122 



FOREST AND STREAM. 



[March 18, 1884. 



record this was to have been expected of .him. Besides, he 

 is understood to he himself largely interested in lumbering, 

 and so is very naturally found on the side of those who are 

 wholly indifferent as to the general welfare, provided only 

 their own profits are not interfered with. These two As- 

 semblymen and Senator Ingalls, of Kansas, who gained 

 such a cheerful notoriety by his liberally intelligent views on 

 National Park matters, ought really to be taken about the 

 country and exhibited as specimen sticks of the timber from 

 which a considerable proportion of our American law makers 

 are hewn. If this were done a great work of political reform 

 might be inaugurated. 



In agreeable contrast to the utterances above quoted are 

 those of Mr. Roosevelt and a few other gentlemen, who in all 

 matters pertaining to the public good., take liberal and ad- 

 vanced views. It is satisfactory to see, now and then, in 

 our legislative halls a man whom neither money, nor in- 

 fluence, nor politics can induce to turn from what he believes 

 to be right, to what he knows to be wrong. 



All that can be said of the bill is that it satisfies the lumber- 

 men and the enormously powerful array of lobbyists, who 

 have so well earned their pay at Albany. When this has been 

 said it requires intelligence of no very high order to under- 

 stand that it does not satisfy those who are looking after the 

 best interests of the State. 



It is even doubtful whether any bill protecting these 

 forests will pass at all this winter. 



The Tide OF Travel, which during the winter has set so 

 strongly southward to,the Southern States, is now on the 

 turn. Almost every day we hear from returned travelers, 

 accounts of pleasant winter days, when good bags were made 

 and glorious sport had in the South. The residents of these 

 States must remember that each year the number of sports- 

 men who go South for the winter is increasing, and that all 

 the destruction of the birds which is going on from year to 

 year, cannot fail to seriously reduce their numbers. It will 

 be wise then for these States to make an earnest effort to 

 render the game laws something more than the mere dead 

 letter which they are at present. In the absence of any 

 other remedy, individual land owners can, by posting their 

 land, keep off intruders, after the close season begins. 



The Massachusetts LAW r . — The matter of a uniformity 

 •Of game laws in Massachusetts is still with the Committee 

 ton Agriculture, which is expected daily to report. 



r M Sp ar ^ mt t m $!i om *$t* 



LIFE AMONG THE BLACKFEET. 



BY J. WILLARD SCHUETZ. 



Thirteenth Paper— Folk-Lore. 



SOAR-FACE, THE MAN WHO WENT TO THE SUN. 



THERE was once a young man who had a great scar on 

 his cheek. He was a very good young man, but because 

 he had this deformity, the people made fun of him and called 

 him Scar-face. There was a very beautiful girl in the camp, 

 and one day Scar-face met her when she was going after 

 water and ask»d her to be his wife. But the girl laughed 

 and said: "Do you think I would marry such an ugly man 

 as you are? When you get that great scar off your face 

 then come and ask me.' I don't want to marry an ugly man." 



Now. Scar-face loved tliis girl, and nis heart cried because 

 £he had spoken so badly to him, and he went off alone and 

 prayed to all the animals to help him. His secret helper said 

 to him, "Go to the Sun, he is good and will help you." Then 

 Scar face arose and started on to the Sun. 



After the second day, he could travel only at night, for it 

 was very hot. In the day time he slept in big holes which 

 he dug in the ground. When he had come close to the Sun's 

 place/he found in the trail some one's leaving. A war shirt 

 was there and many weapons of strange and beautiful make. 

 But he touched them not, for, he said, some god has left them 

 there and will come for them. Now a little way further on he 

 met a young man, the most beautiful per|pn he had ever seen, 

 his hair was very long and he wore a shirt and leggins and 

 robe made of some strange animal's fur, and, his moccasins 

 were embroidered in strange colors. The young man said 

 to him, "Did you see a war shirt and some weapons lying on 

 the trail ?" 



"Yes," said Scar-face, "I saw them." 



"But didn't vou touch them?" asked the young man. 



•'No," replied Scar-face, "I thought some one had left 

 them there, so I did not take them." 



"You are not a thief. What is your name?" said the 

 young man. 



"Scar-face." 



"Where are you going?" asked the young man. 



"To the Sun," replied Scar-face. 



"My name, said the young man "is E-pl-su-ahts [early riser, 

 the Morning Star], the Sun is my father. Come, I will take 

 you to our lodge. Now he is not sitting there, at night he 

 will enter." 



