SOME people like the woods in summer, and some go there in the fall. This year I visited a far-away fastness before the spring awoke, and stayed till summer abounded in the land. The most remote and inaccessible stream in the province of New Brunswick is the North Pole Branch. No road or trail approaches it. Mountain ramparts guard its birthplace. Falls and rapids, which even the salmon cannot climb, are a barrier to its ascent. Henry sometimes goes there to hunt, and he has a shed camp at the foot of a mountain. Many years ago the trees on VOL. XXX.-34 this mountain were burned, and you can see the scar of the old fire when you are miles away. Dunc Moon was sent to this camp last summer with flour on his back and the burnt mountain for his landmark. He reported, on his return to humanity, that his feet "never teched the ground fer three mile." This is why the fallen tree-trunks, which mark the pathway of an unrecorded cyclone, are known to the chosen few as "Dunc's Three Mile." Much of the North Pole Branch is fine canoeing water; a smooth, silent, strongflowing stream, with banks which the beavers climb even at noon-day, to feast on At great pains Henry packed a rip-saw we had gone above all the lumbering to the banks of the Pole, and worked out operations, and reached the country where enough thin boards to make a canoe. the trees are too small for commercial This craft had been built about a week purposes, we could travel in the early when a bear came along and bit a hole in morning on the crusted snow. After ten the bottom through which a cat might o'clock, when the warm April sun had set crawl. Another bear visited Henry's camp things dripping, we would break through on Mitchell Lake, a few miles from the a few times and find the snow more than Pole, and made it look as though a pri- leg-deep. Then we would spread our mary election had been held there. These raw-hide wings and sail along finely for a things occurred in the fall of 1900, and while. After the snow got very soft, and Henry concluded that the bears in the a shovelful caught on each toe at every Pole precinct needed suppressing. So step, we did a little penance for our sins. in the spring of 1901 he spread desola- But it was nothing. A week of rather tion among them. I was allowed to ac- bad going, and then we used the snowcompany him on this campaign, and en- shoes only for the worst places. There are as many sorts and conditions of snow-shoes as there are of guides. Poor snow-shoes sag when subjected to severe trial. The raw-hide fillings slacken, and the journey of the wearer is a joyless progress. Well-made shoes are strung with caribou-skin, so stretched that as the filling becomes wet it draws more tight. Few Indians make good shoes. Henry fills his own, and at the close of a day's march, in the sloppiest snow, his shoes are as tight as drum-heads. There is also a nice knack in tying the strings that hold the shoes to the feet. I believe Henry is the inventor of the tie most commonly used in that region. It is an interesting study to those who have walking to do on deep snow, and is plainly shown in the photograph. Henry had a lot of big steel bear traps hidden in the woods, which he wished to put where they would do the most good, and it was desirable to transport them while the lakes were still frozen over. All woodland trails take to the water as much as possible, both in summer and winter, because the hauling of loads is easiest there, whether by canoe or toboggan. There is a short time in the fall and spring when travel is almost impossible, because the ice is unsafe and canoes cannot run. The dangerous period is very short in the fall, for the thin, new ice of a single night will often bear one with perfect safety; but in the spring ice six inches thick may be so rotten that it will give way without warning. There are several ways to tell whether ice is good. As long as the caribou and moose cross it freely, it may be relied on implicitly. When it begins to soften, the dangerous The Correct Thing in Snow-shoes. spots get brown or black as the water soaks through, while the strong ice remains white or blue. We had a merry adventure with the ice one day. It was getting near the limit of winter travel. The trail led across a narrow neck of Birch Lake, only a few minutes' walk. The toboggan track of two days ago went straight to the other shore. There were ominous brown spots all over the lake, but it would take hours to drag the sleds around the shore, among the fallen trees and thick bushes. Henry thought we could steer a devious course over the ice. We climbed down the steep bank by a fallen tree, and got the sleds on the ice. A few rods from shore, where it looked doubtful, Henry sounded with his axe, while I hesitated and was lost. I felt the ice going, and told Henry SO. "Look out for the camera," he warned, as I plunged waist-deep. So as I fell I held the camera on high. Henry stretched forth the saving hand, and in an instant he also broke through, and found how cold the water was. We were not in a particle of danger, but the toboggans were. Henry broke a path back to shore and I followed him. After the first plunge the water did not seem so cold, and we managed to coax the sleds along till they were in reach of safety. Then Henry floundered ashore, felled some little trees onto the ice, and sneaking gingerly out, rescued our food and blankets from a watery grave. In a few days the streams began to open, and another picture in the infinite panorama of the wilderness spread out before us. Wherever the water ran with a fair current the ice was gone in the centre of the stream, so that canoe navigation was practicable. We could go sometimes for miles through narrow aisles, with ice and snow between us and the shore on either side. Where the river widened into a lake the winter coverlet was still spread, and there was often trouble in making a landing on the edge of the ice. One morning we hauled the canoe far from the water's edge and walked securely down the frozen dead-water. At evening, when we retraced our steps, our morning snow-shoe tracks led straight into black depths, and a long détour was necessary to bring us around the newly opened water. One day when Henry had gone on a solitary cruise, to look out a new trail somewhere, Albert, the cook, went with me canoeing. We floated quietly along, and presently I heard the splashing of some large animal walking slowly through the slush close to the shore. Watching an opening in the evergreen growth, I saw the shape of a large bull moose, with his new antlers already grown a foot or more. I saw he would come out at the head of a little bogan not far away. We paddled as fast as possible to the nearest point, and jumping on the ice, I went ashore with the ever-present camera. In front of me was a little hillock covered with scattering spruces. From the top of this the ground fell to an open barren, but along the water's edge the growth was thick. The moose was not in sight, and I stood a couple of minutes, watching for him to cross the open ground in front, hoping to make a picture. The snow on the land side of the hillock was drifted very deep. The footing seemed fairly secure, and I walked along the edge of the drift, toward the bushes where I knew the moose must be. Without preliminaries the snow gave way, and I was floundering in the soft mass. Then it was that, looking over my right shoulder, I beheld at my side the great motionless moose, with ears thrown forward, nostrils distended and eyes solemnly bulging. a black statue of dignified curiosity. Even in my momentary panic, I could not help noticing how cunningly he kept a bush between himself and me. This habit of the moose is one thing which makes him so hard to photograph. But I was chiefly concerned then to get out of that soft snow. Had the moose known it, he had a fine chance to avenge some of his brothers whom I had slain in former years. Two jumps would have put him on me. But he only pulled his gray muzzle back into the bushes, faced about, and stole away without making a sound. I took the camera to the canoe and shook the snow out of the bellows. Then Albert and I went back to look at the tracks, and we saw that the moose had not run, but carefully placed each foot where the walking was best, and so taken himself away without turmoil. That evening when I told Henry about it, he said the moose was harmless, that his ears thrown forward were a sign of interrogation. "But," said he, "if you ever meet a moose in the snow and he lays his ears back and begins to lick his lips, then look out. And don't you go to clawing at a tree to climb it either. To scrape the bark of a tree in front of a moose is the deadliest insult you can offer him; for that is the way one bull dares another to fight. Never run away from a moose either. Stand your ground and call him all the names you can think of." The opening of the shallow dead-wa |