Dec. 26, 1889. j 



FOREST AND STREAM. 



447 



or three of his hands rushed out and gavethemselvesup. 

 The police made them fast and continued the burning. 

 Presently three other men made a bolt out of the house, 

 but were shot down and captured. These proved to be 

 the three escaped convicts, who had been twice convicted 

 of bushranging in other parts of the country. One of 

 them died of his wounds. The other two were hanged, 

 and the people who sheltered them were sentenced to 

 a long term of imprisonment. It came out that the cat- 

 tle station had been bought for the express purpose of af- 

 fording shelter for bushrangers under the guise of respect- 

 ability, and that the station owner, who, by the bye, was 

 a justice of the peace and a churchwarden, was brother 

 of one of the criminals. The " plant," as the police call 

 it, was a very clever one, and it would probably never 

 have been discovered had not the police brought the best 

 hlack trackers on the continent to follow the trail by sight 

 and scent. Edward Wakefield. 



NOTES FROM ALASKA. 



SITKA, Alaska, Nov. 5, 1889.— More than a year ago, 

 when it was announced that I was to come to 

 Alaska, to discharge important official duties, I received 

 letters from old friends in San Francisco, deploring the 

 fact that I was about to exile myself "among the seals 

 and icebergs" of this "inhospitable country. 1 ' San Fran- 

 cisco has maintained quite a close commercial intercourse 

 with southeastern Alaska for twenty years, and her 

 papers have taken an interest in everything which has 

 concerned the new territory, so that it is almost incom- 

 prehensible how intelligent persons there, my corres- 

 pondents, could have formed such an inaccurate notion 

 of the couutry, that it is simply a land of "seals and ice- 

 bergs." This feeling, however, prevails among about 

 two-thirds of both houses of Congress, and has hitherto 

 resulted in the neglect which the Territory and its inter- 

 eats have suffered ever since the acquisition. A singular 

 manifestation of this want of knowledge and indifference 

 is apparent in the legislation of the last session of Con- 

 gress. The most important developed industry of Alaska 

 is the salmon fishery. Congress declared that all ob- 

 structions at the mouth of streams, against the ascending 

 of the salmon for breeding purposes, should be removed, 

 and none maintained. At the same time no appropria- 

 tion was made for policing the waters of Alaska, in order 

 to enforce this provision. I might enumerate other in- 

 stances of neglect and indifference. The seal industry 

 seems to engage all the attention of the authoiities at 

 Washington, while others, equally important to the 

 country, are ignored. 



The topograyhy of the country, the ruggedness of the 

 mountains, the fact that the narrow valleys of the main- 

 land, and upou the thousand islands off the coast, are 

 occupied almost entirely by glaciers, which feed the 

 small short streams which reach the sea, will always 

 prevent Alaska from becoming the paradise of the 

 sportsman. The mountains are the steepest in the world, 

 and are everywhere. The valleys are nowhere wider 

 than the space occupied by the glacial streams which 

 find their way to the countless bays and inlets. The 

 mountain sides are clothed well up with fir, spruce, hem- 

 lock, yellow cedar, and a small species of birch, but the 

 undergrowth is a perfect jungle everywhere. The 

 timber, which has ^fclen, in some places for centuries, 

 seldom decays. In a few years, on account of the in- 

 tense humidity of the climate, the moss grows over this 

 fallen timber and from it shoots a new growth, so that 

 in thousands of instances great hemlock trees 5 or Oft, in 

 diameter, have with their roots straddled their fallen 

 predecessors, while cutting into the bodies of the latter 

 shows them to be as sound as when they first fell. Be- 

 sides this destruction of fallen timber, the devil's club, the 

 alder and the salmon berry bush create a dense thicket 

 at all points. It is the labor of hours often to penetrate 

 half a mile through this jungle. The devil's club is a 

 kind of thorny cactus which grows 10 or 15ft. high in 

 most places and throw out lateral branches, which inter- 

 lace with the alder and salmon berry bush and present 

 such an obstacle as is difficult to overcome. Besides that, 

 it has a poisonous thorn whose sting creates a pain as 

 enduring and acute as that of the hornet or the yellow 

 jacket. Where the mountains reach a height of 3,000ft. 

 the timber ceases at an elevation of about 2,000ft. 



Before the timber extremity is reached, the wild cow- 

 slip begins, and this is the favorite food of the deer in 

 summer, and extends beyond that nearly to the summit. 

