42 
lie ^arkttjmi $Eourirst 
IN THE BIG THICK. 
In 1882 an uncle who was a railroad contractor had a 
large contract on the New Orleans and Shreveport Bail- 
road, which was then building. Through his influence 
I secured a position as transit road man in a corps of 
engineers who were on the point of starting a prelimin- 
ary survey from Alexandria, La., to Eagle's Pass on the 
Rio Grande River. I knew that we were going to a 
wilderness, and one of my first thoughts was to pur- 
chase a rifle. But imagine my chagrin when my rigid 
old chief told me to leave it behind, asjie had one gun, 
and that was enough to provide fresh meat for the 
whole outfit. We were advised, however, to each carry 
a good Colt revolver as a matter of precaution, as we 
had heard numerous, and, I dare say, exaggerated, 
stories of the travelers who had been held tip and even 
murdered in the lonesome pine woods between the Red 
River and the Sabine. It was not necessary to remind 
the boys a second time. Nearly all of them provided 
themselves with a pair of . 44 six shooters, belts and 
scabbards and lots of cartridges, and as each axe man 
carried an axe and a long cane knife or machete, with 
which to cut the way through cane brakes and vines, I 
declare we were a formidable body of men, in appear- 
ance at least. 
The first fifty or sixty thousand miles was without 
interest, as our course lay through the never-ending 
plantations white with cotton or green with sugar- cane. 
We made rapid progress, and in about a week rose out 
of the low country into the hills. As soon as we were 
fairly in the timber we commenced to jump both deer 
and wild turkeys. Now came the trying ordeal. Lots 
of game and no time, to hunt. Our sagacious old cap- 
tain had anticipated this, and for this reason had for- 
bidden any guns in the party, except the one owned by 
himself, which was a . 44 Winchester rifle. He carried 
this rifle simply to kill meat for his men, and from no 
sporting instinct. He consoled the younger and more 
ardent of his troupe, however, by promising that we 
could take turn around and hunt on Sunday. This 
declaration will no doubt startle my religious reader, 
but when one considers the fact that there is no Sunday 
in Louisiana, except a regular gala day, and also that 
we were miles back in the wilderness, where we dis- 
turbed no one, it will be more excusable. As we 
advanced into the depths of the wilderness the game 
became more and more plentiful. We often jumped up 
whole droves of deer, and on one occasion counted over 
thirty deer as they ran off through the pine woods. 
The country between the Red River and the Sabine is 
very thinly settled, and the few squatters who occupy 
the section hunt only for their meat. It is a rolling, 
hilly pine woods, green with tall grass and well 
watered, and will some day become a productive sec- 
tion. In 1882 it was an ideal hunting ground, and a 
good hunter could kill all the deer and wild turkey he 
wanted. I would kill deer almost eveiy Sunday, the 
only day in the week that I could hunt, and as I was 
the only natural born Nimrod in the party, the rifle was 
generally surrendered to me on that day. Our colored 
cook found time to kill as much game as the party 
required, and you know twenty strong, hardworking 
men can almost eat a deer a day. Of course, we had 
plenty of bacon, hams and that kind of meat along with 
us. But we looked to that rifle for most of our living. 
The fishing was also magnificent. Every small creek 
that we camped near seemed alive with bass, trout and 
bream. Our sedate old captain was himself very fond 
of fishing, and as soon as camp was established upon a 
stream he would get out his artificial flies and go to 
work. He was an expert in the art of angling, and 
would land his fish nine times out of ten strikes. The 
captain, of course, did not stay out on line all the time. 
We had an excellent transit man, a fine young fellow 
from New Orleans, who was a good worker and true 
mathematician, as he was a genial and whole-souled 
gentleman. The conduct of the survey was principally 
carried along by the transit man, so that the captain or 
chief of our party had good time to look up good camp- 
ing grounds, and to fish. We had to move camp three 
or four times a week, as the survey was pushing along 
rapidly, and the camp had to keep up with, the men. In 
this way we found many fine creeks and fishing places. 
We always had either venison, wild turkey or trout for 
supper when we got back to camp after a hard day's 
work, i remember how we used to enjoy those meals. 
We had an excellent cook along with us, a colored boy 
named Graham, who had learned his trade on the large 
steamboats running into New Orleans, and where none 
but experts are employed. We paid him big wages, but 
we obtained grand results. Our captain used to say that 
there was nothing on earth that would come so near 
keeping a crowd of men contented as to feed them well 
and have their food well cooked and nicely served ; and 
I think he was about right. 
