286 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
[Oct. 9, 1897. 
These continued at short intervals for several miles. So 
close together were the obstructions that we would scarcely 
get under way in the free water, after cutting through one, 
hefore another would he in sight. Thus the afternoon was 
spent in heavy work, instead of easy rowing and fishing; 
and darkness overtook us still chopping our passage. The 
jack was lighted, however, and placed in the bow. But fin- 
ally the stretches of open water began to grow longer, and 
the snags smaller and less difficult. Our hopes of "making 
Wine Shanty for the night really began to brighten. But 
as the boat swung around a bend, the jack shone upon a 
pile of logs and brush across the stream a few rods ahead, 
that appeared the largest and most difficult of all. So we 
at once landed and prepared an open camp for the night. 
Soon after supper we stretched ourselves before the fire 
upon beds of balsam boughs, which, after the hard day's 
work, seemed downy indeed. For a few moments we 
watched the stars twinkling through the foliage and then 
fell asleep; only to be awakened, however, at about 4 
o'clock in the morning by rain falling in our faces. The 
camp was at nnce abandoned. And huri-yine: into the boat, 
without breakfast, we again pushed up the Salmon. What 
was our chagrin, upon reaching the huge snag that had 
blocked our way the night before, to find that the logs and 
brush were not in the water at all, but were piled high upon 
the bank, while the stream, with a sharp turn to the right, 
stretched away in open water, with the cosy Wine Shanty 
only ten rods distant. 
From this landing a carry of a little over a mile brought 
us to Plumadore Pond, where Jwe expected to camp for a 
week or more. 
This is a beautiful sheet of water about three-quarters of a 
mile by a mile and a quarter in size, nestled away among the 
mountains that rise on all sides in green-capped terraces from 
its very shores. Its trout are of the red-meated variety, and 
we found tliem large and gamy, most of them running at 
about lib. in weight, with frequently a S pounder and now 
and then even a 3-pounder to add variety and zest to the 
sport. It was truly a pleasure to catch them. No fingerlings 
to bother. No brush to crawl through or logs to climb over. 
Not even was the humble worm required, but sitting quietly 
in the boat guided by a master of the oar, we cast the fly 
upon the rippling waters while the noble fish came to their 
breakfast and also to ours. The early morning was their 
favorite time to feed. In the middle of the day, even with 
an ideal ripple, one would scarcely get a rise, but just after 
daybreak they were ready for sport. 
One beautiful morning while casting on the pond I enjoyed 
a sight that I had never seen before, except in a chromo. 
Some 10yds. of line were out and the drop fly was dangling 
in the air about 1ft. from the surface, when a 21b. trout 
leaped from the water about I5in. to the right, and coming 
over in a graceful curve, took the fly as it hung in the air, 
and disappeared again about as far to the left. For a mo- 
D-ent he seemed suspended between water and sky, and his 
dark-brown back, his rich cream belly and golden sides, 
made a charming sight under the mellow light of the morn- 
ing sun. In fifteen minutes he came to the net, but during 
that time he put up a fight that was worthy of his first bril- 
liant dash. 
While we rejoiced in the fishing day after day. our hunt- 
ing was not so snccessful. Each night one or the other of 
us with Martin floated about the pond in searcli of deer, and 
each night the hunters returned'' to camp 'with the same 
old story. While always present, the deer displayed won- 
derful tact in keeping just out of range. 
All too soon the day came to turn our steps homeward. 
Between the pond and the Upper Chateaugay Lake, where 
we had first taken the trail, there was a long carry and a 
six-mile paddle down the South Inlet. On the way we 
would naturally spend a night at the "spiings," aname given 
to a widening of the inlet at a point where there are numer- 
ous springs, about sis miles up from the lake. 
Rising early in the morning on the day of our departure, 
we whipped the pond diligently, and procured a handsome 
mess of trout to carry home, to gladden the hearts of our 
friends. By 10 o'clock the luggage was packed, and we set 
out on the last tramp. At noon we stopped for an hour's 
rest and eiijoyed a cold lunch; then on again, with occa- 
sional short rests to the "springs," which were reached a 
little before sundown. To our delight, we found that deer 
were coming in here, and we indulged the thought that still 
it was possible to capture one of the noble fellows. A hot 
supper was gotten ready and eaten, and we were soon sitting 
about the camp-fire discussing the prospects of the night's 
hunt. So swiftly did the minutes run into hours, that before 
we were aware it was 9 o'clock — a time somewhat later than 
that set for beginning the hunt. It was my turn under the 
jack; so leaving pard to keep lonely vigil in the open camp, 
Martin and I started for the boat at the foot of the "springs." 
