Dec. 12, 1889.] 



FOREST AND STREAM. 



408 



The photography of faces that have been previously 

 prepared for the "ordeal" should be left for the "profes- 

 sional," whose appreciation of the art is circumscribed by 

 the limitations of the almighty dollar. It is his business 

 to flatter human vanity for sordid lucre. The amateur 

 must not prostitute the art to such base ends. If he de- 

 sires to embalm a sweet face or a graceful form on the 

 unfading tablets of photography,"be should "take" them 

 by the instantaneous process, when they are not posing 

 for it. Groups of merrymakers, taken at a picnic or out- 

 ing, without any warning from the operator, form a 

 laughable feature of photography, and the pictures have 

 the rare merit of being exceedingly "natural." 



The time is coming when an educated man will not 

 think of starting upon a pilgrimage without his trusty 

 camera, upon whose never-failing power he may depend 

 to secure a panorama of his journey, which will be one 

 of the comforts of his declining years. A glance at the 

 pictures will revive a thousand* tender associations of 

 earlier days. 



The time is also coming when every educated man who 

 builds himself a home to live in, will give as much atten- 

 tion to the construction of the "dark-room" as he does to 

 the library. In the dark-room, where may be developed 

 at leisure the results of a day's tramp in field and forest, 

 are to be found the true delights of photography. Here 

 are evolved by the wand of the photographic wizard, the 

 pictures that will hang on memory's wall for many yeai's 

 to come. After the day's battle and the ignoble strife 

 for gain is ended, it is sweet to retire into the quiet seclu- 

 sion of the enchanted dark-room, and bring to light the 

 hidden sun-pencilings of a long ramble through the woods 

 in the autumn days. 



The dark-room is an institution that will mollify the 

 asperities of connubial life and dissipate the corroding 

 perplexities of business care. Truman A. DeWeese. 



CIVILIZATION VS. SAVAGERY. 



THE enthusiastic letter of John Elliott Curran in re- 

 gard to Mr. Grinnell's "Pawnee Hero Stories and 

 Folk-Tales," suggests a few reflections as to the real 

 value of such a book and as to the true view to take of 

 savage as compared to civilized life. I heartily agree 

 with Mr. Cm-ran as to the great value of such a faithful 

 study of savage life by so competent and so artistic a 

 hand as Mr. Grinnell's, and I welcome the book with 

 great pleasure. It brings that breath of the prairies, that 

 sense of contact with nature, that unrestrainedness and 

 freedom which are always so refreshing and exhilarating 

 to civilized men of healthy tendencies, but which are such 

 mainly by way of needed vacation and rest and change 

 from too long- continued confinement and routine. But 

 over and above afi this, the value of this book and others 

 like it lies in the data they furnish for students of the 

 great, growing and vastly important science of anthro- 

 pology. The debt we owe to the men who were far- 

 seeing enough to preserve these materials before general 

 intelligence awoke to their value can never be paid. 

 The time will come when all this will be appreciated , and 

 when every remaining trace of primitive man will be 

 carefully treasured, every burial mound and cairn and 

 fortification and shell heap and cave will be faithfully 

 studied; but it will not be till after millions of them have 

 been ignorantly and ruthlessly destroyed, and many a 

 dialect and many a body of folk-lore is hopelessly lost or 

 remains in dim and unverifiable tradition, but which 

 would have furnished priceless data to the specialists who 

 are slowly and patiently gathering up and piecing to- 

 gether the story of man's advent upon and his gradual 

 conquering of the earth. To the grand science of anthro- 

 pology all the subordinate sciences — archaeology, eth- 

 nology, philology, etc. — lend their aid, and nothing that 

 can assist is unimportant. 



In different ways the tribes of men have reacted upon 

 their environment and wrestled with their problems, and 

 the record of each may throw unexpected light upon 

 every other. It is here, by the way, that the intelligent 

 sportsman may often render yeoman service. Penetrat- 

 ing further and further every year into the wilds in 

 quest of the retreating game, he is often the sole witness 

 of important phenomena, which without his record would 

 be lost to the world; and, therefore, his note-book should 

 be as constant a companion as his rifle. 



