FOREST AND STREAM. 
S43 
gree, would come to me. 1 even had base designs on 
some hound astray, if I should meet one. 
I plodded on mile after mile, and wrote pathetically in 
my diary. "This is the worst part of the trip, I am sure." 
I went through Otselic Center, and at last reached South 
Otselic, The hotel there was clean-looking, and it was 
not fifteen minutes of noon and dinner. I dropped the 
pack on the porch, stood my rifle against the door 
casing, limped into the office, and signed for dinner. 
The proprietor was interested to know that anybody 
should walk where a ride could be had, and the idea of 
camping out, as I was doing, was a novelty. A good 
wash, a good dinner and a good talk with men who did 
not ask if I wasn't selling trinkets turned a dismal morn- 
ing into a bright one, 
I was about to start on when I heard that the stage 
to Cincinnatus was to go in half an hour. Cincinnatus 
was ten miles down the valley, and that much nearer my 
mail. I just had to take the stage; and so I did. 
The driver was talkative, "Last year," he said, "gray 
squirrels were plenty along the Otselic River, but no 
one had seen any this year." He believed they traveled 
in droves, in that region at least, and would probably 
come when the squirrels, wherever they were, learned 
how plentiful beechnuts were in the Otselic Valley. 
"You're picking up gingseng a little, I s'pose?" he in- 
quired of me. I told him I was not, but wished I could 
find the plant. 
"Well, sir, so do I," he said. "There's two fellows 
from South Otselic goes down into Pennsylvany every 
year, just as you be, camping out and digging sang. 
They live all summer and it don't cost nothing in the 
woods, and all winter they don't do nothing at all, just 
sit round. Why, they clears up six hundred to a thousand 
'dollars a year that way. One of them's a good car- 
penter, a first-class man at his trade, too. He says he 
don't have to work any more — just dig sang." 
I walked a couple of miles below Cincinnatus and re- 
ceived permission to occupy an old barn there for the 
night, after it was learned that I did not smoke.. 
"Most generally folks that come along sleeps where 
they want to without asking," I was told. I had visitors 
in the barn after dark. The three boys on the farm 
and the carpenter came out to talk to me and see my out- 
fit. The younger had a camera, and pronounced mine a 
"dandy." Another had an idea of going deer hunting 
tins fall, and wanted to know about guns and duffle for 
the purpose. The carpenter was inquisitive as to who 
'I Avas, why I had traveled, and if I hadn't been pretty 
good on a bicycle. At 9 o'clock they went home, leaving 
the lantern for me to go to bed by. The day which had 
been so hard in the morning was cheerful at night. I 
slept the best of all till morning, when I made a break- 
fast on milk. Returning the lantern, I started down the 
west bank of the river for Whitney Point, thirteen 
miles away. For the first time a wagon upon which I 
might have ridden came up behind me. The driver did 
not ask me to go with him. In a few minutes another 
came up behind me. He was going only a few rods 
further, as he explained. Then there was a third dis- 
appointment. I sat down by a brook at 10:30 o'clock 
and fried some potatoes and pork, covering the pan with 
my granite-vyare plate, and ate a hearty dinner, which 
I followed with beef tea. 
After a while I came to Upper Lisle and passed 
through one edge of it. A wagon far ahead seemed to 
be going slow, but I did not overtake it till it turned into 
a yard. It seemed as if it were to be a day of disap- 
pointments. It was Friday. My mail was still more 
than a day's trip away, but not two days off, I wanted 
to get it on Saturday if possible. Just as I was about to 
give up hope of making Whitney Point that day a man 
drove up. 
"Have a ride?" he asked. He was going to Lisle, and 
that was nearer to Newark Valley than Whitney Point. 
Would I ride? Well, rather. 
The man looked to be fifty-five years of age — he was 
seventy-seven. He had hunted deer in his day; was lost 
once in Potter county. Pa., and shot a deer by the light 
' the fire he built to keep warm by that night. He had 
ot gray and black and fox squirrels, too, and pwned a 
musket, captured froiTf Burgoyne, with which his grand- 
father had helped kill off the deer of central New York 
in the early part of the nineteenth century. 
My feet were still sore when I left him at Lisle, and I 
was tired, but now my mail was in sight. I started over 
the hill out of Lisle. It was up and up, till I staggered 
unrlcr nly pack. But there was no place- to stop in that 
side hill. I came to a vacant house, but it was locked. 
