LAKES RAYMOND Sf SPEARS m Class JHLSLS:!.- Book Sn±_ GopyiiglitN" COPYRIGHT DEPosrr. A TRIP ON THE GREAT LAKES A Trip on the Great Lakes Description of a Trip, Summer, 1912, by a Skiff Traveler, Who Loves "Outdoors." Tells of Fish, Fur, Game and Other Things of Interest BY RAYMOND S. SPEARS Published by A. R. HARDING COLUMBUS. OHIO Copyright, 1913 A. R. HARDING Publisher ©CU;}5086 9 CONTENTS Chapter. Page. I. The Start From Black River ........ 15 II. Canadian Customs 23 III. In the Bay of Quinte . 35 IV. Working My Way up Lake Huron , . 51 V. Perils of the Great Lakes . . 63 VI. Canada's Fish License 72 VII. A Region of Big Game .......... 85 VIII. In the Fishermen's Camp 95 IX. A Day With the Berry Pickers ...... 103 X. North Shore Game Overseers ....... 112 XI. A Desolate Abode . . .' 120 XII. A Small Rifle Country 134 XIII. North Shore Fur Pockets No. 1 — A Trapper Pirate . 147 XIV. North Shore Fur Pockets No. 2— A Valuable Black Fox 155 XV. North Shore Fur Pockets No. B — Twelve Silver Foxes 161 XVI. North Shore Fur Pockets No. 4 — Eleven Mink at Once 167 XVII. Great Lakes Small Boats . . . 174 XVIII. Great Lakes Motor Boats ,183 XIX. Great Lakes Fishermen . . . 191 XX. Great Lakes Fishing ...,..,... 202 (o) ILLUSTRATIONS Page Ready to Start 16 Leaving Dexter, N. Y., Astern 18 Tibbitt's Point Light 24 Off for the Motor Boat Races 26 On the St. Lawrence 36 Three Brothers Islands Light 38 My Row Boat 40 A Bay of Qiiinte Camp 43, Through the Welland Canal 45 Deck Hand on a Tow Barge 52 The Tow Barge 54 Thunder Cape 66 A North Shore Fishing Boat 68 Emil Young of Hare Island 79 The Rocky North Shore of Superior 83 The Magnet Island Camp 89 Shaganash Island Light . 91 Black Dock 93 The Black Dock Family 99 Frank Dampier Towed Me In 104 Port Coldwell 110 Will Dampier's Tug 114 Otter Island Light 117 A Trapper's Bark Wigwam 122 CO 8 Illustkatioxs. Page A North Shore Camp 130 A North Shore Grave 135 The Michipicoten Dock 139 The Skiff 176 The Punt • .... 178 The Yawl 180 Motor Boat Skiffs 187 The Fisherman's Dock 192 Dressing a Lake Trout 194 Loading Fish Boxes 190 Fisherman's Cabin and Drying Reel 199 Dipping Up Minnows 203 Drawing the Minnow Seine 206 In the Gill Net ... 208 The Net Raiser 210 MAPS Page The Trip Along Lake Ontario 32-33 The Route From Buffalo to Detroit . 48-49 The Route Along Lake Huron 58-59 The Lake Superior Route ........... 74-75 The Return Trip Along Lake Superior ....... 124-125 Lake Michigan 142-143 (9) THE V^HY OF THIS LITTLE BOOK TRAVELING is always a complex af- fair; it means time, money, bother and doubts; on tlie other hand it means experience,, novelty, ex- hilaration and profit — the problem is to make the income greater than the outgo. The story that I tell in this little series of chapters considers many problems in a light and almost careless sort of way. It is a nar- rative of actual experiences throughout, and to find the problems answered may take a little figuring on the reader's oavu hook. If I should put down in plain English a Ijlain answer to the question. Should I go traveling?, it would be that any one who desires may do so, but whether an individual ought to go is quite another matter; each must answer for himself. I sought in this narrative to show how very simple it is to go traveling. With a little rowboat, a little something to eat, a few odds and ends of supplies — waterproof cloth, hatchet, matches, etc. — one has the materials necessary to make a long and in- teresting journey. (11) The Why of This Little Book. There is only one simpler way of "going somewhere" than on a roAvboat trip, and that is walking. Once upon a time I walked upAvards of a thousand miles straightway from Utica, N. Y., to Old Virginia, with all my outfit in an Adirondack pack basket, and thence I paddled down many hundreds of miles of river into Alabama; and again., I rowed down the Mississippi River 1200 miles or so in rowboat and shanty-boats ; so this little book, in so far as it tells how the traveling was done, comes from a consid- erable ripeness of experience and oppor- tunity. I have been frank in my narrative, and many an old timer may see things he would have done differently ; I knew better, in some instances ; usually, it is much more interesting to do things the wrong way than to do them according to the best of au- thorities. Many a man and especially many a youth, is deterred from undertaking some longed-for journey because of the expense, or the dread of catastrophe, or just mere lack of confidence. I never went any where yet that I didn't feel handicapped by the lack of money, the shadow of doubt as to whether or not I ought to go. I had ample excuse for not making any trip I ever un- The Why of This Little Book. 13 dertook. On the other hand, by going, pre- pared to do any kind of work that might be needful to pay my way, I have done very well in making money go many miles. I should say that four cents a mile is enough to pay all one's expenses; to put it another way, from fifty cents to f2.00 a day. The cost depends on the man. One should be able to trip the Missis- sippi, the Ohio,, the Great Lakes, any skiff waters, going hundreds, or thousands of miles for less than |200. This means a three or four months, or six months trip. If one earns his own way, all he needs is enough to buy a skiff and supplies, and then the heart to cut loose and go, let come what may. Nothing terrible ever really does happen, unless one is foolish, taking unnecessary chances, or looks for trouble by yielding to the countless temptations that advertise each in its own way. Every one is kind to the wayfarer; only once or twice has my confidence ever been betrayed, and then it really didn't matter, as in the case of the man who picked my p>ocket at Memphis ; no doubt he needed the mone}^ more than I did.. If some one takes courage from what he reads in this little book, and goes forth with 14 The Why of This Little Book. a good coiis(Mence — leaving no great duty Ix'liiiid liiiii — and enjoys some days and* nights alone with the Great Outdoors, or finds here a better way of living for a while,, then I am quite content to have been of that much service. In any event, I've had the fun of the trip and the pleasure of writing about it ; I hope no Socialist will accuse me of not trying to divide up the good times that I have had. E. S. S. February, 1913. A TRIP ON THE GREAT LAKES BY RAYMOND S. SPEARS. CHAPTER I. The Start From Black River. FOR a good many years I have been longing to make a trip on one of the Great Lakes. I had had glimpses of Lake Erie on two or three occasions, and a faint memory of life on the shore of that lake when I was a boy. The thought of going in some, kind of a little craft around the coast of one of the fresh water seas came whenever I looked at a map showing any of them, but it was not till last summer that my opportunity came. Then I determined to take an outing of some kind, and at last I saw my way clear to realizing on my dream of a Great Lake trip. My intention was to go up on Lake Ontario and have a rowboat trip along its shores, of which I knew nothing at all. Then if there was time, I would make a few miles along the north shore of Lake Erie. I bought a double v/ool blanket, a folding cot, several ten cent cooking utensils — a pail, frying pan, knives, forks, spoons, plates, etc., and packed them into a $2.00 camp chest, and started on July 17 for Jefferson county, New York, with my mind only half 'made up about what I should do in the way of an outing. In Jefferson county, I have relatives at Carthage, Black River, Philadelphia, Felts Mills, and Cape Vincent, and more relatives at Pulaski, some of whom I had not seen in fifteen or twenty years, and some of whom I had never seen. I made up my mind to see them all. 15 16 A Trip on the Great Lakes. The Start From Black River. 17 Uncle George, on his way home from a G. A. R. encampment, came off the cars at Little Falls a few days before I started, and he said I shouldn't be in any hurry to buy my skiff, for he knew a man at Black River who had built a skiff for his own use, and had never had it in the water — Fd better look at it before buying anywhere. Now Black River is about 15 miles from the lake, and I wasn't quite sure that anybody fifteen miles from big water would build a boat that I should care to go afloat in where the wind has a clean sweep of 150 miles or so, but I wouldn't hurt Uncle George's feel- ings by saying so, for anything, I had to go to see Cousin Min, and Kate and Aunt Anne, and Smiley — all the folks, and had two or three weeks in which to make up my mind. Well, I went and saw the relatives — and about everybody knows what lots of fun that is, especially if one has a Cousin Ernest, and Ernest is a game protector on his job. I began to get outdoors at Felts Mills, with Ernest, and saw the other Chamberlain boys whooping along the road on a motor cycle — 70 miles an hour ! They go eleven miles to Carthage to get a shave tefore breakfast, and go courting girls all the way from Lowville to Pulaski, two hundred miles or so — they go fishing, two at once, on the motor cycle, and hunt gray squirrels and grouse and other game all over Northern New York, riding on that motor cycle; moreover they go to Watertown mornings to work, and home at night. I wished they'd write up their real experiences hunting and fishing on motor cycles, but 'That's nothing!" That's the way with people who know all about any thing! In due course, I got to Uncle George's at Black River, and he took me up to a little frame work shop, and there, covered with burlap and a buffalo robe was the boat, which Mr. Keppler had built. It M^as 16 feet long, 16 inches deep, sharp at both ends, 42 inches wide amidships, triple painted and the gunwale strakes of natural oak wood, varnished with spar varnish, rock elm ribs and basswood planking — just as pretty a boat as ever I laid eyes on. I had expected to pay about $25 or $30 for a secondhand boat, but I couldn't get $40 down on this boat too suddenly, for it was 2 18 A Trip on the Great Lakes. The Start From Black River. 19 of beautiful model, fit to ride any waves I'd be likely to dare or be caught sleeping by. With my boat purchased, my outfit on hand, and everything settled for a rov^ on Lake Ontario, I sauntered around among my relatives some more and so used up a few days more of time. I was just going to trip around Lake Ontario, understand. Well, on July 30, I was ready to set the boat afloat. My start was made on James Simser's one horse wagon, out of Black River. I had unpacked and shipped my camping chest and rifle back home. I'd better tell about that rifle. It's a 25-20 trombone Marhn which I got a year ago. I intended to take it into Canada with me, and enter it at the customs, and not take out any hunting license because I had no intention of shooting any game — I've been a game protector myself, and don't propose to break any game laws. At the last minute, I reasoned with myself: "If I take the rifle to Canada, I may be badly tempted, or some game overseer may be tempted to get some money out of me, or any one of many things may happen." So I shipped the rifle back home, and did not regret it more than forty or fifty times. I don't know what would have happened — probably nothing. But in practice, as in New York, some protectors arrest a man for carrying a gun, whether he is hunting or just going out to shoot at a mark, and this is a shameful viola- tion of the Constitution which says the right to bear arms shall not be infringed upon. To save a few paltry head of game — to save a little work on the part of protectors, every man who carries a gun a-field without a hunting license is liable to be arrested and fined. Well, I shipped the rifle back home, and when I started from Black River in a wagon, I had no firearm with me. We rode on the wagon to Dexter, through Watertown, to the mouth of Black river. At Dexter there is a dock, and from this dock, we launched the skiflf and I loaded my duffle into it. Then I went to a grocery and bought supplies — bacon, butter, crackers, canned soups, and so on. After a luncheon at a restaurant, I bade Simser good-bye and bent to the oars. Before bending, the local boat livery man called attention to sundry defects in the arrangement of the boat. 20 A Trip on the Great Lakes. Now there are some things about every craft which need shift- ing and changing to bring them into tune with one's own personality. Already I had begun to make changes. When one has an Uncle who can do anything with carpenter tools, files and machinery, why not have things fixed right according to one's own and one's Uncle's ideas? The original oar locks were Y-shaped, with pins through the oars, holding the blades perpendicular, so they presented the broad surface to the wind on the recovery, and holding the boat back by that much resistance. I wanted my oars free in the locks so they could be turned edge to the wind on recovery — feathered, as they say. I bought a pair of brass locks — the only kind I could get of the style I wanted, and Uncle George rabbited the sockets into the other locks to get the right size of holes. I put three brass cleats on the boat, so that when I came to put up my waterproofed muslin, I'd have something to tie the lines to. I had 100 feet of half-inch rope, large enough to hold a forty foot launch, and later I swapped that off for f inch rope. Uncle George made me two basswood hoops, to go over the boat, on which to draw the cover under which I expected to sleep more or less with the boat swinging at' anchor in sheltered nooks. He leathered the oars, too. The liveryman said I ought to row the boat backwards and raise the seats a little higher — and always, it is worth while listen- ing to advice, whether one takes the advice or not. Sometimes advice is better than one's own inspiration, I couldn't change the seats myself just then, so I pulled down Black River toward Black River Bay. As I rounded the first bend and found myself among the islands, afloat on the black water, there came such a feeling of relief as outdoor folks all know. It was just one great big burst of exhuberance and delight on being so close to nature, so free from conventions, so encompassed by the sky and water. It had been several years since I had sat at the oars of a boat, and I wondered how long it would be before I could get their swing. Shortly, I knew that the boat was "down by the head," and that the The Start From Black River. 21 seat was too low — it had been built for fishing, not for traveling, for two or three, rather than for one person. I didn't worry, for I had to go to Cape Vincent where another cousin, Leon Peo would fix my boat for me. I rowed down the river, and the Bay opened out before — a great wide bay, it looked, with reed grown marsh, and gravel and sand shores and beyond the lake itself — Lake Ontario. I could see myself then on the border of fairylands of content. What could be better than tliis venture along the shores of my dreams, for I had hoped for years that I might some day go on the Great Lakes, and see them as I was seeing Lake Ontario, from a little rowboat which I could drag upon the beach if the wind was too strong. I had not pulled two miles before I met the wind — and was glad of it! The wind came out of the west, an afternoon wind, which increased steadily as I went down the Bay, and which kicked up waves that made my little boat buck and jump, and kept me hug- ging close to the shore where there was a kind of lee, and after a while the wind was so strong that I found it difficult to make much headway against it. Then I ducked into shore, in a little bay, ate a bit of lunch, and rested up — for when one is not used to rowing, he soon feels the pull against even a moderate headwind. I wanted to get to Cape Vincent in time for the motor boat races two days later, and the Cape was some thirty miles distant. I therefore had to hurry, when it would have been better to take my time. I pushed on down the wind to Bull Rock Point, and essayed to get around the point in the wind. The waves were break- ing heavily — as it looked to me — and one wave after another came hissing along the sides of my boat, splashing over. When a wave broke over the bow of the boat and wet me from head to foot, I retreated to a little cove, and in the dusk, put up my folding cot on the beach, drew down my blanket, and spread out the waterproofed muslin. I was tired and sleepy, and with the crash of waves in my ears, I fell asleep. Of course, I did not sleep many hours. No one sleeps from dark to dawn. I stirred about 10.30 o'clock, and found 22 A Trip on the Great Lakes. the wind was laid, and that the wash of the waves had become faint and small. I jumped up, broke camp, shoved my skiff out into the water, and by the light of the moon resumed my journey which the wind had interrupted. Nothing- gives me the same taste of adventure as does the night, and, those few hours that I rowed that night are among the most vivid memories in weeks along the north shore. The waves rocked me along the shore sounded the menace of the breakers, and ahead of me were unknown beaches of whose landings I knew nothing. I rounded Bull Rock Point, passed the dark gloom of Pillar Point, and landed at last down in the entrance to Chaumont Bay, where there were no swishing waves pounding along the shore. There I put up my cot again, and went to sleep. I had made a good start, on my trip, and If there was any feeling of disappointment, it was because it was not "wilderness," for where I put up my cot was within 150 yards of a farm house, and even by moonlight, the shores and fields beyond the shores could not be called "wild" in appearance. That first night I was haunted by a suspicion that I should not find much wilderness on Lake Ontario, and that made me question the trip, but when I looked out across the waters and saw the waves heaving darkly, there could be no mistaking their untamed freedom. Whatever the land might have to offer, at least the lake was as it always had been. Moreover, if I could go along the North Shore of Lake Erie, I should no doubt find there woods after my own desires. CHAPTER II. Canadian Customs. ALWAYS, the first night out on a trip is crucial; always the first day brings out one's undiscovered misfits and mistakes. I had been indoors practically for a year, and now that I was on the water, with the sun of the day and the wind of the night sweeping down upon me — oh, but the burn was hot ! My face turned the color of cherries — red cherries. Had I been wise, I should have accustomed m.y face to the wind and sun for an hour or two a day for weeks outdoors before I started on the trip. I did not have much opportunity to enjoy my sufferings for I had a long row that second day, and starting before my breakfast appetite had come, I left Chaumont Bay along the shore at dawn, and when my appetite came, at about 8 o'clock, I went ashore and cooked a good breakfast. I've found that it is sometimes better to have breakfast after hitting the day's journey than before starting. The resting to get breakfast was a joy, and when I had washed out the soup pail and the frying pan, I was ready for a long pull — and I was surprised how soon my long day came to an end. I had about twenty-five miles to row that day and had expected it to take until night to make it, but I rounded the light into St. Lawrence River soon after noon. I ate a lunch, shaved and loitered an hour or two on the river bank, and then came down to the dock about 2 o'clock — Peo's dock, where I was to visit cousins. Leon Peo has a launch and yacht factory, boat livery and minnow tank where most of the sport fishing on the Upper St. Lawrence River begins and terminates. Some twelve or fifteen river guides are always there, and these guides are the aristocrats of fishing, I think, for they get $8 a day for their guiding, and they have skiffs that startle the folks who knew the St. Lawrence River of old. Time was 23 24 A Trip on the Great Lakes. Canadian Customs, 25 when the St. Lawrence skiff was a famous little row boat, fit to take a prize as a safe, speedy little pleasure craft. Now they have 25-horse power engines in their little skiffs, and they go to the fishing grounds at the rate of twenty miles or more an hour. It didn't seem right to me, making race courses of the routes to the fishing grounds, but the argument was put up that if the fishermen saw a squall coming, the skiff going twenty miles' an hour could beat the squall to shelter, and besides, with the fast skiffs the fishermen could go further and fish longer — hours longer than in the old days when navigation was with oars or sails, or both. At least the sports who come a-fishing are more than satisfied with the motor boats, and they're the ones who pay the bills. The tendency of the day is to make the man who rows a boat by strength of his own arm feel as though he was of another age. Companies that used to build hundreds of rowboats now build nothing but motor boats of all sizes. From the number of motor boats I saw on the St. Lawrence River, the ferries, guides, boats, camp boats, store delivery boats, excursion boats, errand boats — all kinds of boats — it was clear that the march of progress has assailed the out-door man along the water front. Now and then some trapper tells of building a gasoline boat, and no doubt the water sets of the near future, except on waters which cannot be navigated, will be made from motor boats. With a motor boat making six or seven miles an hour a man can easily cover forty miles a day, while twenty is a good day's travel in a row boat. The result is that in country where the trapping is along open shores a large part of the season, the motor boat will come into play, just as surely as the motor boat is driving in all the rowboat and handboat market fishermen. Even in Canada, where trapping no more than begins when the freeze-in comes, the transportation of supplies through the lakes and up rivers is being done in large measure by gasoline boats. My good friend, John B. Burnham, formerly chief game protector of New York, and now president of the American Game Protective and Propagation Association, told me two or three years ago about 26 A Trip on the Great Lakes. Canadian Customs. 27 going moose hunting in Canada. There were ten canoes in the party, and one canoe had a little removable gasoline engine on it. The engine was about a horse power, I think, and that little engine towed the ten canoes, saved all the paddling and made as good time. The motor boat races that I saw at Alexandria Bay were a new experience to me. There were several hundred motor boats there carrying passengers and the shores were lined with spectators. Many of the boats were little cruisers and some were large yachts, but most of them were little o::en boats for running around and fishing or visit- ing. Leon's boat was a little cruiser, staunch, and would make about nine miles an hour. He has a faster boat but preferred, in that mob, a safe boat to a prettier one. The racers were odd-looking creations, mere thin shells full of engines that roared and thumped and pounded and drove around the course like scared cats. It was curious to see the craft climbing over the waves with all but a foot or two of their sterns out of the water — and I enjoyed the ride down the river and home again in the stout little cruising launch. I saw a fool launch take a place just ahead of a 200-foot freighter that was going faster, and saw another fool launch circle around the first, and then there was a collision, and the launches all but sank under the bows of the freighter. Why do men show off at the risk of their lives — if their lives are not worthless? On August 7, Wednesday, I was ready to cross the American line into Canada. It was a fair day with a little wind. My cousin took the line and towed me across the St. Lawrence to the head of Carleton Island, where he cast off, waved his hand and flipped out of sight at the rate of fifteen miles an hour or so — and I was on my way into the "wilds." As I leaned to the oars, heading toward the bay from which the old canal leads across Wolf Island, I was a little perturbed, for Canada is a foreign land, with customs officials, and with laws and ideas new to me. It was delightful rowing and the heaving of the little waves was exhilarating. 28 A Trip on the Great Lakes. So far as I was concerned it was exploration — a new world, but disappointingly tame and subdued. There were acres of marsh, how- ever, and along the edge of the water I could see little hummocks on which muskrats sat to eat roots. The runways and swimways through the cat-tails and joint-grass were as open as good roads, though on a small scale and crooked as a rat could desire. There were rat houses, too, and in one place I could see where an otter was a visitor. No doubt mink were there, too; not a place where one would expect big game, but the edge of farm and pasture land. In those marshes, I learned later, there were plenty of trappers in season, and one who had a cabin on the Wolf Island canal caught a good year's wages there every winter and spring. The canal was growing up to weeds but there was a fair way through the weeds through which it was clear motor boats occasionally went, and I could row steadily, though my oars picked up weeds on both sides. Leon had raised the seat and shifted it and my boat was in good balance now, down by the stern and up by the head. A nice, comfortable rowing boat. As I was pulling along I heard a sudden shot ahead of me, and turning to look saw the smoke and a flock of black ducks coming toward me on the dart. This was before the duck season opened, and I knew somebody was hungry for roast duck. A little later I passed a few feathers on the water and a hole in the cat-tails, and I knew that whoever it was had departed in haste, not having seen me till after the shot was fired. A little later, at Marysville, on Wolf Island, I made some cautious remarks, and the way folks bristled up at the thought of some one shooting ducks out of season indicated divided public sentiment. Now, I had to go through the Canadian customs, and those in- tending to trip through Canada may well attend ! I landed at Marys- ville, and asked for the customs officer, and I found him in his house not far from the dock. The Canadian government has recently changed politically, and Mr. Fawcett was a newcomer on the job; but he knew his business. He said I should have to have a permit to take my boat into Canada and to cruise along the Canadian shores. I Canadian Customs. 29 might have to make a deposit on it, but I'd better see the Kingston customs officer, as he did not have the cruising permit blanks. He looked my boat over and my outfit, and I went to Kingston to see the customs people there. They are kind at the Canadian customs office. They explained the requirements, and these were that I might not use my boat for profit, and that on my camp outfit I must deposit a bond to return the outfit to America. When they learned that my outfit was worth about $8, or less (folding cot, blanket, cooking utensils, etc.), they scorned the idea of a bond — too little to bother with. I might, at least, have had twenty dollars worth ! But I hadn't. They gave me a permit that was open till October 1, and I solemnly engaged not to violate the revenue or navigation laws of Canada and to return the permit when it should have expired. That was all there was to it. Then I went around to the game overseer to see about fishing. He was in a sporting goods store and he wanted me to pay a $5.00 license. That is, if I was to live on my own boat, live on imported supplies and not patronize the Canadian producer and merchant, I should pay $5.00, but when I explained that I didn't expect to camp out all the time, but would patronize folks who would take a transient boarder and that I would buy my camping-out supplies — grub — in Canada — or starve, he relented and let me have a $2.00 fishing license. I may add that I caught about forty cents worth of fish on the $2.00 license, but as I had $1.60 worth of fun, I broke even, the fishing tackle, a twenty-five cent line and a trolling spoon being extra. I would have been all ready now to start if it hadn't been for two things. First, when I left Cape Vincent, I forgot to bring my suit case and had to wait and have it sent in by express. Again I went through customs and the officer pawed down through the suit case and found nothing to increase Canada's revenues — just clothes and personal outfit. The other thing that held me up was weather! Oh, but weather looms large in skiff-boating on miles-wide waters! Wind and rain held me at Marysville nearly a week, and I was con- 30 A Trip on the Great Lakes. strained to get me a waterproof coat and to sit me down under shelter to wait till the clouds rolled by. I sat me down but was not idle. I asked questions about the lakes and the shores and sailors told me to watch out and to get a chart of the lake — and in all traveling, first of all, one should have maps — there are maps of most every place, and any map is better than no map at all. Already I had a map of the Bay of Quinte and of the east end of Lake Ontario. Now, I bought United States War De- partment charts of all the Great Lakes — of all the lakes, observe! I had had heaved into me a most astonishing and bewildering suggestion. A firm of publishers had asked me to write a book of adventure for them. I suggested that I would go up to Lake Ontario and while taking my vacation, make observations of what a boy would likely see. From them now came the suggestion that I not only see Lake Ontario, but also all the other Great Lakes as well, and so it was up to me. No more dilly-dallying, no more lolling at my ease while the waves whispered in my ears — no more regard for wet weather and tired shoulders! I'd got to the point where I must see all the Great Lakes, if possible, and see them right, not merely from the view-point of an idle pleasure seeker and summer rester, but from that of sailors, tourists, trappers, fishermen, hunters, 'long-shore folks and all. Naturally, when a man must, he must — but when I saw that this was August, and that I had thousands of miles to go, and hundreds of miles of lake shore to visit and view intimately, I caught my breath. Autumn is surely a wild time to cruise the Great Lakes in a rowboat ! ^l^% SHORE" OF LAKE ONTARIO. CHAPTER III. In the Bay of Quinte. WHEN I found that my little pleasure jaunt was turned into a dash half way across the continent and back again, more or less, I felt like a friend of mine, and a little more. This friend had two dog pups, and the pups were rearing through all the shoes, stockings and other chawables on the farm. As he chased the pups out of the house with a stick of stove wood, my friend turned to remark : "You take a pup, and raise him right; then you've got something!" I'd undertaken a little hundred-mile rowboat trip, nourished it and treated it kindly — but, ho law, how it had grown ! "You'd better go to Lake Superior first," a sailor told me. "It's a good deal colder on Lake Superior than down this way." But I hated to go up there first rip, and the rowboat in the water and the Bay of Quinte calling. I thought I'd go up the Bay first, and I was thinking that if I could get a trip up the lakes on a freighter, I would see phases of the lake not seen by most tourists and lake travelers. At Kingston I tried to get up the lakes on a freighter, but there was no chance. So I went afloat from Wolf Island in my row- boat, pulled out past Garden Island and headed across to Penitentiary Point, where stands the famous Ontario prison, in which the desper- adoes of the province are confined. Out in mid-stream, for this was on the Upper St. Lawrence, the shores were far away, and the waves rocked with the swell from the lake. In a way it was nerve-trying, not a test of courage. A venture into unknown places does afflict the soul with doubts as well as with delights. I could not help wondering where night would overtake me, and the look of the land did not reassure me. It was too well culti- vated, too good farming land, once I was out of the city limits. The 35 36 A Trip on the Great Lakes. In the Bay of Quinte. 37 water was deep and pure, and beautifully transparent. There had been a fog all that morning, but at noon the fog thinned and by 1:30 o'clock when I had pulled out, I had about seven hours of daylight in which to work my way. I did not know what distances I could make in a day, never having traveled in dead water with a skiff before, and I knew that this kind of going would be a good deal different from floating down a river. I knew that always the weather on the wide water would be a very large factor. I struck the North Shore at the Penitentiary and with a southwest breeze coming, pulled along in the waves from point to point, across the mouths of bays. I rowed steadily, driven along by the need of making time, and late in the afternoon I saw away out in the middle of the North Channel a little group of islands, which my chart said were the "Three Brothers Islands," on one of which was a lighthouse. Not knowing the light- house conditions, I expected to camp on one of the islands, as it was coming night. I pulled from the North Shore across to the first island, and found it a tiny rift of gravel, and then worked on a few rods to the second island, on which loomed the lighthouse. I had no more than reached the foot of the island when a voice hailed me: "Caught any fish?" On a rock point stood a stout little man, who had seen me trolling, and now he was there to greet me and bid me welcome. If the shores seemed to me to be crowded with farms and people, here on the three islands was no crowd — just one man who had to keep the light burning at night for the safety of the ships. From Collins Bay to Amherst Islands, some five or six miles, he had no neighbor, and he was as much alone for days at a stretch as the trapper in the wilderness depths— so he welcomed a visitor, and when I went ashore I could not camp out, but must sleep in the lighthouse. Apparently the transition from town to the wilds was to be made stage by stage, and it was just as well. Often too abrupt a change in one's mode of life is hard on the spirits. I got out some of the things I had brought to eat, and he brought out some of his supplies^ and we 3 38 A Trip on the Great Lakes. THREE BROTHERS ISLANDS LIGHT. In the Bay of Quinte. 39 talked late that night. An old man, more than eighty years of age, he found caring for the light a welcome task; in his day he had been a fisherman, catching 1,800 trout at one haul, worth then a quarter each, and now worth more than a dollar — but they catch no such hauls these days. His wife, and her mother before her, used to knit a pound of linen gillnet thread a day — but it is cheaper to buy the net now — twenty rods of net, thirteen feet deep, with from three to four-inch mesh weighed a pound. All the old lightkeepers' daughters were net knitters, too, and they received a dollar a pound for the knitting. What he told me showed that I was not so much rowing along the border land of a rich farm land as on the outskirts of the vast outdoors of the lake. I had but to look through the gaps in the islands to see the blue line of the horizon, and more and more, from that night, I came to understand that at the beach it all depends in which direction one looks whether he is in the great outdoors, or in the little outdoors of fences and farms. However, up the North Channel from Three Brothers Islands, I entered the Bay of Quinte, a Z-shaped channel inland which extends a hundred miles to Trenton and the Murray Canal — an excellent row- boat cruise, if one does not mind the proximity of valuable farms, the presence of other cruising folks, the passing by of countless gasoline launches, the cheapest of which makes the rowboat man question his own sport, and occasional summer resorts aflame with flags and up-to- the-minute "outing suits." I rowed up the Bay more and more, feeling as if it was a matter of duty. A man would be lucky if he saw a gray squirrel or helldiver up that bay, and I was not very lucky — I longed for the wild Canada that I had read about, and wished for sight of moose and caribou, sound of the howl of the wolf and the untamed wilderness. I began to fear that perhaps there were no such places along the Great Lakes, and that it was only too civilized. I camped out a la mode — I went up to the farm houses and bought milk — and if they wouldn't take pay, as sometimes happened, I would give some black bass which T had caught as I rowed along. There were plenty of bass — more than I could eat. There were so many of 40 A Trip on the Great Lakes. Tn the Bay of Quinte. 