Nov. igo!3.j 
Aistri STHEAM. 
SB7 
descriptive phrase, and not in vain offers it for the 
recognition of his fellow lovers of the forest and the 
stream. The discovery of other men who have ml 
seen these things, however much they may claim to 
liave "been exposed," or the discovery of parts of the 
globe where the phenomena in question are not found, 
has no bearing upon the question. 
And now one wonders what poet could safely put pen 
to paper if his readers generally were almost to ex- 
haust the vocabulary of complaint and abuse when- 
ever a word or line of his failed to tally exactly with 
their own inexperience. 
A friend of mine, who is fond of paradox and puzzle 
used to suggest the conundrum of what would happen 
in ecclesiastical circles and affairs if the Pope should 
turn Unitarian! A puzzle of similar difficulty for my 
imagination is suggested by the thought of what these 
gentleman, whom Kipling's innocent words have so 
offended and stirred to such fury, would do for ad- 
jectives if they should ever happen to take up a poet 
who sometimes makes real blunders or uses mixed or 
indefensible figures, yet has for ages been accounted 
great. 
It would never do for them to read Shakespeare, for 
instance. Can it be believed that should they encounter 
such a phrase as "to take arms against a sea of 
troubles," they would survive the shock? 
These things I am moved to say, not because I con- 
sider Kipling infallible or unamenable to candid criti- 
cism, however severe, but as in opposition to violent 
words and impeachment of motives whenever an au- 
thor's choice of words may not seem the best, and as 
against hasty generalization from insufficient data. 
But Messrs. Brown and Ashcroft are ready, solely 
on the basis of their own experience, or lack of it, to 
make the most sweeping assertions and denials, cover- 
ing in their statements the experience of all other men. 
Though sand is the traditional substance of a river 
bar, Mr. Brown asserts that a bar is ahvays of different 
material, and Mr. Ashcroft, with equal fatuity, and 
when it would seem that he must know that every real 
camper in the wilderness would laugh in his face as he 
siiys it, will have it that "the real sportsman likes the 
starlight on his face as he angles at night for big trout,; 
or mingled with the light of the camp-fire as he smokes 
with a comrade beside it, or as he sits in the canoe 
while he and his guide return to camp, but never Wliile 
sleeping on a bed of boughs"! ! I am sorry for any man 
who thinks he has had the deep experience of the wil- 
derness if he has not lain many a night with the star- 
light in his face, and unshe'tered by "canoe, tent, cabin, 
shack or lean-to." In fact, Mr. Ashcroft's assertion 
that the real sportsman always sleeps so sheltered — 
good though shelter is in time of need — but thousands 
of times not to be had, and in good weather not needed 
and often not desired, gives, perhaps, the clue to the 
peculiar experience and point of view of Mr. Ashcroft. 
C. H. Ames. 
Boston, Mass, 
New York, Oct. 30. — Editor l-'orest and Stream: Hav- 
ing just returned after an extended trip through New 
Brunswick hunting moose, it was but natural that I be- 
came interested in the Ivinling controversj' now going on 
in Forest and Stream. 
After reading the able articles by The Old Angler, Mr. 
Hardy and others, I find that there is nothing to add in 
defense of those twelve grand and true lines of verse aa 1 
written by Kipling, only to say that I heartily agree with' 
The Old Angler in saying that it is, without doubt, to'- 
my knowledge the grandest piece of verse ever written OM'' 
the subject, and one that will appeal to all sporfsmeh 
v.'ho have had the pleasure of enjoying the life he s> 
vividly describes. 
Were Mr. Ashcroft cr Mr. Brown to take the trip that 
I have just completed, liirough most of the country that 
was covered by E. Hough in ihe late fall of 1901, a trip- in 
which I traveled 150 miles of country on the Little To- 
bique, Nepisiguit and Upsaliquitch waters, 120 miles of 
which was by canoe, they would see many a sun-warmed- 
shingle; also, by the way, they would have enjoyed a' 
midday meal on some of them, and Mr. Ashcroft no doubt 
would have been annoyed more than once by the click of 
the shod canoe-pole; he also would have been enlightened 
as to the use of them, not only in going up stream, but in 
coming down as well, when the paddle is laid aside and 
the canoe-pole, steel-shcd. con:es into play to retard the 
speed of the canoe whenever the ledges, falls, or other 
rocky or dangerous parts of the stream are met with and 
must be gone through, where anything but a steel-shod 
pole is out of question. 
