Forest and Stream 



A Weekly Journal of the Rod and Gun. 



H A Yeah. 10 Crs. a Copt. I 

 Srx Months, $2. j 



NEW YORK, SATURDAY, OCTOBER 21, 1893. 



( VOL. XLI.-No. 16. 



( No. 318 Broadway, New York. 



CONTENTS. 



Editorial. 



Talkyrie and Vigilant. 

 The Cantankerousness of Fate. 

 The Elixir of October. 

 Snap Shots. 



The Sportsman Tourist. 



The Woman from Sitting Bull's. 



Natural History. 



Facts About the Opah. 

 The Arrow Head. 



Game Bag and Gun. 



The Alitumn Fever. 

 The Saginaw Crowd.— ir. 

 Plumed Quail from the Saddle. 

 A Week at Camp Blair. 

 In a Quicksand. 

 Camp Luck J'. 



Adirondack Deer Shooting. 

 Calibers and Range. 

 Chicago' and tiie West. 

 Vermont Small Game. 

 New England Game Notes. 

 Massachusetts Out - of - Season 

 Quail. 



Notes from the Blackfoot Land. 

 Sea and River Fishing. 



Volcano Ashes from Mt. Shasta. 

 The Seductive Smelt. 

 Susquehanna "Salmon." 

 Angling Notes. 

 New Jersey Coast Pounds. 

 With the Channel Cat. 



The Kennel. 



Westchester County Fair Show. 

 Points and Flushes 

 New Jersey Kennel League Meet- 

 ing. 

 Pugs. 

 Dog Chat. 

 Kennel Notes. 



Answers to Corr^pondents. 

 Hunting: and Coursing. 



' Coursing in Colorado. 

 "Huronites." 



National Beagle Club Trials 



Entries. 

 Vermont Foxes and Beagles. 

 Hunting and Coursing Notes. 



Yachting. 



The America's Cup Races. 

 News Notes. 



Canoeing. 



A. C. A. Executive Committee. 

 Canoe Notes. 



Rifle Range and Gallery. 



Revolver Shooting in England. 

 Rifle Club Doings. 

 Rifle Notes. 



Trap Shooting. 



Bogardus— "Unknown." 

 Club Shoots and Matches. 

 Drivers and Twisters. 

 Answers to Queries. 



For Prospectus and Advertising Rates see Page 355. 



TB.E CANTANKEROUSNESS OF FATE. 



Fate is proverbially capricious. It is more than this, 

 it is progressive, enterprising, Edisonesque in ingenuity 

 and invention to devise new ways of imperiling, maim- 

 ing and killing humankind. Thus, only the other day, a 

 ship's docter, vrho had braved the perils of Atlantic 

 storms and been buffeted about in the hurricane lo these 

 many years, came at last to grief with a leg broken in the 

 giddy mazes of the dance on board ship. 



The sportsman, whether on land or sea, is usually 

 credited with undergoing a certain degree of peril in fol- 

 lowing his chosen pursuit. If a gunner, his gun may 

 explode, or he may be in continual danger from a fool of 

 a companion's gun pointed full at his devoted head, or 

 some other fool gunner may shoot him for a woodchuck 

 ■ or a partridge. If a fisherman, he may get lost in the 

 woods, or a snake may bite him. If a yachtsman, he may 

 tumble overboard, or his yacht may capsize and he be 

 drowned. These are old-fashioned casualities, the com- 

 monplace fatalities of sport; but as has been said, froward 

 fortune has a way of demonstrating her originality and 

 impatience of precedent by manifesting herself in some 

 unlocked for and unprovided against happening. Such, 

 for example, was the killing of the Gulf Coast fisherman, 

 recorded in our columns last week, who met his death by 

 the blow of a tarpon, which leaping from the water 

 dashed full-tilt upon him in his boat. Such too was the 

 untoward experience of Mr. Charles Arns, of this town, 

 one day during the yacht races of last week. 



When we consider the vast multitude of pleasure- 

 seeking spectators who attended the Vigilant— Valkyrie 

 contests, and the thousand and one perils which beset 

 them, our wonder is excited, not that there should have 

 been this one mishap or accident, or visitation or casualty, 

 or catastrophy, or calamity, by which Mr. Arns suffered, 

 but that the mishaps should not have been more in num- 

 ber and of graver nature. It is estimated that on the 

 fii-st day of the races not less than 35,000 spectators were 

 afloat on the Atlantic, on all sorts of craft, from great 

 sea-going steamships to tiny and toppling plea.sure boats. 

