FOREST AND STREAM 

For Forest and Stream, 
THE PRE-ADAMITE, 
——_+-——— 
O! for a rhyme of the good old time, 
Ere Adam or Eve was born, 
When the saurian slept’in the sluggish slime 
With the uniqne unicorn; 
When the mermaid smiled on the mammoth mild, 
And the Dodo sang her lay, 
And the behemoth breasted the billows wild 
With the plesiosaurus gay. 
Oh! a happy wight was the Pre-adamite, 
He basked in the griffin’s smile, 
Or followed the dragon’s dizzy flight, 
Or angled for crocodile. 
Then an omelette, made of the roc’s eggs, stayed 
His appetite so rare, 
While whale on toast, or a walrus roast, 
Was his daily bill of fare. 
No hotel bills or doctor's pills 
Impaired his appetite; 
He laughed at gout, with his stomach stout, 
And kept his molars bright. 
Ho! a tear and a sigh for the days gone by! 
And a dirge for the doughty dead! 
Let the sea-serpent shuffle his coil, and die; 
For the good old days are sped. 
J. J. Rocug. 
Grout Tails from the Jlepigan. 
AWN Jy 1a he 
eS ab ee, 
ReD Rock, LAKE Superior, July, 1873. 
Eprror FoREST AND STREAM : 
When I saw the prospectus of your new newspaper enter- 
prise, I congratulated myself and the public; for now I 
know we shall have a paper which will furnish just the 
kind of information which we sportsmen have long needed 
and looked for in vain. Excuse the flattery—but I have 
learned by experience that the man who wrote that, to us 
useful book, entitled ‘‘ The Fishing Tourist,” is well informed 
of what he writes. I feel assured that he is entirely com- 
petent to take charge of just such a journal as we expect the 
‘FOREST AND STREAM” to be, and that under his manage- 
ment it cannot fail of complete successs—for which I pray. 
Following the instructions printed in the book above 
mentioned, I have visited the Nepigon river, and cannot 
but express myself delighted with the careful accuracy of 
the information given, and more then satisfied with my trip 
and the attractions of this remarkable river, and its marvel- 
ous fish and fishing. Nay, it is more than marvelous, I 
only wonder that the author should not have given to its 
pages minuter details, which could not have failed to en- 
chant the reader and enhance the value of the book. 
Let me premise what I have presently to say, by the state- 
ment that during my ten day’s sojourn upon the Nepigon, 
I took perhaps one hundred speckled trout, (I might as well 
have taken a thousand ) scarcely one of which weighed less 
than three pounds! And to convince your incredulous friends 
that they are the genuine salmo fontinalis, | forward here- 
with a couple of tails of fish that weighed nearly six pounds 
each. Isaw one trout caught with a hook by a surveyor 
of the Canadian Pacific Railway, (one of whose routes is 
laid near this place), which weighed ezght pounds! ‘These 
facts fully substantiate the truth of the ‘‘ Mshing Tourist.” 
If they do not sufficiently whet the appetite of the genuine 
sportsman who has courage enough to come out and rough 
it, I will amplify hereafter. In this letter, however, I shall 
merely give a brief outline of my journey and of the river, 
adding some incidents of personal adventure and experience 
in other letters which will follow. 
Imprinis, 1 purchased a through ticket from New York 
to Toronto, wa the Erie railroad, and in seventeen hours 
found myself at Niagara Falls. Thence four hours to Tor- 
onto by boat—preferable to railroad, after a sufliciently 
long journey by land. At the Rossin House I was most 
hospitably entertained by the Messrs. SHmars, father and 
son, the proprietors, not more by the good provender provi- 
ded, than by their congenial and very intelligent intercourse 
and information upon all subjects interesting to our frater- 
nity of sportsmen. These gentlemen are recognized as 
among the most thorough sportsmen in Canada, which is 
saying a great deal; for, assuredly, for rough, practical, 
intelligent work, the Canadians much excel the majority of 
our sportsmen in the States. Any honorable, fair-minded 
man without prejudice, will ‘acknowledge this. The latch- 
string of the Rossin House always hangs a long way out for 
“thoroughbreds.” 
