Feb. 15, 1896.] 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
188 
[ Couldn't get a worm; they say there's no worms in these 
i woods, and the man brought in some for himself from 
I North Creek. You can't make me believe a trout would 
bite at such dry fodder as that-^-no, sir!" 
"The trouble with Baldy was that he didn't spit on his 
bait," said Slim Jim, sententiously; "he was in a hurry." 
"If you had spit on it all the fish in the lake would 
have been killed," retorted Baldy, "but our guide took 
some trout before we got up yesterday morning, and he 
used some kind of a grub that he got out of a stump, and 
I he let me try one, and that is how I. got that fish that I 
[ showed you. What did you say its name was?" 
"Catostomus longirostris is its full name." 
"Say, would you mind writing that down for me? I 
• want to remember that name and have it stuffed when I 
I get home. I knew it wasn't a regular trout, for I've seen 
I lots of 'em down to Fulton Market, at Blackford's, on 
| the first of April, but these fellows tried to make me think 
it was a sucker. What's that?" 
An enormous bullfrog, with a voice several tones lower 
I than any that we had heard, opened his throat down by 
| the boats and startled some of the party. A rustle of 
I wings overhead as some wandering waterfowl hastened 
I on and was lost in the night added to the surprise, and 
I Baldy's question remained unanswered. The frog plunked 
I into the water, and after a moment Pa,tsy Bolivar re- 
i marked that he wished that there was a good hotel near, 
| to which Ikey agreed and Corky thought the Bowery a 
I much better place o' nights, "For," said he, "on the 
[ Bowery you know where you are, an' you know what all 
I the noises are, an' there ain't no spooky things makin' 
I you Btart. I don't believe I'll sleep a wink to-night. Say, 
iBddy, make us another o' them delights, cow-punchers, 
I that's it? That's a good name for it in the woods, but it 
, tasted like a common hot whisky, or what one of my 
I patients from the South, who drinks peach an' honey in 
summer, would call a hot toddy, only it lacked the pinch 
\ of lemon peel to finish it." 
"I didn't have all the necessities for a genuine sheep- 
herder's delight, or you wouldn't want another until yer 
throat got well," said Baldy, "but I tell you we've got to 
go slow on the booze, for there's only two bottles left 
after that smash when you dropped your end of the boat 
on that first carry, and if anyone goes short it ought to be 
I you and Ikey. We don't get any until we get through 
[the woods, and I won't take any more on this trip my- 
self." 
Slim Jim raised up his head and said: "Stick to that, 
iBaldy, there will be more for the rest, but make us a hot 
[tod before we turn in; use half a bottle and that will leave 
a bottle and a half . We'll use the half to-morrow noon 
and have the full one for our last camp. How's that, 
boys?" 
This proposition was approved and all agreed to go on 
short rations during the great emergency, yet there 
seemed to be grave doubts as to the expediency of letting 
Baldy sacrifice himself as he had proposed, because, ex- 
plained Jim, "Baldy is fond of the old stuff, but never 
touches it except on his vacations, and then he sometimes 
makes up the deficiency, although he has been very 
moderate on this trip." 
By this time it was evident that the guide's estimate of 
this party was correct, and that they were not the gang 
of toughs that I first thought, although a strange party 
to meet in the woods, and I began to feel at home and 
glad of the chance to study this strange form of life. 
The guide, like most of his class, had taken no part in 
the talk unless appealed to, and was evidently enjoying 
his novel experience. The night had worn On until the 
belated moon had risen, and by her waning disk it should 
be near 10 o'clock. The brew was finished, good nights 
were said, and all retired. My fire had gone out, but the 
night was warm, with just breeze enough to keep the 
mosquitoes off without a smudge; the black flies, which 
abound in June and had tormented the new arrivals so 
much until they consented to use the tar and oil, do not 
work at night, and I sat in my tent contemplating the 
grandeur of the night, watching the rising moon and the 
formation of a few fleecy clouds while alternately listen- 
ing to the singing across the water and again to the 
magnificent chorus of the frogs. It was well worth while 
to live on such a night. Even a song of the concert halls 
of the vaudeville, softened by distance and the water, 
did not seem to jar upon the senses, or on the voices of 
the night. Perhaps it was a case where "Dischord ofte in 
musick makes the sweeter lay." Be this as it may, there 
was a sense of rapture in the scene and sounds; a small 
bird in the fullness of its life trilled a sonnet to his lady 
love in his dream, as a cloud drifted across the moon. The 
music of that night, the well assorted chorus of the frogs, 
the carol of the bird and the gentle lapping of the water 
on the rock blended in memory has often been enjoyed. 
