142 



FOREST AND STREAM. 



[Sept. l?, 1885. 



IN A. D. 1950. 

 'JpHE iisual September drouth was upon the earth. The 

 grass was dun and slippei-y under foot; some of the small 

 scattered trees wore a scant leafage of dull gi-een, biit more 

 were burning in the smoky landscape with prematm-e autum- 

 nal flames of yellow and red, casting blm-red shadows under 

 the redder rayless sun tuat burned its slow way through the 

 brassy sky now endoming the desiccated fields and barren 

 hUls. Thi-ough a sedgy level a narrow, muddy stream wound 

 sluggishly, too dull to reflect the blue spikes of pickerel weed 

 that grew along its black shores, or the white blossoms of the 

 saggitaria that drooped languidly ovei- the spent ai-rows of 

 their leaves. This slender waterway floated to-day a beauti- 

 ful boat, with sides as thin as eggshell, but strong as steel, and 

 buoyantly upholding its freight, a noble young gentleman of 

 fourteen and his gray-bearded father, whom he had kindly 

 permitted to accompany him— indeed, had done him the un- 

 accustomed honor of inviting him to go with him on this trial 

 trip of his new canoe. The younger of the two guided the 

 craft by almost imperceptible movements of his forefinger 

 upon the tiller, while the elder propelled it with rapid strokes 

 of the double-bladed paddle, and he, though laboring hard, 

 seemed most of the two to enjoy the outing. He was revisit- 

 ing scenes that, though changed, were yet familiar, and re- 

 called to his mind the past, concerning' which he presently 

 spoke. 



"Right here," said he, as the canoe, under the skillful guid- 

 ance of its master, lightly turned a bend of the narrow 

 channel, "right here, when I was about your age, I killed my 

 first duck with my first gun, which was only a double-baiTeled 

 breechloader, a weapon somewhat out of date even then, but 

 a great improvement on the percussion muzzleloaders our 

 fathers had used, so we boys thought, for," said he with a 

 sigh, "the males of the human race were called boys then till 

 they were at least fifteen years old. The duck was of a kind 

 now almost extinct, a dusky, or black duck, as we caUed 

 them." 



"Aims obscura, I think is the proper name," said the yoimg 

 gentleman. 



"Ah, yes! Anas, Anas, what do you caU 'em? And it was 

 one of a large flock."' 



"Team! A team of duck would be better," suggested the 

 younger. — 



"Very well; then one of a large team of five, and I brought 

 him down with my second ban'el." 



"Ah! Then you missed with your first? Why, I never 

 miss." 



"Those," the elder replied, "who never shoot, or never take 

 any chances, seldom miss, though far be it from me to insinu- 

 ate that this is why you never miss. However, we boys vised 

 to miss occasionally, while we were boys, but when we were 

 older we scarcely ever did. I can remember very many 

 hits, but very few misses. ["How these old fellows do 

 brag," thought the youth.] But this time, notwithstand- 

 ing the miss, I was greatly elated, for it was my 

 first duck,, and I shall never to my dying day forget the 

 place, nor just how it looked then, with the wavelets of 

 the duck's plunge swaying the stems of the wild rice, and toss- 

 ing the floating feathers, and the reflection of the trees 

 that then lined the banks. And I remember too, with a 

 twinge of shame, that I was not a bit conscience-stricken 

 when the upbraiding look of the djang bird's eyes met mine. 

 But that feeling comes later; boys are harder-hearted than 

 men. A httle further on, just around the next bend, one of 

 those rare and most beautiful wildfowl, a woodduck, got up 

 from the log where it sat sleeping in the sun." 



"Anas sponsa, you should call it. Now that the game is 

 gone we should treat the dear departed with proper respect, 

 and I believe fewer ducks than a team are a plump, so you 

 got up a plump of Anas sponsa.-'' 



