CHAPTER IV. 



EARLY RECOLLECTION'S. 



HARKING back to my younger days I pick up reminiscences occasionally from 

 along the trails and thickets of my peregrinations which penetrated far into the 

 unsettled wilderness of the United States and Canada so little traversed then by 

 railroads west of the Mississippi. Introduced names of defunct and disabled 

 sportsmen I fancy are of no special interest to readers of the 20th century, who 

 prefer fresh memories which scintillate in the public eye, and besides my memory 

 fails and my pen drags. However, I call tip an occasional chance meeting 

 from the retrospect, write it for auld lang syne, and kindle it anew around the 

 smoldering campfire. On my old diary I have 2,500 names, dead and living, of 

 whom a very large proportion contributed to Forest and Stream in the 70's all 

 subscribers, gun shooters, rod swingers and athletes of the baseball field. 



Thanks to my stars! I have had my surfeit of all the enjoyment to be had 

 in the line of sport (fishing and shooting) in days past without money and without 

 price; free to fish the choicest pools in noblest rivers and enjoying the companion- 

 ship of my canoemen "for what there was in it," and that knowledge of human 

 nature and human arts and wiles which we were able to draw from each other, 

 ignoring caste and despising nothing, roaming the wilds with the freedom of life 

 untrammeled by anxieties of business and apprehension of dynamite and bad men 

 who break through and steal. -And let me tell you that my enjoyment of the 

 present passing days and hours is made up of the consolation of these memories of 

 past experiences, with the hopes and promises of joys to come in the future 

 happy hunting grounds. But what the books are made of nowadays are apt to be 

 like the heroics of T. R., who has recently scoured the chapperals and jungles of 

 what remains of the prehistoric wilds of Africa, where Baker, Livingston, Stanley 

 and Paul du Chaillu put in their hunting grounds, whence Paul returned in the 

 50's, bringing the head of a swinging club gorilla mightier than the talking 

 anthropoids of Prof. Gamier of today. 



As the venerable Isaac McLellan, who died at 92 years of age in 1893, wrote 

 with ecstasy, so write I now albeit homophones all words which sound alike 

 but may have different meanings. So I quote : 



"Pleasant it is for a traveler after a long day's journey to pause at some 

 elevated hilltop for rest and retrospection, and to take a comprehensive view of 

 the route lately traversed. Far as eye may reach, even to the horizon's misty 

 edge, he sees beneath him outspread like a map, each lovely spot he has visited. 

 Far off in distant obscurity shines out the starting point of his career; and even so 

 can one recall the scenes and events of his early time of youth. All these regions 

 of resort still survive freshly in the memory of the veteran sportsman, even as the 

 scenes of the traveler's adventure are present to his eye and mind as he surveys 

 the features of the natural world, through which he has lately journeyed. Now 

 brightly are photographed in memory the names, forms and features of those old 

 friends, who were the associates of the thoughtful sportsman and scholar in the 

 years departed." 



He adds : "My earliest experience with the gun was in wild pigeon shooting, 



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