Dbo, 13, 1896.] 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
471 
you to say." That was an argument that decided the case 
in our favor. The history of Kansas shows that it was 
only by illegal voting — "repeating," as it was called — 
that the Lecompton constitution was adopted; but I can't 
dwell on this. 
A peculiar state of affairs existed. The Territorial 
Legislature was now under a Free State majority, and it 
declared the last election to be fraudulent and ordered the 
Lecompton constitution to be submitted to the people on 
Jan. 4, 1858, which somehow happened to be the same day 
named by the pro-slavery authorities for the election of 
officers under that constitution. 
Said Warren: "This thing has got to be fought out. 
Voting is no use. For every man our side can get here 
from Boston or Chicago the 'Border Ruffians' can pour in 
twenty from Missouri. If Congress admits Kansas in as 
a State, it will be under the Lecompton constitution, 
which permits men to be held as slaves. If we don't vote 
for officers we can claim our. rights and fight for them; 
but if you take part in the election you must abide by it." 
I favored voting and we discussed this in our feeble 
way until Warren said: "Betcher da'sent go up to Law- 
rence and see what Lane says I" We went and found a 
convention in session that was as divided as we were, and 
that Lane had a body of men down near Fort Scott. Col. 
Eldridge told me that Lane was prepared to fight the XJ. 
S. troops if necessary if the Lecompton men called them 
out to assist them, and that he thought it best to vote. 
Again the volcano subsided and a peaceful victory was 
won at the polls, the Free State men winning every office 
under the hated Lecompton constitution. The officers 
elected promptly petitioned Congress not to admit Kansas 
as a State under the present constitution, and the petition 
beinlg granted it put them all out of office from Governor 
down. Times were not dull there at that time. 
Warren sold his second claim and came to live with me. 
Game was plenty, and from the ridge pole away from the 
fireplace there was always a turkey or two, some part of 
a deer and as many prairie chickens as could be used be- 
fore spoUing. Antelope were plenty, but I killed only 
one; we preferred venison. Near the timber rabbits 
abounded, but we rarely shot them. In summer flocks of 
screaming paroquets went swiftly through the woods, but 
boys have been raised there since and have no doubt 
stopped all that. The mourning dove was too common 
for comfort if one was splitting rails in the woods; its 
melancholy note only ceased at night, A graceful species 
of kite sailed over the prairie looking for snakes, and there 
is a doubt if one of these is left. The only snakes I can 
remember seeing was a striped one, perhaps the "garter 
snake," a "blue racer," which I think is a form of our 
common blacksnake, and the small rattlesnake called 
massasauga, which inhabits prairies and seldom exceeds 
2ft. in length. 
Occasionally a train of a dozen wagons would pass our 
cabin going to or from the buffalo ranges and often left 
us a quarter of beef, but neither Warren nor I had any 
desire to go on these hunts. Perhaps it was because 
everybody else went and we did not want for fresh meat. 
We went once, but this yarn is too long to tell about it 
now, perhaps it will keep for a week. In the summer the 
little prairie wolves could be heard running deer or ante- 
lope most every night. No one called them, prairie 
wolves there; they have another name, perhaps Mexican 
or Indian, but people in the East make such a mess of 
pronouncing it that the name ought not to be printed. 
I'll tell you: the name is ki-o-ty, but confound 'em the 
scholars spell it "coyote," and that leads a man to make 
only two syllables of it. He lives in the ground, like a 
fox, and if not as cunning as reynard, is as fleet and tire- 
less, and it is said that he hunts deer in relays, one gang 
resting till the other brings the quarry buck on the circle. 
He doesn't hunt rabbits, just picas 'em up. 
One day Warren came in with" four little pups in his 
coat. I didn't need a "dog" just then, but somebody said 
they were "just the cutest little things this side of the 
Santa Fe trail," and one was left for us. The young c 
grew on a liberal diet of milk and table scraps, but when 
the first setting hen came off with a brood he realized his 
place in nature. He was the fittest and survived. The 
old hen protested, but he ignored the protest and ate her 
as a piece de resistance, to which the chickens had been 
merely an entree. I also protested— with a switch, but 
Lupus could not be made to understand that chickens 
were not the propsr things to eat. At my advanced age 
I don't understand why chickens should not be eaten, and 
yet I tried to force that opinion on my protege, He dis- 
liked discipline in all its abhorrent forms of switch, club 
or boot, and before long, perhaps the time required to set 
several chicks free from their imprisonment in the shell, 
it was apparent that there was an absence of cordiality in 
our intercourse. Lupus was kind to all but me after I 
ut a chain on him and fenced the chickens from his 
omain. He preferred to chew my hand when I set a 
saucer of milk before him and only touched the milk 
when my hand was no longer available as food. Perhaps, 
poor fellow, his epicurean palate longed for live chicken 
and resented the offer of their bones after his master had 
taken the choice parts. Gurth, the swineherd, had some 
such feeling toward Cedric, the Saxon. 
