S42 
FOREST AND STREAMT. 
IMay 4, 1901* 
Gens Des Bois. 
X. — Joseph McGoife. 
Joseph McGuirEj or Jomaguire (with the accent on 
the first syllable), as he is familiarly called by the de- 
scendants of the Canadian French charcoal burners who 
are his neighbors, lives in a walled-in valley between Poke- 
o-Moonshine Mountain and Baldface, in a half-forgotten 
corner of the Adirondacks. Here in a modest way he 
fills the place of a feudal lord, and though he does not 
sally down from his eyrie on the blueberry hucksters, and 
chance travelers who pass along the highway crossing 
the foot of his valley, he is practical monarch and has 
no rival from Buckstand to the country lying beyond 
But'nut Pond. 
This territory is not so popular as it once was. From 
Jim Lesperance's north on the Albany Post Road there 
is not an occupied house for at least four miles. There 
are half a dozen deserted places, and it was only last 
winter that old man Duclow gave up the battle, when his 
boy ran away, and the weeds have not yet choked the 
path leading to the little whitewashed cabin among the 
rocks. Beyond Duclow's the mountain turns, an un- 
broken wall of rock to the road for two miles, except 
that back of some ruined cabins, unsavory with the 
story of a murdered peddler, there is a wooded ravine and 
a path once used by berry pickers leading to the top. 
Where this wall of rock ends is the Entrance to Jo Mc- 
Guire's domain. 
The Discovery. 
I had followed deer in the snow completely around the 
place, but its discovery is due to a certain person of the 
gentler sex who loves berries and berrying so much that 
she picks them in her dreams, and who by a secret intui- 
tion devined that blueberries were ripe and waiting to be 
gathered in this particular locality one day late in July. 
We left the main road just at dark and turning up 
the valley came presently to a birch sapling laid across 
the road, and a minute later to a gap of fifteen feet deep 
and about the same distance across, where there should 
have been a bridge spanning the brookr Masons' tools 
and shovels were lying about on the level top, and above 
the steep banks of the stream had been gashed and trees 
cut right and left. A broken stringer of the old bridge 
was still there to show, if evidence were needed, the story 
of the break down of a time-honored servant of tht 
public. 
We made a long detour by a dark passage tunneled 
through the woods and climbed a steep hill and then 
followed along the edge of the brook so close that my 
companion more than once clutched my arm and insisted 
that the wheels on her side were over the edge before at 
length an opening appeared and we emerged into a daisy- 
dotted intervale. A cow bell tinkled somewhere in the 
distance through the crisp, almost frosty night air, and a 
glow-worm point of light indicated the presence of a 
house in this little oasis surrounded by the dark rampart 
of rugged mountains. ■ 
My companion said something about a; Swiss farm, and 
the next moment Toby and Guess were barking at the 
horses' heads, and Jo McGuire himself Tiad made us 
welcome, and we were no longer strangers and wan- 
derers. .-: 
Mrs. B. and I spent the night in the barn, despite Jo 
McGuire's protestations, for it was the particular and not 
to be gainsaid wish of the important member of the party 
that we should sleep on new-mown hay, and it did not 
matter that the other member was enough- of a. farmer 
to have lost the gilt edge of his reverence for "herds' grass 
and clover, and had no moral scruples against the ordi- 
nary bed of civilization. Once in the night the bell cow 
in the barnyard rubbed her horns against the door of our 
quarters as if she were determined to come in too, but 
Toby settled her, and after he had nipped her heels and 
spoken in no uncertain terms, the cow went off and we 
were not again disturbed. 
The Dogs. 
It did not take long in the morning for Mrs. B. to gain 
the friendship of the dogs, and soon she knew their his- 
tory as well. ' • , 
"Toby is a full-blooded collie," she announced. "He 
is a splendid dog and understands everything you say, and 
he won't allow any chickens in the garden. Mr. McGuire 
says he 'regulates' the cows. He stays awake all night to 
look after them, and he is so eager to keep them out of 
mischief that he has to be shut up in the. day time to get 
any rest 
"Guess is a fox terrier. He killed three rats yester- 
day, and kills a woodchuck regularly every day in the 
week. He has helped kill ten porcupines this year, arid he 
has a sore throat, poor doggy, because he swallowed some 
quills." — 
Bltteberryfog. 