41 them that they seriously retarded my progress, for when one seized the spoon, I had to stop and haul it in, and yet I wanted to get my $2.00 worth of fun and fish, I threw back many a fine black bass, and some ran up to more than two pounds in weight. Just for bass fishing, the lower Bay of Quinte was as good as I could wish for, and I wished I could stay in one place a week, as I would have done had not my route been extended so many hundreds of miles. Here, too, I learned something about the wind. Notably, I met the "prevailing wind," and that wind came down the Bay of Quinte, up which I was rowing. Nothing quite so tries love of rowing as having a. steady breeze always resisting every stroke of the oars, and waves always throwing themselves against the bow of the boat. Be- ginning with a gentle little zephyr, these winds grew and grew, till at last they drove me ashore. I would put up my cot, roll up on it in the blanket and go to sleep, and toward night, as the wind fell, go rowing on again. I learned not to dilly-dally along when the wind died down, and I welcomed the out-jutting point which gave me shelter under the lee. I learned to start on with the streaks of dawn, and sometimes I pulled after dark. More and more the good sense of the sailors who advised that I make haste to Lake Superior was impressed upon me, and when at last I came into the wide water at the head of the Bay of Quinte, after nearly a hundred miles of rowing (four days, plus), I was ready to make haste, having all I wanted of Lake Ontario waters, good as was the bass fishing. At Trenton I shipped the boat and boarded the steamer to Toronto. Had I foreseen my future course, I should have shipped the boat direct to Fort William by steamer. The cost would have been much less than shipping to Toronto and then reshipping to Fort William, but I had in mind at this time taking little camping trips in my boat on each lake as I progressed, but at Toronto the flight of time forced my hand. I reshipped the boat and then chased it up the lake as best I could, with due regard to seeing all of the shores and boats that I could. It was a pleasant little packet boat trip from Trenton to Toronto, along the North Shore of Lake Ontario, stopping at sundry little cities, 42 A Trip on the Great Lakes. all of which were summer resorts with canoes the popular craft— beautifully painted canoes with paddles varnished and flashing in the sunshine. I would like to see some of those canoes after about three months' service in "real" canoe country. At best the Lake Ontario shore is gasoline boat shore. Harbors are often a long way apart, and one needs speed and size, just to be in the fashion. Along such shores values are distorted. There is no more eloquent a bit of scenery than at Picton Bay, where the rock cliffs rise high above the Bay of Quinte, and yet the boys will understand the class of people one usually meets on those waters when it is remarked that these people commonly say, with surprise : "You ought to have stopped to see the big clubhouse on Picton Bay !" The clubhouse seemed more important than the water, or the stone, or the woods, or even the fruit and farm.s. Nobody had to pay for the bluffs, but the clubhouse cost an awful pile of money, and when anyone "touring" the bay failed to look at the clubhouse, he had missed about the only thing worth looking at ! As I neared the upper end of the Bay of Quinte the character of the water underwent a subtle change. It was no longer the free and swinging water of the Great Lakes, but had the character of enclosed waters, around which are many towns. The water began to fill with minute particles, the stones were covered with slime and along the shores were mute evidence of decay and deadness. The contribution of streams and springs was not enough to keep the water moving, and the last thirty miles or so was unpleasant rowing, not that the water was dangerously unhealthy, but that it was foul to look at, after the bare purity of the stones and cands of Lake Ontario. A great lord hurt the feelings of Toronto mightily by saying that the hotels there are the worst in the world — his world. This may be so, but I think, perhaps, he should have said the hotels of Canada are the worst in the world and give less for the money. I went to one in Toronto which charged for two days when I got there one afternoon and left the following day ; I had been there parts of two days, perforce ! In passing, the only place I ever saw that charged for each In the Bay of Quinte. 43 44 A Trip on the Great Lakes. cup of coffee served at a regular meal was on the Bay of Quinte. In few respects is Canada as cheap as the United States, when it comes to traveling, but in the matter of out-door life, if one is careful and strikes for the wilds, he will have no cause to complain, except that the hunting and fishing licenses and railroad and steamboat costs stir the emotions of an American. Once my rowboat and camping outfit was out of my hands I headed up the lakes, seeing what I could see. I crossed to Port Dalhousie on a sort of ferry and there, after two days' waiting, I managed to catch a freight captain who would take me up through the Welland Canal — one of the great man-made sights of the North country, and it is worth seeing. It is not entirely devoid of outdoor interest, for along its banks, which for miles rise above the level of the farm lands, the muskrats have often caused much trouble, boring through the dirt. I suppose that there are always plenty of rat trappers to take care of the rats, however, and that they must make quite a little money for the hours they spend along the Welland and its feeders. I had one novel experience on the Welland — a wind storm that made the trip unusually difficult for the ship. The other ships tied in, but it happened that two boats of the line were on the canal and the captains were bitter rivals, so the two boats raced in the gale up the canal, prodding each other along in spite of wind, thunder and rain. It was a curious race and the boat I was on was so eager that it rammed a bridge guard, ripped off piling and seemed about fit to sink itself — but it didn't. What accidents befell the other craft I do not know. At Port Colborne, with dollar a day hotels that charge $1.50 a day, I took the train for Buffalo, where I stopped over with an uncle a day or two, and then went up Lake Erie by passenger boat to Detroit. At Detroit I went up the Detroit River, across St. Claire Lake and up the river to Sarnia, Ont. These rivers and the little lake are famous in hunting annals, and from the looks of the grassy marshes, the St. Claire Flats must have a great harvest of muskrats, as well as of ducks. There is a Venice along the lower St. Claire River, on the American side — dozens of little hotels, boarding houses, cottages and cabins, where people pass the summer months. The young folks get out in- In the Bay of Quinte. 45 46 A Trip on the Great Lakes. rowboats and launches to take the wash of the passing steamers — which is, I suppose, great sport. I was an interested spectator — hardly more up that stretch of waterway — till I saw my first flying machine in motion. That was something, as it flitted around the boat and over the water. At Sarnia, the foot of Lake Huron, I found another ■ of lake traveling. I shipped as deck hand on the barge Case> up Lake Huron, just where, the Captain didn't know, but amu. he islands after cedar railroad ties. I wanted to know about life on arge. 4V • 9" \i \ ^^|l BLACK LINE WITH ARROW SHOWS TH A % X ^. / '^ # i-^ —■ -.;; # P i-. N A S Yi;\'AN I 4* W «j ^Mf-s-? tOUTE TAKEN FROM BUFFALO TO DETROIT. M CHAPTER IV. Working My Way up Lake Huron. ANY times I had been captain of a rowboat, and once 1 was sort of assistant captain on a Chesapeake Bay con- verted log canoe, but now I became deck-hand on a tow-barge. They routed me out of a damp bunk, but comfortable sleep at 3 o'clock a.m., and I had to cast off ropes big as my arms, and haul on greasy "sheets" to hoist smoke stained sails — and that hauling wore the hide off the palms of my hands and pulled my arms out of joint. But when the sails were spread to the flowing breeze, the captain motioned me to the wheel, and all hands went below, leaving me as steersman. It was right lucky there was a long line leading to a steam tow-barge ahead, for it took me some little time to learn which way to turn the wheel to throw the nose of the barge into the right trail — and after I learned, I almost went to sleep. So I made my way up Lake Huron, decking and wheeling on a tow-barge. And that first night, a squall came along, and took the jib out of the bolt ropes and tore up the mainsail, and jumped us up and down like so much floatsam on the wide, wide sea — the worst squall, they say, in years. By noon, the next day, we were drawing in to land, and after dinner, when I was again at the wheel, the boat ran into a bay along some wild, scarred wilderness lowland, and there anchor was cast, while the steam tow barge went on its way to other loading places, leaving us to wait the sweet pleasure of the tie superintendent. As this was Cockburne Island, and near the head of Lake Huron, I was some hundreds of miles nearer my destination on upper Lake Superior. I was satisfied to know so much about life on a tow-barge, and now I wanted to keep on up the Lakes. The barge might lie there in that little bay a week, or two weeks, or a rnonth, depend- 51 62 A Trip on the Great Lakes. Working My Way Up Lake Huron. 53 ing on the sweet disposition of the tie superintendent, who seen^d not to know that tow-barge people are human, and must make many trips to earn money. Rather than wait on the tie superintendent, 1 decided to walk across Cockburne Island to the town, and there go either across the North Channel, or else up to the Soo, according to how fortune favored me. There was lots of old canvas on the boat, now that the wind had ripped and torn the jib to ribbons; so when I announced to the captain my intention of going ashore — I had, in shipping, warned him I'd go up, but not go down with him — I took a piece of the old canvas about 30 inches long, and seven inches wide. I split this canvas in two, so it looked like a pair of trousers. Then I looped a piece of trot line around the belt end, and some more pieces of trot line around the leg ends. These trot line ends I lashed around my suitcase and rain coat, makirg a pack. Then I went over the side into the yawl boat, and the captain and able seaman set me ashore on a sand beach, whence had been taken many cedar ties for another barge, and where few ties remained. In my hip pocket was my compass, and in my coat pocket the Lake Huron chart, showing Cockburne Island. It was just afternoon when I landed, and the problem was to get to the town, twelve miles away, before night. There was supposed to be a road from somewhere thereabouts, leading across to the town, but no one knew where the road was. However, I could see two men up the beach a ways, and on pursuing these, I learned that the road was near where we had landed, and that by following it out, and keeping to the left, I would get to the town. Thus I entered the wilderness on an old road, and when I turned to the right at a road fork, the trail became a mere path through fire-weed and an old burn in a slash. However, when I consulted my compass and chart, I saw that I was headed in the right direction, and kept on. Before long, I was entirely on my own resources as a woodsman. The trail split and forked and faded steadily, and it was no more a 54 A Trip on the Great Lakes. Working My Way Up Lake Huron. 55 road than it was a railroad. I gave up trying to keep to the "'main road," and took to the compass course, following whatever led the right way, and thus I found myself taking to skid gutters, haul roads, and mere cross-overs which the loggers had made in going from one slash to another. The lint seeds from the fireweed blew in clouds before the wind and stuck in the sweat that gathered on my brow. Foxes, mink, partridges, deer, and, I think, caribou or moose are on that island, but there are trappers there, too. Partridges, there were in numbers, and rabbits — a sort of mild hunting country for the one who looks for no very great abundance of game, and yet with game enough for good sport. On the neighboring island of Grand Manitoulin there are moose, bear and deer, and I could im- agine no better cruising ground for a gasolene boat in the summer and early fall — could not imagine any better cruising grounds for my rowboat than through that place, but I had not yet seen the north shore of Lake Superior. I was considerably in doubt for nearly two hours, as I shoved as nearly due north as the lay of the land and the windings of the logging trails would permit. It was an utterly skinned section of wild land, even where the fires had not burned. Little gnarly trees, if any, heaps of brush, tangles of briers, with some patches of little evergreen trees, and soil so thin that often I was tramping on the rock in place — the land was just rolling enough and just brushy enough so that I could neither see from the hollows nor from the tops of the knolls. I had noticed a man track in the road when I started out, and as the road faded, I took to looking for this man track. The track was coming and I was going, but I. reasoned that the man must have come from somewhere. I feared, at first, that it might be the track of a timber looker or hunter, but in half an hour or so, I saw that it wasn't a hunter, because it didn't go into good game cover. The direction it went was all right by the compass, so even if it was a timber looker, it would get me nearer the town. I followed the track through brush and over rocks and to keep to it some places 56 A Trip on the Great Lakes. I had to watch the broken fireweed stalks, in others it was moss and Hchens scraped on rocks, and once I picked it up by a broken cedar branch; where the ground was swampy and wet, I could follow it by the holes in the mud, or slidings on the timber thrown down to fill up the waterholes. The footprints went out of sight in some dry brush, and as I circled along the edge of some hardwood timber of small size, I picked up a fresh wagon track, and the sloshings through mud holes were still muddy from the passing. Thereupon, I took to the wagon track, and before long I caught sight of what I thought was a group of tents, but which proved to be a washing on a line, and two little log cabins. There were a number of little children there, and the woman of the cabins, when I hailed, stepped forth and said that if I followed the back track of the wagon, I would get to town. That was easy. I turned back on the wagon track and away 1 went, through the hardwood, for a mile or so, and then I came out into a new contract road, all heaped up and graded and ditched and the right of way cleared through the woods. Following this, I came to a well traveled road, and picking directions by the compass, I came to the top of a hill, over which the wagon had gone, and from this hilltop, I looked across Cockburne Island with interest. There were clearings with small buildings, well painted, in them, but it was a wooded island, and the woods had that ragged and messy look which culled and skinned timber always has. There were few evergreens in the timber, but the hardwood was in all directions, and having plunged through two hours of that kind of timber, with its briers and brush and clouds of fireweed lint, I had little desire to go on and explore the interior of the island. Still heading north by compass along the highway, I passed through a clearing or two and between long thickets of second growth, where partridges were plenty, and rabbit runways numerous. Once, as the road gave a turn off my course by compass, I stopped in at a house to inquire the way — I was on the right trail, I was told. I had no wish, in those wilds, to tramp miles out of .« • ^- '■'■ • O '^w—:'^^m:._:i:i --%. Working My Way Up Lake Huron. 61 my course. A little later I met a man of great size, nearly seven feet tall, if he stood erect, I should think. He had a most scrubby beard of gray and black, and altogether a huge look — but he petered out when he spoke to me. His voice was as thin as a cat's, and peaked and whining. First he begged to know who I was, and then what did I do? When I told him that I had jumped a job as deck hand, he exclaimed : "Don't you think you was foolish to leave a perfectly good job when you had it?" He tapered off into a request for "Jes' a little chewin' tobacco," which I didn't happen to use. As it was a direct road into Cockburne Island settlement, there was only one more little service to make of woodcraft. I saw a path cutting down into some woods, where the road made a sharp bend to the west. I reasoned that this was a short cut, and took a chance on it — and so I saved a few rods walk, and could pat myself on the back as an observer of trails. They call the Cockburne Island settlement after the island, and also Tolsmaville. It has a sidewalk, a boarding house — "No hotel," a resident said mournfully — stores, fish docks, a saw mill in course of erection, a postoffice that is open once in a while; in fact, it is a town. I tried twice to get into a store, and learned that the store wasn't opened only sometimes, and so the store lost a sale or two. About the most embarrassing thing I learned was that there were no ways of getting out of the town, except the highway back into the wilds, and a steamboat that would come along in a few days. It had been a hot, sweaty and difficult tramp across the island and the thing that I most wanted at Tolsmaville was a chance to bathe, for in all the category of aids to the out-door man, there is nothing that ranks higher as a recuperative and restorative and medicine than a good bath, and when I had had my bath and was in clean clothes, I was ready that night to go on again, if chance offered. It would be some time, several days, before the steamboat schedule would allow me to leave the island; if 1 couldn't go, well and good, 4 ^2 A Trip on the Great Lakes. but I would have myself to blame if there was a chance to shove on and I didn't know about it. There was a tug and a schooner down by the dock, and after supper I went down to look things over. I found that a steamer had been obliged to jettison part of its carga over near the Duck Islands, and that fishermen there had salvaged the nails and barbed wire and other things that had been thrown overboard. So far, the fishermen had done wisely — had their mo- tives been right. They failed, however, to notify the Government o£ their fishing up the cargo, and the cargo consisted of American goods. The American goods must pay customs duty on going into Canada, and forthwith, when the Government heard about the salvaged cargo, it went after it. It seized the goods, and also went after the salvagers. The result was painful to all hands. I don't know just what hap- pened, but in a way, that jettisoned cargo had an important bearing on my trip. The Government, for its own account, sold the seized goods, and an American company bid them in. Then came the schooner and tug which I saw at the dock to get that cargo. But not all the goods were at Tolsmaville, for about three 'tons were over at Thes- salon, on the wharf there. The captain of the tug, Edward Laway, was going after that three tons, at about 7 o'clock in the morning, and he would take me over, if I got aboard — and I sure did get aboard. It was a foggy morning, and Captain Laway headed across on a compass course, and out there in the gray mist, we steamed along with the ragged chart and the compass, which was floating on coal oil, because the alcohol had leaked out of it; after a while it came time for us to reach Thessalon, and this time passed, and some more time, and still no Thessalon. We stared into the gray mist, ahead and abreast, anxiously — the captain serenely confident. CHAPTER V. Perils of the Great Lakes. CAPTAIN LAWAY ran along with his tug with as much unconcern as I would have run along with my rowboat, but he kept his eyes open, studying the water and scan- ning the fog. Shortly he saw a shade, and the shade proved to be land. Then, looking at the water, exclaimed : "There's a backwash in those waves !" and soon there glistened dead ahead a low rock point. We skirted along that point and the captain dropped the lead overboard to find how deep the water was; then he worked out around the point, to the starboard, and then pushing into the fog, came into view of a building and a dock; there was the place he was looking for, having hit within twenty rods of it on Thessalon point. I reached Thessalon days ahead of time, and Captain Laway and I went up to the hotel and got dinner on the strength of it. Between the squall on the tow barge and the fog over the North Channel, shot through by the tug, I was awakening to the possibilities of lake seamanship. How those lake sailors scorn the salt water sailors ! The salt water sailor is a bumptious sort of a man, who thinks that because the Atlantic ocean would swallow up the Great Lakes and not get the salt out of one wave, fresh water sailors can't know very much. The salt water man comes up to the Great Lakes, afflicted with curiosity and self-confidence, and shortly he gets into trouble. It actually takes more skill to navigate through the shoals and along the winding and rocky shore of the Great Lakes than it does to cross the Atlantic ocean, but the salt water man refuses to believe that. Now there was a party of sports came up to the Great Lakes a year or so ago. They were in a yacht almost two hundred feet long, and the captain, who could work his yacht through the Narrows into 63 64 A Trip on the Great Lakes. New York bay, allowed that he could navigate his yacht through the islands of the North Shore. He had charts and compass, lots of self- confidence and scorn. He didn't think it worth while loading up his beautiful yacht with a hard-fisted, blistered and whiskery lake fisher- man of a pilot; he thought he could go it alone, and the result was that he went it alone, kerslam, up on a rock that raised the bow of his beautiful yacht about fourteen feet out of the water — that on a perfectly calm day, with the sun shining, and the birds singing in the trees. He was making fourteen miles an hour, when he struck, they say, and they say he believes the chart had the rock located a quarter of a mile out of the way. When they pulled this boat off, it sank in 200 feet of water. That illustrates the perils of fresh water navigation when one is afflicted with too much knowledge of things that aren't so. No one wants to go to navigating the Great Lakes if he isn't willing to learn everything all over again, and then some more, all different from his first lesson. I had a pretty good opinion of my ability to take care of myself when I started, but the first wave that came over the bow of my boat, off Bull Rock point, left my conceit as limp as a wet white collar. From that day I was a willing and an anxious learner. However, sight of that tug captain, whistling and with one hand on the wheel, jamming through the fog showed me a number of things and the little lesson of watching the backwash waves was a valuable acquisition for me. I could see that if a tug drawing five feet of water could plow along at the rate of seven or eight miles an hour in the fog, I in my little rowboat could navigate, too. I may as well anticipate the sequel to that tug trip. I came back down the North Channel a few weeks later, and at Tolsmaville, I recognized the Tug John Kane and ran to shake hands with Captain Laway again. He said he's had an awful slow trip this last time, for he was fourteen days coming across from Cheboygan, and not yet got to the Ducks with a load of coal due there for the winter. I asked how that happened. "Why, you see, the tug sank in twenty-five feet of water and that delayed me almost a week." Perils of the Great Lakes. 6£ Delayed almost a week ! Shucks ! I'd been alarmed when I took a gallon or two of water aboard my, little skiff and this doughty lake captain, skipper of a tug, was delayed "most a week" when his tug sank ! In just a moment, there was revealed to me whole vistas of resourcefulness and courage. Though his ship had been sunk, he was delayed only a week! Other men, overcome by such a catastrophe, would have sat down and wept, sent for the wrecker, and lost a fall's jobs; but not so this man. Disaster served merely to delay and ex- asperate him — and so with all the real men one meets, the strong and able men whom nothing daunts, and who make of trouble oppor- tunity to get further. Thessalon, a sawmill town, and one sawmill already sawed out and shut down, its fires drawn, had some Indians sauntering along the street. I looked at them with interest, for I had heard of Indians, and now I was looking at them. Some men are disposed to call them "remnants" of a race that is "gone" — but they are not that. I fancy that the Indians are going to do a good deal more for humanity, par- ticularly Canada, than appears on the surface and in the newspapers recording the violations of the Indian List laws. It seems clear to me that Indian blood has much to give humanity; the instincts of the Indian races were for generosity, eloquence, love of nature and endurance. The instincts still survive in the children of the Red Men. If the term half-breed has long been a term of oppro- brium, hundreds of halfbreeds are making it a term of respect and pride. They refuse to deny their Indian parent, any more than they would deny the proud white blood. The Canadian people need the Indian faculties and instincts in their effort to conquer that wide desert of stone and starved wilder- ness that lies along the North Shores of the Western Lakes. There is wealth in that wilderness, opportunity and hope — but the whites would usually cringe before it, were it not for the Indian blood; those of Indian instincts are rejoicing that in that great wilderness "civiliza- tion" cannot make wheat fields and town sites. Civilization will have to continue the dark forest cover there, will have to make fishponds of the lakes and fur farms of the timber brakes and venison pastures A Trip on the Great Lakes. "■^y I J^-f Perils of the Great Lakes. 67 of the mossy rock crevices and spruce knowls. In this work the Indian, longing for the solitude of the dark forest cover, will find its out- look and its place in the progress of humanity. With interest I looked at those lank men of the people that feel alien in the land of their fathers. If they sometimes seemed to be slinking along, with their eyes upturned like a trapped fox's or like a skulking coyote — no matter ! Nothing could be prouder or more dis- tinctive than the bearing of those little children whose pale cheeks and straight black hair, whose alert dark eyes and supple figures whose full lips and graceful carriage, indicate a mental and physical inheritance of the good that is in two noble races of mankind. Anxious to get away from Thessalon, on my journey to Lake Sunerior, I nevertheless lost a precious day by waiting for the steamer, a little way-station packet, which failed to come because of fog. I had to go on the day after, taking the train. They have in Canada the custom of having several "classes" segregated on the trains. The "first-class" car, which is a car almost as good as old-fashioned Ameri- can smoking cars, is the car of high-toned folks, and I understand that very ordinary folks cannot buy second-class tickets. The second- class is the car of the "home-maker", and one sits on leather instead of dirty plush and pays a smaller fare and gets there just as quick. All over Eastern Canada when I was there, the railroads were ad- vertising trips to Winnipeg for $10. The ordinary fare is so high that people can't pay it, so they said $10, to get men to do the harvest work on the wheatfields. But to get back, the railroads charged $18, and thus sought to get a rake-off on the money the harvesters earned. Ore must pay anywhere from two to five cents a mile on Canadian rail- roads, with a rate of near four cents as a rule. While the cry is for "more settlers" the vicious obstacle of high rates on passengers and freight are kept up in all directions. The train from Thessalon ran through a land of stone mounds, old lake bottoms and burnings — a land for pioneers and "early settlers." Always along the railroads I saw the old burnings — terrible evidence of the carelessness and idiotic short-sightedness of the railroads which destroyed their own hope of timber freight by the simple expedient 68 A Trip ox the Great Lakes. Perils of the Great Lakes. 69 of burning it all up with sparks from locomotives: They say along the railroad that every division of the roads through that v^ilderness of burned stone is paying its own expenses, and that the railroad in pleading poverty deliberately denies its own prosperity in order to keep rates up — mines and back-country timber, not yet burned up, fish, the plentiful pickings of berries by Indians, fur shipments, passenger traffic, yield profits on even the most barren miles of the railroads. How easy it would be, then, to cut rates and so increase general prosperity — increase the railroads' prosperity ! One needs a little Indian blood, or at least some of the instincts of an Indian to enjoy the Canadian wilderness, which is called the Canadian Desert, extending about 900 miles along the Canadian Pacific railroads. From the viewpoint of agriculture, lawn-makers, home- makers, peaceable men of the hoe, there is scant inducements to press into that wild land — but every mile back is a mile of joy and ex- huberance to those who like the untamed and th'e untamable. Even the railroads are like wild beasts in their ravening, while the wolves and weasels are satisfied with things to devour — rabbits and moose and deer and such like. The "Soo" is on the border of a great game and fur land, and the shores of Lake Superior contain many a fur pocket — places where trappers are few and game plenty. The North Shore is especially a place of "fur pockets," and Mr. Kreps in what he has told of that region has far understated its advantages — and its disadvantages are appalling to any but the hardened and courageous and enduring out- door man. At the "Soo," itself, one is not conscious of the game land so near at hand. The vast locks there, through which drives the grain and ore and package carrying fleets of the lake, and the building of huge industry, and the fuss and fuming of building and expanding, give scant impression of near-by wilds. Yet last summer a moose crossed the river and paraded in fear and agitation around the streets of the American "Soo," visible evidence of one of the great and wonderful game migrations of the American Continent, now in pro- gress, and sure indication of the bleak North Shore which has been 70 A Trip on the Great Lakes. famous in the history of American Furs from the days of the first Couriers of the Woods. Extending north from the "Soo" is a strip of farm land which is fertile and where the farmers are said to be prosperous and crops thriving, but this strip soon peters out on the edge of a terrible wild — a land where only supreme woodcraft enables one to pass through or to survive — and of this wilderness along its lake edge, I have some things to tell, for I coasted along it and was witness of some of its vicious aspects, as of its splendid and attractive features. At the "Soo," which is a handy place to get one's mail, and to bid farewell for awhile to the Stars and Stripes, I remained only a day or two. In that day a little closer inspection of the towns (Ameri- can and Canadian Sault Ste. Marie) revealed sure sign of nearby game lands. There were numerous places where guns, rifles and other firearms were sold, plenty of ammunition and fishing tackle in sight, men of familiar swing and gait — woodsmen — and a certain out- door complexion on most of the population — signs that this was an outdoor town. Time was when the "Soo" was the great fur trading station of the Upper Lakes, to which came the fur buyers and the trappers of tens of thousands of square miles of wilderness, and down to 1840 there was no place in the country surer of its spring migration of picturesque and profit bringing men of the wigwam and log camp, hunting trail and trap line; but the steamboats, the receding frontiers, the railroads, have pressed the "Soo" into a minor place in the fur trade, and yet the "Soo" is at the gateway to a great fur country where it may be questioned whether civilization will ever establish permanent headquarters and reduce a beautiful wilderness to a homely and unhappy summer resort. I tripped up Lake Superior to Fort William on the steamer Al- berta, going by steerage, and so rounding out my lake voyaging ex- periences. In the steerage one pays $5.00 fare, and hires a mattress of the baggageman for what he can persuade you to give, else sleep on slats. You are wise if you bring enough for several meals to eat, for otherwise one must pay fifty cents a meal — and not very good meals Perils of the Great Lakes. 71 at that — or sneak up to the pantry and bribe the cooks to give over sandwiches. The steerage of the Canadian steamers is interesting, chiefly be- cause of the contrast with the reports that make believe the Canadian railroads are so very generous with the people who want to settle in Canada, most of whom go as cheaply as possible, and therefore com- monly patronize the steerage and the second-class accommodations of these railroads-owned transportation companies. There seems to be no competition, except in seeing which can charge the most for giving the least. One would suppose that special effort would be made to make the lower class accommodations of pleasant memory to the people going forth to establish new homes in a country "served" by the transportation company, so that the company would have friends in that new country. But such is not the way of the lake passenger boats, which leave their steerage passengers to the petty grafters of the steward service. I was right glad when I reached Port Arthur and Fort William. CHAPTER VI. Canada's Fish License. PORT ARTHUR and Fort William are on the north side of Thunder Bay, and are about two miles apart, postoffice to postoffice. In fact, there is only a narrow strip of swamp between them, and this swamp is being extensively advertised and boomed into town lots. Some few buildings are already in the swamp, and the number is increasing as we are told, "apace." It's a boom settlement, with plenty of enthusiasm and vast hopes; prices of real estate are away up in the air, and judging from them, every land-holder must be rich in these towns. I had little time in which to see the towns, however. I wanted most to get clear of towns and entangling civilization, and look at the wilderness, which I had been approaching. I had had a glimpse of it as we came past Thunder Cape, at the entrance to the great bay, and the glimpse was reassuring as to the wilds, but a bit startling in its stony heights and scant timber growth. I wondered if I could always find a landing along the foot of such tremendous heaps of stone as that vast Thunder Cape ridge — a wondering that was not to leave me for some miles and days to come. Finding a place for the night, I sought the freight house and found my boat intact — but I was obliged to travel about two miles to get a release of the boat in the freight office. Then I bought some provisions — bread, flour, baking powder, potatoes, cheese, butter, canned soups, canned baked beans (for cold lunches), chocolate, etc. I patronized the Hudson Bay Company, which had a several-story building, which looked just like any other brick store in an ordinary town, and wasn't even surrounded by a log pallisade to keep out the Indians or ward off attacks of wicked independent fur buyers. In fact, the two towns seemed real civilized and peart, even if a little raw and boastful in advertising material. 