AXGLIXG DAYS AND ANGLING WRITERS. 18 



forestry and the ways of the woods, and learned the tricks and manners of farm 

 animals. I could manage the horses and cows and sheep all right, because I 

 gained their confidence. The same bay mare who slung my uncle across the 

 stable with her teeth would let me tangle myself up with her legs and hoist 

 with my back against her belly while I was grooming her; and the "little cow" 

 allowed me to shoot off my gun between her horns, standing in front of her, 

 and not flinch. 



Later I was taken from Hopkins' Grammar School at New Haven and sent 

 to Framington, Conn., where I could have a boat and gun and shoot muskrats 

 on the overflows of the river. From Yale College, which was too artificial for 

 my taste, I went to Amherst, where I could range Mt. Holyoke and Mt. Tom 

 and pick up rocks and minerals for my cabinets. And so it went until I grad- 

 uated, married, and went into business. I was of age. 



SPEARING SALMON' ON THE RESTIGOL'CHE. 

 Mr. Hallock fished for salmon on this river half a century ago. 



But these responsibilities hardly checked my vagabond proclivities. I com- 

 menced to go west of the Mississippi early in the fifties, and there I first heard of Kit 

 Carson, Fremont and Jesse, Pierre Choteau, Jim Beckworth, Jim Bridges, Bill Bent, 

 and Charley Bent, his half-breed son. I read up Ruxton's "Life in the Far 

 West" in 1846 and W. C. Prime's "Owl Creek Cabin Letters," and "Old House 

 by the River," Lanman's "Wilds of America," and Rev. John Todd's "Long 

 Lake" and Chas. W. Webber's "Romance of Natural History" (in Texas), 

 and Col. Emory's Military Reconnoissance from Fort Leavenworth to San Diego, 

 Cal., during the Mexican War. All these were contemporary writings, and it was 

 not long before my old schoolday companion, Bob Stiles, and I came to be intro- 

 duced to some of the real characters. Bob was the same Maj. Robert A. Stiles, of 

 Richmond, Va., whose army reminiscences of the Confederate War, entitled "Four 

 Years with Marse Robert" (Lee) were published in 1903, and who died two years 

 later after a remarkable life of adventure and hair-breadth escapes. 



