364 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
[Nov. 7, 1896. 
IN THE CASCADES.— II. 
The Waldo Lake Country. 
(Continued from page ShS ) 
Christy had made previous arrangements by letter for 
pack horses; but "the best laid schemes o' mice an' men 
gang aft a-gley," and in this particular instance Christy's 
scheme for pack horses went sadly a-gley. The man 
with whom he had contracted lived six or seven miles up 
or down the Santiam, It mattered little to us whether 
he lived up or down or at all, for the horses did not ma- 
terialize and Christy was correspondingly mad. Meara 
took advantage of the opportunity, of course, to even up 
with Christy on some previous proposition, and caustic 
and unseemly remarks were freely indulged in by both. 
The natives all looked for a scrap, but they didn't know 
the boys as well as Mead and I did, and when Christy 
commenced to air his literary attainments by quoting 
from some old author, "Be it your unerring rule ne'er to 
contradict a fool," and Meara had responded, Mead closed 
th" argument by cocking his gun. 
Horses we must have, and Christy, as usual, was equal 
to the occasion. Luckily he soon found a skookum young 
fellow by the name of Ed Myers who had a fine brown 
mare, and he in turn found a little roan cayuse about as 
big and about as useful as a goat; the packs were adjust- 
ed, and we were soon on our way to Waldo Lake, Myers 
accompanied us to look after the horses and the packing. 
He had never seen the lake, and he probably wishes now 
that he had never been induced to go. I have been 
through and through the Black Hills, pretty thoroughly 
investierated the Rockies, camped for weeks in the 
Coast Range, hunted and fished for many years in vari- 
ous parts of the Cascades, but in all my experience I have 
never before seen such a trail to take pack horses over as 
the upper part of the trail into the Waldo Lake country, 
A man or set of men that would take a horse over that 
trail, knowing its character, ought to be prosecuted for 
cruelty to animals, and I hereby tender my gratuitous 
services to the prosecution. Fox told us to go by way of 
the hot springs. He said it was a little longer trail, but 
that we would gain by it, and besides he didn't think it 
possible to get a horse in by the shorter trail. But Christy 
had decided to go in by the shorter trail, and, as Mead 
put it, he would go in that way even if he had to carry 
the horse in on his back, while Meara declared that such 
obstinacy and perverseness ought to be punished in some 
way that would not involve the innocent. 
The first part of the trail over to and along the Bright- 
enbush was more than an ordinarily rough mountain 
trail, but Christy's only answer to our unfavorable com- 
ments was: "Boys, this is a sidewalk compared with the 
P. Warmer above Stink Creek." This was encouraging 
to fellows already dripping with perspiration when they 
were not shivering with fear. We took those horses 
along precipitous trails, where I would not want goats to 
go if they ^^ere worth more than a nickel a head. Stink 
Creek! P. Warmerl Euphonious names surely, and evi- 
dently founded on fact, and we kept wondering what 
the facts were. But an all-wise Providence had decreed 
that we should remain in blissful ignorance of Stink 
Creek and the P. Warmer for that day. All that day we 
traveled up the Brightenbush, sometimes along the 
stream through the finest timber I ever saw, except at 
the head of Deep Creek in the Coast Range; sometimes 
along shelving walls so far above the stream that we 
could hardly hear its roar; and sometimes, well, some- 
where in ethereal space between earth and moon. Chris- 
ty had announced the previous evening that by taking 
this shorter route we would get through in one day. 
Doubtless it was a case of the wish being father to the 
thought. At any rate, night overtook us just as we 
reached the mouth of Stink Creek, and we camped right 
in the deep forest. An acre of that timber standing in 
Iowa would make any man rich. 
The only serious trouble with this camp was the fact 
that there was no provender for the horses, and they 
must have been tired and hungry both, for they had 
been heavily packed and had had a hard day of it jump- 
ing logs and keeping their feet in dangerous places. 
When Mead went for water he instinctively went over 
to Stink Creek instead of the Brightenbush. Curiosity 
will be the death of that boy yet. Doubtless he wanted 
to find out what gave it the name, even if it choked the 
whole crowd to death. Of course he found only the very 
finest of mountain water, and when he returned he re- 
ported the fact. "Well," said Myers, "I'll tell you what 
gave it the name. Some time ago a party of fellows 
camped about where we are camping to-night, and one 
of them shot an elk just a little way above. It fell in the 
creek and he dressed it right there, and when one of the 
tenderfeet went to the creek he found a condition that 
suggested a name for the creek, and that name has stuck 
to it to this day, except that when they came to put the 
name on the map they modified it a little and just called 
it Stink Creek." 
