482 



FOREST AND STREAM. 



LJtjly 17, 1884 



r <h* Mportentmt ^onri§t 



MEMORIES OF SENACHWINE LAKE. 



BY T. 9. VAN DTKE. 



First Paper. 



TWENTY years have gone smce first L trod Scnachwine's 

 boggy shores arid beut the oar in its shining surface; 

 yet it seems as if it were but yesterday -when I was there. 

 Many a happy day before that had I spent along the rushing 

 stream or in the deep dark woods; and many a bright day 

 since has left its autograph in my album of delightful recol- 

 lections; yet to no period does memory so fondly turn, and 

 around none so lovingly linger as around the two months I 

 spent at Senachwine twenty years ago. 



When scarcely out of childhood I had seen Bob White 

 bounce Buttering along the frosty stubble, and at an age 

 when few boys are allowed to even touch a gun, had seen the 

 woodcock furl his whistling wing amid the saddened foliage 

 of autumn, and in the tangled cat-brier brake had hushed 

 the obstreperous wing of the ruffed grouse. But when I 

 saw Senachwine 1 found that I had only been playing around 

 the gate of Elysium, enchanted with the first Mowers that I 

 met and little' deeming of auy thing beyond. I had indeed 

 shot some ducks along the sloughs and snipe meadow of the 

 Atlantic coast, had read nearly all that up to that time had 

 been written about duck shooting, and fancied that I knew 

 something about it. But like a child at the theater an hour 

 early for "the play I had sat dreamily gazing at a miserable 

 daub on a curtain supposing that to be the show that I had 

 come to see. It was at Senachwine that the curtain was 

 first lifted and the marvellous reality that lay behind it 

 burst upon me in all its wildest and fullest splendors. 



At Henry, Marshall county, Illinois, some two miles below 

 Senachwine Lake, 1 stepped from the cars into the open 

 arras of as noble a band of sportsmen as ever stopped a 

 whizzing wing. Though a stranger to them all, the mysteri- 

 ous tie of the field was enough. That I was fond of the 

 chase like themselves, and had come a thousand miles to en- 

 joy it, was all they knew or cared to know of me. They 

 gave me a key of the club boat house and placed at my dis- 

 posal all hunting paraphernalia that I had not brought, took 

 me along upon all hunts, placed me upon the best stands for 

 shooting, and fairly pushed me upon pleasure in every pos- 

 sible way. 



It was a bright September afternoon, the day after my ar- 

 rival at Henry, that Charles Everett — one of the friends 

 above mentioned — and I, were paddling up the crooked 

 slough that leads from Senachwine to the Illinois River. 

 Woodducks, mallards and teal rose squealing and quacking 

 from the slough ahead of us, but Everett paid no attention to 

 them, and 1 soon ceased dropping the oar and snatching up 

 the gun and getting it cocked and raised just as the ducks 

 were nicely out of range. When we reached Mud Lake — a 

 mere widening and branching of the slough at the foot of 

 Senachwine, we drew the boat ashore. Huge flocks of mal- 

 lards rose -with reverberating wings from the sloughs all 

 around us and mounted high, with "the sun brightly glancing 

 from every plume. Plainly could I see the sheen of their 

 burnished green heads and outstretched necks, the glisten- 

 ing bars upon their wings, the band of while upon their tails 

 surmounted by dainty curls of shining green. Everett paid 

 no attention to them. But could I lose such a chance to 

 show him that I could shoot? 



As my gun rang out with right and left at a roaring flock, 

 and I saw two relax their vigorous hold on air and descend 

 in a whirl of cinnamon, white, green and gray, I looked 

 around at my new friend with a smile of pride. He . too 

 smiled, though for auother reason. They had fallen on the 

 other side of a slough, the mud of which exhibited so morbid 

 an appetite for my high-topped wading boots at the second 

 or third step into it that I too smiled — after beating a safe 

 retreat. The idea of considering where a bird was going to 

 fall was something entirely new to me. Probably at this 

 day one is glad to land a duck anywhere along those shores, 

 bat at that time ducks were so plenty that the first consid- 

 eration was generally to land them where they were easily 

 picked up. I never got those ducks, and I shot at nothing 

 more until I saw Everett begin. He soon placed me in some 

 high reeds on a broad tongue of land running out between 

 two shallow sloughs while he went to another point some 

 two hundred yards or more away. 



