Mabch 27, 1897.] 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
243 
city of the dead, west of Eichmond. David Bullock Harris 
was a distinguished graduate of "West Point Mlitary Acad- 
emy, possessing virtues and talents of the highest order. He 
was engaged in civil pursuits, where he was amassing wealth, 
but although he was opposed to secession, when his native 
State called her sons to arms he left all and entered the 
"tented field." He served with great distinction as an en- 
gineer officer, and was the man who had the maguiiiceiit 
fortifications constructed at Charleston which defied the 
Union forces by land and sea until Sherman came up in the 
rear. In 1864 he was promoted to the rank of brigadier or 
major-general and sent to take command at Charleston, but 
was immediately seized with yellow fever and died. 
And thus I might go on and give the names of others, 
women as well as men, citizens of this little county, who 
attained eminence, and made their mark on the world's 
progress, but I will content myself with one other instance, 
and that from the gentler sex. 
Not far from my summer residence in this county, and 
upon an old colonial road called the "Three Chop" road, a 
patch of briars and an old chimney alone remain to iadicate 
that a dwelling once stood there. Here there dwelt in 
former days a tavern keeper, who had a little daughter, a 
bright and attra.ctive child, upon whom he lavished his love. 
She became a gifted and accomplished woman, and in the 
course of time met Mr. James Madison, then Minister to 
France. He addressed her and she became his wife, and 
when he afterward became the president of this republic she 
was for eight years the mistress of the White House, and all 
contemporaneous writers agree that, being possessed of an 
attractive person, a cultivated mind and exceeding grace and 
charm of manner, she fascinated all who came within her 
reach. Such is the brief story of little Dolly Payne. 
And so this beautiful valley and lovely river is not only 
dear to us for the happy hours we have spent in hunting 
along its banks and fishing in its waters, but for. its nobler 
associations Our past is not a "dead past," as some would 
have yon believe; but it is a storehouse rich in examples of 
all that is loftiest and best in human nature, from which we 
may draw inspiration to meet the conflicts and vicissitudes 
of life, which inevitably lie before us, with strength and 
"courage. M., of Northside, Va. 
IN IDAHO MOUNTAINS.— II. 
(jOonlimied from page M ) 
Theee were other appearances of that bear which Jim 
and I had abandoned at the willow jungle, as told in your 
issue of Feb. 20, and this paper is to touch on one or two of 
them; but in the first place 1 am tempted to relate an even- 
ing's experience with elk which had some especially pictur- 
esque incidents. 
The mountain soutli of camp was lofty and precipitous. 
■ Its shoulders were grown deep with rich pasturage and 
sparsely timbered. Its top a park-like mesa with scattered 
timber. Deep gulches seamed the face it presented to the 
river, and here the shelter and lingering moisture favored a 
heavy growth of both timber and undea brush. This shade 
drew most of the life on the mountain as refuge from the 
midday sun, Kell, Jim and I ventured into the deepest of 
these draws one afternoon about 4. I am not aware that 
we had any verj^ definite pm-pose. The spot was wild and 
interesting in itself j it was tracked and marked with signs 
of varied wild life; it was dark already with the shadow of 
its western edge. There was mystery and uncertainty at 
every advancing step. Here was uncorrupted primeval na- 
ture. It would have fitted ray mood perfectly to have left 
om* rifles at camp, but we didn't. The habit of being pre- 
pared to kill is viciously persistent when once acquu-ed ; and 
few there are, in my experience, who put it aside for the 
more rational pleasures of quietly walking as an animal dis- 
posed to be friendly among other animals of equalljr kind 
disposition; but, as I say, we had our rifles — Jim's, a single- 
shot, rusted gun, with a cartridge of indefinite age in its 
barrel; mine, an orthodox Winchester, heavy as a sky- 
scraper. 
We proceeded quietly along the game trails, stopping oc- 
casionally to unlimber a rubber drinking cup and wash out 
our mouths, dried in that parching air. 
A Steller's jay, I remember, found us out and was greatly 
.amused at our appearance; at least his voice seemed to 
iaugh and his bearing was certainly gay. The plain, un- 
crested, gray jays were there too, bearins the air of tramps 
and mendicants, as they always do. Not that the Rocky 
Mountain jay is ever less than a jay — and that always means 
a certain briskness and debonair air — but they, like our own 
■• Canada jay, are the poor relatives, with serious temper and 
earthy ambitions, as compared with others of the family — 
about the diflEerence that marks the Chinaman from the 
Frenchman. 
Bruin too was about — not visible, but signs of his house- 
keeping were frequent. At one spot lay in the path two or 
three quarts of service berries, with which some youthful 
stomach had been overloaded. 
