SPORTSMAN'S 



JOURNAL. 



ci'iu,, Vnur iu-llars a Year. I 

 Ten Cems a Copy. I 



NEW YORK, THURSDAY, DECEMBER 20, 1877- 



I Volume 9.— No. 20. 

 »No. Ill Fulloii St., N. Y 



THE WAY OF THE WORLD. 



rpHERE are beautiful songs that we never slug, 



1 



And names that are never spoken ; 



There are treasures guarded with jealous care 



And kept as a sacred loken. 

 There are faded tlowers, and letters dim 



With tears that have rained above them, 

 For the fickie words and the faithless hearts 



That taught us how to love them. 



There are sighs that eorne in our joyous hours 



To chasten our dreams of gladness. 

 And tears that spring to our aching eyes 



In hours of thoughtless sadness. 

 For the blithest birds that sing in spring 



Will flit the waning summer, 

 And Ups that we kissed in the fondest love 



Will smile on the first new comer. 



■Over the breast where lillies rest 



In white hands stilled forever, 

 The roses of June will nod and blow, 



Unheeding the hearts that sever. 

 And lips that quiver in silent grief, 



All words of hope ref usiDg, 

 Will lightly turn to fleeting joys 



That perish with the using. 



Summer blossoms and winter snows, 



Love and its sweet elysian ; 

 Hope, like a siren dim and fair, 



Quickening our fainting vision ; 

 Drooping spirit and failing pulse, 



Where untold memories hover, 

 Eyelids touched with the seal of death, 



And the fitful dream is over. 



D. M. Jordan. 



For Forest and Stream, and Rod and Gun. 



$tc}fings from the j@%8t 

 4 Shri'te* 



lanst 



BT THOMAS SEDGWICK STEELE. 



(Concluded.) 

 TN our last letter, the reader bade us adieu while we were 

 1 silently drifting northward along the palm fringed shores 

 of Indian itiver, seeking in the few remaining moments of 

 twilight a suitable camp for the night. That night's experi- 

 ence will ever remain fresh in our memory, for our timely 

 Christian teaching to consider "patience a virtue " was of no 

 avail in dealing with the mosquitoes and other insects which 

 came in clouds to our camp fire. We tried our wire-framed 

 nets which had so successfully repelled the black flies of 

 Maine and the Adirondacks, and we wrapped ourselves in 

 the damp sail of our boat, or lay so close to the fire of our 

 ."smudge" as to jeopardize our hair and whiskers— still the 

 "sharp pointed proboscis of these insects would discover some 

 available part, which aroused our Yankee invention to a new 

 set of tactics. 



The only place of importance at which we stopped on our 

 return north to Titusville, was at Pelican Island, fifteen miles 

 south of St. Sebastian River. Imagine an island containing 

 two acres, literally covered with the large and strange birds 

 from which the Island takes it name. Off the bar at the 

 mouth of the St. John's River can frequently be seen the white 

 variety of this same species. But this was the brown pelican 

 (pfilicanus fuscui) &Ur& the size of a goose, and measuring 

 about five feet from tip to tip. This is one of the most inter- 

 esting of American birds in its habits and general appearance. 

 It has a yellow head, neck of redish brown, resembling seal- 

 skin, back and breast of silver gray feathers, webbed feet, 

 while from the lower mandible of its bill, a foot in length, 

 hangs an immense bluish colored bag, six to ten inches in 

 depth, according to age, and capable of holding a gallon of 

 water. This bird is never to be found except around salt 

 water, although the white variety frequents the rivers, while 

 neither kind is to be met with further north than Cape Hat- 

 teras. Their flight is heavy, but well sustained, and they 

 will remain many hours on the wing at a great height, at 

 which time the pouch is rolled up out of sight. This mem- 

 brane is sometimes tanned and made to hold tobacco, gun- 

 powder and shot. Pelicans live to a great age, and have 

 been known to attain three score years and ten. 



