Sam Lovel's camps. Uncle Lisha's friends under bark and canvas. A sequel to Uncle Lisha's shop online

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ALVMNVS BOOK FYND










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SAM LovEus CAMPS



UNCLE LISHA S FRIENDS
UNDER BARK AND CANVAS.



A SEQUEL TO UNCLE LISHA S SHOP



BY

ROWLAND E. ROBINSON



NEW YORK:
FOREST AND STREAM PUBLISHING CO.

1889.



COPYRIGHT, 1889,
BY FOREST AND STREAM PUBLISHING CO.

All Rights Reserved.







TO

MY WIFE

THIS BOOK IS AFFECTIONATELY
INSCRIBED.



U6863



AN EXPLANATORY NOTE.

THE Yankee is everywhere, and everywhere is heard his nasal drawl asking a
question or answering one. But it is a sign that the manner of his speech is
changing that to some readers of " Uncle Lisha s Shop" who are unacquainted
with a dialect once common in Vermont, and as yet by no means uncommon in
portions of the State, the meaning of some words and phrases used by the old
cobbler and his neighbors has not been clear. For the benefit of such readers
of this volume it may not be amiss to explain at the outset some forms of speech
that are least likely to be understood by them.

" Julluk" is a shortening of just like ; "god daown," "pud daown," "led
daown, M " sod daown," and the like, are got down, put down, let down, sat
down, with the last letter of the first word changed to d. " Luftu" and " lufted
tu " are queer corruptions of love to and loved to. "Callate," sometimes
" carc late," is to iniend or plan, not to compute. When a thing is sold it is
"sol ." The "heft" of a thing is its weight and also the greater part of it,
and to "heft it" is to try its weight by lifting. The word hold occurs in
different forms in one sentence, when you are bidden to " take a holt an 1 hoi
on." " Hayth " means height, the " hayth o land," the highest land in a
certain section of country ; the term was often applied in former times to the
Green Mountain range. Creature has slight differences of pronunciation ac
cording to its application. A very poor or wretched person is a " poor, mis able
creetur," a wild blade, a " tarnal critti .r," a bad man, a " weeked crittur" ;
and a bull, when not a " toro," is as politely called a "cruttur," the "tts"
scarcely sounded. " Mongst em " signifies other persons beside the one or
more named; as, "John Doe an mongst em." To "shool" is to wander
aimlessly; to " flurrup " to move in a lively, erratic manner. A "heater
piece " is a triangular piece of land, shaped like a heater or flat-iron. The
" square room " is the best room or parlor. A " linter" is a lean-to, a single-
roofed building set against a larger one.

When a Yankee " dums" or " darns " persons or things, he is not to be un
derstood as cursing them ; church members in good standing do so without
scandal as they mildly swear " by gosh" and " by gum" and "swan," " swow,"
"snum," "snore" and " vum."

The Canadian who learns English of the Yankee often outdoes his teacher
in that twisting of the vowels which, no doubt brought over in the Mayflower,
became so marked a characteristic of New England speech. Some words are
very difficult for him to master, but finally he gets the better of most, and no
longer says " jimrubbit " for India-rubber, or " nowse " for noise. But stove is
his. shibboleth. To the day of his death he calls it " stofe," and the genera
tion that follows him can speak it no otherwise.

ROWLAND E. ROBINSON.

FERRISBURGH, VT., January, 1889.



CONTENTS.



THE CAMP ON THE SLANG.

CHAPTER

I. UNDER THE HEMLOCKS, ...., 8

II. THE PASSING OF WINTER, 15

III. NEWS FROM DANVIS, . . 2 3

IV. COLD WATER QUENCHES VALOR, 35
V. SHOOTING PickEREL, 43

VI. ANTOINE S REDOUBTABLE VICTORY, 55

VII. PELATIAH GOES VISITING, . .

VIII. SPEARING BY JACKLIGHT, .

IX. BREAKING CAMP, . - 8 9

X. A LETTER FROM UNCLE LISHA, . 9 6

XI. THE HOME RECEPTION, - 02



THE CAMP ON THE LAKE.

