26 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
[July ii, ujoj. 
big crackers, cheese and apples, has been eaten; frying- 
pan and kettle are cleaned and "hung up" on convenient '1 
stubs of low limbs. The two tin plates, bone-handled 
knives and forks, and pewter spoons, are washed and "put 
away" in the soda-box. 
"Get out the pipes while I fill the bottle with spring 
water." 
"Nonsense; I go along!" 
Two unshaved old fellows in coarse camp clothes and 
old straw hats lie at full length on the gravel, and drink. 
"Cigars to-night. The boy brought a dozen from 
Stroudsburg." 
"All right. Which will you have, camp-stool or mat- 
tress?" 
The intermittently brightening ends of the lighted 
cigars, and the smoke from them, are added to the fin 
and smoke of the camp. Then, a long silence. The firt 
gets to the heart of its wood, bums more fervently, and 
they hitch their seats away from it. Another silence. 
"Great! ain't it. Bill?" 
"Sure !" 
"Regular old-fashioned rest and comfort !" 
"Sure. Gimme a light." 
To many and many a sportsman this camp-fire comrade- 
ship is the closest tie on earth. Men in town say they 
"know" each other. They should camp, and hobnob. 
There are no white collars and patent-leathers, no easy 
chairs of plush and leather, no deft servants, no walls 
frescoed by man. Even in camp, no two men can actually 
know each other, for no man really knows himself. 
"Wondering chie% at himself; 
Who can tell him what he is. 
And how join in human elf, 
Coming and past eternities?" 
But by the evening camp-fire, the great tides of such a 
friendship as this, powerful, unestranged, borne onward 
I ate of the manna showered down upon those who lov- 
ingly work for others. 
But the gypsy nature is inherent in each man. Here, 
as in town, necessity for each other has grown and 
ripened through all the slow years. 
As they fish or eat together in broad daylight, each 
would deny this with a jest. But here by the evening 
camp-fire, the full light of that necessity is tacitly ad- 
mitted. There are shining traces of it in the unconscious 
watchfulness for and anticipation of each other's needs, 
comforts, wishes; and swift meetings of eyes that have 
noted each other's steps through half a life-time. 
There is no human tie more close than this, binding 
old tent-mates. And how they talk! Old joys, old sor- 
rows, plans for the future, and achievements to be strug- 
gled for honorably man to man, are vividlv summoned 
by memory and ambition. ' 
The joys of the day's angling and canoeing are lived 
over again. How quickly night has come! How sur- 
prised they were to hear the bells at the farmhouses call- 
ing men to dinner ! The afternoon trains had seemed 
hours ahead of time ! 
Some night disturbance has set the unseen water-fowl 
over in the lagoon all a-cry, and babblings and quackings 
float to them on the night air. Low, ominous rumbles 
from over far western woods, where a storm is gathering. 
Silence again. 
"Have another cigar?" 
"Nope— time for bed. An' say. Bill !" 
"Well." 
"Don't you make a fool of yourself about me. It might 
make you sick. Let your family stay at the Gap, an' don't 
you jine 'em." 
Squeaky protests from the rubber mattresses, as they pull 
the blankets up to their chins. Bill soliloquizes : 
"An' I'm going after that miserable bass agin the first 
thing after breakfast." 
MTS. MINSI AND TAMMANY. 
"Then followed long letters from Mr. Babcock, 
Fisheries Commissioner of British Columbia, giving his 
views as to the value of salmon culture on the Pacific 
Coast. I confess that in view of the enormous natural 
production of salmon in those rivers, it is difficult not to 
agree with the conclusions of The Old Angler, who, at the 
end of another long letter in Forest and Stream of May 
i6, says: _ , ...^t 
From my private and official experience of seventy years 
among salmon fishermen, and from mv observation of the effects 
of over-fishing in all rivers of New Eiigland and eastern Canada, 
now so visible in the steadily decreasing catch of the Maritime 
Provinces, I regret to see the' same greedy system being pursned 
on the Pacific Coast and in British Columbia". Mr. Babcock con- 
ckides his letter by telling us that "the combined Fraser River 
and Puget Sound pack in 1901 was 2,400,606 cases of 48 pounds 
each, making 115,229,088 pounds," which, he says, is nearly half 
the annual pack of the world. Surely there can be no need of 
hatcheries on such rivers as these! 