"Anything to oblige you, my son; but then, it was not 

 plump, but thin as a shadow, as I found when I picked it up 

 after bringing it down, as I was about to tell you, with my 

 first barrel. Doubtless it had run the gauntlet of a hundred 

 gxms before it fell to mine. Then I was indeed jubOant, hav- 

 ing got what many an older sportsman had failed to get, two 

 ducks in one day— or perhaps I should say, part of a team and 

 a whole plump in one day— more than a sportsman of these 

 days might hope to get in a season. Oh ! but there were ducks 

 in those days," the gaiTuloiis old man went on. "I have seen 

 yokes; no, tandems; no, teams of a dozen and more right here 

 on these maa-shes, where grew acres and acres of wild rice, 

 and my father used to teU of seeing when he was a boy — ^for 

 he, too, was once a boy — hundreds and hundreds in a — a — 

 team. I suppose it might be said that these waters were then 

 teeming with ducks. These waters, I say, for there 

 were indeed waters here in those days all the year 

 round. There were trees to shade them here and pre- 

 vent their evaporation along these level reaches, and trees 

 on the mountains that are now only bald wastes of 

 rock, to shade the springs and keep the snow from 

 melting all at once, to hold the moisture in the sop of deep 

 moss and dole it out to the streams with a frugal hand. This 

 waterway was twice as wide and deep as now, and full of 

 good fish, pike-perch, bass, pickerel, with no end of perch and 

 bullheads. Now only a straggler of the better kinds, some 

 hardy survivor of his race, ever visits it, and the mudfish and 

 gars have it all to themselves. Himdreds of muskrats built 

 theu- huts ot sedge and mud along the channel's edge in the 

 fall, and found food in plenty at all seasons here, where now 

 hardly a trace of one is ever seen. The great blue heron 

 fanned his slow flight over the marshes that he is now a 

 stranger to, and in the warm days of spring the guttural boom- 

 ing of the bittern sounded from every marshy cove. Now one 

 might as well listen ior the voice of the jungle fowl. Even 

 the buUfrogs, since it became the universal fashion to eat 

 them, have almost entirely disap^jeared, and the few that are 

 left have grown so shy that one rarely hears the deep bass of 

 a solo singer, much less the grand chorous of a hundred voices 

 that of old used to roar along the sedgy levels and make them 

 tremble with their loud melody— yes, and set the young 

 leaves of the poplars aquiver on the distant hills." 



"It must require a rather lively imagination to discover 

 anything musical in the thin bass bellow of a bullfrog, I should 

 think," the young man remarked. 



"Well," bvi father replied, "it was pleasing to my unculti- 

 vated ear, as were the voices of the song birds then so abund- 

 ant. In early spring were bluebirds— excuse me if I do not 

 remember scientific names -the earliest minstrels of the year, 

 'shifting their light load of song from post to post along the 

 cheerless fence,' as a poet of the last century says, and song 

 sparrows smging songs of good cheer, with the jolly robins to 

 help them keep our hearts aUve with hope in the dismal days 

 between winter and real spring. And puiTDle finches atilt on 

 the elm tops, and later the bobolinks, drunk with the wine 

 of spring, singing as they staggered awing over the violets and 

 dandelions of the May meadows. And flashing orioles that 

 made one glad and sad with their song, and yellowbii-ds in 

 summer, hanging hke blossoms of gold on the thistles. They 

 ai-e almost all gone now. The stomachs of men and the bom 

 nets of women have made way with them. It was the absurd 

 and wicked fashion sixty years ago for women to wear stuffed 

 birds on their hats, a fashion that raged so virulently that if a 

 bird had handsome plumage or even shapely form, his sweetest 

 songs and his prettiest ways could not save his life from the 

 savage skin hunters who invaded all parts of the land, more 

 cruel, rapacious and destructive than all beasts and bii-ds of 

 prey. And men, so called, ate robins, and even tickled their 

 maws with the atomic carcasses of the beautiful snow bunt 

 ings that used to come down in hordes from the north and give 

 hfe to the white wastes of our wintry fields." 



"Ah!" the young gentleman sighed, "they must have been 

 vei-ynice; much more delicate than crows, almost the only 

 game bu-ds one can get now." 



"There were snipe on these marshes, a bird most excellent to 

 eat," the old gentleman continued, "and wookcock, still more 

 delicious, in the swamps and willow and alder copses that bor- 

 dered the streams. The snipe were shot in spring and fall 

 until, if there were any left, the marshes had become too dry 

 for them to feed upon, and so they were exterminated or dis- 

 appeared. The woodcock were shot in summer, and even in 

 spring, and the swamps they hauntedwere cleared and drained 

 to make meadows, the copses cut away to gain a few more 

 rods for tillage, and so the woodcock were destroyed and ban- 

 ished. It was impossible to enforce the game laws, for they 

 were cumbrous and full of loopholes that rogues, with the help 

 of tricky lawyers, might escape through, and though liberal, 

 they were held by the masses to be undemocratic, and after 

 years of continual violation were abolished. In some places 

 rich men leased large tracts of shooting groimds and protected 

 the game on them. There were beside the snipe and woodcock, 

 some ruffed gi'ouse, a most noble bird now quite extinct, and 

 wild quaU, from which our domestic quail are descended. 