I. THE VOYAGE DOWN THE LITTLE OTTER, 107

II. JOSEPH HILL GOES FISHING, . . 125

III. EXPLORATIONS, . . .

IV. A NIGHT ADVENTURE IN ANTOINE S PRIZE, 139



V1 CONTENTS.

CHAPTER PAGE

V. THE COOK FURTHER DISTINGUISHES HIM
SELF, I45

VI. PELATIAH S LIFE IN THE LOWLANDS, . .157

VII. CANADIANS ON THE SLANG, 172

VIII. THE TREASURE DIGGERS, 183

IX. RECONCILIATION, jo6

X. SEINING, *.. .. . 201

XI. SUNGAHNEE-TUK, 2 l6

XII. BREAKING CAMP, 228

XIII. AT THE FORGE VILLAGE, 234

XIV. REST, . 24J

XV. NEW LIFE IN THE OLD HOME, .... 249



SAM LOVEL S CAMPS.

ON -THE SLANG.



UNDER THE HEMLOCKS.

BESIDE a low-banked water-way among the reddish-gray
trunks of great hemlocks, there stood, one day in the third
month of a year, half a long lifetime ago, a shanly of freshly
riven slabs with the upper ends slanted together in the form
of an A tent. In front of it a fire smouldered, the slow
smoke climbing through the branches that waved their green
spray and nodded their slender-stemmed cones in the rising
current of warm vapor. A few muskrat skins, stretched
on osier bows, hung drying near by on slim poles placed
in the crotches of stakes, and two canoes, one a light
birch, the other a dugout, lay bottom upward on the bank
awaiting the day of use. The shanty was luxuriously bed
ded with marsh hay and fragrant twigs of hemlock, overlaid
with blankets and buffalo skins, and stretching out into the
light were two pairs of feet, one clad in stout boots, the
other in moccasins. Four legs faded away in the dusky
interior, till, beyond the knees, the. eye was puzzled to fol
low them.



8 t l c c c" SAM LO PEL S CAMPS.



Presently the boots began ^tV stir and then the owner be
came dimly visible sitting up on his couch. When he had
crawled out and scraped a coal from the ashes into his
pipe, and having got it satisfactorily alight, stood up and
looked at the cloud-flecked sky and out on the ice-bound
stream, the tall, wiry form, and quiet, good-humored,
bearded and weather-browned face of Sam Lovel were fully
revealed. He half turned toward the shanty, and lightly
touched one of the moccasins with his foot. " Hello,
Antwine !" he called, " be ye goin to sleep all day ?"

The moccasins moved a little, and a sleepy voice in be
yond said : " Hein ? What was be de matter?"

" Git up an light yer pipe, an then le s go an see ye
spear a mushrat as you ve ben tellin on. Come I" and
Sam vigorously poked the moccasins till they were drawn
into shadow, then reappeared, and Antoine Basette came
hitching after them into the light and sat rubbing his eyes
as he said : " Bah gosh ! Sam, Ah dunno f Ah won t keel
you, Ah dunno f Ah an t ! You spile em up de bes
dream Ah never smell all ma laf tarn* ! Onion bilin in
keetly, patack roast in ashins, bull pawt fryin in paan,
moosrat toast on coal ! Oh ! bah gosh ! jes Ah tryin
mek off ma min de fus one Ah 11 heat nex , you ll hol-
leh Aantwine ! an dey all gone off. Ah 11 pooty mad,
me !" and he shook his head and smote his fists above it ;
but the broad grin that followed gave the lie to these angry
demonstrations.

" Wai, I swan, it is too bad, Antwine, seein t we hain t
hed nothin so fur but pork an dry bread. But we ll
makeup for t bimeby. Lemme see; your onion smell

* This is Canuck for time.



SAM LOVEL S CAMPS.

must ha ben the skunk t ye ketched in yermink trap las
night. The pertater smell I d knovv where ye got, erless
twas a last year s one. The bull paout smell is in the
futur , an the mushrat smell is consid able present, but
not s much s I wish twas. But light yer pipe an git
yer mushrat prod, an le s go an see ye use it," and Sam
sang from the ballad of " Brave Wolf " these encouraging
lines :

" Chee-er up your hearts, young men,

Let naw-thing fright you ;
Be a w v a galliant mind,

Let tha-a-at delight you !"

