Sept. 4, 1897.] 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
183 
answer to my inquiries as to the whereabouts of John, in- 
formed that he had gone fishing. And, sure enough, I 
could see him up the river half a mile, having a try at the 
pickerel. About dark he returned with half a dozen fish, 
and he, too, acted as though he was glad I had come. I 
had long ago found out when John was pleased to see 
one. He asked me what I was up there for, an (i I told 
him I wanted to go fishing. He didn't think much of the 
chances for a successful catch at Millsfield Pond, as there 
were two camping parties in there, and another of three 
were going in the next morning. I suggested Session's 
Pond, and he said we could try it, although the trout 
there are very peculiar; some days a good catch 
rewards the angler; at others you scarcely get a 
rise. He further said fine catches of two and 
three-pound trout had been made there earlier 
in the season. That decided me, and he was willing to 
make the trial. A ride of three miles toward Errol dam 
and a walk of a mile and a half brought us to the pond. 
John handled the paddle and I did the fishing. It was an 
oft day, and although we tried every part of the pond, I 
caught less than a dozen trout, none of any great size. 
John brought his camp coffee-pot along, and at noon we did 
justice to the excellent lunch prepared by Mrs. Chandler. 
John said if I would remain another day we would put in 
the afternoon on Bog Brook. When he said that I knew 
he was a friend indeed, for it isn't everybody that he takes 
up that stream. When he wants a mess of trout he goes 
up there and gels them, that is, as a general rule. I asked 
him what was the matter with going up there in the 
morning as well in the afternoon. He readily agreed to 
that. 
Shortly after 8 o'clock we were carried up the same road 
we had traveled the day before a mile and a half There 
we took the boat, crossed the Androscoggin and entered 
the brook, a very slow-flowing stream, running for several 
miles through an almost dead level country; it is navigable 
for about a mile and a half, then the overhanging bushes 
stop all boatijig. We had not gone far before 
we saw the beauties jumping, and I began to 
feel sure of rare sport. But I soon found they were 
not in earnest in taking the fly; once in a while one 
would take it, and in the course of a couple of hours I 
picked ont a goodly number ot Jib. and ^Ib. fish. We re- 
turned to the house for dinner. In the afternoon, from 4 
to 7, we went over the same ground, and duplicated the 
forenoon catch. John handled the boat in excellent shape, 
mentioning to me once in a while what a superior 
guide he was, to which I readily agreed. Altogether it 
was a most enjoyable day. The next day I bid the family 
a reluctant good-bye, and in the afternoon reached .Jeffer- 
son. To anybody who wants absolute rest, and can appre- 
ciate the good things of this life, I cannot too strongly 
reccommend the place kept by one of the best-hearted 
fellows who ever catered to the wants of the weary and 
hungry traveler. 
To finish up my trout fishing for the year, on Friday, 
the 20th inst, I drove half a dozen miles up to the logging 
camp of the Brown Lumber Company, on the south 
branch of the Israel's River, and in a few hours' fishing 
caught thirty. Years ago this used to be a great stream 
for trout, but it is now so easy of access that it gets fished 
out early in the season. The next day we pulled out for 
home, after a most delightful visit among old and valued 
friends. Wm. B. Smart. 
TWO VIEWS OF THE KLONDIKE. 
Chicago, Aug. 20.— The Klondike fields will hold many 
of the finest, the boldest and most self-reliant souls which the 
whole earth can produce. The place for the young man is 
not here in the city, but there in the gold country. lie may 
go in a tenderfoot, but he will come back a man. He may 
not bring back gold, but he has not lost his time. And he 
may, in the turn of a shovel, solve the problems of himself 
and of his family for his generation and others yet to come. 
The game is a grand one, the boldest and best in which any 
man can engage. True, he may lose his life, but this was 
his to lose once at one place or another, and if he is too par- 
ticular about the place, he does not belong with the men who 
are headed to the far Northwest to-day. 
