FOREST AND STREAM 
Dec. 27, 1913. 
816 
them near the end we had entered, evidently 
waving their rods. The rods were waving, but 
brook trout were performing the operation, and 
1 fancy this was another September convention 
of Fontinalis, as in a deep, clear pool, probably 
a spring, were literally hundreds of trout. The 
Doctor’s men were holding the canoe about forty 
feet away, and the moment the flies reached the 
water up from the bottom sprang a dozen or 
more trout racing to reach it. I was soon in the 
thick of it and became a participant in trout fish¬ 
ing as it is supposed to be, in the prospectus, 
certainly not as it generally is. 
I frequently saw a big trout leap at my fly 
before it touched the water, and to see them come 
rushing up, making a swirl as they missed it, 
dashing down to the bottom again, was one of 
the sights worth seeing and an adventure in itself 
of a most delightful character. \ 
The privilege of naming this new lake fell 
to me, and we christened it “Lac Weber,” in 
honor of' our host. It was really a twin lake, a 
large lake cut in two, and the intervening portion 
over which the men carried the canoes, had a 
deep, splendid gorge in the centre filled with rocks 
and big trees, many fallen down and forming 
bridges from side to side. '■ 
A more delightful little island than this, for 
a camp could hardly be imagined, as from'the 
little impromptu camp we formed for the con¬ 
sideration of those trout just out of the ley 
spring, one could look into a different lake to the 
east and west, and to have such trout fishing 
right at the door and such a gem to look at was 
enchanting. Some day Mons. “Webaire” will 
have a camp here, and will have attained the 
altamathule of angling delights and possibilities. 
When the shadows began to lengthen we 
broke camp and took the back trail to Lac Mar- 
cotte, and made such time down the long lake 
that we reached Lac Croche camp before dark, 
and in time to see the fine Pike catch of some 
man who had been over to Lac Antikiagamak, a 
long, slender lake with high, rocky cliffs, con¬ 
taining nothing but pike, a case of a survival of 
the fittest. This lake with the impossible Indian 
name was fed from our lake, the little river 
rushing down a rocky ravine, leaving a succes¬ 
sion of fine pools containing trout, so that the 
anglers, particularly the Doctor and myself, often 
descended and tried them in the various levels, 
cascades, pools and falls. At such times it is 
•only fair to say we did not use the angling hat 
rack, though I could see a thousand and one uses 
for it. We made our headquarters here for near¬ 
ly a week. When it rained, which it rarely did, 
the men gathered on the porch and whittled out 
■“co cos” and told stories of the old times, and 
■of the big moose and caribou they had taken. 
We heard of the fine ethics of sport which held 
here, of the “sportsman” who wounded a moose 
and refused to follow it up, preferring to let it 
die in agony than get wet, as it was raining. 
When this alien came to camp and told the story 
someone said: “What, you would wound an ani¬ 
mal and not make an attempt to rescue it, put 
it out of its misery? How would you like to be 
deserted in the forest with a broken leg?” And 
then all the able-bodied men in that particular 
camp started out and followed up the trail of 
that moose and put it out of its'misery. It was 
a very lonesome place for that sportsman. He 
was given the last degree, no one would speak 
to him, he even paddled his own canoe out of the 
long lake. 
To the south of Lac Croche, a stone’s throw 
from it, just under the big mountain, was a little 
lake called Petite Lac Croche, one of the most 
charming of the group, if one must discriminate. 
For some reason the trout in this particular para¬ 
dise were, at least for me. very difficult to hook, 
a fact I discovered one evening when with Ubal 
at the noiseless paddle, I found our host on the 
lake. It was a perfect mirror, and look which 
way you would, there would be circles telling of 
rising trout. 
1 was the guest, so had all the advantages, 
and I promptly landed my single fly in a circle, 
missed it, repeated it again. I had a strike, and 
still again I missed. My egotism was running 
out at my elbows, a steady stream. I was becom¬ 
ing “rattled.” I knew the next miss would wit¬ 
ness my undoing, so I promptly called for help. 
Mons. “Webaire” made a cast, dropped his fly 
delicately in the very bull’s eye, gave his wrist 
a peculiar turn, a sort of piscatorial carte or 
fierce, I could not determine which, and the trout 
was his. I cast again, my line straightened out, 
I gave it the butt, and I think the trout threw 
my fly three feet with its tail. So I took another 
lesson, and Mons. “Webaire” hooked my fish 
with the greatest possible ease, in fact he did it 
by intuition. Again I tried and as I missed I 
begged him to throw angling courtesies to the 
wind and take the fish, lest we starve to death, 
as the chef was depending on us for supper; 
and so as I missed, he dropped his fly over my 
fish and landed it with ease. I fancy we rounded 
the lake a dozen times, I luring the trout, Mons. 
“Webaire” taking them, and Ubal trying hard to 
hide his laughter. 
There is nothing like this to take the egotism 
out of your expanding angler. I hope I did n'ot 
need it, but I did receive it, and when Mons. 
“Webaire” is talking about trout, no matter 
where we are, whether in Canada or California, 
the Laurentian or the Tuna Club, the listener 
will observe that I have very little to say. 
