Henry Abbott

“ Also, when one tires of fishing, of mountain climbing, of tramping, and is in need of some new form of diversion, there is always "somethin' doin' at the falls." In the presence of their majestic beauty, and in the roar of their falling, tumbling, foaming waters, deer seem to lose their natural timidity and often, in mid-day, show themselves in the open to drink of the waters at the foot of the falls and to drink in the beauty of the picture. ”

“ In view of their many predatory enemies, not forgetting the human killer of fish, it is marvelous that any trout of legal size are found in a brook.
Noises of the forest night are always interesting. While the camp fire burns, the forest people in its immediate vicinity are generally quiet. The fire is an unusual experience for them. It attracts them. They are fascinated by it, as are small boys by a circus, and while it burns they are likely to suspend their usual occupations and watch the flare and flicker of the blaze and the weird shadows it casts. ”

“ A picture, which I have longed to secure on a film, but which, so far, I have only been able to fix on the retina of an eye, represents a young beaver about the size of a kitten, not fully grown, in an upright position, holding in his two hands and against his breast a gob of mud, while he laboriously and clumsily struggles up the steep side of his house, on the roof of which he is about to deposit his burden. In the water, towing a young log or a bushy branch, he is much more at home and more graceful in his movements. ”

“ After gathering a pocketful of beech nuts for my own consumption, I proceeded on my way eating nuts and musing on the good judgment of the deer in his choice of food.
About an hour later I heard in the distance ahead, a rumbling noise that seemed like the long continued roll of a snare drum or the purr of an eight cylinder gasoline engine. I felt quite certain that no motor car would be found in this roadless wilderness but pressed forward to investigate. ”

“ It is a vast forest-ocean, with mountain ridges for billows, rolling smoothly and gently on like the subsiding swell of a storm. I stand on the edge of a precipice which throws its naked wall far down to the tops of the fir trees below, and look off on this surpassing wild and strange spectacle. The life that villages, and towns, and cultivated fields give to a landscape is not here, neither is there the barrenness and savageness of the view from Tahawus. It is all vegetation--luxuriant, gigantic vegetation; but man has had no hand in it. ”

“ Bill was busy with household duties. With coarse sticks, brush, mud and moss, in the dead branches of a tall pine, she built the family nest and laid the family eggs. She also sat upon those eggs, with her long, spindly legs hanging straight downward, one on either side of the nest, as one might sit upon a saddle suspended in mid-air. When the brood of young herons were hatched and could be left alone, the mother also went fishing with Bill, and toward the end of the season the young birds were on the job with mother and dad.
One day early in the season, Bige and I were crossing the lake. ”

“ A log-road paralleled the shore of the pond and I wandered down this road, hoping to get an early morning shot at a deer. It was still quite dark and I found that the sights on my gun were still invisible in the dim light, so I sat on a log and waited for the first yellow light to appear over East Inlet Mountain. Then, continuing my silent, stalking way, when opposite the mouth of the river, I heard curious and unusual sounds. Peering through the bushes across the slough I saw a black bear. ”

“ A deer, softly stepping along his beaten path which leads down the valley to a pond where he goes every night for drink, for water plants, or just to wallow, may encounter a breeze bringing to his nostrils the human scent. ”

“ I reached camp about the time Bige had supper ready. At the table I told him about my new route to the river. "Sufferin Mike! well, by Gosh! Ha-ha-ha" spoke Bige. "The next time you lay out a trail, you take a compass along, and no matter how sure you may be that the compass is wrong, you go where the compass points. Many a man has been lost in the woods by refusing to be guided by his compass and using his own judgment instead." ”

“ Bige excitedly yelled, "He's got his hooks into a whale of a fish! He'll never let go! He'll be drowned! Gosh!!" Then he rowed the boat nearer to the place of battle. A few heart beats later, and the fight was again on the surface. Wings flapped mightily, fish wriggled and twisted and again the water was churned into foam. We now plainly saw the two pairs of ice-tongs-talons of the bird, firmly clamped on the body of the pickerel, which exceeded in length (from head to tail) about six inches, the spread of wings from tip to tip. ”

“ The Cherry Pond Camp
In still hunting one must sneak through the woods, making no sound and as little motion as possible. Preferably one should also hunt "up wind," but this is not always possible. The deer has been provided with a pair of very large ears capable of collecting the sound made by a breaking twig many rods away; and his sense of smell is so keen as to telegraph to his brain the human scent and warn him of the approach of his hereditary enemy long before he is within range of vision. ”

“ Having, apparently, decided that it would be unwise to cultivate a closer acquaintance with two men in a boat, our swimmer humped his back, lifted high his broad tail and with it struck the water a powerful slap, the noise of which reverberated from "Mud Pond Mountain to East Inlet Holler" and it threw a shower of water and spray eight or ten feet into the air, looking like some of the war pictures of exploding mines. ”

