232 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
LMaech 21, 1896. 
ing on again. "Toho!" Ah, look at him! a perfect 
statue, rigid as though frozen. Slowly the two sportsmen 
step forward— another step— whir- whir. One bird cuts 
to the left past Timothy. "Bang! thud." "Dead bird!" 
The other tries to cross Mr. Legality. His gun springs to 
his Bhoulder. A quick, steady aim, and a stream of 
feathers drift away, while the brave old grouse whirls to 
the ground. "Can I buy that gun and dog now?" 
"No, sir. The gun is worth $500 and the dog $1,000 and 
—by Jove! but this is great sport, eh?" 
But now it grows late and the stream must be crossed. 
It is deeper up here., but Timothy's waders are all right. 
Legality's short boots are no good, but a tree falling 
across a narrow place had made a slender bridge, and 
some wise farmer had decorated this crossing with a 
length of that sportsman's friend, barbed wire. Upon this 
trembling, slippery way Mr. Legality essayed to cross. 
Mr. Timothy, meantime sitting upon the bank, remarked 
the native grace and dignified bearing of the Legal gen- 
tleman in a way which the said Legality apparently con- 
sidered uncalled for. At the expense of a few trouser 
wounds the crossing was at last achieved and the hunters 
turned their faces homeward. On their way they fell a- 
talking of the "Carlin grouse." That is that bird that 
ends so many a day's hunt by flying out of some unheard 
of, unthought of place where he has been lurking to ex- 
asperate the wily sportsman and to spring off at the most 
inopportune time, draw the fruitless fire of the entire 
party, and with a triumphant "hum" vanish over the tops 
of the tallest trees in sight. All grouse hunters know 
him. I myself doubt his true grouse nature. Isn't he 
some nasty little invulnerable imp that assumes grouse 
clothing and performs this final act just to take the con- 
ceit out of crack shots and take all hope of future skill 
from shots that are not "crack?" 
"Well, our two hunters were just discussing the "cussed- 
ness" of this variety of bird, and wondering if they were 
to see him on this occasion when — "buzz" — right out of a 
hollow stump not 20yds. away. Not a tree nor bush for 
30 rods. An elegant open shot. Four barrels emptied 
themselves into the air, but not into that portion of the 
air the bird occupied, and "over the hills and far away" 
he vanished in the twilight. "Sie transit gloria silvai," 
quoth Timothy. "May he live long and prosper," rejoined 
Legality, and then without further venture they betook 
them to the railway station, shook hands and 
"Each went on his several way, 
Besolved to meet anither day." 
TlMOTHYSEBD. 
OMNIUM GATHERUM. 
There appear frequently in your columns accounts of 
duck hunting experiences, mostly from the far East, 
wherein the relator gets up very early in the morning to 
the rattle of the alarm clock and goes away off miles to 
some pond or other duck resort, arriving just at day- 
break as like as not in a cold drizzle, putting out decoys 
or hiding in the grass or bushes near some fly way, getting 
a few shots and a whole lot of discomfort and wet, and 
going home with a good deal of (expressed) satisfaction, 
together with a black duck or two or a coot or sheldrake. 
I always feel sorry for such shooters and wish they could 
have the opportunity enjoyed by some others who have 
such good times and luck that I am afraid they don't ap- 
preciate them; but I don't know as the first-named want 
any of my sympathy. From their accounts they have a 
rattling good time, and whistle up courage in a very 
commendable way. All the same I'd like them to have 
a real good time, just once. Now, I'm not asking for in- 
ference that I am situated in duck shooting clover, as de- 
fined by some, and can go out and kill my 50 or 150 ducks 
a day. No, I can't do that, and I'm glad of it; but I can 
get more than a small family can eat without getting 
foundered, if I wish, and can do it very easily most any 
day in an hour or two, and that, I take it, is as much as 
any decent sportsman ("true," if you like) would desire 
to do. I can wander along the creek in the early morn- 
ing after a three minutes' walk from the house, a few 
hundred yards above where the stream empties into the 
salt water, and surprise an occasional mallard as it seeks 
fresh-water tidbits among the bushes or sparse timber, 
and rises loudly quacking, to fall end over end when the 
gun speaks. Or I can wait, when the tide begins to flow, 
behind a log blind near the creek's mouth and see the 
wary widgeon in pairs or bunches cautiously sail to and 
fro just out of shot, querulously and timorously squawking, 
voicing its fear of unseen danger, though unable to 
resist the temptation that lies where the food is suc- 
culent, sailing, sailing to and fro, ever a little nearer, 
until they arrive where they can upend them- 
selves and pull up the tender grass, which they wish 
they'd never done when the earthquake opens and two or 
three or four duckies flap out their lives in the shallow 
water, while the rest mount heavenward as from a spring- 
board; and the awful roar is repeated, followed by a very 
sudden collapse of one or two more baldpates and the 
rapid disappearance of the remainder. It must be an 
awful experience for them. By the way, I wonder if this 
is "pot-shooting." Or I can sneak along under the cover 
of thesandspit just beyond which the bluebills are diving 
a few yards from shore, and waiting until all or a majority 
have uptilted and disappeared in their funny and wonder- 
fully slick way, make a rush beachward, and when they 
come up and hustle off terrified with great beating of 
wings put a full stop to the proceedings of some of them, 
which the boat a short walk away enables me to pick up 
at leisure. 
