FOREST AND STREAM. 
[Jan. 12, 1907. 
52 • 
Camp Don’t Hurry. 
V.—The Bushkill. 
The breakfasts were a delightful feature of 
our camp life. Many a man has thought when 
a tempting breakfast has been spread before 
him at home or in a good restaurant, how 
much better it would taste if servqd in the 
charming surroundings of the woods. Here 
we had that pleasure. The village store fur¬ 
nished anything we cared for in the way of 
cereals or fruit, and we succeeded in learning 
the pancake art to perfection. A large pail of 
milk was set in the spring every night and 
morning, so that a pitcher of cream could be 
had for the skimming. 
After our trout appetites wore off a little our 
breakfasts were usually strawberries and a 
cereal, both flooded with cream; then boiled 
eggs and bacon, followed by coffee, and as 
many griddle-cakes as we could eat. Picture 
starting the day with such a feast, served 
under a beech tree, by the side of an enchant¬ 
ing stream, just as the sun has come up from 
behind the mountains,, and while every leaf 
and blade of grass is tipped with a drop of 
dew. Then imagine the smoke that followed, 
with nothing more pressing upon the mind 
than to decide whether we should fish, roam 
the woods or just laze about camp. Oh, I wish 
I were there now! 
As I write, the stock ticker at my elbow 
keeps up an incessant snapping of its vicious 
little teeth; the snake-like tape falls into the 
basket, a mass of entangling coils; hoarse¬ 
voiced men and boys in the street are shouting 
the latest “extra,” and the ambulance gong 
clangs savagely in Broadway. Oh, for some 
fairy to wave a wand and change the ticker 
to a singing reel; the tape to a taut line; the 
hoarse voices to the barking of the dogs, up at 
camp, and mellow the ambulance gong to the 
tinkling cow bell. Ho, hum! 
By the end of the first week the creek had 
fallen to about its normal stage for that season 
of the year. It left a beach perhaps a hundred 
feet wide extending from the cave bank down¬ 
stream nearly a quarter of a mile. This beach 
was laid thick with stones, varying in size all 
the way from a fish basket up to big boulders. 
The waterline was broken by many little bays 
a few inches deep, which set back in among 
the rocks, and as 'many little peninsulas ex¬ 
tended out into the water. 
By these bays we used to sit hours at a time 
in the sunshine and watch the tiny lives that 
swam to and fro under the crystal surface, 
protected alike from their larger enemies and 
the sweeping current of the main stream. 
Schools of minnows sailed round and round a 
certain spot, and then at an unseen danger 
signal all turned in a twinkling and were out 
of sight. One by one, as their fears wore off, 
they would reappear falteringly from under 
this or that stone, and before we realized it, 
all would be swimming around in a circle 
again. Steady-going bugs swung on wide 
arcs, making little dents in the water under 
their bodies. Fickle-minded beetles darted 
this way and that in groups. Nervous striders 
would dash along, stop short, and then dash 
again, using two legs for paddles, while their 
other four slid along, making not even a 
scratch on the surface of the pool. Dragon 
flies flew up and down, always missing the 
water by the breadth of a hair, and then alight¬ 
ed’ on the stones with their stiff wings sticking 
straight out in a tiresomely rigid position. In 
tiny lakes, no larger than my hat, little clouds 
of newly hatched tadpoles wiggled from shore 
to shore, and then all settled down in a shiny 
black mass. 
There -was an interesting variety of eggs 
along the water in protected spots, and great 
ingenuity had been shown by the creatures 
laying them. At one place we found what 
looked like water-soaked tapioca pills, strung 
together in the form of a pearl necklace, so 
that their edges touched. In the center of 
each was a glistening black spot, and the 
string thus formed was looped like a coil 
spring which has been drawn out further than 
it can stand, and is not able to recover itself. 
The string was about thirty inches long, and 
one end was fastened to a stone just in the 
edge of the creek, while the other end ex¬ 
tended across stream and was attached to an¬ 
other stone. 
When the water receded, it left a'coating of 
salt water over the stones of the beach, which, 
under the baking sun, had dried to a white 
crust, and was checked into innumerable little 
blocks, like the mosaic work, only unlike 
mosaic, the corners and edges were all. curled 
up by the action of the heat. In the full 
light of the moon there was a ghostly appear¬ 
ance to the place, which was half awing as 
one walked and saw his shadow shoot up, 
the side of a large rock and then passing be¬ 
yond it, reach out to a great length over the 
more even surface of the smaller stones. 
At a distance in the night I saw a skunk 
wander across the beach, standing for a time 
by the stream, as if drinking, and then retrace 
his steps to the woods. Sometimes as I 
strolled along the willow thicket of the bank 
a huge water-snake would glide from under 
the ferns, and wriggling in and out among the 
marble-like boulders, slip into the nearest pool. 
The arch made such a good cook stove that 
Henry decided it was entitled to a cover, so 
that in rainy days we should have a place to 
prepare foofi without its turning out to be 
soup, whether soup was the original plan or 
not. He set up four crotches .about ten feet 
apart in the form of a square, and by means of 
cross poles and rough boards made a slanting 
roof, which looked as if it would answer the 
purpose. We drove nails into the underside of 
the boards, and it furnished a good place to 
dry out wet boots and socks. The sun soon 
curled the boards up, so that when a shower 
came the result was like a lot of eave troughs 
which had been thoughtlessly located with 
emptying ends in the most unexpected places. 
