July 16, 1904.] 
FOREST AND_STREAM, 
47 
trldgc about . him. Then I heard Cfipps calling me by 
name. I left Fergusson, and entered the next room. Jake 
had dragged himself across the floor to the bedside— his 
back was broken by the pistol shot— and he lay there lick- 
ing his former master's haod. 
'For God's sake give the dog a drink of water and put 
him on the bed beside me. I didn't set him on none of 
you men. He was always that way from a pup." 
I went down and got the water, the dog drank all I 
gave him, and allowed himself to be lifted on to the bed 
without protest. Cripps placed his thin arms round the 
black setter's neck and kissed his nose. 
I went back to Fergusson, who was feeling very weak 
from loss of blood, and remained with him until the team 
returned with the elector and Bright. The doctor ex- 
amined the exciseman's wounds, and pronounced them 
"serious. For nearly an hour he worked at them. When 
he had finished, I suggested he should go in and take a 
lock at the sick moonshiner. I borrowed Bright's re- 
volver at the same time, intending to put an end to poor 
Jake's sufferings. Dog and man lay motionless on the 
bed ; the man's arms were still round 'the dog's neck. 
The doctor lifted up one hand and let it fall. "Dead," he 
said, "and the dog's dead, too." The derringer bullet had 
cut one of the intercostal arteries, and the dog had bled 
to death internally. 
At the inquest, an autopsy showed that Cripps had died 
from heart-failure, following an attack of pneumonia. 
We were exonerated from all blame, and the outlaw and 
his dog received decent burial. Fergusson was an invalid 
for some weeks — in fact, he came very near dying from 
his injuries. The seizure was one of the most important 
he ever made ; numerous respectable firms were interested 
in the "pot" -we seized, and though McDorman only got 
two years for his share in the business, the department 
was some thousands of dollars the richer by our night's 
work. I received a check for $200 for my services, with 
an intimation that there was mere to be earned if I 
wished to. 
These events happened many years ago. The dog I am 
now shooting over is an old one;Jie is good enough in his 
way, but he can't hold a candle to his great-grand- 
father, old Outlaw Jake. Edmund F. L. Jenner. 
N iv-. Sc ti v. 
A Summer in Newfoundland. — IV. 
{Continued f>om fia<?e ' A ) 
Early the next morning I took my stand high up on 
a rocky platform overlooking the pool. It was the only 
spot from which a cast could be made, but for such a 
purpose it was one of the finest spots in Newfoundland, 
if not in the world. Forty feet'below flowed the river, 
eddying along through the narrow chasm for thirty yards, 
and every foot of it could be reached from my elevated 
position. 
The sun was bright that morning, and its rays lit up the 
sombre depths to such an extent that I could see clearly 
some forty or fifty salmon massed in a great school lying 
like logs far down among the rocks of the bottom. A 
dozen mere were lazily basking in the sun's warmth but a 
few inches below the surface, and occasionally one would 
swim around and around among the eddies, as if restless 
from his long; imprisonment; and these, active fish that 
s a am near the surface were the very fish that jumped at 
my fly almost as soon as it touched the water. Not once 
did I succeed in enticing a salmon from below, although 
there was not an hour in the day when half a hundred of 
the loggy fellows did net see a silver doctor skipping in- 
nocently above them, or drifting down past their very 
noses. So futile were all early efforts in trying to per- 
s tade these bottom fish that later it was entirely despaired 
of, and no casting was dene unless a salmon appeared 
circling around in the current. It was fishing of a 1 very 
different nature from that at the lower pools; no icy 
water to wade, or sharp recks to cut your boots; no weary 
casting, endless and uncertain, over pools which might 
contain a fish and then might not. It was fish in x without 
work — angling that was definite and certain, depending 
more upon the eyesight than upon any skill in casting a 
fly. - . 
Gaff in hand steed Jim, thirty feet below me, in a little 
niche on the face of the wall ; and the moment a salmon 
rose from below he called lustily to camp for "d. sporter," 
or if I happened to be already stationed on the reck above, 
a few well-directed casts with a single fly usually res 1 ted 
the right way. But not only was the method of fishing 
totally different from that required in the shallow waters 
further down stream, but the salmon when hooked acted 
in a different way. They were prone to be sulky, and after 
striking they usually sank like rocks to the bottom, where 
they remained without budging for seme fifteen or t venty 
minutes, trying to tire me out. But after this introductory 
loginess had passed off they entered into the spirit rf the 
game with zeal, running just as far, and leaping fully as 
often, as any killed nearer the coast. 
