April B 



FOREST AND STREAM. 



191 



Notes.— We made mention sometime ago of the inter- 

 ment of a favorite flog in the owner's private lot in 

 Greenwood Cemetery,;a proceeding which attracted some 

 attention at the time and much unfavorable criticism. 

 So many written and verbal remonstrances were made 

 to the trustees, and so much intensity of feeling was 

 manifested on the subject, that hereafter the interment 

 of any brute animal in the cemetery will be prohibited. 

 This is altogether sensible ; the holiest and most solemn 

 of all human experiences should not be parodied by sen- 

 timentalists. 



A most seasonable publication is the "Traveler's Offi- 

 cial Guide'' map. which is furnished as a supplement 

 to the standard hand-book, now put forth by the Na- 

 tional Railway Publication Company, -16 Bond street, 

 New Yoik, This map shows the railway connections of 

 the whole country so clearly that one may plan out his 

 route with a moment's glance. We have had the "Offi- 

 cial Guide" in our office for years, use it constantly, and 

 have never yet found its information erroneous. "We 

 turn to it as often as to the City Directory, and always 

 find what we arc looking for. 



Prof. Tarleton H. Bean, of the United States Pish Com- 

 mission, will go to Alaska next month, charged with an 

 investigation into the character and value of the cod fish- 

 eries of that ooast. This mission is undertaken at the 

 instance of Prof. Baird, who thus proposes to determine 

 the relative values of the Alaska fisheries, as compared 

 with those of Newfoundland and Labrador. 



Thomas Bell, the English naturalist, who was the au- 

 thor of numerous works, among them the "History of 

 British Quadrupeds" and "British Reptiles," has justdietj; 

 at the ripe age of eighty-seven. Mr. Bell's home for 

 some years had been at Selborne, and in the very cot- 

 tage occupied by Gilbert White. Mr. Bell took great de- 

 light in making himself familiar with the haunts of the 

 kindly old historian of Selborne, and was never happier 

 than when pointing out to appreciative friends the 

 grounds— preserved so far as practicable— just as White 

 had left them. 



"Jacobstaff'a" admirable description of decoy goose 

 shooting, published last week, is one of the most graphic 

 and intelligible papers on the subject in print. Even 

 should a gunner return luckless and duckless from a trip 

 to Good Ground, he would be more than repaid by the 

 study of the tame geese, which display a cunning and 

 duplicity worthy of those human creatures known among 

 men as "stool pigeons." 



BARBUDA. 



AN IMMENSE GAME PRESERVE. 



St. Thomas, W. I., .Marc/i, 1880. 



I HAVE taken the little island of Barbuda, in latitude 

 17 deg. 30 min., for description, and my readers must 

 imagine themselves transported backward some two 

 years to the time of a former trip in the month of Au- 

 gust, 1877. 



This island is one of the northern Caribbees. Isolated 

 as it is, and having no communication with the world 

 save by small sailing vessels! it is one of the most attrac- 

 tive spots to a sportsman in the West Indies. Its fame 

 is world-wide, and hardly a British man-of-war has vis- 

 ited the Lesser Antilles without making up a party from 

 its officers for a week's sport at Barbuda. Like those 

 .other Enghsh islands so closely resembling it in name 

 — Bermuda and Barbadoes— Barbuda is of coral formation, 

 and possesses the barrier of reefs of the second, but not 

 the opeu bays of the first. 



At the river landing where you disembark i3 a martello 

 tower of solid masonry — a relic, it is supposed, of Spanish 

 occupation centuries ago. A flag is hoisted upon this 

 tower when a vessel arrives, and you await the arrival 

 of horses from the village, three miles from the landing. 

