Feb. 16, 1895. 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
125 
been planted. It needed but one lookto see that]in her 
there had once been hope, which had Ions; ago been 
choked out by grim despair that will never leave her. 
She could not read, and probably had never eaten a meal 
from a table covered with a white cloth. 
Presently there came two men from the adjoining 
swamp, each carrying half of a dressed bog. One of 
them, an old man, bent with age, was introduced as Mr. 
Jordan. He shook hands cordially and "reckoned" 
H kept well, and then began admiring the dog, Joe, 
and asked if he would "ketch," meaning, would he pull 
down a wounded deer or hold a savage wild hog. On 
being told he would not, he said it was a pity that "sicb 
a big, strong dog should be no account. And he is the 
purtiest dog I ever seen, too." H then explained 
Joe's uses, and how he pointed birds, and then asked Joe 
if he sucked eggs, which Joe answered by a sharp bark, 
whereupon the whole family took him right into their 
affections, and Mr. Jordan said: "If he was my dog I 
wouldn't take a big cow for him, but it's a pity he don't 
ketch." 
After Joe had been fully discussed, the old man turned 
to the daughter mentioned above, and in tones tremulous 
withf age and affection, asked: "Is dinner ready, honey?" 
The dinner consisted of boiled "hog meat," corn bread 
tnade by mixing corn meal, Fait, and water, and baking 
in a Dutch oven, and coffee made probably of dried and 
parched sweet potatoes, there was certainly no coffee in 
it. This food was just what they have had, and what 
they will continue to have, except when an occa°ional 
deer or turey i« brought in. Sometimes they have a little 
"flour bread," and they "make" a few sweet potatoes, 
and some cane syrup and sugar. 
After dinner H drew the old man into talking about 
himself. He said: "I've been livin' right yei-e for thirty- 
seven years, an' I've allers made a good livin'. It's a 
inighty easy country to find support. The cattle an' 
hogs an' sheep run in the woods, an' don't have to be 
Fedf, an' all we have to do is for a lot of us to git together 
m' go out an' ketch 'em. How much is a good cow 
worth? Bout six dollars, I reckon; I don't sell any. 
Then they's deer an' turkeys, too, though they hain't so 
jlenty as they used to be. Could you gimme a chaw of 
rour tobacker?" Mr. H proffered his plug, and the 
jld man said: "I reckon I'll get you to cut me off a 
ehaw." H cut off a liberal chunk, and returned the 
)lug and knife to his pocket, but the old man still held 
he "chaw" in his trembling fingers, turning it over and 
ooking at it in a meditative sort of way, finally saying: 
I reckon Mr. H I'll have to git you to cut off a leetle 
nore. This yere piece ain't quite enougli for a chaw, 
t'd be enough for my wife, an' my daughter don't take 
jtaite as big a chaw as this, but I chaw a leetle more. 
"I wish a lot of people like you could get interested in 
bhis country enough to come yere an' settle. I ain't 
lever had a neighbor nearer than four miles, an' we 
oan't have any school, an' it's seven miles to church, and 
seven miles to the doctor's, an' twenty-five miles to the 
springs, where we have to buy supplies. It's a pity that 
dog don't ketch." 
"He catches tramps at home," said H ^'but proba- 
bly you are not bothered with them here." 
"Well, we are," said the old man. "There's lots of 
'em." 
H said he supposed houses were so far apart, the 
tramps would have a bard time of it. "Well, you see" 
said the old man, "this yere is one of the mainest traveled 
roads in the whole country. If anybody goes from yere 
to the springs, or to Mossy Head, or Pensacola, or Mo- 
iile, or New Orleans, or anywhere else, they have to go 
tlong this roach I reckon it goes to nearer every place 
iban any other road in the world." 
I have described the old man and his family because 
they are an average family of the "piney woods" resi- 
lents. They are, to some extent, passing away, but be- 
cause of the worthless character of the lands they live in 
they will not become extinct for many years yet. 
