332 
FOREST AND STREAM 
Sept. 13, 1913. 
it is rare fun to wear out and gaff a ten or 
twelve-pound longface. There may be better 
sport than black bass fishing, but the writer 
seeketh it not, neither doth he hanker after it. 
Contentment ariseth and goeth forth with the 
bass fisher in the early morning; it lingereth 
with him through the day, and it abideth with 
him even unto the falling of the shadows of the 
evening, and unto the closing of the day. True 
game, noble and glorious is the black bass—the 
peer of all his fellows of the waters—and as the 
craft begins to appreciate his qualities, he takes 
a step to the front each year as the future game 
fish of the North and West. Not many years, 
till he will flirt his tail in the face of the last 
Salmo fontinalis of these regions, unless a law 
is passed and enforced, to punish the murderers 
of innocent fingerlings, and to better protect the 
forests that give life to the streams. 
Friday morning and time to break camp 
came all too soon, and I prepared to leave the 
little green island and go back to the smoke, and 
dirt and din of the “Paris of America” with 
many genuine regrets. The Cutler boys came 
over early in the morning to help pack up, and 
by 10 o’clock the sun had dried the dew out of 
the tents and fly, and everything was ready to 
put aboard the boats. 
This time we used but two boats and made 
but one trip, by lashing the boats together about 
three feet apart with some loose boards, and 
loading the bulking boxes on top as a deck 
load, leaving room at each side to handle 
an oar. 
One of the Cutler boys had engaged to take 
us to Mancelona by a road that promised a bet¬ 
ter way of getting out from the lake than to 
go by Bellaire, and believing there could not be 
a worse way, I swallowed the bait eagerly and 
wished afterward I hadn’t. Our point of de¬ 
barkation—the only place for a goodly distance 
along the east shore where a wagon could get 
to the water—was near the mouth of our little 
stream at a “landing” where a corduroy road 
had been made through the swamp from the 
hard land to the lake shore. Pap Cutler was 
waiting for us with a new wagon and a yoke 
of sleek, powerful young steers—a team that 
did not promise much speed, but they proved 
sure and reliable in miry places and wearisome, 
knee-deep sandhills that we found on the way. 
I am sure a pair of ordinary horses would have 
stuck in some quagmire or left us hard and fast 
on a sandhill somewhere on that infernal road, 
and I was thankful before the end was reached 
that we had the patient, plodding cattle, and a 
careful driver to handle them, in the person of 
Willard Cutler. When the wagon was loaded, 
with head uncovered, I made a profound bow 
to the beautiful lake, said good-bye to Pap 
Cutler, who stayed behind to care for the boats, 
and bade adieu to the “laughing waters of In¬ 
termediate.” 
We stopped a few minutes at Cutler’s house 
—which, with his outbuildings, make up the town 
of Lake Shore, postoffice and all—to get an axe 
and a log chain, to be used in case we should 
have to cut away a fallen tree from across the 
road or meet with a mishap of any kind. While 
waiting, good, matronly Mother Cutler filled the 
writer up with cool, fresh buttermilk, for which 
he confesses a special weakness, and at 12 noon, 
Willard said: “Come, boys,” to his pets, and 
we were fairly in for a drive, or rather tramp. 
of fifteen miles over a road that would develop 
profanity in a wooden Indian. 
It is enough to say of that road that there 
may be a few more in Michigan, or somewhere, 
that are not so good. We walked nearly all the 
way, because we could not stay on the wagon 
without being tied on. 
Five miles from the station we crossed 
Cedar River, stopping awhile to rest the tired 
cattle and our nearly played-out legs. Here we 
cooled the red-hot inner man and boy with 
copious draughts from the limpid stream, and 
went on our way filled with fresh vigor and 
cold water. About three miles further on we 
stopped at a farm house to get a drink from a 
well 163 feet deep, and judging from the ex¬ 
treme coldness of the water, it must have had 
direct underground communication with the 
deepest and coldest pool of Cedar River. 
From here into town the road was better, 
and we managed to stay on the wagon, greatly 
to the relief of our weary legs and the evident 
disgust of Willard's “boys.” 
An hour before sundown we drove up to 
the depot, thankful that it was all over, and 
after checking the baggage and billing the camp 
furniture through as freight, I dropped in on 
Charley Persons, of the Mancelona House, to 
scour up and see how many of his .32 caliber 
biscuits it would take, flanked by a 2 x 4 beef¬ 
steak, to fill a good-sized area of crying empti¬ 
ness, somewhere in the region below the dia¬ 
phragm. In twenty minutes after the call to 
supper I had a waiter girl distracted, and the 
genial Persons ready to make an assignment. 
Appetites? Well, yes! Northern Michigan is 
full of ’em. 
