CHAPTER X, 



THE UNDINE FISHING PARTY UNDER FIRE. 



When the Undine fishing party started up the Chicago & Northwestern Rail- 

 road from the Twin Cities, the day was not more ominous of direful conflagration 

 f han any previous day had been for months. During all that fervid summer of 

 1894, from May until September, the atmosphere had been murky with smoke so 

 that it was difficult to see or breathe, and the constant solar heat made it still more 

 oppressive. All day long, from week to week, the lurid sun glared down through 

 the smudgy vapor like a redhot bull's eye upon the parched and gasping earth. 

 No rain fell, leaves and grass curled up with drouth, springs failed, rivers ran dry, 

 and farmers said such a long dry spell had never been known before in Wisconsin. 

 Occasionally a grateful zephyr would mitigate the fervent heat and clear the 

 air a little, but in general an unremitting calm prevailed from day to day, dead 

 and stifling as the interior of a bake-oven. Persons who had been up the road 

 asserted that the smoke came from forest fires two hundred miles away, which 

 had got into the muskegs or peat bogs, and were bound to burn ; that large areas 

 were burning, and unless rain came speedily the whole forest would be consumed. 

 Already large gangs of mill men and farm hands were out fighting fire, and some 

 houses and live stock had been destroyed. But the half-baked denizens of the 

 towns who were gasping for relief remembered only the refreshing coolness of 

 the sequestered lakes in that far-off wilderness where they had aestivated the year 

 before, and chafed for its delights. They could not realize that their anticipated 

 refuge was the very seat and source of present misery, and so those who were 

 able to flee the town hastend northward like joyous moths toward the candle 

 flame ; and the fast train bore them on, while the anglers aboard selected flies for 

 seductive casts and counted in their minds the scores of gamey bass, trout and 

 muskalonge which should come to their hands after they reached the delectable 

 land of lakes. 



Just here it is necessary to interpolate, for intelligent comprehension of the 

 situation, that the ramifications of the Chicago & Northwestern system spread 

 over one-third of the great pine region of North Wisconsin, giving easy access 

 to at least thirty trout streams and innumerable lakes with comfortable hostelries 

 at easy intervals, which one can patronize when he does not wish to camp. Some 

 of the lakes are broad and sparkling like inland seas, lying close to the railroad 

 track. Upon others, hidden in the depths of the forest, sunlight never falls except 

 at summer noon. With a portable canvas boat and a guide one can reach most 

 all of them by logging roads, and with a little effort and some endurance of black- 

 flies, mosquitoes, deer flies, wood ticks and flies, gnats and midgets, fish in waters 

 which even now are virgin ; for the physical character of Northern Wisconsin 

 is such that a moiety of it will remain for half a century at least as much of a 

 jungle as the Florida everglades, to which the country bears some small resem- 

 blance in respect to alternate hummocks and swamps, grass meadows and high pine 

 ridges. 



I remember well, a dozen years ago, how the lumbermen and sportsmen 

 rejoiced when this same railroad made its bold push northward to Lake Superior 



(56) 



