outside, the drifts grow deeper. Here, when the crust had formed on the snow and every green thing within easy reach had been eaten, the deer stood upon his hind legs, stretching his long neck to its utmost length and reached into the lower branches of the overhanging trees for a mouthful of browse. When the last scrap of brush had been devoured, too weak to longer stand, he lay down to await a slow and lingering death by starvation. And when the last feeble blat of the last surviving member of the herd trembled on the frosty air, the curtain fell on the saddest of all woodland tragedies.

Every summer we find it necessary to cut out trees which have been thrown across our trails by storms of the previous winter. Sometimes, the limb of a tree falls through the roof of one of our camps, making repairs necessary. Occasionally, in our absence, a porcupine gnaws our rustic camp stools or eats up the dining table; now and then, some animal friend steals our food, but these are minor troubles that are easily cured or provided against.

A few times, other people have used our camps, but these, if they are real woodsmen and know how to use a camp, are always welcome. To such, "the latch string is always out." But the animal we most fear, indeed the most destructive animal that ever enters the woods, is the picnicker. His bump of destructiveness is, if one may judge by his works, abnormally developed. He is never constructive. He calmly makes use of the works of others without ever saying, by your leave. Seemingly, he is never happy, unless he is tearing down something that others have painstakingly and laboriously constructed.

When your picnicker enters a camp, he burns up the firewood if any has been left there, and he always uses the balsam boughs of the camp bed for kindling. Also, he uses a lot of it for fun, just to see it blaze up high and throw out sparks. He never has been known to cut firewood. He has no axe and wouldn't know how to use an axe if he had one; so when he arrives at a camp, if no wood is found ready to hand, he burns up the rustic seats. Next he burns the slats of the bed, then the camp table, then a part of the frame or roof timbers of the camp. When he departs the ground is left strewn with scraps of the late meal, lunch boxes, newspapers, tin cans and other refuse. After a few visits of picnic parties the camp is a complete and hopeless ruin.

The High Ball Brook Camp — before

A few years ago, George and Leslie built a camp for Judge Bowles. It was located at the place where the trail to Bald Mountain Pond crosses High Ball Brook. The camp had a frame made of saplings that was covered with tar paper. It had a good bed, rustic table with bark top, seats, fireplace, etc., and was, in every way comfortable. The Judge and his friends stayed in his camp one night. After that, whenever he visited the place, he found it occupied by a picnic party.

The trail to Bald Mountain Pond was marked many years ago by the Indians. It is now a well beaten path, known and used by Summer residents and boarders along both shores of the lake through fourteen miles of its length. They came in motor boats, in parties of four, of six, of a dozen, and twenty-five or thirty at a time. It was a short and easy walk of a half an hour through the woods to the camp. The picnickers did the rest. The two pictures "before" and "after" herewith, show what happened in one short season to the Judge's camp.

The High Ball Brook Camp — after

Most of the camps that Bige and I have built, are too far from the main lines of motor boat travel, and they require the expenditure of too much effort to reach them, to make them attractive to the average picnicker. Yet, mindful of the fate of the High Ball Brook Camp, we have in some cases thought it wise to camouflage the trail. Many novel and some ingenious devices have been employed to this end.

One misguiding scheme, we successfully practiced as follows. At a place where the trail should, properly, describe an elbow or a curve, the blazing of trees would continue on in a straight line, leading possibly over a hill or down through a swamp where it would peter out and end in nothing. Then returning to the elbow or turning point, the real trail would be marked by taking bunches of moss off the hardwood trees and nailing them onto balsam or spruce trees. This practice would be followed for fifty yards or more, when the blazes would begin to appear again. Of course, an old and experienced woodsman, if he were suspicious of a trick, would never be caught by this one; as he would know that moss never grows on a live spruce tree, except in small patches near the roots in a wet or swampy place, while an entire Russian beard of moss can be seen anywhere on beech, maple or birch trees. Indeed, at the place where we thus marked our trail, one could, without moving a step, count twenty or more similar bunches of whiskers on as many hardwood trees within his range of vision. However, the picnickers never got by.

Whiskers On A Spruce

The struggle for existence, the elbowing, pushing and crowding of individuals, and the final survival of the stronger, the more fortunately placed, or the one who arrived and got established first, is nowhere in nature more marked or more conspicuous than among forest trees. The weaker ones die before they mature, because there is not "room in the sun" for the branches of all; and because, as the roots develop and increase in size, there is not enough room in the ground for the roots of all. Also, there is not enough plant food in the soil to sustain life in all the trees that get a start in the forest. Hence, it is, that in the older woods one can always find, still standing but dead and dry, half grown trees of all kinds. Of these, the hardwoods make the very best fuel for campfires. And a dead spruce six to ten inches in diameter makes excellent logs for building an open camp or a cabin. The smaller dry spruces, three to four inches in diameter, make better roof timbers than do green ones. But they must be taken while standing. A tree lying on the ground in the shade, absorbs and retains moisture and it soon decays and is unfit for use for any purpose. Thus, while conserving live forest trees, one may obtain material better suited to his purpose than if he had used green timber having a market value.

The State owns more than two million acres of forest land in the northern mountains. A few years ago, it was permissible to build log camps on State lands. Recent laws forbid this, and now camping on forest land owned by the State is limited to the use of tents.

Now, when Bige and I decide to build a shack we select a spot on some lumber companies' property and then try to get from the owners, permission to build. Such a permit is usually not difficult to get, but one must always furnish evidence of his knowledge of woodcraft, especially of his ability to so construct a camp fireplace as to prevent the fire spreading to the woods and thus destroying a lot of property.

"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