202 



FOREST AND STREAM. 



lOct. 1, 1891. 



swamp near my plantation. It was getting late in the evening 

 and Joe had tied the, horses and was following me iip. I came to an 

 open space in th« trees and paused, and while standing there a fine 

 5-pointbuckcameoutintoti«openand stopped. I raised my rifle 

 and fired and the biick jumped into the air and fell dead. I then 

 went up to bleed him and to my surprise I found him shot through 

 the head and through the hoof of his hindfoot. This, gentlemen, is 

 the most wonderful shot I ever made." Some remarks were made 

 which were calculated to cast suspicions on the truthfulness of 

 the story and Joe was called in to dispel any lingering doubts, as 

 he had seen the shot made. "Yes, sah," said Joe, scratching his 

 wooly head, afterihe had been told the story, "I was with Massa 

 G-awge when he shoot dat buck, and he act pow'ful queer, dat deer 

 did. I was standin' right beliind Mars Gawge when he shoot and 

 I was watchin' dat deer, and jes as Mars Gawge threw up his gun 

 to shoot dat old buck looked round awfxil curis like and den, jes as 

 Mars Gawge pulled de trigger de old buck reached forward with 

 his hindleg and scratched his nose with his foot, and de bullet bit 

 'im in de foot and den went Into his head jest at de year and killed 

 'Im." And Joe rolled up the whites of his eyes and showed his ivo- 

 ries in a smile thafwas contagious. Later that night Joe and his 

 master were together at the bar of the boat just before retiring, 

 and Joe was heard to remark: "Dat was pow'ful close. Mars 

 Gawge, when I had to explain dat shot, but all at once I 'mem- 

 bered seein' a deer feedin' down by de byou, and all of a suddin 

 he reached for'd with his hindfoot and scratched his year, and 

 den I seed how it was done. But it was pow'ful close, Mars 

 Gawge." 



Another version is contained in the entertaining little 

 volume of "Negro Myths from the Georgia Coast," by Sfr 

 C. C. Jones, Jr. There it ie given in the vernacular of 

 the Sea Island negroes, among whom it appears to have 

 had a place with the Buh Eabbit stories: 



Er Buckra man bin berry luh fub hunt deer. Eh nussen fub 

 brag too. Eh hab er Serhant wuh always gone wid um der wood 

 fuh dribe de deer. Him bin berry fond er eh Mossa, an eh ready 

 anytime fuh schway ter de tale wuh him tell bout how much 

 deer nem kill and way dem shot um. One time dis Buckra man 

 bin tell eh fren say him shoot er deer long er rifle, an wen eh gone 

 fuh zamine um, eh fine say de ball shoot off en bine foote an hit 

 um een eh yes. Him fren coiildn't see how dat happne, an dem 

 yent bin want fuh bleeve de tale. Den de hunter man call pon 

 topper him Serhant fuh proobe wuh him bin say. De Serbant 

 speak de wud same Ink Mm Mossa bin talk um. Den de gentle- 

 mans ax um how de same ball could er hit de deer een eh hine 

 toot an een eh yez same time. De Nigger cratch eh head an den 

 eh mek answer: "Gentlemans, me spec wen Mossa fire pon top- 

 per um, de deer mus be biu er bresh fly oflier eh yez wid eh hine 

 foot." Dat sorter saterfyde gentlemans, and sabe de Buckia 

 man wud. 



Arter the gentlf mans done gone, de Serbant call eh Mossa one 

 side an eh say; "Mossa, me wlllla fuh back anything you say 

 bout hunt an kill deer, but lemme hague you nex time you teU 

 bout how you shoot um, you pit the hole closer. Dis time you 

 mek um so fur apart me hab big trouble fur git um togerruh." 



tartsnjm ^ontist 



TALES OF THE OLD WOODS. 



THIRTY years ago the South Shore of Lake Superior 

 was a great wilderness, save a few scattered towns 

 along the shores. Back in the woods there was an 

 almost impenetrable forest for a hundred miles or more. 

