Two Days on the Batchawana. 
“Oh! rushing river, emerald hued, 
How mad thou art and fearless, 
No frowning gates, though granite barred, 
Can curb thy waters peerless! 
The silent gods of stone 
Revoke their ancient laws of might. 
When through the gorge with wing-swift flight 
Thy wind-tossed waves are speeding, 
Each moment wilder grown.” 
—Rhymes of the Rockies. 
The yacht Goodenough was tugging gently 
at her anchor chains, as she lay in her snug 
harbor off the fish dock, in Batchawana Bay, 
Lake Superior, where she had been so rhany 
times in the past ten years of North Shore 
cruising, during which time the good old ship 
had carried us safely through many a storm and 
always come out in good shape for the next 
trial of strength with the elements.* 
The crew had gathered in the cockpit, after 
a trout and pancake breakfast, and were talking- 
over a trip we had always talked of making but 
never had made. The nearest any of the crew 
ever had come to making good on the resolu¬ 
tion was a few days before the morning in 
question, when Ed, Philip and two Indians, 
with Miller, of the fish dock, had made a try, 
but failed on account of bad weather. 
The great trip was a journey .to the upper 
falls of the Batchawana River. Philip said he 
wanted to try it again, but the next time he 
wanted a tent, as it was no fun sitting in his 
underclothes while the wet outside garments 
hung on the bushes; and he wanted enough 
grub taken to last at least one day. The Com¬ 
modore allowed that if the Major went along, 
there would be plenty of grub; anyway, we 
could catch trout. Foxy Grandpa remarked 
that he was too old a hand to get caught in 
the wilds without some shelter, and even if 
there was no tent aboard, the awning used over 
the cockpit was just about the thing. 
After each one had aired his views, it was de¬ 
cided, that though the weather looked a little 
unsettled, we were about due for a fair spell, 
and “Ho! for the Batchawana Falls,” was the 
cry. Every one bustled about and outfits were 
looked over. Tommy Robinson and his partner 
—Batchawana Indians, of the Chippewa tribe— 
were engaged with their Mackinac boat to take 
us up the river as far as possible and then go 
along to do the heavy work of getting a small 
boat up as far as the first falls anyway. 
After a decision to go had been made, it did 
not take us long to get ready, and Dan, our 
cook, put up a good supply of grub; but, alas! 
Dan forgot the assimilating powers of the red 
man when it comes to white man’s grub—but 
more of that anon. 
Blake L., one of the crew, decided the trip 
would be too strenuous for him, and that he 
preferred the hair matresses of the Good- 
enough to fir and hemlock browse, so he stood 
upon the quarter deck like the boy of old and 
♦For a full account of a North Shore cruise and a de¬ 
scription of the yacht Goodenough, see Forest and 
Stream of June 6, 13, 20 and July 4, 1903. 
waved a farewell as the rest of the crew sailed 
away in Tommy Robinson’s Mackinac. We felt 
very sorry for Blake, as Kb did not realize what 
he was missing, but he had not been on the 
North Shore before. 
It was about ten o’clock in the morning when 
we bade Blake and the men on the yacht fare¬ 
well, and with a fair if not a strong breeze, 
headed for the mouth of the Batchawana six 
miles across the bay. If it were not for the 
bar at the mouth of the river, it would be pos¬ 
sible for boats drawing much more than the 
Goodenough to sail right up the river, as once 
over the bar, there is good water; but on it, 
not over eighteen inches. It did not take long to 
sail the six miles, even with our rig, which, like 
most Indian rigs, was a kind of a makeshift. 
Once over the bar and fairly in the river, we 
k wered the sail and the Indians took to the 
oars. 
The Batchawana River is the largest and 
most important of five rivers that flow into 
Batchawana Bay, and it is really a fine stream, 
and a lover of nature would never tire of 
sailing over its placid lower reaches. Above 
the bay the river flows quietly, with little per¬ 
ceptible current, between densely wooded 
banks, where the forest grows dark and green 
right into the shining water. Firs, pines, hem¬ 
locks, maples and numerous other large trees 
abound, flecked here and there in the somber 
green by the white streaks of the shining birch, 
and ever and anon a splotch of red shows 
where the leaning mountain ash adds its beauty 
to the general effect. In the early autumn and 
sometime by the last of August the leaves of 
many of the trees and bushes put on their gay 
colors, and then the scene is resplendent with 
the masses of scarlet, yellow, brown and other 
tints. 
