Part 9

“Vegetables: potatoes and boiled onions.

“Pastry: rice cakes and maple sugar.

“Dessert: crackers, cheese, and orange marmalade.

“Wines: claret and sherry.

“Tea: English breakfast.”

Our canoes are beauties. They are eighteen feet long, three feet three inches wide in the centre, and fifteen inches in depth. With two men in they draw but three or four inches of water.

Aug. 9th.—We left our camp with one tent, two canoes, and provisions for four days; walked through the woods three miles to a lake, through which our river runs, which is eight miles above us by the stream.

... It is a lovely sheet of water about three and a-half miles long and one and a-half wide, surrounded, except at the inlet and outlet, by rocky cliffs, in many places five to eight hundred feet high....

Aug. 10th.—To our usual breakfast was added this morning a broiled partridge (ruffed grouse) which Fabian killed with a stick or stone yesterday, in making the portage. While at breakfast a gray or silver fox ran past us within twenty feet of where we sat. The woods are filled with squirrels; their chattering is heard constantly. Large and very tame fish-hawks abound—reminding one of the beach from Sandy Hook to Long Branch.... We have tickled the lake with a spinner, trolled with a long hand line, for pickerel. We fished but an hour with two lines. We caught fourteen, weighing thirty-four pounds.

Aug. 11th.—We fished down from the Middle Camp (as our present one is called). M. had the morning’s fishing in the “spring hole,” and took six fish averaging two pounds each. In the Magdalen pool I took three one pound trout immediately upon throwing in. Suddenly not ten feet from where I stood (I was in the water up nearly to my waist), and directly in front of me, a monster fish from three to four feet long, and of thirty or thirty-five pounds weight, shot up from the water, stood seemingly upon its tail for an instant, and with a heavy splash fell over into the pool. “My God! what is that?” I asked my guide. “It’s a saumon, sir,” he calmly replied. I was all excitement and began whipping vigorously where it rose. Failing to get it up, I put on a salmon fly. By this time salmon were leaping above me, below me, and at my very feet. I whipped diligently, letting my fly fall like thistledown upon the water, and then with a splash to attract attention, and now letting it sink and float with the current. It was all in vain; three hours of my most skilful fishing failed to entice one of the wily monsters. Neither could I get up a trout; they had all been driven away by the salmon. I caused my guide to paddle me over the still pool just above, and saw in the pellucid water, three or four feet beneath the surface, ten or fifteen large salmon. They lay perfectly still for a time, and then darted through and around the pool in every direction, as if in play. Suddenly they would congregate in the centre of the pool and lay with their heads up stream, the largest slightly in advance of the rest, as motionless as if the water had become ice, encasing the fish.

Aug. 12th.—At Main Camp.... The canoeing down from the Middle Camp—five miles—was delightful, and at times very exciting; that is, in running the rapids, which are numerous. In making a portage around the “Little Falls” we started up a cock partridge. It alighted upon the limb of a dead tree no higher than my head. “We approached within six feet of it, and stood for a minute or two gazing at the graceful bird. It returned our gaze with head turned aside, and a look of curious inquiry which said, as plainly as if it had spoken, ‘What kind of animals are you?’ I could easily have hit it with my landing-net handle but would not make it a victim of misplaced confidence.” This incident reminded me of the lines of Alexander Selkirk, in the English Reader, which was in use in my early school-boy days:

“They are so unacquainted with man,

Their tameness is shocking to me.”

I may add that squirrels were constantly running about our camp, exhibiting no more fear than those in the parks of Philadelphia.

Aug. 14th.—“David build a fire between our tents, it is cold,” I called out about five o’clock this morning. “Yes, sir,” he replied; “a black frost this morning, had to thaw out my boots before I could get them on.” Our little encampment consists of two wall tents, ten feet square, for the use of Mr. Macdonough and myself. They are about fifteen feet apart, opening towards each other, upon a line twenty feet from the pool, upon ground five or six feet above it. Back of our tents is our dining-table, made of planks split from the spruce, and sheltered with a tent fly. In rear of this is the kitchen fire; and still farther back, two “A tents,” one for the use of our men, and the other for-the protection of our stores.