There was already in sight what seemed to me enough of 

 ducks to satisfy any one. Long lines of dark dots streamed 

 along the blue sky above Senachwine, up the Illinois and 

 over Swan Lake— between the river and Senachwine— while 

 from down the slough, up the slough, from over the timber 

 on the west, and the timber along the river on the east came 

 small bunches and single ducks by the dozen. Shall I ever 

 forget that big mallard that bore down upon me before I 

 was fairly hidden in the reeds? He came along with sublime 

 indifference, winuowing the air with lazy stroke, bobbing 

 his long green head and neck up and down, and suspecting 

 no danger. As he passed me at about twenty -five yards I 

 saw along the iron rib of the gun the sunlight glisten on his 

 burnished head. I was delightfully calm, and rather re- 

 gretted that letting him down was such a merely formal 

 proceeding. If he were fuither off or going faster, it would 

 be so much more satisfactory, etc., you know. Neverthe- 

 less he had to be bagged whether skill was required, or not, 

 so I resigned myself to the necessity and pulled the trigger. 

 Had the sun dropped from heaven at the report of the gun 

 I could hardly have been more surprised. The duck rose 

 skyward with thumping wings, leaving me so benumbed 

 with wonder that I never thought of the other barrel. 



But little time was left me for reflection, for a wood duck, 

 resplendent with all his gorgeous colors, came swiftly down 

 from the other direction. Every line of his brilliant plumage 

 I could also plainly see along the gun, for I was as cool 

 as before. \ 7 et this gay rover of the air never con- 

 descended to fall sheer, rise or even quicken his pace, but 

 sailed along at the report of each barrel as unconcerned as a 

 gossamer web on the evening breeze. 



I concluded to retire from the business of single shots and 

 go into the wholesale trade. This conclusion was firmly 

 braced by the arrival of fifteen or twenty mallards in a well 

 massed flock. They came past me like a. charge of cavalry, 

 sweeping in bright uniform low along the water with shining 

 necks and heads projecting like couched lances. I could 

 see four or five head^ utmost in line as I pulled the first 

 trigger, yet only owe dropped and that one with only a broken 



wing. As they rose with obstreperous beat of wing I rained 

 the second barrel into the thickest part of the climbing mass 

 and another one fell with a broken wing, while another 



wabbled and* wavered for a hundred yards or more, then rose 



high and hung in air for a second, then folding his wings 

 descended into a heavv mas9 of reeds away on the other side 

 of the main slough. Meanwhile my two wounded ducks, 

 both flattened out on the water, were making rapid time for 

 the thick reeds across the little slough and both disappeared 

 in them just as I got one barrel of my gun capped. 



So it went on for an horn' or so. There was scarcely a 

 minute to wait for a shot, yet in that hour I bagged only 

 four or five ducks ; and I should be extremely reluctant to 

 swear that two or three of them were not mudhens. 

 I had already seen more ducks than I had ever 

 seen before in my whole life, tame ones included. Yet in 

 the full tide of pleasure I was slowly drowning under a 

 weight .of bitter disappointment. The nice little gun that 

 had cost so mauy guineas in London 4 that had such a deli- 

 cate balance, such a perfect fit to ray shoulder, whose joints 

 were so perfect, and whose locks had such an oily play and 

 musical click, whose vent plugs, too, were of pure platinum 

 — I had carefully tested them with all the acids known to 

 chemistry — that dear little pet gun that I had so carefully 

 cleaned and polished and oiled and filled with tallow, if I 

 laid it by for a week, that beautiful little gem that had killed 

 so many long shots at field plover and made so many bushy 

 tails relax iu the tallest hickory trees, would not stop the slow- 

 est duck at thirty yards more than once in five or six shots. 

