Aue. to, tgdt] 
FOREST AND STREAM, 
103 
on the opposite shore. Memory was busy with the past 
as I gazed on the familiar surroundings. I had not visited 
tlie lake since 1891, when I made my first trip north of 
^loosehead. As the canine stole quietly along the south 
.shore, I looked in vain for the hunter's cabin where I had 
passed the night with my guide, but soon caught sight of 
famihar ground at the head of the lake. Urging our 
canoes onward through the fast quieting waters, we en- 
tered the inlet. The marsh on either side abounded with 
ducks, mostly sheldrakes; the scenery improved as we 
ghded along, looking out for a good camping place. Pass- 
ing a party off the mouth of a brook who reported no 
luck, we ran the canoes ashore near some high ground 
that answered our purpose. This ended a hard day's work 
with the paddle. Every one of us must have paddled at 
least sixteen miles, most of the Avay in the teeth of a strong 
wind — in fact a little addition to it would have held us up 
at the foot of the lake. After supper we lay around the 
camp-fire basking in the delicious warmth, imtil finally 
tired nature asserted itself, and we dropped off one by one. 
The morning dawned cold as Greenland, with the ice 
close at hand. The fire had died out while we slept, and 
our open tent gave ready access to the cold. The guides 
soon had the fire going, and after making a vicious at- 
tack on our provisions, we were ready for the fray as we 
descended to the stream. The woods and w^ater were 
shrouded in mist. Changing from a cold, deathly gray to 
the rosy tints of dawn as it soared aloft and caught the 
faint morning zephyrs, it opened to disclose enchanting 
views of forests bathed in the splendor of the rising sun. 
I fairly hugged myself in ecstasy and cold while gazing 
on this beautiful effect of sunlight and shadow. The 
grating sound of setting poles came out of the mist ahead, 
causing the timid buck about to slake his tliirst to flee in 
dismay from the ghostly apparitions, not to return until 
the canoes had passed onward and upward. The low 
water held us back considerably. An exasperating carry 
only a few yards long showed up ahead. There was no 
getting around it. so we had to imload and move over. 
The music of falling waters heralded our approach to 
beautiful Allegash Pond. Carrying around, we put our 
canoes in the quiet water above the falls. . A wary old 
buck eyed us suspiciously from the far shore of the 
pond, and promptly resented a' closer inspection. I niet 
no response to mj^ frequent casts, as we drifted out into 
the inlet. The sun was getting low as we came in sight of 
the dam.- While the guides were fixing up the camp I 
managed to secure enough small trout for my supper. 
The next morning was ushered in by a discharge of 
firearms above us, and arovmd the bend came a poor shel- 
drake, fleeing on whistling wings. The party soon hove in 
sight, and fetched up at the dam. Leaving them in pos- 
session, a few strokes of our paddles brought us to the 
lake. Allegash Lake has considerable claim to beauty. 
Far to the west mountains loom up here and there on 
the horizon ; on the north shore are some interesting caves 
that were discovered a few years ago by a lumber ex- 
plorer. Careful was the word as we shoved out into an 
ugly cross sea; but we soon worked out of it, as it was 
only a narrow belt of wind. As we drew near to the 
head of the lake we gazed with ever-increasing interest at 
the great w'ilderness that stretched out to the far-away 
horizon, every stroke of our paddles bringing us nearer 
its heart. Entering the inlet we piilled up at a lumber 
camp on the right bank. A cat came forward to welcome 
us. We found the camp well stocked with supplies. The 
only spoil I carried away was an old pair of overs for 
rough work. We went into camp a short distance above, 
and started off to find Johnson's Pond. The stream that 
comes from the pond was almost dry. Placing our canoe 
in this miserable apologj^ for a waterway, we urged it 
ahead, I have been in many tough places with a canoe, 
but have never seen the equal of this. The stream trickled 
through a quaking marsh that was alive with snipe, ma- 
king me long for my shotgun. The canoe slid along 
through this delectable mixture of about two parts mud 
to one of w\iter, until finally it defied the most desperate 
endeavors of the guides to budge it. There was no help 
for it; we had to trust ourselves to the treacherous sur- 
face of the bog, that threatened to sink beneath us at 
every step. We kept this up for some time before a 
glimpse of the pond rewarded our efforts. This beautiful 
trout pond is' completely shut in by the forest ; it is seldom 
visited, except by a few hardy anglers and hunters. The 
surface looked inviting, so I went to work with the fly- 
rod. I tried very likely looking places in vain. The 
trout would not rise, and that settled it. The return trip 
was uneventful, aside from having to bridge the bog with 
the canoe to get to the timber. 
