^8^ 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
[Oct. II, 1902. 
low up this snowshoe trail until you come to the camp. 
I Avill run doAvn the trail and pick up your pack where wc 
left it at the forks before we went into the moose yard." 
The Klondike Camp. 
Charlie and Jack were at the camp ahead of us and 
husy making ready for the night. Jack had brought down 
a pack of meat from the moose which Adam had killed 
the day before, and had now gone back for another load. 
He reported "blackcat" sign at the carcass, and said he 
had been trying to kill a sable with a snowball, since he 
did not take his rifle with him. The fur of a country 
collects from some distance about any animal killed in 
this way. and it is near a kill that the best takes of fur 
are usually made. 
We all fell to, in order fo make things comfortable for 
the night, not an easy thing to do, for the little square 
box-like shack was cold and half-full of snow, and the 
vigorous little sheet iron stove set everything afloat as it 
began to melt out the interior. We cut some boi%hs, 
spread out the fresh moose skin upon them, laid in a 
good store of wood, and then Charlie opened up his grub 
box. Tea and biscuit and fresh moose meat soon caused 
us to_ forget our troubles. We could not all sleep during 
the night, for one must stay up to keep the fire. I confess 
to a shameful dereliction, for when at length I thought it 
humanly possible for me to serve a turn, Adam calmly in- 
formed me that it was so near morning that I might just 
as well keep on sleeping! 
Snowshoe Tfaosportatios. 
Next day was Sunday, our second Sunday in the wilder- 
ness. We considered it better under the circumstances 
10 go back tp. Bathurst camp, and hence early in the morn- 
ing we started back over the frightful Klondike trail. 
There was about a half-mile of very hard snowshoeing 
here, since the angle was about 45 degrees and the snow 
wet and slippery. The logs and even the bare ground 
were now beginning to show through, for a general thaw 
\vas taking away the snow very fast. Charlie and Jack 
came behind with big packs. I didn't hear either of them 
complaiii that his pack was heavy, or that his toes hurt 
him in his snowshoes, but when we got over the ridge and 
within a mile or so of camp, I rested Charlie for a bit of 
tlie trail, taking his pack. 
"Now r think I'll carry your pack on home for the lasC 
mile." I said to Jack. The latter grinned amiablv and 
said that I had better not. "Try it," said Charlie," like- 
wise grinning, and then I saw all that this yoUng giant 
bad been doing all the time so quietly. When I put my 
hands into the straps of the pack I could hardly lift it clear 
of the log where it was lying. He had over too pounds of 
moose meat, it having been his fortune as usual to draw 
ihe heaviest pack in the bunch. Nettled at their mirth. I 
swung into the pack, and indeed carried it down to the 
cabin, but I had to rest half a dozen times. Jack had 
never set it down at all all the morning. It is one of the 
\\ onders of the woods to me how these men can carry 
such loads on their backs, or pull them on the sleds. 
All the way out and back on this little side hunt we 
had been in among the caribou, and as we came back we 
noticeod that they were making more trails. These 
creatures had been feeding in among the slashings left by 
the lumbermen of the adjacent camp. How many there 
were near us we could not guess, but we did not see any. 
Nervy Miofc. 
An odd little incident happened at the camp, as we dis- 
covered when we returned. Bill Powers, a nearby lum- 
ber foreman, told us that he had gone down to the camp 
while we were away and stopped to make himself a cup 
of tea on our stove. As he sat there eating, a mink 
crawled out from between the logs under the kitchen 
table, climbed up on the table and made away with a 
p.ece of meat which was lying there in the pan already 
prepared for the next meal. "He sat up there just as 
bold and sassy as you please," said Power, "and I just 
sat and looked at him. I reached for a stick and then 
he ran, but not until then." 
"I'll get him," said Charlie, much incensed at these 
hberties taken with his culinary arrangements. We'll just 
have his hide on a stretcher before morning; now you 
watch." 
So he set so many steel traps around the cabin that it 
was not safe to go around bare-footed, and found pieces 
of meat all around the place which the mink had hid. 
"He was doing a good business here," said Charlie. The 
guilty, however, was not long to prosper. About midnight 
Charlie, who had been sleeping with one ear open, heard a 
click and a squeal, and there was Mr. Mink. He skinned 
him before breakfast the next morning. 
Gives Up the Moose. 
