296 
FOREST AND STREAM 
Sept. 7, 1912 
Days Off and Off Days 
T HE heat and humidity of Boston were op¬ 
pressive on the afternoon of July 1, when 
we boarded the Dominion Atlantic steamer 
Prince Arthur, at Long Wharf. On the forward 
deck there was a breath of cool air, which grew 
into a delicious breeze as the voyage began. 
Down the bay a warship, a whaleback and a six- 
masted schooner were lying at anchor; an ocean 
steamer was just starting out—these were every 
day occurrences. A less familiar sight, however, 
was two aeroplanes off to the southward hover¬ 
ing over the water. Shortly afterward only one 
was visible, but it was several days later when 
we read in a Halifax paper how the other had 
fallen 500 feet, carrying two aeronauts down to 
their death. 
The morning came cool and clear, so that there 
was no need of the foghorn on Cape Forchu to 
guide the Prince Arthur to the entrance to Yar¬ 
mouth Harbor and up the winding channel to 
the new pier. The custom house inspection was 
brief. The Halifax and Southwestern train was 
waiting, and soon we were speeding along the 
ocean shore of Nova Scotia. 
To eyes wearied with a year of skyscrapers 
and narrow streets, the change to broad views 
grateful. It was pleasant to look out from 
the car windows on a panorama of farm¬ 
ing and fishing villages of unpainted houses 
weathered to a silvery gray or painted white and 
with green blinds. At times the background was 
a white-capped bay, with fishing schooners tug¬ 
ging at their anchors, or a fragrant evergreen 
forest of spruce, hemlock and fir; and where the 
road bed skirted the shore there were broad, 
level beaches of firm white sand, or of pebbles, 
sometimes with a three-foot rampart thrown up 
by the surf a short distance back from the 
water’s edge. 
By F. G. 
Although in other years we have taken many 
fine trout from the two main branches of the 
Tusket and have heard more recently that there 
is good salmon fishing in their junction pool, with 
comfortable accommodations at a nearby farm 
house, we did not leave the train when it stopped 
at Tusket station, not even to enjoy once more 
the well-remembered hospitality of Mrs. Gilman 
of the American House. Neither did we get off 
at Port Clyde to cast a fly over the falls two 
miles above the railroad bridge where, coinci- 
dently with the shutting down of the sawmills, 
the salmon and grilse are said to be coming back 
again. Nor at Shelburne, the gateway to the 
Upper Clyde district, sixteen miles away, where 
the streams abound with large trout. No, we 
did not stop at any of those good fishing places, 
*but we went further and fared worse. 
At Shelburne the Provincial Guides’ Asso¬ 
ciation had just held an annual meeting lasting 
two days. They had listened to addresses on 
conservation of fish and game and on kindred 
topics. They had amused themselves with con¬ 
tests of skill—moose calling, rifle shooting, log 
rolling and log chopping. Some of the guides 
came aboard the train at Shelburne, among 
others Spehcer G. Freeman, whose home is at 
Sable River, which was our first destination. We 
esteemed ourselves fortunate in being able to 
secure his services. 
Sable River is a town of few inhabitants, 
people in moderate circumstances, who wrest a 
living from the farm, the forest and the sea. 
Its hotel, kept by Mrs. Ida Harlow, has very 
comfortable accommodations for a limited num¬ 
ber of guests and at a reasonable charge. Mail 
for anyone staying there should be addressed to 
West Sable River postoffice; if addressed to Sable 
River, there may be a delay of forty-eight hours 
in its delivery. In the town there are many people 
of the same family name. Once upon a time one 
of them, a man of scanty locks, entertained an 
itinerant temperance lecturer so hospitably that 
at the close of his address the lecturer said: “We 
will now have a few words from Mr. Freeman, 
the one whose hair is thin.” Whereupon, so our 
guide averred, seven bald-headed men arose in 
different parts of the hall. 
The river itself is a small one. It has the 
name of being one of the very few streams in 
Nova Scotia where sea trout may be taken with 
the fly. Late in May or early in June, as the 
spirit moves them, they are found near the head 
of tidewater and are said to be attracted by any 
fly suitable for grilse, but in July one has to go 
up country in order to get them. On the after¬ 
noon of our arrival we took a few brook trout, 
enough for breakfast, from the east branch of 
the river, called Tom Tidney’s brook. Late the 
next morning, with fishing tackle, cameras, 
blankets and provisions for three days, we set 
out on foot for an old lumber camp at Bethune’s 
(pronounced Beeton’s) meadow deadwater, eight 
miles from the hotel. The walk was a warm 
one, relieved by a cool breeze whenever the trail 
crossed a hilltop in the open, but oppressive in 
the brush and along low ground. Only a night 
or two before, however, there had been a frost 
which had nipped the tops of the ferns. Six 
miles from the start there was a halt for lunch¬ 
eon under an old yellow pine where water from 
a cold spring trickled across the wood road. The 
river broadened out there into a wide pond or 
deadwater, in which we fished for an hour or 
more without getting a rise. Then we went on 
to the camp. 
Bethune's meadow deadwater is nearly a 
mile long, varying in width from fifty to two 
hundred feet, and in depth from two and one- 
half to fifteen or more. It has a gravel bottom, 
overlaid with mud along the edges where the 
meadow comes down to the shore. It is sup¬ 
posed to be the favorite spawning ground of the 
sea trout which ascend the river, but we saw no 
signs of them during the three days we were 
there. Before sunrise and late in the afternoon 
brook trout rose freely to natural flies and not 
so frequently to ours, although enough were 
landed to satisfy our needs. Dressed with a little 
butter and eaten from the plank on which they 
had been cooked before the live coals of the 
camp-fire, they were perfectly delicious. 
Two miles further up the river there is a 
smaller deadwater called Coopertrap, after a 
Micmac trapper of earlier years, which Freeman 
was very anxious to have us try. But the ex¬ 
treme heat and the prospect of the walk back 
to town deterred us. Possibly this was a lost 
opportunity. At all events another angler, only 
two days earlier, when the weather was a little 
cooler, took nineteen sea trout, ' two of them 
weighing four pounds each, from one or both 
of the headwaters. 
In the middle of the forenoon of the third 
day we started down the other side of the river, 
taking enough brook trout from Oak Hill Pond, 
two miles below the deadwater, for a late din- 
TOM TIDNEY'S BROOK. 