The next day the guides started oft" to try their luck, 
armed with the deadly spoon, and returned about dusk 
much crestfallen. Cram mourning the loss of his hunting 
knife. The pond had made it "two straight." There is 
no doubt plenty of trout in Johnson's Pond, and most of 
them propose to stay there. Our troubles soon went up in 
the smoke of the camp-fire. After a good night's rest w^e 
came up smiling. Frank Cram took the lead, as he was 
the only one of the party who knew about the country we 
were heading for. Putting our canoes in the still water in 
front of the camp, we paddled gaily up stream. This 
lasted about as long as the Irishman's descent from the 
steeple, when that curse of the canoeman. low water, 
brought us to a standstill. The canoe, relieved of our 
weight, slid along a few yards and then brought up against 
the bottom for good. The guides proved equal to the 
emergency; getting down into the brook among the stones, 
they soon scooped out a channel with their bare hands. 
The stream for miles above was choked up with fallen tim- 
ber, reinforced by rocks and gravel bars. Undaunted by 
this formidable array of nature's forces, the guides fought 
their way up stream, demolishing one obstruction after 
another. At rare intervals the canoe glided into a quiet 
reach, where beauty thronged about us and lured us on 
with its siren song of restful ease, to end abruptly at the 
sight of some giant of the forest barring our passage up 
the brook. At times the water got so unniercifully low 
that a channel had to be -dug out with the paddles. We 
were hardly out of this scrape before we were up against 
another. The axe was mightier than the paddle, as fallen 
trees proved to be our worst enemies. Cutting a narrow 
passage for the canoes was hard and exhausting work. 
After this enemy was conquered others showed up in 
front, ready to dispute our advance, and so on and so 
forth. 
Late in the afternoon I started on ahead with my fly- 
rod. Pool after pool wa,s tried in vain ; no rise followed 
in the wake of the struggling fly. I could not understand 
this, as the stream was every whit as alluring as Webster 
Brook. The fallen timber and other obstructions were 
mute witnesses to the fact that no one had invaded this 
solitude for a long time. The trout were here, but 
resolutely refirsed to embellish the frying pan. Fly-fishing 
is fascinating sport, and is full of hope and promise. As 
davlight faded, absorbed in the pursuit. I soon became 
oblivious to my surroundings. I must have gone a con- 
siderable distance up stream before I awoke to the situa- 
tion. Then, as I looked about me, I experienced a sort of 
creepy feeling. A rampart of fallen timber cut off my 
view ahead, so I concluded I would settle the matter by 
hailing my guides. To my consternation and amazement 
an indistinct murmur of voices drifted down from above. 
Climbing over the obstruction. I sighted the main stream 
a short distance beyond. Hurrying along as fast as pos- 
sible, wondering all the time hoAv they had managed to get 
above me when I had left them far down stream, and 
seeing no sign of them anywhere above, I began to grow 
suspicious of the sounds I had heard ; so halting in my 
tracks, I shouted until the forest rang again. A prompt 
response came from below. After a while the guides came 
in sight, dragging their canoes. I mentioned the incident 
to them, but they failed tc^ solve it. I am inclined to think 
that a bear replied to my hail. Their cry is said to re- 
semble the hallo of a man. These woods are full of mys- 
tery. If I had kept on up stream and taken the wrong 
fork, I might have traveled far out of reach of my guides 
and been hopelessly lost. Bears are seldom seen in the 
day time. The shadows of night were creeping through 
the forest when we came in sight of the forks. The left 
fork leads into an alm.ost unknown wilderness; the right 
trends north to Mud Pond. Moving a few 3'ards up the 
right fork, we went into camp. Soon the sound of the axe 
resounded through the woods, quickly followed by a 
splintering crash, as some noble forest tree yielded up its 
life. After setting up the tent and boughs, we turned 
our attention to supper. Alas ! we had no trout, but we 
made out pretty well with flippers, pork, potatoes and 
coffee. We wound up the evening by piling on the logs 
until we had a roaring camp-fire, that shot sparks and 
blazing brands above the tree tops, paling the stars. After 
lying aroimd a while the conversation flagged, and one 
after another we fell asleep on our beds of balsam, leaving 
the camp-fire to its own destruction. 
W. C. Squier. Jr. 
Companions on Outings. 