By this time I was beginning to get reconciled to the 
thought of failure so far as killing a moose was con- 
cerned. The weather was clearly against us, as well as 
the general fortunes of the chase. We knew that this 
thaw would certainly be followed by a sharp freeze, and 
any moose hunter knows that a noisy crust is fatal to 
all hope of success in hunting so wary an animal as the 
moose. I did not break my heart over the prospect of 
failure, for the killing of a moose was only one of my 
purposes, but I could see that it was worrying Adam 
a great deal, it being his habit to sit around and think and 
not talk much under such circumstances. I told him not 
to mind, as it surely was not his fault that we had' not 
killed our moose. Surely we had seen abundance of 
signs every time we had gone out. 
"It does beat all," said Adam, "how sometimes when 
you want a moose the worst way in the world, you can't 
set him, I would have bet anything in the world we 
would have a head hung up long before this. I'll tell you 
what we 11 do. We'll make another side trip and go over 
to our Moose Brook camp. That's about nine miles from 
here, and the trail is hardly so heavy as the Klondike 
trail. Iheres always moose over in there, and it's right 
near there that we have our 'Caribou Hole,' a sort of 
hck, where we always can get a caribou in the fall when- 
ever we feel like it. The caribou will not be there now, 
but we ought to get a moose." 
We arranged it as above, and although a rain gave us 
a bad bit of weather during the night, and although snow 
began to fall on thg folloxvip^ morning, wt packed up ^i^d 
started once more for a tramp, Adam, Jack and I making 
up the party. We took our toboggans with us for part 
of the distance, and found the shoeing good, though soft 
with the new fallen snow. It was two and a half miles to 
a shallow mud lake or "bogan" which was now a vast 
expanse of white. The water was rising over the ice, and 
we tramped in slush, pulling the sled after us for about a 
mile, until we came to the Nipisiguit River, along which 
k- strung the Bathurst chain of lakes. Finally we crossed 
the last of these lakes, and came upon the main stream 
near a bend, where Mr. Mclntyre had killed a caribou in 
the early fall. Here there was plenty of "blackcat" sign, 
and the carcass of the caribou had been much mauled 
about. Barring anything better, we set a bear trap for 
this blackcat and so went on our way. 
Making a Bridge. 
Now I saw an instance of the shiftiness of the good 
woodsman. Before us lay an open river, across which 
we must fare in order to ascend the Moose Brook trail. 
Without pausing for much deliberation, Adam and Jack 
got out their potent little New Brunswick axes and fell 
to work fellng a clump of three fir trees which stood near 
the brink. These crossed to within a few yards of the 
other side of the stream. Jack made his way to the last 
boughs and with a few steps and a jump was out upon the 
ice, which luckily held, thence to the other shore. We 
followed him as best we might, all going under pack now, 
and leaving the toboggan at the river. 
We got four miles of very fair snowshoeing, through 
an easily ascending country and over a fairly good trail. 
That is to say, there were not more than fifty or sixty 
logs crossing any 100 yards, which is good going in New 
Brunswick. 
"I notice that the trouble with city people is that they 
can't pick up their feet," said Adam, as he strode over a 
three-foot log. It was not any trouble for either him 
or Jack to pick up his feet, and they picked them up so 
consistently and rapidly that they got into camp some 
minutes ahead of me. The last three-quarters of a mile 
of this trail was through a frightful swamp, where the 
big thaw had set everything afloat. The shoes broke 
through the covering of white continually, and getting 
wet in the water below, froze thereafter, resembling 
nothing in the world so little as decent snowshoes. 
Making Camp in the Snow. 
It was about 3 o'clock when we reached this camp, after 
nine or ten miles of travel. We had seen abundant moose 
Sign as we came along in the afternoon, and Adam, while 
temporarily 100 yards or so ahead on the trail, saw one 
big moose which he thought was a cow. When I first 
noted him he was squatted down, looking at this moose, 
which stood in turn regarding him, not more than sixty 
yards away. "That's the biggest cow moose I ever saw 
in my_ life," said he, and we found its track bore out his 
assertion. Later we had every reason to believe that this 
cow was not a cow at all, but a bull which had shed its 
horns. 
While Adam and Jack were getting things ready for 
camp that night they gave what I considered to be the 
best exhibition of axmanship I ever saw in my life. 
