162 



FOREST AND STREAM. 



[Sept. 28, 1883. 



MATOII AFTER THOUGHTS. 

 TTHE British team are now homeward bound laden with 

 -* victory and tin- good wishes of their recent antagonists. 

 Nobody finds fault with their work, for they won by an] te- 

 nor marksmanship, and because for yearn past they have 

 been working intelligently and diligently at the very prob- 

 lem in shunting of which the late match wus an exemplifica- 

 tion. In another column will be found somj opinions upon 

 che match from observer^ and erilics. Some of the conclu- 

 sions reached may be open to contradictions, since they 

 u err draw n From insufficient or erroneous data, bul there is 

 D general agreement that the American team were beaten 

 because they were not property armed for the match. 

 Tran* form the rifles and in all probability the result would 

 biive been a victory for the now defeated team. It was in 

 large measure a success of rifle and not of men- 

 Sir Henry llalford, in his speech before the officers and 

 guests of the Thirteenth Regiment, in the dinner given till 

 teams at Manhattan Beacti, on Tuesday- September 19, hil 

 the key-note of explanation when lie «aid that, while it 

 would not become the American shooters to lay the blame 

 on the Titles, since they would at the same timeGXpose them- 

 selves bo the charge of being poor workmen quarreliug with 

 their tools, yet he could frat kly tell them that the reason 

 for their defeat was to be found m ih (direction. Hi 

 rightly said that it was nonsense to suppose that as good 

 men could not be chosen from our National Guard as wen 

 to he selected from among the Volunteer force abroad. Ex 

 perience counted for .something, and other things being at 

 all equal would decide a match, but the most experience! 

 knftrksm.BD in the world cannot undertake to manage the 

 vagaries of a rifle which, being leaded in the barrel, can- 

 not he relied upon to place two consecutive shots anywhere 

 near the same point on the target 



The visit of the British team has been on the whole a ven 

 enjoyable one. They have suffered uo mishap, have had n< 

 sickness, and after the long run of American victories with 

 the rifle they seem to have turned the tide iu favor of th< 

 British arms. The reception given the team by the officer' 

 of the Seventh Regiment, on the evening of Saturday, tlu 

 16th inst., was a very pleasant affair and enabled the visitor 

 to gain an idea or what may be done in the line of building 

 magnificent armories for these associations of civilians undei 

 military regime. Sir Henry and his team member) 

 could not but note that there is a plenty of young and 

 enthusinstic men in the rants of the Guard and that thej 

 are not likely to sit down under defeat for any length oi 

 time. 



With Monday the 18th came a run up the river to West 

 Point, and this great school for officers of the. United States 

 Array was inspected by the men who possess supereminent 

 ability in at least one duty of a soldier— that of hitting what 

 is aimed at. Of course the metropolis is not properly visited 

 in summer without a trip to Coney Island, and by the cour- 

 tesy of the officers of the Thirteenth Regiment the British 

 team was enabled to have a glimpse of Manhattan Beach. 

 To be sure it was one of the waning days, but the. peopli 

 turned out in a great multitude, and there was a popular as 

 well as a, merely military welcome to the cousins from ovei 

 the water. On Monday nigh' last the New York Rifle Club 

 took the Britislers in hand and showed them how pleasantly 

 marksmanship and' merrymaking maybe blended; and while 

 the Englishmen were familiar with balls and bullets of all 

 sorts, the New Yorkers "balled them off" in a way which 

 made the British ciown swell with the morning light, and 

 would have made a rifle match on that morrow a great sky- 

 s raping affair 



There was a good "send off"' at the departure of the team 

 in the characteristic American way, and many a hearty 

 promise that the honors so well won by the Britishers were 

 not to be kept by them, without a vigorous show of battlt 

 on the part of the Americans. Our guests go home fully 

 aware that they will have need of their best men to meet 

 the team which will go over in June next, for unless the 

 officers of our National Rifle Association display more Ti«ui 

 their usual ability in how not-to-do-it, (here should be no 

 difficulty iu sending over a properly disciplined and par- 

 ticularly a properly armed team, 



The M'anhaden Question.— In regard to the question of 

 the scarcity of menhaden and the influence of the continued 

 capture of these fl-sh wegivethe following, as a contribu- 

 tion to the literature of this subject. For some weeks past Mr. 

