36 AX ANGLER'S REMINISCENCES. 



permits. The woods, grass, lakes, marshes, sloughs and streams are "full of it." 

 Having gone through all of the states in my full-fledged maturity with the express 

 purpose to spy out the land, every facility was afforded by the railroad and steam- 

 boat companies ; but none of them has won the crown and glory of the grand old 

 Pennsylvania Central, the great railway artery and vertebral spinebone of the 

 United States, whose magnate now dwells installed in marble halls magnificent 

 beyond all comparisons. Finger posts at the main station in the great metropolis 

 all point southward. When Presidents Scott and Boyd catered to my travels in 

 the 70's, I shifted from north to south by seasons. At the present date there is a 

 direct tendency toward the Rio Grande for gun shooters of all sorts. It is a great 

 range for road runners, chacalaeas and blue quail, to say nothing of jack rabbits 

 and burros. From El Paso to Matamoras, both sides of the river are blent with 

 strange characteristics of mixed civilizations which have hitherto been little .written 

 c'bout till now, when F. I. Madero, a well-known resident of the Mexican quarter 

 in San Antonio (called Santone), Texas, has taken the lead of ambitious followers 

 after fame. I know the country well! Mestizos sell frijoles (free holders) and 

 tamales in the plazas, and the whole country is everywhere slashed and creased 

 with wet weather gullies, arroyos and barrancas. It is a rough region to chase 

 foxes, rabbits and coyotes, and jump the washouts with bronchos. Even running 

 hounds will turn somersaults by mistake. 



My post-bellum intercourse with the South began in the fall of 1868. Woods 

 and swamps, which are impenetrable at other seasons, are available then to sports- 

 men and prospectors. I was fain to renew my acquaintances with survivors of 

 the war. Shooting birds and animals are preferable to killing recruits. On my 

 arrival at Savannah I picked up Dr. B. P. Myers, in charge of the hospital, and 

 started for Green Island with Dave Adams and George and Sam Stiles to run 

 wild cattle on the deserted plantations for meat and sport. Years afterwards 

 Myers became post-surgeon at Honolulu, H. I., and now lives in retirement at 

 Claremont, California. He gets good pastime at Santa Barbara, and further 

 south, at National City, I have a bungalow of my own. Within a quarter of a 

 mile I can pick up metals where the army camp stood during our Mexican War 

 and each soldier pounded his own corn for daily rations. But my reminiscences 

 do not touch that section where I was or recently arrived. It was a frequent 

 trip of mine to voyage the Chesapeake and Albermale Canal and Dismal Swamp 

 on Capt. Tom South gate's weekly steamboat when the yellow 7 jasmines hung from 

 the forest limbs which overreached the waterway, and rabbits were seen swim- 

 ing across with ears set like a sail boat. Aleck Hunter was a favorite companion 

 of mine for thirty years, and we made our first trip, by permission, to Old Pam- 

 lico Light, where ducks, swan and geese were plenty around the beaches and the 

 Sounds, and Roanoke Island was better. Points, and blinds were at hand all 

 around Manteo and Nag's Head, and when the tide was out swans dabbled on 

 the flats out of rifle reach, and when a shot was fired above them, masses would 

 rise like fleecy clouds above the horizon. Hunter is the most eminent of all 

 sportsmen who have studied ornithology. He has filled wonderful volumes with 

 bird shot, written a relation of four years' service in the Civil War, and put 

 in valuable service in the United States Land Office. Besides, he has given away 

 his dress coat and keeps up a lively two-step clog dance at the time of his record. 



Aleck Hunter wrote in March, 1908: "I can readily understand your giving 

 away your dress coat, and eschewing suppers. That kind of pleasure I gave up 

 when I was fifty years old. It was simply 'Ne vous ne jeu sas le Chandelle.' 



