VENEERED HUMAN NATURE. 
_I counted portions of 14 deer, large and 
small. Two spoiled hides lying near 
were clearly those of does, which it is 
never lawful to kill here. I am told the 
campers admitted killing 20 deer, in 2 
weeks, by the murderous method of lying 
in wait at night at the spring and shooting 
them down as they camé to quench their 
thirst. 
These sportsmen are the highest product 
of our alleged civilization. All these 
4 veneered savages are professional men; 
2 being physicians who, having broken 
down their own health in a mad scramble 
to build up the health and deplete the pock- 
etbooks of other people, had sought retire- 
ment in the wilderness to commune with 
nature with repeating rifles. and pump guns 
loaded with buckshot. Health to them 
spelled death to every wild thing within 
range. 
Yet, curious commentary on the helpless- 
ness of man, were these banal lead sling- 
ers to be deprived of their breech loaders 
and compelled to wrestle with the wilder- 
ness for an existence, they could not for a 
day compete with the chipmunk or the cot- 
tontail. 
Were we to dub such sportsmen beasts 
we would owe an apology to the 4 footed 
ones, for none, save the puma and the 
grizzly bear when angered, will kill more 
than it needs. Only man kills for the mere 
sake of killing. Only civilized man swings 
the besom of annihilation. It was not the 
Indians who annihilated the millions of bi- 
zon on our plains. It was sportsmen such 
as I am describing. 
One night I was awakened at 2 o’clock 
by the blood-chilling cry of a mountain lion. 
A little later, from a distance came the 
sound of squealing, and the “‘woof-woof!” 
of terrified pigs. On my way down the 
mountain next morning I passed the spot, 
an ancient hog corral built of chemisal 
brush, in which possibly 2 dozen wild hogs 
had taken refuge. There the lion had found 
them in the night, and with a savage feroc- 
ity almost equalling that of the college-bred 
deer butchers, he had struck dead 11 of the 
pigs. I found 5 or 6 others wandering 
about in the canyon, some with their throats 
or sides torn open, others with eyes 
scratched out; for the puma strikes with 
I2I 
extended, rigid claws, and the results are 
frightful. 
I have found does wounded and left to 
die by heartless gunners, and birds and 
fishes killed for the sake of killing, and 
thrown away. 
A friend, a mountaineer, had half a dozen 
pet does and fawns which fed with his cat- 
tle, and which he prized highly. While ab- 
sent one day some city sportsmen killed all 
of them. . 
All sounds are musical in the woods, save 
the crack of a rifle. There is nothing more 
terrible than case hardened, pavement civ- 
ilization with a gun. It is not the set- 
tlers, many of whom do not kill one deer 
apiece per year, but the kid glove type of 
hunter from the city who slaughters re- 
morselessly, and sweeps the California hills 
clear of every form of wild life. 
They are as senselessly destructive as the 
ravening kangaroo rats which carry off my 
spoons and pencils; objects entirely useless 
to them. These men are the pickpockets of 
Nature, nor have they the excuse of the 
wild justice of revenge, or the necessity of 
self protection. Ancestral blindness wraps 
them up. 
To remonstrate with such men is like 
feeding meat to a horse. Had they other 
eyes than those of corded fat and gristle 
they might get far greater pleasure out 
of hunting the wild creatures of the wood 
with a camera; and they would find it 
would require greater patience, knowledge 
and acumen to still hunt thus, than to make 
the ground wet with the blood of ,fawns 
and orioles. 
Year after year these cultivated vic- 
tims of the continuous calamity of blood- 
thirstiness are permitted to roam the woods 
and mountains, blind to all the real beauty 
about them, forever gripping a long range 
gun and groping about, like the puma or the 
giant in the nursery tale, with his “Fee-fo- 
fum,” smelling blood and prey. At this rate 
it is only a question of a few years when 
there will be left in California neither game 
nor songsters larger than the cicada. 
May the gods endow such Goths and 
Huns of the fields with a conscience, equal 
at least, to that of the wolf, which kills only 
what it needs! 
“Oh, yes, I’ve opened an office,” said the 
young lawyer; “you may remember that 
you saw me buying an alarm clock the other 
day.” 
“Yes,” 
replied his friend; “you have to 
get up early these mornings, eh?” 
“OC, no. 
I use it to wake me up, when 
it’s time to go home.”—Philadelphia Press, 
