682 
FOREST AND STREAM 
■ Nov. 30, 1912 
lake and camped again in the clean sand off the 
mouth of the Southwest Gander River. Our 
candle lantern, with tight bottom, proved to be 
very satisfactory, as did also the midget carbide 
lantern. Lionel and Bob took the reserve grub 
up-river two miles to cache it on a platform safe 
from bears and other prowlers. The bacon, how¬ 
ever, they put into a canvas sack and hung it 
by a wire from the limb of a birch tree at some 
distance from the main cache, for it appears that 
while a bear will not make any great effort to 
get up on to a platform after condensed milk 
and flour, there is nothing he will not go through 
to get a supply of bacon. 
Caribou tracks were numerous along the 
beach near camp. The clear musical whistle of 
yellowlegs was occasionally heard, and at eve¬ 
ning a big flock of blackducks splashed down 
into the river just across from camp. Just at 
7 p. m. the sun dropped out of sight behind 
Mount Peyton across the lake, firing it all up 
like a volcano. 
Speaking of volcanos and lakes, Newfound¬ 
land must at one time have had a good deal to 
every minute or two. The boys insisted that it 
was impossible to take a salmon with a rod at 
this time of year. “We never flies ’em now,” 
says Lionel; “in June we flies ’em whatever.” 
Three days we traveled up the stream in this 
fashion, the canoes getting much broken up in 
spite of dredging operations conducted through 
the worst “rattles” by the boys with the fine, 
strong, straight-grained ash paddles that Ralph 
had split out for this special purpose before leav¬ 
ing home. Everywhere were clean, hard banks 
and beautiful groves of white birch, making de¬ 
lightful camp sites. Yellow-legged plover whis¬ 
tled up and down the stream, affording sport 
with the twelve-gauge, and occasionally a small 
flock of blackduck would come tearing by. One 
evening a big flock of yellowlegs, chased by a 
small hawk, turned right in to shore and alighted 
almost in the camp, appearing to prefer our so¬ 
ciety to that, of the hawk, and we did not violate 
their confidence. 
Finally encountering more and worse “rat¬ 
tles” and islands, we unburdened the canoes, 
cacheing about half the stuff; even then we could 
eats salt pork I can feel it right there, a nourish- 
in’ of me and a nourishin’ of me.” 
Lionel and Bob went down stream to bring 
up our cached stuff. By actual weight on my 
steelyards their packs weighed respectively eighty 
and sixty pounds; no light burden for men, both 
of whom were over fifty years of age, to carry 
through water and loose shifting gravel under¬ 
foot. It amazed me to see the burdens these 
men carried with their head and breast straps, 
the latter thrown across the breast outside the 
arms, keeping the upper arms close to the body. 
In addition to this Lionel would usually have an 
axe in one hand and his little tin tea kettle in 
the other. 
Everything was dried out in the high wind, 
a cook shanty of birch bark built, a good table 
and bench set up under the fly of my brown 
hunting tent, and packs made up for the little 
hunting camp we determined to set up fifteen or 
twenty miles further up-stream. 
While Bob and Ralph, with sixty-pound 
packs, were gone south to fix up the hunting 
camp, Lionel and I blazed a trail from a point 
KING CARIBOU—A REMARKABLY FINE SPECIMEN. 
AMAZING BURDENS CARRIED WITH HEAD AND BREAST STRAPS. 
do with the former, for along the stream beds 
there are frequent evidences of lava flow; and 
as to lakes, the island is full of them, like 
Northern Maine. Says Lionel, who is an old 
sailor: “She’s got a tight bottom, this old isl¬ 
and ; she holds water well.” 
Getting our reduced outfit snugly packed 
away in the two canoes, we turned our backs 
upon the lake and started into the hunting coun¬ 
try. The water in the river was low. The men 
spent most of the day dragging the canoes over 
the “rattles,” only occasionally getting a ride 
through a short “steady.” I kept a mile ahead 
of them, with rifle and small pack, delighting in 
the thought that now the population of earth 
was behind me. Away upstream I found a little 
island in the midst of a wide “rattle” away from 
the flies, and sat for a long time reading “Toilers 
of the Sea” until the canoes arrived and startled, 
not twenty yards behind me, a caribou doe that 
had come out to drink. Away she went, plung¬ 
ing across the stream. 
Occasionally in a pool a salmon would leap, 
and in a long “steady” where we stopped at noon 
I jointed up a rod and cast without success with 
wet flies, large and small, and dry flies, too, over 
three or four five-pounders that were leaping 
proceed only three or four miles further. At 
this point there were scarcely two inches of 
water spread across the wide gravel bars. Every¬ 
where along the beaches were footprints of cari¬ 
bou and occasionally the slot of a big stag. 
The exertions of this up-stream pull affected 
Lionel, ordinarily tougher than a boiled owl, but 
now out of training, and he fell sick. I turned 
doctor and administered strong remedies where 
they would do the most good, and we decided 
to make our permanent camp. In a grove of 
great big birches, with a fine view up and down 
stream, right where a little cold spring brook 
had its outlet, we set up our tents. The river 
was divided at this point, a long green island 
thickly covered with low shrubs lying opposite 
camp. Back of the camp on the rise was plenty 
of good fire wood and fir balsam feathers for 
beds. 
A heavy rain and wind at night were suc¬ 
ceeded by clearing weather and a fine cool morn¬ 
ing. “She’s be a hard day,” says Lionel, mean¬ 
ing a cold day, good for hard work. Lionel talks 
backward. Says “a big wind would stop us now” 
when he means that it would take a very big 
wind to stop us now. He prefers to hunt on 
hardtack and raw salt pork, saying: “When I 
on the river two or three miles above camp up 
into the high open country easterly from the 
river, so that we might be able to get in there 
later in the month when the movement of cari¬ 
bou should start, and the stags begin to work 
up from the river bottoms out on to the high 
bogs. 
The woods were very quiet. In Newfound¬ 
land there are no chipmunks or red squirrels to 
break the silence with their noisy chatter. The eve¬ 
ning song of the white-throated sparrow, however, 
seemed very home-like. Hornets were very plen¬ 
tiful about the camp, crowding into the sugar at 
every chance; inoffensive, so far as we were con¬ 
cerned, but very quarrelsome among themselves. 
Their rough and tumble fights on our little table 
of hewn birch poles were funny to watch. 
Dozens of them buzzed around and crawled over 
my hands as I posted my note book, but without 
offense; and their music was much preferable to 
the irritating, high-pitched “zing” of the occas¬ 
ional big blue bottle fly. These were not the 
long, slim war-like black hornets, but thickset 
yellow-jacketed fellows, and Lionel says: “Him’s 
not sting never less’11 you’s bother he; spos’11 
you’s kill him’s nest he’s sting we.” We left 
(Continued on page 698.) 
