Feb. 6, 1897.] 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
103 
CHICAGO AND THE WEST. 
Trampin/? and Camping In the Sandhills. 
Chioaqo, 111., Jan. 16. — Laat week I spoke of the pro- 
posed little trip of exploration through the sandhill coun- 
try lying at the foot of Lake Michigan, that somewhat 
restricted but rather wildish wilderness which is the 
nearest approach to Chicago of uninhabited country. 
The trip in reality was interesting in reality as it seemed 
in anticipation, and much to my pleasure I was not 
obliged to make it alone. On the way down to the Calu- 
met Heights Club house, which was to form the starting 
point and base of operations, I met my friend Mr. A. O. 
Patterson. At first he declared that business matters 
would prevent his going, but the nearer the time came 
for starting the more fidgety he became, and finally at 10 
o'clock of the evening previous to the start he flung aside 
his civilized overcoat and civilized business fears and de- 
clared openly for the enterprise. For an hour theraf ter 
he waa busy in constructing a pack sack, which he evolved 
ingeniously from a grain bag and an old pair of braces. 
Another hour was spent in getting together his blankets, 
old clothes, etc. By that time it was midnight and time 
for every one to go to bed at the club house, but we sat 
up a while and talked over the prospect of our winter 
walking trip until we had very little time left for sleep. 
As soon as Mr. Patterson had expressed his determina- 
tion to go we acquired a prospective third member of our 
party in the form of Dick Turtle, who happened to be at 
the club that evening. Dick also called for a grain bag 
and pair of suspenders, and began to pile in a heap near 
by the clothing and outfit he deemed necessary for the 
trip. He soon had enough stuff heap«^d upon the floor to 
load a hayrick, but yet could not see how he could dis- 
pense with a single article. As we laid aside one by one 
his articles of heavy clothing, his fur coat, his blanket- 
lined, trousers, etc., etc., and explained to him how pleas- 
ant it was to slesp on a snowbank with nothing on but a 
pair of overalls, Dick's courage began to wane perceptibly, 
though he insisted stoutly that if he said he would do a 
thing he would certainly do it, and that his promise set- 
tled it once for all. Midnight saw him hound to walk 
through to Michigan City, but the morning found him 
with different views, and the last we saw of him he was 
curled up on the bed asleep. He bestowed a hurried 
morning anathema on Michigan City after a brief look 
out of his window at the gray and wintrv dawn. The 
prospect was not altogether cheerful, one must admit, for 
the sandhill country in winter time is not the most in- 
viting ground in all the world. 
When Mr. Patterson had arrayed himself for the walk he 
presented an appearance not calculated to inspire confi- 
dence in the bosom of one chancing to meethimof a dark 
night. In stature Patti is above 6ft. and built like a 
hired man. About the chest he measures 4 or 5ft., and, 
without jesting, his "mobility," as the doctors call it, or 
the expansion measurement of his lungs, is a trifle over 
6in. — a measurement that is simply phenomenal, as any 
physician will tell you. The accuracy of Patti's asser- 
tion that he could "swell up" 6in. about the chest was 
E roved by measurements we made that night at the club 
ouse. Patti is a dark man, a son of Scotland probably 
somewhere in his ancestry, and he sports a black beard 
which would do credit to Lafitte or some other pirate 
king. As equipped for business Patti wore canvas and 
corduroy over wool and chamois, and surmounted his 
head with a peaked little hat, which he probably took 
away from some hobo or other and which had an un- 
speakable trampish look about it still. As he strode along, 
with a staff in his hand, a tin pot at his belt, an axe at his 
side and his little pack resting lightly somewhere on his 
broad back, he would have made a picture for an artist 
in search of the original gypsy king. He is so big and 
strong that he does not stoop forward when he carries a 
pack, but just stands up straight, with the pack dangling 
from his shoulders unnoticed. It may be seen that I had 
a good companion for a trip like this, and that the best of 
his attributes was the thoroughbred quality of actually 
leaving the wire when the word came to "go." 
Patti carried in his meal bag pack a pair of light little 
blankets, an extra sweater, a loaf of bread, a vast beef- 
steak, some bacon and some salt and pepper. This does 
not sound as though it weighed much, but it is bigger 
than one thinks till he has carried it. In my own pack I 
had a pair of double blankets, a sweater, some eatables of 
about the same weight as Patti's, and also the little tent 
upon which we had staked our comfort for the winter 
camp. This tent was of my own design, and I modeled 
it somewhat upon the lines of Nessmuk's shanty tent which 
he describes in his book, "Woodcraft," though I could 
not quite agree with Nessmuk in some of the features 
suggested. Our tent, instead of being 4ft. wide, was over 
6ft. wide in front, and about 4if t. wide at the rear. It 
was 4ft. high in front and about 18in. in the rear. Ness- 
muk made a frame for his tent, building it neat and trim 
of nicely nailed boughs of exact length and equality. I 
did not figure to do this, for it was never my luck to find 
such nice sticks in the wood when I wanted them, 
I had little guy ropes of twine set on at the corners 
on my tent, for I could not take any interest in 
a proposition which commanded me to make a carpen- 
ter's frame and tack the tent over it with carpet tacks. 