Now this is very convenient and comfortable and en- 
joyable, and as Une' Remus used to say "Dat make me 
say what I duz," when I express sympathy with the 
sportsmen alluded to. And isn't this just as well as it is 
to keep hammering away at ducks, day in and out as 
long as they fly, so as to boast of the big bag and slaughter 
in the papers? What a pitiful spectacle a game hog is, 
anyway! 
I say I can get ducks as desoribed, but I don't always 
when I want to, as happened the other evening when I 
shot a right and left as they rose only to see them dis- 
appear the moment they struck the water, and though I 
waited and watched patiently almost into the gloaming 
neither reappeared, at least to my careful vision, but the 
ntxt day I found one washed up by the tide near by. I 
have heard tales of ducks mortally hurt diving and 
seizing grass or weeds in a death grip, and so anchored 
rob the shooter of his victory. But may be it's fable. 
Do you s'pose my ducks played that trick? It's not the 
only instance in my experience of ducks diving in open 
water and not coming up. 
Another instance of sudden and mysterious disappear- 
ance that occasionally nonpluses shooters occurred a few 
mornings since when I shot a trout-stealing kingfisher as 
I approached the creek, and alarmed a pair of mallards 
that rose straight up among the low trees and were quack- 
ing me adieu as the other barrel went off. The duck 
towered. The drake went off across the marsh, dropping 
lower and lower, evidently hard hit. Upward wpnt the 
duck and I nearly dislocated my neck endeavoring to 
keep track of both. Finally the duck ceased towering 
and circled into the edge of the timber, and with futile 
beating of wings began to settle straight down. I ga.ve a 
final jerk of my head drakeward and he had disappeared. 
Jerk again duckward and she was out of sight, and there 
I was, but I didn't stay long. I crossed the creek,, and 
going to where I had marked the duck down, began the 
search, and failing to find her on the level ground 
ascended the side hill which quite abruptly dropped into 
the valley here, and when on the upper side of a towering 
fir, peering through the brush, I spied Mistress Duck 
cuddled down in a hollow at the foot of the tree almost 
concealed by brush and bush, which intervened between 
me and the bird and hedged her in on either side. I 
noticed that she cocked a bright and watchful eye at me 
and discretion suggested "better blow her head "off," but 
I scoffed at prudence (as I so often have) with the reply: 
"What! shoot a crippled duck in the woods! Go to! I'll 
pick her up," and made a movement to step over the in- 
tervening brush, and, as Unc' Remus has it, "right dar I 
broke my merlasses jug." That duck turned and just 
scooted back through the brush, down around the tree, 
and when I had stumbled and floundered through the 
thicket and craned my neck after her I caught sight 
around the tree of her disappearing tail, and when I had 
fairly extricated myself and got to the lower side of the 
tree the earth had opened and swallowed her bodily, and 
though I searched for a good part of an hour through, 
around and under logs, brush and debris over a quarter of 
an acre faithfully, erect, on hands and knees, and prone on 
my prostrate body with hat off and head under a log, she 
never came to light. There were the feathers 
dropped by the tree, mute evidences of her tricki- 
ness, smartness and flight, but where, O where was 
the owner? I made several excursions round 
about and grew disgusted, and as often as I'd come back 
to those feathers hope sprung anew in the immortal 
breast, and I'd go off and do the thing all over again. I 
came to the conclusion afterward that she had climbed 
the tree when I was wrestling with the brush, and sailed 
out of the top or hidden therein until I removed from 
thence. I call such disappearance as that superlatively 
humiliating and exasperating. When patience had had 
"her perfect work," and more too, I pottered off to the 
marsh after the drake, if haply I might find his deceased 
body some'r's; but though I searched that open tidal resort 
faithfully, so as with tears, round about and way beyond 
where my strained eyes had last beheld his vanishing 
form, I never saw him more. He probably bored down 
in the ground with the crawfish. Dnckless and despond- 
dent, "homeward the weary (hunter) wends his way," 
musing on the vicissitudes that euchre him when he has 
a hand full of trumps. 
