62 
FOR£:ST AND STREAM. 
[July iSI, 1906, 
Reminiscences. 
BY ROWLAND E. ROBINSON. 
Much talking of old times is one of the signs of old 
age, as common an accompaniment of it as gray hairs, 
toothless jaws, dimmed eyes and stiffened joints, though a 
far pleasanter one. The weary mind clings more tena- 
ciously to pleasant memories of youth than to fleeting, 
trivial incidents of yesterday. The old man longs to live 
them over again in' story, and his tongue would fain be 
wagging. To that end he must have an audience. Young 
folks will serve if interested to hear of the days when the 
woods were populous with game, and the clear, shaded 
streams swarmed with fish that were not always lost. Bet- 
ter by far is same old comrade, a good listener, yet 
breaking in now and then with a reminder of some half- 
forgotten incident of the happy, care-free days. An old 
friend, an old pipe and an open fire — happy combination to 
- bring out talk of old times. 
"Do you remember the spring Ave went to Burton's 
Pond?""a familiar voice asks out of the cloud of tobacco 
smoke. Yes, and how we were enticed there by the 
marvelous tales told of swarms of muskrats, told us by 
one without regard for truth, when we were looking about 
for trapping grounds. We could trap up Little Otter as 
far as it would float our boat, and then carry them over 
to the pond, make a camp there, and trap for a week, and 
then come home to enjoy our fortunes at leisure. Besides 
the money that was in it, there would be lots of fun, and 
so, having gained parental consent and parental aid in 
the shape of provisions — for, though grown-up, we were 
not of age — we three set forth on our expedition in two 
boats. 
We embarked a little above the second falls, Joe and 
I in his boat, and By in his, paddling and poling at a 
leisurely rate, setting a trap at every likely sign, whether 
burr'ow, feed bed or nightly haunted log or tussock, and 
so on, as far as could be properly gone over next day. 
On the way up each boat kept its allotted side, never in- 
truding on the other, but on the down stream course it 
was "go as you please," as fast as current and paddle 
would bear us, with an eye out for a chance shot at a 
swimming rat. The trapping here, when water rose and 
fell several inches i^ the course of the day and night, was 
very different from that in the marshy lower creek, where 
there was little variation in the rise and fall of the slug- 
gish current, and a trap remained nearly at the same 
depth at which it was set. 
Next morning we voyaged up stream again, taking up 
traps and catch till we reached the end of yesterday's voy- 
age, where we began setting until we came to rapids so 
swift and rough that we had all we could do to make head- 
way. Then slack water and "sign" for a few more traps 
up to the torn water of Dover Rapids, the busy scene of 
many manuf<actures in old times, all deserted now and 
silent but for the rush of the rapids and the roar of the 
cataract, no vestige left but a rusted shaft, a broken 
wheel, a grass-grown embankment — memorials of departed 
industries and dead hopes. 
We lugged and dragged our boats and cargoes around 
the falls and launched them again in slack water, reaching 
in lazy loops to the site of the old Boston Iron Company's 
forges. A little below it we rounded a long bend half 
encircling the Old Indian Garden, where they say was an 
Indian cornfield. There was a more authentic memorial 
of tirnes almost as old in the venerable tree, living and 
standing with a deep notch cut in it with the plain marks 
of a beaver's teeth. An old man, a son of the first 
settler at this place, told me that the last trout of Little 
Otter were caught here, and were plenty enough in his 
father's day, but I never found any one old enough to re- 
member seeing a beaver. Hard by on the flats of Mud 
Creek was a great hawnt of these animals, long ago 
trapped to extermination by Iroquois and Waubanakee 
and adventurous white fur hunters. The levels were flooded 
by dams that can still be traced, and ditching the alluvial 
soil brings to light a pavement of peeled sticks, the 
tooth-marks as distinct as when first made, but crumbling 
to pieces after brief exposure. 
Here, where the old company's throbbing hammers in- 
cessantly shook the forest sixty years ago, a roaring rapid 
cornpelled another toilsome carry, happily the last awaiting 
us in these waters. Now it was easy navigating the slow 
current. The meadows on a level with our eyes were 
growing green in the pleasant April weather that touched 
us with the comfortable indolence of spring fever, as it 
seemed to touch the crow lazily hunting grubs on the 
broad intervale, and the blackbirds oozing a gurgle of 
melody and discord from the elms above us. 
