Feb. 13, 1897.] 
night. Sometimes in the gloom of midnight he pilots his 
way through the home channel, guided only by the noise 
of the surf breaking against the reef on either side. Should 
he mistake the way by a few feet huge combers grasp his 
boat and hurl it with relentless force against the jagged 
coral. 
But though his perils be many, and his hardships great, 
he loves his calling and enjoys his triumph with hook and 
net. Like all sailors, he drinks more grog than is good for 
him, and smokes an excessive quantity of vile tobacco. 
He is wont to gather at the wharf after the sun has gone 
to rest, and spin his yarn and dance a reel with the rest of 
his mates. Under the benign sky of the tropics, in a land 
of perpetual summer, he pursues his way, improvident, 
careless, untrammeled, save by the cares of a moment. 
.One who sailedlfhese blue waters with him day by day 
during the tropical winter will store up in his memory 
many exciting experiences with shark and dolphin; in- 
numerable pictures of mountainous waves, breaking surf 
and intricate channels. 
He will recall the beautiful coral garden beneath the 
water where he peered into hidden caverns, with their 
wealth of curious shells, sponges and coral. 
As he sits before the fireside of his northern home and 
the snow and sleet beat against the window, he will re- 
member with pleasure the days spent M'ith his friends, the 
flying-fishermen on the surface of the beautiful Caribbean. 
HaERY HlGGINS. 
CHICAGO AND THE WEST. 
Trampln^r and Camplne In the Sandhills. 
{Continued from page ICS.) 
Chicago, 111., Jan. 29. — After leaving the wagon on the 
afternoon of our first day out, Patterson and 1 walked about 
'five or six miles, as nearlj'- as we could estimate it, before 
deciding to go into camp. It was at that time well on 
toward 4 o'clock in the afternoon, and as there was a keen 
wind blowing the night bid fair to be a cold one, so that we 
needed a sheltered place, with plenty of wood close at liand. 
As we were now out of the region of the small sandhill 
lakes, we knew that we should be obliged to get water from 
' Lake Michigan. This meant that we would be forced to 
carry water in our tin cups from the beach up over the line 
of bluffs which skirted the shore— a continuous line of hills 
100 to 150ft. in height, and covered on the lake side with a 
coating of frozen ice almost as slippery as glass. Finally 
i' we hit upon a depression in the line of bluffs, over which it 
was possible to make a way into the wooded hills beyond. 
We followed up this Ions ascent, and were gratified to find 
I that on the landward side it broke sharp down from the 
summit, making a long, steep pitch of loose sand, which ran 
sheer down into a sheltered little hole of a valley. More- 
over, we could see below us a vast loff, which offered advan- 
tages as a backlog, and could also see various little clumps 
of junipers and pines, which assured us of a good bed. 
Sliaing down the face of the sandhill, which, being the side 
toward the sun, was thawfd out and therefore yielding, we 
found ourselves some 75ft below the .surrounding summits 
and quite sheltered from the wind, which we could hear 
roaring and whistling above us, sending long curling sand 
spits down the long white bank behind 
We found that our back log was a big pine tree nearly 
3ft. in diameter which had fallen half across our little 
valley. Unfortunately its stubby limbs still held it a foot or 
more above the ground, so that we feared that we should 
lose some of the heat of our fire We soon piled up the 
open space, however, with smaller logs in a way which sat- 
isfied U8 on that score, and then we set about pitching our 
tent. The latter, as I have stated, was a small affair, but 
still we had dilficulty in finding a place large enough to 
offer us floor room, as our back leg was unfortunately lo- 
cated on something of a side hill. But we went t® work 
with our axes and hands and soon dug out a place large 
enough for the tent, and then we gave an imitation of two 
men putting up a tent in a hurry. In a jiffy we had two 
forked poles driven into the sand, each a little over 4ft. high 
and about 7ft. apart. Across these we threw another pole. 
At the back of the tent the little twine guy rope of the cor- 
ner was tied to a convenient tree. The o'her corner having 
no tree handy, we drove down a stake for it and thus soon 
had the four corners of our tent supported, so that our little 
house in the woods began to take on the appearance of a 
home. The open front of the tent was only about S^'t dis- 
tant from the fire and the roof sloped back cozily, although 
the lightness of the material gave it a good deal of a sag, 
which we sought to remedy by means of long boughs. Then 
we cut ns some little logs, placing one at the back of the 
tent and one on each side, so holding the edges of the tent 
firmly to the ground without the necessity of any tent pins. 