“ One cannot, however, always go through a mountain. It is usually necessary to go over or around it; and following up and down the ridges, through ravines and around swamps and other obstacles, the travel distances above named might be doubled, and then some. The mountain was covered with forest, and there was not a human habitation on it or within many miles of it in any direction. Some lumbering had been done along Cold River and several of its tributary creeks, but the higher portions were untouched and the heavy spruce and hemlock cover looked black from up the lake. ”

“ A high point of land covered with bushes shut off my view of a deep pool just around the corner, in which I had many times caught trout. As I came near this bend in the river a most extraordinary thing occurred. I distinctly saw a fish flying through the air over the top of the clump of bushes on the point. A flying fish is not an unheard of thing, indeed I have seen them several times, but not in the mountains, not in these woods, where there are fresh waters only. Flying fish of the kind I know about are met in the Sound and in bays near the ocean. ”

“ Whiskers On A Spruce
The struggle for existence, the elbowing, pushing and crowding of individuals, and the final survival of the stronger, the more fortunately placed, or the one who arrived and got established first, is nowhere in nature more marked or more conspicuous than among forest trees. The weaker ones die before they mature, because there is not "room in the sun" for the branches of all; and because, as the roots develop and increase in size, there is not enough room in the ground for the roots of all. ”

“ Ever since childhood I have possessed that very human characteristic of wanting that which is forbidden, longing for what is just out of reach; and when a thing is said to be impossible, I at once have an intense desire to undertake to do that thing.
Now, there was good trout fishing in many of the ponds and streams tributary to Long Lake which were comparatively easy to reach; but this lost pond which I had heard so much about was so "impossible to find" that I was possessed with an irresistible longing to find it, to see what it looked like, to fish in it. ”

“ The same is true when the owl booms out across the valley his eternal question, "Who?" No other bird or beast ever speaks in the same tone of voice. But most of the smaller noises of the forest night are subjects for speculation. One always instinctively tries to analyze and allocate each noise to its author. In this game an intimate knowledge of the habits of forest residents is useful, so that, at the camp breakfast in the morning, one may confidently assert that so and so visited the camp last night! ”

“ Whenever my compass tells me that camp is in a direction opposite to that which reason and memory and the lay of the land indicates, my practice is to sit down on a log, lay the compass on the log, stand the gun up against a tree far enough away so the steel of its barrel will not influence the compass needle and try to arrange in mind the topography of the country I am in. After a reasonable rest I am always willing to follow the pointing of the compass at least for a limited distance.
The first impulse of one who thinks he is lost in the forest is that of haste. ”

“ When the moonlight shadow of the tall pine fell upon a particular spot on the big rock, the ardent lover arrived, guided through the dark and trackless forest by the roar of the falls, which could be heard beyond the mountain top. ”

“ I have devoted some time to speculating as to the motive that might conceivably actuate a perfectly sane and intelligent beaver to haul his lumber more than a mile, when in doing so he would have to pass by hundreds of other equally good trees, many of them within a few rods of his house. ”

“ Bige is a wonder in making a camp bed.
While hunting material for tent pegs and poles I noticed a curious rectangular-shaped hillock of green moss a short distance from the shore of the pond. Kicking the mossy covering away, there was disclosed the rotted logs of what had many years ago been a camp about twelve feet square. A dozen yards away was a moss-covered log which seemed flattened on top and tapered at both ends. Scraping away the moss and rolling over the log, I found a "dugout canoe." This had been hewn from a pine log about thirty inches in diameter and sixteen feet long. ”

“ Tradition, dating back to the Indian occupation, perhaps a hundred and fifty years ago, tells of a beautiful Indian maiden who was wont to meet her lover at midnight when the moon was full, at a spot just above the falls. Coming down the river in her birch-bark canoe, the maiden would await the arrival of the young warrior, who was of another and a hostile tribe, living the other side of the mountain. ”

“ During three summers that our experiment in pisciculture has been in progress, not the least of the pleasures of life at Camp Hatchery, is found in watching the spawning beds, observing the play of schools of fingerlings, or lying on the shore of one of the pools in the evening twilight, to see the larger trout jump clear above the surface and grab a passing fly or moth. ”

“ In trapping mink, a piece of fish makes good bait. A large number of mink skins are required in making a fur garment for a human to wear, but considering its small size the trapper gets a good price for a mink skin.
On the hillside back of our camp, on occasions, a marten might be seen chasing a red squirrel over the ground, up a tree trunk, through the branches, jumping from one tree to another, and generally catching and eating the squirrel. We don't care if he does. The red squirrel eats the eggs of the partridge and our sympathies are with the partridge. ”

“ Bige and I discussed it at supper, and that is how we accounted for the peculiar conditions. We were also agreed that there could now be no doubt that this was the pond of Sabattis-Parker fame. The stories fitted well with the facts. Some one surely had been here before and a long time ago, else how could the ruins of the camp and the moss-covered dugout be satisfactorily explained?
That night Bige and I went to bed with clear consciences. We were at peace with all the world. ”