224 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
March 23, 1895. 
and'told him he wouldn't go again— none of which dis- 
turbed him in the least. He had a dozen new friends by 
the time I caught up with him. 
But to catch up, that was the question. Dr. Powell, of 
the U. S. barracks, at New Orleans, called on me at the 
hotel and said the entire party had started down the 
river on a tramp steamboat, and that the boat had been 
disabled by the breaking of some machinery off Point 
LaHache, tire miles down stream He had left the boat 
there and gone ashore and thence returned to the city by 
rail. He didn't know where the others were. Possibly 
sunk and drowned. If I could get to Quarantine and 
find Dr. Fred C. Mayer there, I could learn where the 
party had gone. 
This was Saturday. No boat down the river. Quaran- 
tine about thirty mile* below the en\ of the longest rail- 
road running down the river; party beyond Quarantine 
somewhere. Meantime, a ray of hope in the way of a 
telegram from Mr. Divine at Quarantine, telling me to 
take the New Orleans Southern train that evening at 5 
o'clock. 
The New Orleans Southern train runs down the east 
bank of the river about forty miles, and stops at La 
Hache. The Grand Isle road runs down the west side of 
the river about sixty-five miles, and stops. The trains 
start at about the same time on the opposite side of the 
river. Mr. Divine should have told me to take the Grand 
Isle, but he would have spoiled a pretty comedy of errors 
if he had, so I was glad he didn't. I followed copy, and 
bought a ticket for La Hache, on the east, or "sugar 
side" of the river. 
THE NEW ORLEANS HUNTERS' SPECIAL. 
That Saturday night train out of New Orleans is a sub- 
ject for a magazine article There is nothing odder in all 
the world. The passengers are all hunters, and such 
hunters! The guns have barrels five feet long. There are 
no canvas hunting coats, but great net game bags, of a 
pattern of a hundred years ago. These game bags bulge 
out with loaves of bread, bottles of wine, powder flasks, all 
the necessities of the chasse. Everybody speaks French; 
everybody blows a duck call. The train goes clown 
through the sugar plantations slowly, pausing long at 
villas of French names to let in or off some laborers or 
perhaps one or two planters; therefore, in due course, say 
bv 9 o'clock, everybody gets very drunk and disorderly, 
but in a friendly, good-natured way, at which no one 
could take offense. It is all very odd— odder than any- 
thing I have ever seen connected with American hunt- 
ing. But, thank fortune! everybody was very dirty and 
disreputable, so I felt quite comfortable again in my 
costume and peacefully scraped away cleaning: my 
bear's skull in the dirtiest railroad car I ever saw any 
where on earth. 
It is a great country, this America, and here we were 
only in another part of it, though so strange that to the 
Northern mau it would seem like another land and in 
another age into which he has fallen. 
At Point La Hache, this singular railroad train at 
length came to a final stop at midnight. The Sunday 
duck-hunters all lumbered off in the dark, drunk and 
merry. I found there was a sort of inn, and at length 
started for it in company with its landlord, who was hav- 
ing a few hours' chat with a friend at the station. No 
boat down that night. Quarantine! Ah. unfortunate, 
sad! Monsieur has taken the wrong side of the river. It 
is the Grand Isle road, not the Shell Beach, that one 
needs. No train south on the Grand Isle to-night; un- 
fortunate, sad. But in the morning the train goes suuth, 
and one can ferry over the river by the skiff of Manuel, 
its boatman; and. one can, of course, have bed and break- 
fast. 
THE INN AT POINTE LA HACHE. 
Yes, very good bed and a very good breakfast I had, 
too, the latter of a Creole sort of cookery new to a 
Northern man. I crossed the road to the family house 
for breakfast, and the young landlord's mother was feed- 
ing a tramp when I gob there. The walk led through a 
bed of roses. The air of the morning was soft and 
warm. Xt was all as a different world to the barbarian 
from the north But this good old Southern lady can do 
wondrous things with chickens and rice and peppers; 
and there was such coffee! And were there not odd 
colored prints, pictures of the Saints upon the wall and 
two nice demoiselles to bring more chicken, rice and 
peppers, and to be informed of the North, where ice 
grows upon the rivers and there are no roses in Novem- 
ber! And still there are those who think it all of hunting 
to hunt! 
Manuel, the boatman, for 20 cents in hand to him paid, 
rowed me across the Mississippi, the same stream across 
which one can kill a duck in Minnesota, but which here 
is a steady rolling sea, tainted with the sale of the gulf 
below... The mathematical green blocks of the sugar 
cane country gave place to the mathematical green rows 
of the Orange country. Here I got my Grand Isle train 
about noon on Sunday, but after many stops at orange 
plantations I found that twenty-five miles was all I could 
get out of it. But I landed at another country inn, and in 
time for a good mid-day meal, so I felt that all was still 
well. I was within twenty-five or thirty miles of Quar- 
antine, and my friends couldn't be more than that much 
beyond it. 
