ll
found the clearing all right, and got oats in the bundle for the
horses. Bill also made arrangements with Mr. Sage to bury eight
bushels of potatoes and leave them on the hill where we could get
them as we wished. Bill also killed a large rattlesnake on his way to
the field, which he brought to camp, where we skinned and took out
the oil. When we were skinning the snake Bill remarked, "that he
thought the fur rather light on the varmint, but it was a pretty
cuss." Let me say that at our place on the head waters of the
Allegheny we had no eels, rattlesnakes or wartelberries, so we
concluded that we would stop one night on the Sinnamahoning and get
some eels to take home with us.

While Bill was gone for horse feed I was busy jerking the venison. I
gathered a good hill of dry hemlock bark from the logs, burned it to
a good pile of live coals. I now made a rack or gridiron by driving
four crotched stakes in the ground about the embers and then laid
small poles across in the crotches to form a rack to spread the
venison on over the coals. I stood hemlock bark up about the rack,
freshly peeled from the tree and covering the top over also with
bark, which forms an oven. It is necessary to remove the top or cover
occasionally and turn the meat, and say, boys, next June when you are
out camping just kill a small deer and prepare the meat as described.
Is it good? I guess yes.

Having our work completed at the camp, the next morning after we had
got the horses fed and the venison prepared, we drove back onto
Baleys Run. Here we camped near the mouth of the run, and that night
we set fifty eel hooks, some in the run and some in the main
Sinnamahoning. I think that we caught twenty-two eels and some trout.
As we were now in a section where there were some barrens, which
contained good huckleberry picking, we put in the next day picking
berries until near night, and drove home at night, a distance of
about twenty miles. All the time while picking berries, setting eel
hooks and trout fishing, of which we did enough to supply our needs,
we kept a close watch for signs of animals that we intended to take
in later on.

We saw signs of mink, coon and where an otter had been at play on a
steep bank of the run. We saw signs of bear in several places where
they had torn old logs to pieces in search of grub and ants. We saw
at one place where a bear had dug out a woodchuck, and I should judge
by the amount of digging he had done tha