"I understood that we were to be at Waldo Lake for 
our camp to-night," said Mears with an emphasis and in- 
flection only used by him when his remarks were intend- 
ed for Christy. 
"Well," said Christy, "we are here and we can't be any 
herer," and the general silence that followed this wise 
declaration only seemed to emphasize it, 
Night shut down quickly, and we had scarcely un- 
packed the horses and swallowed a quick supper before it 
was pitch dark. Then came the camp-fire, pipes, stories, 
and lastly blankets, just as of old, and which always have 
been, are now and always will be the most enjoyable 
parts of mountain trips. And when the camp-fire has 
burned 'low, and quiet repose is restoring sorely taxed 
energies, how natural it is to lie there looking up at the 
peeping, half hidden stars, listening to the commingling 
voices of the forest and contemplating the marvelous 
symmetry and wondrous beauty of nature and her works. 
The giant pines and firs seem whispering stories to each 
other of the past, and you vainly try to hear. The gurgle 
of the stream and the sigh of the night wind modestly 
vie with each other in soothing your weary brain 
and softening the voices of the night that are singing 
their sleepy lullabies in your drowsy ear. Gradually the 
eyelids fall, imperceptibly the nerves relax, and sleep 
"dims the sweet look that nature wears." 
No time was lost next morning in getting under way, 
for we were all anxious to reach the lake, for many rea- 
sons, more particularly for the reason that the poor 
horses would have nothing to eat until they arrived 
there. But it was nearly night before Christy's shorter 
route brought us to our destination. And let me assure 
the readers of Forest and Stream that we found out all 
about Stink Creek and the P. Warmer before we got 
there. If I felt in my heart that I was forgiven for the 
wrong that I was partly instrumental in perpetrating 
upon those poor horses on that trip, I would take a sol- 
emn oath that — well, that I am likely to do the same 
thing again the next time that some idiot asks me to. It 
was a hot day— yes, a very hot day — and whenever we 
left the shadows and got out on the precipitous mountain 
sides, where the sun could strike us, I imagined that I 
could smell brimstone. Possibly Stink Creek got its 
name from some other fool that went by Christy's shorter 
route to Waldo Lake on a very hot day. If the creek 
had never been named until now, I could tell you easily 
enough how it got its suggestive appellation, Christy is 
very fond of Worcestershire sauce. We had all objected 
to any such encumbrances, but he had sneaked a bottle 
into Mead's fish basket, and we carried our baskets to 
relieve the horses. Mead and I were bringing up the tail 
of the procession and sweating like butchers. Every now 
and then Mead would wipe the perspiration from his 
manly face and with a sort of saintly resignation declare 
that in all his life he had hever sweat so before. He kept 
asking me if I observed any peculiar odor. I thought I 
did, and after a while it became so pronounced that we 
concluded that he might be in a serious condition, and an 
immediate investigation was decided upon. Then we 
proceeded to investigate. On one side his pants were in 
a condition that suggested that something might be 
wrong in the fish basket, and so we examined the con- 
tents. The stopper had come out of Christy's Worcester- 
shire bottle and the peculiar odor was easily accounted 
for. 
We arrived at the foot of the P. Warmer early in the 
afternoon. It was all and even more than we had antici- 
pated. Geographically it was about three miles high, 
semi-perpendicular, and the last and loftiest step to 
Waldo Lake by the Christy shorter route. Geologically 
it was loose shale or what is commonly known as broken 
shell rock. Meteorologically it was the hottest climb on 
earth. If it derived its name from some old settler, the 
present generation might find some relief if his first name 
had been written in full. Of course, the P. could not 
have stood for Pity, Patience, Piety, or any of those gen- 
tler feminine names, but it might have stood for Peter'd, 
Pedestrian or some such name. If it derived its given 
name from physical characteristics, it is entitled to all 
the alliterative P's descriptive or even suggestive of such 
an infernal place. The boys think, however, that its 
name was the result of spontaneous combustion in Chris- 
ty's over-heated imagination, and has no particular sig- 
nificance. At any rate, the P. Warmer is a Jim Dandy 
and no mistake- 
Before commencing the ascent we left all the packs 
except a few blankets, a little grub and the fishing rods, 
all of which were strapped on Ed's big brown mare. The 
little roan had to be helped up without any pack. 
