The Amanuensis of Bald Nap 
By W. J. CARROLL 
S OME years ago I was one of a survey 
party in the interior of Newfoundland. 
We had about twenty hands in the com¬ 
pany, and as we knocked off work early, we 
had plenty time to devote to hunting, fishing and 
observation. 
Camping is an ideal life during the pleasant 
days, and if the outfit be anyway after the rule, 
the life leaves nothing to be desired. We were 
camped for a week on the banks of one of a 
long string of lakes, known to us as "Packet- 
man’s Ponds,” and in the evenings after work 
many curious yarns were told as the men smoked 
around the camp-fire. 
After tea one could cut a rod and go down 
to the lakeside, or up to the mouth of the river, 
and catch enough trout for the morrow’s break¬ 
fast. Lying aw r ake sometimes, it used to interest 
me to listen to the "voices of the night” and 
try to explain them. 
There was a family of loons in the lake' and 
the first time I heard their weird calls in the 
middle of the night, right near the camp, I 
thought it was the cry of some lost soul, but 
when I became accustomed to it, I used to wait 
with interest to hear it repeated. Our cook was 
a great woodsman and had been on the first tele¬ 
graph survey through the island. He used to 
tell great yarns of bears and deer and beaver 
and other game. He had had lots of adventures 
and could narrate them in an inimitable man¬ 
ner. He told me one that struck me as being 
so curious that I made a note of it at the time. 
On Sunday morning it was the custom to do 
all the domestic duties for the week, such as 
sewing, washing, darning, hair cutting, etc., and 
the camp on that day presented a quaint appear¬ 
ance. Imagine an undulating tract of well- 
wooded country, bordering on a large islet-dotted 
lake, whose shores are fringed to the very 
water’s edge with heavy timber comprising a 
dark background of evergreens, spruce, fir and 
juniper, enlivened here and there with the leafy 
luxuriance of birch, willow and witch hazel. 
Just on a little eminence on the margin of the 
lake you could see the white canvas tents glint¬ 
ing through the foliage. These were the cook’s 
camp and store house, pitched conveniently near 
the water supply. A little behind these, where 
the smoke rose lazily from the camp-fire, was 
the general camp, and over opposite, in the 
shadow of a gigantic silver birch, was the "holy 
of holies,” the chief’s camp. In the center, 
flanked with cross-stick and bar, bearing the 
pots and kettles, was the camp-fire attended to 
by the "cookie” and presided over by the ruling 
deity, the cook. 
Lounging all around in picturesque attitudes 
were the crew, intent on their various avocations. 
One was sitting on a stump with a small mirror 
hanging from a limb before him, and bending 
over him, scissors in hand, the camp barber. 
Another was bending over the brook trying in 
vain to bring back to its original color some 
nondescript article of clothing, every now and 
then muttering something, not loud, bui deep. 
Over yonder sat the reader of the camp, detail¬ 
ing the month-old news to the eager group lying 
around, with pipes in full blast, and every now 
and then uttering some emphatic comment on 
something just read to them. In the shade, sit¬ 
ting in the lee of the smudge, namely, a handful 
of dry and green moss, lighted, to smoke away 
the nippers—was the most important man in the 
camp—the writer of letters home, to the wife, 
the family, or perhaps the sweetheart. 
Imagine the sun’s brilliancy falling in a soft 
and subdued light through the foliage, the air 
vibrating with the summer haze, resonant with 
the songs of birds, and heavy with the odors 
of numberless wild flowers and shrubs; the lake 
lying calmly and restfully, like a silver mirror, 
glistening through the trees and reflecting back 
every detail of the camp, and nature itself filled 
with the lazy indolence pervading all, and you 
would have a pretty accurate picture of the 
average camp on a fine sunny Sunday morning. 
On this Sunday morning the writer, who had 
just finished a half dozen or so of letters for 
the boys, to be dispatched the first chance the 
ensuing week, while treating himself to a well- 
earned smoke, was accosted by the cook, for 
whom he had just finished a letter for the 
“missus,” with the remark: 
“Be gor, sir, the last time I had a letter wrote 
for me in camp, ’twas wrote under mighty 
strange circumstances,” and he then narrated the 
following incident, which I give as nearly as 
possible in his own words, divesting it of the 
many graceful idioms, quaint expressions and 
dramatic force of voice and gesture that I feel 
it impossible to reproduce: 
“Many years ago this summer, we were off 
on a telegraph survey, for the very first tele¬ 
graph line ever laid in America, and we were 
camped on the edge of' a pond at the foot of 
a low white ridge of hills called the Bald Nap 
in the vicinity of the Big Beaver Pond country. 
There were eight of us in camp and not a mortal 
soul of us could put pen to paper to write our 
names if it were to save our lives. And one 
beautiful Sunday morning, just such another day 
as this, we were all lying around the camp and 
we had pen, ink and paper, and every man of 
us wanted to write home by a mail that was 
going from a neighboring sea port in a few 
days; and there we were, with our fingers in 
our mouths, hundreds of miles from any living 
soul that could help us, and we, like a parcel of 
fools, unable to write one single line. 
“All of a sudden we heard a rustling sound 
in the woods, just back of our camp, and I ran 
and got the gun that I always kept loaded and 
near at hand, in case of bears, because we saw a 
good many of them off and on that summer. 
Just as I got back, the bushes parted and out 
stepped not a bear or a wild beast as we were 
half expecting, but as fine a specimen of a Mic- 
Mac Indian as ever you clapped your eyes on. 
“You may be sure we were pretty well sur¬ 
prised at the sudden sight of him, but then we 
recollected that there were lots of Indians fur 
hunting in those regions, so we made him right 
royally welcome. While the kettle was boiling 
he told us some of his travels after fur and that 
he was bound down to the seashore to send some 
word to his supplier about his catch up to date. 
We asked him to take rrtessages for us, and in 
his broken English he said certainly; ‘but,’ says 
he, ‘have you got them wrote yet?’ 
“I up and told him, says I, ‘we ought to be 
ashamed to own it, but bad luck to the mother’s 
son of us can write his name.’ He says, ‘Oh! 
me write your letters for you if you have pen 
and ink.’ 
“When he says that we all burst outright 
laughing in his face, and we thought ’twas jokin’ 
us he was. Anyhow, he was so serious that I 
got the pen and ink, and sure ’twas he that was 
able to write, and the pure copper plate at that. 
“Well, sir, we had six sheets of paper and 
envelopes and he wrote the six letters in less 
than no time, but when I comes to hunt my bag 
I found the only bit of paper I had was all wet 
and stained. Packing it across the Indian Brook 
a few days before, I tripped in a snag of an old 
‘stunned var’ and flopped in heels over head, bag 
and all; so when I come to look at the paper it 
was like an old dish rag. There I was, worse 
off than ever, and not a bit of writing paper 
within miles of us. 
“ ‘Well,’ says I to the Indian, ‘what am I going 
to do now?’ 
“ ‘Why,’ says he, ‘why not get the vellum of 
the birch?’ 
“With that he ups and goes over to a large 
birch and peeled off a sheet of rind and sejs 
down and writes on it, and I declare to man it 
was like the real out and out satin paper; you 
wouldn’t find the equals of it in the Govern¬ 
ment House. After he was through, he got some 
frankum off a tree near at hand, doubled up the 
