276 REPORT OF THE FOREST, FISH AND GAME COMMISSION. 



The deer, too, were there, and venison steak was in season all the year round. 

 There were no game laws to speak of — at least none that the sportsman 

 remembered. And the sportsman had the primeval hunger. He lived like a 

 lord, a lord that had fresh air all day, on the streams or lakes, and through 

 the night in his open camp; and his appetite was like that of a modern locomotive 

 going up grade. Trout, venison, flapjacks and maple sugar, and coffee went 

 into his cavernous stomach, and he got up steam for long tramps, and slept 

 without a bad dream. 



The sportsman had all this world to himself (save the invasions by the pot 

 fisherman of the semicivilized border settlers in other clays). And he kept it to 

 himself and a few chosen friends, for the public counted him a tramp, a vagrant, 

 rather than a sportsman. Those were the barbarous days before vacations came 

 into fashion. So, the good steady people of the State knew very little of the 

 Adirondacks, their beauty and sublimity, their healthfulness and health giving, 

 the material riches and value of the forest growths, the mines of ore, the reservoirs 

 of water in the leaf-mold soil and in the lakes — water that fed the lazy rivers of 

 the outer world in summer, and turned the wheels of many mills outside. None 

 of these goodly, steady people cared much for the rude, rough wilderness up 

 north, where wheat and corn and meadow were unknown. Legislators had no 

 incentive to make stringent laws for the protection of a region deemed worthless 

 nor executive officers to execute the few laws for the unappreciated wealth of 

 forest and waters. 



A few simple wise men, it is true — even the guileless Emerson at one time 

 and his company of like-minded philosophers — loved and sought nature here, and 

 sang the glories of the forest. But their voice sounded afar off to the common ear. 



Then came Murray and Headley with blare of trumpets and the speech of the 

 people, and dear old W. C. Prime, who put "I Go a-Fishing " into a book with 

 artistic and scholastic taste; and they severally told the story of their happenings 

 and happiness in the forest. 



The secret was out! The Adirondacks were discovered. Then came the rush 

 of the multitudes; later, the rude highways, and lastly the railroads and the 

 screech and scream of the steam whistle on rails of iron, on streams and lakes; 

 and the great hotels, with gas, electricity, dancing, card parties and all the 

 paraphernalia of a new Saratoga. Vanished then the happiest days of the 

 primitive sportsman, with his rude camp and rough clothing and his as yet guileless 

 guide. The command of the new events and new multitudes was to "move on!" 

 and he hied himself to valleys among mountain fastnesses and the little lakes 

 hidden there; or, he changed, not his skies, but his nature, put on good clothes, 



