182 



FOREST AND STREAM. 



(^Sept. 26, 1§89' 



he §yortmt\nn ^onmi 



A CATTLE DRIVE. 



TTP when the shadowed peaks stand clear; 

 ^ As silhouettes against the dawn, 

 Woke by the bellow of a steer, 

 To still another crystal morn. 



A meal for hungry man and steed, 



A moment at the sincli strap strain. 

 Then mount and start the herd that feed 



In clusters on the river plain. 



The dust so thick, scarce else but gleams 



From glist'niDg horns anon appear; 

 Like some long line of battle seems 



The grimy cloud their bay'nets spear. 



Down the long valley's slender throat 

 Flows on the mellow hoof-beat rhyme, 



To cowboys' shouts, or whistled note, 



While clinking spurs and chains keep time. 



Then soon come tests for rider's nerves 

 And sturdy broncho's wind and strength, 



As cross a spur of foot-hills curves 

 The steep trail's sharply swerving length; 



And truants from the brown ranks break 



To scatter o'er the slipp'ry shale, 

 Climbing the. knolls for mischief's sake, 



Or scamp'ring down some tempting vale. 



But these are men to saddle bred, 



Who ricle like Centaurs ev'ry where. 

 And many a bull has cause to dread 



Their lariats' sure and fateful snare. 



Once felt drawn taut 'round horns or shank, 

 As long-trained horse braced for the shock, 



With straining limbs and quiv'ring flank 

 Stood rigid as though carved in rock, 



Until the line had run its length. 

 And pulsing from the steer's last bound, 



All his wild, maddened, brutish strength 

 Lay panting, useless, on the ground. 



But milder measures serve to-day 

 Than in the branding time, long past, 



Ere loDg the herd resumes its way 

 As all are gathered in at last, 



And onward push, till sunset flows 



In streams of molten lava through 

 The mountain rifts, as day doth close 



With golden clasps her page of blue. K. H. 



ANTLERS AT THE ANTIPODES. 



ONE of the greatest triumphs of acclimatization ever 

 achieved, perhaps, is the establishment of the red 

 deer in the British colonies of the South Pacific. It is no 

 slight achievement to carry fallow deer, or even the little 

 roe deer, over 13,000 miles of stormy ocean, including a 

 broad tract where the torrid calms of the equator alter- 

 nate with raging tempests, and ending with a fortnight 

 of cold squalls. But fallow deer and roe deer are almost 

 tame creatures, and are easily domesticated. Their small 

 size, too, makes it a simple matter to provide them with 

 snug quarters on board ship, where they can be kept cool 

 in the tropics and warm as they approach the Antartic, 

 and clean all the time. The magnificent red deer (C'er- 

 vus elephas), the monarch of the glen, and the wildest 

 denizen of the highland forest, is a very different animal. 

 Yet the red deer has been quite successfully transported 

 to the antipodes and established there among the fern 

 natures with astonishing results. The first attempts, 

 which began about the year 1854, were a failure, owing 

 mainly to want of experience as to how to feed the deer 

 on the long voyage, which seldom took less than one hun 

 died days. At length, however, a shipment of red deer 

 was successftdly carried to Nelson, a seaport at the head 

 of Blind Bay, in the northern part of the Middle Island 

 of New Zealand, and as the results of that operation, in 

 which I had the privilege to be personally concerned, left 

 absolutely nothing to be desired, I will do my best to de- 

 scribe it for the information or entertainment of readers 

 of Forest and Stream, 



Our deer did not come directly from Scotland, for the 

 simple reason that we found it easier to obtain them else- 

 where. The late Earl Russell, then Secretary of State 

 for Foreign Affairs, was residing at the White Lodge in 

 Richmond Park, and my father, who was a devoted 

 naturalist and indomitable acclimatizer, having inter- 

 ested him in the enterprise, the earl kindly obtained per- 

 mission for us to take a stag and two hinds from the 

 royal herd which adorns the fair chases of Henry the 

 Eighth's favorite domain. Instructions having been 

 given to the foresters, therefore, we had a novel deer 

 hunt in Richmond Park. The object being to secure the 

 animals with as little injury or alarm as possible, the 

 foresters contrived to separate a few deer, including a 

 noble stag, from their companions, and to trot them 

 gently through the fern brake toward a hollow where 

 there is a shallow pond. Here the whole party assisted 

 them to surround the deer, and to drive them toward the 

 water. The beautif ul creatures several times turned and 

 tried to break through the circle of foresters and ama- 

 teur huntsmen who were slowly but steadily closing in 

 upon them; but at every point they were met by waving 

 arms and hats, or, most alarming of all, suddenly opened 

 umbrellas, and cries of "shoo-oo, shoo-oo." At last they 

 found themselves hemmed in on the shore of the lakelet, 

 and the water seeming to offer the only chance of escape, 

 the big stag threw up his antleis, gave a snort of defiance 

 or disgust, and waded in breast high, followed by a 

 younger stag and three or four hinds. The foresters im- 

 mediately went in after them, some on horseback and 

 some in a high-wheeled van drawn by a stout horse. 

