g02 
FOHEST AND STREAM. 
tJuNE 29, 1901. 
In the Yellowstone Park. 
Yellowstone National Park^ Jiine 19. — Editor Forest 
and Stream: I return after an absence of eight months 
to find the Park travel m full swing. The past two 
years the hotels were not opened until June IS; this year, 
in anticipation of the Presidential party's visit, they were 
opened on the first by the new proprietors. New buildings 
are being put up and old ones much improved ; this is very 
noticeable at the Mammoth Hot Springs. 
Capt. Jack Pitcher, whom many will remember as Lieut. 
Pitcher at the Lower Geyser Basin several years ago, and 
again in command of several companies of Colombian 
Guards at the World's Fair, has been appointed acting 
superintendent. He arrived early in the season, and has 
everything running smoothly. 
Capt. Chittenden, for the past few years in charge of 
improvements, came on unusually early, and has several 
large crews at work on roads and bridges, with the larg- 
est appropriation ever made for the Park, a sum con- 
siderably over $100,000, to expend after July first. The 
work now being done is on last year's appropriation. The 
list of improvements is too long for this letter. 
There is a very interesting collection of animals at the 
Mammoth Hot Springs — six mule deer, three males and 
three females. The does have given birth to four beauti- 
ful fawns. These little creatures are attracting consider- 
able attention, as are the six little antelope Capt. Pitcher 
has on hand, to say nothing of the yOUng elk calves. Capt. 
Pitcher intends to add a few more animals to the collection 
in the inclosure in front of the hotel, whefe they will 
remain until after the close of the season. It is the in- 
tention then for them to i-each the National Zoological 
Park, where they will add so much to that beautiful place-. 
By the way, the Yellowstone Park is credited with many 
of the finest specimens in the National Zoo-. ♦ 
I won't repeat what I have said about the game in 
the Park for the past fifteen or sixteett years, but only 
say they have Avintered very well, as it Was an open, easy 
winter. Everything appears to be in vety fine condition. 
I hear of no cases of game starving. 
Capt. Goode tells me of his scouts reporting to him the 
fact that they saw and counted eighteen buffalo, five of 
which were calves. Tracks were seen that at first were 
supposed to be of another herd, but later the scouts con- 
cluded that they were made by part of the bunch of 
eighteen. There is probably one of the two bulls left On 
Snake River that have been reported from year to year. I 
saw one on a mountain side while fishing last year at the 
mouth of Lewis River, where it joins Barlow's Ford. No 
buffalo were reported in Hayden Valley. I will not say 
where the eighteen were seen. It's not thought best to 
advertise their whereabouts. 
There have been showers or heavy rains almost every 
day for the past month. The Park is very fresh aild greem 
The flowers do not appear as abundant this year. I do not 
see them in the usual masses. When we have warmer 
weather they may make up for their neglect. I had been 
bragging about the wonderful wealth of flowers one could 
see — acres of one kind, and the ground blue, yellow or 
pink, as the flower happened to be colored. I suppose it 
the usual thing. If I blow the least about the climate, 
weather, flowers or animals, and a friend comes here to 
see these wonderful things, they go back on me. I think 
I'll brag about our fine line of mosquitoes, gnats, wood 
ticks, no-seeums and many other bugs and biting things. 
We have a lot of them just now, and I think a little larger 
and better than anywhere else in the world. They can 
sting harder, oftener and longer than any mosquitoes in 
Jersey or any other country. 
Before I got home I saw a few things in the papers 
about wonderful new geysers ; now I can learn nothing 
about them. As far as reported by those familiar with 
them for the past twenty years, the geysers are doing 
about the same amount of business. When one takes a 
rest for a year or two, another takes up its work or heat. 
Changes are always taking place in Norris Geyser Basin, 
because the formation is so broken up that a powerful 
geyser cannot form a tube that will last. They soon be- 
come mud springs. Only little geysers like the Constant 
are able to keep up business. There is no geyser trust in 
Norris Basin. 
The Great Geyser, said to have broken out in the 
Lower Basin, from the reported location, is thought prob- 
ably to be one that at the time of the Cleveland-Blaine 
contest was in operation. The name was changed every 
da;y, and sometimes twice a day, by parties thinking thej' 
had discovered a new geyser, and naming it after their 
favorite candidate. It has possibly resumed activity for 
a short season. When the Grand went out of business for 
a year or two, it did look as though the geysers were 
dying out, but it came around again after a few years' 
rest, and is now very well behaved. 
