346 



FOREST AND STREAM. 



[May 27, 1886. 



DAYS WITH THE BARMECIDE CLUB. 



II. 



WHOEVER first selected this site for a camping ground 

 knew whereof he selected. Whoever built this shanty, 

 comfortable to the last degree, was an expert with the axe, 

 for every stick is cut and placed where it will do the most 

 good and every sheet of bark overlaps its rear neighbor as 

 shingles on a house, and you can confidently rely on its 

 power to shed water where it will not annoy you. It may 

 have architectural deformities, but it would surely please 

 the eye of an artist or angler. 



Just a few rods back of the shanty is a leaky spring, hid- 

 den among moss-covered boulders, which drops, drops, drops 

 its never-failing supply, cold and pure, into the crystal pool 

 below, which in its turn adds its mite to the lake, where one 

 can take a delicious header without being obliged to incum- 

 ber his limbs with a blouse and a pair of overalls. 



To the east and among the trees rise beetling cliffs, from 

 out of whose seams and niches grasses and flowers are peep- 

 ing, determined to secure a high average of sunlight and air 

 to stand them in lieu of their limited allowance of moisture 

 and fertility. At the foot of these cliffs and among the huge 

 masses of stone which had fallen were small eaves, which, 

 gathering much of the summer rain, retained it until the 

 frosts of winter gave a supply of ice ample for our present 

 wants. From the shanty to the lake the trees and under- 

 brush had been cleared out, giving an unobstructed view 

 across the great water mirror to the uudulatiDg line of hills 

 beyond, and though the place is not invested with any his- 

 toric or legendary associations, yet to searchers for quiet, to 

 the angler for his sport, it fills every requirement. 



Early morning found us scattered over the lake, Roy near 

 the outlet, Glen under the shadow of the mountain opposite 

 camp, and Storm off Fritz Island. But some potent power 

 was against us; the wind or the clouds or the whats his-name. 

 Probably the former. It seemed a sympathetic sort of a 

 wind. It came quiet and lamb-like, as though it had no 

 desire to interrupt the angling proceedings, which it could 

 easily have done by simply loosing all holds, but it neverthe- 

 less gave us fair warning after its fashion that we might 

 better vacate for the morning. It did not wish to harm nor 

 annoy us, but on the other hand there was a limit to its 

 amiability, which we had better not transcend ; and we soon 

 realized the fact that we might as well angle for sturgeon in 

 a smelling bottle. 



Through the influence of the east wind, no doubt, there 

 was an unanimity regarding taking hold, which was very 

 decidedly adverse to our interests; and Glen and Storm re- 

 turned to camp pretty much in the predicament of old Mother 

 Hubbard; and though the certainty of failure was prosaic 

 enough, still, like the beggar of the Barmecide, we take our 

 medicine smilingly as though all the fishes' favors had been 

 strewn with royal prodigality; and await dinner for Roy's 

 return. The coffee was hissing at the spuds, the bacon and 

 biscuits warming up beside the stewing fruit and waiting for 

 Roy, who came back empty-handed. 



"Boys, this is not one of my days, how have you fellows 

 found it?" 



"Not enough to address a letter to. Trout are practically 

 scarcer than hen's teeth." 



"I haven't had a rise this morning, and speaking about 

 hen's teeth reminds me of what a young lady cousin once 

 remarked to an aunt of mine. My aunt was speaking of a 

 certain dentist in town, and said she would not have him 

 pull a tooth for one of her old hens. 'Why, Aunt Laura,' 

 says my cousin, T didn't know that hens had teeth.' " 



"That reminds me of Captain Scott's coon story, which I 

 was once telling to a young friend fresh from college. Of 

 course you are familiar with the well-known story, but when 

 I had finished telling it my young collegian innocently re- 

 marked, 'Well, I never knew before that coons could talk.' " 



"What does that remind you of, Storm?" 