This would be all right in the summer or when one had 
plenty of time, but it did not coincide with my own ex- 
perience of camping in the winter. When it is cold and 
dark, and your fingers are stiff, and it is coming on night 
and you still have a back log and a bed to accumulate, 
one does not grow enthusiastic over the carpet tack idea, 
at least I don't. So we concluded to depend on a tent 
stretched a little more quickly and rudely. As to which 
more anon, as they say in the novels. The material of 
the tent was brown silesia, of which material they tell 
me ladies make linings for their gowns. It was very 
light, the whole tent not weighing over 3lbs. 
So far we had had a very easy trip in getting up 
to the edge of our wilderness. The only difficulty 
had been experienced in getting out of Chicago. As I 
did not intend to come back to the club house after head- 
ing for Michigan City, I left my office already dressed 
for the woods. No one who has not tried that can know 
what it means. As I stepped out of the office door, clad 
in greasy overalls and short jumper, with a tin cup hang- 
ing at- my belt, a shocking bad hat on top of my head, 
and an old pair of German socks, with rubbers, constitu- 
ting my footwear, I realized all at once what a figure I 
must have made. There was no cab at the foot of 
the buUdii^g, and I had to walk half a block to get 
one, and by the time I got into it there was a crowd 
around the cab window — one of those asinine city crowds 
that assemble to watch a safe go into a window, or a 
fallen horse get on its feet, or a gf^ntleman get into his 
cab. One silly fellow stuck his head in the cab window 
and asked me if I was "the bicycle fellow that was going 
around the world." I just missed him. I told the next 
one that I was the man and that the cab was my bicycle, 
at which he looked vague. Anyhow I got away, perspir- 
ing and red, and not a little irritated. From this it may 
be seen how disreputable and undesprving of confidence 
Patti and I both looked when we pulled out from the 
hospitable club house, Patti had worn his store clothes 
down to the club, and, after his happy-go-lucky fashion, 
had not figured how he was going to get at them again 
after he got to Michigan City. As a matter of fact, he 
had to run the gauntlet of the crowds when he got off at 
Chicago, and then had to take train down to the club bouse 
again, some thirty miles; for we were about thirty miles 
away from the club house and sixty -five miles away 
from Chicago when we reached the end of our march. 
We had a slow time getting away from the club in the 
morning of our start, but at last got ready. The club 
wagon was going down the beach a little way with Mr, 
Carlisle and Dr. Divis, two members of the club, and 
Patti and I concluded to ride along, and so take his big 
camera, which was too heavy to carry with us on the 
trip, but which could be sent back with the wagon after 
we had made some pictures among the hills. It was about 
noon when we reached a part of the country where we 
thought the scenery would be good for our purposes, and 
here we spent a couple of hours in tramping over the wild 
sandhills in search of good views. We discovered, within 
six miles of tha club house, a lake over three miles long 
and some forty or fifty rods wide, one of the odd, wind- 
ing, deep sloughs or serpage channels which in places 
mark this strange sandhill country. Still further toward 
the east is a smaller series of water holes, running along 
parallel to the lake among the hills, and offering good- 
looking duck grounds. Indeed these inland sloughs are 
at times great resting and feeding grounds of the mal- 
lards, which drop into the quiet and unvisited spots when 
the wind is high and when thev are pounded off the 
neighboring marshes and lakes. We thought that Long 
Lake, as this main inland body is called, would make a 
great place for a small cottage, to be used as a shooting 
box for two or three members, on a plan somewhat like 
the cottages at thp Calumet Club, such as those of Messrs. 
Marks, Wilde and Harlan, or Mr, Spalding, at all of which 
we were entertained by the gentlemen and ladies on the 
evening of our visit at the club. Patti and I romanced 
about the cabin we were going to build in there next 
summer, far from the haunts of man. In fact, a man 
dropped down into that country might as well be in the 
heart of the mountains, so far as the looks of things 
would go. I venture to say that a camper who goes into 
these sandhills at any season of the year will meet fewer 
people and see fewer signs of civilization than he will in 
the bulk of the Adirondack country or along the main 
traveled roads of Maine. If I wanted to lose myself I 
would aa soon chance it here as in Wisconsin. I never 
did go into the upper woods of Wisconsin but that I saw 
somebody about every day, but Patti and I only saw two 
persons in our two days and a half of walking, and they 
were out on the lake beach. Half a mile back in the 
hills, and one might as well be a thousand miles from 
Chicago. It is a most surprising situation that of this 
Chicago wilderness. 