 E. G. Blackford, of Fulton Market, has been shipping men- 

 haden to the many fishing clubs which use that fish for bail 

 for strip. -d bjss. He has sent from twenty to forty barrels 

 par weak to club, as far Eut as M i rial's Vineyard, a thing 

 which is very unusual. All along the. coast, to the oast of 

 New York, are clubs of wealthy gentlc-mcr. who fish frr the 

 striped bass, or roi-ktish, as it, is called south of New York. 

 and these club< have heretofore obtained their bait Heal- 

 th eir fishing grounds, in.tnd of sealing to market for it. 

 No better evidence of the scarcity of the msnhaden on the 

 Mtssrchj32ttscoaiti3n33:l-'i. Whethsritis safe to draw 

 the- conclusion that the factories are to blame for it is some- 

 thing we do not care to say, at present. 



Notwithstanding that the Fokest and Stream has 

 been permanently enlarged to twenty-eight pages, the sub- 

 scription price remains the same as before. 



ADIRONDACK SUEVEV SOTES. 



XI.— Till: ADtltONDACKS OF MURRAY. 



r pHE marvelous Adirondack's of which we have all read in 

 * "Adventures in the Wilderness," are indeed a fairy 

 land— a laud which is at once alpine in character, aud one 

 where without paths or other means nf travel save by boat 

 and cany, the most delicate ladies and fragile invalids may 

 venture with full faith that in a few days they will rival the 

 guides in appetite, and in as many weeks will exceed them in 

 strength, in that land the school girl, throwing aside her 

 chewing-gum and substituting trout for her former lunch of 

 slab' pencils, and venison for pickles, returns to her home a 

 perfect Di Vernon. ' 



In Murray's Adirondacks the poor consumptive, who has 

 but four cubic inches of lung left to oxygenate his enfeebled 

 blood, arrives on a stretcher, and is carried into the woods 

 more dead than alive, aud after breathing nature's extract of 

 spruce, balsam, hemlock and pine for twenty-four hours, 

 arises, burns the litter be was carried on, and declares that 

 he f.els a new ltiug sprouting at the lower end of his wind- 

 pipe. At the end of a month his yell delivered from the top 

 of Owl's Head is heard iu Plattsburg, eighty miles as the crow 

 flics; On his return to New York he finds his new lungs 

 so much better than the old ones of those, who have not 

 visited "Murray land" that he secures an engagement in the 

 Bowery to shout the (banns of the fat woman, the beautiful 

 Circassian girl, and the big snakes. It is a fact that if you 

 piestion one of the gentlemen engaged in the last-named 

 > (upation, and who are vulgarly termed "side-show 

 Blowers," you will find that he was formerly a victim of con- 

 lUmptloil, who has oeett restored by the advice of Mr. 

 Murray, and is now living on the labors of a new pair of 

 hand-sewed wateiaud whisky-proof lungs, that are made of 

 the hear damasciis twist, clinker-built aud copper-fastened, 

 •ix-strip bamboo. »emi-kammerless. aud warranted a yard 

 .vide and all wool. The man was the sou of poor but wealthy 

 parents, and after reading Murray he pined for the pines and 

 bawled for the balsams and never spruced up until among 

 the spruces and hemmed by the hemlocks, and free to roam 

 in the aroma of Mr. Murray's woods. He left his track on 

 Brown's tract by reluctant consent of his parents who feared 

 that he could not Bl aud the Raquctte. He went. This was 

 early in June, and the guide rolled the invalid in his liver- 

 pad and placed him iu his gun case. But the healing proper- 

 tics of the piues healed up his lungsandgrew some new ones 

 in a few hours, when he crawled out of the gun case and 

 took on so much fat that he can nevei get hack to its protect- 

 ing tube. Another Adirondack convalescent is a cannon- 

 ball tosser in a circus, and has married the iat woman, and 

 daily sees his athletic progeny tumbling in the sawdust of 

 the arena while he gathers iu more shekels from the combined 

 ittraclious than the manager does. (See Murray's book, 

 page f-1.) This. 1 am aware, is an extreme case, and, as 

 such may seem exaggerated ; but it is not. 