Mr. Ashcroft writes that no gemn'ne sportsman, being 
poled up stream, would submit to the annoyance of the 
c'.ick of the shod canoe-pole for fear it would frighten 
aw?y game before he came in sight. To which I would 
say thit your chances for game in that way is increased 
one hundred per cent. If you were to walk along llie 
lumber road which follows most streams in that country, 
about two hundred yards ahead of the canoe, then any 
game so frightened would very likely cross your path, and 
perhaps give you a shot, as has happened many times in 
that cotuitry. At any rate, it wouFd be acting more like 
a genuine sportsman to the man at the pole than to sit in 
a canoe and be poled up a rushing, roaring, tumbling 
stream at the rate of about two miles an hour. 
Then when night overtakes you, after your long day's 
alk, and you lie with your feet toward the burning birch 
log, perchance you may want something better than a 
"couch of spruce." Otto Keim. 
l-.ditor Forest and Stream: 
The Octogenarian, in his eighty- third year, no longer 
;;ble to obey the call of the "Red Gods," which he feels 
IS keenly now as he did at twenty, loves to read and muse 
r-bout the scenes and experiences of past days, and compari' 
ib.e modern ideas of sport with those that prevailed in 
is youth and earW manhood. Nothing that he has read 
of late years has so surprised him as the musings of those 
two up-to-date sportsmen who have recently aired their 
knowledge in criticising that wonderful little idyll in 
which a lover of nature, a poet and a true sportsman, 
paints a series of word pictures which excite the admira 
tjon of everj- true woodsman, 
But, alas ! this is the day of electricity— the day of auto- 
mobiles, when rude force and brazen assertion dominate 
modest knowledge, and where "villainous dynamite" shat- 
ters the word of truth. The youth browbeats his father: 
tlie matriculant at the curriculum usurps the functions 
ol the preceptor, and the jcnnessc doree run down and 
■smash whatever obstructs their impetuous and reckless 
career. Thought and behavior tally with the impulses of 
the age. The magnates of to-day look on the hoi polloi as 
rubbish. Money rules and the panacea for all they smash 
^"'^^ P^y^" ^^'^^ ^"1^ of the road for auto- 
mobiles IS to settle on the spot for damage done to 
bodies and buggies— human and horses ! In this state of 
things modest knowledge has no chance when it tries to 
correct the errors of certain would-be critics. There 
are men who, without experience of what thev 
prattle about, claim to "know it all," and, tak- 
ing the floor first, seek to palm off their patent 
i.gnorance as the sum of technical knowledge and 
skill. These men measure their own knowledge by the 
extent of their travels, just as they determine the number 
of stars m the firmament by the few they see at dusk or 
at dawn. Having the testimony of their uneducated eyes 
they knoty, and any attempt to correct the errors of their 
limited vision makes the man who exposes their ignorance 
a bar. If their "half baked" guides made their beds of 
spruce boughs, then spruce is to be the woods.man's 
standard. If some boatman pushed his unaccustomed 
craft about with a half-peeled .sapling cut near at hand 
as a make-shift, that establishes the fashion for push- 
poles m all waters. If their voyaging has been, for the 
most part, down stream, they may ignore the existence of 
settmg-poles altogether. If they have seen any consider- 
able number of logs "hung up" in midstream where the 
water ran off suddenly and left them stranded, they call 
that a "log-jam," and suppose that, from these, the poet 
painted that wonderful word-picture — "the raw right- 
angled log-jam at the end"— which evervone who has ever 
seen it will recognize with a thrill ! 
