770 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
[May 14, 1910* 
of the hardwood trees are now changing, and 
owing to the early snows are the most brilliant 
I have ever seen. No wurds can describe the 
colors of one of our hardwood ridges, all shades 
of red, purple, orange and green intermingled. 
Rufus, who was born in the woods, called to 
me the other day from the top of a tall spruce 
tree he had climbed in order to see how to run 
a line. ‘Oh, Manly, if Mrs. Stowe could only 
be here and see what I see, she would never 
try to write about it; she w'ould just go crazy. 
•‘Monday, Sept. 26. Caught five muskrat; started 
a sable line west of our camp; set twenty-seven 
traps and got one partridge. It rained hard all 
day.” 
We started our line about northwest at first 
and turned to nearly southwest so as to cross 
the ridges. The ridges here are very high, 
nearly or quite as high as the Mt. Desert hills. 
Rufus killed a porcupine with his hatchet, the 
only one either of us saw or saw the marks of 
in over two months. 
“Sept. 27. Fine. The bushes as wet as possi¬ 
ble, but we resumed our line. Made nineteen 
traps, some of them for fisher. Our line crosses 
two of these high ridges and ends near the top 
of the third. It starts from Seven in Fifteen 
and ends near the further side of Six in Six¬ 
teen. We call it six miles, but if it were level 
ground it would be ten. Cut the heads off from 
four partridges with the rifle, and on looking at 
our Avery Brook traps took out seven rats and 
shot one. 
“Sept. 28. Commenced to rain last night and 
continued all day. Caught nine rats. Skinned 
rats; dried the meat for sable bait; mended, etc. 
Cooked the porcupine, as we needed meat. As 
he had been feeding on beechnuts it was quite 
good meat, but in winter I prefer my hemlock 
bark clear. 
“Sept. 29. Good weather. Took out five rats and 
went down to the Sis to look at bear trap. It 
was gone, and following the trail I soon found 
him ‘hitched up’ between a cedar and a fir. 
Although only a medium sized bear, he had torn 
great slivers from two to three feet long out of 
those trees, and by biting had crippled both so 
that, although fully six inches through, they had 
broken off. They looked as if shattered by can¬ 
non balls. Although he had done such savage 
work, he was very peaceable, not even growl¬ 
ing or showing fight. A bullet exactly between 
the eyes at fifteen or twenty paces ended his 
troubles. Although it was rather lean, we were 
glad to get this meat. Went up the Sis to the 
head of Daggett Pond and set ten traps for 
muskrats on our way. Camped in a last year’s 
lumber camp. 
“Sept. 30. Went up Shallow Lake Stream to 
the lake. This lake is very muddy and shallow, 
as its name indicates. It is perhaps half a mile 
wide by two long with a great many muskrat 
houses in it, looking like bunches of hay in a 
hay field. We made five mink traps on the 
stream, four on the pond and seven on the Sis; 
shot a partridge and caught a mess of trout. 
Took out eight muskrats coming down the Sis, 
and after ,an eight-mile paddle up the lake 
(Caucomgomoc) reached home at about 4 p. m. 
While Rufus cooked I took the canoe and went 
up to look at our traps at the head of the lake. 
Found four rats, a bittern and a very large otter. 
As the otter was in a trap set for muskrat, and 
I was not sure of the staking, I put a bullet 
through its head. It was a very large female 
otter and the fur was very poor. I also saw an¬ 
other otter, probably one of this one’s young. 
“Oct. 1. Fog until 9. Leaves nearly all fallen. 
Caught five muskrats and saw an otter. Busy 
all day stretching bear, skinning rats and otter 
and stretching them.” 
To have a bear make a nice shaped skin the 
fore legs should be split down on the side to¬ 
ward the head so that when the fore paw skin 
is sewed to the jaw with bark, there will be no 
slack skin where the leg joins the body. The 
hind legs should not be split to the tail, as is 
done on a deer or a moose, but some six inches 
further up the belly, so that when stretched the 
tail will be about six inches from the bottom 
edge of the skin. In stretching drive two stakes 
about four feet high with forks at the upper 
end so as to be a little further apart than the 
loose skin will spread, then sharpen the ends of 
two straight poles some two inches through, hard 
wood preferred. Sew one side of the skin to 
one of the poles, laying one end of it in one 
FIG . 4 —BEAR SKIN STRETCHED SQUARE. 
of the upright forks, thrusting the other end of 
the pole into the ground. Place the- other pole 
in the other fork parallel, binding the tops of 
each pole to its fork. Then draw the skin tight 
and sew it to the second pole so that it is flesh 
side up. Then tie cross poles at the ends and 
sew the ends of the skin to them. This will 
make the skin even at sides and ends, and if it 
rains or snows, the fur is kept dry, while one 
can work on either side of it in fleshing and 
scraping. If it is spring, when the weather is 
warm, the cartilages of the ears should be re¬ 
moved, and a little alum or wood ashes dusted 
in will keep the flies away. (See Fig. 4.) 
