182 



FOREST AND STREAM. 



[Sept. 34, X891. 



New Yobk. 



MUNSON'S FALLS. 



MANCHESTER, VT. 



CPLASHINGr, dasliing, clear aR crystal, 

 ^ Flashing back the sun's bright rays, 

 Runs the brook o'er titne-worn boulders, 

 Babbling forth its liquid lays. 



Racing, leaping, restless waters, 

 Why not be content like me? 



Rest awhile along the journey- 

 Fain am I to talk with thee. 



On it rushes, laughing, gurgling, 



Ever onward to the sea; 

 In each drop a rainbow glistens. 



While each pool reflects for me 



Pictures such as no man painteth; 



Ever changing, ever true; 

 Set in frames of moss-grown granite. 



Tree and shrub of wondrous hue. 



Pretty streamlet, happy water. 



Free from care, restraint or guile; 

 Fare thee well and may God speed thee 

 To thy joxirney'a end, erewhile! 



Alfred H. Tompkins, 



STORIES OF THE SANTA LUCIAS. 



THE California Coast Range goes by many names; it is 

 so broken into groups of mountains by long narrow 

 valleys. These local names do not always appear on any 

 except county maps, but they are worthy of perpetuation 

 and often more distinctive than most mountain names, 

 preserving old Indian and Spanish terms of great beauty. 

 The Mayacamas, the Gavilans, the Gaviotas, the Santa 

 Lucias, are illustrations of these local names. 



But one must know how to pronounce such names or 

 their musical possibilities are lost. The rolling hill 

 country east of Paso Robles (the "Gateway of the Oaks") 

 goes by the name of "iJuer Huero.''' V/hen this name 

 was sent to the Postmaster-General, a new settlement de- 

 siring a post-ofiice, the horrified officials wrote back that 

 sucli a collection of consonants was not to be considered 

 for a moment. All the settlers, however, pronounce 

 Huer-Huero "war-wari-o" and so give it a decidedly 

 Australian sound. 



The Santa liUcias occupy a great portion of the ocean- 

 bordering townships of Monterey and San Luis Obispo. 

 Cattle ranges, a few farms, timber lands and mines of 

 quicksilver and other metals are found there. Being but 

 thinly settled there is more game than in any other part 

 of the soiithern coast range, and no fi.ner' section for 

 summer camps can be found in California. The old set- 

 tlers will tell you that there is no game left, but there is 

 a good deal. Hardly a day passes that deer are not seen 

 crossing the mormtain highways; bears and California 

 lions still carry off calves and sheep; the trade in skins 

 of wildcats is still quite an industry. Of course the days 

 that I remember, in which old "Uncle Nate Morehouse." 

 one of the first settlers at "The Summit," could "kill a 

 deer every week in the year" on his own 300 acres, .sre 

 long ago ended. But if tlie temporary rest that the new 

 game law of California commands is strictly observed, 

 there will be great times again for every sportsman who 

 visits the Santa Lucias. 



A long time ago— I do not like to say exactly how long 

 —I made my first visit to what then had no particular 

 name, but is now called the Adelaide district. Twenty 

 miles square, it lies between Paso Robles, in the valley of 

 the upper Salinas, and the dairy farms of the coast along 

 the Cayucos. When I first saw it, the railroad had stop- 

 ped away north, near Castroville, and one staged from 

 the terminus clear through to Los Angeles, a wild, hard 

 and always memorable journey. A hundred towns that 

 have since sprung u]) along the route were then unfenced 

 pastures; cities of to-day were but ancient, dreaming 

 Spanish villages of the Eighteenth century, in whose 

 iniflst a few Americans were fighting and Working. 