When I am outwitted thus or by other means, I have to 
fall back on communion with nature and reflect that it is 
not all of hunting to shoot, and so forth. That's what we 
do, you know, when we can't shoot anything. But I 
always found it difficult to commune when the mercury 
was about 29°, a dismal rain driving, and my nose, fingers 
and toes half frozen. So I say I'm sorry when I read 
accounts like those alluded to. 'Tis easier to commune in 
the leafy month of June, or maybe as early as February, 
in Washington. 
I hoped to shoot some canvas or redheads, but have seen 
none near enough to recognize them. The varieties men- 
tioned, together with butterballs and an occasional golden • 
eye, comprise the bulk of ducks frequenting these waters. 
An occasional flock of brant is seen at safe distance from 
shore passing up or down, but none have stopped. There 
is nothing but ducks to hunt at this season, excepting 
bear, cat or cougar, the hunting for which is fine, but 
finding is very poor, bear being holed up until April, cat 
wild and wary, albeit fairly plentiful, and cougar being 
too far back among the more rugged and inaccessible 
mountains — particularly this season, when the snow has 
not been heavy enough to drive the deer and elk down 
among the foothills in any number. But I always enjoy 
roaming the upper plateaus and slopes that make up to 
the foothills — that is, when an occasional day free from 
rain happens along, which isn't any too often in this land 
of mist, drizzle and drip. Walking isn't any too easy, for 
the omnipresent sal-lal b ush, from knee to waist high, 
imppdes locomotion badly, but one may here and there 
find areas where the reckless hand of man has scattered 
fire and destruction, and here huckleberry bushes have 
supplanted other growth largely, much to the gratifica- 
tion of the bears, whose trails and signs can be found 
almost anywhere in the summer. Here walking is easier 
and timber more open, but back some miles from tide- 
water, unfrequented by man and fire, there are vast areas 
where the forest is dense and dark as anywhere else. 
Here in places may be found spots where the gloom 
is even more pronounced — light depressions in the sur- 
face, or shallow valleys where the mould lies rich and 
deep, from which the majestic trunks of giant firs and 
cedars thickly tower skyward — so thickly that the eye 
cannot discern their tops, through which no shaft of sun- 
light penetrates to disturb the shadows that for genera- 
tions have brooded in the aisles of this woodland temple, 
where every footfall is hushed in the mossy carpet whose 
deep pile rivals the choicest Moquette or Wilton, and 
softens every outline. No jangling bell swings from airy 
tower, but the lofty spires that whisper with the winds 
wave a perpetual invitation to worship amid silence un- 
broken and profound, where naught shall distract the 
mind from contemplation and adoration of the great 
Creator who has fashioned such majesty and beauty in 
His "first temples." 
Another time, coming out upon the brink of some deep 
gorge down which far out of sight a stream dances and 
sings, whose melody, faint and delicious, softly catches 
the ear through the magnificent evergreens sentineling 
the slopes whose 200ft. tops are another 200ft. and more 
below you, over which you look westward and behold a 
vision of beauty and grandeur unsurpassed; for there 
within seeming easy walk, rising boldly from the dark 
green of the endless forest which encompasses them, and 
thrusting their hoary heads up, up, up, soaring into the 
heavens, from whence they gaze serenely out upon the 
heaving Pacific, the wonderful Strait of Fuca, the lovely 
reaches of Puget Sound, while holding converse with 
their snow-mantled companions, Rainier, Hood, Baker, 
Helen and a thousand others of the Sierras, and sending 
messages to the rugged range of the distant Rockies, far 
to the eastward, stand the mighty peaks of the Olympics, 
startling in their apparent proximity, awe-inspiring in 
their majesty and eternal solitude, and wondrousiy and 
inexpressibly beautiful in their snowy robes that envelop 
them in unsullied purity. Such a view is recompense 
enough for a long and toilsome tramp. You gaze and 
gaze, and the wonderful beauty and magnificence grow 
and grow, and you are filled, mayhap even to tears, 
with wonder and admiration and delight, and 
yet you are not filled. You cannot be. In the 
deeps' of your soul there is an unutterable craving for 
more, more, more, a greater capacity for appreciation 
and enjoyment that will not be satisfied and yet is ever 
unsatisfied, and you are compelled to turn longingly away 
from a scene that angels might sing of exultingly. 
