882 



FOREST AND STREAM, 



[Dec. b 1889, 



syndicate want to cut timber where it will be the least 

 trouble and expense to them, and in order to get per- 

 mission to do this, they have made the excuse that they 

 were delayed because they could not cut green timber. 

 The permission to cut living timber may, unless the cut- 

 ting is carefully looked after, open the way for a great 

 destruction of the forests of the Park, and we should be 

 very glad to see it revoked. 



In the annual leport of the Secretary of the Interior, 

 Mr. Noble refers at considerable length to the difficulties 

 met with in caring for the Park, and which are due to 

 the entire absence of law on this reservation, lie speaks 

 of the Vest bill, notes the fact that it has passed the 

 Senate three times and the House once, and earnestly 

 recommends its enactment as a law. On the whole he 

 takes a broad view of the subject and urges the carrying 

 out of the recommendations made in the reports of Cap- 

 tains Harris and Boutejle. 



The closing paragraphs of Mr. Noble's report are as 

 follows: 



So long as tins tract of country shall remain a national preserve 

 for science, curiosity, and pleasure, it will of course be an object 

 of cupidity to the covetous, who will see or imagine countless 

 ways iu whicii its exhaustless wonders and resources can be 

 turned into private advantage, and who will invent many arti- 

 fices to beguile and circumvent the guardians of this national 

 treasure into granting them foot-holds of one kind or another, 

 whereby they can make personal gain out of this great public 

 benefit. If it is not to be thus frittered away, deprived of its most 

 attractive features and measurably lost to science and wonder, if 

 not to pleasure, the best and surest way to protect it is to permit 

 no trimming down, no incursions, and no privileges except such 

 as may be deemed absolutely necessary for its protection and 

 regulation and for the proper accommodation and comfort of 

 visitors. 



It seems important that there should be an appropriation for a 

 residence for the Superintendent, whether he is to be a military 

 or civil officer. If the Park is to remain under the surveillance 

 of the military, the suggestion of Captain Boutelle that it should 

 be recognized as a military post and provided with permanent 

 accommodations for the officers, men, and their animals seems 

 very pertinent. If it should he the policy of Congress to restore 

 civil superinteudence, attention is called to the recommenda- 

 tion of Captain Harris, in whose judgment I have great con- 

 fidence, as to the number of employees and amount of appropria- 

 tion necessary, which he places at forty-four men, all told, with 

 salaries and equipments amounting in the aggregate to §48,800. 



he ^jfforlwimi f^onmt 



A SAND-SPIT. 



BY K. H. 



A LONELY, dreary .stretch of beach, 

 Whether by storms of winter beat, 



Or throbbing 'neath the summer's heat: 

 Whether the cedars upward reach 



Their threadbare arms in mute despair, 



Or whispered hoarsely on the air 

 Wild tales the sea-winds teach 



Of gruesome deeds done long ago, 

 In "good old times 1 ' when any breeze 

 That sported with the laughing seas, 



Before its salted breath might blow 

 A rakish rig, with black ensign, 

 'Cross the horizon's silver line 



In the soft twilight glow. 



At d some poor skipper's heart would sink 



With the last ling'ring flush of light 



into despair's fear-haunted night; 

 And when the stars like owls would blink, 



Then draw their shade of silver gray 



Against the glare and heat of day, 

 The sirn fresh blood would drink; 



That smeared the splintered, heel-marked deck- 

 Strewn with waste spoil, and here and there 

 A clot of loose, bedraggled hair— 



Of a dismantled, battered wreck; 

 Listlessly drifting, as each swell 

 Would toll anon the foredeck bell, 



Toward some rock-bound neck. 



And sterner fate for skipper bold, 



Who perished not before the horde 



Of human fiends that swarmed aboard; 

 Perhaps bound in the scuttled hold 



He watched the creeping water hide 



Each plank upon the vessel's side, 

 Until the end was told. 



Or fed the gaunt waves grizzly jaws, 

 As stumbling from the dreaded plank 

 He like a leaden plummet sank 



Into their ever sateless maws; 

 Or even now some sand-scoured bone 

 May tell more plain than graveyard stone 



Of savage pirate laws. 



Such tales as these you seem to hear, 



As hidden by the rustling sedge 



That lines the broad bar's inner edge- 

 Past which a salt creek, deep and clear. 



Glides swiftly to the falling tide— 



You wait until, first circling wide, 

 A flock of ducks at last draws near. 



