482 



FOREST AND STREAM. 



[Jan. 14, 1886. 



BIBD DE81 RUCTION. 

 npHE slaughter of our small lairds still continues to be 

 appalling. Every day in the year, from Jan. 1 to 

 Dec. 31, somewhere ;wi thin the boundaries of our country, 

 men are shooting the beautiful white and gray sea fowl, 

 whose graceful forms used to beautify our shores and our 

 larger inland waters, and our singing birds, the destroyers 

 of noxious insects. 



When is this to end? What remedy shall be devised to 

 put a period to this destruction, which is so repugnant to 

 every lover of nature, and is such a serious injury to our 

 agricultural interests? Thoughtless people, who believe 

 that it is possible to reform abuses by act of Legislature, 

 say that there ought to be a law against this bird murder. 

 We have laws against it now, but they are regarded by no 

 one. To make them more stringent would only be to bring 

 further contempt upon our statutes. A law is useful only 

 when it has the support of popular sentiment, and up to the 

 present time the number of people who care about the 

 slaughter of our small birds is very limited. 



The only way to change the present state of affairs is to 

 educate the people. Many years ago, while yet the buffalo 

 blackened the plains of the West, we tried to convince the 

 public that measures must be taken tg, protect them or they 

 would soon become extinct. Time passed. The buffalo 

 were a long way off. Nobody was much interested in the 

 subject. Now the race is extirpated. As with the buffalo 

 so with other large game, though extinction will not follow 

 so rapidly; so with our gulls, and terns, and herons, and 

 even with our swallows and native sparrows, our orioles 

 and thrushes. Nothing will be left alive. 



Along the Long Island shore the seafowl are no longer 

 found. Slaua;htered without intermission during their 

 stay with us, their nests plundei-ed when they attempted 

 to breed, the few survivors of the multitudinous host that 

 once gave life to the dancing waters and to the long brown 

 sandbars, have disappeared. Some few of them may have 

 winged their way up or down the coast, seeking some spot 

 where their ears should not be saluted by the roar of the 

 shotgun; others adorn the hats of women, and we may recog. 

 nize them in the streets of New York, of Chicago, of Mem- 

 phis and of New Orleans. 



Ah! if only the women would think a little; if they but 

 realized the incalculable harm that they are doing; if they but 

 reflected that for each plume and cunning head that adorns 

 their apparel, a bright joyous life has gone out, and remem- 

 bered how easy it is for any one of us to take life, but how 

 i73ipossible it is to give it — if they thought of all this— we be- 

 lieve that the fashion would change so quickly as to bring 

 to bankruptcy those who make their living out of this traffic 

 in bird skins. 



It is natural to say that the ornament to be purchased is 

 now dead, and cannot take its place among the creatures of 

 our shores and our forests, and that the purchase of this 

 single one can make no difference. A hundred thousand 

 women reason in this way and it is easy to see how the de. 

 mand keeps up and why the fashion continues. 



It lies in the power of our women to change this barbar- 

 ous fashion, and to save our small birds now remaining, 

 from the gun of the bird butcher. Let them refuse to 

 countenance the wearing of hat birds, and the slayer's occu- 

 pation will be gone. Then when they shall have fostered a 

 healthy public sentiment against the destruction, laws far 

 more stringent than those we now have may be made and 

 enforced. The first thing to be done is to create a healthy 

 public sentiment which shall frown down the present absurd 

 and brutal fashion. Further legislation will come ]at«r. 



SAND, SAND, SAND. 



FLORIDA rejoices in the possession of vast stretches of 

 barren sand, which to the uninitiated eye appear ut- 

 terly worthless. But there is money in them. They can 

 be made to yield a profit by one of three ways. The first is 

 to let them severely alone and put your capital somewhere 

 else. A second is to spend a small fortune in fertilizers and 

 wait ten years for returns. The third way, speediest, 

 easiest and dead sure, is to divide the sand wastes up into 

 "town lots" and sell them to Northern gulls. Great for- 

 tunes may be made and great fortunes are made in this way. 

 A Florida sand paper town is worth more than a hole in 

 the ground. The public after a while grows weary of sink- 

 ing money in a mine; it never tires of buying "town lots" 

 in Florida. 



This sort of thing has been going on for a long time, 

 Florida sand swindles are older than any other land swindles 

 in this country. Paper towns were surveyed, plotted and 

 sold away back wlien the peninsula belonged to Great 

 Britain, and the thievery was engineered by London land- 

 sharks. In the old books of Florida travel you may find 

 glowing descriptions of great towns that were to be, but 

 never a pine was felled for the first settler. The sand 

 swindles in those days were no meaner than they are now. 

 Simple men and confiding women were no more eager to plant 

 their savings in the pockets of the town promoters then than 

 they are now. Florida sand wastes have never yielded more 

 enormous profits than they are yielding now, and on the 

 other hand the mortification, regret and hardships of the 

 sand sharks' victims were never more poignant than in this 

 year of grace 1886. 



