No Scales to Weigh ’Em, but They Look Well 
Over Three Pounds. 
shape of an old hen grouse with her brood of 
adolescent young, almost tame enough to eat 
out of our hands, and a couple of fat porcu¬ 
pines, who watched us interestedly from the 
tops of their respective fir trees. 
Well on in the afternoon we reached a river 
of good size for Nova Scotia, but quite un- 
canoeable on account of its practically continu¬ 
ous shallows. Here we pitched our tent in a 
fine grove of canoe birch and balsam and soon 
had everything ship-shape for our first good 
snooze in the woods. A meal of bacon, potatoes, 
coffee and water crackers was soon in prepara¬ 
tion by Yok, our most skillful chef, and while 
Jeff wandered off to inspect some rocks down 
the river I splashed up the stream in quest of 
leviathanus Nova Scotinalis Jeffii. 
I cast assiduously for an hour and a half over 
some fine looking pools and succeeded in beach¬ 
ing a brace of six inch wrigglers, which I re¬ 
turned in disgust. A quarter of an hour later 
over one of Yok’s most elegant repasts, when 
the facts were put up to Jeff, that worthy wfth- 
eringly informed me that Nova Scotia trout do 
not lie in pools and rapids like civilized trout 
do, but that they are to be found only in the 
long, deep, still waters where the stream winds 
through the damp marsh country. The din¬ 
ner was too good for me to pursue this dubi¬ 
ous question further, but to put it mildly, I had 
me doots. 
Of course, we lost no time in turning in. A 
big camp fire toasted our toes and kept away 
the cold, August though it was, until dawn, at 
which time I awoke positively numb, to find the 
bushes outside white with a heavy frost just 
beginning to melt in the first rays of the morn¬ 
ing sun. It was cold work taking a plunge that 
morning, b-r-r! my teeth chatter even yet to 
think of it! 
We covered only four or five miles per day 
FORES T AND S T REA M 
for the next three days, spending a good deal 
of time prospecting with Jeff. The granite coun¬ 
try had given place to a quartzy slate, which 
occasionally showed more or less encouraging 
streaks. At first the going was really terrifying. 
It was a case of keep to the river or nothing, 
for under any circumstances knee-deep water is 
preferable to neck-deep brush; but on the sec¬ 
ond day we ran into an old lumber trail and 
after that things went more smoothly. As we 
progressed the country grew wilder and more 
picturesque. By the third day we were in un¬ 
cut, aboriginal forests of hemlock, fir, beech and 
birch. 
Game signs of all sorts became constantly 
more plentiful as the traces of our trail dimin¬ 
ished. Grouse were so abundant that one of 
us actually knocked one over with a stone, never 
dreaming that the thing was possible. Porcu¬ 
pines, minks, woodcock and rabbits were also 
abundant and fresh signs of moose and deer, 
the latter of which are quite rare in Nova Sco¬ 
tia, began to appear. Even then we were per¬ 
haps not above ten miles from the sea as the 
crow flies. Our opinions of Jeff began to re¬ 
vive except with respect to the fishing though 
we had to admit that we hadn’t as yet encoun¬ 
tered a “stillwater” where his psychological the¬ 
ories might be put in practice. 
But the next day we had our reward. After 
a journey of a few miles we came to the first 
fork of our river, the smaller branch which led 
off to the northeast, being the one we were 
scheduled to follow. Up this we tracked for the 
remainder of the day, leaving every vestige of 
a trail behind us and keeping principally to the 
decidedly chilly bed of the stream, which was 
constantly broken by pools, rocks and windfalls. 
We kept this up for about six or seven miles, 
passing two unapproachable still waters where 
the network of alders and bushes absolutely pre¬ 
vented the possibility of a cast. 
In there Jeff assured us there were trout. 
Our replies will not bear repetition. Another 
three miles brought us to a third still, which 
started in to be the replica of its predecessors 
but finally opened out into a dark, deep winding 
stretch of water with comparatively clear, 
swampy banks. Packs were joyously cast aside 
and rods strung together. Jeff looked like a 
criminal facing the bar; his reputation as an 
angler and gentleman was fully and fairly at 
stake and he knew it. Unfortunately conditions 
were by no means ideal, as it was a bright, warm 
day and not late in the afternoon. I distinctly 
noticed Jeff’s hand tremble as he dropped a 
small grouse and claret dropper and a flaunting 
Jenny Lind stretcher over a cluster of low 
bushes into the black depths beyond, but Jenny 
was too much for the finny swains in that still 
water—conditions or no conditions. They had 
evidently never seen anything like her before 
for three of them leaped clear of the water in a 
mad effort to discover what the strange new 
creature was. Jeff was vindicated. From then 
on, we practically lived on trout: it was no 
trick in some of the still waters to hook a dozen 
pairs in as many casts. These trout, it is true, 
were not large, running only to a pound and a 
half and averaging much le=s, but they were 
marvelously game in spite of the dead water 
in which they were caught and a finer pan fish 
could not be imagined. 
The next day we traced the stream through a 
(i‘J7 
succession of ponds and stillwaters, in all of 
which trout literally swarmed, to a sizeable lake 
hemmed in by fine hills of original hemlock and 
birch. As we approached the outlet three or 
four large blue herons rose to welcome us in a 
leisurely, grandfatherly sort of way and a brazen 
throated loon chortled derisively from some¬ 
where up the blue distances of the lake. We 
pitched our camp in a lovely spot among a lot 
of great pines overlooking the water, but before 
we had raised the tent a flock of black ducks 
appeared in the offing, gradually making toward 
us along the shore. Armed only with .32 Colts 
we advanced to an opportune screen of sheep 
laurel bushes and waited until the ducks got 
to some reedy shallows within thirty paces of 
us; letting them have it together we brought 
down a pair at the first volley. Most of these 
ducks seemed unable to fly but they were too 
speedy for our remaining shots, which all went 
wide. We waded out after our prey and a glori¬ 
ous dinner they made that night with the last 
jar of marmalade and plenty of rice, potatoes 
and coffee to back them up, or rather down. 
We spent the better part of a week on this 
lake, principally prospecting. On the morning 
of our arrival we knocked a startlingly, un¬ 
wieldy and cranky raft together on which we 
made some perilous voyages of exploration about 
the lake, which we found a beauty, some five 
miles in length by a mile in width, garlanded 
by wild evergreen hills which rose sheer from 
the water in places to a considerable height. 
There is scarcely anything we wouldn’t have 
given for a canoe, but the job of personally con¬ 
ducting one over the route we had taken was 
too terrific a possibility even to be contemplated. 
(Continued on page 724.) 
Here Are Two, but the Reader Will Have to 
Gu es* the Weight. 