 The deer feed in great numbers on the islands in the 

 summer during the day in these cowslip pastures, where 

 there is no snow and no water. At night they find their 

 way from the heights and pasturage grounds to the mar- 

 gins of the fresh- water streams to drink, and early in the 

 morning again return to the pastures further up the sides 

 of the mountains. The snow did not begin to fall as 

 early on the tops of the mountains this fall as it did last, 

 though the loftiest of them are now very white, and every 

 day during this almost constant rain it is encroaching 

 downward more and more. In another month, in the 

 usual course, the snow will be four and five feet deep, 

 not only above the timber line, but far down into the 

 timber. This compels the deer to seek entirely new feed- 

 ing grounds. In the daytime they will then travel far 

 down into the timber to secluded' and sheltered spots, 

 where they remain until night. From December to 

 April they seek the beach at night, and feed on the short 

 kelp which abounds and is easily accessible at low tide. 



Alaskan deer are very small. I have seen hundreds of 

 them brought in by the Indians for sale, and very few of 

 them will weigh more than 1251bs. when dressed. The 

 flesh has a taste much more like that of mutton than of 

 venison captured elsewhere. The bucks have no such 

 magnificent antlers as the deer of the Alleghenies and 

 the Blue Ridge range. I have never seen an antler where 

 the main stem exceeded ten inches, but notwithstanding 

 this, they are of great beauty and graceful proportions. 

 There are no wolves of any kind on any of the islands off 

 the coast from the British boundary to Sitka, nor have 

 deer been found near the coast on the mainland. The 

 wolves of the mainland seem to have driven the deer 

 across the narrow straits to the islands, where they are 

 unmolested by their enemy. 



Deer stalking is utterly out of the question in south- 

 eastern Alaska. A small party of us, having confidence 

 that it was possible, notwithstanding the jungle and the 

 thickets, attempted it, but soon gave it up as wholly im- 

 practicable. In the summer and fall the Indians resort 

 to places where the deer come to the fresh water for 

 drink at night, and kill them, Few of the Indians have 



improved firearms of any kind. The sale of such is pro- 

 hibited to them. Many of them have double-barreled 

 muzzleloading fowling pieces and old-fashioned percus- 

 sion rifles, and with these they kill the deer at short 

 range while hiding in the thickets close by where the 

 animals come to dxink. 



At intervals of a mile, and often three miles, small 

 landslides have started well up toward the crests of the 

 mountains, and extended in narrow strips to the base. 

 These are never more than a few feet wide, but are worn 

 to a considerable depth by the water from melting snows. 

 Here there is no underbrush, but the courses are very 

 steep, and in very few instances can they be trodden by 

 human beings. The deer, as agile as the mountain goat, 

 use them as pathways, and when frightened from their 

 feeding grounds, among the kelp along the beach, clisap- 

 appear as quickly as thought up these narrow and steep 

 gulches, and are soon out of sight and hearing. The 

 coyote dog of the Indian will follow them when wounded, 

 and feed on the dead carcasses. In the winter time the 

 Indians kill the deer from their cedar canoes. They 

 paddle close in shore with the stillness of death, keeping 

 in the shelter of every jutting rock, aiming to round a 

 point where deer are feeding on the beach. Frequently, 

 after they are startled, deer will pause and gaze at the 

 hunter in his canoe, and stand there until the fatal shot 

 is fired. 



At the present rate, the deer of southeastern Alaska 

 will soon be exterminated. There is no local legislation 

 in the Territory of any kind, and no legislative body. 

 While Congress has made some abortive laws looking to 

 the preservation of the salmon fisheries, and a great stir 

 over the international question of the seal rookeries, not 

 a single step has been taken to prevent the slaughter of 

 deer out of season. There is no close time, and the con- 

 sequence is that hundreds of pregnant does are killed, 

 and their carcasses simply abandoned in order to secure 

 the skins. The Indiris who are more interested in pro- 

 tecting these animals at that season than any others, do 

 not seem to have the slightest regard for consequences. 

 When spoken to about it by white men who h,ave given 

 the matter some consideration, they simply grin at you 

 in a style which they intend for an incredulous laugh, 

 and that is the end of it. 



The sea otter, by far the most valuable fur animal in 

 Alaska, has been almost entirely exterminated in the 

 southeastern portion of the country. Formerly it was 

 the most abundant fur-bearing animal on this coast. 

 During Russian occupation limits were placed upon the 

 numbers taken, in order to insure a constant supply, but 

 from the date of our acquisition, in 1867, nothing has 

 been done to check extermination. Within the past few 

 years the sea otter of the western coast of Alaska has 

 been rapidly undergoing the fate of that animal in 

 the southeastern part. Scores of American and other 

 vessels go to the Asiatic coast opposite, with cargoes of 

 firearms and alcohol, and thence a trade is illicitly car- 

 ried on with the natives on the American side. With 

 breechloading and magazine rifles and nets as substi- 

 tutes for the old-fashioned spear shot from a long bow, 

 natives and whites are both totally exterminating sea 

 otters and all the other fur-bearing animals of that part of 

 the coast. This evil is becoming so formidable that the 

 period is not very far off when the Government will be 

 called on to support the natives on this coast, when with 

 proper foresight they might have remained self-support- 

 ing for an indefinite period. J. H. K. 



