FOREST AND STREAM 
647 
sound quite in keeping with the place and the 
circumstances of the traveler and very unlike the 
voice of a bird. I could lie awake for hours 
listening to it, the cry is so thrilling.” 
To hear the loon’s voice in the wee hours of 
daylight as the camper awakens from his night’s 
slumber, is indeed a most weird and fascinating 
sound and in the camper’s drowsy state he won¬ 
ders if he is still on earth or has journeyed to 
some fairyland. 
As we were in no hurry we stayed all day in 
our Long Lake fairyland to get a good taste of 
a day’s rest in camp and read Thoreau’s compari¬ 
son of the rowdy’s life and the life of the soli¬ 
tary settler. Says Thoreau: “And as for the 
rowdy world in the large cities, so little enter¬ 
prise has it that it never adventures in this di- 
. rection but like vermin clubs together in alleys 
and drinking saloons, its highest accomplishment 
for a chance to run beside a fire engine and 
throw brickbats.” * * * 
“How much more respectable is the life of 
the solitary pioneer or settler in these, or any 
woods—having real difficulties not of his own 
creation, drawing his subsistence directly from 
nature—than that of the helpless multitudes in 
the towns who depend on gratifying the ex¬ 
tremely artificial wants of society and are thrown 
out of employment by hard times.” 
Conditions do not seem to have changed a 
great deal from Thoreau’s day of 1857. We still 
have our city rowdies who use guns instead of 
brickbats, though they do not attempt to run be¬ 
side the modern steam fire engine. We still 
have drinking saloons a-plenty—and in addition 
the bad smelling cigarette and now the dance de 
Tango. But fortunately we have as well, a 
goodly sprinkling of rugged country folk and 
woodsmen—and many city lovers of nature and 
while our pioneers, in the nature of things, are 
not as numerous there remains enough leaven 
of sense to offset the foolish and injurious cus¬ 
toms and habits of the tough rowdy and effete 
city populations. 
Our day in camp emphasized the value to 
health and mind of even a short sojourn in the 
wilderness. 
August 28, 1913. 
We remained a second day in camp on Long 
Lake to browse about and fish. In the after¬ 
noon we caoed across the lake and then walked 
back through the forest for several miles to a 
trout stream, but hooked no fish. The guide said 
that they were not biting this month and the 
region had been whipped over so much that 
there were more whippers than trout. 
On returning to the shore we started up a 
covey of a dozen spruce partridge which were 
so tame that they would light on the boughs not 
over ten feet away and look at us. They acted 
as if they knew at present they were protected 
by the law and it occurred to the writer how 
fine it would be for the community if, as far as 
practical, all of the Maine woods was turned 
into a game preserve and what an effect it would 
have in reducing the present high cost of living. 
The guide remarked that the State of Maine 
once sold land to the lumber companies as low 
as thirty cents an acre and now the state had 
none left to sell. Therefore, to get back the 
land for a forest and game reservation the state 
might have to pay the lumberman’s figure for 
the lumbered land. However, there is a move¬ 
ment under way to have the National Govern¬ 
ment take for a National Park a good slice of the 
Maine woods around Mount Katahdin and that 
would be a step in the right direction to re¬ 
serve the Maine woods for game and recreation. 
Surely with the prevailing scarcity and high 
cost of meats, a plentiful game supply would 
have a tendency to keep down the soaring prices, 
and with all of the mountain and forest land in 
the Maine woods, White Mountains, Adiron- 
dacks, Catskills, Highlands and Berkshires utiliz¬ 
ed as breeding places for game and then market¬ 
ed under strict Government control, the thickly 
populated sections of the eastern states would 
probably not have staring at them so threaten¬ 
ingly a meat famine. 
August 29, 1913. 
Long Lake was shrouded in a mountain mist 
as we paddled out early to make the dam at the 
end of the lake, when we had to throw over our 
dunnage and re-embark. In reaching one of the 
turns of the Allagash we were greeted by a buck 
and doe which seemed imbued with curiosity to 
find out what we were like. They stood looking 
at us until we were within fifty yards when 
they decided that our company was undesirable 
and made for the woods. The guide gave a call 
which halted them and they took another look at 
us but then went splashing to the shore. 
The buck and doe made a total of eight deer 
that we had seen in our seven days of camp life 
and no other large animals. Rather a small 
number of big game to the quantity reported by 
other travelers even in recent years. In 1902 Dr 
Bugbee of Oneonta, N. Y., made a canoe trip 
through the Caucomgomoc country, a neighbor¬ 
ing region to the Allagash, and in eight days his 
party sighted two hundred and fifty-five deer 
and thirty-four moose. The difference in the 
number of big game indicates how Maine’s game 
supply is being exhausted. 
