JXJNE 11, 1891.] 



FOREST AND STREAM. 



413 



The number of species is small; black and white spruce, 

 balsam fir, canoe birch and aspen, with arbor vita? in the 

 moist places, and here and there a few larches and red 

 pines, with an occasional yellow birch; the spruces pre- 

 vailing on the high land, and the birch and aspen near 

 the water, yet everywhere a certain proportion of each. 

 From the great similarity of evergreens on the one hand, 

 and the white-stemmed aspens and birches on the other, 

 at the distance of a couple of hundred yards the forest 

 seemed to be composed of only two kinds of trees. The 

 trees are not large, usually not exceeding 30 or 40f fc. in 

 height. Yet the whole effect is rich and picturesque. 

 Here, as in all the features of the lake, the impression is 

 a grand uniformity, never monotonous, but expressive of 

 its unique character. 



The renowned Agassiz says: "Tiie resemblance to the 

 seashore often recurred to his mind, and according to Dr. 

 Leconte, several insects found here are identical with 

 species belonguig to the seashore, and others correspond- 

 ing or similar. The beach-pea {Lathyrus maritirnus) and 

 Polygonmn m,arit.imum, both of them seashore plants, 

 are abundant in this neighborhood; the former, indeed, 

 throughout the north shore of the lake." 



The first point of interest we passed was Point aux 

 Mines or Mica Bay, as it is sometimes called. Here was 

 established years ago a very extensive copper mine by 

 an English company, who, after sinking bundi-eds of 

 thousands of dollars, finally abandoned it as unprofitable. 

 The works are located in a deep cove protected on 

 either side by ranges of i-ock, with a broad beach at the 

 bottom; and above this is a steep bank, on which at the 

 height of yO or 40ft. above the water stands the dwelling 

 of the superintendent, and above it the storehouse, the 

 lodgings of the workmen, etc. 



We again refer to the celebrated natnralist, who visited 

 this shore about thirty years ago, and who in writing of 

 the geological character of this lake, says that '-the 

 rock at the south *f Mica Bay he considers a proof-positive 

 of the correctness of the glacial theory. Its surface was 

 a couple of hundred yards in extent, sloping regulary 

 north to the water's edge. The whole was polished and 

 scratched, except where disintegrated. The scratches 

 had two directions, the prevaihng one north 10° to 30° 

 west, the other north 55" west. The scratches on the 

 outer or lake side seemed to have a rather more westerly 

 direction than the rest. Great numbers of these striae 

 could be traced below the water's edge, from which they 

 ascended in some places at an angle of 30' with the sur- 

 face, showing that they could not have been produced by 

 a floating body. The rock is granite, with an astonishing 

 number of veins and injections of epidotic feldspar, granite 

 and trap, often crossing each other so as to form a com- 

 plicated net work. Wherever exposed it was ground 

 down to an even surface." 



ft was not very long after passing this place when 

 Montreal Island began to develop its wood-crowned 

 shores. It is about six miles from the shore, and con- 

 tains between three and four hundred acres. Directly 

 opposite the island Montreal Eiver flows into the lake, 

 being about 40yds. wide at the mouth, and empties 

 through a kind of delta, partly overgrown with large 

 trees. The water is deep and clear, but of a rich amber 

 color, such as is seen hi nearly all the rivers on the coast. 

 At its entrance into the lake is a broad beach, which m 

 the south forms a point somewhat jutting across its 

 mouth. On the northern side, at a short distance from 

 the water, the beach, which is of small pebbles, has a 

 very declivitous slope, nearly as much as it could stand. 