There is no better, indeed not so good an axman in the 
world, as the genuine New Brunswicker. The New 
Brunswick ax is not like the American ax. It has a 
narrow blade, being shaped in the form of a true wedge, 
and hung if anything with a little slant inward. These 
narrow-bladed, keen axes have a wonderful cutting power. 
I never .saw trees fall with such rapidity in my life. They 
were big trees, solid frozen birch trees, their sap turned 
to ice and hard enough to chip an ax, one might think: 
3'et they fell into sections rapidly under the assault of 
these two skillful axmen. Our camp was but an open- 
faced lean-to, provided with a bough bed, it is true, but 
with nothing in front excepting all outdoors, and naught 
above its outer opening except the sky, from which there 
now descended steady additions to the snow all about. In 
front of this open shack and leaning against the bank of 
snow which we had thrown up in our excavations, Adam 
now arranged two big logs of birch, each perhaps fifteen 
inches through. Then he cut two "hand logs," perhaps a 
foot in diameter and three feet long. Across these he 
piled his dry pine and his split birch, cut into lengths of 
three or four feet. 
"Now j'ou set this afire." said he, "and as your pine be- 
gins to burn up your green birch, you will see that the 
coals will fall down in between the logs and make a bed 
It's from this bed of coals that the steady heat comes. 
I'll show you that we can keep comfortable here to-night." 
And so we did, thanks to the kind faithfulness of these 
big friends, who took their turns at the fire. A fire prop- 
erly built in this way will do fairly for about two hours. 
Along toward morning the end logs had to be replaced 
and one of the back logs renewed. It was very cold this 
night, five below zero, yet we slept well under our scanty 
covering. On the day previous Jack had gotten a we"t 
foot by breaking through into the brook, and he quietlv 
informed us that he had frozen one of his toes. I noticed 
that for a time he took off his shoepack and traveled in 
his stockings, an old device of the true snowshoer when 
he finds his feet are getting cold. Yet I did not hear 
either him or bis father complain about sore feet, nor did 
any one kick on the breakfast, which was composed of 
biscuit, butter and tea. 
"I notice that a man can go out on these short trips." 
said Adam, "and live on buns and tea, and no meat, and 
he can stand it just as well for three or four days as if he 
were eating more heartily. Then he goes back to camp 
and eats a big square meal, and he's all right again. I 
rather think it's well for a man to go light on his feed 
once in a while." 
On this trip I was wearing my flat bows again, and the 
genuine New Brunswick snowshoe tie. I calmly advised 
Adam that the New Brunswick straps were man-killers, 
and that I didn't expect to get back to camp with a toe 
to my name. He repeated his kind advice that a fellow 
who needed toes ought not to come out in the woods, and 
we let it go at that. 
Croat 
The next morning dawned bright and cold, and, as we 
had feared, with a simply frightful crust upon the snow. 
"It's m use to fiunt," paid Adpfn, "bw^ I su|>pose we'll 
have to go through the motions," and he sighed dismally. 
The beauty of the morning almost made up for our fore- 
doomed failure. The air was keen and brilliant. The' 
snowshoeing, although noisy, was now excellent. We: 
struck good bull sign in less than three-quarters of a 
mile from the camp, and found where moose had vardcd 
before_ the thaw. This thaw seemed to have set all the 
game in the country moving, and had apparently changed 
Its habits, Had it not been for this big soft spell we' 
should have killed our moose before this time. As it 
was, we simply went through the motions of the hunt, as '; 
Adam had said. We found a fresh moose trail presentlj', 
and in time jumped this one, a good big cow. Following,, 
this, we circled and came up over the top of a grand big 
hill. We saw any quantity of caribou sign in the thicket, 
on the steep mountain side, and we were satisfied that' 
our cow moose was somewhere in that thicket, for we had 
circled her trail and come back to the place where we had 
first jumped her. We felt sure also that there was a bull 
somewhere in that circle, for we had seen any quantity oi' 
bull sign in the hardwood ridge above and below our 
camp. It was, however, little use to hunt, and at nooni 
we decided to go back to camp. Over our buns and tea 
we suddenly came to the conclusion that the most sensible 
thing we could do would be to go back to Bathurst, since \ 
the snowshoeing was so good and the hunting so poor that 
It would hardly warrant our staying. Our tremendous.! 
appetites made great inroads on our grub, and we had ! 
scarcely enough left to last until the next morning, while 1 
the hunting was practically at an end. 
