Nov. 30, 1895.J 



FOREST AND STREAM. 



466 



MOOSE HEAD OWNED BY ME. H. C. PIERCE, ST. LOUIS, MO. 

 Killed November, 1890, about ninety miles northeast of Winnipeg, Manitoba. Age about 25 years. Weight about l,4001bs. 



HEAD MEASUREMENTS (ACTUAL). 



Length of head between ears to point of nose , . .S3 inches. 



Length of ear. , .....11 " 



From tip to tip of ears, straight line 30 " 



From eye to point of nose 28 " 



Circumference of nose 7in. from point 26 " 



Circumference of ear 12^ *' 



From tip to tip of horns, straight line. 56 " 



Length of horn from burr to tip 42 " 



Circumference of horn at burr 14J^ inches. 



Longest point on lower palm 12 " 



Longest point on upper palm 13}£ " 



Widest part of lower palm 12 " 



Widest part of upper palm , 18 " 



Length of upper palm 35 " 



Points on left born 17 " 



Points on right horn 17 " 



back under the logs, where he can doze for a few hours 

 each night between mendings of the fire after he has dried 

 his stockings and skinned out bis fur and had his tea and 

 beans. He dozes here under the slant roof of logs, his 

 head upon the precious furs for which he seeks, his feet 

 to the fire. Outside the wind shrieks, and the tempera- 

 ture goes down and down. The awful winter of the pine 

 woods sets in in full sway. He dozes, he sleeps un- 

 harmed, himself a creature of the wild woods, and fit to 

 survive. Meantime, in the city, my lady is returning 

 from the ball. Her maid removes the fur-lined mantle. 

 She sits for a moment near the grate, her feet to the 

 fire, resting them comfortably upon the soft depths of 

 the fur rug which lies before the fireplace. She does not 

 dream of the trapper out in his lodge of logs, his head upon 

 furs such as she holds under foot. Fire and frost are not 

 the same elements for her and the trapper. And once, 

 she thinks, perhaps she remembers, her husband, when 

 they were together up in the woods at the hotel some- 

 where, had said to her that a trapper was a lazy fellow. 

 My lady eats a wafer and a cup of tea— a very thin shell 

 of a small cup. My trapper, if he sleep very cold at that 

 hour, makes him a pint or two of tea in a can that was 

 once a lard pail. It came up from the city, where the 

 furs go— these furs, which he must not allow too near the 

 fire. Good night, my lady, and may you sleep well. Of 

 course if one be only a lazy fellow, it does not matter if 

 he lose a few hours' sleep. 



The Running of the Line. 

 It will be seen, then, that one of the great labors in 

 trapping is establishing the line of traps in the first place, 

 looking out the territory, setting out the traps, putting up 

 the main camps and supplying them, and building the 

 temporary camps and shelters. All this had been done on 

 our line of traps, of course, some months before I arrived 

 on the scene; but it remained to see how the traps had 

 been put out and how they were attended in the actual 

 winter work. Since the establishment of the lines the 

 traps had been visited each week, or say not less often 

 than each eight or ten days. I was glad to hear that the 

 take of fur had been good in nearly all sorts of furs com- 

 mon to that region. Marten had been most plentiful, but 

 our trappers had caught a number of foxes, a lot of fishers, 

 iseveral lynx and a few otter. Mink had been abundant, 

 but did not bring much. They had trapped a family of 

 beaver — an animal now becoming very scarce in that 

 region, and protected by law in Wisconsin — and were ex- 

 pecting before long to get results from some poison they 

 had out for a pack of wolves which had several times 

 swept down across their territory. On the whole, it had 

 been a good season, as trappers viewed it. If all went 

 well, the three of them would clean up $500 or more that 

 winter. At the time of our arrival they had just made a 

 run of the lines and had shipped all the furs. It was now 

 time to go over the lines again, and if we thought we 

 could stand the trip, we were welcome to go along and see 

 how they did it. It would be necessary to walk twenty 

 miles or so each day, to sleep out pretty rough at times, 

 and to eat trappers' diet of plain food. All this was just 

 what we were looking for. I felt glad when at noon of 

 one bright winter day we left the railway and with pack 

 on back set out into the woods. At that time I had just 

 returned irom a trip to Texas, and as I pulled on my lum- 

 berman's socks for the voyage over 3ft. of snow I thought 

 Of £he barefoot children we had a month before seen play- 



ing out in the open air along the Gulf coast. I wondered 

 at and admired the more this great country of America, 

 Of which we were now to see another phase. 



E. Hough. 



909 Security Building, Chicago. 



About Some "Forest and Stream" Writers. 



Biscayne Bay, Fla., Nov. 10 —Editor Forest and 

 Stream: Although Forest and Stream is always a joy 

 and is always well worth reading from cover to cover, it 

 contains every now and then an article, sketch or story of 

 such extra merit as to be worthy of especial commendation. 

