ivavtm 8, 1882.] 



FOREST AND STREAM. 



S 



senatorial and gubernatorial aspirations of the vale of 



Warwick - 



•'Thou hast it now, King, Cawdor, CHamis, nil." 



Bewatd has indeed, long years ago, been a Gonmra and 



Senator of the- Empire State, and he" and the weird prophet 

 who foretold the day, but perished before all had been ful- 

 filled, have alike passed into the silent land from which, 

 though the eternal gates were opened to them, they would 

 not return. Alas poor Forester: What of all the ■■dreamt. 

 cherished amid the lo\ r clv landscape," save this, came to 

 fruition? Was his life work perfected'' Though at every 

 entrance to the Eden of his day-dreams the angel with the 

 flaming sword butted bis pathway, thdugh with his own 

 human hands he lifted the mysterious curtain to enter uu- 

 8ummoued into the greater mystery beyond— who can an- 

 swer? 



It is perhaps enough for us that lie has made the Yale of 

 Warwick, if not celebrated in song like another Avoca, yet 

 in the poetry of the wildwood, fairer to tie; sportsman than 

 all the Valleys of Ionian hills or— which is perhaps worth 

 more than all the rest— that he raised poor Tom Draw up to 

 share with him his own fame, that he decreed for him an 

 apotheosis as immortal as a Cffisar's, It may have been, aft: 



all, with feelings somewhat ao 

 the " Warwick Woodlands" sa< 

 known from Maine to Mexico,' 

 a sportsman. .Never was a fain- 

 paid to friendship, never was h 

 ciation more openly professed, tt 



writer for hi 



ultn 



speaking to the li tt 

 of a promiueut magazine 

 in his efforts to please, 

 inn-keeper of Warwick, 

 sportsman, every man wl 

 not but regret that that 

 Tom Draw, after the 



spot- 



to envy, that the author of 



Tom Draw become "well 



and rank beside himself as 



' or more beautiful tribute 



n attachment and appre- 



u that of the scholarly 



wrnpanion. Perlia: 8, in 



world through the pages 



ideal above the actual 



let til 



Howe 



bote 



nt at I 



in which he so be 

 given to the world, 

 ten by request for 

 upon between pub 

 From the outran 



last tribute 

 »niy net 



.cart to the 



humble 



ray have bet 



u, every 



elf of a fnc 



nd, ean- 



f Frank Pi 



n-stcr to 



stilled— tha 



t tribute 



dls his lost frieud — should have, been 

 le result of a, literary engagement, writ- 



a compensation demanded and agreed 

 isher and author, 



:eof the Vale of Warwick, looking south- 

 ward, one with fifty years at his back may note wondrous 

 changes. The forest on the left has been pressed sternly 

 backward, the needs of the human below have denuded the 

 upper crests of the hills of their timber. Dwellings gleam- 

 ing through the foliage and billowy grain fields occupy the 

 places where, in the days of Forester, the ruffed grouse 

 drummed in the thicket',, and in front, where the solitary 

 white spire of the old Baptist church alone marked the site 

 of the pretty village concealed amid the willows and locusts, 

 more modern spires now arise, and the inevitable brick build- 

 ings looming out in dull red against the landscape and stretch 

 ing across the creek— the Wawayanda— tell that the hamlet 

 in these years has quadrupled Its size. 



The waters alone go "unvexed to the sea." "Unromantic 

 Wickham's Fond," now Clark's Lake, long famous for its 

 pickerel, teems with the gamy black bass, almost rivaling for 

 sport "the dim wood waters "of the pure Truxedo," whither 

 the genial proprietor of the former, that friend of anglers, 

 so often resorts for new conquests, unmindful of the 

 triumphs possible in his own pretty lake. 



A little more than a stone's throw from the ancient hostelrie 

 where "honest, whole-hearted, kind Tom Draw" presided 

 at the jovial board, another Tom D., an angler like the 

 first, dispenses hospitably to man and beast, and cheers the 

 souls of luckless sportsmen with the comforts of his famous 

 inn. Here mine host extends the hearty hand of welcome 

 to enthusiastic anglers, and is always ready to pilot one to 

 Greenwood and join in the sport in lucky "spots known hut 

 to himself. 



