I 
May iij xgoi.j 
-FOREST - AND ®STHEAM: 
863 
"Did he mn over you and knock you down?" 
"No," said I; "he didn't." 
"Where is your hat?" he then asked. 
Summoning up my courage, I replied, "It is down the 
road yonder, ' pointing to the persimmon tree, "and is 
full of very nice persimmons, which I am going down to 
eat." 
"Oh !" said he, with a look of deep disgUst. "I under- 
stand now, and 1 guess you don't care very much about 
hunting deer anyhow, and if you will fire your gun to call 
up our friends we will go home." 
My companions were not rude to me during the return 
trip ; on the contrary, they were polite, profoundly and 
painfully polite, but there was an air of concealed dis- 
gust that was not dissipated by my earnest assurance that 
I had never been in all my life so hungry as I had been 
that morning when L deserted my deer stand. 
Lewis Hopkins. 
i-Fire Stories from Canadian 
Woods— IV. 
Hunting in the Great Massinao and the Hidden Cave. 
Leaving Toronto by morning C. P. R. train east you 
will arrive at Kaladar Station, a few miles beyond Tweed, 
about 3 o'clock P. M., and thence thirteen miles by stage 
TO Cloyne, in early evening. This place is noted more 
from what it is not than for what it is or might be. Its 
negative qualities predominate. Unlike most villages, it 
has no pest and, in prospect, no future prosperity. A 
tavern, two or three stores and a blacksmith shop, with a 
few dwelling houses without paint scattered along about 
a mile of sandy, dusty road, comprise the place. On the 
east side is the county of Frontenac and on the west the 
county of Addington. 
The soil is a coarse, barren sand, and plants and crops 
look pinched and stan^ed, even in a year of exuberant 
growth in other localities, and farmers do not prosper. 
It is, however, the entrepot to the great lumber region 
beyond, being only three miles from the depot of a 
large lumber company at the foot of the Great Massinau. 
It Is the center of a lacustrine district, swarming with 
lake and brook trout, and in the fall of the year is the 
starting point of numerous hunting parties for the forests 
i)eyond. The Perry road runs northerly along the Mas- 
sinau Lake. Deserted homes here and there denote the 
failure of some settler who, after years of toil in clearing 
the pine lands and rearing substantial buildings, has left 
in disgust for a more genial locality and a more generous 
soil. About seven miles from Cloyne the traveler obtains 
a fair view of the Massinau, a fine sheet of water ten 
miles long, running in a southwesterly direction. Here 
he stands upon the height of land. The waters of this 
lake flow to the south and east. Over and behind the 
big rock He Dyer Lake and Buck Lake. To the south of 
them, Little Buck Lake, Marble Lake, Massinogon and 
Long Lake (Massinogon seven miles and Long Lake 
twenty miles long). To the east there is Campbell Lake 
and McClintoc Lake, and to the north of McClintoc the 
Brule Lakes, which empty into the Madawaska. To 
the south and west the waters of Loon Lake find their 
way to the Bay of Quinte, while to the north and west 
the West-la-ma-coon runs to York River, a tributary of 
the Madawaska. This is a land of forest, lake and stream 
—a sportsman's paradise. Here the .scenery is worthy of 
our artist's pencil. From Tapping Mountain, which rises 
about 900 feet from the waters of the lake, looking west- 
ward, the illimitable green rises billow upon billow clear 
across the counties of Addington and Hastings, a distance 
of about fifty miles, while to the north and east the 
rnountains around the Brule Lakes and the Madawaska 
break the horizon, or upon a clear day over the waters of 
the lake in the upper regions of the air the empyreal 
reg.lm of the eagle, that majestic bird, perhaps, may be 
seen extending its immense wing=! and wheeling slowly 
and majestically to and fro, seemingly without exerting a 
tpuscle or fluttering a feather, but moving by mere voli- 
tion and sai'ing on the bosom of the air as a ship upon the 
ocean. Directly in front of you to the east rises the 
famous rock of the Massinau. This rock is apparently 
the half of a high mountain split in two by some terrestrial 
convulsion ages ago, the west half having disappeared, 
leaving the east half a sheer precipice, rising perpendicu- 
larly from the waters of the lake hundreds of feet and 
extending north and south about a mile and a half. In the 
clear atmosphere objects at a distance seem surprisingly 
near. When on the lake you imagine you are only a 
half-mile or so from the rock, and are disgusted when 
.told you have to row two or three miles to get to it. 