If Commissioner Babcock, in view of the experience of Europe 
and eastern America, covering a period of over thirty years, 
expects to keep up this enormous catch by means of artificial 
culture, he is simply chasing rainbows, and I know not which 
most to admire, his calm indifference to the past history of 
salmon culture and the lesson it teaches, or his sublime faith in 
oodles of ova and figures of fry. Bvit 1 doubt if this last letter 
will make a convert of Mr. Marstoii, while I am quite sure that 
the "scientific gentlemen" will see in neither of them any reason 
for changing the opinion wliich a better knowledge of the litera- 
ture of salmon culture, both in Europe and America, has forced 
upon tliem. 
"Having elicited these opinions and facts from Ameri- 
can authorities, I think it would be very interesting and 
instructive to hear the views of pisciculturists in Europe, 
and to see if any facts can be adduced proving that sal- 
mon culture is improved and is itnproving the supply of 
salmon. I have always supposed that we could at least 
point to the Yorkshire Esk as a river in which salmon 
had become extinct which has been successfully restocked, 
but I am told this is at least doubtful." 
Canoe and Camp Life A.'on^ the 
Delaware River* 
XV.— Teat Mates.— Two Old ys. 
"For tribulation worketh patience, and patii....:e, experience, 
and experience, hope." 
"Friendship— one soul in two bodies." 
There is a growing tendency, as the sight and taste for 
nature-beauty become more and more keen, to not only 
love and be'with flowing water, but also with hills and 
mountains. And there is no better region in which to 
sludv all these than here at the Water Gap. After a break- 
fast 'in one of the hotels below, it is inspiring to follow 
the paths and penetrate the nooks of rills and fern- 
patches, rock and lichens, flower and foliage wealth, and 
to watch the cloud effects and the winding river, from far 
up on the sides of Mounts Tammany and Minsi. No- 
where can the Nature-lover realize rnore fully what I 
now desire to analyze— the twin musics of the human 
soul and the nature-soul, and their intertwined being 
and influence. 
It seems, when circumstances are favorable, as if there 
were no more really young boys than old boys. Close 
study of two such campers on the Delaware, demonstrates 
that they could scarcely have had fresher hearts or more 
gladness in the beauty of earth when they wore copper- 
toed boots and knickerbockers, than here in their tent 
about five miles "above" the Water Gap. Here is one of 
their dialogues : 
"Take it, or I will throw it into the river." 
"Throw, then ! I will not sweeten my coffee with our 
last lump of sugar." 
The small, white cube is split by the blade of a jack- 
knife; and a half goes into each cup. 
"There !" with. a growl. "Does that satisfy you ? How 
selfish in you to refuse the whole lump." 
An answering growl : "One should have taken the 
whole or none. You are that one !" 
The men are friends, grappled to each other "with 
hooks of steel" for thirty years. Nearly all of those 
summers have found them fishing and camping together. 
Deaths have occurred in their families. Each has 
known deadly jousts with untoward circumstances. 
Despite mutual help ; business ordeals have wrenched and 
scarred them, but the sheet-anchors of iron-true friend- 
ship have steadfastly held, always. Many life-battles 
have been lost, and but few won. Times of light and 
ease have been displaced by those of unhoused misery. 
There have been hours of vanity and conceited self- 
praise at success, and others that saw within their breasts 
the ghastly murder of hopes and yearnings. Hours when 
the tides of some great crisis for them surged and de- 
molished, when souls were whipped with scorpions and 
tried by flames, when palsied hands were lifted to skies 
of brass, and the sufferer felt like "tearing off the bandage 
and turning face to the wall !" And then the other stead- 
fastly encouraged with help, and brave, hopeful words, 
so grateful in times of dire need. 
Both are vigorous, resourceful, fairly contented, and 
always up to the elbows in business when at home. Here 
it is different. Watch and hear them this July night. 
There is no moon, but the sky is bespangled. Hills 
have lost themselves in twilights. Forest shadows are 
deep, and advance, but are driven back as flames dance 
over the log behind the camp-fire. Bellowing voices from 
a distant convention of bullfrogs! Cries and an occa- 
sional boom from invisible nighthawks aflight! Fire- 
flies in a meadow across the river! Far-away hoots of 
owls on the mountain down that other shore! Voices 
of the river are growing more distinct. Strange forest 
odors! Lazy stir and whisper of foliage! Dull, dim 
lustre cast over all by occasional flashes from low-lying 
clouds in the west, the faint pink of whose domes swiftly 
changes to purple and dark blue ! An hour ago they saw 
the white head-stones shining, in the sun, around the lit- 
tle church on the mountain across the river. Now they 
have faded from sight. 
