"The Trout Hatchery Camp" is of this class, the owners only reserving the right to use the camp for their own employees in case of need. I believe that in a period of five years they have so used it only twice. On one occasion a party of surveyors, who were correcting and reblazing the boundary line of the companies' property, spent a night in the camp. On another occasion some men were sent over the mountain from headquarters to put out a fire about a half mile from The Hatchery. This fire had been started by a careless cigarette smoking hunter who threw a burning cigarette butt down in the dry leaves.
The Hatchery camp was built by Bige and Bill at a time when I was carrying about with me a rather complicated harness in which was a broken arm; so, I had no hand in its construction, but I contributed a lot of advice. I have found it a very comfortable living place.
It has for many years been our practice, on occasions when we happened to have a good supply of game in the cooler, to go back to the cottage by the lake, collect our women folks and lead them over the trail to camp, where we would give them an exhibition of real camp cookery; while we roasted a saddle of venison before the campfire, serving it to our distinguished guests while they sit upon logs around our rustic camp table in the shade of the towering forest trees. Thus do we square ourselves, justify long absences and gain new indulgences.
There is a wonderful spring at The Hatchery. The water is very cold and there is a large volume of it boiling out of fissures in the rocks on the mountain side. Indeed it is the beginning of a fair sized brook which tumbles over the boulders and swiftly rushes along its gravelly bed just back of the cabin. By its music we are lulled to sleep at night and it is the first sound to greet us at day break.
Basting a Venison Roast
Bige allowed that it was a great pity that there were no holes in that brook with water deep enough for trout to live in as the water was ideal for that purpose. Trout are fond of cold spring water. They flourish best in it. Besides, the nearest trout brook was two miles away, and sometimes, during the open season, we need fish. So, said we, "let's make some holes."
Immediately, we got busy building a dam across the stream near the shack. We employed some of the methods of Brother Beaver, which, though primitive, are none the less effective, and we soon had a pool of water from three to four feet deep, seventy feet long and twenty feet wide at the dam. Then selecting our smallest hooks, we filed off the barbs and went down to Pickwacket Brook where we caught some trout which we kept alive and brought back in a bait pail. Many and frequent changes of the water were necessary to keep our fish alive, but they were safely deposited in the pool.