PORTER TYLER. 49 



in their boat to give to some one who will want them. In 

 the early '5o's there would be found a number who were 

 shooting for fun and saving the animals for Porter. 

 Among these were Colonel David A. Teller, James Mil- 

 ler, Reuben and Ira Wood, Harleigh Mather, Godfrey 

 Rhodes, Bill Fairchild, myself and about a dozen others. 

 The result was that Port had to hire help to skin the ani- 

 mals while he would stretch the hides. 



At this late day, with a memory hardly worth a hill of 

 beans, it is not safe to make an estimate of the slaughter 

 of muskrats during a freshet on the eastern shore of the 

 Hudson River, between Dow's Point, which is less than 

 two miles below Albany, and Castleton, which is nearly 

 ten miles from the city. I had to go to school, sure, for 

 my father knew well that only an iron hand could keep 

 me there, and he had it; but two days in the week I 

 claimed for rest and recreation. The latter I had, while 

 the former was not needed. It was poor shooting when 

 I did not pick up thirty muskrats in a day during a freshet, 

 and men have killed as high as 200 in a day. Perhaps 

 with about fifty gunners there was an average of thirty 

 musquash each, which would count up to over 10,000 in a 

 week! It seems too big a figure for eight miles on one 

 side of a river, but the flats or bottoms were from a half 

 to three-quarters of a mile wide, rich with alluvial deposit 

 from each overflow and rank with vegetation along the 

 river, the island creek and the ditches which drained the 

 bottoms into the creek ; also our sociable little mammal is 

 largely a vegetable feeder. With donations from his 

 friends, in addition to his own gun, Port Tyler one year 

 marketed over 2,000 muskrat skins, a few obtained by 

 winter trapping, but mainly shot during the freshets. Just 

 what these were worth at that time is forgotten; all were 

 not "prime" because of the shot holes, but they brought 