There is a Shooting Club in Toronto, which numbers two 
hundred members, besides a yatch and boat club, and other 
minor clubs, The Shooting Club at Niagara Falls, of which 
Mr. J. B. King is President, cromprises some forty mem- 
bers of excellent grit. 
From Toronto there is a choice of routes either to Colling- 
wood or Sarnia, whence good boats run to Sault Ste. Marie, 
and from there, the first to the north shore of Lake Superior, 
and the other to the South Shore, touching at Marquette and 
other points, and on to Duluth. The North Shore steam- 
ers connect at Prince Arthur’s Landing with other boats 
for Duluth, one hundred and forty miles distant. A favorite 
route for Americans is from Buffalo va Lake Erie to De- 
troit, and thence through Lake Huron to Sault Ste. Marie. 
Residents of States west and north f New York, will nat- 
rially make Detroit their objective starting point, Of the 



two routes from Toronto I chose the Collingwood, by your 
direction, and purchased a round trip ticket for thirty-five 
dollars gold, which includes meals and stateroom, The 
fare from New York to Toronto is eleven dollars fifty cents ; 
so that the cost of the entire trip from New York and re- 
turn is about sixty-five dollars currency. The actual run- 
ning time of the trip occupies ten days. One cannot com- 
plain of the expense. Iam explicit in giving information 
because I hope gentlemen will avail themselves of it, as 
August and September are the best months for fishing the 
Nepigon. 
The distance from Toronto to Collingwood is ninety-six 
miles by the Northern Railroad, and I was surprised to find 
the route lying through a populous and rich country, with 
substantial farm houses and extensive saw mills at intervals 
along the whole line. The appointments of the railway are 
first-class, and the station houses models of neatness and 
beauty. Nearly all have tasteful flower gardens and lawns 
attached, with jets of water spurting from fountains that 
cool and refresh the plants. It isa rare combination, es- 
pecially in a new country, this association of the finer 
features of nature with the harsh rasp of gang-saws and 
the rumbling of ponderous railway rolling stock. This isa 
touch of nature which appeals to the sympathies of all who 
love her for herself. At the head of Lake Simcoe, famous 
for its fishing, and a delightful summer resort, is an unex- 
ceptionable lunch room; and while the passengers are 
breakfasting or dining, the train runs up to Barrie a couple 
of miles ona branch track. Barrie is a handsome brick 
town upon the sloping hillside that girts Lake Simcoe, 
and the locality of a famous Trotting Course, where annual 
meetings are held in July. At Collingwood there are 
two large saw mills, a long pier, and an immense grain 
elevator, and very little else. The place is low and inattrac- 
tive, and in winter bleak and wind-racked. Three steamers 
compose the Collingwood Line. It was my eminent good 
fortune to take passage on the ‘ Counberland,” Captain 
Sandy McGregor, an accomplished gentleman and a most 
skillful navigator of intricate channels and uncertain shores. 
For be it known that, although the waters of Huron and 8u- 
perior are vast and deep, fogs continually envelope their 
waters during the early summer months, and at all times 
treacherous gusts and storms are liable to sweep ones their 
expanse. The water of the lakes, especially of Superior, 
is very cold, and it takes many weeks to equalize the sur- 
face temperature and the warmer air above. Often the 
steamers have to ‘‘lie to” for twenty-four hours and more, 
and when a heavy seais running, proximity to sunken 
rocks and fog-enveloped shores becomes unpleasant. Tropi- 
cal fruit doesn’t grow in this latitude; but the Aurora 
Borealis often gleams out on calm clear nights to remind 
the tourist that the Arctic ‘‘ice blink” is notmany degrees 
to the-northward. From the time we left Collingwood 
until my return in the middle of July, I was not without 
my overcoat on some portion of each day. At all times 
warm clothing should be at hand for immediate use, to 
meet the constantly varying moods of the weather. Yet 
there are many sunny days which cheer the wayfarer, and 
make him feel that it ‘‘is ‘good to be here.” 