One day, when trying for sea trout in the very swif est 
of the current, where salmon rarely lurk, I took, in quick 
succession, three fish which played as gamely ard i imped 
as frequently as the liveliest grilse in the river — but no 
livelier. They were long and slender, three or four pounds 
in weight, and at first I mistook them for small sea sal- 
mon. But after a careful comparison with one of the 
latter, their deeply lunate tails and large pectoral, dorsal 
and adipose fins, together with other distinguishing pe- 
culiarities, proved their identity beyond a do-bt as 
ouananiche, the little fresh-water salmon of the inland 
lakes and rivers, probably washed down over the falls 
from the ponds above. Ouanar.iche seems to be the 
usually accepted orthography of the word, pronounced 
whon-an-iche or whan-an-iche by th> Mentagnais and 
French habitants of upper Quebec. At all events, that 
spelling seems to possess a prior literary and historical 
claim for accuracy to either wininiche, ouenanesh, winan- 
iche, or any of the fifteen or twenty anglicized corrup- 
tions of the word. According to a letter reprinted by 
E. T. D. Chambers in his delightful account of "The 
Ouananiche in its Canadian Environment," the clde?t 
book of the Montagnais Mission, written by a Jesuit mis- 
sionary some two hundred and fifty years ago, spells the 
name oua-na-niche. Neither William nor Jim had ever 
heard of such a fish as a landlocked — or, more properly 
speaking, a fresh-water — salmon (for in many localities 
jt is confined to the fresh water merely by choice, not by 
necessity), and although they both informed me that 
small salmon did inhabit some of the interior lakes, yet 
their dull fishermen's intellects were lacking in sufficient 
acuteness to investigate, or even to question the possibility 
that such fish never migrated to the ocean. The New- 
foundland guides whom I have questioned concerning this 
fish, and who knew it sufficiently to distinguish it from its 
salt-water brother, pronounced the name win-in-iche or 
whin-in-iche, although none that I ever met were con- 
versant enough with the letters of the alphabet to write 
the word on paper or spell it correctly. But after all, the 
name is of ancient Indian origin, a name of the Mon- 
tagnais, taught to the early French pioneers of the conti- 
nent, and merely an introduction into the animal nomen- 
clature of Newfoundland. Ouananiche, however, is not 
the only Indian name which has been tortured by the 
spelling and pronunciation of to-day. There are many 
such; but of all perhaps the most glaring illustration of 
modern corruption we find in the many misnomers ap- 
plied to the giant pike of the northern lakes and rivers. 
At the present time probably no creature in America — 
unless it be the cougar — is saddled by more titles philo- 
logically incorrect as those applied to Esox nobilior. 
Mascalonge, muskellunge, muskellonge, maskinonge, plain 
'lunge, and half a score more, have been adopted indis- 
criminately by different writers. The derivation of the 
word rnascallonge, it is true, has been explained as origi- 
nating in the old French phrase masque allonge (long 
face),- and it seems a possible explanation for the acoear- 
ance of an 1 or 11 in the name. According to the best 
authority, however, Esox nobilior was the Indian mashk 
kinonge (deformed or bad pike), because it really was 
kinonge or great northern pike. It is a pity that so many 
of the old Indian names have been changed or translated 
into meaningless equivalents — names used by the 
aborigines centuries before the white man ever paddled a 
canoe or cast a fly over the broad rivers of Canada. For 
ages past the giant pike and the little fresh-water salmon 
have helped to nourish entire villages of hungry Mon- 
tagnais ; and many times as the eager fisherman pulled in 
his line and unhooked the struggling quarry, to him it 
was nothing more nor less than a mashkinonge or a 
ouananiche. 
Contrary to the generally accepted belief, the fresh- 
water salmon is by no means confined in its geographical 
distribution to the vicinity of Lake St. John and the Hud- 
son's Bay region, but occurs in at least four different 
localities throughout Maine, probably in New Brunswick, 
and according to such excellent authority as Mr. A. P. 
Low, over the whole eastern watershed of the Labrador 
Peninsula. In Newfoundland the ouananiche is found ir- 
regularly in many localities, but as yet n© systematic effort 
has clearly defined the limits of its distribution. During 
the hunting season of 1902, when camped on the shore of 
George's Pond, I saw several good sized fish break water 
in the southern cove, but no attempt was made to take 
them with the fly. Some days later, however, a number 
of smaller ones were taken in Butt's Brook, which is a 
tributary of George's Pond, and a few succumbed to the 
fly at the inlet of Terra Nova Lake. In fact, the whole 
Terra Nova system contains fish which are undoubtedly 
ouananiche, as a great fall nearer the coast prevents sea 
salmon from ascending to> the ponds and upper reaches of 
the" river. I have seen them jumping in Cross Pond near 
the west coast, and although I have never fished Red 
Indian Lake, have been informed by good authority that 
its waters abound in ouananiche, while a few have been 
taken in Gander Lake and the upper Exploits^ Mr. 
