FOREST AND STREAM 
09(3 
together with the little necessities of camp life, 
a pair of Colts and plenty of fishing tackle. Our 
packs when loaded and ready for business (out¬ 
side of Jeff’s prospecting kit), weighed less than 
twenty-five pounds apiece; and I think that any 
forest cruiser will admit that this is cutting it 
down some for a two weeks’ hike. 
It was a stormy night in the last week in Au¬ 
gust before we found ourselves aboard the tiny 
little boat which ventures from Halifax east¬ 
ward along the desolate storm-lashed, fog-ridden 
coast to M- Harbor, our ultimate destina¬ 
tion. It was raining and blowing and fogging 
and altogether doing everything it could to be 
as nasty as possible. Incidently to 
make matters interesting it appeared 
that the three staterooms of which 
the S. S. “D” was the proud possessor 
were already preoccupied by trios of 
violently sea-sick passengers, which 
disconcerting fact necessitated our 
bunking down in the only available 
place consistent with comparative 
safety, which happened to be the bot¬ 
tom of a pendulent life boat on the 
superstructure deck. It may be noted 
that the lower deck was usually knee 
deep in green water. So we spread 
the folds of our tent over the four 
inch slats that divided the bottom of 
our life boat at comfortable intervals 
and wrapping ourselves as best we 
could, settled down to the benign con¬ 
templation of the belligerent and am¬ 
phibious elements around us. The 
“D.” though by no means the propor¬ 
tions of a premiere danseuse per¬ 
formed more extraordinary feats in 
advanced acrobatics that night than 
one would believe possible in a boat 
not owned and operated by the devil 
himself. It is no insult to accuse a 
man of having been seasick on such 
a trip as that, for (to be Irish) any¬ 
body who wasn’t was a liar! Need¬ 
less to say that when we arrived at 
M— Harbor the following afternoon 
at five o’clock, some nine hours over¬ 
due, we were a very bedraggled and 
woe begone lot. Our rosy hallucina¬ 
tions about things in general had all 
disappeared in a riotous chaos of 
drunken life-boats and rebellious stomachs. The 
shifting of our water-logged duffle in the pouring 
rain to the flat barren rocks which constituted 
the only land in sight was not calculated to re¬ 
assure us and a muddy mile of villainous road 
which wound in and out of a fringe of gray 
woods, fog-wreathed and stunted, occasionally 
broken by tiny poverty-stricken fishermen’s cot¬ 
tages and bits of clearings where pitiful crops of 
hay and potatoes struggled for their scant ex¬ 
istence, completed the ebb to which our mental 
and physical spirits had flowed. 
It was eight o’clock before we were finally in 
the four room hotel of M- Harbor. A plen¬ 
tiful meal of huge pickled trout, caught only the 
day before by the family urchin and for some 
unaccountable reason promptly “pickled” for lo¬ 
cal consumption, with really delicious baked 
beans and ubiquitous tea and potatoes did much 
to revive us. After a man’s stomach has been a 
vacuum for twenty-four hours a little nourish¬ 
ment creates about as pleasant a sensation as 
one could expect to enjoy, especially the hot and 
monstrously strong tea that one always finds in 
these latitudes. 
We were informed by our host, a burly 
Scotch-Irish giant, that Hen McNeill, the man 
who was to “take us in” had been called east¬ 
ward on an unexpected lumbering expedition, 
and we, therefore, decided, and not without some 
of the exhilaration of school boys in a melon 
patch, to .venture in alone. 
Another couple of hours before turning in 
was taken up with preparations and the assimila¬ 
tion of highly specialized advice from three or 
four philosophers who were making desperate 
though fruitless efforts to assume the place of 
the delinquent Hen McNeill, and when the three 
of us eventually disappeared in our single, com¬ 
modious and enveloping feather bed it may well 
be imagined that our joys and sorrows were 
speedily obliterated. 
The morrow dawned, or tried to dawn, but 
made a very poor business of it, for a thick fog 
still clung to the visible portions of the drip¬ 
ping landscape. We rose, however, and were 
amazed to find at the unearthly hour of five 
A. M that the selfsame coterie whom we had 
left at midnight were still engaged in silent 
speculation about the kitchen fire. I inquired 
discreetly whether it were customary to retire 
for the night on the East Shore, but it devel¬ 
oped in the course of a few monosyllabic re¬ 
plies that the gentlemen had all been home, 
broken their fasts and dropped in to see us off. 
Whether this course of affairs was the usual 
thing in M- Harbor I am not prepared to 
say, although judging by our reception I think 
I am safe in concluding that nobody present 
had ever beheld an American sportsman before. 
Our last touch of civilization consisted of 
more trout and beans and tea and wt were off 
for the open. The “closed,” however, would 
have been a better name for it. Jeff was bound 
for a couple of mythical lakes somewhere in the 
remote interior and he claimed to be master of 
a system of dead reckoning which might even¬ 
tually get us there. But judging by our start 
the question was not free from doubt. We had 
been instructed to take the first “old road” lead¬ 
ing off to the northard with “two lit¬ 
tle blazes” by it. This was said to be 
“abote a mile.” For the benefit of 
the uninitiated “abote a mile” in Nova 
Scotia is two hours’ brisk walk, and a 
“road” any temporary thinning out of 
what would otherwise be an impass¬ 
able jungle admitting of a human be¬ 
ing’s kicking himself through. As a 
matter of fact it took us all of three 
hours to find this particular road and 
then it was the blazes and not the 
road that finally caught Jeff’s sophis¬ 
ticated and eager eye. But we had 
come to take chances and in we 
plunged. Besides the sun was begin¬ 
ning to burst through the rack of 
scud and the glamor of the woods 
was getting into our blood. Do you 
know the wild, mad exhilaration of 
going into a new country unknown 
and untried? Do you know the 
keen joy of wandering you know not, 
care not, where with new lakes, new 
streams, new mountains and the 
never ending mystery of the primeval 
and the eternal over you, under you 
and around you? Do you love the 
free vagabondage with nature, your 
all upon your back, king of illimit¬ 
able acres and despot of unnumbered 
flocks and herds? If so, you would 
love the East Shore, for here are 
primeval woods, indeed, thousands 
and thousands of square miles of 
them, most of which are rarely if 
ever visited by a human being save 
perhaps an occasional lumberman or 
lonely trapper from one of the villages on the 
coast. In spite of this utter isolation the penin¬ 
sula is only some sixty miles across, which 
renders the coast always accessible in a couple 
of days’ forced march. 
Our first day’s hike was a very arduous one. 
A scant trail led off to the north through a 
succession of marshes of deep green and red¬ 
dish brown arctic moss, varied by parallel gran¬ 
ite ridges thrown up like mighty parapets across 
our path and occasional hard wood hills of va¬ 
riegated second growth. Every now and then a 
little icy brook would wander across the trail, 
through an impenetrable tangle of bushes and 
alders giving promise of substantial piscatorial 
blessings to come. The air, bereft of the tedi¬ 
ous vapors of the preceding days, speedily be¬ 
came crisp and cool and with the bracing blue 
sky life was again the joyous thing it was in¬ 
tended to be. 
Signs of animal life began to appear in the 
We Camped That Night by the Edge of the Great Forest. 