Southward from the village and on either side of the 

 Wawayanda, across luxuriant meadows — rare hunting- 

 grounds in the good old days— the Forester Game Olnb 

 has its preserves, the first attempt in the vale to prevent the 

 wholesale destruction of game and to provide for sport in 

 coming years. It was fitting indeed that its christening 

 should be in honor of him whose spirit still lives and moves 

 along the wooded upland, on the tlowerv slopes and in the 

 quiet runs and swales; everywhere from that nameless rill on 

 tne north to the waters of the Papakatiug. Still southward, 

 the meadows, once so wild and marshy, have been drained, 

 and now produce burdens of choicest hay, the land then 

 woody now teems with golden corn. . While Forester has 

 been sleeping the years ot his manhood awaj', the axe. and 

 the plow have not lain in rust. Through the valley 

 which we have traversed, until far away to the north, the 

 cone of Sugar Loaf seems but a hillock, the years have 

 wrought changes in customs, lives and sports. Yet think 

 not that the sportsmen, of whom the vale contains not afe' 

 fret away their lives. 



To the eastward lie the Warwick Woodlands, in all their 

 olden freshness and glamour; here at least nature has held 

 the mastery over man. An ocean of forest with glens which 

 have never yet rung with the sound of the woodman's axe, 

 stretches away from Point Peter southward, away to the 

 Hogback, ana ou and on until the forest takes other uames, 

 and that of the Woodlands is unknown; still on to the south- 

 ward, until it passes beyond the limit of the vision, a dusky 

 line on the horizon. 



Below Point Peter, on the left, lies one of that series of 

 tarns which extend from Schooley's Mountain, far south- 

 ward in New Jersey, to the Highlands of the Hudson, the 

 track of the glacier which in years gone uy, beyond the 

 limits of human reckoning, wrought annihilatfon to the men 

 of the river drift— in other hinds if not in this. This is Long- 

 Pond of old, Greenwood Lake of to-day, as fair, as beauti- 

 ful in the dawn of the morning, as when from this summit 

 Frank Forester looked down upon it in the davs which saw 

 him and Tom Draw among the liviug, and what is of far 

 more interest to these pages, a spot where devotees of the 

 rod and reel hud sport rivaled by perhaps no spot nearer than 

 the Thousand Islands, or may tie the Delaware. Here, as 

 well as in the vale, the years' have left their traces, 'the 

 long brown building at the. head of the lake, known once us 

 "Felter's," bus become the Windermere; across the eastern 

 arm that popular report of old, known as "Hazen's," is now 

 the Waterstoue Cottage, while midway and on the western 

 shore of the lake, the Lake Side House of to-day, in a trans- 

 formed state, is all that remains of another "Angler's Home" 

 of the olden time. The "lower end" was a sort of aqua in- 

 cognita to- dwellers ou the New York side of the line; the 

 grand fishing ground was at the upper end. Here great rafts 

 constructed of logs were anchored, each with an aperture 

 in the center in which could be set the car for the keeping of 

 the minnows for bait or for holding the captured fish. These 



rafts were for the use of the pickerel fishermen, and were 

 the scenes of many an hour of exciting sport, and of wilder 

 fun "between bites." One incident connected with them is 

 Worthy to be recorded. 



An enthusiastic party came in about sunrise one. morning 

 bent on a day's sport with the picket el. They were duly 

 placed upon one of tile rafts and the sport which they had 

 that day, though not uncommon at the lake, was sueh as to 

 make the neophyte au angler forever. The members Of the 

 party all, save- one, stmug'thrir fish and hung them over the 

 edge" of the raft, and hours before night the long-faced beau- 

 ties which were tethered around wen- a sight which caused 

 the glow of the afternoon sun upon the 'golden and em- 

 browned autumnal foliage on the eastern mountain slope to 

 pass unnoticed. The member who did not stilus his fi-.li 

 placed them one by one as caught into the car. His luck 

 had surpassed all the rest; four, five and six-pounders had he 

 taken from the water and dropped into the ear. 



