T was my first visit to the Tahquamenon drive-or, rather, I hoped it was going to be, though as yet I did not know just how those hopes were to be realized. I had alighted from a railway train on a morning in early May at a little station on the edge of the Tahquamenon Swamp, and I knew that somewhere toward the north and west, at an indefinite distance, was the Tahquamenon River, rolling along through the woods on its way to Lake Superior. And somewhere on the Tahquamenon River was the Tahquamenon drive; but just where or how I could reach it, or how, indeed, I could reach the river at all, I did not know, and there seemed to be no one at Eckerman who could tell me. I recognized him as a land-looker whom I had met in the woods some years before. His errand at Eckerman was the same as mine to find the drive-though his motive was a different one. The firm that owned the timber had heard nothing from it for some time, and had sent him to see where it was and when it might be expected at the mill. Moreover, they had provided a driving team and a low, broad-seated buggy to carry him as far as McNurney's place. There was room for another passenger. Would I go along? I certainly would, and an hour later we were bowling northward over the stage road that leads to the south shore of Lake Superior. It was a bright, sunshiny morning, with a faint chill in the air, but with a promise of better things in the near future. Beside the corduroy the trailing arbutus was in blossom, and up in the hardwood, to which we presently climbed, there were spring-beauties by thousands, and in places the ground was fairly yellow with dog's-tooth violets. Most of the trees were bare, for spring comes late to instant I could not place him; then I the Lake Superior basin. Some of the But Fortune, for once, was kind. was still puzzling over the problem when an express train pulled up for a moment at the station and a tall, elderly man in woodman's garb stepped off and gave me a hearty good-morning. For an beeches had even a few of their last year's leaves, frayed and tattered and bleached almost white by the winter storms, still clinging to their lower branches. But the hazel bushes were putting forth their new foliage, and in the lowlands the tamaracks showed a faint tinge of green. Nine miles from Eckerman we left the stage road, and turning toward the west, we drove as far again along the section lines, now and then passing an old Government blaze, a witness-tree, or a corner, while the land-looker discoursed pleasantly of woods-lore and the ways and methods of timber-cruisers. Occasion ally he would drop other matters to speculate on where in kingdom-come that drive could be, till I felt quite as if I were starting out with Stanley to find Dr. Livingstone. Then, by and by, we left the dry hardwood and the rocky pine ridges and dropped down again into the cedar swamp, where the road was very bad and the mud-holes very numerous, and at last we reached a place where the corduroy was all afloat and the buggy, for a moment, seemed uncertain whether to founder or to capsize. But the horses struggled through, and in a minute more we were crossing a dry, level field. McNurney's place is a broad green clearing that slopes gently down to the dark, silent river. Facing the water stands the house, low and rambling, with a small flag flying from the peak of the roof and flower-beds laid out in the dooryard-the only inhabited house for sixty miles up and down the Tahquamenon. Close by are the barns, the blacksmith shop, and a number of outbuildings that once belonged to a lumber camp, and all around are the dense woods, mixed hardwood and evergreen growth, with a few scattered pines here and there, relics of the years before the lumbermen came. The frogs sing day and night, the partridges nest not far away, the muskrats have their holes in the river-banks, and at dusk the deer come out into the clearing to see if there are any vegetables left in the garden. McNurney himself was not at home, for that spring he was foreman of the drive, but his wife and son were there, and said in answer to our inquiries that they could give us lodging that night, and that we could perhaps get McIntosh, the bear-trapper, to take us on up the river. river. That the drive was still above us was evident, for the river was strewn with its advance guard-stray pieces of spruce and balsam pulpwood, big pine logs and little pine logs, hemlock logs with the bark on and hemlock logs without, and once in a while a piece of cedar. Some of them were very buoyant, while others were almost completely waterlogged and showed only the tip of one end as they went by. The naked sticks of hemlock rode highest, for they had had their sap pretty well dried out before they were put in the water. "Yes, sir, them peeled logs floats good," the land-looker said. Presently, as we stood on the bank watching them go by, McIntosh's little black gasoline launch appeared, a mere clinker-built rowboat fitted with a small second-hand engine. McIntosh, it seemed, lived in lower Michigan, but came every spring to trap bears for a few weeks on the Tahquamenon. Going after bears with a launch was something new to the land-looker and me, but it appeared that his traps were strung along the river and its branches for a distance of twenty or thirty miles, and the boat was really very handy in visiting them. At least it was when the engine would work. Sometimes it would and sometimes it wouldn't. This afternoon, however, it seemed to be in a fairly good humor, and the land-looker engaged him to come at seven o'clock the next morning and take us on our way. About sunset three or four men came up from a bridge, four miles down stream, where they had been busy all day guiding the stray logs through a broken span and keeping them from jamming. The McNurney daughters came home from an afternoon call on the trapper's wife, who was temporarily occupying a deserted log cabin a mile and a half away, and it was a goodly company that sat down around the supper-table. In the evening we played flinch, which game had lately been introduced on the Tahquamenon. The trapper's wife had had something to do with it, I think-at any rate, she had told the daughters of the house that it was all the rage in Kalamazoo. And promptly at seven the next morning McIntosh was