 And my feelings were not soothed by the steady, dull "wop" 

 that followed each report of Everett's gun, no larger than 

 mine and a cheap American potmetal at that. To tell the 

 truth, I felt a slight nibbling of envy at my heart strings. 



While gazing a moment into the blank that despondency 

 often brings before me, two blue-winged teal shot suddenly 

 across the void. With the instinctive quickness of one trained 

 to brush shooting, 1 tossed the gun forward of the leading teal 

 about the same space that I had been accustomed to fire 

 ahead of quail at that apparent distance. The rear duck, 

 fully four feet behind the other, skipped with a splash over 

 the water, dead, while the one I had intended to hit skimmed 

 away unharmed. I had fallen into the common error of 

 tyros at duck shooting, viz., underestimating both tfie dis- 

 tance and speed of the game. 



Some of my friends who had never been west of the Alle- 

 ghanies had often said that there was no sport in duck shoot- 

 ing, that it took no skill to stop a clumsy duck in clear, open 

 sparje, and that the duck was not a game bird anyhow, etc. 

 How I wished for the presence of some of those friends 

 that evening as old Phoebus entered upon the home stretch 

 and his glowing chariot neared the gate of gilded clouds. 

 The number of ducks increased by the minute. They 

 came with swifter aud steadier wing and with more of an 

 air of business than they had shown before. Those hitherto 

 flying were nearly all ducks that had been spending the day 

 in and around Senachwine and its adjacent ponds and 

 sloughs. But now the host that duriug the day had been 

 feeding in the great cornfields of the prairie began to move 

 in to roost, and the vast army of traveling wildfowl that 

 the late sharp frosts in the North had started on their South- 

 ern tour began to get under way. Long lines now came 

 streaming down the northern sky, widening out aud descend- 

 inginlong inclines or long sweeping curves. Dense bunches 

 came rising out of the horizon, hanging for a moment on 

 the glowing sky, then massing and bearing directly down 

 upon us. No longer as single spies, but in battalions they 

 poured over the bluffs on the w p est, where the land sweeps 

 away into the vast expanse of High Prairie, and on wings 

 swifter than the wind itself came riding down the last 

 beams of the sinking sun. Above them the air was dotted 

 with long wedge-shaped masses or converging strings more 

 slowly moving than the ducks, from which I could soon 

 hear the deep, mellow honk of the goose and the clamorous 

 cackle of the brant. And through all this were dartiug here 

 and there and everywhere ducks, single, in pairs, and small 

 bunches. English snipe were pitching about in their erratic 

 flight; plover drifted by with their tender whistle, little 

 alarmed by the cannonade; blue herons, bitterns and snovry 

 egrets, with long necks doubled up and legs outstretched 

 behind, flapped solemnly across the stage; while yellow legs, 

 sand snipe, mud hens, divers, I know not what all, chinked 

 in the vacant places. 



When I shot the last one of the two teal ducks instead of 

 his leader, I thought that I had discovered the art of miss- 

 ing, and fondly imagined that the skill I had acquired by 

 shooting in brush would now show my friend Everett some- 

 thing worthy of his notice. How the bright bloom of that 

 youthful conceit wilted under the fire that now consumed 

 my internal economy! The nerves that felt but a slight 

 tremor when the ruffed grouse burst roaring from the thicket 

 now quaked like aspens beneath the storm that swept over 

 me from every point of the compass. There I stood, the 

 converging point of innumerable dark lines, bunches and 

 strings all rushing toward me at different; rates of speed, in- 

 deed, but even the slowest still fearfully fast. There I stood 

 bothering with a rauzzleloader, loading it with trembling 

 hands, fever heat and headache from its recoil under the 

 heavy charges I was vainly pouring into it, with the last 

 duck that had fallen swimming away only wounded, half 

 afraid to reshoot it because my ammunition was getting ex- 

 hausted, yet knowing that it would surely get away if I did 

 reshoot it; painfully conscious, too, that my chances of hit- 

 ting a well duck were fragile compared with the certainty 

 of a shot at the cripple, there I stood delighted yet bewildered, 

 ecstatic yet miserable. And little conscious of how cruelly 

 he was harrowing my feelings, Everett called out: 



"Let everything go now but mallards, and land them close 

 to your feet." 



