214 
FOREST AND STREAM 
ISept. tg, 1903. 
A Garden Island of Champlain. 
BY ROWLAND E. ROBINSON. 
With illustrations by Rachel Robinson. 
In the Baie de Vasseaux of the old French explor- 
ers, not far from the mouth of the sluggish Little Ot- 
ter and that of the dear hill-born stream of Sungah- 
neetuk, lies Garden Island, an emerald set in crystal 
deeps. The massive rocks, red, green and brown, that 
uphold it, can be discerned through the limpid depths, 
stable and unchanged save by the slow erosion of the 
water, though near three centuries have passed since 
Sieur Champlain and his companions first set eyes 
upon it, when thev paddled southward with their war 
party of Abenakis" contemplating the country and see- 
ing "'on the east side, very high mountains capped with 
snow." . , ^ ^ 
Whence its name no one knows or whether it is har- 
den or Gardner, as it is sometimes called. Doubt- 
less the island had a good Indian name full of mean- 
ing, the "Island of the Fishing Place," or the "Smile 
of the Great Spirit," or the "Island of Blossoms. It 
is safe to assume that its original discoverer was no 
gardener. His wife, or wives, held that position in his 
simple establishment, and centuries ago, ^may have 
tended a few hills of corn among these rocks. He was 
a hunter and warrior, and to-day may be found an 
arrow point that he or some of his after-comers lost or 
let fly here. The island is well named, for though scant 
of earth for a garden, it is blossomy enough in early 
summer to have received the name from some visitor 
in a long ago June. I have seen it so white with 
bloom that at a little distance it looked as if the waves 
of all Petowbowk had stranded their foam on its 
rocky shore and tossed it into the shrubbery. Then, 
too, it has the delicate blush of wild roses, the glare 
of field lilies and the dull gold of lady slippers. _ 
Bill Bigelow, by courtesy and the untried possibili- 
ties of soap and water, a white man, certainly not an 
Indian further than dirt, laziness and basket-making go 
landed here and called every green thing upon this 
island a barbarous name. So intent were they on sci- 
ence that they did not see the waves dancing and toss- 
ing the images of the clouds, nor the sky arching over 
them from the Crouching Lion to Tahawus and tangl- 
ing its silver fleeces on their peaks, nor Split Rock 
Mountain and the green headlands stooping to the blue 
level of the lake, but they found a new variety of 
Brotvnii, and were happy. 
To-day the island is held chiefly by a party of crows, 
who, becoming aware of my intention of landing on 
their domain, alter some clamorous circling: overhead, 
go over to the mainland, beating the air with labored 
strokes. A sandpiper, on the shelving rocks, to which 
my prow points, balances himself on his slender stilts 
for a moment, and then skims the shore with down- 
ward-pointed wings, and a kingfisher launches from 
his perch on the outreaching arm of a cedar, and with 
his big head towing his body, or little body pushing 
his head, puts a girdle of clatter about the island. 
So, when my boat's bottom — keel she has none — 
"haunted by fishermen; 
to make him one, and too unhappy for a negro, 
strengthens this supposition. He complained of a 
pain, though one would never think he had li^fe enough 
to feel one, concerning which he drawled, "They tell 
me it's new-rology. I don't care if 't is, I c'n cure it 
when Garden Islan' blows aout." William has faith 
in the healing touch of nature, when she becomes ready 
to reach out her hand to him; and there is a largeness 
and happiness in his expression of faith— a whole island 
blossoming at once for him! 
After the manner of other adventurous voyagers, i 
coast about the island before entering upon it, to see 
what fashion of land it is and what its ports and 
whether there are enemies upon it, to oppose even 
with so much as ungentle speech. 
It is but a little patch of not more than two acres, 
counting its rocks and every foot of its thin soil. All 
its north shore is an escarpment of rock, a wall of 
noble masoniT. built to ward of¥ the north wind and its 
waves. Not many years ago it was crowned with a 
brave growth of cedars, but they have been cut down 
by cruder foes than wind and waves. Only one little 
cove, like a sallv port where one may land a boat on 
a shelving, rocky beach, or set forth on his voyage, 
breaks the solid bulwark. Here and there out of the 
seams of the wall, a harebell hangs by its slender 
cord, perhaps knolling water sprites inshore with a 
chime unheard by my dull ears. To me, it beckons 
Avith its graceful, noiseless swing. 
