THE AMERICAN SPORTSMAN'S 



JOURNAL. 



Entered According to Act of congress, in the year 1881, by the Forest and Stream Publishing company. In the omoe of the Librarian of congress, at Washington. 



NEW YORK, THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 22, 1881. 



CONTENTS. 



Editorial :— 

 Death ° f James A. Garfield ; " On the Mash ;" The Creed- 

 rooor Fall Meeting; Bye- Ways of the Northwest 143 



THE Spobtsmaji Toubibt :— 



From Vera Cru2 to Hanzanilla ; An Autumn Reverie 145 



SatcbMj History :— 



The Bail Wo Shoot ; Rabbits and Foxes as SwimmerB 146 



Game Bao and Gun :— 

 Beer Shooling in Northern Ontario! Dittmar Indicted; 

 Spots in Gun Barrels ; Ontario Shooting Notes ; Missis- 

 sippi Gaino Notes 147 



Sea asd River Fishing . — 

 Fi»h and Game in the Northwest; The Gamy Catfish; 

 logling in Northern Scotland ; Can a Fisherman be a 

 Christian? The Salmon Biver Country 149 



ftBBODWUBE :— 

 Epochs in the History of American Fishculture ; Books on 



Aquaria 150 



Tee Kennel : — 

 The Pennsylvania State Collie Trials ; GUroy Field Trials ; 

 National Field Trials . 151 



Btjtle anb Trap Shooting : — 



The Creedmoor Fall Meeting 163 



Tacbttno and Canoeing : 



Begattas, Yachting and Canoeing News 155 



Answers to Coruehpc >ndents , 157 



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FOREST AND STREAM. 



Thursday , September 22. 



Last Monday night the news was flashed forth to the 

 world that James A. Garfield was deid. The ball of the as- 

 WSBin had done ita wotk. The long agony waB over. The 

 \nll-8peot life had ended. The Nation mourned. 



A Etrong man, in the prime of life, having attained the 

 height of political preferment, surrounded by his friends and 

 Just starting with bright anticipations to rejoin his family 

 for a summer holiday, is suddenly and without warning 

 flruck down by the bullet of a contemptible assassin. Eighty 

 days follow of intense physical suffering and dire distress, 

 the viclim, with heroic, determined, marvelous endurance, 

 battling for life ; eleven w<.eks of a death-bed struggle whose 

 paiheiic surroundings are without a parallel, while without 

 Ike chamber, in mute and anxious suspense, the Nation 

 vraiches the mortal anguish of the sufferer and marks the 

 fluctuations of life and death — and then the pitiable ending ! 

 Buch is the dismal tragedy which began in Washington oathe 

 morning of that eventful secocd of July and ended at Elbe- 

 f 0n, New Jersey, at Ihirty-five minutes past ten o'clock last 

 Hobday night. 



It were needless now to dwell upon the painful details of 

 these memorable months. The anger and indignation awak- 

 ened ere the report of the wretched murderer's pistol had died 

 away, the spontaneous outburst of grief and sympathy for 

 the President, the resolute, undaunted determination of the 

 wounded man to improve "the one chance," the tender, self- 

 forgetful solicitude with which he thought and spoke of the 

 absent wife, the succeeding scenes at tbe White House, the 

 letter written by the President to his mother, his pathetic 

 appeals to be taken back to his Mentor home, the historic 

 journey to Long Branch; all the daily incidents of this pro- 

 tracted and hopeless struggle, as week was added to week ; 

 and then, after It all, the final yielding of the poor, wasted, 

 pain-racked body, and the quenching at once of Garfield's 

 life, and the Nation's anxious hope ; — all these have engaged 

 the concern of the people and formed a part of their daily 

 thought and life. 



The circumstances attending the sick chamber at Wash- 

 ington were such as to arouse the sympathy of all classes, of 

 men and women, of old and young. When that fatal shot 

 was fired last July, it was not Garfield, the President and 

 public man, alone, who fell ; it was Garfield, a husband, a 

 father, and a son. The connection of the political and domes- 

 tic phases of his life had been so strong, and their association 

 in his sickness and death were so intimately blended, as to 

 appeal with a peculiar directness and tenderness to every fam- 

 ily circle. And so in turn, when the telegraph sent its mel- 

 ancholy message over the land last Monday night, the intel- 

 ligence was received by all with the pang which comes with 

 the announcement of the death of a near and dear friend. 

 The grief, which is symbolized to-day by the funereal draw- 

 ings of black, is not the conventional mourning for the 

 demise of a public functionary ; it is the sorrow of the 

 Nation and of the households which compose the Nation, a 

 sorrow genuine and universal, akin to that of a family for 

 one of its own. 



If in this long watching at the bedside of James A. Gar- 

 field, and in this common grief at his untimely death, the 

 Nation has forgotten and put away forever the harboring of 

 sectional distrust, and the unseemly feuds of partisanship ; 

 if now, when the country is one in its grief, the threads of 

 its union be knit into a closer and stronger woof, this will 

 have been the one bright side of these eleven long weeks of 

 national distress. If, because of his sufferings, the Union is 

 to-day more a Union than it was before, then indeed not in 

 vain nor without glorious reward has been the slow martyr- 

 dom of James A. Garfield. 