In our photographic work we climbed hills probably 
over 200ft. high; bare, wind-swept dunes whose sandy 
faces were made of frozen compound, hard as iron and 
slippery as glass in spite of the sand. From such a point 
of vantage the view was a grand one. On one side would 
lie the big blue water of the lake, with its long, curling 
line of white breakers, extending as far as the eye could 
reach on either hand. Below stretched the falling slopes 
of sandhills of lesser size, rolling off in long white and 
black billows into the deep woods. All the earth was 
sand, but sand with some principle of life, for it sup- 
ported a thin mat of vegetation. On some reaches the 
black pines were big and dense, now and then lining 
cafions and hillsides as rugged and gloomy as one would 
ask in the mountains. Again the sand would sweep in 
a wide sea of white, blinding to the eye and dropping 
gradually down to the lake level, for all the world like a 
big glacier. In spots the dunes had a sheer face up 
which no one could climb, and over their crests swept al- 
ways a curling wreath of sand, sliddering down upon the 
further side and always building, so that always there 
might be tearing down. In some places the sand had 
swallowed up the short oak trees, burying them alive up 
to their necks. Again the sepulture had gone further, so 
far that death had come to relieve the suffering of the 
trees, from whose cold corpses the sand blast had stripped 
the vestments and even the limbs themselves. Up above 
the white, shifting, writhing surface, the straight dead 
stumps stood, devoid of a limb or worn half in two by the 
incessant current of erosion, the deadwood in places 
smooth and polished by the constant friction. One cor- 
ner of the world we found thus, the very abomination of 
desolation, covered with the stumps of what had been the 
forest, which now stood up hopeless and pitiful. Here 
we paused, and at one tall spire of dead pine Patti sat 
down and gaz3d up meditatively. "I reckon this is the 
end of the world," said he, "and this is surely the North 
Pole they are always trying to find." So here we made a 
picture, showing this pole arising straight up out of the 
waste and cheerlessness. This view we named the "For- 
est AND Stream expedition in the act of discovering the 
North Pole." Few expeditions of any purpose have done 
more than that. If any future expeditions ever do dis- 
cover the North Pole, methinks they will find tacked 
upon it a copy of Forest and Stream, describing where 
the best walrus fishing may be found. 
We found the forest very heavy in some parts of this 
upper part of our wilderness, most of the trees being 
pine, with a good sprinkling of oak and other hard 
wood. Cedars and junipers clung on to the high bluffs 
with precarious hold, such as their adventurous souls 
most love. Over and through all these many trees was 
the sighing and hissing of the wind, which makes the 
music of the outer air. Batween one wooded slope and 
another there might be a stretch of a quarter of a mile, 
down in the bottom of which might lie a deep gully, 
asking a lot of slipping and sweating to explore. Yet 
further down and to one side perhaps an odd and deep 
little pocket in the earth might be scooped out, a little 
cuddy-hole of a place, where rthe wind never came, and 
in which one could only hear a faint and far-off talking, 
away up above him in the air. In such places we saw 
fallen logs and small wood, with good pines standing not 
far away. So we looked upon the land and saw that it 
was an ideal one for winter camping. We knew that we 
should have all the essentials for comfort, and though 
our frien-ls guyed us and told us we would soon be back 
at the club house that night, we both knew that we would 
not be there, but far away in some shelterpd little hollow 
back of a big fire, whose heat would be reflected into our 
open-faced camp, and where the pine boughs offered us a 
bed high above the frozen ground. Therefore we exulted, 
and ran up and down hills, and did a great many things 
which made us perspire and get hungry. I had not been 
hungry for a montih before. Patti, I think, is always 
hungry, and that is how he came to grow so big. 
They tell me that in the summer time the sandhills 
harbor all sorts of creeping things, including many 
lizards. I did not know that the lizard ever lived so far 
north. Yet I saw many cactus plants in this country, 
which also was a surprise. No one would naturally be- 
lieve that the cactus was native to Illinois, yet it is. So 
is the lizard and the flea, both of which creatures one is 
fain to associate with Florida or some other seaboard 
sandy region. We did not see any fleas or lizards, nor 
indeed any other game of consequence, except one ruffed 
grouse, a big owl and a rabbit or two. The snow was 
scanty on the sandhills, so that ww could not do much 
tracking, but we saw some skunk tracks, and a few tracks 
which were faint, but which we tnok to be fox tracks. 
