Jan. ii, 1908.] 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
59 
nigh spoiled the trip for one of them. How¬ 
ever, they went out the day after I left and killed 
four deer and a moose—a good record for one 
day’s shoot. 
Daisey was troubled about my not having any 
game to carry out. He was so anxious to get 
me something that I let him go for a day by 
himself, though I cared nothing for game I did 
not shoot, and should probably have left it be¬ 
hind rather than taken the team down the tote 
road. He covered seventeen miles that day. He 
trailed a bull moose back of Strickland Moun¬ 
tain until he found that it was traveling faster 
than he was. Then he got on the trail of a bear. 
He followed it a mile and a half and saw it 
twice. When he crossed the trail of another 
with two cubs, he made the mistake of sticking 
to the first one. He got nothing that day. 
I believe from what I hear that Sourdnahunk 
is the best trout water in Maine. Years ago I 
was told that even in August the fishing was 
fine. Now the trout are larger—up to 2 > l / 2 
pounds—and quantities of them. I saw them on 
the spawning beds in the springs up in the 
woods. There was one hole a yard square and 
‘a foot deep which contained at least twenty of 
them, averaging 10 inches. 
I By Friday, Nov. 2, the water under the snow 
had run off and some of the snow had dropped 
aff the bushes, so I determined to make an early 
start out of the wilderness, stopping over night 
at the lower camp, where we had left grub and 
Dlankets. Nothing was seen on the way down. 
The next day I took the trail ahead of Daisey, 
ntending to wait for him at York’s Camp, where 
■ve would have luncheon. Half a mile down I 
'ost a chance at a red fox—a big fellow. There 
were plenty of deer tracks and some of very 
arge bucks, but I saw none. Three miles 
urther down I saw something move to the right 
pf the trail and threw my gun on a running 
fioose which I soon saw was a cow. She was 
10 sooner out of sight than I saw a good pair 
>f horns following after. I fired at his shoulder 
it about seventy yards, and he stopped behind 
• ome bushes. I could see a square foot of his 
ump and decided, unwillingly, to shoot again. 
This started him up and I followed him for 
ifty yards through the trees and bushes, but be- 
ore I could get another shot, he went down. I 
vent near enough to get a clear view and held 
ny gun on him for some minutes. He made 
n effort to get on his legs, but it was no use. 
Vhen I approached him he was nearly all in. I 
hot him through the heart and he lay still. I 
lad all along said that I wanted my two bucks 
ut no moose, and after all I had to take what I got. 
Daisey found me half an hour later trying to 
Ight a fire in the road. He said, “What was 
ou shooting at?” I said, “I killed a little doe 
n there. I wish you would follow my trail in 
cross the brook and drag her out.” 
After a few minutes’ silence I heard a babble 
f hilarious profanity. He was immensely 
leased. I couldn’t make him think that I 
'ould rather have had the deer. My first shot 
ad entered his shoulder low down and had 
cen split up, a part of it going into his liver 
nd the rest into his heart. The second shot 
as evidently deflected and did not touch him. 
lad I not fired again, he would have died where 
e stopped. We saw by the tracks that there 
ere two cows and two good bulls in the bunch, 
u t the others I did not see. They had crossed 
the tote road below me, having come down to 
the flats from the foothills of Katahdin when the 
weather became warmer. 
Torrents of rain fell that night and Sunday, 
and Sourdnahunk stream was boiling. Two 
nights were spent at York’s camp. On Mon¬ 
day, when I went out, the West Branch was up 
eight feet. The scenery had changed. The 
waves had fallen. I brought out one of those 
half wild creatures, a Maine ’coon cat. He is 
five weeks old and full of intelligence and play. 
The fable of raccoon ancestry is like the negro 
superstition that the Chesapeake Bay retriever 
is part otter—interesting as illustrative of the 
working of the naive human mind. The ’coon 
cat must be a descendant of something like the 
Angora. He has little hair but is covered with 
a thick mass of fine fur. His intelligence and 
AT THE “SECOND TABLE.” 
companionable character are far above the ordi¬ 
nary cat, and together with his beauty, his un¬ 
usual size and adventurous nature, he makes a 
very desirable member of a household. 
