THE AMERICAN SPORTSMAN'S JOURNAL 



ma, Four Dollars a Year. 1 

 Ten Cents a Copy. I 



NEW YORK, THURSDAY, AUGUST 9, 1877- 



f Volume 9.— No. 1. 

 )No. Ill Fulton St., N. Y. 



(TramlaM from the Portuguese for Forent aivl Stream.) 

 THE CRY OF A LOST SOUL.* 



TN that black forest, where, when day is done, 



-*- With a serpent's stillness glides the Amazon, 



Darkly from sunset to the rising snn, 



A cry, as of the pained heart of the wood, 



T he long, despairing moan of solitude ; 



And darkness and the absence of all good 



Startles the traveler with a sound so drear, 



So full of hopeless agony and fear 



His heart stands still and listens, with his ear. 



The guide, as if he heard a dead-bell toll, 

 Starts, drops his oar against the gunwale's thole, 

 Crosses himself, and whispers "A lost soul! — 

 " No, Senor, not a bird. I know it well- 

 It is the pained soul of some infidel. 

 Or cursed heretic that cries from hell. 

 Poor fool ! with hope still mocking his despair, 

 He wanders shrieking on the midnight air, 

 For human pity and for Christian prayer. 



" Saints strike him dumb ! Our Holy Mother hath 

 No prayer for him who, sinning unto death, 

 Burns always in the furnace of God's wrath ' 

 Thus to the baptized Pagan's cruel lie, 

 Lending new horror to that mournful cry, 

 The voyager listens, making no reply. 

 Dim burns the boat lamp, shadows deeper round 

 From giant trees with snake-like creepers wound, 

 And the black water glides without a sound. 



But in the traveler's heart a secret sense 

 Of nature, plastic to benign intents, 

 And an eternal good in Providence, 

 Lift 1 ? to the starry calm of heaven his eyes, 

 And lo ! rebuking all earth's om'nous cries, 

 The Cross of pardon lignts the tropic skies 1 



" Father of all," he urges his strong plea, 



" Thou lovest all ; thy erring child may be 

 Lost to himself, but never lost to Thee ! 



" All souls are Thine ; the wings of the morning bear 

 None from that Presence, which is everywhere ; 

 Nor hell itself can hide, for Thou art there; 

 Through sins of sense, perversities of will, 

 Through doubt and pain, through guilt and shame and ill, 

 Thy pitying eye is on Thy creature still. 

 Wilt Thou not make, Eternal Source and Goal 1 

 In Thy long years, life's broken circle whole, 

 And change to praise the cry of a lost soul ?" 



For Forest and Stream and Rod and Gun, 



JJ §raa$q ]§m\t in Sweden. 



MANY years ago we Lad occasion to visit the town of Os- 

 tersund, the capital of the Province of Nordland, in the 

 interior of the north of Sweden. The little place is most beau- 

 tifully situated on the shore of " Storsjon " (Grand Lake), one 

 of the larger inland lakes of the country. Dotted all over with 

 birch-covered islets, it is surrounded on three sides by high 

 mountains; to the north the "Offerdals," to the south the 

 "Orviks," while to the west the "Areskutan" raises its 

 ^snow-clad head some 8,000 feet above tidewater. 



Expecting some good shooting during the week or more we 

 were obliged to stay in the place (for it was in the latter part 

 of August), we had brought with us our John Manton and 

 our Russian setter, Finn, "a tried friend on many a bloody 

 held." And just here let us say a few words in memoriami of 

 the best dog it ever was our good fortune to possess. When 

 yet a pup he was presented to. us by a friend in Finland ; 

 hence his name. As full grow^Kfcjvas of medium size' 

 strongly built, broad chest, rather long body, and short legs ; 

 head large, ears thin, but not very long ; eyes large, full of in- 

 telligence ; color white, with large spots of light brown j hair 

 long and coarse, even on the head, and somewhat inclined to 

 curling. On the whole a very homely beast. He was ex- 

 tremely intelligent, and easily trained; faithful and good- 

 natured. The first day we took Mm out in the field he be- 



[* This poem was written by His Imperial Majesty Dom Pedro II., Em- 

 peror of Brazil. The cry of the Campanero, a Brazilian bell-bird re- 

 sembles the slow tolling of a church bell. You hear his toll, and then 

 a pause for a minute, then another toll, and then a pause again, and 

 Mien a toll, and again a pause. Then he is silent for six or eight miu- 

 and then another toll, and so on. Actaeon would stop in niid- 

 '.lana would defer her evening song, and Orpheus himself 

 would drop his lute to listen to him, so sweet, so novel and romantic is 

 the toll of the pretty snow-white Campanero. To the Buflerstitious 

 half-breed the note is one of horror, for he believes it to be the cry of 

 a soul condemned to the torments that the Church prescribes for the 

 ■damned.— Ed.] 