The gray flock settles on the stream, 

 That sweeps them gently down to view; 

 And now the past is lost to you, 



Flown all your noon-day dream 

 As swiftly as the whirring wings, 

 ( Your gun's report so quickly brings) 



On which the sunbeams gleam, 

 As fortune's favored ones arise 

 And melt into the distant skies. 



JAMES FENIMORE COOPER. 



THE COOPER NOVELS. 



ON Sept. 15, 1889, occurred the centennial anniversary 

 of the birth of Cooper, the earliest, most prolific, 

 and the most original of American novelists. The earliest, 

 because before the publication of ''The Spy," in 1821, the 

 only readable American novels were those of Charles 

 Brockden Brown, and those seemed to be imitations of 

 English works. The most prolific, as the published works 

 of Mr. Cooper reach nearly one hundred volumes, accord- 

 ing to Professor Lounsbury. And the most original, the 

 Leatherstocking tales and the sea stories being wholly 

 new in literature, and Cooper is one of the few writers of 

 the world who has made a new creation. Such is Natty 

 Bumpo the Leatherstocking, as original a creation as 

 Hamlet or Falstaff. Such is Chingaciigook the Delaware 

 Chief, the first and best of the ideal Indians of romance. 

 And such is Long Tom Coffin, of whom Miss Mitford 

 wrote "that he appeared to her to be the best thing since 

 Parson Adams." Like all prolific writers, Cooper was 

 unequal, and he had his limitations. In the forest or on 

 the prairie he was at home, and stands unrivaled and 

 supreme. Said Balzac of the "Pathfinder," "I know no 

 one in the world save Walter Scott, who has risen to that 

 grandeur and serenity of colors." When Cooper attempted 

 to describe the manners and conversation of social or 

 fashionable life he failed. "If Cooper." said Balzac, "had 

 succeeded in the painting of character to the same ex- 

 tent that he did in the painting of the phenomena of 

 nature, he would have uttered the last word of our act." 

 In his sea tales Cooper seems to the present writer to be 

 as unrivaled as in those of the forest. Before him no 

 one except Smollet had introduced seamen or the sea into 

 fiction, and Smollet was not himself a seaman. Cooper, 

 like Dana, had served two years before the mast, and 

 afterward three years in theU. S. Navy as a midshipman, 

 and had acquired a thorough knowledge of seamanship. 



A recent critic has said that W. C. Russell is a better 

 sailor than Cooper, but this is not the opinion of those 

 who are familiar with ships and their management. It 

 is curious that the United States, which fifty years ago 

 led all the world in the excellence of her ships and sailors, 

 and has furnished in Cooper. Dana and Melville the best 

 writers on naval topics, should now be so far in the rear. 

 But neglect and unwise legislation have accomplished it. 



These works of Cooper have a peculiar value as depict- 

 ing scenes and events that are fast passing away. The 

 unbroken forest wilderness, with its savage inhabitants; 

 the boundless prairie, a waving sea of grass and flowers, 

 dotted with herds of bison, elk and deer; now covered 

 with grain fields and farms, and where the scream of the 

 locomotive has succeeded to the howl of the wolf. So 

 also with the sea tales; they were written in the days of 

 sailing vessels, which are giving place to steamers, and 

 the maneuvers of a ship under canvas, so admirably de- 

 scribed by Cooper, will in a few years perhaps be a lost 

 art. The Tom Coffins and Ben Bolts, who carried the 

 Stars and Stripes all over the world, will be succeeded by 

 engineers and mechanics, who will handle valves and 

 levers instead of cordage and canvas. Whether a future 

 Cooper will evolve romance from steam boilers and don- 

 key engines may be doubted, but we shall still have these 

 sea tales to remind us of the men of 1780 and 1812. 



In the admirable biography by Professor Lounsbury, 

 from which much of this paper is taken , Cooper appears 

 as a kind-hearted and generous man, wholly truthful 

 and of undaunted courage, somewhat prejudiced and 

 pugnacious, and a most patriotic American, who was 

 misunderstood and abused — one of the most interesting 

 figures in American literature. S. C. 0*. 



COOPER'S WOODCRAFT. 



BY ROWLAND E. ROBINSON. 



r pHE recent celebration of the hundredth birthday of 

 JL the earliest American novelist, suggests to Forest 

 and Stream readers a consideration of the woodcraft of 

 the creator of Leatherstocking, the typical backwoods 

 hunter that is still a unique figure in fiction, for all the 

 futile imitations which have s© often been attempted. 