Sourdnahunk offers more attractions than 
most places. It is remote from the railroads, 
and one therefore avoids contact with the lover 
of unearned sport. It can be reached by way 
of Moosehead in three days, and the longest 
carry on that route is from Telos Lake, six 
miles. As I said above, the trout fishing is un¬ 
surpassed. Of game, my guide, Chas. A. Daisey. 
Norcross, Me., and I saw black cat, red fox, 
raccoon, bear, mink, spruce and birch partridge, 
moose and deer. 
The limit on the number of deer in Maine is 
set only by the amount of food available. Five 
years ago deer were much too plentiful. The 
result has been a deplorable mortality through 
starvation in the winter. Skeletons are fre¬ 
quently found, and when the yards become over¬ 
crowded, there is bound to be a failure of the 
food supply. With moose it is different. These 
big brutes are able to get about in heavier snow 
and can feed on the tops. It is difficult to pro¬ 
vide against overstocking, but if five deer for 
one had been shot four or five years, ago, it 
would have averted untold suffering. 
W. M. ELLrdOTT. 
The Great Miramichi Fire. 
Providence, R. I., Dec. 12 .—Editor Forest and 
Stream: The time was early October, 1825. 
Fifty years before a road had been opened from 
Fredericton on the St. John River to the Mira¬ 
michi River, and down its north side to New 
Castle. At New Castle, a village and port for 
seagoing vessels, dwelt a thousand people sup¬ 
ported by ship building, commerce, lumbering, 
fishing and the tillage of their cleared lands. 
At intervals along the valley of the Miramichi 
lumbermen and farmers, settlers and the children 
of the earliest settlers had their homes. They 
were a sturdy race of English, Scotch and Irish 
blood; a people well fitted to gain a livelihood 
in a new country. Their lives were filled with 
hard labor, and they were mostly poor, but there 
was much rough comfort and sport, for the 
woods were full of game and the lakes and 
streams with trout, while in their season the 
river furnished salmon and shad in abundance. 
The clearings were in a narrow strip on the 
north side of the river, and all along the length 
of the valley were primeval forests of pine, 
spruce, hemlock and maple. These yielded tim¬ 
ber rarely equalled now. This timber the work¬ 
ers hewed square with the broadax and floated 
down the river to New Castle, whence it was 
exported. Miramichi is an Indian word signi¬ 
fying “happy retreat,” and, indeed, it seemed 
aptly named, for these settlers had lived 
here undisturbed by the Napoleonic wars that 
carried death and sorrow through Europe. 
For many weeks no rain had fallen in the 
province of New Brunswick; the summer heal 
yet lingered untimely over the land. Many 
springs and small brooks had ceased to flow, 
and the rivers ran low with clear water—spring 
water only. Far back in the wilderness on the 
upper waters of southwest Miramichi and Nas- 
waak stream in the fateful October, 1825, some 
small forest fires were burning, eating their way 
slowly through the timber. Then came a gale 
of wind fanning to fierce blaze the smouldering 
fires, uniting them into a mighty force, sweep¬ 
ing destruction over the country. In twenty- 
four hours the flames ran forty miles, and in a 
few days burned along both sides of the Mira¬ 
michi River for a hundred miles, only stopping 
at the coast. Four million acres had been burned 
over. 
The forests were destroyed; houses, crops, 
stock, farm implements, game, everything by 
which the people lived. Even the salmon and 
other fish in the river and smaller streams died, 
either because of the heating of the water, or 
from the leaching of the ashes in the rain that 
followed. The fire reached New Castle in the 
night, and the people who had not thought them¬ 
selves in danger were taken by surprise and had 
to leave their homes in great haste and take 
refuge on a marsh opposite the town, and which 
is overflowed at high tide. When the fire was 
over only twelve houses were standing in the 
town. 
This great calamity reduced an independent 
and comfortable people to utter poverty. Some 
six hundred houses and five ships were destroyed, 
and for the whole length of the Miramichi above 
New Castle only three houses remained. These 
houses were near the river between Doaktown 
and Blackville, and were a tavern kept by a Mr. 
Fowler, a tory from the United States, and two 