"God is its author, and not man; He laid 
'Jhe keynote of all harmonies; He planned 
All perfect combinations, and He made 
Us so that we could hear and understand." 
It was near midnight before I thought of lying down. 
The tired party below slept audibly when I crawled under 
the blankets and floated off into dreamland. Suddenly 
there was an alarm, a heavy splash in the water, a cry of 
"Bears!" and a volley of rifle shots. The commotion in 
the water continued, and just as the clicking of the re- 
peaters announced readiness for another shot a voice 
between the boats cried: "Help! Don't shootl It's me, 
Baldy Sours. O, dear! Help or I'll drown! Help!" Some 
one kicked the fire into a blaze, and they pulled poor 
Baldy out, dripping from his rim of hair to his feet, but 
hanging fast to the bottle from which he had been trying 
to extract an unnoticed and unrecorded nip, and as he 
Btood there in his underclothing, with a sad look upon his 
usually cheerful face, a shout went up which startled the 
loon into a ghostly laugh that drowned the guide's remark 
about "two boats all shot to pieces," while from the op- 
posite camp, which had been listening, came the strains of 
the banjo and the song: 
"The twinkling stars are laughing, love, 
Laughing at you and me." 
Baird's Sandpiper on Long Island. 
New York, Feb. 2.— Editor Forest and Stream: On 
Sept. 17 last I shot at East Hampton, L. I,, a specimen of 
Baird's sandpiper. This is the specimen recorded by Mr. 
W. Vaughn in the Auk. F. Gallatin, Jr. 
fNo mention is made in Mr. Vaughn's note of the indi- 
vidual who killed this interesting specimen.] 
NOTES AND COMMENTS. 
Old Hickory made an effort the other day, and wrote 
me a short note. There were but eight pages of it (letter 
size), but it served to remind me that I had nojj done much 
in that way of late. I have always something which I 
would like to say in Forest and Stream, but somehow or 
other it seldom gets written. I could give reasons, but 
instead will offer a few disjointed remarks: 
Mr. Hough's correspondence is always entertaining, but 
I have taken special interest in the papers on trapping, 
I have done a little in that way in the old days, and my 
wife has a set of furs (in good order) made from the skins 
of fishers which I trapped in Maine, away back in the 
fifties. We used deadfalls a good deal at that time, but 
the fishers were taken in steel traps. The Boston furrier 
who dressed them told me they were the finest he had 
ever made up — they all went to Russia at that time, 
I never trapped for a livelihood, and regard this calling as 
one of the hardest and most uncertain of employments. 
Those young fellows who are anxious to get their living 
in that way can do no better than read what Mr. Hough 
has to say about it in his recent articles in your columns. 
I have read also with interest what he has said of 
snowshoeing. Nowadays I don't take any thirty mile 
tramps on mine, though I sometimes find them conven- 
ient to beat a trail through a snowdrift when I go out to 
inspect the trout-horse. I believe that your readers are 
not acquainted with this excellent animal (which his 
name it is Jo- Jo). Some other time I may enlarge upon 
this subject. ' 
Yes, the caribou snowshoes are the best; but the gen- 
uine are often hard to get. They may be had by follow- 
ing a formula analogous to that recommended for obtain- 
ing pure port wine: "Goto Oporto, see it made, then sit 
on the cask all the way home." 
To a man who for many years has been deeply in- 
terested in the subject of game and fish preservation, and 
has spent much time and effort in the hope to accomplish 
something substantial in those matters, there is some- 
thing inexpressibly dreary in the reading of the pro- 
grammes of the various "national associations" which 
have and will be organized in this interest. I wish they — 
or some one of them — might accomplish the purposes of 
their organization, but I hardly think they will. I sup- 
pose, however, that I should not be eligible as a member, 
for I sometimes fire sitting shots. In fact, about all the 
shooting I have done in the last five years was at sitting 
objects last airing, and yet I have long opposed spring 
shooting. However, the temptation (or whatever it was) 
was too strong, and I knocked 'em endways. The gun 
was my old 10-bore Parker, commonly called Aunt Han- 
nah. Like Aztec, and for similar reasons, I am a "black 
powder fiend," and the charges consisted of 3^drs. of 
the blackest kind of Hazard's Duck Shooting No. 4, with 
loz, No. 6 leaden shot. I am thus precise in detailing 
the constituent elements employed in the destruction of 
these cats because it seems to be the fashion. The dis- 
tances were from 5 to 15 yds. , and after the gun cracked 
there ensued a slight vibratory movement of the extreme 
end of the tail. I used the brand of powder named be- 
cause I have shot it for more than forty years and know 
just what it will do under any circumstances, besides 
the shells were the last that I loaded for ducks some seven 
or eight years ago, and there have been very few ducks 
here since. 