As we approached the summit, elk sign was fresh and 
plentiful. It was hardly a surprise, therefore, when a well- 
antlered bull lumbered up from his lair and, obeying the in- 
exorable law of his nature, broke away up the hill. A snap 
shot or two, and he was gone to the eye, but present to the 
ear in a long train of fading crashes through the timber. 
Nell was after him like a flash, yelping like a gatling gun. 
A crimsoned leaf found in the path of the flight placed on 
us the duty of following to the death, despite the lateness of 
the hour. When we had made our labored way to the crest 
of the mountain, Nell's faint barking, now intermittent, told 
of the stag at bay ; not for long, however, for almost at once 
the elk turned again from his pigmy pursuer, and this time 
stopped not, but passed out of hearing for good. In the 
meantime the sun was down, the moon was up, we were 
some miles from home. We turned down the bed of a small 
stream into a ravine other than the one from which we had 
just come and started for home. Nell joined us shortly. 
Suddenly from directly behind us there came the sharp 
challenge from an elk's whistle. This was taken np and 
answered from across the gulch. Again it sounded from 
behind us and nearer. It was a chance quickly seized by 
•Jim. Prom somewhere out of his ungainly face there came 
the voice and the language of a belligerent, defiant, love-lorn 
elk. In instant answer came rei)ly from the hillside above 
us, and now so near that his footsteps were audible. Then 
silence, and in the darkness above the fancy pictured that 
stalwart, proud figure, listening like a knight of old for the 
summons which might tell him exactly the location of his 
rival. Again Jim sent up his treacherous challenge, at the 
same time cautioning me to be ready and shoot on the count 
of th.ree when the elk appeared. This time no answer came, 
but a plunge and a clatter, and then there stood before us in 
the moonlight, his silhouette set into the western sky line, 
this bristling champion. ' 
The rest of the story is one of shame, and should be quick- 
ly told. At the count of three we fired point blank, with 
no sights visible in the darkness. I felt like a midnight 
assassin when that gallant figure rolled almost to my feet, 
stone dead. His head I have, and I suppose when the ques- 
tion Is asked I still say in cheap sportsman pride, "I shot it;" 
but 1 am glad of the poor satisfaction of knowing that the 
bullet we dug from that hody does not and never could fit 
my gun. 
Our experiences with bruin were of a desultory and incon- 
sequent kind for some days after the first meeting. Once 
the Major had brought him out of cover for a hurried recon- 
noissance by mistaking his movements in the hemlock for 
those of a little band of elk, known to be near; but he van- 
ished as quickly as a seal's head in a smooth sea— it was a 
trick he had. But there came a day when he multiplied 
himself by seven and showed up at all points of the compass 
at once. It was this wise. 
The rascal, Time, had taken frorii the Major the activity 
of youth. He was burdened with those leaden pounds 
which weigh down too often the sporting spirit of fifty and 
over, and so handicapped the Major had"missed his share of 
the game. To set the scales even, a game drive was deter- 
mined on, of which the Major was to be the sole beneficiary. 
Conditions favored the plan. A broad, open gulch seamed 
the mountain from foot to crest on a line which bisected, or 
nearly so, a great stretch of timber. Game traveled back 
and forth from cover to cover across this space. The eye of 
a man placed here could have within its field everything 
which attempted the passage. The Major was accordingly 
seated in comfort at a point of vantage. His spectacles were 
fresh dusted for the doings of that day ; his rifle cleaned and 
recleaned; his field glasses drawn and placed by his side. 
So was he left, like the dauiitle(?s band at Thermopyla;, to 
hold his pass. Jim, the cook and myself started on our de- 
tour to get on to the mountain side a mile below. The plan 
was for Jim to take the bottom, the cook the middle and 
myself the top. Then to advance toward the Major's posi- 
tion, storming like Populists. 
We did that very thing. We had that hillside moving 
like a Roman chariot race inside of five minutes. Elk, 
coyotes, red deer, blacktails, owls, bears got up and dusted 
from that bedlam like fire horses when the button is pressed. 
-Jim's Sioux war whoop almost stampeded me, and as vari- 
ous beasts passed me they carried their ears and eyes cocked 
back toward those awful screeches. I escaped being 
tramped to death, and at length reached the extreme upper 
end of the Major's gulch. 