In the clear gold of sunrise, as the stage-coach hastened 

 across the Salinas plains (then a desert, now a wheat- 

 field), the driver halted and called my attention to what 

 was even then a very rare sight, that of a band of ante- 

 lope on the mesa. When J. Ross Browne, some time in 

 the early fifties, had ridden alone across the Salinas Val- 

 ley, deer, wild cattle, grizzlies, antelope and other large 

 game were everywhere in the beautiful oak-studded 

 levels •and slopes. Long after the antelope had been 

 driven out of the upper Salinas, they were in the Mohave 

 and Colorado deserts, where they held their own until 

 the advent of the railroad. 



Deer, too, still dwelt along the Salinas. The stage 

 drivers often saw them, and travelers on the highways 

 had come into the stage stations with deer they had shot 

 from horseback. But the home of game was west of the 

 valley, in the moiin tains. There was not a fence except 

 a fCAv brush walls about the corn patches of the pioneers. 

 Nothing had been surveyed: cattle trails ran on every 

 hillside, and made so perplexing a maze that it was often 

 difficxilt to keep the bridle paths. Practically speaking, 

 one could ride anywhere that his horse could carry him. 

 There were mountain paths of astounding steepness, 

 where the greenhorn and his saddle would inevitably slij) 

 over the horse's tail long before he was half way up the 

 grade; my friend Daniel, then a plump little school- 

 master, now a wily politician, once spent a whole after- 

 noon in recovering his luggage from the tops of the man- 

 zanita bushes 300yds. below one of the grades of the San 

 Josefa trail. 



One morning I went out from Uncle Buck Wright's 

 cabin and walked up the gulch. There was a rare 

 fl.ower there, one of the labiates, that had long puzzled 

 my slender stock of botanical information, and I wanted 

 to find out more about it. I climbed upon a shelf of lime- 

 stone projectiug over the gulch, and sat down under the 

 shadow of the Hvq oaks, looking at the hills' blue 

 distance, at the sunrise, still rose-piirple. I sat there for 

 perhaps half an hour resting quietly. Then I heard a 

 sharp tinkle below, as if two pebbles had been struck to- 

 gether, and in a little while 1 caught other sounds that 

 aroused my curiosity. By standing up I was able to look 

 over and down upon a lower shelf overgrown with trees 

 and shrubs— a peculiarly lovely spot, fresh with the 



sparkle of water from a spring, and yet arched over with 

 clear blue sky, and sprinkled with sunlight and shadow. 



Just here, in a space like a lady's parlor, a doe and two 

 fawns of six months age were playing in the most home- 

 like way. They had climbed up from the bottom of the 

 ravine, and circumstances had so greatly favored me 

 that I was actually within 35ft. of the unconscious crea- 

 tures. The heavy boughs of the live oak hid me, but a 

 small opening enabled me to see clearly and the wind 

 blew from the doe, so that, as I said, it was a rare oppor- 

 tunity. A naturalist might have had some theory to de- 

 fend or demolish, but I was well content to enjoy the 

 scene without thinking of it as "material." I remember 

 that I was especially pleased by the refined way in which 

 the doe nipped off a leaf here, a small twig there, in the 

 intervals of her play with the fawns. It was breakfast 

 time, but when I went down to the place after they had 

 gone, the keenest scrutiuy could not have seen that any- 

 thing was marred or spoiled. Nature's wild garden was 

 the wild garden still. They tripped away as easily and 

 gracefully as Spanish dancing girls, and the memory of 

 their haunt in the canon by the mountain springs was 

 one that kept me in hopes of another such experience. 



Hiram Selby was one of the mountain-bred boys, a 

 phenomenally good mustang breaker, a fine shot and a 

 companion you could trust. I have told many stories 

 about him in those Santa Lucia days. Poor fellow! An 

 oak that he was felling killed him years ago, and the 

 Selby cabin, where he lived with his feeble old mother, is 

 fairly rotting into a place like a burial mound, so quickly 

 the wild clematis and blackberry have seized upon it. I 

 rode past it a few days ago, and some of Aunty Selby's 

 marigolds were still blooming around it. The old oak 

 still remains on which Hiram used to nail his "skins an' 

 varmint an' hides." "Skins" meant deer or "bar:" "hides" 

 meant calves or cattle— the tamed, domestic element one 

 might say; "varmint" in Hiram's mind meant coons, 

 foxes, wildcats, coyotes and badgers. 