From this gray bulwark the surface slopes to the 
south shore, which slanting gently to the bay, invites 
invasion from this quarter. Up its mdme, when the 
south winds blow, the waves wash to the border of 
bushes, which mark the high water line. When the 
lake begins to fall, in early summer, a few rods off the 
eastern point, a reef or islet gets above the surface, and 
at very low water, another, still further to the east, 
both more barren than the nakedest boulder in an up- 
land pasture, for they have not even a lichen upon 
them. Once, when a comrade and I landed on the 
larger one and spattered it with the scales of the fish 
we dressed there, we named it the Isle of Scales, but 
the name did not stick to it much longer than the 
scs-lcs did. 
Inside the steadfast boundary of rock the island is 
covered with a thin layer of reddish soil, wherein flour- 
ishes a goodly though small growth of oak, hickory, 
white birch, hop-hornbeam, elm, linden and cedar and 
many shrubs, flowering plants, grasses and vines, all 
native, for it is not known that any one has ever sown 
any crop here, nor reaped any, but now and then a 
load of wood, handful of herbs or a nosegay. 
Botanists find it a rich field and get here some plants 
and shrubs hard to find elsewhere, and a rare variety 
of chestnut ogk. f hpe la^tely hearcj of tyvq >yho 
THE JUTTING SHORES. 
grates on the rocky slope where many a birch— and 
elm-bark craft of Abenakis and Iroquois has been be- 
fore it, and I step ashore, I am in undisturbed posses- 
sion- f J 
There are traces of former occupants from the rude 
fireplace, with its warm ashes and smoking brands of 
yesterday's fishing party, back to the water-worn pot 
shards, arrow points and flint chips of its aboriginal 
owners, whose fires were long ago quenched and the 
ashes scattered by the winds of past centuries. 
A well-beaten path leads to a hut in the interior, 
built by some inland people of the continent for their 
accommodation when they come to the coast a-fishmg. 
Inboard, also, are pits scooped out by searchers for 
hidden treasure, who were not money daggers, for they 
dug no money, though they might have gamed its 
equivalent if they had worked half as diligently in more 
fertile soil. Here they dug down with great labor 
by the light of pine torches, into the crevices of the 
rock, speechless, for with money diggers -silence is as 
golden as coin and quite as hard to keep. The owls 
hooted at them, and a loon, wakened by their pother, 
sent his devilish laughter across the bay. At length 
would rock a couple of inches, a seam opening on its 
inner side as each wave receded and being closed by 
each incoming wave with force enough to nip off a 
cedar wand as big as one's finger. At length it toppled 
over into the lake, for the builder of the island, in 
His own way and time, is taking down His work. On 
this slightly swaying platform a lazy angler might sit 
with his rod across his knees and be lulled to sleep by 
the gentle motion and the sound of waves lapping the 
interior of small caverns explored only by fish and 
mink, till a fish, lured by his bait, magnified and mult'- 
plied in the swirl of green water, seized it and tugged 
him out of dreamland. 
Doubtless the island's coast has always been haunted 
by fishermen. Of old, by the Indians, with their bone 
hooks; by the kingfisher; by the sheldrake, and by the 
mink, fisher and fowler, too, taking, when the chance 
offered, his feathered brother fishers. Now, the troller 
skirts it, with slow oars, the bass fisher anchors his 
skiff on the reefs, the perch fisher drops his line from 
the jutting rocks, and the night liner overhauls his 
many hooked cord hourly under the stars, till a poor 
fish is put to its wit's end to discern a free minnow 
or worm from one with a hook inside it, or a minnow 
from a shining bit of metal, and at times seems to 
choose starvation rather than such uncertain fare. 
But fishes have seasons of foolishness, when they for- 
get all experience and fill the fisherman's basket or 
string with many unhappy members of their tribes. 
