1026 
[JUNE 30, 1906. 




vost i x CHESTER CREEK, 
ing through the gloom ahead. Someone says 
Superior, but surely we can’t be at Superior so 
soon. A glance at the watch, however, shows 
9.10 P. M., and we rumble into the town of 
Old Superior, then West Superior and on across 
the long trestle over St. Louis Bay into Duluth. 
Duluth as a tourist point, is more happily 
situated in its relation to wild nature at least, 
than any city of its size in the United States. 
With all the adjuncts of metropolitan life, it is 
in the untamed wilderness: Deer and moose ob- 
struct its street car traffic; bear amble about 
its parks and streets. Its parks are almost in 
their primeval state, with just enough of road 
building to make then accessible. Its boule- 
vard, fifteen miles long, has no parallel in the 
world. Its lakeshore drive is unexcelled any- 
where. An hour’s walk toward the hills from 
this city of sixty thousand souls, takes one out 
of sight of the works of man in the tangled wood. 
To the east sparkles Lake Superior with the 
battlements of the Wisconsin hills dimly show- 
ing beyond. But let us take a ramble on the 
boulevard. We will follow Superior Street to 
15th Avenue, east, which leads up to the eastern 
loop of the drive. 
After leaving the business part behind, we are 
constantly passing stately mansions of the finest 
architecture and grounds most beautiful, but 
our eyes constantly turn to the lake and its 
shipping. Ships are constantly coming and go- 
ing to and from Two Harbors, Port Arthur, 
Chicago, Toledo, Cleveland and Buffalo. Com- 
ing, they center at Duluth. Going out they 
scatter like the frighted covey and are lost in 
obscure places. 
Fifteenth Avenue is the first that leads up to 
the drive, but we will turn off on 4th Street be- 
tween 13th and 14th Avenue and make our way 
up through the Chester Creek Grotto. This is re- 
served as a park, and with the exception of a 
path along the north wall, is still in a state of 
nature. This path is cut through the wood half 
way up the wall and comes out here and there 
on cleared plateau and dome _ overlooking 
Walterfall and other picturesque parts of the 
Grotto. We will keep to the bottom, however, 
and make our way up over the tumbled mass of 
stones. Waterfalls greet us at every turn with 
sparkling pools beneath. Though we keep in 
the very bed of the stream, we are climbing all 
the way. Here we swing round some projec- 
tion; there we climb a rock wall with only a 
slight nick cut for a foothold. : 
Up to last year, this Grotto was the rendez- 
vous of street gamin and school-boy; and many 
FOREST AND STREAM. 

fierce battles between warring tribes have been 
waged within its confines, while all about are 
deserted caverns and robber camps. But the 
opening of the path above, has let in such a 
flood of light, that they of dark deeds have been 
driven to the next grotto back, where gamin 
and school-boy still mingle in war dance and 
midnight revelry on pleasant Saturday after- 
noons. 
We will snap our kodak here and there, as 
we pass along, but only under the most favor- 
able atmospheric conditions can we hope to get 
anything of a picture, and in no case will the 
camera do justice. Ah! there is the bridge 
where the boulevard crosses Chester Creek and 
we climb out to the level of the drive. 
We are now five or six hundred feet above the 
lake, and it looks as if we might cast a stone 
into the water, but the effort to do so will show 
a great error in judgment. We will now walk 
westward along the drive for five miles. Being 
nearly to the top of the bluff, the country on 
the right is more level. Blue grass dotted with 
white clover; hillside and wooded knoll. It is 
all out-door country on that side. To the left 
and below, is the panorama of city, lake and 
shipping. Away to the northeast, the smoke of 
an incoming vessel hangs darkly above the 
water. Below the hoarse bellow of a great 
freight boat loaded with iron ore is answered 
by the scream of the tug coming out to tow her 
in; that long finger pointing out across the bay 
there is a sand reef dotted with pine. It is eight 
miles long and not more than two hundred 
yards wide. It almost reaches and touches 
fingers with a similar reef pointing out from the 
other side. Here the drive passes between two 
artificial lakes, and dividing, skirts the base of 
a steep hill either way. Let us climb the hill 
and take a look. 
Whew! it makes us puff, but here we are at 
last at the top. There to the north and west is 
the forest primeval; that wood on whose border 
we now stand extends westward to the Red 
River Valley. Northwestward to the Roseau 
country and north to the borders of the eternal 
snows, wild game is through it all. Bear are 
plenty. Indeed, we are likely to meet some on 
any of our rambles. But hold! you need not 
run away, as likely they are somewhat less than 
formerly; they must be, as last year upwards of 
twenty were killed inside the city limits of Du- 
luth. This is a matter of record. Moose are in 
that wood in greater number than elsewhere in 
the West. If you had been round and counted 
them in their native haunts, you would be will- 
ing to swear that the world’s supply of moose 
would never be exhausted. In that wood are 
ten thousand lakes where all manner of fishes 
are swimming about in countless numbers. 
Ruffed grouse have their home there, and the 
schoolboys kill them in season with their target 
rifles. Anywhere outside the city limits the for- 
est is full of deer. All this is true, but there is 
something else I wish to impress upon your 
mind. 
In the cities and towns around the head of 
Lake Superior, and all within sight of where we 
now stand, there are ten people for every deer 
there is in the woods for fifty miles round. 
Each of these people are as much entitled to a 
deer as you are. Leaving half for restocking, 
it is twenty years yet before you can lay special 
claim to a deer. Adding to this the fact that 
likely your skill is not more than 50 per cent. 
of the average, shoves the date back another 
twenty years. If then, after a couple of days 
of shiftless wandering in the wood, you fail to 
score, don’t come back howling about some one 
having stolen your share and demanding that 
the government catch and punish the thief. The 
ambition to kill a deer is not a very laudable one 
at best, unless you really need the deer, and it 
is forty years yet before the government is in 
justice bound to catch a deer and lead it back 
and forth in front of you until you can shoot it. 
Meanwhile, remember that 
“There is a pleasure in the pathless wood, tt 
And health in honest exercise,” Vi fies 
But the main object in bringing you here is to 
point out the possibility of the place for a 
summer vacation; the opportunities for such 
rambles as we have taken this morning are limit- 
less. It is coolin summer. Lake Superior doesnot 
give up the last of its ice crop until June; that 
great body of ice water acts as a refrigerator and 
keeps you cool. Excursions by water can be 
taken any time. To Two Harbors, Port Arthur, 
Isle Royal and all points on the north shore, 
where the trout fishing exceeds anything known 
in that line, that gap in the woods away to the 
west marks the course of the St. Louis River; 
the faint glimmer through the break is Fond du 
Lac, the oldest settlement at the head of the 
lake. There John Jacob Astor maintained a 
trading post in the old fur trading days. All up 
and down the mountain side and through the 
woodlands, faint tracery of ye olden days can 
still be found. And now, young man, having 
filled you so full of light and airy matter and 
jammed it in so solidly, I think I may safely cast 
you over the bluff, and that you will zig zag 
downward like a feather and drop in Superior 
street so softly as not to damage a single paving 
block. I shall go. down by the incline railway 
and thus we shall save one fare. E. P. JAQUEs. 

ROBBERS SURPRISED, 
