Forest and Stream 



A Weekly Journal of the Rod and Gun. 



Terms, $4 a Tear. 10 Cts. a Copt. 1 

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NEW YORK, MAY 13, 1886. 



j VOL. XXVI.-No. 16. 



1 Nos. 39 & 40 Park Row, New York. 



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CONTENTS. 



Editorial. 



A Plea for the Unprotected. 



The Railroads and the Park. 



Report on the Park Railroad. 

 The Sportsmajj Tourist 



A Week on Michigan Lake. 

 Natural History. 



The Sparrow Ha\*k. 



The Distribution of Species. 



The Birds of Michigan. 



Birds and Trees. 

 Game Bag and Gun. 



A Tennessee Valley Hunt. 



Different Ways of Camping. 



In the Olden Time. 



North Carolina Doings 



My First Trip to Maine Woods. 

 Sea ^nd River Fishing. 



How to Cast a Fly. 



Rocky Mountain Trout Streams. 



Camps of the Kingfishers.— XI. 



Note trom Eagle's Nest. 



Tim and the Seven Ponds. 



Poaching in Saratoga. 



Fishing iu the Adirondacks. 



Fishculture. 



American Carp Cultural Ass'n. 



The New York Fish Commission 

 The Kennel. 



.Notes from the Occident. 



The New York Show. 



American Kennel Club. 

 Rtele and Trap Shooting. 



Range and Gallery. 



The Trap. 



The Minnesota Tournament. 

 I Canoeing. 



The A. C. A. Trophy. 

 Brooklyn C. (J. Challenge Cup. 

 A Suggestion for tue Trial Races 

 A 500-Mile Cruise on the Rivers 

 of Northern California. 

 Yachting. 

 Cruise of the Coot.— xxii. 

 Yacht Design and Building in 

 Boston. 

 New Publications. 

 Frank's Ranche; or, My Holiday 

 in the Rockies. 

 Answers to Correspondents. 



TEE RAILROADS AND THE PARK. 

 rpHE Senate Committee on Territories has favorably re- 

 ported the bill authorizing the granting of a right of 

 way to a railway through the National Park to Cooke City. 

 This favorable report is signed by four members of the com- 

 mittee, while a minority report, presented by Mr. Mander- 

 son, is signed by three. 



The majority report consists mainly of the two favorable 

 reports by committees of the Senate and House, which we 

 have reviewed and shown each to be a tissue of misrepresenta- 

 tions. We remarked weeks ago, that these documents furnish 

 abundant evidence that they were prepared by the same 

 hand, and there seems to be little doubt that this hand be 

 longed to General Armstrong, some time Railroad Commis- 

 sioner, and now a mine owner of Cooke City. This individ- 

 ual has shown remarkable energy in pushing forward this 

 railroad scheme, and is credited with having tried to bully 

 the friends of the Park into ceasing their opposition to his 

 plans by saying to them, in language more forcible than 

 elegant, " If we don't get our railroad, we'll bust the Park." 

 It remains to be seen whether this magniloquent threat of 

 " busting the Park" will so alarm Congress and the people 

 of the United States that they will tamely submit to see their 

 pleasure ground taken away from them, to see it cut up by 

 railroads, to see it dotted with towns in which are machine 

 shops, dwellings occupied by railroad hands and saloons, 

 to see its forests and its prairies burned off, to see its game 

 destroyed or ^driven out of the reservation, so that it may 

 fall an easy prey to the hide hunters and meat butchers. 



In this majority report the false statements as to the length 

 of the line in the Park are repeated. General Anderson 

 again refers to the difficulties of crossing the range between 

 Clark's Fork and the head of Soda Butte Creek, as if there 

 were a steep divide there, whereas it is perfectly well known 

 that the divides are very slight and easily surmounted. 

 General Anderson has never been over the country, but the 

 members of the U. S. Geological Survey have, and the char- 

 acter of the divides can be ascertained from their reports or 

 from the men who made them. Major George O. Eaton, an 

 interested mine owner, says in this report that all that the 

 miners of Cooke want is a railroad, and that ouo from Bil- 

 lings would suit them just as well as any other. Let the 

 nainers of Cooke possess their souls in patience. A road will 



be built from Billings, the surveys are being made, and the 

 money for building the road has all been promised. It is 

 road that does not pass through the Park. 