But my special wish was to say a word about a true 

 and a false sentimentalism in regard to the savage and 

 the savage life. As cities grow and as civilized life be- 

 comes more and more complex, we shall increase rather 

 than diminish our love of nature, and our zest for a vaca- 

 tion stay in the wilderness will grow as the wilderness 

 itself becomes hard to find, but it is not wisdom to mis- 

 take the life of the savage as in any sense higher or more 

 desirable than tbat of the civilized man. The return to 

 savage simplicity of fife is only desirable as a temporary 

 change and rest. Neither is it true in any true sense that 

 the savage understands nature or is ennobled by his contact 

 with it. It is because of his very submersion in nature, 

 his failure to have arisen above it and out of it, that he 

 ■is a "savage" and low in the scale. It is true, as Mr. Cur- 

 ran says, that "his first care is to get something to eat," 

 but that is not to his credit nor to his ultimate advan- 

 tage, nor is it true of any race of men, whose first or chief 

 concern was to gratify the immediate demands of nature 

 that they have risen much above the brute, over whom 

 in the nature of the case they could claim no superiority 

 of aspiration. It is never until men acquire the faculty 

 of prevision and, even in the desire to minister to their 

 bodily wants, can make the wants of the future superior 

 to those of the present, that they can attain the best and 

 surest means of gratifying them, and it is never until 

 men conceive of moral and spiritual wants, for which 

 they are willing to give up all other gratifications, that 

 they become truly civilized and human. 



Civilization with all its terrible evils is yet immeasur- 

 ably better than savagery, and moreover, civilization sets 

 itself intelligently and consciously to cure its own defects. 

 Mr. Curran says that the Indian "has, in the main, much 

 grander and more dignified thoughts and conceptions 

 than are likely to fall to a man who, for instance, is 

 always poring over books of account, or always writing 

 letters, or always trying to get rich by trading with 

 people." Again, in speaking of the intense physical life 

 of the Indian, be says, "And living, he gets much nearer 

 to God, nearer than we do who trot over our pavements 

 day after day, enter our stores and do and think all 

 things in our own miniature, unlasting world, erected by 

 our own hand to the exclusion of nature." 



This is the false sentimentalism of which I spoke, and 

 the fallacy is that of taking, on the one hand, some real 

 or supposed defect of civilization and holding it so close 

 to the eye as to shut out the view of the universe, and, 

 on the other hand, of imagining a universe of solid struc- 

 ture where little more than a vacuum exists. Yet this 

 fallacy appears so often that it may be worth while to 

 speak of it. Born of the same stock is the conceit that 

 puts trust in the " doctor "whose only claim, forsooth, is 

 that he has never in his life studied anatomy or medicine 

 and never availed himself of one of the helps to knowl- 

 edge which the combined study of thousands of men has 

 furnished. It is of the same piece with the ignorance 

 which scouts "book learning" and supposes that the 

 Digger Indian, who lives on and whose whole concern is 

 about roots and acorns and snakes and snails, must there- 

 fore know more about these very things than Professor 

 Gray, the botanist, and Agassiz and Huxley and Darwin. 



The truth is that the average civilized schoolboy has 

 in one day far more "grand and dignified thoughts 

 and conceptions " than a real savage has in the whole 

 course of his life. Some recognizable germs of these 

 thoughts he does have, and they are genuine as far as 

 they go, but, compared to the far-reaching generalizations 

 of civilized man, they are infinitesimal. The truth is 

 that those who live in closest physical contact with ma- 

 terial nature know least about nature and see the least in 

 it. By so much as they depend upon the sharpness of 

 the bodily senses, by so much are they ignorant of that in- 

 finitely more important secondary sense which avails itself 

 of the thinking and reasoning of all other men combined. 

 The savage knows things in their isolated singleness. 

 The civilized man knows them in their far-reaching re- 

 lations, and this is the only true knowing. 



That which Mr. Curran calls "our own miniatui-e, un- 

 lasting world erected by our own hand to the exclusion 

 of nature," is precisely the reverse of what he describes 

 it to be. It is the world higher than mere nature, the 

 world of human nature, the world of art, the permanent 

 world of institutions. The world of the savage is the lit- 

 tle world, the immediate, and of all things the least per- 

 manent. It is a world so little as to neither merit nor 

 secure for itself its own recorded histoiy, unless that his- 

 tory is written by some one else and that, too, from a 

 motive which would be unintelligible to a savage. A few 

 dim and fanciful traditions, interesting as they may be 

 to us for various good reasons, are not in any true sense 

 history. An Arctic explorer questioned the leader of a 

 tribe of Esquimaux as to the great decrease in numbers 

 of his people, and showed him that in a generation or 

 two the tribe would probably be extinct, but he found it 

 impossible to arouse in the savage any emotion or con- 

 cern at such a prospect, the truth of which he acknow- 

 ledged with a grin. So long as his own belly was full he 

 cared nothing for the future. Of course there are savages 

 and savages, and many North American Indians are 

 far more advanced than this, but because they are capa- 

 ble of somewhat less selfish interests, and just in propor- 

 tion as they are, we call them "higher in the scale." 



A lady, who lived two or three years with the Cree In- 

 dians and who learned their language thoroughly, and 

 entered in all things into then life and interests, told me 

 how extremely limited and commonplace these were. 