Parts of two days were spent on the "mountainside 
above McGuire's, during which time we succeeded in 
gathering a bushel of berries. Our arithmetic was re- 
freshed to the extent of realizing graphically that there 
are thirty-two quarts, or six-four pints, or between two 
and three hundred saucers of blueberries M a busTiel, and 
we concluded that the individual berries raust- mount in 
numbers well up to the million mark, thot^h this latter 
result was reached without resorting to mc^tjiematics. It 
was a poor season, and berries were rithef 'scafc'e, but if 
we had been laboring for the cash return we- could easily 
have succeeded better. - :'x-'~C,i Z' ' \ ' 
A part of our reward — the major partT^w,as derived 
from the prospect at our feet as we gained each nevy ledge 
on the side of old Baldface. Butternut Pond, Auger 
Lake, Warm Pond and other sheets Of -^yater lay close 
by, while over Bigelow and Rattlesnake and Sugar Loaf 
in a trough bounded beyond by Mansfield and Gomell's 
Hump and other peaks of the Green Mountain range, 
stretched the steely blue of Lake Champlain, the old war 
route of many fighters. _ 
"I don't think there'll be many blueberries here a week 
from now," said Mrs. B., alluding to the fact that they 
were already beginning to drop from the stems. 
"Not at this particular spot," I assented. "You have 
cleaned them out too effectually." The frau laughed. 
"You know. Jack, there is such a fascination in picking 
these berries, every last one of them, that I don't know 
how to stop," she said. "When it comes time to leave you 
will have to blindfold me and drag me off by sheer force." 
The larger and finer berries grew in partially shaded 
spots, or else in places where the soil was deeper and 
better adapted to conserve the moisture than the aver- 
age on the ledges. The very best of all were found under 
the scattering jack pines, seeming to gain vitality from 
the heavy mulch of needles. Along with the blueberries 
from time to time under the pines we found beds of scarlet 
bunch berries, while a very highly colored kind of choke 
cherry was quite common, as well as the purplish shad 
berry. 
A find which gave me keen delight was a shed deer's 
antlers, colored a delicate green and brown by contact 
with the matted berry undergrowth. It was from a cun- 
ning old buck, its age being certified by ten points, one 
hollowed and another thin and fluted, and all odd and 
distinctive. Somehow I had an idea that the horn was a 
message from a deer I had followed the year before almost 
to this very spot, a gauntlet thrown doAvn to meet in the 
lists when the leaves are off and snow flies again in No- 
vember. 
A Lost Deer. 
That evening we sat upon the porch and talked with 
the family. 
"We're all bachelors or old maids except my sister that's 
a widow," said McGuire. "We don't kill ourselves with 
work and we have all we need to live on, and though 
it's a little out of the world up here, we have a lot of 
friends and visitors. We're satisfied with it and haven't 
time to be lonely. 
"There's trout in the brook and game on the moun- 
tains — often we see deer feeding on those bare ledges right 
in front of the house, and last fall -one came almost 
through our yard. I grabbed my rifle and started for the 
door, pushing cartridges into the magazine as fast as I 
could, but just as I got there our little dog started to 
get by me to go for the deer. I tried to keep him back 
with my leg, but he jumped and pushed, and the first thing 
I knew the old gun went off and blew a hole in the stoop 
floor and lost me my chance at the deer. 
" 'Tain't the first time I've had a gun go off by accident, 
either. The best man that ever shot a gun will have the 
same thing happen. The only safe way is to have the 
gun always pointed some way so that when she breaks 
loose there won't be anybody killed." 
Jo McGwire. 
Jo is a smallish man with a good-natured, kindly face. 
If he has any failing it must be that, from his sisters' 
standpoint, he is over-hospitable. He looks to be about 
sixty years of age. He came into the Poke-o-Moonshine 
country as a boy with his father, and saw the forest shorn 
for miles around to supply the charcoal kilns and the 
forges. One of the forges was located in his valley. 
