318 MEN I HAVE FISHED WITH. 



bits when I first came to America, and where I once got 

 lost in the underbrush and strayed away off to the north- 

 east, where the Astoria ferry now is." Think of it! The 

 street is near the lower end of Central Park, and right in 

 the middle of the city. The late ex-President Chester 

 A. Arthur told me that he had shot woodcock where the 

 Fifth Avenue Hotel now stands, and that is only at 

 Twenty-third street. All this has nothing whatever to 

 do with my fishing with William Warren further than to 

 show what changes take place in our rapidly growing 

 country. As a historian, in a feeble way I record it. As 

 an American and a naturalist, I regret it. Emigration 

 has been encouraged to build great cities where the buf- 

 falo should still range over territories which ought to 

 have been left for Americans who will be born a century 

 hence. These sentiments prove to you that I am an 

 "old fogy," but one who believes that we should not give 

 away our great farm when we have children growing; 

 but that is "politics," and so we will go on to tell about 

 this man with whom I fished in Kansas in the year 1857. 



I was boarding with a man named Serrine, on the 

 Cottonwood, while looking up a suitable place to claim 

 a quarter-section, and Warren came there often. He 

 was from Chicago, and had a claim over on the Neosho. 



He was a big, strong fellow, about twenty-five years 

 old, with a dark, pleasant face and a habit of clipping his 

 words. A favorite way to begin a sentence was with 

 the word "Betcher," which stood in his vocabulary for 

 "I'll bet you." So one day in the spring he said to me : 



"Betcher da'sent take a day off o' land-lookin' an' go 

 shootin' buffler fish; they're just comin' up on the riffles 

 now and a-wallerin'. They're thicker 'n hair on a dog; 

 'f you never shot 'em you'll like it. What yer say?" 



My rifle had been packed in a chest and sent by 



