April 30, 1904-] 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
of Woodhull's on the east shore, and the other south 
of Fenton. Such old residents of that town as ex- 
Senator Crane and Mr. and Mrs. Joseph Seaton have 
many memories of what tlieir fathers and aged neigh- 
bors told them of life among those Indians almost a 
century ago. 
The cabins of a few white settlers had been built in 
the county as early as 1830, and two or three houses 
were within a rifle shot of Long Lake in 1837, when 
Michigan became a State. Among these settlers was 
Enoch Smith, who had come from "York State" with 
a wife whose maiden name was Dane; and he pur- 
chased what was then known as the Barnum farm. 
But he was crippled, having crooked fingers and a 
crooked foot, bad handicaps always, and doubly so 
when that pioneer life called for the hardest work 
from even burly men of perfect physique. _ Five or six 
years were enough, in spite of the kindly aid of his few 
lough-handed neighbors, to make him reach his first 
great loss. His farm was another's. He and his wife 
went to live on the island in Long Lake in 1845. With 
all too weak hands they built their house, partly a cave 
dug into the south bank, and partly a bark-roofed 
shack. Cold, privation, malaria and hopelessness were 
LEMAN S LOG CABIN^ LONG LAKE. 
borne by his wife for two years, when she died there. 
The crippled, desolate old man became locally 
famous. Enoch's Island was known far and near. And 
Enoch lived there alone, supported somehow by selling 
bad whisky and worse cigars to fishermen. But they 
were the best he could buy. All sportsmen were 
warmly welcomed. He dressed, fried and served fish 
that he would help catch; and his kindly attentions 
were always welcome as his hearty "Come again!" 
But he was lapsing into a true hermit. No other 
woman would share the earth-shanty of the grizzled, 
dirty, cross-eyed, crooked-fingered and club-footed 
Enoch. He did not have the consolations and promise 
of religion; his home was a den, his life a slow tragedy. 
But he loved nature and that home — no place like it, 
be it ever so humble! 
His longing for companionships and love was shown 
by his strange pets. With him lived a big spotted cat 
(a rare chipmunker), and two or three water-snakes that 
would come to be fed with crumbs when he called 
them by knocking two stones together under water. 
In the house were four or five doves. Chained in a big 
wooden cage outside was a badger he had caught there 
and which he had taken to the mainland and villages 
and exhibited from house to house at five cents "ad- 
mission," until interest in the animal had ceased. 
That whole-souled, energetic man, Capt. Bennett, of 
Fenton, pitied Enoch, and built him a house on the 
island, painting the house red. And anglers did not 
think a visit to the famous black bass fishing there 
complete without a call on old Enoch, "monarch of all 
he surveyed," "lord of the fowl and the brute." He 
was often styled "the governor," so the isle with its 
only resident became known as Governor's Island. 
In 1858 the writer and another boy spent nearly a 
whole day with Enoch. Ragged, gaunt, his lean, 
starved face seamed with sorrowful lines, his rickety 
table always between the chair he sat in when eating 
his meals and a better chair on its opposite side which 
his lost wife had once occupied — what a pitiful tale of want 
and hardship was disclosed even to the two urchins ! They 
felt and understood something of his mute, stoical 
submission to his lot, of the hunted look in the sunken 
black eyes peering from under the dirty straw hat. 
Yet he tried to be cheery with us even when sufifering 
from "ager," gave us a "ride" in a swing under the 
trees, and showed us where he had nailed a cigar box 
with a slit in it to receive the pennies of those who 
might use the swing in his absence — -for he often fished 
all day for months, and sold his catches for scanty 
shillings, cast-off garments, boots, and the provisions 
which kindly neighbors gave in pretended barter and 
real compassion for the solitude and pathos in the old 
hermit's life. He was yet selling firewater and cigars 
to anglers; and even managed to make a lemonade 
for us. 
"Wanter see my childurn?" he quavered. Then he 
called the spotted cat to purr and rub against his old 
boot legs. The three doves cooed and ate from his 
hands. He rapped for the water-snakes, and two came 
swimming for their meal of breadcrumbs. Then he 
pulled the badger from the cage by a rattling neck 
chain. 
Finally he "give" us a ride in his dingy boat, whose 
name, Marier Jane/ was daubed on the stern with black 
paint in letters of very bad shape and worse relative 
size and position. And he seemed overjoyed when we 
gave him a whols half dollar; and asked us to accept a 
basswood bowl and ladle made by himself. One of 
these bowls is yet preserved by Mr. Charles Case, of 
Fenton, who now owns the island. 