 We frequently met with such steep beaches often of a 

 considerable height. Outside there is a bar, which ex- 

 tends entirely across 6ft. below the surface. The stream 

 issues from the hills through a chasm (5 or 8ft. deej) and a 

 few yards wide, with straight walls of rock, somewhat 

 overhanging ;on one side. From this gorge the river 

 issues with great force. The cliffs which hem the foam- 

 ing water are filled with fanciful pictures of curious 

 forms. In rapid succession come castles with moats and 

 towers, heads of gorgons, demons, dwarfs, and the like, 

 and with the dance of sunbeams upon the gray and 

 lichened bulvrarks, the scene is one of indescribable 

 beauty and grandem*. Higher up there is a cascade of 

 some 40ft. , falling from a dark, still lakelet, and above 

 this again a succession of seething rapids. Here nature 

 in her great generosity presents a portfolio of lovely 

 views, of tossing tori'ents, massive rocks, variegated 

 forests and waving shrubbery, that form the material of 

 a landscape that stimulates the imagination, educates the 

 sense of beauty and gladdens the heart. "In these happy 

 spots of natme where land and water, above and below, 

 combine their charms, it is hard to tell whether the stony 

 upland height, or the liquid deep beneath, most Im-es the 

 sight," 



Leech Island, which seemed to possess an arcadian 

 beauty as it nestled lovingly on the gleaming waters of 

 the great lake, was the next object of interest in the pic- 

 turesque xjanorama which was being rapidly disclosed to 

 us as the little tug plowed through an almost unruffled 

 surface. It is four miles west of the Lizzard, and con- 

 tains about 400 acres, all of which is in dense woodland. 

 Just north of this is a small island called Gull Island, so 

 named from its being a breeding place for the white- 

 winged birds of tlie icy lake. Four miles beyond this is 

 Gargantua Liglithouse, which is located on a" small rock 

 75ft. above the level of the lake. It is one of the finest 

 harbors of refuge on the lake, and shows a wealth of -wild, 

 entrancing beauty in its moss-covered and storm-beaten 

 rocks, ragged shoreland and receding hiUs, in whose 

 ravines huge shadows hnger and whose tops blaze with 

 morning gold. 



Two miles above this, Pictured Island rears up in awful 

 grandeur its solid walls 155ft, perpendicular, and then 

 comes Little Detroit Island, with its granite ledges run- 

 ning up a hundred or more feet and its channel of about 

 the same dimensions. Just half a mile further on, Gar- 

 gantua Fall River, a charming little stream, with foaming 

 falls near its mouth, sends its darkling waters into the 

 great lake, and then follows Menaboujou and his wife, 

 being two large rocks, looking ac a distance like man and 

 wife, that have fallen into the lake from the cliff above. 

 These are always pointed out with some interest, and it 

 is said that no Indian, even at this late date, ever passes 

 by them in his canoe but that he does not leave an offer- 

 ing of some kind upon the rocks, in order to propitiate 

 the great magician of Lake Superior. This myth is one 

 of the most general in the Indian country. It is the 

 prime legend of their mythology. He is talked of in 

 every winter lodge— for the winter eeason ia the only 



time devoted to such narrations. "He leaps over exten- 

 sive regions of country like an ignis fatuvs. He appears 

 suddenly like an avatar, or saunters over weary wastes a 

 poor and starving hunter. His voice is at one moment 

 deep and sonorous as a thunder clap, and at another 

 clothed with the softness of feminine supijlication. 

 Scarcely any two persons agree in all the minor circum- 

 stances of the story, and scarcely any omit the leading 

 traits. The several tribes who speak dialects of the 

 mother language, from which the nai-rative is taken, 

 differ m like manner from each other in the particulars 

 of his exploits. His birth and parentage are mysterious." 