I repeat, that " the island was literally covered," the beach, 



the mangrove trees, the old logs, held all they could conveni- 

 ently accommodate, pushing and crowding each other for a 

 roosLing place. They were provokingly tame, and we could 

 walk within ten feet of them without their being disturbed at 

 our approach, while the surface of the water clear around the 

 island was fairly black with them, pluming and sunning them- 

 selves. We sat down on a log and watched their movements, 

 as they drove the scaly prey toward the shore, scooping them, 

 with their enormous pouches, spread like so many bag nets, 

 and devouring the fish by thousands. Over our heads they 

 flew, passing and repassing, and we had to give good heed to 

 our ways, or we were liable to tread on their eggs, which, in 

 the rudest of nests, reposed on the ground. Obtaining one or 

 two of the finest specimens (more would have been murder) 

 we repaired to our boat well paid for our morning's excur- 

 sion. Then we stopped at a turtler's camp, purchased some 

 curiosities which they had collected on the outer reefs, visited 

 some wild orange groves, aud, after days of sailing and camp- 

 ing, again landed at Titusville. 



The morning we left Titusville was cloudy and warm, the 

 thermometer about 70 degrees in the shade. Into a large 

 covered wagon we loaded our baggage, and, with an addition 

 of six gentlemen to our party, we drove across the country 

 six miles, to Salt Lake. The gait of the mules would have 

 pleased the chief of police of any well regulated city, as it 

 was hardly four miles an hour. We could at anytime slip 

 down from our seats, run back in the pine woods, pick blue 

 and white violets, jessamines and lilies, and return to find the 

 team at almost the same place in the road. It was so con- 

 venient that we shall always hold the driver in tender re- 

 membrance, and we regret exceedingly we didn't ask for his 

 photograph, cart, mules and all. But as " all things have an 

 end," so did our ride, and we were in time placed aboard an 

 old barge anchored in a lagoon which communicated with the 

 lake. 



Here we waited patiently for the captain of the steamer, 

 frqm 9 a. m. to 5 r. m. We had bid good-bye to our guide 

 at Titusville, who, with the sail-boat and the balance of the 

 provisions, returned to New Smyrna, and we thought of our 

 larder many times during those seven weary hours. To divert 

 our attention from thoughts of the " inner man," we devised 

 target shoots, races, and tramps back on the road after the 

 delayed officer, who was at that moment "the dearest one 

 on earth," but all to no purpose, while the heat increased 

 every hour. There were a large number of boxes of Indian 

 River oranges aboard, and unfortunately for the firm in 

 Jacksonville, to whom they were addressed, they riveted at 

 last our attention. How invitingly they looked, as peeping 

 out between the slats they returned our glances. Never be- 

 fore or since has that fruit seemed so bewitching, and we little 

 dreamed it had so much personal magnetism. We gazed on it, 

 drew closer and closer, thought of our early moral training, and 

 reverence for the eighth commandment that had been instilled 

 into our young heart. On a full stomach commandments are 

 good, and never should be broken, but ours were empty, and 

 hunger has but little conscience. We crept down to the 

 boxes, and, strange to relate, found-one of the bars could be 

 pushed one side. Quite a number of the oranges were de- 

 cayed, and of course it would be of advantage to the firm to 

 have these removed, and we took an infinite amount of satis- 

 faction in displacing them. 



Accidentally a good one made its appearance, and knowing 

 it would be difficult to return it, drew our hunting-knife 

 across it and divided our sin, as well as the orange, among 

 our companions, never realizing so before the " sweetness of 

 stolen fruit." It tasted well — we tried another, and another, 

 until we had each eaten five, and copying the address of the 

 firm on the outside of the crate, we took oath to mail to the 

 house their value in postal currency. To this day it must be 

 quite a conundrum to that firm that out of all the letters with 

 remittances enclosed — were there any who failed to keep 

 their promise. 