The hardships of the trail and of the life in the mining 
country of the Klondike district have no doubt been grossly 
exaggerated. Those who are going in now are doing only 
what nearly 3,000 men have done before them, and what 
50,000 will have done before this time next year. For a ten- 
derfoot such a trip is an appalling one. For a man of the 
FoBEST AND Stkbam family the kind that has camped out 
and roughed it and acquired a notion of the necessities of out- 
door life, the terrors are only such as will dissipate before a 
determined front. It will be hard at first, but if the man be 
the right sort he will so quickly harden into the work, so 
readily adjust himself to all the changed conditions .as to be 
a continual surprise even to himself. We speak of the dan- 
gers of the wilderness, but really the most dangerous place 
on earth is in a large city. The percentage of men who die 
on the trail or in the Klondike country this winter will not 
be nearly so large as it will be in the same number of men in 
Chicago or New York. It is a hard matter to kill a man 
when he turns himself loose and begins to rustle like an 
animal. These men will go through all right, and every 
minute of their trip will be a joy forever to them. Is it any 
wonder that the exultation of all this throbs to day under the 
breast of nearly every man you meet? Indeed, it seems to 
me that all the ^ood men must be those who are on their way 
over the far trail, and that the poor ones are we who are 
staying at home. Sympathy should not be for those who 
have gone, but for those who have stayed. The real difficul- 
ties of the trip are not those of the wilderness, but these of 
the home. The real hardships will not be those suffered in 
the mining country, but those mental pangs endured when 
the absent one thinks of those he has left back in the States. 
Emphatically it is only the first step which counts on the 
way to the lilondikc. All the rest is easy if one be bold 
enough to tear away from home. 
We are to have still another bit of the Great West, 
after all. The old, self-reliant days of the frontier are 
to come back, after all. A vast new hunting ground 
is to be opened up. A new State is to be added 
to the Union. New millionaires, new families are to 
appear again as they have done before the advent of 
the cornmonplace times of the modern West. The exciting 
drama is to be enacted again upon the Northern continent, 
as it seemed was never again to happen. What wonder that 
"Klondike" is in the heart* or on the lips of every man! 
Lucky the ones who have started or shall start! And may 
good luck follow them, each and every one! 
Word received here from conservative men who have been 
accustomed to rough outdoor life seems to indicate that the 
newspaper reports of the difiiculties of the mountain passes 
of Dyea and Skaguay have been exaggerated, and that if a 
man has energy and funds ennugh, he can get his outfit 
across the range and upon the Yukon Chain in ample time to 
reach the mines this season. One man returned from there 
says he would undertake to find any number of men who 
would cross the dreaded Chilkoot Pass every week all winter 
long if they had to. They have driven cattle to the Klon- 
dike. They are drivine sheep in there now. They have 
gone all over that entire region for a century or so in the 
course of the fur trade, and the Hudson Biy Co, could take 
miners in easily enough by way of the Mackenzie River 
route if it wanted to do so. There is more money and more 
brains going in on the Klondike stampede than ever went in 
any other. There is no reason to dread anything except that 
those who go now will be too late to get good claims in the 
country which has been the immediate cause of this stam- 
pede. It will be useless to go to the Klondike tributaries, 
and one will have to find his own claim in a country new to 
him but old to many another man who ha" been in there two 
or three years. The Stewart and the Pelly rivers would 
seem to be the best ones to strike for now, and not the al- 
ready occupied creeks along the .Klondike River. That 
country has not yet been discovered where claims are wait- 
ing for everybody to come and wash out $1,000 to the pan. 
Mr. W. S. Phillips, mentioned some months ago as an 
artist and writer (known in Fokest and SxKBAir as El Oom- 
ancho), this week arrived in Chicago from Seattle, where he 
has been in the middle of the Klondike exodus. He saw 
the ereat shipment of gold that came down on the steamer 
Portland, and saw the strange sight of a ton and a half of 
gold piled up in one heap, with men guarding it with Win- 
chesters and the crowd surging about it half demented. Y^et, 
though Mr Phillips had opportunity to go grub staked to 
the gold fields, he declined, and came just the other way, 
back to Chicago! It is a funny world. Here again he met 
me, naturally very anxious to go just where he had cnme 
from! Mr. Phillips says that over 1,500 men are working 
on the White's Pass trail, and that it will soon be in good 
condition. The last word from the Chilkoot Pass is that all 
the supplies and men are moving steadily over to the water- 
ways beyond, and that it is very unlikely that anyone will 
need be left behmd who wants to go ahead. Of course the 
daily papers reek with the customary scare heads, and it is 
not altogether unlikely that the owners of steamers which 
ply by the long route around by the mouth of the Yukon 
are at least quite willing to have large stories go abroad 
concerning the extreme hardships of the land route. 
