234 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
[[March 19, 1904. 
A. C A. National Meet, Sugar Island, Thousand Islands, St. Lawrence River, August 5-19, J 904. 
The Log of the Iris. 
BY J. N. STALKER, DETROIT, MICH. 
The prospective LLD. and myself, in council as- 
sembled, had decided to go on a canoeing trip for our 
summer vacation. This was in the winter that the 
council met, so we had plenty of time for our prepara- 
tions. We first ordered a canoe built, in conformity 
with some ideas that we had on the subject, and which 
as we now consider them excellent, may be of interest. 
The craft was 15ft. long, 30 in. beam, and iiin. deep 
amidships; decked over 3j^ft. forward and 3ft. aft, and 
equipped with a leg o'mutton sail on a short mast and 
long jointed boom for sailing. She was, of course, 
heavier than a perfectly open boat would have been, 
but the lockers underneath the decks were very con- 
venient for storing our stufiE, and the decks themselves 
were absolutely invaluable in some of the heavy weather 
we later encountered. With regard to equipment, we 
were necessarily hampered by our lack of ability to 
carry very much, and when that is the case, of course, 
what to take and what to leave is largely a matter for 
individual preference. We took a pup-tent, rubber and 
woolen blankets, hatchet, frying-pan, bacon, corn meal 
and hard-tack, besides the endless array of small things 
stowed largely in the pockets, of which any camper can 
supply a list containing three times as many as it is 
possible to carry. 
Equipped as indicated, we found ourselves one Satur- 
day afternoon in the town of Ypsilanti, and got our 
boat, which had come out by rail, into the water about 
5 o'clock. Then, we started, and the feeling of de- 
light with which we pushed off into the swift and 
beautiful Huron River would be hard to describe. For 
two weeks we would be our own masters; sleeping, 
eating, and traveling, where and when we chose. And 
then how we expanded! Colleges and banks faded 
away into dim and misty unrealities, and we ex- 
perienced the rare and pleasant sensation of feeling, 
now that we were entirely dependent upon ourselves, 
like complete men. 
The Huron River charmed us from the very first. A 
more beautiful little stream it would be hard to imagine, 
with its rushing current, eddying and swirling along 
under overhanging trees, which lean over at all angles 
from either shore, and very frequently, indeed, are 
fallen quite across the river. These trees were a con- 
stant source of interest, and occasionally annoyance, 
all the way down. There was almost always some way 
to pass them, either shooting around the end, worm- 
ing our way through the branches, dodging through 
the roots, ducking under the trunk, when one end was 
lifted out of the water, or often skimming over it, which 
was generally more or less dubious, as we could not 
tell how much water was passing over until too late to 
go back. The snags and sunken logs of which the 
river is pretty full, really increased the pleasure _ of 
navigation by adding complexity to the ever changing 
succession of problems that confronted us. We would 
think we had our course past a couple of fallen trees 
Canoe Iris on Lake Huron. 
beautifully clear, and would swoop down on a nar- 
row opening with a rush, only to find a tree stump or 
something just in the middle of it, a couple of inches 
below the surface. We had to act quickly at such times 
to avoid difficulties. 
It was at one of these trees, not twenty minutes from 
the starting point, that my cap was launched on its- 
sea of misfortunes. In passing through the branches 
of a tree, being then inexperienced, I allowed the cap 
to be scraped from my head into the water. We were 
then close upon another tree which demanded instant 
attention, so that before we had any time to look for 
it it had disappeared. While still peering anxiously 
around, we were swept past 3 little igland^ and there, 
lo and behold! we saw serenely coming down the other 
side a very tough-looking cap, not quite water-logged 
enough to sink. It was fished out, and then a few minutes 
later dropped into the mud and stepped on at a por- 
tage, made necessary by a fallen tree. That was pretty 
good for the first hour, but as will be seen, was only 
a starter. 
About 6:30 we came to an ideal camping ground on 
a little island, and concluded to stop there for the night. 
In a short time we had our tent pitched, a camp-fire 
crackling cheerily, with bacon sizzling in the pan, our 
canoe hauled out, turned over, with most of our stuff 
stowed securely underneath, and everything ready for 
supper. The supper was of long duration if not very 
various, being a continuous process of cooking pans 
full of bacon and then eating them, along with bread 
Chart of Course taken by the Canoe Iris. 
and milk (the latter ignominiously purchased from a 
farmer). 
I had wondered a trifle how we would put in our 
evenings, but we passed most of that evening very 
pleasantly in the manner indicated above. It may be 
confessed, however, that our enthusiasm for bacon 
somewhat abated before we got back home. 