 The deer finding themselves surrounded" in water almost 

 out of their depth, surrendered at discretion, and the 

 foresters having seized the big stag and sawn off his 

 antlers, skilfully roped him and two fine hinds, and drag- 

 ged them out of the water nto the van, where they lay 

 as docile as possible. The others were allowed to find 

 their own way ashore, and in a couple of seconds were 

 out of sight in the nearest oak coppice. The captives 

 were taken to the stables at the lodge, where they were 



placed in separate loose boxes and kept until their ship 

 sailed,so as to accustom them to con finement and artificial 

 diet, before setting out on their long sea voyage. This 

 afforded an excellent opportunity to experiment with 

 different kinds of food; and the result showed that red 

 deer are almost omnivorous. Hay, oats, bran, carrots, 

 turnips, apples, potatoes, beans, acorns, bread, biscuit, 

 sugar, salt, and even small pieces of meat mixed with 

 their other food were all thankfully received and speedily 

 disposed of; while it was shown that their liquid require- 

 ments were very small indeed — an important matter on a 

 voyage of a hundred days, before condensers for ship's 

 use were invented. The fare that suited them best, how- 

 ever, was an alternation of hay and acorns, one full meal 

 morning and evening, with a lump of rock salt to lick at 

 between whiles. As soon as they were tame enough to 

 be handled, they were habituated to a daily rub down 

 with a wisp of straw, and subsequently with a stiff brush. 

 In the meantime, stalls almost exactly like ordinary horse 

 boxes had been fitted up for them on the main deck of 

 the ship, and to these they were transferred, having been 

 taken down to the dock in a van and slung on board, the 

 day before their departure. 



Sea sickness is proverbially capricious. Some people 

 are terribly sick when first they go on the rolling deep, 

 while others get their sea legs at once and suffer little or 

 no inconvenience. This is even ntoi-e markedly the case 

 with animals. I have seen horses champ their chaff un- 

 interiv ptedly from leaving the wharf, through all sorts 

 of weather, while others beside them were prostrated 

 with agony and terror. So it was with our deer. The 

 big stag, sultan of the herd, was a wretchedly bad sailor. 

 For the first few days, when we were tacking about the 

 chops of the channel, or driving through a heavy sea in 

 the Bay of Biscay, he used to stand shivering with his 

 forefeet wide apart, his head hanging down helplessly, 

 and a mass of spume drivelling from his mouth and 

 nostrils. Once or twice he tried to collapse on the floor 

 of his box, but we stopped that by means of a broad 

 belly-band of canvas with a woolly sheepskin lining. It 

 was not until we were off the Western Islands that he 

 fairly recovered and took his tucker regularly with- 

 out any unpleasant consequences. His lady loves, on 

 the contrary, were quite hearty from the start. When 

 the ship began to roll in the heavy swell off Deal, they 

 opened their great pathetic eyes very wide and sniffed 

 inquiringly, as if in feminine curiosity to know what in 

 thunder was the matter with the ground. They also had 

 a peculiar habit of bristling up their hair and wrinkling 

 their skin over the neck and shoulders as a silent protest 

 against such goings on; but they very soon settled down 

 to their new life, and never missed a meal from the out- 

 Bet. We had taken an ample allowance of the best mixed 

 hay, oats and clover, in neat little trusses, and enough 

 acorns in barrels to give them each about half a peck a 

 day for a hundred days. For variety, we gave them 

 ship's biscuit every other day, and on Sunday they used 

 to be allowed a few American dried apples or a little 

 sugar for a treat. 



