266 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
[Aug. is, 1908. 
thing that turned up. Georgian Bay sounded 
right to us and that was as far as we had gone 
in our minds when we reached Toronto, where 
Bill bought grub and I a very beautiful nest of 
aluminum kettles. A friend who met us at the 
station said to go beyond Georgian Bay, but his 
chief concern was that we looked too tough to 
invite him into the best hotel in town for a 
meal. Meeting at a grocery store, we held a 
conference in a corner and decided to buy tickets 
to North Bay, agreeing that we might as well 
go further north as long as we had the oppor¬ 
tunity. In a few minutes we rushed pell-mell 
aboard the only train of the day, getting sepa¬ 
rated in the crowd and each believing the other 
had been left behind. 
But what should we do when we arrived at 
North Bay? All day we consulted maps, rail¬ 
road folders and every guide, prospector and 
lumberman on the train. Two chance acquaint¬ 
ances almost persuaded us to drop off and go 
through the Algonquin Park with them, but with 
the supercilious look of old woodsmen we ex¬ 
plained that we were “going on north.” 
The Mississauga, Temagami Lake, Spanish 
River, the. Missinabie and Temiskaming each 
had its claims and the names were all alluring. 
Finally I remembered a letter of introduction 
in my pocket to a man in Sudbury which I had 
accepted without any idea that it would be 
available, but which we now determined to use. 
Spanish River, if that were the final destination, 
could be conviently reached from Sudbury. 
In the meantime the rich land above Toronto 
had been left behind with its flocks of sheep 
and pigs, Lombardy poplars and cedars tipped 
with brown blossoms. Lake Simcoe lay chang¬ 
ing like a chameleon as the sun chased down 
the broken clouds of a passing storm. At the 
stations brown-faced lamb-eyed men, thin, 
peaked women and children of all ages rushed 
up and down the platform exactly as is the cus¬ 
tom in towns that see a train only once a day. 
Approaching Lake Nipissing, the country grew 
wilder with more water and wood and big fields 
covered with charred stumps. Great richly 
colored banks of golden rod and white and 
purple asters lay along the roadside. In the 
twilight filmy mists rested on the meadows like 
pieces of clouds fallen from the sky until the 
moon arose and the night winds blew them away. 
It had been only within an hour of reaching 
North Bay at 11 o’clock that we determined to 
proceed to Sudbury, and it was 2 o’clock Sun¬ 
day morning when we tumbled out of the train, 
blinking like owls at the station sign reading, 
Vancouver, 2,464 miles. 
The babes in the wood slept, ate breakfast, 
presented the letter and were introduced to their 
fate in the form of Haight, a lumberman and 
prospector and a fine type of clear-eyed, brown¬ 
skinned woodsman. With a shy, kindly smile 
he wasted no words in telling us what he knew. 
“Spanish River is no good,” he said; “don’t 
think of it. There is a good trip with plenty 
of fishing up the Ridout to Flying Post and back 
to Biscotasing, but it is very rough burnt land 
and the fishing is not always certain.” 
Bill broke in with a question about the trip 
to James Bay. Haight smiled indulgently and 
then told of wonderful trips that no healthy man 
could hear about and not give a year of his life 
to take. “That’s great,” he replied; “but it will 
take at least three months. The best plan is 
to go up on one of the regular routes such as the 
Missinabe or Lake Abbitibie and return by 
Rupert’s and St. John’s rivers. That is the 
minimum up-stream and maximum down¬ 
stream.” 
I thought it well to store all this information 
in the back of my head for future use, but it 
was no help in solving the immediate problem. 
“Oh! I guess you boys had better go to 
Temagami. It is the real thing now, but pretty 
soon the railroad will be in and spoil it. My 
canoe and paddles are in a shack on Net Lake, 
just east of Temaeami. You can have them.” 
“Temagami!” asked Bill; “what’s it like? 
The Adirondacks?” 