 That Cooper intended to impersonate in Natty Bumpo 

 the highest type of woodcraft attainable by a white man 

 is evident enough, for in all the series of tales to which 

 his name has been given, no other white man at all ap- 

 proaches him in the science that is not learned of books, 

 though naturally, as should be, some of the Indian char- 

 acters surpass him in rapid reading of the forest's faintly 

 traced records. 



One wonders in what degree the author possessed the 

 peculiar gifts which he bestowed upon his favorite crea- 

 tion, who holds the chief place in the five volumes on 

 which the writer's fame most securely rests. How much 

 of this had he gained by actual experience, how much 

 from intercourse with the old hunter Shipman. who as 

 Miss Cooper tells us in her introduction to the "Pioneers," 

 "came frequently to offer his game at Judge Cooper's 

 door, and whose rude equipments, dogs and rifle had 

 much attraction for the lads of the home," or how much 

 from the story of his father's adventures in the wilds 

 where the scenes of some of the Leatherstocking tales 

 were laid, when "there existed not an inhabitant nor any 

 trace of a road. T was alone," he says, "three hundred 

 miles from home, without bread, moat or food of any 

 kind: fire and fishing tackle were, my only means of sub- 

 sistence. I caught trout in the brook and roasted t hem 

 in the ashes. I laid me down to sleep iu my watch coat, 

 nothing but the melancholy wilderness about me." 



The father possessed that faculty of ready adaptation 

 of slender means to suddenly arising needs which is so 

 essential a part of woodcraft" This was exhibited when 

 in a season of great scarcity of food among the settlers 

 he contrived a net of twigs into which great quantities 

 of herring ascending the Susquehanna were taken, and 

 starving people relieved. This is related by Judge Coo- 

 per in his letters to an Irish exile, and in them he fur- 

 ther exhibits his woodcraft in describing what soils shall 

 be found where different kinds of trees flourish. 



In the first written of the Leatherstocking tales, " The 

 Pioneers," there is not the opportunity that the others 

 afford in their wilder scenes for the display of woodcraft. 

 But there are vivid descriptions of the wilderness in it 

 from first to last, and the movements of the old back- 

 woods hunter are well described in Natty's gait and in 



his attitude in the brief but certain aiming of the long- 

 barreled, ill-balanced rifle of old times. Shipman, steal- 

 ing up for a "pot shot " at a partridge or squirrel, was no 

 doubt the unconscious lay figure from which the artist 

 drew this picture. 



Perhaps the panther scene that thrilled us with delight- 

 ful horror when we read it in our "Town's Fourth Reader* 

 forty years or more ago, does not seem so real now as 

 then, and we may offer the criticism that Natty would 

 not have called out to the wooden " female " to " stoop 

 lower, gal, your bunit hides the creature's head," but 

 would have swerved a little to one side for a better shot 

 in that supreme moment, but yet we must own that it is 

 well done, and so in spite of the stilted, unnatural con- 

 versation of the actors, is the escape from the forest fire. 



He was a woods haunter and a true woods lover who 

 put in Natty's mouth the words so often echoed by so 

 many a one of us who has beheld the ruthless sweeping 

 away of loved landmarks. " There be scarcely a, tree 

 standing that I know, and it's hard to find a place that I 

 was acquainted with in my younger days." 



What knowledge of woodcraft, or rather plaincraft, is 

 shown in "The Prairie," we know was not gained from 

 actual observation, for the author had not seen the prai- 

 ries, then more distant than Europe was from the Atlantic 

 States. Yet the scenes are perhaps as accurately de- 

 picted as those in the tales whose actors played, their part 

 in the forests that had not lost their primitive wildness 

 when Cooper saw them. 



In his best work, "The Last of the Mohicans." whose 

 rapidly-shifting dramatic scenes are all set in the shadows 

 of the forest, the author has imparted to us the most that 

 he had gained, by whatever means, of woods lore, and if 

 it is not always perfect, it serves well its use in the weav- 

 ing of a romance that must ever delight the lovers of 

 wholesome and purely American fiction. If his eye 

 might not detect the displaced fallen leaf, the broken 

 twig, the frayed moss on a tree trunk or the light imprint 

 of a stealthy footstep on the forest floor, he could com- 

 prehend what these might mean to men so wise in 

 woodcraft as the Sagamore, Chingaciigook. and the "man 

 without a cross." 



