Litchfield enquirer., 1877-09-27
Sporting in the West.
MICHIGAN PINE WooDs, FORTY MILES WEST OF LAKE HURON,
 SAnfAmher. 1877.

| OUlLkS M Es5T OE LAKE hUhON, September, 1877.
 MIR. EDITOR. T believe the Enquirer does not advertise for correspondents from this section of the country but we thought perhaps your general sweeping clause I would let us in. You look at the post mark, and the hand writing, shake your head, haul out that ponderous waste bas- ket from under the table with your foot, say you don't know us, and don't care 8 fig who or what we are, you don't want to hear anything from Northern Michigan, you can't place it under the head of ''Lo- cal items" or Foreign missions. Stop minute; don't be too severe and hasty with us or we will certainly stop our pa- per when we get home, and will tell all our relations and our wive's relations, what corrupt and immoral sheet you publish. An. hal now you begin to scratch your long editorial head and unconsciously shove the waste basket back to it's accus- toned place. So will proceed immedi- ately to tell who we are and what we are doing. 9a@f as e- in a@ ~
 I can't just now give you our pedigree. but I will simply say that we are band of nine males. from the hills of your own old native town of Judea. Some of us are old married men, with wives and children thousand miles away; others are young. and scarcely out of our teens; some have sweethearts far-far away, and when home, go sparkling regularly every Sunday night; and others don't and never did believe in such things. We are each differently made and constituted; but, take us all in all, we are every one of us Gin our own es- timation), first-rate, jolly good fellows.
 Weleft Washington by the eight o'clock Monday morning train, Sept 10th, with the idea of coming to the'wild woods of Northern Michigan to camp out, ,and hunt, fish, trap, and otherwise recruit our weary minds and bodies, and have frst-rate, good time generally. Wewere all dressed in our rough backwoods suits, armed with rife and shotgun, tomahawk and scalp ing kn1fe-a border-rufian looking set as we passed down the Shepaug road. said we were all dressed in our backwoods suits. should have made one exception for we had an ertrenaely handsome man in the crowd and it did seem such pity to dress him up in so fr1ghtful way, that we allowed him to wear 'biled" shirt, and other things to match. Intending to keep him clean and n1ce, and to use him as sort of figure head-a representative man-we called him Solomon. The rest of us answer to the following names; David, John, Andrew, Philip, Julius, Timothy, and Simeon
 We reached New York at the proper time (which was dinner time), and were to leave by the Erie Road at o'clock that. evening. We had taken from home what we considered an ample supply of provisions to last us until we reached our destination, but voted unanimously, on leaving the 42d st. depot, to get two good, square meals before leaving the city. A very gentlemanly agent of The Grand Un- ion Restaurant. overhearing our conversa- tion, very cordially invited us to patronize that establishment. We marched in. pill ed up our baggage. and stacked arms around it; took possession and called for everything they had. I would further state that here as we'll as at some other places we attracted considerable attention, and were the subjects of some very humi.- iating remarks. We could only hear an occasional word or two, such as "Black Hillers," "Gold Hunters" "Emigrants," " "Swedes," "Railroad men on strike, '' "One very decent looking fellow." &c Sc. This last remark seemed to please Solo, mon. but was very distastefnl to the rest of us. We ate about all they had ID the house, paid our bills, and then tried to contract with the proprietor to send him black bear and deer every Tuesday and Saturday, but couldn't agree on terms. Then we scattered to make individual pur. chases and all hands met at the Erie Office on Broadway at 6 o'clock. They sent an attendant to Jersey City with us to see us safely on board the train, check baggage, &c. The train started at 715 Ca little af- ter dark). We passed through some of l the grandest and most magnificent scen- cry on;this whole continent Chat is the gentlemanly agent of the Erie so informed us when we purchased our tickets. but as the night was extremely dark, and We very sleepy. perhaps we hadn't better make oath to this part of the statement).
 The Board of Health have very fine ar. engagement on this road to prevent pass engers from sleeping too soundly When the conductor notices a person sleep ing sounder than the laws of health admit. he punches him three
 or four times in the ribs on pretence of examining his ticket. The plan works like g charm. and scarcely any of the l passengers See through it. They had a very efficient conductor on that train who did his work thoroughly. David assisted the conductor in the work of disturbance. While in New York he had been presented with policeman's whistle; and now he came around examining each of our seats, declaring that he had lost his whistle. We finally quieted him with the promise of a new whistle and nice little rattle-box in the morning. At last peace reigned su- preme, and we had slept nearly half an hour when we heard stentorian voice calling in at one end of the car and out at the other. ''Elmira, ''Elmira." We sup- posed it was a bad case of elopement and that this was the enraged father in pur- suit, till. looking from the window, we found ourselves at the station of Elmira, N. Y. saE .n g..
 We rode on and on, all day, through fertile and well improved valleys, over the Grand Portage Bridge in full view of