404 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
PSTOT. 20, 1897. 
the corapaBS to determine the cardinal points while following 
their line of direction ; or when the compass itself is not 
used, by locating the cardinal points by the many signs of 
the bush, which 1 will treat of later on. The latitude and 
longitude come into play by the ability to calculate the direc- 
tion and distance from one locality to others; purely a men- 
tal operation, learned by experience and observation, some 
learning much sooner than others and becoming experts in a 
short time, while others never make progress in estimating 
distance and direction. This faculty is often developed to a 
high degree in birds and animals, being called a sixth 
sense. 
In the woods it is often found to be the case that, while 
the sense of direction is found to be all right, and a clear 
conception exists of distance and direction between one local- 
ity and another, one is unable to lay out and follow a course 
of even one mile, unless with the assistance of the compass, 
without losing all trace of the cardinal points, and thus being 
unable to reach a locality whose direction and distance were 
known at starting, and would yet be clear if north, south, 
east and west were not so hard to find and locate. My obser- 
vation during over thirty years, which has furnished me with 
considerable hunting every year, together with the ideas of 
many older and more experienced bushmen with whom it 
has been my good fortune to be acquainted, make it within 
the bounds of reason to say that, among the many men who 
go into the bush only for a few days annually, not more than 
one out of every ten can lay out a course in a strange bush, 
and follow it even for one mile, without the aid of a com- 
pass, while even then the sun may be shining full in their 
faces. And not over one in a hundred can lay out a course 
in an unknown bush and accurately follow it during a storm 
or when the sky is dark with heavy clouds that obscure the 
sun, unless provided with a compass. And yet in these very 
cases, when the cardinal points were hopelessly lost, the 
sense of direction had not been interfered with. The mis- 
guided wanderer well knows the direction he should go, but 
lacks the ability to locate the cardinal points without the 
compass to assist him. 
Nature's Compass Signs. 
The many different methods to determine the cardinal 
points while on the mountains, in both heavy timber and 
small bush, or upon the featureless expanse of a great marsh, 
are exceedingly numerous and reliable enough for all practi- 
cal purposes during an every-day life in the bush, unless a 
very long journey is to be made which would require a num- 
ber of days, and would make it necessary to hold on a very 
fine point while making so long a distance. 
My observations are the result of over thirty years experi- 
ence, which, added to the notes taken among the French- 
Canadian hunters and woods Indiana of the Northeast 
Provinces, the lumbermen, hunters and guides of Maine, the 
hunters, Crackers and marsh rats of Georgia and Florida, 
make quite a collection of matter on this subject. 
Only those which have proved reliable and practical for 
use during an every day life in the bush under ordinary cir- 
cumstances, when trouble to locate the cardinal points was 
the chief cause of complaint, need be dealt with in detail. 
Only the wanderer, who has been caught far away in the 
big woods miles from camp with night coming on, the sky of 
leaden hue, and with seemingly no possible way of laying a 
course, can appreciate the feelings of those who have been 
there. Nature's compass is so large, that while those who 
love the sweet odors and music of the woods can find it 
everywhere, to handle the subject we will be obliged to 
divide and examine sectionally. 
Trees and their Lansruage. 
We will first take notes on the coniferous trees, pines, firs, 
spruce, cedars, hemlocks, etc. The bark of these is always 
lighter in color, harder and dryer on the south side of the 
trees; while it is in color much darker, is also damper, and 
often covered with mould and moss on the north side. The 
gum that oozes out from wounds, knot holes, etc., is usually 
hard and often of beautiful amber color on the south side, 
while on the northern side it remains sticky_ longer and gets 
covered with insects and dirt, seldom drying out to more 
than a dirty gray in color. 
On large trees that have rough bark, especially during the 
fall and winter months, the nests and webs of insects, spi- 
ders, etc., will always be found in the crevices on the south 
side. A preponderance of the large branches will also be 
found on the warmest or southern side of the trees. Also, 
the needles of all the above-mentioned trees are shorter, 
dryer, and of a yellowish green on the southern side, while 
they will be found longer, more slender and pliable, damper 
to the touch and darker green in color on the north side. 
The cedars and hemlocks, as if trying to outdo the others, 
always bend their slender tops of new growth toward a 
southern sky. 