“Not like them at all,” Haight snorted. 
“Pshaw. They are nothing. They are only a 
backyard for New York and a show place for 
consumptives. I'll tell you what Temagami is 
like,” and he did. So back to North Bay we 
went and put up at a hotel for an early morn¬ 
ing start on the way north. 
About bed time a notion seized us to re¬ 
pack our duffle. Horace Kephart or John Dough 
or someone else had written in a book that 
there was only one correct way to make up a 
pack and Bill was determined to follow the 
theory to a finish—another instance of how the 
book writers on these subjects make life miser¬ 
able for the tenderfoot. Bill spread his stuff 
all over the room, packed it up, put it on the 
tump line and stamped up and down the hall 
to see how it worked. Then he spread every¬ 
thing out again and moved it about as if he 
were solving a big puzzle. Something broke 
loose, corn meal, I think, and made a mess. 
How many times Bill made up the pack, tried 
it and ripped it apart I do not know because 
I went to bed and fell asleep. I awoke at 2 
o’clock and was startled to see a man’s form 
on the floor at the foot of the bed. Making a 
light I saw Bill sound asleep on his pack and 
his head dangling painfully in the thin air. He 
arose with a groan and explained that he had 
fallen asleep after turning out the light when 
he got down on the floor to avoid making a 
noise and awakening me. 
1 he new railroad to Temiskaming was in pro¬ 
cess of construction and only a very big fee 
secured permission to ride on the workmen’s 
train as far as it went. The road bed was 
rough. Blue herons and wild ducks arose from 
the numerous lakes along the road and flew 
away as the train bumped noisily along. Cer¬ 
tainly we were intruders. Two guides swapped 
fish stories for our benefit. I asked a man with 
an Ontario fire ranger’s badge if he knew about 
Net Lake, where we expected to get Haight’s 
canoe, and he said he did; that another ranger 
by the name of Logan was in the camp now, 
and that he himself was to make it his head¬ 
quarters for two months. 
Laisenly, for that was his name, was an in¬ 
teresting talker and loved a good listener. He 
filled one with respect for the Canadian fire 
rangers appointed to patrol crown lands and 
locate and extinguish fires. We were soon to 
see them exercise their authority as game war¬ 
dens in stopping us to take down our names 
and addresses. Once we met one when we 
thought we were fifty miles from a man and 
over in the. region between Temagami and the 
Montreal River. We met another who was on 
a range that required a week to cover. Such 
good care of the forests is a lesson for those 
of us who never stop to consider the sources 
of the. common every day things about us, the 
wood in the tables we write upon or the floors 
under our feet. 
The thick carpet of roots and moss in the 
woods—the muskeg—burns slowly but persist¬ 
ently. Laisenly told of discovering fires at 
night, camping and extinguishing them in the 
morning. He expected plenty of trouble with 
his two mile stretch along the new railroad, but 
he had authority to call off the contractor’s men 
at any time to help him with fires. 
Our train went only to a point five miles be¬ 
low Net Lake. Soon Logan, who knew Laisenly 
was coming, sauntered toward us with a 
“Howdy, boys,” shouldered a pack and led us 
up the road. Two miles exhausted us and Bill 
was left to stand guard over the duffle until 
the night construction train came and gave him 
a lift. The rest of us went on to Net Lake and 
had a bully supper in camp, but 10 o’clock ar¬ 
rived and no Bill. Laisenly and I walked back 
and reached him just as the construction train 
came, along. Piling the packs on a flat car and 
jumping aboard we were astonished to see the 
train back down the track away from Net Lake 
at a high rate of speed for two miles. There 
was no way to reach the trainmen and find out 
the meaning of the joke. However, it was only 
a part of extraordinary and nerve-wrecking 
shifting, until finally it seemed that the train 
was being shifted for spite. It bumped and 
squirmed and groaned on the uneven track, the 
whistle, screeched through the echoing woods, 
the trainmen yelled and swore, big cinders from 
the engine rattled on the cars, smoke enveloped 
us, high wooden trestles creaked and sagged, 
and the track sunk in the soft muskeg. Sleepy 
and cold, we huddled back to back and sang, 
paced the car or flattened ourselves against the 
warm engine tender. But in the midst of our 
misery we felt it a privilege to see closely the 
making of a railroad in the wilderness, and 
especially one so far north, pointing like a man’s 
finger to Hudson’s Bay and the North Pole. It 
w'as a glimpse of real pioneer work. 
