i4 
trout about or leaving that to the still moving fish below. 
Now, with the rod between the thighs, the other hand is 
slowly brought down to inclose the fish, and simultaneous- 
ly it is seized and a finger thrust into the mouth to meet 
a thumb in the gill slit. But noAv the rested nether fish 
takes part, giving a vicious tug at the leader and — Shade 
of Isaak Walton, there are two of them below ! Three at 
a cast! Can they be landed? Luckily, at this critical 
moment, the hook of the dropper fly is disengaged and 
trout number one is quicldy in the canoe. Now the fight 
is on again, fast and furious, for a few plunges. What 
chances were taken in landing that dropper trout 1 A net ! 
A net ! My kingdom for a net ! After more play, till 
there seems little more life left in the two trout, the mid- 
dle fly is relieved of its shining game in much the same 
way, and the third beauty only remains. Cautiously ho 
is worked near to midships, the canoe tilted to the danger 
point, and with a hand on the leader, at just the right 
moment, he is led with a little lift and swing over into the 
canoe. 
Now their necks are pierced and they are weighed 
and admired. The middle fly held a plump one-pounder, 
while the snapper held the heavyweight of the three. He 
weighed one pound six ounces. The place of the cast 
must be well rested by this time. A repetition of these 
successful tactics results in a double at the first cast, and 
by rare good luck, with much time and care, they are 
landed. Five trout at two casts! Who will believe it? 
No one, perhaps. However, there they are, arid that's 
the way they were caught. 
At each of our several subsequent visits to this favored 
pool, fish were taken, but after the first two or three 
days the exercise of the highest art was required, and at 
the last, only real live mooseflies (caught on the camp 
windows) on tiny hooks, attached Avith thinnest gut and 
dropped Avith lightest nicety, availed. But that's just 
wherein the real sport of fly-fishing consists. Who cares 
to catch them when no skill is required? 
The memory of the fifth lazy evening over the dam in 
that "camp of proved desire and known delight" will 
linger long. The city dweller, refreshed with a plunge in 
the cool river, well-sustained by a meal of crisp trout 
garnished with wild strawberries and condensed milk, sat 
tilted back in the light smudge smoke, enjoying a cigar 
and gazing out over the wide river valley across which 
streamed the level rays of the moon rising from behind 
old Basin Mountain. A cool breeze was blowing, laden 
with life-giving oxygen and the odor of balsams. The 
night hawks (bull bats) were booming and wheeling in 
great circles overhead or swooping fearlessly down to 
hover over the sun-dried chips of the yard. Two little 
screech owls answered and called to each other at inter- 
vals out of the obscurity of the valiey. It was a situation 
and a scene to fill the soul with calm and wholesome 
thoughts. 
The next day was one of toil. The canoe and a small 
outfit were worked up the rocky bed of the Little Spencer, 
now at low-water pitch. Paddling a little, poling, push- 
ing, pulling and lifting, coaxed the outfit past the last 
rapid, through the last pool, and finally over the dam and 
afloat on the clear, sparkling waters of Spencer Lake. 
Forest-girt home of the trout and togue, where few in- 
deed molest or even intrude. There are a very few cabins 
on the twenty-five or thirty miles of shores which are 
occasionally visited by sportsmen, but the evidences of 
man's visitation are very few. No steam whistle ever 
rivalled the loon's wild cry and no sailboat, even, has 
ever startled the bald eagle that keeps watch and ward 
over this lake of the woods. Nestled among its rugged 
mountains and smiling in the sunshine or rushing on the 
rocks of the south shore in miles of indigo waves tipped 
with white under a stor.my sky, it is ever a wild thing in a 
wild setting. A couple of hundred yards from the shore 
is a low log camp, sans floor, sans stove, sans everything 
in the way of furnishings, except a big square hole in 
the roof, and under it some big stones on which to lay 
logs for the camp-fire. Ah! The glad days on the 
Spencer and the delightsome evenings at the crackling 
camp-fire called up by the thoughts of that old camp in 
the woods ! Dear old Phil ! The college chum and camp 
companion of those days whose ready wit, never-failing 
good nature, and keen insight into all the moods and 
ways of nature, added so much to the pleasant memories 
of camp life, has finished his work here and gone into the 
great beyond. In his own words, "Pax vobiscum." 
On stum.bling through the low, famihar doorway of 
this camp, somebody's duffle was found scattered about. 
Is there no neck of the woods so securely hidden away in 
these wilds that the ubiquitous camper has not found it? 
