42 



FOREST AND STREAM. 



[Feb. 6, 1890. 



SLIDE ROCK FROM MANY MOUNTAINS. 



III.— CHARITY. 



THE manners of the Canadian are milder than those 

 of the earnest Yankee. Even the mining camps of 

 early times had not those scenes of daily murder that en- 

 livened the diggings across the line. 



A single inefficient constable graced the Caribou dis- 

 trict, but his occupation was gone or never came. If 

 there had been anything for him to do he could not have 

 done it, but as things were he rose to the occasion. The 

 sole recorded appeal to arms in those washings was 

 settled with nature's weapons, and the vanquished com- 

 batant poulticed his eye and resigned his claim without 

 a murmur. 



Some cause of this may come from a gentler and more 

 law-abiding ancestry, but we must ascribe something also 

 to climate or soft water or emollient blue berries or the 

 like: for how could the thousands of gamblers, drinkers, 

 ruffians, borderers, whose tacit motto was borrowed from 

 the old moss-trooper's, "Thou shalt want ere I want;" 

 how, I ask, could this congeries hominum mix into so 

 inexplosive a compound without some pervading bland- 

 ness native to the soil? 



It was in such a region and by such men that the 

 town of Chaxity was founded. Even its name breathes 

 peace. 



Its fortune swelled on the rising wave of early enter- 

 prise. Eight thousand souls strove for wealth or "lived in 

 contented comfort there in its prime. The ciphers are 

 gone now. Eight, let us hope just, persons comprise the 

 people of the town which has settled down without an 

 unseemly struggle to doze away its remaining life. The 

 second growth of pine and fir towers tall in the clearings 

 that once marked the city's extent. The streets, rich 

 with grass and fragrant shrubs, show only the trails of 

 the few pack trains that cross the range. The wagon 

 road remains to show that wheels were once known, but 

 the flood-broken bridges, the caving banks, the fallen 

 trees would make a wagon useless indeed now. Two 

 long rows of red withered pines fringe the avenue that 

 leads to the cabin which serves the priest for a chapel, 

 remnants of the Christmas decorations of the Indians a 

 year ago, and the squat forms with contented faces of the 

 converts waddle along the river bank and watch the dead 

 and dying salmon float by. 



This season happens to bring around the four-year 

 cycle when the salmon are said to run in fabulous num- 

 bers. You can see the "humpbacks" jumping all over 

 the river, while the shallows of the tributary streams are 

 full of fish writhing up the riffles or caught among the 

 stones. Almost all of these are of near the same size, 

 say about 5lbs, weight, and the chief part are of a white- 

 fleshed variety, the male of which is a flat-sided, hump- 

 backed creature, looking like a split codfish and smelling 

 even worse, for nearly the whole of them perish in the 

 streams, and every beach and eddy is dotted with the 

 dead. The female has a handsomer form, though her 

 fate seenis the same. So says local wisdom, and the 

 numbers of the fish are such, according to the same 

 authority, that men had to stand at the mill-sluice and 

 toss out the salmon with pitchforks in order to get water 

 enough to run the mill. 



But before you visit Charity fou must get there, and 

 even|the approaches to the holy place are in keeping with 

 its sleepy nature. The railroad runs on the other side of 

 the Fraser River, a stream deep, wide, rapid, turbulent. 

 There oip the lofty bank is a station labeled "Charity." 

 When I got off the rear car the train started. By the 

 time I reached the platform I found that my baggage 

 had gone on to the next stopping place, because the sta- 

 tion master was absent on private but strictly necessary 

 business. He, too, was gone. From the character of 

 the country I felt sure that no one would say "peradven- 

 ture he pursueth," or possibly he had married a wife or 

 was taking steps preliminary to that end. 



As I entered the station the doubt was solved, for there 

 lay the rough draft of a letter written on the back of a 

 circus poster. "Je tecri pour t 'apprande que je changer 

 de plasse" — "I write to inform you that 1 am changing 

 my place." The gentle "habitant" is a new arrival. He 

 will soon get up and come to see what is worrying the 

 restless stranger. And as I pace the platform I hear his 

 fiddle. With livelier march I step to the time of Mal- 

 brook" and almost sing as I mark time to the "Irish 

 washerwoman's jig." He leans toward the telegraph in- 

 strument, still playing his catching airs, and communes 

 with the electric rattle with one ear. Soon he sends my 

 message and refuses my money. 



Gentle "habitant," may your civil, if ineffectual, service 

 continue long! May your musical march through life 

 never be disturbed by the harsh clatter of the commercial 

 drummer, or the vulgar stress of vulgar business. 



And now I hunt up an Indian, and, as I am unac- 

 quainted with Chinook, I converse with him in smiles. 