We started back across the wretched Moose Brook 
swamp, and made it over more comfortably than we had 
feared, though we all got wet feet by breaking through 
the crust into the water below, which had not been 
reached by the chill of the air through the protecting 
blanket of snow. We saw at least a dozen fresh caribou 
signs, or animals which had crossed our trail since the 
day before, and we saw very much sign of sable, but ' 
met no further adventure save that Adam broke one of 
his beloved pair of snowshoes. In springing across a ' 
httle open place he landed square on the crust of tha 
ice with toe and heel of the shoe, and his foot went right 
on through, carrying with it a straight break across both 
the bows. He did not cuss very much. "If it had been a i' 
broken leg, it would have been much worse," said he. In- i 
deed, a broken leg in the winter wilderness would be 
pretty near the same thing as a death warrant. 
We crossed the Nipisiguit River this time on the ice 
without much trouble, though Jack broke in and wet his 
leg up to the thigh. None the less he philosophicallv 
chmbed out and took the trail down to see whether the 
blackcat had gotten into the trap or not. Pie reported 
tha>t the cat had run all over he trap, but was not heavy 
enough to spring it. When we got through with our 
trapping operations and had the big bear trap lying safely 
on the toboggan. Ave started out for a swift run on the 
ice m order that Jack migh not entirely freeze his feet. As 
a matter of fact, although the thermometer was very much 
below zero, he did not freeze at all. So muph for 'the in- 
destructible quality of the thoroughbred ^nter, and for 
the virtue of abundant New Brunswick wool. I had not 
yet heard a whimper from anybody. These men were as 
big and strong as the hills about them. It certainly is 
restful to meet such human beings once in a while. 
At length we reached Bathurst camp once more, and 
found Charlie in the act of getting ready for supper.' He 
had had a tramp himself that day, a little matter of fifteen 
miles or so, on his trapping line over on Nictor Lake. 
When he first started out he broke clear through the ice 
and_ came near "getting in for good," as he expressed it, 
having to come back to camp and change his clothing 
before he could go on across. Charlie had seen eight cari- 
bou on that da}', and said he could have killed one with- 
out the least trouble in the world. 
WarTalfc. ^ 
At breakfast on the moriring of Dec. 18 we held a gen- 
eral council of war. Adam was looking mighty blue, and 
I felt sorry for him, he felt so bad about our bad luck. 
I explained to him how foolish this was, since no one 
had been at fault and since in such weather conditions 
no hunter in the world could possibly hope to Idll a 
moose, no matter how abundant they were. 
We now took up the question of the trip south across 
the unknown country between Adam's chain of camps 
and those of Henry Braithwaite, on the Miramichi side 
of the divide. I told Adam that I had no doubt what- 
ever that if we stayed a week or so here at Bathurst wc 
should kill our moose without difficulty, as the weather 
was bound to change. He wanted me to go with him 
up to his Upsalquitch camp, where there was splendid 
moose and caribou ground, and thence to go out to the 
railroad at Bathurst, about eighty miles from our present 
camp. I told him I should be glad to see his country 
and knew .that we would get our game, but if I did so "l 
would be only doing what all of his customers had done, 
since it was no extraordinary thing to kill a moose and a 
caribou in that country. On the other hand, I explained 
to him, if we could really succeed in making it across the 
divide, and come out in the Miramichi country in an en- 
tirely different region from that where we had gone in, 
we should surely, from a newspaper man's point of view 
at least, be doing a better stroke of business. In other 
wofdS; much as I hated to sacrifice Adam's professional 
pride in the matter, I determined to give up my moose for 
the sake of the story. Adam, big-hearted and generous 
as he is, at last agreed to this. 
"What do you say, boys?" said he. "It means all of 
us, and it means all that all of us can do. There will be 
a heap of hard work in getting over there, if we ever do 
get over at all. Now I will go if the rest of you want to, 
but we won't ask any one to go who don't feel like it." 
It hardly need be said that Charlie and Jack fell promptly 
into line, and thus it was determined. 
I had now practically said good bye to my chance for a 
moose, yet none the less looked ahead with a great deal of 
interest to the rest of our journey. The days were now 
slipping by very fast, and I felt it was taking considerable 
chances to start out into an unknown country so late in 
the game. Nothing venture, however, nothing have, so we 
let it stand as agreed. 
On the following day Adam took three steel traps and 
trotted <iowp the lakes thre? or four miles to set 0«t 
