Makch 16, 1901.1 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
209 
snowshoe trail, and all these guides say you can walk 
all day and never need to think of your toboggan. They 
mention 100 pounds as being about the proper load, and 
say that those people who can pull 200 pounds easily 
dan't grow in their parts of the woods. This sledge is a 
beauty,' and is one of the most ingenious specimens of 
resourcefulness in the woods that was ever seen at any 
show. 
I had a good talk also with Arthur Pringle, the famous 
snowshoe maker. I told hirri that when he sent me my 
pair of snowshoes he left of¥ the straps. "They must 
have got lost in the custom house," said he, "for I sent 
them on the shoes, and had them tied just the way we all 
tie our shoes up there." He took down a pair of shpes 
and showed me the tie, and it is one of the prettiest 
things I ever saw, and the only regret is that one cannot 
describe it anj^ more than he can describe the diarnond 
hitch, or shew it any better even in a picture. Briefly, 
there is a permanent toe strap made out of moose hide. 
Now take your thong, also of moose hide, double it. and 
pass the free ends through the corner hole on each side. 
The loop of the strap is now back on the body of the 
shoe, and the ends hang down; below the shoe. Now 
bring the ends up through the shoe, over the first bar 
braces on each side of the toe hole. Cross the thongs. 
Pass the left hand end under the toe strap and bring it 
back. Pass the right hand end under the other strap and 
over the toe strap. Now pull both ends free and straighten 
them out back on the snowshoe. Now throw each end 
forward, and take a half hitch over the crossed thong at 
the front of the foot. Bring both the free ends back again 
until they join the original loop of the thong, which you 
left lying on the shoe. Tie them of the same length as 
that loop. Now you have a double strap running back 
behind the heel. You do not change this strap at all, but 
kick your foot into it, or out it, when you are using the 
shoe. You can tighten your straps by rolling them at the 
heel.. Now the wonderful and indescribable part of this 
tie is that on the toe of your foot you have something 
which looks as though you had started to braid some 
meshes with moose hide. You have not a single, thin, 
biting strap, but a pad of braided ^ straps. Your foot 
cannot slip sideways in the shoe, friction is reduced to 
a minimum, and that great desideratum, firmness com- 
bined with flexibility is attained. This snowshoe tie is 
the ancient device of the Millicete Indians. The Micmac 
tribe follow this same tie, except that after making the 
half hitch or turn of the strap they do not bring it back 
and tie it behind the heel, but pass the free ends through 
a slit in the side strap, and confine it by a peg tied cross- 
wise of the slit. They thus have only one heel strap 
instead of two. There are all kinds of snowshoe ties, but 
the fittest survive. There is every likelihood that this 
ancient tie of the snowshoe Indians, which has come 
down for so many generations, is the best, simply be- 
cause it remains unchanged. Not even Henry Braith- 
waite has been able to improve upon it, and everybody 
from Mr. Armstrong and Harry Allen to Mr. Chestnut 
says that that settles it. 
Wadiog Boots and Casting Lines. 
Mr. Norman Fletcher, of Louisville, Ky., wants some 
information about fly-fishing outfits, which I am sure some 
reader of the Forest and Stream .will be good enough to 
give him. His letter follows: 
"Can any of the readers of Forest and_ Stream tell 
me in detail how to fasten leather soles with hob nails 
on to the bottoms of mackintosh wading pants that have 
boot feet so that there will not be any leak ? Until last 
year I have always used the stocking feet waders with 
Canvas shoes having hob nails in soles.. With this outfit 
I could walk over clay or smooth stone bottom without 
the slightest danger of slipping. With the usual boot 
feet waders (the soles being of rubber) I find it impos- 
sible to avoid slipping down occasionally. In 1899 and 
1900 I had bad luck with enameled fly-lines. I bought 
the most expensive lines from some of the most reliable 
houses in the United States. The trouble was that the 
enamel was too hard and cracked off in places, leaving 
the h'nes in a limp condition. In one instance the line 
had no strength. It seemed to be rotten. I usually use 
E. & F. tapered lines. I never had any of this trouble 
until the summer of 1899, although I have been using fly- 
lines for qvdte a term of years." 
Spring Game, 
Under date of March 4 Mr. Emile Pragoff writes from 
Louisville, Ky. : "The first snipe of the season was killed 
here to-day." 