Somehow in the last tramp the door to the jack had been 
lost, and we found ourselves at the boat with no door. This 
would not do, so Martin whipped out his red bandanna, 
folded it twice, and tied it to the jack in front of the open- 
ing. It made the best door that bid jack ever had. In a 
few minutes we were quietly running up ' 'the springs." But 
alas! too late! A deer had gotten there ahead of us, had 
passed down through the "springs" and gone to the bank 
. on the east side. Wit-hout the usual warning he bounded 
away into the woods as the boat glided by. But with the 
tope that another might come, we paddled to a point half- 
way up the "springs" and stopped in the shadow of the tim- 
ber on the west bank, for the moon, being a Uttle beyond the 
new, was half-waj^ down toward the western horizon. From 
this on it was a waiting game. Our boat didn't move for four 
long hours, and only the strange sounds of night in the for- 
est kept us awake. The wind sighed through the pine tops; 
the rabbits scurried along the shore ; the muskrats sozzled in 
the water. Now and then a lonely owl hooted from his dis- 
tant perch, and a whippoorwill piped his note in a shrub 
nearby. Truly, it seemed as if we were the "Wills" that 
were being "whipped." 
But the scene changed. It was after 1 o'clock in the 
morning. The moon had set. Only a few stars peered 
through the drifting clouds. Suddenly the heavy steps of 
an animal moving swiftly were heard at the head of the 
"springs." He soon struck the water, and with splashing 
feet came directly toward us. The boat moved up to meet 
Mm, and as the red bandanna swung to one side the jack 
revealed the outlines of a noble buck. In a moment his eyes 
caught the light. He stopped, and with head erect and 
every muscle tense, gazed at the unusual sight. Martin, to 
whom the seconds were now minutes, thinking that his 
•sport" was a trifle slow, whispered eagerly: "Shoot, shoot." 
The sharp crack of the rifle answered his urgent command. 
And the deer, wxth one last leap, fell dead in front of the 
boat. 
The next morning deer's heart was served in camp for 
breakfast. We all ate heartily. But by 8 o'clock the boat 
was again in the water and we were paddling down through 
the alders that interlock their tops over the winding south 
inlet. Robe. 
Syraousb, N. Y. 
A MINNESOTA CHICKEN SHOOT. 
It is a peculiar thing about upper Minnesota and Da- 
kota, that every time you want to go anywhere you have 
to sit up all night. When you are in New York or Chica- 
go, or St. Paul or Minneapolis, you can start out at night 
or get m at morning; but if you travel out in that country, 
you start at midnight and you get there at midnight, no 
matter where you go or how you come. I figured for a 
long time over this with the Chief, who was out in that 
country at the same time, and we concluded that this 
funny state of affairs was one of the drawbacks of that re- 
gion; and the only reason St. Paul and Minneapolis have 
grown to be such big cities, is because the railroads favored 
them by locating them at that point on the time card 
where the trains start and get in at evening or morning. 
This, we are sure, was discrimination of the rankest sort, 
and in contravention of the inter-State commerce laws, 
under which any town should be granted its inalienable 
right to have its trains start mornings and evenings, and 
not at midnight's unholy hour. 
When we all arrived at Fargo after our Dakota duck 
shoot, we were sleepy and tired, for we had been obliged 
to take the train at 2 A. M. at Dawson. I noticed that Mr. 
Bowers was not eager to go out snipe shooting as I sug- 
gested, and somehow the Chief had changed his plans. 
He now said that he could not stop to take the chicken 
shoot with me that we had arranged; so he shook me at 
Fargo and went on to New York, sinking into a deep si- 
lence, which makes me fear he may be making up some 
of his lost sleep. On my part, I had promised to meet 
State Warden Fullerton, of Minnesota, for a chicken shoot 
at Campbell, Minn., and of course I did not want to make 
any changes in plans. The usual hitch in train time en- 
sued, and I found that I should have to lie at Fargo from 
7 A. M. till 10:30 P. M.. before I could catch a Great North- 
ern train south out of Fargo over the Breckenridge divi- 
sion. So I put in the day very pleasantly with my Fargo 
friends, and with regret said good-bye to Mr. Bowers that 
night. Then I got on the train, and promptly went to 
sleep. 
I had enjoyed a pleasant little nap, as I thought, when 
the conductor came along and asked for my ticket — a 
brand new conductor whom I did not recognize. He 
looked at the ticket and calmly told me that we had 
passed Campbell about five miles back, and that he couldn't 
stop the train and back up for me. Here was a pretty 
kettle, for I supposed Mr. Fullerton would be waiting to 
meet me at Campbell. Luckily that midnight business 
now came in handy. All the trains run at midnight up 
there, so pretty soon another train would be coming along, 
going the other way. I got off" about a dozen miles or so 
down the road, at Tintah Junction, and after a wait of an 
hour in a depot full of fighting hobos, who were returning 
from the harvest fields, I at length arrived, about 2 A. M., 
again at the little town of Campbell. 
