim, 
 which will tell how. 
 
 Pleas fiud iuclosed fifteen dolers to pay youre 
 
 bill. tbe reson of delay was, hard times, bad 
 
 weather, sickness and no money, d d if I 
 
 believe there's $500 in circulation in the hole 
 
 United States. 
 
 Yours Truly 
 
 I reproached him for having broken his solemn word 
 about swearing. "Well," he said, "I tried not to, but 
 I couldn't help it ; times were so awful pore. ' ' ' ' Why, " 
 
said lie, "I owed a man ten cents who lived eighteen 
 miles off, and he drove in one day and sat around 
 for over an hour when he said he wished I would pay 
 him that ten cents, as he had driven all the way in 
 after it, which would make the round trip thirty-six miles 
 for ten cents. " ' He told this incident to prove the scarcity 
 of money out here. 
 
 ^BAZUSKIS RIVER. 
 
 Last year a lumberman who had got into financial 
 difficulties allowed three notes which I held against him 
 to go to protest. I was advised to give them to a firm ot 
 lawyers in a neighboring towui to collect. So I drove 
 over and found that the firm consisted of two brothers, 
 one of whom was that very day in the height of excite- 
 ment running as a candidate for a public office of a 
 responsible and honorable character. After a chase I 
 finally captured the other brother and gave him the notes 
 
for collection. He said he guessed there wasn't much 
 use, but he'd try his best, and putting the notes in his 
 pocket drove off. Last week I happened to meet the 
 maker of the notes, who was joyous over the fact that he 
 was soon going to be able to pay off his creditors, and 
 asked after the three notes. I told him to whom I had 
 given them for collection, but he said he had never heard 
 from them. He advised me to ride to the town and get 
 them, so next day I started over the mountains to see the 
 legal lights. On the road I met my friend the lumberman 
 coming back, and he reported that the lawyers had no 
 recollection of my claim whatever. 
 
 On my arrival I found the pundits in a little upstairs 
 room seated at a table covered with envelopes, opened 
 letters, bills of sale, bonds, writs of replevin, leases, 
 promissory notes and "the Lord knows what." 
 
 The elder brother was a genial, kindly-looking man, 
 with an old straw hat, a shirt much the worse for wear, 
 and no coat, vest, collar or necktie. He assured me when 
 I told him who I was that he had promptly presented my 
 claim to the lumberman, but he found that if he sued he 
 hadn't any chance, and so had waited. I asked for the 
 return of the notes. Then a hunt was started and such a 
 hunt as only the immortal Dickens could, with justice, 
 have described. Brother number one looked through the 
 letters, papers and portfolios at his side of the table. 
 Brother number two ditto at his side. The day was hot, 
 niwggy and oppressive; they got worried, excited and 
 nervous. Brother number two said he guessed he'd go 
 home and look through his clothes, which he did, brother 
 number one in the meantime going through his printed 
 
 117 
 
blanks in his search. Brother number two finally returned 
 without the notes and gave it as his opinion that I had 
 never given him any notes. This was awkward on num- 
 ber one, because he had related very minutely just how 
 he had presented the notes to the debtor. 
 
 So it was, as an Irishman said, "like bein' in the 
 cinther of a hobble," and with a look of despair, some- 
 thing like the pictures we used to see of the " Knight of 
 the Rueful Countenance," they gave up the hunt and 
 acknowledged they would have to give the debtor a bond 
 to keep him harmless from the notes if they ever turned 
 up, and their only apology for their carelessness was that 
 notes in West Virginia "ain't much account, no how, 
 when thej^'d got to be sued for," and so they didn't "set 
 much store b}- them." 
 
 At the lumbering town of Ronceverte, W. Va., eleven 
 miles below here, on the Greenbriar river, a great boom 
 and a gigantic saw mill have for years impeded the pas- 
 sage of black bass, trout and other fish up the river, which 
 of olden times was always a noted stream for the bass. 
 The fish used to be of immense size, and, of course, as 
 gamey as black bass can be in cold mountain streams. 
 During the early spring of this year the ice and winter 
 floods caused a break in the big dam which took consider- 
 able time in repairing, and lo and behold, the river this 
 summer is full of the fighting beauties eager to take fly, 
 minnow or even bait, hungry — voraciously hungry — and 
 now there is "fishing as is fishing," and the Izaak Wal- 
 tons are wending their way hither from distant parts to 
 pursue their fascinating sport. 
 
It is intimated that the President of the United States 
 may be induced to come for a few da5'S, as four years ago 
 he plied his rod on the banks of the head waters of the 
 turbulent James river, about thirty miles from here, at 
 Clifton Forge. Verily the old Anglo-Saxon love of sport 
 is engrafted in us all to a greater or less extent, else why 
 should it be that the shibboleth of black bass should 
 be more potent in drawing people from a distance than 
 the charm of polite and cultured society, the beneficial 
 properties of the famous waters of the White Sulphur, 
 or even the cusine of the great hotel and the considerate 
 attention of the Chevalier Bayard of hotel men — "The 
 Major." But so it is, and I for one would not want to 
 change it. L,et American business men devote more time 
 to outdoor sport, spend more of it in the open air and the 
 knowledge will soon begin to dawn upon them that dol- 
 lars are not the onl}' good things in this life, and as it can 
 be lived only once, it is better during that " once ' ' to hold 
 on to a share of good health, even though they may drop 
 a few dollars in doine it. 
 
 >J^ 
 
A FIGHT TO THE DEATH. 
 
 Both sides fiercely fought. 
 