If a person contemplates investing in Florida real estate, 



the cheapest way is to purchase the plant of some one else 

 who has put time, capital and hard work into a piece of 

 ground and now wants to sell out for about a quarter of what 

 he has spent. Florida is full of such people. 



THE NEW TORK SYSTEM. 

 TN another column will be found abstracts of the annual 

 reports of some of the New York State game protectors. 

 They are not all so satisfactory as might be wished, but on 

 the whole the statements of work undertaken and accomp- 

 lished are encouraging. They show that New York is on 

 the right track. The system is a good one. The lawless in- 

 dividuals who make a living by unlawful practices have not 

 in every instance been brought to book; but in a large 

 number of cases they have failed to elude the officers 

 and have paid their fines. This never could have happened 

 under the old order of things, when game law enforcement 

 was the business of enthusiasts in general and nobody in 

 particular. 



The force now employed is inadequate to perform the 

 work as it should be done. The number of protectors ought 

 to be increased. 



The Maine Woods are unusually full of lumbermen this 

 year, a large share being "Canucks;" and the crews go far 

 back to remote localities where moose are said to be found. 

 The slaughter in crusting time will be great. Many hides 

 will be taken out in the spring by way of the back lanes and 

 roads; and they will not all be hides of animals which have 

 been used for f ood. 



Mk. Robert B. Roosevelt is not one of the despondent 

 pessimists who croak that "the shooting is played out," and 

 he is just wise enough to keep himself free to go for the 

 birds whenever the flight is on ; and it was presumably on 

 that principle that Mr. Roosevelt last Monday declined an 

 appointment as Assistant Treasurer of the United States at 

 New York. 



Newspaper LYma. — President Cleveland recently deliv- 

 ered his mind on the subject of newspaper lying. We notice 

 that some of the editors who are scurrying to the front to 

 indorse his remarks are the very ones who last summer filled 

 their columns with the rubbish about the President of the 

 United States hounding deer in the Adirondacks. 



If the Deer Hthstter who was out after unseasonable 

 game on Jan. 1 in Northern New York had not been en- 

 gaged in that unlawful pursuit he would not have compassed 

 his own destruction ; but as it was he was drowned. 



The Massachusetts Fish and Game Protective Asso- 

 ciation's annual dinner will be held at the Parker House, 

 Boston, Tuesday evening, Jan. 19. The secretary is Mr. 

 Henry J. Thayer, 246 Washington street, Boston. 



TO THE WALLED-IN LAKES. 



VI. — STRONG POWER, SUN. 



THE next day two Kootenays, one of them the man who 

 had promised to come the day before, rode up to the 

 camp and proposed to go hunting. No one seemed to 

 care to go except myself, and so saddling Jerry, we were 

 soon on the way toward the mountain which we had fir.st 

 climbed, the one on the west side of the upper lake. 



As I rode along behind the Kootenays 1 rather wondered 

 how I should communicate with them in case I should have 

 anything special to say. One of them could talk Piegan, it 

 is true, but my knowledge of that tongue was confined lo 

 about half a dozen words. A good deal could be said by 

 signs, but I am not especially proficient in this language, 

 and there is always a chance for a misunderstanding of the 

 particular sign on which the sense of the whole communica- 

 tion depends. 



We did not follow the trail taken by our party in previous 

 climbs, but rode toward the shore of the upper lake and 

 crossed the Inlet just below where it leaves that body of 

 water. As we passed over the Inlet flat the Kootenay sang 

 a little song to the Sun, in which he told that luminary, as I 

 gathered from his gestures, that we were going to climb the 

 great mountain before us, and there among the peaks kill 

 plenty of sheep. He then made a prayer asking for good 

 luck, and that our arms might be made strong and steady, 

 so that we could shoot straight. 



After crossing the Inlet we climbed the hills, not taking 

 the trail, but making a new one, along which the Indians 

 broke branches to mark it for future use. If I had been sure 

 just where they were going, I should have taken them over 

 to our trail ; but I reasoned that they probably knew what 

 they were about better than I did, and so I followed behind. 

 When nearly at the edge of the timber line we crossed our 

 trail, and on seeing it and the recent tracks which we had 

 made, the Indians seemed surprised, and after speaking 

 together, the older one turned in his saddle and asked me by 

 signs if the trail had been made by us, to which I replied in 

 the affirmative. Pushing on, we left our horses at the same 

 point as on the two previous occasions when I had ascended 

 the mountain, and started on over the rocks. 



While we were preparing for the climb I endeavored to 

 convey to the Indian the information that I was a poor 

 climber and easily got out of breath and had to stop and 

 rest, while he and his companion were strong and could go 

 right on; so, I said, they must wait for me and go slowly. 



