730 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
[Nov. io, 1906. 
MOONSHINE MILL—SIDE VIEW. 
Two brawling streams meet at this point. The background is almost precipitous 
mountainside, covered with dense laurel and primeval forest. None but a mountain- 
bred horse can foot the trail that leads hither. Corn is brought from over the moun¬ 
tain, often on men’s backs, and at dead of night, 
MOONSHINE MILL—END VIEW. 
A curious feature of this picture is the puzzle-face that nature has imprinted on 
it, quite in keeping with the spooky surroundings. (Upper right-hand corner.) 
They have crossed the divide, a mile above sea 
level, and are in another state. Hour after hour 
they “climb down,” as they would say. They visit 
farmers’ homes at dead of night. Each man 
shoulders two bushels of shelled corn (112 
pounds) and starts back again over the highest 
mountain range in eastern America. It is twenty 
miles to the little mill. They carry the corn 
thither on their own backs. They sprout it, grind 
it, distill it. Two of them then carry the whiskey 
twenty miles in the opposite direction, and, at 
the risk of capture and imprisonment, sell it at 
a profit that will not net them the daily wage of 
a hod-carrier. 
This is no fancy picture; it is the' truth. This 
is no story of ancient days; it is going on right 
now. Do you wonder that one of those men 
should say, with a sigh—should say this: 
“Blockadin’ is the hardest work a man ever 
done. Besides the manual labor, thar’s the con¬ 
tinual dread of the laws. I tell you hit’s wearin’ 
on a feller’s nerves. Fust chance I git, I’m 
a-goin’ to quit!” Horace Kephart. 
Medlin, N. C, 
A Newfoundland Vacation. 
A visit to a good game region turns the mind 
intently to every item in the news of the day 
touching the experiences of others there. We 
went to Newfoundland in July of this year, and 
now we appreciate the controversy about the 
fisheries; we can see why Placentia was 
selected as the port from which to smuggle 
Chinamen, being on the south shore at the end 
of a short branch railroad, where a sleepy, easy 
frame of mind is normal, and official eyes are far 
away at St. Johns. 
Maine had been our vacation mecca for 
twenty-five years, and we had serious mis¬ 
givings at swapping, even for a season, the sure 
for the uncertain. 
We are now without a doubt as to the superior 
fishing sport for salmon and brook trout in the 
streams of the west shore of this island. 
The fishing comes from the first of July to 
the last of August, with quite a good chance 
during the last ten days of June in some waters. 
We sailed from Boston Saturday, July 7, on 
the steamer Pretoria, touching at Halifax Mon¬ 
day and reaching the railroad at Hawkesbury, 
C. B., Tuesday morning. The season had been 
a bad one for fogs, and we had our fill. After 
reaching the railroad we had sunlight, brighten¬ 
ing Cape Breton landscape and giving us a 
fine look at the Bras D’Or Lake region. 
When lunching at Hawkesbury we saw some¬ 
thing inspiring at the tavern, a fresh caught 
salmon, 45 inches in length, weighing 37 pounds. 
Being so fresh from the water, it showed the 
beautiful sheen and the clear colors that fade 
when the market is reached. 
At eight in the afternoon of Tuesday we 
reached North Sydney and at eleven we were 
off on the steamer Bruce for Port Aux Basques, 
N. F., where we arrived at daylight. If we had 
had our fill of fog all the way on the water, 
none of our party had been seasick, and we 
had broken up the passage with very many 
amusing episodes. Distinguished people, profes¬ 
sional and literary, had fed our curiosity; broiled 
live lobsters at Halifax had delighted our appe¬ 
tites; an unexpected meeting with a classmate, 
and a surprising recognition in the last city 
encouraged us to believe that we could borrow 
if we fell short. 
At Port Aux Basques we made a wide turn 
from where we would have gone had our vaca¬ 
tion been purely for the sport of fishing; but 
we had our wives and daughters with us, and 
that called for a compound of sight-seeing, grati¬ 
fication of curiosity, resting, as well as casting 
of flies. Starting from this small port at the 
southwestern corner of the island, we engaged 
in a scheme of coasting eastward for three days 
on the Glencoe to Placentia, stopping at about 
a score of small fishing hamlets on the way, to 
leave or take passengers and freight. It was a 
plan delightful to imagine, picturing stray 
harbors, the fishermen and their rough home¬ 
made water-craft, houses perched on the narrow 
support of bold rock-ribbed shores, with human 
life queer, monotonous, limited to one industry, 
far from the infinite diversity springing out of 
enterprise and superior advantage. It had been 
described to us in print and orally, and wherever 
the fog lifted we found it “all there.” but it was 
very much behind the curtain most of the way for 
the lack of sunlight. Our steamer was fitly com¬ 
plete, the fare satisfactory, our care attentive 
and courteous, Capt. Drake reliable, safe, al¬ 
though the good vessel had been punctured a 
month earlier by the rocky bottom and sunk. 
We knew the lightning didn’t often strike twice 
in the Same place, so we didn’t worry about the 
incessant music of the toot, toot, nor think the 
sometimes visible white fringe of breakers were 
for us. One of our little vacation party was a 
captain, as he seemed to 11s, we called him so, 
and yet he was more of a steward, for there 
was no mortal need that he did not supply from 
some pocket, or his capacious dress suit case, 
and it was all-day fun to make piratical requisi¬ 
tions on him to meet our many trivial wants. 
You need abundance of good cheer to coast 
four days, most of the time in fog, and, when 
you see the land, find it barren, bold, with never 
a sign of tillage, except a vegetable patch about 
as large as the ship’s small saloon. At times 
the sun broke through and we saw quite a large 
expanse of inland country, but it was nothing 
but rocky ridges, sprinkled with dwarfed and 
scanty growth. 
We were told by apparently reliable pas¬ 
sengers that salmon and sea trout abound in 
streams that come into bays winding far in be¬ 
hind these ridges, but there is no attempt to 
invite the vacation multitude or provide for them 
along the south shore. As have their fore¬ 
bears, the inhabitants are struggling to live 
alone off the uncertain crops that grow in the 
sea. They are about always complaining that 
the fish are either small or scarce, and with 
considerable good reason. That was the pre¬ 
vailing sound we heard. “Fisherman’s luck” is 
plainly not peculiar to those that fish for amuse¬ 
ment. 
We made two small ports where whales are 
worked up, and where their fragrant oil was 
finely diffused in the sea air. It was no sacri¬ 
fice to steam rapidly away. Off a narrow 
channel into the interior, where a stream came 
out between the high ridges, we saw brook trout 
rising freely, just as in inland ponds, and when 
our steamer was anchored for a time at a cer¬ 
tain wharf a trout was caught off the side 
weighing nearly a pound. Arriving a day and 
a half late at Placentia, we were not slow to get 
to our salmon river on Monday. The trouble 
there was the limitation of our sport to a single 
stream. It was a fairly good chance, had things 
been normal, but drought had kept the fish back 
from their usual full run, and a dam had been 
built at the headwaters for the purpose of 
sluicing out a lot of logs that had been detained 
because of low water in the spring. The gates 