So the Canadian got his black pipe ablast, and taking a
one-tined spear and an axe from the shanty, announced his
readiness to start.

They went out through the sere rushes, flags and sedges
that lay lopped by the winds and snows of many a winter
storm, over the frozen marsh, to where the channel of the
" Slang" wound clearly denned under the snow and ice,
like the street of an aboriginal village, with here and there
set beside it the huts of the muskrats. Away from the un-
wooded eastern bank stretched the wide, flat fields of the
Champlain Valley, yet dazzling white with the slowly melt
ing snows of the persistent northern winter, though in
places the pall was rent where the knolls and southerly
banks of the tawny earth had come to the surface again,
and zigzag lines of fences cropped out above the drifts. A
mile back the gray and dark green hills arose, and along
the eastern horizon ran the hazy wall of the Green Moun
tains, topped with the shining towers of Mansfield and
Gamers Hump. Westward from the standpoint of Sam
and his companion an uninterrupted forest of hemlocks



io SAM LOVEVS CAMPS.

and tall pines seemed to reach to where the Adirondacks
scarred steeps gleamed through their veil of haze. Over
the landscape bent a warm-tinted sky with fleeces of white
cloud drifting slowly across it before a gentle southern
breeze. The tempered air, a tinge of purple in the gray
of the water maples spray, the caw of returning crows, and
the long resonant roll of the woodpeckers drum-beat gave
unmistakable signs of the coming of spring yet many
days off, but surely coming.

The fall after Uncle Lisha s departure to his new home
in the West, Sarn had taken the old man s advice into se
rious consideration, and finally for various reasons conclud
ing to follow it, he bargained for the making of a lot of
traps and took Antoine as partner and instructor as well,
for Sam had not much experience in trapping muskrats,
those fur-bearers being not at all plenty in the rapid,
weedless streams of the hill country, where all his hunting
and trapping had until now been done. Long before
sleighing gave any sign of failing they had their boats, traps,
and provisions hauled down to the trapping ground, built
their rude but cosy shelter that was for some weeks to be
their home, and were now waiting for the opening of
small-craft navigation, when they would begin trapping in
earnest. They had set a few traps in the muskrat houses,
chopping out a small opening to the bed, whereon the trap
was set, and the covering carefully replaced. From the
houses so taken possession of rose the tally sticks, to which
the trap chains were fastened, like miniature flagstaffs. To
one not so marked Antoine now led the way. " Go steel
naow, Sam," he said in a low voice as they drew near it :
" not mek it no more nowse as leetly mouses. Naow.
Ah m s goin stroke it raght in dar !" and carefully laying



SAM LOVEL S CAMPS. II

down his axe, he drove the spear into the centre of the rough
cone of flags, mud, and sedges, a little below the top and
on the south side.

" Dah, seh, Sam, ant Ah tol you? Ah 11 gat she!
Ah 11 feel of it heeni weegle ! Ant you ll see ?" cried the
delighted Frenchman, and when he quit his hold on the
spear staff Sam saw that it was violently shaken. Antoine
now chopped into the house and took out a muskrat writh
ing in agony and biting at the cruel spear that impaled
him. The half-savage Canuck was in no haste to despatch
him, but Sam dealt the poor brute a kick in the head that
ended his misery at once.

" What for you do dat, Sam ? You wait mineet you
see dat leetly dev faght lak a coss ! Have it some funs !"

" There, Antwine," said Sam, with an expression of
strong disgust upon his face, " you needn t prod no more
on em on my caount."

" Hein ?" cried Antoine in astonishment, "what for
Ah don t, Sam ?

" Wai, it s too durn d savage. The s too much Injin
baout that for me. "

"Ant you want it moosrat ? Don t dat goode way git
heem, an t it? Ah 11 git forty, prob ly twenty so, in one
day ! You s pose he an t lak it jus well as be ketch in
Iraap, hein ? Pool off his laig all day, bambye heat him
off, den goo by, Sam, he say ! He feel bad, you feel
bad, ant de bose of it no good, an t it ? Bah gosh, Sam,
you ll got foolish motion in you head, seh !"

