Terms, Four Dollars a Year. ) 

 Ten «JentB a Copy. f 



NEW YORK, THURSDAY. OCTUBER 19, 1876. 



j Volume 7, flnmber 11. 



1 IT Chatham St. (City H all *qr.) 



THE TKAPPER'^ bTORY. 



[Fiom the wobe Democrat.} 



?rpWAS a moonlight uuht, the the trapper be^an 

 1 »mie lay in t. m might camp fire — 

 Come fill up your pipes, and pile ou the brands,] 

 And draw a lit le Higher— 



"Twa3 a moonlight night * hen Bet and I, 



Bet, ahe'o the old mare, you know- 

 Started for cimp on our lonely route; 



O'er the dreary waste of snow. 



1 na^ been to the clearing that afternoon, 



For powder and bdl, and whiskey, too, 

 For uame wau plenty, fura in demand, 



And plenty of hunting and trapping to do. 



1 had no fear of the danger that lurked 

 In ihe Kgions through wbicu m> journey lay, 



Till Bei of a sudd* n pli.ck. d up her ear, 

 And snifftd the air in a curious way. 



I knew at once what the danger was, 



And Bet ttiuck oui at a forty gait; 

 "Tv\af life or death for the maie and me, 



And all 1 could do was to trust to fate. 



Wolves on our track, ten miles from home! 



A ph-asant procpect that— eh, boys? 

 I could tee ihem skulking among the trees, 



And the woods re tchotd their hideous noise. 



At last, as their numbers began to swell, 



They bolder grew aud pressed us close; 

 So '"Old Pill Diiver" I brougiit to bear, 



And gave the leader a leaden dose. 



Now, you must know, if you draw tho blood 



On one of the sneaking, ravenous crew, 

 The rest \^ill turn on the douD.'e quick, 



And eat him up without more auo. 



This gave me a chance to load my gun, 



With jut?t a chauce to oieathe and rest, 

 "When ou ihey came! a gaiuiug fast, 



Tbough Bet was doing her level best. 



I began to think it was getting hot; 



"Pi.l Driver," cays 1 'this will never do; 

 Talk to 'em again 1 ' You bet she did, 



And ri^hi in his tracks lay number two. 



Well, boys, to make a long story short, 



I pickid them oil till but one was left;' 

 But he was a vt hopper, you'd oetter believe — 



A reg'lar mammoth in size anu heft. 



Yes, he was the last of the savage pack, 



For, as they had followed tbe n a'ral law, 

 They had eaten each other as fast as they fell, 



Till all were condensed in his spacious maw. 



.. ~«-e-»- 



For Forest and Stream. 



♦ — 



CAPT. JACK projected the expedition. Not Capt. Jack 

 of the murderous Modocs, for lie has passed through 

 a hempen noose to that mythical land where he now way- 

 lays emigrants, sh<>ots commissioners, and steals ponies ad 

 libitum, hut Capt. Jack of Grand Rapids, part owner and 

 master of the section boat Modoc, such a boat as we some- 

 times see pictured in tne advertising columns of Forest 

 and Stream. I had never seen our Capt. Jack until 1 

 joined bin. on our late trip, although our correspondence 

 commencid more than two years ago, when he first ordered 

 fly-fishing tackle of me. Our letters gradually became 

 more and more friendly as we discussed the geographical 

 position and grayling capabilities of the various brandies 

 of the Manistee, and this, early last summer led to an 

 invitation that I should join him in a trip to the source ot 

 the main branch. So 1 started from Philadelphia on the 

 2 1st of August at 1 p. m. and bowled along over the 

 smooth steel rails of the well- ballasted track of the Penn- 

 sylvania Hail road, sleeping soundly in my berth as I passed 

 through Pittsburgh, andotned the next day at Fort Wayne. 