 — Henry VI. 
 
 WE are a few "city men" up here in the very heart 
 of the wilderness of Pike count}^ Pa., each man 
 expecting to catch his complement of thirty -five 
 lusty speckled trout, which is all that the rules of the 
 " Beaver Run Club," whose guests we are, will allow any 
 member to kill in any one season (and the fish must be 
 over eight inches in length, to boot, or back they go into 
 the stream). 
 
 Japan is said to be the home of the rhododendron, 
 and it is also said that the whole island kingdom is one 
 great bed of those gorgeously dressed flowers. Up here 
 in Pike county is the home of the mountain laurel, which 
 grows and thrives in wanton profusion everywhere about 
 us. It seems to grow equally well on the ridges, in 
 the thick cluster of the woods or down by the edges 
 of the trout pond or its emptying stream; and, behold, 
 it is here in all its glory, and well worth a trip from 
 the heated city just to feast the eye upon its ravishing 
 mass of colors, as the bushes sway to the breeze. The 
 laurel is well backed up by great quantities of wild moun- 
 tain roses, now in full bloom ; acres upon acres of black- 
 berrv bushes, clothed with their white blossoms, and also 
 
the appetizing sight of the luscious wild strawberries, red 
 ripe and bursting with their delicate acid sweetness, if the 
 term may be used ; and why not mention the elderberry 
 and the wild hop vines, both in the height of their rustic 
 loveliness, and the hazel bushes that flourish by the road- 
 side. The man whose sense of beauty remains unstirred 
 by such miracles of Nature's coloring must be something 
 of clod whose life is scarce worth the living. 
 
 Maybe, however, if the flowers and waving grasses, 
 and the spear-pointed fields of rye, now nearly ready for 
 the reaper, do not arouse him to a knowledge that nature 
 up here is working her miracles every hour, the singing 
 of the wondrous variety of birds might entrance him, for 
 here the feathered songsters, as well as our noblest game 
 birds, thrive and multiply amazingly. As we arrived at 
 night we heard only the solitary whip-poor-will, and we 
 heard him from every direction. He seemed to be ubiqui- 
 tous, but when "Phoebus 'gan to rise" next morning 
 (Sunday) then did the bird concert truly begin. For a 
 while it was hard to tell, from their notes, which was which, 
 they all sang so lustily and joyously and well ; however, 
 bye and bye I recognized the warble of the gay oriole, 
 then the sweet, loving song ot the linnet, then the robin, 
 the flicker, the catbird, the blue jay, the song sparrow, 
 and from across the trout pond the familiar note of ' ' Bob 
 White" which rang out clear and sweet, piercing the early 
 morning air like a piccolo. A Wilson snipe started up 
 from a bit of wet land, and swept away, saying, " Scape, 
 scape, scape,' ' while a pair of sandsnipe swelled the chorus 
 with their piping notes. The red- winged blackbird, the 
 grackle and the mottle-breasted thrush were as busy and 
 
gleeful as the rest of the feathered songsters, and I had 
 nearly forgotten to mention the leader of the choir, the 
 bobolink. I heard him singing his rollicking, laughing 
 song with such gusto I thought he would split his mar- 
 velous little throat. 
 
 But while the birds sang, and the bees worked, and 
 the trout leaped swiftl}^ for the passing fly ; while nature 
 seemed glad and laughing at her own handiwork, yet 
 sorrow was in the land. As my friends and I sat around 
 the grateful log fire in the club room, our talk was of the 
 tragic death of young Walter Clark, son of 'Squire Clark 
 (an old and respected magistrate of this county), and of 
 the boy's funeral, which had just been held during the 
 afternoon. The cause of his death was a fight to the 
 finish between the boy and a big and vicious rattlesnake. 
 The snake won and the boy won, for each killed the 
 other. " 'Twas a duel to the death, ' ' and the story of the 
 fight had to be told by conjecture, for there was no eye- 
 witness. The fight was in the seclusion of the woods, 
 and one of the combatants was dead and the other uncon- 
 scious when found. Walter Clark was a boy of eleven 
 summers, sturdy and strong of his age, but a fever had 
 left him, as a reminder of its virulence, an impaired mind 
 and imperfect speech. He had one marked trait, a strong 
 antipathy to snakes and hornets, and would gladly fight 
 either when opportunity offered. On Frida)- last his 
 father, the 'Squire, was working in the field and Walter 
 was helping him, barelegged,. with but shirt and pants on. 
 The boy heard the ringing of a cow-bell, and said to his 
 father, ' ' Cow ! cow ! " His father said, " Yes, I hear the 
 bell, ' ' and went on with his work. The bo)' started down 
 
the road in the direction from whence the sound came, 
 and that was the last seen of him until a search was made 
 over three hours after. He was found away from the 
 road, swollen and unconscious, his tongue out and 
 swelled to such a size that his mouth could not be shut. 
 He was bitten on his hands, his arms, his face and on his 
 legs, and some twenty feet away from him was a great 
 rattlesnake with its back broken in three places, its 
 fangs inserted in its own body, forming a loop. A 
 brother of Walter's, also a lad, had found him and car- 
 ried him on his back for over a mile and a quarter, until 
 his strength gave out and he fell by the wayside. His 
 father ran out, found the two boys and at once .started to 
 doctor the wounded one. Repeated doses of whisky and 
 milk brought the boy back to consciousness for a while, 
 when, with fierce look and gesture, he would shout, 
 "Eam'd snake! dam'd snake!" but convulsions set in 
 and he soon died. His body became spotted like the 
 snake's, with streaks up his chest and sides, and spots 
 upon his cheeks and brow. 
 