 There the explorer found much to interest him besides 

 the valuable minerals which he was in search of. The 

 game was in the greatest abundance, both small and 

 great, and the remembrance of it lingers pleasantly in 

 my mind to this day. The student of natural history too 

 had much to learn of the habits of animals now quite ex- 

 tinct in that region. It was there that one could study 

 the habits of the black bear, the various fur-bearing 

 animals, and fish in great variety. Bear, beaver, otter, 

 lynx, and even the rai-e black wolf, were to be found 

 without the seeking, they ran across one's path continu- 

 ally. I have met the bear face to face within 10ft, and 

 neither of us flinched. Once I left the trail to gather a 

 few luscious blackberries that hung temptingly over a 

 big fallen pine. A rustling on the other side 5rew my 

 attention and looking up there was a bear so busily en- 

 gaged in the same pursuit that he seemed in no way dis- 

 turbed at my appearance. He went on picking berries, 

 gathering the vines In his arms and eating industriously, 

 while I was picking my way backward and left him to 

 his enjoyment, being unarmed, 



I had several camps in the woods which were used oc- 

 casionally, and it was impossible to keep these animals 



was all that was left of some poor fellow who had been 

 lost, and lost his reason in his fear and despair. After- 

 ward we were told that a man had gone hunting from a 

 camp and had never returned. We gave the bones to 

 mother earth, and carried a.way shreds of his clothing 

 and his sandy beard; but no one could identify them. A 

 sad tragedy, of which those woods might relate several. 



Beaver were so abundant at that time that one of my 

 men took over $800 worth of fur in one winter. It was 

 a grand opportunity for studying these curious creatures. 

 And this reminds me of a matter recently mentioned in 

 the Forest and Stream. It is in regard to the sinking' 

 of the wood laid up by the beavers for their winter 

 rations. These sticks are kept at the bottom of the water 

 in the same way that the boy's toy called a sucker sticks 

 to a stone. The sticks are partly sunk in the mud and 

 cannot rise because the water presses on them and cannot 

 get under them to float them. There are many little 

 scientific toys used in popular science based on this prin- 

 ciple, only it is the an- and not the water that is the 

 material used. I had a water mill there and took the 

 water from a well inhabited bearer pond. The water 

 kept stopping in spite of all our tapping of the dam, 

 which had been made by beavers. It was the beavers 

 which I had seen bringing sticks to fill the opening we 

 made in the dam. It was a choice between the beavers 

 and the mill which should have the water, and to my 

 great regret the beavers had to give up possession. I 

 shot the last one bringing sticks to close the dam and 

 saw him beat them down and stir up the mud and dead 

 leaves with his tall to fill the crevices between the sticks. 

 Then we had the water in peace. These animals are as 

 playful as children. I have watched them for an hour 

 at their slide on a steep bank, which was worn quite 

 smooth by use. They would crawl up the bank, or 

 rather wabble in an ungainly way, and run around to 

 the slide and coast down into the water, where they 

 would chase each other about as so many boys might do. 

 The hindquarters of the beaver are delicious meat. The 

 canvasback duck is not more toothsome, and the tail is a 

 mass of rich jelly-like fat. For years it was one of the 

 delicacies of our camp fife. A bear's ham often varied 

 it when we were tired of it. It was here that Mr. Mor- 

 gan gathered materials for his book on beavers, the only 

 one extant, I believe, and I had the pleasure of taking 

 him to many of their dams in this neighborhood. One 

 dam I showed him was nearly a i[uarter of a mile long. 



Then the deer were so numerous that one day in the 

 early winter I saw more than 300 brought into the village, 

 that had sprung up by that time around the iron mines, 

 and I bought a fine buck that weighed over 3001bs for §L 

 The fat was three fingers chick on his loins. The skin 

 made a fine sleigh robe. The Indians had caught these 

 deer in their long <-shaped fences as they migrated 

 southward at this season. 



The trout, now alas all gone, were of the finest. At a 

 river then called the Yellow Dog, I have taken them up 

 to 51bs. The first experience with this river was a wet 

 one. I stood on the end of a log projecting over the 

 water to avoid the brush, and cast my hook baited with a 

 grasshopjDer. Before I had recovered myself I was jerked 

 off the log and found myself up to my neck in the water, 

 with all I could do to keep myself from going in deeper. 