“Oct. 2. Rained at night. Was in camp all day 
as it is Sunday.” Nearly all the fur hunters, both 
white and Indian, used to keep Sunday and 
usually they cut their wood on Saturday. I still 
have a “crooked knife” with an elaborately 
carved handle, which an old friend, an Indian 
named Sabattis Solomon, gave me some fifty 
years ago, saying: “We t’ink great deal you. 
’Gainst our principles hunt Sunday. Took free 
Sunday afternoon made that knife handle.” 
“Oct. 3. Fine, but blows a gale from the north¬ 
west. Went out on Baker Lake Carry to finish 
the home end of our line. We found where the 
carry started from Avery Pond and an old In¬ 
dian sable line bearing to the west; also a tree 
marked ‘Alonzo Mitchell, Aug. 19, 1859.’ We 
made forty-five traps for sable, mink and fisher. 
Found beaver works. Took out five muskrats. 
• “Oct. 4. Wind blows furiously from north¬ 
west. Went out and looked at a bear trap to 
the west of the camp. Then went down some 
two miles on the east side of the lake and up a 
very crooked brook to a pond among the hills. 
This is laid down on new maps as Rowe Pond, 
which is a printer’s mistake, as this pond was 
named Ross Pond for John Ross who first lum¬ 
bered near it. It is a pretty pond with several 
islands. We found good signs of mink and 
otter. I stamped a muskrat out of a bank and 
shot him. Set ten sable and eleven mink traps. 
In driving the stakes for a mink trap on an 
island a stake struck something a few inches 
underground. I dug away and pulled out an 
old shank bone of a moose, then another and 
another until I had five of these bones which 
had been laid side by side. Evidently some 
moose hunter long ago had laid these here in¬ 
tending to save them for the marrow, as is 
usually done, and for some reason had not 
taken them, and they had lain here until several 
inches of soil had accumulated over them. I 
have taken a pint and a half of clarified marrow 
from the eight bones of the legs of one moose, 
and when salted it is better than any butter. 
At night it calmed down and going home 1 
fired at a lone sheldrake at long range. Though 
he was crippled we could not overtake him. 
Loading a muzzleloading rifle when a canoe is 
moving is not easy, but I loaded and fired three 
more shots, the last stopping him. When we 
reached him he dived, but could not stay under 
long. We found that the first ball had broken 
a wing close to the body and the last had broken 
the other wing in exactly the corresponding spot. 
“Oct. 5. Started to go down to Chesuncook for 
letters and supplies. Felt very sick, pain in the 
bones and shivery. Paddled eight miles to the 
foot of the lake, carried one and a half miles 
past the Horse Race and then paddled against 
a strong wind until two hours after*dark, not 
having eaten dinner. Finding the sea too heavy 
to cross Caucomgomoc Cove (on Chesuncook 
Lake) we tried to camp in a desolate place on 
the flowage. It threatened rain. We had no 
tent, as we expected to stay at Smith s over 
night. We tied my rubber poncho to poles with 
a few boughs at the sides and built a large fire 
in front. I was too sick to eat or to care for 
anything. Philbrook said that he had heard that 
the bark of the yellow ash was a good medicine 
for something, he did not know what, and he 
was going to get some for me. He got a birch 
bark torch and started into the swamp after giv¬ 
ing me both blankets. After a while he brought 
me a pint dipper nearly full of the steeped ash. 
It was very bitter, but I <^rank it all. Rufus 
told me to roll up in both blankets and he would 
keep the fire going. I lay with my feet so close 
to the blaze that my stockings were scorched, 
and under the combined influence of the hot ash 
tea and the reflected heat of the fire, actually 
‘ took a sweat lying in the open air on those bleak 
swampy flats in an October gale. It did not rain 
and I was up at daylight feeling much better, as 
the medicine had acted as physic. Rufus had 
half a pint of the tea cold and to please him I 
drank this. 