 Also hares of two kinds in the eastern part of the continent, 

 and red foxes. One or two individuals of this species are yet 

 in existence, owned by the gentlemen of the New^jort hunt, 

 and arc hunted by them every season. One of the foxes is so 

 old and feeble that he has to be drawn before the pack in a 

 low-wheeled cags, trailing behind it a bag filled with anise 

 seed. The sport is said to be very grand and exciting, and 

 nowhere else in America can one see this ancient and noble 

 pastime pursued, with carefully bred hounds, blooded horses 

 and well-equipped and gallant riders, and a real, live fox. 

 The extinct raccoon and opossum also afforded a great deal of 

 sport, and were preserved in the leased tracts, and in them 

 was found too the terrible skunk, the most formidable and 

 dangerous wild beast of the continent. It secreted a potent 

 fluid which it ejected by the gallon, paralyzing whoever in- 

 haled its fumes, when the ferocious animal would spring upon 

 and savagely bite its victim, who sooner or later expired in 

 the agonies of hydrophobia. 



"But these domains were eventually invaded by the march 

 of improvement, the marshes drained, and all the woods cut 

 down, for when the running bean became the fashion in Bos- 

 ton, every tree in the land half as big as yom- wrist was taken 

 to furnish the immense bean fields with poles. Perhaps it was 

 because the supply of poles was exhausted, and therefore the 

 supply of this most brain-nourishing of beans fell short of the 

 demand, that the ancient center of culture lost its distin- 

 guished position, and the continent became a great bicycle, as 

 it were, Chicago the hub of its big wheel and Boston that of its 

 little wheel, for you know, of course, as you know everything, 

 that on the great plains of the West was conceived and put in 

 practice the idea of training bean vines on sunflower stalks, by 

 a wild man from England, which was not then a republic, for 

 this was before the Battle of Dorking, you know. 



"And here we are almost at the lake, or what was once the 

 lake. Alas I it is only a great puddle now, or rather a series of 

 puddles, and if the ancient explorer who named it could see 

 it now, he would be sorry that he ever discovered it. But 

 bark ! There is a — a— I cannot call the correct name, but what 

 we used to call a helldiver, almost the only bird of the duck 

 kind left. And there is a sportsman stalking him, and will 

 soon open fire on him with his hopper-gun." 



They watched a man clad in a suit of woven sedges and 

 looking exactly hke a great animate sheaf of the wild grass 

 he was making his way through, till he' arrived at the margin 

 of tne stream, where he set a tripod supporting a machine of 

 curious construction. Into its hopper he poured a quantity of 

 powder, shot and wads, and began turning a crank, where- 

 upon the water for yards about the poor diver began to bod 

 wdth the storm of leaden rain poured upon it by half a dozen 

 revolving barrels, and for some minutes a succession of rapid 

 reports filled the air. When these ceased and the foaming 

 water became quiet, a cloud of feathers floated upon the sur- 

 face, and were quickly brought to the sportsman by his re- 

 triever, till now unseen by the occupants of the canoe. Draw- 

 ing near to the sportsman, they asked to see his game, and he 

 with some pride showed his game bag half full of feathers. 



"Thank you," said the elder of the canoeists, "but my son is 

 something of a naturalist, and would be glad to see the bu-d." 



"Oh," said the other, smihng, "there goes the bird swim- 

 ming his best for the lake without a feather to his back, I 

 did not wish to kill him, for he has f m-nished me a day's sport 



a year these five years, and if some bungler does not fafl in 

 with him, wiU give me as many more. I have picked him 

 clean more than once, without injurmg his bill, legs or eyes, 

 or, I think, breaking his skin." 



They went their way, marveling greatly at this shooter's 

 skill. When they came to the lake their further progress was 

 stopped by a sand or mudbar covered only by an inch or so of 

 water. It was a dismal scene. The old rocky shores of the 

 lake, once clothed with trees and washed by bright waves, 

 stood now some furlongs inland, with a wide stretch of bare 

 sand, cracked dried mud, and mossless, water-worn stones 

 between them and the shrunken lake, whose turbid bosom no 

 goodly fish broke into circling ripples, nor waterfowl swam 

 upon. Not even a heron waded the black shallows, nor king- 

 fisher clattered above them; not a sign of wild life was to be 

 seen. The mountains to the westward were monstrcus sterfle 

 piles of treeless rocks, savage and forbiddmg, not giving so 

 much as a home to the eagle. 



"Let us return," said the old man. "This is all so changed 

 from what it was when I was a boy that I cannot bear to look 

 upon it. The axe and fii-e— man's greed and carelessness and 

 spirit of wanton destructiveness have spoiled it aU. Let us go 

 home, where we have at least an orchard and a well of clear 

 water, and fields that are not entirely without gi-eenness. 