E. Hough. 
San Fhancisco, Aug. 18.— Editor Vorest aiuL Stream: 
Already thousands of misguided adventurers are stranded at 
the ports where they ha?e been dumped ashore bag and 
baggage on an inhospitable bleak coast, without shelter of 
any kind, to find further progress impossible; no facilities 
other than paying Indians 20 cents a pound for packing 
provisions, and having to scale the almost inaccessible Chil- 
koot Pass, and thereafter to wade through swamps and 
swim rivers. Of the thousands collected at Dyea, not one 
in a hundred will get over, and those remaini^ig will have 
the choice of wintering over until late next spring in a cli- 
mate where the thermometer freezes up when it gets down to 
the end of the tube. And all this with no other shelter than 
tents, if they are so lucky as to have even those, and fire-, 
wood scarce at $3.5 per cord. Or the other, alternative of 
returning, if that is possible. Added to the expense of get- 
ting over the Pass, provided they succeed in that, the Cana- 
dian Custom House officers stand ready to pounce down 
upon them for duties on outfit and provisions. 
The few who left earlier may reach St. Michael's in time 
to get the last boat of the Alaska Commercial Company up 
the Yukon, and may succeed in reaching Dawson City be- 
fore the river freezes. The distance by river from its mouth 
is 1,900 miles. The boats are small stern wheelers, without 
accommodations for sleeping other than the soft planks of 
the deck; and sandbars and low water at this season renders 
progress slow. And last, but not least, are mosquitoes in 
clouds and myriads, unequaled in the whole world. All this 
is only a part of the delight of a trip to the Klondike. 
This picture is no exaggeration, for at my elbow sits a fel- 
low who has wintered in that locality and is authority, and 
tells me of his experience. He says that when mixing up 
dough (with hot water) for bread, if he left it standing long 
enough to chuck a stick of wood on the fire, when he re- 
turned to the dough he found it frozen stiff. Let those who 
are lamenting their inability to go lo the Klondike read, 
learn, inwardly and outwardly digest. 
Like letters "from our correspondent in Europe," written 
in the back office, you will read any amount of correspond- 
ence written from here, and dated Dawson City and along 
the route, padded out from notes gathered from returning 
miners unable to reach the diggings. 
Speaking of the Alaska mofquitoes, one would suppose 
that the frosty nights, even in midwinter, would be discour- 
aging to them, but that feature appears to give them an ap- 
petite. Although they do not possess the characteristics of 
the Jersey species as to size, being, on the contrary, so small 
as to pass through the meshes of an ordinary bar, they have 
a bill that would be the envy of a plumber in length. Noth- 
ing short of cheesecloth is an obstacle. In the very severe 
weather cf the winter they are not so apparent. They avail 
themselves of the close season to go around visiting with 
their whetstones under their arms, and sharpen up as they 
gossip over the new arrivals that will afford sport when the 
season opens. Podgeks. 
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SOAP AND SOME OTHER THINGS. 
Editor Forest and Strewi: 
Much has been written in proof and illustration of the 
delicacy and accuracy of the sense of smell, especially as 
developed in animals, but I very much doubt if we have 
found out even yet everything which is to be known on that 
subject. 
To illustrate — my father was a sheep farmer and wool- 
grower, and of course kept his stock in numbers by a fresh 
crop of lambs each spring. The breeding ewes, during the 
period of lambhood, were usually subdivided into flocks of 
not over fifty. Frequently on warm, sunshiny spring days, 
while the mother ewes were feeding, the lambs, thirty, 
forty, or fifty in number, would gather together by them- 
selves, and run foot-races up and down a clean stretch of 
smooth, hard, dry turf, apparently in pure frolic — and they 
didn't bother themselves about a timekeeper or an umpire 
either. They ran each race strictly on its merits, without 
trickery of any kind. 
Aft^r twenty minutes or so of such vigorous exercis";, 
beginning 
To feel, as well tuey mi^ht, 
The keen demands of appetite, 
they would, as though by common consent, "call the 
game," and scatter for refreshment from the maternal fount. 
Each call or "bleat" by a lamb would at once be answered 
by its mother, but in no case would a lamb be allowed to 
touch the udder until the mother had satisfied herself by 
smell that that particular lamb was hers. In other words, 
out of fifty lambs, all having the same sire, and having 
I ,sister-mothers, and all so nearly the same age, size and 
appearance that, with a few exceptions, the owner of the 
flock could not tell them apart, and all living and lodging 
together, with the same food, treatment and surroundings, 
all which factors would apparently tend to give them ex- 
actly the same odor— still every mother ewe would instantly 
identify her own lamb with absolute accuracy by a single 
sniff, and distinguish it from forty-nine others. And she 
never made a mistake. If it had the correct "scent," all 
right, but if it had any one of the forty-nine other odors it 
might go hungry and even starve, so far as she was con- 
cerned. She would not take the trouble to smell it again. 