The hour of departure came, and the parly prepared for 

 their journey homeward. The strings of fish were drawn 

 in preparatory to their being packed, and "he, the chieftain 

 of them all," began his arrangements for taking the fish from 

 the car. The first dip of the net failed to bring Up a simile 

 fish; a second dip was made, with the same result; a third 

 and deeper oue made evident the fact that some one had 

 blundered, that there was no car in the opening in the raft, 

 and that our fisherman, through the live long day, had been 

 restoring his fish as fast as taken to their native element. 

 Let every angler who reads these lines sketch for himself the 

 expression upon that honest fisherman's face. 



"I looked up at Nye, and he gazed upon roe." 

 It cannot be caricatured. 



In the springtime "Long Pond suckers" were a harvest for 

 resident fishermen, and a luxury to the dwellers over the. 

 mountain. It was perch and pickerel, however, for which 

 the lake was famed. To the latter have since been added 

 black bass— both varieties— and salmon trout, and the fish- 

 ing for the former has long been fine. Anglers now throng 

 the lake by wholesale, attracted by the sport and the excel- 

 lent accommodations afforded to those having families, by 

 the half dozen hotels within easy reach. 



On the western shore the club house of the Greenwood Lake 

 Association, the Encampment Hotel and the 1 bill of Christian 

 Philosophy offer new attractions to the sportsman, tourist and 

 scholar. Though the members of the former are unknown to 

 us by name, save oue— W. O. McDowell, Es<j.. to whom 

 the credit is due for the plan of the proposed Forester me- 

 morial monument — we are assured that the honor of the an- 

 cient order of gentlemen is safe in their keeping, and that the 

 gentle craft will never be reproached for act of theirs. The 

 gentleman above-named is, we believe, the founder of the 

 club. 



Teaohman's cabin has become classic, and the halo of that 

 night— the last of that "first week in the Woodlands," with 

 its roystering and carouse, with Tom asleep "Hat on his back 

 like a stranded porpoise, with bis mouth wide open, through 

 which he was puffing and breathing like a broken-winded 

 cab horse— his immense rotuudity protected only from the 

 cold by an exceeding scanty shirt of most ancient cotton," 

 that "flash 1 slush I of a pailful of ice-cold water slap in the 

 chaps, neck, breast and stomach of the sound sleeper," will 

 hang around many a group of merry sportsmen, and the talc 

 he told again and acain to ears that never weary in hearing 

 that rude exploit "of Frank Forester and Barry Archer.' 

 Since, then other nights have, been made memorable at Green- 

 wood Lake, and not the least of these the one on which the 



genial president of the Railroad attempted the role 



of physician to assuage the pains of his host, brought on by 

 the partaking of too much cheese and too little applejack, 

 or vice versa, or too much of each. 



Miles aw r ay to the west, along that road fragrant with the 

 memories of the morning ride to John Hiker's tavern, we 

 come to the "drowned lands," now to a great extent cleared 

 and drained. Stretching away from "Checbunk on the north 

 far away into the Jerseys, as far as the eye can reach, a sea 

 of coarse grass interspersed here and therewith patches of 

 swamp and thickets, with now and then a group of piues 

 and cedars, venerable when he who made them famed was 

 sporting away the hours of a happy boyhood among 'he 

 green pastures of his native Wharfdale.'' "One hundred and 

 twenty-five, woodcock bagged on these grounds of a day 

 seems somewhat mythical to the modern spsrlsman. but 

 grand shooting i= still had upon these meadows in favorable 

 seasons. The twenty thousand odd acres of the drowned 

 lands with the great cedar swamp in its northerly portion 

 will, with proper protection, be a favorite resort of the 

 sportsman tor years to come. 



The Warwick Woodlands of fifty years ago, and the 

 coveys of quail, woodcock and partridge were no myth. 

 From the spot where on that second morning "Tom Draw 

 pulled down a set of bars to the left and strode out manfully 

 into the stubble" with Frank, and Harry, and Tim, up the 

 ■alley, at the "Squire's Swamp Dole,"' "Seer's (properly 

 ' ''Hell Hole," the white oak of Bill 

 ow a hale octogenarian — the sportsmen 



dstoric track, enough may bo found to 

 suggest the good old days. The swamp holes arc perhaps 

 more diaiued, the ground less marshy, and the swamps 

 proper a trifle less wooded, but the crack of Greeners and 

 Sootts, in the season, breaking the stillness of the morning, 

 tells that the past is being lived over again. 