 I thought I had a lake trout about a lOOlbs. weight on my 

 hook. But it was only a 51b. speckled trout. Four of 

 us took as many as we could pack home (it was 60 miles 

 away) in one day's fishing. "We carried salt with us to 

 cure the fish, and smoked them, after a light salting, over 

 a smudge of birch bark. Thus prepared, these large trout 

 are delicious. But they will not keep over a few days, 

 or the over salting spoils them. On& hour in the .salt is 

 enough. And so is my story for this time. H. S. 



THE PELICANS ON WHISKYCHITTO. 



'"THHE PELICANS" are unique. They (or it) are (or is) 

 JL a club— but a club without organization, without 

 constitution or by-laws, without officers or memberp, 

 without even a name. Sometimes they are called "Peli- 

 cans," on account of their fondness for fish, and then* 

 capacity for catching and eating the same; sometimes 

 the "P. D. Q.'s," because, when they make up their 

 minds to go a-fishing they are off with a celerity that 

 astonishes more slowly-moving persons; sometimes "The 

 Truthful Jimmies," on account of the strict veracity 

 which marks the narration of their exploits, and some- 

 times by other names, complimentary or otherwise, none 

 of which they acknowledge. But as, for the purpose of 

 these chronicles, they must have a name, that of "Peli- 

 cans" wiU do as well as any. 



It was a typical mid-summer Louisiana day when the 

 Righter, hot and perspiring from his eight-mile drive 



out of them. They burglarized them "constantly, and from his plaiiktion on ^ay on d' Anglais, drop'pe 

 made shreds of the blankets. Going to one of these club's headquarters, in Lake Charles, to seek a glass of 



.camps one day, with one of my men. a half-breed 

 Frenchman, we heard a terrible scrambling, and when 

 near the camp saw a most comical sight. A big bear 

 had been licking out an old butter keg, and had got his 

 head fast in it. There he stood on his haunches, pawing 

 for all he was worth to get the keg off his head. How he 

 danced and rolled in his efforts was a sight never to be 

 forgotten. We had no weapons with us or I could have 

 got the finest skin I ever saw. It shone like silk, and 

 waved as he danced about, like the long fur on the shakos 

 of one of the old Enelish lifeguardsmen. My Frenchman 

 was in ecstacies. "Voila! voila!" he cried out. See him 

 danser. See him pirouetter. Sacre N, de D.," and roll- 

 ing on the ground he laughed until he was black in the 

 face. I was equally incapable of doing anything, if any- 

 thing could be done. This went on for several minutes, 

 while both of us made the woods ring, and so scared the 

 bpar that he bolted against a big tree and burst the keg 

 and went off without saying good-bye, with the hoops 

 about his neck. That camp was never disturbed after 

 that. 



The mosquitoes and black flies were past belief for 

 quantity, I have struck my pick in the moss on the 

 rocks and raised such a cloud of them that it was impos- 

 sible to breathe, and a sudden retreat had to be made. 

