426 



FOREST AND STREAM. 



[June 25, 1885. 



Address all communicaUo7is to the Forest and Stream Publish- 

 ing Co. 



IN THE FORESTS OF NEW BRUNSWICK. 



THE bright green of the beeches was fading into yellow 

 and bunches of crimson leaves were scattered here and 

 there among the thick foliage of the maples, as our party- 

 took their way up the Nashwaak River, which unites with 

 the St. John at a point directly opposite the city of Freder- 

 icton, the capital of the Province of New Brunswick. 



The road up this stream was through a veiy pretty valley 

 worn in the gray sandstone of the coal measures by the lapse 

 of ages. The river itself is about sixty miles in length, its 

 water being of the purest, here turns now to the right, then 

 to the left in many a graceful curve, rippling over beds of 

 gray gravel, amoDg green meadows fringed by rows of 

 maples and elms and by a thick growth of shrubs, which 

 protect the banks by their friendly shade. 



A journey of twenty-five miles brought us to the little vil- 

 lage of Stanley, where we remained for the night. Resum- 

 ing our journey next morning at an early hour, we reached 

 the last settlement, and sending back our wagons prepared 

 to enter the vast forest which extended to the northeastward 

 more than a hundred miles without a single settler or clear- 

 ing. 



Two of our horses were reserved to draw over the rough 

 lumberman's portage which we were to take for a part of the 

 way, two sleds shod with wood, which pass more easily 

 over the stones and roots than those shod with iron or steel. 

 On these were loaded our bedding, provisions, and what 

 few cooking utensils we required. A three days' walk over 

 a rough and hilly portage brought us, after crossing the 

 Mramichi River, not very far from Slate Island, to a lum- 

 berman's depot on the upper waters of the Burnt Hill stream, 

 a branch of the last-mentioned river. The water of Burnt 

 Hill is very bright and clear, and we could see a few trout 

 darting about in it as we crossed. We made our headquart- 

 ers in a little camp distant about a mile from the stream. 

 This was built and formerly occupied by a hunter; there was 

 in it a stove and rude bedstead, which latter we covered 

 wiih freshly -gathered fir boughs, and tired enough, laid us 

 down to rest, some on the bed, others on the rough floor. 



About midnight we were awakened by a sudden thump 

 on the spruce bark covering of our camp, and some one 

 called out, ' ' What is that?" One of the party who had spent 

 the summer alone in this camp as guard, said from the floor 

 where he was lying, "Oh, it is only the mink; he often does 

 that; he is jumping about on the roof of the camp, and 

 would have come in, but he knows there are strangers here." 

 In the morning we heard the story from the watcher Patch- 

 ell, who had acted as a guard over the oats, flour and other 

 articles which had been left at this depot during the previous 

 winter. He said that some time in the month of June he 

 had caught a large bear in a trap, and after skinning him 

 had brought a piece of meat with him in a bag, which he 

 left at the door of the camp. In the morning he found a 

 hole in the bag and a large part of the meat gone. A little 

 observation showed him that the culprit was a mink who 

 resided under a brush heap close to tbe camp. As Patchell 

 showed no enmity to this animal he soon got so tame that 

 he would run into and about the camp in the afternoon and 

 evening. He was very fond of fish, especially of trout, of 

 which Patchell caught great quantities in Burnt Hill. He 

 said that he often used to amuse his lonely hours (for he had 

 no companion) by fastening a trout's head to a piece of string 

 and throwing it out to the mink and then dragging it away. 

 The little brute would hold on to it as long as he could, and 

 when it was pulled away from him he would snap and snarl 

 at Patchell, exhibiting great rage. 



The guardian of the depot also informed us that he had 

 shot during the summer around the depot more than three 

 hundred squirrels, which had come there to get some of the 

 oats and flour which were in the storehouse. The squirrels 

 must have some means of communicating the fact of the 

 presence of food to one another, as in these thick and gloomy 

 forests one may travel for several days without meeting one 

 Of them. 



Not far from the depot there was Beaver Brook Lake. A 

 hunter who was one of our party informed us that it was a 

 great place for black ducks and that he had got as many as 

 fifteen there in one day. A waif of a mile and a half, part 

 of the way on an old timber road, the rest through the woods, 

 brought us to its shores, which we cautiously approached 

 crawling through the thick branches of the low cedars by 

 which they were surrounded in this place; four or five 

 hundred feet to the left we could see a large flock of black 

 ducks feeding among the rushes close to the shore. Two of 

 the party, leaving the others behind, crawled along until 

 they got within guushot and fired, but only two were 

 secured. On our way back to the depot we shot some 

 partridges so that the next morning we had an excellent 

 breakfast on game. The black ducks were especially fat 

 and good. This is a famous country for black ducks. Mc- 

 Keel Brook Lake, which can be readily leached from the 

 Burnt Hill portage, about the first of September abounds with 

 these fine birds as well as with other water fowl ; caribou, too, 

 seemed to be plenty as their tracks were abundant. Indeed 

 we saw where a hunter had killed one, taken the skin and 

 left the carcass to rot in the woods. 