Terminal Facilities. 
No Mr. Fullerton appeared, and I was at a loss to know 
what to do, when I saw a man with a lantern, and accosted 
him at random. He asked my name, and so it developed 
that this was Mr. J. H. Jones, the deputy warden in that 
county, who was to take out our party to his farm and 
give us a shoot as bis guests. Mr. Jones had had a hard 
time of it also, for he had expected us all a day earlier, 
and he had driven over and waited for us two diflferent 
times till this uncanny hour of the night. This day he 
had received a telegram from Mr. Fullerton from quite 
another city, saying that he had been called away and 
could not get there on time. So I was left alone at mid- 
night, abandoned by all my friends in a strange land. In 
such a case only one thing remains to be done, and that is 
to make new friends. At once I told Mr. Jones that we 
would have that chicken hunt anyhow, for I never had 
been known to go back on a shooting trip in all my life. 
I referred with pity to the Chief, at that hour no doubt 
sleeping the sleep of tired innocence somewhere on the 
trail to New York, and allowed that Mr, Fullerton didn't 
know what he was going to miss. So then we hunted up 
the hotel. 
The hotel at Campbell, Minn., is run by a widow 
and her redheaded boy, and they go to bed at 8 o'clock 
and die till the next morning at 9 o'clock. If it had not 
been for Mr. Jones,who was acquainted there.I should have 
had to sleep on the platform that night. With difficulty 
he broke into the hotel, and I took possession of the bed 
which he had reserved for me. In the morning we had 
the worst breakfast ever was on land or sea; but soon 
thereafter we were trundling out over the hard prairie 
roads behind a pair of good horses, and likewise behind a 
pack of rattling good chicken dogs, which ranged in the 
good old-fashioned way, on both sides of our course as we 
crossed the wide stubble fields and stretches of unbroken 
prairie. 
The Ancient Lake. 
My friend, Mr. Phelps, tells me that in the neighbor- 
hood of Campbell we are upon the edge of that prehistoric 
body of water known as Lake Agassiz, which once upon a 
time occupied all of what is now known as the valley of 
the Red River of the North. In this neighborhood one 
is close to such points as Fergiis Falls, Tintah Junction, 
Campbell, Breckenridge, and he hears of Ten-Mile Lake, 
Lake Christian, etc. As we drove on over these wide, flat 
prairies that morning my companion pointed out to me 
that beyond us, and beyond his farm, which was some 
eight miles away, there rose a rim of rough, low hills, from 
which a great view could be had of the surrounding level 
country. From this farm, I was told, the town of Camp- 
bell could be plainly seen across the prairies, and of a 
clear day even the town of Breckenridge, some eighteen 
miles away. Probably most of the dwellers in that coun- 
try have not heard of, or remembered the story of this 
ancient lake, and do not realize that the land, apparently 
flat, really slopes gently up to the rim of this great lake 
bottom, this wonderfully rich valley of the Red, whose 
soil is 90 deep and black. When this odd old lake had 
filled its mission, and had gone into other fields of activ- 
ity, as all earthly things must one day do, its waters 
drained oflF through the narrow, deep, dinky little channel 
of the Red River, but here and there there were lakes left, 
disconnected from the river, and even the head of the 
river does not reach back so far as what was once the ulti- 
mate edge of the valley at its southern end. 
Somewhere to the east of us lay the divide which sends 
the Mississippi waters to the south instead of the north, 
dividing the muscallonge from the great northern pike, the 
redfish of the South from the whitefish of the North. All 
over this uncovered lake bottom the soil is so rich that the 
prairie grasses have grown deep and strong, and after them 
the wheat has come, standing tall and sturdy, so that by 
wheat alone man has held his own here, selling that for 
fire, house, clothing, everything. Meantime man has 
disputed with the prairie chicken the ownership of this 
wide valley land, which to-day is the best chicken country 
left in Minnesota, and perhaps in the entire West. As yet 
the chicken crop has not yielded, though its numbers are 
growing less. Still these wide reaches of untroubled grass 
hold the nests of the big brown fowl of the W"e6t, and 
still man's stubble fields are poac'jed upon by these birds, 
which know also that wheat is good to eat. The heaviest 
bags of which I got any knowledge this fall were made not 
far from this same locality. This may be remembered for 
next year. 
