Forest and Stream 
Terms, $3 a Year, 10 Cts. a Copy, 
Six Months, $1.50. 
NEW YORK, SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 2, 1911. 
] 
VOL. LXXVII.—No. 10. 
I No. 127 Franklin St., New York. 
ON A PORTAGE. THE START AT ROGERS LANDING. 
From Rossignol to Tusket—I. 
By M. B. MILLER 
Illustrated from photographs by J. Gurney Taylor 
T O the grammarian and purist this letter, 
laboriously pencilled on a rough sheet of 
paper and still faintly smelling of the ill- 
defined but characteristically pungent odors of 
the lumber camp, was beneath contempt, but to 
me it was too eloquent of future joys for cap¬ 
tious criticism: 
Five Mile River, Febary 10, 19010. 
Dear Sir: 
Receied your lette to day th 10. I know the partey 
speeking bout, they will hap to go up'cowphan. tak a 
carry and go to boosehead Lack wich Is the headwaters 
of Weameth River, and then follow the streem tall you 
get to the Fift Lack, and then they Is a streem wich 
goes to Diwst Lack. when you get to Diwst Lack 
there Is A Lake abot 3 miles father on, and when you 
get to that Lak there A carey abot % mile Long wich 
will carey you to Oakland Lack. they Is A carey 
betwn 5 Lack and Moosehed Lak no good to goe that 
carey for It about 4 Miles Long and you will lose A 
lot of fishing If you go that way. Come and we can 
tak you though safety and hap a plenty fishing'. I will 
be home the 10th of March. Yours Truley, 
Louis. 
As I laid the letter down the busy, nerve-ex¬ 
hausting life of the great city faded away; once 
again I faintly heard the weird cry of the loon 
across the lake, the lap-lap of the clear dark 
waters against the canoe; and as in fancy I drew 
into my lungs the crisp, balsam-scented Nova 
Scotian air, innumerable vistas of the wilder¬ 
ness, the real wilderness, flashed through my 
mind and the yearning to go back to it gripped 
me with overpowering force. Practically, this 
rough scrawl meant the realization of a dream 
which had beset my vagrant thoughts for many 
weeks—a chance to go deeper into the woods 
than ever before and particularly to attempt 
with a fair warranty of success to make the trip 
from the Lake Rossignol waters over the head¬ 
lands to Oakland Lake and thence down the 
Tusket to the sea. The “Louis” of my letter 
was Louis Harlow, a Micmac Indian, an ex¬ 
cellent guide and expert canoeman, who had 
hunted and trapped over much of the territory 
in question and his assurance that the plan was 
feasible settled many doubts. The only part 
left for us was to complete our arrangements 
and await the chosen time. 
In the spring of the year before our party of 
four had visited familiar haunts on the Upper 
Tusket, then returning to the railroad, had 
journeyed northward several hours to Annapo¬ 
lis Royal. Crossing South Mountain, a drive 
of sixteen miles had landed us at South Mil¬ 
ford on one of the Milford chain of lakes. Here 
we were greeted and welcomed by that famous 
man of the woods, A. D. Thomas, the genial 
“Dell” of Albert Bigelow Paine’s “Tent Dwell¬ 
ers,” who was ready to outfit us and send us on 
our way through the Nova Scotian wilderness 
to Liverpool on the Atlantic seaboard. With 
Charles Charlton, Lawrence Munro, and two 
Indians, Louis Harlow and David Glode, as 
guides, and in four canoes, we made a never- 
to-be-forgotten journey of six days down 
nature’s beautiful waterways to the sea. The 
tale of that adventure need not be told here. 
We had gone through Lakes Iveejeemacoojee 
and Great Rossignol to the Indian Gardens 
and on down the rushing Mersey to quaint old 
Liverpool, but there still remained beyond our 
ken much which had held our absorbed interest 
—lakes and streams which seldom were touched 
by visiting sportsmen, further places which only 
an occasional trapper reached in his quest for 
fur, and still beyond was the upland country in 
which only the Indians knew the ancient routes 
of their forefathers by water and trail. Stern 
duty did not permit of further wanderings. Our 
time was nearly up. We could only listen to 