In these days Pliram would be ranked as a cowboy. 

 But he was more of a wood ranger on horseback. He 

 drove cattle for the wealthy ranchers, and earned a fair 

 living; but he preferred to be his own master and to ride 

 all day long over the Santa Lucias, with his favorite 

 weapon, a large army revolver, "peggin' " at things. 

 "Ground squirrels an' jack rabbits they give a man prac- 

 tice," he used to remark to me. "Varmint, them's better 

 and wuth a little. I reely like to drop a wildcat with 

 my six-shooter." 



For large game he carried an old muzzleloading rifle, 

 as most of the boys of the district did, until a few years 

 later Henry rifles or old model Winchesters came in. 

 Sometimes for a year or two at a time he made his living 

 by "huntin' an' tradin' bosses," as he once told me. 

 Once a year he went to camp-meeting, and was always 

 mightily stirred up before its close, leading the mourners 

 and confessing all his sins of omission and commission. 

 Then he came home rejoicing to Aunty Selby, and for a 

 few weeks the work he did in the garden would have 

 done credit to any professional horticulturist. Aiter a 

 little the charm of the unfenced mountain wilderness 

 again overcame him, and the giant oaks about the log 

 cabin began to be covered once more with his "skins, 

 hides an' varmint." 



The type is old, but it is vanishing; it is already hard 

 to find on any part of the Pacific coast; forty-acre farms 

 occupy the valleys, and men are planting orchards by the 

 hundred in the sunny shelters of the Santa Lucias. There 

 is still a certain sort of pioneering to be done there, but 

 it is a tame and tiresome sort compared with the book of 

 the days of the beginnings, when the first trails were 

 made, the first grizzlies shot, the first squatter fights 

 fought out between cattlemen and cabin builders on the 

 Naciemiento. CnARLES H, Shinn. 



BOSTON SPORTSMEN. 



GOVERNOR RUSSELL, of Massachusetts, knows how 

 to take a vacation. He was greatly pleased with 

 his trip to Birch Lodge, at the head of Richardson Lake, 

 Maine. In the first place, the camp is all that heart could 

 wish in the shape of a hunting and fishing camp. It 

 overlooks the whole length of the lake, with the wooded 

 mountains beyond. Rustic, yet almost jDalatial in its fit- 

 tings, the hunting and fishing home of a millionaire, Mr. 

 Bayard Thayer, who, with his brother, Mr. John E. 

 Thayer, of the Governor's staff, is entertainmg the Gov- 

 ernor and a few friends. The doings of a single day wiU 

 picture other days of the Governor's stay in the wilder- 

 ness. Clad in corduroy, with leggins and a slouch hat, 

 Mr. Russell, with his guide, Steve Morse, a veteran in 

 that section, embark in a skiff, morning and evening, to 

 try the trout with a fly. The Governor is getting to be 

 an expert with the fly-rod. Twenty -four handsome trout 

 were the result of one morning's fishing, with half as 

 many in the evening. But this is not all. After fishing 

 and a rest at the lodge the Governor shoulders his gun, 

 and half a dozen partridges are the result of a few hours' 

 delightful tramp in an old lu mber traU. All the birds 

 are said to have been taken on the wing, for how else 

 should a Governor hit a partridge ? 