My new friend, Mr. Jones and I did not worry much 
about geology as we rode on over these wide green and 
yellow flats, but we kept our eyes on the operations of our 
chicken dogs, a liver-colored pointer and a lemon and 
white setter. The latter belonged to a friend of Mr. Jones, 
a Mr. Roberts, and I must say that had I had proper trans- 
portation facilities I should probably have stolen this dog, 
for she was a mighty good one. All the morning long she 
kept out ahead, from 200yds. to a quarter a mile, never 
stopping her steady and methodical gallop, and quarter- 
ing the fields as handsomely as though worked by auto- 
matic machinery. The pointer was a bit jealous and did 
not do so well, his eyes being always fixed in envy upon 
his handsome running mate. Yet far as they both ran 
and careful as was their every motion at the faintest suspi- 
cion of a bird, we found nothing for nearly two hours. 
Then we put up wild two birds on a piece of stubble. 
These we marked down on grass, and when the first went 
up it hardly got well started till it fell, as badly shot up as 
Marco Bozzaris in the fourth reader. Another bird rose 
wild out of the grass, and marking this we put it up, and 
Mr. Jones killed it with his second barrel as it rose in 
front of him. After that we found nothing for a long time, 
until about 11 o'clock we saw the setter drop into a band- 
some point on a piece of grass some 300yds. ahead of us. 
Unfortunately the dog Brownie also saw her, and at once 
concluded to steal her point. This he did by means of 
flushing the bird, an old hen, with a wild run over in its 
direction. Yet again the two got a flush between them a 
little later, but this bird we marked and I got it as it rose 
strongly from a hard field road in which it was running 
ahead of the dogs. Then we drove over to Mr. Jones's 
farm, he not very enthusiastic over the morning's sport, 
and I by this time so sleepy that I did not much care for 
anything in the way of sport. 
To Mr. Jones's surprise, he found waitine him at his 
house two gentlemen from St. Paul, Mr. J. M. Smith and 
Mr. F. B. Brace, who had come out for a little shoot. 
After dinner we all went out together, and as by this time 
I had caught a little nap by way of equalizing the time 
cards of all these railroads in that country, I felt keen 
enough for the fun. This time our luck changed, and be- 
fore we had gone a quarter of a mile from the house we 
began to find birds. We now had a third dog along, 
Blucher, a black pointer, and between the three we 
covered a wide strip of country. I shall not weary readers 
by any detailed description of the sport, for at chicken 
shooting the sport is all pretty much alike. We found the 
birds well grown, and had full proof of the fact that they 
had been protected in this part of the country, as Mr. 
Jones had said they had been. The coveys, except those 
which he knew had been shot into, were full and strong, 
and though it was now only just past the middle of 
September, we found some of them quite able to take care 
of themselves. At best, however, this big grouse is but a 
helpless bird in that environment which he has chosen 
for himself, of flat open country, with no cover oflPering 
concealment of his flight. Those birds which we did not 
kill we could easily mark down, so that escape was all too 
difficult for them. One by one, in twos and threes and 
fours they becran to come into our buggy boxes, until we 
approached the dignity of near two dozen. Some of the 
snooting was at long range, and offered good fun enough, 
though in the short range work the sport was handicapped 
by there being so many guns. The dogs did their work 
beautifully, Mr. Jones having been wise enough to tie up 
the city dogs of the visitors, and take out country trained 
rolling stock of his own and his neighbors. These dogs 
were in part of his own breaking, and I must say that as a 
dog handler and as a field shot there are few who have 
any business with Deputy Warden Jones. I fancy that it 
was his gun which was responsible for a good share of our 
bag. 
How the Chicken Hides. 
Along toward dusk in the evening we began to find 
birds everywhere, the cool of the evening seeming to start 
them moving all at once. It was nearly dark when we 
marked down a covey on a bit of stubble and followed 
them up. As we drove on and pulled up the horses near 
where we expected to see the dogs point, we stopped nearly 
in the middle of the covey, which rose so close to the 
horses' heads that we did not care to fire. We saw that 
these birds were young and not very wild, and were not 
surprised to see them pitch again on the same stubble 
field, not 300yds. away. As we walked toward them, a 
single bird that had tarried behind the others rose in front 
of me, and I killed it. Then we went on after the rest. 
We walked quite beyond the spot where we thought the 
birds had dropped, but to our surprise no bird arose, and 
we thought they must have run. Finally Mr. Jones called 
attention to the actions of the setter, which was just stif- 
fening into a point some 20yds. back of us. We two 
turned back and killed this bird as it rose, about the same 
time that the others killed a bird just beyond us. Then 
we tried to find the bird we had killed, which had fallen 
fairly cut to pieces; but as it was growing dark we could 
not at once pick it up. I tramped all around over the 
place where we thought it had dropped, and was joined 
by both Mr. Jones and Mr. Smith, the three of us covering 
what seemed to be every inch of the ground. Meantime 