We passed the summer and the corn had nearly passed 
the roasting-ear stage; I had learned to guard myself 
from the carnivorous dentition of Lupus, but one day 
Warren called out: "The cattle are in the cornl" and 
surely they were. 
I was a farmer. Ten acres had been put in sod corn 
and there was a crop. The crop may have been due to 
the richness of the soil— or to my excellent farming, if 
you will. But the fence was down, and half a dozen 
steers and some cows were doing to that corn what Lupus 
did to the chickens, Perhaps they were right, but it was 
no time for argument. I rushed out, and the nearest way 
was past the kennel of Lupus. He was lying quietly 
within until I passed, when he suddenly decided to see if 
my leg might not have a better flavor than my hand, and 
he acted on the impulse of the moment, and took a piece 
of it, just above the boot leg, where I kept a favorite 
muscle well trained for running and another for kicking. 
He tackled the wrong muscle, and the kicking one came 
to the relief of its neighbor and projected a boot under 
his chin with such force that he was a-weary. Other leg 
muscles took up the argument, and somehow the same 
boot that lifted him one under the jaw cracked his 
skull, and his hide was drying on the fence an hour 
afterward. 
I was sorry, very sorry; so was my leg. It was too 
bad to MU the poor o , and it was too bad to kill 
the poor little chickens. I was a brutal fellow, and I 
knew it. 
Warren said: "You stood it longer'n I would. Them 
durned kiotys 's got two kinds o' teeth— one for chickens 
and wild animals and another for human flesh. Betcher 
never try to tame another one. Say, them devils runs 
down a wounded deer or bufflar when they find one, and 
they get him. S'pose we go down on a huffier hunt some 
time. What d'ye say?" Fbed Mather. 
ANGLING NOTES. 
FItz-James Fitch. 
It is quite the fashion to remark on occasions that this 
is a small world after all, but when I learned for the first 
time on the last of November that my friend Judge Fitch 
had died on the 23d of July, this year, at Prattsville, N. 
Y. , I resolved that it was a very large world. 
Judge Fitch was born at Delhi, Delaware county, N. Y., 
in December, 1817, and consequently was seventy-eight 
years and six months old at the time of his death. He was 
County Judge of Greene county for eight years and then 
practiced his profession in New York city for ten years, 
when his health failed, and by the advice of his physician 
he returned to the Oatskill Mountains, for which I have 
always believed that he had an abiding affection because 
of its trout streams. 
Judge Fitch was the highest type of a fly-fisherman, 
and probably there were few more skillful than he in 
fishing a mountain stream where trout were educated 
and scarce. A gentleman of the old school, as we are 
given to saying of those who are courtly, precise, consid- 
erate, and observant of all the little amenities of social 
life, he was withal a loyal friend and charming com- 
panion. For nearly or quite fifty years he kept an accu- 
rate record of all the trout that he caught and all that he 
returned to the water uninjured. He required no 6in. 
law to restrain him in his fishing, for he was a law unto 
himself to basket only a moderate number of trout of 
decent size. If all fishermen were governed by the same 
motives which governed Judge Fitch in all his fishing 
we could do away with the fish laws entirely. He could 
make a fly-rod equal to that of a professional maker, and 
the "Fitch grip" for a fly-rod was his invention. The 
basket strap to be used on the left shoulder with a belt 
around the waist was also his invention, although a tackle 
dealer who made it gave it his own name, and lately I 
have seen it advertised in a London paper by still another 
name, and never was the inventor's name associated with 
it except among his own friends, who knew the circum- 
stances and how it came to be invented, although the 
circumstances have been related in this journal. A few 
years ago this matter of the basket strap was agitated, 
and Judge Fitch sent me a photograph of himself with 
fish basket and strap on left shoulder, taken, as I now 
recall it, in 1850 something. 
Judge Fitch endeared himself to all who came in con- 
tact with him, and his writings upon fly-fishing subjects, 
rod making, etc. , chiefly over the pen name of Fitz, are 
some of the most vigorous and instructive contributions 
to our angling literature, and his death at a ripe old age 
will be mourned by a circle of sincere friends. 
Weight of Sunapee Trout. 
It is no exaggeration to say that during the past two or 
three weeks I have been asked fifty times: "How large 
does the Sunapee trout grow?" This is in consequence of 
the fish being brought to New York State by the Fisheries, 
Game and Forest Commission and planted in Lake George. 
