Game Protection, Fish Culture, Natural History, Preservation of Forests, Rifle Practice, Yachting, Boatino, 



tbh Kennel, and Sports ok all Kinds 



1 



NEW YORK, THURSDAY, APRIL 26, 1877. 



Mrr Forest and Stream, 

 THE GUILELESS GUIDE. 



UNTO the mountains! aid go 

 In search of S tlmo f.mUnalis; 

 I hired a lad (the path to show), 

 A rustic free from guile or malice. 



Then well equipped with fishing gear, 



I did unto the urchin bscliou. 

 And bade him choose the way moat near. 



Said he, "I reckon." 



Onward he led. through woodland rough, 

 TiU every limb and joint were tired j 



I hinted it was rather tough. 

 Says he, " Ail-find." 



Thus, after trudging half the day, 

 I Baid, "You've misaed the tract, I know 



With vacant stare the lad did say 

 "By jinks ! that's s»." 



So gave it up and turned about! 

 "I swow I" said he. "faint where it ougbter — 

 It's petered out." 



Thus homeward we our faces set, 



He led, and muaing I did fuller. 

 "Is aught to pay?" Said he, "You btl — 



I waut a dollar." T. W. A. 



getters of ^rnvel 



Western Experiences— Among the Lakes of Southern 

 Minnesota— Wild Fowl Shooting — Western Peculiari- 

 ties of Living — Spirit Lake. 



WE arrived at. the town of Spirit Lake, in Dickensen 

 County, Iowa, situated just across the line dividing 

 that State from Minnesota, at sundown on the twentieth day 

 of October, after a beautiful drive over the rolling prairie, 

 and along the timbered shores of the numerous lakes which 

 give to the country, in the Indian dialect, its characteristic 

 name of "Minnesota," land and irater. 



In briefly noting the means of approach to this place, of 

 which I am about to narrate a few days' experience, I will 

 say that Worthington is the nearest railroad point to it, and 

 lies in the southwestern part of Minnesota, on the line of 

 the Sioux City and St. Paul Railroad. The train arrives there 

 from the south at midnight, and the traveler must pass the 

 remaining hours of darkness at the hotel. As morning 

 dawns, the broad level of a prairie town discloses itself, with 

 elevated plank walks raised along the shop fronts, and above 

 that western combination of water and clay, familiarly known 

 and long remembered as "boot-jack." 



For the benefit of the untraveled, I will say that the above 

 allusion is to the direful mud which accumulates in a 

 Western town. Those who have been West require no ex- 

 planation, and will desire that their minds bo stirred to no 

 recollection of it. The usual monotony of an outlook from 

 a Western hotel window on a morning subsequent to arrival 

 is broken, in this instance, by two broad lakes — fine, but 

 naked sheets of water, which lie, one on the east, and the 

 other on the west of the town. Between these lakes there 

 used to be a famous pass of wild fowl, hut owing to the per- 

 nicious habits of those with good Western appetites, the 

 birds no longer take in the town in their travels, but go from 

 one sheet to the other circuitously by way of the desolate 

 but less letiferous prairie. 



The sunlight shimmers over the surface of the eastern 

 lake, as if it were the first surface it had struck in its 

 distant flight from the dreary and unbroken horizon, and 

 gradually the buii climbs up over the waste of land, as at 

 sea it does over the waste of waters. All that day we 

 travelled in an open two-horse wagon, across country to 

 Spirit Lake. This was one of the earliest settlements, but 

 in the fate of towns, the magic lines of railroad iron had 

 dodged it to the distance of thirty miles. After leaving 

 Worthington, the prairie effects very soon gave way to the 

 charms of lake and timber scenery, which makes Minnesota 

 one of the most lovely and picturesque sections on the foot- 

 stool. Between, and around, and sometinieB even 

 through these wild and lonely lakes we travelled. Many a 

 time, our vehicle being of a light nature, we skirted their 

 pebbly shores, where there was no road, one set of our 

 wheels being immersed to their hubs, and thus saving our- 

 selves perhaps a considerable detour by the road. 



The day was warm, and we enjoyed life in our shirt 

 sleeves. At every bayou on (ho prairie, and at every lake, 

 my friend and I went forward, creeping either through the 



sedges, or stealing noislossly through the timber upon the 

 unsuspecting flocks of wild fowl, feeding in their native 

 solitudes. 