DOWN THE RIVER. 
This inn I found to be an adjunct of a country store, 
where they sold such goods as the 'Cajuns use— cotton 
goods, whiskey, powder and shot, steel-traps anu flannel. 
The room was full of 'Cajuns, some very pleasantly 
drunk. Among these the landlord sought diligently to get 
me a man to sail me down the river to Quarantine, I 
having announced that I could not wait, which seemed 
a very strange and indigestible fact to him, who probably 
hadn't seen anybody in a hurry for a long time before. 
One man could go in the morning; another suggested 
that a willow boat would be going clown to the jetties 
that evening or in the morning; another would go if he 
had a boat; another thought it quite far, yes. And it 
was coming on cold, very cold (about Fourth of July 
weather for Chicago) . 
At length the obliging landlord told me that about 
three miles down the river livsd one Albert Barroner, a 
river fisherman and hunter, who would perhaps take me 
down to Quarantine. If I liked to try, I could have his 
horse and wagon to go down and see Barroner. This was 
good, J resolved to face toward Quarantine and not 
come back, no matter what Albert Barroner or "Albare 
Bow-wow," the nigger driver I had accumulated, called 
him. might happen to say about it. 
My nigger talked French, and it seemed to me a very 
strange, weird, unnatural thing for a coal black nigger 
to talk French, so that every time he began I felt like 
getting down out of the wagbn. The horse talked noth- 
ing but French also, and didn't understand that very 
well. The nigger told me that he was in a awful big 
hurry, as he wanted to get back and attend a funeral. I 
explained to him that I didn't want to deprive him of a 
pleasure, and didn't care how fast he drove if the horse 
didn't. So we went on toward Quarantine. Went on until 
the wagon broke down, with Albare Bow-bow's house 
not yet attained. I shouldered my bag and started ahead 
on foot, leaving the French-American-Africanj to get 
back to his funeral. 
VIA M. BOW-WOW. 
Albare Bow-wow I found to be an old. gray, weather- 
beaten man, who spoke weather-beaten French and no 
English. He would take me down to Quarantine, 
twenty-five miles down the river, for three silver dollars, 
but alas! his boat was across the river. His son needed a 
pair of shoes, and had gone across to get them. Would 
Monsieur come in and have a cup of coffee while the 
matter was brought into consideration? So I accepted 
the simple hospitality, and evolved the deep proposition 
that maybe Mr, Bow-wow could borrow a boat of his 
neighbor and sail over the river and exchange boats with 
the young man who was in need of the pair of shoes. To 
this Albare could find no serious objection. In less than 
an hour and a half he had borrowed a boat; in less than 
two hours he had said good-bye to his wrinkled old wife 
and his Evangeline of a daughter, had girded up his thm 
jacket, taken in hand a piece of bread and plenteous to- 
bacco, and were off! In mid-stream we met the other boat 
coming back. Making the exchange, Albare headed 
down stream, we spread our ragged brown lateen sail, 
and went foaming down the mid-current of the Missis- 
sippi in the last of the many sorts of locomotion that had 
proved needful in the qaest for Quarantine, It was 4 
o'clock in the afternoon when we started. Albare said if 
the wind held we should make Quarantine in three hours, 
But the wind didn't hold, It never does when you want 
to go anywhere by sailing boat. It shifted and lulled 
and died away at sundown. The air became very 
the Mississippi. And here I found the oddest and the 
most comfortable camp I ever lived in in my life. 
IN CAMP ON DEAD MAN'S BAYOU. 
There were two great wall-tents, each about 20x25 feet 
pitched on the bank at the edge of the bayou. The 
highest land was only about two feet or so out of water 
at high tide. In every direction the marsh stretched, 
even, uniform, perfectly level, cut up by myriads of pond 
holes and passes and channels. There were no trees, no 
wood and no water— for the water here was all salt. All 
the cooking here was done on a charcoal furnace, and 
the drinking water came out of a barrel. 
All the vast luggage of this camp had been brought on 
from New Orleans, where it is the property of a little 
club of gentlemen , of which our hosts, Mr. Divine and 
Mr. Foster, are members. There were to have been 
several other gentlemen with us, but they failed, so only 
we four had the whole camp, which evidently wasn't 
planned on the small and lonesome style. There were 
barrels of vegetables and tinned goods, sacks of charcoal, 
cots, trunks, nails in the tent poles, and all that sort of 
thing. We had two colored servants— and better ones no 
man ever had— Jim the cook, and George the table 
servant and butler in chief. We had a schooner of 
thirty odd feet length, a captain and four men who were 
to serve as paddlers.' And at the bank lay four pirogues, 
or native boats. Certainly we had all the requirements 
for absolute happiness, from a camper's standpoint of 
luxury. And as we lay on the cots in the big house tent, 
which was filled knee-deep with a fragrant grass which 
grows along these shores, we figured it all out that we 
were the four happiest men in all the whole wide world. 