Arthur Winter, a man thoroughly familiar with the New- 
foundland interior, has killed them on the Gambo, while 
James Howley, of the Government Survey, writes me that 
they occur in many of the interior lakes, whose waters 
ultimately empty into the ocean. 
Cooking at the falls required far less culinary skill than 
in those days of luxury when camped by the ocean we 
dined regularly on lobsters and doughnuts, oatmeal with 
real milk, or eggs, codfish, and fried cakes. In the ab- 
sence of John, William had been promoted from the 
menial position of packer to the distinction of cook and 
packer combined ; and under his care our daily menu cer- 
tainly gained in originality what it lacked in variety. 
Salmon the inevitable was always the piece de resistance 
three times a day; and just how to cook it so that it 
would taste as little as possible like salmon was an im- 
perative order issued to William. He boiled it, "skivered" 
it, roasted it in the ashes, fried it with roe; or perhaps we 
enjoyed it salted and smoked, or just plain smoked with- 
out the salting, and each time we heaved sighs of relief 
when our duty was done and the plates emptied. Over 
four weeks of fresh salmon — ninety meals of it — produce 
a wonderful craving of the appetite for something else; 
anything, in fact, provided it is not a fish with pink flesh. 
For breakfast we usually sat down to a repast of bread, 
tea, oatmeal and salmon. This was varied at dinner time 
by substituting rice for oatmeal, coffee for tea, salmon 
served in a different style, and a smoke for dessert ; while 
in the evening hot biscuits were added at the expense of 
the rice, while a couple of roes were relished as luxuries. 
Anyone who has ever tried real prime salmon roe when 
the eggs are as large as small peas and as hard as pig 
nuts, will rarely repeat the experiment unless, perhaps, as 
a substitute for the fish itself. But the berries out on the 
barrens were fast ripening, and Newfoundland is truly 
an island which produces numerous kinds in great pro- 
fusion. Old Jim ate quantities without stopping to con- 
sider either their species, size, color, or degree of ripeness, 
and repeatedly informed me that "dey wuz all good, not a 
pizen berry on de country;" and he was right, as far as 
their edibility was concerned. But it does not always fol- 
low that a pretty berry, when tried, is found pleasant to 
the taste, or that its non-poisonous qualities recommend 
it to the palate, and many possessed no more flavor than 
a raw potato. There was a small species of cranberry, 
insipid and tasteless, which in places literally carpeted the 
hills with red; while raspberries flourished in profusion 
along the river banks. Huckleberry bushes covered acres 
of the open country, but as yet the fruit was green and 
unfit for use. The prize of the lot, however, proved the 
"bake apple." Just why it is called bake apple I do not 
know, as it resembles in no way an apple, growing much 
the same as a low bush blackberry; but I do know that 
ic is small, about the size of a cherry, soft as a persimmon, 
yellow as a buttercup, and possesses a delicious flavor, 
different from that of any existing fruit. Occasionally 
our repasts were varied by a dish at which the cook ex- 
eel led ---a hare stew, simmered for hours over a slow fire, 
ihose varying hares were easy to catch, and a couple of 
salmon line snares set in a runway at sundown usually 
captured at least on'e during the night. They were very 
abundant on the smaller barrens, where thick cover 
afforded good protection, but alas! so, too, were the 
ynxes, or "links," as the word stands in the Newfound- 
land vernacular, and only too often we saw the result of 
a sad woodland tragedy, the remains of a poor bunny sur- 
rounded by the tracks of some prowling feline marauder. 
A fat young hare makes a very appetizing meal for a 
hungry man, but three of the five which William served 
up from time to time were old bucks, and an old buck 
possesses about as much flavor as a dry birch chip. 
There is one dish, however, at which the Newfound- 
lander is an expert hand, and that is baking "skiver" 
bread. It is his favorite way of cooking it; a method 
so simple and yet. so well adapted to practical use that I 
will explain it. in detail. A hard wood limb two feet long 
and some three inches in diameter is shaved down on each 
side until it looks like the blade of a short double-edged 
broadsword. This is accordingly sharpened at each end, 
one of which is stuck in the ground at the proper distance 
from a bed of glowing embers, and then the "skiver" is 
complete. Your dough is ready on a piece of clean birch 
bark. It is rolled out into a long, thin loaf, then stretched 
further out until it looks not unlike a white cotton rope, 
and finally is wound spirally around the stick in a single 
layer, the edges being allowed to overlap. Now your 
bread is ready for the fire, and during the next twenty 
minutes the position of the stick should be changed 
several times to insure against burning, until the latter is 
finally drawn forth and the baking is completed. It is a 
queer, misshapen loaf, the one that you hold in your hand, 
not unlike a laterally compressed cornucopia, or perhaps 
it might be termed a "scabbard of bread ; but it tastes 
good, and the. long pocket-like interior may be filled with 
meat or jam, thus forming a very convenient and service- 
able sandwich. 