Whether he comprehended the polyglot mixture of talk and 

 signs by which I endeavored to express my meaning I do 

 not know, but I am sure that he did not act as if he did, for 

 by the time I had reached the top of the first bench he and 

 his comrade were far ahead of me, and were disappearing 

 over the point of the mountain to the northwest. It is 

 impossible for a man whose occupation for ten or eleven 

 months of the year is sendentary, to start out and follow these 

 mountain Indians over the rocks. I do not pretend to do 

 it. I can scramble around pretty well after having been a 

 few weeks in training, but when I am at my best I yield to 

 a mountain Indian, and am content to follow him. 



By the time that I had reached the point where they had 

 disappeared, the Indians were nowhere to be seen, and I was 

 unable to tell whether they had descended into the deep 

 canon, or gone around the point of the mountain on this side 

 of it. Just then it began to blow and snow furiously, and I 

 waited for the squall to pass over. While I did so a sheep 

 snorted somewhere above me on the steep mountain wall, 

 but though I strained my eyes in the effort to discover it, 

 the snow was so thick and blinding that I could not make 

 it out. After a while the snow ceased falling and I started 

 on around the point of the mountain, but before I had gone 

 very far, three shots sounded quite a long way up the canon. 

 The Indians had evidently found game. 



I had gone perhaps a mile further and had stopped to 

 listen and look, when suddenly I saw, three hundred yards 

 ahead of me, two tiny points rise over a ridge and then a 

 sheep's head. At the first warning I had sunk down beside 

 the rock against which I was leaning, but not soon enough 

 to escape the animal's keen eye. It stopped as soon as it 

 had come in sight and for a moment or two we looked at 

 each other. It had evidently been alarmed by the shooting 

 up the canon and did not care to go back, and so turuiog 

 up the slope toward the wall of rock, it tried to run along by 

 me on the upper side. Just as it started, another snow squall 

 began, and for a moment the flakes flew so thickly that it 

 was difficult to follow the animal's course. Twice it stopped 

 to look, once at 200 yards and once at about 100 yards, and 

 on each occasion I tried to shoot, but the snow was flying 

 so that I could not see the foresight of my rifle. It ran 

 swiftly by me and then stopped again, this time at about 

 150 yards; but, as bad luck would have it, directly 

 behind a pile of rocks, over which I could just see the line 

 of its back, and between two of which its head and neck 

 were visible. I knew that it was now or never, for if it 

 once got fairly by me, it would not stop again within shoot- 

 ing distance. So 1 drew a fine bead on the neck just below 

 the head, and the old gun spoke out. In that wind there 

 was no hanging of the smoke, and as I lowered the rifle and 

 before the sound of the report could have reached it, I saw 

 the animal give a wild bound and start at headlong speed 

 down the mountain. I knew from these signs that I had hit 

 it, but where? Possibly my ball had merely grazed the skin, 

 but the creature acted as though hard hit. 



I did not stand still and reason about the matter, but seeing 

 that the sheep had taken a course which would at once 

 carry it out of my sight, and that therefore there would be 

 no opportunity for a second shot, I had thrown another 

 cartridge into my rifle and dashed off for the point where 

 the animal had disappeared over a ridge. Springing from 

 rock to rock, I hurried along the mountain side, and was 

 soon near the spot where I had last seen it. While yet some 

 yards distant my eye caught the deeply-plowed imprints of 

 the wide-spread hoofs, and as I cast a glance ahead down 

 the slope, there was a patch of old snow, on which were two 

 or three tiny dots of blood, confirming the story already 

 told. 



The trail was an easy one to take, for it led down over 

 loose shale interspersed with rocks, and I followed it at a 

 run down the mountain side. Once or twice when the 

 animal had made a sudden turn I overran it, but a glance 

 backward always gave it to me again. 



There is something rather horrible in the wild and 

 savage excitement that one feels under such circumstances 

 as these; the mingling of exultation over the appai'ently 

 successful pursuit, tempered by the doubt about securing 

 the prey, and then the fierce delight, temporary of course, 

 when the capture is assured. These feelings seem to be 

 those which the wolf must have when he is pulling down the 

 exhausted deer, or the hound when the tired fox pants along 

 just ahead of him, and the fierce triumph of success is heard 

 in his exultant mellow bay. It seems shocking that a 

 respectable civiHzed and well-ordered being, such as a person 

 of ordinary cultivation living in the nineteenth centmy may 

 be supposed to be, should, under any circumstances, indulge 

 in such bx-utal feelings. It shows how thin is the veneer of 

 civilization which hides the brute in our nature and how 

 easily this veneer is rabbed off, showing underneath it the 

 character of the animal. 



As I k.ept on down the mountain side, the blood on the trail 

 became more abundant, and soon I felt sure that the sheep 

 would be found within a short distance. A little further on 

 there was a patch of low willows a foot or two in height, 

 over which was a broad smear of blood as though some 

 large object had been dragged across them, and looking 

 beyond them and down over a ledge twelve or fifteen feet 

 high I saw the game stretched on its side. It was quite 

 dead. 



The animal was a yearling ewe and was In very fair order. 

 My ball had struck the neck about three inches below the 



