Sept. 9, 1911.] 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
409 
Sometimes the latter ignore the island refuge 
and have their calves on the mainland, depend¬ 
ing upon strength, prowess and maternal vigi¬ 
lance to fight off marauding bears. Someone, 
not as well versed in faunal lore as our guides, 
cited it as a wonderful example of the protec¬ 
tion nature gives to her wild creatures that dur¬ 
ing this interesting period the cow moose had 
no scent, but the frank skepticism of our thor¬ 
oughly moose-wise guides makes it necessary to 
record the statement as poetical, but probably 
not true. 
Shelburne River was reached shortly before 
8 o’clock. It is well to note before proceeding 
further that the Shelburne River bears no re¬ 
lation to the town on the south coast of simi¬ 
lar name, as its waters flow into Lake Rossignol 
and thence into the Mersey. Shelburne town is 
on the Roseway close to its mouth at the head 
of Shelburne Harbor. Between the Mersey and 
the Roseway are the Sable and Jordan rivers, 
both sizeable streams. According to the guides 
it is an easy trip to go from Lake Rossignol to 
either the Jordan or the Roseway; the carries 
are not long or difficult and both rivers afford 
excellent fishing. The route to the Jordan is 
through the upper lakes connected directly with 
Rossignol; to the Roseway by way of the Little 
Tobeatic. 
The Shelburne, our gateway to the upper coun- 
gull’s nest' on a boulder. 
try, was hard to locate on the lake shore until 
we were right upon its mouth. Here Pat Lacey 
went ashore with his boy to visit a long round 
of bear traps which he had out between the Shel¬ 
burne and the Tobeatic lakes. A couple of hun¬ 
dred yards up stream brought us to rough water 
where the paddles were dropped and the spiked 
set poles taken up for the push through the 
falls. This was work which mainly fell upon 
the guides since the swift water meant trout, 
and we three could not resist the temptation to 
fish rather than to help; besides, the difficulties 
were not great and the pace was slow. Alternat¬ 
ing with the falls, none very high or long, were 
stretches of stillwaters. The little river wound 
and turned amazingly and afforded us constantly 
changing vistas of sylvan beauty. While we 
knew that the lumberman had taken toll along 
this stream, we could see no evidence of it. The 
banks were richly clothed with trees of goodly 
size, and beneath them the ground was carpeted 
with fresh green moss and ferns. About the 
middle of the morning we came to the first real 
carry of the trip, 300 yards, a little one which 
was to fade into insignificance in comparison 
with the mighty portages further along. This 
was at Kempton Dam. At another shallow run¬ 
way, known as Pollard Falls, we saw the re¬ 
mains of an ancient log road, but further than 
these we noticed no evidences of human visita¬ 
tion. 
We lunched on a large natural meadow gor¬ 
geously bespangled with the purple blooms of 
the “sheep kill,” a member of the laurel family. 
A mile-long Stillwater ran through it in broad, 
easy curves, dimpling in the gentle breeze. We 
boiled the kettle and ate our simple meal. Near 
us at the water’s edge a noisy specimen of the 
genus Rana attracted our attention by his bold¬ 
ness and reiterated vociferousness. One of us 
decided to try a little experiment, and taking his 
A PORCUPINE SEEN ALONG THE TRAIL. 
rod, swung a fly craftily in front of the pointed 
green nose. Quicker than the eye could follow, 
a soft tongue flew out and the fly disappeared, 
but almost as quickly came the strike, and froggy 
rose in the air, the most thoroughly astonished 
frog in Nova Scotia, to indulge in comical and 
wonderful acrobatics while the resilient rod held 
hig dangling. In a moment he was released and the 
energy of the two or three jumps waterward, and 
the final dive gave us an inkling of his opinion of 
such feathered frauds as trout flies. It was a very 
funny episode, but perhaps there was an element 
of thoughtless cruelty about it. However, it may 
be forgiven in the light of our general good be¬ 
haviour since a less destructive party than ours 
never went into the woods. We had a very good 
pistol, but it was only used occasionally to 
demonstrate on a tin can target what utterly 
bad shots we were. At one time on the Sport¬ 
ing Lake stream, Gurney tried to shoot a swim¬ 
ming muskrat at an impossible distance, but 
nothing came of the attempt, and there were no 
others. When it came to fishing, I may say 
while we took many trout every day, it was 
an invariable custom to return to the water un¬ 
harmed a’l of them save a carefully estimated 
number which we kept to eat. We even went 
so far as to wet the hand before loosening the 
hook, so as to avoid the growth of fungus which 
sometimes attacks trout which have been roughly 
handled. The ones we kept were mercifully 
killed by breaking their necks. 
We continued up the winding Shelburne, en¬ 
joying fully the warm bright day, watching the 
bird life, paddling through the stillwaters, and 
fishing the pools and rapids. The trout were not 
large, none weighing a pound, but we caught 
fifty-seven, and in the swift current even the 
medium sized fish put up lively fights. We had 
those wretched little pests, the black flies, with 
us all day, but fortunately their attacks at no 
time were very serious or disturbing. About 4 
o’clock we turned to the left and entered Sand 
Brook, a lovely little stream with clean white 
sand bottom. We went up it a short distance 
and camped in an open space amidst a grove of 
hemlocks, having made about twelve miles for 
the day. We needed the daylight hours remain¬ 
ing to dry the damp clothes, tents and blankets. 
Lawrence collected plenty of fragrant fir boughs 
for our beds, while Horace, threatened by the 
total exhaustion of the bread supply, with which 
we had started, cooked biscuits in the reflecting 
oven. 
During the manifold activities which occupied 
our attention before supper it was noticed that 
Gurney had become quiet and thoughtful. Pres¬ 
ently, and with nothing to soften the shock, it 
came out—he was going in swimming! He 
would not presume to suggest that any one else 
in the party required more water than he had 
been getting right along, but for his part he did 
not mind confessing to friends that he needed 
a wash and proposed to get it. He had been 
A loon’s NEST. 
looking at that brook with a calculating eye, 
it might be a bit shallow and the temperature 
of the water might leave something to be de¬ 
sired, but on the other hand it was clean, and 
the white sand bottom looked very attractive. 
The Scribe was so taken with Gurney’s presen¬ 
tation of the matter that he said he would go 
in, too, but George, more cautious, was inclined 
to be conservative; said it would not give him 
the slightest trouble at all to sit on the bank and 
see that our clothes were not stolen; in fact, the 
more he thought about it the better he liked 
that job, and anyhow he had gotten his feet wet 
that day and he had long made it a rule of 
life never to go in swimming with wet feet. He 
was hard to convince, but we finally got him. 
My powers of description are utterly inadequate 
to draw the picture of the sequence of events 
which followed. I can only sketch in the barest 
outlines the scene on Sand Brook that sunny 
afternoon and leave to the imagination of the 
reader the filling in of details; how, in the pro¬ 
cess of undressing, each man kept a watchful 
