A Summer in the Wilderness / embracing a canoe voyage up the Mississippi and around Lake Superior

CHAPTER XXVI.

Sault Saint Marie, August, 1846.

One more letter from this place, and I shall take my leave of Lake Superior. Saint Mary was formerly a trading post of renown: it is now a village of considerable business; and as the resources of the mineral region are developed, will undoubtedly become a town of importance in a commercial point of view; and the contemplated ship canal through this place (which would allow a boat from Buffalo to discharge her freight or passengers at Fon Du Lac) ought not to be delayed a single year. There is a garrison at this point; the society is good, bad, and indifferent, and in the summer season it is one of the busiest little places in the country. But I intend this to be a piscatorial letter, and must therefore change my tune.

The river Saint Mary, opposite this village, is about two miles wide, and having found its way out of a deep bay of the ocean lake, it here rushes over a ledge of rocks in great fury, and presents, for the distance of nearly a mile, a perfect sheet of foam, and this spot is called the Sault, signifying falls. The entire height of the fall is about thirty feet, and after the waters have expressed in a murmuring roar, their unwillingness to leave the bosom of Superior, they finally hush themselves to sleep, and glide onward, as if in a dream, along the picturesque shores of a lonely country, until they mingle with the waters of Lake Huron.

The principal fish of this region are trout and white-fish, which are among the finest varieties in the world, and are here found in their greatest perfection. Of the trout, the largest species in Lake Superior is called the lake trout, and they vary from ten to sixty pounds in weight. Their flesh is precisely similar to that of the salmon in appearance, and they are full as delicious as an article of food. The Indians take them in immense quantities with the gill-net during the spring and summer, where the water is one hundred feet deep; but in the autumn, when the fish hover about the shores for the purpose of spawning, the Indians catch them with the spear by torch-light. They also have a mode of taking them in the winter through the ice. After reaching the fishing ground, they cut a hole in the ice, over which they erect a kind of wigwam, and in which they seat themselves for action. They attach a piece of meat to a cord as bait, which they lower and pull up for the purpose of attracting the trout, thereby alluring the unsuspecting creature to the top of the hole, when they pick it out with a spear. An Indian has been known to catch a thousand weight in one day, in this novel manner. But as the ice on Lake Superior is seldom suffered to become very thick on account of the frequent storms, it is often that these solitary fishermen are borne away from the shore and perish in the bosom of the deep.

My mode of fishing for lake trout, however, was with the hook. In coasting along the lake in my canoe I sometimes threw out about two hundred feet of line, to which was attached a stout hook and a piece of pork, and I seldom tried this experiment for an hour without capturing a fifteen or twenty pounder. At other times, when the lake was still, and I was in the mood, I have paddled to where the water was fifty feet in depth, and with a drop-line have taken, in twenty minutes, more trout than I could eat in a fortnight, which I generally distributed among my Indian companions.

A fish called ciscovet, is unquestionably of the trout genus, but much more delicious and seldom found to weigh more than a dozen pounds. They are a very beautiful fish, and at the present time are decidedly the fattest I have ever seen. Their habits are similar to those of the trout, and they are taken in the same manner.

But the fish of this region, and of the world, is the common trout. The five rivers which empty into Lake Superior on the north, and the thirty streams which run from the south, all abound in this superb fish, which vary from ten to forty ounces in weight. But the finest place for this universal favorite, in the known world, is, without any doubt, the Falls of Saint Mary. At this place they are in season throughout the year, from which circumstance I am inclined to believe that there must be several varieties, which closely resemble each other. At one time you may fish all day and not capture a single specimen that will weigh over a pound, and at another time you may take a boat-load of them which will average from three to four pounds in weight. You may accuse me of telling a large story when I speak of boat-loads of trout, but I do assure you that such sights are of frequent occurrence at the Sault. My favorite mode of trouting at this place has been to enter a canoe and cast anchor at the foot of the rapids, where the water was ten or fifteen feet deep, but owing to its marvellous clearness appeared to be about three, and where the bed of the river or strait is completely covered with snow-white rocks. I usually fished with a fly or artificial minnow, and was never disappointed in catching a fine assortment whenever I went out. My favorite spot was about midway between the American and Canadian shores, and there have I spent whole days enjoying the rarest of sport; now looking with wonder at the wall of foam between me and the mighty lake; now gazing upon the dreamy-looking scenery on either side and far below me; and anon peering into the clear water to watch the movements of the trout as they darted from the shady side of one rock to another, or leaped completely out of their native element to seize the hovering fly. During all this time my spirit would be lulled into a delightful peacefulness, by the solemn roar of the Sault. I have taken trout in more than one half of the United States, but have never seen a spot where they were so abundant as in this region, but I must acknowledge that there are streams in New England and New-York where I have thrown the fly with more intellectual enjoyment than in the river Saint Mary.

But I must devote a paragraph to the white-fish of Lake Superior. They are of the shad genus, and with regard to flavor are second only to their salt water brethren. They are taken at all seasons of the year with gill-nets and the seine in the deep waters of the lake; at this point, however, the Indians catch them with a scoop-net, and in the following manner. Two Indians jump into a canoe above the rapids, and while one navigates it among the rocks and through the foaming waters, the other stands on the look-out, and with the speed of lightning picks out the innocent creatures while working their way up the stream unconscious of all danger. This is a mode of fishing which requires great courage, immense strength, and a steady nerve. A very slight mistake on the part of the steersman, or a false movement of the net-man, will cause the canoe to be swamped, when the inmates have to struggle with the foam awhile until they reach the still water, when they strike for the shore, there to be laughed at by their rude brethren of the wilderness, while the passing stranger will wonder that any men should attempt such dangerous sport. But accidents of this kind seldom happen, and when they do the Indians anticipate no danger, from the fact that they are all such expert swimmers. It took me three days to muster sufficient courage to go down these rapids in a canoe with an Indian, and though I performed the feat without being harmed, I was so prodigiously frightened that I did not capture a single fish, though I must have seen, within my reach, upwards of a thousand. The white-fish, ciscovet, and lake trout have already become an article of export from this region, and I believe the time is not far distant, when the fisheries of Lake Superior will be considered as among the most lucrative in the world.

Clyx.com