April i8, 1903.] 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
809 
'iiinifi-ii'i-i^it>-tiii-nY*T"-rn I 
Canoe and Camp Life Along the 
: Delaware River, 
: ■;5.jJiCiJ3i.iS 
Snaps Willi a Pocket Camera, and^FIy Casts With Tamarack 
Poles. 
ni— A Day and Night in Camp. Poetry of the "Weeds. 
"Hundreds of people can talk for one who can think; 
But thousands can think for one who can see." 
— Raskin. 
"Days that never dim or darkle. 
Nights that spangle; nights that sparkle. 
Dawns that flame with burnished splendor, 
Eves that melt in raptures tender. 
Noons that glow with sapphire burning, 
Singing waters seaward yearning. 
Shouting rapid, lilting shallow. 
Green of forest, vistas mellow!" 
Trout fishermen seldom fish the brook "slow" 
enough, and walk over and past hundreds of those 
kings of the jeweled coat. Bass fish- 
ermen here on the Delaware glide by 
pools, rapids and eddies, where hun- 
dreds of the quarry lurk and dart, 
and, oh, the pity of it! are all but 
blind to the loveliness of these chang- 
ing panoramas of hill, forest and 
stream. How few of us even pause 
to reflect that it is a vital part of the 
Great Plan that the land has been ele- 
vated to give motion to this blue- 
green water of the hills, talking and 
singing toward the sea? 
And so we beach the canoe, and 
camp, and try to behold! We want 
leisure to watch the gray squirrel as 
he barks and scolds at us from his 
perch of safety, or scurries up and 
down a tree from sheer exuberance 
of sturdy life, and intense curiosity 
at these interlopers who have pitched 
a cloth tent in his domain. And we 
must become acquainted with our 
vigorous comrades, the crows, that fill 
the morning air with their raucous 
cries What a knowing bird! Hued 
black until he glistens, curious, watch- 
ful, he yet impresses us as being 
cheerful. He is so vigorous and alert! 
Handicapped with such an unmusical 
voice, he yet tells us with it of power 
and enjoyment. He is so happy with 
his quiet mate, sitting on that rough- 
est of nests, made of a jumbled lot ot 
sticks and coarse twigs in the inmost 
fastnesses of the tree selected for its 
■ unobtrusiveness! He is an accentu- - 
ated clergyman in somberest black; 
vet he is also a humorous thief, ihe 
crows lend cheer and novelty to the 
Delaware canoeist, and would be sad- 
^^RSefs are forewarned that what no v follows may 
be deemed rhapsody, mawkish sentim^ It and teebie 
audacitv, instead of knowledge. . 
From the hundreds of photographs i my album, i 
cut two for reproduction here. One 
is a wild camp and garden scene be- 
low Long Eddy; and the second, a 
view of the mystery of woods, and 
of the onrush and millions of simul- 
taneous dimples all over the wide 
face of ranidly flowing water, lile- 
lusty, smiling-earnest, busy with its 
mission and duty between banks 
where happy plants have come to 
dwell and drink. Note them by the 
score in the foreground of the pic- 
ture growing in nature's wild .gir- 
den— their joyous life to be seen 
and felt, and their profusion, all iuU 
of that "felicitous fulfillment of Junc- 
tion" which Ruskin calls 'vital 
beauty." . 
And in the other picture, what a 
good time that angler is having! 
Pipe aglow, canoe safe but ready, 
tent, tackle-box, camp hatchet, cook- 
ing utensils, even the last touch 
given by the planting of a little 
star spangled banner! He is in 
care-free communion with what is 
fairest, purest and most divine, close 
to the bosom of Mother Eartl ! 
Yet that wild garden is wh ' we 
call "the weeds," so feared and 
fought by the farmer, so harriea and 
exterminated by the plow, scythe, 
spade and hoe. Yet that angler, if 
he is a botanist, is drawing heavily 
on his wild garden for much of his 
food. The "crinkle-root" is there, 
more delicious than celery when 
eaten with salt; the dwarf, or 
ground-nut, grows thick in the 
moist land of the adjacent "bot- 
tom." There are the red berries of 
the wintergreen, lush water-cresses; 
and the leaves of the swamp marigold, cowslips and 
trillium make fine "greens" when boiled in his tiny 
camp kettle and "dashed" with salt and vinegar The 
dells are thick with several kinds of ferns, waving in 
their green and mystery of refreshing plumes and 
spires; and their white roots are delicious eating. Of 
course there are the aromatic twigs of the birch and 
sassafras to browse upon, The brier-patches often 
grow to the water's edge, yielding several kinds of 
berries ready to be picked and eaten fresh, with sugar. 
The black-red and' purple of the wild cherry is often 
seen. Wild grapes gleam from amid the green of their 
\ine&,. like' pointed glass. And the wild crab-apple is 
quite as fully a globe of sunshine as the orange or the 
peach. The best tea I ever tasted was made with 
wild chicory. Thoreau liked the tea made by steeping 
hemlock leaves. An outing with one who knows the 
gastronomic possibility of the wild plants, is a revelation. 
And there is more of loveliness in the "weeds" 
around that bass-fisherman in the picture than he 
could discover by studying and searching for it all 
his life. 
The master artists loved and painted such "weeds." 
Titian, in his "Bacchus and Ariadne," decorated his 
foregrounds with the blue iris and columbine, and 
said there was more of intricacy of form, light and 
shadow in a single tuft of grass, than any painter could 
depict in a lifetime. Raphael expended months of 
alert, careful work in painting the sinuous leaves and 
blossom clusters of the common colewort and ox- 
eyed daisy. See the engravings of his "Charge to 
Peter" and "The Miraculous Draught of Fishes." 