Whether from its echoes or from its gruesome .appear- 
ance while passing underneath in a boat, this rock in- 
spired the Indians with reverential awe. Forty or fifty 
years ago pa'ntings could be seen — Indian hieroglyphics — 
but are now obliterated b}' the action of the water and 
frosts. A curious legend is connected with this rock, and 
one which invested it with more than local interest. Like 
the buried treasures- of Captain Kidd and similar 
chestnuts which used to interest the past generation, it 
was currently believed that a cave surpassingly rich in 
native silver existed within' its adamatine bosom. Won- 
drous stories were told, and currently believed, how the 
walls were studded with pure silver. Stalactites of the 
solid metal hung from the roof, while all around was 
scattered wealth equal to a king's ransom. Here was a 
veritable "King Solomon's Mines," without the old hag 
Gagool to close the stone door upon the intruder. Like 
all other such fables, the truth of its existence lay in the 
impossibility of finding it. Its locality was known to the 
chief medicine man of the tribe, and the secret had been 
handed .down from generation to generation and sacredly 
kept. The Indians said it was the abode of the Great 
Spirit, and no one (but the medicine man) dare enter, for 
he could not come out alive. The breath (poisonous 
gases) of the Great Spirit would cause him to die. 
The name of Meyers is so closely connected with this 
cave that its history would not be complete without a 
word or two about those people. 
Settled in early times on the shores of the Bay of 
Quinte, near Trenton, the Meyerses were a hardy and 
jiumerous family with an inclination to hunt as thoroughly 
ingrained as that propensity was possessed by an Indian. 
A Meyers was as adept as an Indian in following a trail 
or tracking a deer or a bear, and as expert at trapping 
and all manner of woodcraft. Without a compassv no 
tract was too lonely for him to explore, no forest jungle 
too dense or too vast for him to penetrate. The man- 
agement of the camp was second nature to him, and the 
trackless forest was as plain and open as the streets and 
alleys to the dwellers in the cities. He loved the forest 
and its associations. To him the singing of the pines was 
sweet music, trees and rocks his companions. He was a 
true son of nature and in touch with her ever-changing 
mood. 
A rifle — flintlock, of course — powder horn, a few patches 
and bullets with hatchet and knife composed his hunting 
outfit, while a blanket, pannikin, a few pounds of pork 
and flour, a little salt and tea by way of luxury, and 
the ever-present flint, steel and tinder box, completed his 
kit. Thus equipped for the woods, he would start out. No 
matter wherever night overtook him, with a wigwam of 
evergreens and a bed of the same material on top of the 
snow, and a fire at the root of a large tree, rock or log 
which would retain the heat and refract it back into his 
snug quarters, he would enjoy his night's rest with the 
ease of a commercial traA'eler in a palace hotel, and with a 
sound and reflresh'ug sleep which downy pillows and 
spring mattresses fail to bring. While deer roamed around 
his own fields and fallow, his favorite hunting grounds 
were on the tributaries of the Moira, about thirty miles 
north of where Tweed is now situated. Here deer were 
as plentiful as sheep in a farm yard, and still continue to 
be very numerous to this day. 
At the earliest snows the Meyerses repaired to this favor- 
ite hunting ground, where they built a rude cabin as a 
sort of depot for their hunting excursions, and remained 
until about the latter end of January. Some of their 
sons, now old, gray-headed men. still tell of their accom- 
panying their fathers in their annual hunts, and of the 
sleigh loads of deer and the bales of fur garnered in dur- 
ing their sylvan harvest, fth^se were the happy days of 
muzzleloaders and of plenteous game, with no statute to 
limit the season or prescribe the number. From this 
place proceeding a short distance to the north and east 
through what is now known as the township of Anglesea, 
they would find themselves near the large waters of Loon 
Lake, which lie only a mile and a half from those of the 
Massinau. 
B}'- placing a canoe in the water at Corbyville, four 
miles from the motith of the Moira, Loon Lake may be 
easily reached, there being only short portages to be 
overcome. These Vkjaters being of easy access to the 
voyageur, the Meyerses and their friends became acquainted 
with them, long before any settlement was dreamed 
of, and years before the lumberman's axe resounded 
throughout the woods. 