Iu Murray laud "the lumberman has never been. No axe 

 has sounded along its mountain sides, nor echoed across its 

 peaceful waters." (Page 1?"). Why, no; those stumps that 

 you aee are all the work of beavers. To be sure, it does look 

 like the work of an a.\c, but then you know the beavershave 

 learned how to take a tree down and not leave it filled with 

 tooth marks as they did a century ago. Thai second growth 

 of while poplar, birch and other deciduous wood, which fol- 

 lows the clearing off of the evergreens in so many places, 

 has just sprung up to give variety to the forest, and the 

 lamming of the lakes is merely to give water to the canals 

 and not to drive timber down, and those tracts of land that 

 the lumbermen have 'nought of the State for five cents an 

 acre will never be cut oft"; they only bought them to look at, 



Here I must have dozed, for I heard a voice which said: 

 "L'Adirondaque d' M. Murray is for oue man who is blase, 

 otic very fine place where he find the refreshment without 

 the fatigue of the tramp, as he so truly tell us in his most 

 excellent book (page 51.) Here one is front & front a dame 

 Nature, and can be so faineant, so idle as he may please. 

 Here the divertissement of the hunt aud the fish is all per- 

 formed from the boat which your valet he carry on his back 

 over the • ortage. The most delicate lady do uoi i at< b the 

 cold in 1'Adirondaque, for it is one impossibility where the 

 lampness and the miasma come not. Fatigue is unkaown, 

 and one enfaut of five summers can put forth all the exer- 

 cises which oue needs in le grand wilderness." 



"Die Adirondacke des Herrn Murray haben in dem monat 

 Juui eiu little black fly, aber cr ist nieht as the mosquito so 

 Dad, as you may on page 55 leain. The men who have in 

 the newspapers of this insect written have the black fly 

 much exaggerated, ttnd you will find that Herr Murray ha 

 of him a good and a truthful account given, unci he so truly 

 says that the bite, not severe is nor is it ordinarily poisonous, 

 obgleich there may exceptions be. It is of the insect family 

 one of the most harmless and least vexatious, und ist ei 

 monster which in the feverish imaginations of men exists 

 only. Die stories von die heirs ist ridiculous, also, animals 

 that more timid are and harmless exist not, und when the 

 bear naeh your camp come, a stick oder a piece of hark von 

 die tree will scatter them so like the cats which on the back 

 shed come. All what bad is, ist sehr ubertrieben by die 

 newspaper fellows. In die Adirondacke can man who no 

 experience has, und who all his muscle gains when he 

 pounds on his pulpit, take himself in his boat down some 

 rapids where his guides who much in the woods are dare 

 not follow." 



'In la Italia we have no so fine wildernessa as iu la Ad- 

 irondaka. I comtue from la city, where I keepa one fine 

 standa for do pea-nuta. Iu de first tima, a prima vista, 1 

 thinka so granda, sofine, but denewbrooma, you known., he 

 vecp so clean, as we say, 'di novelle tutto par hello,' but I 

 lika much. Here can one see so granda sights, one younga 

 girl she come in canoe with light at night, and John aud me 

 sec she was one espirita, John call ghosta. 1 was so scars 

 at first, but we ehas -a her, and when I catch her drcssa 1 

 found nothing but empty air. I tell John she is 'dolcc 

 cosc a vedere, e dolciinganui,' or somethings sO sweet to ace 1 ! 

 and some sweet deceptions, I wus so much impressed with-a 

 her vision that it is with much grief, con dolore, that I go 

 hack-a to the city, where the small boy he ask-a me, Say. 

 mister, how mucha you-a sella de banan?' But if you uo 

 believe-a him. ask-a John." 



"Begorra, av it's fun you want you should g'up in the 

 Adirondacks. You should have seen me an' Martin take 

 turns holdin' av a deer by the leg an' he the tail. It was a 

 dark, forgy night, d'ye see, an' after I shot the spalpeen — 

 the deer, not Martin— he lay still till I kem and then, bad 

 cess to him, he strived to get, on his legs again, and I tuk a 

 giip on his hind leg an' hilt wid all the grip that t had willed 

 to me be ray ancestors, the O'Caseys, who were famous ill 

 Tipperary for grip. There's Lar^y O'Casey, now, Aldher- 

 man in the Ninety -siventh Ward in New York, has a grip on 

 the b'yes, who all make their headquarters in his saloon, aud 

 ivery man av them is good for a, dozen votes apiece, and sd 

 Larry has a powerful grip on the Boord av Aldhermcn, d'ye 

 see? But I forget the. deer. He kicked until I thought I 

 .'as in bed with a man who had the delirious triangles, aud 

 ras a-kickin' the Clothes ell Ml me, until 1 was forced to let 

 ;o. when Martin O'Flaheny grabbed the creature be the 

 tail. 'Hold on, Martin.' says 1, 'a tail holt is a good holt, 

 av it don't pull loose.' 'Phat's that?' says he. 'Spit on 

 your hands, Martin.' says I. 'Go to t'.:c divil,' says he. 