Mr. R. B. Foster, of the firm of Foster & Weeks, of 

 Boston, is not altogether unknown to the readers of For- 

 est AND STEEA.M. Mr. Poster is a sportsman from first 

 to last, but more in love with rod and line than almost 

 any man I know. This time, however, he has just re- 

 turned from a most successful salt-water fishing excur- 

 sion. Mr. Horace W. Jordan is a sportsman well known 

 in Boston. Several years ago he met with one of those 

 terrible gun-in-carriage accidents that deprived him of 

 his right arm, and since that time he has had to be more 

 contented with fishing than shooting. But he has been 

 far more fortunate in money matters than most men 

 with two arms, and having accumulated considerable of 

 this world's goods, of late years he has been able to grat- 

 ify his tastes. He has a fine camp on Jordan's Island, 

 sixteen miles from Bar Harbor, and here he delights to 

 entertain his friends. 



Mr. Foster is a friend fast and true, and it is down 

 there that Mr. Foster has been by presping invitation. 

 The little steamer and the help and the camp are at the 

 service of the guests, with the genial eompanyof Mr. Jor- 

 dan into the bargain. They went one day down to Sea- 

 vern's Ledges, a point some sixteen miles from camp. 

 The captain ran the steamer on time; that is, lie ran at a 

 certain rate of speed, and measured his distance in search- 

 ing for the fishing gi-ounds by the distance he had run. 

 About the last ten minutes of the run he commenced 



sounding, and to the lead was attached a baited hook. 

 When about seventeen fathoms of water had been 

 reached he drew up a codfish. Then the anchor was 

 hove and the steamer brought to a standstill. All hands 

 went to fishing. Such fishing it is seldom in the luck of 

 sportsmen to get. Soon a fellow drew up a big cod amid 

 scores of smaller fish. It weighed only 501bs. The 

 catcher was high line for some time. But soon another 

 came. The captain estimated it wotdd weigh 65lbs., 

 and on the scales three hours after it actually weighed 

 631b8. 



For a time this gentleman was high line, and, in fact, 

 so to this day, of that trip, though it looked for a time as 

 though he was badly eclipsed. One of the sportsmen 

 felt a pull at his line that was a pull, and the line was 

 running through his hands in spite of every effort. He 

 called for help and another man took hold. By snubbing 

 the line over the rail of the boat they managed to hold 

 the fish. The captain of the steamer recommended the 

 embarking of the fishermen who had the line in hand, in 

 a boat, in order that they might let the monster they had 

 in charge run, and, if possible, tire him out. They did 

 so, and after a hard fight of nearly an hour they had their 

 fish to the surface. It was an enormous halibut, esti- 

 mated to weigh between 800 and SOOlbs. They had nearly 

 brought him to the gaff, when by a sudden turn he tore 

 out the hook that was fast in his mouth, and the second 

 hook, also hooked fast in his side, was straightened out 

 like a piece of wire. The hooks were very heavy ones 

 indeed, and considered safe for almost any fish that 

 swims the ocean. But the great halibut was gone. When 

 they got to camp they had 240 codfish, all taken in less 

 than three hour's fishing. 



Mr. John Ross, of Bangor, one of Maine's largest lum- 

 ber operators, has been entertaining his friends at his 

 splendid place at the head of Moosehead Lake. Among 

 his guests have been Mr. and Mrs. Otto Greely and son, 

 of Minneapolis: Miss Alice Gillis, of Somerville, Mass.; 

 flir, W. W. Cise. of Rockland; Mr. Harry F. Ross, of 

 Bangor; and Mr. and Mrs. C. V, Holman, of Boston. 

 They are all out for a few days hunting and fishing at 

 Moosehead. 



The Lake Auburn, Me., Fish Protective Association 

 held its annual meeting the other day. President Han- 

 son was in the chair, with secretary Gifford at his post. 

 The following directox-s were elected: Henry H. Hanson, 

 J. W. Ricker, D. E. Parlin, George G. Gifford, J. B. 

 Daniels. John N. Wood, Lem Baker, G. B. Bsarce and 

 Frank R, Conant. The directors immediately i-e-elected 

 Henry H. Hanson, president, G. G. Gifford, secretary, 

 and Geo. E. McCann, treasurer. An exx^ert from the 

 Government hatcheries at Orono told the members of the 

 association that they had been remarkably successful in 

 hatching trout and landlocked salmon at then* works, 

 they having succeeded in hatching over 80 per cent, of 

 the eggs takan, while the Government hatcheries rarely 

 do better than 85 to 90 per cent. 