At Collingwood Landing a motley crowd is gathered to 
witness the steamer’s departuré? The deck-hands of the 
boat are all full-blooded or half-breed Indians, and hard- 
workers they are, too. Then there is the remarkable 
consociation of Scotch, English, Irish and French, which 
are always noticed throughout the Canadian Dominion, all 
busy about the freight-house and wharf. There is a general 
scene of bustle and activity everywhere. The only per- 
sons not employed are a dozen of do-nothing negroes who 
lie around loose and impassively watch the proceedings. 
The presence of so many is an enigma to practical geogra- 
phers who know that Ethiopia lies in the tropics. These 
are doubtless retired barbers, waiters, and whitewashers 
whom handsome fortunes realized haye made independent 
of work. 
The freight of the steamer is a curious conglomeration 
of mills, implements, live stock, furniture and supplies, ex 
route for the mines or the more distant and far Northwest. 
.The Canadian Pacific Railroad also adds a large business to 
the steamboat line, and gangs of surveyors with their out- 
fits are constantly going forward. 
Not many hours after we leave the land we are on the broad 
expanse of Huron, as boundless to all appearance as mid 
ocean. Seldom does a floating object come into view. There 
is nothing but the life within the vessel to break the dead 
monotony of the watery waste without. But on the second 
day a grateful change is sprung upon the scene. We are 
in Georgian Bay! Islands succeed islands in an unbroken 
continuity hour after hour as we glide on ; islands of every 
conceivable size and shape, more numerous than the 
thousand islands of the St. Lawrence many times multi- 
plied; islands barren, wooded, sandy, rocky, columnar, 
gracefully rounded, precipitous and gently sloping, wind- 
swept and storm-polished, large, diminutive, and infinitesi- 
mal; reefs widely spreading, and submarine monoliths 
whose peaks barely project above the surface. There is a 
breadth and sweep and never-ending change in the pano- 
rama which is all-absorbing to a mind intent upon the 
picture. For one hundred and seventy miles we steam 
through this island scenery! In the calm repose of a sum- 
mer morning, when the waves are stilled and the face of 
the lake gleams like polished glass, the shadows fall heavily 
from the indented shores, and every rock and tree is sharp- 
ly outlined and reproduced inverted in the mirror. Then 
we seem to float on airy nothing, looking upward into 
cloudland and downward into cloudland, into depths above 
and below that seem illimitable. There is very little ani- 
mal life upon the islands. The main land is a continuous 
upheavel of bare Laurentian billows of granite that once 
were moulten. There is but a scanty growth of trees. 
Sweeping blasts have scathed them and frequent fires blast- 
ed out their vitality. There are very few houses and but 
little cultivation. Occasionally a bark canoe glides from 
behind a point, and at intervals a solitary fisherman’s hut ” 
is descried. Were it not for the gaunt white gulls that 
hover over our wake or keep vigil on the rocks, this 
would be a solitude. 