 'Go there yourself,' says I, an' wi' that the buck gave a lep, 

 an' Martin kem down on his buck, crying 'Och! murther! 

 me eye is out an' the hole slopped up wid mud,' and thai 

 ■as the last 1 heard av the buck till we found him dead, 

 r ith his head in the marsh, where it had run be rason av 

 his bein' overbalanced when his tail pulled out. ' " 



Here 1 awoke and found the book had chopped from my 

 hand and I had been dreaming. At least this is what I ask 

 those who read this to believe, whether I do or not. 11 you 

 don't believe it. ask John. 



One impression remains, in his chapter, "When to Visit 

 the Adirondacks," Mr. Murray says: "July is the best month 

 for jack or night shooting." I have been over the ground of 

 night shooting, and have no more to say of it, but I would 

 like to have Dodge or some other game protector catch him 

 shooting deer in July. Now, having gone over Murray's 

 Adirondacks, I will have to touch upon the idea that some 

 others •ntertain of that region. F. M. 



the gportertjun ^ouri^L 



FAMILIAR LETTERS. 



II. — ANO't'HEU OLD ADAGE. 



IN a former "Familiar Letter," the old adage thai "A 

 work and uo play makes Jack a dull boy," formed th 

 trellis over which we'trained our remarks, which blossomed 

 with truth and good counsel. 



In this thirsty, sticky, dogday weather, we are thinking, 

 dear Forest and Stkeam, of the many "slips" which many 

 have found " 'twixt the cup and the lip" during the summer 

 now pa t. 



There are "slips" moral, "slips" spiritual, slip-ups and 

 slip-downs, but, the prime "slip," which we have in mind, is 

 the "slip" physical, which may possibly drag in its train the 

 whole catalogue of "slips'' in general. 



Imagine with me a royal fellow, who, from ambition or 

 necessity, is devoting himself, jody and soul, day and night, 

 to his lii'e work, one who finds in his daily work the great- 

 est pleasure, for it is possible to combine the most serious 

 and sustained effort with the liveliest satisfaction, and such 

 combination is most always the winning factor in success. 



We can easily conjure up such an one, can we not? and 

 feel like enrolling our royal selves in such a noble army of 

 martyrs. 



The price of such devotion is wear and tear, however, and 

 unless we take heed, we are liable to make a fearful "slip" 

 just here. The thirsty, needy, ambitious "lip" craves the. 

 "cup" of success. Shall such a "slip" dash it to the ground?" 



Our imaginary worker cries "no," and seeing the need of 

 rest and recuperation, decides to secure it in his little "vaca- i 

 tion" that he may return to his woik "like a giant re-' 

 freshed." 



Do you not see by this time, my dear journal, that my 

 mind "is dwelling "upon the many ridiculous and absurd 

 "slips" made just at this point? Without a "slip'' here, one 

 may quaff at 'this cup and drink to the full to pleasure and 

 profit. But a "slip" made, and as with Tantalus, the rag- 

 ing thirst is unquelled, audit is "all up" " 'twixt the cup 

 and the lip." 



How to spend a vacation free from the "slip" of disap- 

 pointing results is to some a hidden secret. Because at the 

 outset, drawn within the maelstrom of some fashionable rev 

 sort, where conventionality hampers and frets, or where con- 

 tinued long hours and a really superheated life consume, the 

 "slip" is made at once. One easily trips over the equally 

 dangerous mistake of casting lot, for a while, in some smaller 

 community at less expense, but where the dangers of surface 

 drainage and kindred evils make the "slip" a costly one. 



We want you to join us, in fancy, dear Forest and Stream: 

 (for you are good company and we like your society), and see 

 if you cannot give our imaginary hero a few hints whii hmay 

 open his eyes, while we draw a pen picture of a few days of 

 our "vacation" this summer, We are eager to ask this, be- 