The ship carried a large number of emigrants, includ- 

 ing swarms of children, and our greatest difficulty was to 

 prevent the youngsters from killing the poor deer with 

 kindness by giving them all sorts of unwholesome things 

 to eat, such as sour pastry, mouldy raisins, chalky sugar 

 plums and other filth. More than once we leared we 

 should lose one of the hinds from this cause, and the 

 stag very nearly died off the Cape of Good Hope of a 

 mysterious illness, which proved to have been caused by 

 a facetious sailor giving him a piece of tobacco, which 

 the unsophisticated creature masticated and swallowed 

 with gusto, little suspecting what dire effects would 

 follow. While in the tropics all three deer showed signs 

 of suffering from cutaneous irritation, probably caused 

 by some parasite; but we kept them in health by brush- 

 ing them all over as often as the weather permitted. We 

 easily got some of the most trustworthy among the young 

 men on board to assist us in this; and there came to be 

 quite a rivalry as to who could turn out the best groomed 

 deer. We proved, in fact, that all that is necessary to 

 secure the well being on board ship is to feed them 

 strictly according to rule — rather underfeeding than over- 

 feeding them — and to keep them scrupulously clean. 

 They often got very wet, either with rain or with salt 

 water coming over the side in bad weather, which was 

 unavoidable; but it did not appear to hurt them at all. 



As soon as we arrived in port we had the deer removed 

 in their boxes, on a drag, to the residence of a gentleman 

 who had large racing stables, and who took a warm in- 

 terest in acclimatization, and they were at once placed 

 in loose boxes and supplied with a moderate allowance 

 of green food. This was on the outskirts of the lovely 

 little city of Nelson, where the lower spurs of a range of 

 lofty hills, rising in the background to snow-capped 

 mountains, come down to the back gardens of the houses. 

 A few weeks after our arrival, when the deer seemed to 

 have become accustomed to their change of food and 

 their new surroundings, we chose a nice warm evening 

 — it was in the early summer — and turned them out of 

 the stables into the scrub and grass on the hillside, where 

 there was nothing to prevent them from wandering 

 away at their pleasure. It was curious and touching, 

 however, to see how unwilling they were to go. Like 

 the prisoner of Ohillon, they did not know what to do 

 with their liberty when they recovered it. The stag 

 especially was loth to leave us, and we had actually to 

 drive him into the low scrubs where he began browsing, 

 and so, straying on unconsciously, was lost to sight in 

 the growing dusk. 



The next evening, and for many evenings afterward, 

 the affectionate creatures came back, and looked wist- 

 fully at us over the fence, as if begging us to take them 

 back; and they did not finally leave the place and make 

 for the mountains until a fierce kangaroo dog — a cross 

 between a mastiff and a Scottish cleerhound— set upon 

 them and drove them for miles. 



Years passed away without anything being heard of 

 the deer, except that from time to time some settler in 

 the back country reported that his cattle had been led 

 away into wild recesses by some animal with big horns 

 standing up from his head , and we greatly feared that 

 a revengeful rifle ball had frustrated all our pains. In 

 course of time, however, a fawn was found dead on a 

 river shallow after a flood, and then reports came from 

 various quarters of deer having been seen. Careful 

 search was eventually made, with the gratifying result 

 that the deer were found to be well established in the 

 mountain fastnesses; and for several years past it has been 



permitted to stalk the stags for a two months' season. 

 Like all acclimatized animals in New Zealand, they attain 

 an extraordinary size, 4001bs. being a common weight 

 and 4501bs. by no means uncommon. This is fully lOOlbs. 

 heavier than any stag I have heard of being shot in the 

 Highlands, at all events for many years, and it is not 

 easily accounted for. 



The acclimatization of red deer has added a new attrac- 

 tion to a country which is in many respects one of the 

 most attractive in the world, and is surely destined one 

 day to be an important source of wealth. 



Hares have also been most successfully established in 

 New Zealand, another of my father's exploits, in which 

 I had the pleasure of assisting him. Our pioneer hares 

 were netted by country louts among the beanstacks or 

 in "runs" through thorn hedges down in Suffolk, and 

 were kept for a fortnight in the zoological gardens under 

 the charge of a Suffolk boy who took care of them on the 

 voyage out. They were fed on oats, bran and ship's 

 biscuit moistened with water, and we only lost ten per 

 cent. The survivors, numbering twenty-seven, we 

 divided into two lots, one of which we turned out at 

 Nelson, at the same spot where we drove the deer away, 

 while the others saved us the trouble by leaping out of 

 an open port hole at Lyttleton, 400 miles to the south, 

 and swimming ashore on Bank's Peninsula. In both 

 places they multiplied amazingly, and spread in course 

 of time all over the country, either of their own accord 

 or by being netted and turned out at fresh spots. 



