OCT. 7, 1886.] 



FOREST AND STREAM. 



20B 



"That remiads me." 

 190. 



LAST fall a party of us were out camping on Bmce's 

 Bayou. One of the tents was occupied by Dr. V., 

 Nats., Lockie and Jack A. The tent was rather small 

 and the large tick filled with straw took up the entu-e 

 width and made rather close quarters. The party, except- 

 ing Jack A, , were old campers, and persuaded jack (who 

 had come well supplied with buffalo robe and blankets) 

 that the best plan for comfort would be to make one large 

 bed, using the buffalo robe for a foundation and coverini^ 

 with the blankets. Jack acquiesced and stood looking on 

 while Lockie and the Doctor made up a most inviting 

 looking bed. Nat S., in the meantime, was quietly getting 

 ready to turn in, and no sooner was the last of the blankets 

 put in place than he had ensconced himself imder one 

 side of them, and giving them a scientific tuck, planted 

 his 1751bs. of avoirdupois on the tuck. Lockie followed, 

 and Doctor was not much behind him. Jack's share of 

 the blankets looked decidedly scant, but he turned in say- 

 ing nothing. After about half an hour of tugging and 

 trying to get enough blanket to cover one side of Irim, he 

 gave it up and ajjpai'ently ch-opped asleep. Tlie rest were 

 certainly sound asleep, Nat S. and Lockie snoring a loud 

 accompaniment to Jack's chattering teeth. Jack quietly 

 got up, stepped outside the tent, and then pulling aside 

 the tent flaps stuck his head in and called in a very loud 

 whisper, "Lockie." "What's the matter, Jack, why don't 

 you tiu-n in?" answered Lockie. "Where's my gun?" ex- 

 citedly asks Jack, apparently trying to find it in the 

 corner of the tent. By this time the rest of the party are 

 awake, and Doctor sleepily adds, "What do you want 

 with a gtm at this time of night?" "There's a coon in the 

 big oak back of the tent," says Jack, making a desperate 

 effort to get his gun from the case. They are all up now, 

 rather scantily attired and barefooted, and all three rush 

 to the oak tree (not noticing that Jack does not follow) and 

 sm'round it. After some time spent in peering into the 

 tree top, Lockie, through his chattering teeth, says, Ja-Ja- 

 c-k, are you sure you saw a coon?" There is no reply, and 

 Nat says, "Where the dickens is Jack?" And then they 

 all begin to see something more than coon and silently 

 make their way back to the tent to be gi-eeted by Jack on 

 then- entrance with, "Turn in, boys, take yom- 'choice of- 

 sides, I'll take mine out of the niiddle tMs time." Very 

 little is said. The old campers conclude Jack is not such 

 a tenderfoot after aU, and Jack smokes good cigars under 

 a promise of secrecy, but the story was too good to keep, 

 and thus it finds its way to FoBEST AND Stream. X. 

 Grand Haa^en, Mich. 



"NESSMUK'S" POEMS. 

 ^OME time ago there came to the Forest and Stream a manu- 

 ^ script volume of verse, written in the characteristic hand of 

 "Nessmuk," and bound in limp huckskin from a deer th.it fell to 

 his own little muzzleloadlng rifle. The manuscript gavee\idence 

 of ha'v'ing been much read by the author's friends; and it has been 

 read and in parts re-read, here in the office, and frequently brought 

 out for the entertainment of \-isitors when "Nessmuk's" name 

 happened to come up. Those who are familiar with "Nessmuk 'sS 

 contributions to the Forest and Stream need not be told that 

 many of his poems relate to the woods and the camp; but their 

 range is more comprelieusive than this. If some of his verses are 

 attuned to the soughing of the night wind through the hemlocks, 

 and some are musical -with the gurgle of the moimtain stream, in 

 others is the rhythm of life and labor— the ring of anvil and lap- 

 stone, the buzz of loom and whirr of factory wheels, the city's 

 rumble, the roll of drum and cannon's roar. And because between 

 these btickskin covers we have found so much time poetry- 

 humor, pathos, shrewd philosophy, and that which has to it the 

 ring of manliness, we propose to put the poems into the permanent 

 form they deserve, and give them, wider circulation than ever a 

 manuscript can have. 