There are some birds, though not so many as on the 
mainland. A few sparrows and vireos nest here, but 
I do not remember seeing any robins, though one 
would think in their choice of a' summer home the ab- 
sence of cats might overbalance the scarcity of worms 
of an edible sort. There are thousands of horrible 
centipedes with a double fringe of legs, hard looking 
fellows cased in shining brown plate armor that 
nothing short of starvation could induce a decent bird 
to try to feed upon. Indeed, they seem to escape all 
enemies but old age, and one may find, in places, a 
double handful of their mummied corpses, crumbling 
to decay. Crows are frequent visitors, for they find 
some eggs to steal, and the offal of fish. And more 
than once I have startled an eagle from as mean a re- 
past as the crows or from the tallest tree, where he 
was comforting his hungry inside with a snatch of sleep 
or wainting for what the waves might bring him. 
It is an odd day any time between May and Novem- 
A ROCKY POINT. 
someone's bar or pick struck the money pot, when a 
surprised exclamation sent the treasure rumbling down 
into the maw nf the island, far bdow the reach of pick 
nr spade, too deep to bend any divining rod toward it, 
though cut from the northernmost branch of a witch- 
hazel. Speaking at the wrong time seems to be the 
curse of treasure-seekers as of many others. _ 
Thirty years ago there was a curious rocking stone 
on the western point of the island, taking the brunt 
of the winds from all quarters but the eastward, it 
was three yards square and a couple of feet thick, and 
though no one ever "hefted" it, could safely be set at 
some tons' weight, "YVhen any sea was running, it 
A DISTANT VIEW. 
ber that one is not to be seen hereabouts, scaling the 
airy heights above the bay, or faring across them to 
another shore, nearer the sky than to us. I have 
seen a fleet of seven or these upper-air men-o'-war 
sailing over these headlands. 
Of quadrupeds, there are but two kinds resident, so 
far as I know— minks and meadow mice. The first, 
since that sad day for the race when its fur became 
fashionable, have become very rare; the last I have 
known to be so plenty that campers here were greatly 
annoyed by them. At times there are none to be seen 
nor any traces of them, and doubtless in an unfavor- 
able winter, the whole mouse population of the island 
is destroyed. Then its coasts are clear of them, till in 
the spring floods, some Noah cf their race is cast 
ashore here with his family, a hollow log, their ark, 
and the patch of earth is again replenished. 
In winter, when the habitation of the fishes has a 
ceiling of ice, many a fox trots across to explore these 
shores, and in the mice seasons gets his fill of the fat- 
ness of the island. Now and then, timid hares hmp 
over the crystal skylight, scaring with their shadows 
some wide-mouthed pickerels, big enough to swallow 
them, to take a nibble of the island brush. After snow 
falls the hound comes bellowing on the trail of these, 
his voice unheard by the pickerel and perch just be- 
neath him, but carrying consternation to the chase a 
mile before him, and starting muffled echoes out of 
all the snowy, wooded shores of the bay till fox and 
hare know not from which quarter their enemy comes. 
In their day hunted deer rested here from their swim- 
ming across the bay to escape wolves or hounds; and 
otter, coming over from the river to which they gave 
a name, fished here with better luck than any of us hope 
for, and fed and basked between catches on the rocks. 
No sheep or kine graze here, but now and then, in 
winter, the horse of a fisherman or wood stealer finds 
shelter and munches his meager baiting of hay, while 
his master drops his line through the ice, or with his 
ax robs the island of some of its crown jewels. 
Off far-away Thompson's Point, are specks that I 
know are fishing boats, with men in them, waiting hope- 
fully or lazily for bites, and from nearer shores I hear 
the voices of jolly anglers, trolling snatches of songs 1 
and inquiring one of another the day's luck, but all, 
aloof from me, and keeping so till I begin to feel as if 
I were out of the world. 
Presently, an awkward boat, propelled by hands un- 
used to oars and paddles, comes yawing across the 
bay from the Little River of Otters. Its prow points 
by turns to half the points of compass, like a hound 
trying to follow a cold scent, but by and by its devious | 
course ends at our island, with some bumping and., 
scraping of its bottom. The crew crawl and tumble, 
ashore, and prove to be three mountaineers from the 
backbone of the State, qomQ to the lake for a day sj 