About eighty years ago John Meyers, the veritable nim- 
rod of the family, hunted in this locality. Every fall he 
repaired to this locality and hunted weeks and months at 
a time with the Indians. Whether by joining or becoming 
one of the tribe and going through the initiation pre- 
scribed for becoming a medicine man, or by influence over 
the chief, he gained access to the cave, and from his de- 
scription it surpassed in richness everything said or 
imagined about it. But like all other stories of this kind, 
something happens to keep them on foot. Meyers on his 
journey homeward was overtaken by a storm on the lake, 
his canoe upset and he lost his rifle and effects, and the 
specimens of silver went along with the rest. Not long 
after his return home he was taken sick and never recov- 
ered. Before he- died, however, he left as a legacy the 
important secret of the cave, and to a trusty friend gave 
directions, which were written down on paper, as to the 
locality. Whether from tlie bungling or careless manner 
in W'hich the precious information was written down, or 
from the feeble and clouded state of Meyers' mind, weak- 
ened by disease, the description was as ambiguous as the 
answers of the Delphic oracle. 
The story of Mej'^ers' discovery was soon widely circu- 
lated. Many v.'cre the searchers after the hidden treasure, 
and among the rest were Meyers' confidants, who to the 
pleasures of expectation added the exultation of absolute 
certainty. But all their explorations were in vain, the 
Great Spirit was not generous; they might as well have 
searched for the amphitheater in the Kaats-kills, where 
Rip Van Winkle played ninepins with the crew of Hen- 
drik Hudson. As the search began to become fruitless, 
those who possessed the precious document grew gener- 
ous, and its contents were imparted to others. The writ- 
ing stated that the cave was situated about half a mile 
from the "mouth" of the lake. Learned disquisitions 
took place as to what was the mouth of the lake. Some 
held that the mouth was where the waters of the lake 
flowed into the Mississippi, while others contended that 
it was where the waters received those of the river at its 
head. The story of Meyers' Cave gradually died away 
into fable, to be revived from time to time as the fluctua- 
tion of mining interests increased or waned in this locality. 
E. B. Fraleck. 
[to be continued.] 
Some Boyhood Memories. 
IX.— A Boy, a Man and a Memory. 
It was Saturday afternoon and you were husking corn 
out in the barn alone — it's you I am speaking to — and the 
late October simshine streamed in through the open door 
and flickered yellow on the husks. 
There was a woodpecker rapping away on the old tree 
by the well, and a partridge had been drumming down in 
the woods back of the house all the afternoon. You just 
naturally can't stand it, and you kick away the corn 
husks and go out around the back way, and up into th'e 
woodshed chamber, and take down the old gun from its 
pegs on the beam. You have been allowed to use that gun 
a few times, mostly to kill crows in the cornfield, and you 
know how to load her and where the powder and shot is 
kept on the top shelf in the cupboard. 
A charge of powder poured in the palm of your hand 
(no fine distinction here between 3% and 3}^ drams), a 
wad of newspaper rammed down till the iron ramrod 
fairly bounded from the barrel, about the same bulk of 
shot — no. 4's — another light wad, tap it gently this time, a 
G. D. cap shoved down over the nipple — and there you 
are. 
Then you went down through the orchard to the 
corner where the woods and the orchard joined and the 
Spitzenberg blushed to the nodding of the pine cone. Then 
you crawled through the fence and walked carefully — oh! 
so carefully — down the old woods road, for you did not 
catch your partridge on the wing in those days. My I how 
still the woods was. Then you worked your way in 
through the underbrush and sat down on an old hollow 
log and laid the gun across your knees and wondered what 
made you breathe so fast. 
Then after awhile a red squirrel chattered in a big 
pine and a dog barked away off somewhere, Harki Some- 
thing is rustling the dead leaves. Don't turn your head 
now; just look. Ah! a big cock partridge walks gravely, 
suspiciously, from behind the top of that fallen hemlock. 
Wait now I Wait till his head is behind that second 
growth beech. Pull her up. There he comes — bang ! A 
flurry of leaves, a cloud of smoke from the old gun and 
a trembling hand is pressing the fluttering bird to the 
ground. 
The tragedy is over. Tragedy did I say? No, no 1 It is 
a law; nature's law; inexorable, immutable; the law that 
the fittest shall survive. 
You took that partridge up with trembling fingers and 
sat down on that old log, and laying him on your knees 
smoothed the ruffled leathers, gently and Now, hon- 
estly, did you feel quite that way when years later you 
shot your first deer? 
You are older now — quite a bit older — and you come 
back to the old homestead one afternoon and walk down 
the old woods road. 
