Jan. II, 1913 
FOREST AND STREAM 
39 
Little Bald Mountain, N. B. 
By RUPERT STARBIRD 
It was old, hard packed snow and I couldn’t 
even pound a hole for my hip to rest in. It 
was cold snow, too! It's a hard proposition 
to try to warm up a whole glacier through a 
few thicknesses of blanket. 
I shivered and shook until I became alarmed 
for fear of the volcano getting into synchronic 
vibration with me and causing an earthquake. 
Even Morpheus gave me the cold shoulder, de¬ 
priving me of the solace of his lethean arms. 
It was a splendid opportunity, though, for 
dreamy retrospection. I presume I became so 
wrapt in thought that its additional folds af¬ 
forded some warmth, for I dozed off toward 
morning and overslept. 
After a hasty breakfast of frozen biscuits 
and meat I resumed my way with only the 
camera and snowshoes. 'I'he latter I soon had' 
to use, as I had got up to the loose snow, 
much of which had fallen in the recent stormy 
weather about the summit. The snowshoes 
were rather small, and this, with the loose snow 
into which I sank deeply, and the increasing 
rarity of the atmosphere, made climbing ex¬ 
ceedingly difficult and laborious. 
Passing too close around the sloping end of 
a crevasse, I stepped on a patch of wind-swept 
ice and m3' snowshoes slid, carrying me down. 
I landed on a ledge six feet below, and scram¬ 
bling out, went on. The smoke serpent of the 
previous evening had reared its head in an 
attitude of defense . against the threatened in¬ 
vasion of man. 
After climbing several hours, I saw that 
at the progress I was making, I would prob- 
abl3’ reach the crater by evening — too late to 
return to my night’s camp by dark. It would 
have been folly to have attempted to remain 
on the summit at 14,000 feet over night with¬ 
out shelter. If not death from exposure, it 
most likel}' would have been by asphyxiation 
in the smoke and gases. Plad I left the main 
camp early in the morning instead of 2 p. m.. 
I could have reached a much higher altitude 
for my night’s camp. Then from there have 
reached the summit by noon and returned to 
the night’s camp for another night, or probably 
reached the main camp. 
As it was, I reluctantly turned and took 
the back trail; and on reaching my night’s 
camp, gathered together my pack and hit a 
fast pace down the glacier. As the afternoon 
waned, soft fleecy clouds had gathered about 
the summ.it, frorn seeming^' nowhere. These 
spread and settled, and through broken rifts 
the sun at times burst, casting dark, shadowy 
profiles along the icy slopes. Looking far down 
across the fissured glacier, beneath the dark, 
lowering clouds, it seemed like some dismal 
abyss of Dante’s Inferno, where lost' souls 
were tortured. 
Big, damp flakes of snow commenced to 
fall when I reached a large rounded rock passed 
the day before. Its protecting shadow had pre¬ 
served its base while the sun had melted away 
the surrounding surface, leaving it poised on a 
pedestal of ice like a gigantic football awaiting 
a kick-off. Camp was reached at dark and a 
big feed of sheep stew duly appreciated. 
In July, 1909, five years after my attempt, 
the crater was reached by Robert Dunn and 
"VS’illiam Soule. I had adways planned on go¬ 
ing back some day to be the first to look down 
(Continued on page 63.) 
T he country around Little Bald Mountain, 
New Brunswick, is a prolific territory in 
which to hunt, and of especial interest, 
owing to the variety of game to be found there. 
It quickens the pulse when one thinks he may 
meet a bear, caribou, moose, or deer in a day's 
walk; and variety is the essence of New 
Brunswick hunting. 
Little Bald Mountain lies sixty-five miles 
northwest of Newcastle, and relatively is hard 
of access, but you cannot expect to step from 
a Pullman car into a district where game is 
plentiful, and the hunters few. 
Porty years ago the last big forest fire in 
this section passed over the tops of the moun¬ 
tains, leaving the timber in valleys standing, 
and with the help of time only a small dead 
stub here and there marks the event. Only a 
few scattering spruces are now making the 
struggle for existence. 
Hunting there is a miniature of that in the 
mountains of the West. You may go up on 
the top of a mountain from where other moun- 
taintops, slopes and glades among the spruces 
unfold themselves to view, and with a good 
pair of field glasses look over the country at 
leisure; but the chief purpose of the glasses is 
in looking for good heads, saving unnecessar\' 
walking for game which you would not shoot. 
These open places furnish food for bear and 
deer, as well as caribou; for in addition to the 
moss, they are covered with blueberry bushes, 
upon which the deer were feeding; but Novem¬ 
ber is a little late for bears. 
After the first of November no day passed 
without caribou being seen, either singly or in 
groups. The largest band I saw contained 
about twenty-five. This is not a large one, 
since last year it was not uncommon to see as 
many as one hundred in a herd. But it was at 
a time when there was a considerable snow in 
the woods. Then the moss is not so easily 
found, but in the open it lies everywhere under 
the snow. 
On the first day after the first meal in 
camp, I got a deer. I had walked in twelve 
miles in the morning, much of the way through 
a wet valley, partly caused by the many beaver 
dams along the brook. This makes traveling 
hard, but after lunch I was refreshed and ready 
to make a start. 
The first mountaintop lies about a mile 
from camp, and when Luke and I were topping 
the last ridge before coming into the “game 
field,” we saw two deer, a buck and doe, with 
heads up, looking in our direction. They were 
about 125 yards away, and I fired at once. The 
buck flinched, and the doe ran at the report. 
I fired again, missing, when the buck ran, but 
turned at the brink of the hill and looked back. 
Why did he do this? At the time he had a 
bullet in his shoulder, and I did not expect to 
see him stop in full view, within 200 yards, 
under the circumstances. I shot again as he 
faced us. and he bounded over the crest into 
the timber below. Going over to where we 
last saw him. Luke picked up a piece of bone 
from the deer’s leg. But it was hard to find 
blood, for the low bushes which covered the 
ground had spots of red coloring on their 
A QUENCH INTERRUPTED. 