 For instance, what reader did not experience an added 

 thrill of pleasure upon opening hispaper of three numbers 

 back to discover that Uncle Lisha, Antwine, Sam Lovel, 

 Joseph and Peltier had come again to camp with us for 

 awhile? In this connection I am certain that every one 

 of the widespread Forest and Stream brotherhood will 

 welcome a few words concerning the genius who created 

 those characters and has again evoked them for our enter- 

 tainment. 



Last summer, when taking a bicycle trip through Ver- 

 mont, I made an especial pilgrimage to North Ferrisburgh 

 in the hope of meeting Mr. Eobinson. Nor was I disap- 

 pointed ; for I not only met him, but I received such a 

 kindly greeting and was so charmingly entertained that I 

 came away feeling that the day was to be marked with a 

 red letter, and that I had gained a friend. Mr. Robinson 

 is a man of striking presence — tall, straight and broad- 

 shouldered, with snow-white hair, and a face beaming 

 with good-will to his fellows. He is a gentleman, and his 

 speech is pleasantly punctuated with the "thou" and 

 "thee" that betray his Quaker origin. Although he is 

 always cheerful and gives no sign of what he suffers, he is 

 a victim of one of the greatest misfortunes that can come 

 to man; for he is totally blind, and can no longer gaze 

 abroad over the widespread valley of Otter, that he loves 

 so well and of which he writes so well. He writes, as he 

 always did, with pencil on paper, but now he must lay 

 the sheet on a corrugated board and slowly feel his way 

 from line to line. Does it not make his wOrk doubly 

 precious to know of the well nigh insurmountable difficul- 

 ties that attend it? To me it does. And now, when I 

 find a chapter shorter than I would wish it to be, I no 

 longer complain of its brevity, but am thankful for the 

 dauntless perseverance that has given it to us at all. 



Besides thanking this blind wizard of the Green Moun- 

 tain State for his wonderfully lifelike word pictures of 

 that corner of our country, and for the best examples of 

 Canadian- Yankee patois extant, I want to thank you, and 

 through you Dr. Robert J. Morris, for his story of a 

 salmon in one of your September numbers. Never have 

 your pages held a sketch more happily conceived or more 

 deftly woven than that. Can't you persuade Dr. Morris 

 to write another, and when he does, won't you announce 

 it beforehand that we may enjoy it in anticipation? 



Then there is Mr. Hough's masterly but terrible picture 

 entitled "My Lady's Plumes." I would that it might be 

 reprinted in every paper in the land until it reached the 

 eye of every man whose brutish greed leads him to the 

 slaughter of God's innocent creatures for money, and of 

 every woman whose contemptible vanity leads her to deck 

 herself with the blood-stained fruits of his crime. 



I am sorry that Mater should have so woefully miscon- 

 ceived Mr. Hough, and so misinterpreted his word* cq 



imagine that he was attacking her sex, for I am certain 

 that no more chivalrous knight than E. Hough ever 

 wielded pen in defense of right or defiance of wrong. As 

 I read his article it contains no word of indiscriminate 

 attack against womankind, but is leveled solely at those 

 whom every right-minded woman should be quick to 

 condemn for their thoughtlessness, cruelty and silly 

 vanity. And, Mater, look about you the next time you 

 go to church or to the theater. For every feminine hat 

 unadorned by feather or plume do you not see two 

 decked with wing, breast or other evidences of slaughter? 

 Even if the proportion claimed does not hold in your 

 locality you will see enough to convince you that the 

 annual sacrifice of bird life for millinery purposes is in- 

 credibly enormous, and it is well to remember that while 

 it is man who does the killing it is invariably woman 

 who pays his shameful wages. O. K. Chobee. 



UNCLE LISHA'S OUTING. 



IV.-The Ducks of Little Otter. 



When Sam and Antoine paddled out from the landing 

 a thick film of fog lay upon marsh and channel, undulat- 

 ing in the almost imperceptible breath of the morning 

 breeze, but disclosing the dun and green rushes and glassy 

 water the canoe's length away, beyond which color and 

 substance dissolved and vanished in the pearl gray mist, 

 Now a vague form loomed up in the marsh's edge till it 

 shrunk to the solid reality of a musk rat house, then again 

 became unreal in the veil of vapor. To tbe voyagers' 

 eyes there was nothing substantial but themselves and 

 their canoe and the little circle of glassy water sliding 

 smoothly into the fog before, rippling a widening wake 

 into the fog behind. 



