370 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
[Sept. 2, 1911. 
Crowell, at Kemptville, instructing him to send 
to his camp at Bartlett’s eight or ten miles down 
the Tusket from Oakland Lake and seven miles 
back from his place, enough food to last the 
party until we reached the settlements, and to 
have it there by June 4, two weeks hence. 
An hour was passed profitably and pleasantly 
with Dr. Edward Breck, author of “The Ways 
of the Woods” and other interesting books and 
essays. Dr. Breck, like the sensible man he is, 
each year spends as many months as he pos¬ 
sibly can either in or on the edge of the wilder¬ 
ness, and for several years he has made his sum¬ 
mer home at Milford. We freely discussed with 
him our proposed adventure, and acting on his 
advice, concluded to modify our original plan in 
so far as to leave out the Indian Gardens. To 
visit them would probably mean that we would 
be there on the 24th of May, the Queen’s birth¬ 
day, or, as it has been called since the death of 
Queen Victoria, Empire day, a day which every 
good Nova Scotian devotes to fishing, and there¬ 
fore we might be bothered by undesirable com¬ 
pany at such a well-known and popular spot. 
The next morning a jolly but properly sub¬ 
dued party—it being Sunday—left the Milford 
House before the dew was off the grass and 
drove the seventeen miles to Roger’s Landing. 
Here awaiting us were the guides and loaded 
canoes, all prepared for the start. We warmly 
greeted Lawrence Munro as an old friend who 
had helped pilot us to. Liverpool the year be¬ 
fore, and shook hands with the two strange 
guides, Llorace Munro and Charles Sullivan. 
The two Munros were from Milford and knew 
the section we were to traverse as far as the 
upper Shelburne. Sullivan belonged in Wey¬ 
mouth and was familiar with the Sissyboo water¬ 
ways up to Sporting Lake, while it was tacitly 
understood that the Scribe was to act as head 
guide on the Tusket from Oakland Lake to 
Kemptville. 
After lunching al fresco in the shade of the 
great old hemlocks we bade farewell to Mr. 
Thomas and watched him disappear up the road, 
then setting up our rods and each selecting a 
paddle, we stepped into the canoes and pushed 
off for the long anticipated and fondly hoped- 
for trip, ready and willing to take whatever 
fortune the red gods sent. First we paddled 
out the little brook to the main river, then there 
followed a half mile of easy going with the cur¬ 
rent, till presently we rounded a sweeping turn 
and ran out on to the dancing waves of Lake 
Keejeemacoojee. 
Keejeemacoojee, Iveegeemacoojic, or Kedge- 
makooge, as it is variously spelled in the at¬ 
tempts to put the Micmac pronunciation into 
English, or Fairy Lake—as it is sometimes called 
—is a magnificent sheet of water, broken' by 
beautiful bays and headlands and dotted with 
picturesque islands. Next to Rossignol it is the 
largest lake in the Province, being fifty-four 
square miles in area. The significance of the 
Micmac name is the origin or source of a great 
river. Its virgin forests of beach and birch, 
oak and maple have been preserved in their pri¬ 
meval loveliness from the ravages of the lum¬ 
berman’s axe by the fortunate circumstance that 
from earliest times the bordering lands and 
many of the islands have been held as Indian 
grants. Through the decimation and wandering 
habits of the descendants of the original occu¬ 
pants, the old camping grounds have for many 
years been deserted, and only recently the Gov¬ 
ernment decided to lease the lands and to apply 
the rentals for the benefit of the remaining 
tribesmen. It has happened that this lease fell 
into the hands of C. W. Mills, of Annapolis 
Royal, who has organized a club to take over 
the privileges and to preserve the whole section 
in its natural beauty. 
We paddled out on this superb body of water 
near Jim Charies Point, a fine level peninsula 
where there once lived a famous old Indian of 
that name, while further on were the Fairy 
Rocks, soft sandstone boulders rising sheer from 
the water’s edge. Close to these was the nar¬ 
row opening of the original Fairy Lake of the 
Indians, a name which has been applied by the 
whites erroneously to the larger lake. Across 
the water to the westward we saw Indian Point, 
the end of the tongue of land three miles long 
which projects deeply into the northern end of 
the iake, and on top of this high promontory 
was the new club house. Still further to the 
westward, island after island stretched away 
until lost in the distant haze. On that side in 
the northwest corner empties the Middle River, 
which has its origin in the chain of lakes of 
which Frozen Ocean is the largest, while fur¬ 
ther south is the mouth of the West River, and 
still further south on the western shore is the 
trail to Pescawees. 