THE HILL FARMS OF NEW HAMPSHIRE. 



ptHARLESTOWN, N. H.— Editor Forest and Stream: 

 KJ Since writing you a few days ago on the "Woods 

 and Waters of New Hampshire," my mind has often 

 wandered back half a century to some"of the happy days 

 spent on those old hill farms, and I have thought of a 

 few more things I would like to say on the subject of 

 restoring the forests of these highlands, rather than to 

 attempt to repopulate them by the introduction of immi- 

 grants, whose children after the first generation would 

 probably become emigrants, and leave them for more fer- 

 tile fields, as did the sons of the early settlers. Let me 

 preface with a few words of geographical and geological 

 description. 



Here, where I write, is probably one of the most fertile 

 sections of the State. The Connecticut Valley is about a 

 mile wide, and through it the river takes its usual sinu- 

 ous course, leaving a broad stretch of fertile meadow on 

 either hand, now in New Hampshire and now in Ver- 

 mont, from which the hills rise steeply on each side to a 

 height of 300 or 400ft. above the river. Then comes a 

 depression and then a higher rise, and so on till the 

 height of land is reached, either in the Green Mountains 

 or at the "backbone" of New Hampshire. 



Many of these high ridges were the first points selected 

 by the early settlers, perhaps for the sunny exposure, 

 perhaps for the lookout, affording more safety from 

 attacks from the French and Indians, who were in the 

 habit of coming down the river on their raids hi the "old 

 French war," and it is to some of these farms, which 1 

 knew well when a boy, that my memory turns. 



The underlying rock here in the valley is a coarse mica 

 schist, which four miles east of the village forms a long 

 ridge about 1,000ft. above the sea, or 700 above the river, 

 with several peaks rising to 1,300 or 1,400ft. above sea 

 level; then comes a deep valley, in which about east of 

 the village head two brooks, one flowing north and one 

 south: and then the land rises again to the village of 

 Acworth, 1,400ft. above the sea, and the rock changes to 

 the genuine New Hampshire granite. 



Just four miles east of the village, on the Acworth 

 road, stands the old "Prospect Hill Fa?'in," from which 

 went the two of my schoolmates, whom I spoke of in my 

 last, as leading Western troops to victory in the war for 

 the preseveration of the Union. The old house stands as 

 it stood then, bare and bald by the roadside, with not a 

 tree near it save a few scrubby lilac bushes, for these old 

 pioneers hated a tree as the devil is said to hate holy 

 water, and the grandfather of my friends, who settled 

 this farm in 1780, cut down everything within reach ex- 

 cept the "sugar hush," which used to stretch up a rocky 

 swale toward the top of Prospect Hill, itself rising 200ft. 

 higher just east of the house. This was as bare as my 

 hand, and was used for a sheep pasture, and is as bare 

 now, save that the summit is crowned with a cairn of 

 stones and a flagstaff, which weire used as a landmark in 

 the topographical survey of the State made some thirty 

 years since. 



It is well called Prospect Hill, for from its bald summit 

 the view r is clear in every direction. The great granite 

 dome of Ascutney lifts itself 3,000ft in air, clean from 

 the river bank, unbroken by any foothills, about sixteen 

 miles to the north; a little to the east of this is the range 

 of the Croydon Mountains, with Moosilanke beyond them ; 

 nearly east is Sunapee Mountain, and in the opening be- 

 tween you get a distant, view of Cardigan, and beyond 

 that in a clear day of Mt. Washington itself. To the 

 southeast is Monadnock; arid the whole west is one great 

 panorama of the Green Mountain peaks for eighty miles. 

 Mt. Equinox, Mt. Tabor, Mt. Holley, Shrewsbury Moun- 

 tain and Killington Peak, and in good weather the Cam- 

 el's Hump, are sharply outlined against the sky. 



From the front of the house the "mowing lot" sloped 

 away down into "Rock Meadow," which then held a 

 sparkling trout brook, fed by the waters from the heavy 

 forest of oak, beech and maples, which then clothed the 

 northeasterly slopes of Prospect Hill beyond my friend's 

 domain. There was but little arable land near the house, 

 enough to furnish the necessary supply of potatoes, rye, 

 Indian corn and pumpkins for the family use, and that 

 was all. 