 Once one of my men was so tortured by them that he 

 became insane and ran off like a deer, and although I 

 had him searched for for several days we never found 

 him. Men were frequently lost in those woods. One day 

 I came upon a melancholy sight. The branch of a small 

 birch was bent nearly to the ground over a ghastly heap 

 Of old clothes and bones. The small end of the limb was 

 . looped, and twisted in it was a bunch of sandy hair. Thig 



ice water, a fan, an easy chair and a whiff of the cool 

 Gulf breeze. There he found The-Old-Man-Who-Bakes- 

 Fiah and the Maiden, clad in the scantiest vestments that 

 decency would allow, wiping the sweat from their brazen 

 foreheads and, as they smoked their pipes, discussing 

 ways and means for a trip to Whiskychitto after bass, 

 or, as we misguided Southerners call them, trout. To 

 them the Righter listened in silent contempt for a while, 

 and then, in choice and forcible Anglo-Saxon, gave his 

 opinion of any set of blanked fools who would ride forty 

 miles in a lumber wagon, under a broiling August sun, 

 to a place they none of them knew anything about, in a 

 helpless attempt to catch fish in a season of the year- and 

 a stage of water when nothing but gars and mtid-cats 

 would bite. And if they expected him to make such a 

 Tariegated and consummate ass of himself as to join 

 such an expedition of cranks and lunatics, they were "big- 

 ger fools even than he had always known them to be, if 

 such a thing were possible. When the Righter's breath 

 and his stock of objurgations were equally exhausted, 

 the Old Man said, placidly, "We'll leave here about 5 

 o'clock Wednesday morning and be at your place in time 

 for breakfast. Have your traps all ready and half a dozen 

 big watermelons on ice." 



"All right," promptly responded the Righter, "I'll be 

 all ready for you." 



So about 8 o'clock on the appointed day up rolled the 

 wagon to Bayou d' Anglais plantation, and out tumbled 

 the Old Man, the Maiden and the Churchman, htmgry 

 from their long ride. Breakfast was soon done with, and 

 off they started, anxious to make as much headway as 

 possible before the sun became too hot. 

 As the Maiden was the one who had proposed Whisky- 



chitto, they naturally looked to him for guidance; but he, 

 with that shy modesty which befitted his name, had 

 failed to reveal to them the fact that he knew nothing 

 about the place, and still less about how to get there. As 

 none of the rest knew anything more than he did (about 

 the road, I mean), they began to inquire the way of every 

 one they met. This was a well-conceived scheme, and 

 might have worked all right had they met any one who 

 knew the road. But no one did, and as each wayfarer 

 met was too kind-hearted not to do the best he could for 

 them by sending them in a new direction, and as they 

 imphcitly followed each one's advice, the result was that 

 their tn ck, if platted, would have looked like a streak of 

 forked lishtuing. They had intended to camp for the 

 night at Phillips's Bluff, and, from the directions received, 

 began to think that Mr. Phillips must own every bluff on 

 the river for a hundred miles from its source. They went 

 N.N.E. by W S.W. and l N., with an occasional change 

 of course to E.S.W. and i N W. by W N. W., varied with 

 tacks to E.N.E. by W., or W.N.E. by S. 



And so on, over the prairie, across .belts of pine woods, 

 through stretches of cypress swatnp they kept their 

 dogged way, scorched hy the blistering sun, soaked with 

 sudden tropical showers and bitten and punctured by 

 sandflies and gallinippers, and through it all the Old 

 Man kept his cheery good humor, the Maiden quietly 

 sucked at his pipe or blushingly told modest little stories 

 of his experiences with Red bones and with preachers; 

 the Churchman placidly flicked gigantic horseflies off 

 his near mule or cracked a dry jokp when the road or the 

 heat was worse than common ; while the Righter heaped 

 maledictions upon all fools who went afishing and an- 

 athematized roads, people, weather and the universe in 

 general. When at last they stopped for the night at old 

 Belizare's they only knew that after a day's steady travel 

 they were seemingly no nearer the fishing grounds than 

 when they started. 