Our course took 11s down the eastern side of 
the lake past the three Meuse Islands and Peter 
Glode’s Island to the outlet, eight miles. On our 
trip the year before we had been towed down 
the lake by a motor boat belonging to the club, 
but this year there were no adventitious aids in 
sight, so we turned to with the paddles and 
woke up some long unused muscles. The out¬ 
let is fairly broad and divided by a long narrow 
island into two channels, and from there to Lake 
Rossignol is supposed to be twelve miles. Here 
the current was moderately swift, and as we 
were tired of paddling, we turned to fishing, 
George taking the east channel and Gurney and 
I the west, while the guides merely kept the 
canoes floating straight with the current and 
occasionally snubbing them at a favorable spot. 
Rather to our surprise, as we had done noth¬ 
ing through this stretch on the previous trip, we 
commenced to catch trout, not very many and 
none very large, but still trout, and before we 
stopped for the night George had taken sixteen, 
Gurney thirteen and the Scribe eleven. One of 
Gurney’s had risen to the fly with part of a six- 
inch lamprey eel hanging out of its mouth. Be¬ 
yond George’s Run, where we started fishing, 
came George’s Lake, then the Eelweir and Hem- 
lock Run with more fishing, and then came Loon 
Lake and the end of the day’s run. 
Below Loon Lake outlet are the Loon Lake 
Falls, with nothing very formidable about them 
but still requiring a short carry. As the sun 
was halfway down the western sky, and as it 
was our first day out, we decided to kill the 
proverbial two birds with one stone and stop 
for the night at an old campsite a few feet back 
from the noisy, tumbling water. To make our 
own camp where others had previously camped 
was a rule we followed whenever we con¬ 
veniently could, as there were many advantages 
in so doing, and the disadvantages were trivial 
and largely involved the esthetics. We were 
thereby sure of a smooth place for the tents 
and a fire-place with perhaps some charred 
embers to help start the fire; sometimes a tent 
pole or two and certainly stakes were available, 
together with odds and ends which might come 
in handy; all aids in expediting and making 
easy our tent dwelling, while the mental dis¬ 
tress arising from the tin cans and other un¬ 
lovely debris littered over the fair face of nature 
was not so very material, especia ly when one 
remembered, quite prosaically, that the insects, 
birds and little animals of the woods are per¬ 
fect scavengers. At this place we had the un¬ 
wonted luxury, not to be repeated for many 
days, of eating our meals at a real table, with 
an accompanying seat, neatly fashioned out of 
slim birch poles, by some fastidious predecessor. 
Our supper that night consisted of trout fried 
to a turn and served piping hot, great mealy 
potatoes cooked in their jackets, tomatoes 
stewed with broken bits of ship biscuit, excel¬ 
lent cocoa in the agateware cups, with a sweet¬ 
ener at the end in the form of orange marmal¬ 
ade. Perhaps the bald recital of this menu 
may not arouse any enthusiasm from the jaded 
disciple of Lucullus, but for us that night, or 
indeed thereafter, no foreign chef could have 
provided more acceptably than did our cook. 
Of course, the sharpened zest born of long 
hours afloat in the canoe or afoot on the hike 
played its part in our enjoyment of Horace’s 
culinary efforts, but beyond all this there could 
be no denying that he was an excellent and re¬ 
sourceful cook. 
In connection with camp cooking, camp 
food and the appetite which goes with them, 
a word of caution may be given for the guid¬ 
ance of the unwise or unexperienced. The 
food which can be carried on a long trip in 
canoes, or for that matter on pack horses, is 
rather heavily nitrogenous and lacks the bulky, 
diluting qualities ordinarily given to a diet by 
green vegetables. Invariably the active, open 
air life develops the keenest kind of an appe¬ 
tite, so that the temptation is very strong to 
over-eat and, what is far worse, to eat too 
rapidly. Hence, with this sort of food, it fre¬ 
quently happens that the full enjoyment of the 
first few days is marred by indigestion. To eat 
slowly, to talk aplenty over meals, and. to drink 
freely of water will avoid practically all di¬ 
gestive unhappiness. 
After the evening meal, Horace and Law¬ 
rence each took a canoe and gave us an exhibi- 
tion of paddling up the falls against the current. 
With the set pole either one coidd probably 
have surmounted the entire rapids, but with 
the paddle it was different. By almost her¬ 
culean effort and by taking advantage of every 
swirl and eddy, first one and then the other 
would climb the torrent inch by inch, but sooner 
or later the little craft would succumb to the rush 
of the water and fall back to the pool below. 
The long twilight had not faded into night 
before we were safely tucked away. The ab¬ 
sence of evergreens in the neighborhood meant 
that we slept pretty close to mother earth, and 
as it became almost frosty during the night, 
one of our tent mates assured us that there 
were nothing but rocks in: his bed. But we all 
slept well enough for the first night and woke 
up at five o’clock refreshed. It was a cool, 
gray morning with a thick fog blowing softly, 
up the river from the south, but later the fog 
lifted and the sun shone in our faces as we 
paddled out on the river. 