Well, whoever you are, they probably won't refuse the 
usual hospitality of the backwoods— i. e., to share with the 
stranger. Firewood and fresh boughs for a bed are 
dragged in out of the gathering darkness and arranged 
under a tight-looking part of the roof. Then comes 
supper, and later a smoke, as one lies stretched on the 
blanketed boughs, gazing at the flickering camp-fire that 
throws dancing shadows into the far corners. How is it 
that an Havana so enhances its fragrance by being en- 
joyed under such circumstances? How still it is! 
Plump ! gently strikes a soft body on a corner of the 
roof, followed by the scratching of small nails and_ a 
scampering of little feet along the eaves. A flymg squir- 
rel, doubtless. Wonder where those owls are that used to 
practice their hooting lessons in the surrounding tree- 
tops. The fire had died down and the only inhabitant, 
as he fancied, of Range V., No. 3, must have been nearly 
asleep. What's that? Approaching footsteps— from the 
direction of the lake— two of them! What a thumping 
and stumbling on the rough path! "Ah! Here's the 
camp !" says one. "What !" as he sees the smoke. Then 
they tramp steadily around to the door, and it creaks 
back on its wooden hinges. "Hello' Room for one more 
to-night?" This is sent out from the blankets behmd 
the "deacon's seat." Then followed the renewal of the 
fire, a glimpse of each other's faces, introductions, the lay- 
ing aside of creels and rods, supper for the hungry, in- 
quiries anent the route down the Spencer and up the 
Dead River, where Arnold's route in '75 is struck, etc. 
With the production of some information, maps and 
cigars, the acquaintance with Messrs. Nichols and Whip- 
ple is on. Not ordinary, coimtry rustlers these, out for a 
few days' fishing, but men of discernment and informa- 
tion, apparently. While Nichols is drying his only 
trousers at the fire, Whipple, also wet to the hips, un- 
I^OREs'f And s'tream. 
packs his creel and tenderly takes out a spray of white 
flowers wrapped in leaves and protected from the trout by 
twigs. He .shakes it out and holds its curious white 
flowers to .the light, wondering what variety of orchid it 
is_, and suggests that it is one of the eighty-odd varieties 
of Gyrostachys, and shows us how the pinkish pistils, bent 
in a bow and pointing outward, may be released by a 
touch to fly upward and inward like a spring to touch 
their ends pollen laden to the upright stamen. 
Not till next morning, when, breakfast over, we were 
about to separate, two to go down the Spencer to camp 
and fish, while one went up the lake to strike across coun- 
try four miles to King and Bartlett lakes, did it come out 
that these were young professors, teachers of French 
and higher mathematics in a New York college. Being 
thorough woodsmen and ready to rough it to the fullest 
extent, they had struck through the forest from Jackman 
on Moose River, for some point on the stage line on 
Dead River, a tramp of nearly fifty miles through an 
almost trackless forest. There may have been a lingering 
desire to know more of these manly, modest nature lovers, 
who revelled in old French literature and differential 
calculus, these doctors of philosophy who knew the birds 
and flowers on sight, and never doffed shoes or garments 
in crossing a ford or fishing a stream, who toted their 
duflle and tent on their backs and struck through, without 
map or arms, from one river valley to another unknown 
river. Be that as it may, the stay at King and Bartlett 
lakes was short, and the second afternoon following found 
the three back on the banks of the Spencer, the profes- 
sors declining an invitation to share the accommodations 
of the camp over the dam on Dead River. They pre- 
ferred their tent, they said, so, directed to a camp site on 
the strawberry meadow, they were left. 
That night it rained and blew so that the brooks more 
than tripled their volume. The professors, their tent hav- 
ing been blown down, appeared at the camp. Here two 
"vyeeks passed all too quickly, and a chance acquaintance 
soon developed into a mutual regard and friendship that 
the lapse of time has only served to strengthen and per- 
fect. Many were the pleasant fishing trips and experi- 
ences crowded into that fortnight. On one of our trips 
together, that to the mouth of Heald Brook, a tributary 
of the Little Spencer, some four miles from camp, as 
the trail led through a beautiful hardwood growth, a 
peculiarly sweet, weird bird song was heard. A love for 
the birds, vacations in their haunts and ordinary observa- 
tion, with some reading, serve to acquaint one with the 
commoner bird notes and their producers. Here was a 
note not heard except in the deep north woods. An 
elusive little sprite he must be, for many a chase has he 
led off the trail, sometimes so far that the dropped pack 
or rod has been hard to find again. Only tlae merest 
glimpses of himself would he allow. So he came to be a 
sort of tantalizing, haunting thing, and his gay, cheery 
song took on a fancied note of taunting. None seemed 
to know him, so for three summers he had mocked all 
effort to discover his identity. "Now, Whipple, you seem 
to know all the birds, whose song is that?" "That must 
be the winter wren, a common breeder in this latitude, but 
rarely seen away from the deep forest." So it was solve^, 
and from that time on his song lost all hint of mockei^ 
and became the glad, wild music of the midsummer- 
woods. 