The hardwood trees are equally as communicative, and 
have all the characteristics so far as regards their trunks, as 
the coniferous trees, except the absence of gums, but this is 
more than made up by the fungus growth of mould and 
mosses that is very noticeable on the north side of these 
trees. Like the coniferous trees also, the largest branches 
will be found on the southern side, while the leaves of all 
trees wax eloquent in proclaiming the effect of sunlight and 
shade. They are smaller, tougher, lighter in color, with 
darker-colored veins on the sunny side of the tree, while 
they wiU be found larger, damper, more tender and much 
darker green in color, and having larger, lighter-colored 
veins on the noithern side, and, as is the case with the 
coniferous trees, the insects, spiders, etc., will be found with 
their nests and webs in the rough bark on the warmest side. 
I might also add that in the Southern States the air plants 
that so often cover the hardwood trees will he found most 
plentiful among the branches on the northg:n side of the 
trees. Also, for good measure on the part of the trees, I 
might add that the heart of all trees is never in the center of 
the trunk, but is nearest to the northern side, owing to the 
fact that the concentric rings of yearly growth are thickest 
on the side next to the sun. Old stubs standing in the woods 
testify that they are usually harder and dryer, also that they 
resist decay longer, even until only a thin shell remains on 
the southern side, while on the opposite side, owing to more 
moisture held on the shady side, and the fact that the heart, 
which often begins to rot first, is nearest that side also, and 
thus assists toward a more rapid decay on the side facing 
the polar sky. 
Mosses and Lichens.. 
The ledges of rocks, which may be part of stupendous 
mountains, or merely an occasional cropping out here and 
there in the woods, or, perhaps, some great boulder alone by 
itself a silent vfitneaa of the glacial period, all alike testify 
to the effect of light and shade. The sunny side will usually 
be bare, or at most only boast of a thin growth of harsh, dry 
kinds of mosses, that will only grow when having the light; 
while the northern sides will be found damp and mouldy, 
and often covered with a luxuriant growth of soft, damp 
mosses that love the shade, while every crevice will bear 
aloft beautiful and gracefully waving ferns. 
The forest floor on the sunny side of hills, ridges, clumps 
of trees, bushes, big rocks, etc., is more noisy under the foot- 
fall than on the northern side of such places, where the dead 
leaves and litter are soft and damp, holding more moisture 
than in places exposed to the light of the sun. 
These places last referred to will frequently have growing 
grasses and plants of different kinds, and the beautiful little 
flowers of the woods will he drinking their fill of light in the 
sunny nooks; while there will be found on the northern side 
not less beautiful sombre mosses and graceful ferns, that 
beautify the effect of continuous shade. 
In the Marsh. 
As a salt-water sailor has a wholesome contempt for a 
brother of the same craft on the great inland waters of our 
lakes, so, also, does the old woodsman turn up his nose when 
he hears of people who lose their way in a broad, flat coun- 
try free from timber; or one which, at most, has but a scat- 
tering growth of small bush; or upon the wide expanse of a 
great marsh, where you can see for miles around you. Many 
of those with whom 1 have hunted agree that it is is equally 
as perplexing, and as disastrous in consequences, to be un- 
able to find one's way out of the marsh as when lost in the 
big woods; and that when it comes to matter at hand to draw 
from that will furnish the clues to the cardinal points, the 
woodsman has the best of the situation. But the marsh rat 
also has something "up his sleeve" which he can draw on to 
guide him on his way, even when the skies are of leaden hue. 
In an open country nearly void of timber, clumps of small 
bushes during summer will furnish all the conditions found 
to exist among the leaves of the trees, beiog equally sensi- 
tive to light and shade as are the monarchs of the woods. 
The landscape gi'een with moving grasses and beautiful to 
the eye which feasts on the countless numbers of wild flow- 
ers, representing every form and hue known in the flowery 
kingdom, also "furnishes a reliable guide for locating the 
cardinal points, as most wild flowers, especially the long- 
stemmed varieties, hide their faces from the north, and, like 
the sunflower, turn toward a southern sky. Large boul- 
ders, clumps of small bushes, 'mounds and small hummocks — 
all testify, too, for the ground around such places exposed 
to the suo will be burned nearly bare of vegetation, or 
parched up until of a dead grass color; while on the shady 
side it will be found quite green, and often here there are 
growing mosses and ferns of rare beauty, which thrive only 
where they have moisture and shade. 