If our trip had not been enlivened by a quan¬ 
tity of deer and moose we now had before us 
such a picturesque sight, for in the distance we 
could see coming up stream a seventy foot lum¬ 
ber supply scow, drawn by two wading horses 
and manned by a crew of French Canadian 
voyageurs togged out in gray stockings, knee 
breeches and red-plaid mackinaws. In the bow 
were two men poling on each side to keep the 
lumbering craft off the rocks, and perched on the 
top of the slanting roof of the cabin was the 
skipper steering with a great sweep oar. The 
scow was loaded down with a winter’s supplies 
for the lumber camp and as she passed by car¬ 
ried one back to romantic pioneer days of 
Irving, Cooper, and Thoreau. 
As our canoe was swept down stream past the 
lumber voyageurs, we were startled by gun shots 
on the shore of the stream. The skipper of the 
scow turned around and shouted in French- 
English to cease firing, that a canoe was coming 
down and in another instant we reached a 
clearing where a party of lumbermen were trying 
out some new guns on a flock of ducks that 
were down stream. 
We sped on and that night camped for the 
first time on the Allagash River, not its tribu¬ 
taries. All ponds and lakes had been left be¬ 
hind. 
Day’s Journey-—26 miles. 
August 30, 1913. 
On breaking camp this morning our first en¬ 
counter was with a drenching thunderstorm 
which fortunately hit us as we were abreast of 
our first sight of cleared land and on which 
there was a barn that afforded shelter. But 
thunder storms are soon over and by noon we 
had reached pretty Allagash Falls, which neces¬ 
sitated another short carry. The guide said the 
Falls were a splendid site for a pulp mill such “a 
dandy water power” and his commercial calcu¬ 
lations were enough to give a chill to every lover 
of nature who believes in saving some of the 
few water falls that we have left. It shows that 
nature lovers must rally and get Congress or the 
Legislature to save some of the Maine woods, 
if they are to be spared from the ravages of 
modern mercenary civilization. 
The downpour of the morning had somewhat 
swollen the river or as the guide expressed it 
"greased the rocks” and we glided swiftly down 
stream toward our last camp on the Allagash. 
One of the pleasures of a Maine canoe trip 
is to watch and help the guide make and break 
camp. In making camp he first selects a suitable 
site, usually one that is used by the dif¬ 
ferent touring parties, but frequently there is 
frame work missing and he must hew out the 
stakes with his handy axe. When frame work 
is placed in position it takes a Maine guide a 
very few minutes to put up and fasten his tent, 
then the fly and afterward throw over his din¬ 
ing-room tent. Get the right wood for the fire. 
Every act of making camp is done quickly but 
carefully and likewise in breaking camp—tents 
yanked down in a jiffy but carefully packed with 
the dunnage in the only vehicle of transportation 
—the cherished canoe. 
A feature of the Maine camps which might be 
open to criticism is the untidy way in which par¬ 
ties leave camp sites. Refuse and slops of all 
kinds are thrown around; apaprently there is 
no attempt to burn the rubbish. The Maine 
camp laws either require a statute to compel the 
incineration of the leavings of camping parties 
or the enforcement by the State Foresters of 
legal camp tidiness. In this respect they could 
follow to advantage the rules of the Appalachian 
Mountain Club: viz., “Burn your rubbish.” 
Day’s Journey—15 miles. 
August 31, 1913. 
A peach of a day with eagles flying about, 
greeted us as we left the last camp on the Alla¬ 
gash and headed down stream to where the Alla¬ 
gash flows into the St. Johns River. As we pad- 
died down stream we met a number of canoes 
poling up stream—a rather slow process against 
the swift current—but the only means of trans¬ 
portation in this as yet unspoiled country. 
Our attention would be called frequently to 
broods of ducks which skirted the shores and 
the frantic efforts of the mother to get her family 
out of sight for the young could not fly and the 
mother would not desert them. The result was 
usually a wild rush along the shore. 
At the junction of the Allagash and St. John 
rivers travelers run into hills about as high as 
the highlands of the Hudson and as yet unmarred. 
There are beautiful cloud effects and charm¬ 
ing vistas. While floating on in the rushing tide 
a squirrel swam across our path and the guide 
with his paddle lifted it into the canoe. A little 
further along we sighted a horse and buggy, the 
first we had seen in a week and when we had 
glided a bit further we heard the sound of cow¬ 
bells. At night we camped on the side of a hill 
(Continued on page 663). 