After putting these logs in place, we scooped the sand over 
them from the inside of the tent and completed an air tight 
joint all around the tent by heaping up the sand in a ridge 
about the tent outside We now had a structure wind 
proof, so far as this fiimsy fabric could be. The fire was to 
be our front door As this fire would be apt to burn a hole 
in our tent, and as, moreover, it looked very much as 
though we might have a snowstorm, we proceeded to 
thatch our roof with green pine boughs. Then we hauled 
up some dead trunks of trees for firewood and had our tent 
all complete excepting the bed. While Patti now went to 
the lake after water I set out after juniper boughs for a bed. 
I found a clump of these wiry title trees growing in long, 
curved, fan like branches which spread out'from a common 
center. By cutting off these branches close to the ground I 
got a complete feathered bed spring about 3ft. long and 
l^ft. wide. Dragging down several bundles of these 
branches, 1 thalched the entire floor of the tent three layers 
deep with them, putting the convex side of the branches up. 
This made a deep and springy bed, and quite took away 
the cold and clammy feeling which the wet sand had given 
to the interior of the tent up to that time. Later on Patti 
and I spent half an hour or so covering up this preliminary 
frame work of our bed with little tips of pine boughs cat 
from small trees which we dragged up to the tent. Thus by 
taking time and pams we got a very good and comfortable 
hough bed. 
I noticed that it took Patti a long while to get the water 
at the lake, and when finally he came crawling gingerly 
down the hill with a cup in each hand he explained the 
reason of the delay. He had run against a whole lake full 
of wafer, but bad found it almost impossible to get any of it. 
The breakers were running high, but by the time they had 
spread out into shallow wavelets high up the beach it was 
\ impossible to dip up a tin full of water, and such as could be 
a obtained was mostly sand. Patti's ingenuity, however, was 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
equal to the occasion. He lashed the quart cup to the end of 
his_ staff, and taking up a position on a high cake of ice 
wait'^d for the waves to come in. Meetins' each wave with 
his tin cup held as far as possible in front of him, he would 
grab off what water be could and then run back up the 
beach as fast as he could go ahead of the incoming wave, 
which even then sometimes overtook bira and splashed half- 
way up to his knees. Thus, -by great diplomacy and indus- 
try, he finally managed to get the two tins full of water. 
We had no water pail, having reduced everything to as light 
a basis as possible ; but the absence of such a vessel under 
the circumstances put us in rather a ludicrous plight. We 
were both warm and thirsty from our exertions, and one 
quart of water apiece, to last for the entire evening, we 
found to be pretty short rations, including as it did the 
water for making coffee, with the incidental spillings and 
boilings over. Before lying down to sleep I was so thirsty 
that I thought I should not be able to rest thoueh I could 
not relish the thought of soing out in the cold wind over the 
sand ridge and wrestling Lake Micbiaan in the dark for the 
drinks. We found about a tablespoonful apiece left in one 
of the cups, and it tasted very good. 
All these little operations required considerably more than 
an hour, and it was quite dark when we called the camp 
complete, and proceeded to build a fire. This Patti accom- 
plished by striking a tingle match, which shows that he was 
something of a woodsman, as indeed he is. (We only used 
three matches on the trip.) As we wanted to cook supper 
first, we built only a very small lire, and before supper was 
ready we were boih pretty well chilled through. One can very 
well keep warm in the winter time camping out so long as 
he is walking: or engaged in continuous exercise, but as soon 
as he ceases to work and sits down be comes to realize that 
he is not in a steam-heated parlor. But we soon had our 
coffee boiled and our beefsteaks broiled. Meantime we had 
pulled on our sweaters and spread out our scanty store of 
blankets in the tent. We now heaped up the fire with brush 
"patti," of thb forest and steeam expjiditios. 
and limbs of resinous pine and soon had a crackling, roar- 
ing fire, which lit up the dark little valley gloriously and 
warmed to the uttermost the little brown house in front of it. 