These musings are the result of reading, in your issue 
ot October 24, the second paper of R.' W." Ashcroft 
m w^hich he invites Messrs. Hardy and Ames, and of 
course your other intelligent contributors— the Hermit 
Von W., Dixmont, R. T. Morris, Newfoundlander, and 
T. P. Biddle, all old woodsmen— to read an editorial in 
the New York Evening Post and there learn how little 
they know of woodcraft! This is amusing; but when he 
tells us of his "circular letter" to sportsmen who have 
used canoe-poles in India, Norwav, Australia, Fhiland, 
Alaska,' British Columbia, Ontario, New Brunswick, Cape 
Breton, New^foundland, Labrador and several points in the 
Upper Amazon Valley, that is going to convict us all, 
a.s well as Kipling, of ignorance of the racing streams of 
Maine and New -Brunswick, of which alone we wrote, the 
' force of folly can no further go!" 
fir. Hallock writes to me in his quaint, honest fa-shion: 
■The story of the forest is as simple as the liA^es of its 
denizens. It is so simple that it cannot be parodied with- 
out instant detection by all who have matriculated as 
students and enjoyed a few terms of its fascinating cur- 
riculum. Every observing sportsman who has passed his 
novitiate with Red Gods on racing streams running 
through forests, knows that the impact of the current 
stnkes the bank at the bends at right angles, and the logs, 
following the current and stranding at the' bends by the 
free ends swinging across the stream to the opposite shoal, 
iiia.<e a "nglit-an'.led jam' which is the correct and pic- 
turesque term which Kipling happily used in his charm- 
ing idyll, while the addition of the single word raw paints 
the whole landscape upon which I can shut my eyes as 
I write and see before me with this sole raw spot on its 
nco. 
I "As to, setting-poles, the voyageur or skilled canoe-man 
■I* as fastidious about his own as an expert angler is about 
his rod, or a skilled billiardist about his cue. So far from 
being content wit;h an indifferent or unwieldy implement 
he is careful to have it well balanced and as stiff as it is 
flight. PTaving procured some spruce saplings to his lik- 
nig, he carefully fa.shions them to his taste with his 
crook-knife,, spending much time over them. Having got 
tjieni into shapes and proportions to suit his individual 
judgment, the canoe-man is not likely to use them up in 
a few. hours by splitting the ends against rocky bottoms 
or over stony rapids; therefore he protects them with iron 
thimbles or shoes." How often have I seen Sachem Gabe 
or Peter Metallic drop back to recover the shoe from a 
^broken selting-pole, and spend both time and trouble to 
rctne\-e it from the submer,ged cleft of rock into which 
II had been driven in surmounting "the three-mile rapids" 
or fighting their way up quick water, yclept "shove-and- 
be-d d" on Southwest Miramichi! 
In reply to a question as:<efl l-.ist week of Mr. Charles 
Hallock, whose canoe experience is, perhaps, more ex- 
tensive than that of any -of the Old Guard now living, he 
wrote: "I have never seen cither an ash or a maple 
canoe-pole. Spruce, while cedar and fir saplings are con- 
sidered best in the order named. Nor did I ever see any 
hut iron ferrules or shoes. Copper was, however, used by 
cur prehi.sloric aborigines for this purpose, as well as for 
many other implements. This was probably before they 
understood working in iron. I' have seen these co]iper 
implements in a private collection.*' 
In my last letter I gave an extract from: Mr. Plallock's 
"Fishing Tourist" as to ihe click of the canoc-pnlc. I now 
give one from George Dawson's "Pleasures of Angling" 
published in 1876. At page 52-3. describing his first vis'it 
to Grand Cascapedia, he says: "A novel, picturesque and 
exciting scene was presented as our six canoes moved off 
in Indian file up the rapids of the Casrapedia. The poles 
used arc tipped with iron tubes, and make pretty niusic 
as they strike upon the pebbly bottom of the river in per- 
fect time." If this is not oftener alluded to by sports- 
men, it is simply because it is too coinmort to deserve 
special mention. 