Pld Enoch liyed ther? eighteen years, s^dly repulsive 
and dirty, almost friendless, and feeble. What he 
dreaded became inevitable. He died in the county 
poorhouse. Diligent inquiry fails to locate the grave 
of either his wife or himself. How few of the summer 
cottagers there now think of him, and his quaint, prim- 
itive, humble life, of the paths that his long-vanished 
footsteps wore across the island, his love of nature — 
beauty, and doves, cats, and even water-snakes — the 
love that Coleridge makes the central theme of his 
"Ancient Mariner." 
Now a dozen cottages are on the island.^ Flint, 
Pontiac, Owosso, and smaller towns are within an 
hour's run by rail or carriage. The primitive craft 
are replaced with steam launches and jaunty row- 
boats. There are smooth lawns, and cool porches, and 
musical instruments are played as the water glistens 
under moonlight. Cedar Point, The Highlands, The 
Cove, and the Shallows are visited not only by anglers, 
but by many summer loiterers. Through woodlands 
gJeam tents, where "wood smoke is smelled at twi- 
light," as camp-fires are started. 
And even yet the fishing is very good. Bluegills, sun- 
fish, eels, perch, rock bass, calico bass, pike, pickerel, 
and a few Oswego bass were to be had there last sum- 
mer; and we cooked them on the rocks along the east 
shore, or on the island. And there are numerous small- 
mouth black bass. A picture is given herewith of a 
catch of 37 pounds of these royal fish taken before 
breakfast last summer at Long Lake by four men. 
Mr. C. A. Doty, of Flint, took twenty bass (i to 4 
pounds each) in three hours by casting with a "yellow- 
kid" hook. In August Mr. John McCollum, of Fen- 
ton, took an 18-pound pickerel, using a small perch 
for bait. Rev. S. A. Northrup, of Kansas City, landed 
a 16-pound pickerel. Such veteran and experienced 
anglers as Charles Begole, of Flint, seek no further 
than Long Lake for a good fight with the black bass, 
and an environment of nature beauty. And for the 
writer, not even the trout and salmon fishing of British 
Columbia and Newfoundland has robbed Long Lake of 
its charm. Shrunken to a tarn but five miles long and 
hardly a mile wide, crossed twice in a single day by 
swimming, it had its own sylvan appeal and hypnotism. 
No greener woods, bluer skies or more fair clouds. 
Memories of the "giant" waves a half-century ago 
seemed rather absurd as I faced the realities there in 
TQ03; but it was all quite as attractive to the man as it 
had been to the boy. Such angling waters are of es- 
pecial interest because they are easily reached by fish- 
ermen, campers and cottagers with scant time and 
money — people who cannot afford to visit the really 
wild and remote, painfully reached and almost unin- 
little cottage beside shores where white and gold gravel 
shows through pellucid water !^ Nature beauty wanders 
everywhere, and its home is anywhere that water 
sparkles clearly, and where green forests are happy 
as leaves whisper in winds, telling each other of mystic 
presences. 
The fare to the lake from the railroad depot at 
Fenton is 5 cents on the horse cars. It is surrounded 
by a fine farming country. Market wagons with fresh 
meats, butter, eggs, breads and milk come right to the 
tents and cottages, and the prices for camping supplies 
seem very low to the city man. Lakeside boarding 
houses called "hotels" will furnish comfortable rooms 
and excellent meals for a dollar a day; and boats, with 
bait and rude poles and lines, will cost 25 cents a day. 
Or one may rent, buy or build a cottage, and delight 
his family with a couple of months in those woods on 
the east side of the lake near its north end, where the 
rock effects and mosses are so fine. The man who 
turns his children loose from such a cottage during the 
heated term will be surprised at the interest they will 
take in the coming of the next summer. 
And the bass! No livelier fish swims in still water 
than the small-mouthed black bass of Long Lake. The 
man who uses light, fancy tackle will need a cool head 
A BIT OF SHORE LINE. 
habited regions that, as a rule, seasoned sportsmen of 
leisure and wealth tell about. 
The angler is always sure of a "mess" of at least 
panfish at Long Lake. Those cool, spring-fed depths 
(the deepest water is about sixty feet) readily yield 
these fish, even though the fisherman be inexpert. And 
when the bells at the farmhouses sound their warn- 
ing that the noon hour has arrived all too soon and 
unexpectedly, panfish, freshly caught and dressed, 
cooked beside the mineral water spring and over the 
little fire kindled a dozen feet from the shore, are 
always delicious and welcome. One has but to anchor 
almost anywhere along the bars, or at the edge of blue 
water outside of the bulrushes, and the panfish will 
welcom.e his bait even when he uses the rudest tackle. 