Hear Maeterlink about the "weeds": . 
"They live on, audacious, immortal, untameable! 
They have remained similar to what they were a hun- 
of strange shapes, as if to invite us to examine them. 
Star-shaped, heart-shaped, arrow-shaped, fretted, 
fringed, cleft, furrowed, serrated, sinuated; in whorls, 
in spires, in tufts, in wreaths endlessly expressive, de- 
ceptive, fantastic, never the same from footstalk to 
blossom, they seem perpetually to tempt our watch- 
fulness, and take delight in outstripping our wonder." 
So, too, the poets love and describe them: 
"Cuckoo gossips, never quiet, 
Blossoms revel, blossoms riot. 
Every breeze abrim with fragrance 
From the hill and valley vagrants. 
Roses in the tangled coppice; 
Privet, pimpernel and poppies; | 
Harebell, thyme, in purple stretches, ; , 
Vervain, violets and vetches; , 1 
And through all, above and under, ! 
Something moving like a wonder, 
Something vigorous and vernal, 
Evanescent, yet eternal." 
So we learn that God is in these still, small voices, 
and strive for humility and insight as 
we realize what nature is to the far- 
piercing, worshipping, beholding eyes 
of the really great artist or poet — that, 
as Melanchthon said: "The humble 
ones are the giants of the battle." 
The best modern analyst of poetry, 
W. J. Courthope, stated in his lectures 
at Oxford, that Homer was the great- 
est poet, because he best saw that the 
humblest things have a divine life of 
their own. No wonder that the Greek 
name for the earth was Beauty. No 
wonder that as we see this fair stream 
at Long Eddy, with its cloud-ranges 
massed in scarlet and pearl, its hills 
so stately and far-reaching, we become 
dazed, and the eye can look no more 
for gladness. 
HARMONIES. 
dred thousand years ago. They have not added a fold 
to their petals, re-ordered a pistil, altered a shade, 
invented a perfume. They keep the secret of a myste- 
rious mission. They are the indelible primitives. The 
HAPPINESS. 
soul is theirs since its origin. They represent, in short, 
an essential smile, an invariable thought, an obstinate 
desire, of the earth. 
"That is why it is well to study them. They have 
evidently something to tell us. Let us not forget that 
they were the first, with the sunrises and sunsets, with 
the springs and autumns, with the songs of birds, * 
* * to teach our fathers that there are beautiful 
things in this world of ours." 
Thus, our greatest living writer about nature. And 
that greater (alas! now silent) beholder, Ruskin, says 
of these same "weeds": 
"The leaves of the herbage at our feet take all kinds 
Our camp comrade yet uses the 
tamarack poles, and has caught three 
bass, and dressed them. There is an 
odor of boiling cofTee in the air. Twi- 
• light is settling on the scene as sup- 
per is eaten. Cigars are a comfort 
after a day of such scrutiny of the 
small things right about us. No ex- 
travagant fish stories are told, and 
there is no whisky drank, no liquid 
"fish-bait" or "snake-bite" tolerated. 
It is the crying duty of all true ang- 
lers to rebuke drunkenness in camps, 
so often used against them as a re- 
proach, and so often deserved. To 
emphasize this, attention is asked to 
the most tremendously important and 
vital fishing- story that has oc- 
curred, or that possible can occur, -in 
the annals of mankind. 
Read, carefully, the last chapter of 
the Four Gospels, that essence of Scripture. It is not 
mere history, no Enic Poem. It is fact, never more 
imperatively demanding attention than now — the last 
earthly life of the already crucified and risen God Man. 
and His parting plea to us as He 
partook of the fish that were His 
last food on earth. 
Seven disciples — rude, roughly at- 
tired fishermen — had cast their 'nets 
all night in the Sea of Tiberias. 
Dawn had lighted the solemn, en- 
circling hills; but the nets had gath- 
ered no fish. Then, just before leav- 
ing the earth, He appeared on the 
shore and called to them, directing 
that the nets be cast on the other 
side of the ship. Even before the 
nets were hauled, Simon knew Plis 
voice, girded his rough fisher s coat 
about his loins, cast himsell, naked, 
into the water, and swam a hundred 
.vards to shore. There he found his 
Master, and a coal fire, where fish 
were cooking even while the nets 
were yielding one hundred and fifty- 
three large fish. 
Think of that open-air scene in 
Palestine — of the fish, of our Lord's 
question: "Simon, lovest thou me?" 
and of his command: "Feed my 
sheep"; and then marvel in humili- 
ation that after almost two thousand 
years of human progress and boasted 
civilization, with church spires point- 
ing heavenward, and faith-incense 
burning on myriads of family altars 
throughout Christendom — yes, with 
His love and pleading now even 
more fresh and vital, and with the 
marvelous beauty of the golden 
simimer brooding over all our ang- 
ling waters — think that as the stars 
of heaven shine and beckon, so many 
— . men who call themselves anglers, 
should, by some strange travesty on 
the pursuit of happiness, delight in 
being false and drunken! It is a miracle of miracles — 
infinitely sad and tragic! 
He said: "Bring ye the fish that ye have caught." 
Brother anglers, if we will not do that, at least we 
should not crucify Him anew. The comfort is great 
that sport becomes, yearly, more and more a life of 
love and insight, and less and less one of orgies and 
untruth. 
But my sleepy chum is scolding over the attempt of 
his sinner tent-mate to sermonize, and we "turn in" to 
continue our good time in the morning. 
L, F. Brown. 
