188 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
[March s, i8g8. 
Park," etc. It is dear that in regard to tluig matter you 
liave been misinformed. Mr. Wylie's camps are lo- 
cated within easy reach of the soldiers' quarters, and 
these soldiers give frequent inspection to his camps. 
They of course have full authorit3^ to enter his premises 
at any and all times, and this freedom of authority is 
not only cheerfully accepted, but invited, by Mr. Wylie. 
No refuse or debris of any kind is eA'er seen by the 
traveler around these camps. Their cleanliness and 
genera] attractiveness are matters of common remark 
on the part not only of those who stop at them, but of 
hundreds of tourists who make the trip by the other 
method. 
Our experience has shown that the reason so many 
people make the trip through the Park by wheel is be- 
cause they can do so more economically than by paying 
the regular stage fare; and this being true, they nat- 
urally prefer to stay at the Wylie camps for a consid- 
eration of $2.50 a day rather than pay the hotel company 
$4 a day. 
Aside from the monetary aspect of the case another 
great desideratum is that when a bicyclist makes this 
trip by whe*l he does it not only for an outing, but 
to get away from the usual routine of petty constraints 
and conventionalities. He would rather not go through 
the Park at all than at the end of each day's ride be 
reluctantly constrained to go through the prosaic and, to 
him, too civilized formalits^ of "dressing for dinner" be- 
fore he can satisfy his bicycle appetite. 
The ver}' fact that these camps are so liberally pati'o- 
nized by wheelmen is evidence that there is a sub- 
stantial demand for them. We do not hesitate to say 
that with these camps discontinued, and no other ac- 
commodation to be had except the $4 a day hotels, more 
than half of the bicycle travel in the Park will cease. 
On the contrary, should they be continued, the Park 
trip, from the point of view of the bicyclists, would in 
the near future become one of the most justly celebrated 
and popular bicycle trips to be had in the United States. 
From the point of view of the constantly increasing 
number of bicyclists who make this trip every year, 
nothing could be more harmful than that these camps 
should be discontinued. Respectfully, 
Geo. H. Tim.y, 
l. p. s.^nders, 
p. g. schrokder, 
Ch\s. F. Ward, 
'Committee, 
Men I Have Fished With. 
LXn— Wallace Eugene Blackford. 
If the stork had been kind to me and brought a boy 
to our hearthstone that grew to be such a boy as Wal- 
lace Blackford was, I would have reason to be proud. 
Probably the stork knew best, and selected only girls 
for me, arguing that if I had a boy he wo^ild be off in 
the woods wnth rod and gun, and be instructed about 
birds, beasts and fishes to the neglect of other things. 
Certain it is that a little difference of forty years in our 
ages did not prevent a close and loving friendship which 
was broken only by that reaper who harvests the unripe 
as well as that which is ready to be gathered. 
In the spring of 1884 his father, Hon. Eugene G. 
Blackford, then one of the State Fish Commissioners, said 
to me: "I have a boy about thirteen years old who wants 
to take a trout. He wants to begin at the top and take 
it with the fly; can you take care of him and put him 
in the proper shape to do it?" 
'Ts he strong?" 
"He is very strong for his age, and is fond of ath- 
letic exercises in the gymnasium; he is a good boy, and 
if 3^ou like good boys you'll like him. Why did you 
ask about his strength?" 
"Merely to know if he could handle my favorite rod, 
which is not a light one, or if I should unpack some 
boxes to hunt for some lighter rods, which I seldom use; 
that's all." 
He came down to Cold Spring Harbor, Long Island, 
one Fridaj^ afternoon in April, shortly after the trout 
season opened, and was impatient for the morrow. He 
wanted to know how big the trout grew in the large 
private mill ponds belonging to the Jones family, as 
undivided property, and in which I had been accorded 
the privilege of fishing. He was curious to know who 
had taken the biggest fish, and when; how many trout 
could be taken in a day, and his enthusiasm was not 
only charming, but contagious. What his dreams were 
that night we can only guess. 