 It is surmised that after breaking the rattler's back 
 vvith his stick he rushed at it and caught it in his hands, 
 trying to crush its life out, but that it bit him over and over 
 again wherever it pleased, and finally fastened its fangs 
 into its own body, and then the boy fell back in a swoon. 
 A wagon was sent post haste to Stroudsburg for a coffin, 
 but none could be had in that rustic town, and it was neces- 
 sary to send to Easton for one. And so the savage, plucky 
 boy has now been laid beneath the sod, and the neighbors 
 and visitors to this wild region revel in stories of snakes, of 
 snake bites and snake fights, and the men hereabouts look 
 
carefull.v where they tread, and jump at the rustling of 
 every chipmunk that they hear, and the women — God 
 bless them — they hug the seclusion and safety of the 
 boarding-house or hotel porch and will not wander 
 "afield" for love or money. Who can blame them. 
 There are many more snakes up here just as deadly as the 
 one that killed Walter Clark, and since the date of our 
 mother Eve women have always dreaded snakes and ever 
 will until the end of time when all our fears will be 
 blotted out, masculine as well as feminine. 
 
 124 
 
A LOST MAN AND A WOUNDED MOOSE. 
 
 I have lost my way. 
 
 — Atitony and Cleopatta. 
 
 IT is the unexpected that always happens in hunting. 
 When you most desire and look for your game, then 
 is the time you don't see it, and when and where 
 you don't look for it, then and there you're apt to run 
 against it. 
 
 My guides had told me marvelous tales of the 
 hunting opportunities that flourished around a certain 
 pond or small lake, a couple of days journey from our 
 camping ground. To find out whether these tales were 
 true or not, I thought it worih while to go there, 
 especially as one of the guides had spent the previous 
 winter in a lumber camp near by, and was familiar, or 
 ought to have been, with the country. There was a very 
 large bog, five miles long and about a mile broad, which 
 was a favorite haunt of the caribou, moose and deer, who 
 found in it enough rich food for sustenance without 
 resorting to any other locality. 
 
 Very pretty and promising all this, but "there's no 
 rose without a thorn , ' ' and this rose of ours had one in 
 the shape of a goose — a goose of a sportsman who was 
 camped on a stream some two miles away from the pond. 
 
The ' 'goose" delighted in firing a rifle that burnt one 
 hundred grains of powder behind a fifty calibre bullet and 
 enjoyed himself hugely in loading up his miniature can- 
 non and banging away at red squirrels, partridges and 
 rabbits. He would leave his camp in the morning, walk 
 to the pond and make the welkin ring for miles around 
 with the noise of his snap shots and sight shots. 
 
 The unwritten law of Maine in regard to the shooting 
 rights on ponds or small lakes is that the sportsman 
 who first puts a canoe upon a pond or small lake is 
 safe from intrusion on the part of any other sportsman. 
 Acting upon this hint we determined to paddle up a 
 stream as far as we could, then carry our canoe to the 
 pond and take possession, thus shutting out our noisy 
 friend. So at four o'clock one morning, our strongest 
 guide started, and after carrying his canoe on his back 
 for a distance of two miles, placed it on the pond and 
 returned to camp for breakfast. Then after our morning 
 meal I started with another guide and walked to the pond 
 loaded only with a tin cup, an axe and a rifle. We 
 reached the pond at about half-past seven, got into the 
 canoe, but at the very first dip of our paddle we heard 
 the boom of the 50-100 rifle fired b}- our "goo.se" who 
 was busy banging awa}^ at the red squirrels on the other 
 side of the pond. This was not a cheerful .state of affairs 
 to contemplate. Big game, as a rule, don't like cannon- 
 ading nor a neighborhood that indulges in it. A few 
 minutes after the noise of the shot and its echoes were 
 sobered into silence, we saw a pair of deer two hundred 
 yards away. My guide suggested that I try a shot at 
 them, saying it would be a good idea, even if I missed 
 
 126 
 
the deer, for it would let the goose — the other fellow — : 
 know that there was a canoe on the pond , that the pond 
 was mortgaged and he had better skip. The deer, how- 
 ever, were in an awkward place to be shot at with effect. 
 However, I did shoot and missed. They wheeled like a 
 flash and bounded into the woods. The sound of the 
 shot reached the goose with the 50-100 rifle who stepped 
 out into the open, saw us, and started back for his camp. 
 We now paddled to the other side of the pond and as 
 the sun was coming out warm we left our coats and vests 
 in the canoe, took with us a tin cup and four bouillon 
 capsules and left, feeling sure that the cannonading 
 already indulged in would hinder us seeing any more 
 game that day, We left the canoe exactly at eight 
 o'clock (I know, for I looked at my watch on starting). 
 Not more than five minutes later my foot stumbled in the 
 bog. Recovering my foothold and looking up I saw a 
 sight that startled me almost as much as the ghost of 
 Hamlet's father startled the melancholy Dane. Not a 
 hundred yards away a great bull-moose, with wide-spread- 
 ing antlers and dilated nostrils stood looking straight at 
 me from between two trees. The place where he was 
 standing was one where a man would least expect to see 
 him, because, by all rules of prudence and usually safe 
 moose conduct, the noise of the late rifle shots should by 
 this time have driven him miles away from this locality. 
 It appears it did not. And what did I do under the 
 circumstances? Well, precisely what any other man 
 would have done. Up went my rifle and without sighting 
 or even an attempt to take careful aim, I blazed away. 
 And the moose ? Ah ! Like a ghost he came and like a 
 
 127 
 
ghost he disappeared. The guide — a French Canadian — 
 said : ' ' Vat you shoot at ?" "A bull-moose, ' ' I replied, 
 " Didn't you see him ?" " No, I no see him !" "Well," 
 I said, "we'll take up his trail and see if he's hit." 
 "You no hit him," he answered disdainfully. 
 