"I think I complain as little as any person in the world, 

 and 



"Come deaf or come blind or come cripple, 

 Or come ony ane o' them a', 



I don't believe I would murmur; but this morning's sport — 

 and I call it sport understand — reminds me of the beautiful 

 lines of Tennyson : 



"And the handsome trout dart down 

 To their shelter beneath some rock, 

 But oh, for the sight of a trout on the feed, 

 And the sound of a trout on the flop. 



Or, as Rabelais would say, 'Jau le suila teausau de viessa 

 etait.' " 



From certain standpoints of view this was an inauspicious 

 opening. The fisherman would have inclined to grumbling, 

 while the angler accepts the situation as a matter of course. 

 To him every day of outing is replete with attractions of 

 some kind, and though his creel be empty, perhaps some hid- 

 den secret of woods or waters has been revealed to him, or he 

 has gained in strength of body or mental invigoration, or 

 else gathered a certain kind of experience which, if never of 

 practical value, may furnish a pleasant retrospection. We 

 play billiards, whist and chess when we are in the mood, 

 but we angle at every legal opportunity. There is no day in 

 the season save the Sabbath that is too unpropitious. "Din- 

 ner, dinner," says the cook, so down we sat, 



And to our viands fell not seemingly, 

 But with the keen dispatch of real hunger; 



and guide found that his carefully prepared dinner was fully 

 appreciated, for we made a clean sweep. Dinner looked as 

 though it had been trying to pass a looomotive on the same 

 track. We came back with good appetites and spent the 

 afternoon in making some improvements in camp. 



We built an outdoor cooking range, or perhaps it might 

 more properly be called an underground cooking range, and 

 we found it by far the best and most convenient ever intro- 

 duced, at least for pleasant weather cooking. It can be 

 made in less than ten minutes on an average. It is simply a 

 hole in the ground about seven or eight inches deep, one 

 foot wide and three feet long. The fire is built in this hole, 

 and in a few minutes you can hav,e a fine bed of coals, which 

 can be replenished as needed from your camp fire or by the 

 addition of any small chips which are handy. The dishes 

 while cooking are supported by iron bars long enough to 

 reach across the range, say fourteen or fifteen inches. About 

 four of these bars are sufficient for all one wishes to cook at 

 one time, as they will support half a dozen different dishes 



and add no material weight to the kit, and on a pinch might 

 perhaps be dispensed with. This range requires but little 

 wood and then only the smallest chips, as there is no waste 

 of fire and every degree of heat can be utilized. 



Dishes are not required to be continually watched, as there 

 is no more danger of their tipping over than there would be 

 on a Charter Oak stove, and no matter how hard the wind 

 may be blowing there are no wild unmanageable flames to 

 contend with, as they are confined, and besides as you have 

 no side logs to burn away and perhaps dump a mess of trout 

 or a pot of coffee into the fire, you will have one care less. 



Toward evening Roy tried the outlet of the lake, and re- 

 turned with trout enough for our supper and breakfast. 

 Meanwhile Storm superintended the bean business, following 

 the directions in "Woodcraft." Was it a success? Oh those 

 beans. Yes, as four hungry men can testify. Boston can't 

 beat it, Mr. "Ncssmuk." 



One Monday morning a country girl wrote a letter to her 

 sweetheart something like this: 



„ _ __ Monday Morning, 6 o'clock. 



Dear Creorge—Ma has just called me, and I am wondering if you 

 love me as much as you did at twelve e/clock last night, when we 

 kissed each other good-night at the gate. Oh, if I only knew for cer- 

 tain that you did, George, dear, you don't know how it would encour- 

 age me to go down and tackle tnem cold beans for breakfast. Yours, 

 Amanda. 



You can accept it as an assured fact that Amanda's ma 

 didn't know how to handle the bean question as Mr. 

 "Nessmuk" does, else her daughter would not have required 

 the stimulus of George's love to assist her in tackling her 

 breakfast. 