A woodchuck waddling along the bank prospecting for 
the earliest clover fools us into stalking him for a musk- 
rat until he takes alarm and scurries into his burrow with 
a derisive whistle. We came head to head above the 
banks of a bend with a great blue heron that sprang to 
flight with a startled croak, and frightened a pair of dusky 
ducks, startling us in turn with sudden splash and flutter, 
and taking new fright at the sight of our boats. Doubt- 
less the pair were in quest of a secluded summer home 
where they might rear their annual brood of ducklings 
in peace, and we hoped our brief intrusion might not 
change their plans, which gave promise of sport the 
coming fall. When the well-named hillock, Hedgehog 
Hill, bristled far behind us the creek narrowed to a chan- 
nel that barely gave passage to our boats, and our voyage 
came to an end where a short bridge spanned it. 
A team met us, and loading our boats on to the wagon 
went lumbering and bumping over the rought-dried clay 
highway toward our destination. Happily escaping ship- 
wreck on this dried sea of mud, we came to a bright little 
torrent of cascades and rapids, which we rightly guessed 
to be the outlet of our pond, then saw the gable of saw- 
mill peeping over the top of the hill, and then came to its 
hospitable door, the whole open side .gaping a welcome to 
cuctomers and their logs, and explaining the stale old 
comment on such as forget to shut doors behind them, 
"Guess you was raised in a sawmill, where the' hain't 
"jio doors!" Even so long ago the old-fashioned "up-and- 
down" sawmill had been almost entirely super.seded by 
th« modern cirpuj3r saw, an4 lingered 3 little whil^ 
to refresh our earliest recollections with watchmg the 
automatic movements of this relic of old times. It was 
as interesting to us, grown up, if not so wonderful to us, 
as when callow urchins, to see the keen saw gnawing its 
gradual way steadily through the log, tossing up jets of 
sawdust till the carriage tripped the gate lever, and the 
machinery creaked to a slow halt ; then, in obedience to the 
push of a lever, the carriage trundled the log back to its 
first position, the leaping saw attacked it, and agam 
gnawed through it. What a wonder it must have been 
when it came to push aside the clumsy old pit saw and its 
two attendants, the name of one of whom, the pitman, was 
fitly appropriated by one of its parts. 
We were not looking at the mill all this While Without 
more than half an eye to the pond, nor Without some dis- 
appointment. There it lay, clear and bright in the April 
sun, but sorely disfigured by the dead, drowned trees that 
stood around and knee-deep in it, and among which its 
upper end was lost, for it was an artificial pond, made by 
throwing a dam across a wooded dell, and- so Of course 
killing all the flooded trees. Some were evergreens and 
some deciduous, and all were ugly in dead nakedness. 
Beyond, we could hear the brook brawling its way down 
the mountain, a stream once populous with trout and not 
yet quite fishless, so a kingfisher proclaimed, mapping an 
aerial tracing of its course, with continuous clatter. Some 
bunches of driftweed lodged among tree trunks that 
might be debris of ruined muskrat houses, and a modest 
display of sign on a floating log gave evidence of the pres- 
ence of muskrats. A clumsy scow with a broken trap and 
a tally stick lying in the bottom, grounded on the bank 
near the bulkhead of the flume, showed a rival at hand. 
Pulling our boats into the water, we began exploring 
the pond, keeping an eye out for a good place for a camp. 
The shores were low and damp, and we could not see any- 
where from the water a place at all to our liking. We 
found promising places for a few traps, and having set 
them became aware that it was time to search in earnest 
for a night's lodging. The sawyer gave us a flat refusal 
when we asked for a chance to spread our buffalo skins 
on the kitchen floor. Evidently he did not look kindly 
upon our invasion of his domain, though we had been 
told that no one trapped here and the rats were going to 
waste, dying of old age. However, he afterward came to 
be on trading terms, furnishing us with some articles that 
we found ourselves in need of. Among them I remember 
some dip candles which were the most remarkable triumphs 
of tJie chandler's art we had ever seen. We called them 
self-supporting wicks, for it was a marvel how a 'limp, 
loosely twisted cotton cord could stand with such a thin 
casing of tallow. But they fitted our kind of sconce — a 
split stick— much better than larger ones would have done. 
We were making up our minds to be thankful for tramps' 
quarters if we could find a hospitable haymow; but just 
then we fell in with a cousin of By's, whose family lived 
in the neighborhood, and having heard of our presence 
there had sent him in search of us to invite us home. It 
was all right for By to accept the proffered hospitality 
of his relatives, but Joe and I were strangers, and it was 
rather awkward to crowd ourselves in. But hunger and 
weariness overcame our scruples, and our hospitable 
entertainers soon made us forget we were strangers wear- 
ing mud-stained clothes. In the course of the evening 
chat around the kitchen stove we were told of a tenantless 
log house in the neighborhood of the pond that might 
serve our purpose as a camp if we could get the consent of 
its owner. 