By means of chopping the brush and fallen trees out of old 

 lumber roads we were enabled to take our horses a day's 

 journey further to the east, to an old lumber camp on the 

 Clearwater, a stream of very clear cold water about two rods 

 wide and from a foot to eighteen inches in depth. It was 

 bounded by high and steep hills, while the narrow rim of 

 low land at their base was covered by a thick growth of 

 tangled cedar and low shrubs of various kinds. We prepared 

 to remain at this camp for the night. 



The air had been full of smoke for several days, but this 

 night it was so thick as to completely obscure the stars. In- 

 deed only a few struggling rays of light reached us from the 

 red and lurid moon. We had begun to feel uneasy lest the 

 fires from which this smoke arose should overtake us on our 

 road; but about midnight the flood gates of heaven were 

 opened and the water fell in torrents. 



In the morning when we looked out of our rude habitation 

 everything was changed ; the air was cool and bracing and 

 the sky cloudless and of the brightest blue, while the pearly 

 drops which yet hung on the leaves of the shrubs glittered 

 like diamonds beneath the light of the early sun, and from 

 the autumn leaves which were one by one here and there 

 slowly falling from the trees. 



The evening before when we were entering the camp we 



had noticed a strange freak of bruin, who had evidently been 

 a frequent visitor there. A paraffme lamp which the lum- 

 berman had left filled with oil had been removed by him 

 and left outside, the body of the lamp in one place and the 

 chimney in the other, and we could see the marks where he 

 had been rolling himself between these, which were yet un- 

 broken. The bear seems to have a great liking for this oil. 

 On our road out we had seen where one of them had lately 

 been scratching around the roots of a spruce where some of 

 the fluid had been spilt the year before, and the old hunter 

 who was with us said that he had noticed that bears fre- 

 quently visited this spot and scratched around the roots of 

 this spruce. 



So soon as we had got everything packed up we com- 

 menced wading up the stream, our horses, Avith the loads 

 now on their backs, doing the same, as we found that we 

 could walk easier and quicker up the gravelly bed of tbe 

 Clear Water than through the tangled brush on its shores. 

 A mile and a half of this wading brought us to an old hunt- 

 ing camp, from which a blazed or spotted line led in a north- 

 easterly direction to the summit of the high hardwood-cov- 

 ered hills which lie between the two branches of the Mirami- 

 chi River. Following this, evening brought us to another 

 hunting camp, situated in a little valley among a magnificent 

 growth of beech, birch and maple. On three sides of this 

 there were high, semi-oval shaped hills covered by hard 

 woods to their very summits. Through the green leaves by 

 the slant rays of the sun I could catch a view of the Clear 

 Water Mountain, whose conical and elevated summit was 

 covered by a thick growth of dark green fir rendered black 

 by distance. Not very long after sunset star after star came 

 into view until the whole twinkled with the brilliancy of 

 those which glitter in the forehead of the Arctic sky. We 

 slept well that night, as each of us had carried his load, and 

 our journey was all uphill from the shores of Clear Water 

 to this camp. . . 



As our hunter had left some beans and other provisions 

 hidden here from the previous winter, we concluded that we 

 would make use of them. In the morning I went with him 

 to the place of deposit to notice in what manner he circum- 

 vented the wiles of the bear and sauirrel, both very cunning 

 animals. The plau which he had adopted was this: He had 

 cut down a small fir, leaving five or six feet of the stump; the 

 fir, which was a long one, he had trimmed smooth. The 

 beans and other provisions he had put into an empty flour 

 barrel which he had enveloped completely with white birch 

 bark, which he had bound around the barrel with the small 

 iron wire which is used for bundling hay. 



The barrel thus protected from the effects of rain, he had 

 suspended it to the smaller end of the fir by means of a piece 

 of the same wire. He then had laid the lower part of the 

 fir on the stump, pressing down the butt of this fir which 

 elevated its top, to which the barrel swung, to a height of 

 twenty or thirty feet from the ground, just as you see the 

 bucket dangle from the top of the old-fashioned well poles. 

 The end of the fir was well loaded, so as to keep it in its 

 proper place, and as bruin did not know enough to remove 

 this load and dare not venture to ciiinb out on it, and as the 

 squirrel could not climb down the wire to the barrel, every- 

 thing had remained just as good as when it was first placed 

 in the barrel. 