 They come galloping down the lane in charge of a dare- 

 devil darkey, and you mount and ride up to the house 

 through a wilderness of sea-grape and beach-plum, and 

 between great fields, in which graze herds of horses and 

 cattle. Wild pigeons flutter up from the scrub, and wild 

 guinea fowl fly across the fields, causing one to indulge 

 in pleasant anticipations of sport on the morrow. At 

 the house you are ushered into a hall so profusely 

 adorned with guns, rifles and hunters' equipments that 

 you are prepared to receive the warm welcome extended 

 by the burly Yorkshireman, Mr. Hopkins, and later that 

 of his copartner, Mr. Cowly, the clergyman. The house 

 overlooks a vast lagoon, called "Flamingo Flash," on 

 the shores of which are the battleniented ruins of the 

 dwellings of the first proprietors, having such a Spanish, 

 or Moorish aspect, as to suggest the idea that there were 

 dwellers here before the English occupation. Circular 

 towers flank the forlress-like structure, pierced, like the 

 latter, with loop-holes. Notwithstanding, it may have 

 been built by the good Col. Codrington, upon whom the 

 island was bestowed in 1680, and who was later the 

 founder of a college in Barbadoes. For many generations 

 this island remained in the Codrington family (it has 

 lately been returned to the Crown) ; and that they did 



the best they could to develop its resources, and spent vast, 

 sums of money in their endeavors to make it a fit place 

 of retreat for an English hohlemau, is abundantly evi- 

 dent. There are fields a mile square, surrounded by solid 

 walls so high that even a deer Cannot jump them, with 

 gate-posts of masonry, square and massive, Several of 

 those fields, once well cultivated and yielding good crops 

 of corn and cotton, are now abandoned to the goats and 

 guinea fowl. Only in the days of slavery, when labor 

 was cheap and abundant and crops remunerative, could 

 even a wealthy family like the Codringtons build in this 

 sequestered island such durable inclosures. There are 

 living evidences of the thrift and foresight of the early 

 Codringtons in the multitudes of cattle, horses and deer 

 that roam in the vast fields and browse in the scrubby 

 tracts. Barbuda is noted for the excellence of its horses, 

 many of which are sold in the neighboring islands. It 

 is related that the original stock was from a noble strain 

 of blood, that the great-grandsire of the hundreds that 

 now roam these fields was a pure Arab stallion. This 

 may bo well believed after an examination of some of 

 the horses and colts here to-day, for though smaller than 

 the ideal horse of the North — owing to the mixture of 

 native blood — they are perfect in shape and full of fire 

 and energy. The deer that may now be numbered b}- 

 thousands doubtless originated from fallow deer im- 

 ported from England rather than from the Mexican vari- 

 ety. This I judge to be their origin from those that I 

 examined, shot while I was there, and from a collection 

 of antlers and skulls sent by me to Washington. From 

 the original stock they have multiplied until they cover 

 the island. 



Not the least attractive, to a sportsman, are the wild 

 guinea fowl, which, escaping from captivity at an early 

 period, have increased so that they now roam the island 

 in large flocks, and undoubtedly are much more numer- 

 ous than the deer. With their freedom they have re- 

 gained that wildness peculiar to them in their native 

 African jungles, and more wary birds, keener of sight 

 and ear, have never been hunted. 



The island, though small, is so well covered with thick 

 scrub that it is difficult to hunt through it, and hence 

 every animal that has been introduced for domestic pur- 

 poses has run wild, and there are, besides deer and guinea 

 fowl, wild goats, sheep and hogs. These, with the large 

 flocks of plover, curlew and duck that visit the island in 

 the winter season, and the great number of doves and 

 pigeons resident throughout the year, added to the great 

 variety of fish to be caught in the lagoon, make life here 

 a lm ost to realize the sportsman's dream of delight; — the 

 elysium of his happy hunting ground. The two good 

 Britons holding the lease of this island are worthy rep- 

 resentatives of their country. Mr. Hopkins had passed 

 several years stock-farming in Australia, and was well 

 calculated to conduct successfully an enterprise like this, 

 aud make remunerative his little kingdom, with its area 

 of seventy-five square miles and nearly a thousand sub- 

 jects. There are but three white men resident on the 

 island, though there are about eight hundred colored 

 and black inhabitants, who gain a livelihood by culti- 

 vating the fields of the proprietors, fishing and wrecking. 



The morning after our arrival, at daybreak, we each 

 found a little darkej' waiting at the gate to conduct us 

 to the fields. They led the way past the negro village 

 and over a wide common to the first inclosedfield, where 

 we separated, my friend taking the lane and myself the 

 wall running toward a thick wood. We had covered 

 several miles before we saw the first flock, a dozen ox- 

 more feeding in the thin grass. Noting the direction 

 they seemed to be taking, I crept carefully from bush to 

 bush, crawling close to the ground after the most ap- 

 proved style of bushwhacking ; but when I ventured to 

 raise my head they were two hundred yards away in an- 

 other direction from the one I was pursuing. They saw 

 me, too, as I arose, and were on the wing in an instant, 

 sailing over the field like meteors. Then we made a long 

 journey through abandoned fields to the woods, whore 

 were little inclosed gardens — the "grounds" of the 

 negroes — where they raised what some Americans would 

 call "garden sass." Here the style of hunting was dif- 

 ferent, and I thought I shoidd certainly avenge myself 

 with great slaughter, for I had only to keep perfectly 

 still, crawl up to a chink in the wall, and, if there were 

 any birds there, arise and fire as they got up. But I had 

 first to find the fowl (no easy matter, as they run and 

 bide like quail), and then to drop them as they arose (no 

 easy matter either, as they get up in such a hurry that 

 it is a wonder they don't leave then- feathers behind). 

 Three times did I approach three different walls, and six 

 times did I discharge my gun at the up-darting forms of 

 as many guinea fowls, but without saving even a feather. 

 In despair I looked at my gun, tho same gun with which 

 I had shot turkeys and quail, ducks and plover and snipe 

 in past years,and everything in these islands from a hum- 

 ming-bird to a wild hog, and whioh had never failed me 

 before. I sat down and looked at it. There it was, the 

 same symmetrical stock of walnut, the broad-breeched 

 barrels, twelve-bore and twenty-eight inches in length ; 

 the perfect mechanism that opened aud closed the breech 

 so tightly did not admit the escape of a particle of gas. 