"Wai, I s pose I hev, but I can t help it. I know
trappin* is onhuman business the best way you c n fix it,
a-ketchin critters by the laigs an lettin on em surfer,
but the don t seem no other way o gittin some on em.



12 SAM LOVEVS CAMPS.

A deadfall, at knocks the life aout on em fust dab, is the
only human trap the is, but they hain t wuth shucks for
mushrat. But when you come to set for mushrat in the
water, theydraound quick an I guess don t mind it much,
bein they re so uster the water. We ll wait a spell an
git em that way."

Further discussion was stopped by the shouts of a man
who was coming toward them over the ice at the top of
his speed.

" Hello there ! What in thunder ye duin on?" and
as he came up to them, breathless with unwonted haste
for he was short and fat, built, as Sam thought, more for
sitting than running he panted out gustily: " What in
thunder an guns be ye duin on, ketchin my mush-
rats ? Clear aout, ye cussed thieves, an le my mushrats
alone."

Is this raly one o your mushrats ? Sam asked,
picking up the animal and examining it closely ; " I don t
see no ear mark ner brand on t, but if it s yourn, prove
prop ty, pay charges an take it away.

" Wai," said the new-comer, seating himself on the
muskrat house and wiping his hot face with his coat-sleeve,
1 you don t b long here ; you ha no business here ! These
is aour rats !"

" Oh, aour rats," said Sam quietly ; " yes, they be aour
mushrats when we git em, not afore. You take your
sheer, an I ll take mine, f we c n git em. And I m
a-goin to git mine f I know haow."

" I tell ye," the man reiterated hotly," ye don t b long
here ; ye ha no business here ! Thunder an guns 1
you re durn d putty fellers, hain t ye ?"

" Don t b long here ? I m a V monter, an live in this



SAM LOVEL S CAMPS. 13

caounty, an was horned and raised in it. Who give ye
these mushrats ? D you own this ere ma sh ?

No, the visitor admitted that he did not own the marsh,
but he lived near it, and he and two or three other resi
dents had always trapped in Little Otter and the two
Slangs, " and the trappin here b longed to em."

" Haow many traps do the hull caboodle on ye set ?"
Sam asked ; and after reckoning in his head and on his
fingers, the man said, " Baout hund ed an fifty."

" A hund ed an fifty traps on all these miles o ma sh !
Wai, I guess what we ve got won t make no great diffunce
wi ye, so don t fret yer gizzard, my friend. The s room
nough for all on us, an we d like to live friendly wi you
fellers, but anyway, we re goin to trap here a spell."

"Who gin ye leave to camp over yunder ?" the man
asked, waving his hand toward the shanty.

"The man at owns it," Sam answered shortly. "I
do know why in Sam Hill I never thought to ask you
but then, you see, i hed not hed the pleasure o your
quaintaince till jes naow. Be you willin ?"

"Humph!" grunted the aggrieved trapper. "Camp
an be cussed ! Trap and be darned ! Ye won t make
much aouten on it, see f ye du !" and he went his way in
no better humor than he had come.

When he was at a safe distance, Antoine, till now a very
silent partner, shook his fists at his broad back, seized him
self by the seat of his trousers and apparently lifted himself
off the ice in a rapid series of short leaps, and cried in a
tone that he was sure would not be heard by the retreating
foe, " Hey ! bah gosh ! Ah wan leek you, seh !" Then
turning to Sam and throwing down his cap, " Ah dunno
what for Ah ant tink for leek dat man when he here."



14 SAM LOVEVS CAMPS.

"Wai, Antwine, " said Sam, with a quiet smile, "I
da."

Then they went back to the camp, and Antoine skinned
the rat from chin to tail, and stretched the pelt on a bow
of "nanny bush," fastening it in place by upward cuts
through the skin and into the wood at the nether ends of
the bow. Then they made their tea, frizzled their slices
of salt pork over the coals, and ate their rude but well-
relished supper. After a long smoke they turned into their
robes and blankets.