To them, in this state of doubt and despair, came riding 

 by on his way home, a certain Creole, named Meel-yaw 

 (by phonetic spelling), who kept a ferry on Upper Dar- 

 bonne. He reported fish plenty there, and told such a 

 glowing tale that next morning the Pelicans moved on to 

 his place, guided through the swamp and woods by old 

 Belizare, who, with the courtesy and kindheartedness so 

 characteristic of these people, neglected his own business 

 and rode miles out of his way to do a kind act to a party 

 of entire strangers. But, alas! either Meel-yaw was mis- 

 taken or the fish were not in a humor for biting. For 

 three days the Darbonne was fished persistently, but, 

 with the exception of a few small "pearch," the results 

 were nothing. The weather was torrid, and ticks and 

 red bugs by day, and gnats and mosquitoes by night, 

 made life hardly worth the living. ' Mr. Tanner," the 

 colored gentleman who acts the combined p^rts of guard- 

 ian angel, caterer and cook to the club, had a hard time 

 of it duriug those three days. Had he been taken out, 

 tied to a tree, and "given forty," one-tenth as many times 

 as that procedure was threatened, he wouldn't have had 

 skin enough left on his back to cover a flea. And, as if 

 his tribulations by day were not enough, his nights were 

 one prolonged torture, for, with the improvidence of his 

 race, he had neglected to bring a mosquito bar, and those 

 bloodthirsty wretches consequently made his life a ^■ur- 

 den, giievous to be borne. But his unfailing good humor 

 and politeness never forsook him, and bis coffee was as 

 clear and strong, his fried fish and squirrel stew just as 

 delicious, and all the duties of his position as aptly and 

 cheerfully performed, as though fife were a bed of 'roses, 

 and he in receipt of a princely salary, instead of doing 

 and enduring it all for the mere love of it. For Mr. Tan- 

 ner is as big a crank as any of the rest of the Pelicans. 

 He'll drop his work any day to go fishing, and the club 

 could not exist without him. 



Sunday was a blue day in camp. The expedition so 

 far had proved a failure, and the Righter's "damnable 

 iteration" of "1 told you so," didn't tend to soothe ruffled 

 tempers. If they hadn't told their friends when f hey left 

 that they were going to stay a week, they would have 

 packed up and gone home, but, with that stuhb >rnne^s 

 which had won for them the namo of "The Mule Team," 

 they were bound to stick it out. Whilf "cussing and dis- 

 cussing,'' a visitor came in the person of Ben H. Ben was 

 a long-lost brother-in law of the Maiden's, though the 

 latter, with his usual modesty, had failed to mention it. 



Ben told them that they were only five miles from the 

 Whiskychitto, which was as full of bass as the pine woods 

 were of tick^, and that if they would come and camp at 

 his place he'd fill 'em to the muzzle with peaches and 

 melons. The Maiden replied, "Ben, you're a liar, and you 

 know it. There isn't any such stream as the Whiskychitto 

 — there's not a bass in aU Louisiana— and you haven't got 

 a melon or peach on your place. But no place can be 

 worse than this, so we'll go — if only to make you ashamed 

 of yourself." And go they did, and it was a case of 

 "Paradise Regained." Ticks, mosquitoes, sand flies and 

 red-bugs vanished as by magic. The weather smiled upon 

 them clear and cool, like October in the Highlands. 

 Every eddy and pool of the swift-flowing, sandy- bottomed 

 stream was full of lively bass, ready to take the bait and 

 try their tackle to the utmost. And, best of all, cheery, 

 jolly Ben and his big-hearted sisters made them welcome 

 in a way which excelled even the proverbial Southern 

 hospitality. 



Nothing in, on or around the place was too good for 

 them. Butter, eggs, milk, cheese, melons, peaches — 

 everything was theirs. By day, Ben paddled them in the 

 pirogue to the hkeliest holes for bass, and at night or- 

 ganized coon hunts for theu- amusement. It will be a 

 long and cold day before the Pehcans forget what they 

 owe to the Ben H. family. 



As soon as the first string of bass was taken, The-Old- 

 Man-Who-Bakes-Fish proceeded to show how well he 

 deserved the name. Sing, OMuse! the triumphs of his 

 zeal and skill! How deftly he split them from head to 

 tail, removing back-bone and fins; how tenderly he 

 placed inside the slice of lemon and of onion, the pinch 

 of pepper and of salt; how daintily he larded them with 

 the sweet, fresh butter; how snugly he wrapped them in 

 their envelopes of wet, brown paper; how cosily he tucked 

 them away in their bed of hot ashes, and how the fire of 

 genius Ut his eye as he compounded the sauce, stirdng 

 and tasting, adding a drop here and a pinch there, till it 

 was neither too sweet nor too sour, too strong nor boo 

 weak, but simply and absolutely perfect. But what shall 

 be said of the result, wh(-n at last the glowing embers 

 were raked aside and the crisp wrappings were removed, 

 while the fragrant steam arqse, and the palate was stirred 