Edilor Forest and Stream: 
A few weeks ago Forest and Stre.\m published an 
article of mine under the heading of "Companions on 
Outings." In that article I advanced a few- opinions 
gained from personal experience, and offered a little well- 
meant advice to the novice. Soon after Mr. Charles 
Christadoro coincided with my views, in the main, be- 
cause he had evidently met with similar experiences to my 
own. therefore was capable of judging from my stand- 
point. 
But my article seems to have affected in a different 
w^ay J. P. T. This Qorrespondent seems inclined to judge 
my experiences from the standpoint of dissimilar experi- 
ences of his own. ■ 
As I haA-e said before, I have found outings with untried 
companions to be lotteries. Once one fellow stole from a 
member of the party, and sneakingly put the blame on the 
guide. Another member of the same party passed muti- 
lated money on the same guide, and it gave me satisfaction 
to call the guide's attention to the fraud. An untried 
companion, who is noAV superintendent of a large sani- 
tarium, made it a point to go deliberately and maliciously 
out of his way in order to break fences and rip limbs off 
fruit trees in order to steal the fruit. Another made it a 
practice to blow trespass signs to pieces, while yet an- 
other, with more mouth than gray matter, regaled me by 
telling how he would '"break the law and mop up the 
ground with the game warden if he interfered." There 
are others too numerous to mention here, but these are 
among the worst cases. One trip with each was enough 
for me. and most of them w-ere tenderfeet. 
But there are others, and good friends, too, with whom 
I would not care to go into the woods or on the waters 
again ; and. no doubt, they entertain the same feeling 
toward me — and I hold no grudge against them for that 
feeling. Their tastes and mj' tastes are so diametrically 
opposite that it would bore each to be in the other's com- 
pany again — on an outing. 
Here is an extract from a letter which I am proud 
to keep. The w'riter was Fred Mather. I had invited 
him on a shooting expedition, and this is part of his letter 
of acceptance : "Provided, that you assure me that you 
are not like a friend of mine — a man who can talk only 
upon the salvation of the heathen. But — hang the 
heathen, I'm one of them, and I have no interest in their 
future welfare more than I have in their present existence. 
If you are that kind of man, you will never enjoy my 
company. I am not young, but like a lively companion — 
because I am mentally lively. This is, of course, plain 
talk ; but better this than a week's horror. I think you 
will appreciate my candor — it is better thus than later dis- 
co\-eries.'' What honest, manly and sound logic ! From 
experience I had learned that Mr. Mather was right. I 
did appreciate his candor, for there was the very essence 
of truth in it. Professor Dean, of Columbia University 
joined us, and there were ten golden days of fun. These 
w'ere capital prizes in the lottery of companions on out- 
ings. 
The tried companions with whom I would care to spend 
a week in camp or longer do not number more than a 
dozen. I have slept and camped with them in Florida, on 
yachting and sailing trips, in 'duck shooting and other 
bird shooting, and they are reliable companions and faith- 
ful friends. Some are naturalists and biologists, some 
mechanics, and others sailors, guides, etc. 
I cannot apologize to J. P. T. for expressing my honest 
opinions, and I still adhere strictly to my first article. I 
am not rich, nor even "Well fixed." I like good wages, and 
believe in good wages for others — guides included. 
Whether I am considered "selfish as to others' rights. 
especially in money matters," or not, does not. alter my 
opinion that any man who would luxuriate at the expense 
of a guide's bread and butter, by paying him starvation 
wages, ought to be kicked out of the woods. Give the 
guide what is right, no less, just a little more rather 
than less; and — "go it alone with your guide unless 
you know your companion from the ground up." 
William H. Avis. 
HiCHWOOD, Conn. 
— • — 
The Sea Elephant, South and North. 
Among the great mammals of the world which have 
been exterminated, or nearly so, by the greed of man, is 
the sea elephant, formerly extremelv abundant over a 
c_onsiderable stretch of the Pacific coast, from southern 
California down into Mexico. It was also found in great 
numbers on some of the islands on the borders of the 
.^ntarctic seas, as Kerguelen Island. Heard's Island, the 
Crozets, and perhaps at other points. It is an animal of 
vast size, and is said to be from eighteen to twenty-five 
and even thirty feet in length, and with a circumference 
of from twelve to eighteen feet. Its general aspect is 
seal-hke. It has little power of bending the back and 
cannot bring its hind flippers up under it as do the eared 
seals, which include the walrus, the sea lions and the sea 
bears ; but having a more or less stiff vertabral column, it 
crawls by dragging itself along by movements of its fore 
flippers, going slowly and wath difliculty. 