A fine sentiment! Very appropriate, neatly expressed and 

 handsomely emphasized by the wop of a four-pound mallard 

 in the mud beside him. He might, however, have spared 

 his wisdom for a worthier subject. 



Never did nature make a fitter background for such a dis- 

 play as appeared when twilight sunk over the earth. The 

 sky was one of those rare autumnal skies, on which light is 

 shattered into a hundred tints, when, above the horizon all 

 is clear cut in sharp outline, and over all below it lies a pallid 

 glow that intensifies all brilliant colors, but throws a weird, 

 sepulchral gloom upon all somber shades. From the de- 

 parted sun a broad, rosy light radiated far away into the 

 zenith, while the clear sky on the east was changed by the 

 contrast into pale gold tinged with faded green. North and 

 south the deep blue changed into delicate olive tints, shading 

 into orange toward the center of the great dome. On the 

 west were cloud-banks of rich umber, fringed with crimson 

 fire, on the east long banks of coppery gold, and aloft long 

 fleecy streams of pale, lemon-colored vapor. Over such a 

 stage now suddenly poured a troop of actors, that made the 

 wonders of half an hour, aye ten, five minutes ago seem a 

 mere puppet show. 

 Hitherto the ducks had all come from the level of the 



horizon. But now from on high, with a rushing, tearing 

 sound as if rending in their passage the canopy of heaven, 

 down they came out of the very face of night. With wings 

 set in rigid curves, dense masses of bluebills came winding 

 swiftly down. Mallards, too, no longer with heavy beat but 

 with stiffened wings that made it hiss beneath them, rode 

 down the darkening air. Sprijrtails and other large ducks 

 came sliding down on long inclines with firmly set wings 

 that made all sing beneath them. Blue-winded teal came 

 swiftly and straight as flights of falling arrows, while green- 

 wings shot by in volleys or pounced upon the scene with the 

 r«£h of a hungry hawk. The old gray goose, too, came 

 trooping in in untold numbers, though few came near enough 

 to give us a fair shot. One fell at a long shot from Everett's 

 gun, striking the earth with a crash that suggested the fall 

 of one of the heroes of Homer — 



Doupesan de peson, etc., 

 But nearly all of them steered high along the sky until over 

 Senachwine Lake, or Swan Lake— a little below us to the 

 northeast— then, lengthening out their dark strings, they de- 

 scended slowly and softly in long spiral curves to the bosom 

 of the lake. Brant, too, dotted tbe western and northern 

 skies, marched along with swifter stroke of wing and more 

 clamorous throats until over the water's edge, then slowly 

 sailing and lowering for a few hundred teet in solemn 

 silence, suddenly resumed their cackle, and like a thousand 

 shingles tossed from a balloon, went whirling, pitching, tum- 

 bling and gyrating down to the middle of the lake. Far, far 

 above all these and still bathed in the crimson glow of the 

 fallen sun, long lines of sandhill cranes floated like flecks of 

 down in their southward flight, not deigning to alight, but 

 down through a mile of air sending their greeting in long- 

 drawn, penetrating notes, such a flight as he must often have 

 seen who wrote: 



JSthera trauant 

 Cum sonitu* fugiuntque notos clamore secundo. 



Myriads of ducks and geese traveling from the north, 

 swept by, far overhead, without slackening a wing. Far 

 above us, the mallard's neck and head, looking fairly black 

 in the falling night, could be seen outstretched for another 

 hundred miles before dark. "Darkly painted on the crim- 

 son sky," the sprigtails streamed along with forked rudders 

 set for a warmer region than Senachwine. Widgeon sent 

 down a plaintive whistle that plainly said good-bye. Blue- 

 bills, woodducks, spoonbills and teal, sped along the upper 

 sky with scarcely a glance at their brethren, who chose to 

 descend among us. And far over all, with swifter flight 

 and more rapid stroke of wing than I had deemed possible 

 for birds so large, a flock of snowy swans clove the thicken- 

 ing shades as if intending to sup in Kentucky instead of 

 Illinois. 