_ Accordingly, the next morning I was delegated to inter- 
view him. I found him at work in an adjacent field, a 
man with a pleasant face that promised a favorable an- 
swer, which was cheerfully given when he was assured 
that we had no evil designs on the community. The old 
house had one room, doorless and windowless, and with- 
out a fireplace, though there was a chimney built from the 
chamber floor with a pipe hole in the bottom for the ac- 
commodation of a stove. We set to work to make the 
most of this by building a primitive fireplace, consisting 
of a quantity of clay mud spread directly beneath the 
chimney and covered with flat stones embedded in it to 
bring them to an even surface. Upon this we could make 
enough fire to do a little very plain cooking, aft'ord a little 
warmth and a great deal of smoke, some of which crawled 
up the chimney after the room was completely filled. Dur- 
ing the smokiest progress of building the fire we lay prone 
upon the floor, breathing a little and weeping much until 
the worst was over and we could crouch around our 
hearthstones to frizzle a slice of salt pork or warm our- 
selves. 
We had the luck to find a 2-inch plank on the premises, 
which we set edgewise in a corner at a proper distance 
from one wall, then filled the space with straws purchased 
of the sawyer, and spreading the buffalo skins on top 
we were furnished with a luxurious bed. The door being 
gone, we boarded up its place permanently, using the 
window hole for ingress and egress, tacking up some 
boards to keep out the weather when we were in for the 
night. 
Our arrangements for beginning housekeeping being 
completed, we made the first round of our traps. The 
result was not encouraging; the water had risen with 
the shutting down of the mill gate, covering almost every 
trap so deep that they were untouched. We made allow- 
ance for this rise when resetting, and had better luck, but 
were at no time overburdened with .skinning and stretching 
skins, for the place was not overstocked with rats, and we 
had convincing proof that toll was regularly taken out of 
our light catch. The navigation was a continual vexation 
by reason of stumps just under water, on which a boat 
would snag itself with a graceful ease that was the poetry 
of motion, and pivot thereon in exasperating response to 
our futile efforts to get her off with the bottom out of 
sounding by paddle or oar, and nothing within reach- to 
push against. 
When we got there, there was pleasant seclusion at the 
upper end of the pond, paled in by the ragged gray trees 
where the shallow water was fretted by the ripples of the 
incoming brook, whose silvern babble came from the 
mountain dell along Avith the boisterous cackle of a loo-- 
cock. Some tiny minnows, which it pleased us to believe 
were trout, flashed to and fro across the golden-barred 
bottom, as tHte basking frogs cut short their lazy croak- 
ing and splashed into the water at our approach. 
There was no resisting the spell of the indolent at- 
mosphere that the April sun distilled, and stepping 
SsJioFc >vent ^ack eut pf th? desolation pf drowned 
trees to living woods and loafed our M on moss-cush- 
ioned logs. When the day and what we called its work 
were done, and the long shadows widened into twilight, 
we climbed in at our window, nailed up the boards behind 
us, illuminated our quarters with a couple of the sawyer's 
dips, "one to see the othef by," Joe said, and lighted a Are 
on the hearth. After enduring a half-hour of smoky tor- 
ment, we were rewarded with a bed of coals, over which 
we roasted some choice quarters of the most carefully 
dressed muskrats, or frizzled slices of salt pork, and if 
inclined to extreme luxury, toasted our brown bread. 
With sharp-set appetites and raw onions for sauce, we 
would not have exchanged our supper for the President's. 
After it the pipes and quiet enjoyment of smoke that 
was not torment, and a recapitulation of the day's fun and 
vexations, of Avhich the first formed the greater part, and 
then yawning to bed and sound sleep — always but oilce. 
A warm sotith wind blew a thick covering of clouds 
over the sky, that grew thicker and more lowering and 
portentious of a long rain storm. The threatening weather 
sent us to our quarters early, for our poor facilities for 
drying wet clothes made vis dread a wetting. We were 
scarcely housed before the first drops fell in an intermittent 
patter, quickly increasing to a wind-blown downpour that 
made us thankful for the sound roof over us. From end 
to end of the eaves a broad cataract fell and ran in a 
noisy, rushing brook to join another larger one in the 
highway ditch. 
I could imagine the women of former households sally- 
ing forth on such occasions to put in order the always-de- 
layed corner barrel to catch water for an infrequent wash- 
ing, then scurrying in bedraggled and dripping, while the 
lazy men folk unconcernedly smoked by the greasy stove. 