Moose seemed to be tolerably plenty in this country, as we 

 frequently saw where they had bitten off the moose woods or 

 peeled their bark. After a comfortable breakfast we shoul- 

 dered our packs and continued our journey, still over high, 

 hardwood-covered hills. One of these was more than three- 

 quarters of a mile long; this was the divide between the two 

 branches of the Miramichi, and the view from it was lovely. 

 Nothing was to be seen but forest-covered hills rising one 

 after the other as far as the eye could reach, all adorned in 

 the full glory of autumn, red and green here and there 

 fading into yellow; while now and then one would get a 

 view of some silvery lake wooded to its very edge. A large 

 one lay not more than a mile from us in a deep valley. To 

 the north we could see Clear Water Mountain not more than 

 five miles distant from where we stood, while far off to the 

 north dimly blue were to be seen the Blue Mountains, south 

 of Tobique and more to the eastward the high range which 

 divides the streams running into the Bay of Fundy from 

 those which discharge into the Great Bay of Chaleur. 

 Toward the afternoon we had descended into the valley of 

 one of the western branches of the Little Southwest Mira- 

 michi, the growth here being largely of fir and the ground 

 very stony. " Our route became very rough and we were very 

 glad to pitch our little cotton-shed tent before evening in a 

 grove of hardwoods and fir, the former being of small size. 

 We used a large white spruce for back logs for our fire, 

 which we required of good size, as the nights were becoming 



In selecting a camping ground one ought always, 

 if possible, to secure one where the level of the fire shall be 

 a little above that of the bottom of the tent, as in such case 

 the fire is reflected by the back logs into the tent; indeed, 

 there is much more in this and in securing large back logs 

 for the fire in order to keep one's self warm, than in almost 

 anything else. Good back logs and good band junks are 

 absolutely essential to a good fire. "Hand junks" are the 

 sticks which are placed under cither end of the logs which 

 are put on the fire so as to elevate them sufficiently to secure 

 a good draft. They perform the same duty as the andiron 

 did when we burned wood instead of coal. In tbe morning 

 when we got up the fire had burned away the moss with 

 which the stones were covered, and there were but a few 

 embers left in a hole among a lot of angular rock fragments; 

 indeed, in this part of New Brunswick there seems to be 

 hardly any soil, and the wonder is how vegetation can be 

 sustained. We had to wait here for more provisions, Patch- 

 ell and his son having returned to the depot for a load. 



As we were to have some idle time here, we concluded 

 that we had better spend it in making a log canoe out. of 

 some of the few scattering white pines which were to be 

 found not far from the bank of the stream which in places 

 was navigable for loaded canoes. After breakfast we went 

 to one of these which was large enough for our purpose. 

 Two of the men who were with me sounded it on either side 

 by pounding it with their axes, and pronouncing it good 

 proceeded to chop it down with much labor. There proved 

 unfortunately to be a small flaw in the heart, and condemn- 

 ing it, we cut down another which proved to be perfectly 

 sound. Before felling the large white pines the woodsmen 

 cut down small trees for bedding on which they fell them, 

 and thus they are prevented from breaking. 



Our cook, who was a handy man, aided- the hunter to hue 

 out his canoe, at which they soon commenced chopping with 

 their axes. It is astonishing how quickly the tree begins to 

 assume the shape of a canoe, and how neatly they hew and 

 trim it down with their axes alone. The only implements 



used by the men in this case to commence and complete the 

 work on this canoe were their axes, an old, new land, or grub 

 hoe which oue of the men found in the camp at the Cear- 

 water, and their crooked knives. This peculiar knife was 

 in use among the Abenaquis Indians on St. John River as 

 far back as the latter part of the seventeenth century. It is 

 nothing more than a long, stout-backed knife, curved at the 

 furthest extremity from the round handle, into which it is 

 firmly fastened, and which is held by all the fingers in the 

 palm of the hand, and shavings are removed from the axe 

 handle or other article under process of manufacture by draw- 

 ing the knife toward the person usiug it, instead of from him 

 as is done when using the common jack-knife. A handle 

 had been made and fitted into the grub hoe which the cook 

 had sharpened some way or other, and by its use as an adze, 

 and with the help of the crooked knife and axes, in a day 

 and a half three men made one of the prettiest log canoes I 

 had ever seen. The place where it was made was about a 

 quarter of a mile distant from the still, a deadwater in tbe 

 stream, which deadwater was four miles long. They soon 

 brushed out a way to the bank of the stream, came back, 

 shouldered the craft, and with some half-dozen rests brought 

 it to the water, where it proved as good as it looked. He 

 had some paddles made from a piece of good hardwood, so 

 that we were all ready to make use of our new vessel. The 

 hunter jumped into it and took it down the stream to look 

 for ducks, which he said were plenty in the locality. The 

 rest of the party retired to our little tent for the balance of 

 the afternoon, now well advanced. Several times while we. 

 were lying in front of the fire we heard the sound of the 

 hunter's gun as it re-echoed among those ancient hills, and 

 we knew that the sound meant a prize of some kind. 