To dispose of an orange gracefully, and with that ease 

 which cares little of the criticising eyes of your friends, takes 

 more than one winter in Florida to accomplish. There is 

 more than one way to eat an orange ; and it is a curious study 

 to note the different modes of warfare with that perverse ar- 

 ticle. Some fruits show evidences of good training at the first 

 bite and lie submissive in your hands, and amenable to all the 

 rules of polite society ; an item that enhances the beauty and 



grace of the eater. A pear or a peach can be consumed 

 gracefully and deliberately— a charming tete-a-tete lunch can 

 be held over those high-bred fruits, and the lunchers come out 

 of the contest better and wiser. But an orange resists every 

 effort to become refined and cultivated. It flies in your face, 

 "not to speak," but literally and actually at your first ap- 

 proach. The skin combats you with its oil long before you 

 reach the actual fruit ; but if you can overcome that, and not 

 loose your eyesight, then the real engagement begins. Charles 

 Dudley Warner would class the orange among his vegetables 

 for moral discipline. The habitues of this locality have made 

 a profound study of the manner in which to dispose of an 

 orange, and the proficiency they have attained ought to have 

 some influence upon the ignorant stranger. First, you must 

 choose whether you will have the juice drip off your elbows 

 or you ears. It will frequently do both in spite of you. I 

 have seen an old gentleman— an accomplished orange-eater — 

 cut off half the skin, bury himself, as it were, deeper and 

 deeper every minute, and finally reappear, breathless but 

 victorious, only to renew the conflict with another. At the 

 north the orange is a little more susceptible to persuasion. 

 The climate evidently chills its naturally depraved instincts, 

 and, with a little dexterity, a very pretty cushion can be made 

 of the divided peel, and Ihe orange eaten with a degree of re- 

 spect that is due to its age. The youthful orange, with its 

 " foot on its native heath," is obstreperous and unmanageable. 



But we will return to our friends in the barge, whose faces 

 grew brighter after eating of the "forbidden fruit." At five 

 o'clock p. m. the long-looked-for captain made his appearance, 

 and with the working of poles by six stalwart darkies, we 

 were landed at Salt Lake on board the steamer Daylight, 

 which was rightly styled from the number of orifices it had 

 in its dilapidated sides, through which the sun gained admit- 

 tance. From the lake we passed into Snake Creek, whose 

 windings would have puzzled even its namesake. It was so 

 narrow that the steamer filled the entire stream, the tall canes 

 arising six feet above the upper deek, and brushing the boat 

 on both sides. 



Entering the St. John's River over four hundred miles from 

 its mouth, we passed down to Lake Harney, where we were 

 transferred to the steamer Volusia. 



The scenery of the upper St. Johns is nothing remarkable. 

 Of course there are our old friends, the graceful palmetto, the 

 mangroves, the live-oaks, and the cypress trees, ^with the 

 dreamy Spanish moss ever pendant from their branches, while 

 frequently on either hand, for miles, extended the Savannahs, 

 filled with many varieties of water fowl. Occasionally a 

 horseman would make his appearance on the banks, and come 

 aboard animal and all, and now and then we stopped to "wood 

 up." We met a party of hunters with a deer over their 

 shoulders, and the noise of the boat would start the wild 

 turkeys on store, one of which the captain shot from the 

 wheel-house. At the landings we occasionally caught "brim 

 fish," which had a similar appearance to our roach, and at 

 "Cook's Ferry" we examined some Indian mounds and 

 gathered strange flowers and plants. 



After spending three clays on the stream, passing through 

 Lakes Munroe and George, interested in every object by the 

 way, I sailed down the river and landed at Palatka, which I 

 had made headquarters for mail. 



Thus ended my out-door- life in Florida. The shrill whistle 

 of the steamboat and the dash of its paddles will ere long be 

 as common in this section as elsewhere, but nothing can de- 

 tract from the enjoyment of my first Etchings from its East 

 Coast. 



Deb Waidmann.— We are always glad to find in our foreign 

 exchanges copies of this excellent paper, which is the official 

 organ of the ALlgemtinen Beutschen Jagdsahutz Yereina. Its 

 editor, Mr. R, Voa Schmeideberg, is well known both in the 

 United States and in Germany. The last number which 

 comes to hand contains an excellent account of our bison, 

 with illustrations. German sporting journalism ha3 charac- 

 teristics of its own, which always make their reading most 

 interesting. Studies of natural history in Her Wauimann 

 are always thorough, and such conclusions as they arrive at 

 arealways correct. We are too prone in this country to make 

 facts fit to circumstances. It is a mistake tj suppose that 

 America is the only country where game is to be found. In 

 Germany, thanks to the protection of their hunting grounds, 

 a day's sport can be had almost at any time which would as 

 tonish our own votaries of the gun. 



