FOREST AND STREAM 
Reuben Cary—Forest Patriarch 
A Biographical Sketch of a Well known Adirondack Guide 
By Paul Brandreth 
With ‘Photograph b\) the Author 
(Concluded from last week.) 
854 
carted in on the backs of the Indians; talking 
machines will be found indingy teepess, hun¬ 
dreds of miles from a settlement, playing 
“There’ll be a Hot Time in the Old Town To¬ 
night,” when not an Indian could tell what it 
was saying. The unique bit of woodcraft known 
as a lob-stick is found in this region; it consists 
of a cutting away of the central branches of a 
lofty pine or spruce so that merely a tuft shows 
against the sky. The Indian women are very 
superstitious about being photographed and re¬ 
sent it to the point of splashing the photog¬ 
rapher. There are no greater loads carried 
anywhere in Canada than one will see on the 
backs of these young Indians; seven hundred 
pounds is frequently carried short distances. 
During the surveying and construction of the 
road hundreds of log cabins were built at sightly 
places along the right of way or at nearby lakes. 
The railway is securing many of these camps 
and they will prove splendid headquarters for 
the visiting sportsmen for years to come. While 
the stations for towns are finished all along the 
road it should not be assumed that there is any 
town in the immediate vicinity; sometimes there 
is no one living within many miles. The fore¬ 
sight of the constructors of the road, however, 
will unquestionably find quick appreciation on 
the part of the incoming settlers for all this re¬ 
gion is destined to be an important part of the 
Dominion’s vast agricultural development. 
There are practically no really good maps of 
this great region available to the sportsman. A 
few years ago the Dominion government, at 
Ottawa, published the best general map now to 
be had; the surveyors and engineers have made 
better maps of the territory close to the right 
of way. The only descriptive matter in print 
consists of reports made to the Canadian govern¬ 
ment by surveying parties; it is not of much 
value to sportsmen. Probably during the 
next few months the Grand Trunk Pacific Rail¬ 
way, Montreal, which will take over and operate 
this great national system, will put the material 
which has come to it from my own and other 
sportsmen’s exploration trips, into the form of 
a booklet. It is reported that trains will be 
running regularly over this route during the 
early part of the summer. There is every inclin¬ 
ation among the Canadian officials, both govern¬ 
mental and railway, to assist the sportsman and 
the tourist, in his plans to visit this new and 
wonderful wild region. 
OVER 50,000,000 FISH PLANTED THIS YEAR 
Grand Rapids, Mich., June 15.—Upward of 
50,000,000 fish have been planted in upper Michi¬ 
gan waters this spring. Forty-one millions of the 
fry were hatched at the state plant at the Soo 
and the remainder at the federal hatchery at 
Duluth. The bulk of the planting was done by 
the National Government. This was for the 
benefit of the commercial fisheries.. 
The state’s contribution was 3,000,000 lake 
trout, planted in inland lakes, and 2,000,000 brook 
trout and 1,000,000 rainbow trout, planted in 
streams. The fish planted by the goverment con¬ 
sisted of 25,000,000 whitefish and 10,000,000 lake 
trout, hatched at the Soo, and approximately 
,10,000,000 whitefish and trout procured from 
Duluth. Only because of this annual work are 
the commercial fisheries and the game fishing of 
the region maintained. 
"We must have been travelin’ for a couple 
of hours, when off thrugli the woods we seen a 
big panther cornin’ along on her back track 
with two cubs wallerin’ behind her. I sup¬ 
pose she must hev been fakin' ’em some place 
where she’d killed a deer. The minute she 
seen us she whirled like a flash and bolted, 
leavin’ both her cubs scrabblin’ and squealin’ in 
the snow. We ran up ter them, and found 
they was awful small, not much bigger than 
kittens, cute little chaps with stripes down 
Glistening Icy Lake Trout. 
their backs and so young they couldn’t bite. 
We picked ’em up, put ’em in our packs— 
gracious! how they squall’d and scratch’d and 
tried ter git away—and hung the packs on a 
tree. Then we started hot lick after the old 
one. 
“It wasn’t long before Farmer, who was 
ahead, come to a stop and hollered, ‘There she 
is up in that tree!’ Sure enough I could see 
her standin’ on the branch of a big hemlock 
about twenty feet from the ground, her back 
arched like a cat, and her eyes blazin’ green 
fire. She was a nasty lookin’ customer and I 
didn’t give her no time ter change her sneakin’, 
cowardly ways. So I fired pretty quick and 
got her right through the heart. Well, sir, 
yer should hev seen her come sailin’ jist like 
a flyin’ squirrel down out of that hemlock! 
She lit on her feet, made a couple of jumps, 
hopped over an old log and then come straight 
fer me and Farmer! Maybe there wasn’t a 
flurry round there fer a few seconds! Farmer 
grabbed his axe, and let go the dog. They 
landed in a heap jist about the time I got an¬ 
other cap on my rifle, but the panther was a 
dead one and didn’t have strength enough ter 
maul the beedle. 
“She was a big animal and we was mighty 
glad we didn't have no more trouble with her 
than we did. We took the cubs home and kept 
’em both till they was six or seven months 
old. They got awful strong and had claws as 
sharp as needles. One of ’em managed to get 
away and the other finally sickened and died. 
“I knowed one feller in the woods that killed 
twenty-three panthers huntin’ and trappin’. 
Arnold and Sam Dunnigan and this same man 
Farmer that went with me took a trip one 
winter down Brown’s Track way, and I guess 
they got about twenty-five or thirty skins. 
That’s how panthers come to be exterminated.” 
In recalling panther anecdotes and experi¬ 
ences Rube says he can remember only a 
single instance where one of the animals at¬ 
tacked a person without provocation. The in¬ 
cident happened in the locality of Newcomb, 
and might very well have had tragic conse¬ 
quences. A man by the naime of Frank Chase 
discovered, one winter morning, while hunting 
in the woods, the fresh pug marks of a panther. 
Led by curiosity more than anything else, for 
he was armed only with a shotgun, he com¬ 
menced to follow up the trail. In an opening 
in the underbrush he stumbled suddenly on 
the freshly slain carcass of a deer. As he 
stopped to examine it there came a ferocious 
snarl from behind a screen of little spruce and 
at the same instant a big panther broke from 
cover and rushed full tilt at the surprised and 
consternated hunter. However, like most 
woodsmen, he was not long in recovering his 
wits, and flinging the gun to his shoulder 
dropped the enraged animal stone dead with a 
load of heavy bird-shot in the head. It was 
not more than a few feet from him when he 
fired, otherwise the bird-shot might not have 
had the desired effect. 
Not only in the line of hunting has Rube at¬ 
tained a varied and successful career. As a 
trapper and fisherman, as a past-master in all 
the details and arts of woodcraft, he has 
reached that point of efficiency which verges 
on second nature. In the woods he does things 
almost subconsciously which would take an¬ 
other man years to learn. In selecting a camp 
site; in building a fire in the rain; in throw¬ 
ing together a shelter for the night; in finding 