When the air is still, and especially in the 
afternoon or early evening, the shadow effects 
on this river are wonderful and entranc¬ 
ing, and many times have we rowed and drifted 
down the broad and quiet reaches, watching the 
magic scenes spread out before our wonder¬ 
ing eyes. Here we looked upon the sky with 
fleecy clouds and the great trees overhanging 
the shores, as we seemed to glide over them as 
if floating in the air. Then it seems as if we 
were about to run into some huge stump or 
rock that seemed to rise from the mirror-like 
surface, but which faded away at our approach. 
The reflections of all objects are so vivid and 
real, that one can scarcely believe they are only 
reflections, and it is hard to distinguish in some 
of the photographs we have made of these 
shadows which is the object and which the 
reflection. 
As we ascended the river the banks became 
higher, and in places great bluffs rose pre¬ 
cipitously from the water’s edge. Then great 
inlets or lagoons opened from the main stream 
and ran back into the forest for long distances. 
Here, in the fall would be a duck hunter’s para¬ 
dise. It was four or five miles from the mouth 
of the river to the first real riffle, and here 
navigation for ordinary boats ended. Our In¬ 
dians rowed steadily, and at twelve-thirty p. m. 
the prow of the Mackinac grated on the gravelly 
bank below the first rapid water and we landed. 
All the duffle was taken from the Mackinac and 
transferred to the little fourteen-foot, double- 
ended yacht tender we had towed up. Then 
our Indians built a fire, boiled tea, and we ate 
our lunch. It is needless to remark that no 
one but the Indians wanted any of the tea; but 
an Indian does not think he has done the right 
thing when he stops to rest if he does not boil 
seme tea. How they can drink the lye-like 
mixture is a wonder to the uninitiated, but they 
do, and they like it. It is an acquired taste— 
like lots of others. 
After lunch the Commodore and Ed decided 
they would try to find a trail that had been 
sketched out for us on a rough map by a party 
who had been up to the falls, overland. Philip 
and the Professor put on their waders and. 
elected to stay with the Indians and help get 
the little boat up the river—Philip, because he 
thought there might be long stretches where he 
could get a ride, and the Professor, because he 
wanted to keep his eye on things in general. 
Some very rapid and shallow water begins 
just above where we left our Mackinac, and 
then we found deeper and more quiet water 
leading into Commodore’s Pool. We have been 
up the Batchawana so much that we have 
christened many of the most prominent features, 
and as Commodore’s Pool is one, it is worthy 
of mention. Into this pool flows a cold spring 
creek, or rivulet, and it is evidently fed by other 
springs. It is very deep and the water is very 
cold. The little creek is a favorite place for 
one of our crew to visit, and he goes up to the 
little falls, which are back in the forest a half 
mile, and here he sits and eats his lunch, en¬ 
joying the wild, sylvan beauty of this quiet, se¬ 
cluded and very seldom visited spot. Foxy 
Grandpa’s Creek also has numerous trout in it, 
and on one occasion one of our crew “wiped 
the eyes” of two of us by taking twenty-five 
out of one of its pools, while we, in the main 
river, never got a rise. This is not always so, 
for the Commodore has made great catches in 
his pool, hence the name. 
From this we did not find the going quite so 
easy, but the riffle was quite deep and the de¬ 
scent not so abrupt that it made it over hard 
to tow the boat up. Then we struck a long 
quiet reach and Philip and the Professor both 
got a ride, while the Indians were glad of the 
chance to get out of the water and walk along 
on the sandy shore. After rowing up the long 
pool, we found more bad water and riffles, but 
it was not until we had gone a half mile further 
that we found real trouble; here the river 
narrowed and ran like a mill race, with high 
rocky walls on one side. We pulled through 
this, and then came a series of heavy rapids, 
where the two Indians, assisted by the Pro¬ 
fessor, had a hard pull. Over these rapids and 
once more we found a long smooth reach into 
Billie’s Pool, where another cold spring stream 