 Here I transferred myself to the Grand Rapids and Indi- 

 ana Railroad, and in passing over the level and undulating 

 lands of Michigan noticed, many lakes of various areas, 



suggestive of pickerel, mascalonge, and bass. Capt. Jack 

 and his friend joined me at 10 p. m. at Grand Rapids with 

 their cabin car, containing two boats, provisions, and 

 camp equipage. And here let me describe my youthful 

 fellow voyageurs: Capt. Jack I found to be a sinewy 

 youth of twenty one, 5 feet 10 inches high; his companion, 

 whom I shall call "the Navigator," was of the same age, 

 rather shorter and more robust Better men could not have 

 been found for our journey down the difficult river. By 

 breakfast time next morning we had reached the town of 

 Mancelona, well up towards the Straits of Mackinaw, and 

 found our men, Taber, an experienced woodsman, and 

 Egan, a sturdy fellow and excellent cook, awaiting us. 

 Having replenished the inuer man, we proceeded to look 

 after our outfit. There were two section boats with live 

 boxes amidship, one of about 33 inches beam and 16 feet 

 long; the other, the Modoc, nearly 4 feet wide and 18 long. 

 I at once saw that they were not of appropriate model for 

 running a smooth rapid stream obstructed by sweepers and 

 sunken logs. They had not floor enough, of course, and 

 drew too much water. The smaller was not over 20 

 inches across the bottom, and the larger not over 27 — veiy 

 different in carrying and floating capacity from the light- 

 draft boats of my friend Dan Fiizhugh, and then they 

 were fitted with awkward oars, and the men were inexpe- 

 rienced in the use of the setting pole. They were the 

 only boats, however, that could be procured at Grand Rap 

 ids for our journey. We loaded bouts, our two tents, 

 our provisions, and our many etceteras on a two horse 

 wagon, fastened all securely with ropes, and proceeded 

 eastward on the road towards Otsego, which is on the 

 uorthern branch of the Michigan Central Railroad. Otse- 

 go is a village by the side ol a small lake of that name 12 

 miles above Crawford, or Grayling, as it is now called, 

 and is 20 miles east of Mancelona. At 1 p. m., having 

 traveled a distance of eleven miles, we came to the bridge 

 near the head of the main branch, and as I supposed the 

 most westerly of all the branches. Capt. Jack, however, 

 only averred that it was the head of the main stream, re 

 gardless of its being a westerly or easterly branch; and 

 its being one o'r the other was a matter of much conjecture 

 and discussion among us as we descended it. W e were 

 disappointed in its size, and had some little misgiving as 

 as to there being water enough to float our large craft 

 when loaded. We joined the two sections of each boat, 

 launched them from the bridge, stowed our traps, lunched, 

 and commenced our journey. The river here was a mere 

 brook, the outlet of a small lakelet a few miles to the 

 north; the water still retained the same temperature it had 

 acquired in the pond, and much too warm to be palatable. 

 We kuew, however, that the constant influx of springs 

 as we descended would, within a few miles more, bring 

 the temperature down to that of spring waier. There were 

 many wiudings, many sharp curves in which the Modoc 

 rubbed her nose and stern against opposite banks, much 

 dodging of alders, much scraping and pushing over shal- 

 low places until 5:30 p. m., when, after making a distance 

 of two and a half miles or so, we thought it time to camp 

 for the night; so we pitched our tents while Egan rigged 

 up the camp stove— for Capt. Jack, the luxurious scamp, 

 had brought one along— boiled our potatoes and coffee, 

 and fried our bacon flitch. And how good it all tasted, 

 this woodman's rough fare. I don't think 1 ever ate such 

 potatoes. I never knew until then that potatoes had a 

 flavor. 



We had scarcely started next morning when we found 

 we had come to cold water, and with the cold water the 

 sweepers. 



And now my dear reader, unless you have run a trout or 

 grayling river in Michigan you hardly know what sweepers 

 are. They are iuvariably white cedars, the arbor vitas of 

 the east, and invariably grow on tne very margin of the 

 streams, which wash away the friable sandy loam from 

 their roots, and cause them to incline over the water, and 

 at last to fall into it, and in most cases directly across. 