The poems, with a biographical sketch of "Nessmuk," wiUmake 

 a volume of something more than 120 pages. The book will be 

 printed from type; the size of the edition wiU depend upon the 

 number of subscriptions received, and the type will then be dis- 

 tributed. The price for copies subscribed for before publication 

 wni be $1. For remaining copies after publication the publisher^ 

 reserve the right to advance the price. Subscriptions should be 

 sent in on the blank form on page 218. Duplicate blanks will be 

 sent upon application. 



NESSJnjK's poems. 



John o' the Smithy. 

 Gleaners after the Fire. 

 Genius Loci of Wall Street. 

 My Neighbor over the Way. 

 Sunrise in the Forest. 

 Surly Joe's Christmas. 

 The Mameluco Dance. 

 Disheartened. 



A Christmas Entry. 

 Two Lives. 



Anna Fay— on Skates. 

 Polka Jacket, 

 At the Hop. 

 A Summer Camp. 

 Johnnj' Jones. 

 Paraphrase on Brahma. 



Answer to "Flight of the God- Hannah Lee. 



dess." 

 In the Tropics. 

 Our little Prince. 

 Mickle Run Falls. 

 Typee. 



It Does Not Pay. 



Ida May. 



My Forest Camp, 



Hunter's Lament. 



My Hound. 



Non Respondat. 



lone. 



New Year's Eve in Camp. 

 October. 

 My Attic. 

 Lotos Eating. 

 For the Times. 

 Drawers and Hewers. 

 All Things Come Round. 

 The Smiths. 

 To Gen. T. L. Young. 

 "Woodland Princess. 

 Ballad of the Leekhook. 

 Remembered— L. K. 

 Mother and Child 

 A Summer Night. 

 That Trout. 

 New Year's Ode. 

 Stalking a Buck. 

 Greeting to the Dead. 

 Bessie Irelon. 



'Sixty-Five and John Bull, 



Tlie Retired Preacher. 



The Scalp-Hunter Interviewed. 



Breaking Camp. 



A Fragment. 



Elaine. 



Waiting for her Prince. 



Crags and Pines. 



King Cotton. 



Our Camping Ground. 



New Year's Ode, 18(36. 



Pauper Plaint. 



Desilucao. 



May. 



Isabel Nye. 

 Puir Buffle. 

 Watching the River. 

 The Banshee. 

 An Arkansas Idyl. 

 Miah Jones. 

 Tropical Scrap. 

 Haste. 

 At Anchor. 

 Deacon John. 

 Temperance Song. 

 O'Leary's Lament. 

 Wellsboro 

 Town. 



Crusading the Old Saloon. 

 The Cavan Girl. 

 From the Misanthrope. 



Temperance 



To John Bull on his Christmas, Why I Love Hiawatha; » Tale. 



^mm ^Hff md 



AMress aJ) communications to the Forest and Stream Pub. Co. 



HUNTING IN THE HIMALAYAS. 

 Lights and Shades of an Indian Forester's Life. 



XI.— CONTINUED. 



CAMP BOKSAR, Lower Gurhwal, SewaUks, East In- 

 dia. — Retm-ning to camp from oiu- pig-sticking ex- 

 pedition, G. declared his determination to go on to the 

 Ganges in the evening, and gave orders for his camels to 

 stai-t at 3 o'cloclf. The man-eater was to be my chief 

 solicitude; I was told to license any party of professional 

 Shikarees to go after him, and G. gave me provisional 

 authority to offer 500 mpees reward, undertaking to get 

 sanction immediately for the advance. After breakfast I 

 looked over my correspondence. Using the local forester 

 as my nioonshie or scribe, I passed orders on the vernacu- 

 lar correspondence, and had just finished when G, came 

 in ready for the road. It was then half -past four, and 

 ordering my pony to be saddled, I rode four miles along 

 the road with him, and as the sun was then setting, I re- 

 ceived his last parting instructions to bag the man-eater 

 if possible, exchanged adieus and galloped homeward, 

 reaching camp while it was still daylight. 