 For the four races there must have been far more than 

 100,000 people thus carried to sea in heavily-loaded and 

 over-crowded craft, subject at all times to danger of 

 collision, of capsize, of foundering, or at the very least, of 

 tumbling overboard. Such emergencies were not unex- 

 pected. Ample provision was made for them by the 

 police. The patrol steamer Aurora was at hand, having 

 a complete equipment of life-saving apparatus and a 

 trained crew of fifty patrolmen. She had on board life- 

 boats manned by crews who were stationed constantly at 

 the boats ready for immediate response to call. Other 

 squads of the crew stood by, ready with Kfe-lines and life- 

 rings. Five police surgeons were on the qui vive to render 

 their services. Taken all in all, this thoroughly fitted out 

 and disciplined life-saving police contingent constituted 

 an admirable and noteworthy feature of the great inter- 

 national occasion. 



But police patrol, boat, crew, surgeons and life-lines 

 availed nothing for the protection, the succor or the re- 

 suscitation of the unfortunate I\Ir. Arns. While this en- 



thusiastic yachtsman was watching the race, eagerly 

 scanning the progress of the two boats, his heart beating 

 fast with joy as the Vigilant lengthened the space which 

 measured her lead, he was overtaken by disaster and 

 sorely wounded in body and in spirit. Just here it was 

 that the elaborate system devised by the pohce to protect 

 a hundred thousand pleasure seekers broke down. In 

 the words of the political orator, it was protection that did 

 not protect. It did not, at night after the race was done, 

 restore him to the bosom of his family, whole in body 

 and joyful of soul, crowing as so goodly a proportion of 

 the hundred thousand was crowing at the victory of the 

 brave Yankee craft over the Britisher. For one reason, 

 Mr. Arna was not withm the reach of the life-lines. He 

 was not one of the multitude of the hundred thousand on 

 the sea. He did not venture out on ocean's troubled 

 breast on that eventful day. He remained on the hard, 

 sohd, substantial terra finna; and watching the races 

 from afar, noted the fortunes of the day and followed 

 the progress of the competmg craft as set forth in 

 mimic representation high up on the front of 

 the World building in Park Eow. A Vast, surg- 

 ing crowd was there, and Mr. Arns was in the crowd. It 

 was just at a most critical moment in the uncertainties of 

 international yacht racing, that, if we accept his story, 

 he was hit over the head with a club by Policeman Baker; 

 or, if we accept the policeman's version of it, somebody 

 in the crowd threw a missile which hit the unfortunate 

 Mr. Arns over the eye. Just what did actually happen 

 may perhaps be determined, when on Mr. Arns's com- 

 plaint the Police Commissioners shall try Policeman 

 Baker; or, baffling inquiry, the incident may go down to 

 posterity arm in arm with that famous mystery be- 

 queathed to us by our forefathers, "Who struck Billy 

 Patterson?" Be that as it may, whoever dealt the blow or 

 heaved the missile was but the unwilling agent of capri- 

 cious Fate, the chosen instrument through whom, in that 

 week of perils of the deep courted by the ten times ten 

 thousands who went to sea, she elected to exhibit her 

 cantankerousness by bringing calamity only upon this 

 dry land sailorman, who was following the fortunes of 

 the race amid the presumably safe, secure and tranquil 

 precincts of Newspaper Row. 



VIGILANT AND VALKYRIE. 



One good to both sides that has come from the Cup 

 races is the renewal of a discussion over technical points 

 of design, construction and handling; there is ample 

 material for thought and study through the whole of next 

 winter. This year the English are fairly ahead in the 

 material and making of their sails, Mr, Ratsey may go 

 home with the consoling thought that his part of the 

 work has been well done. While the superior speed of 

 Vigilant is freely conceded, there is much about Valkyrie, 

 in particular in her ease of handling and in her construc- 

 tion, which is worth copying. 



One of the most strikmg points of Vigilant's superiority 

 is in her rigging; Mr, Herreshoff has departed from all 

 conventional ideas, and, it must be admitted, with com- 

 plete success, the mast being far better supported with 

 less weight. The great fault of the rig, the extreme 

 lightness of its component parts at the outset, was effectu- 

 ally remedied before the Cup races; the general arrange- 

 ment of shrouds and stays has proved entirely successful, 

 and is likely to be generally adopted by designers. 



In the matter of handling many points of comparison 

 present themselves, and both parties are likely to profit 

 by the experience of the five races, but taken altogether 

 it is dilficult to say which crew has done the best work. 

 Although Mr, Herreshoff's sailing has been criticised in 

 some quarters, each of the boats was beautifully handled, 

 though the details of working are quite different. Capt! 