There is an element of suffering in sympathy, and I 
shall spare Forest and Stream readers the sympathetic 
pains of our ascent. The big brown mare fell once and 
rolled over five times — some of the boys said six, but a 
turn or two doesn't matter — and brought up against a 
rock fifty feet below. We all thought she was surely 
killed; but she hadn't a scratch, and her fall didn't even 
start a ferrule on the rods. But the bread box bursted 
and left ample evidence of some kind of catastrophe. 
After three long hours' climbing we reached the summit, 
looked over among the shadows beyond, whence came a 
breath of refreshing coolness, and we appreciated the 
fact that at last we were at Waldo Lake. S. H. Greene. 
PoHTiiAND, Oregon. 
[TO BE CONTrmJED.] 
LIFE ON THE KANKAKEE. 
Chicago, 111., Oct. 16.— In these days of literary and 
artistic activity there is continuous search for new fields 
where there may perchance be obtained those indefinite 
things vaguely called types, color and atmosphere. So 
ingenious have been the writers and artists, and so judi- 
cious the editors of the great thought mills, that at times, 
the conviction is forced upon one that all the fields, types, 
colors and atmospheres — except the good ones — must long 
ago have been exhausted. Local dialect and local real- 
ism have done a great deal for the literature of this coun- 
try, because they have made everybody want something 
else. At times this realism is so unreal as to be grotesque, 
but it goes just the same, because the people who do the 
reading don't know anything about the new "field" which 
is exploited, and the people of the "field" do not do the 
reading. Any one must at different times have seen in 
the monthly magazines of the land bits of local color 
which were thing's for wonderment. Any old new field 
is worth a hundred dollars if one can add a guarantee that 
no former pen has ever tilled it. On this basis it seems to 
me that "Chicago and the West" ought to be worth $100 
this week to anybody, or perhaps, more accurately speak- 
ing, worth an additional $100 to anybody on account of 
the literary tip it contains about a new field. 
It is a great deal nicer to be a newspaper man than it is 
to be anything else, as of course everybody knows; but 
what I want is a partner, a writer, a man who wears kid 
gloves and unbagged trousers, and who has the entree to 
the literary chutes which lead on to fame and plunks. 
Such a man I am willing, for the sum of $50— a fair di- 
vide — to take into a half interest in my new field, in 
which I promise him a good line of types, an assorted lot 
of color and atmosphere a plenty. He can make his own 
dialect. They usually do, you know. 
In order to show good faith on ray part I presume I 
should give some more specific mention of my field. It is 
no less than the great Kankakee country of ladiana. So 
far as I know, there has never been any literary hand- 
ling of this unique and distinct field, which, as is so often 
the case with good things, has been right at hand all the 
time. 
The Kankakee Marsh country is a bit of the world en- 
tirely apart from the rest of the universe. It is inhabited 
by a class of people out of the ordinary— uncommon, 
peculiar. This class has held its own peculiarities for 
generations, after the waves of other days and other cus- 
toms have swept by and entirely surrounded it. We 
might expect to find types so strong a thousand miles 
away in an undiscovered country, in the mountains in 
Oarpathia, in Africa, in the valleys of the Rockies, or tfae 
pine woods of the far unsettled South; but who would 
look for them within fifty miles of the second city in the 
whole country, where a gathering of the wonderful and 
beautiful things of the civilization of the world remains a 
fresh memory? In the middle of affairs, in the path of 
cities, on the edge of world's fairs, the Kankakee country 
has held its own, very much less changed in the same time 
than have been Montana, Wyoming, Colorado, California. 
The marsh dweller of the Kankakee has indeed been a 
type for you. He has not changed. He has stuck to his 
environment, and the environment has been stern enough 
to keep out the world, including writers. 
Very far be it from me to ridicule in the least way the 
typical marsh dweller of the Kankakee country. One > 
might laugh at a wealthy city man, who has achieved all 
the failures which go with what is called success, but 
never, if he understood his man, would he laugh at the 
marsh man, for here he would have a character enduring 
and bold and manly enough to stand up by itself, a char- 
acter of strength and independence enough to command 
the respect of any one who saw it well enough to under- 
stand it. The city man is afraid of a policeman, and has 
a dread of the law. The marsh man is afraid of no one, 
and does not know what the law is. The city man is 
solicitous of fashion plates, but the clothes of his fathers 
are good enough for the marsh dweller. The city man 
would know always what are the ways of others. The 
marsh man cares not at all, for his own ways are good 
enough for him. He does his own thinking and is him- 
self all the way through. This he has been for many 
years, in the meantime there having passed quite away 
such types as the Western hunter and trapper and scout 
and explorer, now applauded as belonging to the pictur- 
esque past, when men had to be men to make a living. 