 We tramped around trying to find his tracks without 
 much hope of seeing the tell-tale drops of blood, for the 
 bog was soft and the feet of the moose left no mark as he 
 ran, and the red moss that covered the bog prevented the 
 blood — if there was any — from showing on it. We finally 
 worked out of the bog on the ground leading up to a 
 ridge, and making careful search as we walked, found at 
 last, a drop of fresh, hot blood on a leaf; then a little 
 further on a pool of blood that would have filled a bucket. 
 This blood was mixed with the pink tissue of the lungs, 
 showing plainly that the bullet had gone through that 
 organ of his anatomy. I now proposed to spot the trees 
 so that we could find the place again, then go back to 
 camp and give the moose a chance to lie down and bleed 
 to death. My French Canadian, with a whiff of his old 
 clay pipe, gave it as his opinion that the bull was mortally 
 wounded, that we'd find him in a few minutes and advised 
 that we follow^ him at once. We did so, finding no 
 difficulty whatever, in tracking him, as his trail was 
 almost a continuous stream of blood, excepting when his 
 wound would apparently become clogged with a piece of 
 tlie pink tissue, and then for a few yards we would lose 
 his trail, but only for a few yards, for soon the gushing 
 blood would spurt its passage through, forming another 
 pool. And thus we followed on, over ridges and through 
 swamps and bogs, hoping soon to catch a sight of our 
 
 128 
 
expected prize. Sometimes we would strike a place 
 where the bull had stopped to listen ; and again where he 
 had gone around a windfall, showing he was hard hit if 
 not mortally wounded. How did we reach these con- 
 clusions? Simply enough. The hunter, if he be any- 
 thing of a detective, which he should be, on seeing, as 
 we saw, a plainly drawn half circle of blood, would say, 
 " Here he stopped and turned half round to listen." In 
 
 the second instance, if 
 he had not been hard 
 hit he would have 
 gone over the windfall 
 and not around it. 
 Once we saw where 
 he had leaned against 
 a tree, either to rest 
 or listen, or both, but 
 nowhere was there any 
 Twice in our pursuit 
 we heard him crashing through the brush ahead of us, 
 but at neither time were we fortunate enough to catch a 
 glimpse of him . 
 
 Our brain befuddled with the chase, 
 
 We took no note of time or space, 
 and before we were aware of it the morning hours had 
 gone and we found ourselves on the borders of another 
 lake, miles away from our canoe and from our camp. 
 
 It was three o'clock in the afternoon, when we built 
 a little fire, heated some water in our tin cup and boiled a 
 bouillon capsule for each of us which we drank. The 
 next consideration was "what shall we do now?" The 
 
 ON A PILE OF SAWDUST. 
 
 evidence that he had lain down. 
 
guide said we were about four and a half miles from the 
 canoe, and that in following the twists and turns of the 
 wounded bull we had covered a distance of about eighteen 
 miles. His advice was that we start at once for our 
 canoe, but first to ' ' spot ' ' the trees with the axe to enable 
 us to take up the bull's trail again and track him to his 
 death bed. So at half-past three we started back, the 
 guide assuring me that he knew the way perfectly well. 
 Maybe he did, but coming events cast a sort of a shadow 
 over my mind — maybe he didn't. He first led us 
 through an alder swamp, that only needed a Bengal tiger 
 or two to rival an Indian jungle. Lathered with perspira- 
 tion we finally got through this and faced a high ridge 
 covered with numerous windfalls. After scaling this and 
 getting down on the other side of it we found ourselves 
 in a dense cedar swamp, wandering here and there, and 
 perspiring at every pore with the labor of climbing over 
 and under logs, and jumping windfalls. Then came 
 the pleasant conviction : ' ' We are lost ! ' ' 
 
 It was nearly dark, the weather had turned cold, and 
 no time was to be lost in getting some wood together and 
 starting a fire. Here we were in what might righteously 
 be called a constipated predicament ; without coat or vest, 
 or blanket, or tent, with nothing to eat and nothing to 
 drink. Could we have found water our remaining two 
 l)Ouillon capsules would have made us a good supper; 
 but there was no water and consequently no supper. 
 The best and only thing to do now, I did. I pulled off 
 my hip rubber boots, intending to use them for a pillow, 
 dried my few clothes, wet from perspiration, and kept 
 close to the fire to avoid catching cold from the bare 
 
 130 
 
ground and freezing air. M5' purpose was not to sleep, 
 but keep awake. "Tired Nature," however, wouldn't 
 be denied her "sweet restorer," and soon I was in a 
 slumber that lasted till eleven o'clock, when I awoke to 
 find the cold intense. Piling more wood on the fire, I 
 threw myself again on Mother Earth's bosom and slept 
 till two, when the frost settling on my face like sharp 
 needles awoke me. Again I replenished the fire and 
 again slept till five, when I awoke in time to catch 
 Aurora at her morning task of decorating the oriental 
 sky. And, I ma}^ safely saj', I never watched her with 
 greater satisfaction, for never before was daylight so 
 welcome to me. 
 