My reply has been: 7 or Sibs. is probably the maximum 
weight, although it has been claimed that they have 
grown to a weight of lOlbs. 
It has been stated in the newspapers that the Sunapee 
trout are found nowhere else in New Hampshire except 
in Sunapee Lake, but this is an error, for they are found 
in Dan Hole Pond in New Hampshire. Whether the fish 
in Dan Hole Pond came originally from Sunapee or are 
native to the pond, as has been claimed, I will not attempt 
to say; but they are there, and I quote from a letter writ- 
ten by Commissioner Wentworth: "Daniels has been to 
Dan Hole Pond to see if he could get eggs of landlocked 
salmon or saibling (the Sunapee trout are called saibling, 
white trout and golden trout by residents in New Hamp- 
shire), and he tells a remarkable story on his return. 
The fish had cast most of their spawn when he arrived, 
but he caught six salmon, the largest 43in. long, and he 
was sure it would weigh 301bs. He got but eight saib- 
ling, but the largest one would weigh ISlbs. Daniels 
found that saibling were in a pond near Dan Hole called 
Coonen Pond." 
The Transfer of Sunapee Trout. 
When I took the State fish car Adirondack to Sunapee 
Lake, New Hampshire, to bring back some of the 
trout from the lake, the adult fish had never been 
transported alive, and no one could tell what they 
would do once they were placed in the cans, even 
if they survived the wagon journey from the hatching 
station to the car, a distance of six miles. The Fish- 
eries, Game and Forest Commission of New York are in- 
debted to the New Hampshire Fisheries Commission 
through its president, Col. Nathaniel Wentworth, and to 
Dr. John D. Quackenbos, that the fish were permitted to 
leave the State to find a nelv home in the waters of New 
York, but the transfer from beginning to end was an ex- 
periment, and I have been asked to give some of the 
details of it. 
The car reached Newbury, at the lower end of Sunapee 
Lake, on the evening of Nov. 6, which was Friday. It 
contained some fingerling brook, brown and lake trout as 
a present to the people of New Hampshire, in exchange 
for the Sunapee fish. The next morning Commissioner 
Hughes took the lake trout to Manchester, and on the 
same train I sent one of the three men on the car to 
Bucksport, Me., to return to the car with some young fish 
from the U. S. Fish Commission. In the afternoon, Col. 
Wentworth having arrived, spawn was taken from the 
Sunapee trout in the tanks at the hatchery near the lake. 
After spawning the fish were greatly exhausted and re- 
mained on their sides in the tanks longer than I wished 
they would before they righted themselves. Grant 
Christie, the captain of the car, was expected back from 
Main© abouc noon of Tuesday, and early that morning 
Dr. Quackenbos furnished a team to transport the fish 
fi'om the tanks to the car, The two men were at the car 
and I had told them to have twenty-five cans of fresh 
water from the lake and the ice-box was refilled early in 
the morning. At the hatchery I had but three ordinary 
fish cans and one barrel to transport the fish. By 9 o'clock 
they were loaded — sixty Sunapee trout weighing from 
IJlbs. to 5lb8. each, two landlocked salmon of 81bs. each 
that had been spawned on Sunday, and one brook trout 
of 4jlbs. Four big saibling, two landlocked salmon and 
the brook trout were to go to Dr. T. H. Bean, director of 
the New York Aquarium; and two saibling of 51bs. each 
were to go to T. W. Fraine in Rochester, to be mounted for 
the Sportsmen's Exposition in Madison Square Garden 
next year. There were reasons why I haa so few cans 
and none of the men from the car to assist in transport- 
ing the flush in safety to the station, but they are not 
necessary to explain here. The start was made so hastily 
that I had to leave my personal baggage at Dr. Quaoken- 
bos's house, to be sent after me to the station. Once on 
the road, I urged the driver to avail himself of every bit 
of fairly good road to make haste. The wagon had no 
springs, and the poor fish, like Br'er Rabbit, had to take 
it. The largest of the fish were in the barrel, with a sack 
tied over the top, and before two miles had been traveled 
it seemed as though every fish had its head out of water 
gasping for oxygen. It was just after a hard rain, and 
the brooks we crossed were high-colored, and I did not 
dare use the water in the cans. At a clear spring, with 
the driver's help, fresh water was furnished to all the 
cans and the barrel, but it did not seem possible to get the 
fish to the car without great loss. Even if they did not 
die outright, I feared they would be so bruised that 
fungus would form, and it would be hard to nurse them 
back to normal condition. At the car the fish were hur- 
ried into cans of fresh water, placing one and two fish 
in a can. The water at the hatchery was 36° Fahr., and 
the water from the lake was 41", and as soon as the fish 
were changed the water was reduced with ice. All the 
fish were alive when they reached the car, but some of 
them were badly bruised. The cans, of which there 
were ninety in the cars, were not large enough for the 
big fish, and they had to be curled up to get them in. 