Just before night Patchell and his son Archy arrived veiy 

 heavily laden. It seemed that the latter and another young 

 fellow who were driving back one of the horses we had 

 brought to the Clear Water, the color of which was gray, 

 were astonished at a fine caribou trotting up to the animtls 

 in the most unconcerned manner possible; when he was 

 within fifty or sixty feet of the horse, Archy, who had a gun 

 loaded with small shot, fired at him, when he soon disap- 

 peared in the woods. The caribou has been known before 

 to do the same thing. 



Just before night closed in we heard our hunter's gun for 

 the last time. It sounded far off toward tbe foot of the dead- 

 water, then tbe silence of night set in. It was a dead calm, 

 and no sound was to be heard but that of the crackling of 

 the spruce back logs as a spark now and then flew from 

 them, or that of our own voices as we talked in somewhat 

 subdued tones; we did not even hear the voice of Kook koo- 

 kus, as an Indian hoy of seventeen who formed one of the 

 party called the owl. And this should have been his abode, 

 for it was dark and gloomy enough to answer for such pur- 

 pose. 



The night was passing along and yet no hunter made his 

 appearance. At last Frank (the Indian boy) said to one of 

 the men, "Dan, come, let go and look for Henry (the 

 hunter)." As there were some white birch trees, Frank soon 

 peeled the bark from them and made several torches. Light- 

 ing one and taking the others under their arms, the two 

 started off for the deadwater, distant half a mile. They soon 

 got out of our sight. 



Twenty minutes or half an hour had elapsed when a faint 

 halloa was heard in the distance, then another nearer. At 

 last a ruddy glow shone upon the tops of the trees, and in a 

 little while we saw by the light of the torches three men 

 approaching, one of them loaded down with black ducks 

 which he had shot in the deadwater. 



Molly (for thus we had named the canoe in honor of 

 Frank's dusky love) was a charming craft, the hunter said, 

 and would prove invaluable to us when we got down to the 

 lakes on the head of the Little Southwest Miramichi. 



Edwaed Jack. 



New Brcns-wick. 



tui[di W^ ot u* 



JLddress all communications to the Forest and Stream Publish- 

 ing Co. 



HYBRID WOLVES. 



Editor Forest and Stream: 



I notice the reference by your Philadelphia correspondent 

 to the supposed hybrid wolves recently born at the Zoological 

 Gardens here. Hybrid wolves have always been very com- 

 mon alone our western frontiers. I have seen several of 

 them, sired both by dogs and wolves, and all I have seen 

 have resembled wolves rather than dogs. While Minnesota 

 was yet an "Indian country/' I was living there and 

 wolves were tolerably abundant, particularly the prairie 

 wolves. Near my residence I had a rough, open poultry 

 shanty. In one corner I had a large Brahma hen upon a 

 nestful of eggs, patiently awaiting her chickens. Early one 

 morning I heard an outcry from this hen. Seizing my 

 loaded rifle I sprang to the back door and saw the old hen 

 running round the shanty, followed by a large prairie wolf 

 with feathers in its mouth. I ran toward the shanty, and as 

 the hen came around the wolf was barely a yard behind, but 

 seeing me it stopped suddenly and forgot to start again, 

 having met a rifleshot. Beyond a serious loss of feathers the 

 hen had not been injured, but at once resumed her duties. 

 Upon an examination of the wolf my neighbors and myself 

 were convinced that it was a hybrid, though the difference 

 was not perceptible a short distance away, and especially 

 when the animal was moving. 



One of my neighbors, about one-fourth of a mile distant, 

 had been losing some of his poultry in a thicket near his 

 house. He had caught glimpses of a wolf in the thicket, 

 and bad now thought that my rifle had stopped the mischief. 

 He was no gunner, but had a musket heavily loaded with 

 buckshot behind a door which opened within thirty yards 

 of the thicket. A few days after I had killed the hybrid 

 wolf I heard the heavy report of his musket followed by the 

 retreating yell of a dog. As he was not the kind of man to 

 be killing dogs, I ran over to see what was up. As he was 

 about coming out the door next the thicket he saw a prairie 

 wolf just coming out of the thicket, but which stopped 

 instantly. His musket being in reach he at once seized it 

 and fired upon the wolf which dropped in its tracks, and at 

 the same time a yell in the thicket beyond betrayed the pres- 

 ence of an unseen dog, which ran yelling out of the thicket 

 and over the ridge beyond. It was a medium size strange 

 cur dog. Ad examination of the dead animal showed it to 

 be. unmistakably another hybrid wolf and almost the fac- 

 simile in appearance of the one I had killed n few days be- 

 fore, but this one was a female and evidently in heat. We 