As the gray of twilight slowly turned darker and darker 

 and night came tripping on with noiseless feet, the fireflies 

 commenced their brilliant dance, striking their lucifers at 

 every step, as if they feared to lose the time and tune. The 

 moon with its stronger light was paling the stars and silver- 

 ing the edge of the ripples, which chase each other with 

 monotonous murmurings. The mountain across the lake 

 looms up vague and indistinct in the moonlight, and the 

 great pines on its summit silhouetted against the sky assumed 

 fantastic forms. The birch logs on our fire sizzled and 

 snapped and the dashing flames cast long lines of restless 

 radiance far out on the water. The shrill cadence of the 

 crickets, the humorous concert of the owls, the friendly 

 croaking of the sociable frogs, the distant gushing sound of 

 the falls all tell us it is good to be here, for this makes old 

 hearts young again and young hearts rejoice. Millard. 

 Cheyeene, Wyoming. 



THE MUSKOKA COUNTRY. 



FIRST TAPER. 



THE maxim has become fully established that no one 

 should go near the water till he has learned how to 

 swim. Following the same course of reasoning, no one 

 should ever fish in waters that are strange to him, or if he 

 does he loses a deal of pleasure. The greatest delight in 

 hearing a fine opera is that which grows out of having heard 

 it before, and the highest enjoyment in a fishing trip comes 

 from retracing the course of last year (and haply the year 

 before), living over the former contests and successes, reviv- 

 ing scores of pleasant reminiscences, whose impalpable shapes 

 have haunted the air and waited for your coming. A 

 favorite fishing ground revisited is like a last year's suit, 

 already adjusted to your figure; like a friend who lends you 

 money when your credit in bank has gone; and when you 

 can nurse that mild but comfortable feeling of superiority 

 that comes from you introducing some fellow fisherman to 

 your chosen resort, your cup of bliss is indeed full. And 

 with all these conditions favorable we began last August to 

 arrange for our annual "farewell" trip to the Muskoka 

 country. 



Detroit, as usual, was our port of final departure. There 

 is quite a convenience in making a double start on a fishing 

 expedition. After you have pulled yourself together and cut 

 loose from the five hundred "last things" that require atten- 

 tion, it is a great comfort to stop just beyond the clutches of 

 the butcher and baker and the man with a little bill, and 

 take a full breath and an account of your kit. For no matter 

 how carefully you may have replenished your stock, in the 

 hurry of departure there is always something overlooked or 

 omitted. This time it was only a few yards of heavy braided 

 sash cord (for maskallonge stringers) and a spool of No. 22 

 copper wire. The uses of the latter are numerous, the most 

 important being to make leaders for maskallonge fishing. 

 And he who has added to it two spools of button-hole silk, a 

 bit of shoemaker's wax, a fine half-round file and a small pair 

 of pliers, laughs at calamity. 



Our route this time lay over the Great Western division of 

 the Grand Trunk Railway from Detroit to Toronto, via 

 Hamilton, and as it gave us a daylight ride over some of the 

 finest country in the Province of Ontario, we were not sorry 

 for having chosen it. Not the least attractive feature of the 

 landscape is the constant succession of rapid streams which 

 come tumbling across the track at frequent intervals. The 

 descent from Lake Huron to the level of Lake Erie is quite 

 marked, and as the road crosses the watershed at an approxi- 

 mate right angle, the effect on the view is very pleasing. All 

 the towns along the route have a conservative, yet prosper- 

 ous look, and the long-settled farms of Lower Ontario will 

 compare favorably with the best agricultural portions of 

 the States. 



Arriving at Toronto in the evening, we found that the 

 great annual Agricultural and Mechanical Exposition was 

 trembling on the verge of culmination, and that the farmers 

 and country storekeepers and officials, with their wives, 

 daughters and sweethearts (not forgetting the volunteer com- 

 panies of Her Majesty's horse), had come in and overflowed 

 the town. And we, who had heretofore regarded Toronto as 

 having been built especially for our benefit, wandered dis- 

 consolately from hostelry to hostelry till at the fifth (in grade 

 as well as number) we sank to rest upon a melancholy bed, 

 and in the morning were summoned to a breakfast whose 

 meagerness would delight even the frugal soul of "Ness- 

 muk." 