Yet, of those that tarried there was enough for me. With 

 tremulous hand I poured my last charge into the heated gun 

 and raised it at a flock of mallards that were gliding swiftly 

 downward, with every long neck pointed directly at my 

 devoted head. Wheeooo shot a volley of greenwings between 

 the mallards and the gun ; ksssss came a mob of bluewings by 

 my head as I involuntarily shifted the gun toward the green- 

 wings; triff, wiff, icif, wiff came a score of mallards along the 

 reed tops behind me, as, completely befuddled with the 

 whirl and uproar, I foolishly • shifted the gun to the blue- 

 wings. As I wheeled at these last mallards after making a 

 half shift of the gun toward the bluewings, they saw me and 

 turned suddenly upward, belaboring the air with heavy 

 strokes, and just as I turned the gun upon them a mass of 

 bluebills with the sound like the tearing of forty yards of 

 strong muslin came in between, and just behind me I heard 

 the air throb beneath the wings of the mallards I had first 

 intended to shoot at. The gun wabbled from the second 

 mallards to the bluebills and then around to the mallards 

 behind me— each chance looking more tempting than the 

 last— and finally went off in the vacancy just over my head 

 that the mallards had filled when I raised it. 



Perhaps you think I sighed for a breechloader about that 

 time. If I 'sighed for anything it was a garden rake, for it 

 would have been about as efficient as the gun and consider- 

 ably easier to load ; and I don't feel at all certain even now 

 that I could not have raked down a few ducks before dark, 

 while I feel quite positive that I could not have done so 

 with a revolving rack of loaded guns at hand, with a game- 

 keeper to hand them to me. 



But in a moment I sighed for nothing. You who think 

 you know all about duck shooting, if you have never been in 

 such a position, have something yet to learn. Excitement 

 and success you may enjoy to the full but while your ammu- 

 nition lasts you know nothing of the pleasures of contempla- 

 tion. Amid the shock and jar and smoke, the confusion of 

 even loading the quickest breechloader and retrieving the 

 ducks even with the best of dogs you see nothing compared 

 to what you may sec without a gun. Many a mile would I 

 walk to-day to see that scene once more and gladly would I 

 leave the gun at home. I had felt my importance as a factor 

 in the universe more or less reduced at Niagara, but now I 

 felt completely annihilated. As I dropped the worthless 

 gun upon a muskrat house and sat down upon top of it the 

 whole world where I had been living vanished in a twinkling 

 and I found myself in another sphere filled with circling 

 spirits all endowed with emotions, hopes and fears like those 

 that Dante saw in Paradise. 



Oude si movous a diversi porti 

 Per lo grau mar dell' essere, eciascuno 

 Con istiuto a let dato che la porti. 

 There indeed was the great sea of being, but all one vast 

 whirlpool that engulfed the soul of the poor powderless 

 "tenderfoot," while his ears were stunned with the whizz 

 and rush of wiugs all around his head, with the thump and 

 bustle and splash of ducks alighting in the water before him, 

 with the squeal of wood ducks, the quack of mallards, the 

 whistle of widgeon, the scape of traveling snipe, the grating 

 squawk of herons, egrets and bitterns, the honk-wonk of 

 geese, the dank-alunk of brant, and the dolorous grrrroooo 

 of the far-off sandhill cranes. 



Thankful am I that so many Western readers Lave seen 

 the full intensity of "the evening flight." For otherwise I 

 should not have dared to tell half the truth. 



New York Fobest Commission. — Albany, July 14.— Tbe 

 Commissioners appointed by the Comptroller to investigate 

 and report a system of forest preservation will meet at 

 Saratoga on July 23. Owners of timber and forest lands, 

 and all who are interested in the subject have been invited 

 to attend. An erroneous opinion has got abroad that this 

 Commission was appointed to look after the Adirondaeks 

 only. The act under which they were appointed applied to 

 all the forest lands in the State. 