 I climb into his cedar dugout and we both grasp paddles 

 and shove into the dull green current. Around a point, 

 through an eddy, and then, where the water whirls by 

 like a millrace, the skillful pilot lands me in sight of the 

 houses of Charity. Here, too, the boatman displays an 

 unexpected knowledge of the English tongue and 

 demands twice his usual fare. I hail the sign of progress 

 and meet the demand. Then I climb the bank and go 

 where I see a sign board "Sutherland Hotel — G. Suther- 

 land," a house kept by an old, old man, whose quavering 

 tales led me through lands and cities I had never known , 

 or known only of late, while his memory seemed almost 

 to go back to the dawn of time. 



Does this seem exaggerated ? Then know that he had 

 been apprenticed to a saddler who kept his shop at the 

 corner of Broadway and Ann street, in New York, where 

 the Herald building now stands, and that he could tell 

 about the Rutgers and the sad experiences of old Rutgers 

 in the War of the Revolution. 



His American sympathies were bravely displayed, too, 

 in more ways than one. There was a map of the great 

 republic on the wall, with portraits of all the Presidents 

 down to Mr. Arthur, arranged around the margin. You 

 could tell the Presidents apart by the names printed on 

 each medallion, but you grieved to see that Zachary 

 Taylor, with true military greed, had taken up a "mon- 

 strous cantle" of the State of Maine. 



And besides, when Behring Sea had the carpet or came 



on the floor (you may choose between those metaphors), 

 my entertainer spoke out honestly in behalf of the help- 

 less seals. 



These were modern instances, but in the main he was, 

 nay he is, the living past in person, and may he keep so 

 long. He had followed tke sea. 



"The mariner's chart he knew by heart. 



And every current, cliff and shore 

 From the shif ting sand of Newfoundland 

 . To the sun-split rocks of Singapore." 



He had seen New Zealand when the island had con- 

 tained but seven whites. He had been cured of blindness 

 by an Irishman, and could tell you the intimate history 

 of a dozen mining camps. That cure I will now relate that 

 the desperate may hope, then I will tell "one story of 

 Caribou which is shot enough to be forgiven, and then I 

 will let you rest. 



One summer, one August in fact, my host, who then 

 was following the profession of a foremast hand , worked 

 hard in lading a sh ip for Liverpool, went on board in the 

 evening and woke up at sea, blind. He could faintly 

 distinguish daylight from dark, but could not see his 

 hand much less count his fingers. This state of misery 

 kept on unchanged. He landed, and from August to 

 November passed from physician to physician, from 

 surgeon to surgeon, seeking help and finding none. At 

 last he felt his way on to a packet, homeward bound, 

 and there came deliverance. 



He met an emigrant who saw his piteous plight and 

 persuaded him to take brisk treatment. Early in the 

 November morning the blind man stripped and stood in 

 the channels while the unlicensed doctor, from the top 

 of the bulwarks, poured buckets of sea water on his 

 head. 



The first day the sight Improved. The second day the 

 patient could read the headlines of a newspaper. ' The 

 third day's treatment restored the vision to more than 

 pristine excellence, though one can notice a well marked 

 areas senilis and a powerful convergent squint. 



And the Irishman! He rose to be a porter in a ware- 

 house, a sachem in Tammany, and for years gave us 

 beneficent laws. Perhaps the only recorded instance of 

 deserved political success in the Irish race. 



And now for Caribou, 



Caribou is a district in the Gold range. Among the 

 great names of Alder Gulch, Potato Creek and Dutch 

 Flat, Caribou can safely rank, and better than all the 

 other waters of Caribou is Williams's Creek. 



The stream was taken up, crowded, pressed down and 

 running over; that is, the running claims were all worked 

 and possessed along its entire course from mountain 

 spring head to muddy mouth; but' a poor man named 

 Davis, who knew that claims were limited to 100ft, each 

 and who needed money, relying upon the peaceful dis- 

 position of the Canadian, took a tape-line and started at 

 the source of the stream, measuring down. And lo! 

 there was a remnant 13ft. wide left over; and Davis, in- 

 stead of getting shot full of holes, got $13,000 from his 

 12-foot claim. And is he not kown to-day in the news- 

 papers as "Twelve-foot" Davis? 



Stranger or friend, if you would not have two days at 

 Charity seem like two years and a half, stop at the Suth- 

 erland Hotel— G. Sutherland. H. G. Dulou. 



OUT-OF-DOOR PAPERS. 



SI. — A FIRE OF POPLAR. 