The first rain of any importance came dur¬ 
ing the night, and had cleared away by morn¬ 
ing. Henry, after getting up and building a 
fire, was standing over a fryingpan full of 
bacon when I came out to see what condition 
my rubber boots were in. I pulled one off the 
nail, and it seemed a little heavy, but I did not 
suspect what the matter was until the thing 
flopped over in my hand and emptied a quart of 
water into the bacon. The grease flew all 
over us and the neighborhood. However, the 
sputtering was _ slight, compared with that 
which Henry did, when by my removing the 
weight of the other boot, from the warped and 
twisted board, I allowed a pocket of water, 
which had accumulated in a hollow, to escape 
squarely into the back of his neck. He started 
up quite a brisk line of remarks, from which 
I was unable to sift any personal compliments 
intended for myself, so I asked him who 
built the roof anyway. 
“Well, I built it,” he retorted, “but if you 
are going to use it, it should be covered with 
a layer of fool-proofing.” 
The storage capacity of the roof seemed 
to be pretty well exhausted by these experi¬ 
ments, so that starting again with a fresh 
pan of bacon, breakfast came out all right after 
all. That afternoon we got a roll of tar paper 
from the store, and our troubles from leakage 
were at an end. 
The only really inconvenient thing about the 
cook house was that in digging loam to lay up 
the arch with, we had made a hole about three 
feet deep right back of it, and the hole was 
included in the space covered by the roof. We 
often discussed the project of filling it up, but 
never during our entire stay were we able to 
bring ourselves to a frame of mind suited to 
the task. It was easy enough to dig the hole, 
when we were anxious to see how the arch 
experiment would turn out, but to actually 
carry dirt to fill it was labor of a very differ¬ 
ent sort. 
Henry was more interested in the hole than 
any one else, for he is a quick-moving creature 
and always keeps his eyes more upon the ob¬ 
ject to be obtained than upon the path to the 
object. In this way it happened that almost 
every time he had to go around behind the 
arch he fell into the pit. ‘Scarcely a day passed 
that we did not hear a commotion and other 
things which indicated that Henry had fallen 
again. At length, when one day he had taken 
a particularly hard tumble, he came up with 
determination sticking out all over him and 
began to throw brush into the excavation, 
stamping it down with his heel and mumbling. 
He got a good, stiff tangle of small limbs 
wedged in before his ire subsided, and he left i 
it with the remark, “There, I guess that’ll 
help some.” 
This method of handling the difficulty was 
not a success, so far as Henry was concerned, 
and proved to be quite a burden upon the rest 
of us. Instead of its keeping any one out of 
the hole, it just prevented his seeing it at all. 
Once a fellow started to fall, he would be some 
little time ramming his legs down into the 
brush before he came to a full stop. When he 
finally got through falling he was about as 
securely trapped as possible, so that help was 
always required to get out. It became one of 
our daily exercises to untwist Henry from the 
tangle, about as you take a screw out of a 
cork. 
On the Monday following our visit to the 
old bear hunter, Robert decided that we needed 
some new logs for the camp-fire, and so he 
cut down a small beech which stood just on 
the edge of the bank above the springs. It 
did not fall free, but lodged in some other 
trees, and he went up on the body to cut away 
the brush which was holding it. He gave a 
good, sharp stroke, which severed a little limb 
and set the tree rolling just enough so that he 
lost his balance. To save himself from falling 
he had to drop his ax and jump clear of the 
limbs in the only direction which was open to 
him, and that happened to be right down the 
bank. I was standing near, and was thoroughly 
frightened, for it certainly was a good chance 
for him to be hurt. He went out of sight over 1 
the edge in a flash, and as soon as I could get 
around the falling tree to the ridge I saw him 
slipping, sliding and sprawling along down 
the slope, grabbing at everything, but catching 
nothing. At the bottom he came to a halt 
sitting in the spring. One foot had gone 
through the bail of our milk pail, while the sec¬ 
ond was planted firmly in a basin of eggs. As 
he sat there in the cold water with a milk 
shake on one shoe and an omelet on the other, 
he looked up at me and asked, “What time of 
day do you suppose it is?” 
I saw there was nothing hurt but his feel¬ 
ings and the eggs, so I suggested that he go 
and get some dry clothing. “Not by a darned 
sight,” he retorted. “A fellow who makes 
such a move as that don’t deserve to have 
dry clothes on, and I’m goin’ to stay right in 
these.” 
However, we compromised the matter by 
my putting a couple of poles over the arch 
and his sitting on them until most of the 
dampness was gone. Just at this juncture 
Henry happened in, and seeing Robert sitting 
there wiping the egg off his shoe, remarked, 
“Getting quite reconciled to the arch, aren’t 
you, Robert?” 
“Got to use it for something; it’s no good 
for cooking,” he replied, without looking up. 
In the afternoon Robert and I went up the 
Bushkill fishing. It is a most* interesting 
stream, and has as many moods and tempers 
as there are months in the year or changes in 
the weather. At its upper end, where it runs 
for miles' between the mountains, it is walled 
and choked by solid ledges, but as it plunges 
downward among these fetters, it gathers 
power and fury. When at length the moun¬ 
tains recede, just below the old bear hunter’s 
house, and leave the creek free to work, its 
will upon the narrow flat, its vengeance seems 
to know no bounds. It is never satisfied with 
the bed it has made, but rolls and tosses about 
in its anxiety to try a new. one. It races back 
and forth across the flat, filling in here, tearing 
out there and uprooting everywhere. Such is 
the Bushkill’s behavior in normal stages; but 