Suddenly that rare sight, a lunar rainbow, 
almost a complete circle of beautiful silvery 
light, like a halo, appeared on a bank of mist 
that lay upon a lake to our right. 
At 2:30 in the morning—Tuesday morning— 
we reached Haight’s camp three days after leav¬ 
ing New York. Such are the pleasures of get¬ 
ting under way when you are carefree and have 
no special object in view! Strange as it may 
seem, we were not even started on the real trip, 
because from Tuesday to Saturday we were lost 
in the woods between Bear Lake and the Mon¬ 
treal River, without food or guide, looking in 
vain for Sandstone Creek where Haight had 
said could be found the best trout fishing in 
Ontario. With pain and difficulty we worked 
our way back to Haight’s camp where we were 
welcomed by Logan, Laisenly, Sweezy—who 
had come to Net Lake in our absence—and 
Peeshabo, the Indian engaged as our guide for 
the balance of the vacation. They saw what 
had happened without being told, smiled, but 
were considerately silent. Bill and I never men¬ 
tion the subject. 
In the evening we sat on logs in front of the 
shack and talked. The usual evening owl hooted 
and the stars were reflected in long silvery 
streamers over the glassy surface of the lake 
at our feet. Sweezy, who was employed by the 
Government to check up the ties cut for the 
railroad from the crown lands, told this story 
of his brother Ben who had been in the employ 
of the Hudson’s Bay Company over fifty years: 
Once in the old days before the railroad, the 
factor at Flying Post had commissioned Ben to 
take overland to the mines at Vancouver a bad 
Indian who had killed a white man in a fit of 
jealousy over a woman. The entire distance of 
twenty-five hundred miles had to be made on 
snowshoes in the dead of winter. Four long 
months the wit of the white man was pitted 
against that of the Indian who, in spite of hand 
cuffs, broke loose three times and made desper¬ 
ate attempts to kill his captor. Once he followed 
Ben to a stream and pounced on him as he 
stooped to get water, but he was finally subdued 
in a rough and tumble fight in the snow. Ben’s 
wits and superior physical strength conquered, 
and finally as the snow was disappearing under 
the spring sun he delivered his man and saw 
him put below to serve the life sentence. 
Laisenly brought out worn copies of Whitman 
and Sydney Lanier, his favorite authors, and 
read a half hour by the fire light to the blank 
astonishment of Logan and Sweezy. Peeshabo 
sneaked off to bed. In the first pause Bill spoke 
about the Adirondacks. Logan was puzzled and 
asked: 
“The Adirondacks! Where are they? -I 
never heard of them.” 
Bill evidently did not continue what it was in 
his mind to say, but asked peevishly: 
“Ever heard of New York city?” 
“Nothing particular,” was the reply, and the 
subject was dropped. 
Later in the evening, when the aurora began 
to shoot up from behind the trees on the far 
side of the lake, we three young men sang and 
the older men sat in silence and smoked. At 
last the jumping-off place had been reached, and 
to-morrow, nine days since leaving New York, 
Bill and I were to take the canoe and make 
the real start for the trout pools in the north. 
J. N. Trainer. 
A. C. A. Membership. 
NEW MEMBERS PROPOSED. 
Atlantic Division—John R. Fraser, 580 E. 
165th street, New York city, by Cornelius 
Cregin. 