 Our search now was for water, but we succeeded in 
 finding none. We did find, how^ever, under an upturned 
 cedar root, a thin sheet of ice. This we broke and melted 
 in our tin cup over the fire and then cooked our capsules 
 in it. Such was our breakfast, and I am rather sure 
 the Roman glutton lyiicullus never experienced greater 
 satisfaction over one of his ten thousand dollar dinners 
 than we did over that simple meal of bouillon. 
 
 After our breakfast we found a lumber road and 
 followed it for about three miles to a great marsh or 
 meadow. Here we obtained our bearings, discovering 
 that we were about five miles from camp which we reached 
 at eleven o'clock that forenoon, thankful and happy to 
 see once more our white tent and the guide we had left 
 behind whose anxious face told plainly of his alarm at our 
 absence. He had been firing shots at frequent intervals 
 during the night, but the distance between us prevented 
 our hearing them. We had been tramping around an 
 
ever-widening circle, until night compelled us to stop. 
 My French Canadian guide, who was one of the ' ' I-know- 
 it-all " men, had nothing to say in extenuation but this : 
 " I don't compre' how it all did happen. I did know ze 
 way sure, and then I didn't. I feel much sorry, but ze 
 nex time I go by ze compass not by ze knows how." 
 
ADVENTURES OF A DEER HUNTER IN 
 MAINE. 
 
 Escai^ed with the skin of my teeth. 
 
 —Job XIX. 20. 
 
 OF all the things in this world which are not pic- 
 turesque the breaking of camp after a long season 
 spent in the woods of Maine comes close to being at 
 the top. We had spent many long and exciting days in 
 the wilds of Maine, and camp was broken at six in the 
 morning. The camp had been on a high ledge, over- 
 looking a circular sheet of water, known as Moose Pond, 
 and flanked by bogs on two sides, a cove at one side and 
 the outlet into it from a small lake above. It was a 
 dismal day, and the three guides looked glum when we 
 started to make our way out of the pond through the 
 cove into the lake beyond. The wind blew directly in 
 our faces, and the guides seemed to be afraid of every- 
 thing. First they were afraid they could not get the 
 canoes around the point, then afraid they would have to 
 camp on the shore of the cove,— in fact there was nothing 
 they were not afraid of. Finally, my son and I told them 
 that if they would only put us on the other side of the 
 cove we would lighten the canoes by walking the three 
 miles across the point and through the woods. 
 
Well, we started, and, although it rained buckets of 
 water, I rather enjoyed the experience. We found many 
 fresh tracks of big game, the windfalls were few, and as 
 the path was deeply carpeted with fresh fallen leaves the 
 walk was anything but tedious. 
 
 As I emerged from the forest the road led through a 
 piece of burnt land. I heard a cow-bell jingling, and 
 soon spied some cattle feeding off to the right and straight 
 in front of me two big does. But they had scented me, 
 and as they threw their heels up and bounded away I 
 tried a shot at the nearest one, but — ah, there's that 
 "but" again ! — I missed, and the deer were, in a twink- 
 ling, safely into the timber. 
 
 We reached the lake, and then had a long wait for 
 the canoes. On their arrival we found one of them had 
 shipped a good bit of water, and that they all had had a 
 narrow call from capsizing. As the wind was increasing 
 every minute, and it was necessary for us to cross the 
 lake (here about a mile and a half wide), we put the 
 baggage into one canoe, and with our strongest guide to 
 handle the stern paddle and I to use the bow paddle, 
 while my son squatted down in the centre of the canoe, 
 we pushed out into the hissing, boiling water. The wind 
 was blowing a gale straight down the lake, and so strong 
 as to pick the water up from the top of the white caps 
 and blow it around us in the shape of fine spray. Our 
 course lay diagonally across or up the lake in the teeth 
 of the gale, and hardly had we gotten a hundred yards 
 from shore before my son's "souwester" hat was 
 knocked off by the guide's paddle. But that was no 
 
 134 
 
place nor time to stop for a hat. The canoe mounted and 
 rode the waves beautifully, and yet at times it seemed as 
 if the wind would blow us over, or actually out of the 
 water, particularly when we reached the centre of the 
 lake and the canoe was turned obliquely down towards 
 the other shore. Then we had to paddle for our very 
 lives, and to watch the waves and see that they didn't 
 break over us. When the light canoe was going down 
 the sloping sides or in the hollow of a big wave we had 
 to use every pound of our reserve strength to shove her 
 along before another mountain of water caught us . It was 
 indeed a ticklish trip, for had we capsized we would have 
 had no show whatever in the icy water, as our heavy 
 hip boots would have prevented an}^ chance of swimming 
 or of a rescue. We fully appreciated the situation. 
 However, we got over without mishap, other than a 
 wetting, a lost hat, and a profuse perspiration from hard 
 paddling. We were safe and for this we devoutedly 
 thanked the Ordainer of all things. 
 
 We stopped for dinner at a little frame hotel, the 
 ' ' Chesuncook House, ' ' which is the last sign or semblance 
 of a hostelry you see before plunging into the great 
 wilderness beyond. Among those who were making the 
 hotel their headquarters were three ' ' sports ' ' who went 
 out in the morning to hunt and returned at night to 
 recuperate. They had killed a nice buck the day before 
 our arrival and had set it up on the shore of the lake for 
 inspection. It was hanging from a trident formed of 
 three poles, and while the rain beat upon it and the wind 
 swayed it to and fro, the hunters watched it with admiring 
 eyes; and well they might, for it was a beauty. 
 