 Story says his grandmother was the dattghter of the 

 moon. Having been married but a short time, her rival 

 attracted her to a grapevine swing, on the banks of a lake, 

 and, by one bold exertion, pitched her into its center, 

 from which she fell through to the earth, Having a 

 daughter, the fruit of her lunar mai'riage, she was very 

 careful in instructing her from early infancy, to beware 

 of the west wind, and never, in stooping, to expose her- 

 self to its influence. In some unguarded moment this pre- 

 caution was neglected. In an instant the gale accom- 

 plished its Tarquinic purpose. Menaboujou is talked of 

 all along Lake Superior. You cannot come to any 

 strangely formed rock or other remarkable production of 

 nature without immediately hearing some story of his 

 being connected with it. He is also the legislator of the 

 Indians, and the great model or ideal for all their cere- 

 monies, customs and habits of life. Nearly all their 

 social institutions are referred to him. Enough having 

 been said about this mysterious being, in explanation of 

 the fallen rocks named after him and his wife, will state 

 that the next point of interest to the lover of nature is 

 Cape Chogg, but a few miles above Menaboujou and his 

 wife. Here the cliff comes down upon the lake, the rocks 

 rising from the water to the height of three hundred feet, 

 with chasms, sometimes vertical, sometimes slightly in- 

 clined, and strewed all the way up with stones, like the 

 "slides" at the White Mountains. Beyond this it falls 

 away into a vast basin of green, sloping hills, curving 

 inland and then sweeping out to rocky points beyond. 

 The cliff, wherever the slope aUows any soil to rest, is 

 covered with birches to its base, leaving room for a wide 

 slope of debris, and a beach that rises in flve terraces, the 

 lower one falling steeply to the water some twenty feet, 

 showing that it alone can be connected with the present 

 level of the lake, and that the rest must belong to former 

 epochs. 



The landscapes here are of amazing beauty, being in- 

 terspersed with islands of varying size, immense blocks 

 of granite, against which the tumultuous waves dash, 

 visions of mountains, so many-tinted and so singular of 

 outline that they almost seem to have been created for 

 the express pm-pose of compelling astonishment. 



"The miglity pyramids of stone. 



That wedge-like cleave the desert airs, 

 Wheu nearer seen and better known. 



Are but gigantic flights of stairs. 

 The distant mountains, that uprear 



Their solid bastions to the sky. 

 Are crossed by pathways, that appear 



As we to higher levels rise." 



Having been somewhat geographical, if not topograph- 

 ical and mythological on the trip, wiU return to the sub- 

 ject proper, and soon have the reader in camp with us. 



Alex, Starbuck. 



THE JOYS OF DEEP-SEA FISHING. 



RECEISTTLY my brother Bob, who is a more successful 

 angler for dollars than for drum — a member of the 

 firm of Markly, Ailing & Co., in the windy city of Chi- 

 cago— sent me a $20 Bethabara-lancewood-tip fishing rod, 

 with a |6 reel, with other liiscatorial appurtenances there- 

 unto belonging. After showing my most welcome pres- 

 ent from my younger brother to my friends in my law 

 office (1 am a ''liber et legalis homo" and work as well as 

 fish), 1 solemnly promised myself that that rod should 

 have its "baptism" with its silk line in taking in out of 

 the wet a big drum off the coast of Anglesea, 



June 1 was the day I selected for my outing to christen 

 my lancewood tip, and it is in the first flush of my vic- 

 tory over a big fish (the jeunesse doree, so to speak, of 

 my piscatorial pride), which leads me to treat you as I 

 treated that drumfish, i, e., to drop you a line. 



I meant to be on deck in the gray dawn of the first 

 June morning, and as I sped down through the new- 

 leaved woods and lawns of May, down toward the infinite 

 sea, I sang all alone a verse of Elizabeth Stoddart's an- 

 them to June: 



"The spirit of flowers is watching now 

 As winking in the snn they suck the dew, 

 The thickets parley with the splendid fields— 

 What meaneth June to hap us every year?" 



It was night when I reached the Hotel Anglesea, and 

 I was a case of "tired eyelids on tired eyes;" and after a 

 sound sleep in the blessed sea au-, which to me is ever 

 like Keat's "Lucent syrops'tinct with cinnamon," I was 

 ready to fight a 14ft. shark or haul in the quick-darting 

 bonita on my silk line with my new reel. Brother Bob 

 (with whom I took my pleasure after gray squnrels in 

 the Indiana woods thirty-six years ago) 'would have 

 smiled amid his Chicago hardware had he witnessed the 

 boyish pride and genuine enthusiasm with which I en- 

 joyed my rod with a lancewood tip. 



