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FOREST AND STREAM. 
[JUNE 9, 1906. 

To Hudson Bay by Canoe. 
BY ROBERT T, MORRIS. 
PERHAPS we have found the home of the very 
biggest brook trout on the continent, and we may 
have added the “Nebogatis” to the fly-fisherman’s 
list. 
Last spring, at about the time when chrysalids 
turn over in their cocoons and fishermen do like- 
wise, one of my employes asked about summer 
plans. When I told him that we were going to 
Hudson Bay he wanted to know if that was up 
above Peekskill. I answered “yes,” but was un- 
able to give much more information, because my 
companion, Charles Wake, and I had been trying 
for three months to find out something about the 
country. Most of the information that we col- 
lected proved later to have been wrong or mis- 
leading. The reason for this was because few 
white men have gone over the region that we 
traversed excepting fugitives, prospectors and the 
Hudson’s Bay Company people. The latter do 
not care to give much information that is encour- 
aging to visitors, and their position in the mat- 
ter can be defended. 
Rival traders who enter the country are often 
irresponsible men who take unfair advantage of 
the Indians, and visiting sportsmen sometimes 
give the Indians such wages and tips that all of 
the rest of the Indians become enthusiastic over 
the thought of having the wigwam chock full of 
unearned increment, and they lose interest in 
plain white folks who do not carry cash enough 
to sink them in case they get overboard. 
The Canadian Camp Club, which proposes to 
have a stamping ground between Lake Huron 
and Hudson Bay, will. be fully in accord with the 
Hudson's Bay Company, which for more than 250 
years has managed the Indian, understandingly 
and kindly and to his very best advantage. 
We had considerable difficulty in getting guides 
as none of the local Indians cared to take the trip 
at the time of their annual bear hunt, and there 
seems to be a disinclination for Indians of one 
locality to trespass upon the territory of others. 
In this primitive region each family has its own 
hunting and fis hing eround, and certain lakes 
and streams are handed down from father to son 
without written agreement, but in that sort of 
mutual agreement which is as binding as other 
unwritten laws. 
We finally secured from North Bay, on 
Huron, three Indians. 
Lake 
who were unfamiliar with 
our proposed route. and of whom we knew little 
excepting that two of them had been given bad 
reputations hy men who had employed them pre- 
viously. Our starting point was from Winnebago 
Siding, on the Canadian Pacific Railroad, at the 
height of land where a stream known as the 
Wakami River was supposed to belong to the 
Hudson Bay watershed, and to the Moose River 
system. 
On June 30—Friday—we started down the un- 
known river with unknown Indians, for the ob- 
jective points of Moose River and the Bay. Let 
me say right here that the Indians all proved to 
be as good ones as we have ever employed, and 
that “badness” among men of various colors 
often depends upon ‘who pushed first.” It does 
require patience to manage Indians, and one must 
be uncritical, considerate and at times human; 
but any one who has managed children without 
having to take to drink will find little difficulty 
in having a royal time in the woods with the sons 
of the forest. It is said that old maids are the 
only ones who know how children should be 
brought up, and if anyone goes into the woods 
with preconceived notions about what Indians 
should do he will do better to return to some 
hotel] and devote the vacation to writing letters 
upon the negro question. 
We made only about eighteen miles on the first 
day’s run, as the stream was low, with many long 
stretches of rocky rapids, and Wake and I tried 
to act Jike squirrels among the tops of fallen trees 
while the men guided the canoes over a noisy 
stream bed. There were some plunging falls, and 
a few miles of still water, with tracks of many 
animals alone the banks. During the day we 
passed six moose and one red deer standing lazily 
among the rushes anl lily pads, and some of the 
moose allowed the canoes to pass within a few 
yards of them, although the wind was down 

stream, and we were not taking any pains to go 
quietly. Four of the moose were bulls, and two 
of them were very large ones. All of the first 
day’s run was through country that had been 
burned over many times, excepting for the oases 
of trees in swampy ground. If the black locust 
will thrive so far north, fire lines could be made 
with hedges of locust sown not far from the rail- 
road. The fallen leaves of leguminous trees and 
plants seem to absorb so much moisture that they 
are effective in forming barriers against creeping 
fires, and if the lines were not far apart they 
would check headway of fires that otherwise fill 
the heavens with sparks for miles ahead. We 
made the following notes during the first day: 
Waters moderately tannated, probably with tan- 
nates of both iron and manganese. Surface tem- 
perature. 64 degrees Fahrenheit, noon. Stream 
bottom of sand and rocks, with banks of mud. 
Land rolling to hilly, consisting of sandy gravel 
with a good layer of humus. Rocks of gray and 
reddish Laurentian granites, with outcropping of 
eruptive Huronian at one point. There were a 
few drift boulders. and in all probability a wide 
terminal moraine would be found a few miles to 
the southward of our starting point, but there 
was no one who could give information about it. 
Trees.—Jack pine (P. banksiana) predominat- 
ing, 
Much: black spruce, 