The friends of the Cinnabar & Clark's Fork Railroad 

 scheme are evidently hard pushed for ammunition, for they 

 introduce in their report a quotation from a petition signed 

 by sixty-six citizens of Cinnabar, who ask for this railroad 

 grant. To any one who has been to Cinnabar, this is really 

 laughable. Cinnabar has only four or five houses in all 

 These are the railway station, a stable for Wakefield & 

 Hoffman's horses, a saloon and one or two cabins. Probably 

 there are not a dozen voters in the town, and every rancher, 

 teamster, cowboy, brakeman, and probably woman and 

 child, in the whole region must have put his or her name to 

 the document to make up the "sixty-six citizens of Cinna- 

 bar." 



The minority report is signed by men who have given 

 themselves the trouble to look into the matter and to take 

 the opinion of those intelligent and disinterested persons, 

 who are best acquainted with the National Park and its re 

 quirements. Against the railroad we find men like Secretary 

 Lamar, General P. H. Sheridan, Mr. Arnold Hague, Lieut. 

 Dan C. Kingman and Mr. W. Hallett Phillips. Letters 

 from these gentlemen giving incontrovertible reasons why 

 the railroad should not be built through the Park, have been 

 written in support of the minority report, and we print them 

 this week. They should be carefully read by every one who 

 is interested in the preservation of this wonderland. 



Recent advices from a surveying party now engaged in an 

 examination of the Clark's Fork route, give a very favor- 

 able report of the line along the canon, the only place on 

 the whole route where it has been pretended that there are 

 any difficulties to be overcome. The practicability of the 

 Clark's Fork route seems thus to be assured. The party, 

 when we heard from it, had been only two days in the canon, 

 and had already surveyed a line where the grade, for a dis- 

 tance of seven miles only, is 171.4 feet to the mile, with very 

 light work, and there is every prospect that further investi- 

 gation and the running of other lines will result in the dis- 

 covery of a much more moderate grade. It is usual in run- 

 ning new lines through a mountain country to look 

 about for some time before the best and easiest 

 line is found. Suppose, however, that no grade 

 easier than 171 feet to the mile can be found, 

 there is nothing very alarming in this. It is true that it is 

 steeper than the maximum grade on the Northern Pacific 

 main line, but it is' 54 feet less than the maximum on 

 the Denver & Rio Grande R. R., and 79 feet less than the 

 temporary line over the Mullan Pass. It is not a heavy 

 grade for a mountain road, and it is less important here, 

 because all the heavy freight to be hauled from the mines 

 will pass down the grade, while only empty cars or very 

 light trains will go up the hill. There seems little doubt 

 that a road from Billings will before long be an accomplished 

 fact, and this being the case, it would be insane to permit a 

 railroad to enter the Park. 



The tremendously strong lobby which is working in favor 

 of the Cinnabar & Clark's Fork R. R. has been a good deal 

 of a puzzle to the people who have been watching it, and 

 who are familiar with what it has accomplished. 



We have good reason to believe that the strength of this 

 movement, for some time so mysterious, lies in the fact that 

 the Northern Pacific Railway Company is backing the pro- 

 ject. We are informed, on authority which we cannot but 

 trust, that this is the case, that this grant will be utilized 

 by the Northern Pacific people to run a line into the Park, 

 so as to secure considerable additional passenger traffic 

 that there is no intention of building the road to Cooke, but 

 that it is merely the entering wedge to enable thi3 company 

 to gain a foothold for a railway in the Park. Once within 

 the boundaries of the reservation, it is believed that it will be 

 easy to get permission to build a little further in one direc- 

 tion, and a little further in another direction, until the whole 

 Park is gridironed with tracks, and its usefulness and its 

 beauty destroyed forever. 



Already this corporation has a strong bold on the National 

 Park. Theirs is the only railway which runs to its borders. 

 A powerful syndicate of its stockholders have obtained 

 leases for hotel and other privileges within the Park. Yes- 

 terday the franchise and leases of the National Park Im- 

 provement Company were to have been sold at public auction 

 in Evanston, the county seat of Uinta county, Wyoming 

 Territory, and it was the reported intention of the Northern 

 Pacific people to bid them in. These leases include the 

 exclusive transportation privileges in the Park. 