I woke at the Hotel Anglesea with my strength renewed 

 like the eagle's and I demolished a breakfast, and the 

 sight of the debris of that matutinal meal made Landlord 

 Smith sigh. 



The tide was right, and before my fisherman got ready 

 for otir day's outing I went down, rod in hand (and the 

 sand fleas for bait in a small tin box, as I carry small 

 green frogs for fresh-water bass), to the long 'wharf, 

 where the water was Oft. deep. There was a soft south 

 wind rippling the waves, that kissed each other ere they 

 broke upon the strand. I impaled two sand fleas, one on 

 each hook, and threw out my line as far into the "raging 

 main" as I could reach in my first inartistic throw. As I 

 sat with my legs dangling over the wharf, the subject 

 nearest my heart was whether I would miss the big mud- 

 hen tides this September as I did the last: for the "clap- 

 per rail" can only be bagged on the Anglesea moors 

 when "moon-led water white" covers the meadows so the 

 adventurous gunner and his pusher can paddle over the 

 marsh grass in a canoe. I suddenly changed my mind 

 from feather to tin by reason of the little tBrill running 



up my right arm, which said in plain fisherman's Eng- 

 lish, "That is a drumfish sucking in a sand flea." 



I m^de no motion. I waited patiently sixty seconds. 

 Then I knew that this drumfish was my "meat," for he 

 had got one or more sand fleas and a hook fast in his 

 "inwards." Tlien came the tug of piscatorial war, which 

 tried my soul more than any legal "scrap" I ever had with 

 that "frosty son of thunder," John James Ingalls Cran- 

 dall, the legal acrobat I generally clean out when trying 

 a "boss" case before a Jersey jury. 



That drum pulled with the force of one of Ben Butler's 

 "forty jackass power mud macliines," but I yanked him 

 toAvard me, tenderly but firmly, as though I loved him. 

 Then the big fish with the flea and the big hook inside, 

 ran away with my line as the fat lawyer -John Wartman 

 chases an "earnest worker" in a beneficial short-term 

 society, ere he thinks his cash has gone where the wood- 

 bine twineth! I trembled for my new silk line, not know- 

 ing how, from my coign of vantage on the high wharf, I 

 could pull in my drum. 



My "whopper" came up to take a peep at his mortal 

 foe. He churned the water white as he went down head 

 foremost, not liking his new foe with an old face. He 

 sulked as drum never sulked before. I gave him the butt 

 and up he came again like a jack in the box, weakening 

 perceptibly, for the fish had evidently swallowed a power 

 of water. 



As he went down again he made a break for Seven- 

 Mile Beach, across the inlet, and ran away with every 

 inch of my Chicago silk line. I was scared again, but 

 held on him hard and the drum soon came up "blowing " 

 with wide open mouth. Then I felt good. His bright 

 sides quivered in the sun. Then I felt better. But I felt 

 best when I slowly reeled in my prize, thorotighly ex- 

 hausted to where the water under the wharf was only 

 3ft. deep, and trusting my pole to my young friend 

 Hampshire (I call him New Hampshire because of his 

 youth) I bade him hang on like grim death to a defunct 

 Scipio Africanus. Without hesitation, accoutered as I 

 was with my best Wanamaker suit on ('^52lbs. avoirdupois 

 being my fighting weight) I let myself drop gently into 

 the water, seized my 401bs. di'utnfish by the right gill 

 and yanked him out on the dry sand with a single flop. 



Then I gave a yell which mine host of the Hereford 

 House heard half a mile away. Hampshire joined me 

 in a halcyon and vociferous shout, and pronounced that 

 kind of morning fun "heroic fishing." 



That drum I bore in triumxih to the Hotel Anglesea, 

 and at 4:17 P. M. expressed it to my fellow soldier and 

 fellow statesman William J. Sewell. And that was the 

 way in wliich I caught my first drum on the first sum- 

 mer day in June. 



