Sept. 9, 1911.] 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
413 
one, alarmed at our near approach, went spat¬ 
tering away across the water, making a tre¬ 
mendous racket. At this the whole mass began 
to scatter and swim out into the open sea. Yes, 
my dear, imaginary reader, I see you have 
guessed it; not a single feather of any other 
kind of fowl in the whole lot—all mudhens. 
But then, when the sign is just right, mudhen 
makes a very good pot-filler, too! 
We went into camp where the primeval 
forest was so dense that we had to chop out a 
place for the tent with an ax, like Stanley in 
Darkest Africa. Across from our camp was 
an ideal point for pass shooting, the point lead¬ 
ing to the very center of a pass between two 
larger sections of the lake. We stood on this 
point the first evening, but only one duck 
crossed and that got by before we saw it. 
We had been out ten days without seeing 
any human being except a few Indian rice 
gatherers at a distance and began to feel the 
glory of the isolation of our position and the 
originality of our camp ground. After we h?.-d 
been there one day, the Parson, Jr., went out 
to gather wood for the camp stove. A short 
time after I heard a shout, and going out, heard 
him mumbling something about relics of the 
cliff dwellers. I went over, and, sure enough, 
in a cave dug in the bank he had found a 
wooden box of strange design. The box was 
divided into twenty-four sections, and in each 
of the sections sat an earthen jar of antique 
design, being about of the capacity of one quart 
each. The box and contents were remarkably 
well preserved, considering their great age. 
On each of the I'ttle jars was a label written 
in the hieroglyphics of the past, which, trans¬ 
lated, read: “Export Beer,-Brewing 
Co., Duluth, Minn.” Not a drop of the strange 
liquid remained in any of the jars, showing that 
the aborigines had gone to the happy hunting- 
ground with the full glow of courage attributed 
to John Barleycorn by the poet Burns: 
“Inspiring, bold John Barleycorn, 
What dangers thou canst make us scorn; 
With twapence worth we fear no evil; 
Twa shillings, and we face the devil.” 
There were no flights of ducks at all, but we 
picked up here and there a straggler during the 
last two days of our stay. These were mostly 
mallards, and when tied into bundles, they 
made quite a display, so much so that every 
party of empty-handed sportsmen we met on 
our way out shouted as if with one voice: 
“Game hog; what a shame!” 
Unless one strikes a new flight just down 
from the far North, the old-time glory of an 
evening shoot in the wild rice has departed. 
The birds soon become so well educated after 
they cross the dead line into civilized lands, 
that they will not come into the rice until it 
is too dark to shoot, and then they come so 
sudden and plump down so abrupt as to give 
the shooter no chance. Even though they 
drop within ten yards of you, once in the rice 
you cannot get them out again. Most of the 
ducks of these days are got on original plans, 
the old ways being too well known by the birds. 
The day is spent by them in small isolated lakes 
that arc surrounded by floating bogs; on long 
sand points where there is no cover; in the 
large lakes, or in the midst of tossing waves 
in the open sea. We got a dozen fat mallards 
out of one of the small lakes in a very peculiar 
way. We had noticed the flocks dropping- 
down behind the timber and went over to see. 
There were several hundred ducks in a small 
lake that was surrounded by floating bog, which 
made near approach impossible. The lake was 
in a swale between high hills. We noted that 
ducks came over the hills and dropped abruptly 
down from a great height, but when they 
passed out they followed up the swale for some 
distance against the wind. We drove them from 
the lake and then one of us stationed himself 
in the swale behind a spruce where they went 
out. The other stationed himself at the op¬ 
posite end. When a bunch of the birds came 
back and dropped in, the lower man would 
come out of cover and the ducks would invari¬ 
ably pass out at the upper end and give that 
man a shot. Some of the ducks fell too far 
back on the floating mass, and we worked two 
hours building a bridge out to them. The 
bridge was made by cutting spruce trees as 
large as we could handle and throwing them 
out on the bog, then others across the first 
until they would bear one’s weight. The 
largest pole I could get and still be able to 
handle it would go down its full length without 
striking anything solid. This made it rather 
H AVE you ever stopped to consider how 
much of true, genuine pleasure-—the kind 
that does not leave a bad taste in the 
mouth—we owe to that comparatively seldom- 
mentioned faculty, the sense of smell? Of 
course I will admit there are occasions when 
keen olfactory powers are not particularly de¬ 
sirable ; when they may, in fact, be a distinct 
disadvantage. For instance, take the incident of 
the inquisitive skunk which tried to explore 
the interior of your tent at two in the morning 
and whose friendly advances you undertook to 
check with a paddle blade before you realized 
the visitor’s nationality. Or, for a more com¬ 
mon and prosaic example, with which every city 
dweller is familiar, think of the odor that arises 
from the asphalt-boiling apparatus with which 
apparently soulless laborers are wont to outrage 
the nostrils of the neighborhood. On occasions 
such as these one is apt to wish that he had no 
nose at all, or at least that the one which adorns 
the center of his otherwise civilized countenance 
were temporarily out of commission. 