Mr, C. Z. Bassett, of Appleton & Bassctt, fishing tackle 

 dealers, started Sept. 19 for a 10-days' gunning outing 

 in the vicinity of Northfield, N. H. He is accomp«ied 

 by W. H. Thairwell, the owner of the celebrated fish 

 preserves at Plymouth, and Dr. S. W. Langmaid, a cele- 

 brated physician and hospital surgeon. Dr. Langmaid is 

 also a devoted salmon fisherman. These gentlemen are 

 after grouse and the native woodcock on this trip, and it is 

 expected that fine sport will fall to them. They will also 

 go to the same section in October for the late flight of 

 woodcock. Their dogs are on the ground already, and 

 are in the best of training. 



Mr. C. H. Johnson, of Mattapoisett, Mass., with Mrs. 

 Johnson, will start for Richardson Lake, Maine, on the 

 21st, for a couple of weeks hunting and fishing. They 

 will be quartered at Camp Stewart, in which Mr. John- 

 son is interested. They will be followed a couple of days 

 later by Mr. and Mrs. W. K. Moody, of the same camp, 

 and Mr. H. S. Kempton, sub-editor of the Boston ifemM, 

 as guest. Mr. and Mrs. George T. Freeman, of the same 

 party, are prevented from sharing in the outing by the 

 sickness of Mrs. Freeman. Mr. W. C. Grout, one of the 

 assistant editors of the Boston Herald, will start for the 

 Upper Dam, Richardson Lake, about the 2od, accom- 

 panied by a party of friends. They will remain several 

 days for hunting and fishing. 



Mr. P. H. Kelley, the well known builder of Catholic 

 churches, of Cambridge, is at the Upper Dam, on his 

 fall fishing trip. There is no man in the world more 

 thoroughly devoted to fly-fishing than Mr, KeUey. It is 

 said that 'he can cast with a rod in each hand, and he 

 has promised the writer of these lines to show him the 

 feat this fall, It is suggested that he may land doubles 

 on each rod at the same time, and if he does the Forest 

 AND Stream shall have the benefit of the story. Mr. 

 Kelley is accompanied by his friend, Mr. Bateman, the 

 gentleman who caught the big landlockiid salmon at the 

 Upper Dam last spring, an account of which Forest 

 AND Stream has already had. Special. 



PENNSYLVANIA BIRD NOTES, 



13 ROF. AUGUST KOCH, the Lycoming county natural- 

 ist, in the early part of July last secured five speci- 

 mens — adults and young— of Bewick's wren near his 

 home in South Williamsport. This bird is quite a rare 

 summer sojourner in the eastern, centi'al and northern 

 portions of our State, but from reports of different ob- 

 servers it appears to be tolerably frequent as a summer 

 resident in some parts of southwestern Pennsylvania. 



The tree, or white-bellied, swallow is a regular and 

 rather plentiful summer resident at Renovo, Clinton 

 county, on the Philadelphia & Erie R.R., where it breeds 

 usually in bkd-boses in the yards and parks. 



An albino rattlesnake captured July last in Clinton 

 county is said to be on exhibition in the city of Williams- 

 port. 



Prof. Robert Ridgway, of the Smithsonian Institution, 

 recently examined a pair of ravens taken in the moun- 

 tains of Center county, kindly sent to him for examina- 

 tion by i\lr. ( Jlias. Eldo'n, of Williamsport. Mr. Ridgway 

 described the bij-da to be Corvus co>xix jmncipalli^ the 

 only form, doubtless, occurring in our State as a resident. 



The act of Assembly, approved May 14, 1889, providing 

 for the protection of song and other birds in our State, 