The group which on that autumn morning fifty years ago 

 stood upon the white porch of Tom Draw's tavern and 

 looked southward upon the orchards, the golden hillsides, 

 and upon the mountain glens in front, have become as classic 

 almost as the Laocoon, and in literature as immortal as the 

 chieftains who joined in the quest of the Argo— those who 

 winged their way with ' 'pine cut down in the forests of 

 Pelion" to the Colchian land. 



All of human agony that the chisels of the great triad 

 could wring from marble, all that, the pen of Sophocles, 

 dark with fate, could depict, commemorates but a Ink- of 

 sin and retribution. Halcyon days they were, too, in that 

 age of myths, garbed now iu poetry and shrouded in a light 

 that was never seen on land or sea." But halcyon days have 

 ever been possible, whose record contained naught of woe, 

 suffering or baffled hopes, whose picture is 

 As fair as Eden before the fall, 

 Ere the trail of the serpeut was o'er it all. 

 Such days, such pictures, Frank Forever drew in colors 

 which will" never fade. The garden— the Warwick Wood- 

 lands — whose fruit could be gathered by no vulgar hands, 

 have opened their treasures under the spell of a master's 

 touch, and stand to-day famed in literature. Eastward from 

 the vale of Warwick, and on a crest of the range overlook- 



ing the Woodlands and a panorama which will be stretched 

 out in beauty forever, appreciative sportsmen have designed 

 the erection of a memorial which shall keep alive the mem- 

 ory of Forester, What spot could be chosen more fitting 

 than the one which overlooks the scenes of his "pleasant 

 sports by day, of Jovial boards at night, of dear, unfoigotten 

 friendships," the latter to him now. alas, as though they had 

 never existed, unless indeed they be renewed somewhere 

 beyond the ken of the mortal. 



it, was a saying of the great Lamartinc, "What can man 

 do for the man who is no more? Nothing but write a cold 

 epitaph. Marble keeps the memory longer than the heart. 



Sayer's) Swamp," 

 Wisner— the latter 

 of those days eon 



rd 



len Frank Forester roamed 

 streams are vet within the 

 there, are hands still flesh 

 d eyes which saw him and 

 grave lie between, the day 

 in the world of letters, 

 marble. 



that 



sepulchre." Thonsii the days ^ 

 these glades arid angled in the 

 memory of living men, thougl 

 which "once grasped his own, a 

 see him still though the sods of 

 is at hand w r hen his memory, sav 

 must perish unless kept in granite 



Let. then, the base of the memorial support the standing 

 figure of the poet, artist, sportsman, with head bared 

 and face turned toward the Vale of Warwick. Crouch- 

 ing beside him, with his Queen Anne's Tower musket, and 

 with hand shading his eyes — so soon to be dimmed — 

 peering toward his old home below, let Tom Draw have his 

 place and share the glory of the other, and let the world talk 

 of them while they sleep. 



Earthly immortality is nought to them now. Never 

 dreamed of, perhaps, by one. unless in that highest aspiration 

 of the lowly, to have his name written ou a tombstone. 

 True, the desire to live on somehow beyond the days of the 

 flesh, is as strong as life or death itself. We can read it in 

 everything of human longing, from the unselfish wish of 

 Herodotus "that the deeds of men may not be effaced by 

 time," from brazen pillars, set to mark" the limits of con- 

 quest, down through the centuries to the gentle poet whose 

 lament was, that his name was "writ in water." 



But these aspirations are not of the humble; theirs is, at 

 most, that their names shall be inscribed somewhere where 

 it must sometime be read, though by someone who must 

 needs ask who and what the sleeper was. It is another 

 touch of that nature which makes the whole world kin. 



And if it be that in the after time, two stone faces, eternal 

 in their repose, shall look across the vale, catching the glow 

 of summer sunsets and facing winter storms, in noonday 

 and in darkness — emblematic of that fitful fever of theirs 

 which we call life — the tribute due from the living will 

 have been paid, and the Warwick Woodlands and the Yale 

 of Warwick, guarded by these sentinels, of her past, will 

 take on fresh lustre and live anew in song and legend, as 

 undying and imperishable as those peaks above — God's 

 eternal monuments over the graves, though leagues apart, 

 of Frank Forester and Tom Draw. 