Aspen poplar and balm of Gilead abundant. 
but little white spruce or 
FRAGRANT ARBOR VIT/E OVERHANG THE BANKS. 
balsam fir. Tamarack in the marshes. The tam- 
aracks were dying all of the way to Hudson Bay, 
probably from the attacks of the tamarack saw- 
fly, and the natural enemies of the saw-fly cannot 
now arrive in time to save any of this forest. 
Arbor vite grew along the stream banks. and 
added its fragrance to that of the balm of Gileads. 
We saw some paper birch and rowan, but these 
trees were not at their best here, or at any other 
point along the course of our trip. 
Shrubs consisted chiefly of beaked hazel, red 
willow, red dogwood and white bush maple. Oc- 
casionally we passed a group of striped maples, 
and here and there a thorn bush (Crategus) was 
seen, 
Animals or their characteristic signs observed: 
Moose, white-tailed red deer, varying hare, wood- 
chuck (A. monax), red squirrel, gray wolf, black 
bear. Porcupines were notably absent, and we 
were informed later that few porcupines and no 
wolverines are to be found in this whole basin. 
Musquash holes were in evidence, and we found 
plenty of otter sign. 
Birds observed during the day were bald eagle, 
spruce partridge, yellow hammer, three-toed 
woodpecker, Canada jay, rusty grackle, kingfisher, 
robin, hermit thrush, water wagtail, red crossbill, 
olive-side flycatcher, night hawk, song sparrow, 

white-throated sparrow, winter wren, bank swal- 
low and probably the rough-winged swallow. 
Fish were not observed, but we did not stop to 
do much looking, and the fish may have acted in 
the same way. Crustaceans were represented by 
crawfish, which were extremely abundant, and 
one could get a mess for dinner in a few minutes 
by turning over loose stones near the bank, Mol- 
luscs casually observed were fresh-water mussels 
(Unio) and a rather abundant snail (Physa). 
Batrachians were not as frequently seen on the 
first day as they were later in the summer, but 
we noted the common toad and a frog which I 
took to be Rana septentrionalis. This was the 
only species of frog seen during the whole trip 
excepting one brilliantly colored leopard frog at 
Flying ‘Post, 
Butterflies were fairly abundant in the open 
burned woods, where it was rather difficult to 
capture specimens for identification, but the fol- 
lowing genera were observed: Argynnis, Limi- 
nitis, Papilio, Pieris, Colias, Lycena and Meli- 
tea. We saw no other kinds of butterflies on the 
whole trip excepting an Oeneis or Satyrus near 
a spring on Lake Matagaming. We were unable 
to capture a specimen, although in the attempt 
Wake and I scrambled over windfalls and 
through the mud in a manner unbecoming to 
great bear hunters and dignified salmon fisher- 
men, and it was difficult to explain to the Indians 
just what we were trying to do. We take off our 
hats to the nimble wood butterfly, or at least we 
did do so. Ephemeras of many species were in 
greatest abundance, and I do not remember to 
have seen this fish food in more profuse supply 
anywhere, : 
On July 1, the second day of the trip, after a 
long glide through still water and past burned 
forest, we suddenly emerged upon a lake of en- 
trancing beauty, surrounded by primeval green 
forest. Bold headlands of granite were softly 
gray and white with caribou moss. There were 
little rocky islets, pretty sand beaches, reedy bays 
and all of the features that poets like to find 
about the ideal lake. I named the lake in honor 
of my companion, and we soon found a perfect 
camping spot on an elevated plateau rising a few 
yards above a small sand beach, among fragrant 
arbor vite trees, with great towering spruces 
and cheery barked red pines for a background. It 
was a hot day, and we found right at hand a~ 
trickling spring in the sphagnum moss, with a 
temperature of 42 degrees Fahrenheit. 
We spent two days. on Lake Wake and ex- 
plored an adjoining lake and the forest. The two 
trees which we added to the list of the first day’s 
trip were red pine and black ash. The lake was 
shallow, and the greatest depth that we found 
with the sounding line was eighteen feet. Fish 
were plentiful, and we soon had the fry pan send- 
ing out a fine rich odor to compete with the spice 
of the conifers and the aroma of birch wood 
burning. While the fish were turning brown and 
juicy we picked a mess of green blueberries and 
stewed them with sugar for a delicious dessert, 
to the delight of our Indians, who, like most of 
the Indians that I have known, were unfamiliar 
with the nice things to be picked up by the way. 
The fish that we captured were jackfish (E. 
lucius), yellow perch and suckers (C. catosto- 
mus). Great numbers of whitefish came to the 
surface at evening, but we did not happen to 
catch any of them on the fly or with our col- 
lecting nets. We captured them later on. in the 
trip, and found that the species was Coregonus 
labradoricus. 
On July 3 we broke camp reluctantly and pass- 
ing the outlet of the first two lakes, slid down 
stream on a morning that was so quiet that the 
stillness was almost oppressive. It was Sunday 
morning most of the time in the woods anyway, 
but on this morning not a breath of air ruffled 
the mirror surface of the water with the tiniest 
cat’s paw. Pointed firs made reflections in the 
water that seemed more real than the trees upon 
the bank. Wagtails were singing their clear 
notes of supreme joy at being alive right then 
and there. The spiritual ecstasy of the voice of 
the hermit thrush was mellowed ‘in the forest 
depths. Red crossbills sang their songs of jolly 
good fellowship, as the bands of merry fellows 
journeyed together along their roads in the 
spruce tops away up high. The voice of the red 