I do not often look into our kitchen: Seeing Fabian wipe my silver-plated fork upon his pantaloons, between courses, cured me of this. “Where ignorance is bliss, ’tis folly to be wise.” I did, however, look into the kitchen to-day to see how our excellent bread was baked. It was properly made with “raising powder,” kneaded and formed into loaves. A trench was dug in the ashes and sand, forming the bed of our camp fire, wide and long enough to admit of three loaves. They were put into the trench, without any covering except the hot sand and ashes, with which they were surrounded on all sides, top and bottom. Live coals were raked over the mound, and it was left for time and heat to do the rest. An hour or so after I saw the bread taken from the ashes. It was brushed slightly with a wisp broom, which removed the little of ashes and sand adhering; and the bread was as clean as if it had just left the baker’s oven, and was of a uniform rich brown color. Lamb and green peas (French canned) formed one course at dinner to-day. The flavor of fresh mutton is much improved by non-intercourse with the butcher for two weeks.

Sunday, Aug. 16.—Another bright and beautiful day. It would be pleasant to hear “the sound of the churchgoing bell, which these rocks and these valleys ne’er heard,” It is now near two weeks since we entered upon our camp life, and we have seen no signs of civilization, save in our camp; nothing but forest, rock, water and sky, all as they came from their Great Creators hand. No sounds have been heard to carry us back in thought to the world of life and labor, save the occasional booming of the fog cannon at a government station on the south side of the St. Lawrence. How strangely did the warning voice of this gun, telling us of danger to the mariner, break upon the silence of the hour as we sat watching the fairy forms and fantastic shapes in our first evening’s camp-fire!

Pleasant as it is to the writer to live over again the days of which he has written—to dwell upon the scenes in which he was an actor, so vividly presented to his mind’s eye as he writes of them—pity for the too-long suffering reader has prompted him to close the lids of his journal and restore it to its place in the book-case.

It only remains to write somewhat of our success in fishing. The season was a very dry one, our river very low, and no rain sufficient to affect it fell during our stay, consequently the trout did not come up in as large numbers as usual, and the clearness of the water rendered successful fly-fishing more difficult. We caught on this occasion but two hundred and forty-three trout, of the aggregate weight of three hundred and four pounds. All these fish were taken with a fly, save one: thereby hangs a tale heretofore untold. At Tadousac, on our way out, I saw a gentleman, to whom I had been introduced, making something in the construction of which he used three snelled hooks and about three inches in length of thin white rubber tubing. I asked,

“What is it?”

“A devil,” he replied. He gave me materials, and while sailing down the river I made one. One day at the Home Pool I saw ten or a dozen large trout. They paid no heed to my flies. “Try the devil,” my guide whispered. In a moment of weakness I yielded to the tempter and put it on. The first cast caused commotion in the watery camp. At the second I struck and soon drew out on the beach a pound and a half trout. I looked upon the beautiful fish with compassion, cursed myself for resorting to such unfair means, removed the cruel hooks as tenderly as I could from the mangled and bleeding mouth, and taking off the devilish invention threw it as far as possible into the woods.

... “The beasts of game

The privilege of chase may claim.”

I have not since used, and shall not in the future use, this rightly named instrument, and hope no angler will. I have narrated this only unpleasant feature of my bout to illustrate the devilish ingenuity of “pot fishermen” and the curiosity of sea-trout. I wonder what was the gender of the fish!

With a view of showing the capabilities of our river in the production of fish, I have aggregated the scores from 1872 to 1882 inclusive. In one of these years three rods were in use, in three others two, and in the other years but one. The average time of fishing in each year was about three weeks.

Number of trout taken, 5,525; aggregate weight, 6,625 pounds; average about one pound three ounces. In the year 1881 the average size of two hundred and thirteen trout taken with a single rod in eight days’ fishing was one pound fourteen ounces. Not one of these fish was wasted. A few were eaten upon the stream, but most of them were given to the guides, who salted and packed them in barrels for future use. A sack of coarse salt and empty fish barrels were always included in the anglers’ stores.

Three days after the last date mentioned we were again on board our chaloupe “homeward bound.” The loss in weight in our stores was made good by the barrel of salted anadromous salvelinus-fontinalis which were to supplement and eke out the pork barrel of our honest and worthy guides during the long ice-bound winter before them.

Tadousac was reached about sunrise on a bright morning. At nine o’clock we were in citizen’s dress and seated at the hotel breakfast table. A glance around the room showed that summer birds and Cook’s tourists had mainly migrated to more southern latitudes. Our trunks were re-packed, our guides paid $1.50 each per day, and the captain $2.00, gold, and bade adieu. We took the Saguenay steamboat for Quebec, the Grand Trunk Railroad from Point Levi to Montreal, where we passed the night. The next morning we travelled by rail to Rouse’s Point and by boat down that charming Lake, Champlain. At the various landings many persons, including several friends, came on board.