So Patti and I sat in the door of the house and fell upon our 
supper joyfully, soon feeling as warm and comfortable as 
we ever had at home. "This is not so bad," said Patti; 
"we'll sleep here all right to-night " So saying, he cut off 
another goodly slice of beef and wiped his knife on his leg. 
(Patti has a beautiful pair of canvas pants which show 
plenty of service. He values their grease and grime spots as 
much as an old smoker does the color on his meerschaum. 
Being a careful and methodical man myself, I always wipe 
my knife when eating on my left trouser leg, so that my own 
canvas unspeakables are a shade darker on that side than on 
the other ) 
We had a good supper that night, except that we did not 
have coffee enough — less than a quart for the two of us. 
There was not snow enough to melt, and we both dreaded 
the trip to the lake. We found that the half of a big apple 
each allayed our thirst somewhat. By 9 or 10 o'clock we 
were ready to go to bed, which was a very simple operation, 
as neither of us removed any of our clothmg. We were 
both tired, and could have slept the night through without 
waking had it been possible to build a fire which would last 
all night. In this sort of camping it is simply a question of 
fire. If one has a lodge or tepee he needs only a small fire, 
but we could not carry so large a house as that, and of 
course in an open-front tent one would freeze to death with- 
out a big fire all the time. I went to sleep at about 11 
o'clock, and the first thing I knew it was 3 o'clock in the 
morning; but meantime Patti had been up twice, so he told 
me, to build up the fire. Prom that time to 6 o'clock I 
tended fire two or three times. In sleeping out in this way 
it does not seem to cost one much sleep to get out and budd 
up the fire, for as soon as he lies down again he falls asleep 
and stays asleep until the next cold chill runs up his back. 
Really we had a pretty good night of it all in all. We found 
the theory of our little tent all right, and once or twice in 
the night we congratulated ourselves on om- comfort, as we 
lay and hstened to the wind roaring high above us. 
We had proved to ourselves that two men can go on a 
walking trip and carry on their backs all that they need to 
make them comfortable in zero weather. This is something 
which has been proved many times before, but, as 1 have 
remarked earlier, we felt ourselves in need of a trip, and so 
thought we would prove it over again. 
In the morning we had a breaMast very much like the 
supper we had the night before. We did not hurry to get 
123 
away, as we had no place in particular to go to and nothing 
to accomplish but to have a good time. Taking a trip into 
the hills about our camp, I paused at the top of a ridge and 
looked down upon our hidden valley. Rarely have I seen 
in any country a wilder bit of nature. The ragged sand- 
hills have an indescribably wild look to them, and for all 
the look of the place had "to do with it, we might as well 
have been 1,000 miles beyord the jumping-off place. The 
hills were here covered with a scattered growth of pine and 
oak, the country being a continuous succession of sharp 
ridges and valleys. It had the look of a good game coun- 
try, and indeed there are a few remnants left of different 
species native to these hills. An inquisitive gray squirrel 
made us several visits during the morning, and as I stood 
high above the place and looked down at the smoke curling 
up from our rough looking little camp this same squirrel 
came sidling down the hill close up to the back of the tent. I 
called to Patti that he had a visitor, but at the shout the little 
fellow turned and scuttled up the almost perpendicular face 
of the sandhill' at a gait which seemed well nigh impossible. 
I stood there on the hill for some time looking at our camp. 
Still higher up above me the wind was raging furiously. 
The sky was gray and snow was falling, adding to the light 
covering which had come down during the night. From 
beyond the rim of the sand bluffs came the boom of the surf 
of the inlaijd sea. Inshore, along the top of the high bluS 
line, and not over lOOyds. from our tent, there passed a long 
line of great gray gulls, flying slow and silent, like spirits of 
an irnpending storm. There is nothing cheerful or peaceful 
in this country. The whole scene is one of forbidding deso- 
lation. Rebellious and repellant indeed must be that hand 
which at the very gate of the city of Chicago has kept away 
the house of the settler and almost kept away the foot of 
man. 
It was about 10 o'clock when we shouldered our packs 
for the continuance of our journey. Par down the beach 
we espied a tiny speck which in the course of an hour we 
made out to be a house, still some miles away. It was about 
noon when we came up to this house, and found it to be a 
fisher's cabin occupied by two boys, who told us that they 
made a sort of a living by their giil-net fishing throughout 
the year. The take, which consists mostly of lake herring 
and perch, they peddle out among the farmers back beyond 
the sandhills. 