 It was as good a gun as FoXj of Boston, could make me 



for my work, and I knew the fault must he in me or in 

 the birds. 1 tramped back to the house with a heavy 

 heart ; novwas I at all mollified when, meeting my friend 

 with a brace of fowl, I missed another shot at a single 

 bird which went sailing by. Not this alone, hut my 

 companion, a quick-eyed shot, dropped the same bird at 

 forty yards distance. I saw then that 1 bad htijn shoot- 

 ing behind the birds, their large size a ml velocity of flight 

 deceiving me. 



Barbuda is so nearly level, in all except the eastern por- 

 tion, that a heavy rain floods the surface at once. But 

 the water is soon absorbed into the porous lime stone i and 

 during the dry season, there being no springs nor streams, 

 there are few ponds or even moist places. In these ponds 

 the water is brackish ; but to them dock' all the birds for 

 miles about, at certain times of the day, to drink. One 

 of these shallow ponds, known as the " Bull-Hole," was 

 the favorite resort of doves and other birds, and I rode 

 out one afternoon with the proprietor to collect doves for 

 specimens and for pies. At 8 o'clock they commenced to 

 come in, and we dropped them one after another, until 

 there were forty to three guns ; and many more could 

 have been shot. 



Toward sunset, one evening, Mr. Hopkins ordered 

 horses, and rode out with me into the scrub to watch the 

 guinea fowl as they went to roost. For an hour before 

 dark they commence to come in from all directions, con- 

 centrating in the copses of high trees) and even roosting 

 in single trees in the open fields. They keep up an incest 

 sant calling to one another, and one might think it the 

 easiest thing in tho world to pot any number of them at 

 that time. But let it be remembered that they keep 

 their ears open as well as their mouths ; and the wider 

 they stretch the latter, the more they open the former. 

 With a well-trained dog, they are as easy to capture as 

 the ruffed grouse, for they are at once driven to tree; 

 and if the dog pursues and barks continuously at the foot 

 of the tree, they give him their whole attention, The 

 hunter has only to creep within shot and single out the 

 lowest one of the flock and fire. It is said that he can 

 sometimes secure half a flock in this manner, as it is re- 

 lated ruffed and spruce grouse have been obtained before 

 the balance take the alarm. He must, however, be se- 

 curely hidden, as, though their ears are sharp, they de- 

 pend mostly upon their eyes. The guinea fowl had begun 

 to assemble, but so wary were they that they would inva- 

 riably discover us and dash out on the opposite sides of the 

 trees before we could obtain a shot. At last, long after 

 the sun was gone, I heard one calling. Carefully work- 

 ing my way through the dense thicket I approached him. 

 There he sat, with his small head and neck outstretched, 

 some fifty yards away. 1 could get no nearer ; the re- 

 membrance of the morning's defeat and the afternoon's 

 indignities could not urge me through that thick, thorny 

 scrub with sufficient caution to escape his sharp eyes and 

 ears. So I watched a chance, when his head showed 

 against the sky (though his dark body could not be dis- 

 tinguished from the leaves), and fired. I did, brother 

 sportsmen ; I potted that bird in the most contemptible 

 manner. And you would have done the same, had you 

 spent two thirds of a hot day in August (a West India 

 August day, at that) in chasing his brethren over sooroh- 

 mg fields, and wasting your powder and adjectives in 

 firing two feet behind every one you put up. There was 

 nothing but exultation in my heart as I picked up that 

 bird at the foot of the tree, and worked my way back to 

 my horse. 



Soon it was late in the evening, and the brilliant moon 

 cast black shadows beneath the trees in the field. All 

 was silent and hushed. Suddenly there burst out of a tree 

 near by a roaring, rushing body, which made off across 

 the pasture with confused cries. It was a flock of guinea 

 fowl. My companion, more used to their tactics than 

 myself, dropped one of their number before they had got 

 out of range. We approached the next clump of trees 

 cautiously. I even dismounted and carefully examined 

 every limb, the bright light from the moon rendering 

 everything visible, so that we could see, we thought. 

 every knot on tho branches. Like a whirlwind from the 

 ocean, there came out of that free a flock of screaming, 

 cackling fowl, a score or more, which appeared as though 

 evoked by a conjurer's wand from space. That they 

 were in reality veritable birds of flesh aud blood, and not 

 shadowy forms, was quickly proved by two hurried shots, 

 which fully established a beloved gun in favor again. 

 Shooting at ghosts is about as satisfactory as guinea-fowl 

 shooting by moonlight, until you have learned that, to 

 get the last one of a gang of a dozen, you most throw up 

 at tho foremost, or, to drop a single one, you must sight 

 about three feet ahead of him, On the table, they proved 

 toothsome and tender ; and after one initiation the board 

 was kept well supplied. They aro rapid runners, restless 

 and uneasy in feeding, and some fields would be deserted 

 in the afternoon that in the morning contained several 

 flocks. "Deyis so roam," said my sable friend— "Dey 

 is so roam ; dey is bad to fine." 



At -t o'clock, in the darkness of a morning in Au- 

 gust, I was awakened by a rap at my door, and knew 

 perfectly well that said rap proceeded from the black 

 deerslayer, Wilham Jack, Hastily dressing and going 

 into outer air, I saw, by the light of the stars, that 