 Cranfield's work in starting and in maneuvering his 

 boat through the race has been generally praised, and 

 the perfect drill of the English crew has been admired 

 by all who have seen it. At the same time Vigilant 

 has been boldly and skilfully handled at aU times, and 

 if her crew has shown a lack of drill and discipline it 

 has made up for it by quick and energetic work, as in 

 the final race. 



In the method of setting sails, especially the spinaker, 

 and in the use of the baUoon jibtopsail, the American 

 crew was distinctly superior, and Capt. Cranfield wiU 

 have some new tricks to carry home with him. Taken 

 altogether, the present races are likely to be of material 

 benefit to both parties in the future. 



THE ELIXIR OF OCTOBER. 

 This is a day of hard matter of fact and common 

 sense practicality; the age of magic phHtres and wonder- 

 working elixirs has passed by and been forgotten. But 

 has it? Every town dweller country bred will tell you 

 better than that. Every such an one, we mean, who has 

 not utterly lost his freshness of spirit, whose heart has 

 not been wholly withered and incrusted with the parch- 

 ing heat and the dustiness and mustiness of time and 

 toil and turmoil of business. Every one, we mean, too, 

 who shall confess the fact, concealing nothing and freely 

 reveaUng to you his true self. He wiU own to the elixir 

 of October days and testify to the magic of their spell 

 on the man of the town who was the boy of the country. 



Such an one may look up into the deep, mysterious blue 

 of October heavens only through the narrow rifts of city 

 streets; the floods of golden sunshine may gladden him 

 but for a moment in the noonday rush; the glory of the 

 sunset glow he may behold only as it flushes the tow- 

 ering summits of business blocks; of the zig-zagging 

 fall of flaming autumn leaves he may catch but a 

 glimpse as his elevated railway car speeds past the city 

 parks; the tracery of bare. October branches he may per* 

 ceive only by down-bent gaze at night as their reflec- 

 tion is painted on the pavement by the high-poled elec- 

 tric light; yet shght as is the impression of the senses, 

 momentary the glance, fleeting the picture stamped on 

 the retina, all these manifestations of the changing year 

 speak to him with their thousand tongues of the stretch- 

 ing fields, the wooded hillsides and the running waters; 

 carry him back to boyhood days, and overwhelm him 

 with heart thoughts of the old home. 



Blessed is he— more blessed indeed than he can ever 

 know while the blessing itself shall last— to whom the 

 intimations and suggestions of October days are not of the 

 sacred past alone, but of the present, too; to whom they 

 brmg thoughts not only of the old home that was, but of 

 the old home that is, 



A prosy, practical, matter-of-fact age? Not yet, nor 

 ever shall be, in the season when the elixir of October is 

 in the air and the magic of October blue in the sky. 



SNAP SHOTS 



The New York Forestry Commissioners are engaged in 

 an attempt to restock the Catskill Mountains with deer. 

 Last week sixteen deer, captured in Indian Lake in the 

 Adirondacks, were transported by rail to the CatskiU 

 State Park, at Big Indian in Ulster county. With what 

 have been put out there before and with the natural in- 

 crease, it is expected that there will be nearly a hundred 

 deer in the park next spring. With wise management 

 this Catskill deer enterprise should prove successful; and 

 there is no reason why the game may not become a per- 

 manent feature of the mountains. 



Another and more important deer stocking experiment 

 is the introduction of reindeer into Alaska, to furnish a 

 food supply for the coast Eskimo, This work, under- 

 taken by the National Government on the suggestion of 

 Rev, Sheldon Jackson, gives promise of proving a very 

 great success. Recent advices from jVIr, Jackson report 

 that of the original herd of 110 reindeer imported from 

 Siberia last year none died during the winter, while the 

 stock has been increased by the accession of 72 surviving 

 fawns, A further addition of 37 reindeer was brought 

 from Siberia in June of this year, and 150 more will^be 

 imported this faU, This is a beginning which appears to 

 assure the establishment of the deer in Alaska. 



A convdhtion of Georgia sportsmen was called to meet 

 last Tuesday in Atlanta to organize a State association 

 and to consider needed amendments of the game laws. 

 Georgia is one of those States which rejoice in game codes 

 consisting for the most part of local county laws, each 

 one differing from the rest, and the whole collection so 

 various, diverse, complicated and uncertain that not one 

 lawyer in ten can tell what it all means. If the sportsmen 

 of Atlanta, Columbus, Americus, Savannah, Macon, and 

 the other cities represented in the new movement shall 

 set about the codification of the Georgia game statutes 

 into an orderly, consistent and intelligible law, they will 

 have made the first movement toward efficient game pro- 

 tection. Such reform is needed in a dozen other States 

 where codification of the laws is one of the essentials to a 

 comprehension and respect of them. 