 Probably no boat or even a canoe had passed do wu this 

 incipient river from the bridge above "since the time of 



the Indians," and most likely not before. So our men Ta- 

 ber and Egan, who were exports with the axe, and wexe 

 well equipped in that way, had some chopping to do. Not. 

 unfrequently the sweepers were partly under, or the up- 

 per sides just even with the surface of the water, which 

 rendered the chopping of the log thrice as difficult Then 

 we would occasionally come to some monster log eighteen 

 inches or two feet through, extending entirely across the 

 stream, the moss growing on many of them having matted 

 and spread until broad highways were made for bears and 

 other "varmints." And on such bridges we frequently, in 

 our journey, saw evidences that prated of Bruin's recent 

 whereabouts. Sometimes a row of thrifty cedars, many of 

 them apparently fifty years old, sprouting from the prostrate 

 parent trunk at intervals would span the current that glid- 

 ed beneath. You would think such an old trunk roiten 

 —that you could dig through it with a grubbing hoe; but 

 scrape away the moss and strike your axe in; by the time 

 you had got the outside chip off vou were into sound tim- 

 ber. A cedar, and especially a white cedar, iu the water 

 never rots. I believe some of those logs had been there a 

 century. Over such we made a "carry," although a short 

 one. Piling our luggage on the log itself, or on shore, we 

 would pull the empty boats over with a "he O heve," and 

 loading them atrain go on chopping sweepers and hauling 

 our boats over logs whose upper side came only to tne sur- 

 face until we came to another carry. And so we continued 

 until Saturday night, and then the Sabbath sun dawned 

 upon us. No open water yet; our potatoes were nearly 

 exhausted, our twelve pounds of bacon gone, and we had 

 not struck grayling; there were plenty of them rising ami ng 

 the sweepers and logs that obstructed our wav , but they 

 were not for us, although I essayed with an alder pole 

 and then at great risk, even with my ringed rod to en ice 

 them, but it was "no go." Our men had worked and 

 chopped in the water in their stocking feet or barefooted 

 three mortal long days. Capt. Jack, who started from 

 home with a cold in his head, donned his India rubber 

 waning pants, and worked with them until his cold had 

 nearly disabled him, when the Navigator succeeded him in 

 the use of the leggings, and rendered good service. To 

 make our plight still more sad, Taber, our head man, had 

 snagged his foot badly, could not wade, and was obliged 

 to chop logs standing in the large boat. But Capt. Jack, 

 the Navigator, and Uncle Thad still enjoyed the scene and 

 the adventure, and witn our plucky men were determined 

 to go through. It was a question with us this bright Sab- 

 bath morning whether we would rest a day or plead the 

 necessity of getting out of the bush as an excuse for pusu- 

 iug on. We had hoped by this time to get down to the 

 op^n water and meet with the gang of men who were im- 

 proving the river by clearing it of logs and sweepeis, and 

 replenish our depleted commisariat; that we would have 

 found good fishing, and that our troubles would be ended. 

 Measuring the distance by land I don't think we had 

 come four miles, and certainly not over ten by water from 

 the bridge above. One day we did not make over a half 

 mile. The stream, however, had quadrupled in volume, 

 and that was encouraging. I had been so confident that 

 we would strike the neadwaters of one of the western 

 branches that up to this time I had not consulted our pock- 

 et map. On producing it, what was my astonishment to 

 see that the road from Mancelona to Otsego (that is if the 

 map was correct) crossed only the head of the eastern 

 branch, those to the west of it rising south of that road. 

 After all hand- had taken a look at it we were inclined to 

 think that the map was wrong, or Capt. Jack in error. 

 But he stuck to it that whether an eastern or western it was 

 the main river that he had fished lower down the previous 

 summer; that we would soon come to unobstructed water, 

 aud had vainly imagiued the day before that he heard 

 the sound of axes and the halloaing of' the gang of the 

 River improvement Company. In fact, we had noticed 

 the previous day in several places that the sweepers had 

 been cut by some persons who had evidently worked a pas- 

 sage upward in a canoe at high water a year or two ago, 

 probably trappers or land hunters. As we had a long river 