Capt. Pitcher has hopes of establishing a small fish 
hatchery in the Park. The place selected is at some never 
failing springs close to the road, where visitors could see 
the hatching going on. The object is to keep up the 
supply of the many kinds of trout now fonud in the Park, 
and restocking some of the, streams they have left, espe- 
cially the Gibbon River above the Virginian Cascades. 
This was stocked with rainbow trout. They have all 
dropped over the falls. Many of the streams where most 
of the camping is done have become fishe'd out for short 
distances, and require more .stocking than the usual num- 
ber dropping down from above or coming up from below. 
The cost would be very low, as the building could be made 
of logs and be in keeping with the surroundings. As 
our native trout spawn in the spring, the whole operation 
would be conducted during the visiting season. Millions 
of eggs can be secured from the large trout in Yellow- 
stone Lake in July, and as these are not infested with 
tapeworms, they could be planted in any waters desired. 
For one, I hope we shall have a hatchery. We have fine 
fishing now, but we could have better and still live. I 
trust the Forest and Stream will favor it. 
There is some talk of marking many interesting things 
fast disappearing. Capt. Chittenden wishes to mark and 
preserve the two camps, if there is any sign left of them, 
where the Helena and Radesburg parties were captured 
by the Nez Perce? In4ians in 1877 ; and some of the mosx 
interesting things about the Indians' trails, camps and 
fortifications. Also of Gen. Howard's march, where his 
wagon train was taken up Mary's Mountain, where the 
wagons were let down very steep hills by ropes passed 
around trees. Several such places remain With the rope 
marks still showing. I showed a party sevefal trees last 
.summer thus marked. And where the train crossed Cas- 
cade Creek, and points on Mount Washburfte, Vvheire 
the train (or that part that crossed there) had to haul 
their wagons up pitches of about 60 degrees and let them 
down places almost perpendicular. There is left at the 
Monmouth Hot Sprinigs tile cabin at whose door a. tftaift 
was shot by the Indians, and many things of this kind 
that are now becoming historical are fast being obliterated 
by the road buiMing and other improvements. Even the 
graves of men killed here cannot be fouftd except by Ihosfe 
who assisted at the burial. There is the stofy of a half- 
breed .scout wounded on a branch of Blacktail, who 
crawled into the brush, his companion escaping. After- 
ward they came back to look, for him, hut he was never 
found, iiof !iny sign of him. 1 never pass along that part 
of the trail or in that section hut that I am looking for 'A 
bone or something by which I can identify the dead scout. 
That was Within a few months of. twenty- foilr years ago. 
Capt. Chittenden hopes to find a feW of these interestirig 
points this summer and mark them on the maps and 
ground. The Weed-grown remains of the old Henderso'Ki 
cabin, burnt by the Nez Perces just outsii^e the f'afk in 
1877, can be seen by the tourist along the Cinnabar road ; 
6ut not one in a thousand ki'iows of it. 
^The .waters lyere iiot so high this year as usual. The 
Yellowstone did not reach within 3 or 4 feet of high-wateir 
mark at Gardiner. E. HdFEfi. 
Gardiner, Mont., June 20. 
Fishing at North Bay. 
At/rti'ouGH i haye fished «nn\ialiy for many years in 
mafty waters I had fteVer had the pleasure of real ttou't 
fishing uii'til last August, when t found myself in the 
town of North Bay, a place of some 4,S0'b inhabitants, at 
the intersection of the Grand Tmnk and Canadian Pacific 
railroads, about 250 miles north of Toronto. On tji? 
train 1 met a Michigan doctor, who made a very gtiniil 
eompiliion. He was prospecting fof nifckfel and copper, 
so he claimed; but he was l^>y fiai- too enthusiastic an 
angler to do much prospecting when productive pools 
were lying idle for \vant of anglers to fish them. We hired 
a rig of j'oe Mullin on Monday morning and started 
ntjftneast toward Trout Lake, where we had learned there 
were abundance of bass, big 'lunge, pickerel, pike and 
trout. We drove over a very rough, corduroy road, and 
had a poor horse. At the Trout Lake Hotel we hired a 
boat. This hotel was formerly kept by Dick Jessup, a 
very interesting character, who had drifted here from 
the States. I had heard many times of Jessup and was 
disappointed When they told me he had gone back to 
the States— to Florida, I belidVe. Many hunters and 
anglers in the States temember him. 