Reports were received from Fred Allen, of Monmouth, 
III., to-day, March 9, that there are a great many pintails 
on the prairies at that point. 
Ducks are reported to have appeared at the Maksawba 
Club yesterday, March 8. I saw a large number of 
bluebills in Lake Michigan to-day, March 9. 
E. Hough. 
Hartford BmLDiKG, Chicago, 111. 
Ticondefogfa Gun Qub* 
The Ticonderoga Gun Club, whose motto is K. W. Y. 
A. A. — ^"Know what you aim at" — held its first annual 
dinner at the Yale Club, this city, on March 8. ' These 
officers were elected for the year : Edward M. Bliven, 
President; W. Bradford Smith, Alexander H. Weed, 
Paris Scott Russell, Vice-Presidents; Peter Flint, Secre- 
tary, and George Ketchum, Treasurer, 150 Nassau street, 
New York city; Cass Pease, Ticonderoga, and Alanson 
Moore, Eagle Lake, Local Secretaries; Robert Donohue, 
J. E. Taylor, Herbert Moore, Committee on New Mem- 
bers ; Edmund O. Luthy Herbert Smith, J. A. Paez, B. F. 
Hibbard, David Abercombie, George Farrington, F. H. 
Russell, Charles Hanft, Albert Weed, W. C. Witherbee, 
Directors. 
President Edward M. Bliven, of Yonkers, spoke on 
the Vineyard, where he has hunted for several years. 
He fully indorsed the purpose and liberal scope of the 
organization, and favored rigid laws for the punishment 
of the careless shooter. He said that K. W. Y. A. A. 
was practiced at Bunker Hill when Old Put told his men 
not to fire until they could see the whites of the Britishers' 
eyes, and that the careful placing of h«llet,s should he 
laujjlit to, .all young 0^ c:ar^Je§§ hunters^ ' ' ' 
Paris Scott Russell spoke enthusiastically about the 
Ticonderoga hill country, and referred to the beauty of 
Eagle Lake for fishing and hunting. 
Mr. Robert Donohue, who has returned lately from a 
trip up State, spoke of the popularity of the movement 
among central New York hunters, and that similar bodies 
are soon to be formed there. 
W. Bradford Smith, of Newark, N. J., told of his 
twenty years' experience in Ticonderoga hunting, and was 
glad that Eagle Lake is to be the summer rendezvous of 
the club, where its trout dinner will be held at Eagle 
Lake Inn, Aug. 21, with a target shoot and boat races as 
additional features. There is a new post-office at the 
lake, which will be appreciated, Mr. Smith said that the 
region extending from Eagle Lake to Schroon Lake, 
through miles of virgin forest, was one of the most in- 
teresting hunting localities in the Adirondacks, and was 
imsurpassed for the beauty and number of its large and 
small lakes. 
A hearty vote of thanks was given to Mr. Peter Flint, 
the new Secretary of the club, for his promptness in cap- 
turing the sentiment K. W. Y. A. A., which has resulted 
in the formation of so powerful an alliance for protection 
to hunters. 
Letters of regfet were received from Lieutenant-Gov- 
ernor Timothy L. Woodrufif, Dr. Arthur Matthewson, 
Charles T. Catlin. Brooklyn ; Edmund O. Luthy, Cin- 
cinnati, and F. S. Russell, Chicago. 
Houncis on the Northport Preserve. 
At the annual meeting of the Northport Gun Club a 
notable feature was the passing of a resolution prohibiting 
the employment of hounds on club grounds during the 
month of November, in order to improve bird hunting, 
which certainly is the noblest part of the sport. There is 
no doubt that the noisy hounds frighten every species of 
game_ from the preserves, and the stand the club has taken 
in this matter deserves the hearty approval of every true 
sportsman. . ; f^^'^'f 
Dttcfcs m New Jersey. 
Eayville, N. J.. March 7. — There are lots of ducks on 
their way up. The cold snap has stopped them here. 
They will not stool, but stay in the middle of the bay. 
They will leave the first fair day. Herb. 