But he may grow petulant over their skill in stealing 
his bait. This is especially true of that pugnacious, 
. sly little rascal, the brightly marked yellow perch, a 
fish often despised because so common, yet a real 
fighter, and always ready to play a game of nibble-and- 
jerk with you. Place him in a wartn, unclean pond of 
discolored water, where a trout would die in a single 
day, and he will live and accommodate himself to cir- 
cumstances, and be fairly happy. Give him a home-like, 
cool, roomy, clear Long Lake, and catch, dress and 
fry him along shore, and I risk the statement, even in 
the columns of Forest and Stream, that no fish that 
swims has a more delicious, appetizing flavor and relish 
than the despised yellow perch. 
Long Lake is not really wild. Yet it is very beautiful. 
Out beyond the woods, and poised on the topmost twig 
of some elm or maple left standing in clover meadow 
or wheat field, bobolinks flutter and trill; larks, robins 
and thrushes "ring their silver bells." Ducks and 
even sea-gulls are there. Loons glide, dive, yell and 
watch at safe distances. No fairer dawns and twi- 
lights of evening, no more fragrant smoke from camp- 
fires, Qr mp.Tp ^4'^al free sites for t^he humble tent 
FISH AND PICTURES TAKEN BEFORE BREAKFAST. 
and deft hand when handling one of those burly water 
brutes. They are not now to be had easily, although 
many thousands are in the lake. They have been fished 
for so much that they have grown cautious, and are the 
most uncertain of biters anyhow. Conditions may seem 
perfect, the big fellows may even be seen swimming 
lazily about, sometimes in schools of three to a dozen 
in the dim depths, working their fins and seeming to 
laugh from the corners of their great mouths as they re- 
fuse to take the most tempting minnow, frog or grass- 
liopper. And on other days, when the wind is in the 
unlucky northeast, and under a midday sun, you will 
get a half-dozen fine bass, averaging 2 pounds each, in 
a couple of hours of either still-fishing or trolling. This 
uncertainty as to "luck" is one of the chief charms of 
fishing. Any moment you may get a startling strike, 
or you may return to the dock and to camp with only 
v;hat you cannot show — the beneficence and charm of 
having been right out in a brisk wind that has set the 
waves to running in mimic wrath and turbulence — out 
where you have watched the slow flight of crows and 
herons, and the bullet-like flight down the wind of red- 
heads, mergansers, teals and widgeons. 
L. F. Brown. 
A Small Boy's First Fishing, 
"Uncle Ed, take me?" 
Down back of the barn, where the soil was damp and 
rich, were a man and three boys, in the early evening of 
a pleasant July day. 
The man, evidently but little past his majority, was 
tall and erect, and as he turned the earth with a fork, 
the muscles in his bare arms played back and forth, every 
motion attesting perfect health and strength. 
Each forkful, turned and broken, revealed wriggling, 
squirming earth worms, which were eagerly pounced upon 
by the boys and carefully deposited in a wooden box. 
' "Well, I don't know ; seems as though you are pretty 
small to go fishing ; but then, the sooner you begin the 
more fishing you'll get. Yes, if your mother's willing, 
you may go." 
The little red-headed, freckle-faced boy instantly trans- 
formed from a baby, who must always stay_ at home, to 
a boy, who could go fishing, and do other things boys do. 
Perhaps he might go swimming soon. 
"Oh, Uncle Ed," he'll scare all the fish," cried one of 
the others, perhaps three years the red-headed boy's 
senior. 
"And maybe he'll fall in," chimed in the other. 
But the man explained that four poles would catch 
more fish than three, for the more baits, the more the 
fijh are attracted, and so it was harmoniously decided 
that the "kid" might go. For, you see, the man was a 
diplomat, and whatever Uncle Ed said was generally 
right in the boys' estimation. 
In a short time the box was half filled with worms, 
which were covered with a little earth. Then the party 
quickly cut around the hog pen, through the cow yard, 
and so to the wagon shed, where were the fishing poles. 
"Say, bub, you run in and ask your ma, while I fix a 
pole and line," and little red-head scampered in at the 
back door. 
He was gone some minutes,^ during which time the man 
deftly attached a heavy linen line to a short, light, cane 
pole. The line was made long enough to equal the length 
of the pole, and was firmly tied to the tip, while the longer 
end was wound spirally around the pole, till it came 
nearly to the larger end, where it was securely fastened. 
A stout pout hook, with a long shank, was then tied to 
the free end and the outfit was completed with a liberal 
lupply of tea lead and cork. 
Just thet^ a troubled little fa^^e appeared at tlie dooy^ 