The replenished camp-fire, whose lights can show un- 
earthly lines and expressions on the human face such as 
no other light discloses, has been merely smoking, its 
vapors lazily mounting through the leafage; but now 
it blazes up, showing two tanned, healthy, rugged faces 
below shocks of gray hair. 
The supper of fried fish and bacon, roasted potatoes, 
bj' like tastes, sympathies, and joys of their common daily 
and nightly lot, encompass them like the camp-fire's light. 
Life which engulfs both is the same to both. They sleep 
in the same tent, fish in the same canoe, eat and drink 
from the same rude dishes ; and as the night comes on 
they are separated only "by a step or two of dubious twi- 
light." which the camp-fire almost dissipates. 
The}' are not "good" men. Neither is a church mem- 
ber. They believe and rejoice in the unrest which has 
built nations and navies, cities and schools, factories and 
transportation lines. Like all actiA'^e men, each "has the 
devil in him bigger than a barrel !" Grown-up boys, their 
hearts young! Each, with such insight as has been given 
to him, gropes for truth, wondering, meanwhile, why God 
sent trouble into the world — that old question that al- 
most drove Goethe mad, and made him write "Faust." 
They have been nature-students, always with a growing 
sense of their own weakness and littleness. Both are 
well down on life's western slope. 
And each is a miniature counterpart or mirror of 
this Nature he loves so well — Nature "with all her vast 
contrivances of charm, her grand procession of the 
seasons, her many musics of loud diapasons, and low bab- 
blings, and clear, wild trills of bird-notes; her seas and 
lands, her cloudy splendors, her glancing lights and 
shades and darkling closes, her cold and snowy exalta- 
tions, and the warm mother's breast she keeps for her 
tired children." 
Both these men have sinned, have sometimes been 
drunk when oppressed with burdens too heavy to bear. 
Yet both have had the hands of practical charity, have 
lifted up and cheered those fallen by the way — waifs with 
pinched faces and bowed forms and tottering steps ; and 
thus they have found constant resurrection of peace 
through v/ork for others. They can be profane, but are 
ashamed of it. They have stood beside tired wives and 
mothers busy with household duties and mercies, and 
have held the hands of trusting children, "life's tenderest 
appeal to a man's fainting heart." And thus "the charmed 
cup of love and sacrifice never once ran dry," and th^ 
"Stop your talkin'. W^hat's that? Don't I believe we 
shall have a canoe and a tent, and a river with bass in it 
to catch, when we get to heaven? How do you ever ex- 
pect to get in there?" 
"St. Peter was a fisherman." 
"Well, he knows, right now, ho^v you swore when you 
lost that big one to-day. Good night." 
"Good night. Keep to your own side of the tent ; you 
shoved me clean through the side last night. It's goin' 
to rain, an' I want half these inside premises." 
"All right. If yer old bones get cold, just reach over 
an' take my extra blanket. I can't spare you either before 
the camp grub is et." 
"Better 'tend to your own roomatiz. Stop talkin'. 
This is a sleepin' tent. How good the mattress feels !" 
The camp-fire burns low, and is put out by the heavy 
rain that pounds on the tent, unheeded by the sleepers. It 
washes the exposed frying-pan and skillet a second time, 
and is followed by strong winds that start all the forest 
into a masked-ball dance. At five o'clock a frowsy, gray 
head is poked through the tent-flap, and a tanned face 
ynth keen, kind eyes, takes a quick survey of the morn- 
ing world under renewed sunshine. Cautious emergence 
from the tent, still gathering of dry wood, and the fire is 
renewed. He fills the small kettle, drags six potatoes 
from the bag, and puts them into the yet cold water, to 
"boil." Then he goes to the farm-house a half mile dis- 
tant, and gets milk, sugar, butter, and two loaves of bread. 
He walks around the tent on his return. 
"Poor old chap ! How he does snore ! Tired him out 
yesterday. He certainly is gettin' feeble !" 
The coffee-pot is placed on the fire, and there is a 
savory smell of frying fish and bacon. He shakes himself. 
"Blamed if I am hardly awake yet. These farmers cer- 
tainly do get up early. That one over there has milked, 
and driven seven cows to the pasture-lot on the hill. 
An' Bill not up yit." A tremendous yawn, and a shout : 
"Bill !" 
A sleepy protest from the tent. 
"Breakfast ready. Git up an' put on yer dress suit 