Now and then the raucous quack of dusky ducks was 

 heard calling to their befogged mates, and the rustle and 

 splash of some unseen life occasionally stirred in the 

 marsh; but far or near there was no sound telling of 

 human presence save the tinkling drip of the paddles or 

 the scratching of a weed along the canoe's side, or a few 

 whispered words of consultation. 



So for half an hour they drove the arrow of their wake 

 through the fog till at a turn of the channel Sam saw the 

 ripple of another wake ruffling the water before him, and 

 following it toward its point discovered five dark objects 

 appearing as if hung in the mist. In two cautious noise- 

 less motions he laid down the paddle and took up his gun, 

 then aimed and fired just as the ducks, now suspicious 

 and restless, were pivoting on the point of taking flight. 

 As the smoke slowly lifted it disclosed two ducks killed 

 outright and one fluttering toward the marsh with a 

 broken wing, while two drove away into the fog, uttering 

 wild quacks of terror. Antoine stopped the cripple with 

 a timely shot, and then sent the canoe forward with a 

 few dexterous strokes of his paddle till Sam could recover 

 the dead birds. 



The report of the guns was followed so quickly by the 

 roar of myriad wings, as a mighty host of waterfowl up- 

 rose from the marshes, that it seemed a part of the echo 

 which rebounded from along the wooded shores and far 

 away among the distant hills, and then for a few moments 

 the air Was filled with the whistle of wings as the dis- 

 turbed flocks circled above the almost invisible intruders 

 or set forth in flight toward the lake. 



"Wal, there!" said Sam, after listening till the confu- 

 sion of sounds subsided to a faint whisper of retreating 

 flight and the splashing flutter of laggards suddenly 

 alarmed at finding themselves alone, "I guess we started 

 aout the last duck in the hull crik, an' might as well go 

 back tu camp. The' can't be no more, the' hain't no room 

 for 'em." 



"Oh, Ah'll tol' you, Sam, dey was roos' top one 'nudder, 

 an' dey a'n't honly top one flewed off yet," Antoine an- 

 swered in a low voice. "Naow we go in de ma'sh for 

 load off aour gaun." 



With a few strokes they sent the canoe her length 

 among the wild rice stalks to insure greater steadiness 

 while they stood up to reload their guns. The sun was 

 rising, and the first level beams paved a gilded path and 

 pillared and spanned it with resplendent columns and 

 arches of mist as it lifted and wreathed in the light wafts 

 of the uncertain air, and now through and beneath the 

 rising vapor a stretch of the channel shone in a curving 

 line of silver, still barred with fading ripples of the 

 canoe's wake. Sam's eyes were following it as he capped 

 his gun, when suddenly he crouched upon his knees, 

 whispering hurriedly: 



"Scrooch daown, Antwine, th's su'thin' comin'; I'm 

 goin' tu try 'em if they don't light." 



Antoine bent his head low as a flock of teal came 

 stringing down the channel in arrowy flight, and Sam, 

 aiming a little ahead of the leading bird, pulled trigger. 

 The hindmost teal in the line slanted downward, and, 

 striking the water with a resounding splash, lay motion- 

 less when the impetus of its fall was spent. 



"Wal, if that don't beat all natur'," Sam said with a 

 gasp of surprise. "That 'ere duck was ten foot ahind o' 

 the one I shot at. What sort o' ducks du ye call 'em, An- 

 twine?" 



"He come 'fore you call it dis tarn, but w'en he a'n't, 

 you call heem steal dawk in Angleesh, Ah b'lieved so. 

 He was plumpy leetle feller," Antoine remarked as he 

 picked up the bird, when Sam had reloaded and the canoe 

 was again in mid-channel. 



"An' a lively breed they be, tu shoot a-flyin'," Sam com- 

 mented, as he examined this victim of chance. " 'Tain't 

 no use a-shootin' at 'em. You got to shoot 'way off int' 

 the air ahead on 'em, an' let 'em run ag'in your shot. 

 Naow be we goin' tu poke among er lay low for 'em?" 



"Wal, seh, it bes' was dis tarn o' day, we go 'long kan 

 o' slowry. 'Long mos' to evelin' was be de hes' tarn for 

 hide in de ma'sh, w'en de dawk come for hees suppy. 

 Naow you be ready for shoot an' Ah'll paddle de cannoe, 

 me." 



They had not gone far up the channel when the canoe 

 in its stealthy progress came close upon a dusky duck sit' 

 ting among the wild rice, where she might have remained 

 unseen and unsuspected but for her alarm. As she 

 Bprang with a startling splash and flutter clear of the rank 

 marsh growth, Sam thought to profit by his experience 

 with the teal and fired too far ahead his mark, making a 

 clean miss. 



Sam stared at the escaping duck and Antoine offered 

 the consoling oomiqerit: "Dit feller a'n't run ag'in you 

 shot, prob'ly," RowjANp B- Robjwsojt, 