After he retired I got out the rod, my lOj^oz. split- 
bamboo, which is my favorite to-day. I had carefully 
looked the boy over; he could handle that rod, and if 
he learned to cast with it he could easily get down to a 
lighter one, for at that time anglers were using rods of 
half that weight, and were trying to get a practical rod 
which would not have any weight. While I believe in 
light rods for those who have no muscle, and who do 
not care to develop muscle, I prefer to use a rod that 
makes my biceps sore after a day's casting, but hardens 
it in a few days. Therefore I did not search for lighter 
rods for the boy, but looked the old one over for abra- 
sions of the varnish, faults in the rings or elsewhere; 
oiled the reel, tested the last lOj^ds. of the tapered silk 
line, soaked the gut leaders for an hour, and then tested 
their strength and put them away in the box between 
sheets of damp felt; looked over the flj-'-book, and jour- 
neyed to the land of Nod, where there are not only 
frotit streams, but mines of gold and precious stones, 
fame, fun and all things which mortals pursue in the 
mad race of what we call life; a race which sometimes 
ends in fruition and sometimes in the penitentiary or 
tlie lunatic asylum. One generation after another re- 
peats it, learning nothing from those gone before, be- 
cause each individual considers himself as a special crea- 
tion, wholly distinct from the great herd. Dreams are 
not, as Churchill said, "children of the night, of indiges- 
tion bred," nor are they, as Mercutio says, "the children 
of an idle brain," for they come when the brain is busy, 
and all other parts of the body are at rest aod the brain 
is at work. I£ J dreamed that night, there is no re- 
membrance of it, but there is not a doubt that dreams 
came to my boy guest. 
His breakfast was a light one, he was anxious to 
meet his first trout, and when, we reached the dam of the 
lower pond, where there were no trout, I said: "Wal- 
lace, your father told me that you were ambitious to 
take some trout with the fly; can you cast the fly?" 
"I don't know; I think I might, but I've never had 
a chance to fish with the fly, and only know, in a gen- 
eral way, that fly-fishing is the correct thing for taking 
trout. How do you do it?" 
I found a place free from bushes on the dam, oiled 
the ferules of the rod in my hair, put it together with 
reel, line, leader and one fly. "Now," said I, "let me 
see you cast the fly." He tried to get it out in many 
ways, but failed; the leader had an annoying way of 
coming back in his face or of twining around the rod, 
and after awhile he said: "Let me see you do it!" 
He watched the line go on the back cast and then 
straight out 6oft.. and thought he could do it; but when 
I called attention to the fact that the whip-snap sound 
behind him told that the fly had been whipped off, he 
took hold of the principles of fly-casting, and in less 
than an hour could get out 40ft. of line without cracking 
the fly off on the back cast. I have had many pupils 
in the art of fly-casting, but never one like this, and we 
went through the woods on the west to the lower end 
of the upper of the three ponds, where there was a dam 
with a long apron and but little Avater running over it. 
WALLACE E. BLACKFORD. 
Here he lost a fly in the brush on the back cast, and 
was admonished to retrieve over the other shoulder, and 
it did not happen again. 
The scholarly angler knows the picture "Steady, 
Johnny," where the boy with wrinkled hrow is straining 
at a rod which presumably is connected somewhere with 
a salmon, while the old Scotch fisher rests his hand 
on the boy's shoulder to restrain him. We would have 
made a similar picture, if not so picturesque, when Wal- 
lace hooked his first trout. He had made several casts, 
and probably wondered in a boyish way why a trout 
did not rise at each, but a trout did finally rise, snatched 
the fl)', and the reel was singing merrily when I called: 
"Check him before he gets into the weeds." And then 
the fight began. Wallace was disposed to reel the trout 
in at once, despite its rushes, and I put my hand on his 
shoulder and gave advice, "Give line," or "Reel in," as 
the fish rushed or weakened, and when the trout was 
brought into the shallow at the crest of the dam and 
Wallace said, "I've got him now, and he is a beauty," 
there was a rush and the rod bent almost double before 
I could say, "Let him go!" This was repeated, but the 
third tiiTle the fish was brought near the crest of the 
dam I netted it. Wallace was pale and trembling with 
excitement, and said: "It is a beauty, and must have 
fought me over an hour. Do vou think it will weigh 
2lbs.?" 