But when we safely landed on the morning train of the 

 Northern & Northwestern Railway for Muskoka wharf, all 

 these things were as though they had never been. For when 

 we are fairly under way on the N. & N., with its baggage 

 checks in our pockets and the conductor's "trip slip" in our 

 hats, then and not tiil then are we saturated with the con- 

 viction that we are fairly and finally "en route," and that 

 everybody on the line from this onward is a sympathizing 

 well-wisher, who is not only willing we should have a good 

 time but will help us if he can. 



Why is it that tourists, hunters and fishermen in traveling 

 gravitate together? Possibly aside from the subtle and mys. 



in Canada is that you can pick out a man from "the States" 

 half way across a "concession," as the Canucks have it. Suf- 

 fice it to say, we had not been in the car fifteen minutes till 

 we drifted against a man who had just been to Maskallonge 

 Lake the week before, and who, with his partner and s;uide, 

 had killed a black bear. The story of the conflict was graph- 

 ically told, and with various side excursions into kindred 

 topics, served to while away the morning hour very pleas- 

 antly. At Rosseau the next day we met the "partner" and 

 were favored with his version of the death of bruin, and a 

 few days later with a modified and reconstructed version as 

 detailed by the guide. We did not obtain the story of the 

 bear for obvious reasons. But I venture to remark that if 

 these three stories could be printed in parallel columns they 

 would afford entertaining and by no means monotonous read- 

 ing. It developed, however, that while one gentleman was 

 armed witn a .47-caliber 65-280 rifle that threw an indefinite 

 number of balls at an iucrediblc velocity (and low trajectory) 

 the weapon got out of order at the critical moment and the 

 fatal missile came from a shotgun. Isn't there danger that 

 our repeating rifles maybe made too effective? 



All along Muskoka and Rosseau lakes as the little steamer 

 plunged her way northward that afternoon, we found the 

 summer boarders at Beaumaris, Port Carling, Windemere 

 and other points packing up their effects and preparing for 

 their homeward journeys. Jav Berk. 



Toledo, O., April 27. 



DEATH OF BURR H. POLK. 



OCCASION has been had before to say something of the 

 more than formal relation existing between the Forest 

 and Stream and many of its correspondents. Here and 

 there, in every State of the Union, are men whom the editors 

 have never personally met, yet have learned to esteem with 

 a regard like that which comes of long friendship; and 

 when, now and again, in place of the familiar hand, comes 

 a letter written by another, announcing the death of such a 

 one, the message is received as would be that of the loss of a 

 familiar friend. With such regret have we learned of the 

 death of Col. Burr H. Polk, at his home in Lincoln, 

 Nebraska, May 15. Mr. Polk's name is familiar to the read- 

 ers of this journal as the author of a number of brightly 

 written sketches of sport and adventure ia Mississippi, and 

 in more recent years the W est. These papers were charac- 

 teristic chiefly by reason of the all pervading and abounding 

 good humor and philosophy which triumphed over every 

 disadvantage and drawback, and found pleasure where 

 others might have sulked in the doldrums. The following 

 appreciative estimate of Col. Polk's character is extracted 

 from a Lincoln paper: 



"For several years Col. Polk has been an honored citizen of 

 Lincoln, and the. unexpected intelligence of his death will 

 bring pain to all who knew him. He was a modest and 

 unobtrusive man aud few persons knew him intimately. 