Now it came to pass that on three occasions during the 
progress of our tantrums back in the cover the Major had 
indulged in clusters of from two to five shots, so that now 
that 1 was through my part of the work I hurried to see the 
results to show therefor. When I came within eyesight of 
the Major's countenance I beheld almost a stranger. A man 
stood before me who clearly had passed through impressive 
experiences. I should think any man might carry a similar 
expression who had suddenly lost his mother and simultane- 
ously seen the ghost of Julius CEesar. I called from afar: 
"Major, what did you get?" He took ofl: his glasses, slowly 
wiped them, and made no answer. The query was repeated ; 
still no reply. I was now almost at his side. He slowly 
arose to his full stature and still in partial trance; addressing 
his own thoughts as much as me, he said, "I have had an 
elceedingly interesting afternoon." I made no further effort 
to force his story, but moved with him down to where the 
ponies were tethered. Slowly the Major began to note his 
surroundings, and finally sat down on a stump, repeating his 
former remark, "I have had a most extraordinary after- 
noon." This time it was a prelude to a connected recital of 
the happenings of the afternoon : 
"1 was lying on my side, facing your direction, when a 
pebble rolled by me, coming from behind. I turned my 
head and looked into the face of our bear. He stood about 
50yds. off, looking at me. I took careful aim at his neck 
and fired. He vanished behind a log. I was sure of my 
aim and felt that I had my bear. So sure was I that I cir- 
cled around, scanning with my glasses every possible hit of 
near cover. No bear was ready to be skinned, so far as I 
could see. So finally I decided to close in, and bethought 
me that I must lower my sights for closer shooting. When 
I started to do so, I found that they were sighted at 300yds. 
I had of course overshot ; but I dropped them nevertheless, 
and followed on in a forlorn hope of another glimpse. Not 
a sign, and I returned to my lookout almost blind with dis- 
gust. While still in this mood there appeared in the edge 
of the woods opposite another bear, followed by a second 
and a third — an old cinnamon and two cubs. Everything 
was forgotten in the new excitement. I drew on the old one 
and fired, a second, a third shot, before they cut for shelter. 
Each shot fell short and stirred the dirt under them." At 
this point the Major almost sobbed as he added: "I had left 
my sights at SOyds. and I was shooting nearer 300." 
We waited in symijathetic silence for him to resume and 
tell us where he had buried the three shots still unaccounted 
for. He turned to me: "A few moments before you came 
out on the path you were following there appeared three of 
the scaredest bears that ever ate berries — again an old bear 
and cubs. She hesitated a moment, and then turned down 
the steep, wet bed of the half dry rivulet. Her cubs fol- 
lowed ; none of them could keep their footing. In tandem 
style they half slid, half fell the 20ft, or so which brought 
them to secure footing. To keep them in view, I jumped a 
little hollow and emerged into full view. My rifle was at 
my shoulder before I found that the jar of the jump had 
loosened and jolted from its frame the right glass of my 
spectacles. My sighting eye could no longer tell a rifle sight 
from a cholera germ. My left eye witnessed and reported to 
me the progress of that flock of bears on to cover. I fired, of 
course, and possibly hit one of the Tetons. I shifted to use 
my left eye, and finally coaxed a cartridge to explode by a 
left-handed shot I felt as congenial to tbe attempt as John 
Milton might trying to write "Peck's Bad Boy.' " 
The Major confided to me at a later day that on the night 
following he had dreamed that his sleeping bag was a stock 
yard, occupied by some thousands of bears, whose skins he 
had contracted to turn into rugs. Not a bear could he catch 
or shoot, and he was awakened finally when on the point of 
being trampled to death under the.se 10,000 plantigrades. 
Some sporting recollections grow vivid with time. Until 
I am afloat on the Styx I shall bear with me this unfading 
picture : An ardent sportsman, out of luck, sitting expectant 
and hopeful where possibly his fortune might turn. His 
chances fortified with field-glasses, eye- glasses, and three 
beaters carrying a Sioux war whoop. Then bombarded with 
bears, his pet game, as June buss bombard a street light ; 
fairly put to it to keep from underfoot; the spectacle infused 
with a touch of vaudeville in the shape of an ursine ballet 
down a wet slide; he meantime seizing each chance to shoot, 
with dghts just a bear behind, until at last, and after a half 
century of practice right-handed, he fights three bears with a 
left-handed rifle and a left handed eye-glass. TwrsTKiiE, 
RECOLLECTIONS OF lOWA.-HL 
"Work, feed thyself, to thine own powers appeal. 
Nor whine out woes thlue own right hand can heal." 
Labor's pathfinders were these frontiersmen. May the 
blessings of a grateful nation forever rest upon them! The 
unwritten histoey of their toils and trials, their joys and sor- 
rows, their disappointments and successess, would fill all 
hearts with admiration, sympathy and thankfulness; admir- 
ation for their courage, sympathy for their distresses, and 
thankfulness for the sacrifices they made for the genera- 
tions to come. And yet, though unwritten, that history is 
not wholly lost. Like the Icelandic sagas, these tales are 
handed down from generation to generation, and let us hope 
that they will continue to be handed down as long as such 
examples "allure to brighter worlds, and lead the way." 
"No age hath been, since nature first began 
To work Jove's wonders, but hath left behind 
Some deeds of praise for mirrors unto man." 