Sam Lovel^s Boy.* 
The quaint Danvis Folk with whom the genius of Row- 
land E. Robinson peopled the hills of Vermont have be- 
come very real beings to thousands of readers of his 
books. For*their sterling qualities and human foibles as 
so truthfully and sympathetically depicted by Mr. Robin- 
son, we long ago canfe to love them. Sam Lovel we 
knew, and Hitldy we knew, and for the sake of such a 
father and such; a mother we were prepared to take into 
our hearts the boy Sam, and he speedily showed himself 
worthy of our affection for his own sake. As was to have 
been expected. Uncle 'Lisha assumed the delightful office 
of mentor of the boy in woodcraft, and under the guidance 
of the old man the j'-oung Sam soon showed himself a 
true son of his woods loving father. The chapters which 
describe Sam's initiation into the mysteries of fishing and 
shooting and wilderness life are among the most charm- 
ing in all the Danvis series. The book is filled with those 
pen pictures of nature in which the author excelled, and 
as in all the other works which came from Mr. Robinson's 
pen. there is throughout a plav of the humor and of the 
pathos which make up human life amid New England hills 
as the world over. Keen as he was to have noted the 
ways of nature, and marvelous as are his graphic pictures 
of natural phenomena. Mr. Robinson was a searching 
observer of human nature as well, and it is the human 
nature in his inimitable books that will give them life. 
*Sam Lovel'is Bo v. By Rowland E. Robinson. Clotli. 259 pages. 
Price. $1.25. .Sent postpaid by the Forest and Stream Publishing 
Company. ^ - 
* — # — . 
The Beaverkill* 
Editor Forest and Stream: 
There is a stream the very name of which is music to 
the ears of the veteran trout angler of this State, and that 
stream is the Beaverkill. Its praises have often been 
sung, but I am not sure that any history of it has ever 
been written. Other trout streams have been visited and 
are known to the present generation of anglers for trout, 
but this one has a history, and was known before the 
streams in the North Woods were ever heard of, and it 
has been visited by the most expert and noted anglers 
this State has ever produced. 
The angler of to-day knows but little in his tramps, 
either in the Catskills or the Adirondacks, of the wealth 
of trout which abounded in some of our streams from a 
half to three-quarters of a centry ago, and there are but 
few living to-daj-- who can tell of it. None of the veteran 
anglers who visited this stream in the forties are now 
living, so far as I know, and but few are now living who 
fished it fifty years ago. 
It may be well to explain to those who have never 
given the stibject any thought that there are two water- 
sheds in the State of New York, one in the Adirondacks 
north of the Mohawk River, with Mount Marcy some 
5.400 feet high, and the other and perhaps the greater 
of the two is in the Catskill region south of the Mohawk. 
This lower watershed contains fifty-nine mountains 
3,000 feet high, and upwards, twenty-five of which are 
over 3,500 feet above tidewater, the highest, Slide Moun- 
tan, being about 4,800 feet high. 
About the year 1802 the State of New York conveyed 
certain lands on this lower watershed, and among the 
rest conveyed what is known as Great Lot No. 9, of the 
Hardenburgh Patent, which contained 10,000 acres and 
extended on the crest of the mountain from a point now 
known as Lttmberville, 17 miles easterly tq a POiut ^bot^t 
five miles east o£ Balsam Lake, ■ ! . 
The persons who were foolish enough to purchase this 
tract committed greater folly in laying out a road from 
the head of Dry Brook over the mountain; thence down 
tlie Beaverkill some twelve or fifteen miles to Alder 
Brook, and from thence over Cross Mountain to Luraber- 
villc, and this made accessible the most noted trout 
stream which ever existed in this State. From Alder 
Brook a road soon extended down the stream through 
Westfield Flats, and to its junction with the Delaware. 
This stream has its source near the crest of the Catskill 
mountain range, some 3,000 feet above tidewater, and is 
from forty to forty-five miles in length. 
For half a centuiy it furnished from twenty-five to 
thirty miles of as fine fishing for bait or fly as any stream 
in the State, and that largely because itwas so inaccessible. 
It was difficult to reach it without a trip of a couple of 
days hj private conveyance. 
About 183s a gentleman in New York City found it 
necessary to provide a mountain retreat for a near rela- 
tive, and he selected for that purpose the most delightful 
spot he could find on the Beaverkill, Avhere he erected a 
beautiful Gothic cottage, in front of which was a charm- 
ing lawn, extending to the stream. 
James Murdock, then a young man, was engaged to 
take care of the invalid, and he was given the privilege 
of entertaining a hmited number of anglers. 