In these vast stretches of forest and. swamp, affording 
unlimited food, abundant cover and so genial a climate, 
it seems strange that there is not more game; but it's 
scarcity is due to that most ugly, vicious, and altogethe 
lepraved brute — the Florida dog. He ranks next to the 
leer in fleetness, and his sense of smell is as acute as that 
)f the best setter. Every foot of the ground is explored 
by him at frequent intervals, and the turkey's nest of 
5ggs is one of his luxuries. If the egg is hatched before 
le finds it, he will most likely get the young turkey be- 
fore it can fly, for he follows their trail and scents out 
(heir hiding-places as surely as any dog could do it, and 
le even catches the old hen turkey, while she tries to de- 
fend her brood. Many fawns are his victims as soon as 
;hey come into the world. The hogs follow the herds of 
sheep for days, and get every new born lamb that is 
Iropped; and sometimes they pull down and devour the 
mil grown sheep. New-born calves are another favorite 
jauie, and the cow must be far away from any of these 
ieasts, if she saves her offspring. If the turkey or the 
:awn has escaped the hogs, great eagles are soaring over 
lead, on the aleri^for something to devour, and at night 
he wild cat is hunting for anything he is not afraid to 
tttack. But, after, all, the hog has come to stay. It 
would hardly be possible to exterminate him, and, as an 
irticle of food, he ranks superior to any other animal of 
;his region. In spite of the repulsive ugliness, and 
lglier disposition of the Florida woods hog, its flesh has a 
iender juiciness and a delicate gamey flavor that are alto- 
gether lacking in his corn fed relative of the North, and 
vhich captures the taste of every one who partakes of it. 
These hogs are of domestic origin, but there are many of 
ihem that are veritable wild boars, with tusks six inches 
ong; and when brought to bay by the dogs they charge 
it everything that moves, and often a dog is killed at a 
iingle stroke. A lot of specially- trained cms are used in 
mnting them. They bay the boar, but are careful to 
seep out of his reach. When the hunter comes up and 
shoots the boar, the dogs close at once, and woe be unto 
-hem i £ the shot has not been a stunning one, for some 
if them will be killed. These old fellows are not used 
;or human food, but are killed as nuisances; and the 
lesh is sprinkled with strychnine and hung up for the 
»agles and wild cats to eat. 
On the 18th H said good-by to his companions of 
;he camp, and departed for De Funak Springs. If the 
itories told about quail by the residents of this place were 
arue, H was going to have s ome great sport, He 
hunted two days and found one little" bunch of 'quail. 
Then his host, Mr. Tom King, planned a trip to his big 
plantation twelve miles north from town. Mr. King 
said there were three miles of old fields, and two dogs 
could find fifty to one hundi'ed coveys in a day. The 
party was to be made up of Mr. King, Mr. Cawthon, and 
Mr. Hall, of Mobile. Mr. Hall came on the evening 
trani, and at supper talked quail just like everybody 
else, and declared the party would get one hundred' birds 
to-morrow. 
H said: "Mr. Hall, did you know that Solomon had 
just returned from a Florida quail shooting trip, when he 
said in his heart that all men are liars?" 
"Well," said Hall, "I'll bet you $100 to $50 that we 
get one hundred shots out there." 
The importance of an early start was urged by Mr. 
King, and the cook was ordered: "Have breakfast ready 
at five o'clock sharp, do you hear?" But all the same 
H lay in bed still, and then dressed leisurely, and 
waited twenty minutes for breakfast. Their road lay 
nearly all the way through the beautiful piney woods, 
the weather was very pleasant, and the only drawback 
was the sandy roads which everywhere in this region 
ma.ke travel slow and wearisome to horseflesh. Arrived 
at the plantation, they found the old fields grown up with 
sedge and briars, while along the numerous rivulets there 
was a dense tangle of trees and bushes. A good deal of 
the old field ground had been worn out and abandoned 
ten years before, and these portions were grown up with 
a thick forest of pines seventy-five feet high. By noon 
three coveys had been found, all of which plunged at 
once into the thick brush, and were seen no more, al- 
though they could be heard when they flushed. Five 
birds had been bagged, and the clothing, hands and faces 
of the party showed evidence of conflicts with briars. 
It was voted too tough a country to hunt in, so after 
lunch the party drove toward home, stopping at another 
plantation that looked very inviting. More than one 
hundred acres of promising looking ground was hunted 
over, resulting in finding one small covey, from which six 
birds were secured. Just at dark, while still six miles 
from town the party were overtaken by a terrific thun- 
derstorm. The rain came down in sheets, and the wind 
threatened to uproot the tall pines, while the blinding 
flashes of lightning and the crashing and reverberating 
thunder were sublime beyond description. To him who 
has no fear of lightning, there is no grander or more en- 
joyable phenomenon in nature than a thunderstorm, and 
H enjoyed this one more than he did the quail hunt- 
ing, although getting somewhat wet. 
The next day H and Joe rested until noon, and 
spent the afternoon in a stroll to Lake Stanley, a pretty 
sheet of water three miles out in the woods; they brought 
in one mallard. The forenoon of the following day was 
spent in rest, and the afternoon in hunting quail near 
town. While hunting in a weed grown orchard, a man 
some distance away said: "Say, mister, I'm a little 
afraid your dog will get poisoned if you hunt in there. 