They came to his lodge, very large it was, and very beauti- 

 ful. Many unknown animals were painted on it in strange 

 colors, and behind it, suspended on a tripod, were the war 

 clothes of the Sun, made of large and beautiful feathers and 

 the skins of great animals. Scar-face was ashamed to enter 

 such a great lodge, for his clothes were of common cow skin 

 and his moccasins all torn with much travel': but Morning 

 Star said, "Enter, my new friend; and fear not; our hearts 

 are like our faces, we conceal them not. " 



They entered. All about were sitting-places covered with 

 white robes, and everything was strange. One person sat 

 in the lodge and that was the Moon (KO-kO-mik'-e-fcs: Night- 

 light), the Sun's wife, and the mother of Morning Star, and 

 she spoke to Scar-face kindly, and gave him something to 

 eat. "Why have you come so far from your people? ' she 



Then Scar-face told her alsout the beautiful girl who would 



not marry him because of the ugly scar on his face, and that 

 he had come to ask the Sun to remove the scar. Now when 

 it was time for the Sun to return home, the Moon hid Scar- 

 face under a pile of robes. But as soon as the Sun got to 

 the door-way he stopped and said, "I smell a person." 



"Yes, father," said Morning Star, "a good young man 

 has come to see you, a very good young man. I know he is 

 a good person, for he found my beautiful clothes in the trail 

 and did not touch them." 



"I am glad," said the Sun, as he entered the lodge and 

 took his accustomed seat, "that a good person enters my 

 lodge. Be friends, my son," said he to Morning Star, "with 

 this newly arrived young man." 



The next day the Moon called Scar -face away out of the 

 lodge and said to him, "Go with Morning Star and hunt 

 where you please, but neyer go near a large lake way out 

 there, for by that lake live great birds with long sharp bills, 

 which they use to pluck out people's hearts." I have had 

 many sons, but these birds have killed them all except 

 Morning Star. Never let him go there." 



Now, one day when the young men were out hunting, 

 they came in sight of this lake and saw the great sharp-billed 

 birds swimming in the water. "Come," said Morning Star, 

 "let us go and kill the birds." "No, no," said Scar- face, 

 "we must not go near them," but Morning Star ran quickly 

 to the lake, and so he followed, for thought he, ' 'I may save 

 him." The birds, seeing the young men close, came and 

 fought them, and with their "spears the young men killed 

 them all, and they cut off their heads and carried them 

 home. 



Now, when the Sun came home that night, the Moon told 

 him what a brave deed the boys had accomplished, and his 

 heart was very glad. "My heart is glad," he said, when he 

 had sung a song, "for the sharp-billed birds which have killed 

 my children are destroyed. Speak, my son Scar-face, what 

 can I do to pay you?" 



Then Scar-face told the Sun about the beautiful girl he 

 loved, and that she would not marry him because of the scar 

 on his face. "Pity me," he said; "take off this scar which 

 makes my heart so sad." 



Then the Sun made some powerful medicine, and put it on 

 Scar-face, which made him handsome, and he took him and 

 Morning Star to the Moon, and said, "Look, mother; which 

 is your son?" and she recognized Morning Star. 



Then he took the boys away and rubbed some more of the 

 medicine on Scar-face, and again he took them before 

 the Moon and said, "Now, mother, which is your son?" 

 and she looked a long time, but could not tell which 

 was Morning Star, for the Sun had made Scar-face beautiful, 

 just like his own son. 



Then the Sun gave him some beautiful clothes and food 

 and told him he could return home. "But, my son, " said 

 he, "do not marry that girl, A woman who will not many 

 a good man merely because he has a scar on his face is surely 

 not a good woman. Be glad that you did not get her. But 

 punish her, that the people may know that a bad face is no 

 sign that the heart is bad." and he told him what to do. 



When Scar-face started to return home Morning Star hung 

 on his neck and cried, saying: "How can I part from my 

 friend, my brother?" and the Moon also cried, saying: "How 

 can I let my new son go away?" and all their hearts were 

 sad. 



Now, when Scar-face had come close to his home, he met a 

 young man, and inquired if his father still lived in the camp; 

 and learning which lodge his father owned, he entered and 

 sat down, and no one knew him, and when he told his father 

 and mother who he was and where he had been, for a long 

 time they did not believe him. 



Toward evening he walked out in the camp, and all the 

 people crowded around him to listen to his wonderful story, 

 and the beautiful girl whom he had loved called him away 

 to one side, and she said: "You are such a good-looking 

 man that I will be glad to be your wife," and Scar-face re- 

 plied: "All right, come into my lodge tonight," and when 

 she had come in and lain down beside' him he smothered her 

 to death with a robe, for so the Sun had told him to do, and 

 he married good women and lived a long time, and when he 

 died the Morning Star came and took him back to the Sun, 

 where he lived forever. 