There may or may not have been an ore bed near; in 
those days an abundant supply of wood was the chief 
factor influencing the location of the forges, and the ore 
was often hauled long distances to them. 
The country was booming, and every one was pros- 
perous. Hundreds and thousands of wagon loads of 
limiber, charcoal and iron rolled down the long grade 
to Lake Champlain, and was shipped in barges to the 
outer world. Little farms sprang up wherever there was 
an available patch of level ground, and the coal burners 
pushed back still further and built their cabins among 
the ledges, sometimes on perches that would have satisfied 
an eagle's heart. There are two of these primitive cabins 
at the edge of a crater-like basin near the summit of 
the mountain, one of them io tiny that a large man can 
reach from side to side with his outstretched arms, while 
his head touches the overlays. A rude ladder leads to an 
upper floor, where it is impossible to get around except on 
one's hands and knees. The walls are of stone, laid with 
clay, and the main part of the house is practically a 
cellar, for only the roof projects above the surrounding 
level. 
The place has beeii deserted for years, yet there can 
be no doubt it was once occupied as a human habitation, 
for there is an old bedstead still there and little odds and 
ends, indicating the presence of a woman and children. 
Jo McGuire first learned to love hunting in the com- 
pany of one of these coal burners, who was an ingrained 
woods character. Though the country was much more 
thickly settled than it is at present, the game was abun- 
dant and less wary. There was so much to do in sub- 
jugating the wilderness that few men could afford to 
take the time for hunting, and the game was not nearly^ 
so persistently pursued as it is now. 
The Cave on Pofce-o'-Mooashioe, 
Once in company with his friend Jo McGuire visited 
a famous cave on Poke-o-Moonshine. "You know that 
place at the top of the mountain where it's like a road?" 
asked Jo, referring to a great groove riven a mile or 
more along the, summit. "It was among the ledges north 
of that— the third ledge up, I think— that the cave is 
located. It was a Sunday afternoon when I was about 
nine years old that we went up there. The cave was sixty 
or seventy feet deep and cold enough to freeze a nigger 
inside. At the back end was an opening from above that 
let in the light, so that you could see. There were some 
queer things there that I don't remerhber much about, and 
the only thing that I can tell for sure- is that the names 
of the men who first. came into this country as much as a 
hundred years before were scratched on the rock. 
"I've never been to the cave of late years, though I've 
been near it often enough. It was no great distance from 
there that I got two deer once on a ledge on the front of 
the mountain in a way that's not apt to be duplicated, ■ 
Trapped ia a Ledge, 
"1 had been following the trail of four deer in the 
snow one afternoon, and night overtook me before I 
couId_ come up with them and get a shot. The next 
morning I took the trail again. The deer were working 
east toward the precipice over the State Road, and 
presently they separated and two turned back. I kept 
the trail of the two going east, for I judged one of them 
to be a good big buck, though as a matter of fact I was 
mistaken in this, 
"The pair kept right on, further than I had any idea 
they would go, and by and by they turned on to a kind 
of shelf that swung around the northeast corner of the 
mountain. Then I knew that I had them, for that shelf 
ran along the side of the precipice a good 200 feet above 
the bottom, and gradually petered out till it ended in 
nothing. 
"I was a little too sure, though, and I came near being 
disappointed, for at one place water had trickled down 
and frozen and made an ice hill with about the slant of 
one of these flat roofs. I didn't want to be shot off into 
kingdom come, but I wanted those deer, and finally I 
compromised the matter by crawling along the upper 
edge, holding on to some bushes that grew there. 
"When I got near the end of the ledge I saw one of 
the deer's heads pop up over a rise in front, but before I 
could shoot it had ducked. The deer had run back on 
the trail toward mc. which showed she knew she was in a 
tight place. The next minute I saw both deer. They 
were standing at the very end of the shelf where there 
was hardly footing for a squirrel, and one deer was trying 
to crowd by the other. 
"I had my rifle ready for fear they would try to rush 
past me on the ledge,^ and the minute I saw them I fired. 
