I- 
Forest and Stream 
$3 a Year, 10 Cts. a Copy, 
Six Months, :^1.50. 
NEW YORK, SATURDAY, JUNE 15, 1912. 
VOL. LXXVIIL—No. 34. 
137 Franklin St., New York. 
The Lure of the Allegash 
By ETHEL DORR MELLOR 
Photographs by B. F. Mellor. 
T O those whose idea of a summer vacation is 
a few weeks spent on the piazza of some 
fashionable hotel, the Allegash has no mes¬ 
sage, for it boasts no hotels at all, and its only 
piazzas are those which nature has carpeted with 
green moss and pine needles, and roofed with 
the branches of the tall trees of the forest along 
its banks. Nor will the Allegash River canoe 
trip of over 200 miles along the lakes, streams 
and rivers of Northern Maine appeal to those 
strenuous souls who wish to rough it and are 
looking for the kind of vacation trip which har¬ 
dens, toughens and brings out those heroic quali¬ 
ties of fortitude and endutance, engendered by 
the discomforts and hardships supposed to be 
necessary accompaniments of camp life; unless, 
indeed, they choose to undertake it without 
guides, in which case it will have difficulties in 
generous measure, with enough of the spice of 
adventure and even danger thrown in to satisfy 
the most venturesome spirit, for there are rapids 
and stretches of white water along the way 
which were sufficiently exciting to us even with 
the skilled boatmanship of our experienced 
guides between us and disaster. 
But, if you wish to reach the haven of 
“the blessed freedom of all outdoors” on 
“flowery beds of ease” made up of the com¬ 
fort and luxury of living, with which these 
Maine guides surrounded us; if you wish to 
drink in the delights of the wilderness in full 
measure, with the smallest possible portion of 
the dregs of discomfort at the bottom of the 
cup; if the lure of the forest, in its native wild¬ 
ness appeals to you, then you will find, as we 
did, infinite joy in the swift-gliding motion of 
this mode of travel; in the living in canoes by 
day and in tents at night; in the delicious frag¬ 
rance of the fir balsam beds and their springy 
softness when properly made, and you, too, will 
become a willing captive to the charm of this 
sweet wayward wandering through the unbroken 
wilderness, carrying our tents and provisions 
with us, our motto, “Wherever night finds us 
there is our home.” 
Of the many hardship we had been warned, 
by our pessimistic friends to expect, we encoun¬ 
tered none but what may be cheerfully endured 
by anyone who loves nature and life in the open. 
One of the bugbears was to be the bough beds 
filled with hard, woody ends coming into un¬ 
pleasant contact with various protesting parts of 
our anatomy, but the guides about Kineo are 
the best in the State, which is saying much, and 
know how to make a bough bed, cutting the fir 
tips all of uniform length, and sticking the hard 
end of each one into the ground in close even 
rows overlapping each other like the shingles on 
a roof, the soft, spring ends uppermost. 
Another discomfort was to be the weather, 
but although it rained during some part of the 
twenty-four hours nearly every day, we were 
surprised and not a little gratified to find that 
properly equipped with oilskin slickers and 
soft felt hats which shed the rain, we could 
travel on a wet day with comfort, and in the 
serene consciousness of having nothing on that 
would spoil, could abandon ourselves to the joys 
of a rainy day like real water ducks. 
And then the delight of coming into camp 
after a rainy day journey and watching the mar¬ 
velous skill with which our guides set to work 
to turn what ought in all reason to be discom¬ 
fort, into comfort! It was miraculous how 
quickly they cut tent poles and pegs, col¬ 
lected boughs for our beds, made an im¬ 
promptu table and benches for our out-of- 
door dining roorq, with an open fly tent over¬ 
head if stormy, got a big camp-fire going, and 
in wet weather even built a fire before the door 
of each sleeping tent, and all done with such 
quickness and skill that before we realized what 
was taking place, our row of picturesque white 
tents was up under the tall fir trees, our beds, 
with a little birch bark 
table at the head, made, 
and the appetizing 
meal which they al¬ 
ways “get a-goin’ ” the 
moment the fire is 
built, was on the table. 
And such cooks as 
these guides of ours 
were! There may be 
poor ones among the 
two or three hundred 
around Kineo, but 
none such fell to our 
lot. Such delicious 
flaky biscuit, such ban¬ 
nock, such Johnny- 
cake and “flapjacks” 
were never seen, and 
once, when we camped 
in the same place on 
Lake Churchill several 
days, for our two ang¬ 
lers and their guides to 
make a side trip to Lake Pleasant for some 
special fishing, we had old-fashioned yellow-eyed 
beans baked over night in the ground in a hole 
previously prepared by keeping a fire going all 
day heating stones which were placed with the 
hot coals all around the pot of beans, which was 
covered with more hot stones, then with earth, 
and left to bake slowly all night in true lumber¬ 
man fashion, to come out in the morning a de¬ 
lectable dish beyond the power of achievement 
by the most famous French chef. 
Then, too, we had bean “swagin,” a kind 
of bean chowder which makes a most appetizing 
supper dish, and all the trout we could eat 
throughout the trip. When we tired of it fried, 
they made it into chowder, an ignoble fate for 
such a royal fish as those handsome speckled 
mountain trout. They fried fresh doughnuts 
for us, and even made pies from evaporated 
apples, which by some magic they made to taste 
as if fresh from a Maine orchard, and we al¬ 
ways had plenty of bacon, ham, butter and fresh 
eggs, though no fresh meat, as it was close sea¬ 
son for game, and our guides were strict in their 
observance of the game laws. 
You will wonder how we could, traveling 
through a region devoid of markets, and even 
of habitations, have such variety, when every¬ 
thing had to be carried with us in canoes, not 
only our tents, blankets, extra changes of 
SENSIBLE WOODS COSTUMES. 