Once when Sam arose to replenish the fire and take a
quiet midnight smoke, he thought he heard the sound of
axe strokes out on the moonlit marsh, but he saw nothing
and thought then no more of it. But next morning when
they went abroad he and his comrade found every muskrat
house chopped down and uninhabitable, and the few traps
they had set were thrown out upon the ice. Their un
pleasant acquaintance of the day before, and his partners,
had done their night s work thoroughly. The muskrats
had retreated to their burrows in the banks, and there
could be no more trapping nor spearing in the ruined
houses. Antoine pranced and tore his hair, and made
threats of terrible vengeance. Sam said, " Wai, arter all,
twas kinder neighborly in em not to steal aour traps.
We ll wait an start long o the rest on em when the ice
goes aout."



II.

THE PASSING OF WINTER.

SAM and his partner lounged about camp waiting for the
opening of the water, and there was not much to break the
dull monotony of those days of waiting. For the most
part there was little to do but cook and eat the simple fare,
and sit by the camp-fire trimming muskrat bows and tally
sticks. Now and then a chopper would stop at the shanty
to light his pipe, and if a Yankee, to ask no end of ques
tions ; or if a Canadian, to jabber with Antoine till Sam
was driven almost wild with the incessant jargon so unin
telligible to him. A mile down the creek a party of lum
bermen were building a raft of logs upon the ice, and often
to pass the time away Sam and Antoine would visit them,
and "being expert axemen, help them make " knock downs"
while they chatted and joked.

One day Sam was hunting about camp for something,
and Antoine asked, " What you look see, Sam ?"

"I m a-lookin for a mushrat carkiss. I seen where a
mink s ben gallopin raound, an I want some bait for a
trap."

" Wai naow, seh, Sam, you goin b lieved what Ah 11
tol you. T ant no use for settlin bait for minks to heat
naow. He ll goin sparkin dis tarn year, an he ant cares
no more for heat as you does w en you ll goin sparkin .



1 6 SAM LOVEL S CAMPS.

Set you trap in road where he 11 goin see hees Mamselle
Hudleh, Sam, den you ll ketched it.

* Like s not you re pretty nigh right, Antwine," Sam
said, laughing, " but he might be comin hum hungry
arter his sparkin . I ve knowed of such cases ;" and hav
ing found a bait of odorous muskrat flesh he hung it over
a moss-covered trap in a hollow log, and next morning
brought in the lithe slender fellow whose brown coat of fur
became so fashionable and valuable in after years, though
then worth no more than the muskrat s.

Once they went coon hunting in the great woods, and
after a half day s wallowing through the soft, deep snow,
tracked three coons to a big hollow pine stub, and chop
ping it down, took out five residents and visitors, whose
pelts made a showy if not a rich addition to their slender
display of peltry.

Along the winter roadway of ice, now made the most of
by teamsters while it lasted, frequent loads of logs and
wood or empty returning sleds came and went, crunching
in and out of sight and hearing. To the eastward beyond
the wide fields, from where the smoke of farm house chim
neys drifted upward, came sounds of busy life : the "jing-
jong" of old-fashioned " Boston" sleigh bells faring to and
fro on the highway, the steady thud of flails in barns, the
lowing of cows and the bawling of calves, the cackle of
hens and the challenge of chanticleer ; at noon the shouts
of schoolboys and the mellow blasts of the conch-shells
sounding for dinner. To the westward were the woods,
their primeval solitude almost undisturbed, their silence
only broken by the strokes of a far-off axe, followed by the
dull boom of the falling tree. At night the gloomy, cryptic
aisles resounded with the solemn notes of the great horned



SAM LOVEL S CAMPS. 17

owls, and once or twice the trappers heard there the wild
caterwauling of a lynx. So forty years ago the narrow
Slang was the dividing line between broad fields that had
long been cleared and cultivated and a thousand acres of
ancient forest.