72 i> \^ \* ^'f # . t h n- 'im t w i ,s o •V .. i V J-> THE LAKE SUPl ^'■i ^J^SieSS^ OR ROUTE. Canada's Fish License. 77 rhey have a delivery service for the Hudson Bay store, but the service was tired and crowded that Saturday night, and the company furnished me with a coffee sack to carry my purchases to the freight house where was my boat, and then, at dusk, I was fore and fit, and knew that in the morning I could start for the row boat trip along the lake shore. I sauntered around town and then I moved on to my bed where I slept well enough. In the morning I moved down to the dock with my suit case and other duffle, put them into the boat, and with the help of the dock watchman and a stevedore or two, slid the boat over the edge into the water and took my place at the oars. Away I rowed through the yellow water, stirred up by the dredges that are trying to make a steam boat channel in a little creek. I rowed down past huge wharf buildings, past a steamboat or two, and was struck with surprise when I saw a bear climbing up on the rail of one of those steamers — so! If bears were wandering around Fort William on a peaceable Sunday morning, smelling the decks of steamboats in that way, what must they be out in the real wilds? A look around showed that these towns were, in fact, settled in the wilderness, and not in the borderland of a great settled country. It is not far from Main Street to the Big Woods in that region. I waved my hand at the bear, rounded out into the bay, and started along the shore, with the idea of cutting out to Mouton Island and perhaps across to Welcome Islands, but I had gone only a short distance when a black cloud out of the west brought both rain and wind. I was driven to the shore, where I found shelter in a little frame building beside a railroad track. The wind kicked up waves and white caps — but in an hour it went on past, and I pulled out again, this time getting under the lee of Mouton Island, when a storm came along. From there I slipped across to Welcome Islands, and faced the dubious seven-mile crossing to Hare Island, which I could not see, it was so far away under the huge Thunder Cape. However, an old, old Welcome Island fisherman said there would be no more wind for several hours, and I risked the crossing, and in due course arrived at Hare Island, just as the breeze started up again. 78 A Trip on the Great Lakes. I landed, went to the fisherman's cabin on this island, and the dogs missed me till I was right along side; then they did make a noise. They were Emil Young's sledge dogs and the first of the kind I had seen to know their purpose. Young is a fisherman and he lives on Hare Island all summer, making money fishing. In winter he lives on Welcome Islands and visits often in the two towns. In his little cabin I became a little acquainted with the fishing phase of Lake Superior life — and a very lonely and isolated life, it seemed to me, though the black smoke of Port Arthur was plain on the far side of the bay. The smoke was further by far than the rocks of the Cape; two miles away, on the point of the Cape was the lighthouse, and this was Emil Young's nearest neighbor; the other was the Welcome Island light keeper and the old fisherman, who had read the weather for me. We pulled my rowboat two rods up the bank, as he said the wind might blow — and hardly was the boat up than it did blow, blew white and black all the rest of the night, and was a little gale in the morning, so I could not go on, but must wait for the storm to go by. I was not sorry, for suddenly Lake Superior looked huge and ugly, and I wanted to see the fresh water sea in better temper than it was all that day, as it beat and gnashed with pounding waves on the point, and sent swells along the flanks of Hare Island. Blue and distant I could see Isle Royal, and the chart showed that there was no mistake about it ; this was the country I had come to see. "The doggone wind is crazy these two weeks !" Young cried. "East ! East ! East ! Can tell nothing about it — from all directions, but East, East, East!" I had come up to Superior partly because the winds up Lake Ontario were west winds and head winds ; now the winds were east and that was head wind for me on my eastward trip along the lake — such is the perversity of the weather. There on the little island, in the welter of the waves, the significance of the wind became very large in my mind, and from that day onward always I kept my eye on the sky: for of all things a man in a little rowboat must look out Canada's Fish License. 79 80 A Trip on the Great Lakes. for on wide water the wind is the great menace. Nothing else is anywhere near as important. "It doesn't take any time to get up a sea here," the fisherman said. How near the wilderness comes to the towns along that North Shore now became apparent from what the fisherman said. Wild life comes into the streets of the towns; rabbits are so plenty that around the lighthouses and cabin homes no one bothers much to hunt them. Grouse — partridges — are "everywhere." In the woods and recesses of the stone mountains are moose, deer, caribou and bears. Wolves appear at intervals. In the isolated places fresh meat was venison — "caribou meat," and as often as not the people called moose meat "caribou," since they are not quite accustomed to the recent comers, moose. There has been a migration along the North Shore of moose and wolves. A few years ago, I was told, all along the shore moose were scarce, deer very plenty, caribou plenty and wolves scarce. Then the moose began to move eastward and they appeared more and more frequently along the North Shore. With the moose came wolves ; caribou began to grow less plentiful and deer were rapidly dispersed or killed by the wolf packs. It was as if the balance of Nature was swinging. The day I waited over on Hare Island was September 9, 1912. I knew that this was late in the year for a trip along the North Shore. All summer long it had been cold and windy, and the promise was of an early Fall, of bitter autumn gales — and yet the rowboat was better to travel in, perhaps, than another type of craft. I could haul the boat out on shore anywhere, but in a large boat I might be storm- bound, caught by a bad sea in an unsheltered place. If one contem- plates a journey on wide waters, this question of being able to haul up the beach is of great importance and should be well considered. A rowboat up the beach is much safer than a gasoline launch anchored off a windward shore when a gale is blowing. All along the North Shore the fishermen have no love for the fish laws that make them pay $50 for a pound net and $10 for a gill net license. In fact, the subject of game and fish preservation is one Canada's Fish License. 81 hard to understand and reduce to the best terms in written law. One thing shows the Canadian laws in a sad and unbecoming light. One inevitable law of Nature has been wilfully disregarded all along the lakes, and the country and the fishermen are paying the penalty. More fish have been caught than have been growing up. The consequence is fishing isn't as good as it used to be. Instead of providing for more fish, the country has not done anything worth mentioning. The United States, thirty or so years ago, started in to replace the fish that were netted by planting fish fry and fingerlings of all the kinds desirable in the Great Lakes. Perhaps Canada thought that the efforts of the United States meant easy fish for the Canadians. As a matter of fact the fish planted by the Americans did increase the supply on the American side and staved off, if it didn't prevent entirely, the annihilation of the food fish supplies. The planting on the American side, however, did not save the fishing on the Canadian side — there the fishing has grown poorer and poorer all the time and market fishermen find themselves suffering from the scarcity. Canada tried to make amends by high net license — a stroke that hurt the incomes of the fishermen still more. Then it tried the ex- pedient of reserving the spawning beds of the fish — only to buck up against the everlasting howl of politicians anxious to placate the fishermen. It was even necessary to pass a law forbidding the fishermen dumping the fish refuse overboard in the lakes and harbors, although the fish refuse rotting in the water, polluted it and drove the remaining fish away. Now thousands of tons of fish refuse is dumped on the bank, there to become the breeding place of insects ; in a land where gardens are few and sterile, that refuse would double the crop of potatoes and other roots along hundreds of miles of shore, and yet it is all wasted, and worse than wasted, for the stench around the fish docks is unbearable and the houses nearby are simply alive with flies. On the screens of Young's cabin he killed quarts of flies by throwing boiling water on the black masses of flies. Young had no real garden for the refuse; the strange part of this waste of offal is that it is worth $30 a ton on farms down east at least; in that wild 5 82 A Trip on the Great Lakes. and infertile land it is worth at least $50 a ton, as prices up that wa> go, but I saw none who use the fish offal so wastefully cast away. Even the spawn of the lake trout is thrown away by the ton, because the government permits fishing — perhaps because the fish com- panies are so powerful — during all the spawning season, none of the spawning beds being really efficiently protected, for the law against fishing nets across mouths of spawn bed streams is violated, and always will be violated as long as lake trout, black trout and other trout can be shipped during the spawning season. Stop the spawning season fishing and the lakes will again get their supply of lake trout and other trout; if the spawning season fishing is not stopped there will be no fishing left for anyone. There are other questions of this sort that are raised by the bountiful Nature that gave Canada uncounted lakes and streams of as pure water as there is anywhere in the world. There are countless lakes which could be developed into fish-raising aquariums, where tons upon tons of trout could be supplied to market, just as beef and mutton is supplied to market. Some of these lakes now have in them only a kind of little sucker that grows to a length of a few inches, and they are inaccessible to trout on account of impassible waterfalls along the streams. Other lakes, on streams that are not blocked, are alive with brook trout, which in some future day will make the Canadian Desert a great source of supply of trout and other good fish ; but the Canadians must wake up and tend to business — being very proud of business, apparently, although pseudo-business is often their chief concern now, and they don't know it. When, on the 10th, I pulled out from Hare Island and rounded Thunder Cape, I was wondering what strange country I would see. I had no idea what to look forward to — utterly no memory of thing read or heard of to help my imagination, except one fact that was stirring and hopeful in its suggestion. Along this North Shore, through these waters and along this very land, years ago, more than two hundred years before, the Indians had paddled their canoes and the fur-traders had paddled their canoes, laden with bales of skins on their way eastward toward the Canada's Fish License. 83 84 A Trip on the Great Lakes. Soo and Montreal. I was in the wake of the great fur trade, and if they had gone in canoes, there was no reason why I should not go in a well built skiff; that much was reassuring. It did not dawn on me that the shore would be much the same now as it was then, that there would be only a few settlers along the shore, that the visible changes along most of the way would be only such as criminal carelessness with wilderness fires had made and an occasional cabin almost invisible among the trees and stones. I had expected a semi-wild country and had created a vision from ex- perience in the trailed and blazed Adirondacks, and in the mountains of the South, where the valleys are cleared and in farms and the mountain tops covered with skinned woods. A few minutes after rounding Thunder Cape the tremendous truth was revealed to my astonished and startled gaze. That vast face of tree-grown and frost-splintered rocks was the same, and in the same condition as when the first French Courier de Bois came that way with his new found duskv friends. CHAPTER VII. A Region of Big Game. ALONE between the wilderness and the sea — this was where I found myself on that bright morning off Thunder Cape's vast heap of jagged stone. There was really the home of the moose, the sauntering ground of the bear, but it was some time, and I made a good many miles before I fully sensed the wilderness quality of the shore. I had yet to under- stand that the people there were miles apart, that when I did see any one, he was likely to be the only man anywhere within miles — that the scattered habitations along the lake shore were all the habitations in that whole region, barring scattered settlements along the railroad, forty miles or so away, and that between that lake shore and the railroad hardly a trapper's cabin, hardly a trail, marked the presence of mankind in those tumbled stonelands. Sight of that shore startled me a good deal, for I had not antici- pated the character of the country. My memory of the Lake Erie shore had been of a long sand beach along which one could stroll for miles — but I had not thought so far as to consider a coast with per- pendicular rocks at the water edge — a shore that one could not follow, except in a boat. Suppose I should punch a hole in my boat? I had meant to get some tacks so that if I should break in the boat bottom I could cover the hole with waterproof muslin or rubber cloth. Now T recalled that well-meaning, and determined to stop at Silver Island and get the tacks. They spoke of Silver Island at Fort William as a "summer resort," and my prejudices had been instantly aroused. I had no wish to see a summer resort ; they are an abomination, summer resorts are. Now, I felt obliged to stop at Silver Island and buy some tacks. I did not know where it was, but skirting along the shore I ran in behind an island where a dock appeared on the mainland, and on the dock was a 85 86 A Trip on the Great Lakes. wharf house, with sundry young men in sight, and a slender youth wHg looked exactly like a summer resort youth, to my prejudiced eyes. However, I landed in, after passing by, and found tacks there. If I had only known what I heard two hundred miles down the coast ! The kindly captain there was Cap'n Cross, and the stocky young man there was his son. They have, I was told, 300 mink in captivity in pens there at Silver Island, and refused $1,000 for one hundred of the mink, preferring to keep them for breeding. They have several silver foxes in captivity, and other foxes — and I came right past with never a word about that fur farm, the very thing I would most have enjoyed seeing and asking questions about. More- over, that young Cross was out one day last spring looking for a strayed cow, when he found a moose calf that a bear had killed. As he looked at the calf the cow-moose charged him, chased him and ran him to a bluf¥, so that he had the choice of jumping or fighting the cow. He jumped into a birch treetop and most broke his knee. The cow jumped after him and broke her ankle. Then the two raced for the town. The young man reached an abandoned ore reduction plant, and took refuge in the machinery, the moose rearing around, trying to tear him out, and succeeding in making the plank fly. The do:is of Silver Island heard the racket and came on the jump, and they managed to drive the cow moose to cover. Perhaps distance makes the stories larger, but at least, Silver Island was much more than a mere summer resort. I was there only ten minutes and drove on along the shore toward the east, for after my introduction to the wind, I knew that I must make haste while I could if I would get along. The North wind was strong, but it was an off- shore wind, and under the lee I did not feel it to amount to anything. The shore maintained its wildness with emphasis. A brushy woods and a rocky shore, and where I land.^d in for lunch in a little bay 1 found what looked like cow tracks in the sand, and I knew they could not be cow tracks, but must be mocse or caribou. I could not help but gaze with awe at that land. I had no firearms of any kind with me, not even a revolver or pistol, and as I realized this I could not help but feel just a little A Region of Big Game. 87 apprehension and doubt, wondering was it wisdom on the part of a traveler there to be unarmed? I don't think it was wise; having no hunting Hcense and desiring none, it would not have been worth while to have a rifle or shotgun, but at least a good, healthy revolver or automatic pistol would have made me feel more comfortable, especially as a few days later I heard wolf stories — not the old-time man-treeing kind, but thoroughly up-to-date wolf pack kinds. Of course, wolves seldom attack men, but in a wolf country one would better be ready for the unexpected and unlikely. Of course, if I stopped to think about the wolves and wild animals, it was not so much to worry about them as to gloat over the fact that I was there and that they were there, and that I had at last reached the real wilderness, home of moose and caribou and wolves. Away back in the great timber lands, in the wild fastnesses of the rocks and deserts, live those men who hear the wolves howl every night and who have only to step a few rods from camp to find the tracks of big game — I wonder do these people know the sensations of those who are strangers to their experiences and manner of lives, when these strangers enter the country of big game? Sorrlehow, a good deal that seemed like very important wild life in my previous experiences sud- denly revealed itself as almost make-believe in its simpleness and narrowness, its proximity to civilization and farmlands. At Black Bay I found a problem before me which was embarrass- ing. The North wind came down twenty or thirty miles of Black Bay, and where I was the waves were rolling up pretty high and breaking with a sharp rush that was disquieting. I did not know whether it would be safe to attempt to cross the bay or not — and I was there to do nothing foolhardy — to take no chance. I had much to learn about waves and tide water. I know now that those waves were not at all bad and that there was- no danger in them for me, but I ran along the shore up the bay a ways, and as I crossed one little bay I saw some- thing jump back from the bank. It looked much too large for a deer, and I surmised it might be a caribou, but do not know, for it was gone too quick to see clearly. 88 A Trip on the Great Lakes. A pound net on a point some distance above indicated fishermen, and as I went out to the pound, I ran into the waves, took them with- out difficulty or danger, and knew that I could get out to the islands in the bay, so I pulled out to them, not unconscious of the chance of the wind increasing a good deal. Under the lee of the islands I looked farther across to the east shore and tried to pick the opening through the islands there toward which I should head. The islands were so close together that I could not see the channels among them, nor the bays the map showed. However, I pulled that way and in something like an hour the channels and bays came into sight, but it was luck, mostly, that carried me into the right channel that led between Porphyry Point and Edward Island — just a little channel a few rods wide going into a deep wooded gap. I had little expectation of finding anyone in that maze of channels, but I knew that there was a fisherman on Magnet Island. As I pulled toward Magnet Island I spied a launch anchored ahead of me, and when I reached it found two men towing firewood logs. They were from the Porphyry lighthouse, and said that the fisherman was "straight ahead." I went on and soon seemed lost among little islands and large. I could see Magnet Island, a long and wooded island, plain enough and with the wind that was blowing, I hesitated to brave the waves — yet they were not bad. I saw, at last, two big wooden triangles on posts, and surmised that a steamboat channel was there. I rowed around to the outside of Magnet Island and found only a barren shore. I had hoped for a snug harbor with safe landing at a fisherman's cabin. Now, I gave up trying to find the fisherman I knew was somewhere within a few miles of the place, and pulled back to the wooden triangle and started down a narrow channel, looking for a place to camp in on some little island, I was no sooner in the narrows than I spied a pound net pile driver, and a moment later some little cabins. There was smoke from the cabin stacks and men under the trees. I ran in, having found the fishermen, and learned a lesson. They had told me the fishermen were on Magnet Island; but they were, in fact, on a little island near Magnet Island, off Magnet Point. Other fisher- A Region of Big Game. 89 90 A Trip on the Great Lakes. men, said to be on other large islands, proved to be nearby on small, unnamed islands. Unless one has the habit of finding places meagerly described, both woods and lake directions are apt to prove insufficient, for v^hat is ample direction for one man is for another hardly under- standable, and frequently I've found myself able, by the best attention to understand what any fisherman would know without being told. Somehow I've always been able to blunder through somehow, but many times I've reached my destination just when I was about to give up or had given up. It was almost dark when I reached Magnet Point and rowed in to the camp there. They were glad to welcome a stranger who would vary the monotony of life there between the woods and the water. One man was Louis Gague; the other Edmond Geaudreau, both of Port Arthur, where they live winters. Mrs. Gague was with them. They confirmed the idea that this was real wilderness. From there to the railroad was no one, while the islands and the mainland, the point of which- was marked by the wooden diamond signs, were covered with woods alive with game — with moose, bears and furbearers. Once in a while a trapper comes to those lands to trap, but the fur is not all caught up by any means. Otter and beaver are plenty and protected by law for some years to come. The wisdom of the Canadian Fathers is nowhere illustrated quite so clearly as by the law protecting the otters. Otters devour tens of thousands of fish, which are growing scarcer all the while, and the government, in its mighty wisdom, protects them. Of course, otter couldn't be exterminated in those islands, but some sports, gifted with more sentiment than knowledge, wanted otters protected, thinking, perhaps, they were on the same grade with beavers. Now, I will bring in ahead of time a suggestion made to me by Game Overseer Nuttall, of Port Arthur, whom I met at Port Coldwell, some scores of miles beyond Point Magnet, but whose remarks apply to this matter of protected otter and beaver, as well as to other fur. Nuttall said that the way to protect beaver and other fur is to have a five years' close season, followed by a five years' open season. That would give fur a chance to get going again, and yet not let it A Region of Big Game. 91 92 A Trip on the Great Lakes. become a nuisance the way otter and beaver, especially beaver, have become. The protection of beaver has caused them to spread all over the woods, and above Port Arthur there is a hundred thousand acres of pulp wood, worth more than all the beaver skins of Ontario, killed by the overflow of beaver dams. Here is something to think- about, this suggestion of Nuttall. Shut down the law on, say skunk, mink and muskrats for five years, where these animals are skinned out. Shut down only two years on muskrats, if that is enough, and then open two years ; the alternate open terms of years would result in ample fur and give the trappers better incomes than they can get anywhere now isn't this so? As night began to close down on us there at that little island camp a light suddenly gleamed and then shone far down the water in the eastward. It was miles away, five or six, and its sparkle there was particularly interesting and pleasing. It was a lighthouse, built there for the purpose of lighting the way of barges loaded with lake shore sand on their way to Port Arthur for use in buildings. Somehow, I do not remember having seen anything that seemed so lonesome as that light there on Great Shaganash Island. The place was so utterly away from everything, separated by islands and channels, and miles and woods from all but these fishermen on Magnet Island— the little island near Magnet— that it was almost depressing; and this feeling was often with me in the days to come, as I realized how far away these good people are from everything and every one, compelled to fight alone, almost, when it is standing together and using the combined strength and wisdom of all that makes mankind strong. My route in the morning, they told me at the Point Magnet camp, would be past the lighthouse and across Roche de Bout (boo) Bay, by way of Black Dock beyond. And in the morning calm, when I pulled out and headed away down the east, my sense of the wilderness and isolation had increased many fold, from listening to the remarks about moose and wolves and the farness of things from one another, bay from bay, island from island, man from man. I must not fail to stop in and see the Shaganash light-keeper, the fishermen said. One must be sociable in this region. His passing is an A Region of Big Game. 93 l««*l r 4- 94 A Trip on the Great Lakes. event of interest and importance, especially if he goes in a rowboat, and is more or less unlike other passersby, as a stranger voyaging on an old fur trade route. Shortly after I started the wind started up in puffs and became fairly brisk. I had a pole on board and a rectangle of muslin tied to it in a leg of mutton triangle sail, and it carried me along about four miles an hour, or as fast as I could have rov^ed. When I came to the light- house I rowed in and landed, somewhat to the surprise of the keeper, William lies Fairall, who finds there a pleasant summer home and place to view the world with philo:ophic happiness in its natural aspects. It was quite the most natural place I had seen, with water and islands and wild mainlands, untempered by rude or commercial hands of mankind. He fixed a boom on my sail for me and after a little visit, I started on again, heading for an island ten miles away down the bay, past which I should go to get to Black Dock, the next inhabited place along the route that I was following. CHAPTER VIII. In the Fishermen's Camp. AS I sailed down Roche de Bout the wind increased slowly, but steadily, and the harder it blew the higher the waves became; the more the waves kicked up the more I sat up and looked around, for if there is any one thing that looks big, it is a wave coming up astern, with a little curl on the crest of it. I was far from land — several miles — and that fact was disquieting, in an increasing sea, and the way to get to land was run with the wind into the higher waves down the lee. By the time I was down near that miles-distant island, the waves were jumping, not so awful much, but enough and to spare. I saw that with my knowledge of sailing, I'd better trust mostly to my oars, and so I let fall my sail and mast, and took to the oars, with which I felt more at ease. Now, noon was gone by, and I was hungry, and I wanted some- thing to eat. I pulled down the flank of the island, a large, rocky ridge covered with wilderness, and there I landed in a little bay. On the beach of gravel I built a fire. I sliced up some steak amd put it in the frying pan and fried it. Then I cooked some potatoes and it wasn't very long before I had a first-class meal. I should say of this steak that it was the first of the kind 1 had ever eaten. It was handed to me by a man who said it was good meat to eat, and that some time when I should get to cooking my own dinner, it would be dandy. And so I found it — moose. What was I doing with moose in September? I found that in that great unorganized territory the people are obliged to live on the game, if they would have fresh meat; they used common sense in the matter and wasted no wild meat, where meat is plenty. They would not tolerate, for a day, a game butcher or a mere sport, shoot- ing for fun, but they recognize the conditions as they are and the 95 96 A Trip on the Great Lakes. law is used for the benefit of the people, and not for the benefit of the gangs that call themselves "sports" and kill without hunger and waste without sense. The stranger in that country is warned not to kill game, however. The people are as jealous of their game as farmers are of their cattle, and for the same reason. A lone traveler would be a butcher to kill a moose, but I do not imagine any great furore would be made by most game overseers or local protectors if a man was caught skinning a rabbit or potting a partridge when he had no other fresh meat to fall back on. Anyhow, I had no gun, and moose meat tasted as good as any meat I ever ate. I ate about two pounds, and then went afloat again. The wind was still blowing, but along the shore was a kind of a lee, and I got well down in the narrows where I swung out in the mid-channel and rode the waves to my own delight, feeling that they were not bad. It was sunny and clear and so wild that I could imagine nothing wilder, though perhaps I might find places farther from civilization. As I rowed along, I looked at woods and waters, at bends and islands, at low mountains and stony ridges, and evergreen timber and bushy point and top, where I could feel life was free and savage. I could almost see bears and other creatures. Suddenly out of the left corners of my eyes I caught a flash. It was just a disturbance of water a long way off; when I looked to see what it was — a flicker in a little bay behind a point of rock. There was a black something in the water, quite too far for me to see what it was, but I knew it was game, and I pulled my boat about, started up wind and pulled for a screen behind the point, under which I could row in nearer and get a closer view. All the joys of hunting were mine just then. I had my camera and as soon as I was out of sight I fixed the camera for a shot. Then I ran in to the point and crawled up on the shrubby bank to get a sight of the animal, bear or whatever it was. As I raised to observe the creature I saw a sleek, nubby back and shoulders. As I studied it a shudder ran through the back, the muscles drew and then up out of the water reared the tawny horns and gnarly, homely head of a bull In the Fishermen's Camp. 97 I suppose a very large proportion of the readers are familiar with big game and have seen at least deer. I had seen hundreds of deer, and killed a few. I now looked for the first time upon a wild bull moose, from back to nose, and from prong to prong of his terrible horns. Ho, law, but he was a big brute! He chanked the weeds that he had rooted up out of the bay bottom, and the water ran down his palms and poured into the water in little water falls. His back was black, his horns yellow, his muzzle gray and his eyes the wickedest little glints of evil that I remember seeing outside of mink and white weasels. When he ducked his head for another mouthful I jumped for my camera, and crawfished over the point toward the bay. When I saw his back quiver and the muscles over his shoulders begin to hummock up, I stopped short and froze, and watched that stag rear up with flying water and blowing nostrils. An old buster of an ugly looking brute; my enthusiasm over a close inspection abated as I drew nearer and nearer to him with each submersion, and finally, when I was in the fringe of alders at the water's edge, I was close enough, though not so very close at that. I wished I hadn't tied the boat quite so tight on the other side, and I wondered if the brute would charge me, if he saw me, and I had lots of thoughts on stories of angry bull moose that I had read about. However, I adjusted my camera, and aimed it and focused it and when the animal's head was up and quiet I pressed the bulb — and had the sensation of my life. The sharp click of the camera was like a pistol shot, almost, there in the quiet, and Mr. Moose jerked his head around to look straight at me, and during that long inspection a blue-bottle fly strolled across the bridge of my nose and down one cheek and across my mustache, over my lower lip and around to my ear, and then the moose reached down into the water for another mouthful. Then I squared accounts with the blue-bottle fly. Again I tried to get a picture of the moose, and then I crawfished back across the point with one eye on the moose. Just as I reached the back of the ridge he lifted his head, scratched his ear with one 6 98 A Trip on the Great Lakes. hind hoof, shook himself violently and walked ashoie on the far side. I thought he must be two stories high, for the length of time it took him to get out of the water up the bank, and the way he kept looming up and up — it was a beautiful view of a bull moose, and I could have had no better anywhere under any circumstances, I feel sure. I was quite close enough to him, too. But the photographs proved too small for reproduction. Then I went on down the bay toward the foot of the large, long island opposite. I could not help but notice the restless way in which my eyes sought traces of mankind. The little surveyor's triangles on points and islands seemed to fairly stick out of the landscape. The pound net pole washed upon the beach caught the eye a long way off. A gap in the woods would suggest ax-felled trees. A glint of white or peaked or angular shape would call for another look to see if it was cabin or flash of tent. How keen the eye becomes for some friendly mark I discovered near the foot of the island. As I rowed along, wondering where Black Dock was and what it looked like, I suddenly picked up a faint white line up the bay at the foot of the island, now behind me. It was a long way off, and tlie line was not clear white, yet I felt that it was some kind of a boat. I searched the bank, and the island hillside, but the eye instantly dis- carded the thought that there was a camp there; there was no trace of a camp, except that boat whose shape I could not make out. I supposed it might be some hunter, and it was none of my busi- ness if it was a hunter, so I pulled on. I rowed on into narrowing channels and after awhile I came into a flock of islands in which 1 lost hope of finding Black Dock. Within five minutes I rounded a turn, entered a little channel, and there was a cabin on the open hill- side, fish net reels, a fish dock, and two men repairing an old boat. This was Black Dock. I needed no second look to know that those little children, romp- ing around, playing with a puppy and little play-boats in a tub of water, were part Indian — happy as children could be. This' was Dick's camp, and, of course, I could stay there, though the house was crowded In the Fishermen's Cj % 100 A Trip on the Great Lakes. and I should be obliged to sleep in the storehouse, which was no hard- ship. When I mentioned the boat up in the bay, they said it was berry pickers there. After awhile the berry pickers returned, an old Indian woman and an astonishing young woman, plainly a Scandinavian and pretty, with no trace of Indian in her face. She was the wife of one of the men, a half-breed employe of George Dick, the other man. When supper was ready I was taken up to eat, and after supper they wanted me to hear some music — a "talking" machine. The strange girl, of fair complexion and pretty figure, blue eyes and well- fitted dress, brought out record after record, and while the jig music filled the room two little Indian girls danced and cut down to the measure of the music — quite the prettiest sight that I had seen in many a day. They laughed and swayed and danced with all the abandon of otters at play; it was more fun than dancing oneself. I wondered about the mystery of the romance there — the Scan- danavian girl and the