One of the extraordinary things in this Lau¬ 
rentian region was the abundance of game, yet 
it had a marvelous faculty of remaining con¬ 
cealed. I am convinced that I was often but a 
few yards from a bear, its tracks were absolutely 
fresh, the old tree trunk it had ripped open and 
scattered about was still “smoking,” the marks of 
its claws fresh on the trees where it had 
“yawned,” yet I did not see a live bear, though 
they were heard of here and there every day, 
and were so plentiful that ladies never went out 
without a guide, and we always took a rifle. 
Luther, poet, author, was the bear hunter 
of the camp and I often accompanied him on 
bear hunts. We scoured the country, crossed 
and re-crossed by moose and bear tracks, but 
never did we see a bear until late in the season 
when I was in other pastures, in fact, on the 
grand banks of Newfoundland, when my com¬ 
panion found a bear in the great meadow and 
wounded him, but ultimately lost him. 
It was on one of these hunts that I marvel¬ 
ously gave a demonstration of the trailing quali¬ 
ties of Phil-o-rum. We had walked to the west 
of Lac Perchaude on a bear hunt one day, leav¬ 
ing the canoe on the west shore, climbing up 
through fields of flowers to a famous bear coun¬ 
try in the vicinity of a blueberry patch, but no 
bears were to be seen. Then we descended into 
a little meadow that had been a lak. It was 
absolutly surrounded by a maze of dead and liv¬ 
ing trees and of brush of all kinds, an ideal bear 
country. In some places we lay down and crept 
through the tangle, coming out after a long 
struggle into the ancient lake bed, not a little 
meadow about two hundred yards across. 
The tall rippling grass open to the blue sky 
and sunshine showed every evidence of game. 
There were nests, “forms” here and there, but the 
game was not there. In the thickest part of this 
maze I sat down astride a tree trunk to rest, 
took off my cartridge belt, and in answering the 
sudden call of my companions, started after them, 
forgetting it; it w r as too dark to go back. That 
night at San Souci, I told Phil-o-rum as near 
as I could where I went in, as we had separated 
to cover as much ground as possible. It was like 
finding a needle in a haystack; yet Phil-o-rum 
walked around the edge of the swamp until he 
struck my footprints, then by broken twigs, 
tracked me to the log and that night brought 
home the belt, which, though I valued it for cer¬ 
tain associations, went to him.. 
$50,000 Worth of Diamond Backs 
P ROBABLY the most novel farm in the 
world, certainly one of the most profitable, 
in view of the fact that its lands are 
worthless for anything else, is the “terrapin 
ranch” of John Ludwig, Jr., on Grand Isle, thirty 
miles from New Orleans. Under the roofs of 
his three sheds are gathered about 20,000 “cow” 
terrapin—as the females are called—and between 
5,000 and 7,000 “bulls.” The cows are worth 
from $1.25 to $2 each, value varying with size, 
while the bulls range from 10 cents to 50 cents, 
being much inferior to the cows in flavor and 
fineness of flesh. On the' table they bring some¬ 
thing like $4 apiece, but Ludwig considers him¬ 
self lucky if he gets half of this. 
His sheds, of which there are three, for cows, 
bulls and young, are about thirty by fifty feet in 
size, built over small bayous, with shelves inside 
on which the queer “herds”- of this terrapin 
farmer climb when tired of the water. It is the 
largest establishment of its kind in the world 
and Ludwig started it by catching terrapin with 
his own hands seventeen years ago. His farm 
has given Louisiana the lead in terrapin-produc¬ 
ing states of the Union. 
Scores of men and boys are employed 
throughout the season catching terrapin in the 
marshes of the South, and so important has the 
industry become that the Conservation Commis¬ 
sion has secured the passage of a law in Louisi¬ 
ana prohibiting the sale of “diamond-backs” less 
than six inches in length and providing a closed 
season from April 15 to June 15. Terrapin are 
found in mudflats. The hunter probes with a 
stick until he strikes the hard shell, then digs out 
the toothsome creature with a shovel. Sometimes 
dogs are used, pointers being the most skillful, 
and the terrapin is pointed by the trained dog 
just as surely as he would find a bird, even 
though the diamond-back may be under two or 
three feet of mud and water. 
Ludwig supplies New York, Boston, Phila¬ 
delphia, Baltimore and other large cities with 
hundreds of terrapin during the season. The 
females, containing eggs, are considered the most 
valuable, as the eggs are used to garnish the 
dish—at $4 a plate. Three cartloads of chopped 
fish are fed to Ludwig’s terrapin every day, and 
rap with a stick on the door of any of the sheds 
will bring hundreds of black heads, with shining 
black eyes, to the surface of the shallow bayou, 
looking for their dinners. 
Baby terrapin by hundreds are hatched at the 
farm each year, and require about five years to 
attain full size. Besides raising these, the farm 
serves during the winter as a stable for many 
barrels of terrapin, which are shipped in from 
northern farms in the fall and sent back in the 
spring. Ludwig charges $10 a barrel for this 
stabling, and derives a neat income from this 
source alone. 
Formerly terrapin were to be found in shoals 
on practically all the mud flats of Louisiana, but 
they have been hunted out until the Conservation 
Commission is preparing even more rigid laws 
for their protection and preservation. M. L. 
Alexander, president of the commission, is pre¬ 
paring data on the terrapin industry as exempli¬ 
fied in Ludwig’s success as a farmer of the dia¬ 
mond-backs at Grand Isle. 