 135 
 
Now two of the aforesaid sports were from Wood- 
 bur5^ N. J. and the other from Boston. The Boston man 
 and one of the Woodbury men were built on the corpu- 
 lent model, extremely oily, and with a girth that might 
 have rivaled Falstaff's. But they were not sensitive on 
 that point as some oleaginous men I know are ; men to 
 whom the slightest reference or even glance in a stomach- 
 ward direction would be at once a casus belli. 
 
 Our conversation at dinner turned upon the treat- 
 ment they had been experiencing from their guides. 
 " Do you know," said the Boston man, " I have had the 
 most unpleasant experience rubbed into me by these 
 guides and I don't care to have the operation repeated." 
 
 "What was the nature of the operation?" I ventured 
 to ask. 
 
 "Well, you probably have noticed that I have a 
 good deal of butter in my make-up, and I don't care to 
 have it all melted at once, which .seemed to be what these 
 guides were after. They told us that the Ambezuskas 
 meadow was a glorious place to hunt in, and so it may be 
 for a lean man ; surely no fat man could find any glory in 
 it unless his fat be of a tougher quality than mine. 
 Imagine three hundred pounds of flesh floundering 
 through mud and water, tripping over cedar roots, falling 
 over logs, struggling for a little temporary foothold in 
 order to pull oneself out of the nuid and regain an upright 
 position while the guide stands at a safe distance away, 
 beckoning and shouting ' ' come on ! " After this part of 
 the programme had been repeated several times, always 
 winding up with " come on," tired Nature gave out and 
 
 136 
 
refused to comply with the guide's mandate. Mounting 
 a stump I gathered together what little strength I had 
 
 left and put it all into a shout, "You be d d ! I'll not 
 
 'come on' any more. 'Come on' ^^ourself, that's what 
 I'm paying you for.' ' 
 
 His story, by the way, reminds me of another which 
 is short enough and good enough to fit in here. Two 
 would-be deer hunters, one thin and wiry, the other 
 round and oily, had struck a trail, and the thin fellow 
 lifting his eyes saw a big buck bounding direct!}^ towards 
 them. ''There he comes! lie down !" shouted the thin 
 chap, but seeing no reduction in the obtrusive size of his 
 companion again he shouted, "Lie down ! Lie down !" 
 
 This time an answer came from the direction of the 
 butter pile. 
 
 "D n it all, I am lying down !" 
 
 "The d 1 you are ! Then stand up and perhaps 
 
 the buck won't see you !" 
 
 We left Chesuncook Lake at half-past one in the 
 afternoon, fixed our loads in the canoes for our up-river 
 trip at a landing stage, near the mouth of the river, and 
 still in the driving, pitiless rain, we started to paddle up 
 the river, intending to reach the "Halfway House" (a 
 resort for lumbermen, freighters and sportsmen, about 
 eleven miles up the river,) before dark. On the trip up 
 the "sport" is expected to leave the canoe and walk 
 around the obstructions in the stream known as the ' ' Pine 
 Stream Falls," "Rocky Rips," and the "Foxhole 
 Rapids," while the guide with the lightened canoe poles 
 it up against the swift current which swirls and eddies 
 around the huge rocks lying in all sorts of ways and 
 
angles in the bed of the stream. We walked therefore 
 through a path in the woods around ' ' Pine Stream 
 Falls '" and the " Rocky Rips," and above them was a 
 stretch of " dead water, ' ' which ended at the foot of ' 'Fox 
 Hole Rapids." Here we left the canoes again, and took 
 to the road, which runs in a pretty straight direction, 
 while the river makes a great bend off to the right, and 
 the road for the distance of, say a mile and a half, cuts off 
 quite a detour in the river. Just as we entered this road 
 I told my son to walk on ahead very carefully until we 
 came to a piece of burnt land, that I recollected as being 
 quite a feeding ground for deer, as he might get a shot. 
 As he was emerging from the woods on to this burnt land 
 I saw him stop, and take his rifle from under his arm (for 
 it was still pouring rain) aim, and fire. I saw a deer 
 bound away and the youth jumping over burnt timber 
 and scrambling through stunted brush. Again I saw him 
 aim and fire, and I saw the deer drop. Now we were in 
 a pickle ; night was coming on fast and the canoes were 
 away off to the right. The rain was splashing down in 
 torrents. There was no time to wait, so we at once 
 opened the deer and took out the " inwards," cut a 
 sapling with our knives, ran it through the " hocks " of 
 the deer, slung it on our shoulders and started for the 
 road. This road is called a " tote road" by courtesy, 
 and in winter it is much used for hauling supplies on 
 when there is a good depth of snow. 
 
 In summer and fall it is not much used, and there 
 are rocks upon it, roots upon it, and holes in it, that 
 would shame the "Slough of Despond." It was now 
 dusk, and soon — oh, so soon — it became pitch dark, and 
 
 138 
 
the rain , how it did pour ! We stumbled and slid along 
 " uber stick and stein," and also over roots and " stein," 
 and water and mud, swaying from side to side with our 
 unwieldy load, rifle in one hand and the other steadying 
 the pole on our shoulders, every now and then tramping 
 on the deer's head, which hung and dragged on the 
 ground. So for the mile and a half we trudged and 
 trudged until the canoes were reached. 
 
