i;gJ^li::!i^l!iJ^^OX>^^^C>X/S05;3i-g>^ •.^::^i'; i'.':^;Ay 



Chronicles of Camp Gihson 



Elkmont, Sevier Co., Tenn., July 15, 1912. 

 The camp has had the distinction of entertaining some lady 

 visitors. The really important division of the editor's family, and 

 a sister, came up into the mountains and landed at the end of the 

 last logging switch of the Little Eiver Lumber Company a few 

 days ago, housed in a box car, and dressed in funnel shaped 

 skirts. They both insisted that it was a physical impossibility to 

 disembark, or to be disembarked from a box car. Ernest Tipton, 

 the company's engineer in charge of the logging end of the rail- 

 road, offered to back up with the log loader and lift them out 

 onto the bluff, but finally by the employment of sundry grub cases 

 and skids the ladies were landed on the trail for camp. 



It must be known that the 

 editor's wife has previously been 

 obsessed with the idea that the 

 only legitimate place for a sum- 

 mer outing was along the Atlan- 

 tic coast between Scituate, Mass., 

 and Atlantic Beach, Va., the 

 front porch of the Marlborough- 

 Blenheim at Atlantic City being 

 preferred. We have had our 

 arguments about this mountain 

 camping game for some years, 

 and while usually she has had her 

 way, it came down to a point 

 where, in spite of her presumable 

 aversion to camp life in the 

 mountains, the lady was advised 

 that in order to keep peace she 

 must come down into the Great 

 Smokies with me, for just a week, 

 even if she came in a net. 



Her sister came along to see 

 that no bears attacked her or 

 rattlesnakes bit her. Her sister 

 is one of those lady scouts who 

 is perfectly willing to tackle any 

 old enterprise once, and devotes 

 her time and hubby's money to 

 .winter cruises to San Diego, sum- 

 mer tours in Europe, and the rest 

 of the year to automobile trips, — 

 and charity work. 



The advent of the feminine 

 contingent to the tent house 

 showed that it had an inclina- 

 tion to adapt itself to camp life. 

 The hobble skirts disappeared, but 

 cajolery could not coax the ladies 

 into an abandonment of fluffy 

 ruffle caps. While they growled every minute over the little jaunt 

 up to camp, it wasn't twenty-four hours before they were climb- 

 ing up the rocky gorges of the mountain streams, and chasing into 

 the wildest recesses for ivy and laurel 'blossoms, the scarlet horse- 

 mint, the flox and the other flowers in which the country abounds. 

 They got back to nature mighty quick, and really seemed occa- 

 sionally to enjoy slipping off a rock into a creek. In short, I 

 have two city-born and city-bred women fully converted to a 

 belief in camp life in the woods, and to a love for the wonderful 

 allurements of the mountains. 



We ceremoniously observed the Fourth of July with some anti- 

 bellum-made fire crackers obtained at Knoxville, about one in ten 

 of which would explode, and an American flag raised to the top 

 of a baby poplar pole in front of the tents. In the evening we 

 had really quite a display of rockets and Eoman candles, but the 

 balloons failed us entirely. I had entirely forgotten that a four 



—32— • 



SISTER CROSSING A "RAGING TORRENT 



thousand toot altitude was beyond the rising limitations of hot air 

 balloons. So the illuminated, colored bags, bobbed around on the 

 ground in an attempt to sink to lower levels, rather than to rise 

 up to Clingman's Dome. Several friends were with us, and we 

 closed the ilay by sitting about the big camp fire, out under the 

 sky, where the stars seemed just above the tree-tops, and sang 

 or made an attempt to sing all the patriotic airs that any member 

 of the bunch could remember, and a hybrid collection of the old 

 songs, and a few of the latest comic opera gems. All camp rules 

 were broken that night, and the party did not break up until 

 midnight. Nine o'clock is bed-time in camp, as to fully enjoy 

 this sort of life one has to get up before five o'clock, and 



have breakfast in the open with 

 the sunrise. 



Avery has taken very kindly 

 to the feminine visitors, who, 

 being naturally of a bossing dis- 

 position, succeeded in displacing 

 him as czar of the cook-house. 

 Avery is not at all fussy, and has 

 an earnest desire to acquire all 

 the information possible, whether 

 it be about the culinary art or 

 otherwise. Therefore he was eas- 

 ily amenable to feminine domi- 

 nation and instruction. Look on 

 the result: In place of good sub- 

 stantial pork and beans, boiled 

 potatoes, coffee, hot sinkers, fry- 

 ing cakes, cornbeef hash, bacon 

 and eggs, we are deluged with 

 salads with mayonnaise dressing, 

 fancy custards, broiled baby 

 I hickens, fancy muffins and a lot 

 of other gastronomic plunder, 

 varying to those with the incom- 

 jirehensible Gallic names that we 

 ri'ad about and fail to understand 

 on the bills of fare at the Eeitz- 

 Carleton and other swell grub- 

 houses. 



Since the departure of the 

 ladies, Avery has gone back to 

 first principles, and now we have 

 llackberrj' pie for breakfast, just 

 as Dwight Wiggin, Bill Litchfield, 

 Frank Lawrence, Wendell Weston 

 and Gardner Jones do down in 

 Boston. 



In the little stream below the 

 spring we have excavated a fish 

 pond and edged it in with rocks. Here we hold our surplus live 

 brook trout, which the boys catch in the upper creeks and bring 

 back to camp in tin buckets. Such trout as suffer death in the 

 catching process we manage to dispose of, but the live ones we 

 keep in stock. 



When the average visitors blow into camp about the first thing 

 on their minds is something to eat, and the first thought in that 

 line that comes to them is brook trout. They immediately want 

 to know about the fishing. They are told that the fishing is very 

 bad this year, and that the crop seems to be practically exhausted. 

 Then Avery is called from the cook tent and asked if he thinks it 

 possible to catch a few fish for the gentlemen's dinner. He shakes 

 his head sadly, but says he will try, and slips out on the trail 

 with a fish pole over his shoulder. It usually takes him about 

 eight minutes to get to the fish pond, grab a dozen trout, and bring 

 them back for inspection. Then there are doings. Every stranger 



