232 
FOREST AND STREAM 
The Outboard Motor in the Wilderness 
Its Handiness is Making it Popular in Far Away Places—A Few Hints From One 
Who Has Tested it Out 
IKE all old timers, wedded 
through years of association to 
the canoe and paddle, I once re¬ 
garded the outboard motor as a 
fad for schoolboys and roman¬ 
tic young people who idle about 
lake resorts, and more than 
once around the camp-fire, we were wont to re¬ 
fer contemptuously to such contraptions as “tea 
kettles’’ and laughed at the idea that they would 
ever prove practical, to say nothing of being labor- 
saving. In those days it was felt that the man 
who did not half kill himself every twenty-four 
hours, packing a canoe over a portage or bucking 
it against a head wind, did not deserve the title 
of outdoor experience. 
But times have changed. The outboard motor 
is still used by the schoolboy and the romantic 
young summer couples at fashionable resorts. It 
is also being used more and more in the wilder¬ 
ness, far from civilization and far from the cen¬ 
ter of John D’s distillate known popularly as 
“gas," or “juice.” 
Olive Logan once wrote a book entitled “Ten 
Miles from a Lemon” meaning by this a distance 
far from civilized conveniences. A book now 
might be writen “One Hundred Miles from 
Gasoline,” for that would typify real wilderness. 
I do not know how far the outboard motor has 
penetrated the wilds. -I have taken one myself 
pretty much up to the headwaters of the Ottawa, 
and I know of one or more that are doing service 
around Hudson Bay Posts in that country. Fre¬ 
quently I have seen them hanging over the side 
of the double-nosed bateaux of the lumbermen, 
snorting away and propelling considerable cargo, 
and I have even watched them towing a goodly 
bunch of logs across a lake. 
In a word, the outboard motor can be used as 
far in the wilderness as you can keep it supplied 
with gasoline, and if through convenient arrange¬ 
ments you can have a quantity of the necessary 
fuel shipped in on the snow in the winter, you 
can have a lot of fun the next summer, pottering 
around big lakes and running the nose of your 
boat to the very end of long deep bays that no¬ 
body else has penetrated before you. 
So far as the question of an outboard motor 
and a canoe built to accommodate it is concerned, 
the whole problem centers around the length of 
the portages and the character of the water 
which you meet on the way. Of course an out¬ 
board motor is not made to run in shallow white 
water rapids, although it can do it, but where a 
succession of long or big lakes without rapids is 
to be encountered, the carrying of a 60 pound 
motor is not an obstacle, for you can split it into 
two pieces for this purpose. The transportation 
of gasoline in cans is a matter which everybody 
must decide for himself. One advantage is that 
if you intend returning by the same route you can 
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By “Old Camper.” 
lug quite a lot of gasoline part of the way and 
cache some of it along the route to be picked up 
coming back. 
What if someone stumbles across the “gas” 
and steals it? Well, they do not do such things 
in the North County and even if a stray Indian, 
under the impression that he had found an Eden 
of unlimited high wines, as represented in the 
cans, did take a drink of it, he certainly would 
not repeat the dose. At any rate, if you do get 
stuck the canoe will bring you through and 
paddling is not a lost art, even though it is be¬ 
coming unpopular and unnecessary. 
But, the reader may ask: What if your engine 
busts? Well if she does, she does, and that is 
the only answer, but I have noticed that the break¬ 
ing down of these little motors, or their refusal 
to work, usually begins with the “monkeying” 
curiosity that stirs the amateur to look inside at 
the works, just as the small boy breaks his watch 
by trying to see the wheels go round. The manu¬ 
facturers of the motors usually send them out in 
perfect order and if one will keep his hands off 
the carburetor and does not start to screwing 
valves or doing anything else of that sort, the 
motor will give him good service. 
If you have any curiosity as to the “innards” 
of these machines, satisfy it before you go into 
the woods, or better yet, get some good mechanic 
to show you the whys and wherefores and the 
secret of operation. The best mechanic I ever 
knew—he was a celebrated inventor at that—told 
me once that the secret of running machinery 
successfully was to let it alone as long as it work¬ 
ed right, and this applies to the outboard motor. 
A little study and instruction before taking the 
motor into the woods and the carrying of a few 
simple parts are generally all that is needed to 
venture far from civilization with one and get 
back successfully. Some people may bring up the 
point that storage batteries play out. They do, 
but in these days of built-in magnetos that fear 
need no longer be entertained. 
As to fishing possibilities, the outboard motor 
is ideal. It can be held down to slow trolling 
speed and more water can be covered in one day 
through its use than in half a week under ordi¬ 
nary conditions. In common with many people 
I once entertained the conviction that the purring 
of the motor and the whirl of the propeller would 
frighten fish. I have caught half a dozen big 
lake trout in the late fall going around a rocky 
little island in a Canadian lake, from a light 
boat equipped with an outboard motor, passing 
over the same spot repeatedly and taking some 
of the big fellows less than twenty feet from 
the propeller, which seems to show that the fish 
were not afraid to snap at the lure as it passed 
over them. 
In a club to which I belong, in upper Canada, 
we have five or six of the motors attached to 
boats. The best fishing spot on our main lak : 
is just at a place where the shores narrow to 
something over one hunded feet and this spot 
is passed over more frequently by the members 
going and returning on trips up and down the 
lake than any other. There is just as good 
fishing in these narrows as ever. The bass may 
have been educated to the sight and sound of 
a propeller, but I do not recall that they ever 
stopped striking, motor or no motor. 
Again it has been argued that the noise of the 
outboard motor will frighten game. So it will; 
so will the passing of any boat if the game is in 
sight. But with the motor properly muffled, the 
sound does not amount to much and I have never 
had evidence that game had been scared away 
from the shores of any lake because boats going 
up and down were self-propelled instead of 
rowed or paddled. 
The satisfaction of being able to cover twenty, 
thirty or forty miles on an average day’s fishing 
or exploring trip and then having lots of time 
on your hands, and the luxury of sitting idle 
and having a chance to enjoy the scenery, 
instead of looking up once in a while to 
wipe sweat out of your straining eyes, 
or relieving a half-broken back and aching 
arms by stopping occasionally, while the cussed 
headwind blows your canoe out of its course, or 
on a rocky shore, must be experienced to be appre¬ 
ciated. I know that in our club we used to count 
it a pretty good day’s journey to paddle ten 
miles up the lake, fish a while or visit another lake 
and return. Now we run that far in a motor 
canoe and get back at lunch time if we desire. 
It costs something to keep a supply of gasoline 
many miles from civilization, but the expense is 
nothing compared to the saving in labor and the 
saving in extra guides. 
I have often wondered why some of the ven¬ 
turesome spirits who are contemplating long 
trips—into the Barren Land country of Canada, 
for instance—do not take the outboard motor 
as a means of getting over a lot of territory at 
little expense and less trouble than contained in 
the proposition now. One can have all the 
gasoline necessary sent by usual boat and river 
transportation through to Great Slave Lake or 
even Hudson Bay River steamer to Great Bear 
Lake, and once that was done, the rest would be 
easy. The man who does this will have the sat¬ 
isfaction of knowing that he is in a position to 
travel around and over big lakes that as yet 
have been only partly and imperfectly explored 
and he can do it in comfort and peace. 
The thing works out almost mathematically. 
Two 150 pound Indians with still another 150 
pounds or so of grub and outfit for a month’s 
trip means nearly 500 pounds in all. Against 
this we can put a 60 pound outboard motor and 
not over 150 pounds of gasoline and get more 