I shot the cats because they were after my song-birds 
in the shrubbery about my place, and they now sleep 
peacefully at the foot of my Cat-awba vines. Kelpie. 
Cfcimut La£e, Feb. 1. 
P. S.— To-morrow is Candlemas, and bear and ground- 
hog are sure (so I am told) to be out looking for their 
shadows. 
OUR CHRISTMAS NUMBER. 
Editor Forest and Stream: 
It has now been several days since I read the Christmas 
Forest and Stream, and in its later numbers the many 
sincere compliments bestowed by its many contributors 
and readers. I have waited for my blood to cool, so that 
with a steadier pulse I might endeavor to put some of my 
appreciation into words to its credit. 
As Byron says: 
"Words are things, and a small drop of ink, falling like 
dew upon a thought, makes thousands, perhaps millions 
think." 
I have written a good many words or things which have 
been printed and have gone — the Lord only knows where. 
Like most authors, I presume, I have enjoyed seeing that 
my words were considered worth putting into type and 
thereby being preserved, and have enjoyed conning them 
over myself chiefly for that reason. I believe writers 
generally feel a commendable kind of pride in this way — 
a kind of pride that none should be the worse for, and 
whioh is indeed the impetus to good writing, if it is not 
the essence of inspiration itself. 
I say that I have written things which have been 
printed in various publications and which have gone 
abroad in the world, but I know of nothing I have sent 
adrift that has given me more pleasure than some of the 
not over carefully worded sketches printed in Forest and 
Stream from my pen. 
In my opinion, it is something worth living for to have 
a place with and even receive compliments from a corps 
of such men as contribute to these columns. I have read 
the Forest and Stream for over fifteen years, and have 
been often amazed at the graphic and true character of its 
gleanings from nature everywhere, from the wilds and 
wildernesses of the world. That many of its pen pictures 
have been etched by the able and talented, the sensitive 
and refined, the rough, honest hands of backwoodsmen 
and those most intimate with the lore of woods and 
streams, no one who reads ]may doubt. Its columns con- 
tain engravings cut with the pen with all the art and pre- 
cision to be found anywhere, pictures touched with all the 
tints and profusion of color in nature herself, and cruder 
sketches made in haste here and there that only need a 
little shading and retouching; but I will retract even 
that — they need nothing. They are natural and that is — 
perfect. 
All in all, Forest and Stream is a sort of natural in- 
spector, or the chronicle of nature's doings in her far-away 
nooks and crannies, noting now and then where man and 
his arts come in collision with the infinite and invisible 
around him. It has patrols and scouts all over the earth, 
and is especially rioh. in resource in its own land and im- 
mediate realm, 
It does not consider the rod and rifle, or guns, dogs and 
boats as mere implements for profit and pleasure alone, 
or that they are merely toys or playthings. They are but 
inciden tal conveniences or necessities that enable us to 
profit otherwise than in narrow or selfish channels; and 
in my opinion they are chiefly valuable as inducements 
which persuade us to get out of musty offices and edifices of 
boards, or brick, or stone and the realm of art, and back 
to, or within hailing distance at least of, nature and 
natural conditions. Nature is the source and end of all. 
We only deceive ourselves with art. Originally we all 
have to learn to like or bear the artificial, but after a while 
we have to school ourselves back to nature. Too large a 
portion of our populace is centered in cities and towns. 
Too many of us are "chained to business," and too many 
to something worse. 
"God made the country, man made the town," is an 
old phrase. We will have to embellish it and append be- 
fore the period, "with the devil's help." The couplet of 
Goldsmith's — 
"HI fares the land, to hastening ills a prey, 
Where wealth accumulates and men decay," 
would read just as nicely and be even a little more ex- 
plicit as follows: 
"111 fares the land, to hastening ills a prey, 
Where towns accumulate and men decay." 