I was plaiming measures of detection of dishonest subor- 

 dinates over my after-dinner pipe, when the forester sent 

 in his salaams, and being admitted, reported that the let- 

 ter carrier from the Ganges had not yet turned up. My 

 thoughts at once reverted to the man-eater, which, on the 

 law of even chances, was the one missed by G. the pre- 

 vious day, and wliich, driven over the hiU, had entered 

 the forest about midway between my camp and the Gan- 

 ges and only three or fom* miles from the road. "It is 

 possible that G. Sahib took Imn back with him," said the 

 forester, "to secure his own letters which were indistin- 

 guishable in the dusk of the evening; none of us are 

 afraid that the man-eater has taken him, for although the 

 beast has been three years in the forest and killed so many 

 villagers and baml)o'o cutters, he never once touched a 

 man with a government badge on him, and the rangers 

 are daily in the forest alone and liave no fear." The sug- 

 gestion that G. may have taken him back to the Ganges 

 was by no means improbable, and amounted almost to a 

 certainty when, on inquiry, I learned that the letter bags 

 were carried locked and that each forester kept a key. I 

 tried to convince myself that this was the solution, but I 

 was anxious, nevertheless, and gave orders for an early 

 start in the morning. 



I got away betuues, and skirting the road at a distance 

 of a mile or two, struck the hill at about six miles, and 

 skirted its base, wliich sloped off toward the Ganges, 

 There was a general line of depression at the base of the 

 hill, with a narrow strip of glass cover, from which I 

 put up two or three pigs and some spotted hinds, but 1 

 saw no stag until within a few hundred yards of the road, 

 when one sprang up and went straight away from me. 

 I hit him and saw him wince, but he recovered himself 

 and went off at a gaUop for another fifty yards, and the 

 elephant moving, I was imable to fire the second ban-el 

 immediately. As soon as the mahout had steadied him I 

 saw the stag, which had stopped suddenly in his rtm, 

 stand as if paralyzed, and talung a second shot I bowled 

 him over. I had reloaded my rifle from w-hich I fixed the 

 second shot, and was looking at the stag as we ap- 

 pi-oached, when the elephant gave sign, and the same 

 instant a savage gxowl not ten yards from me apprised 

 me of a tiger crouching in the "grass. I fired, the beast 

 rose on his haunches, and I gave him the second barrel 

 in the shoulder as he rolled over backward, when to my 

 surprise I found that he had been lying in a bed matte(i 

 with blood. I looked round and saw no victim, and as 

 the tiger lay I saw no wounds save the two I had given 

 her— one on the side of the neck the other in the shoul- 

 der. She— for it was a tigress, with a very handsomely 

 marked and bright skin — appeared to have ceased strug- 

 ghng, and after having made the elephant examine her 

 with trunk and foot, and satisfied ourselves that she was 

 quite dead, we dismounted, and by means of ropes at- 

 tached to her near legs turned her over, off side upward, 

 and saw that her left side was matted with blood and a 

 great hole in the flank, which I had no hesitation in cred- 

 iting to G.'s express. As we turned her over a piece of 

 excrement dropped from her, and taking it in mv fingers 

 and breaking it, found the pieces held together with a 

 single hair. Crushing the mass add drawing the hair out 

 carefully, it ciurled up in my hand, and declared itself 

 beyond all question a human haii-, although not from the 

 head. Remembering the Gkoorka's tale, I examined the 

 chest and shoulders, and soon fotmd an old but healed 

 scar, not between the chest and shoulders, as had been 

 supposed, but right in the muscle of the shoulder. On 

 closer examination we could feel a hard substance, evi- 

 dently a battered bullet, under the skin at the very top of 

 the shoulder. 