When the biscuits gave out, the waiter girl 
folded up her exhausted frame into a chair, and 
Persons and I adjourned outside to laugh at the 
antics of a young bear cub chained to a stake 
in the yard. 
The train south came along at 11 105, and 
half an hour after I was curled up on two seats, 
sound asleep, and dreaming I was back on the 
sparkling lake with the bass and longfaces, and 
the loons and kingfishers. 
Before reeling up this “hundred yard, hard- 
twisted letter of many kinks,” I wish to say a 
word about the G. R. & I. R. R. and its manage¬ 
ment, as affecting sportsmen. 
First, there is no region in the country as 
easy of access as by this road that will afford 
the trout and bass fisher better or more abundant 
sport. The “Six Lakes” chain is literally alive 
with bass and pickerel, and several of the 
streams flowing into these lakes are full of 
trout, with a fair sprinkling of that “silvery 
beauty of the gorgeous dorsal,” the American 
grayling. 
The region around Petoskey is perhaps as 
good, but there are too many people there dur¬ 
ing the season. Everybody—his uncles and his 
aunts and his aunt’s sisters—goes there, till “the 
woods are full of ’em.” They camp out, and 
they stay at the hotels, and they overrun the 
country, and they fish, and they don’t fish— 
mostly don’t. If you want solitude—and what 
true lover of the rod and reel does not?—if you 
want to have a private talk with Dame Nature 
without being interrupted or jostled by a crowd, 
go to the Six Lakes; if you don’t, go to Petoskey 
and fish Crooked, Burt and Mullet lakes, and on 
through to Cheboygan. 
Deer and ruffed grouse (local, “partridge”) 
are very plenty in the region where we were, and 
later in the season the lakes are covered with 
thousands of wild geese and ducks, but as all 
game and wildfowl are out of season in July ex¬ 
cept woodcock, they received no attention from us. 
A bear may be found almost any day along 
Cedar River, but we had not lost any bears that 
we knew of, and besides, somehow, we did not 
care much about bear meat. 
But to come back to the railroad. The man¬ 
agement carries dogs, guns and fishing tackle, 
with a liberal allowance of traps, free, and one 
can always get a civil and respectful answer to 
a question from the officers and men, from con¬ 
ductor down to the humblest “wheel polisher.” 
I have no acquaintance with W. O. Hughart, 
president and general manager of the whole line, 
but if he is half as courteous and obliging and 
as solicitous of the comfort of the patrons of 
the road as are the men under him with whom 
we came in contact, the directors have certainly 
the right man in the .right place. 
The lower end of the line, from Fort Wayne 
to Richmond, is under the able management of 
that clear-headed, sterling old Quaker, Wm. 
Parry, well and familiarly known in Eastern 
Indiana railroad circles as “Uncle Billy,” and 
the angler who may have occasion to “run” the 
end of the “fishing line” held by him, may be 
assured that his lines will be cast in pleasant 
places and his comfort looked after by a crew 
of careful and obliging train men. The road 
from Richmond to Cincinnati is controlled by 
the C. H. & D. R. R. Co., and is under the eye 
of that clever gentleman, Lew Williams, general 
manager, to whom the writer is indebted for 
many courtesies. 
A word about the expense. We were out 
from Cincinnati seventeen days, and our ex¬ 
penses, each, including $19.75 for round trip 
ticket, were $42 and a few cents. This included 
transportation from Mancelona to the lake and 
back, boat hire and camp boy, and we lived well 
and had everything needful for a well conducted 
camp. 
I got home on Saturday night, and Monday 
morning fell into line and resumed the prose of 
life with new vigor and clear head, having en¬ 
joyed a trip that will never be forgotten. And 
now, old friend, my lines are reeled up, reels 
cleaned, oiled and put away, rods unjointed, bur¬ 
nished up and in their cases, and the Editor, the 
Scribe and the writer are counting the weeks 
till the time comes when we (with yourself) 
may again wet our lines in the “placid waters 
of glorious Intermediate Lake.” 
[the end.] 
Sea Fever. 
I must go down to the seas again, to the lonely sea and 
the sky, 
And all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by; 
And the wheel’s kick and the wind’s song and the white 
sail’s shaking. 
And a gray mist on the sea’s face, and a gray dawn 
breaking. 
T must go down to the seas again, for the call of the 
running tide 
Is a wild call and a clear call that may not be denied; 
And all I ask is a windy day with the white clouds flying. 
And the flung spray and the blown spume and the sea¬ 
gulls crying. 
I must go down to the seas again, to the vagrant gypsy 
life, 
To the gull’s way and the whale’s way and the wind 
like a whetted knife; 
And all I ask is a merry yarn from a laughing fellow 
rover, 
And quiet sleep and a sweet dream when the long trick’s 
over. —John Masefield. 