All history will bear me out in this slight revision. 
But, as usual, I wabble sometimes like a toboggan or a 
pair of Mr. Hough's shis on a rough tack. I intended to 
devote these words entirely to an unsolicited testimonial 
to the worth of Forest and Stream; and I would like to 
eulogize a very long list of its contributors, but I would 
exhaust my choice phrases upon any name of a score that 
I know of. The Hallocks, the Houghs, the Arefars, the 
Robinsons, Coahomas, El Comanchos, Morrises, Star- 
bucks, Nessmuks, Shoshones, and the almost endless list 
who have contributed and contribute to these columns 
are of the fraternity of true Sportsmen and they will 
grieve for no nobler title. They are men with all the 
higher and most elevated instincts and attributes. 
They glean from the true field of the worthiest things 
within the reach of mankind, and they are magicians 
and conjurors even to those who have the same oppor- 
tunities and experiences. 
A yellow primrose by the river's rim 
A yellow primrose is to them— 
And It is something more. 
May your staff of such contributors never diminish, and 
I believe it never will. Younger ramblers and scouts will 
replenish the passing of the present generation and pro- 
long the line until there will be nothing worth living for 
and men will quit the world. Charles L. Paige. 
California. 
CALL NOTE OF THE PINTAIL. 
Boston, Jan. 25. — Editor Forest and Stream: Replying 
to Mr. Fred Mather's query in last week's number as to 
the call note of the pintail or sprig, I wish to suggest that 
Mr. Mather must be unfamiliar with the bird in its winter 
home — the waters and marshes of the South — to have con- 
ceived the idea that it was mute. The writer made the 
acquaintance of this bird and several others of the duck 
kind on a ducking trip of four months' duration in the 
waters of Galveston Bay, Texas, last winter, and is now as 
familiar with the notes of all as with those of the robin or 
chickadee. 
The drake sprig has a single note, a low-pitched whistle, 
not very loud, which I used to hear all day long (and 
sometimes in the night), mingled with the myriad cries 
of widgeons, teal, mallards, spoonbills, broadbills and a 
dozen other kinds. The sprig invariably utters this call 
note when he is approaching your decoys, but it is very 
noticeable that it is the note of the drake only; the duck 
has a quiet, modest quack. In fact, that is the case with 
nearly all ducks. The teal (greenwing) often utters a 
reedy, high-pitched whistle, not very loud, as they come 
in; but it will be found that the little drake is the author 
of it, his mate having a quiet little quack. The widgeon 
("bald-pate" they call them there) has a lisping whistle, 
which may be imitated to perfection by whistling softly 
through the teeth; but this also proceeds from the drakes. 
A good gunner, familiar with all these birds, will call any 
of them without any artificial aid — "make an old duck 
ashamed of hisself ," as they say on the Texas coast. 
It may be that the sprig doesn't have anything to say 
when he is in the North. Birds act differently in differ- 
ent sections. I surprised the Texans very much by tell- 
ing them that the robin was a singer with us in the 
North. 
If any one wonders why some of our songsters l have 
been so rare the past year they should have seen, as I did, 
the ground strewn with bluebirdB, robins, meadowlarks, 
yellow-hammers, even English snipe, that froze to death 
in the cold snap of last February, when over a foot of 
snow fell in Galveston, followed by extreme cold. These 
birds were gathered up and brought into the market by 
the bushel. 
I was led to this region by Mr. Hough's accounts of the 
gunning there. Though I can't get away to repeat the 
trip the present winter, I certainly intend to next year, 
for we don't get anything in the North to compare with 
the duck shooting down there by the Gulf of Mexico, 
"but that's another story." Ipsarraka. 
A Captive Eagle. 
Staunton, Va, — Editor Forest and Stream: I have to 
report the capture of a large golden eagle about eighteen 
miles from this place. Weight about 201bs., measure 7ft. 
tip to tip. The bird was caught in a bear trap baited with 
a fowl, which he had just caught and which he was 
caused to drop by being shot at with a rifle, but not hit. 
No effort was made to conceal the trap and he was caught 
in less that twenty minutes after trap was set. The bird 
is now in my possession alive and doing well. 
A. E. Dabney. 
The Forest and Stream is put to press each week on Tuesday 
Correspondent", intended for publication should reach us at 
atett by MfV iay and as much earlier as practioabl*. 