on hand and we started up the river to find the drive. But we had not gone far when the trapper's troubles began. The engine balked. Over and over and over again he cranked it, and it started up with a heavy "thud, thud, thud," ran faster and faster for a minute or two till it sounded like the long roll of a partridge, and then stopped short just as the boat was getting under way. He kept at it for perhaps an hour, but he had to give it up at last, and, getting out his oars, he began slowly and toilsomely to row us up stream against the current. If he had good luck with the bears, he said, so that he had a little money to spend, he was going to get an automatic sparker, and then-then we would see how that launch could go. By and by he turned toward the righthand bank and thrust her nose into the moss of the cedar swamp. He had a trap set a few rods back in the woods, he said, and he wanted to see if it had caught anything. So we all disembarked and made our way up a faint trail to a tiny hut, only three or four feet in height, made of balsam boughs and small logs. It looked very innocent, but just inside its open doorway a huge steel trap was set, fastened by a short chain to a heavy clog, and it would go hard with any bear that walked in after the rabbit's head that lay on the ground in the far corner. But so far no bear had entered-probably none had passed that way-and the prospects for the automatic sparker seemed poor. However, the drive proved not very difficult to find. You can always find a drive if you take the right river at the right season and follow it far enough. As we worked slowly up stream, mile after mile, the logs grew more and more numerous, and by and by we rounded a bend and saw the whole surface of the river covered and almost hidden by the floating timber. We had to push it aside to make a road for the launch. And then, from around a far curve, the wannigan came slowly into view-two rafts and a scow chained together, the rafts carrying canvas tents, and the scow a little cabin with a stovepipe sticking up through its roof. Drifting quietly down with the current, it presently crept in under the bank and stopped, while we pushed our way with some difficulty through the crowding logs and were soon alongside. The trapper immediately went to tinkering at his engine, in the vain hope that he could find the difficulty and remedy it, and the land-looker and I climbed aboard the wannigan and hunted up McNurney. The foreman was not far away, and he was soon telling us of his progress hitherto, and of the drowning of one of his men the previous afternoon. 'Three or four new hands had been on their way down the river in a leaky little tub of a rowboat, to join the drive, and they had had some whisky with them. They drank, they quarreled, they capsized; and now there was one river man less on the Tahquamenon. "There comes the rear," said McNurney, after a time; and, looking up the river across the floating timber, we saw fifteen or twenty men coming around a distant bend. They were moving about busily, some in small boats, some on the logs, and some on shore, and they seemed to be urging the timber down stream with their pike-poles and peaveys. We had found the drive, without a doubt, and the land-looker was able to go home the next day with his report. But I stayed on and followed the men at their work, eating with them, sleeping with them, talking with them, and learning a little of the life of the river. The day began at half-past three, when Dingman, the cook, woke us with a solo on his five-foot tin horn-a sound like a demented bugle-call pitched two octaves too low and wandering aimlessly all over the bass clef in the loudest, wildest, weirdest music that ever woke the echoes of the swamp. Up and down, up and down, up and down it went, over and over and over again, in scales and trills and arpeggios and quavers, ending at last with three short, sharp blasts like an angry steam-whistle. The whole floor of the tent, save for a little space around the small box stove, was one big straw bed laid on the logs that formed the raft; and now the blankets began to heave, and out from under them came a dozen The majority were Canadian men. French, and a decidedly good-looking lot. One or two were heavily bearded, but more were clean-shaven. Most of them were quite young, none were old, and nearly all were like the fishers of Venice"Gaunt, sinewy men, that are good to see." But they were certainly noisy. They jabbered patois violently as they slipped into their outer garments and pulled on their spiked river-shoes, while a volley of similar sounds came from the other tent, only a few feet away. "The crew runs heavy to frogs," I had heard one of the few Americans say the day before," and when they get to talking you can't hardly hear yourself think." As I lifted the tent-flap on that first morning and stepped out upon the edge of the raft, it seemed to me again, as it had so many times before, that I had forgotten how beautiful the world could be. Half the river was covered with the brown logs, lying quiet like a herded flock, and the other half was shining like a mirror. The whole eastern sky was flushing with the glory of the sunrise, the first golden light was just sliding over the tree-tops, and even the dark, somber-colored hemlocks on the hillsides could not help looking cheerful. From around the nearest bend came the notes of "le rossignol," the white-throated sparrow, and over all the woods and the water hung the peace and freshness of early morning in the wilderness. With the river for a wash-bowl we made a hasty and perhaps a somewhat superficial-toilet, and trooped aboard the scow for breakfast. The little cabin was nearly filled by a huge cook-stove that left only room for a narrow work-table, some shelves, and the bunks of the foreman, the cook, and the clerk; but further forward was a space that was roofed over but not walled in, and here stood another table, covered with oilcloth and loaded down with stacks of tin plates and small tin basins, piles of iron knives and three-tined forks, a three-gallon coffee-pot, dripping-pans full of fried ham and browned potatoes, and small mountains of bread, cookies, and doughnuts. Each man helped himself, and as soon as his plate and his coffee-basin were full he backed away to make room |