stoHd half-breed, as unlike as two mortals could be. Nor was I able to solve this little mystery, except in my imagina- tion, and this is no place for imaginative stories. All this shore was new ; every bay, island, point, channel and vista was different from all the other places. When I pulled out of Black Dock the next morning I went down among islands and through chan- nels, uncertain as to whether my course was true — and yet by the compass I was homeward bound. I passed islands and bays and lost my reckoning, but after a demonstration into a deep bay I saw the right course, and discovered the Hawk Island of the chart, which showed that I was on the right course toward Niplgon Straits — ■ Nipigon ! Oh, but to make that journey unhurried, with leisure to stroll and float and wander around! That would be splendid — that would be experience and satisfaction. But I was hurried. One does not linger and loiter with autumn at hand and the gales coming on apace. I glimpsed that long shore, but only as I leaned to my oars and pulled with persistance toward my far goal. I cut the corners, and crossed the mouths of bays. I went across the south end of a large In the Fishermen^s Camp. 101 Island just inside of Lamb Island light, and then headed across Nipigon Strait — toward the head of Fluor Island. That island looked ugly and forbidding as I started toward it. The stone and the slide at the foot of the stone seemed a repulsing mass. I looked at the sky and at the wind rifts on the water before I started. I was tempted to go up into Nipigon Bay — but that was the long way round. Accordingly, I went straight across, wondering where I would make a landing, where I would get ashore if the wind should blow up in one of those sudden gales that all warned me about. With lots of time I should have waited around there a week, drinking in the sweetness of nature — but I had to hurry. I crossed the Strait with no experience except the helpless feeling that comes of realizing that a thin sided boat is all that is between one and the blue depths of the lake. On the way I crossed a shoal where the waves heaved up without breaking — a mountain on the lake bottom. On Fluor Island, they told me, there was a fisherman's camp, and I did not know if there were any other fishermen anywhere beyond there or not. Fluor island was miles long, miles wide, with jagged contour and outline. To find fishermen on it I would have been obliged to row all the way around it and up into deep bays. I did not try to do that. Instead I pulled down the east side and put out my trolling line. I had a strike or two, but caught no fish. Such lake water I never had seen, considering it as a mere trout proposition. I had caught brook trout in lakes, and they were there, I knew by the looks, and also by the leap of two or three as I came along. Flies were over the water and one brook trout rolled up that looked like three pounds or so — another occasion for longing for more time. I did not know but what I might find the fishermen there, but seeing nothing of them on Fluor Island I settled down for a long pull into some waters, I did not know where. As I pulled I saw something white flash down the south, in a little hook of a bay. I looked, puzzled, for it was flash — flash — flash. I started across to investigate, and then to my surprise, I spied camps up the bank. 1 had found the fishermen on a little island near Fluor island — not on Fluor island as the directions had said. Where I turned to investigate 102 A Trip on the Great Lakes. was a little grassy creek, and this I learned later was Blind Channel, leading to Nipigon Bay. The white thing proved to be a little sailboat, owned by some kids. On the fish dock — and it smelled something terrible — were two Indian youths. They could not understand me, nor I understand them. I was in a pickle of doubt, for I could not tell where the next camp was, nor its distance. Somehow the idea of camping out alone on that weird shore bothered me. I didn't like to do it. It was some time before the Indians gesticulated toward a new camp and said: "Mrs. Willard— she talk!" In a new cabin, with tight screen doors, and clean as a peeled spruce, lived Mrs. Willard and her husband. She talked like a convent education and was comely and dignified — a woman who would not deny her Indian blood, for it added to her worth, without doubt. She could talk better English than I could talk, and if I could put down her words they would sound like a passage from Thackery, I'm sure, or, perhaps, from Stevenson. "Do you see that low island away down there? Right on that island you will find Frank Dampier, and he will set you on your right course, I am sure." She said it better than that, I know, and I should have waited to greet her husband, only I had no time — I must hurry, hurry, hurry on. A mile down the way I set up a snack and ate it, then pulled for the low island far down the island lane — miles and miles away — with a breeze freshing a bit, across the opening waters. CHAPTER IX. A Day With the Berry Pickers. AT Fluor Island, the Indians had canoes drawn up on the shore — birch bark canoes, which they had built of scalps of birch, cedar rib splints, and spruce gum glue. I had never seen canoes in their native land before — not birch bark ones, and I wanted to take my hat off to these crafts which looked as light as they were. They gave me something to think about as I pulled down the shore headed for the fisherman's camp somewhere on the low island, ten miles from Fluor Island. There had been something forbidding about the shore all the way down to this place from Fort William. There was a menace to the red rock blufifs, and a bitterness in the frowning, jagged islands — I had felt it all along, and now realized that I had sensed the reserve and repulse of the stones and the starved woods. But from Fluor Island onward for a ways, the islands were lower, the shores showed more beach, the character of the woods was less brittle and hard — the branches looked less like thorns and briars. It was such a place as I would expect the Indians to call "This is where we rest," or some such name. Certain it was that for ten miles, the invitation to camp down and enjoy the scene was like a voice. There were island shores all along the way, and the bays were sheltered, the channels narrow and comfortable — not the vast breadths of the lake and great bays. To the northward was the vast pile of St, Ignace island, with a shore full of nooks and crannies, and low points extended out from all directions. Here and there I could catch glimpses of the lake between islands, and as I neared the bay of Little St. Ignace Island, I had a few minutes of heavy sea among some jagged rocks that were just awash. Within the bay, it was quiet and serene, with low "picnic shores" extending in all directions, in a bay of wide repose and inviting havens. 103 104 A Trip on the Great Lakes. A Day With the Berry Pickers. 105 As far as I could see along those shores, there was sand beach and low forest, camping grounds for thousands, and one sail was in sight. It was reddish brown sails on a schooner of small size; the owner had dipped the sail in net tan to preserve it, and it made a very- pretty sail. I had my own sail up, and cruised that way, but the boat beat up the wind and out of sight, so I went on across toward the low island on which the fisherman was said to be camping. I spied a low craft and making toward it, was left far astern for it was a gasolene boat ; but it stopped at a net buoy, and I stopped there, wait- ing the return of the fishermen who were hauling a gill net in a punt. The fishermen were Frank" Dampier and his boy Charley, and they towed me to their camp, on the far side of the low island, and, of course, not on it, but across a bit of a bay on the point of Little St. Ignace island. Here there was a Httle cabin, the fisherman's, and a tent, belonging to berry pickers, and across the bay on gravel island, was another tent of berry pickers. When Dampier had heard who I was, and remembered hearing that I was coming along — gossip travels fast there on the North Shore — he said I'd better wait over a day and go in with Paulmart's tug, which would go to Rossport on Saturday. I would have preferred to row, but I was hurried, so I decided to take the tug, and I was two nights on Little St. Ignace. The place is alive with rabbits, and many partridges are on the island. There is a bit of clearing on the island point, and that is an old, old clearing. For years, perhaps hundreds of years, that was a camping ground, and some years ago, it was a settlement of fishermen, but the waters round about have been fished too hard, and the people have moved over to the railroad. Now it is Dampier's camp, and women folks come in sail boats and tugs to pick huckleberries, sand cranberries, and other kinds of cranberries which abound thereabouts. I heard some moose stories here — stories of riding a moose in the water in a punt, killing a moose with a hammer, of seeing seven- teen moose at once in one bay — all the stories, I think, that one hears in a big game country. Also I heard what wonderful shots some of them are in the North Country, dropping moose every whack at 600 yards — apparently, 600 yards is the standard long range at which to lOG A Tkip on thk Great Lakes. drop a moose, and to shoot him behind the ear with a 22 short in the water at seven feet is the standard short range moose killing distance. In the morning, it was raining and there was a hard wind. The berry pickers were little daunted, however, and two women crossed to the gravel island pulling the oars' of the punt like veterans of the sea, though they were young. They returned in a few hours, wet as could be. Their tent had been set up without fore and aft guy lines, and it collapsed, but we men fixed it up for them, with trot line guys, and it stayed up. Tliis region is the happy cruising ground of all sorts of craft ; one man in a gasolene boat 18 feet long, another in a ca,r.oe, a third in a little sail boat, these are some of the lone travelers who make that shore. Campers come along in large launches and yachts, in sail boats and tugs and steamboats ; many pairs of campers and travelers come along in canoes, and other small boats. But it is so far from everywhere that in the aggregate few have time to get to that region. If any one has a desire to commune with nature, and desires to be alone, let him get into this North Shore, seek out some far back bay, and he may get through the summer with few or no visitors and no neighbors within miles and miles. In the fall and spring, during the migrations, the fishermen catch thousands of ducks in their fish nets along this shore — a hundred to three or four hundred at once, and there are those that think that in this way the game supply is being depleted. I found them talking about the migration of moose along the North Shore — how the moose had come along and driven the caribou and Virginia deer out of the woods ; or at least, the wolves that came with the moose drove out the caribou, and deer. Also, the wolves have interfered with the fur supply, treeing lynx and chasing them out of the country, and killing off the fishers, mostly the males, so that trappers get four or five female fishers to one male in their catch. In Paulmart's tug, with my skiff towing behind, I went to Rossport, in a considerable sea. Charley Dampier wanted to ride in the skiff, and lying back on the duffle, he went to sleep. The skiff jumped and A Day With the Berry Pickers. 107 rolled, so much so that I was afraid it would capsize, but when I mentioned my fears to the father he remarked : "He's only got once to die, anyhow!" As a matter of fact, the old fishermen saw little to worry them in the waves that were rolling. At the wheel of the fish tug was Paulmart's boy, a lad of nine or ten years, steering by compass in the fog, and by the water ahead when the fog lifted. His father fired ; I could not help but exclaim my admiration for this part of the training of boys on the North Shore. Yet the sad part of it is that many of those North Shore lads are compelled to help their fathers, and are kept out of school to save deck hand and wheelman hire. The result is that the boys, some of the brightest and most capable in Canada are growing up scarcely able to read or write, and scarcely capable of competing with less able but better educated children. The father who cannot read or write, says what was good enough for him is good enough for his boys. Rossport was just a little settlement in an old burning beside the railroad — a store, a few houses and a fish dock or two, and a little hotel. I was here only over night, and then I went on in the morning in my rowboat, headed for Coldwell sixty or seventy miles down the coast. All this part of the lake shore is desolate. The railroad has burned off all the timber to save the expense of fire patrols who would have saved some millions of dollars worth of lumber and pulp. The jagged rocks showed above the shrubs and low second growth. It was a thoroughly disagreeable shore to look at, because there was the plain evidence of the folly and the greed of men. The Indians pick many berries on that barren, however, and as I rowed along, I saw man}- camps and little wigwams and cabins and shacks where Indians and other campers had stopped a while. A few of these camps were occu- pied, but once I rounded out at the Schrieber Point, there was scant sign of humanity anywhere. On the south was the broad lake and on the north the burned rocks. I rowed about twenty miles and then came to Black River, a stream that tumbles down over the rocks into a little sandbar bay in a larger 108 A Trip on the Great Lakes. bay, and here I camped for the night. I built a fire on the beach, and cooked supper. Then I thought of putting up my cot on the sand, but on second thought, I decided not to. I cast anchor and let the boat swing in the bay. I put up the waterproofed cloth on the hoops, and set up the cot inside. At dark, I rolled up in my blankets and went to sleep. One mistake I made. I had the muslin lap the wrong way, and the wind from the bow worked under the muslin and made cold chills creep over me until I had made the lap fish-scale-like from bow to stern. I had just gone nicely to sleep when suddenly, I sat up straight and wide awake, roused by a sound new to me — a noise that came through the roar of the waterfalls like a maul. I listened, and heard it again, a long, ascending howl that filled all that part of the land- scape with shudders. I made up my mind that this must be a wolf, though I had never heard a wolf. In the morning, when I went on the sandbar again, I found the track of a wolf, I think — about four inches across and like a dog, scuffling in the loose sand. It was so cold — the coldest night and the hardest freeze so far on the trip — that I rowed an hour or two before getting breakfast, and when the sun was well up, I went ashore to get the meal. Then I settled down to split the miles. I had no idea how far I could go that day, but as the morning went by, a west breeze sprang up and every stroke I pulled was helped by the wind. I cut the corners, going across from point to point, and when I came to L'Anse a la Boutilles, in mid afternoon, inside of Slate Islands, the choice opened before me of going thirty or forty miles around the shore of Mc- Kellar's Bay or heading straight across, twelve or fourteen miles to Pic Island strait. The wind was favorable, and the only question was would it be too strong before I got across? I was rowing, with the sail up, and after some calculation, I made up my mind that I could make it. Away I went, and the miles dropped behind me as on no other day in the row boat. I made the crossing in less than three hours — so much less that my rate of progress must have been more than six miles an hour, thanks to the sail. However, I was mighty glad to get under A Day With the Berry Pickers. 109 the lee of Pic Island, for the wind increased slowly, and steadily, out of the southwest, and the boat was jumping when I entered the strait. In the calm of the strait, I took stock of the time, and found that I had time enough to make Port Coldwell, if I could find it. I settled down to a long stroke, shot through the shallow waters of Little Pic Island straits, and headed down the rock bluffs that lead north to Port Coldwell. Night was coming on rapidly, and I began to wonder if I was on the right course. I turned down into one bay, only to find nothing there, and just as I was making up my mind to go ashore and camp in the early twilight, a whiff of tainted wind came along. It carried the unmistakable odor of decaying fish, and I knew the town could not be far distant A minute later, I saw a steam tug come out of a gap, or split in a huge cliff, and went in through a canon, and there was Port Coldwell, — four houses, a fish dock and some net reels. So much for going by guess and by chart, and trying to read the water trails. I had rowed more than forty- miles this day, helped by three hours' sailing. It was the longest day's trip in the skiff, as events proved. In Port Coldwell I found camps of Indian berry pickers up near the railroad, and saw the Indian men and women bringing in their boxes and pails of berries. They received sixty cents a basket of about eight quarts, which enabled them to earn two or three dollars a day. One woman earned $4.00 a day, and some of the families could pick six or eight dollars worth of the berries a day. I could not help but compare their opportunities for amassing money and securing prop- erty with the spend-thrift way of their buying and wasting things. With all their earnings, they could not be sure but that in mid-winter, they would strike a rabbit famine and have to go hungry for a long while. They could not tell whether they would need canned fruit ; they put down no berries for winter use, but sold the wild berries and bought fruit in tin cans to eat in their tents and wigwams ! Such is their improvidence, their neglect and ignorance of the future. At Port Coldwell, I found another stroke of good luck waiting for me. By waiting over a day — and that day it stormed, — I would be able to go down the wild eastend coast of Lake Superior forty miles no A Trip on the Great Lakes. A Day With the Berry Pickers. Ill in a fish tug which happened to be going that way to try its hick. And this day of delay was a stormy one, on which I could hardly have moved at all. Surely the season was getting late, and a day on which I could travel was apt to be succeeded by a day of wind and storm — even by many days of gale and rain, as I soon was to discover. In a rising wind, came the little brown cruising launch, The Pirate, the hunting craft of Game Overseer Nuttall of Port Arthur, who watches all this coast from the American line around to Otter Head, 300 miles. Some- thing of his life is worth mentioning, if only as a warning to those who imagine the game protectors of the Dominion do not know all about the wilderness and that it would be easy to keep out of the way of the game laws. CHAPTER X. North Shore Game Overseers. GAME and Fish Overseer, A. W. Nuttall, with an assistant, Bert Spears — who had wondered who it was named Spears that wrote stories and articles for Camp & Trail and Hunter-Trader-Trapper, and now was surprised to meet him face to face, but no one need be surprised for writers for these publications are far-rangers — had just been down to Otter Head. They had started from Port Arthur and came along the coast, running into every nook and cranny and taking little tramps back up on the islands and mainlands. They knew me, for they had picked up my trail at Silver Island, and passed me somewhere along the route, perhaps through Nipigon Bay when I took the outside course. If I had been up to any mis- chief there and any one along the coast had known I was up to mischief, then the Game Overseer would at least have known about it. Mighty little escapes the attention of that North Shore game pro- tector, and one would better come pretty near being well acquainted with a locality before trying any short cuts with the game and fish laws there. It is a great life, the game protector leads. He scurries from bay to bay, through channels and straits and up rivers. He crosses islands on foot, and takes looks at moose wallows and bear holes and wolf runs — he keeps tab not only on the men who might violate the law, but on the wild life. He is an old trapper, and has caught many silver and black fo«es. He fished for market for a long time. He has mine claims of various kinds — a thoroughly busy man, Nuttall is one who knows his game protecting business, and he knows how to go about saving the game from butchery ; and yet he knows the difference between making the laws an oppression and a menace and keeping the laws in good order among the people of that wild land. If I were 112 North Shore Game Overseers. 113 hungry and killed a moose, I imagine that the game protector would give me a lesson in economy as soon as he could get his hands on my collar. The lone traveler has no need of killing a moose; but if I should kill a rabbit or two and some partridges, even if I didn't have a hunting license, I should imagine that, far from a source of supplies, my indiscretion would be viewed according to the circumstances. But here the trespassers would better think twice before trusting to all game overseers. There are some good fellows among the game protectors — men who understand that game laws are for the benefit of humanity, and not for the benefit, particularly, of game. There are game protectors who would not hesitate to nab the man who, starving, had shot a grouse. There have been game protectors who, asked for a license to fish on Lizard Island, would send a sick man a hundred miles to Pilot Harbor, say. There was one game protector who served notice on the keeper of a lighthouse, fifty miles from the base of supplies, that the keeper must not set an old gill net for an occasional trout! This overseer arrested surveyors who killed grouse fifty miles back in the woods. But Game Protector Nuttall is not of that sort. He uses common sense in the enforcement of game laws, and if I had had a gun he would not have questioned my intelligence half as much as he did when he found that I was making the North Shore trip without a firearm of any sort. And yet, judging from what I heard, a gun or rifle in my skiff on another lake shore beat would have been regarded as ample cause for hauling me before a justice and making me as much trouble as a narrow mind and martinet heart could devise. Had I happened to meet Nuttall a few days back I would have had a long and informing trip with him along the coast, but as it was I had only a little talk with him. However, I had my tow down the northeast shore with Will Dampier, son of Frank Dampier, of Ross- port and Little St. Ignace, and learned much about the tug fishing business. Down this shore Nuttall had seen, on one little sand-bar near Swallow River, the tracks of a hundred wolves, as if they had come there for game or on a trail. 7 114 A Trip on the Great Lakes. North Shore Game Overseers. 115 With this bit of information in my head, I was not particularly anxious to camp down on the mainland along the lake shore. The wolves, I was told, were not at all apt to attack a man, or menace him, and yet there is always the chance that a pack will turn on a man; one would better be on the safe side. It is the height of folly to take a needless chance of any kind. With my skiff on the tug, and with a wind rising, we headed out of the Port Coldwell canyon and into the open lake, across to the northeast shore, striking it below Port Huron and Pic River, at which point the railroad strikes into the heart of the rocky desert and leaves the lake shore without settlement for more than a hundred miles, to Michipicoten. Some miles down the shore the timber covered the hills, but in places there had been forest fires and the timber was black and dead. There were no fishermen along here in cabins or camps, and only the tugs make occasional visits along the coast at this time of the year. A little later, perhaps, some trapper would appear and make his headquarters there, but it is such a far place from anywhere that few visit it, and the Winter frequently finds only a man or two along the whole coast from Pic River Mission to Michipicoten. In fact, a few years ago, the Wilsons, father and son, found that for many years there had been no trapper along forty or fifty miles of the coast, and they came there to trap. They caught many thou- sands of dollars worth of fur, some placing the figures as high as $25,000 in five years, including mink, marten, fisher, lynx and foxes, but only one silver fox. Their trapping ended in tragedy, however, for the son found the father dead in one of the line wigwams a year ago last March on his trapping rounds. It is so far from anywhere that few could or would venture to spend the Winter there, and yet occasionally a tenderfoot comes to the coast with sad results. We went into several bays, many splendid harbors for shelter of small craft, and in the course of the day got down to Spruce Bay, or Triangle Harbor, where we anchored for the night. It was a lonely bay, surrounded by woods with a narrow entrance. A cabin that had stood on the shore was burned down, and the open was growing up 116 A Trip on the Great Lakes. to brush. Five miles beyond, on Otter Island, was a lighthouse, and in the morning, as the fish tug started back along the shore to Port Coldwell, I rowed down to Otter Island. It was a pretty morning, with a little breeze, and I thought that I would get far that day. I crossed to the island, two miles, just to say "good morning," and perhaps stay an hour gossiping. There was no one in the cottage, so I circled the cottage to find the path to the light. I found a track in the briers, which I thought was a cow track, and then I struck the trail to the lighthouse on the point of the island. The lighthouse was empty, so I returned and found a man gazing at the skiff. He had been out after firewood, he said, and his name was Capt. McEneny, the keeper. I told him who I was, and then he said : *T wasn't expecting you for a week or ten days !" The game overseer, Nuttall, had told him I was coming but my tow into Rossport and ride down to Triangle had speeded me on my way. We talked awhile and then I said I guessed I'd better be moving on. "No," he said, "I don't think you will, not for a few days. You see, there is a big storm coming and the wind has come up a good deal —look!" He pointed out on the lake, and there was the flashing white of waves rolling against the rocks, and as far as I could see through the narrow pass out to the wide spaces the water was flecked with whitecaps. In an hour the barometer's threat had made good — and the lighthouse keeper knew what to expect, and I did not. A long storm had set in. I had arrived just in time at the most comfortable place on 110 miles of shore to wait the passing of the storm. Capt. McEneny had lived on that island during the months of navigation for many years, and he knew what had taken place along that savage coast, if any one did. He was a good host. I asked about his cows and he stared at me. "I have no cows — " "But I saw their tracks up there in your back yard !" "Let us go look at those cow tracks," he said, so we went to look, and when I had picked up the trail again, he said that it was North Shore Game Overseers. Ill ^"-- ^-- ^s..^f^m^m^^-}m^^: OTTER ISLAND LIGHT. 118 A Trip on the Great Lakes. caribou. During the Spring he killed three wolves in the clearing, one from his bedroom window and two from the side door. There were seven in the pack, probably a litter of some she wolf that came across to the island on the ice. There could have been no surer indication of the loneliness of our situation, there on that island, as a southwester came swaggering up over the vast breadth of Lake Superior. The waves rolled in and exploded against the jagged s-tone, or broke over the steep slopes of the sands. The wind hissed and whined through the stiff evergreen tree branches, and an occasional gull or crow sailed into the storm. The lighthouse keeper said that it was fifty-five miles to the nearest base of supplies, and that night there were no other men along a hundred miles of coast. It is too far for most people to go there; it is too wild for the tenderfoot, too desolate for the average sportsman, too dangerous for most lone hunters, and yet some few do go there to be next to Nature and to enjoy the sport that is to be had there. A few gasoline boats, an occasional sailing yacht, a canoeman — these are the men who visit that northeast shore. They catch large trout, mostly. None of them go there for fun in the autumn, when the hunting season is on — it would not be safe for the ordinary boatman and woodsroamer. Two men came there a year ago to trap in those woods, having heard of the luck of the Wilsons. They brought No. traps by the score, and they had a few traps of larger size. The Wilsons had used double springs almost, if not quite exclusively. The two new- comers ran out of grub along in late February, though the land is alive with rabbits, and they came to the lighthouse and went in. When the keeper arrived there in April he found that they had eaten a hundred pounds of flour, beans, peas, bacon, salt pork — had eaten nearly all his supplies, in fact. What they would have done without them it is hard to say. They had no fur, apparently, and they were in a leaky little skiff. Imagine the ignorance and folly of two men who came to a Winter coast inaccessible for months, without enough food to see them North Shore Game Overseers. 119 through, and improperly equipped for the trapping they had to do — No. traps for fisher! Of course, any trap in that country is Hkely to get a fisher, lynx, marten, mink — and one cannot use the little traps, except on muskrats, and even for those No. Jumps are pretty small. Wolves menace the trapper; bears are found along that shore — no tenderfoot, no mere muskrat and skunk trapper should venture there. On this shore, as in other parts of the real trapping country, a trapper who runs out his lines is free from the lines of other trappers. There is little or no trespassing on one another's trapping grounds, and the foreign trapper — the American — must pay $20 trapping- license. Much of the country is covered by Indian, half-breed and white men lines, and a trapper thinking of going to that region would do well first to look the country over and talk to other trappers of the locality before going in to put up cabins and making trails. Trappers of that land go to their country in late August or early September to get ready for the Winter. They cut trails, build a main camp and line wigwams, cut firewood, make fish scent baits, build trap cubbies and dig root cellars for potatoes, cabbages, etc. After the lines are established and the traps distributed, the trappers — two together — are able to make money the second year and need not go in so early in the season. It costs about $600 to outfit two trappers for a North Shore trapping campaign, and this means only a little boat; one slaould have a staunch gasoline cabin boat, small enough to haul up the bank for the Winter, but many trappers use only small sailboats. CHAPTER XI. A Desolate Abode. 1AM not sure but what I should like to be a lighthouse-keeper on some bleak shore for a summer. One lights the oil lamp at night and blows it out in the morning; that is the work to be done for the government. Besides, one must sometimes paint the buildings, and keep them clean. Wood for the fires must be collected during the calm weather, from the drift along the shore. There is cooking and washing and scrubbing out once in a while. Perhaps, all told, there are three hours work a day the season through. That leaves twenty-one hours for sleep and other things. The other things to do are numerous; fishing till one is sick of it; gather- ing gull eggs in season; picking berries in season; killing a bird or other game for potpies from time to time; reading, if one has books; studying nature, if one has the inclination; doing one's own work if there is work one can do there. I do not imagine that women folks would like to be on an island; there are many good business opportunities along the North Shore, which promise good money, but the owners have wives who cannot stand the desolation of the bleak stones and the evergreen wilderness, the loneliness and lack of companionship. Capt.' McEneny carried a broom stick with him when he crossed to the light, night- and morning, "It is to keep the wolves off!" he explained. That tells in brief emphasis the condition on the island. I found here plenty of emphasis of the storm phase of Lake Superior life. The wind blew steadily, working around a little to the west and almost to the northwest in the course of days. The barometer in the cottage held around 29J, and the man shook his head as he watched the waverings of the needle. "I'm glad of your company," he said, "But the first fair day, 120 A Desolate Abode. 121 you'd better pull down the shore. There may not be two fair days for a month, this time of the year. I've seen gale follow gale day after day!" This gale lasted from September 20 through to September 27, or seven days. During those seven days I found the question of food supply bothering me. I had about twelve or fifteen days' sup- plies, but they were flour, potatoes, and bacon, nothing fancy, but mere rations. To make up the difference between what I had and what the Captain set up, I went forth and got fresh meat; it was a case of necessity, and I felt justified in shooting a bit, even if I was a non-resident. I got what we needed for some potpies, and there were plenty of fish in the lake, which gave us variety. I could cook and so could the Captain. We got along well together. One day I crossed the bay, which was partly sheltered from the wind, and landed at Twin Falls, hauled my boat up and went inland. I wanted to see what kind of a country it was in back. There was a trail from the top of the rocks, over one of the old Wilson trap lines, and I looked for it. It was a climb of a hundred feet to the top of the rocks, and then I found myself in a spruce thicket. The trees stood hardly a foot apart in places, and it was as much like an Adirondack balsam swamp as anything else, including some of the balsams. I could see hardly twenty feet in places, and' in the opens, bare rocks, and boulders obstructed the view. I did not find the trail, at first, but as I was following the lay of the land up a sort of flat between two cliffs of rocks, I discovered a blaze mark on a tree, and with this to work from I soon had the trail under foot. It was five or six years old, but had been re-blazed here and there by some summer sportsman, and even a few wind-falls and brush had been trimmed out. The trapper Wilson who made the trail, had trimmed it out a good deal, evidently having tramped along, ax in hand. I followed it back for several hours, and it was a good trail to walk over, and easy to follow, as it led along the crest of the river bank, which here was a hundred feet or more high. The woods seemed to have lots of partridges, but I saw no ^22 A Trip on the Great Lakes. A TRAPPER'S BARK WIGWAM. THE RETURN TRIP ALONG THE 1^ :th kSHore of lake superior. A Desolate Abode. 