Both deer'went off into space, one of them dead and the 
other hard hit with the ball, which had gone into its 
shoulder. 
"It took mc an hour to work around below the precipice 
to where the deer lay on the rocks below. Their hides 
weren't broken, but when I came to dress them there 
wasn't a whole bone in their bodies, and a good part of 
the meat was so bruised it wasn't fit to eat. 
■'A good many years ago some men who were hound- 
ing jumped two deer on top of the mountain, and the 
dogs and deer all went over the precipice and were killed. 
The dogs were running by sight and had almost caught 
up with the deer, when the edge suddenly opened up in 
front and over they went in a bunch. 
A Sore-Footed Deer, 
"The deer hereabouts are wonderful climbers and can 
go over places that a man" or dog couldn't attempt. I 
was off one time on the snow with La Mountain, and 
we followed a big doe over the top of Baldface down to 
the head of the steepest slide on the whole front of the 
mountain. The slide is smooth rock, nearly quarter of 
a mile long, and it rounds over like the edge of a bowl, 
growing worse every foot of the descent. 
"Just as we got to the top of the slide La Mountain 
said, 'There goes the deer.' I wheeled and saw her on 
the jump, going straight out of sight. I let her have 
one, but I think I overshot, as I most generally do. on 
those down-hill quick chances. 
"I was perfectly sure we'd find her dead at the foot 
of the slide, for at the speed she started she would hit 
the bottom like a cannon ball, and I was confident she'd 
be in pretty much the shape of those other deer I was 
telling you of. I was mistaken, though. 
"We had to go around the best part of a mile to reach 
the end of the slide, and when we got there our deer had 
disappeared, carried off by her own legs, too. 
"The slide above us was a good part ice, and I could no 
more have gone up it, even in summer, than I could fly, 
yet that deer had only missed her footing once, when 
she was almost down, and she had gotten her feet right 
off again, though she slipped and sprawled consider- 
able doing it. We left the trail then and there and went 
home. That deer certainly had earned her life, and besides 
it was an almighty hard climb back again to the top of 
the mountain where she'd gone. 
Infrequent Bears, 
"Bears somehow are not very common on this range, 
I have never seen one alive in the woods, and I've seen 
very few trails. I lost fifty sheep one year — all the in- 
crease of my flock — ^but I believe it was a two-footed thief 
carried them off. Over on Arnold Hill, which is a good 
deal more out of the woods than this, bears are thick, and 
there and on Hale Hill the farmers are losing sheep all 
the time on account of the bears, and Black Mountain, 
just across the Clintonville Road, is a great place for 
them. They have some reason for not hking Poke-o- 
Moonshine, though what it is I can't say." 
An Impractical Inventor. 
McGuire relapsed into a reminiscent mood, and talked 
of the country as it had been in the days of its pros- 
perity. _ Incidentally he discoursed on the impracticablness 
of the inventor of the machine for cutting horseshoe nails 
who had been a friend of his and not very distant neigh- 
bor. "The man could invent machines all right, and yet 
he wasn't practical enough to do what any snipe of a 
nailer could do and run them. Two of the hands they 
had running machines at Keeseville wanted to go off to 
Rhode Island one time to get a better job, and he said 
to let them go and he'd keep the machines in shape. Well, 
sir, he didn't run them over two hours before they were 
cutting the worst shaped nails you ever saw, and do 
what he could he couldn't get them to working right, be- 
cause he didn't know enough to keep his dies properly 
sharpened. According to his theory they shouldn't have 
needed attention, though any boss nailer knew it was 
necessary. The man who told me about it was just a 
common, uneducated nailer, but he must have had what 
the man who had invented the machines didn't have, for 
the company sent him over to Ireland to set up machines 
and teach them how to use them, and he got four dollars 
a day and found for the two years he was gone. 
History of a Kaolin Find. 
"This Dr. Pollard who found the kaolin on the west 
line of my farm was something the same kind of a man. 
He'd been to Californy and made a strike, and came back 
here and began practicing medicine in Westport. They 
were working a gold mine back on the mountain — ^it 