Life on the Kankakee was never exactly a bed of roses. 
The baby that opened its eyes first upon the wide seas of 
grass and the low blue ridges of timber land could ?iot 
have had the gift of prophecy or it would never have 
been satisfied, and would have hustled back home on the 
trailing cloud of glory with which Mr. Wordsworth tells 
us babies come hitherward. Perhaps the baby hustled, 
back anyhow before long, for the malaria of these swamps 
was ever potent against the young. The father of the 
family bought quinine by the bottle when he sold his 
game hi town, and whisky according to his lights on the 
questions of domestic economy. At night the cold white 
mist of the malarious river region lay like a blanket of 
death over the land. He who survived this for a lifetime 
was lesin, wrinkled, toughened and yellowed. His chil- 
dren were suggestions leading up to that conclusion irre- 
sistibly, according to their different ages. 
!^The genuine Kankakee Marsh man never did any work. 
Of course, since the days of modern sportsmanship on 
those marshes he has been the boat pusher for sportsmen 
at the clubs or elsewhere, but it never was any work for 
one of these men to push a boat. Oars or a paddle he 
despised, but though you watched him all day long push- 
ing his boat up the swift rush of the stream or over the 
marsh where it seemed a boat could not go, you could 
never see any distress in his movements or any hui-ry in 
his steady sweep of the long push paddle. That was no 
work, for he was born to it. His environment meant that 
he must learn it. The little house he had on the high 
ground near the river cost small labor to put up, and once 
up it lasted for a long time. Its furnishing cost little, for 
never was life more primitive than here. Perhaps there 
was a cow or two, more or less amphibious and web- 
footed creatures, but these required no care to speak of, 
nor did the swine which made their company about the 
yard. A little hay was made, but this not strenuotisly. A 
little wood was cut when the fire was out. A little food 
was on hand when meal times came, or if it was not it 
was easily to be had with net or spear or gun. Work as we 
know it there was not. The "farm" could not be farmed. 
Everywhere was the river, the marsh, dominating all 
with its monotone of theme. Even, -flat, uneventful, yet 
strong, was the flow of life on the Kankakee. The marsh 
man dwelt apart, and so had time to think, as does the 
settler of the mountains or the plains. So he gained in- 
dividuality, vigor of character, strength of type, if you 
will. He troubled not the schools with his children, for 
it was far across the marsh, and he did not wish his kind 
to mingle very much with those who dwelt upon the high 
ground and who thus were objects of suspicion. Churches 
he had none. At times he and his sons went to a dance, 
and there danced or perhaps cheerfully fought, as was 
made necessary by the ethics of the marsh. It is the at- 
titude of folly to say off-hand that the ethics of the marsh 
are wrong and ours are right. Nothing is actually right 
when you catch it outside its own dooryard. The door- 
yard of the marsh man was the same for generations. 
Tiiere never was at any time or in any country a class 
of men who more truly lived off the gifts of wild nature 
than did and do the native dwellers of the Kankakee. In 
earlier days they were accused of taking a few horses now 
and then, and the marshes at that day no doubt harbored 
many bands of lawless men who might better have been 
out of the country, though nowadays all that is changed. 
The marsh man of the Kankakee is not dishonest. He 
might fight a little if you transgressed his notions of 
etiquette at a dance, but he was not actively bad. He 
would not steal from his neighbor, because, partly, his 
neighbor had nothing worth stealing. He would not 
grow angry easily, but if you had committed what to him 
seemed the great crimes he would calmly kill you per- 
haps. Certainly he would not have you arrested , for with 
the law he had no concern. These men had their own 
notions about law, I say it with no disreepect and with 
no wish to deride them, but rather with a feeling of ad- 
miration, that probably no more lawless a class of men 
ever lived in the land than these marsh men of the Kan- 
kakee. Yet they were not troublesome, they were not 
criminals, they were not openly endangering the rights 
of others. They wanted nothing the outside world might 
have, but they insisted that the outside world had no right 
to tell them what they should do. For law, as law, there 
never was any respect or awe whatever on the Kankakee, 
nor will you to-day find it there. Yet you may fiud a 
simple-minded and straightforward people, generous to 
the last degree, hospitable as any of the country, free with 
what little they have and not in the least churlish or dis- 
obliging. The marsh man is contented to let you live as 
you like. He does not worry about you at all. He is not 
looking for types. He only asks to be let alone. 
The Kankakee native was always a hunter, a fisher and 
a trapper, and such he is even to-day. No better shot at 
wildfowl ever lived. He began in youth to shoot and so 