The three of us would have been unable to load her, and 

 ! I was anxious to get her into camp for a leisurely ex- 

 amination of her internal economy, I was not sorry to 

 hear voices on the road. Hailing the party to halt, we 

 mounted the elephant and went down to the road, where 

 we found a i)arty of seven or eight fakirs, who freely 

 proffered their aid on learning that the man-eater had 

 been seciu-ed. There were a great many ejaculations at 

 first sight followed by laughter, and then the sturdy 

 rascals got hold of her and lifted her bodily to the ele- 

 phant's haunches, where she was soon lashed securely, 

 with the stay on top of her, and the howdah braced to its 

 tightest, to maintain it against the heavy strain. 



It must have been just dusk when G. passed the spot, I 

 argued, and being probably uncertain whether he had hit 

 the beast or not, had either spent little time in following 

 her up, or liad taken the wrong course. Query— Had he 

 met the postman later and taken him back with him? 

 We beat up the strip of grass thoroughly down to the 

 road, about 200yds., and then sighting another clutcrp 

 about 200yds. to our left, we advanced on it to find that it 

 had already been thoroughly trampled down by elephants; 

 we found some spots of dry blood, and were able to con- 

 clude that G. had followed up the tiger to this clump, 

 and that the beast having passed through it, it was too 

 dark to trace her further, Giving up the quest we were 

 about to make for the road, when I caught sight of a few 

 thin tufts of table gi-ass which appeared to fnnge a water 



course. Turning back the elephant we soon reached the 

 spot, and there in a Httle water com-se, not 3ft. wide, lay 

 the poor postman, face downward, the mail Ijag still 

 round his neck, his blanket pants torn off and one of his 

 thiglis stripped bare of flesli. We coidd now imravel the 

 whole story, the tigress had bagged him, can-ied him to 

 the water course, and was busy tearing him when she 

 heard G.'s elephant pass, or perliaps heard talking, and 

 stole out to reconnoitre. One of the party 1iad got a 

 glimpse of her, and G. had fired, and going into the jungle 

 had found the grass plat, and beaten it thoroughly with- 

 out seeing the wounded beast steal off. Securing the 

 letter bag, and leaving the poor fellow's body where it 

 lay. we hurriod off to camp, to send out his caste brethren 

 to perform the last oflSces for his remains. 



And this bright-skinned lithe young tigress was the 

 man-eater in defiance of all our theories that it was some 

 decrepit old beast too inactive to seize deer, and too feeble 

 to attack a boar or a buflalo. 



Arrived in camp, I found a note from G. telling me 

 that he had fired at, and pretty sure he had wounded, a 

 tiger or panther, he hardly knew which, close to the road, 

 and that it was too dark to get on the track, and as he 

 could not spare another day he wished me to go back at 

 once and follow the beast up if I got on the track. The 

 man-eater, he added, was somewhere about that neighbor- 

 hood, and he had not met the postman although he had 

 kept the road and been on the lookout for him. I de- 

 spatched a note to his camp at once, giving full particu- 

 lars and suggesting that the Ghoorkas should get a. 

 hundred rupees and that the balance should go to the 

 famUy of the poor postman. This has been since ap- 

 proved of. The poor fellow left two wives who get a 

 hundred rupees each, and a young brother who secures 

 the appointment, together with the two wives, to enable 

 him to raise up seed to his brother according to the 

 scriptm-es; the Ghoorka party get back their battered 

 bullet and divide a hundred rupees between them. 