 Here we found the guides angry and alarmed at our 
 prolonged absence, and, as they were soaking wet, we 
 couldn't blame them. We got into the canoes again and 
 paddled as hard as we could until a welcome light shone 
 ahead at the " Halfway House." This house is away up 
 on a clay bank, set far enough back from the river so that 
 the spring and fall floods won 't wash it away . Now a steep 
 clayey bank on a night when the water is pouring down 
 is not a nice one for a lot of half- frozen, half-drowned 
 men to clamber up. We slid and slipped here and there, 
 now down and now up, until we were well covered with 
 clay, but we were cheerful withal, and that's a great deal 
 towards contentment. We at last reached the house, had 
 our baggage brought in, and, to our disgust, found every- 
 thing was wet, overcoats, blankets, underclothes, nega- 
 tives, etc., etc. A big fire was built in a big stove. We 
 ate supper, hung our wet clothes around the fire, emptied 
 all of our luggage sacks and hung the contents of them 
 upon the chairs and benches as well upon the wall, 
 and then to bed, where we slept the sweet sleep that 
 comes to all men who labor out in the open air, and who 
 whimper not at storm or cold but try to make the best of 
 everything that fortune is pleased to shower upon them. 
 
 339 
 
At half-past three the next morning we tumbled out 
 of bed, ate a hasty breakfast of bread and butter and 
 bacon and coffee, repacked all our things (which now 
 were dr}-) in their proper sacks, carried them down and 
 placed them in the canoes and before the goddess of morn 
 had time to get her e3^es open we pushed off for our last 
 canoeing trip of the season. 
 
 jUSfc THfc btAVEn 
 
 The pouring rain ot the night before had ceased and 
 now the weather had turned so cold that the water froze 
 upon our paddles, and the river was so nearh^ frozen that 
 there was little or no spring in the canoes. 'Twas a dead 
 push all the way up to the " North East Carry." Our 
 leather boots we had not been able to draw on, b}^ reason 
 of their soaking of the night before, and rubber boots had 
 to be substituted, which, in that biting cold, made it 
 uncomfortable paddling. After a run of four miles we 
 
 140 
 
were glad to push the canoes ashore, build a fire and 
 warm up. At about nine o'clock we landed at the 
 "Carry," hired a wagon to "tote" our stuff over to 
 Moosehead Lake and then we walked the two miles of 
 good road, which constitutes this famous " Carry." 
 
 At the little hotel at the lake end of the "Carry " 
 we had to wait several hours for a steamboat to take us 
 to Greenville, forty miles away, where the train is taken 
 for Bangor. Here I noticed a youth who looked feeble 
 and sick, as if nigh unto death. He was a farmer's bo}', 
 whose home was near Hartford, Conn. On the farm he 
 had read and reread stories of hunters ; of their happy 
 lives in the woods, and their ignorance of restraint. The 
 reading of Cooper's novels had so fired his imagination 
 he believed that all he had to do to be and live the life 
 of a hunter was to take into the woods with him a rifle 
 and a rubber blanket. This was not a theory with him 
 to dream over, but one to act upon, and in reality that 
 was exactly what he did. He came alone from his 
 farm, went alone into the woods and very soon stalked a 
 deer which he succeeded in killing. Then his youthful 
 breast beat high with rapture as he saw the noble quarry 
 lying at his feet. But hunger must be appeased, and he 
 was hungry, no doubt about that. He dressed the deer, 
 cut a steak, still reeking with animal heat, built a fire, 
 toasted the venison on a stick and greedily ate it. Then 
 spreading his rubber blanket upon the ground and without 
 either blanket to cover him or sleeping bag to crawl into, 
 he laid him down in the frosty air and slept the sleep of 
 youth and tired-out nature. Next morning he awoke 
 with shivering body and chattering teeth and a burning 
 
pain in tlie intestines. Hanging his deer up in a tree as 
 well as he could, he built a fresh fire and tried to warm 
 his body and dispel the chill which at last gave way to a 
 fe\'er and a splitting headache. The morning passed, 
 noon came, and night, and there he lay. On the morning 
 of the second day, prone upon the ground, with the red 
 squirrels busy about him gathering their winter stores, 
 the poor boy lay. Here, sick, far from home, from 
 kindred, from a mother's tender care, from a doctor's 
 aid, he was found by a party of lumbermen, who carried 
 him to their camp and nursed and fed him as well as they 
 could for six days. Then as the winter was fast closing 
 in they sent a man out of the woods with him to the 
 "Carr3^" and here I saw him. His attendant a.sked me 
 if I would look after him as far as I went. I told him 
 nothing could give me more pleasure than to do so. 
 
 When the steamboat arrived I took him aboard, got 
 a sofa for him to lie upon, and then looked m}- medicine 
 chest over. Picking out some tablets, which had a very 
 little morphia in them, I gave him one of these every 
 three hours, and made him drink hot milk with some 
 cayenne pepper in it. 
 
 We reached Greenville very late at night, leaving at 
 six the next morning and arrived at Bangor about noon, 
 which place we left sometime in the early afternoon. At 
 these places and wherever and whenever I could get the 
 hot milk I made the poor boy drink it. At Portland, I 
 had a doctor examine him who said that the boy was 
 certainly in the early stages of typhoid fever and that he 
 also had intestinal catarrh, caused bj^ the eating of the 
 venison before it had parted with its animal heat. The 
 