We do not at present care to express an opinion as to 

 whether it is desirable to have the national pleasure ground 

 so entirely in the power of a great corporation. But we in- 

 sist that neither the Northern Pacific nor any other corpora- 

 tion shall push a railroad into the Park. Let them be con- 

 tent with what they have, and leave to the people their Park 

 undisturbed by the scream of the locomotive and the rumble 

 of the train. We have already resisted the attempts of 

 monopolists to seize this pleasure ground, and there are more 

 people interested in the Park and ready to fight for it now, 

 than there were when we first took the matter up some 

 years ago. 



Congress cannot afford to turn over this Park to a cor- 

 poration. 



A PLEA FOR TEE UNPROTECTED. 



\\[ HEN one goes out for a day's shooting he is a little 

 ' * apt, especially if young, thoughtless and too ardent, 



to shoot at many things that when alive harm no one, that 

 when killed are of no worth to him but as proof of his skill 

 with the gun; not even that. Why not spare them? The 

 world is pleasanter for all of us the more happy wild life 

 there is in it. Why kill for the mere sake of killing or the 

 exhibition of one's knack of killing? 



When one is duck shooting on inland waters, sitting alert 

 in the bow of the skiff with his gun ready for the expected 

 gaudy wood duck, or plump mallard, or loud quacking 

 dusky duck, or swift-winged teal, to rise with a splashing 

 flutter out of the wild rice, and there is a sudden beating of 

 broad wings among the sedges with a startled guttural quack, 

 and one's heart leaps to his throat and his gun to his shoul- 

 der, and then— only an awkward bittern climbs the Septem 

 ber breeze with a slow incline, there is a vengeful tempta- 

 tion to let drive at the disappointing good-for-nothing. But 

 why not let the poor fellow go? If you dropped him back 

 (as the poorest and most poking shot might) into the marsh 

 to rot unprofitably there, disdained even by the mink, unat- 

 tainable to the scavenger skunk, what good would it do you? 

 If he disappointed you, you disturbed him in his medita- 

 tions, or in the pursuit of a poor but honest living. Or per- 

 haps a great heron too intent upon his fishing or frogging, 

 or dozing in the fancied seclusion of his reedy bower, springs 

 up within short range and goes lagging away on his broad 

 vans. If you kill him you will take him home to show, for 

 he is worth showing even then. But if you wish your 

 friends to see him at his best, bring them to him and let them 

 see how well he befits these sedgy levels — a goodly sight, 

 whether he makes his lazy flight above them or stands a 

 motionless sentinel in the oozy shallows. The marshes 

 would be lonely without him, or if one desires the charm of 

 loneliness, does not his silent presence add to it? 



A kingfisher comes clattering along the channel. As he 

 jerks his swift way over the sluggish water he may test your 

 marksmanship, but as he hangs with rapid wing beats over 

 a school of minnows as steadfast for a minute as a star for- 

 ever, needing no skill to launch him to his final unrewarded 

 plunge, why kill him! In such waters he takes no fish 

 that you would, and he enlivens the scene more than almost 

 On the uplands, where the meadow lark starts out of the 

 grass with a sharp, defiant "zeet!" and speeds away on his 

 steady game-like flight, remember before you stop it or try 

 to, of how little account he is when brought to bag; and re- 

 member, too, how when the weary days of winter had 

 passed, his cheery voice welcomed the coming spring, a 

 little later than the robin's, a little earlier than the flicker's 

 cackle; and what an enlivening dot of color his yellow breast 

 made where he strutted in the dun bare meadows. 



In some States the woodpeckers are unprotected, and are a 

 mark for every gunner. Their galloping flight tempts the 

 ambitious young shooter to try his skill, but they are among 

 the best friends of the aboriculturi3t and the fruit grower, 

 for though some of them steal cherries and peck early apples, 

 and one species, perhaps, sucks the sap of trees, they are the 

 only birds that search out and kill the insidious, destructive 

 borer. 



any other frequenter of it, never skulking and hiding, but 

 with metallic, vociferous clatter, heralding his coming. Then 

 his still mid-air poise, the same in calm or wind, and his 

 unerring headlong plunge, that one never tires of watching 

 nor ceases to wonder at. 



When one wanders along a willowy stream with his gun, 

 cautiously approaching every lily-padded pool and shadowed 

 bend likely to harbor woodduck or teal, and finds neither, 

 and his ears begin to ache for the sound of his gun— if a 

 green heron flaps off a branch before him, he is sorely 

 I tempted to shoot the ungainly bird, but for what? If the 