We went through awful experiences after we left the 
high, pine hill country, and got into the Sabine swamps 
and in the "Big Thick" of Eastern Texas. 
One day before we were out of the hills we had 
stopped on the bank of a small stream to eat our 
luncheon. We had all learned to be "good soldiers" by 
this time, and would take advantage of every opportunity 
to rest. We had finished our luncheon, and. all the boys 
had lain down on the ground to catch a short nap be- 
fore our dinner hour was over. I was the only one 
awake, and I was half dreaming, and playing mumble 
peg with my pocket knife, when I heard a noise near- 
by. 1 looked up, and there, within fifteen feet of me, 
were five large deer drinking at the brink of the stream. 
They bad come down the steep bank of the creek almost 
to the spot we occupied and had not seen nor smelled 
US. I drew my revolver and put a ball into the deer 
nearest to me. They all ran off, and we tracked my 
wounded deer some distance, but finally lost the blood 
trail and had to give it up. I suppose the deer ran off 
somewhere and died. I would like to have bagged that 
particular deer, just to say that I had killed a deer with 
a revolver, but fate decreed it otherwise. 
We finally emerged from the hill country and entered 
the dark and dismal swamps of the. Sabine River. Now 
our privations and tribulations began in earnest. The 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
river was out of its banks in the last part of October, as 
the fall rains had sot in, and rains in that country mean 
downpours or torrents. I do not believe any of us had 
a dry thread on us for three weeks. We had to cross 
the overflowed swamps, and there was nothing to do 
but wear it. Lots and lots of times I have stepped off a 
bank or into a hole and gone out of sight head and ears 
only to come up snorting and swearing. I had to lead 
the van. That was my place, and I cotdd not even com- 
pel one of the axe men to go ahead and see how deep 
the water was. It was lucky that I was an expert 
swimmer or I would not have filled the place. I went 
plump into the Sabine River before I knew I was 
within half a mile of it. The only way I found it was 
by walking into it, and then I knew by its depth and 
current that it was the river. 
Well, we ran our line up to our bank, and I crossed 
the river on a Choctaw log, and then we triangulated 
the stream and found its width, and started our line in 
the overflowed swamp on the other side. Our camp 
outfit and wagons had to go nearly one hundred miles 
out of the way to find a ferry boat to cross We could 
not afford to lose the time by going with them, so we 
crossed the river on logs lashed together with pins and 
stays and existed rather than lived for four days with 
out beds or anything to sleep on at night, or any cover 
from the rain which was falling constantly. We 
walked out of the overflowed swamp every night to 
high ground, built a big fire and roasted there till 
morning, and then plunged into the cold water again to 
remain all day. The depth of the water was anywhere 
from knee deep to shoulder deep, and often over our 
heads. We came near losing our field instruments half 
a dozen times. I thought to myself a thousand times 
that if that was civil engineering I would study law as 
soon as I reached civilization. However, everyone must 
learn his trade in the hard school of experience, and 
many times until I gave up the profession I had almost 
as hard experiences as the ones narrated. 
We finally got out of that swamp only to plunge into 
another. The bad season set in, and a miserable time 
we had, plodding in mud and mire, chopping our way 
through impenetrable thickets, and cane brakes, and 
almost sleeping in the nasty, slimy, slippery ooze. The 
whole of east Texas, from the Sabine to the Nachitoches 
River, is an almost impenetrable thicket. They call 
it the "Big Thick" of Texas. It is one continued cane 
brake, with matted vines and small bushes as thick as 
the hair on a dog's back. Sometimes we would not 
progress a half mile in twelve hours' hard chopping, and 
we only cut a line open enough to get a sight through 
our telescopes, on the instruments How I have heard 
our transit man swear. He was an ambitious fellow and 
wanted to make a reputation, and half a mile a day 
would never make him one. I used to try to console 
him by telling him that if the company had not sent 
us into this "God forsaken" country they would never 
have known what it was, and as it was essential to 
know what the country was like, and what kind, of a 
road bed could be gotten, we were doing the full 
measure of our duty. And we were. 