At last I came to a farm, with several barns and an un- 
painted house upon it. The owner refused to let me 
sleep in one of them; so I went on, hoping to find a 
place where I could camp. Rod after rod I climbed or 
went down into gullies. At last I came to an old horse 
hnrn, about the size of a chicken coop. It was impos- 
le. The road ahead showed another hill, with a neat- 
ic oking farmhouse and barns half-way up. I headed that 
way. It was late, and I decided to roll up in my blanket in 
' ti' woods above the house. There was a big hay barn in 
? lot, as I could see, and seeing the man I asked to 
ep in it 
Well," he said, "you're all right, aren't ye?" 
I hoped so, and then I was told to go into the house 
nnd make myself comfortable, put my pack in the parlor 
,iiid stand my rifle in the corner. 
■'Listen!'' said the man. "Hear that dog running up 
til (TO on the hill? Say, hasn't he got a dandy voice? 
^; uns rabbits all day up there." 
There followed a supper of large size, and a talk of 
lafoning sort, a sleep that rested me more than any 
iii.it I had had before. Pancakes and sausage and pota- 
loos and milk and cofTee made up a breakfast I'll not 
soon forget. I heard of squirrel hunting and rabbits 
and foxes. As soon as the sun was bright enough I took 
photographs of the fine hound, which had returned from 
hunting, and of the big cat, which Connors and his wife 
?ay are the finest thereabouts. 
It was worth the four miles of toil from Lisle to find 
such a place as that. I reached my mail at noon, riding 
four miles on a load of potatoes. I walked five miles 
out of Newark Valley, and decided that as I had once 
ridden from New York to Buffalo, passing Owego, to 
^A'1verly, on ray bicycle, I would skip this portion of the 
toad; and 30 I took the cars at Fleming's VUlage- and 
came to Sayre, Pa., on them, where the first stage of the 
trip ended on Oct. 12. 
Raymond S. Spears. 
In the Ranger Service. 
BY JROWIJ^ND E. ROBINSON. 
VU— Lieut. Frederic. 
Before the end of summer General Abercrombie gave 
portions of his army more profitable employment in the 
Vi^estern part of the province, and in one way and an- 
other the Rangers got their share of service. 
A year passed, during which I got no tidings of 
my unfaithful sweetheart. I had become able to bear my 
sorrow with some degree of resignation, for time had 
eased the constant pain of the wound to occasional pangs, 
and I found myself as often inventing excuses for poor 
Mercy as blaming her for yielding to the importunities 
that must have beset her; and if I wa.s not warmed by the 
old fervor, I was still aware of a tender and pitying 
affection. The solitude of the woods continued to give 
its comfort and consolation, and this my service gave me 
opportunity to seek. 
The next summer found us again moving against the 
Champlain forts in the army of General Amherst with 
less pomp and parade, with greater assurance of success 
in its deliberate advance, than had attended the last ex- 
pedition. As we drew near Ticonderoga there was a skir- 
mish in which \vc lost a Colonial officer and some men, 
but met no further opposition. The abattis had become 
harmless in the first stages of decay, the deserted breast- 
works were as silent and lifeles.s as the last year's graves 
that lay before them, and when we came to the fortress 
as deep a silence brooded over it, though the banner of 
France still floated aljove its untenanted walls. Such an 
ominous silence pervaded the place that no one dared to 
enter it, and an hour of waiting proved the wisdom of the 
caution, for then there was an upburst of fire and smoke 
and timbers, and a thundering explosion, that shook the 
earth; and before its echoes died, and almost before the 
shower of debris ceased falling, our troops swarmed 
through the open gate and set to quenching the kindling 
flames. 
When we had set things in order there, our deliberate 
General moved upon Fort St. Frederic, to find it also 
abandoned and the rearmost transports of the enemy 
but specks and white clouds on the far horizon. We 
were full of curiosity concerning a place that had been a 
frontier stronghold of the French nigh on to thirty years, 
and when we were assured that no mine was waiting the 
creeping spark of a match to blow us nearer to heaven 
than a Frenchman is likely to get we rummaged the 
place from the black dungeons, where many a poor Eng- 
lish prisoner had pined, up to the flagstaff tower, where 
the red cross of England was now planted in the place 
from which the French lilies were banished forever. We 
went down to the water gate, from whose wave-washed 
threshold the last white-coated soldier had so lately de- 
parted, and into the chapel, where the odor of their 
Popish mummeries still lingered; in short, into every 
nook and corner inside the walls, and outside, to the 
windmill that had ground its last grist for its first owners, 
who were themselves. now between the millstones of fate. 