In this way the days passed, while the snow slowly melted
off the fields and the ice slowly rotted. More tawny knolls
cropped out in pasture and meadow, gray streaks of ice
came to the surface along the creek and Slang, and in the
woods the snow sunk lower and lower its winter litter of
twigs, shards of bark and slender evergreen leaves, till
here and there a hummock brown with last year s fallen
leafage, or a mouldering log bright with ever- verdant moss,
came to the checkered sunlight again.

Cold nights and cold days were not infrequent, when the
saturated snow was crusted hard enough to bear a horse,
and a roaring fire was needed at the shanty front to keep
the trappers warmed into anything like comfort. But after
each " cold snap" the south wind blew warmer than be
fore, more crows came sagging heavily along on it from
their winter exile, the woodpeckers sounded oftener their
cheery roll, bluebirds and the first robin came, a phebe
called sharply for his mate and found flies enough in sunny
nooks to keep him busy while he awaited her coming, and
a dusky chorus of blackbirds gurgled out a medley of song
from the tops of the maples, while the tardy spring drew
nearer.

In these warmer days, hollow, unearthly moans and roars,
rising at times almost to a yell, were heard along the lake,
at first faintly from afar, then nearer, till every jagged steep
of Split-Rock Mountain echoed with the wild voices, then
fading away to a humming murmur in the distance. It



1 8 SAM NOVEL S CAMPS.

was as if some tormented demon was fleeing over the ice,
or a phantom host of the Waubanakee was rushing in swift,
superhuman haste along the ancient war-path of the dead
nations. It was the booming of the lake, a sound strange
and almost appalling to Sam, who, till now, had never
heard it.

At last a great rain came with a strong southerly wind,
and the two made quick work of the snow melting, and
the brooks poured down their yellow floods till the sluggish
current of the Slang was stirred. The ice, for some days
unsafe to venture upon, was now honey-combed, and pres
ently was only a mass of loose, slender, upright spires of
crystal, undulating when disturbed in long, smooth swells,
and tinkling a faint chime as if a million fairy bells were
knolling its downfall. Watery patches began to show here
and there on the marshes, great flocks of geese journeying
northward harrowed the gray sky, and ducks in pairs and
droves came whistling down and splashed into the open
water to feed and rest.

Then one morning, when Sam and his companion
crawled out of the shanty, they beheld the long-wished-for
sight of marshes clear of ice, and after a hasty breakfast
they launched the birch and dugout and loaded them with
the traps already strung on the tally sticks, and each with
axe and gun they set forth to coast the low shores. The
boats kept close together, the pine leading the birch, for
Antoine was now to take the part of instructor. Scanning
every half-submerged log they passed, he soon stopped his
craft alongside a fallen limbless tree whose roots still clung
to the bank, while its trunk slanted with a gentle incline
into the turbid water. Abundant sign about the water-line
showed that the long-imprisoned muskrats had already



SAM LOVEL S CAMPS. 19

made the most of their newly gained liberty to swim with
heads above water.

" Dah seh, Sam, you see he been here, lot of it, an
prob ly he ll comin gin. Naow, chawp nawtch in de
lawg, so," and with half a dozen strokes of his axe he cut a
neat notch in the log just below the water-line, wide enough
to hold a trap when set. It was a pine, well preserved,
and the chips and notch were bright and fresh. " Naow
you see, w en de nawtch mek it too shone, you wan put
it on some weed, mud, sometings, " and he overlaid the
cut with a thin layer of sodden water weeds. " Moosrat
he ant very cunny, but he lak see ting where he been look
kan o usual. " Then he drove the tally pole firmly into
the soft bottom, and set the trap in the notch with no cov
ering but the two inches of muddy water that rippled over
it in the light breeze.

" Dah," he said, as he resumed his paddle, "if de
water ant rose or don t fell, you as dat trap to-morrah
mornin , he tol you, moosrat !"

At the next promising place Antoine superintended the
setting of a trap by Sam, and pronounced it, " Pooty well
do, for dee-gin. " So they fared on through the marshes
floating weeds and bristly thickets of button bush, now over
the submerged shore among the trunks and sprouts of wil
lows, water maples and ash that bordered it. Often they