It is not always agreeable to dispel a boy's illusions, 
and tell him Santa Claus does not come down the chim- 
ney; it is safe to infer that he will learn that by de- 
grees, passing through the state of doubt to positive 
knowledge, as he acquires years; but I could not resist 
telling him that my watch said the fight had lasted 
through eleven minutes, and the fish would probably 
pull the scales down to the 34lb. mark. To me this was 
more pleasure than to take a hundred trout. The ex- 
citement and enthusiasm of this boy with his first trout 
was contagious, and stirred the blood of an old fellow 
to -whom such contests were common, but were always 
enjoyable— but not with the freshness of youth. I al- 
ways loved a boy v/ho was companionable and wanted 
to learn things which I happened to know, and who 
placed implicit confidence in his instructor. It reverses 
the condition, for when I was a boy I sat, figuratively 
speaking, at the feet of "Old Port" Tjder, the profes- 
sional hunter and trapper, and learned the ways of birds, 
loeasts and fishes from what I believed to be the fountain- 
head of all such knowledge, and to whom I gave atten- 
tion such as no instructor in "readin', 'ritin' and 'rith- 
metic" ever got. 
After a few trips to these Long Island ponds my 
young friend became ambitious to essay the Adiron- 
dacks, and a couple of years later we found ourselves at 
the Mountain Home, on East Canada Creek, near More- 
houseville, N. Y. He was now a good fly-caster and 
brook trout angler, and we fished that stream from Ed 
Wilkinson's, some ten miles below, to almost as many 
miles above, with varying success, taking many other 
species than trout, such as chub, red-fin shiners, etc., for 
all of which Wallace entertained great contempt. 
He had been listening to some fishing talk in the 
hotel, and said: "I want to go over 'to Pine and G 
lakes, about three to five miles, and fish for lake trout." 
The wilderness was new to the boy, and his enthusiasm 
was intense. He wanted to know so many things: 
"How far do you have to go before you get where the 
deer are?" 
"They are on all these hills; we have passed several 
deer tracks, but the deer are not apt to be seen by men 
who talk as much as we do, and most of them are lying 
down on the hillsides now. This is a well-beaten trail 
that we are on, and the deer know that men are apt to 
be on it at any time, and they avoid it as much as pos- 
sible; but they cross it at times, when necessary." 
"Do deer know that this is a path where men go? 
They surely can't know all the paths in these great 
woods." 
"They surely do. If not run -off by hounds, a detr 
might spend its whole life within a five-mile square, 
ranging for food or water at different seasons, and would 
know almost every square foot of it. It is possible that 
several deer have heard us, and as we kept on the trail 
they kept still where they were lying and resumed their 
cud-chcAving or sleeping as we passed on. Here is a 
track; a big buck passed here within twenty-four hours." 
And then I had to explain how I knew all this, and 
play schoolmaster to an eager scholar. I rather like that 
sort of thing, if a boy takes real interest in the ways of 
beast and bird, and so we walked and talked until we 
reached the lake, and found where the boat was hidden. 
The trout were not rising well, and by noon our catch 
was two small ones and three fairly large chubs; the 
whole lot might not have weighed much over ilb., but 
it was time to cat after such a walk as we had, with its 
trips around uprooted trees and over fafleii logs, and 
I had provided for just such an occasion. A frying pan, 
coffee pot and tin cups were brought -out of a basket, 
and it was ftm to see Wallace hustle around for dry 
wood while I cleaned the fish. There is a vestige of the 
nomad left in all of us, a heritage from our wild an- 
cestors which breaks out in civilized man in various 
ways, and if it does not impel him to live in the woodl^ 
all his life, as it sometimes does, it tempts him to seek 
their solitude for rest and recreation; or if this is denied, 
by reason of lack of time or means, then comes the de- 
sire for the excursion, the picnic and the clam-bake on 
the shore. We all have it, the difference being not in 
kind, but in degree^ — a trip to the beach for a day, or a 
similar outing on a lake or stream being satisfactory to 
one, while nothing less than a fortnight of life under 
bark or canvas, is satisfactory to others. 