It would be hard to give in so few words a better de- 

 scription than this of the forest in July, "The vast 

 canopy of woods spreads itself to the margin of the river, 

 overhanging the water and snadowing its dark current 

 with a deeper hue. The rays of the sun were beginning 

 to grow less fierce and the intense heat of the day was 

 lessened, as the cooler vapors of the springs and foun- 

 tains rose above their leafy beds and rested in the atmos- 

 phere. Still that breathing silence, which marks the 

 drowsy sultriness of an American landscape in July, per- 

 vaded the secluded spot, interrupted only by the low voices 

 of the men [Leatherstocking and Chingaciigook], the oc- 

 casional and lazy tap of a woodpecker, the discordant 

 cry of some gaudy jay, or a swelling on the ear from the 

 dull roar of a distant waterfall." One feels the sultri- 

 ness of the woods and hears the voices of its lesser deni- 

 zens that oftenest and almost unnoticeably break its 

 silence, yet one can but think near the close of the same 

 chapter that Hawkeye's ears were a little dull that such 

 a trained woodsman should be so slow to hear the unac- 

 customed sound of horses' hoof-beats, and in the next 

 that the hunter must have been a little careless in his 

 statement to say, "Nor have the geese done their flight 

 to the Canada waters altogether." Wild geese flying 

 northward in July? 



Except for occasional slips, Cooper's favorite character 

 is wonderfully well drawn and consistent from his first 

 appearance as the Deerslayer to the last pathetic scene in 

 "The Prairie." The love of nature which such a close 

 observer must feel, his simple faith iu an over-ruling 

 Power, his honesty and unaffected simplicity, his cau- 

 tious bravery, his pride in the skill with "the long-bar- 

 reled, true-grooved, soft-metaled rifle," are all consistent 

 traits iu a man who had spent his life in the woods. 



His figurative manner of expression is natural in one 

 who had so long been the constant companion of the Sag- 

 amore, and in brief words he often gives many maxims 

 of wood lore, as in his reply to Major Heywood, who 

 with the treacherous guide Magna was lost in the wilder- 

 ness between Ft. Edward and Ft. William Henry: 



"An Indian lost in the woods!" said the scout, shaking 

 his head doubtingly; "when the sun is scorching the tree- 

 tops, and the watercourses are full; when the moss on 

 every beech he sees will tell him in which quarter the 

 north star will shine at night ! The woods are ftdl of 

 deer paths, which run to the streams and licks, places 

 well known to everybody." 



His contempt for the singing master, "the weak soul 

 who passes his days in singing," is a natural touch. ; 1 'Tis 

 a strange calling," muttered Hawkeye, "to go through 

 life like a catbird, mocking all the ups and downs that 

 may happen to come out of other men's throats." Just 

 as natural is his poor opinion of the men of the towns, of 

 books and the writers of books. 



"Book! What have such as I, who am a warrior of the 

 wilderness, though a man without a cross, to do with 

 books? I never read but in one, and the words that are 

 written there are too simple and too plain to need much 

 schooling. 'Tis open before your eyes," said the scout, 

 "and he who owns it is not a niggard of its use. I have 

 heard it said that there are men who read in books to con- 

 vince themselves there is a God. I know not but man 

 may so deform his works in the settlement as to leave 

 that which is so clear in the wilderness a matter of doubt 

 among traders and priests. If any such there be and he 

 will follow me from sun to sun, through the windings of 

 the forest, he shall see enough to teach him that he is a 

 fool, and that the greatest of his folly lies in striving to 

 rise to the level of One he can never equal, be it in good- 

 ness or be it in power." 



Cooper's Indians do not hit the popular idea of the 

 present day: his good Indians are too good, his bad ones 

 not bad enough. Yet Chingaciigook, Uncas and Hard- 

 heart are such as we read of in truthful histories of olden 

 times, no more faithful to their friends nor with kindlier 

 traits than Massasoit or Soyengahratah; and as for Magna, 

 treacherous, revengeful, bloodthirsty and cruel as a tiger, 

 and a drunkard withal, it would be hard to outdo him in 

 wickedness with any modern instance. In expert use of 

 the rifle, none of them equal the incomparable marksman 

 Hawkeye, which is true to life, for Indians rarely or 

 never excel in marksmanship with firearms, while in 

 turn and as naturally they surpass him in the finer subtle- 

 ties of woodcraft. But he exhibits great skill in the 

 art when he detects the difference in the twig bent by 