 Beyond the few stock excitements of the hunt and the 

 fight it was inane to an amazing degree. Because of re- 

 flection and study the civilized man becomes acquainted 

 with principles, and thereby can truly know and inter- 

 pret nature and make its most hidden powers serve him, 

 and for this reason it is that, other things being equal, he 

 will always in time surpass the Indian in the latter's own 

 chosen field. 



Mr. Curran declares that the Indian has been despised 

 because he "has savage, that is natural ways." He should 

 be reminded that it is only as man has brought art to his 

 aid and conquered his natural ways that he became 

 cleanly and self-respecting and able to combine with his 

 fellows, and to transmit in ever-increasing volume the 

 advantages he has gained to those who come after him. 

 Mr. Curran says that the test of greatness of mind is not 

 the power to "do calculus," but rather "that simplicity 

 that bares the human breast to final things, to time, to 

 space, sky and earth, to the last of human motives — the 

 last in the crucible when all others are evaporated— the 

 desire of life and companionship." This is indeed a 

 strange confusion of thought. If "the desire of life and 

 companionship" is the test of "greatness of mind," then 

 it is one which can be triumphantly passed by nearly all 

 the lower animals, and is certainly not the test by which 

 any of the distinctions at present in vogue in the world 

 have been established! As to the "simplicity which 

 bares the breast to final things, to time, to space," etc., 

 it is not simplicity but profound thought alone which 

 conceives of space and time at all as such, a thought far 

 profounder than any real savage is capable of; and it is 

 just his simplicity itself which makes it impossible for 

 him to do it, for he lives naively and unreflectingly in 

 time and space, and for the most part innocent of any 

 attempts at philosophy about them. 



The whole matter has long ago been rightly summed 

 up by Tennyson in "Locksley Hall," where, after indulg- 

 ing for a short time in some such bilious notions as I 

 have been criticising, he comes to his senses and sees the 

 folly of it all. He has been disappointed in love and 

 "the world is out of joint" for him, and in the bitterness 

 of his pain it seems to him that civilization is all wrong, 

 is only a diabolically complex machine to torture a man, 

 and that it would be far better to turn one's back on it 

 and flee to the wilderness, to "burst all links of habit" 

 and to "wander far away" where no echo of the civilized 

 world can reach him. Listen to him: 



"There methinks would be enjoyment more than in this march of 

 mind, 



In the steamship, in the railway, in the thoughts that shake man- 

 kind. 



"There the passions, cramped no longer, shall have scope and 



breathing space; 

 I will take some savage woman, she shall rear my dusky race. 



"Iron-jointed, supple-sinewed, they shall dive and they shall run. 

 Catch the wild goat by the hair, and hurl their lances in the sun; 



"Whistle back the parrot's call, and leap the rainbows of the 

 brooks; 



Not with blinded eyesight poring over miserable books.'" 



From the standpoint which I have criticised the pic- 

 ture seems to be attractive and complete. But it turns 



out that the thinking of the world for the last few thou- 

 sand years has not been done for nothing, and there is 

 some validity to human institutions after all. Listen to 

 the poet after his delirium has passed and he can see 

 things clearly: 



"Fool, again the dream, the fancy I but I know my words are wild, 

 But I count the gray barbarian lower than the Christian child. 



"I, to herd with narrow foreheads, vacant of our glorious gains, 

 Like a beast with lower pleasures, like a beast with lower pains! 



"Mated with a squalid savage— what to me were sun or clime? 

 I the heir of all the ages, in the foremost files of time." 



No, the picture is not a pretty one, and his wise and 

 firm conclusion is that no amount of the sensuous pleas- 

 ure of savage life would be a fair price for which to 

 barter the smallest of the benefits of civilization, or as he 

 states it in a single line, 



"Better fifty years of Europe than a cycle of Cathay." 



Having already in another number of Forest AND 

 Stream expressed myself as keenly appreciative of Mr. 

 Grinnell's fine book, I am glad to join hands with Mr. 

 Curran in his warm praise of it, only dissenting from 

 some of his side reflections and philosophy. 



C. H. Ames. 



ROD AND GUN IN SISKIYOU. 



EVERYBODY knows that the railroad line between 

 Portland, Ore., and San Francisco, Cal., passes 

 through immense regions where the hunting and fishing 

 are especially fine, and which were not accessible until a 

 few years ago. The country along the upper Sacramento, 

 the McCloud, and the lesser streams of Shasta and Siski- 

 you, is covered with great forests; it is, in fact, one of 

 the last fastnesses of the superb coniferous forests of the 

 Pacific coast, and it is being pierced in a dozen directions 

 by the lumber men. Wood, flumes are being built, rail - 

 roads are surveyed into the heart of the pineries, and in- 

 side of twenty years this magnificent mountain paradise 

 of animal and vegetable life will probably be as desolate 

 as the worst wastes of the Adirondacks, Therefore let 

 those who can afford it come while the woods are still 

 unviolated. 