We heard that a couple of foxes had been seen near the 
place where we made our pictures bv some fishermen 
who live on the beach in a' tiny sand-buried cabin. We 
could not find any siarn of wildcats, thoueh we had heard 
of these animals having been seen within the last five 
years, as well as a few wolves. From the tops of our 
tallest peaks we could see a wild panorama of hill and 
slough and marsh and stream, country which offered 
even at this late day of the century a cover suitable 
enough for any or all such game. We could at places 
get a view of several miles, and far as we could see we 
could discover no house or sign of human beings. Always 
the blue and white and gray of dune and forest and snow 
patch reached on and on, backed by the regularly 
rolling lake and covered by the sky. now grown gray. 
As we stood at the top of one of the tallest dunes we 
heard faint in the distance the sound of wild geese, un- 
mistakable note and one of always compelling interest 
One of us honked in answer and soon drew the long line 
over us. honking and clamoring and dropping to the 
note. Then they spied us and sped on out over the lake, 
over which they began to settle down, in those wild, 
headlong, reckless gyrations by which geese show their 
exultation at finding rest, and their skill at dropping out 
of the air from half a mile of heigrht. It was a curious 
and interesting sight to see their tumblinar, until finally 
they were all down and hid in the tossing of the blue 
water. At right angles to the flight of the geese, up and 
down the beach, streamed always a long and solemn pro- 
cession of gulls, great, gray, fearless fellows, breasting 
the wind steadily and with unvarying flight. These birds 
had abandoned the water and were flying directly over 
the tops of the first row of high sandhills back from the 
beach several hundred yards, this for some reason best 
known to themselves. 
Our driver had left our team in a sheltered little valley 
where the sun was warm and the wind was not felt, and 
here we gathered for our lunch. We built a fire, made 
some coffee and hart a pleasant little partnership meal. 
Then about 2:30 o'clock in the afternoon we packed the 
camera back in the wagon and said good-by to our com- 
panions who were to return to the club house. As they 
drove off up the iron beach thev waved their hands to us, 
and then Patti and I turned off with our packs on our 
backs, really now on foot and hourly further from our 
base of supplies. We tried to think ourselves very bold 
men, bound on a very dangerous quest. Several of our 
friends of the usual practical turn of mind had asked us 
what we wanted to take such a fool trip for anyhow. 
Patti told them he was going because I had asked him to, 
and I told them I was going because I was naturally 
foolish anyhow. They all shook their heads very gravely, 
still not comprehending and pitying us very much. We 
had no gun with us except a six-shooter. We were not 
hunting or fishing. We were not going anywhere. 
There was no money in it. There was no great amount 
of comfort in it. Obviously it must be two very crazy 
men who would leave a good bed and a warm fire at such 
a time and go off into the woods for nothing. Yet Patti 
and I did not worry about this. We only walked and 
felt good, headed by the compass, northeast by north, for 
Michigan City, twenty-six miles away. Our starting 
point was exactly at the foot or the head of Lake Michi- 
gan, and our course was in a wide curve, around the toe 
of the lake and northeast up its further side from Chi- 
cago. We had heard that there was such a place as 
Michigan City, but had no reason to believe it more than 
a rumor so far as any evidence was concerned. We had 
heard that it was located on the lake, but how could we 
be sure of that unless we saw it actually so? We had 
heard chat the sandhills were yet wilder further in, but 
how could we prove this unless we tried it? We had 
heard and seen that persons could camp out in winter and 
be comfortable, but how could we know that they could 
do this if they had along with them only what they could 
carry on their own backs? Obviously there were things 
enough to be seen and to be established. There were pur- 
poses enough for our trip. At least so it seemed to Patti 
and me as we humped it along over the sand in the gray, 
thick light of the fading winter afternoon. It grew 
colder and we grew hungrier, and the wind was keener 
and stronger, but we felt that we ought to go at least five 
miles further before going into camp that night, or else 
rest under the charge of being very inefficient explorers. 
So we hit off a gait of about four miles an hour, and 
gradually the masts of the wreck of the schooner on the 
beach at the club house grew fainter and its hull more in- 
distinct. At length the sun grew dimmer and our 
watches said it was getting toward 4 o'clock. As our 
first camp was an experiment, we decided to hunt up a 
good place and go into camp. So we crossed the high 
ridge of sand lying next to the beach on which we had 
been walking, and headed into the sheltered and broken 
country in isearch of a place we might call home. 
E. HOUOHj 
[to be concluded.] 
