MY FIRST FLINTLOCK 17 
by a brace of hounds, was wonderfully done. The stag 
was two inches long. There were thirty-four groups of 
game inlaid in gold, both at rest and in flight. The 
gun now occupies the leading place in an artist-sports- 
man’s collection. Itisagem asa work of art, for [have 
reviewed and studied it again and again for many years 
after I had ‘‘let go” of it. Other guns I knew well and 
respected, but this one was my dearest possession and all 
I have left now is my memory of it. 
I recall vividly another gun: it was an old flintlock 
owned by one of my guides in Florida. He had never 
owned any other gun. His father died when he was 
fifteen and left it tohim. The gun had a long thin stock 
with a receptacle in it for patches, had a set trigger, and 
weighed seven and a half pounds. The hammer held 
in its grip the reddest flint I ever saw. Originally a 
rifle, the rifling had long since worn smooth and the 
present load was a solid ball with a leather patch around 
it and three buckshot. It shot true up to fifty yards, 
but beyond that distance it was uncertain. 
Modern guns make no such noise as ‘‘fizz-bang,’”’ but 
it exactly describes a flintlock. We were running 
bears, the ordinary black bears of the country, one day 
in Florida with half a dozen dogs. The bears finally 
took to water in a swamp and swam across to an island 
where both climbed the same tree. Being nearest the 
swamp I reached the pond first. 
The water was the color of ink. I had killed three 
water moccasin snakes, that crawled out of the same 
pond, within half an hour and balked at entering the 
water. The guide ran up and holding his gun and 
powder horn over his head waded across although the 
water was up to his neck, and shot both bears. The 
““fizz-bang”’ of his gun was very much in evidence. 
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