Page:Reminiscences of Sixty Years in Public Affairs (Volume One).djvu/278

Rh murders by the same parties. On the Sunday following we arrived at a small lake where the camp was too limited for the accommodation of the entire party and those who had remained proceeded to join their companions. The day was rainy and when we reached our destination, we found that one end of the camp had been destroyed by fire and that the part standing furnished only inadequate room for the small party already occupying it. The building of a new and much larger camp was the work of the entire party. For a bed we cut great quantities of hemlock boughs and after shaking the water from them we laid them upon the ground and in our blankets we lay down with our feet to a rousing fire which extended along the entire front of the camp not less than twenty feet. None of the party suffered from the experience.

At that time fishing for brook trout was not an art. On one occasion I waded into the rapids of Racket River where the water was about two feet deep, and as often as my hook struck the water, I would get a bite. The fish were of uniform size and weighed about one pound each. We had equally good fishing upon the streams which connect the Eckford Lakes. At Racket Lake a controversy arose about the route to be taken. Alvord and Hoyt had a plan which Bird did not approve. Pierce and myself took no part in the debate; we had accepted Bird as leader and we chose to follow him.

We were quartered in a log house that had been built for the use of some railway surveyors, but it was then occupied by a man who went by the name of Wood. It was rumored that he was a refugee from Lowell, Mass. He had lost both legs to the knees by freezing, and he walked upon the stumps with considerable speed. He was able to walk to the settlement at Lake Pleasant, a distance of thirty-eight miles. He had a wife and one daughter, who were as