A second name has been added to the list of the martyr 

 Presidents of the United States. God grant lhat it may be 

 the last 1 



It is a mistake to infer fioni what has appeared in these 

 columns respecting the would-be imitators of "Frank 

 Forester," that we are lacking in appreciation of the emi- 

 nent services which Herbert rendered to American sports- 

 manship. The influence of his writing has been much 

 greater than can readily be estimated ; and we would not 

 attempt to detract from his merits and fame. We admire 

 '• Frank Forester's" wri ings; what we do not admire is the 

 prating about " Our Frank," and the attempt to make demi- 

 gods of Ueibert and his spotting friends. To Herbert let 

 due credit be given, but in giving it let us preserve our mas- 

 culinity and talk and write as men. 



It has been suggested that the President of the United j 

 States ought to be in future provided with a body- guard. 

 No. buch a provision would be in vain, if the execration! 

 and loathing, which the Dation has heaped upon the guilty I 

 wretch now awaiting the gallows for his terrible crime, shall I 

 not suffice to deter another from winning by a like deed a like | 

 reward of infamy. 



'IN THE MASH." 



(( A HI twenty years ago, them was the times. Then they 



-"l was birds," So the old pusheTS have said to us many 

 a time as we hive been quietly rowing to or from the 

 flats. And it is likely enough that with the rail, as with 

 the other game birds, the olden days were days of plenty. 

 Whether tbis be true or not, it is safe to say that in tbe time 

 of muzzle-loaders the birds seemed more numerous than they 

 now are. When one's gun was empty, and the birds were 

 getting up by twos and ihrtes about his boat, they seemed to 

 multiply themselves wonderfully, and the impression left on 

 a man's mind was that of tens where really there were only 

 units. Rail shooting to our mind is capital sport, and the 

 practice, coming as it does just at the opening of the season, 

 is just what one needs to put him in shape for the later 

 shooting, where the birds are harder to hit, and the work, 

 from ail points of view, more difficult. The chief objection 

 to the apart is that there is not enough work about it. We 

 have seen gentlemen, faultlessly attired and wearing diamond 

 studs and kid gloves, shoved over the grounds killing their 

 birds in excellent shape, and at last stepping out of the boat 

 at the landing without a speck or a stain upon their clothing, 

 looking as fresh and neat as though they had just emerged 

 from their dressing rooms. One of our friends even had an 

 arm chair placed in the bow of his skiff, and used to shoot 

 most of the time from that, only rising to his feet when the 

 gra^s was too high for him to see over from his seat. Now, 

 while the charms of keeping dry and clean are certainly very 

 great, it is no small advantage for one to be so clad that if 

 necessary he can jump overboard and help shove the boat off . 

 a bog, or over some little strip of dry land which may separate 

 one good piece of shoving ground from another. One can 

 often save fifteen or twenty minutes by such a manoeuvre as 

 the last named, and if the birds are plenty the tide will seem 

 all too short without any such loss of lime. 



The methods employed in rail shooting have already been 

 alluded to and are well known. The birds are easily killed 

 and furnish most delicate morsels for the table. They fly 

 straight and slow, and are excellent birds for the beginner to 

 practice on, although a too long extended course of rail shoot- 

 ing has, to our mind, a tendency to develop a pottering 

 shot. Therefore let tbe tyro begin on rail September 1, and, 

 after practicing at them for two or three weeks, look up the 

 few English snipe that will by that time have made their ap- 

 pearat ce. The woodcock and ruffed grouse he can essay as 

 soon as the law is off, and the quail will be about right in 

 November. By commencing with the rail and snipe he 

 has the advantage of shooting at first in the open, and thus 

 learns, much more readily than he otherwise would, where 

 to hold on his birds. An autumn's practice, thus begun, 

 ought to enable him to get a pretty good idea of how to 

 shoot in the proper way. 



It is astonishing, when we consider how many of them are 

 killed each season, how little is known of the habits of our 

 rail. The old idea that they spent the winter lying torpid in 

 the mud at the bottom of likes and strtams is no longer 

 held, it is true, but still, very few people know much about 

 the way in whicb they pass their lives. This results natu- 

 rally enough from the places which they inhabit, which are 

 never visited by the sportsman, excepting during the shoot- 

 ing season. Then, too, the rail do not like to fly if they can 

 escape by running. They are swift of foot, and, where the 

 grass is very thick, can run through it faster than a boat can 

 be shoved. Often they will not fly until the boat is almost 

 on them, and we have seen uninjured birds, too tame to fly, 

 killed by a blow from ihe pusher's pole. All old rail shoot- 

 ers know how difficult it iB to retrieve cripples. They will 

 dive, swim under waer, and cling to Ihe bottom, but above 

 all they will hide. When tbe grass is thick, the ta3k of find- 

 ing a wounded bird is almost a hopeless one. This fact 

 often gives the pusher who has not carefully marked down 

 his bird an excuse; and if, after searching for it for a while 

 he cannot find it, he is likely to say, "You didn't kill that 

 one— he was only wingbroke." 



We have all of us been witnesses of the ambition which 

 the pusher exhibits to have his man show the biggest count 

 when the boats come in after tbe shooting is over. It ia curi- 

 ous to see how soon the propelling power of the boat be- 

 comes weakened, if the man in the bow cannot hit his birds. 

 The boat goes along slowly and listlessly, and the shover has 