127 rabbits. The moose and caribou had been through there recently, as I now could tell by their trails. I saw fur sign, too, fisher I think, and marten, and on the river rocks, mink. But it was a hard hunting country. The timber was so thick that I had to turn sideways to get between some trees, and the limbs were so thick that I could see only a few yards, except in occasional clumps of hardwood — birch — where the leaves hanging on screened the distances. The leaves were turning yellow, however, and ten days later, I surely would have been glad to tramp those woods with a good rifle. It was not hard to stillhunt, but with thick leather soles on my shoes I made noise, of course, and getting near big game would have been an accident, and yet once I heard the rush of some animal a little ways from me that must have been a bull, for I could hear the horns striking, as I had heard deer horns in thick cover in my own country. This ten or twelve mile walk in the thick timber told me more about the woods than any number of miles coasting along the shore could have done, and when I returned I had a very definite idea of the "feel" of the Canadian wilderness — woodsmen know what I mean. One likes to try the woods just as a man likes to try the rifle that is new, or the fishrod that he joints up. But for a real try, I would have been obliged to carry a good carbine rifle — a carbine is certainly the best barrel length to carry in that kind of timber — and get a whack at some one of those huge creatures with tracks half a foot, more or less, across. I came back to the top of the rocks, and a blast of wind struck me in the face, once I was clear of the timber. I had not noticed the rising of the wind; the gale had shifted around, and now the waves were pounding in on the beach where I had landed. When I got down to the boat, the waves were rolling up and throw- ing some over the stern of the skifT, although I had drawn it up a good ways. I was in a pretty pickle, with no shelter, a little lunch, two or three birds, and a pounding in of waves. I looked at those waves, and at first did not dare to try to launch my skif¥ in them. I went 128 A Trip on the Great Lakes. for a walk through one of those knee-deep mossy swamps and re- turned in an hour, to find the wind»slowly rising, and the appearance of a rain storm setting in. I might be there a week, if I didn't get across to the cottage. I must make a try to get across, or else build .a shelter there, and draw my belt tighter for my forthcoming meals. In the Twin Falls bay is a large gull rock, and the waves were breaking over these, but my boat, behind these rocks caught only the sidewash when I shoved out to try the sea. Then I watched my chance, and when the three big waves of a sea had broken in, I pulled out and headed into the little waves that followed — little ! The first one broke over the bow of the skiff and solid water shot across the little deck and hit me in the back like a saw log, cold and clammy. I pulled, and the next wave was a little less, and then I rode the next breaker in safety, and got out in the swell, where my boat would have ridden them had they been twelve feet high, so long as they did not break too bad. Well, I pulled across to the island against the wind and was right glad to get under the lee, and into the little harbor of Otter Island; when I was in dry clothes before the warm fire, I felt that it had been a first class day for seeing the sights. On the morning of September 27, Friday, we awakened to find the ground and trees covered with snow, and the wind, what there was of it, coming out of the north, but varying. The barometer, which had been easing up slowly, indicated fair weather. When I crossed to the lighthouse, to blow out the light, saving the Captain that trip, the dark Lake Superior was heaving with the dead sea after the storm. Along the miles of rocky coast, the waves were burst- ing and flashing white — but there was no wind, and the beaver weather vane on the lighthouse did not utter a squeak or tiny shriek. It was too rough to start out, but the waves subsided as the morning wore away, and I cleaned off the snow on my boat, and bailed it out, packed up and made ready to go, and after an 11 o'clock dinner, I started down the bay, toward Otter cover and faced the long, bare shore that reaches to Michipicoten and the "Soo." The first dip to the waves was a heavy one, for in the gap, and A Desolate Abode. 129 over the shoals, the waves heaved up, but after I had taken the sea a little while, and tried the boat in the trough — for I must row in the trough of the seas that day — I saw that I could make it. I knew that in another day there might be a wind. I must make all the speed I could — which was not much for I had to take the seas quartering, and take a "Z" or "W" Hke course in places. If at first I was nervous and doubtful, before long I was rejoic- ing in the swing and swagger of the sea, and in the cold loneliness of the shore. I knew there were some cabins, trappers and fishermen having built them, but I knew too, that night might overtake me on a barren beach where I must sleep in the open, cold or no cold. I came to Pukaso, and rowed in the bay to look at the pulp camp cabins, now empty and deserted. Then I went on down the coast, out of the good harbor there, making the most of the breeze and the falling sea. Suddenly, it began to grow dusky, for it was a cloudy day, with only a little sunshine now and then. Night was coming on, and I was off a tumble of stone, with sand bay gaps in between. I could not tell where to land, but as I rowed along, just outside the breaker lines, I looked for some kind of a cabin, or even a good place to camp. I figured that I must be near Pilot Harbor — Old Pilot Harbor — but I saw no place worthy of such a dignified name. Finally, I spied some gull rocks, and after a close inspection, I saw that behind them there must be some kind of a little harbor. I pulled toward them, expecting to camp on the bare beach, but before I reached the rocks, I saw a gray surface above the stone, and then the familiar color of an old cabin, or shanty. The North Shore Manitou had taken me into a trapper's shanty, after all, and when I landed, and looked it over, I found it was dry, contained an old stove and pipe — it was good enough for anybody. I did not know whose cabin this was, but it had been used dur- ing the summer, probably by sports, for tents had been pitched just behind it, and a tripod fire place fixed, a brouse bed laid down, and other fancy things prepared. The beach was only a few rods long, half or more of it behind gull rocks. On the beach were cords of 130 A Trip on the Great Lakes. A Desolate Abode. 131 drift wood. In the cabin were old, dry boughs, rabbit-gnawed floor- ing, a very rusty stove pipe and stove. When I put up the pipe, 1 found that it was just a bit too short, but a rusty section of old pipe bent on the top of the other pipe reached to the tin pipe-hole, enough to balance it. I cut a pole, braced it behind the stove, and with brass partridge snare wire, lashed the pipe upright to the pole, so it would stand up. I gathered twenty armsful of chunks and sticks and drift wood for the fire, and the warmth was most welcome as the last twilight faded. The smoke poured out the chimney and out the stove, but the cabin builder had left one plank off the roof along the front wall, and this drew the smoke out. By candle light, I set up my folding cot, ate my supper and prepared for the night. Behind the cabin, twenty feet away, the woods came down to the cobble beach, and in front of it, beyond the gull rocks, heaved the unresting lake. Between roars of the bursting waves, I fancied that I heard the low moan of the wilderness, and once, in the night, between stokings of the fire, I started from my slumbers with the feeling that some visitor was in the edge of the woods, prowling around the cabin, uttering some low grunt and growl of inquiry — I could not tell for certain. Again, there came through the darkness, riding the crash of the waves, so to speak, a trembling wavering soHnd, which suggested the howl of that lone wolf at Black river — perhaps it was a wolf howl. My ears are not very good, and per- haps I hear things that aren't so, as often I fail to hear things th^t are so. Neither the Mississippi Bottoms, nor the mid-winter Adirondack woods depths, nor the lonely mountain ridges of Tennessee, nor any other place that I have ever been, yields just such feelings as I found there in that little cabin — Dave Catasson's cabin, I heard it was after- wards. Regularly, every hour and a half, the fire had to be built up again, for it was freezing cold, and when I looked out across the gray sea it was with a sense of isolation and loneliness I had not had before. I was on the brim of the pit of the sweet-water sea. 132 A Trip on the Great Lakes. and at the edge of the vast and pathless desert of stone and forest — I need not say that it was exhilerating. I slept a little late in the morning, but soon after 7 o'clock I launched my boat and rowed out into as fair a day as it has ever been my lot to witness. There was no wind, but only the very faintest of zephyrs. The dead sea heaved and washed along the rock shores, of course, but the boat moved in glassy calm, as it swayed to the lift of the waves. I had, I supposed, about twenty-five miles to go to Dog river, and forty-five to Michipicoten. I thought that this cabin was at Pilot Harbor, but an hour after I started, I came to that harbor. As I came past it, I spied a motor boat coming up the shore, and a few minutes later the boat went by, heavy laden with supplies, and with two men on board. This was Prospector Ross Hamilton, with a mining expert, going to look into a mine claim ten miles back from Otter Cove. Hamilton expected to winter on that shore, probably, but we neither of us had time to more than wave our hands in passing. When his boat went out of sight up the coast a little later, I turned my eyes to the scenery again — a shore varied between stone and sand, gravel and cobbles, little bays and flat points where one could not land for the rocks. On one sand bank, I saw a red fox with a tail almost all white, wandering along. I hailed him, and he turned to look at me. After a minute inspection of each other, he continued along the shore, and I rowed on past seventy or eighty yards distant. Twelve or fifteen miles off shore was Michipicoten Island, looming blue and huge out of the glassy and mirage-raising surface. I could not tell just where I was, for the shore is so unbroken that it was difficult to recognize any point or bay — yet it was very essential for me to know where I was. Somewhere along this shore was a ten mile stretch of coast where the chart makers had written "No boat landing". I had looked ahead to this place with dread from the day I left Fort William; I feared I might be caught along there in a sudden squall or on- A Desolate Abode. 133 shore wind. I pulled hard to pass it by that day, and yet watched the sky and water ceaselessly. What breeze there was was on-shore — it might blast up into a gale. It was the finest possible kind of day — and yet, No Boat Landing was ahead of me, the dread spot of the whole journey. CHAPTER XII. A Small Rifle Country. THERE is one exasperating and unnecessary fault of the charts of the Great Lakes. They seldom, or never, show the lay of the land. On this trip along the shores, time and again, an indication of the height of the land at point and bay would have saved considerable puzzling, and that day along the shore, approaching No Boat Landing, doubt after doubt would have been saved, if there had been height of land indications. Always I was looking ahead, thinking to see Point Isacor, and point after point I mistook for the beginning of No Boat Landing. There was no need of all this; Point Isacor loomed unmistakably when at last I came in sight of it, but there were long miles of shore where I could not tell whether I was entering the No Boat Landing section. Once I was sure I had come to it — a long bank of steep rocks and bayless shore, but when I rounded the next point, there were plenty of boat landings' anywhere along the way. Finally I saw the huge pile of rocky ridge that must be Point Isacor, and in the bay west of it — I was going east along the shore — I found cabins. I had not expected any more cabins along that shore till I reached Dog River. They were trappers' cabins — two cabins and two wigwams together in the woods at the top of a sand beach. A little further along was an old shack that had fallen in, and in the old clearing there was the thing that never fails to excite melancholy reflections, and a slight tremor of sadness, a little picket fence that marks a grave on that terrible shore. Somehow, it seemed harder to die and be buried there, so far from everyone — yet there are many of those graves on that shore and in those woods, some of them long forgotten heroes of the old fur- trade days, and one, at least, of modern fur-trade significance, that of Old Man Wilson, who lies in the floor of his wigwam, where his son found him dead a year ago last Winter, thirty miles back from the A Small Rifle Country, 1S5 136 A Trip on the Great Lakes. lake. It seems hard, of course, and yet where would a good outdoor man rather go into his eternal sleep than in the heart of the wilderness, where the birds sing their matins over his grave, where the squirrels romp among the branches of the tree that is his headstone, where the fox and wolf, passing by, pause to do homage at the tomb of their fellow? Along the foot of Point Isacor the dead sea broke in low waves, bursting against the stones. Beyond the point I knew was the No Boat Landing, and with the thought that for ten miles I must follow a shore where I would certainly lose my boat, in case of a sudden squall — there were low banks of black cloud down the south and west — I made my way out to the point. Just beyond the point was a little sandbar, and I thought that was the last harbor I could make. Beyond the next point I saw some more sand — and one of the vast, magnificent sweeps of Lake Superior's varied shore. There rose the ridge of stone hundreds of feet high, and very nearly perpendicular, with trees clinging along the face of the bluff, and a peregrine falcon hovering along the bank of gray stone. In a great sweep, ten miles long, that ridge curved around the lake shore, and for a few minutes it seemed as though there was no boat landing there, and my heart sank as I looked at those dark clouds and at that frowning mass of stone. But when I looked along the water's edge I saw that there were pretty beaches of sand, that there were clumps of trees and brush at the foot of the heights, and that I could land every few rods and with my light rowboat I could get ashore anywhere, and haul it up out of the way of the highest seas that might beat against the foot of the moun- tain ridge. In a moment that part of the lake shore was robbed of its terrors, but, of course, for one in a large boat, in a sail boat or launch, or even a life boat too heavy to drag up out of the wash and pound of the sea, there was no boat landing. The curve was a mile or more deep, but I struck straight across from Point Isacor to a low, wooded point I could see miles away over the water, lifted by the mirage above the surface, and rowed for Dog River, which I knew must be somewhere along that shore. I rowed a A Small Rifle Country. 137 long, hard stroke, and in about two hours, perhaps a little more, I had passed No Boat Landing, and as I rounded a little point I heard a shot, and looking, saw an Indian squaw, gun in hand, watching a wavering bird in a little bay. I had reached Dog River settlement, and I turned in. As I rounded in, I saw a net reel and a man spreading a net on it. I rowed in to him, and he proved to be William Newman, the wolf trapper and fisherman who writes an occasional letter to Hunter-Trader-Trapper from this North Shore wilderness — a place of loneliness and despair for another man, but for him home and happiness. Years ago, the doctors told him he could not live a year, and he is not well even now, but like the out-door men of the world, he does not think of his operations and pains. He refuses to go to the "comfort" of towns and paved streets, and this Winter, alone, he has removed up the coast from Dog River to Pukaso or thereabouts, set out his steel wolf traps, laid in his supplies and settled down to listen to the sweet music of the cold wind, to the thrilling refrain of the hunting wolf pack and to the crash of the frost in the timber and the ice. He had traveled far, through the West and Middle West, and had trapped in many states; at the end of the day on a trap line or hauling a fish net, he stretches out on his bough bed, covered with blankets and reads his H-T-T, C & T or other magazines that are passed along that coast from camp to camp, from lighthouse to lighthouse, to be read from cover to cover — advertisements, stories, letters and all. Some- times I wonder if the men writing in their little cabins — Newman has written for the Pleasure and Profit Pair — realize with what avidity their words are picked up in just such far places as the mouth of Dog River, Otter Island, Pukaso Harbor, Little Gros Cap Light. The black clouds which hovered at the horizon all that day came up that night and snow and wind were in them. In the morning there was a gale blowing, but toward noon it had subsided, and I was able to pull away down the coast toward Michipicoten, and I knew by this time that it would be foolhardy to attempt to row clear down to the Soo at that time of the year. I might even be held a week on the eighteen miles from Dog River to Michipicoten. 138 A Trip on the Great Lakes. Little puffs of wind came and made me hug along the shore, ready to jump to the sand, but I reached the Mission above Little Gros Cap without mishap. There, however, a squall came up, blowing harder and harder, so that when I went out to round the Cap, I was tossed and pitched so that I knew it was far from safe going around the point, where the waves are sure to be worst of all. I ducked back into a little bay, and then crawled along the shore back to the Mission, where the old Indian chief called my attention to the fact that the wind had gone down a good deal and that as he had gone around the Cap in a much worse sea than was now running, I could do it in my boat. In the morning, he said, the storm would be much worse, as the black West showed. So I pulled out, and in the gathering dusk, among waves that were the highest I had yet encountered — so high that at times I was several feet below their crests, in the trough, I rounded Little Gros Cap and rounded in at the boathouse of the light there. The house was built on rocks, but I watched my chance and ran in, leaped out and hauled the skiff up on the smooth rocks, and went up to the lighthouse to see William Richardson, the keeper, who has for more than twenty years lived along that shore, and who has a harbor, Richardson's, named after him. Hunter, trapper, fisherman, boat builder, he has lived the life of an outdoor man and probably understands the shore from Otter Island to the Soo better than any other man. I had a fishing license to give him, he having forgotten it at Newman's, where he had been fishing for two or three weeks. His wife, a girl and a relative were at the light, but he was not there, having crossed to Gargantua in a fish tug. I remained here two nights, and on the second night Richardson showed up about 9 o'clock, almost starved, for he hadn't had anything to eat but rabbits, partridges and trout for two days, except that they had flour on the boat and made flapjacks without baking powder. I had thought to find here a large settlement, but there was only a store, a few houses, a steamboat landing, and the end of a railroad that led to a mine twelve miles back, where several hundred men are em- ployed. This road has just been connected with a road that runs north from the Soo, clear up to the main transcontinental line, but the country A Small Rifle Country. 139 140 A Trip on the Great Lakes. will never be much less of a wilderness than it is now. Perhaps opening of mines and pulp cutting jobs will cause the thinning out of the game, but that will be all. Some sportsmen get up this far now, but they cannot get far from Michipicoten in the hunting season. The coming of the moose and wolves east along the North Shore has changed the character of the hunting a great deal. Formerly it was all deer hunting, with occasional caribou, but now these animals are gone, or going. The hunters do not like the moose, for they are too large. There is a conscience in the woodsmen that goes against the wasting of the game meat. The trappers kill few of the moose and they are very plenty. Newman told me about seeing twelve or fourteen on one day setting out his line of traps. A moose is not a good animal to fool around. Two timber lookers were going up a little river down the coast and came to a little lake where a moose was feeding. One of them had a little 22 rifle and "pricked" the moose with one of the bullets — 22 short. The moose charged them, and the water was so shoal that he could come on the gallop. They dodged and paddled around, seeking deep water, but there was none, and the brute drove them into trees and charged back and forth from one to the other whenever one made a noise. The riflemen had two boxes of 22 shorts, and he kept shooting at the huge beast and finally, with only three or four bullets remaining, he found a joint in the animal's neck and killed it. This is a small rifle country — the 22 caliber is the most popular rifle there. It is "the meat gun" and the "bait gun." Trappers of the country discard their 30-30s, their army rifles and their big shotguns for the little twenty-two. Rabbits and partridges are the staple baits and foods of the wilds, and with a twenty-two one is able to kill all he needs to eat. I suppose that the 22 Winchester is the best gun for the country, but perhaps it would be hard to get cartridges. The standard is the 22 short and 22 long repeater. Trappers carry in thousands of cart- ridges and soon kill their rabbits running, their partridges flying, if need be. For protection against wolves and in any case of need, they have one or other of the automatic pistols with long barrels and stocks; A^ ^;*-* / m mm ^h ^ #♦ - • /^ < • / f ^'^^ // ^y^-^- • %. ■f /( ^ If w A Small Rifle Country. 145 automatic firearms for game are forbidden in Canada, but not for pro- tection. The Marble Game Getter has many ardent champions, and I saw among the boys a lot of the little single shot 22s. An Indian boy, eight or nine years of age, bought a 22 of Lighthouse Keeper Blondin, at Port Coldwell, and on the way home with it met a bull moose, which the boy shot dead at a range of eight or nine feet. If one wants an arsenal, a light shotgun, a moose rifle and a 22 rifle are enough, but the 22 caliber is the best all around gun there is for the Lake Superior shore, according to the woodsmen there. I should take a 25-35 carbine and a 22 caliber repeater if I were going there to hunt for fun, and on a trap line I should carry a 22 caliber Winchester for meat and an automatic high power pistol with stock for wolf or mad bull moose. In any event, the 22 caliber is a necessity, and cart- ridges by the hundreds should be carried. My trip was now at an end, so far as the outdoors was concerned. I left Little Gros Cap light at noon on October 1 and rowed down to Michipicoten, a mile, and late in the afternoon went aboard the steamer for the Soo, uncertain as to how I should go home. At the Soo the following day, I decided to keep right on down the North Channel and through Georgian Bay to Owen Sound, where I went to the American consul and on showing my cruising permit, issued by the Canadian customs officials, I got a re-entry permit for my boat and American outfit of camping duffle. These I turned over to the railroad and they took the boat in charge while I went on the train to Buffalo and east- ward home. I had seen four of the five Great Lakes, traveling them from end to end, going on freighter and passenger, and mixed passenger and freight boat, been on cabin passage, steerage, and worked my way on a tow boat, gone by fish tug, row boat and, for a little ways, gasoline. The total expense was something under $200, including $40 for the boat. I was gone about 76 days. Special objects compelled me to go to expenses that on another would not have to meet, however, and by going straight to Fort William and cruising down the lakes, consider- able expense would be saved. 14G A Trip on the Great Lake^. Two making the trip together and starting early in the season could coast in a skiff or launch from Fort William to the St. Lawrence, camping out on the way, with much less expense to each than one could do the trip. I was right glad to get home again, too. CHAPTER XIII. North Shore Fur Pockets — No. i. A Trapper Pirate. THIS is a story of good luck on the trap line. It is the tale of men who found lost corners in the wilderness, where fur-bearers were plenty and no one knew it. Men who venture are the men who gain in trapping; they find the silver foxes, and they find the rich, dark marten and mink. They pick up lynx and fishers. Yet they take chances to find this fur and to get it. This is not the story of men who took chances, and lost. We all know that where one trapper finds fur in great plenty, and makes a small for- tune, a score of trappers lose out. They fail to find good trapping; they fail to make money, and sometimes they fail to come out alive. Many a trapper has found a fur pocket, and then lost out — died or starved almost to death. Along the north shore of Lake Superior there are more stories of men who found fur pockets than I ever heard of anywhere else. In my note books that I kept along that north shore, there are stories of men who discovered corners in the wilderness where fur had for- gotten the smell of steel and where all the crippled toe animals were dead. Think of the trapper who caught twelve silver and black foxes in one campaign on an island ! That is one of the things I have to tell about. Only I want to make certain that no one who has not had much experience, who is not hardy and strong, who has little knowledge of deep wilderness and wide waters undertakes to go and get rich on "the terrible north shore." Be certain to observe, that when I say a man found a "fur pocket" at a certain place, that that fur pocket no longer exists. Another fur pocket may be within ten miles of 147 148 A Trip on the Great Lakes there, but again, it may be fifty miles through terrible desert — tim- berland and stone desert — to another pocket. However, on the other hand, if I were going to trap all winter, I should spend a summer along the north shore of Lake Superior looking for a fur pocket. I should go there, prospecting for fur, just as some men prospect for timber, for gold, for iron and for other natural fortunes. One hears of fur pockets on the north shore, just as he hears of killing two deer at once, in a deer country, or a big bag of rab- bits where cotton tails are plenty. There is game, lots of it, alopg the north shore, but it is from fur that the wilderness men there make their money; they poison wolves, and draw bounties; they run lines of traps through the wilderness and catch mink, marten, fishers, foxes, and other furs. The country is a land of trappers; nearly every one sets traps ; there are Indian, half-breed and white trappers. There are some of the cleverest trappers in the world who live in the little settlements along the north shore. One who goes there to trap, comes in competition with men who know how to trap. A good deal of the trapping country is covered by the years' old trap lines of old fur catchers. In this country, there are no Johnny Sneakums, and there is no stealing of one's own trapping country. It is his". Thus, if one goes there trapping, he must be sure and ascertain who trap and then learn from those trappers where there is "open country." Now it is in the "open country," that one will find the fur pockets which almost unquestionably exist there. It was by cruising in "open country" that fur pockets were found along the north shore. The "open country" is the trapper's land of opportunity, but Ameri- cans intending to trap there, would better study up the game laws and before they lay down their line, take out a trapper's $20.00 license ; that might save a lot of trouble. However, the game laws are liberally construed throughout Canada wilds by certain game protectors. The safe side is always best in the matter of licenses and observation of the laws. Yet the boys all know that under certain conditions, the ' A Trapper Pirate. 149 trapper in the deep wilderness can know no other law than that of self-preservation. My first story is about a man whose name I cannot give. He told me about his fur pocket, and others told me about it. The fur pocket was on Slate Islands, which are about ten miles south of Cape Victoria. Slate Islands are "private property," and are kept as a kind of private preserve. Just what is done with these islands by the owners, I did not learn. They are a pile of rocks, covered with woods, and contain forty or fifty square miles of land. As trespassers were forbidden — as I understand it — to hunt or trap there, and as the owners did not trap there, the island shortly became alive with fur-bearers. Lynx and marten, especially, were very plentiful, and foxes were numerous — beautiful black ones among them. Probably the owners never knew that they had a ready-made fur farm in their possession, but the trapper of whom I speak shared the north shore indignation that people should make a private preserve of wild lands. He felt that if he and other people had the square deal he would have a chance to trap on that island. On this sub- ject we all have our notions and our ideas. If a man develops a fur farm he is entitled to his profits, but if the owners of Slate Island did not trap, and would not permit any one else to enjoy or use the island fur that is another question, to be answered in our own hearts. The trapper, in summer, was a fisherman. He ran along the north shore, and set some gill nets near Slate Island, and anchored of a night in the island harbors. Looking ashore, he saw fur animals, and he knew that fur must be plentiful where one sees several mink along the shore in a late afternoon. He had his doubts, however, for he realized that one family of mink would make a lot of show in tracks and in animals. If one sees a mink three times and doesn't recognize the animal, he may think it is three mink, instead of one. Out of curiosity, the fisherman went ashore, on a day that was too windy to haul his nets, and took a look through the timber. He was a good bare ground reader, and the further he tramped in the woods, the more he saw. He spied one fox, and though it was a 150 A Trip on the" Great Lakes. glimpse among the summer leaves, he realized that it must be a silver or a black fox. In all directions were fox tracks and signs. Then he saw several martens, like squirrels up in the trees. Where there was a rock on which the gulls nested, he found that mink were feeding on the eggs. The mink caught fish, too, around the island. There were plenty of otter signs around the island, too, but it is against the law to catch otter in Ontario. However, this trapper is a sort of a trapper desperado, or pirate. He knew that there were markets for otter. He had no particular conscientious scruples. The only people on the island were the man and woman who kept the island light house. The people who owned the island did not come there very often, he knew, and he was very sure that when trapping time came around, there was mighty small chance of any one wandering out to that island — unless he knew what he was about. The fisherman knew what he was about. During the summer he got things ready for the fall trapping on those islands. He took precious good care that no one heard of what he was up to. In summer time he was a fisherman, but he looked ahead further than his nose. He put out baits along the island runways, and in the gaps over the island ridges. He could blaze no trails, of course, but an old woodsman needs no blazed trail to keep him on a ridge back or on the way up a hollow or valley. He picked places where he would set traps, and baited those places with fish that he could not sell, and with chunks of meat. There is plenty of good meat along the north shore. A pirate trapper knows how to get it and how still to keep it. This pirate baited the trap line half the summer, and even a marten with lots of good berries in its stomach cannot forbear taking a sniff at a piece of ripe fish, or a piece of green meat. Now trappers all know, of course, that during the summer months, most fur-bearers eat a lot of green stuff — grass, leaves, ber- ries, nuts, some kinds of seeds, and other things of the vegetable type and kind. In the berry season foxes often won't look at a piece of A Trapper Pirate. 151 meat, and let even the juiciest kind of a little young rabbit get away unchased. I think that this is one of nature's wisest provisions. If foxes and wolves and the weasel tribe did not turn from flesh during the breeding season of birds and squirrels and rabbits — of the flesh eater's normal prey, the food supply of the flesh eaters would be killed off by winter. But this trapper, as I said, put out flesh baits which the flesh eaters would find and would not forget. When fall came, and the frosts of September and the whiffs of snow in early October had quickened the appetites of the Slate Island fur bearers, most of those animals had had a taste of the baits. A chunk of clean meat makes a mighty good dessert for a square meal of blueberries, fishers and foxes and their kind feel certain. There were lots of meat and fish desserts eaten on Slate Islands that fall. When the fur is getting prime along the north shore of Lake Superior, the lake is a fearful place for even the hardiest of men. The wind sweeps across it, lifting the waves higher and higher, and the huge swells roll against the upright rocks of the jagged coast, exploding into great clouds of spray, white and ominous to watch as the day wanes into the dark murk of a smoke of snow squalls. I have little sympathy with thieves, and the best I can say of this man who trapped the Slate Islands is that he could not know that if those islands were a private fur farm, he was doing wrong to raid the islands. But when one sees the chances he took to raid the islands, we cannot fail to observe the similarity between his acts and the acts of the Buccaneers of the Spanish Main. He raided a private preserve, and the Buccaneers raided an equally selfish con- tinental preserve. When the fishing season was at an end, and the nets had been taken up, the rivers were iced over, except in the white water. There was snow on the ground. The spray had draped the lake shore stones with crystals. In the bays, the ice was forming, and along the shores the ice was churning up in the dreadful waves of mush. Now was the time when the trapper pirate went afloat in his fish boat and drove in the night along the lake shore, venturing the 152 A Trip on the Great Lakes. winds and braving the waves, out to the islands which were practically in mid-lake. At that time of the year, even the great lake steamers hunt along the shore, and ship from lee to lee, making their last ventures across the open lakes. At that time of the season insurance rates go up — and many a craft is caught and wiped out. Some boats disappear, and none survive to tell what became of them. Even he did not know what fortune awaited him there on the islands. He had kept fishing very late. He had taken only time to set out his traps during days when he was storm-bound there at the island. He thought that he ought to keep to his fishing as long as he could, because fishing paid a good profit. The trapping was only a side line — a winter fill-gap. At best, it would not last long there on the Slate Islands, unless, perchance, he should be frozen in and compelled to wait till he could get across on the ice to the shore. He did not spend any time considering how he would get ofif the islands if he should be frozen in there. He had enough grub to last a long time, and he had firearms to kill meat, and traps, snare wire and other paraphernalia for getting grub as well as fur. He would not starve. He v/as resourceful, too, and had faced disaster in boats, with dog teams, on the trap line, and in all kinds of north shore conditions. He was no tenderfoot ashore or soft paw afloat. He knew his business. There was some snow on the ground when he went to the islands to stay awhile. He had some traps out, already, which he had set on days when storm drove him in under the lee. He had taken some fur there, which he had slipped home and into hiding places, where none would know that he was on a trapping campaign, A raider, he didn't want to take a chance of being raided himself. Now he reaped the reward of his planning. He found that where he had set out baits, the meat eaters, turning from the sum- mer diet of berries and seeds and greenings, had not forgotten the meat baits. They visited old meat baits, and fresh baits brought them across the trap pans on all sides. A Trapper Pirate. 