 Bufc those uniformly regarded him with a feeling of affection 

 like that of close kinship. He was a man of ability. As a 

 business man he combined enterprise and conservatism in a 

 happy and successful manner. He had accumulated a hand- 

 some competence and had laid his plans for a life of healthful 

 leisure. His word was always as good as his bond. Social 

 and kind-hearted, without aparticle of malice or envy or 

 hardness in his composition, liberal to the core in word and 

 deed, there are few such men, and the loss of one is severely 

 felt. 



"Col. Polk was bom at Taylorsville, Ky., January 15, 1835. 

 He obtained a liberal education and nad embarked upon the 

 practice of law at Princeton, Ky., when he married Miss 

 Eliza A. Montgomery, at Petersburg, Ind., March 2, 1858. He 

 continued to make Princeton his home. In September, 1861, 

 he entered the army as captain in the Thirty -third Indiana 

 regiment, serving with the regiment through all the arduous 

 campaigns in which it took part until April 23, 1864, when he 

 was promoted to be adjutant general with the rank of major. 

 In all capacities he was distinguished for coolness and corn-age, 

 and was twice brevetted for gallantry on the field, the last 

 commission being that of colonel and bearing date of March 

 13, 1865. 



"At the conclusion of hostilities Col. Polk was offered a first 

 lieutenancy in the regular army, but he preferred— although 

 he had developed a strong personal military feeling— to take 

 up a life that would be more agreeable to his family. In 1868 

 he removed to Vicksburg, Miss., and engaged in business of 

 various kiuds, cotton factoring, contracting and other ex- 

 tensive operations. In these a brother shared and the ventures 

 were quite successful. He also served a term as mayor of 

 Vicksburg by appointment from the governor of the State. 



"Having acquired what he deemed an ample fortune for his 

 liberal but not extravagant taste, CoL Polk resolved some six 

 years ago to abandon active business and lead a retired life, 

 devoted to his family and friends and such pursuits as were 

 adapted to simple enjoyments. He came to Lincoln shortfy 

 afterward and bought a charming residence on L street in the 

 most desirable portion of the city. He was soon surrounded 

 by a congenial circle of friends. But the seeds of disease had 

 been sown in his system, and as long as two years ago he dis- 

 covered that his heart was affected. All was done that could 

 be, but nothing availed. He sank steadily into further weak- 

 ness, and when he reached home a few days ago from spend- 

 ing the winter in the South, he was compelled to take his bed. 

 The end came speedily, and yesterday morning at 9 o'clock he 

 died. He was iu full possesion of his faculties to the very last 

 and met his end with undisturbed composure. 



"Col. Polk's estimable wife and three children survive him. 

 It is hardly possible to state the personal character of Col. 

 Polk without the appearance of fulsome eulogy. He was 

 honest, brave, true, modest, genial, able and whole-souled. 

 All these in a practical, unromantic way that the casual eye 

 might not see, but none the less actually. There are men who 

 might be more widely missed, but none whose departure 

 would cause a deeper heartache." 



Mr. T. G. Dabney, of Memphis, Tenn., writes: "Col. 

 Polk was a sportsman in the truest sense, a thorough gentle- 

 man, always mindful of the courtesies due between sports- 

 men, and a whole-souled companion in the field. Col. Polk's 

 career as a sportsman presented the unusual spectacle of a 

 man who had never handled a gun until alter he was forty 

 years old, and who then took it up, and by persistent and 

 systematic effort characteristic of the man, soon became a 

 very expert wing shot and skillful sportsman. He was a 

 fluent and very interesting writer, the author of a book en- 

 titled, 'The Great American Caravan,' detailing the experi- 

 ence of a party of American tourists in Europe; and also of 

 many interesting communications to Forest ane Stream, 

 over the signature B. H. P. Col. Polk died of he?jt disease, 

 from which trouble he had suffered for some months past, 

 and which caused him, with much regret, to lay aside his 

 gun during that time aud content himself with reading of 

 the exploits of others in the columns of his favorite journal, 

 Forest and Stream. His untimely death will be severely 

 felt by a large circle of warm friends, and the fraternity of 