CAMPS OF THE KINGFISHERS. 



cs bight parts — PAjiT vm. 



nPIIE next moruiug the Veteran and I were early up lake 

 JL looking for a sunken reef or "submerged island ' that 

 Johnson had told about, and around which he had taken 

 some very fine bass. We found it after a diligent search, 

 about forty rods or so straight up the lake from Long Point, 

 and after trolling slowly around it three or four times, and 

 taking three small-mouths of over three pounds each, we 

 pulled across to Deep Water Point, where a party of four 

 young Cincinnati lads — schoolboys out on their vacation — 

 had made their camp early in the previous week. 



While we stopped a few minutes, Dan struck and landed, 

 right under their noses, a bass that weighed on their scale 

 three and three-quarter pounds, which surprised them greatly, 



they had taken nothing near tin 

 nfisti. Some of them had beet 

 y the previous week, and we 

 they wanted, for their luck had 

 taken barely enough to eat, but I 

 ful, and eager to learn how it w; 

 They were well-behaved boy 

 meuded them for their good sem 

 in the woods rather than in somt 

 sensible pastime. Two of them 

 day or two after and took au 

 equipments, not omitting the. ci 

 providing themselv 

 Sensible boys! Si 



3p< 



'11 do 



p but a few dozen 

 o sec. us occasion- 

 al them what fish 

 that they had 

 mg and hope- 



Sensible boys! bpend you 

 of beer-shops, billiard-roo 



and old Dan com- 



> in spending their vacation 



less health-giving and less 



vent down to our camp a 



nventory of all our camp 



rry-comb, with a view of 



lar outfit for the next year. 



md your vacations in the woods instead 



ioms and worse places, and your 



parents need have little uneasiness about your future. 



The Veteran left a pair of the largest ba'ss with them — all 

 they would accept — and we pulled around below Buzzard 

 Boost to look for a mate to his big bass that he and the 

 Mossback succeeded in losing a day or two before, so firmly 

 does your old angler believe that where there is one big bass, 

 there are two. Just around the point 1 struck and captured 

 a very game five-pouuder, and 1 was having a quiet chuckle 

 to myself over old Dan, but it did not last long, for as we 

 turned a point to follow around the sweep of a small bay he 

 suddenly said, "Hold on Hickory, there's trouble on the old 

 man's mind," and as he looked up, 1 stopped the boat and 

 reeled quickly up to lake a hand — with the oars— in the 

 tussle that was coming. 



When he struck him I knew by the action of the rod that 

 there would be a chance for the" old fisbhawk to show his 

 mettle, and that it would call into play all the cunning of 

 that one "flipper" of his to obtain the mastery over such a 

 powerful fish as this one by his first great rush had shown 

 himself to be, and I backed the boat rapidly up on the line 

 to get within good working distance of him. Out into the 

 lake with a tremendous pull that nearly lifted Dan from his 



uit (he weiulis ou 

 back, with Dan winding- 

 up the slack of the line 

 attempted to pass unde 

 strokes of the oars EtJdles 

 for the lily stems and bu 

 Wbirling'the boat aroura 

 a strong pull headed tli 

 about to vanish in the i 

 cans; some other time-' 

 rushes and lily pads must ha 

 fight, although desperat 

 wa3 turned down shor 



,) the fish turned and came 

 handle for dear life to take 

 is the fish came on. He 

 at, but a couple of lusty 

 nd he went by with a rush 

 some fifteen yards iushore. 

 Dan his favorite position, 

 -mi shore, just as he was 

 rith a "Good-bye, old peli- 

 f ail ure to get among the 

 broken his heart, for the 

 lasted but a few minutes after he 

 and when he was led alongside, 



rolling from side to side, "clean bushed," it was small trouble 

 to take a quick, firm grip on his lower jaw with thumb and 

 forefinger and lift him iuto the boat. He never left the water 

 once while negotiations were pending, and we both had 

 handled smaller fish that made longer fight. But what a 