153 He set snares — the Indian lynx snares, so often described in H-T-T — and he baited his traps with rabbits and partridges. He had fish scent bait, and anise and his own private "medicine" which he keeps secret. The^e he used Hberally. He tracked the island from end to end, keeping away from the light house only. There was not much danger from the light house people; however, he had the theory that "What people don't know won't hurt them." He climbed the rough rocks — and they sure are rough rocks in that north shore country. He followed the fisher runways and discovered the mink and marten crossings. He worked all day in the day time, and he came home in the dark. There was no time to waste; he must get his catch and get away with it. The time would come, he could not tell how soon, when it would be too late to get away, when if he did get away, he might never get ashore again. He trapped the island nearly a month. He stretched his lines in all directions. He had out hundreds of traps. It was virgin trap- ping ground — it had not been trapped in ten years or so. Of course, the animals were not shy, and even the foxes were unafraid. The trapper alone knows how many furs he caught — how many black and silver foxes, how many mink, marten, fishers, lynx and other animals. He does not tell about these things. Even the fur buyers could not know how much he caught. To some he sold a few, to others he sold a few. From a poor, hand-to-mouth fisherman when he went to the island, he came away with a little fortune. He came away in time, too, for the "Ice" nor the "Norther" did not catch him. He knew enough to quit in time. As I said, it is against the law to catch otters in Ontario. This trapper was a lawless man, as has been told. One man said that he happened to see a pack of otter furs hidden in a little cache, in some rocks. He hefted the pack. It would weigh at least sixty pounds, he thought. They were beautiful skins, large and prime. Per- haps there were twenty-five of them — an otter skin runs more than two pounds to the skin. That would be, perhaps, $300 to $500 for ot- ters alone, that month. 9 154 A Trip on the Great Lakes. This is just a trapping story — a story pieced together from re- marks and admissions and answers I forced out of people who thought I might get a good fellow — even if he was an old private preserve pirate — into trouble. I could make a first-class guess at his name. I know I talked to him. I wish I'd been with him, just to have seen that raid on one of the famous north shore fur pockets. There are other tales of fur pockets ; if I get things a little mixed as to just where the pockets were, the north shore boys will be able to set us straight. There are lots of H-T-T and Camp and Trail men along the north shore. I found a lot of them there. They know I was a walking question mark. I didn't get all the stories, of course, but I'm going to let fly those I did get. CHAPTER XIV. North Shore Fur Pockets — No. 2. A Valuable Black Fox. THIS is the tale of a black fox that was caught in a North Shore Fur Pocket. It was told to me by Game Overseer A. W. Nuttall, of Port Arthur. I met him at Port Cold- well, and he told me about the fox as we sat on the Foster dock watching Bert Spears putter with the engine of Nuttall's gasoline boat, The Pirate. The last he heard of the black fox pelt of this story, it was sold to the Czar of Russia tor the equivalent of £750. Mr. Nuttall is pretty well off himself, but he didn't get $3,750 for the skin. I don't know how much he did get, but it was something. He hasn't a starved look, but I fancy that if he had known the Czar of Russia would pay that much for the skin he caught he would have gone to Russia with his little bundle of fur under his arm and dickered with the Czar himself. He would have made money by it, too, for the diflference between £750 and what he got would have paid for a trip to, Europe, and then given him something over with which to see the sights. Now, I've forgotten, if he told, where he caught this fox. It was on one of those great islands that are along the North Shore of Lake Superior, from Fort William to Port Coldwelk Perhaps he didn't tell, on purpose. It doesn't matter, particularly; it was on an island, and there were two other black foxes there; some martens, fisher, red foxes, cross foxes, mink and other fur bearers. The big black was just one of a bunch, and it helped level up the average of the winter catch. Somewhere along the Nipigon Bay region Nuttall, who was a fisherman and trapper in those days, and was not yet a game pro- 155 156 A Trip on the Great Lakes. tector, found an island where he discovered many signs of fur. As he was fishing summers, it was an easy matter for him to look this island over and get ready for a winter campaign. Those North Shore trappers are wise woodsmen. They make ready in the summer and early fall for the winter trapping. They blaze trails, build cabins and search the land for runways, crossings and all kinds of places they may need to know about in the winter. Now, the islands along the North Shore are a trapping country by themselves. Some are large islands, some small ones, and all of them are fur islands, according to their size. There are so many of them, and in winter they are so far from other parts of the world that sometimes no one traps through them. There are some islands of a few square miles which may not have been trapped in twenty years. Where the islands are close together, the ice covers the inter- vening straits, and one can go from island to island on the ice. Many trappers run their lines in the North Shore country with dog teams. Sometimes a trapper runs the islands with his dog teams. It, is dangerous trapping among those islands. The level of the lake rises and falls with the wind, and sometimes there are gaps in the ice under the snow. People who get deep in that cold water never come up again. Captain Nuttall found his fur pocket and when fall came, he put out his traps, and when the fur was prime, along about the first of November, he set them up and rebaited his cubbies. There is a month of good trapping — not much snow, but pretty cold. He had not trapped long before he saw that a banner campaign was at hand. He quickened his stride over his lines so that he could empty the traps and keep them set more. Now, here is a little hint in trapping. The North Shore trapper is always pestered by "meat hawks" and "meat cats" — any bird that eats meat and steps in traps is a meat hawk. Any animal, not a fur animal, that eats meat and springs or robs traps is a "meat cat." Rabbits, squirrels, deer mice, and the like, are "meat cats." Every hour a trap remains with one of those animals in it is an hour of useless trap. Where fur is plenty, meat-eaters are plenty — and a A Valuable Black Fox. 157 trapper often finds half or more than half his traps sprung by rabbits or partridges. Rabbits will climb a sloping tree just to bother a trapper. "Keep the line open," the North Shore trapper says. Well, Captain Nuttall swung around his lines on the jump, throwing out meat hawks and meat cats, and picking up fur that got in before the meat-eaters did. He made quick trips and worked hard. His reward was great; he caught twelve or fifteen cross foxes, a lot of lynx, a good bunch of fishers, mink and marten, and a small silver fox. On the first snow he found a fox track that looked like a small wolf in size. If it hadn't been for the fox step and the fox shape, he would have suspected that it was a wolf, but, of course, he knew a fox track — would know it if it was as large as a bear track. This fox made such a large track that it startled the trapper, and he was at some pains to get acquainted with this fox, which was a dog fox. His runway was along the shore of the island, across to a smaller island, back to the larger island, and up into the heavy timber. He was a proud, high-stepping fox, and got his game by craft. At the same time he kept out of traps by craft. Nuttall pretty nearly stopped trapping for other foxes to get that fox. He didn't know what kind of a fox this was, except that he was a big fellow with no desire of putting his paws into steel jaws. The big track was a challenge to the trapper. He would go out of his way to see what the fox was doing, and to set traps in nice likely places for the fox to lose his nerve or forget himself. From the beginning the fox and Nuttall had it in for each other; the fox liked the baits that Nuttall put in his traps, but he didn't care for poison baits. He would rob a trap, but he wouldn't take poison even if a trap was at the bait to make it look like a steel trap set. Nuttall didn't waste much time on the big fox, except that he used a lot of fox traps in that neighborhood. He was paid for the trouble by getting other furs, and if the track hadn't been so large he would have been contented. Trappers all know that there is always some big fisher, or wolf, or mink or otter or fox that refuses to get caught till it gets good and ready. Nuttall knew that at the 158 A Trip on the Great Lakes. proper time this fox would come home to the fur bale. He kept ready to receive it, but did no special stunts beyond trying new tricks every time he could think of one. One day Nuttall was moving along the shore where the fox was in the habit of using. It was a dull day, rather gloomy, and there was the threat of a storm in the air. He rounded a point and almost rubbed noses with a fox which looked over a low ledge of rock to see what was passing by. As Nuttall looked up, the fox looked down, and their noses were about thirty inches apart — or something like that. Anyhow, Nuttall saw the fox, saw that it was about twice as large as an ordinary fox, and that it was black and glossy as hard coal. One jump and the fox was in the thick evergreen cover — a thousand dollars lost in the wilderness 1 Captain Nuttall is an old, old trapper and woodsman in experience. He isn't old in years, but in trapping he has seen fur as is fur. This was the prize fur of all his life! It would be worth more than all the rest of the fur of the winter. He might never see it again, but as the animal lived on an island, and as it was a Lake Shore animal, he had his hopes that he could find him again. He began to study fox trapping all over again. He made up his mind that if he wanted to get that fox he must begin ,at the beginning . and learn how. He boiled traps in all the different kinds of stews he could think of, and he used all the different kinds of extra fine baits he could remember or discover. He did not have time to tell me all the different sets that he used, trying to get that fox. He used wolf sets, bear sets, fisher sets — all with the traps just as nicely deodorized as he knew how to make them. He made one set of four traps, left them for weeks, and then threw down a bait — shot it, a rabbit — right there and did not go within eight rods of those traps. The fox ate the rabbit, turned two traps over, and went his way rejoicing. The extra care had its reward, of course. He caught a fine assort- ment of cross and red foxes — some of those great big timber reds came his way. He got several wolves, too. In that country the trappers of the highest order set double spring traps on loose clogs or A Valuable Black Fox. 159 on limber stakes. This is so that the trap will give and spring should a large animal get into it. Bears have been caught in wolf and even in large fox trap sets. One never knows when a marten set will be called upon to entertain a fisher, when a fox trap will have to endure a wolf. Nuttall's traps would hold an ordinary wolf. All the flush days of the banner catches he was making in that island fur pocket were as wormwood and gall to Nuttall, as long as that black fox giant was at large. He would dream about him, and he would find himself thinking about him when he was on the other end of his trap line. He had no peace of mind thinking about that fox with a thousand dollars in his fur coat; he suspected that at a thousand dollars that fox would be a mighty cheap fox, but he wasn't certain. Nuttall knows a thing or two about poisons. He knows how to make a wolf think two drops of death are fish and venison. I say two drops advisedly, for he uses fluid poison, sealed in tallow — the dangerous and difficult prussic acid is in his service when he gets right after anything. Ordinary trappers don't want to monkey with this stuff, for it will poison a trapper with just as much bad will as it poisons a wolf or a fox. The smell of it will kill a man; a drop of it on a wolf's tongue knocks the wolf down right there. But there are kinds and kinds of prussic acid; some is strong and some is weak; some is effective and some isn't. There are acids of weak percentages and strong percentages. Two ounces of the pure stuff will kill a whale ninety feet long in two minutes ; one whiff of the stuff will kill a man in three seconds or so. The black fox didn't care for any prussic acid, not even in mutton tallow or in cubes of fish. He wouldn't have anything to do with strychnine, either. He was just one great big wise fox and he knew better than to be nervous or worried. He would go about his business all around that part of the island, and yet, when he came to suspicious places — and Nuttall laid great temptations and covered up all the suspicions he could all over that part of the land — the fox just wouldn't take any fox bait he had a mind to put out. 160 A Trip on the Great Lakes. Weeks passed and the fox side-stepped every trap that Nuttall put out. He never did get into a trap that Nuttall set for him. He seemed to know a fox trap by instinct, ty training, by intuition, by observation — by all the ways that a fox could possibly know a fox trap. Once in a while a trapper gets out of bait, and he has to set some snares and traps to catch rabbits. Nuttall needed some rabbits, and there was a long, thick swamp on the island in which he put out some brass wire snares, swinging them from long, limber switches. The rabbits running along the runways would plump their heads through the snares and swing themselves up. The swamp was only a little ways from Nuttall's camp, and he used to throw out some cabbage leaves, turnip parings and other vegetables. He had some apples in the root cellar, and he took the skins and cores of some of these and baited noose traps with them. Trapping rabbits saved cartridges and saved a lot of hunting some- times. One morning when Nuttall had just come from his line and had decided to lay over a day, he went out to look over his rabbit snares, just for exercise. He didn't need any rabbits, exactly, but he thought he would go out and look them over. He found two or three rabbits and hung them up in trees and reset the snares. He took down a partridge that looked all right, having his little bait rifle with him. He ambled around through the woods for an hour or two and then came to his string of apple-bait snares. Rabbits are very fond of apples. There was a rabbit in every apple-baited snare, except the last. The great black fox, worth $3,750 to the Czar of Russia, had had an appetite for apples, too, and there he swung on his hind legs, with his head in a tiny brass wire noose. "After all the pains I'd took with him, too !" Nuttall remarked. CHAPTER XV. North Shore Fur Pockets — No. 3. Twelve Silver Foxes. THIS is the story of a man who caught twelve or seven silver foxes in one Winter on one island. The trapping land is Michipicoten Island, and it lies about sixty miles from The Soo, and it belongs to Canada, It is not a fur pocket any longer, however. The track of only one fox was seen there last Winter, and one lynx was seen there. It is a strange thing, how fur pockets are missed by trappers. There is no stranger story of a fur pocket than this one of Michipi- coten Island. Here was a little island, where fishermen had fishing stations, where the government had a lighthouse, where trappers came during the Summer months to work on the fish tugs. A steamer made regular calls there; in fact two steamers came there, besides fish tugs, and there was a good deal of rabbit and partridge hunting done on the island. A good wagon road ran several miles back up in the timber, and it would seem as though any one must have seen where the foxes and the lynx and the other fur animals traveled and led. I s-uppose the trappers knew there was fur there. They could not have helped knowing it; those North Shore trappers see fur signs where you and I of the little clearings and the little woods would not see sign. They read the woods. Yet they did not see the signs of the twelve silver foxes (in one place my notes say seven). There is a reasonable explanation of the thing, of course. The island would not make more than a small loop on a North Shore trapper's line — excepting the line of some such man as Billy Newman, who sets few traps, but tends them like a cat tends her kittens. No 161 162 A Trip on the Great Lakes. one thought there was enough fur there on Michipicoten Island to bother with. Yet there it was, in sight of the old Hudson Bay Post at Michipi- coten — now abandoned, because it is no longer a sufficient fur country, and because most of the Indians are gone, and the trappers have "plenty of markets in other directions. I am rather doubtful as to the details of the discovery of this fur pocket. I may possibly be mistaken as to the number of foxes the open-eyed trapper caught. I give my facts as I find them in my note book. There may be some little variations, but in the main what I say is as I understood it. Lewis Carmash was a fisherman at Michipicoten Island. He had a rabbit tooth, and he had to feed that tooth on rabbit meat, or suffer a good deal of hunger. He was an original genius so far as I could learn. Those North Shore fishermen have ways that awaken one's ideas. Carmash hung a piece of old gill net between two trees, between which ran a rabbit runway, and draped the netting down so that it was like a curtain hanging three layers deep over the runway. The net was light linen threads, and the meshes were about five inches in size. Carmash expected to catch rabbits in the gill nets, and he did get enough to satisfy his appetite for them. Also, he caught a medium sized silver gray fox, worth a hundred dollars or so. One man, and perhaps only one man, grasped the significance of that catch. Billy Richardson, who has lived along the North Shore between Michipicoten and Port Huron, happened to be fishing from the island. He lived for a time on Richardson's Harbor, and gave that fine bay his name. No other man, with the possible exception of Capt. McEneny at Otter Island Light, has so much knowledge of the shore. He is trapper, boat builder, lighthouse keeper (Little Gros Cap), fisherman and hunter. Richardson divined that if there was one silver gray there there must be others there. At least, one young silver gray fox meant old foxes, and if there were very many foxes, very many lynx, very many mink, very many marten and so on, there would be a good enough Twelve Silver Foxes. 1G3 catch to invite a Winter's attention. Billy Richardson and his w^ife, a fine woman who scorns to deny that she is a half-breed Indian, would not for anything desert that wild and wonderful land where they have lived these many years. They would be only too glad to spend a Winter on a gull rock, if they took a notion to. Without saying much about it, they settled down on Michipicoten Island for the Winter. Richardson went home to Michipicoten, where he. has a fine home, and brought away his Winter outfit — camp supplies, clothes, traps, everything that he would need in the Winter. It is worth saying 'that a proper Winter outfit, not counting a boat, costs upwards of $600. When one is on the North Shore of Lake Superior, camped down for the Winter where the ice lies between the islands and the shores, where the storms rage, and where one has no other resident within fifty miles, it is necessary to have a complete outfit, and anything forgotten may mean suffering and even death. Men die back there in those wilds and no one finds them in their un- known camps. When the end of the Fall fishing was at hand, there was a scat- tering of the Michipicoten Island people. I think that the island was entirely deserted, except by the Richardsons that Winter. At least, they were the only trappers there, and the first trappers there in many years. Mrs. Richardson is a trapper and hunter herself — most of the North Shore women are users of rifles and shotguns, and they run their own lines near the camps. With the fishing out of the way, and the fur prime, Billy Richard- son was ready to follow up his trapping. An old North Shore trapper is certain to know pretty near where he is going to set his traps before he starts out with his traps. He will have the very places to set his traps picked out, and frequently, when he is a fox trapper, he will have the traps already placed, ready for baiting later. Sometimes he baits or scents a set, and then puts in his traps. He has as many tricks as the next man. Billy Richar-dson boils his traps in maple wood chips. That gives them the odor of maple syrup, which is not a bad scent for foxes. Of course, for each fox one must devise and scheme and puzzle out 164 A Trip on the Great Lakes. the best way to get him. Richardson does these things. No tender- foot going to Michipicoten Island would have caught those silver grays which were racing the runways and nipping the rabbits in the small of the back. If they were there now, forty tenderfeet could not get them. They called for all of Billy Richardson's skill, and he has all the skill that any North Shore trapper has. He needed it all. All the experience that he had had trapping was put into the scales against those foxes, old and yearlings. Of course, he got them. He cleaned up the foxes on the island. Only one was known to be there last Winter. That one probably came across from the mainland, for Lake Superior froze over last Winter. There were a lot of minks, and a good number of lynx and other wild animals. There were a lot of red foxes and several cros-s foxes. One doesn't know whether the fox he is after is a red or a sampson or a black, unless a glimpse is had of it. On Michipicoten Island, where the timber is thick, as on all the North Shore, except in the fire barrens, one sees few fur bearers. The tracks in snow, mud and sand betray them. Richardson and his wife caught a lot of fur that Winter. They never had shorter lines or more fun trapping than on Michipicoten Island. They did not have to sleep out in the little shanties; they lived in a comfortable home with everything snug and cozy. They went out every fair day and gathered in a lynx, a mink or two, a fox or a fisher, and that was like play-trapping. They had to use great skill and care, of course, but compared to the long march over the ordinary North Shore trap line, these island lines were play, were little exer- cise walks. It was like those little lines of muskrat traps that boys set around on little ponds and by creeks. Had they been on a honeymoon Billy Richardson and his wife could not have enjoyed life more than they did there. All the time they were there they could not help but be amazed that so much fur, so many pelts, should have been unobserved by the keen eyes of other trappers. But Richardson himself had missed those furs. He knew Michipicoten Island, had been there scores of Twelve Silver Foxes. 165 times in the fifteen or sixteen years he had traveled and trapped the North Shore. It v^as incredible that so many furs should have roamed there, unmolested. When they talked it over, they knew the fur had been seen. The mink played around the fish docks and seized the fish refuse thrown out to them, and they ran under the fish docks and stuck up their heads through the floor like rats. Habit had a good deal to do with the failure to see the fur pocket that was on Michipicoten. There is a time when a place is "all trapped out." No one can catch fur there, and every one stops trap- ping. Everyone says, "Trapping is no good around here." They keep saying it, year after year. Even good trappers, remembering their ill success, think there is no trapping. They think it is hopeless to try to find any fur tracks, so they lose the habit of looking for fur. After a time, once in a while, they see a mink track, a skunk track, or any kind of a track. They say to themselves, "Oh, well, it just happened so!" If they see several tracks, why, then, "Oh, well, it's just one that run around a lot." That was what happened to Michipicoten Island. No doubt, some time or other, the island was "cleaned out," just as Billy Richardson cleaned it out. There was one good big season of trapping on it. Then in five or ten years, there would be another season. In ten or fifteen years, another good catch could be had. So it goes with the "fur pocket islands" all along the North Shore. About every so often somebody finds that an island has not been trapped, and he finds that fur is thick there. With that, he makes a great haul of fur. Sometimes, in the course of years, he finds another fur pocket in some other place. These great years put some North Shore men on their feet, financially. The North Shore trappers arc a steady, hard-working set of men. They are on the look-out for fur pockets all the while, and yet they miss some that are right under their noses. I do not know how much fur Billy Richardson caught that Winter on Michipicoten Island, He made large wages any hew, and had a good time. He would have made good wages had there been no silver gray foxes, for the lynx and mink would have paid the way that Winter. 166 A Trip on the Great Lakes. I may say that the ordinary North Shore fur catch of business- Hke and thorough-going trappers runs from $700 to $1,000, but dubs can make $300 there on an outlay of $600, just as elsewhere. Indeed, some of the best trappers, in Winters of hard luck, can make no profit at all, but go in the hole. In another article I shall describe a fur pocket, and tell some things about it. The fur pocket is there now— but it is not a place that one man in a thousand should go to — not one trapper in a thou- sand has any business there. Trappers haven't lost any fur in that country, and they needn't think they have; and yet on the face of it, that fur pocket is the greatest temptation I know of in the trapping line. It is one of the traps that Nature sets to catch trappers in. CHAPTER XVI. North Shore Fur Pockets— No. 4. Eleven Mink at Once. FOR a thousand years, perhaps for ten thousand years, men have hunted Fur Pockets. Much of the romance of the world is found in this prospecting for fur. Those old time French Courier du Bois wanderers sought fur pockets, and they found the interior of a great continent; wars were fought over the continent because it was a fur pocket, the home of the beaver, and Canada puts the effigy of a beaver on its lighthouses, and the most beautiful stamps ever printed in Canada bore the picture of a beaver. Now, Canada is the land of fur pockets. We may hope that the time will never come when the hardy and experienced trapper cannot find fur in that great wilderness north of the Great Lakes. Yet the search for fur pockets means hardship, weariness and danger, if one would venture into the deeper recesses of the Land of Fur. There are little fur pockets which are protected by the blindness of men to the foot prints of mink and muskrats. Just the other day, my brother told me of seeing a little marsh beside a trolley track between two great cities, where there were scores of muskrat houses, hundreds of feeding places and countless runways and swimways through the reeds and cat-tails and grasses. On all sides are wealthy farmSj and the sons of the soil have forgotten the art of trapping, and do not know the little wild fur farm in the back lot. Now I have to tell a little about a Great Fur Pocket. Martin Hunter probably knows its story far better than I do ; perhaps a score of old trappers know, it better than I could ever know it, though I should trap across it for winters. 167 168 A Trip on the Great Lakes. In Martin Hunter's H-T-T book, Canadian Wilds, on page 42, he tells of accompanying men who carried winter dispatches between Pic River, where the Canadian Pacific railway now strikes the north shore of Lake Superior, and Michipicoten, which is on the lake, on the way to The Soo. The trail is 120 miles long, and about midway along this trail, toward the west, is the fur pocket I promised in No. 3 of this series to describe. I am just a little bit afraid of Martin Hunter and those other North Country sharps, and I am rather doubtful about putting before their eyes this article lest they find much fault with its details and its generalities. However, if they find fault I shall retort that we waited so long for them to speak that it was time somebody told about it. This fur pocket is a terrible land. I say that to start with, be- cause I don't want any one to head for it, seeking their everlasting fortunes on my say-so. It is a temptation; but let me say that there are graves all along the west side of that fur pocket, along the lake shore. I saw a number of them, with little picket fences around the six-by-two bit of ground in which lies all that remains of men and women who endured that bleak shore — and then died. There is a grave at Pukaso, for instance. There are forgotten graves there, I am sure. There are graves that were never marked by the little fences. There is one grave, at least, that of old man Wilson, 30 miles back in the fur pocket, where a trapper lies under the ruins of his fallen wigwam. Doubtless, there are bones of men there, which never had a grave over them. Let the bitterness of that land sink deep in the hearts of every man who would face its rigors and endure its miseries, and tempt its unkind gods, for sake of the fur that lives among the glacier worn hills of stone and in the gullies of white water rage. I do not know how large the fur pocket is. It may be smaller this year than it was last, or it may be larger this year than last. I made some figures on this subject — some measurements from informa- tion that I got, and it appears that there are 1,600 to 2,000 square miles of territory there which was not trapped last winter. Eleven Mink at Once. 169 One corner of this territory is — or was — somewhere near Point Isacor, toward Michipicoten, and the other lake shore corner is some- where south of Pic River, or Port Huron, and any one who will get a chart of Lake Superior and measure from the scale of miles will find that there are from forty to fifty miles of lake shore where there was no trapping last winter, except by two tenderfeet who almost starved to death, and would perhaps have died if they had not found left-over supplies in the lighthouse at Otter Island. Now, this fur pocket extends back from the Lake Shore to almost if not quite to the Old Hudson Bay trail, which Mr. Hunter tells about in that most interesting of trapper narratives, Canadian Wilds. He does not tell of it as a fur pocket, and in fact tells how he went over the trail and found no game to shoot with his rifle, I fancy that the fur pocket has developed since he was on that trail. Now, a fur pocket will start up in a very few years. One or two years on a muskrat marsh, with a fair breeding stock, will make a fur pocket. Then if mink are left alone four years, they make a fur pocket without outside assistance. Otter are rather slower, beaver are very fast breeders, bears very slow, fisher quite fast, marten rapid sometimes, and sometimes they never seem to increase, however little molested. This country that I am describing has this year, I think, two occupants. One of these is a prospector named Ross Hamilton from The Soo, who has a camp at Pukaso, from which he may be running a line of traps this winter. William Newman is there somewhere, I think at Old Pilot Harbor, or perhaps a little further north. Then there are two men whose location is above Point Isacor, and whose intentions are doubtful, but they are probably trappers. Under Point Isacor, in the bay, there is the camp of Madji Nugent, wife and daughter, trappers. This leaves about thirty or forty miles of the shore without any one, except the Pukaso prospector, who almost surely will run a short line — say fifteen or twenty miles. He saw eleven mink at once on Otter Cove, and could hardly resist such a temptation as that. Certainly, a dozen or fifteen trappers could not trap that country 10 170 A Trip on the Great Lakes. clean in five years. A line run from any of ten or twelve bays and coves, and attended as a business proposition, could hardly fail to reward the hardy trapper with wages. He must know the North Country, however. He must know wolves, not only as a trapping proposition, but as a deadly menace for him should he meet a hungry pack. Game Protector A. W. Nuttall told me that he saw the tracks of a hundred wolves on one little sand bar near Swallow River. The lake shore along there is a long mass of perpendicular rocks, with bays and coves due to the contour of the land. These coves offer excellent harbors for boats, but as they freeze over solid, the boats must be hauled out during the winter. The land is grown to small sized, close standing spruce, balsam and some hardwoods. There are two sugar bushes, or maple trees, a few miles back from the lake shore, known to the Indians, and visited by them in the spring of the year, on occasion. The swamps are alive with rabbits, which furnish an ample food supply for the foxes, fishers, martens, and other furbearers, except that once in a while, the rabbits are afflicted by some intestinal dis- ease, and die off, leaving only porcupines — quillpigs — for food. Then there are the grouse, or partridges. These birds are in great abund- ance. Although the timber is very thick, there is no difficulty in killing as many of these birds as one wants, except that they, too, are sub- ject to fits of scarcity. A trapper getting in there with a short supply of grub might very well find his food from the wild supply, unless he found a time of epidemic, in which case he might starve. . Now, the streams and lakes are alive with trout — but one must know how to catch them. One must have an auger, with a two-inch bit, and this will bore a hole down through the four or five feet of ice on the lakes over the sandbars on which the fish lie in the lakes in winter, and then catch them. The location of the fish beds must be ascertained in the fall before the freeze up. It is a terribly hard country to travel in, if there are no trails to follow. The trapper must cut his trails through before the snow comes, and he must build his line shanties, set up his trap cubbies, Eleven Mink at Once. 171 prepare his scent baits, and he should cut great piles of fire wood for each shanty or wigwam. He should have plenty of kindlings stored away, too. One thing that shows the kind of a country it is is the list of sup- plies that are regarded as necessary. One cannot run out to the store when the baking powder is short, or when the squirrels eat up all the split peas and beans. One must take enough for seven months, and be on the line by September 1, for the trail cutting and camp building. Of course, an old trapper might make a go, if he went in in October, and hustled through, but the older the trapper, the earlier he would be in going to the scene. Maps cannot be had of the interior of that country. There is one issued by the Department of the Interior of Canada, covering the Nipigon and reaching down to the Otter Island Light, but it has only the faintest indications of the course of two or three streams. The coast has not even been sounded and there have been no surveys — it is primitive wilderness, calling for pioneer hardihood and resource- fulness. The mountains rise to more than 2,000 feet above the lake level, I think, and there are thousands of precipices from a few feet to hun- dreds of feet high. I was hours, in one little corner, making my way a few hundred yards. The picking of the