810 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
[May 21, 1910. 
or in Alaska, but in buying over twenty thousand 
taken south of the St. Lawrence I have never 
seen its equal. Our sable, or pine marten, have 
the heads nearly white and the breasts a deep 
orange yellow, while the dark sable which come 
from the far North have much paler breasts. 
Sable sometimes will not take bait. Besides 
catching mice, squirrels, rabbits and birds they 
often feed on the berries of the mountain ash 
and sometimes they will climb a tree to eat these 
berries, not noticing a well-set trap close by. 
They are an unsuspicious animal and are easily 
trapped when they will take bait. 
“Oct. 12. Sat up late last night; skinned my 
three sable and made stretchers for them. These 
stretchers are made from split cedar. There are 
two side pieces about tvfro feet long and two 
inches wide pointed at the head. The skin is 
drawn on these two pieces as far as it will go 
and tacked down at the legs. Then a pair of 
clamps are put across just above the fore paws 
and another pair at the lower end of the skin 
to keep the side pieces from twisting and a nar¬ 
row, tapering wedge is driven in between the 
side pieces. Sable and fisher are usually stretched 
point-headed, while mink and otter are usually 
round-headed. When a hunter had no tacks 
with him he caught a little slit in the legs of the 
skin into a notch in the edge of the stretcher. 
The tails of otter were often extended by a row 
of tiny sticks of graduated length laid parallel 
and caught under the edges of the skin. The 
stretch of the different hunters was so individual 
that in numerous instances I could identify a 
man’s catch, no matter where I found it. 
“Was up * long before sunrise. Went up 
Avery Brook and found a nice mink in the 
trap where I landed Rufus. While down near 
Bangor mink will not be prime until nearly 
Nov. 1, this was strictly prime (Oct. 13) ; as are 
all the sable, though sable are usually prime a 
week before mink are. 
“I set thirteen traps for sable, one for mink, 
and one for otter, came to camp and went to 
look at bear trap. Trap empty. Set a steel 
trap for fisher, baited with the forward half of 
my beaver, also made two traps for sable on 
home end of my line. Rufus came just at dark 
with two sable and a beaver. 
“While at the shed camp at the further end 
of our line Rufus had cut his camp-wood double 
length, as it was late, and was cutting it up after 
supper, when a bull moose came to the sound 
of his ax. When he was quite near, Rufus re¬ 
treated into the camp and the moose walked 
back and forth on the other side of the fire, 
grunting and slapping his lip. As Rufus had 
only a single-shot pistol of small caliber, he did 
not like to fire; because the moose, if only 
wounded, might charge right over the camp¬ 
fire. So, thinking prudence the better part of 
valor, he did not shoot. It is singular how 
few signs of moose we have seen. Since we 
built our camp we have not seen half a dozen 
tracks in all our travels. The bear are plentier 
than the moose in this vicinity.” 
At this time there were no caribou in Maine, 
although they began to come in by 1861. Also 
there were extremely few deer above Katahdin. 
In 1857 and 1858, we saw only two tracks, and 
this year we did not see one. Also we did not 
see the tracks of a fox, although there were 
some around Chesuncook and Chamberlain 
farms. Although I caught a skunk in a sable 
trap the year before at Nictor Lake at the head 
of the Little Tobique, there was not one taken 
in our woods, away from the settlements, for at 
least eight or ten years. The first one ever 
known to be taken was sent me from Chesun¬ 
cook. It seems singular that while, in most 
States, raccoons were found in the woods away 
from the settlements, in Maine I do not know 
of a single instance of one being taken above 
the forks of the Penobscot (Nicatow) until 
about 1856, when Rufus and his partner took 
one in a bear trap near Katahdin on the south 
side. A few years after one was taken near 
Katahdin Iron Works by Big Jim Edwards, and 
in neither case did the hunter know what* the 
animal was. A few years after one was taken 
near Patten, and after that they began to be 
taken occasionally in the deep woods. 
“Oct. 13. Looks rainy, but we started down 
the lake to go up Loon Lake. Loon Stream 
comes in at the foot of Caucomgomoc at the 
opposite corner from the outlet. By the stream 
it is about three miles to Loon Lake—three- 
fourths of a mile of quick water, two of dead 
water and a carry of a quarter of a mile just 
below the lake. Shot three partridges on the 
carry; set five traps for mink on the stream; 
camped at the foot of the lake. 
“Oct. 14. Looks sure to rain by noon. Went 
up the lake,'set a line of seven sable traps back 
of where we camped; going up the lake, set 
seven traps for mink and otter. Loon Lake is 
some six miles long by perhaps half a mile to 
a mile wide. Began to rain about ten A. m. 