But leaving out of consideration the disad¬ 
vantages of a capable smelling organism, and 
also the more or less temporary enjoyment which 
may, for example, be derived from the perfume 
of some fragrant flower, and what sensations are 
left which are directly traceable to the power 
of smell? Perhaps the most important are the 
pleasures, anticipated as well as retrospective, 
that are aroused by certain odors which, by asso¬ 
ciation, are closely connected with some enjoy¬ 
able experience. And it is in this, it seems to 
me, this carrying of the mind forward in antici¬ 
pation of joys to come, or backward in grate¬ 
ful remembrance of past happiness through the 
bad about walking on the bridge, for our 
steadying poles would often break through and 
leave 11s without support. I got off the bridge 
once in this way and into the floating mass 
waist-deep, but the incident added zest to our 
adventures and a dozen fat mallards to our 
string. I think the adventure of the bridge 
comes back in memory rather more vividly 
than any other event of the trip. 
Yes! we are going there again in the near 
future, and we may strike that great northern 
flight of ducks we have been reading about for 
so many years. Then, indeed, will Aitkin’s 
flood suffering poor be cared for at last. And 
now, to avoid possible hard feelings, let me 
quote an old saw, “Two are company; three is 
a crowd.” We go to escape the madding 
crowd, and, incidentally, to make them madder 
still when we come back and display our string. 
But the field is large and there is no special 
law against any one going there that wants to, 
so long as he keeps well out of our way. 
Capt. Viebaum’s boat makes several trips up 
the river during the season, and the oppor¬ 
tunity for a wilderness outing is of the best 
the world affords. And if one be real expert, 
he may get a few birds and some fish. 
agency of some scent, that the olfactories of the 
average present day citizen—especially the lover 
of the open places—find their chief justification. 
Do you remember, in “Little Rivers,” the chap¬ 
ter entitled, “A Leaf of Spearmint”? What a 
host of boyhood scenes and memories are called 
forth there by the fragrance of a simple brook- 
side plant with which every trout fisherman is 
familiar! That is as pure and true a pleasure 
as one can find—the recollection of happy, care¬ 
free days along the streams, of camps in sun 
and rain, of canoe trips where the silence is 
never broken by the jarring clamor of the city. 
On a cold, rainy night in December I was 
walking along one of the narrow, cramped 
streets that lie between lower Broadway and 
the North River. It was nearly 9 o’clock; the 
little stalls and butcher shops so characteristic 
of that section of the city were closed, and only 
a few belated commuters like myself were hurry¬ 
ing homeward, splashing, with umbrellas bent to 
the storm, through the gray slush of the street 
crossings. I had just concluded a strenuous en¬ 
counter with a banana peel which someone had 
dropped on a dark part of the pavement, and 
was feeling generally out-of-sorts with humanity, 
business and bananas, when I chanced to pass 
a great stack of young balsams, piled in front 
of a store waiting to be sold and carted away 
to many scattered home where, in a few days, 
they would bear the annual Christmas crop of 
toys and tinsel. 
I suppose I never would have noticed those 
trees had not a chance puff of air brought me 
a whiff of their spicy fragrance, redolent of the 
North country whence they came, with its streams 
and rocks now buried deep in snow. No en- 
Magic Scents 
By ROBERT S. LEMMON 