Dr. Dick wanted to row and I wouldn't quarrel with 
him. We hatl seen at the hotel on the jam of the door 
a record of some bass caught by the late Colonel Her- 
ron, of iPttsburg, years ago. The record showed one 6, 
one 5^4, one one ^Vz and three 4 pounders, an average 
of almost S pounds to the fish. They showed Us the 
island near which this catch had been made and we 
rowed directly to the place. I put out my troll, using a 
dark copper spoon bait, and caught two fine pike on my 
way over to the island. We fished where a lafge tama- 
rack tree had fallen over into the water. We were Con- 
tinually getting our lines fouled on the pinetop, but this 
trouble was abundantly compensated for by the numbers 
and the beauty of the bass We were catching. They were 
of a greenish caste and very beautifully mottled. We 
were using frogs for bait. The fish at first_ seemed fran- 
tic to get the frogs. The water would boil around the 
bait, and two or three bass would follow their 
captive comrade clear to the boat side, where they turned 
tail and were gone. The Doctor got greatly excited as 
I drew a fish in, claiming he had also hooked one — a 
monster, as he put in when I reeled in a 3-pounder. I 
found it had first taken the Doctor's bait, then it swam 
around a pine snag and then took mine. This fouling 
the line caused the Doctor to imagine he had hooked a 
whale, for he felt the full force of my efforts to land my 
bass. I had hooked him in the lip and when I released 
him the fish .swam over and soon freed the Doctor's 
line, and for this accommodation the Doctor gave him 
his liberty. We caught bass and wall-eyed pike here until 
we were tired catching them. Each one of us longed to 
get one of those very large bass, but were disappointed 
in this, and soon tried trolling for muscalhmge.. We had 
seen at the Queen's Hotel a 'lunge caught by Mr. E. C. 
Shepherd, the proprietor, that weighed 56 pounds. It 
had an unusually large head, and the fish must have 
weighed something near this figure. As we worked 
around a bay we came upon an old wood duck and her 
ten ducklings. Hoping to secure one, the Doctor gave 
chase ; but the masterly way the old mother duck handled 
her little army of ducklings would have done credit to 
Dewey or Grant. When we had one separated and 
pretty well tired the old mother would appear to our rear 
and soon the young duck would appear behind us also, 
and when we had turned it would be well away and rest- 
ing up. The mother duck's intelligence and cunning were 
really wonderful. We soon gave up the chase. 
Five miles down we came to a small ledge of iron ore, 
reputed by the natives to be extensive and of great value. 
The Doctor was disgusted. The .ore was of great purity, 
but in very small quantities. 
, A mile further down, near the lower end of the lake, we 
came upon five men camped on a small island. They 
were business men from Rochester, N. Y. They re- 
ported fishing poor — but as they were using flies and other 
artificial bait this was not to be wondered at. _ 
W'e had dinner with them under a clump of pine trees. 
They had caught about 100 fine frogs the evening before 
and the cook had cooked them to a brown turn. One 
of them had shot a fawn, and we had some of it fried. 
I don't think I ever enjoyed a dinner more. These 
campers reported two moose to have passed Sunday 
night. When they turned their acetylene lamp toward 
them all that was left was an echo of crashing branches 
and fi faint ref^ollection. 
On our way back we tried to buy some provisions from 
a settler, but all he had for sale was some jerked moose 
and very young onions. We botight some of both, but 
have never found any one who could eat the moose yeti 
The man said it would keep, and it did. 
The Doctot- decided to head for the hotel at the head 
of Trout Lake, trolling in the hope that We might catch 
a big 'lunge on our way back. We came next thing to 
catching one. Two men, who were connected with the 
Havemeyer Sttgat- Refinery in New York, were on theii- 
way down to the Ottawa River on a canoe trip. As they 
came by us the younger got a terrific strike and a most 
magnificent fish broke Water, within five feet of our boat, 
so near as to splash the Doctor, who was trolling in the 
stern of the boat. I could see the monster's capacious 
maw and great, cold, cruel-looking eyes. It shook that 
troll as a dog would a rat in his frantic efforts to throw 
it out of its mouth. 
