CHAPTER XVII.
Lost in the Woods.
One writer contends that the pocket compass is but very little use to a man in a dense forest. This, I think, depends largely upon circumstances. While the writer has spent a good portion of fifty years almost continuously in the woods, he has seldom found it necessary to use a compass to guide him out. Now this is due partly to the natural faculty of locating any particular place. This faculty of locating any certain place or point by giving or knowing the proper direction to take after one has traveled all day or for several days in the woods, I am inclined to credit to a sort of natural instinct.
I have often thought of the story of the Indian who was met by a man in the woods who asked the Indian if he was lost. The reply was, "No, me ain't lost, wigwam lost, me here." Now I can say without boasting that it is seldom that the camp or a given point gets lost with me, while it is not an uncommon occurrence for the writer to get lost or rather bothered himself in a strange locality. But after a moment's thought, I say the camp or the point I wish to reach is in that direction, and it is not often that I miss my calculation.
As I have had several occasions to search for parties lost in the woods, I wish to relate a particular instance of one man who was lost. It was an uncle of mine by the name of Nelson, and the writer went in search of him. To illustrate that those who are lost lose their heads as soon as they find that they do not know where they are.
Now I wish to say that if you lost your course or get bothered in your bearings, do not lose your head, for if you do you are lost, but keep cool and keep your head. Sit down and fill your pipe, and while you smoke draw a map of the country carefully in your mind, and almost invariably you will locate yourself and in so doing will locate the camp.
To get back to the lost man in question whose name was Amos Fish, and at the time, was the proprietor of the Cherry Springs Hotel, in this county. This hotel was located in the heart of the largest forest in Pennsylvania, and originally was a great resort for hunters from all over the state as well as southern and western New York. (The time of which I write was somewhere in the 60's--have forgotten exact date.) There were several men boarding at this hotel and my uncle and myself were among the number boarding with Mr. Fish, hunting, as were other boarders. This hotel stood in the center of a field containing perhaps eighty acres of cleared land, and there was not another clearing or a building within a distance of seven miles.
One morning after there had been a fall of four or five inches of snow, which made fine tracking, Mr. Fish thought that he would go out that morning and try and kill a deer. He left the house going through the field in nearly a due east course. After going about one mile he crossed a stream which ran in a north and south direction. Mr. Fish had fished this stream for trout many a time. After crossing this stream Mr. Fish crossed a broad ridge and went on to a small stream known as the Sunken Branch, and a tributary of the stream Mr. Fish had previously crossed. Now Mr. Fish was fairly well acquainted with the location which he was in, but in his search for deer he had got a little mixed in his whereabout and at once lost his head.
My uncle when coming in from hunting that evening crossed Mr. Fish's track on the ridge near the head of the Sunken Branch, and had heard him shoot several times but supposed that he was shooting at deer. When the hunters all got in that night and Mr. Fish failed to appear, the matter was discussed by the hunters from all points of view. It was generally thought that Mr. Fish had had good luck killing deer and had been detained in dressing and hanging them up, or that he had wounded a deer and had been led a long way from home in getting it.