Besides our shot guns, which were 12 gauge, 7to 1\ lb. guns, 

 I carried a Maynard rifle, which was built under my per- 

 sonal supervision by the Chicopeo Falls Arms Co., for 

 heavy work on the plains — buffalo, elk, and Indians 

 perchance. It was J-inch calibre, 32-inch barrel, 9 

 lbs. weight, and shot 70 grains comfortably, besides having 

 wonderful accuracy if pointed right, as they say. It was a 

 matter of astonishment to me, wherever I went upon the 

 great plains, and during my experiences in the Rocky 

 Mountains, to see how clumsily the frontiersmen, whose 

 very life may be said to be in the saddle, carried their rifles 

 when on horseback. My first experience was at Fort Wallace, 

 in Kansas, and I went around among the hunters the night 

 before to gather such information as would be of value to me 

 on the morrow. I learned much about the management of 

 the fiery little broncho (Indian horse), how to tie the knot 

 by which the saddle is secured, for no buckles are used in 

 that country, where, if broken, there would be no means of 

 supplying oneself with a new one; and many other points of 

 value gathered from their large experience; but after trying 

 many ways they had of carrying their rifles, I preferred the 

 manner to which I myself had been accustomed of carrying 

 my shot-gun on horseback among the partridge and wood- 

 cock covers at home. To be sure they manage to use them 

 with great nimbleness, but their inconvenient manner of 

 carrying them, either attached to the pommel in front and 

 knocking against their shins, or else resting horizontally be- 

 fore them and in a grinding manner between them and the 

 pommel, was none the less surprising to me. My method 

 was as follows: A strong russet belt runs over the shoulder, 

 at which, part it passes through slits in^ a broader piece 

 of leather to prevent the weight from cutting the shoulder; 

 thence around under the left arm. and buckled on the 

 chest, where the buckle is convenient for loosening or 

 tightening, and where it is tightened till the strap encircles 

 the body half way from the arm- pit to the waist; at this 

 point a sliding spring snap catches the ring which moves in 

 the small steel bar along the side of the breech of the rifle, 

 and the rifle so attached, adapting itself to the figure, hangs 

 with the stock level against the back, up to the height of 

 the shoulder, while the barrel hangs vertically down behind, 

 and out of the way if not wanted, and yet in the most 

 convenient position for grasping for immediate use if 

 needed. Should one desire to rest the weight across the 

 pommel, or, grasping the barrel, to rest it over the knee, both 

 can as readily be done as by any other method. Strange 

 to say in my travels over the plains and through the Rocky 

 Mountains I have never seen the rifle carried in this man- 

 ner. And it seemed very strange to me that it 

 should be so, for in moments of trouble, -and perhaps 

 peril, the riders who carry their rifles in these clumsy ways 

 have their hands encumbered uselessly, if not disastrously. 

 Therefore, it was no longer remarkable to me that so many 

 tyros in the art of hunting on.horseback had spoken to me 

 of having found trouble. As quite a convincing proof of 

 the desirability of my method to my companions, on an early 

 occasion I allowed a fiery and comparatively unbroken horse 

 to run with me to his heart's content, and it looked very 

 much as if he were going to brin g me out on the shores of one 

 of the great oceans, and subsequently plunge and kick and 

 spring about like a skiff in the chop of the English 

 Channel; and all without comparative inconvenience to me, 

 as my rifle adjusted itself readily to every motion behind. 



Others of the party who had, on occasions, tastes of this 

 horsc-pital treatment suffered on account ctf their method, 

 not only from the blows and raps which their rifles had 

 given them in cavorting about their heads and shins in 

 their mad career, but were occasionally unhorsed, throwing 

 themselves open to the chances of having their mustang 

 turn and finish them with his heels, if it was a vicious 

 horse adventure, or of having their "checks cashed'' by the 

 prompt arrival of some fine old buffalo bull in vengeful pur- 

 sail. 



At last, toward evening, we came in sight of the little clump 

 of buildings with its white village spire — the prairio village 

 of Spirit Lake, and, like a ship at soa, our ship of the prai- 

 rie entered the harbor and drew up at the small hotel. 



We were rather taken aback by the decidedly rude appear- 

 ance of the interior of the office and of the occupants, who 

 were smokingand lounging therein. Mr. Crandall, the land- 

 lord, showed us to a small room upstairs, of about twelve 

 by six feet, in which there were two beds. Everything ap- 

 peared clean and neat, and after having the inevitable 

 feather beds removed and straw mattresses substituted, we 

 managed to be very comfortable. The table also was very 



good, Mrs. Crandall being an excellent cook, and showing 

 great attention to cooking things as we liked them best. 

 Since visits made in the West in '67-'G8 and '69, wo notice a 

 marked improvement in cuisine wherever we go. In those 

 days the bread was always poor, and the meat, although in 

 itself the best, so poorly serveel as to be quite unpalatable. 