AGHAQUE saint sa chandelle! Let every man wor- 

 ship at the shrine of his choosing! One believes in 

 hickory and one in oak, and one in rock-maple, but who 

 ever sung the praises of a poplar fire? If God made 

 them to see the excellencies of these particular trees — 

 for fire-building comes by instinct rather than by edu- 

 cation, and no amount of science and rhetoric can induce 

 a man to alter his preference or to change his style — if 

 God made them thus, why may not some special power 

 have been given me to see the virtues of the poplar? It 

 is true that there is little in its outward appearance to 

 recommend it: its wide-angled, open boughs offer no 

 concealment nor convenient crotches, and the birds will 

 not nest in its branches; its sap has no sweetness; its wood 

 has no beauty; there may be a prejudice against it too, 

 because it is a cold tree and shivers even in the summer; 

 but not many, certainly, would burn poplar from prefer- 

 ence. There are those, not a few, who will tell you to 

 take anything else sooner, even sheet iron and asbestos 

 roofing; who will praise water-soaked ash and balm-of- 

 gilead and basswood in comparison, and who will declare 

 to you by the sacred relics of their own bitter experience, 

 that one's cup of misery is not full until he has been 

 forced to make camp in a rain storm and to build a pop- 

 lar fire. 



And a camp-fire it must be — if one is determined to 

 disregard all good advice and to try the experiment — 

 both from reasons of propinquity, because such poplar as 

 is wanted does not effect the neighborhood of houses; 

 and out of respect to the fire. That is but half a fire 

 which is not an object of solicitude and careful atten- 

 tion; whose wants are not noticed by watchful eyes and 

 supplied by willing hands; whose pleasant warmth is 

 received without gratitude, as "merely a mode of 

 motion" with a mechanical equivalent in foot-pounds. 

 A fire should have an aesthetic as well as an economic 

 value. "For the beauty of the honey and the good of the 

 bees," said the wise old monk, who was also a successful 

 apiarist, but no Benthamite, and the man does not de- 

 serve a fire who wilt not consider its beauty as well 

 as his own comfort. Strict utilitarianism is a poor induce- 

 mftit to lay golden eggs; as well be killed out of curiosity 

 as forced to lay one's self to death out of cupidity, says 

 the goose. And has no one ever noticed how the fire 

 goes down when the kettle goes on? It is a lesson on the 

 value of idealism — popular, not philosophic idealism, as 

 opposed to materialism, which denies the unseen, and to 

 utilitarianism (falsely so called) which sees not the thing, 

 but the dollars in it. The fire means thoughts and as- 

 pirations, the interchange of noble sentiments and the 

 growth of nobler parts; wherefore, though all should end 

 in smoke and* ashes at last, let us treat the fire as some- 

 thing more than a convenience for cooking. Being of 

 poplar, which most count worthless, there can be no 

 gratification in its costliness or its rarity ( which other- 

 wise have reconciled many to discomfort and bitter food); 

 and since it already bears an ill name, so that its faults 

 are likely to outweigh its virtues — impressing us first — 



any pleasure which it affords should not be deemed sub- 

 jective, but be attributed to an inherent worthiness in 

 the wood, which by its own virtue renders us responsive. 



And in the first place, green poplar will not burn; there 

 your informant was right. It has its uses: it maybe 

 peeled and " driven" and converted into pulp at last, or 

 it may be wrought into an ox yoke or a pitchfork handle or 

 a canoe paddle, which, when seasoned, will compare with 

 the birch, ash and rock maple articles in strength and 

 elasticity; but if any one wishestosee verdancy, viridity, 

 greenness beyond compare, let him try to make a fire of 

 the next greenest thing he can find, which will be the 

 round limbs of a sapling poplar. Nor is the "down wood," 

 as hunters call that which has fallen naturally, much 

 better, being slimy beneath the rotting bark, heavy from 

 moisture, and, as we say down East, " soggy." As the 

 camper out cannot wait for wood to season, he seems 

 likely to forego the pleasure of a poplar fire unless there 

 is some via media provided. It is an embarrassing .ques- 

 tion, but — do you know a poplar when you see it 2 Of 

 course not the gnarly, starveling pasture shrub which 

 answers to that name, and the small-sized, jaundiced, an- 

 gular sapling which spindles up among second-growth 

 birches, but a first-class poplar in its prime, do you know 

 that ? It is rarely to be seen, if at all, outside the wil- 

 derness, and even there an apprentice at woodcraft would 

 probably pass it by; for it grows large and tall, two feet, 

 sometimes nearly three feet, in diameter, and so rough- 

 barked that it might easily be mistaken for maple. Hav- 

 ing reached a certain size it grows more slowly than pine, 

 and the largest— among which may be counted some of the 

 fine trees on the Passadumkeag— probably date back as far 

 as the Minmichi fire of 1825, which with the great Chase 

 fire of the same year, swept across the State, planting 

 birch and poplar where pine and hemlock had been. A 

 water-loving tree, it reaches its greatest perfection on 

 the intervales by brook and riverside, either in clumps 

 by itself or mingled with trees of almost ever other kind. 