There is a boy with you — your boy — ^and' you see an old 
rotten log covered with green moss that looks like the 
same Whir-r- ! went a partridge from behind that 
stump. "Oh, papa! why didn't you bring your giui? 
When can I have a gun?" Then you sit down on the old 
log, and as the shadows grow darker on the russet leaves 
you tell the laddie how you shot a partridge — ^your first 
partridge — just over yonder under that little hemlock 
when you were a boy. 
And years after, when that boy is a father, will he for- 
get it? No, indeed' And some time, mayhaps, he may 
take his boy down an old road through the woods— and it 
all comes back. Then he will laugh quietly to himself 
and say. ".See here, Bubby, your grandpa told me that 
he shot a partridge once right over by that tree some- 
where." "Tell me about it, poppy." And he will, briefly 
perhaps, and with a paucity of detail. 
But will that boy forget that incident, or will not that 
very locality in every detail meld iilto his retina so that 
in a day to come, as he sits alone on a runway, watching, 
waiting, the half-forgotten picture will unroll before him 
as a mental panorama? He does not remember his grand- 
father very well except as a tall, gray, silent tnan, who 
stooped a little, and whose eyes always seemed to look, not 
at you, but at something far beyond you. 
iBut he could sketch that woods roads down to the last 
knot on the dead pine. And yet we wonder why tradi- 
tions never perish. 
Ah! yes. Hiawatha could well afford to wait a thou- 
sand years for Longfellow, and the Lorelei will live when 
the Rhine is but a memory. 
Dr. F. J. Tompkins. 
Troy, N. Y. 
Then and Now. 
In reading the list of camp outfit which Mr. Hough is 
to carry, all of which it may be very nice to have. I could 
not help comparing it with the outfit we used to have a 
few years ago. The fall I was twenty-one I was hunting 
all the fall. Our provisions consisted of hard bread (and 
very hard bread, too), pork, potatoes and a little molasses. 
In 1858 my partner and myself for a month had nothing 
but very sour flour and salt, except what we killed, and 
that had either to be roasted on a stick or boiled in salt 
and water. We had swamped and wet our flour, and no 
dog, unless very hungry, would have eaten such bread as 
it would make. We had no tea nor coffee nor even pepper. 
In 1859 the provision for two for our three months 
was: 125 pounds of flour, 50 pounds of sugar (we car- 
ried an extra quantity of this, as we expected to find cran- 
berries), 30 pounds clear pork, 2^^ bushels of potatoes, 10 
pounds of rice, 2 cakes of chocolate, a little tea, a peck of 
beans and one salt codfish and a barrel of hard bread 
(about 80 pounds), and this outfit was luxury compared 
with what I used to see the hunters start with when I 
was a boy. 
I have often seen two Indians start about the first of 
February, when the snow was from two to three feet 
deep, with all their outfit on a wide one-runnered tobofr- 
gan. Besides a gun, hatchet, pair of snowshoes and single 
blanket for each man, they had about 25 pounds of flour, a 
few pounds of pork and a little tea. Before leaving the 
settlements they would get some settler's \*'ife to boil some 
potatoes which they would peel and mash and tie up in 
a cloth, as in this way they would not be injured by 
freezing. They had flintlock guns, and carried flint, steel 
and punk for lighting a fire. They had not a rag of spare 
clothing, and were very lightly dressed, as like the Cree 
guide whom Robinson tells of in his "Great Far Land." 
They had leggings which reached up a certain distance, and 
a breech cloth which reached down a certain distance, 
leaving a large space for that providence which "tempers 
the wind to the shorn lamb" to experiment upon. Clothed 
in this way. they went on foot and hauled their outfit from 
75 to 100 miles, camped in such camps as they could 
make with their hatchets, always sleeping side to the fire,, 
as in this way the extra warmth thus obtained helped 
make up for scanty bedding. They saved and dried their 
spare moose and beaver meat, and would return the last of 
May in a canoe, which they had mad.^; either of birch bark 
or the hides of three moose, shaved, sev/ed together witli 
lap seams and stretched over a cedar frame. 
Now people go to those same grounds in cars, sleep on 
spring beds, have hotel fare and call it hunting, and (ell 
of the hardships of roughing it. M. H. 
The Forest and Stream is put to press each week on Tuesday. 
Correspondence intended for publication should reach us at the 
latest by Monday and as much earlier as practicable. 