NITRO COFFEE. 
In the morning we tried a casting net from the stern of 
the lugger and caught some fresh mullet, that multitud- 
inous and obliging sea fish, whose object in life seems to 
be caught and devoured by all things. We had birds and 
shellfish and mullet and omelets, and I know not what all. 
And such coffee as that nigger man Jim did make! It 
was the genuine French drip. Alas! we found it to be 
nitro coffee, and that you didn't want so much of it to do 
as of the common sort. Jim served it in big cups, and 
nearly ruined our digestion, albeit we felt very good at 
first. 
ACADIE BY THE SEA. 
But there will be many who will be wanting to know 
AMONG THE WILDFOWL. 
"In the Battery." 
cold, and I was fain put on my hunting clothes again 
Albare took to the oars, and he being an old man 
seventy-five at least, I should say, I was ashamed to see 
him row, an so I did most of it myself. Seven o'clock 
came and eight o'clock, and it was black on the river, 
and every red steamer light we saw we thought was the 
light at Quarantine. But at length we did make Quaran- 
tine, after thirty hours of as wierd travel as I ever did. 
QUARANTINE AT LAST. 
There was a light at Dr. Mayer's house, and toward this 
I made, hearing as I approached, a sound of revelry by 
nio-ht, with a sinking of the heart as I thought again of 
my corduroys, buckskin shirt and paralyzed hat. I 
knocked, and a flood of light burst forth. There, just 
finishing an elegant dinner and all dressed in the best 
clothes they had, sat Tom Divine, Roll Organ, Mr. Foster. 
No one recognized me till I stepped in, when, seeing they 
were not ordered to throw up their hands, the diners 
looked more closely at the stranger. Then there was a 
big yell and I was much mixed up with a lot of them, and 
they wanted to know where I came from and all that. 
Then they introduced me to Mr. Mayer, the health officer 
at Quarantine, who, with the tact of a true host, con- 
vinced me that my clothes didn't matter, and that the 
best thing I could do was to sit down and eat something. 
There were also present Mr. Parmalee and Mr. Johnson, 
of New York City, and Mr. Jewell, of New Orleans, who 
were on a hunting trip down in that country. 
It was well in the evening when Dr. Mayer's insistence 
as host allowed departure. At that time I had persuaded 
the partv that Ave really had killed three bears up m the 
Mississippi, offering in proof the skull of the one that I 
had with me, now much improved by the cleaning on 
the Shell Beach railway car. We now embarked in a 
schooner or lugger, which it seemed was part ot our 
camp outfit, and hoisting the big boomless lateen which 
all the luggers of that region have, we calmly swam 
away to our camp on Dead Man's bayou, one of the 
thousand cut-offs which cross the marsh of the mouth ot 
all about the shooting, how much game there is and how 1 
to get at it the quickest way. For these, some words I 
descriptive of the conditions of the" country will not be ] 
out of place. 
There is a vast strip of country lying on each side and J 
back from the mouths of the Mississippi; indeed, one I 
might say, covering the whole coast of Louisiana, which I 
is natural wintering ground for the wild fowl. This has I 
long been shot over by the Acadian market shooters, who I 
know small law themselves, and have come to look on J 
that region as their natural heritage. Born on the marsh, I 
with the tide almost washing their doorsteps as it rustles i 
through the endless sea of rushes, sometimes in the great 
storms losing all they have— houses, cattle flocks, indeed, 
even families at times — thej r seem a natural complement 
and outgrowth of a desolate, monotonous and little 
known land. It is the exception for one of them ever to 
leave the region where he is born. Hardly one out of< 
dozens of them can sign his own name. Nowhere in 
America is there a class of population more densely igno- 
rant or more ignorantly conservative. The ways of the 
fathers are the ways of the sons. The daughters wear 
the costumes of their mothers' mothers. As a people, the 
'Cajuns are very simple, for they live in communities so 
simple that straight conduct is a necessity. The men are 
fairly honest, but hot-blooded and often quarrelsome, the 
favorite weapon of the coast 'Cajuns being the knife. 
One of our paddlers had a fine deep scar across the face, 
where his own brother had stabbed him with a knife ;> 
and Tom, one of our men, said proudly of his brother-in- 
law Emilien, the best paddler we had, that he was "a' 
very bad man. If you dared him to cut off your hand, he 
would cut it off." So they seem to have some sort of a 
code among them. 
By market shooting or trapping these men x^ake a dol- 
lar or a dollar and a half a day. To do this they have to 
work hard, getting bodily out into the greasy sea mud, 
waist deep, and pushing their pirogues into the rpmote 
pockets of the marsh where the mallards go. All the land, 
about the mouth of the river belongs or did belong to the 
