RECREATION 



VOL. XXIV. 



MARCH 1906 



No. 3 



v.U^H*' 



IN A L G O N Q^U IN LAND 



By ARl'HUR HULL MABLEY 



T was merely a vague 

 possibility until that 

 bright June morn- 

 ing made it a pur- 

 pose. We had 

 reached Toronto on 

 our annual sojourn 

 and had four hours 

 to wait for the Grand Trunk train north. 

 "We' 1 ' do it," said we, and before noon 

 we ha' 1 rounded up the following camp 

 outfit : 



One tent, drill, 7^x9 feet, without 

 poles or fly ; folding camp stove, weigh- 

 ing about three pounds ; a few pieces of 

 tinware ; assorted provisions for a 

 month. 



To these we later added two portable 

 cots and some bedding. Be it known 

 that neither my wife nor I had ever 

 camped, even so much as in the back 

 yard. We had neither read authorita- 

 tive works on camp economics, nor puz- 

 zled over the enticing pages of beauti- 

 ful catalogues published by the manu- 

 facturers of campers' supplies. We 

 were merely humble disciples of the 

 Forest and trusted in the Wilderness. 

 Extending some fifty miles north of 

 the Ottawa division of the Grand Trunk 

 Railway system, at a point about seven- 

 ty-five miles east of Georgian Bay, lies 

 Algonquin Park, the national reserve 

 land of Ontario. Numerous tourists pass 

 through a corner of this tract of two 

 thousand square miles, but few leave 

 the train and find their way into the in- 



terior. It is still wild, with all the wild- 

 ness of the primeval woods of this, the 

 oldest forest in North America. Ex- 

 cept for the inroads of lumbermen and 

 the railroad, it is a land still unharmed 

 by the hand of man. It is no summer 

 resort and it supports no hotel. The 

 man who ventures within its confines 

 must needs be his own supporter as well 

 as a lover of the free life. To the de- 

 votee of the primitive she shows vistas 

 of beauty that delight and entrance, and 

 for the genuine sportsman, whose chief 

 aim is not death, she is generous. Rock, 

 water and trees are the elements out of 

 which this beauty is made. Fire-rent 

 granite, veined with seams of quartz 

 and mica, forms the ground floor of a 

 thick vegetation of pine, spruce and 

 hemlock, whose roots * seem to pene- 

 trate into the very rock, so shallow is 

 the nourishing soil. Eight hundred 

 lakes, many of them nameless and un- 

 surveyed, fill the hollows in the rocks. 

 Deep lakes these are, with waters cold 

 and dark, enshrouded in the strong 

 arms of the interminable forest. 



We had secured a government map 

 of the park before leaving home and we 

 now set to work upon it to find a suit- 

 able place for camping. We knew noth- 

 ing of the region from personal experi- 

 ence, nor were we successful in secur- 

 ing knowledge from others. Even at 

 Huntsville, our jumping-off place, we 

 found out only the fact that if you wish 

 to know what a place is like you must 



195 