And it may be that returning from such a jaunt and 
view on such a day of wondrous clearness you come out 
upon a Bpur high up above a valley, between two ravines, 
and as you pause to reBt a moment, facing eastward, be- 
fore the sharp descent homeward, there opens from be- 
tween the nearer towering, straight and motionless firs a 
vista, the loveliness of which you may travel many a 
weary day to match. The green so dark and dense and 
well defined near at hand fades and fades, and is dimmed 
and softened as no painter's brush can portray it. The 
outlines of the trees here so distinct are blurred and 
blended as they recede into a solid mass, until at seventy 
miles as the crow flies, if he flies very straight, there rises 
from a hazy horizon and seemingly from a perfect level 
the perfectly defined outlines of incomparable Mt. Rain- 
ier, clothed from crown to base in snowy white that 
glows and burns in the rays of the waning sun, a vision 
of loveliness that no language can adequately describe. 
Over two and a half miles further than where you stand 
his brow is bared to receive the good-night kiss of thf» day 
god, and so rare is this wonderful air at the moment that 
your attentive ear almost catches his "good night" in re- 
turn, and to the earth that is already drowsy, while he 
keeps his silent, unwearied eternal vigil, and speaks with 
the glittering hosts that nightly twinkle responses to his 
greeting. 
You may weary of men, but intercourse with nature 
never palls. 
While you of colder climes are suffering with blizzards, 
snow squalls, chilling rains, in the fag end of a winter 
that dies hard, spring here has put out her feelers, and the 
back of a very mild winter is easily broken. Frogs are 
peeping and trilling their love lays in the ponds and 
marshes; the silken buds of the pussy willows are nigh to 
bursting in their ambition and haste; certain early sorts 
of bushes along the creeks, of which I know not the 
name, for I am not much of a bushist in these parts, have 
put forth leaves, and the white bloom buds are growing 
fast; robins and bluebirds are already numerous, the wild 
currant and gooseberry are arraying themselves in sum- 
mer garb, and a new edition of grass, furbished in stand- 
ard and orthodox green, is being published at the in- 
stigation of warm and vivifying rainB. Notice the 
adjectives. The other kind of rains have been falling all 
winter. They seldom or never do anything else in winter, 
which is only an exaggerated sort of late autumn. Some- 
times it snows, but that is only rain whitewashed. It's 
just as wet, for rain always precedes, accompanies or 
succeeds snow, and then all is gloom, slush, drizzle and 
slop. The cedars and firs catch all the mush, and drip for 
a week; for the rain is a mist of the same tempera- 
ture as the snow, and if it snows 4in. and rains 
four days there will probably be about 3^in. left; 
and it's so nice to be out in, particularly 
along the side hills endeavoring to trail something, 
and slip, and flounder, and strain, and paw the air, and 
wrench your back, and come down finally, whack! and 
not have adequate literature wherewith to express your- 
self, while the slush is up your sleeves and down your 
neck and in your pockets and plugs up your gun. It's 
not all of hunting to hunt, as I think some one has re- 
marked, and that's one of the times when you don't want 
to commune with nature. I intended to say something 
else, but I haven't time now. See you later. I'll simply 
remark, though, that last winter I wrote an account, 
which you published in yours of Jan. 4, of the red 
salmon found in these waters. I really hoped for some 
information on the subject from either Messrs. Bean, 
Goode, Samuels, Cheney or some other of the experts, 
but the article seems to have fallen as dead and heavy as 
some unlucky batch of bread for want of fresh yeast or 
flour, or proper fire or manipulation, or chemical com- 
bination or something. I suppose I must grope in gloom 
and ignorance some more, and comfort myself with the 
thought that the fish is just as pretty as though I was 
acquainted with its history, parentage.and lineage, but a 
person likes to know the why of things sometimes. 
O. O. S. 
Washington, February. 
Distracted dog-owners who object to the order of the 
muzzle may perhaps find a word to the wise in the fol- 
lowing experience of a well-known Parisian society 
woman. This lady bought, the other day, from a per- 
ambulating dog-dealer on the Champs Elysees, a ravish - 
ingly beautiful little toy poodle, whose feet especially at- 
tracted attention by their extremely delicate appearance. 
She took the treasure home into her salon, ana was hor- 
rified on seeing it run at once up the curtain. The dog 
turned out to be a rat sewn into the skin of a baby poodle. 
This is an improvement on the story of the other Paris- 
ienne, who imported a most rare and expensive little toy 
dog from London, and found out, at home, that it was a 
joyful little mongrel sewn into the coat of a canine 
grandee. But why should not the distressed dog-owner 
of to day go and buy a rabbit-skin to wrap the unmuzzled 
doggie in?— Westminster Gazette, 
Pasajdena, Cal.— I had an orchestra seat in the Puenta 
Hills the other day and saw ten foxhounds jump on a 
lynx in one act and one scene. The fur flew fast and 
fine. P. 