"Would-be critics," _Mn Hallock adds, would do well 
to study acoustics a little before venturing to deny that 
the clicx of shod canoe-poles can not be heard in a racino- 
stream. It can be as readily and distinctly heard as can 
ihe sharp crEick of the rifle when artillery is thundering 
in front. A sportsman can never bag ducks when poling 
up the stony and gravelly bottom of a stream. Lon^ 
before he rounds the bends where the ducks are feedin<? 
the click of the poles has given them warning, and as th''^ 
bend is turned he sees them scooting along the surface 
of the water or over the trees to the nearest cover Mnf 
temp^'oVMrlT^cl;Vto hobf^^ ^T"" 1-^'- ^t- 
of his friend U i J J^J^ne criticisms 
-I HE Old Angler. 
Editor Forest and Stream: 
ment so far advanced. Now, these able defenders ot 
in connection with "rods and reels?" T " 
iop-iam^" \ATu^4. ■ '""^^j reeis.-" What is . a raw 
iogjani: What is a nght-aneled loo--;am?" \m t 
clegam language, j uu make the sense stand out that wav 
Durham, Kan. ' J^Q^ES. 
Carcase-jour. 
Editor Forest and Stream: 
I note your inquiry after that "old French word sig- 
mtying glutton," ot which your correspondent in laft 
annlierf ^^'''""^'^ ^e a^orruption a 
woH in 1-1 ' r^^'V"'- '^^""^ tl^ere IS no such 
void m the French vernacular from away back 
Carcajou is a coined word, like maskinonje, whose 
fr^H \i "^'^"t '"'"^^ originating in Canada, and in- 
troduced across the line into Michigan and Wiscon- 
sin, and perhaps into Vermont and Maine, where alone 
oi all the States it is known and used. To trace its 
meeption the philologist must go to the courriers 
du bois or wood runners, French and Indian, who 
hunted and trapped together for the fur companies, and 
theieby mingled their tancies and their dialects 
Wolverines or gluttons are such inveterate plunder- 
ers ot set traps and so difficult to catch in them, or out 
oi them, that they are known in backwoods parlance as 
Indian devils. hur hunters had to get up early m the 
moining Qe jour), as the saying is, m order to kill or 
capture one; and when a varmint was found dead, the 
successful trapper exclaimed in his clarion, calling to 
his customary partner, or companion on the lines 
carca,se-jourr' words which sound like "carcajou" at 
a little distance when spoken quickly, and equivalent 
to dead meat soon,' meaning that they did not have 
to Avait long. Ail this I learned orally torty years ago 
N f r'^i *^^ °^ ^^^^ Brunswick on trappers' lines 
All Indian proper names, appellatives, sobriquets and 
nicknames are expressive of incidents, peculiarities, or 
characteristics and are very often used in caricature. 
Usually m phrases tormed through association of 
races, the aborigrme took the trait, and the dominant 
language the designation. Besides, the Indians were a 
silent race, and the French loquacious. This accounts 
tor the grafting of so many French words into the 
northern Indian dialects. In the Chinook vocabulary 
tully one-third of the words are of French origin. 
Washington, Oct. 2T. 
Editor Forest and Stream: 
_ In youi- issue of Oct. 24 a writer, communicating in- 
formation about the wolverine under the above head- 
ing, says: If Mayne Reid ever wrote of the carcajou' 
and wolverine as two different beasts, he erred " 
Captain Mayne Reid's knowledge of natural iiistofv 
subjects was deep and wide, acquired from extensive 
travels (m America among the Indians and trappers) 
and extended research and study. He rarely erred in 
his statements of facts. Here follow his comments re- 
garding the wolverine, taken from his "Youne Vov- 
a^eurs," first published in 1853: ^ . . 
•'-'T,'^^,^.^"'^*^'^''^ ^'oyageurs call the wolverine 'carca- 
iff' Tj ^ ^'"''^^y ^"^ ScotchAervants of 
the Jiiidson s Bay Company he is oftene/, known as 
the qmckhatch.' It is supposed that both tliese namS 
are corruptions of the Cree word, okee-cdo-haw-enJ 
(the name of the wo verme among the Indians of that 
tribe). Many words from the same language have betm 
adopted by both voyageurs and traders" 
What is "the old French word signifying glutton"^" 
Let your correspondent rise and explain. - 
^ „ Charles H. Cot,'" ' 