The native officials were unanimously of opinion that 

 the man-eater's fate was due entirely to his reclilessness 

 in attacking a government servant, and this opinion, has, 

 I find, met general acceptance among aU. classes. For 

 myself I cannot help feeling that if the beast had lived 

 out the season, she would have added a zest which my 

 budgets will now want. What sticks me as imaccountable 

 is that she was a full grown animal and has ah-eady had 

 cubs, which cubs if they lived must have been ti-ained on 

 human flesh, yet as far as can be ascertained, she had 

 always hunted alone. In my conversation with G. the 

 question of one or more man-eaters had been frequently 

 mooted, and when we fii-st heard of the kill in the 

 Ganges valley, following so soon on the kill at the 

 other end of the division, we again discussed the question, 

 but finding the Ghoorka's bullet was evidence enough that 

 our tiger was the one they fired at, some fifty miles oflf, 

 and whether she had grown up cubs following in her 

 com'se or not, she at any rate roamed over the whole 

 division. 



And what made her a man-eater? Accident perhaps — 

 poor fellow came suddenly on her over a kill and beiag 

 attacked in a moment of unguarded fierceness was found 

 to be an easy prey and probably superior in flavor to 

 either pork, beef or venison — a .systematic lying in wait 

 for the next victim, an easy capture, and her*^ man-eating 



Eropensities were confirmed. The poor postman had 

 een seized from beliind and his neck broken so that he 

 could scarcely have been conscious of his fate. 



Skekaree. 



MINNESOTA NOTES. 



PILLSBURY, Minn., Sept. 30.— The sporting outlook 

 has not been so bright for five years, though owing 

 to the unusual coolness of the weather and prevailing high 

 winds the sportsman fuids some discomforts. The north- 

 ern flight of ducks has ah-eady commenced; that is, the 

 bii-ds have come down from their northern breeding 

 grounds to our lakes, sloughs, rice beds, and are tarrying 

 for a while before continuing their journey southward. 

 A good many of them will make their eternal tarry here- 

 abouts. Not since the fall of '80 have such immense 

 flocks been seen, nor such a large proportion of mallards. 

 More brant are also seen than usual. Ruffed grouse are 

 in gi-eat force, and already a little army of pot-hunters ai-e 

 scouring the woods. I have seen but a few gray and 

 black squin-els as yet; but as the nut crop is gTeat. good 

 bags may be made later when the trees are bare of f oH- 

 age. Land hunters and lumbermen report deer and bear 

 sign plenty. Few localities can equal this for the lovers 

 of rod and gim. J. Fkank Locke. 



Sauk Center, Sept. 29.— Prairie chickens are not so 

 plenty hereabouts as they were formerly, owing to their 

 being so shamefully slaughtered out of season. There are 

 a lot of loafers (they handle the gun and think they are 

 sportsmen) around here who do not care a particle for 

 the law and really manage to escape its clutches. They 

 go out "just for a ride" or "to train the dog a little" and 

 kill off our poor little chicks before thev ai'e half grown 

 and before other tiiie sportsmen will think of shooting 

 chickens, Tlie prospect is fair for water fowl, especially 

 ducks, but as yet the wild geese have not come down from 

 the north in any great numbers. 



A bountiful harvest has been raised in this part of the 

 county, and there will be grand good shooting if the 



feese only come in sufficient numbers so we can ahnost 

 eep our breechloaders "red hot" after them. 

 It is one of the best countries to sport in hereabouts, as 

 the farmers are aU very kind and ouhging, and one can 

 usually find out by them a splendid place to "dig a hole" 

 and wait the pleasure of Su- Goose. 



Wild rice is getting a start in a number of om- lakes 

 and marshes, and as the ducks dearly love this species of 

 food, I think it is bound to increase our water fowl in 

 these pai-ts. 



In my next I will give you a description of a fishing 

 trip some time ago, to waters where fish can be found in 

 great quantities. Dell. 



Abolish Spring Shooting.— Greenport., Long Island, 

 Sept. 26.— I think the Forest and Stream is worthy of 

 all praise for the excellent work it has inaugiu-ated for 

 the protection of song birds, and also for its earnest en- 

 deavors to prevent spring shooting. I have been out witli 

 the gun constantly for forty years, and have always 

 thought it wrong to disturb the fowl and birds in then- 

 spring migrations; but it never occurred to the sportsmen 

 to suppress the evil until the Forest and Stream opened 

 the war.— Isaac MoLellan. 