To make a long story short, we chopped and chopped 
for two months, and about the first of January, 18855, 
emerged from the ' ' Big Thick. ' ' There is plenty of 
game in there, but it can stay there so far as I am con- 
cerned, for I will never bother it again. I killed several 
deer, plenty of turkeys and many ducks and coons and 
oppossums, and squirrels and such small fry. Our cook 
laid a bait down and killed one good sized black bear, 
which came to it, so we had bear meat once on the trip. 
I cannot say that I enjoyed the hunting while in this 
thicket, because I was wet all the time, and one has to 
be tolerably comfortable to enjoy anything. On the 
Louisiana side of the Sabine, however, in the rolling 
pine hills, the deer hunting is simply grand. One can 
still or stalk hunt there to his heart's content, and kill 
deer every .day of his life if he knows anything about 
hunting. One cannot help but jump them if he walks 
through the woods, and if he knows how to use a rifle 
he is sure of meat. I am going back to that country 
some day, and as there is still no railroad near it, I 
know the deer are bound to be there still. 
As to the rest of our survey. We ran the line as fast 
as possible, so soon as we reached the prairies, to make 
up for lost time. We encountered some .antelope, but 
they were so shy and wily that we could not kill any of 
them. We also came across numerous flocks of prairie 
chickens, but could do very little with them. 
I have failed to mention the jack rabbits of Texas. 
The first one I jumped out of the grass, I vow I thought 
it was a fawn. They have ears from six to eight inches 
long, and the rabbit itself is as large as a small grey- 
hound, and it takes a greyhound to catch one, too. I 
saw a beautiful race on the prairie near Hempstead, 
Texas, between a jack rabbit and four large fine hounds. 
An Englishman at Hempstead owned a pack of English 
deer hounds. One day while we were running the line 
near Hempstead, he came out with four of his dogs to 
have a race with a rabbit or an antelope. He jumped a 
rabbit, and it was a race for life and. death. At first 
the rabbit gained on the hounds, then they gained on 
- him, and the rabbit commenced to double on his track 
like a fox and run in a circle. Every now and then one 
could see the rabbit jump clear of the grass so as to 
locate the dogs. It took those dogs nearly an hour to 
catch that rabbit, and they finally overhauled him in 
less than a mile from where he started. 
We reached our western terminus about the 1st of 
April, after running a line about 750 yards long and 
taking seven months to run it. We passed through 
some very disagreeable country in Western Texas, and 
got into the chapparel and mesquite thickets, and 
between that and the cactus we came near losing all of 
our clothing. When we got back to Shreveport we were 
a browned and hardy looking set, and would then have 
made good soldiers. We brushed up, bought new olothes 
all round, drew our eight months' pay and were happy. 
The railroad was never built. It was found that it 
would not pay, as the company was fearful lest they 
would have no local travel from the "Big Thick, "and 
other sections of Eastern Texas, excepting the bears and 
alligators, and possibly the coons and catamounts. For 
that reason I say that the game is still in Western 
Louisiana, the garden spot of earth for deer hunting, 
the ' ' happy hunting grounds. ' ' 
I will in my next give you some minute descriptions 
[Jan. 19, 1895. 
of several deer and bear- hunts that I had two years later 
in the Bolivar country, Mississippi, about one hundred 
miles south of Memphis, in the caneb rakes of the 
Mississippi River .swamps. A, B. Wino field. 
Tennessee. 
AN ENGLISHMAN'S EXPERIENCE 
FLORIDA FISHING.— III. 
OF 
BT ALFBED C. HABMSWOKTH. 
I have said little of the Elorida scenery, because it is 
difficult to convey any notion of its simple beauty in 
words. 
We passed down a river which narrowed occasionally 
to a few yards only, and then broadened out to the 
width of half a mile. The water was blue as the cloud- 
less sky, the trees for the most part monotonous — the 
strangely rooted mangrove, varied by magnificent palm's. 
As we emerged into a wide lagoon the mullet were 
jumping. I shall never forget the sound of those tens 
of thousands of fish leaping at one moment. A pound 
trout can make a fairly loud"swack" as it comes down. 
Try and imagine myriads of fish doing this at the same 
moment, picture them extending in gleaming shoals 
almost as far as the eye can see. 
t They ceased as suddenly as they had begun, and we 
went on and on through lagoon after lagoon until we 
grounded on one of the many beds of oysters that infest 
— yes, that is the correct word — the creeks and rivers 
of Florida. 