When we had finally finished and had washed tlie 
dishes (not much of a job, fortunately), we piled tlie. 
wood on the fire, got our cigars, and resigned our- 
selves to absolute contentment, I swinging my cap to 
and fro in the smoke to dry it, the LLD. joyously 
digesting his bacon. In the course of these maneuvers 
I dropped the cap into the fire, burning it in spots and 
covering it with white ashes, which, when I tried to 
brush them off, united with the green mud in entering 
into the wet cloth. The occurrence made an inefface- 
able impression on the cap, it was never the same again, 
finally, stimulated by the example of the frogs, crickets, 
tree-toads, etc., of the vicinity, we lifted up our voices 
in song and really enjoyed it very much. We seldom 
have a chance to sing with vigor like we did then, as 
nothing of the sort would be tolerated by neighbors. 
At length we squirmed into the tent between the 
blankets, wrapped our heads up in our coats and 
didn't go to sleep. The situation was too strange the 
first night, and the chorus outside too energetic. 
The night was an unusually cold one, and about 4 
o'clock we decided that we had enough of that miser- 
able cold, achy feeling, so we got up, built a fire, and 
were soon happy again. 
For breakfast we had hot buttered toast (really very 
creditable toast), bacon, rye bread, cheese, milk, and 
the best of sauces. Before 6 o'clock we were on our 
way again to make as long as possible one of the most 
enjoyable days we ever spent. A most delightful 
feature about traveling the way we did, was the fact 
that we never knew what was coming next, and what- 
ever it turned out to be, we had never seen it before 
and never would again; when a person is going any- 
where with the expectation of returning, every dif- 
ficulty surmounted, such as a dam, acts as a drag on 
the spirits, owing to the knowledge that it must be 
remet. With us it was quite the contrary. 
Another continual source of pleasure was the ani- 
mals along the banks. They seldom seemed to notice 
us at first, coming along quietly as we did (though 
unlike the traditional Indian, there was always the regu- 
lar gurgle and drip of the paddles to betray us). There 
are almost no boats on that part of the river, and I 
suppose the animals, while keeping a pretty good look- 
out to landward, though that from the water-side they 
were safe. That day we saw dozens of squirrels and 
chipmunks perched saucily on stumps, or rollicking 
through the treetops with their dare-devil leaps and 
scrambles; a 5core of muskrats, which frequently let 
us approach within twenty feet of them when swim- 
ming before they dived, half a dozen woodchucks, a 
mink, and hundreds of turtles, besides dozens of ani- 
mals who did not wait for inventory, and of which we 
saw nothing but the splash. 
One of these turtles provoked a shout of laughter 
from us by the eccentric means of self-preservation he 
adopted. We were noticing him because of his un- 
usual size and shape; he was probably twelve or 
fourteen inches long by eight or nine inches wide, and 
positively, he looked less than an inch thick, as if he 
had been stepped on accidentally by an elephant, or been 
put through a clothes wringer. Later, when we saw 
more of this species, we perceived that it was the 
fashionable shape on the river, and admired it as 
sincerely as if it had been a straight front corset. As 
I started to say, this peculiar beast paid no attention 
to us until we had got safely past him, when he raised 
his head straight up on his long neck with the ap- 
irearance of wildest alarm, and started galloping des- 
perately after us down the slope. He descended in a 
little avalanche of sand and pebbles, with a more 
ludicrously clumsy method of propulsion than we be- 
lieved existed, his head and tail waving frantically in 
ihe air all the lime. In comparison with him a gallop- 
ing cov/ was like a naked nymph for grace. 
The number and variety of the birds we encountered 
contini-ously shamed rs for our ignorance of natural 
history. A good many of them we knew by sight, but 
1 heir, notes we found to our disgust that more often 
than not we were unable to identify. In the mornings, 
especially, about sunrise, we would be surrounded by a 
regular carnival of melody, each saucy little rascal ap- 
I'arently trying to outdo all his neighbors in the volume 
of his music he produced. In the midst of such ex- 
uberant happiness, with a glorious sunrise ushering 
in a fresh, clear day, I defy the gloomiest misanthrope 
in the world to be anything but cheerful, and we are 
not misanthropes by any means. 
Kingfishers were very numerous along the river, 
tl:ough what ush they found I do not know, and watch- 
Huron River. ' 
ing them dive for food, which they did in utter disre- 
gard of our presence, is something of which I would 
never tire. Of all the creatures we encountered, how- 
ever, the species for which we came to have the great- 
est respect was the crow< By paying strict attention, 
we became grounded in the rudiments of his very con- 
siderable language, not to be able to talk it, but 
enough to be able to catch the drift of meaning of many 
of the conversations we heard. While the crow is 
not precisely a lovable bird, he can, nevertheless, 
command respect through simple force of intelligence. 
We paid the more attention to the little creatures I 
have referred to, owing to the fact that the river banks 
were delightfully free from human beings, Tlie farmer 