At the mouth of Heald Brook, overhung with alders or 
banked with tough, wiry "tea wood," the matted roots of 
which form the surface of so many of our northern 
bogs ; it was not easy to force one's way to within cast- 
ing distance of the water. In eagerly working his way 
out on the bog, Whipple broke the middle joint of his 
rod and was hors de combat. However, the stained old 
fly-book containing things other than flies, was along, and 
soon two figures were seated on a log busy with knife,, 
glue, qrtills, shellac and Avhipping silk, but dividing their 
attention with the mosquitoes. How the pests did bite !: 
They seemed to recognize that they coifld take a mean 
advantage. Meanwhile Nichols was evidently finding the 
trout. We could hear faint splashes and exclamations or 
chuckles of satisfaction from up the stream not intended! 
for our ears. He shouted down occasionally to find how 
the rod progressed, and even seemed at one time on the 
point of stopping his sport to come down to us till the 
rod should be finished, and no doubt, like Lowell in the 
Adirondacks, though not with the same motives, he 
"avoided to catch" when he could. Assured that the 
rod was nearly finished, however, he kept on and — filled 
his basket before he or any one else realized it. At a 
subsequent visit to this place he insisted, as though in 
some way to atone for his good sport, on paddling while 
the other two rods fished. 
Among the cherished mementoes of the chase and angle 
is a stick of white maple sapling picked up that day fresh 
gnawed and peeled on the beaver dam we found thrown: 
across Heald Brook. Lifting over, the big dome of wood 
and mud, the home of the little engineers was not far to 
seek. On this trip, too, Whipple explained on request 
that the so-called "tea wood" of the bog was a variety 
of Rhodora, probably Canadensis, and that it was a mem- 
ber of the same family — i. e., the heath family, as "Labra- 
dor tea," sometimes used by hunters and Indians in lieu of 
other wherewithal to "bile the kettle." The leaves of the bog 
Rhodora are similar in shape to those of the tea- plant, 
but the leaf of the "Labrador tea"' (Ledum) has a con- 
cave, brown, wooly nether surface, while the leaf of the 
Rhodora is smooth. 
At length the day for breaking camp came all too 
soon. Plans were made for a next summer's trip up the 
Kibby Stream. The professors tramped along up the 
Spencers nearly to the lake to help; with the canoe, which 
had been brought down for use in fishing. A shower 
coming up, the last cigars were ^'smoked as the three 
sat huddled close under the overturned canoe to avoid 
the raindrops. Not that the professors cared for a little 
wetting, but they wanted to be sociable with one who did. 
So, the shower over, with a handclasp and wishes of good 
will that were not empty words, the professors set out 
south to find their way to civilization by following Dead 
River, while the lone "fisher made the best of his way by 
land and water to the sporting camps at King and Bart- 
lett lakes, where the canoe found a ready purchaser in the 
person of the genial, heartjr proprietor. Next day a six- 
teen-mile tramp on a buckboard road returned the traveler 
to the land of sawed boards and paint, where travel by 
stage and rail is easy. _ Grapho. 
UvLY 12, 1902. 
"A Walk Down Sotjth," 
Editor Forest and Stream: 
I have read to tlieir conclusion, with unabated inter- 
est, the thirty-five chapters of Raymond S. Spears' "Walk 
Down South," a most misleading and insufficient title, for 
v/hich I would suggest "River Life in the Southwest" as 
a substitute. 
I infer that it is the atlthor's intention, and perhaps 
the purpose of the publishers of Forest and Stream, to 
issue these very valuable letters in book form. Such a 
book ought to sell like hot eakes in the river towns west 
of the Alleghanies, for the sketches cover phases of river 
life in the Southwest which I do not remember to have 
ever seen presented except in isolated bits. Added to 
M-ark Twain's steamboat experiences, they cover pretty 
much the entire fluviatile economy of the continental mid- 
way and its peculiar people, and add a chapter to the 
volume of distinctively "American Notes," to which 
Charles Dickens was pioneer contributor, and very un- 
generously received, too, at the time of wi-iting them. 