Those who are fond of what it seems to be the thing 
to call the ' ' succulent bivalve, ' ' should take a shipload 
of brown bread and butter, with an adequate supply of 
pepper and vinegar, and emigrate to Florida at once. 
Oysters are to be had there for the picking. We got 
out of *he boat, procured a mass of them and proceeded 
down stream eating them as we went. 
A little further on I was reminded that travelers' 
tales are occasionally true. I daresay a good many of 
us have read one time or another a paragraph that often 
goes the rounds entitled ' ' Oysters that grow on trees. ' ' 
Most of us have, probably set the statement down as a 
thundering lie. I did certainly. I regarded it as of the 
same category as another popular paragraph that tells us 
about the gentleman of South Africa, who has trained 
monkeys to serve as clerks. Having seen the tree 
growing oysters I can almost swallow the monkeys 
(metaphorically, of course). 
The mangrove tree spreads in a curious way. As it 
grows, its branches dip over into the water and make 
fresh roots. To the drooping branches the oysters attach 
themselves, and thus it is that one can cut off a young 
limb with four or five dozen oysters attached. These 
tree growing oysters are hot, as a rule, good to eat. 
They told me in Southern Florida that it is always 
dangerous to eat oysters that are uncovered at any state 
of the tide. 
Presently we passed out of the wide lagoons into a 
narrowing portion of the river, where the rush of the 
water reminded me of the Rhone as it enters the Lake 
of Geneva. We had been more or less drifting hitherto, 
but now Hart had his work cut out. Owing to some 
curious natural formation it appears to be difficult to 
row going either way a little above Gordon Pass. The 
natives, with that delightful lack of formality which 
distinguishes American nomenclature of places, terms 
this "Pull and be d d, " and it was hard to suppress 
a smile when this free and easy name was mentioned 
quite seriously by some solemn old gentleman in dis- 
cussing his adventures of the day. 
A few yards more and we were to commence tarpon 
fishing. We anchored the boat at the verge of a large 
pool, and, though I did not know it, I was on the eve 
of an exciting experience. Having rigged up my tar- 
pon tackle in the manner described in a previous chap- 
ter, I donned the necessary belt, cast out my mullet, 
sat down, lit a pipe, and prepared for a doze. I have 
described to you the stiff 7 foot rod, and the big reel 
that runs on ball bearings and carries 600 feet of fine 
salmon line. 
Resting the rod across the boat I was indulging in a 
post-prandial day dream, when the handle of the reel 
began to revolve. I was awake in an instant. The 
check was off ; I had come to the conclusion, after care- 
ful consideration, to invariably keep it off dm-ing the 
first run of a tarpon, in order that he might gorge the 
bait sufficiently without feeling any strain. 
"Tarpon?" I said to Hart, interrogatively. 
' ' I think so, sir, 1 ' he replied. 
About seventy-five yards of line ran out, when, to our 
dismay, the line speedily began to slacken. Either the 
tarpon had dropped the bait or it was not a tarpon at 
all. 
"I guess it is a shark," remarked the guide. 
Standing up in the boat, placing the butt of the rod 
in the cup of my safety belt, I swung round and struck 
the fish with all my strength and weight. 
Whatever it was, and at eighty yards we were too far 
off to see, it came to the top of the water and plunged 
furiously. Hart was puzzled. 
' 4 1 never saw a tarpon stop so soon as that, ' ' he said, 
"but I never saw a shark come to the top of the water 
in that way when he struck. ' ' 
We had no time for colloquy, for the fish began ma- 
noeuvering in a style that was quite new to me. 
Up came the anchor, and the next moment Hart was 
pulling with might and main for the centre of the pool, 
in order that I might have the best opportunity of play- 
ing whatever it might be. 
The line suddenly slackened, I wound faster and faster 
till my fingers were going at their utmost speed. It is 
not easy to describe what passes through the angler's 
brain at an exciting moment like this, but for a brief 
instant I felt certain that whatever had taken my bait 
was off. But no ! Of a sudden the strain on the line 
commenced again. I tried what I could do to weaken 
the fish by pulling against it. The result was merely 
to send the reel dashing round again, and it sang, for 
the check was now on as though it were being worked 
by some rapid machinery. 
"That's a shark, sir, " remarked Hart. 
What was to be done. Playing shark on a light line 
is a sport that had never occurred to me, though it is 
one that in my opinion is next only to tarpon fishing 