From these boys, who were the only human being we saw on 
our trip, we learned several interesting things. At this 
point a strong stream of water from the inland marshes has 
broken through the restraining rim of sandhills and empties 
directly into Lake Michigan, Fomewhat after the fashion of 
the Grand Calumet River. No member of the Calumet 
Heights Club had ever explored the country so far away as 
this from the Calumet club house, nor had we ever heard of 
this stream of water, which is not marked on any map We 
learned that it was only about three or four miles to the head 
of the stream, which was near the town of- Porter, on the 
Michigan Central Railroad. Our fishermen friends told us 
that there was once, long years ago, an attempt made to es- 
tablish a village at the month of this creek, and that the 
plare was called "City West," in distinction to the town of 
Michigan City, only about nine miles away. The creek had 
no other name except the genfral one of "City West Creek," 
so we thought it would be best to call it Patterson's River. 
We named our first camp Camp Calumet, it being the prero- 
gative of all explorers to change the names of things as given 
by the people who were there ahead of them.' 
Upon receiving the information that Michigan City was 
only nine miles further on, Patti and I were very much sur- 
prised and annoyed, for it appeared that we would soon run 
out of country at this rate. We learned that we must have 
walked six or seven miles the first afternoon and about as far 
this morning. We resolved to walk more slowly, as we did 
not want to end our trip until the following day. 
I presume the correct way to explore this sandhill country 
would be to plunge into the middle of it and walk across the 
hills, not taking advantage of the smooth and hard highway 
offered by the beach. This would certainly make the 
enterprise difficult enough, as a man with a pack would have 
trouble in traveling more than eight or ten miles a day in 
such a region. On the beach we found that we could travel 
at the rate of twenty miles or so a day with perfect ease, al- 
lowing plenty of time for morning and evening camping 
operations. As we had only limited time for our trip, and 
did not know much about the country, we stuck to the 
beach most of the way. On this day we found the character 
of the country changing very rapidly. From points on the 
high bluft's we could see that the sandhill region was narrow- 
ing down toward a point. The pine trees were disappear- 
ing, bemg replaced by thickets of scrub oak. The beach 
was much narrower, more covered with pebbles and fenced 
in by much higher and steeper bluffs. At times we would 
walk for half a mile without finding a place where it would 
be possible to make the ascent of these icy bluffs. A 
little after 1 o'clock, finding a depression where we 
could get through, we concluded to stop for lunch, 
as we were now getting dangerously close to Mich- 
igan City. Accordingly we searched out a sheltered 
nook under the lee of a big sandhill and made a tran- 
sient camp, with a big log as a shelter. Again we 
carried water from the lake in diminutive supply, and again 
we made a meal much like those preceding, for appetite 
waits always on the winter tramper. As we had no logs at 
hand, we were at a loss to see how to cook on the sharp side 
hill, where our fire was built. There was no place to set a 
frying-pan or a coffee tin in such way that it would not spill 
its contents. Patti remedied this state of affairs by cutting a 
long crotch out of a green pine limb. Across the fork of 
this he put his frying-pan, and retaining hold on the end of 
the limb, he thus had a handle to his pan and a cooking 
range all in one. Thus we fried bacon without spilling or 
burning, and thus we made coffee; the green limb, placed 
flat down over the fire, not burning through before our 
cooking operations were concluded. 
As we continued our walk along the beach that afternoon 
we noted again the great number of wrecks and hulks which 
line the edge of Lake Michigan at this part of its shore fine. 
There were fairly dozens of them, or pieces of such, all 
nearly buried in the sand, which rapidly covers up anything 
left exposed to the wind. We supposed that most of these 
fragments came from lumber schooners or fishing boats, 
such as often come to grief on this stormy water. Obviously 
many of them had lain here for many years, the ends of the 
timbers in some cases being worn smooth by the cutting 
sand blast. All sorts of things are found on the beach, odds 
and ends of wreckage and objects which seem to come from 
the land side of the lake. Thus we saw many paving blocks 
which at first we thought were worn by the action of the 
wate, but which later we discovered to have been actually 