I've put out poison to kill the rabbits and coons that 
bother me so, and I'd hate it if your clog got some of it," 
H wandered over to him, and talked awhile, during 
which the man said he had walked up two bunches of 
quail the day before, about three-quarters of a mile south 
in an old field, and gave minute directions how to find it, 
H started to hunt them up. Before getting across 
the orchard, Joe found a small covey, but they went off 
safely, though two charges of shot were fired at them. 
They went into the swamp, of course, and H and Joe 
went in after them, and with a good deal of floundering 
through^ the mud and water and sundry conflicts with 
black briar vines, they managed to rouse out five or six 
birds, and bagged three of them. Then they started for 
the old field, where the two covies were, but mistook the 
directions and sundown overtook them before they found 
it, so they walked back to town, some two and a half 
miles. 
That night, Mr, Wolfe and H went to Gary ville, 
eighteen miles east, getting there at eleven P. M., and 
found the landlord of the hotel gone to bed, but the 
doors were not locked, and Mr. Wolfe being acquainted 
with the landlord and his ways, looked around until he 
found a room witb three beds in it, two of which were 
unoccupied, and then they turned in. Mr. Wolfe said 
the old man's custom was to go to bed when he felt like 
it, and guests arriving after that time were expected to 
hunt their own beds, then in the morning the old man 
went around to see who had come in .during the night. 
This morning just at daylight he knocked at the door, 
then opened it, and was confronted by Joe, sitting on the 
foot of H 's bed and growling at the intrusion, where- 
upon he hastily retired. H- — told Joe to be quiet, and 
called to the man to come in. When he came in, he 
said: "My gracious, I thought he was a bear sitting on 
the bed, and he does look like one, he's as big and as 
black, and got the white spot in his breast, an' say: Ain't 
he the purtiest dog I ever see? Now, you all git up, and 
wash your faces, for breakfast is most ready." 
After breakfast the hunters started to some old fields, 
which they worked faithfully till noon, but failed to start 
a single feather. H was' disgusted with the long con- 
tinued bad luck, and wanted to go back on the after- 
noon train, but Wolfe said he was so disgusted he wasn't 
going to go home till the night train, so they struck out 
for some fields two and a half miles out east from town. 
A mile out along the railroad track, Mr. Wolfe shot a 
hawk, a short distance out in the woods. The hawk fell 
fluttering into the grass, and near it a quail arose but 
dropped into the grass again a rod away, evidently afraid 
to risk a flight through the open woods. Then Wolfe 
and H stepped out there and flushed a covey, most of 
which flew right over their heads, and went to the 
swamp. It was such an unexpected sort of flight that 
they did not get a bird. One was marked down in the 
open woods, and was soon secured. Several more were 
flushed in the swamp, and two shots fired at them, but 
they got safely away. A further walk of a mile and a 
half brought them to the fields, and there they hunted an 
hour before Joe pointed along a bttle branch fringed with 
bushes. As Wolfe was up in the woods, and H 
thought the birds would go there, he flushed them and 
got one, but instead of flying to the woods they came 
down further up the branch. Wolfe came over, and they 
flushed again, every bird getting up at once, and only L one 
killed, the others going away into a swamp. It was! evi- 
dent that it was not one of the shooting days for either 
Wolfe or H . f Half fan'hour later Joe located another 
covey in open pine woods.. This time two fell, the rest 
as usual going into a swamp. Here a couple of hounds 
joined the hunters, and going into the swamp did good 
work driving the birds out. Two shots and two birds re- 
sulted. Further search after some scattered ones failed 
to find them. Men and dog were very tired by this time, 
and it was near sundown, so they took up the long walk 
to town, had some quail cooked for supper, and arrived 
home at 8.20 P. M. Here, H learned that the rest of 
his party had returned, evidently pretty tired, as they 
had gone to bed at eight o'clock. 