Now I can readily understand that the odor of a sheep is 
different from that of a horse, and also that the odor of a 
sucking lamb may bo distinguishably different from that of 
a full-grown sheep; but the idea that fifty young lambs, so 
nearly related by blood as I have stated, and subject to no 
influence which, so far as we know, could possibly make a 
difference in odor—and in fact, lambs which to the human 
eye are as near alike as two 16-to-l silver dollars recently 
from the mint— the idea that fifty such lambs should have 
fifty separate— and distinguishably separate— odors, is some- 
thing quite incomprehensible to me. Nevertheless it is a 
fact; and if it be true of fiftv lambs, I know of no reason 
why it should not be true of 500 or 5,000. And if so, where 
is the limit of the sensorial capacity in' the animal kingdom 
— or is there any limit? • - • «" 
While this is not what I sat down to write about, another 
fact occurs to me now which may be of interest. 
Occasionafly a new-born iamb would die from accident or 
exposure, and occasionally a pair of twin lambs would 
appear in the flock. To foist directly on a lambless ewe a 
lamb that wa-^n't hers, was simply impossible. In such 
cases we usually stripped off the skin of the dead lamb 
while it was still fresh and retained its natural odor, and 
tied it on to one of the twins, and then got the lambless ewe 
to adopt it as her own. Usually we had to shut up the 
twin thus jacketed with the lambless ewe for a few days. 
Sometimes the ewe would detect the fraud at once, and then 
for a day or two would have to be held while the lamb 
partook of its nourishment; but, with rare exceptions, the 
ewe would soon become "wonted" to the fictitious offspring, 
and the new ralationship would be fully established. After 
a week or two the skin of the dead lamb could be removed 
without breaking the relationship. How the odor-problem 
was worked out, so that the new "scent" took the place of 
the old, and became acceptable as such in the mind or nose 
of the foster-mother, I do not know. I give but the facts. 
And speaking of smefls— though this is not what I sat 
down to write about either — I get no little amusement to 
myself by observing the actions of strange dogs. I am not 
a special lover of dogs, though I have no antipathy toward 
them as a class. But I make it a rule to be friendly with all 
the dogs— four-legged ones, I mean — which I meet at the 
houses of these on whom I have occasion to call, either on 
business or pleasure. Most dogs, on my first approach, will 
take on the usual manner or attitude of hostility or suspicion 
until the-y catch the odor of my person, and then they will 
more commonly wag their tails' and trot off with a manner 
which says clearly, "He's all right," and thereafter we are 
friends. But sometimes, instead of giving any indications 
of friendship, they will thereafter treat me with the most 
utter indifference. Apparently the odor is with the dog the 
test or standard of friendship; but in the cases last referred 
to, it is a friendship of strict neutrality. After the first 
visit, the dog, after getting my "scent," pays no mce 
attention to me than he would to a friendly cat. He will 
not come at my call, nor even look at me. If he passes my 
chair, and 1 offer to pat him, by wav of establishing friendly 
relations, he wifl sometimes stop for a minute, provided he 
has nothing else to do, but will trot on as soon as something 
else attracts his attention. Ordinarily he is as indifferent to 
my presence as if I were an article of furniture, In one 
family where I visited frequently, I tried time and again to 
get on good terms with a high-bred pug, which was a gen- 
eral favorite with everybody except me; but after my first 
visit he ignored me absolutely. I might as well have tried 
to win the friendship of a graven image. He never showed 
the least feeling toward me either way. He simply ignored 
my existence. 
And while this is not what 1 sat down to write about, 
another dog incident may not be out of place. 
I have two daughters who resemble each other quite 
closely in build and general appearance. One of them re- 
cently made a protracted visit with the family of a f ormer 
schoolmate, and became quite a favorite with the family 
dog. A few weeks after her return home, the other daugh- 
ter made a visit to the same family. As soon as she entered 
the door, the dog bounded toward her with every appear- 
ance of doggish joy, but instantly catching her "scent," and 
so finding out his mistake, he dropped his tail between hia 
legs, and, with downcast head and ears dropping like two 