They are life photos of which the chance tourist, however 
favored, seldom secures more than transient glimpses.. 
I don't know of a book or subject that should command 
so wide or eager a market. The interested reader ought 
to be thankful to obtain so much grist at so small ex- 
pense of comfort. For my own part, I would not pro- 
voke my gorge to get the information which Mr. Spears 
has done in the only way in which it could be gotten— 
namely, to live with the men. In these fastidious later 
years of life, when I am grooming my appetite., I o'^ten 
wonder how my stomach coirld have ever retained what 
went into it in those years "when I went gipseying." 
Charles Hallock. 
— 
Montana's Buffalo. 
The Pablo-Allafd Hefd. 
(Concluded from lasi week^) 
The Pablo-AUard herd of buffalo consists this spring 
of about 360 individuals, divided as follows: 
Full-blooded buffalo 300 
Half-bred buffalo 60 
Quarter buffalo i 
361 
In 1898 the calves produced were 48 
In 1900 50 
In 190T SO 
It will thus be seen that the increase is y^xy rapid, and 
by proper attention and the frequent renewing of blood 
the herd should last and grow. The heifer drops her 
first calf at three years old and breeds thereafter for many 
years. The herd is now in charge Michel Pablo. 
The Conrad Herd. 
In the spring of 1901 the Conrad Brothers, of Kalispell, 
Mont., purchased some buffalo of Pablo and AUard estate. 
They were bought as a business venture, and the owners 
have since offered to dispose of some of them. They are 
kept near KaHspell in an inclosure of 240 acres. 
The herd consists of thirty-six full-bloods. The number 
of calves born in igoi Avas nine. Three calves and one 
cow died in calving, probably from injuries received in 
handling and driving on the way from Pablo's in early 
spring. There are eight bulls, one stag, eighteen cows 
and heifers, of which three are three-year-olds. The 
calves are dropped in May and June. None have been 
sold. 
One two-year-old bull was castrated. He went off by 
himself for some time until he had recovered. The fence 
which incloses the buffalo is about five feet high, with one 
wire at about three feet from the ground. The same fence 
would be required for domestic stock. 
They have been fed about fifty tons of timothy and 
grain hay. The buffalo seem to prefer the grain hay. 
They all look fat and thrifty. Some of the cows were 
commencing— April 5 — to shed their winter coats. Every- 
thing connected with the buffalo is in good shape. 
Mr. Ford, who 'personally attends to this herd, is an old 
Montana cattleman, and so thoroughly in sympathy with 
the anim.als that they 6ught to do well in his care. The 
public is not allowed to frighten or worry the buffalo, but 
interested persons will be given every opportunity to see 
the herd. The herd is run by business men, and informa- 
tion concerning it may be had from W. A. Conrad, Kalis- 
pell, Mont. 
Michel Pablo and his Heme. 
Michel Pablo is a half Blackfeet, half Spaniard, and 
•was born on the Great Plains. When he was quite 
young his parents moved to the Colville Reservation. 
His early life was one of hardship and rustle, and he 
seems to be a man who knows every phase of Western 
life. 
About 6 ft. 2 iti. in height, weighing about 240 pounds, 
without any spare flesh, active and pushing, he seems 
a man thoroughly awake and alive to all business veri- 
tures. His ranch is run like clockwork; a skilled Chi- 
nese chef runs the kitchen; two business-like men, a 
French-Canadian and a German, attend to the ranch and 
farm work; meals are had on time, horses curried night 
and morning, stables swept out, wagons, buggies and 
farm machinery under cover, fences and all buildings in 
good repair. Everything denotes push and progress. 
He has an elk park, and two cows, two bulls, and one. 
last year's calf occupy a well fenced twent3'-acre tract. 
I saw some wild geese, and some queer looking geese 
around the house. During our talk he told me he had 
some cross geese, between wild and teme. I forgot to 
examine them in my haste to catch the boat. 
He told me of having had a white mountain goat which 
would get upon an ordinary rail fence and walk the top 
rail for a quarter of a mile. Some hounds one day 
caught it away from home and killed it. He is now 
negotiating with parties in'the Northwest Territories for 
some antelope. 