haved like an old dog. I thiuk I can safely say he never in- 

 tentionally flushed a bird unless ordered to do so. He was a 

 first-class retriever on land or in water ; never much of a 

 ranger. The greatest ranger in the world could not beat him 

 to find game. His power of scent was marvelous and his en- 

 durance incredible. Finally, he was a first-class "reporter;" 

 which term, as applied to a dog, mty not be understood in 

 this country, but is not unusual in Sweden, where a great deal 

 of woodcock, black game and partridge shooting is done in 

 very close covert. The term signifies that the dog, having 

 found the game, hut not seeing his master, barks out from the 

 point, hunts up his master, "reports" by wagging his tail or 

 some other doggish expression, and leads him directly back to 

 the game. After we had hunted Finn for a season, we taught 

 him this simply by hiding ourselves when he came on a point, 

 and let him stand. Probably he remained on the point for an 

 hour or more, and then he got tired of it, and as it was not in 

 him to flush the bird, he retreated quietly and found us. We 

 led him then at once to the game and shot it. Eepeating this 

 a few times he took it as a matter of course, and would after- 

 ward never remain for five minutes on the stand unless he 

 saw us in the neighborhood. We hunted with this most excel- 

 lent animal for ten seasons. After this digression we will con- 

 tinue our narrative. 



At the hotel where we were staying, arrived the same day 

 from Norway a young English baronet, whom we will call 

 Sir Francis S., on his way to Stockholm. We had met Sir 

 Francis before— as true a gentleman and as accomplished a 

 sportsman as you would wish to meet. Seeing us provided 

 with dog and gun, and himself also having a fowling-piece 

 with him, Sir Francis proposed to join us the following day 

 in a tramp in the mountains. Agreed. Our landlord fur- 

 nished us with a sailboat and guide, and we set out next 

 morning; but as hardly a breath of air ruffled the placid 

 waters, we did not reach our objective point at the foot of the 

 mountains until evening, very tired indeed from constant pull- 

 ing nearly the whole time. At a small farm-house, near the 

 lake shore, we spent the night, and here we hired another 

 man and a pony to carry our provisions, blankets, etc., and 

 also our expected large bag of grouse. 



At 4 o'clock the next morning it was broad daylight, and 

 we started. Following a cattle path through a dense forest of 

 spruce and pine, on a rather steep ascent, we proceeded for 

 five or six miles and emerged on an upland moor, where our 

 guide, himself a hunter, told us we would find orr-fogel (black- 

 game). And so we did ; for within a quarter of an hour Finn 

 came to a stand. Up went a dozen or more nearly full grown 

 birds, and down went four of their number. We followed 

 the direction the birds had taken, found them again somewhat 

 scattered, picked up one after another, found two or three old 

 cock-birds, and in about two hours had bagged nine brace. 

 We were now on the bank of a beautiful little mountain lake, 

 where we sat down to rest, refreshing ourselves with some ex- 

 cellent "Otard" Sir Francis brought with him all the way 

 from London, took a smoke, and then resumed our upward 

 tramp tlnougk another belt of timber, stunted and gnarled, 

 the path more rocky and steep at every step. Finally, after 

 a long and tedious march, we came out on an open, gently 

 sloping terrace or table land. Naked granite ledges predomi- 

 nated, but in the declivities where soil had gathered was fine 

 grass land, interspersed with patches of heather, dwarf birch 

 (fietula nana), and several varieties of wild berry shrubbery. 

 To the east and west this plateau extended for several miles, 

 but to the north, within a distance of a mile, the very tops of 

 the Offerdals mountains rose in precipitous cliffs to the height 

 of more than 1,000 feet. Pasturing on the grass-land were 

 quite a number of cattle, mostly milch cows, for this was the 

 satra (summer pasture) of our landlord of the previous night, 

 whose son Eric was our man with the pony. In a sheltered 

 nook on the bank of a little mountain stream stood a comfort- 

 able loghouse, with stables and a cattle pen. Summer pas- 

 tures of this kind, often miles away from the homestead, be- 

 long to nearly every farm in Northern Scandinavia, where the 

 cattle are sent early in spring and kept all through the summer 

 and fall, invariably guarded by women, the farmers' daughters 

 or hired girls, who milk the cows and make butter and cheese. 

