26 AX ANGLER'S REMINISCENCES. 



more than fifty years since. Those beautiful birds were then very plentiful in 

 New England and I have shot them within a few miles of Boston. They were 

 then shot by the concealed gunner as they collected on a tall pole, like the old- 

 fashioned well-sweep. It was usual to bait with grain the ground beneath, and 

 the flock would gather there for food, first alighting on the pole and then settling 

 to the feast. This bird had great strength of wing. It was said to travel at the 

 rate of a mile a minute and it required a good marksman to stop them." 



Following him closely in this recital of incidents, now extinct, my venerable 

 kinsman, Nicholas Hallock, of Ulster county, New York, a lusty fox hunter now 

 of 84 years of age, called my attention the other day, while we lunched together, 

 to the sport he had among the wild passenger pigeons in the state of New York 

 in the 40's, and I claimed to have had some gun practice at the same time ; for 

 while I was fitting for Yale College at Hart's Classical School in Farmington, 

 Conn., the principal kept my percussion cap gun in his study for occasional use 

 on outings and holidays. I was the only scholar who had the privilege, and I 

 frequently brought in a bag of pigeons, partridges and quail, which I was obliged 

 to wade for by fording the canal up to my armpits ; and when the meadows were 

 flooded in the spring old miller Holt's son and I shot muskrats galore from a 

 pungy skiff. Thousands of the wild pigeons were shot constantly at the trap- 

 shooting conventions of sportsmen from that mid-century date up to the 80's, or 

 thereabouts. In those far back 40's the birds were carried in baskets for long 

 distances on canal boats towed by six horses trotting against railroad time, which 

 ran not much faster then. They were so roughly huddled together that they so 

 seriously suffered from long confinement that twenty per cent of them died, and 

 when the survivors were turned loose at the shooting line they were too tired to 

 take wing, and so the starters would throw a baseball at them to make them 

 rise. Such cruelty was insufferable among game and humanity and hosts of 

 pigeons took flight for the West, making Wisconsin their chief nesting place and 

 home. I remember taking a trip on one of these primeval canal boats on the 

 Erie, which was fitted up comfortably with stateiooms for emigrants moving west. 



My cousin, Nicholas, resided in Queens county, Long Island, when the 

 Hempstead Plains were crowded with "fur, fin and feathers." The scrub oaks 

 afforded cover for deer, quail and foxes. Even today the midland woods and 

 swamps are almost an undisturbed preserve for forty miles from North Islip to 

 Riverhead, where I have hunted quail with the Wagstaff boys not far from 

 Babylon, sixty years ago, on their father's demesne. Both of the now old gentle- 

 men are taking active lead of the New York Game and Fish Protection, and 

 ex-Senator Alfred is its president. The South Side Club, with the far-famed 

 actor, J. K. Hackett, president, was a favorite resort in the 60's, when John 

 Stellenwerf was chef there before he took charge at Blooming Grove Park in the 

 70's. Aaron Vail ran a high-class anglers' club at Nort Islip, near where the 

 deer, foxes and rabbits took convenient cover. The terminus of the main railroad 

 was just beyond at Farmingdale. Across country, on the south side, Austin Roe 

 kept hotel for anglers, with his fine trout ponds at Patchogue. David Hartt held 

 forth at Good Ground, not far away, where ducks dabbled, and down at Fire 

 Island, where Sammis was landlord, I spent one Fourth of July with the Benson 

 boys on the Great South bay, and heard Joel Headley make his address in the 

 evening. Then there were the Maitland, Minell, Massapequa and Maspeth trout 

 ponds, owned by Wm. H. Furman, Wm. Floyd Jones, Shepard Knapp, Aug. 

 Belmont and the tobacco Lorillards. all famous fishermen in those days gone, 