It is a singular thing that wherever hares are turned 

 out they are for many years most numerous at the very 

 spot where the original ones were liberated. I know 

 gullies which are a mere speck, as it were, in a wilder- 

 ness of hill and dale, but where, nevertheless, hares are 

 thicker than anywhere else in the neighborhood, simply 

 because the first that were turned out made their form 

 there years ago. Shooting does not spread hares much; 

 but hunting with harriers or beagles — now a thoroughly 

 established institution both in New Zealand and in 

 Australia — soon disperses them far afield. 



The hares, like the deer, commonly attain a size which 

 would be considered abnormal in Europe. I have often 

 been at shooting parties where over 200 hares were 

 bagged in the day, and the majority of them were over 

 lllbs., and a very respectable minority weighed 131bs. 

 The hare has the same affinity for red-currant jelly in 

 New Zealand as it has elsewhere, and is equally in favor 

 roasted, jugged or in soup. It has been a most welcome 

 addition to the somewhat narrow menu of a new country. 



We took out a great variety of game and song birds, 

 including pheasants, partridges, starlings, blackbirds, 

 thrushes, skylarks, bullfinches, chaffinches, goldfinches, 

 linnets, robin redbreasts, and in most cases with complete 

 success. The various acclimatization societies have con- 

 tinued to import all kinds of birds, so that the colony is 

 now well stocked, except in certain instances where the 

 failure has been equally complete and unaccountable. 

 Pheasants have taken very kindly to the country, espe- 

 cially the Chinese variety; but partridges have been a 

 miserable disappointment. Both the brown English and 

 the red-legged Frenchman have been tried and tried and 

 tried; but every attempt ended sooner or later in the same 

 failure. The birds increased for a year or two, and then 

 diminished and nearly or wholly died out. This is so 

 well ascertained that the societies have given up par- 

 tridges in despair, and are now trying their luck with 

 grouse. 



The bird which has taken possession of the country 

 most effectually is an American, the California quail, a 

 beautiful little crested bird like a diminutive guinea fowl. 



I cannot better conclude my article than by saying that 

 American sportsmen will find themselves quite as much 

 at home in New Zealand as is the American quail. 



Edward Wakefield. 



A RATTLESNAKE KILLER. 



THERE is a man in Hague, New York, who follows a 

 queer business part of the year. The Albany Jour- 

 nal's Lake George correspondent wrote last fall: "Isaac 

 Davis of Hague, who in 4 years has killed upward of 

 1,400 rattlesnakes, and who last fall at the county fairs 

 of this vicinity was the first to handle rattlesnakes in 

 public exhibitions, recently killed 4 monster rattlesnakes 

 near - Sabbath Day Point. This year he has killed upward 

 of 400, for which he has been paid a bounty of 25 cents 

 per snake. He makes rattlesnake hunting, catching and 

 exhibiting his whole business, and is paid $50 a month 

 during the season by property owners about Hague for 

 killing snakes in aid of their extermination. He is be- 

 lieved to be the only man in the world following this 

 occupation. He is an intelligent man, fond of reading, 

 of quiet demeanor and gentle disposition. His friends 

 apprehend that he will meet his death some day in hand- 

 ling these reptiles, but the business seems to have a fas- 

 cination outside of the remuneration it affords him. He 

 always carries with him a remedy in case he should be 

 bitten, but does not feel any special confidence in its 

 efficacy. He is a man of 45, and killed his first snake be- 

 fore he was 6 years old, but never went into regular 

 snake hunting until 4 years ago. His father before him 

 was the famous snake hunter, 'Mint' Davis, who used to 

 kill them for the oil to sell to druggists. The old man is 

 said to have been bitten several times by snakes and to 

 have cured himself by use of 'rattlesnake weed.' It used 

 to be a standing joke about the lake that when a rattle- 

 snake bit old 'Mint' Davis it was the snake that was 

 poisoned to death. The old man certainly seemed to 

 have no more fear of a rattlesnake than a child had of a 

 kitten." 



We wrote to Mr. Davis about this and he replied as 

 follows: 



Editor Forest and Stream: The item in the Albany 

 Journal was an error. During the past two years I have 

 killed 1,400 rattlesnakes and destroyed eggs to more than 

 three times that number, l devote my time through the 

 month of May and from the 15th of September to the loth 

 of October to killing the rattlers. 



They almost invariably rattle before striking, except 

 during dog days, when they are blind; then they strike 

 at every noise they hear. The blindness is caused by the 

 shedding of their coat or skin, a covering is shed from the 