 The satra now before us was presided over by Eric's two 

 sisters, a couple of handsome girls, with clean cut features, 

 fine figures, rosy cheeks, dark blue eyes, and a "profusion of 



time, they were very glai to S3e their brother, and our whole 

 party shared in the welcome. Tired and hungry, having had 

 nothing to eat. and very little rest since early in the morning, 

 we lost no time to spread our stores, to which our amiable en- 

 tertainers added the freshest of butter, the sweetest of milk 

 and the richest of cream to our coffee, with bread of oatmeal, 

 very brittle and thin as paper. After a most hearty meal we 

 lit our pipes, and lying down to rest outside the house, were 

 soon wrapped in the arms of Morpheus. We were the first to 

 wake up, rather late in the afternoon, and missing our dog, 

 we rose to our feet and looked around. Some 200 yards or 

 more off we observed Master Finn, head erect and tall extend- 

 ed, marching ahead as gravely and slowly as an alderman in a 

 Fourth of July procession. Apparently he was on some trail, 

 and we let him have his own way, expecting every moment to 

 see him come to a point. But no ! On he went until he was 

 nearly out of sound of my whistle, when 1 called him back. 

 Rousing the whole party, we took our guns and ammunition 

 and started for the place. The dog soon resumed the trail, 

 following it quite a distance without any result. It was plain 

 that the birds were running, and probably ptarmigans, for the 

 girls had told us they had seen plenty of them every day. 

 We were just deliberating what to do when Eric pointed to a 

 naked ledge some hundred yards ahead, where a whole covey 

 of birds were standing in full view. A moment later they 

 took flight and sailed away a short distance, lighting in a 

 thicket of dwarf birch. Neither of us had seen these birds 

 before in their native wilds, and we were very anxious to have 

 a shot at them— in fact that was our principal object in climb- 

 ing that rough mountain side up to the satra. We sent our 

 friend on a circuitous route to the other side of the copse and 

 then went for them ourselves with the dog, leaving the guides 

 behind, and taking care to make as little noise as possible. 

 We succeeded in reaching the edge of the thicket without dis- 

 turbing the birds. Here Finn came to a dead point, and with 

 our gun ready for action, we entered the coppice with rapid 

 strides. Apparently we took them unawares, for up they 

 went helter-skelter, on all sides around us, scattering in every 

 direction. Three or four flew directly over the head of my 

 companion, and he made a fine double shot. We also brought 

 down the same number, and as they had lighted all around us, 

 within 200 yards, we lost no time to follow them up. At first 

 they lay pretty well, and we got two more brace within the 

 next half hour ; but after that they commenced again running 

 and we heard their whistling on all sides. The dog would 

 take the trail, but could not get up to the bird, who was run- 

 ning ahead faster than Finn, always 100 yards or^more ahead. 

 At last we got tired of this j it was rather late, and we started 

 for the house and our supper. On the way_back, in a deep 

 ravine, we came unexpectedly on another covey of ptarmigans, 

 of which on the first rise webrought down three, and that was 

 the last we got of them, for they sailed far away out of sight. 

 In the meautime our kind hostesses had not been idle, and 

 we found spread on the table a meal that might even tempt an 

 epicure. There was a large dish of the " speckled beauties," 

 as the piscatorial correspondents of Forest'and Stream 

 like to call them, for the brook was just full of them, and the 

 girls knew how to catch " oring," as is the„*name in that part 

 of the world ; then some of the black game we had killed in 

 the morning, baked with salt pork, offered almost tempting 

 dish ; then fresh butter, milk, bread and coffee. This was 

 all, as far as we remember, and we did ample justice to the 

 repast. Again we stretched ourselves down on the ground for 

 a quiet smoke and to enjoy the view, which jwas magnificent. 

 To the east a large part of the Province of Nordland was 

 spread out, a beautiful panorama of woolland^and water, in- 

 terspersed with cultivated fields. To the^south — it^ seemed at 

 our feet — expanded the glorious Grand Lake, a mirror in a 

 framework of rugged mountains, and far away to the west 

 Ariskutan raised its snowy head in solemn grandeur. 



It was now bed time— past 10 o'clock. &TkeJ sun had just 

 set, but its parting rays spread yet a fiood^of light on the sum- 

 mits of the western mountains. 



" 'Die hall was cleared— the stranger's bed 

 Was there of mountain heather spread." 

 And on such a bed we slept very comfortably 'indeed through 

 the short summer night. Rested and greatly ^refreshed by a 

 good ablution in the cool water of the brook, and after an 

 ample breakfast, we prepared to leave early^next morning. 



golden curls." Having heard nothing from home for some ' And herecomes in the least bit of ronnnce. » We were much 