Dr. Marcy, Dr, Gross and Charles H. Barnard, of the 

 West Jersey Game Society, caught 18 black drum by 

 wading in the surf, early in the week, the big fish aver- 

 aging 48lb3. a piece. 



The rociifish and flounders are biting well and an oc- 

 casional 51b. weakfish. 



Stillwell Ludlam tells me that the spring shooting is 

 good with decoys on Seven Mile Beach. The bay birds 

 are abundant en route to the colder climate north of us 

 where the bullhead plover, avocets or long-legged lawyers, 

 calico-backs, robin-breast snipe, Wilson plover, marlin, 

 graybacks and sickle-biil curlew go to "nest-hiding" and 

 raising then young. 



This place is yet the paradise of the genuine fisherman. 

 Some 68,000 black bass have been caught and shipped 

 from Anglesea to New York and Philadelphia dttring the 

 first twenty daj'S in the month of IMay. 



Two steam yachts, the AYave and the Harvey, jointly 

 capable of carrying 150 people to "the banks,"* start out 

 every morning when the north wind don't blow and 

 return to an early dinner, laden with the sports of the 

 gTeat deep. The fare is %1 a head. Three decent hotels 

 The A.nglesea, J. J. Sturmer's and Pickwick's Hereford 

 House give the wayfaring man comfortable provision for 

 man or beast at §1.50 or .Si a day. 



The drum will remain till July, and the honest angler 

 who needs rest and enjoys inlet or deep-sea fishing can 

 find no happier spot than Anglesea. If the lover of rod 

 or gun will come to PhiladelxJhia he Avill readil}- find his 

 way here via the West Jersey P. R. And if the angler 

 ever angles at Anglesea there is no doubt that he wiU 

 come again. James M. Scovel. 



MINNESOTA FISHING. 



WAYZA-TA, Minn., June 1,— The fishing season in 

 Lake Minnetonka has opened up in a most j)rom- 

 ising manner. The law prohibiting spearing and seining 

 is universally observed. Among: the fine catches noted 

 during May are those of L, H. Hays and two friends of 

 Minneapolis, who caught 160 black bass weighing 2901bs. 

 A. Straud, of this place, caught 25 black bass weighing 

 69lb3. George Allen, of St. Paul, caught 60 black bass 

 weighing 173lbs. S. B. King, of St. Paul, caught one 

 pickerel weighing lO^lbs. and 19 bass. The largest pick- 

 erel so far reported was taken by John H. Ball, of Minn- 

 eapolis, and weighed ISlbs.— Tnbs. Simpsok. 



Alexandria, Minn., June 1. — The various club houses 

 on the lakes in this vicinity are being fitted up for the re- 

 ception of guests. The Miltonia Club of Chicago will have 

 a large party here very soon. They have twenty yachts 

 and a steam latmch. TJ^ie new summer resorts on lakes 

 Darhng, Carlos and L'HommeDieu is the most attractive 

 locality, and a number of cottages are being built. The 

 finest catch of fish so far reported is that of H. B. Pardee 

 and friend, who caught 151 black bass, pike and pickerel 

 in one afternoon. — G. H. RoE. 



Litchfield, Minn., June 1. — A number of extra good 

 catches have been made this season with hook and line. 

 Lakes Ripley and Minnebelie are full of fish. A. J. 

 Reeves and two others caught 73 black bass on Sunday 

 afternoon each weighing f ron li to olbs. A number of 

 persons have caught as high as 30 or 40 black bass in a 

 single afternoon.— James Robinson. 



FOR "FOREST AND STREAM" READERS. 



WE have secured, for the private information of the 

 readers of Forest ajnd Stream, knowledge of a 

 number of streams and lakes easily accessible from this 

 city, where we believe that good fishing for trout and 

 black bass may be had. The information, much of 

 which comes from private sources, we are not at liberty 

 to print, but we shall be glad to furnish it without charge 

 to any reader of Forest and Streaih who will apply 

 for it, either personally or by letter. 



