Ocx. 5, 1912 
FOREST AND STREAM 
423 
Adirondacks of 1858 and 1859 
By ALBERT BIGELOW 
I T is very interesting to recall the old Adiron- 
dacks of more than fifty years ago, when 
they were a veritable wilderness; when the 
wolves frequently, in fact nearly always, howled' 
at night, and the panther and loup cerviers, or 
“lucyvees,” as the guides used to call them, ranged 
the woods (and the guides’ exciting stories of 
adventures with them ranged the camps). 
I remember distinctly a canoe trip from a 
camp on Constable Point on Raquette Lake 
through Marion River to Blue Mountain Lake 
and lying on the shore under my turned-up canoe 
and hearing a panther's or a mountain lion's 
cries above me on the mountain side for a long 
time before I could sleep. At that time there 
was a man living alone in a small cabin on a 
hill not very far from the lake, but no other 
in that whole region. This was before the re¬ 
gion of the Adirondacks was published or known 
to any extent as a resort for tubercular dis¬ 
orders, and when Mitchell Sabattis and Dick 
Birch and others of their age were boys, and 
Paul Smith was a young guide in his camp on 
Loon Lake, and long before the days of any 
‘‘hotels” or summer homes in that wilderness. 
In those days there were no game law pro¬ 
hibitions that prevented deer hunting at any time 
with or without dogs, and for several years we 
had one or two hounds with us to bring the 
deer to the lake where we were in camp. At 
our camp there were always five or six hungry 
appetites to be supplied (beside the dogs) and 
game was needed. That was before my days 
of fishing for trout only with the fly, but the 
trout, both lake and Fontinalis, were so abund¬ 
ant and so eager for the bait that the camp was 
profusely supplied with fish. Venison and trout 
were always plentiful in our larder, which was sup¬ 
plemented with wild ducks, sometimes abundantly. 
The guides had no moral or professional 
scruples against the use, which would now be 
regarded as “antique and horrible,” of the 
sunken-set-night-line, with one end attached to 
a “sinker,” the other end to a “float.” Nor had 
I any such scruples under the conditions of the 
big appetites in our camp, and then it seemed 
some fun to pull up a long line of 90 or 100 
feet with twenty-five or thirty short lines at¬ 
tached at various distances, each one having a 
large hook baited with a minnow at the end. 
and to find a big trout or a broken piece of 
stringer and a missing hook and end of the 
streamer. 
A visitor at any of the same regions (hills, 
lakes or rivers) of to-day would find it almost 
impossible to realize the wildness of the old days. 
That wildness was so beautiful! 
I remember on a morning of the day when 
I was to start on my return to the streets of 
New York, my going out to the shore of the 
lake before the camp had awakened and looking 
up off at the hills and valleys and lake, and the 
beautiful colors of the dawn on the whole trans¬ 
porting scene and actually crying, as a young 
lad cries at parting with his love. 
I recall one trip in 1859, I think it was, 
w r hen we started in at the camp which subse¬ 
ALL IN THE DAY'S WORK. 
pound to one and a half pounds each, until the 
bottom of our boat was well covered. Then we 
continued on down to the little. Johnson camp, 
where after a little fishing in the rapids we con¬ 
tinued on our way over the carry to Raquette 
River, thence up the river to Long Lake. After 
the whole length of Long Lake (on which I 
do not remember the sign of any habitation; I 
think Mitchell Sahattis had not then built his 
camp there) and a considerable paddle in a nar¬ 
row stream, we came to what was generally 
quently became ‘Martin’s” on Lower Saranac, 
and I rowed one of the two boats of our party 
through to Bartlett's, then a small unpainted 
house, and then to where we camped for the 
night in our tent on Round Lake. 1 don't know 
about the trout fishing of to-day at Round Lake, 
but after our night there two of us pushed our 
boat out on the pond, and at the mouth of a 
stream there took trout for an hour or more as 
fast as we could land them, one or two at a 
time, ranging in weight from one-third of a 