"O, why could they not have spared the trees upon these 

 i-ocky shores, where they cumbered no tillable ground, and 

 were so useful and so beautiful? The woods are gone, the 

 waters are passing away and the hearts of men are grown as 

 arid as the world they have spoiled. When I see how then- 

 Lands are never withheld from laying waste the earth, from 

 making sterde and forbidding all that was once so fruitful 

 and fan-, from exterminating nature, I cannot but be glad 

 that in a few years my eyes will be shut forever from the 

 sight of this 'abomination of desolation.' " 



Address all communications to tM Forest and Stream Publish- 

 ing Co. 



AMONG THE WATERFOWL IN DURANGO 



THERE are places enough in the United States where one 

 may stilJ see plenty of ducks and geese, but plenty of 

 waterfowl by no means implies plenty of shooting. There 

 are many places where good shooting may be had, but it is 

 too often at an expense of bodily comfort which the pleasure 

 may fail to repay. 



Of wildfowl shooting amid the howling blasts or driving 

 rains of autumn, of shooting that involves starting before 

 daybreak on cold mornings and lying in a battery on one's 

 back or cramped up all day in a blind, shivering and lonely, 

 there may be two opinions. But of wildfowl shooting dar- 

 ing the middle of soft, warm days, upon ground where no 

 boat is needed and perhaps even wading boots are unneces- 

 sary, and beneath bright sunny skies, wliile the lakes of the 

 North are closed with ice and the once glad fields are lost in 

 heavy drifts of snow, there can be but one opinion. 



In Southern California I have seen some shooting of this 

 latter sort. But there the ducks fly but little during the day 

 unless stirred up, when they circle once or twice and then 

 fly off to some other place. I have seen nothing there that 

 equals the shooting between Lerdo and Noe in the State of 

 Durango, Mexico. And considering the variety of game, its 

 amount and manner of flight, combined with the ease and 

 comfort of bunting it, I believe it now unapproachable any 

 where in the United States. 



Seldom have I seen the sun rise upon a fairer sight than 

 that presented by the cotton and corn fields on each side of 

 the Mexican Central Railroad, as on a bright warm morning 

 in the latter part of December 1 went whizzing down the 

 line on a hand car, propelled by several stout peons. On 

 each side of the road stretched broad fields of lofty corn 

 standing yet unhusked, and wide fields of cotton whose tall 

 stalks, growing four or five years without replanting, are 

 blowing the whole year round, were hanging full of snowy 

 balls. Along the track and under the track ran ditches of 

 water coming from the Nases River far above; and from 

 these many of the fields were flooded with water, while 

 others were perfectly dry, and some were still moist from 

 recent irrigation. 



On the right and on the left, from the ditches themselves 

 and from the ponds of water formed in the fields by the 

 irrigation, rose ducks and brant by the hundred. Two Eng- 

 lish gentlemen were with me, and I had hard work to keep 

 them quiet until we got to headquarters. They wanted to 

 stop, but I had been over all the ground before, and knew 

 that we were only among tlie advance guard of the host we 

 were going to meet. We kept on some five miles to a long 

 stretch of fields, into which the water had been lately turned. 

 Here a rare scene opened upon us. The ducks in the fields 

 that had been flooded for several days, though plenty enough, 

 were as nothing compared with the hordes that rose dark and 

 roaring from those into which the ditches had been turned but 

 yesterday. And even these were as nothing compared with 

 the long lines that could be seen streaming afong the horizon 

 miles away over the wide sweep of the irrigated fields. On 

 every hand mallards, sprigtails, canvasbacks, redheads, 

 widgeon and other ducks in strings, dense bunches and 

 wedge shaped masses, went spinning across the top of the 

 corn and cotton, or with stiff set wings were settling into it. 

 No large geese were to be seen or heard, but gray brant 

 were winging their way here and there in clamorous bands, 

 or from the sKy above were pitching and tumbling down- 

 ward in their peculiar way to alight. The black or bronze 

 curlew in long black ranks, and with light and even stroke 

 of wing, rode the warm air in different directions; occasional 

 bunches of the sickle-billed curlew, seeming ill at ease, went 

 wandering along on high; English snipe pitched about aloft 

 or rose with their usual remark from the boggy ground along 

 the ditches or out of the cotton or corn; and plenty of doves 

 winnowed the air in every direction. Plenty of other birds 

 were there too to add variety to the landscape, the snowy 

 egi-et standing thoughtfully along the ditch, the white- 

 throated and white-tailed liawk preening his dark wings 

 upon the mesquite bush, the buzzard sailing far away in the 

 sky. Grulls too, and even pelicans, were there, passing 

 probably from one to another of the distant lagunas. 



Mexico seems to be the winter home of the sandhill crane. 

 I thought I had seen some sandhill cranes in the Western 

 States many years ago, but neither there nor in California 