Christie with his twenty cans of fish did not arrive on 
the noon train, and we had to wait until nearly 5 o'clock 
for the train which would bring him and haul the car 
to Claremont Junction. In icing the water it got down 
to 33°, and while I was at the telegraph office Catchefer, 
one of the men, took out all of the ice and added fresh, 
lake water to two cans containing two big saibling that 
had turned belly up. It did not seem possible that a 
reduction of 3° in the temperature from the hatchery 
water would turn the fish over, especially as only two 
cans were so affected; but when I returned the water was 
brought up to 36° in all the cans. During the afternoon 
the fish turned up more or less, and at once the water was 
turned out and fresh put in, for pumping the water did 
not have the effect that it does with small fish. The big 
fish seemed to exhaust the vitality of the water beyond 
the point where it could be restored by aerating — to ex- 
press it crudely. With fresh water the fish soon righted 
themselves, but all the cans were aerated constantly. We 
pulled out on the afternoon train, having lost one of the 
smaller saibling, and another was very sick; both probab- 
ly having been injured by the larger fish in getting to the 
car, and none of the fish had recovered from spawning. 
At the junction the train on the Connecticut River R. R. 
was an hour and a half late, and had it been on time it 
gave us only ten minutes to be switched to the Rutland 
R, R. in Bellows Falls, and there was nothing to do but 
make the best of it. We could get out at Bellows Falls 
at 11 o'clock on the Boston sleeper, and that we did. 
With Robt. AuUs I took the first watch until 2 A. M,, and 
sent Christie (who had been up all the night before) and 
Catchefer to bed. Going over the mountain to Rutland 
the brook trout turned up, and it was discovered that a 
steam pipe near his can was leaking; but with a can of 
fresh water and some ice he righted himself. We had 
had no steam in the car from the time we struck the 
Boston & Maine R. R, , and it was an agreeable change to 
find it again in the office and stateroom when we struck 
the Rutland R. R., although it was shut off entirely from 
the main part of the car containing the fish. . On 
the trip to New Hampshire the stateroom and of- 
fice bad been partly flooded from the water when 
the train was going up grade at the time the water 
was being changed, and the holes in the car floor 
had clogged. At Rutland we remained in the railroad 
yard until 6:25 o'clock, and therd was a chance for 
two hours' sleep, the fish acting well, although during 
the night first one and then another would turn over, but 
with twenty-five cans of fresh water only one small saib- 
ling was lost. The two large fish for Fraine were killed 
to give the salmon more room in the barrel, from which 
they had not been removed since they left the hatchery, 
except temporarily. The run from Rutland to Lake 
George was made by 9:30 A. M., and then all but the 
aquarium fish were taken from the car, and forty-two 
saibling, half males and half females, were selected for 
planting in the lake. The county of Warren furnished a 
steamer and the fish were taken down to a shoal near 
Diamond Island and released from the cans in good con- 
dition, although on the steamer three fish turned up, but 
righted when fresh water was added. Aerating the water 
did no good beyond a certain point. If the fish came up, 
pumping the water would send them to the bottom of the 
can again, but once they turned over the only thing to do 
was to put in a can of fresh water. We got away from 
Lake George at 11:25 with ten saibling for the Caledonia 
hatchery, half males, half females, and the fish for the 
aquarium all in good order and with plenty of water from 
the lake. While we were sorting the fish in the railroad 
yard previous to planting, both of the salmon and the 
brook trout turned over, but we were used to it by that 
time. We reached Albany at 2 o'clock and found a mes- 
sage from Dr. Bean that he would be up for his fish him- 
self, and had sent me some big cans from the aquarium. 
These were procured from the express office and the fish 
changed, Catchefer remained behind and the car went 
on to Caledonia at 8 o'clock P. M., arriving there at 5 A, 
M. the next day with all the fish in good order. Dr. Bean 
came up at 4:15 arid returned with the fish at 5 o'clock. 
That night he had them in the aquarium tanks. Fungus 
developed on the aquarium fish later, but the Doctor 
writes me that salt-water baths have nearly cured the 
fish of this parasite and that they are now in good con- 
dition. On the outward trip the car was loaded with 
about 10,000 fingerling brook, brown and lake trout, which 
