One day when a young man called on me and said that he would give me an interest in a "goose pasture" to go out in the woods and camp, I was interested. Smoky Jim (that is his nickname) although his name is Charles Earl, and there is nothing smoky about Charley except his pipe, which he is very fond of, too much so, I think, for so young a man. Well, when Charley said that he would like to go and camp out in the woods, I was practically as good as gone. I knew Smoky to be a lively kid and all right, although he had never put in any time as a trapper or a bee hunter. I said, "Smoky, can you see a bee fly?" Smoky said that he thought he could, for he knew that he could tell when one stung him, but he had never watched to see how far he could see one fly.
I found that Smoky was given to making comical remarks as well as to smoking. I said, "Smoky, what day can you go?" He replied, "Any day." This was on Tuesday, so I said, "Alright, Smoky, be here Thursday and we will start early Friday morning."
Smoky said, "Alright, but we will not get a darn thing while we are gone if we go on Friday unless we get drowned, and there will have to be more water in the creek than there is now or we won't get that much."
I had already made application to the State Tourist Commissioner for a permit to camp on state lands. It may be well to state here for the benefit of those who wish to so camp in this state (Pennsylvania) that the authorities will not give a permit to camp for a longer time than 14 days. In my case they were very obliging and made out the papers for several applicants of 14 days each, so that it would only have been necessary to have signed one of the applications and send it on a few days before the previous application had expired.
WOODCOCK FISHING ON THE SINNAMAHONING.
We were all ready to start Friday morning. Our route lay over the mountains a distance of about 20 miles from the head waters of the Allegheny to the head water of the west branch of the Susquehana waters, known as the East Fork of the Sinnamahoning. We pitched our tent just at the point where the Buffalo and Susquehana Railroad begins to cross the divide, known as the Hogback, by means of several switch backs. It is a splendid sight to see two or three trains working their way up the mountain's side on a clear, frosty morning, when the steam and smoke show so plain.
We did not get the tent in good shape for the first night, nor did we get our bunk up, owing to its being so late when we got to our camping ground. The first night in camp we had a sharp frost and in the morning Smoky Jim's fever for camping had dropped fully one-half. He complained that any one that would go into such a country to camp should be reported for trespassing on the rights of the porcupine.
It took until the third day to get our camp in good shape. We built a skeleton frame of small poles all over the tent, leaving a space of about 18 inches between tent and frame, and thatched it good with hemlock boughs. While we were working at the camp we had our bee bait out, and the second day after we put out the bait no bees came to it. Smoky laughed at me and said that a honey bee was too intelligent to stop in a place like that, but Smoky was wrong. The next morning after the sun had got well above the top of the hills, so as to warm up things down in the valley, I heated a large stone quite hot and burned some honey comb on it. It was not long before Smoky called out to me and said that there was one fool of a bee. It was not long before we had bees a-plenty. We paid no attention to them farther than to keep plenty of bait out for them. Every bee hunter knows how much steadier a bee flies after they have the bait well located.