course for the trails requires consummate woodcraft. However, when the difficulties are surmounted, when the trails are blazed, the traps laid down and baited — it is a fur pocket! It is a wonderful pocket. It costs $600 for the outfit, not including a boat, but there is fur. An occasional silver and black fox, hundreds of mink, marten, fishers, lynx, cross and red foxes, wolves, muskrats are there. One hears many stories about the Wilsons on that North Shore. I suppose some are made up, and yet those Wilsons, father and son, showed the way into .that fur pocket. Time was when the Indians trapped that country, and it was not a fur pocket. Then the Indians died and weakened, and as Martin Hunter tells, they ceased to be trappers. All through that North 172 A Trip on the Great Lakes. Shore country there are old Indian trapping grounds now abandoned because the Indians are weak and old and no account. The Indian has lost his skill and his endurance there. This fur pocket is the old trapping ground of a man who died three or four years ago, who had his camp at Pukaso. That Indian had not trapped for years. Then the Wilsons came and ran two three hundred miles of trap lines in loops and main lines, and got in five winters no one knows how many furs — perhaps $10,000 worth, perhaps $25,000 worth. I do not know. They took out $900 worth one early December, I was told. They could not trap all that fur pocket, no two men could do it. The trappers there have gasolene boats or sail boats. Gasolene costs 40 cents a gallon. Billy Newman traps a line ten or fifteen miles long, and specializes on wolves. He says that $500 is his winter's work. He does not have the strength to ram his line into the heart of the land. Other trappei:s of that region turn their backs on it. It is too remote, too hard for them. Many of the best trappers cling to their own lines, year after year, preferring their old well-opened trails to the new and unknown. Disaster has overtaken the trappers of that land time and again. V/illiam Richardson of Michipicoten, is the only one whom I know who did not suffer there. He had his camp on Richardson's harbor, and he trapped back into the wilderness several winters. He carried his supplies up in a sailboat, and he left the place, several years ago, preferring Michipicoten to the lonely hardships of the wild frozen land. Bill Newman, as I have said, is somewhere up there now — a man who has been sick for several years. I hate to think of what he may undergo. Dave Catosson has a cabin on the lake shore under the lee of some gull rocks above Old Pilot Harbor — but he would not stay there over winter. Old Madj Nugent swings a circle of traps out from the mouth of Dog River as far as Point Isacor, which is as far as he cares to go. I think there is a line of traps reaching down from Pic River Mission (Port Huron), but it probably comes no farther than Oiseau Bay. From Oiseau Bay to Pukaso is a land with no trapper, and on Eleven Mink at Once. 173 Otter Bay, six or eight miles from Otter Island Light, is the beach where Ross Hamilton saw eleven mink at once. I took a look at the sand myself, and at the woods and along shore. I saw a great red fox in broad day at one place, and mink tracks about everywhere, and moose and caribou sign. There was lots of signs — very tempting is that Fur Pocket. I do not know of any place where Nature has more cleverly baited its trap to lure trappers into the jaws of a terrible winter and through the bitterness of a hungry campaign. That is what this great fur pocket is — a Trap, a man trap. There are sly wolf-like trappers who know a trap, and can keep out of the jaws while lifting the bait. They may or may not consider this North Shore, or rather Northeast Shore of Lake Superior. After all, perhaps this is just the imagination of men who talked to me up there — except that I saw the tracks there along the shore. One animal makes a lot of tracks. Then, again, with every one telling such stories about this fur pocket, it may be that there are a dozen trap lines across the land this winter. I do not know. Billy Richard- son, at Michipicoten, Ontario, might know. So might N. W. Foster at Port Coldwell, Ontario. As I said, somebody knows a lot more about that land than I do — let them speak ! Personally, if I were looking for fur pockets to trap, I would hunt up that muskrat marsh between Utica and Syra- cuse, N. Y., before I went to the Otter Island hinterland. I would go to St. Ignace Island south of Nipigon Bay, or Fluor Island, or Magnet Point before I went to that shore between Port Coldwell and Michipicoten. CHAPTER XVII. Great Lakes Small Boats. THE Great Lakes are the hunting and fishing and trapping grounds of thousands of outdoor people. I saw I don't know how many kinds of craft along the string of lakes from the St. Lawrence to Fort William. There were birch bark canoes and flying machines, the canoes being on the north shore of Lake Superior and the flying machines on St. Clair Lake. They say that there are some sports who hunt ducks from flying machines, but it costs so much to run them and to buy them that it doesn't seem much like a poor man's outfit. There are many canoes — beautiful little crafts — used along the Canadian shores. On the American side there were mostly skiffs in similar waters. I could not at first figure out why this should be, unless it was just the habit or the fancy. I think, though, that why the canoes are so popular in Canada on the lake shore is because they are so pretty to look at and they are so attractive to handle, requiring skill and resourcefulness. But there is another reason why canoes are Canada's favorite craft. No skiff that was ever built could rival the canoe in its utility in the small streams of Canada. The North Shore streams call for the canoe, and the skiff has little place there in the swift waters pour- ing down out of the glacier-worn mountains along the north side. The canoe was the more useful to the Canadians; the skiff the more useful to the Americans. That explains the utilitarian motive for the different kinds of craft found on the northern and the southern side of the lakes. If we travel in far places, it is certain that in those far places we shall find outfits corresponding to the needs of the community. We may think in our own minds that something else would be better but there is a reason for the local customs. 174 Great Lakes Small Boats. 175 Now, the canoe is a better boat for navigating the swift streams of Canada. It is lighter to carry around the rapids and falls. It is easier to handle in the rushing waters where one need not land — if he is skillful enough to keep right side up ! Always, in considering the Canadian trips, one must give the canoe first place in the possible choice of a boat; it should be displaced only because of superior merits for the purpose for which a craft is to be used. The canoe is a romantic craft. With it is associated all the fine developments of the old traveling kinds; the Indians were canoe men, and the traditions echo' with the wild adventures of the first woods runners, the Frenchmen, Courier de Bois, when they dipped their paddles and headed away across the vast divides. The best boat for the hardest part of the journey is the rule in picking a craft for a journey. For part of their journeys the French woods runners would have found a sail boat better than a canoe — but as they were obliged to go in a boat in which they could go up stream, which they could carry over the divide, in which they could trip down stream as well as go out into the wide lakes, naturally they went in canoes. The canoe was the only boat that would make the whole journey, for they could not make carries with skiffs. Very wonderful, very beautiful, is the canoe in its own country. No picture scene that I saw was quite so fine as the old Indian at Dog River, on Lake Superior, putting the finishing touches on a nine- feet long canoe built of birch bark. He worked with the fond care and balanced effort of a man who loves his work. He had a big lake boat, and a skiff or two, but this was his real boat; the one in which he would go with his family up into the wilderness, killing game and catching fur and fish. Imagine a white man taking his wife and grown daughter and their camping outfit in a boat nine feet long! That was Madgi Nugent's intention. Thus, if one intends to trip up the streams, and make the little lakes which are in thousands through that country, the canoe is the boat. Perhaps there is no other craft that has so much genuine sport in it as the canoe,, the light, graceful, efficient, wonderful canoe. A little canoe will carry five hundred pounds, and one of the great fur 176 A Trip on the Great Lakes. Great Lakes Small Boats. 177 trade canoes would carry perhaps as much as two tons of men and their packs. No other craft is of quite such a woodcraft type as the canoe. The canoe is the pleasure craft of thousands along the north shore of the lakes, people who do not go anywhere but on the lake shore. I saw scores of these crafts with young people in them off the pleasure resorts of the North Shore. On the Bay of Quinte, at Belleville, Trenton and the various little villages, all the young folks know how to paddle their own canoes, and they ride far to picnics in them. Caught in a storm on the little lakes, bays and along the shore, many a merry-maker has lost his life, however, because the canoe is not a wide water boat; it was never meant for open waters. It was invented and developed for stream travel, and it has no rival in the always dangerous but fascinating work of running rapids — driving through the white water. The largest canoes now on the Great Lakes are, I think, those used by the Indians in running the Sault Rapids, at Sault Ste. Marie, at the foot of Lake Superior. They are about twenty feet long, very wide and with very high sides — a beautiful craft. I met one party of canoe cruisers sailing down the Bay of Quinte, two and their duffle in a craft about sixteen feet long, deep laden and with a sail up. For hand-power travel on the Great Lakes, the skiff is the thing. It cannot rival the canoe in grace, lightness, or in beauty, but it has strength, stability and room which the canoe cannot have, length for length. I have traveled more than two thousand miles in the open skiff, with my camping outfit, rowing, floating and paddling. One was a brute, in which I came down the Holston and Tennessee Rivers, but it was better than a canoe would have been. Had it been the right kind of a skiff, it would have been a perfect class of boat for the purpose. There were no carries and no rapids demanding the peculiar qualities of a canoe. For straight lake service, the skiff is always most in demand. The survival of the skiff in such colonies as those at St. Claire Flats, at St. Lawrence River and at all the south side summer resorts shows that the skiff is the best of hand-power boats. It has even survived 178 A Trip on the Great Lakes. Great Lakes Small Boats. 179 the motor, for the rod and line fishermen's boats with motors in them are nearly all skiffs, or gas engine boats developed from skiff lines. The rowboat should be fitted to the service for which it is de- sired, and on the Great Lakes the adapting of boats to the needs has brought about a good many different models and designs. The net fisherman has a heavy, sharp-bowed, flare-sided, square stern "punt," eighteen or twenty feet wide, with a flat bottom. It rides the wave; like a duck, pulls easy, considering the size and weight, and he v-an haul his net up over the side of it without upsetting it; indeed, he put? both feet on the side and hoists away to get up his net. This skiff costs around $30.00. At the other extreme are the summer resort skiffs, one of which it was said cost $140, and probably if one went right out to see how much could be put into a skiff, three or four hundred dollars could be spent on an 18-foot rowboat. For from $25.00 to $60.00 one should get a rowboat sixteen feet to eighteen feet long, as seaworthy as it could be made and fit for going anywhere along the shores of the great lakes. I like the skiff that is sharp at both ends, because it rides well, rows well and carries well. It is less apt to take waves over the stern and a little bow and< stern deck saves a lot of bailing in a sea, as the wave breaking over the stern does not come down solid as it does in a square stern, deckless boat. The boat sharp at both ends is easier to launch in the surf, too, stern first — as most beached boats have to be launched. I recognized this when I was caught on a windward shore and had to go afloat in the breaking waves. The waves were cut up by a large stone out from where I was beached, and backing out stern first I caught some water even with the sharp stern. On the Mississippi, twice, my square stern boat was swamped because the stern did not rise, and the wave broke over on the stern seat, starting the boat's filling. Most of the pleasure boats that I saw were sharp at both ends, since in practice it has been found that on wide waters they stand up somewhat better. One particular advantage they have, if the seats are arranged right is the rowing both ways, using either end for the bow. This is of tremendous advantage in a short, choppy sea, when one would have 180 A Trip on the Great Lakes. Great Lakes Small Boats. 181 to turn around and perhaps swamp before getting clear around, if the stern was square. Of course, a well-made skifif is not apt to upset. It should have its bottom wide and almost flat. It should have high sides, and its seats should be high enough to have the elbows of the oarsman level with the top of the gunwale, at least— a little higher, perhaps. The stern seat should be low, and the load should be on the bottom — light stuff on top of the heavy. The load should be so placed that the bow will rise higher than the stern, at least two inches in a 16-foot boat, with all on board. A boat down by the head is all right for sailing, however, and whoever travels in a skiff or other kind of a craft, for that matter, should learn how to trim ship, fore and aft and across. For mere traveling one does not need a heavy boat. There is little likelihood of staving a boat if ordinary precautions are taken. Neither is there great danger of swamping. The fact that millions of dollars' worth of furs were carried down the Great Lakes in canoes shows that the lakes are fit for small boat navigation — if one is not reckless. I suppose that a man could go from Duluth to Cape Vincent, the whole length of the Great Lakes in a canoe twenty-four inches wide, and ten feet long — but he would have to pick his weather. The same journey could be made by a man in a 16-foot skiff, 42 inches wide and 15 inches deep without a bit of danger, if he knows enough to go ashore when the wind blows or the clouds roll up black. Boys of ten or twelve years on the Great Lakes pull around with their parents riding the waves in punts and skiff's under circumstances that would make one unused to the water hold his breath with fear. For instance, there was a sport wanted a brook trout for supper. Two youths went in their skiff against a gale of wind and rolling waves right out to a gill net, pulled the net and came back in again with the trout. They kept their bow to the waves; less able seamen would have swamped. Canada bleeds its people by means of a high tariff. The rail- roads bleed the country by excessive freight rates By putting on low tariff and low freights, thousands of square miles would be developed in a very short time. There are thousands of motor boats on the 1^2 A Trip on the Great Lakes. American side of the lakes, while on the North Shore there are hardly any. Gasoline, selling on the south shore for 18 or 20 cents a gallon, costs 40 cents or more on the North Shore. Kerosene costs 40 cents on the North Shore in some places. For this reason there is little, motor boating in Canadian waters except by American boats — and American motor boaters are up against it in the effort to get gasohne or lubricants or other supplies. The Canadian fishermen are still using sailing boats in their work, simply because their government is permitted by Canadians to keep conditions as they are. Trappers, hunters, fishermen, prospectors, woodsmen, traders — furbuyers— loggers, small supply and passenger boats would all use oil in their craft if the Canadian government were not so short- sighted in the matter of prices charged for fuel and lubricants. The loss to Canada's prosperity since the gasoline boat came into service through the failure of the government there to open up their waters to this kind of craft by removing onerous burdens must amount to many million dollars. In the fishing, only a few men have motor boats; they cost too much to buy and to run. Fishermen use sail- boats where the American fishermen use motorboats. Canadians are using little steam boats which might better give way to oil burners. The artificial barriers imposed by politics has retarded many of the Canadian industries and deprived thousands of profits they should have had in this one matter of motor boats. Yet, in spite of the barriers imposed the motor boat is coming to the top in the Great Lake outdoor boat service. Trappers follow the shores on both sides of the lakes, going to and from their trapping country in motor boats. On the North Shore economical motor boat- ing would open up hundreds of miles of country which is now hardly touched owing to the fact that sailboats of a size for one man service or two man service cannot safely be used. For mere running around, the skiff is all right; it is a good pleasure boat, and I would rather have a skiff with a little sail than almost any other type of boat — far more than a large sailboat cruiser, but for right down lake service, there is nothing to compare to the motor boat, and in the next chapter I'll discuss the motor boat as a matter of motion, sentiment and service. CHAPTER XVIII. Great Lakes Motor Boats. ONE of the oddest motor boats I saw on the Great Lakes was just south of St. Ignace Island. The loneliness of the North Shore had had its effect on me, and instead of looking for a place to camp, I was keeping my eyes open for sight of some one. Then I came to Dampier, the Rossport fisherman, and his motor boat was a genuine curiosity. It was a tin boat, I think, and its sides came down in a regular "V." In it pounded a little motor and the boat rocked away across the water, tipping so far that I thought it would surely upset. It seemed top-heavy — but that did not matter. I could not but wonder at the enterprise of the fisherman who would bring a motor to that hard shore and build himself his own motor boat. He had designed and built the boat with his own hands, and if there were any imperfections in the design they did not really matter. The point was that he had built a motor boat and put an engine in it, in spite of tariffs and forty-cent gasoline and custom. With three or four horse power, he saved hours of arm toil. He towed around a punt — one of those heavy, clumsy looking row boats used by the fisherman, and when he came to his net he would cast anchor, tumble into the punt with his boy and run the gillnet — hundreds of yards of net — set the net again, and then return to the motor boat and go on to the next one. The lighthouse keeper at Lamb Island had a motor boat. I met him down the shore from the light, where he was gathering drift wood for fires, and perhaps timber for some new building or other. He had a boat about twenty-two feet long and five wide, which he used to tow sticks of timber. It was just an open launch, and I suppose it carried four or five horse power, but when he had dogged the timber and started away with it, the logs straightened out and 183 184 A Trip on the Great Lakes. chased along with far more speed than he could have made with large sails and many oars. He went into the wind. But there was another motor boat which was interesting and a warning. The man at Thunder Cape light had a motor boat. It was a dandy, but the flanks of Thunder Cape offer no harbor for a motor boat, and it had to be anchored out where it caught the brunt of the storm, with the result that the boat was thrown up on the shore a wreck. Of course, in the summer months, many motor boats of various sizes find their way into Canadian waters. There are those motor boats, for instance, which slip across the line, pick down a deer or moose or other game, and return with it for a feast on the American side. On the other hand, there are the swift little boats which the smugglers use in making their ferries of whiskey and furs and other goods. Just the other day I read that some one was going to put a 90-foot motor boat on the Great Lakes — spend I don't know how many thou- sands of dollars just on the pantry — galley, I think they call it. This is just to show that while one may get a motor for $35.00 or so and build the boat himself out of seven doflars' worth of lumber, one may also put everything he has, including all his time, into a motor boat. Of course, most men buy in motor boats what they can afford rather than what they would like to have. It isn't good business, or good sport, however, to buy what one doesn't need, just for the sake of having it. The outdoor man would better think quite a while before buying a boat to use in his own business. There is a prospector named Ross Hamilton on Lake Superior working back from Otter Bay, sixty miles from any where except Otter Island Light. Hamilton has a motor boat about twenty-five feet long with an engine of about eight horse power. I met him down near Pilot Harbor, piking for Otter Bay with a load of supplies — about a ton — and an expert to look over his claims back in the wilderness. Now, he had an ideal outfit for the work of prospecting and trapping. It wasn't so large but what he could haul it out on the Great Lakes Motor Boats. 185 beach, and up into the woods by means of tackle for the winter. He could carry all the supplies that he needed, and he could run the engine and steer the boat himself. This, then, was the boat for the lone prospector. It was about eight feet wide, and had a cabin in which he could sleep, and the power of the engine was ample for the service demanded. He could get seven or perhaps eight miles an hour out of the boat. Its shoal draft enabled him to run into the numerous shelters and harbors along the shore and, of course, he would not venture out into the wide water in a blow. On a long, open shore, where the wind has a full sweep, where the waves throw themselves against the sand and stone, one must have a boat that he can land and run up the beach in a hurry. Thus the canoe, the skiff, the canvas boat are safer and better than the boat which one could not get up the beach in time to weather a squall. Curiously enough, there are many lake men who have neglected this one feature of the open water — the wind. The launch and the motor boat appeals to them. The Canadian government has supplied lighthouses with motor boats, and there wasn't a vestige of shelter at the lights for the boats. If one's camp is in the open — then better have the old-fashioned arm-power boat. But if there is a good harbor, there is no economy quite like the motor boat. Take for example the men who trap the lake marshes and up the creeks from the little bays, miles away from home. Trapping com- monly begins a month or six weeks before the freeze up, and sometimes much longer. In the trapping, the little motor boat carries the traps to the ground in less than half the time it takes to row, and the man arrives there fresh for the work of putting down the traps and taking up and resetting. The motor boat, with a little skiff towing behind, covers ten miles where with a row boat one could not cover four miles. In such trapping as muskrats, where the number of traps well placed means a certain catch, if one can put out four hundred traps instead of one hundred, the advantage of the motor boat is seen in- stantly. The saving in arm power means also a direct income in furs. Moreover, the motor boat is so much larger and is so mugh faster and 11 186 A Trip on the Great Lakes. more seaworthy, that one is able to cover marsh in weather which would compel the skiff man to remain at home, else run chance of drowning. It is worth while to get a good engine, all the users of the motor boats say. One should have ample power, too. The reason for having the ample power is not so much for speed as it is for safety. I remember that down on Chesapeake Bay, six or seven years ago, a friend of mine sold his twelve horse power engine and installed a four horse power on a thirty-two foot canoe (the big log canoe of the bay). The little engine would drive the canoe along in good fashion, almost as fast as the twelve horse power. Some models of boats will go just so fast, and then all the power in gasoline would hardly get them going faster. The difference in the running was found when the boat went into the wind. It would hold its own with the big power, where with the little power it would yaw around and either sink or go ashore. A fast boat is not needed in the ordinary traveling of an outdoor man. The fishermen take six or eight miles for their work. That is an economical speed; a high speed costs money, more than it saves. The trappers of the North Shore, the men who get into the fur pockets and pick up thousands of dollars, are beginning to get motor boats. They used to depend on canoes, and then came the era of skiffs and sail boats. Most trappers now use the sail boat, a craft twenty to thirty feet long; but these are rapidly being discarded for boats like Ross Hamilton's little cruiser. Billy Newman, Richardson, Game Overseer Nuttall — an old-time trapper — all agreed that the motor boat would knock the sail boat out of business. The reason is that the gales of wind are too big for sail boats and between the gales are fiat calms, in which the sail boat cannot move. The motor boat, unable to brave the terrible storms, is at its best in the day or two of calm between the autumnal gales. Now a motor boat that shoves along at the rate of eight miles an hour will make eighty miles in ten hours. In twenty hours it goes 160 miles, and in thirty hours it goes 240 miles. That is to say, the boat would go anywhere along the shore of any of the lakes if it could find thirty hours of calm, and it is a rough fall indeed when the Great Lakes Motor Boats. 187 1.88 A Trip on the Great Lakes. motor boat could not pick up a day's run a week between October 1 and December 10, when the lighthouses usually close down. The motor boat is used by trappers at all such places as the Michigan marshes, the St. Qair Flats, among the Georgian Bay islands, and along the wild shores where they can find shelter for their boats. The motor boat enables them to cover islands which it would be foolhardy to visit in a skiff or even in a sailboat. Now ihe model preferred by the lake men of the type or class which finds its pleasure and its profit in the sales of furs, the odd- jobbing of various kinds — the occasional salvaging, fishing and knock- ing around known to most of us — is a motor boat as good as can be afforded, with a little cabin, fit to sleep and eat in, a cock-pit with a housed-in engine, covered by a low awning, easily taken down in a hurry. I see that one can build a thirty-five foot cruising boat, with a motor, for about $500. Such a boat would be large enough to go all over the Great Lakes, and into most waters along the Atlantic and Gulf Coast, provided the navigator wasn't one of the reckless idiots who takes all manner of chances to show off, to himself or to others. Now, the thirty-five foot boat is entirely too large for ordinary trapping work, and it is perhaps the large size limit for the man who lives aboard his boat and knocks around a lot alone. The chances are, judging from the little motor boats that I saw, in practical use, a twenty-five foot motor boat with a six horse power engine would be of ample size for darting to and fro from camp to store, from bay to creek to point, where are the hunting blinds and the traps and the ordinary nets or fishing of most out-door people. Of course, if the trapping is up some stream navigable for a boat drawing ten or twelve inches, but no more, the motor boat should be even smaller — less than twenty feet, if one works from the boat. But I noticed that nearly every motor boater towed a little skiff astern, and this skiff was used in running to the shore, or over shoal waters or into the marshes. Even the Indians of Canada are buying motor boats, and many of the hunting parties that go back on the great chains of lakes of various sizes in the wilderness are carrying with Great Lakes Motor Boats. 189 them little motors which are fastened on the sterns of canoes and drive the canoes back into the wilds. A friend of mine who went into the big Canadian woods with a party whose luggage and people filled ten canoes, told me of their little adjustable motor, which was hung on the stern of a canoe and lines passed back to all the other canoes towed them all along as fast as they could have been paddled in the ordinary course of traveling by hand power. The little motor, of perhaps a horse power or a little more, carried them along mile after mile, without a break — it was a curious spectacle, no doubt, but it had its significance to every thoughtful out-door man the world over. There is no use lugging ones shoulders ofif to save the fifty or the hundred dollars necessary to put in a motor, if one is in waters where a motor would save time and strength. This advice comes curiously enough from one who rowed hun- dreds of miles up bays and lakes, but it happened that my ideas did not need a motor boat ; it wasn't a journey for profit or even to make expenses. Had I been after an income, it would have been better to take a motor boat without question, and looking back on the trip, I feel quite certain that I should have had a motor boat anyhow, except for one consideration : I desired to transport my boat by freight on several occasions, and the expense of that transportation for a motor boat would have been very much greater than I had toting my rowboat around. There are many things which people should consider in the boat question ; the main thing is the character of the waters to be navi- gated and the work to which the boat would be put. What would be just right for a man or two running a line of traps in great marshes would not do at all for the man desiring to live on board and going thousands of miles. The motor boat would be useless expense under many circumstances, and it would bring a hundred per cent, profit in others. Generally speaking, the motor boat is needed where there is ten miles length of navigable waters, if one's business extends along those waters. One could have a lot of fun with a little motor boat on a 190 A Trip on the Great Lakes. pond half a mile long, and there are thousands of motor boats profit- ably used on lakes only three or four miles across, not to mention on rivers where they serve as ferries. Neither speed, size nor beauty is the main thought to be consid- ered in the boats; the one great consideration in such a matter is whether or not it is needed. Of course, if one needs the fun of a motor boat, he needs it worse than if he merely needs it in his business. CHAPTER XIX. Great Lakes Fishermen. FISHING on the North Shore of Lake Superior is as lonely a life as that led by the trapper, and it is more dangerous. The trapper who watches out runs little danger, except from lost supplies and falls. The fisherman when he goes forth in his boat in the morning does not know whether or not, during the day, but that he may find himself caught in one of those terrible squalls which make life on great waters unsafe. He may fall overboard and drown. He may be wrecked on some gull rock and freeze to death in the early or late season. In a fog, he may be cut down by another boat and so find violent death. It is not even safe to be merry on a fish tug. Two men, the captain and engineer of a fish tug, were skylarking, and both fell overboard, leaving two boys who knew nothing of navigation or steam engines. The men drowned, and the two boys did manage to get to port, by steering and keeping the fires going. Lake fishermen of the North Shore type make .from $500 to $3,000 in the course of a season. Many of them are trappers, too, and as the summer fishing ends, they take up the burden of the trap line. Some are hunters, and in most of the fish tugs there are rifles and shot guns, and many the moose and bear and other large game that finds its way into the kettle and dripping pan because of the alert and double-acting men wlio make their livings over the deep waters and along the stone-bound shores of Lake Superior. The first requisite of the Lake fisherman is the license exacted by the Canadian government for fishing. The cost is $50 for the right to fish pounds and $10 for fishing so many gill nets. Then one must have nets, as gill nets and pound nets, and they cost according to size, quality and service. One cannot set nets, however, without boats, and the fishermen use all kinds of boats, from canoes and 191 192 A Trip on the Great Lakes. Great Lakes Fishermen. 1^3 skiffs, for hand line fishing — mostly sports — through punts and sailing vessels up to gasolene launches and steam tugs. The tug is the chief article of transportation on the North Shore of Lake Superior. I was on two or three fishing tugs, and the life seemed, some- how, a life of sport and excitement. It could not be listed as a mere business. There are too many things in the life that bring one to the happy land of adventure and experience. There was the fish tug of the fur pirate of whom I told in Fur Pockets. He paid for the tug, they say, with the price of silver and black fox skins caught on a private preserve island. How could such a man as that fail to live exhilarating fishing? There was Captain H. Paulmart, at Rossport, who uses the offal of his fish to bait bears with, and who owns a team of sledge dogs with which he carries the mail up to the mines winters. Then Captain Will Dampier is woodsman, lakeman, fisherman and engineer. Very soon after pulling along the North Shore one learns that there the youths begin to fish early. The owner of the tug is likely to be the engineer and stoker, while his son, a mere nine-year-old lad, rides the wheel up and down, holding her. It is too bad, a fact that cannot be too often repeated, that those sons of tug captains and lake fishermen are not educated in the schools, while they also have the authority and the gravity of work across the wide waters, making them capable and resourceful far beyond their years. Stopping those boys from helping their parents work would not help the boys any, but the fathers who take their children out of school and keep them out of school should be made to give them, the education they deserve. Illiteracy is frequent on the North Shore; youths are growing up there unable to read a line, because their fathers, who cannot read or write, say that if they could get along without reading or writing, the boys should be able to do so. Of course, this is the folly of ignorance and obstinacy. The days when ignorance can make its way in the world are passing. The men who get ahead now, are the men who know books, who know arithmetic and grammar. 194 A Trip on the Great Lakes. i'^K^'" Great Lakes Fishermen. 