Said Wallace: "That frying pan is without a handle; 
you can't fry fish in that! And, say — you aren't going 
to eat those chubs, arc you? They never send chubs to 
market, and I wouldn't like to eat them. How arp you 
going to make coffee without a tea kettle to boil the 
water in first? How long will it take fo get dinner? I'm 
just about as hungry as 1 can get. Open that basket 
and let me get at what there is in it." 
Before he had finished his questions a wooden handle 
had been put in the frying pan, and this diverted his 
attention from his hunger; the water was boiled in the 
coffee pot and the coffee put in; the fish were fried 
in salt pork fat, and then the basket was opened. On 
the birch-bark plates I served him the two small trout 
and I took the chubs. After the fish came cold boiled 
ham, broiled chicken and the accessories which go with 
an al fresco lunch, and the amount of edibles that this 
growing boy put out of sight that noon would have 
astonished a Maine lumberman. 
Dinner over, he wanted to get out on the lake and 
troll for the big lake trout, of which he had heard;, but 
I said: "No, my boy, we spent part of the morning in 
getting here because we did not start early, and had only 
time to try for a trout or two for dinner in the wor.st 
part of the day. It is still the worst part of the day, 
and we may as well rest; and for nij^self, I propose to 
crawl into this bark shanty and sleep for an hour." 
"Sleep!" said Wallace. "Well, you can sleep if you 
want to, but I came here to fish, and I'm going. to do it." 
The sun was hastening into the west when I awoke. 
It was Wallace throwing the oars into the boat, and 
that is a sound that seems to fill j^ou ear longer than 
a rifle shot. He looked disappointed as he said: "I've 
cast all kinds of flies around this lake, and in the middle 
of it, and only got three rises, and they were chubs; here 
they arc, but I'll not eat them." 
"Come and sit down and rest; in half an hour the 
sun will be over that mountain, and the lake will be 
in shadow. Then the fish will wake up, and we will go 
out and troll for the big lake trout, come in and eat our 
supper, and get back to the Mountain Home by 9 
o'clock. But it will give us more sport if we sleep in this 
shanty to-night and get out on the lake at early daylight, 
when the fish are stirring for food. I've got all the 
necessary provisions, with what we are sure to catch, 
and a fire in front of this open shanty will keep us warm." 
Wallace was a city-bred boy, and imagined all kinds 
of danger. I told him that the dangerous snakes lived 
in warmer countries, and that north of Florida no snake 
was awake at night; that bears and other wild beasts 
Avould not come near a fire; but it was no use. I don't 
think that he doubted my knowledge of these things, but 
there was an undefinable dread of the wilderness at night 
which made him prefer a roof. I wanted to stay at the 
lake, and had prepared for it, but would not insist upon 
it, and along about 4 P. M. we started in to troll for 
lake trout. On stiff" trolling rods we trolled 202. sinkers, 
beyond which, at, some lolt., was a hook baited with 
a chub, and as we were fishing in 40ft. of water it was 
not exciting sport, and I said so to Wallace as I rowed 
along. 
"Well, it's not fly-fishing," he said, "but I want to get 
a big trout." And he did. He got a strike and reeled 
in, saying: "That sinker is so heavy that I don't know 
if 'the fish is on or not. Yes, he is; I felt him wiggle 
just now; but it's only a little one." He brought up a 
laker that weighed close to 81bs., and remarked; "That's 
poor fishing for a fish of that size. Why, I'd rather take 
a 40Z. brook trout on a fly rod than a dozen such lazy 
things, and with something less than a ton of lead to 
troll." 