Many a happy day have I spent there, going out first 

 in the spring to the "sugar mahing," then trout fishing 

 in Rock Meadow later, and in the fall squirrel shooting, 

 winding up in the evening with a coon hunt, or a tramp 

 across lots to the "old red school house," set on a cross 

 road as near the geographical center of "the district" as 

 possible, to the meetings of the "Debating Club," for 

 these old farms raised lots of boys then , and we used to 

 discuss the same old questions which have vexed the 

 minds of hoys and opened their lips since the days of 

 Cain and Abel. Not that we ever came to blows, but I 

 have never doubted that that historic quarrel arose in 

 some discussion on land- tenure, or the single tax! I 

 wish our Mend, the author of "Uncle Lisha," would give 

 us a description of one of these country debating societies; 

 he could do it justice. 



In the winter my friends came into the village to their 

 grandmothers' to get some higher shooting than the out- 

 lying district afforded, for they bad then made up their 

 minds to "go West," stimulated by the exanqile of some 

 cousins who had gone from the village to Illinois about 

 1830, and they wanted to study land surveying and some 

 other matters not quite in the reach of the ordinary 

 country schoolmaster. After thoy and a still younger 

 brother had gone, their father sold the old farm and 

 moved into the village. Here he bought a bit of pasture 

 land on the edge of the plateau on which the village 

 stands, and down which sloped the road to the meadows, 

 bordered by a beautiful row of old oaks and butternuts. 

 These he at once cut down, and converted into firewood, 

 leaving it as bare as he had left his hill pastures. 



Those were pleasant days, though, for the boys at the 

 old hill farm. The dining table was always set in one 

 corner of the big kitchen, and amply stored with rye and 

 Indian bread and butter, doughnuts and cheese, cold 

 baked beans, apple and pumpkin pies, and a big pitcher 

 of milk, and there was no delay nor trouble about meals, 

 it' we wanted to go for gray squirrels before daylight, or 

 lingered late by the brook for the last big trout in the 

 evening. I will not attempt to ring in the old device of 

 comparing the provender to that of some noted restaura- 

 teur, but there was plenty of it, and we were always 

 hungry. 



The old house and the big barns still stand there, but 

 the next house is utterly gone, save the cellar wall. The 

 bare pasture ridge stretches away a mile to the south, and 

 then on another road which crosses it to the valley of the 

 "Great Brooks" stand two more deserted farms, the shells 

 of the old houses and barns left, but windowless and for- 

 lorn. Then comes "Brier Hill," once well wooded, but 

 now deserving of its name; then comes another road 

 which sweeps round the base of the next peak, "Sam's 

 Hill," so-called from an old Revolutionary colonel who 

 owned it. This, although joining the ridge at its east end 

 and overtopping it, is of a different formation ; it is sim- 

 ply a great wedge of white quartz, thrust up from below, 

 in some early geological convulsion, shaped for all the 

 world like the front sight on an old-fashioned rifle; steep 

 to the east and south, but sloping easily to the west, 

 toward the village. This was too rough and steep for 

 pasturage, and the old wood was left untouched until 

 within the last twenty years, when it has been cleared 

 for lumber and fuel; but not being burned over, the hill 

 is just springing up to woodland again. 



South of this hill comes a deep meadow, through which 

 runs a once favorite trout brook, and in which stood a 

 hay barn. The farmhouse to which it belonged stood in 

 another meadow, an eighth of a mile to the west, with 

 another pasture ridge between — but there is noth ing left 

 now but the old well. 



The clearing of the forests dried up the brooks in the 

 summer, and exterminated the trout, as at Rock Meadow. 

 The alders grew up thick in the sluggish water, and 

 then roots choked it back into the meadows, which have 

 become tussocky swamps instead of good mowing. 



Next, and last on my list, which is getting too long 

 already, comes Page's Hill. Over this stretched the 

 "Old Crown Point Trail," by which the Colonial troops 

 from the seaboard marched to Ticonderoga. The old 

 road stretched straight aw T ay to the southeast, uphill and 

 down, and here on this hill are two more old vacant 

 farms. 



One of these I used to visit often, for the big pastures 

 were full of old solitary chestnuts, left as a shelter for 

 the sheep, and it was a great place for gray squirrels. I 

 well remember the day when President Harrison's grand- 

 father, "Old Tippecanoe," was elected, for two of my 

 cronies came out here, and returned at night with thir- 

 teen gray squirrels and one black one. The old farmer 

 died childless, his widow moved into "the street," and 

 the farm passed into the hands of the next neighbor, 

 whose family has run out entirely, but whose old house 

 still stands tenantless on the western brow of the hill, 

 commanding one of the most beautiful views in New 

 England. Down through the valley of the little brook 

 just mentioned, 1,000ft. below and four miles away, you 

 get a glimpse of the waters of the Connecticut, sparkling 

 in the sunshine, with the long ranges of the Green Moun- 

 tains for a background. 



But I have taken too much time in description, for my 

 memory has run away Avith me. 



Here are these miles of breezy, billowy pasture lands, 

 once covered with thousands of sheep, now vacant and 

 solitary; what shall be done with them? The sheep, I 