Went up Loon Stream; turned up Withey 
Brook. It was raining hard and blowing a gale, 
so that we were glad to take refuge in a very 
old lumber camp which had only some ten feet 
of the covering left on one side of the roof, but 
this was tight and saved pitching a tent. Shot 
a partridge right at the camp door.” 
Just as we landed we saw a new beaver chip 
floating, so as soon as we had eaten dinner, we 
started out to find the beaver. Only a short dis¬ 
tance above came to the place where an old 
“banker,” who had neither house nor dam, was 
getting his winter’s wood by cutting small wood 
and tucking it into holes under the bank. I 
had landed Rufus to set a trap for him and 
was standing in the canoe, which lay across the 
mouth of a small logan. As I went to pass the 
bait stick to him, the beaver, which must have 
been up in the bushes somewhere, jumped in 
with a loud splash. I seized my rifle. He swam 
directly under the canoe, but too deep for me to 
see him and went into a hole on the opposite 
side, making his raft of wood just rise out of 
water as he passed under it. Rufus set the trap for 
him, I set one for otter and we set some for mink. 
“Rained terribly and blew so that we had to 
prop up the end of the old camp, for fear of its 
being blown down upon us.” As it rained so 
that we could not pick any boughs, we had a 
rather hard bed, although not much worse than 
I have had some forty .years ago at some of 
the high-priced Bar Harbor hotels, where they 
used to have mattresses filled with meadow hay 
or with cornhusks with the butts on. 
“Oct. 15. Our beaver got such a fright that 
he did not get trapped, so we went up stream 
to the Lower Hur.d Pond and carried into the 
Upper Hurd Pond, setting two traps between 
them. The Upper Hurd Pond is a very singu¬ 
lar pond. It is perhaps a half mile long by a 
quarter mile wide, and is filled with yellowish 
mud about as thick as very thick gruel, so that 
it is hard work for two men to force a canoe 
through it. A twelve-foot setting-pole finds 
no bottom, even close to the banks. Near the 
center are several rocks some feet above the 
water, or rather the mud, which are as red as 
if fire had passed over them. The shores are 
low and boggy. 
“Leaving our canoe here—it had begun to 
snow—we spotted a line through to Caucom¬ 
gomoc, about four miles, and made eight sable 
traps on it. We struck the lake about four 
miles below our camp and followed the shore 
up to our camp, getting home at just dark. 
“Oct. 16. Sunday. Snowed last night, but is 
clear to-day. On Sundays we have a treat 
which we cannot get on other days. Not hav¬ 
ing any kettle suitable to bury in a bean-hole, 
we cannot bake beans as the lumbermen do; 
but we can put them on to stew on Saturday- 
night, and by letting them stew slowly, filling 
in water as needed, we can cook them by noon 
so that they are as good as those baked in the 
regular way.” 
I brought the second volumes of Longfellow’s 
Poems, the old blue and gold edition, in with 
me to compare some of the things he writes of 
with things as we see them in the woods. It is 
surprising how accurately in Hiawatha he de¬ 
scribes the works of the beaver. 
“To a dam made by the beavers, 
To a pond of quiet water, 
Where knee-deep the trees were standing, 
Where the water-lilies floated. 
****** 
On the dam of trunks and branches 
Through whose chinks the water spouted, 
O’er whose summit flowed the streamlet. 
And the sunshine and the shadows 
Fell in flecks and gleams about him, 
Fell in little shining patches.” 
Very few, looking at a beaver dam as they 
wrote, could describe it so that the reader could 
see as perfect a picture of it in his mind’s eye 
as these quotations give. 
“Monday, Oct. 17. Snowed last night. This 
morning went down the lake to look at our traps 
on the Sis. At the foot of the lake saw a mink 
running on the logs, and, just as I was about 
to fire, he jumped upon something covered with 
snow, which I saw was a canoe that had been 
carried to the outer edge of the logs the night 
before and was now covered with snow. As 
I could not fire shot without danger of spoil¬ 
ing the canoe, I waited until he got down 
among the logs. I fired just as he stood with 
his fore-parts showing above a log. The shot, 
cut a path in the snow where he had been, but 
he had dodged at the flash, and, although I 
called for him, we did not see him again. I 
have often been told that there is nothing 
which can dodge a bullet. In this case I fired 
the shot-barrel, as I did not wish to spoil the 
skin with a rifle ball, but I have seen muskrats 
and otters dodge bullets and have seen harbor 
seal, when in the water, do it scores of times. 
Indeed, I have found it almost impossible to 
hit a seal when side of head was toward me.” 
On turning over the canoe we saw by the 
head-bo^rd lashed to the middle bar, that the 
owners were Indians, and a large bag of steel 
traps told why they were there. 
We had just got across the lqgs to the sandy 
shore, when the bushes opened and an old and 