[TO BE CONTINUED.] 



DOWN THE YUKON ON A RAFT. 



BY LIEUT. PREO'K SCHWATKA, U. S. ARMY. 

 Seventh Paper. 



THE Tahkheesh Indian, who was ahead in a canoe, to 

 show us when we were near the only canyon in the 

 Yukon, would have let the raft go right on through as far 

 as any valuable information was concerned. Long before 

 we reached the canyon and its appended rapids, the passage 

 of which every Indian in the country had predicted impos- 

 sible for such a vessel as a raft, it was becoming painfully 

 evident that our Tahkheesh guide in the canoe would inform 

 us of the canyon just in- time to be too late. Anticipating 

 just such an emergency, and having ascertained that the 

 proper eamp was on the right hand or eastern bank, we kept 

 the Resolute into the bank as well as the current would allow, 

 for it was now so swift that it kept shooting us from one side 

 to the other, and we were glad to keep from "jamming" the 

 raft end on the gravel banks and having ourselves torn to 

 pieces. 



Already the perpendicular walls of the canyou were in 

 sight, and the first break of the white water entering them 

 showed like the white teeth of a tiger as we started to 

 make the bank in the swift current. This current helped 

 us for a few seconds until we had nearly reached the shore, 

 when it started us out, and from there an almost straight 

 line of water led to the narrow canyon but a couple of hun- 

 dred yards away. The first line that hands could be laid 

 upon "was thrown ashore, and our half-breed interpreter, 

 Billy, jumped into the canoe and paddled ashore, and quicker 

 than it takes to pen these lines one end was made fast to the 

 strongest tree convenient and the other to a cross-log of the 

 raft. There was no time for "snubbing" with so tew to 

 manage the line, and the raft was allowed a runniug gait of 

 some twenty or thirty yards out into the swift water before it 

 brought up with a tw'ang that ought to have snapped an inch 

 and a half rope, let alone the little quarter-inch flag halliard 

 that was thrown out to do this duty of a giant. As the raft 

 was brought up by the thread the current came rushiug over 

 the end of the logs and even over the cross-piece, and every 

 one expected to see the halliards part, but they stood the 

 strain, singing like a taut telegraph wire in a high wind 

 until we struck the shore, and the raft was let down a few 

 yards into a whirling eddy and tied up until an inspection 

 could be made of the obstacles ahead. 



This revealed a canyon about three-quarters of a mile long, 

 to which was appended a series of rapids and cascades ex- 

 tending for another four miles. This canyon was not over 

 thirty or forty yards wide and as many feet deep. Its 

 banks were perpendicular columns of basalt, as regular as 

 those of Fingal's Cave, and lookiug more like the workman- 

 ship of man than of nature. In this chanuel the water con- 

 tracted to nearly one-tenth its average width, fairly boiled 

 as it rushed through, and it must have been very deep to 

 have allowed the entire volume to pass through even at its 

 rapid gait. Dangerous as it looked, with its" frothy waves 

 running three and four feet high, I doubt if it was at all as 

 perilous for a raft as the four miles of rapids that, succeeded 

 it, running, in the former width of the river, over shoals and 

 bars of boulders, and tangled and intricate masses of cap- 

 tured driftwood, where it seemed impossible that a bulky 

 craft like ours could escape them all as they appeared in 

 echelon. Just at the tail end of these rapids came a cascade, 

 where the river again narrowed into such small proportions 

 that all the water could not get through, and it ran up over 

 the ascending aides and poured down over these, making a 

 perfect crescent of water. Here, too, near and just before 

 this cascade, were pretty and regular columns of basalt, but 

 in no way so high as those in the canyon four miles above. 

