Rensselaer Journal, Volume 11, Number 30, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 2 January 1902 — BEAVERTAIL SOUP. [ARTICLE]

BEAVERTAIL SOUP.

Michigan Lumbor Camp Delicacy That rieaned a Marylander. "Although I am a Marylander, and an eastern shore one at that," said Chauncey F. Raynor, "and consequently know what good things to eat are, I want to tell you that I’ll have to take off my hat to the lumber camp cook of the upper Michigan peninsula as the discoverer, fabricator, and dispenser of a dish that knocks the eastern shore cuisine silly. And that rare lumber camp dish is beaver-tail soup. "I was with Colonel Park of Columbus, Ohio, deer hunting in the Rainy lake region of Michigan one fall. We lived at a lumber camp boarding shanty. There were signs of beaver at the upper end of the lake, and a trapper succeeded In trapping one of the wily dam builders. When the beaver was brought into <;amp the cook went nearly wild. And so did the lumbermen when they heard the news. All because they had been trying to trap a beaver for weeks — not for its fur but for its tail, as they were pining, they said, for beav-er-tail soup. The cook took that broadappendage of the beaver, mailed like an armadillo, took from it the underlying bone and meat, and from it made such a soup as never came from any other stock at the beck of the most expert and scientific chef that ever put a kettle on. We could do the samething, and perhaps better, on the eastern shore, but we lack one thing. We haven’t got the beavers to yield us their tails.” —New York Sun.