And the deeds of praise left behind by the American fron- 
tiersman have done more in our nation's great school than 
all else combined to gain for our country the enviable posi- 
tion it now occupies in the great family of nations that con- 
trols the world and moulds its progress. 
They taught themselves and their children to labor and 
love mankind. Energy, honor, integrity and purity of char- 
acter were the indexes to their lives. While generous, they 
were exacting. To be a man or woman among them meant 
labor, labor, labor. While the nien hunted and tilled the 
soil the women spun, and wove, and rocked the cradle. 
They worked in happy harmony, and in joyful chorus sang: 
"We never know want, for we live by our labor. 
And in it contentment and happiness find." 
Old Pete was the best horse I ever knew. He was a 
powerfully built roan, full of energy, and was never known 
to balk. Pete laid the foundation of father's competency. 
He was there when I arrived, and for twenty years after- 
ward. Father hauled flour from Oskalooaa, seventy five or 
eighty miles down the Des Moines, to Sioux City, more than 
100 miles west of us on the Missouri. He drove three horses, 
two on the wheel, and old Pete on the lead; and Ben Ben- 
nett used to tell some rather remarkable stories about father 
and old Pete. There were no roads to speak of, and there 
were innumerable bottomless swales and mudholes on father's 
route. As a natural consequence father was stuck most of 
the time. Ben said that he had watched father get out of 
these holes a good many times down on the Walnut Creek 
bottoms, where he lived. He said that when father found 
that he was stuck good and fast he would unhitch all the 
horses, put old Pete out on hard grovmd, tie a rope around 
his neck, run the rope back between Pete's legs and make it 
fast to the end of the wagon-tongue, and give Pete the word. 
Doubtless if Ben was telling the story in these days of the 
kodack, he would simply say that father touched the button 
and Pete did the rest. 
Now while Ben was a good citizen, and a hard-working, 
industrious man, and with all due respect for his reputation 
for truth and veracity (which was not ordinarily regarded as 
the best), and his desire to pay a high compliment to Pete's 
energy and integrity, the undeniable facts were that when 
father got stuck he had to follow the good old plan of toting 
the flour out on his back, and reloading it after the empty- 
wagon had been pulled out; and there is every reason for be- 
lieving that if there had been any such thing in those days 
as a good roads club, father would have been a charter 
member. But time and toil did their work, and Pete be- 
came broken down, blind and helpless. Even then it was 
truly pitiful to see the old-time, unconquerable energy and 
ambition of Pete's nature manifest themselves. He would 
try to appear "just as young as he used to be," and hurt 
himself against the fence or shed. Father dug a grave up 
in the orchard, led poor old Pete into it, put his arms around 
his neck, bade him an affectionate farewell and shot him. 
When father turned away he remarked: "There lies the 
truest piece of horseflesh God ever made, peace to his ashes!" 
Of course we all felt as if some member of the family had 
died, but then that was a long time ago; and now old Pete, 
with all his good qualities, is only a fading memory, - and 
with the passing of the present generation even that will be 
forgotten. ' ' 'We bury love, and f orgetf ulness grows over it 
like grass." 
Of coiirse father always carried his rifle with him on these 
long, lonesome trips. A pioneer without his rifle with him 
was not a pioneer. I have known them to even take their 
rifles to church with them. A pioneer and his rifle were as 
inseparable as is a Comanche Indian and his horse. You 
know that if. a Comanche wants to go a mile on business he 
will ride if he has to go five miles to catch his horse. 
Father would always stop to see us both going and coming 
on these trips. We were a kind of halfway house, and so he 
always kept us well provided with game, particularly veni- 
son, turkeys and chickens. 
I did not appreciate then, neither can I find words to ex- 
press now, the lonely, dark hours mother outlived during 
these trying days of the early frontier life. Left for days 
and even weeks without the protecting arm or comforting 
influence of her husband, with her father, mother, sisters 
and brothers beyond the plains and mountains, with two, and 
later three, four and five little children at her apron string, 
subject to all the infantile aches, pains and diseases, without 
medical assistance, without experience or sympathy — left 
alone "to watch and weep and pray for all." Then add the 
fact that the country was infested with Indians and ravenous 
wild animals, and mother's lot seems to have been hard in- 
deed. Well do I remember the tears and sori'ow that she 
tried in vain to hide. And so I feel constrained to say that 
the pioneer mother's love was — 
"The love of many prayers and many tears. 
Which changes not with dim declining years," 
Panther Creek, a tributary of South 'Coon, just west of us 
a few roiles, was the scene of many of my boyish hunting 
exploits. About all the trapping I ever did, too, was on this 
stream. It was the outlet of Pilot Lake in the northwest 
corner of the county, and was a favorite resort of otter and 
mink. Billy Ludington and I had a great deal of sport 