In places the flinty strata of rocks yield a mmeral wealth 
sufficient to induce the sinking of a mining shaft, or the back 
country affords a supply of furs which necessitates the 
establishment of a trading post anid depot. At these 
the steamboat touches, sometimes to take in wood, some- 
“times to land a passenger, and anon to descharge some 
freight. At the hamlet of Killarney, 173 miles from Col- 
lingwood, we run into a rocky passage so narrow that we 
almost touched both shores. Here is a hamlet of a dozen 
houses, a store, a small fleet of bark canoes, and a score 
of loungers, chiefly half-breed Indians. A few miles 
farther is Indian Landing, a wooding place with a single 
shanty, where an intelligent Indian sells mats, miniature 
canoes and birch bark toys to curiosity seekers, and drives 
a thriving trade. There is an Ingian village of five hun- 
dred people a few miles distant which boasts a very neat 
stone, chapel and substantial dwellings, some of them of 
stone... Next on the route comes Little Current, another 
small fimlet, and here a tide sets between the islands with 
a four-knot current. Singular phenomenon in this great 
lake of three hundred miles in length! It is said the tide 
is caused by the wind, that it sets in whichever direction 
the wind is blowing at the time. Still further on is the pic- 
turesque Hudson’s Bay Compny’s post called La Cloche, with 
its sunny white buildings, red-roofed. The water isshoal for 
two miles out from the shore, so that all supplies for the 
post have to be landed and received at an isolated hut far 
off. When the boat arrives, great birch canoes manned by 
Indians of every hue and degree of miscegenation put out 
from the distant shore, and with sturdy arms and many 
paddles, skim over the intervening space. From the stern 
of the foremost flaunts the red flag of England, and under 
its official egis a fleet of light canoes filled with lads and 
squaws and their pappooses, follow in the rear. When 
they have reached the steamboat landing, the men and boys 
squat in line upon the shore and motionless watch the bust- 
ling operations of landing freight. 'The squaws sit in their 
canoes and nurse their progeny, never wincing under the 
scrutiny of the glasses levelled at them from the promenade 
deck. When the boat departs, the aboriginal coterie, hay- 
ing filled up the measure of this little episode in life, paddle 
back to headquarters. What noble impulses swell their 
tawny breasts! what ambition, what pride of race and tra- 
ditional renown must stimulate them to other deeds of like 
emprise! 
At the Bruce Mines, three hundred and seven miles from 
Collingwood, are the huge chimney stacks and shops and 
piles of copper ore and ranges of hovels two miles long 
that belong to this great company that delves the precious 
metal from the bowels of the surronnding earth. The 
works have cost over a quarter of a million of dollars. 
We are now near the head of the lake, and presently en- 
ter the wide and serpentine St. Mary’s river, with its In- 
dian reservation and villages upon the Canadian side, and 
an occasonal farm on the Michigan shore. Forty miles 
more, and we reach the Sault, with its foaming rapids, its 
great ship canal, and the rival villages that confront each 
other from either shore. Here if one elects to tarry, he 
-will find good fishing. There are numerous Indians on 
hand to lend their services and canoes, and if the sports- 
man will try the Garden river on the Canada side, he can 
fill his creel with trout, though the stream is much netted 
by the tribes of Lo. Sixteen miles below the Sault is Hay 
Lake and its outlet, affording fine trouting and good duck 
shooting in their respective seasons. There is a very com- 
fortable hotel at Sault Ste. Marie called the’ Chippewa 
House, but the town itself is not attractive. The green 
parade ground of the old fort alone relieves the monotony 
of dingy houses and rotting plank sidewalks that character- 
ize the place. The Canadian side is more picturesque, and 
there are some fine private residences there. 
Through the Sault and into Lake Superior! We have 
traversed one vast Mediterranean, and another is before us. 
We have still 417 miles to sail by the route to our destina- 
tion. And Duluth the terminus, is 198 miles further yet! 
It is only now that we begin to realize the immensity of 
these inland seas. The voyage for duration is like a jour- 
ney to Europe. Great ships of thousands of tons burthen, 
traverse its highways, and storms that are not surpassed 
in violence agitate its depths. One hundred miles we speed 
after loosing sight of land, and then arrive at Michipico- 
ton Island and river. Here in summer the boats tarry a 
few hours that excursionists may pick up agates along the ~ 
pebbly shore or catch huge trout in the adjacent waters. 
Were it not that so much larger fish can be taken in the 
Nepigon, the size and quantity of these would seem amaz- 
ing. Some of the agates found here are of unusual beauty 
and transparency. The light-house keeper, who has a sort 
of monopoly of the business, in that he has thoroughly 
raked the placers, will sell a pint of them for a dollar. 
Hence to Prince Arthur’s Landing and Fort William 
the distance is 306 miles. The latter place is ninety-six 
miles beyond the Nepigon. Boats generally go there di- 
rect and touch at the latter place on their return, Fort Wil- 