. The fifth day of my stay at the fall commenced with a 
light drizzling rain. It augured well for future good luck, 
for at that time the river contained little more than a 
foot of water, and in maay places merely trickled down 
between the stones. For over a month I had waited and 
hoped in vain for the arrival of a really decent rain — for 
a shower, a thunderstorm — anything, in fact, that would 
rile the water and raise it sufficiently to bring the salmon, 
scattered over a stretch of thirty mfies, to their final 
destination. And I was not alone in my hopes and disap- 
pointments, for during July there were many anglers in 
Newfoundland who could tell a similar tale — a tale of 
glaring sunlight shining down on clear, glassy pools, filled 
with fish absolutely indifferent to the fly. But at last a 
real storm was approaching. William had predicted one 
regularly every day for a month, and Jim "knowed it 
wuz a-comin'_ fur more'n a fortnight past." 
Soon heavier raindrops were pelting the sides of my 
tent. The breeze freshened, it shifted to the east, and 
black clouds rolled in over the sky. All day great gusts 
of wind swept the open barrens in a constantly increasing 
gale, which shrieked through the walls of the narrow 
canon, sending spruces and great branches crashing down 
the torrent and over the rocks. The water was rising 
rapidly above. The river was coming up to meet it as 
swiftly from below. By evening the sound of the falls 
had changed to a thundering roar, silencing our voices, 
as spray and foam and branches swept over the brink and 
down into the pool below. It was a terrible night, that — 
terrible for the little people of the woods. Beavers and 
muskrats were flooded from their burrows, and the young 
song sparrows in their nest by the river bank were 
washed down along with the debris. It was bad for the 
tired fish, slowly working their way up stream, to be 
caught in a shallow pool, and worse for the brood of 
half-grown shelldrakes that lived in the calm water below 
the rapids. But my salmon were safe; far down in the 
deep pool below, twenty feet beneath the turmoil on the 
surface, they sensibly hugged bottom, waiting for wind 
and water to subside. For two days the rain poured down 
steadily; every puddle became a pond, and every rivulet 
a rushing, torrent. My little bridge of spruce trunks was 
eighteen inches below the surface. Even our familiar 
friends, the jays, had quite deserted our camp. Not until 
evening of the third day did the water commence to sub- 
side. On the morning of the fourth day I stood again on 
my rock, and cast out into the dark turbulent flood below. 
The river had fallen nearly a foot, but the wind still blew 
from the east, and all efforts to obtain a rise were in vain. 
Early on Friday the sun once again peeped in at the 
tent's .flap, and the top of my bridge appeared high and 
dry above the current of the brook. It was to be my last 
day at the falls, and it was with mixed feelings of hope 
and uncertainty that I again took my stand by the big 
boulder and peered over its edge for a last look. What 
a sight awaited me! At last the salmon had come; not 
the meager store of fish I had watched so often, but 
dozens of brown backs close together, arranged in serried 
ranks. Rocks on the bottom of the pool were obscured 
by them, large and small alike, little three-pound grilse, 
and great heavy spawners, some bruised and battered by 
the rocks, others marked by a white line back of the head 
where they had struggled in the meshes of the nets. I 
watched them for some time in silence, without making a 
cast. One especially interested me. We were already old 
friends. It was the same fish which had baffled all my 
efforts a fortnight before, twenty miles nearer the ocean, 
for he had the same crescent-shaped gash on his back. 
What a wonderfully powerful instinct it must be that 
drives the salmon, with little or no sustenance, so many 
miles, by so many perils, up such a dangerous pathway; 
but here they all were, at last safely harbored at the end 
of their journey. Soon several of the fish became restless, 
and one slowly rising to the surface circled lazily about 
among the eddies. Then I knew that he was mine, and 
hardly five minutes had elapsed before the reel hummed 
merrily as he coursed up and down the pool fast to a 
Jock-Scott. It was not a gamy fish, probably still tired 
from the arduous swim up stream, and in thirty minutes 
eight pounds of fat flesh were strung upon the scaffold in 
the smoke-house, drying for future use. 
The sun was now well up and at least twenty salmon 
some inches below the Surface swung around and around 
in the swirl. Two were hooked in quick succession, but 
