May 27, 1911.] 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
811 
which the fishing is excellent. The old bunk 
house which we used was in excellent repair, 
and we found many conveniences. The woods 
are alive with game and one can find moose and 
deer sign everywhere. There was a moose yard 
used the previous winter about 200 yards from 
the cabin. 
Emerald Lake portage lies around a point 
back of the cabin and the lake is surrounded by 
high cliffs covered to their summits with mam¬ 
moth pines and is a gem of beauty lying long 
and narrow, and as we saw it with the afternoon 
sun bringing out the glorious colorings of rock 
and forest and with several bald eagles soar¬ 
ing high in the air, adding a touch of life, we 
stood spellbound with admiration. It is a scene 
well worth many miles of travel. From this 
lake was taken fifteen years ago a lake trout 
4SV2 pounds in weight. The story of its capture 
was told me by the man who caught it, an old 
prospector who has spent twenty years in this 
region, and is a most interesting character—Jim 
O’Neil, known far and wide as Jasper Jim. He 
caught the monster trout unassisted, from a 
twelve-foot birchbark canoe. Mounted, it is 
now in the University of Minnesota Museum. 
From Carp Lake one can portage into the 
Man Lakes, which are a chain consisting of 
Little Man Lake, This Man’s Lake, That Man’s 
Lake and the Other Man’s Lake—all wild, 
beautiful and full of trout. Weeks could be 
spent in this great wild country, where one feels 
with Wordsworth—that “Nature never did be¬ 
tray the heart that loves her.” 
We spent three days at Merrit’s Camp, and 
then reluctantly turned our canoes toward civil¬ 
ization and retraced our course as far as the fish 
company’s headquarters. “Headquarters” may 
give the impression of an elaborate plant, so it 
may be well to state that they consist simply of 
two shacks and an ice house on an island in 
Basswood Lake, as no fish are stored there, the 
catch being taken to Duluth weekly, as before 
mentioned. There were only two halfbreeds and 
their wives on the island when we were there. 
Instead of following our outward course from 
this place, we decided to go north on Basswood 
and around Government Point, which we did, 
turning west at the point and then south, 
finally reaching Newton Lake again after a 
paddle of about thirty miles. We camped that 
night on Fall Lake at the foot of the beautiful 
falls from which the lake derives its name, and 
about three miles from Winton. The next day 
we had our canoes, etc., hauled to Ely and 
took the train for ho.me. 
Our trip is now only a memory, but so pleas¬ 
ant an one that already meetings of the old 
crowd have been held and tentative plans have 
been laid for a return to the scenes whose ap¬ 
peal is so strong as to be irresistible. 
To those who in mind and body are weary of 
the din and turmoil of “the madding crowd’s 
tumultuous strife” let me say, go to the good 
old woods, restful and peaceful, where every 
minute new objects of interest, of plant, animal 
and bird life present themselves; fill your lungs 
to the full with the pure pine-perfumed air, and 
after the night’s sleep, made deep and dreamless 
by the vigorous exercise of the day, awake re¬ 
freshed and unwearied, then when you return 
to duties of the city, you will have memories, 
the recollection of which will afford many pleas¬ 
ant hours of restrospection. 
Uncle Jack 
By W. B. S. 
A NDREW JACKSON D. has lived by him¬ 
self in a lonely canon in Northwestern 
Wyoming since 1865. “I have seen,” said 
he “five hundred Bannocks camped on that flat 
by the cabin,” and in the o’d days elk and buf¬ 
falo, antelope and deer, and even moose were 
almost at his door. 
The cabin built of logs has two rooms and is 
so low that even a short man cannot enter it 
“UNCLE jack” DAVIS AT HIS CABIN IN SNAKF 
RIVER CANYON, WYOMING. 
without stooping, and “Uncle Jack,” as its owner 
is called, is a six-footer. The roof is of sap¬ 
lings, covered with a thick layer of dirt, and is, 
strange as it may seem, practically waterproof. 
The interior is lighted only by the door, when 
the weather permits it to be open, and by a 
single small pane of window glass, set in a hole 
cut between two of the logs composing the cabin 
walls. The only lamp is the cover of a tin can, 
filled with elk tallow, into which a strip of cloth 
has been stuck, and more often than not even 
this humble contrivance is wanting. Stove, there 
is none; for cooking and heating sole reliance 
is a huge open fire-place mou'ded of sand and 
baked to flint-like hardness. The yawning chim¬ 
ney, when the fire is out, lets in all outdoors, 
and the old water bucket frequently loses its 
bottom from freezing solid in a night. For tem¬ 
peratures in this region are almost Arctic, fifty 
and more below zero Fahrenheit being not un¬ 
known. 
All the chairs, tables, bed and the like are, of 
course, hand made and resemble Robinson 
Crusoe’s, as does Uncle Jack’s calendar, only in¬ 
stead of notching a post, Unde Jack has a slate, 
on which every morning he writes down the 
date. He has no horse, and everything he uses 
he has to pack on his back, except in winter, 
when he has a rude sled on which he manages 
to bring home some pretty fair-sized saw-logs, 
which are bucked up into very presentable lum¬ 
ber to use in his mining. For this purpose, again 
like Crusoe, he has a saw pit, and many of his 
tools like Crusoe’s are fashioned by his own 
hand by means of a forge and improvised anvil. 
On the whole, however, Uncle Jack is much 
more ingenious than his prototype, albeit he has 
not yet taken to making wicker or earthenware. 
But his hand-made rotary blower for the forge 
is probably beyond anything Defoe’s imagina¬ 
tion compassed. 
His little placer proposition yields him barely 
a “grub stake” and he has often come near to 
starving, being reduced one winter to the neces¬ 
sity of eating up an elk skin suit of clothing. 
Poor as he is, however, he is as generous as a 
king and would share his last sour dough bak¬ 
ing or anything else he had with any stranger 
who happened to find him. The last time I saw 
him by going far afield I killed him some wild 
meat, incidentally seeing thereby a lot of new 
country and pleasuring myself more than him, 
but he tried thereupon to force on me a two- 
ounce nugget and was actually grieved because 
more than suspecting it was all he had for 
flour, coffee and tobacco, with winter close at 
hand, I refused it. These are his only neces¬ 
sities, for salt he gets by going to a distant 
saline spring and boiling down the water. 
It is impossible to convey to anyone an im¬ 
pression of the fineness of his spirit. Though 
nearly seventy, he never complains, never talks 
about himself or his troubles, always has a 
cheerful and helpful word. Distant neighbors 
to whom he entrusts his little nuggets and small 
commissions forget to return change and some¬ 
times cheat him unmercifully, but resolute as the 
old man is, he never objects. “It’s not worth 
bothering about,” says old Uncle Jack. 
Even the birds have learned his kindliness, 
and it is a fact that for three years past a con¬ 
fiding couple have built their nest inside his dark 
and lowly shack back of the door behind the 
little looking glass, which means of course that 
the door cannot be shut from the time the birds 
return in the spring until their brood is reared. 
It is an odd example of wild creatures’ implicit 
trust, and Uncle Jack takes great pride in it. 
He calls them “pintos,” a species no ornithologist 
would recognize. 
A few years ago a married couple settled in 
the canon about twelve miles from Uncle Jack’s 
cabin. The husband died, and in bitter winter 
with the snow nearly six feet on the level, the 
old man would snowshoe there to cut the widow’s 