One could tell by the looks of the place, though so long 
uninhabited, that such was the class of its tenants. The 
marks of shiftlessness and discomfort were indelibly set 
upon it. Not even a stunted cherry tree nor sprawling 
unpruned currant bush grew near ; no dry stalks of chance- 
sown poppy, pink or four-o'-clock betokened the former 
presence of a posy bed ; and what was once by courtesy 
called a garden was a waste of dry weed stalks, pitted - 
with scars of old potato hills. 
As we peeped out across it through the crannies of the 
logs, we saw the columns of scud sweeping across the 
blank gray background froni south to north, then 
change the direction of their march to the east until we 
heard the slanted drift of rain beating against the westerii 
gable. The air began to have a creeping chilliness uporj 
which our smokj^ fire made as little impression as the glow 
of our pipes, and it grew more creepy and benumbing 
when the rain beat on the northern slant of the roof and 
then subsided to the slushy splash of wet snow. At last 
we were driven to the poverty-stricken extremity of going 
to bed to keep warm, when Joe declared that his back "felt 
as if he was list'nin' to a good scarey panther story 
when the critter's jest goin' to jump," and I am sure mine 
was as if the panther was in the chamber. 
For awhile we dozed in a half-comfortable state, but 
the cold increased beyond the capacity of our buffaloes 
and straw to ward off, while the north wind shrieked with 
a keener blast after every lull. We spent the dreary night 
in turning over and over, giving one side a chance to 
thaw a little while the other slowly froze. Wc needed nq 
alarm to get us up in the morning, but were up when the 
first level rays of the sun shining from a clear sky came . 
through the crevices of the logs. It shone upon a tranquil, 
frozen world. The windless woods and crisp, dun 
herbage, just sprinkled with snow of the storm's finale, 
glittered as if set with innumerable gems. 
We crawled out into the sunlight and tried to absorb 
some of it, apparently with less success than a brave little 
song sparrow that sang his cheery lay from the top of a 
fence stake. We were not quite in the mood of singing, 
though we managed to crack some jokes over the night's 
misery, and counted it a part of the ftm of our trip. 
It was dismal work going the rounds of the traps, break- 
ing ice to get to some, resetting in the icy water and get- 
ting little for our trouble, as the night's flood raised the 
water beyond our ordinary calculations. 
A few days later the catch became so light that we 
decided to leave, and so engaging a team to transport our 
boats to the head of navigation, we bade farewell to our 
humble abode and Burton's Pond — a long farewell, for I 
never saw either again, and both have long since de- 
parted this world. We were probably the last tenants of 
the old house, which not long after went to the wood pile 
and the sawmill, and when the mill had devoured all the 
available woods in its neighborhood it was abandoned, 
the dam went to rvtin and the pond ran away. Where 
it was a little brook crawls among new alder thickets, and 
if a muskrat dwells there, it is only some solitary hermit 
who has wandered far from his fellows in search of a 
safer and quieter retreat. 
I have heard of the place two or three times in con- 
nection with enormous blacksnakes which were seen 
there by people passing on the highway. A friend of 
mine killed one which measured 8 feet in length. I do not 
know whether these snakes were the common water 
snake which is common to all our waters, though rarely 
so large, or the blacksnake common enough south of «s. 
but almost unknown here. Fortunately for our peace 
of mind. Burton's Pond had not gained a snaky repu- 
tation at the time of our brief sojourn, in which case it 
might have been briefer. 
Getting our boats afloat at the place of our previous 
debarkation, with nothing to detain us, we voyaged 
merrily down the narrow stream, now with newly turned- 
out kine staring at the strange apparition of bodiless 
human heads gliding past, now disturbing again our old 
acquaintances— the heron, the ducks and the woodchucks 
— -and so after a little to the head of the long rapids above 
the old forge of the Boston Company. Joe and I ran our 
boat ashore without a thought of running the raprds. for 
though they were smooth enough at the head, white water 
showed below and there was an omnious roar that 
threatened danger. By came- dashing past, answering to 
our earnest remonstrances that "He'd risk it," and shot 
into the swift, smooth water like an arrow. 
I watched him a moment, and then, as he seemed to 
be getting through safely, went about setting a mink trap 
in what looked to be a likely place in the base of a hollow 
tree. When not lo«g so engaged. I was startled by a 
loud outcry of distress, "Rowlan' ! Come auick ! Come 
quick!" and tearing along the bank at the best pace my 
long legs would compass, I presently (Jlscovered our too 
