42 G 
FOREST AND STREAM 
Oct. 5, 1912 
parties. That night we met three of the parties, 
and all reported many birds seen, but only an 
average of eight per party were killed. This 
supplements what I have said about quail having 
a safe cover for years hence. 
A series of cool rains and a bit of muddy 
water in the river forced us to forego hunting 
for a few days. We journeyed, nevertheless, by 
easy stages and made a landing at the bluff-pro¬ 
tected town of Alma, Wis., after putting in at 
many other little ports and watching the Govern¬ 
ment steam dredges helping to keep the channel 
open to navigation. 
We had salted and pickled a great number of 
the moon-eyed minnows. Now we were to know¬ 
how good they were for bait. The first couple 
of days’ fishing with flies was abominable. The 
next day with salted mooneyes and pickled moon¬ 
eyes was worse. And we promptly dumped the 
whole lot overboard, containers and all. By dili¬ 
gent search we found a number of nice sized 
frogs for bait-casting. These were used to good 
advantage back among the lilypads between the 
wing dams for big-mouth bass. I cannot say 
the fishing was excellent, though by diligence we 
replenished the larder. 
Up the river again on the next day we sought 
mooneyes in the pot-holes connected with the 
river and found them. Then things began to 
look up. With one bass in the creel and a nipi- 
gon bait made of the white streak in his belly, 
we soon had others. The nipigon seemed to do 
more effective work than the mooneyes, and you 
may be sure we made a number of them and 
pickled them to use with spinners for fishing to 
come. 
Now for more cruising. Dirty weather set 
us going again. We could travel in comfort in 
the worst of rainy weather, while lying idle gave 
us the fidgets. The boat was tight-roofed, a 
canopy covered the cockpit, and with our charts 
beside us we navigated right along until we 
came upon the one big bump of the trip. Below 
Winona and near the postoffice of La Moille, 
Minn., the skipper saw a ‘‘hull inspector” or dead 
head, a log that swung in midstream. By all the 
rules of navigation he should have stayed in¬ 
side of the log, as that would have been on the 
outside of the bend where the deepest water is 
supposed to be. He stayed there and was run¬ 
ning full head down stream, when with a bump 
that sent the crew out of their seats he hit a 
wing dam that was but twelve to eighteen inches 
under water. It was the same dam on which the 
steamer Quincy sank but a couple of years be¬ 
fore. The log was a black buoy beckoning one 
to stay on the left of it instead of the right, yet 
it lacked the white cap usually seen on these, it 
probably having been knocked off by a raft of 
logs at some time recently. 
Up we went on to the rocky dam and hung 
there on the strut of the under part, rocking this 
way and that in the swift water. By getting the 
dink on to the fore deck and filled with water, 
and other of the load carried ahead, we man¬ 
aged to get the stern moving forward, and off 
the rocks a few inches at a time by jumping into 
the cold water and using the gang plank as a 
pry. Then came along a hydroplane. It was 
useless in aiding us. Soon came a fantail with 
a ten-horse bit of power in her, which coupled to 
our own managed to shift 11s off the rocks with¬ 
out damage after two hours of hanging on them. 
The next place we stopped in saw the pur¬ 
chase of a pair of field glasses which henceforth 
were at the left hand of the skipper at the wheel, 
and with which he picked many a safe channel 
and landing before the end of the journey. 
At Bad Axe. Wis., we took to the prairies 
beyond the bluffs for a two days' shoot. There 
was plenty of shooting, but the amount of game 
did not pay for the powder. Chickens were 
found on hill and catstep, the latter a shelf- 
covered hill. They were wild, having been shot 
at a deal before the season. 
Just below Dubuque, in a reach of the river 
that gave the wind a chance to fairly annihilate 
the water, we stopped for the night. It was the 
first open landing we had made since starting 
on the trip. Generally we could find a safe har¬ 
bor for the night in some creek's mouth or a 
pocket of the river near shore. The river charts 
always show some snug harbor back of an island 
or between an island and a piece of mainland. 
We worked to make these ports and lay behind 
them if we were going to stop any length of 
time. On the particular night that we stopped 
below Dubuque, the wind began to rise, and we 
had no protection except a small point around 
which the up-river swells driven by the wind 
pounded the cruiser upon the rocky shore. 
Steadily the -wind increased and steadily our 
pounding grew worse. We were in for a night 
of it. The anchor would not hold on the hard 
bottom, hence it was useless to try to go out 
into the river and be upended and cat-hauled by 
wind and wave. The wind was up-stream and 
the current down into the eye of the wind, and 
between the two we wallowed in the trough of 
a dirty sea for that portion of the river. There 
was nothing to do but try to back off shore, so 
that we could turn and head down stream and 
into the leeward of Nine Mile Island. The island 
was three miles away, and to gain it in the mid¬ 
dle of the night was no easy thing, the wind 
blowing so strong that it turned the cruiser out 
of her course twice on the way. 
Before we had turned in for the night we 
had noted two Government river lights, one 
directly across the river, and one down river 
opposite the head of the island. We got these 
firmly fixed in mind, and then with great dif¬ 
ficulty backed off shore and swung into the eye 
of the wind for the trip. The skipper lost part 
of the clothing he had on and never missed it 
till morning. The women folks were thrown 
from their berths, the kids rolled on the floor, 
and yet in all the scramble and tumble the engine 
turned steadily and brought us in an hour be¬ 
hind the island head where the water was peace¬ 
ful enough to plant the anchor. 
And we had no sooner thrown it into the 
mud than a covey of Government steamers and 
barges blew around the point of the island head 
and dropped alongside us to spend the night. 
This was the first bad night we had on the 
Mississippi. 
“It costs more to keep clean on the Yukon 
than it does in the States,” writes W. A. Hillis, 
of the Remington-L'MC Co., who is on a shoot¬ 
ing trip in Alaska. “Up here in Alaska,” con¬ 
tinues Mr. Hillis, "my laundry bill averages about 
three times American prices—just an ordinary 
bundle this week cost $2.75. It would be al¬ 
most as cheap to buy clothing for every “change” 
provided the purchases could be made at home 
prices. One dollar of my bill this week was for 
washing a light, linen coat. They charge a quar¬ 
ter for washing soft shirts, ten cents for col¬ 
lars, forty cents for union suits and everything 
else in proportion. 
“My old back-home washerwoman, with her 
tub and scrubbing board, could make $25 a day 
at these prices. 
“Of course, average wages are high here so 
that prices aren't really so unreasonable as they 
look, but it’s naturally hard for newcomers to 
adjust themselves to conditions.” 
A MISSISSIPPI RIVER STEAM BOAT. 