 142 
 
doctor also said that the tablets I had given him were 
 ' ' right " and that the hot milk was ' ' right . ' ' We reached 
 Boston at nine o'clock in the evening, and thinking that 
 the train I was to take was the same which was to carry 
 the boy to his home, I took him to the Providence 
 depot, but found I was mistaken, and that he had to go 
 by the Boston and Albany Railway. My time was short 
 and his too. Checking my own baggage I engaged my 
 berth to Philadelphia, and leaving my son with the re- 
 mainder of the stuff, started for the other depot. It was 
 raining heavily, and at that time of night I could find 
 neither carriage nor street car, and so was compelled 
 partly to support and carry, and partly to drag the sick 
 boy on the way. We reached the train with five minutes 
 to spare. After buying his ticket I helped him into a 
 car, laid him down and then hunted up the conductor — a 
 portly, pompous, beggar-on- horse-back sort of a fellow — 
 and asked him if he w^ouldn't kindly look after the boy to 
 the end of his division and then ask the following con- 
 ductor also to see to his comfort. His reply was perhaps 
 what I might have expected. "No, sir! I have no 
 time to look after sick people. I've got my train to 
 attend to, and if the boy gives me any trouble I'll put him 
 off at Worcester and send him to the hospital." A man 
 was standing near him (probably a railway oJeBcial) who 
 had listened to my story and request and to the con- 
 ductor's reply. He turned quickly to the man of brass 
 buttons and swinging lantern, and spoke with a frown. 
 The words were few and their purport I did not catch, 
 but, whatever it may have been, the change was magical. 
 The conductor came toward me and in the most polite 
 
and cringing manner promised to look after the boy. 
 Then the semaphore over the gate changed from red to 
 white, the bell rang, a shout of "All aboard" and with 
 measured puff the train was on its way. 
 
 My own train was to leave at midnight and I hurried 
 back to it through the rain which pelted in torrents and 
 wet me through. However, it took but little time to get 
 undressed and into my berth. A few moments afterwards 
 I felt the train moving out of the station, and then all 
 knowledge and recollection took a back seat. I knew, 
 nothing until I awoke next morning in Philadelphia, 
 fully aware then that the hunting season of 1896 was over, 
 that I was back among my friends and loved ones, sound 
 in mind and limb, revived in brain and ready for any 
 amount of work. Verily, 
 
 " Huuting is an exercise 
 To make man sturdy, active, wise ; 
 To fill his spirits with delight, 
 To help his hearing, mend his sight, 
 To teach him arts that never slip 
 His memory ; canoemanship, 
 And search and sharpness and defense, 
 And all ill halnts chaseth hence." 
 
THE YOUNG HUNTER. 
 
 JAMES J. MARTINDALE AT 13 YEARS, WHEN HE KILLED HIS FIRST GAME. 
 
A PARTING SHOT. 
 
 Have you with heed perused What I have written to you ? 
 
 — Coriolanus. 
 
 Y^LUTARCH says: " Recreation is the sweet sauce 
 jj^ of labor," a fact of which the American business 
 \_^^ man who usually swallows his labor with no sauce 
 at all, should make a note. 
 
 " What so strong 
 Btit wanting rest will also want the might ? 
 The Sun that measures heaven all day long, 
 At night doth bait his steeds the ocean waves among." 
 
 The labors of old Sol, to be sure, are a little out of 
 the line of the business man, but not so much out of it 
 that he can afford to disregard the example or declare 
 that rest and recreation are but snares, 
 
 Delusions mere, inventions of the devil, 
 
 to bamboozle the thrifty and keep up the world's stock of 
 drones. If the devil did invent them I have a much 
 higher opinion of him than usually obtains, and the 
 proverb is right — the old fellow is " not so black as he's 
 painted." 
 
 What I have recited in the foregoing pages comprises 
 but a small portion of the very macy pleasant and excit- 
 ing incidents and experiences enjoyed in my tussle with 
 
 146 
 
the wilds of Nature. Though the time was comparatively 
 short the trips were not. By laud and water, by rail, 
 steamboat, wagon, buckboard, yacht, row-boat and birch- 
 bark canoe, the miles covered were over ten thousand. 
 No trifling distance ; and yet through it all I was never 
 ill but once, and the damage done then was not serious 
 enough to prevent my returning home, 
 
 " Full of vigor, tough and glad, 
 Feeling like a wiry lad," 
 
 and with a capacity for work that was well worth its cost 
 of two months time. 
 
 And now a parting word to you, you man of business, 
 chained like a felon in his cell, bereft of sunlight, 
 harassed with care, tiring your brain over the one mighty 
 problem of money-making — or else some scheme to stave 
 off financial disaster — 'twill pay you to ponder on my 
 words and my experience and call a halt. Make up your 
 mind that money without health is a much greater 
 calamity than health without money. Leave your desk 
 and turn your back on the steaming streets of civilization 
 and your thoughts where Nature tempts with her trout 
 streams, her mirrored lakes and her game-abounding 
 retreats; to her forests, fragrant with balsamic odors and 
 watered by living streams, streams wholesome with the 
 leechings of the Spruce, and Pine, and Cedar — Nature's 
 own nectar; a draught of it and you'll need no other 
 stimulant. Then when the days sport is over and the 
 night comes, what a revelation is in store for you ! Cud- 
 dled in your warm sleeping bag, with plenty of blankets, 
 you "lay me down" on your bed of spruce boughs, 
 
 147 
 
whose odors play thick aboiit you, filling the air and 
 soothing you quickly into babe-like slumber. In the 
 morning, spryer than the sun, you leave your bed before 
 him, armed with a double-edged apppetite, so keen and 
 new you wonder where it came from. Trust me for what 
 I tell you, but even my words but faintly speak the novel 
 joys which await you. Once more I say, forget "the 
 shop" and all which that implies, and with the poet 
 Rowe you may exclaim to some purpose : 
 
 " Begone my cares ! I give you to the winds." 
 
 THOMAS MARTINDALE. 
 
 148 
 
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 
 
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