Fishing is said to close in northern California with 

 October, but I heard and saw enough in a few days spent 

 in this region during the middle of November this year, 

 to justify any sportsman in trying the journey, ordinary 

 seasons, even later. I can promise a man a good time 

 almost all winter. 



The territory which I wish to describe lies in an irreg- 

 ular square, cut north and south by the railroad, and 

 comprising a district perhaps fifty miles square. It lies 

 around the base of such noble peaks as Eddy, Muir, Scott 

 and the giant of Shasta. The weather the middle of Novem- 

 ber in Strawberry Valley, and in fact everywhere at that 

 elevation — of about 4,000ft. — was clear-, bracing and de- 

 lightful. No snow had as yet fallen mucb below the for- 

 est line, above which the great white domes of Eddy and 

 Shasta rose, the latter the most noble and satisfactory 

 sight imaginable. There was frost at night, and a fire 

 was very comfortable after sunset, but all day everywhere 

 in the streets of the mountain towns, men went to and 

 fro in their shirt sleeves, or worked in the lumber mills. 

 Green grass was springing under the pines and in the 

 meadows, while through innumerable ditches ran the 

 cold snow water from the heights. Such a region of con- 

 trast it has seldom been my good fortune to discover. 



The Sacramento River heads a little beyond Sissons in 

 a. large spring bursting from the mountain side. Among 

 the larger tributaries are the Pitt and the McCloud; and 

 all are fed by the glaciers of Shasta. North again, the 

 Shasta River, rising at the foot of Scott- Mountain, flows 

 many a tortuous mile into the Klamath , one of the great 

 rivers of California. The lesser streams are almost count- 

 less, and there are a number of mountain lakes, besides 

 lagoons in the larger valleys. All winter wildfowl 

 abound in the region. They frequent the lakes and 

 lagoons, and the meadows in the valleys. The Indians 

 snare ttiem; the pioneers count them a timely addition to 

 the bill of fare, and their numbers do not appear to 

 diminish in the least. Hardly a hunter finds his way to 

 the region iri the winter, and it is almost virgin soil in 

 that regard. The manager of a large lumber mill told 

 me that ducks, geese, curlews and other wildfowl in 

 little Shasta Valley "are of ten too tame and too plenty 

 for real sport." There are no fences for miles. One 

 drives about the rolling foothills, the lava rocks, and the 

 meadow borders, and gets shots every few minutes, 

 either at birds flying over head or by flushing them from 

 the pasturage or the small ponds. 



Fly-fishing on the McCloud closes with October. The 

 native fly of the region has a yellow body and brown 

 wings. "Benn's McCloud" is a good one; so is the 

 "golden-brown hackle," the "blue miller," the "royal 

 coachman," and "Benn's orange-gray and brown." The 

 pot-fishermen are guilty of using salmon roe, which every 

 true disciple of the line abominates as nothing less than 

 murder. The rainbow trout (Salmo it-idea) is most 

 abundant, but the large Dolly Varden trout offer the best 

 sport. Salmon are very plentiful in the season. All 

 along the Upper Sacramento, from Redding north for 

 several hours of travel, the railroad trains pass within 

 casting distance of the beautiful river, and one can see 

 trout from the window of his car, "head on" below the 

 rocks, or moving across the shallows. 



The Indians spear them at this season (November) and 

 they are in excellent condition, but in the whole country 

 one cannot find a devotee of the rod; it is the society 

 season in San Francisco, and besides there is a supersti- 

 tion abroad that the weather is too cold up here. The 

 pioneers and the loggers and mountaineers could tell a 

 different story. They love the winter better than any 

 other time of the year. 



The large game of this mountain region is very inter- 

 esting. The Rocky Mountain sheep still live and breed 

 13,000 or 13,000ft. above the sea on the Shasta crags. 

 Muir speaks of "the cradle of this little mountaineer, 

 aloft in the sky, rocked in the storms, curtained in clouds, 

 sleeping in thin icy air." Another extremely rare ani- 

 mal is the American chamois {Aplocevus montanus). 

 The antelope is another, though thirty years ago there 

 were many thousands of them in California. Mr. Sisson, 

 the old pioneer of all this region, says there were a 

 few specimens of a species of polar bear with black heads 

 and snow-white bodies living on Mount Shasta, and there 

 \ were others that were all white. The pioneers of Siski- 