Nearly fifty years ago the sea elephant was almost ex- 
terminated in California and Mexico, and Captain Scam- 
mon, who wrote about 1852 of Cedros Island, off the coast 
of lower California, says : "Seals and sea elephants once 
basked on the shores of this isolated spot in vast num- 
bers, and in years past, its surrounding shores teemed with 
sealers, sea elephant and sea otter hunters. The remains 
of their rude stone houses are still to be seen in many 
convenient places, which were once the habitations of 
these hard}- men." 
Within twenty-five years, a few sea elephants were still 
found at Santa Barbara Island, off the coast of California, 
but to-day there is probably not a single living one in 
North America. 
The sea elephants have many times been almost exter- 
minated in their far southern haunts; those gloomy, ver- 
dureless and rock-bound islands, which lie near the bor- 
ders of the Antarctic Ocean. Time and again, thev have 
been killed off there, imtil the search for them became 
unprofitable, and then, having been neglected for a term of 
years, have increased and become sufficiently numerous 
once more to tempt man's cupidity. 
In Volume XIX. of Forest and Stream, appeared two 
articles written by Mr. John Easmond. the mate of a 
.sailing vessel cast away on the shores of Kerguelen Island, 
w-here the writer spent more than a year before the oppor- 
tunity came to escape from his prison. In this account— 
which, for quaintness, terseness and force, reads like a 
chapter from Defoe — is given much interesting informa- 
tion about the sea elephant and its habits, and at the 
present day it is to those islands that we must go to see 
these vast creatures at home. 
Such a visit was recently made by Mr. Robert Hall, of 
-\ustralia, who has contributed to the October Zoologist 
a very interesting article on these monsters. He says: 
In the summer of 1897-98 I paid a visit in the brig Ed- 
ward to this island of the South Indian Ocean. I did so 
by the invitation of Mr. Hans Gundersen. and acted in the 
capacity of naturahst. 
The southern seals are not so strong in species as those 
of the northern seas. The distribution of the total tw^entv- 
five species, including a walrus, is four in the southern 
hemisphere and twenty in the northern. One is peculiar 
to both, and this is the one under present consideration, 
and specially called Macrorliimis Iconinus. It Ts to be 
found in California, and is probably circumpolar in the 
-Australis. 
Certain of the seals are very local, and have reached 
peculiar places on the earth. One is confined to the Cas- 
pian Sea. and another to Lake Baikal, each bearing char- 
acters apart from all others of the Pinnipedia. 
A considerable trade in the skins of these animals an- 
nually passes through the salesrooins in Europe, and 
bears, leopards, lions and elephants are vernacular names 
with which the various markets are familiar. Seals are 
eared or earless. Of the former there are nine species; of 
the latter, fifteen species : and an intermediate manunal. 
familiarly known as the walrus, completes the comple- 
ment. 
Kerguelen Land is a large island of about ninety 
miles by forty nfiles. and full of fjords, on the coasts of 
which the sea elephants congregate in number, more espe- 
cially on the west coast, where they are secure, owing to 
its ruggedness. dangerous winds "and currents. It is 
thought they arrive to rear a family in August, and our 
observations lead us to believe the departure is timed foi 
February and March. During these months they are very 
restless, and remain no longer the listless creatures of 
December. A sea elephant is contrary in nature to a 
sea lion, for, while the former on this island is docile and 
languid, the latter on the Aucklands is active and savage. 
The elephant, on observing a stranger, shows a restless 
eye, but quickly goes to sleep again. You may then walk 
through a herd of fifty sleeping animals, and merely dis- 
turb one or two for a moment. These hot-blooded crea- 
tures vary in size from 6 feet to 20 feet 6 inches, and we 
found a skeleton of a young one about 4 feet in length. 
The largest were exceedingly diflicult to handle ; but, as 
the enterprise of our ship was principally a commercial 
one, the business faculty was quickly brought to bear upon 
any awkward and unwilling customer. 
Many of the animals would weigh approximately two 
to six tons. No five men could turn a large bull' over 
without special levers, and it needed seven sealers to haul 
half a skin along the sand to the boat in waiting. As for 
dragging a whole skin, that was quite out of the question 
under the circumstances. For museum purposes we made 
a preparation of one, and this w'e feared would break the 