After some years the invaHd died, and Murdock be- 
came the owner of the property, and continued to owh 
it until his death, a year or two ago. No fact is better 
known t^' the angler than that the cooking of trout is 
an art, and no one ever excelled Mrs. Murdock in this 
art. 
I presume that there is no angler now living who knows 
more than the writer in regard to the condition of this 
stream from forty to sixty years, or even longer. James 
Murdock was a close friend of mine, and I also knew and 
fished foi- many years with the most remarkable trio ot 
anglers who ever lived in this State, and to the veteran 
angler of to-day I need only mention the names of 
"Fitch, Adams and Smedburgh." Judge Fitch lived in 
Catskill, W.niiam Adams, a brother-in-law, in New York 
atid John Smedburgh, another brother-in-law, in Pratis- 
villc. 
In 1838 this party took its first trip to Murdock's, start- 
ing from Prattsville, with a team of three-year-old horses 
beionging to Smedburgh, and repeated this trip with the 
.same team for twenty-one years. 
They always started as near the 24Th of May as they 
could, without traveling on Sunday, and always spent 
just ten days on the stream. Judge Fitch, who Survived 
the others, died some years ago, at the age of eighty-four. 
In 1858 I joined the party, making a fourth member; 
for several ycar.-^ we fished together in the Beaverkill and 
adjacent streams, and if I have to-day a correct idea of 
what the true angler is and should be, and if I have ac- 
quired any skill in throwing the fly, I owe it to tliem. 
I knew them for years, and had a history of their early 
trips from Murdock, and during all their visits to the 
Beaverkill, none of them was ever known to utter a 
grofane or coarse word, to fish on Sunday, to travel in 
or out on Sunday, and although abundantly supplied 
they were never known to offer a single drop of liquor 
to any one, even a guest. 
It is hardly necessary to say that they fished the 
Beaverkill when at its best, but the angler "then as now 
had sometimes a bairen trip, for the reason that forty or 
fifty years ago^ we were almost sure to have a violent 
northeast storm in the last week of May or the first week 
in June, and in 1859 there were two, so that we had but 
one day's fishing during our whole trip, but this was an 
exception. 
These gentlemem always carried a 24-pound basket (the 
modern term creel, which generally applies to a little 
basket, was not then in use), and it was an off day when 
they did not bring in at least twenty pounds of good' 
sized fish. 
On one morning in the fifties they went out before 
breakfast, and when they came in about ten o'clock, their 
three baskets were full. 
Early in the sixties, while I yet carried a 24-pound 
basket, I went down the stream and soon had it a third' 
full, which I gave to a friend who was on his way out, 
and when I came in at the close of the day my basket 
was full. 
A year or two later, however, there came a great freshet, 
and in a year or two it was followed by another, with 
the result that from one-half to two-thirds of the trout, 
which took refuge in the pockets on the banks, perished 
when the waters receded and the stream has never rallied. 
After the first of these freshets I counted over seventy 
trout,_ many of them over half a pound in weight, lying 
dead in one pocket, and I saw many others. 
I will not undertake to give the names of the well- 
known anglers who have visited this stream, but there 
is one who could give a charming history of his visits 
to it, enriched with sketches of his own. Mr. Joseph 
Jefiierson has spent many days at Murdock's, and being 
equally skillful with rod and pencil he often devoted a 
part of the day to making sketches from nature, and 
when the sun was low and the mountains on the west 
of the stream cast over it their afternoon shadows, and 
the late flies abounded, he would take his rod for an 
evening fish. He has a portfolio full of sketches. 
My story of the Beaverkill would not be complete if 
I did not mention one or two singular facts. 
When the trio of anglers to whom I have referred 
went to Murdock's in 1838, there was not an angle worm 
to be found on the place or in the neighborhood, and as 
they had taken in a supply they planted what they had 
left, with the result that in a few years there was an 
abundance. 
Another fact is this, that while many large trout were 
taken with bait, neither they nor I ever took a trout in 
the Beaverkill. nor in the Willewemoc, Neversink or 
Rondout, which tipped the, scales at over 15 ounces. 
In this respect the veteran anglers who fished our 
streams when at their best seem to have had less success 
than oiir modern ones, who find them almost depleted of 
fish, and yet so often take trout weighing a pound or 
upwards, perhaps— but why try explain? 
' ' S, Van Ci,mf. 
■pQVGHKEEfStKJ K.-Vj 
t 