Then we went to the village whence two years before we 
Rangers caught our prisoner; a desolate place now, with 
no living things in it but a forsaken cat, lonely enough, 
but still loth to make friends with Englishmen, and one 
brave Gallic cock, that crowed defiance at our whole 
army. In one house a kettle of pea soup still steamed 
over the embers, but for all its savory odor we dared 
not taste it for fear of poison. A little way off was a 
graveyard where their dead were left to sleep forever, 
far from countrymen and kindred. 
Out in the fields that we Rangers had harried two 
years before were acres of ripening wheat that the hur- 
ried departure of the French had not given them time to 
destroy, but left it to be garnered by other hands than 
the sowers. We wished the grain had got so far as the 
threshing. 
As we beheld all this scene of desertion, we might 
have pitied those who left behind them pleasant homes, 
built with infinite toil; fields grown dear and familiar 
through years of labor, and the graves of their beloved — 
it they had not been Frenchmen. But our hearts were 
hardened against them for their perfidy, and the murder 
and rapine they and their cruel allies had wrought on our 
people. We rejoiced in keeping everything they left us 
but the Popish name, which we dropped for the honest 
English name. Crown Point. 
Our army had not been long established here, when 
our General broke ground for a new and larger fort on 
higher ground, and further from the water than the , 
French fort. The skill of the best miHtary engineers 
was taxed to plan these new works and to improve the 
fort at Ticonderoga, and a fine road was laid between the 
two. Fortification was our General's favorite pastime, 
and he gave it full play here at a cost of three million 
pounds sterling to His Majesty, and all for nothing, as 
it turned out. 
Vm.— The St. Francis Expedition. 
In the midst of such affairs General Amherst be- 
thought to write out chastisement to the pestilent tribe of 
Indians harboring on the St. Francis River in Canada. 
Years before they had been gathered there from all north- 
ern New England by an old governor of the French 
province long since in perdition. Thenceforth, full of 
hatred of the English, they had been the constant terror 
and frequent scourge of our New, England frontier, 
whither the Lake Champlain and Connecticut River gave 
them easy paths in all seasons. They were known to us 
as the St. Francis Indians, but called themselves Sooqua- 
gese, which, I have been told, means the Little Nation, or 
the people who went apart from the others, for they were 
all of the great nation of Waubanakees. 
When General Amhert sought a proper instrument for 
the punishment of these blood-thirsty scoundrels, he 
could not have chosen a better one than Major Rogers, 
for he was as learned in the cunning tricks of the savages 
as if he were born to their manners; his bravery was 
tempered with a jtjst prudence, and he was not apt to 
ert in the respect of too tender mercy, any more than 
were his men, most of whom were of New England, and 
many of whom had tasted the quality of Indian mercy. 
Upon many of their homes these red wolves had de- 
scended out of the black forest like lightning from a 
cloud, slaying or snapping up their victims, ilien gone 
with captives and booty, swallowed out of sight in the 
maw of the woods, swift as the flame of the fires they 
kindled, silent and trackless as their path. 
On Sept. 13 two hundred Rangers embarked from 
Crown Point at night, according to custom of our leader 
when setting forth on an important enterprise. Bastions 
and citadel dissolved in the darkness behind us. into 
which the gloomy shores receded on either hand till we 
seemed launched upon vergeless space, voyaging we 
knew not whither, and like an army of ghosts, for no 
one was permitted to speak above a wliisi)er. Wiih us 
there was no sound but the occasional splash of an oar 
and the soft chuckle of ripples against our bows, and the 
shores were silent, though from the far depths of the 
forest we heard the dismal wail of wolves calling and 
answering one to another. 
How our guides in canoes leading the bateaux kept 
their course after the glimmer of the fort's lights faded 
out behind us, I do not know; but they brouglit us safely, 
about daylight, to a landing at the mouth of the Otter 
Creek, which the Waubanakee Indians call Wonakake- 
took, having the same meaning, and sometimes Peconk- 
took — the Crooked River, It was one of their chief 
thoroughfares to the English settlements, tor it comes 
ftom far back among the mountains nigh to a river that 
flows_ into the Connecticut. These streams, with the 
carrying place between, made what was known in those 
times as the Indian road, whereon many a captive went 
the weary way to Canada. Here we lay all day, very 
quiet, and at night set forth again. No one couhl know 
when or where the sharp eyes of the Indian spies might 
be watching us to guess and frustrate our design, so to 
evade them we voyaged only by night, eveti then keep- 
ing from the shores to avoid ambush. 