Next morning Billy said: "We hunted every day after 
you left us, and had the usual luck. I got a 250-yard 
shot at a turkey and made him jump, and Bolton got one 
deer, but Mr. T and Gus did not get a shot at any- 
thing. Day before yesterday we broke camp, and start- 
ed the baggage to the railroad, and we stayed all night at 
Bolton's, and walked to the railroad next day. You 
missed an experience by not staying over night at Bol- 
ton's. All three of us had to sleep in one bed. The bed 
was narrow, but the room was only two feet wider than 
the bed. The mattress bad been made of a mixture of 
cotton and tow, but there had been a war between the 
tow and cotton, and they had separated into hard lumps 
of cotton here and lumps of tow there, with large areas 
of neutral ground between them. We had to use some of 
our comforters for covering, and everything about that bed 
was so dirty that we just came away and left the com- 
forters on the bed. Truly, it was a long and miserable 
night, and could have been passed by a pine knot fire in 
the woods with much less misery. The breakfast was so 
abominable, we just went back on it, and started on our 
fifteen mile tramp to the railroad on empty stomachs, 
and a hungry lot we were long before we got there. We 
made the fifteen miles in five horns, and by rushing the 
last mile got there ten minutes before train time. I for- 
got to tell you that Ben Cockroft came to the camp, and 
hunted with us three days and one night undertook to 
show us how to kill deer by torchlight, but a heavy fog 
came up from the gulf, and Ben got to traveling in a cir- 
cle, and coming in sight of some live coals that had 
dropped from the torch, mistook them for deer's eyes, 
and took a shot at them. We can't vote the expedition a 
success, if we reckon it by the amount of game killed, 
but we have had a big time all the same, and feel bene- 
fited generally." 
"What will you do next?" said H . "Going to 
start home to-day," said Billy. "Are you going with us?" 
"Not much," said H . "I've sent for my wife, and 
will meet her at Pensacola. From there we will go sail- 
ing along the coast, picking up shells, ducks, and fish till 
we get tired of it. If we are not satisfied, then, we will 
go to Havana. Won't you go along, boys?" 
They all declined, and H told them if they pre- 
ferred snow and ice to summer and green leaves it was 
all right, but for himself he proposed to stay with the 
summer. O. H. Hampton. 
CONFIDING CHICKADEES. 
I have a friend — not unknown to the world of art and 
literature — who is a keen observer and lover of nature 
withal. He has the migratory instinct so firmly im- 
planted in him that he always comes back to pass the 
summer months- on the old homestead, which he has 
watched over and guarded, that no vandal hand might 
destroy or cut any of the wild things that have beauty, 
rarity or oddity to recommend them to a foothold. He 
has improved on nature by making a woodland path here, 
another there; a fine tennis court beneath the shade of 
giant pines which the "wood hawk," with his eye may 
look at but must not touch. In quiet and shady nooks 
are inviting seats, where one may listen to the flute-like 
evening song of tbe hermit thrush, and hear the whistle 
of the woodcock and the whirr of the ruffled grouse. He 
has set out in congenial situations very many of the rarer 
wild flowering plants and ferns, trees and shrubs, so that 
it has come to be a veritable arboretum, and a list of the 
faunal, floral and scenic attractions would occupy more 
space than I feel at liberty to ask. 
East of the house, and on the easterly edge of the 
garden, stands a pear tree, which at about three feet 
from the ground divides into two trunks or virtual 
branches. One of these trunks was several years ago 
sawn off, leaving the other to become the trunk and bear 
the fruit. Of course, that portion of the main trunk be- 
low the scar became somewhat decayed, and six or seven 
years ago a pair of chicadees excavated for themselves a 
home a few inches below the edge of the scar, and on the 
west side, facing the garden and the house, and com- 
menced housekeeping there, evidently with complete suc- 
cess, for they returned year after year and sent out into 
the cold world their annual quota of fine black-capped 
destroyers of bark infesting pupae. They were always 
very tame'and confiding, permitting the closest examina- 
tion of their domestic affairs. And so everything was 
harmonious and to the complete satisfaction for landlord 
and tenant, until two years ago, when my friend found 
in the spring that a portion of the bark about six inches 
square— the part through which the hole had been cut — 
had been torn away, exposing the interior. 
Now, besides being an artist and a scholar, my friend is 
a very skillful wood carver, and he went to work to repair 
the little home and thus keep the tenant, with the result 
that he very nicely fitted a piece of pine bark into the 
place where the natural bark had been removed; cut a 
hole in the proper place and awaited developments with 
some degree of doubt I imagine. 
To his deHght, however, when the right time came, one 
morning he saw a chicadee fly out of the artificially con- 
structed doorway. Watching a few moments he saw it 
return with its mate, who had building material in his bill. 
Then he knew that they had accepted the situation and 
his kind intentions as well. The interesting story of I the 
chicadee's life was continued through another summer of 
contented prosperity until the young arrived at months 
of discretion, when the whole family became hopelessly 
mixed with the rest of the race in their vacation rambles 