195 The North Shore fishing is, as in all the Canadian waters, much fished for market, falling away fast. The great fish trust and the fishermen and the government are finding their supply of fish failing, as in the salmon industry on the Pacific coast. The best of the fishermen find that even the higher prices paid for fish, and in the price of fish, formerly not bought, less money than they used to make in the days of old. They have fished the lake too close. They have wasted the capital of their industry. The government has al- lowed them to do it, too. In fact, when the government has tried to impose laws, the outcry from the fish district parliament members has sounded to heaven. There is plenty of room for improvement. Canada, waiting for the fish hatcheries of the United States to supply her waters with fish, finds that the fish of the American side do not migrate over to her side as much as she had expected. Canada's fish laws are the laws of a great, raw country, and one finds that there is much complaint about the administration of them. A fisherman who does not understand the subject is apt to get into trouble. I have told how in the Port Arthur District, a fishing license is good anywhere, while in the Soo District, the local officers issue permits for certain localities, as Lizard Island, or Pilot Harbor, or Gargantua. Sometimes a fisherman applies for a license, and the overseers, or whoever grant them, take so long in granting the permit that the fish season is over with ; then again some one else is fishing the locality where the unfavored fisherman desired to fish. One finds by listening and catching the drift of the talk of fishermen that there are things which make the men boil with anger, yet they cannot help themselves. There are whisperings of favor- itism, such as we have sometimes in our own outdoor life, that the politicians are the ones who profit; that the men with pulls have privileges not granted to others who have no pulls. If there are more fish along the North Shore, there is also more helplessness in coping with the political conditions. There are men like Overseer Nuttall of Port Arthur, who have been fishermen themselves, and who 196 A Trip on the Great Lakes. LOADING FISH BOXES. Great Lakes Fishermen. 197 play fair, but one need not be assured that there are men and men in Canada, as well as elsewhere. The fish tug works out from some railroad port. Thus there are fish tugs that run out from Fort William and Port Arthur as far as Nipigon Bay (west end), and then from Rossport, Jackfish, and Port Coldwell. Up from Michipicoten comes a nsh tug. and others out of Michipicoten Island, and, I think, Gargantua, and sO' on down to The Soo. The Michipicoten fish all go down the lake to The Soo in a steamer line owned by a fish company, and this line works clear through The North Channel, Georgian bay to Owen Sound on Lake Huron waters, its business being to carry fish, but the freight and passenger business must almost make the fishing business clear profit. The boat I came down on carried about 170 boxes of fish, each box weighing around 150 pounds, into Owen Sound — one trip. The fish tugs are steamboats about 45 feet long, more or less. They burn driftwood gathered along the beaches, sawed up with buck and cross cut saws. They are owned by the fishermen, who buy them out of their "lucky summer" profits. Sometimes they mortgage their boats in slack seasons, and one hears of the boats being taken over for debt by the store-keepers who advanced supplies and tackle. Wherever one goes, one hears the stories of the store-keepers who foreclose mortgages and liens because of debts unpaid. It appears to be part of the necessity of business to insist on the return of money that has been loaned out, but somehow, the borrowers who are caught feel hurt when their debts, either because of hard luck or bad man- agement, at last overtake them. Being too ambitious, "biting off more than one can chew," appears to be the main cause of fishermen's troubles as regards debts. "I never buy anything till I have the cash to pay for it," one man said to me, and he was pretty well off. He had purchased his boat for cash in hand. Another man, who was as well off, apparently, said: 'T didn't have a dollar when I bought this boat! Now I own it all." 198 A Trip on the Great Lakes. How could one draw any conclusions from that kind of thing? The net fishermen borrow money on their tugs to pay their help, when fishing is slack, and the fish companies borrow money on their tugs when receipts run behind expenditures, both hoping for better times before long. Sometimes better times come, but in these days, the fishing does not grow better, but usually grows worse. The fishermen who are surest to grow rich are the ones who never spend more than they make in time of poor fishing, and who never spend much more in time of good fishing than they do in time of poor fishing. If a man has a margin to put in the savings bank on a hundred pound of fish, he puts all he gets above what he spends when he gets a thousand pounds of fish. This, at least, is the way one fisher- man on the Bay of Quinte did, and he has $50,000; now after ten or twelve years fishing. The thing that cuts down the profits of fishermen on the lakes, aside from storms that cost them their boats and only too often their lives, is the fact that many of them do nothing in the winter but eat up their summer income. That is just as though a trapper trapped all winter and sat down and ate up his profits all summer, doing nothing. When I asked one fisherman why he didn't work in the winter, he answered proudly, that he was a fisherman, and that he wasn't a trapper, or Indian. The men who are growing rich on outdoor life on the North Shore trap winters and earn wages summers, perhaps as sailors, or as loggers, or teamsters, or on the railroad, or even working on tugs for wages. The saving fishermen of the summer trap, log it, buy furs, get government jobs, or build boats, work at odd jobs in winter. They make their living every week of the year, prac- tically, and what they do not need for living any week, they slap away into the bank, or bury it in a glass jar under a stone in the wall. I saw one fisherman who fished all summer long, catching thousands of pounds of fish. At the end of the season, with about a thousand dollars in his pocket, he goes to town, pays up his debts, and then starts in on a rearing, tearing time, which lasts him about a month. Then, almost if not quite, penniless, he retires to his home Great Lakes Fishermen. 199 200 A Trip on the Great Lakes. and waits for spring and fishing, to go about gathering money for his annual spree. I do not know of any better way of living than that of such families as the Dicks. They have a home in town, where they live during the winter. In the summer, husband and wife and children move down to their island home, and there they spend the summer in the great outdoors. Of course, the children are fat as butter, and as happy as squirrels in a park. The women folks are some of them lonesome, however, .and that is a drawback. But if the woman is happy, and the man is making money and the children are well, there are no happier families than those of the fishermen of the Great Lakes who make their work a months-long vacation. If a man doesn't like his job, he would better quit it for one that he does like. I knew that thousands of men are outdoor men because they like the life, although they could easily hold down indoor jobs worth as much, or even make more money. It is a curious fact that most of the fishermen are white men, the Indians not fishing very much. No one seemed to know why this is. Fishing is not hard work, except for a few hours every other day or so. The Indians seem not to take to fishing, although they are said to know a good deal about fishing. They would rather pick berries, or let their women folks pick berries. I saw only one or two Indians fishing. The Indians of the better type, who are workers, are found working near towns, or in towns. They are unsteady, as a rule, but there are a good many Indians who have saved up hun- dreds of dollars from their wages and their trapping and their other work. One thing that has broken down the Indians is the liquor and food that they eat. In spite of the Indian List, which names the people to whom liquor must not be sold— habitual drunkards and In- dians — Indians find liquor, and the result is they go to pieces. Tuber- culosis has carried away thousands, and the remnant on the upper lake is a pitiful one, lank, hollow cheeked, muddy-faced and diseased. A good many of the great men — the men of money — who are important citizens in the North Shore Towns, got their start in fish Great Lakes Fishermen. 201 and furs. There are some who merely made the outdoor life the stepping stone of the prosperity, having no real liking for the out- doors, except as it was an opportunity of making money. As soon as they made their start, they went into the land business, the timber business, to mining, or some other traffic of the kind, turning their backs on the lake. Others, however, hold fast to their ancient occu- pation, as, for example, the fisherman who not only supplies Fort William with fish but brings in thousands of tons of gravel and sand besides with which to build the concrete structures necessary for the growth of the coming North Shore city. ]2 CHAPTER XX. Great Lakes Fishing THE fishing on the Great Lakes is divided into many different kinds — gill nets and pound nets and seines being used usually in commercial fishing. There is some hook and line fishing, but perhaps the most of this is done for sport, and the money is made out of it by the indirect method of wages for guides, restored health, railroad fares, steamer fares, tips and board bills. There are hundreds of oeople who go to the lakes and spend more or less lengthy vacations fishing. At the foot of Lake Ontario, for example, at Cape Vincent, there is some of the finest black bass fishing to be had anywhere, and the business of catching bait for these sportsmen is an important one. The minnows are caught in a min- now seine, and they sell for $L50 a hundred. The state of New York exacts a license for seining — $10 a year, — and one must know con- siderable about minnows to catch them. The bait business is one that offers a good little opportunity to the men who are located right for supplying live bait. Wherever sportsmen go fishing for black bass, pike, or other fish using live bait, some of them are always willing to pay a fair price. Many and many man has seen a boy sent out to dig worms by visitors, never once realizing that if the boy or the man would go to work and keep on hand a good supply o^f bait, sportsmen would make it pay. There is a man at Cape Vincent who saw an opportunity and took it. His name is Leon Peo, a boatbuilder who continues a busi- ness established by his father. Sportsmen came there after black bass and muskalonge. They wanted the minnows, and for years, the de- mand for minnows was greater than the supply. All kinds of baits were tried, but the only efficient bait was live minnows. Some sports- men hired men, just to catch bait for them, besides paying a guide. 202 Great Lakes Fishing. 203 204 A Trip on the Great Lakes. Then Peo took to taking orders for minnows, and sending out his own seiners to get them. The minnows were brought back in barrels and kept alive a day or two, but they would not live longer. They had to be caught fresh. Even when a long, wooden tank was built and water run into it through the village waterworks, the min- nows refused to live long. They died and they keep on dying, al- though fisheries experts have looked into the problem. It is thought that perhaps in capturing the minnows, they are injured, their scales being rubbed. Perhaps they are nervous and are scared to death ! In any event, I went out with the minnow catchers there at Cape Vincent, being more interested in the catching of bait by men who know that business than in seeing sportsmen catching a basket full of bass under the tutelage of a guide who, with his gasolene boat costs S8.00 a day. I think that I would rather pay a guide not to help me, than to pay one to help me. The bait catchers have to go out every day in season. The de- mand runs from a thousand to four thousand minnows a day, de- pending on the number of fishermen going out with rods. One sports- man will take out from 100 to 200 minnows in a live bait pail. The number going out on a day varies from seven or eight individuals to thirty or so, depending on the season and the weather. We started about 7 o'clock in the morning in a converted sail- boat about twenty-five feet long, and five feet or so wide. A hogs- head amidships, a little motor near the stern and the two fishermen, George Kilbourne and James De Jourdene, the box of seine, and myself comprised the outfit. The trip was five miles up the river into the lake and then out to Grenadier and Fox islands, and along the mainland, here and there, trying to find minnows. The minnow is a mysterious little fish, whether it is the Great Lake kind, or just the little brook kind, for it has notions and habits and it doesn't always appear where one most wants them. Not much is known about them. The fishermen think that the minnow is a deep water fish, and that it would not go up into the shallow water if it were not hunted ashore by the black bass and the other wolves of the water. The Great Lakes Fishing. 205 minnows appear here and there in certain bays, shoals, and along cer- tain stretches, and the minnow seiner must know in what kind of weather they are most likely to appear at certain places. We went to the Elms first. Here there was a flat under water which contained some drift and some weeds. As we ran in, one of the boys jumped up on the little bow deck, as the engine was shut off, and with a long pole in hand, looked ahead into the water, poling the boat along. He was looking for minnows, and as I stood along side, wonder- ing what things his trained eyes were noticing, I saw at last a little silvery flash — the darting of a tiny fish as it turned short to go in another direction. He set his pole to stop the boat, the anchor was dropped overboard, and the two minnow fishers stripped down, put on bathing suits to go seining the minnows. The seine, 65 feet long, was paid over the side while the corks were kept up and the sinkers sunk, with no twist in the length of it, of course. The minnows were in about four feet of water, but with the seine, which is seven feet deep, they are caught in as deep water as eight feet, the men swimming around with the seine end on occasion, to get the net around the school of fish. They merely waded out, now, with the net paid over the side. They walked the ends of the seine around the school, pulled the loop in, and drew the bottom up till they had the fish in a pocket. Then they came along side the boat, and with buckets filled the hogshead half full of water, dipped the minnows up with a scoop net and a big dipper which was all there was to the gathering of min- nows. However, in the net were some black bass which had also hunted minnows, some perch and other fish of no service to minnow catchers, and these were thrown back into the lake. The theory is that the bass and other minnow eaters chase the minnows into shallow water, else the minnows would never be found along the shore, close in. The one haul caught about 2,500 minnows, or thereabouts — I didn't try to count them, but the men who catch minnows day after 206 A Trip on the Great Lakes. Great Lakes Fishing. 207 day all summer long get so they can estimate a school just as cattle men estimate a bunch of cattle or herders a flock. of sheep. The minnow seine was all the seine I saw hauled, but when I reached Lake Superior, I saw gill nets and pounds, where they catch the food fish. Gill netting is poor man fishing, but it isn't fool-man fishing, for there are many things one must know about the fish he would catch. The fish of the lakes have their runways, their feeding grounds, their spawning beds, their play grounds, and sometimes they are on one kind of ground, and some times they are on others, and sometimes the fishermen would give their boots to know where in the seas they are. As I rowed along the shore, I would come to little poles, with flags on them, sticking out of the water, and I knew that the poles were the buoys of nets. Sometimes the buoys were right smack up against the stone-bound shore, and they told me that sometimes they set the nets miles out to sea, by compass, with huge poles and great flags so that they can be found. Some of the boats go out three or four hours to put in deep water the nets for the roaming fish. Usually, along shore, the nets were placed out from the points of land, and across the mouths of bays, and, in the spawning season, in shallow water along the sand beaches where the fish are wont to lay their eggs; time was when the fishermen set their nets across the mouths of streams, up which the trout made their way to de- posit their eggs, but in late years the Government has been gradu- ally closing down on the practice of netting around the seining bed. The Gov'ernment sought to protect the Lizard Island spawning beds, for example : the fishermen made such a howl that the Government decided to allow only two fishermen to fish there; thereupon all the fishermen who did not have Lizard Island licenses set up a hundred times the howl of old; then there was a widening of the island. A government that plays favorites in such matters as granting fishing licenses for certain territories is worse off than one that plays a straight yes or no game. 208 A Trip on the Great Lakes. IN THE GILL NET. Great Lakes Fishing. 209 A very few fishermen clean up a vast territory, especially if they fish from tugs. One tug fishes fifty miles of the North Shore, running both pounds and gill nets. A man in a gasolene boat fishes ten or twenty miles of shore, and one finds men in rowboats ranging ten miles; the sailboat, which always must carry oars because of calms fishes but little more than the, rowboat, except the large ones. Gill nets are set in deep water — in a hundred fathoms of water, if need be, but pounds can be set no deeper than the poles reach. A gill net is started by dropping over the buoy and then the anchor line, the anchor being a large rock or railroad iron, well wired to prevent chaffering. Then the net goes over, one paying out the net while the other pulls, but on the tugs, the net is paid over the stern of the tug, two men catching the net, and straightening it out. Some- times the sinkers tangle up and the net goes over like a rope for a little ways. The punt set net is usually better set, yard for yard because in case of a tangle the punt rower stops to wait, but the steam tug is too unwieldy for that. However, a tug sets five miles of net while the punt sets only half a mile or so. The tug covers fifty miles of coast while the punt covers only six or eight or ten, not half as thoroughly. The good fisherman knows the lake bottom as well as the hunter knows his mountain ridge and the trapper knows his trapline. There are men who forget over winter all that they knew about the fish the summer before. There are fishermen who never take a chance, and there are fishermen who always take chances. If a man makes a great haul off some point in June, the next year he is likely to have forgotten whether it was May or July that he caught the fish. Perhaps he sets his nets off that point a month too late. Now the fact is, the fishermen ought to keep a note book and put down in that notebook all about all the fishing; good times with the bad times, places where he had bad luck at certain times and places where he had good luck. Fish travel one way at one season, another at another; catching fish isn't any hap-hazard game. It is a science. The difference between a successful fisherman and an unsuccessful one is simply the difference between know how and know why, 210 A Trip on the Great Lakes. Great Lakes Fishing. 211 and don't know why. It isn't luck — despite the old yarn of "Fisher- man's Luck." If a fisherman had the results of his fishing, day and date and place and weather conditions, for ten or fifteen or twenty years, he would have only to compile the record and then he would find that on certain points, year aiter year, he had good luck within the range of, say, a month at certain places, and then the luck shifted to other places. I know that this is so because in my trout ifishing with ilies, the trout marched up from the deep holes to the foot of the rifts, and then followed one, two or three days of the best fishing of the season over the gravel shoals; then the fish got scattered over the rifts and took up the rift period of their summer; followed by the deep water and then the cold beds of summer. All this was according to the weather. But in the lake, where the temperature three fathoms down hardly changes, winter or summer, I was going to say, questions of cloudiness and sunshine, of food supply and schooling and scattering are found. Judging from what I have seen and heard, fishermen know a good deal less than they ought to know about their fishing, for the reason, chiefly, that they are handi- capped by the fact that they cannot study the fish the way one can study, say, muskrats. The gill nets are hauled by hand in punts, but some one invented a "net raiser" for the tugs, which runs by steam. The net raiser saves many an hour of toil. It is simply a steel drum with little "buttons" which catch up the meshes and lets go of them so that the net runs over the drum without slipping into the box. In freezing weather, the nets freeze up, but the tug men just stick a steam pipe down into the box, and in two minutes have it thawed out, ready to pay over. The pounds are set with pole drivers, worked by hand — a hard and painful job, this is, too. The lone fisherman sets few pound nets! They are placed where the fish are supposed to come around points, but the bottom 'has to be soft enough to take the poles, and the current must not be strong enough to carry out the pound. There 212 A Trip on the Great Lakes. are great currents in the lake, due to winds. The fog traveler must not forget these currents, for after the wind the set is back again. I suppose every one knows what a pound is ; it is simply a net fence that turns the fish out toward mid-channel to get around. The end of the lead fence is a funnel that leads through a small hole into a large net corral or box, and when the fisherman comes along, he hoists up the funnel, then hoists up the box and scoops the fish out of one corner. In season, they catch thousands of ducks and loons in the pounds. Once in a while, they catch an otter in a gillnet, two or three hundred feet under the surface. I may add, that when a man goes down in Lake Superior, he never comes up. Few of those drowned in the lake ever appear, if they happen to get down three or four fathoms. Many and many a man has gone out into the lake, never to return. One hears about these tragedies whenever he asks about the fishing, or travels with the fishermen. The boys on Dampier's fish tug were skylarking around. "Don't do that!" Dampier called to them, "I hate to see them romping around," he added, "Lots of men go overboard that way; this lake's water is cold. Before we could back, like as not they would be down — and they'd never come up again!" Tragedy is close to the laugh on the North Shore fishing waters. END. SCIENCE OF FISHING SCIENCE or ri3HING A NEW BOOK TELLING HOW TO CATCH FISH; FOR THOSE WHO HAVE CAUGHT THEM, AS WELL AS THOSE WHO NEVER HAVE. The book contains 258 pages of practical information on fishing for fresh water food and game fish, also those of salt water. There are no superfluities, but each chapter has been condensed and put into a simple language that is easily understood by all, and there is more information in this book than in any other book on fishing of its size ever published. It de- scribes the fish, tells where they are found, tells their habits, and how, when, and where to catch them, also the kind of tackle that is used for each fish. The book is profusely illustrated with half- tone cuts from photograplis and drawings, showing all kinds of rods, reels, and other tackle, the d various fish, diagrams showing ^ij ^^-- - _J how to make rods, nets, etc., and how to handle the tackle in various kinds of lishing. There are over a hundred illus- trations in all. The book is 5x7 inches, printed on good quality of paper and divided up into twenty-two chapters as follows: "^^ I Remarks on the "Gentle Art." II Rods. III Reels. IV Hooks, Lines and Leaders. V Flies. VI Artificial Baits. VII Landing Nets, Gaffs, Tackle Boxes, Etc. VIII Bait-Casting. IX Flv-Casting. X Surf-Casting, Troll- ing, Still Fishing, Etc. XI Use of Nat u r a 1 Baits. XII Handling the Hooked Fish. XIII Fishing for Black Bass. XIV Fishing for Trout and Salmon. XV Pike, Pickerel, Mus- kellunge & Pike- Perch. XVI Sunfish, Carp, Cat- fish and Suckers. XVII Fishing for Tarpon and Tuna. XVIII Fishing for Other Sea Fish. XIX Making, Repairing and Caring for Tackle. XX General Inforation. XXI Commercial Fish- ing. XXII Distribution of Fish — Good Places. The Most Practical Book on Fishing ever Published. PRICE, CLOTHBOUND, POSTPAID, 60 CENTC. HuirrBR The above iHiustralion shows a front cover of Hunter Trader -Trapper Monthly Magazine, published by A. R. Harding, Columbus, Ohio, who also publishes. Dookc on Trapping and Out-o'- Door SportSj bringing out new ones continually. Latest booklet descriptive of magazine and jooks published will be sent free upon application. See following pages. Hunter Trader Trapper 0s its Name Indicates is a Magazine of Information for Hunters, Traders, Trappers and Out-o-Door People. If you are interested in hunting, trapping, raw furs, ginseng, raising wild animals, taxidermy, etc., you will fmd tliis magazine of interest and value. The magazine is published monthly and treats on the fol- lowing subjects: Steel Traps, Where and How to Set; Baits and Scents ; Proper Season to Trap ; How to Skin, Stretch and Handle Furs; New Ways to Capture Mink, Fox, Wolf, Marten, Beaver, Otter and CDther Shy Animals ; Raising Fur Bearing Animals ; Growing Ginseng and Golden Seal; Training Night Hunting Dogs; Leading Fur Markets; London Raw Fur Sales; Fox Hunting and Hounds ; Coon Hunting ; Letters From Old Hunters and Trappers, etc. The Editor is a man of long experience in handling raw furs and trapping. The articles published and photos used are largely from those who have had actual exper- ience with trap, gun and dog— you will enjoy them. The magazine contains from 128 to 200 pages each month, averaging about 160 each month or 2000 pages a year. About 700 illustrations are used each year. The magazine is printed on good quality paper and the subscription price is only y 1 m\)\} 8L JL GSiV TEN CENTS A. R. Harding Publishing Co., Columbus, O. Camp and Trail Methods Interesting Information for all Lovers of Nature. >Vhat to Take and What to Do By E. KREPS This book, one of the most practical works on woodcraft ever written, was brought out to fill a vacancy in outdoor literature. There are numerous works on this subject but they were written for the sportsman and the city camper, therefore, the informa- tion given in them is not of value to the practical, outdoor man. CAMP AND TRAIL METHODS is intended for woodsmen, country people, mountain men, prospectors, trap- pers and the hardy outdoor people in general, the people who read the H-T-T, each and every one of whom the author is proud to call a brother, for he is one of their kind. To them this work will not only be interesting but also be valuable as it gives information which cannot be obtained elsewhere. The work was rini in installments in the H-T-T but has been revised before putting in book form. Much information has been added and many new illustrations have been used. It contains 274 pages and 68 There are 19 chapters as follows: Snowshoes and their Use. Snowshoe Making. Skis, Toboggans and Trail Sleds. illustrations 1. Pleasures and Profits of Camping. 2. Selecting a Camp Outfit. 3. Clothing for the Woods. 4. Pack Straps, Pack Sacks, and Pack Baskets. 5. Cooking Utensils, Beds and Bedding. 6. Firearms. 7. Hunting Knives and Axes. 8. Tents and S'helters. 9. Permanent Camps. 1.0. Canoes and Hunting Boats, 14. Provisions and Camp Cookery. 15. Bush Travel. 16. Traveling Light. 17. Tanning Furs and Buck- skins. 18. Preserving Game, Fish and Hides. 19. Miscellaneous Suggestions. The book is attractively bound in cloth and printed on nice paper, size 5x7 inches. Price, Postpaid, Cloth Bound, 60 Cents. CANADIAN WILDS Tells about the Hud- son's Bay Company, Northern Indians and their modes of hunting, trapping, etc. This book contains 277 pages, sizes 5x7 inches, is printed on good quality heavy paper, not illus- trated, and contains thirty-seven chapters as follows : The Hudson Bay Company. The "Free Trader." Outfitting Indians. Trackers of the North. Provisions for the Wilderness. Forts and Posts. About Indians. Wholesome Foods. Officer's Allowances. Inland Packs. Indian Mode of Hunting Beaver. Indian Mode of Hunting Lynx and Marten. Indian Mode of Hunting Foxes. Indian Mode of Hunting Otter and Musquash. Remarkable Success. Things to Avoid. Anticosta and its Furs. Chiseling and Shooting Beaver. The Indian Devil. A Tame Seal. The Care of Blistered Feet, Deer — Sickness. A Case of Nerve. Amphibious Combats. Art of Pulling Hearts. Dark Furs. Indians are Poor Shots. A Bear in the Water. Voracious Pike. The Brass Eyed Duck. Good Wages Trapping. A Pard Necessary. A Heroic Adventure. Wild Oxen. Long Lake Indians. Den Bears. The Mishap of Ralson. This book Is from the pen of a Hudson's Bay Officer (Martin Hunter) who has had 40 years ex- perience with the Hudson's Bay Co — from 1863 to 1903, During that time he was stationed at difCerent Trading Posts in Canada, paid, 60 cents. I. II. III. IV. V. VI. VII. VIII. IX. X. XI. XII. XIII, XIV. XV, XVI, XVII. XVIII. XIX. XX. XXI. XXII. XXIII. XXIV. XXV. XXVI. XXVII. XXVIII, XXIX, XXX, XXXI, XXXII, XXXIII, XXXIV. XXXV. XXXVI, XXX vn. Price, cloth bovnd, post Fur Farming (REVISED EDITION) A Book of Information on Reusing Furbearing Animals, Telling All About Enclosures, Breed- ing, Feeding, Habits, Care, Etc. FUP ^ FARMING THE first editior of this book is ex- hausted, and the present revised book is far more complete than the old. It is the recognized authority on raising all kinds of furbearing animals, and all of the questions that are asked regard- ing the business are answered in detail. It is the only guide for those who are contemplating the raising of furbearers for profit, and its accurate descriptions of the animals and their habits, when in the wild state, make it interesting and valuable to all. The information has been secured from reliable sources, mainly from those who have already experimented exten- sively in this line. A part was also taken from the United States Govern ment reports of their investigations. The new book contains 237 pages, 5x7 inches, printed on good paper, with 35 illustrations from photographs and drawings : also a new cover design which is shown above. It contains 14 chap. , as follows : I. Supply and Demand. VIII. Mink Raising, !L What Animals to RaisCo IX„ Opossum Raising. III. Enclosures. X. Muskrat Raising. IV, Ji^aws A.ftecting Fur XL Raccoon Raising. Farming, XII. The Beaver and the Otter V. Box Trap Trapping. XIII Killing, Skmning and VI. Fox Raising, Stretching. VII. Skunk Raising XIV. Deer Farming The book is attractively bound in cloth. Price, postoaid, SO cents. Ac Re HARDING, Publisher, Columbus, Ohic Fox Trapping. A Book of Instructions Telling: How to Trap, Snare, Poison and Shoot. A Valuable Book for Trap- pers. —J Contains about 200 pages and 60 illustrations divided into Twenty-two Chapters as follows: 1 General Information. 12 2 Baits and Scents. 13 3 Foxes and Odor. 4 Chaff Method, Scent. U 6 Traps and Hints. 15 6 All Around Land Set. 16 7 Snow Set. 17 8 Trapping Red Fox. 18 9 Red and Grey. 19 10 Wire and Twine Snare. . 20 11 Trap, Snare, Shooting and 21 Poison. 22 My First Fox Tennessee Trapper's Method. Many Good Methods. Fred and The Old 1 rapper. Experienced Trapper Tricks Reynard Outwitted. Fox Shooting. A Shrewd Fox. Still Hunting the Fox. Fox Ranches. Steel Traps. If all the methods as given in this book had been studied out by one man and he began trapping when Columbus discovered Ame-ica more than four hundred years ago, he would not be halt completed. CLOTH BOUND 60c., POSTAGE INCLUDED. /Wink Trapping A Book of Instructions giving many Methods of Trapping. A Valuable Book for Trappers. Contains nearly 200 pages and over 50 Illus- trations divided into Twenty Chapters as fol- lows: 10 General Information. 11 Mink and Their Habits. 12 Size and Care of Skins 13 Good and Lasting Baits. 14 Bait and Scent. 15 Places to Set. 16 Indian Methods. 17 Mink Trapping on the Prairies. 18 Southern Methods. 19 Northern Methods. 20 Unusual Ways. Illinois Trapper's Methods. Experienced TrappersWays Manv Good Methods. Salt Set. Log and Other Sets. Points for the Younj Trap- per. Proper Size Traps. Deadfalls. Steel Traps. The methods as published are those of experienced trappers from all parts of the country. There is money made in catching mink if you know how. After reading this instructive book, you will surely know. If you only catch one more prime mink it will pay for the book several times. _ CLOTH BOUND 60c., POSTAGE INCLUDED. t HUNTING DOGS. Describes in a Practical Manner the Training:, Handling:, Treat>^ ment, Breeds, etc., Best Adapted for Night Hunting:, as well as Gun Dogs for Daylight Sport. This book contains 253 pages, 5 X 7 inches, 45 illustrations show- ing the various breeds, hunting scenes, etc. The author, Mr. Oliver Hart- ley, in his introduction says: "As if hunting for profit, night hunt- ing for either pleasure or gain and professional hunting gener- ally had no importance, writers of books have contented them- selves with dwelling on the study and presentation of matters relat- ing solely to the men who hunt for sport only. Even then the Fox Chase and Bird Hunting has been the burden of the greater per cent, of such books. Chapter Part One — Hunting Dogs. Training— For Squirrels and Rabbits Training the Deer Hound Training— Specific Things to Teach Training — Random Sug- gestions from Many Sources 1. Night Hunting 7. 2. The Night Hunting Dog — His Ancestry 8. 5. Training the Hunting Dog 9. 4. Training the Coon Dog 6. Training for Skunk, 10. Opossum and Mink 6. Wolf and Coyote Hunting Part II — Breeding and Care of Dogs. Chapter ^ 14. Breeding (Continued) 11. Selecting the Dog 15. Peculiarities of Dogs 12. Care and Breeding and Practical Hints 13. Breeding 16. Ailments of the Dog Part III — Dog Lore. Chapter 18. The Dog on the Trap 17. Still Trailers vs. Ton- Line guers. Music 10. Sledge Dogs of the North Part IV — The; Hunting Dog Family. American Fox Hound The Beagle Dachshund and Basset Hound Pointers and Setters- Spajniels Terriers — Airedales 20. American Fox Hound 24. Scotch Collies. House 21. The Beagle Dachshund and Watch Dogs 25. A Farmer Hunter — His Views 26. Descriptive TabljC of Technical Terms The contents show the scope of this book and if you are at all interested in hunting dogs, you should have this work. The book is made up not only from the author's observation and experience, but that of scores of success- ful night as well as daylight hunters. This book will not interest the field trial dog men but is for the real dog men. who delight in chases that are genuine. Price, cloth-bound, postpaid, 60c. A. R. HARDING PUB. CO., Columbus, Ohio Bee Hunting A BOOK OF VAI,UABI,B INFORMATION FOR BFE HUNTERS. Tells How to I/ine Bees to Trees, Etc. The following is taken from the Author's Introduction to BEE HUNTING M ANY books on sports of Tarious kinds have been written, but outside of an occasional article in periodicals devoted to bee litera- ture, but little has been written on the subject of Bee Hunting. There- fore, I have tried in this volume — Bee Hunting for Pleasure and Profit — to give A work in compact form, the product of what I have learned along this line during the forty years in nature's school room. Brother, if in reading these pages, you find something that will be of value to you, something that will inculcate a desire for manly pastime and make your life brighter, then my aim will have been reached. The book contains 13 chapters as follows : I. Bee Hunting. II. Early Spring Hunting. III. Bee Watering— How to Find Them. IV. Hunting Bees from Sumac. V. Hunting Bees from Buckwheat. VI. Fall Hunting. VII. Improved Mode of Burning. VIII. Facts About Wne of Flight. IX. Baits and Scents. X. Cutting the Tree and Transferring. XI. Customs and Ownership of Wild Bees. XII. Benefactors and Their Inventions. XIII. Bee Keeping for Profit. This book contains 80 pages, paper cover. Price, postpaid, only 25 cents. A. R. Harding Pub. Co., Columbus, Ohio NV^ 18 \9\i LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 016 097 816 8