For a time we saw the black steeps of a mountain 
looming up on our left, and then came on the same side 
the lake, to a rocky point, which was cleft quite in twain, 
to the bay on the other side of it, to a width suflicient 
for a canoe. I was told that the Indians called this place 
Lobapskwa, the Pass through the Rock, and a point 
that jutted from the east Kosoapskua, the Long-Story 
Point Here the lake becomes much broader, and as we 
held nearer to the eastern shore we saw only its head- 
lands, while on the other hand there seemed nothing 
but endless space. 
In the morning we made our camp on a great point 
or cape of the eastern shore, which the Indians call 
Quineaska, and a river einptying into a bay behind it, 
Quineaskatook. But beyond this point a singular, naked 
rock rises out of the water thirty feet or more, a very 
notable landmark to voyagers, and held in great awe by 
the Indians, for in it, they say, dwells a mighty spirit, 
who controls the lake and raises storms to vex any who 
venture to pass his abode without making some offering 
to propitiate him, whom they call Wojahose, the For- 
bidder. Some say that this was the rock that marked the 
bounds of the Iroquois country; others that it e.Ktended 
no further than the cleft rock, Sobapskwa, and this was 
the belief of some Stockbridge Indians, who were with 
us. They told us that the Mohawks called the cleft 
rock Rigiochne. When we passed the rock a little after 
nightfall, we did not offer the terrible spirit so much as 
a pinch of tobacco, but if he owed us a spite for our 
neglect he did not set the wind upon us, but paid it in 
a storm of our own raising. 
To the east of us a fine, broad bay opened, with a 
beautiful wooded shore sloping down to it, and far 
away, behind the crest of the slope, above the gathering 
gloom, the last light of day lingered on the peaks of 
Ta-wah-be-de-e-wad-so and Mo-zo-e-wadso, the loftiest 
mountains of the region. Nigh here I was told the 
Winooskitook emptied, which our people called the 
French River, because the French and their Indian 
scoundrel allies used it so much as a road to our setde- 
ments. A little beyond, the Wintook, or Narrow River, 
empties, and still further, almost at the end of the lake 
whither we were going, the Azzabattacook, the stream 
that turns upon itself. We call it Missisquoi River, but 
that name, or, rather, Missapski. the Sound of Arrow 
Flints, belongs to the country, not the river. When I 
remember how the savage solitude which, like a spell 
that would never be broken, then lay upon the shores, 
whose only peace was that of desertion, and behold 
now what the hand of civilization has wrought, it is all 
like a dream till I see how swift the changes still go on. 
Two fine, large rivers enter the lake from the great 
western wilderness, named Popoquanianatook and Sen- 
halenactook, the last entering near the great Cape .Scon- 
onton; but we went nigh neither, keeping nearest ihe 
eastern shore. Often we came upon such countless 
swarms of waterfowl that were loth to take flight wlien 
our boats ran into the midst of them as was a sore vexa- 
tion to the heart of one who loved fowling not to have 
a shot at them. Every day wc saw deer, and once a 
mighty moose, so close that the fingers of many a hunter 
itched for the triggerr but we were not permitted to fire 
a shot save for necessity. 
We passed the islands which the French call the Isles 
of the Four Winds, and the Grand Isle, coming to jtarts 
very unknown to most except our guides, who were trap- 
pers that had run all risks in the wilderness for the sake 
of gain, and some Stockbridge Indians, who had been 
here in war parties against the Waubanakee: but our 
voyage continued very propitious till the tenth day out 
fioin Crown Point We were encamped for the day, 
having our boats hidden and keeping very close, for we 
were now fairly in the enemy's country, though not l)e- 
yond the rightful possessions oj. the King. We saw 
smoke on shores not far distant, which we knew must !>c 
from the camps of French or Indians. We were tinili- 
ered in close ranks, waiting a distribution of powder, a 
keg of which was being brought up from one of the boats 
b> a careless fellow, who did not know that it was leak- 
ing out a thin dribble of its dangerous contents along the 
earth. Another fellow, as thoughtless, observing it, 
rapped out the fire of his pipe on to the chance-laid 