 The portage around the canyon, made by the Indians, was 

 over quite a high ridge, and then descended abruptly with a 

 dizzy incline into a valley, which, after continuing nearly 

 down to the cascades again, ascended a sandy hill 

 very hard to climb. The hilly part around the 

 canyon was pretty thoroughly covered with small 

 pines and spruce, and all along the portage trail 

 some miners that had preceded us had cut these down near 

 the path and felled them across it, and then barked them on 

 their upper sides, forming stationary skids along which they 

 could drag their whip-sawed boats. Two large logs, on the 

 dizzy declivity, well trimmed of their limbs and bark, made 

 inclines on which the boats could be lowered into the valley 

 below. Here they had floated their boats by tow-lines down 

 to the cascades and had dragged them around this. It is not 

 very hard to imagine that such a chapparal of felled brush 

 and" poles across tbe path did not improve the walking in the 

 least. The day we walked over the "trail on the eastern side 

 of the canyon and rapids was one of the most insufferably 

 hot ones I ever experienced, and every time one sat down it 

 was only to have a regular "Down-East fog" of mosquitoes 

 come buzzing around, and the clawing in the air and the 

 slapping of the face was an exercise equally as lusty as that 

 of traveling. The only way was to walk along brandishing 

 a handful of evergreens from shoulder to shoulder. As one 

 advanced they kept the same invariable distance ahead, as if 

 they had not the remotest idea you were coming toward 

 them. An occasional vicious reach forward through the 

 mass with the evergreens would have about as much deadly 

 effect as going through the same amount of fog, for I believe 

 they could dodge a streak of lightning. Nothing was better 

 than a good strong wind in one's face, and as you emerged 

 from the brash or timber, it was simply delicious to see them 

 disappear. If you would look on your back, however, you 

 would see it spotted with them, even then crawling along 

 and testing every thread in one's coat to see if they cannot 

 find a thin hole where they can bore through. Once in the 

 wind it is comical to turn around slowly and see their efforts 

 to keep under the lee of a red shirt, as one by one they lose 

 their hold and are wafted away in the wind. 



Returning to the raft, nearly all of the remainder of the 

 day was occupied in the splendid grayling fishing that was 

 so abundant in this part of the Yukon, and if ancient writers 

 were right in recommending these fish as proper food for 

 sick persons, then Miles's Canyon (for so it was named in 

 honor of the Department Commander who had ordered the 

 expedition) would probably be one of the great health resorts 

 of the world. They were delicious and fat, and as this fat 

 the ancients also believed had the "property of obliterating 

 the marks of small-pox. freckles, and other spots on the 

 skin," if certain natural histories can be believed, there 

 might also be some curative power for the infinite variety of 

 mosquito bites that were making the tops of our heads, as wc 

 sat in rows at meal times, looklike half-bushel displays of 

 assorted red apples. These grayling were the most persist- 

 ent biters I ever saw rise to a fly, and more uncertain than 

 those uncertain fish usually are in grasping for a bait, for 

 there were times that I really believed we got fifty or sixty 

 rises from one fish before he was hooked or the contest would 

 be given up. The same invariable two sizes, already alluded 



never wholly ceased until the White River, nearly a hundred 

 miles below Selkirk, pours in its swift, murky waters, of 

 supersaturated glacier mud, when all bait and fly-fishing 

 ceases, and with only fish hooks as articles of barter with the 

 natives, one must go into bankruptcy. 



We did not leave this vicinity for two or three days after, 

 and during our stay I believe that fully 400 or 500 were 

 caught,and our Tahkheesh Indian allies, some ten in number, 

 men, women and children (graded according to type), lived 

 almost solely off of our catchings. Whenever a little gravel 

 bar ran out into the swift water and sent a long string of 

 diminishing whirlpools from its point, there any one could 

 satiate his fishing appetite. The Doctor was the only one 

 with a reel in the party, and it kept a constant opposition in 

 buzzing with the swarms of mosquitoes. The Doctor thought 

 that the fish might be caught in seines, but as he tumbled off 

 of the slippery rock where he was standing out in the water 

 drawing them in, as he turned around to see the effect, no 

 court martial was deemed necessary in the case. During 

 warm sunny davs not a "rise" could be had even in the 

 shady places, but in the cool evenings with a few clouds 

 over the sun, two or three flies on a line might each be re- 

 warded with a fish at a single cast. The picture of a Michi- 

 gan grayling in "Sport with Gun and Rod* is a most accur- 

 ate portrait of the gamy fellows we captured near this part 

 of the Yukon River, and I doubt not they are identical 

 varieties, or very closely allied. Whenever the strong south- 

 ern winds that had done us so much good in sailing over the 

 lakes would cease, alight breeze from the north would follow 

 with clearing weather ami warm sunny days, and for a few 

 days during this particular part of the year these zephyrs 

 from the north would bring with them a perfect snowstorm 

 of small brown moths or millers, not unlike the grass- 

 hopper plague of years ago on the Western plains. A puff 

 of wind or an eddying gust would tumble many of them in 

 the water where* the current would pack them down in 

 strings of brown color faster than the fish could think of eat- 

 ing them, and most curious of all it was dun ng this very 

 time that we caught our gamy grayling, and thai, too, with 

 brown flies. The millers caught by the water and drifted 