 Having attained a good size and its maturity, it dies; and 

 standing on year afer year, growing drier and at the same 

 time softer, it seasons itself and becomes the best camp- 

 wood that the woods afford. To make a fire of poplar, 

 use wood that has died on the stump. 



The hunter or tourist who beaches his canoe near a 

 grove of large poplars may say to himself that he has his 

 firewood already cut, split and collected for him; for this 

 task which usually begins as soon as the tent has been 

 raised and continues until the labor grows wearisome, or 

 the night shades close about, is wonderfully lightened by 

 the obliging poplar. He has only to pick out the dead 

 trees or the tall stubs which remain standing, and if of 

 small size and dry, he can push them from the stump 

 with his hands; if larger and sound at the butt, there 

 may be some hard chopping, for seasoned poplar is like 

 horn; but when the long trunk comes down with a mel- 

 low thrash— its own deadness muffling the echoes— and 

 measures its length on solid earth at last, in most cases 

 the shock proves too much for its decrepit age, and when 

 it falls prostrate, there it lies broken into pieces conveni- 

 ent for camp use. Then what a sight is revealed ! what 

 a page in the history of once happy homes ! Old nests 

 come" tumbling out of the chickadee^ vacant apartments, 

 chip-dust sifts out of the woodpeckers' open doorways, 

 and where the shattered trunk is cleft adown the center, 

 all the arcana of their housekeeping stand revealed. 

 There are holes in all stages of construction— some un- 

 finished, others wrought out to completion, with evident 

 signs of occupancy, from which we can in fancy see the 

 family of big-mouthed nestlings who grew up 'in dark 

 and narrow quarters, but now are working in open 

 air under the four winds. Some are small— the downy 

 woodpecker's little domicile; and others, more capacious, 

 belonged to the hairy; this great one which seems like a 

 bird's boarding house, was the home of the golden-wing; 

 and here on the outside the log cock has left his blaze. 

 Sometimes one finds in these dead trees the remains of a 

 nest more interesting than any woodpecker's— that of the 

 red bellied nuthatch, perhaps the most abundant of our 

 woods' birds. The woods resound with their harsh, 

 metallic, drawling tee eet, lee-eet, and they may be seen 

 everywhere industriously running up and down the tree 

 trunks, too busy to turn about, or else because nature 

 shaped both ends alike, as indifferent to "end-for-ending" 

 as a steam ferryboat. Their nest is a deep hole excavated 

 by themselves, externally so much" like a chickadee's or 

 a downy woodpecker's that it might be passed unnoticed 

 but for one peculiarity, the two nests which 1 have seen 

 were both distinguishable and even noticeable on account 

 of a considerable quantity of pitch which was smeared 0 

 about the opening both above and below*. As one was 

 in a white birch and the other in a poplar— trees which 

 yield no gum nor resinous exudations— the busy little 

 home makers must have made many a journey back and 

 forth before they collected all the pitch which ornamented 

 their lintel and doorposts, for it ran down like the oint- 

 ment upon Aaron's beard. 



This dry poplar is a very light wood, lighter than dry 

 cedar even, so that it is astonishing to see how large a 

 piece a man can shoulder and carry into camp. Having 

 arrived there, each must construct his fire after his own 

 fancy; it is a craft in which no man ever learns anything 

 or will consent to be taught of his neighbor. Ancient as 

 the art is, going back to the shadowy, prehistoric ages 

 when man was separated from the brutes and a brand 

 given him as the sign of his superiority, it is as primitive 

 as at first; a naked savage knows more about making a fire 

 than the inhabitant of St. James', and the one who could 

 not live on raw meat by a grim turn of fate is the one 

 who would not know how to cook it. But every one has 

 his own theories of fire architecture; and you may name 

 a man from the fire he builds, just as from the style of 

 the nest you can determine the kind of bird that made 

 it. One lays all his sticks across both andirons, and an- 

 other will place a certain number with one end only rest- 

 ing on the dogs — each with convincing arguments in 

 favor of the reasonableness of his own method; and I 

 knew a man once, of kingly intellect, with a firm grasp 

 on half the sciences and the power to make all the metals 

 obey him, who to the day of his death placed his kind- 



*One of these nests was empty, the other contained nve eggs. 

 They were described in the Auk at the time of their discovery, 

 and are now in the collection of Mr. William Brewster, of Cam- 

 bridge, Mass. The only other instance I have seen of a bird pitch- 

 ing its nest was a redstart, which built a wonderful little n^st, 

 but was too vain to hide it. fo that the boys tore it down. But the 

 note properly belongs to M'ss Flnjence A. Merriam, and. I be- 

 lieve, is mentioned in her delightful little volume "Birds With au 

 Opera Glass." 