The young man hauled it to the canoe and his Com- 
rade tried first tq shoot it and afterwar.d ,to gaff it, and 
bungled both, Wheh thfe ytahhggi- lifte'd it iii on troll. 
It was a feeauly and would go 35 pounds. It almost 
wrecked the canoe when it wag landed; 
This excellent catch fired the .Dbttbt- With a liople 
ambition to go and db likewise, much to my chagi-in, for 
1 was _ pi'Gtty tired rowing. Howevfer. oul" efforts WCrfe 
hot withoiit Reward, as I witnessed the strahgest sight 
in all my experience as an anglei:. As we drew near a 
rocky point at the beginning of a weed.y bay we \vere 
both astonished . at an imusual petforplance of fish. Fish 
began jU\hping' fi'oih among the weeds towafd the dcepfef 
watei", hbt by twos, but by dozens !^nd stores. Sevefal 
,struck oyv boat, one baSs lit f^i'r in the Doctor's lap and 
he quickly brusheti it out, and one fell in the bottdm of 
th'e boit. The panic spread away up the bay, and a teg- 
ular tattoo was beat on the \vatelrs by jufiiping fish. 
Whether a school of muscallonge hove in sight or our 
boat started the jjanic I was unable to determine, t 
once had the same experience in Ten Mile Creek, Penn- 
sylvania, while fishing with Dr. Clyde. Crumrine. Wi° 
had no luck with bait and rowed near .shorfe, on otii- -w'Af 
home, and a small bas.s jumped into the boat. The per- 
formance was repeated three time^ and these were the 
joe's Home. 
only fish we caught. The fish on this occasion evidently 
communicated their fright, causing consternation quite 
a distance up the bay. 
In the next bay we had a great run of luck on pike. 
The Doctor hooked a small one; as he drew it in it 
broke water and spit the spoon out, and the spoon had 
hardly struck the water when a really splendid pike 
grabbed it._ The Doctor landed it, only to return the 
captive to its native element again. I put in my troll 
and in an hour and a half we had caught twenty-three 
fine pike and pickerel, but no muscallunge. I rowed up 
a creek and rested. We here saw a pair of loons on land," 
the only_ pair I ever saw out of water. They looked like 
a pair of very awkward ducks on stilts, and their wabbly 
antics showed us how very much of a water fowl the 
loon really is. There was a pair of young birds near them 
in some reeds and the four then floated off and began 
fishing. It is nothing short of marvelous how far the 
loon can dive — surely 500 or 600 feet. He is the most 
skillful diver of all the water fowl. I met a settler who 
showed me a cap he had made of a loon skin. We after- 
ward here saw near the water a large nest of coarse sticks, 
that I think was the nest of a loon. At 6 P. M. we 
arrived at the head of the lake, putting up at the hotel 
formerly kept by Dick Jessup. 
After supper we gathered worms in a tomato can. 
Since we were on Trout Lake, the Doctor said: "There 
must be trout here. But the trout that have given the 
lake its name are the salmon trout, and at this season 
they are in the very deepest part of the lake, and this 
is saying a good deal, for Trout Lake has been sounded 
to t6o feet. It requires a couple of pounds of lead to 
sink the troll to the bottom. Early in the season they 
are in shallow water, but retire into deeper Avater as the 
weather grows warmer. The salmon trout aims to keep 
himself in the same temperature all the year around." 
An old settler, who lives on the Government road, 
said: "There's lam lashins' o' trout in Dick Jessup's 
old meader in the crick;" and the next morning found 
the Doctor urging me to hurry so we might try for 
some trout before dinner. We walked out the corduroy 
road, known as the Government road, turned to the right, 
stopped at the bridge over the creek, and turned up the 
stream through a tangle of underbrush. We left our 
split bamboo rods under the bridge and cut short rods, so 
we could fish the small pools with some comfort, as the 
overhanging branches rendered the handling of even 
short rods auite difficult. 
As to numbers,, the trout were abundant, bttt as to 
size, that is different. We soon had 50 or 60 finger- 
lings apiece, and they were such game little fellows that 
we enjoyed the sport very much. The sand flies were 
so troublesome I couldn't stand the torture and came back 
to the bridge and let my bait flo^t down gently under 