 The bread was generally in small, hot, doughy cakes, or as 

 bad loaves, raised with saleratus, and served hot; the moat 

 cooked almost immediately after killing, the steaks being 

 pounded and mangled between patent instruments resem- 

 bling those of the Incjuisition, and after going through this 

 process, fried till they resembled the prepared scalp of some 

 departed negro. With bread and meat, the staple dishes of 

 the feast, thus set forth, there was always a lively display of 

 pickles and the most indigestible and choleratic 

 cucumbers and the like, after which first course 

 of, in every sense, pieces de resistance, came on the pies, 

 puddings and cakes of the desert. The pastry of the pies 

 always differed decidedly from Delmonico's, and led to the 

 question by one interested party as to whether "these ere 

 pies were pegged or sewed?" Warner, in his delightful 

 back-log studies, states the habitat of the pie as follows: 

 "Draw a line upon your map, beginning at Bangor, Me., 

 curving southwardly through Bellow's Falls, and thence on 

 to Omaha, and you have the isothermal limits of per- 

 petual pie." But throughout this trip — North and South — 

 west of the Mississippi, not only in the taverns, but in the 

 most remote farmhouses, we found light, excellent bread, 

 raised with yeast, and in many places meat snfficienlly 

 kept before cooking to be tender, and also not fried when 

 cooked into the coD.dition of sole-leather. It would seem 

 as if the past five years had given some abatement to the 

 rush which pervaded the then comparatively newly settled 

 country, and enabled people to think a little of the amenities 

 of life. We hope that another five years will enable a man 

 to ask for a daily morning tub without being stared 

 at as a bloated aristocrat or a pampered child of luxury, as 

 he is now in the West. One man, the landlord of a hotel, in 

 Gold Hill Camp, Colorado, who looked as if he had not taken 

 a bath since his infant baptism, expressed to me sincere pity 

 for the Eastern people, whom he said found it necessary to 

 bathe and be clean. Before closing this subject, however, 

 we must say that in certain hotels in which we have been 

 upon this trip there still exist what used to he a prevalent 

 fault in the large hotels of our Western towns, namely : ex- 

 hausting their whole force and energy in the printing of 

 an elaborate bill of fare, with innumerable dishes with in- 

 numerable French names, none of which were ever heard of 

 in French, and totally unpronounceable by the waiters, and 

 mingled in with matter-of-fact dishes, such as pork andbeims, 

 fried tripe, and pickled cabbage. These hotels also luxuri- 

 ate in the elaborate ornamentation of the table with stiffly 

 starched napkins, most grotesquely twisted up into the 

 shape of all the animals of the. ark, or of all the tombstones 

 in Mt. Auburn. There would be no objection to all this 

 except that there is no force left for the successful and ap- 

 petizing production of the dishes themselves ; they are all 

 equally'bad, equally cold, and all taste pretty nearly alike; 

 are all served on infinitessimal dishes with microscopic 

 liberality, so that if a man wanted to get the equivalent of 

 the honest eighteenpennj T dinner of a London tavern — roast 

 beef and potatoes — he must ask for roast beef for ten, which, 

 when he gets, resembles nearer cold dead man. The small 

 care dishes receive in cooking among their innumerable com- 

 panions of pots and stews of the glorious bill of fare make 

 them all equally poor. 



The town of Spirit Lake was settled before the time of 

 railroads in Minnesota, and as chance had it, it lies thirty 

 miles from them. The lakes are large ami beautiful, and the 

 surrounding country is the most beautiful that we have been 

 in in the West. The bayous on the prairies are full of wild- 

 fowl in the fall, and the prairie chicken shooting is excel- 

 lent early in the season. 



We started one morning hrightand early from the hotel in a 

 large double wagon drawn by a pair of mules, driven by the best 

 naturedof men, known from the first to Us as "Uncle John," 

 who keeps the best and most reasonable livery stable. This 

 genial character amused us throughout the trip by frequent 

 effusions of that characteristic humor peculiar to men who drive 

 a stage. He made the best of everything, and seemed to 

 take life as it came. At night, when, after having bestowed 

 merciful care upon his beasts, and he came to turn in himself, 

 finding the entire surface of the solitary mattress upon the 

 floor covered by others, he peacefully deposited his immense 

 weight upon the soft side of the pine knots of the floor, 



mildly threatening Mr. C , who was crowing over him at 



being more comfortably lodged, that he would "up and set 

 upon him"— an idea which, if carried out, would be so terri- 