Laying a Course for the Flat Country, 
We will now take an old woodsman from the northern 
woods and a modern sportsman, one of those preferred who 
has inherited as an heirloom a sixth sense (namely, of direc- 
tion), and go into a great marsh in southern Florida for a 
day's snipe hunting." We will go in a few miles early in the 
morning, and, as it happens, we have struck a day having a 
dark, leaden sky, with no sun. On such a day as this the 
mosquitoes, never bashful, and even more fierce than the 
New Jersey variety, are abroad in swarms, while the deer- 
fly joins forces with them and strives to keep all your other 
senses active. The hunt having begun, we follow the dogs 
during the day over miles of marsh in every conceivable 
direction. 
We have waded across shallow sloughs, skirted bay heads, 
w^orked over the broad beds of dried-up ponds— which are 
great shallow lakes during the rainy season but now only help 
to make up the great marsh about us— where all that is left of 
great bodies of water is here and there ao alligator hole of mud 
and water, and miles of saw-grass that cuts like a knife. 
We have deviated from our course scores of times to gather 
dead birds, and have followed birds that were marked down, 
some making quite long flights, in more than a hundred dif- 
ferent directions. It being now late in the afternoon, one of 
us already out of shells, and all having birds enough, a halt is 
called and we decide to go out. 
The old woodsman looks at the dull, heavy sky, he sur- 
veys the flat, featureless horizon which surrounds us on all 
sides, and his eyes show bewilderment as they behold what 
seems an endless expanse of sloughs and saw-grass. Off 
about half a mile is a swamp of water trees of different kinds. 
In the air over this place are hundreds of buzzards wheeling 
and sailing on tireless wings while waiting for the gathering 
gloom before descending to their roosting place. 
The sportsman with the sixth sense has also been looking 
around, and has relapsed into a bit of solid thinking, fully 
realizing that he has something on his hands more than a 
gun and an empty shell bag and three or four dozen snipe. 
All agree that the general course during our day's hunt was 
to the eastward of our starting po=nt. But who could locate 
the cardinal points with such a heavy sky, and lay out a 
course due west was another matter. Surely not the old 
woodsman, neither the man with the many senses 
The above is a true outline of a day's snipe hunting some 
thirty miles up the Caloosahatchee River, on the west coast 
of Florida, in which the writer, in company with two old 
Florida men, took part. The heavy sky prevented my com- 
panions from making their way out, while I, a stranger to the 
country, struck a course due west by the signs of the marsh, 
much to the astonishment of my companions; and after some 
three miles had been made we struck our trail near where we 
started early in the morning. The soft, wet places in the 
shadow of the tall saw-grass, while quite dry on the sunny 
side; the bleached and dried grass on the south side of the 
hassocks, while fresh and gi-een on the north, all told their 
story, while two old Florida hunters were loud in expres- 
sions of wonderment, and both vowing they never could 
again get turned around on the marsh. 
Among the Hills. 
In the fall of 1881, a companion and I, taking a liebt lay- 
out of duffle, headed for the northern part of New Hamp- 
shire, our objective point being a small lake about nine miles 
in from the settlement. We were driven in to the settlement 
by Grill, who was a brother of Joe, my companion, who lived 
some ten miles further down the country. Gill, whose horse 
was lame, said if we could walk up the hills he could make 
the settlement with our rig without much trouble. 
Arriving at the back settlement we hunted up a character 
named Fred Brown. He was a little man with bushy 
whiskers that grew way around on the back of his neck. 
Gill told us that Fred trapped sable and gathered spruce 
gum during winter, and in summer did a little farming and 
considerable loafing, but that he would be a good man to go 
in and show the way to the lake besides toteing a pack of 
duflle. Fred could not go in, he had fall plowing to do, and 
was picking apples on shares with some of his neighbors. 
But wepursuaded him, and he concluded that the work could 
wait a couple of days and he grew enthusiastic over the 
prospect of a chance to stretch his legs. The duffle was 
divided up into four packs, and we went up through the 
maple orchard into the timber in tolerable good order. 
We had not made more than a mile into the woods when 
the sky became very dark, which caused Fred to make fre- 
quent glances upward in a vain endeavor tD locate the sun. 
Having a good map of the country, I was well aware of the 
direction the lake was from the settlement, and soon noticed 
that Fred was bearing a num' er of points to the west of 
what should be our course, so I asked him to point out the 
direction of the lake. This being done and the direction 
carefully noted, we proceeded on our way. In a short time 
our course veered still more toward the west, and Fred was 
again asked to point out the course toward the lake. This 
being done, it was found the lake had moved around still 
further to the west, while it should be northeast. A halt 
was called ; Fred's errors were pointed out to him, and he 
reluctantly admitted his neglect to take along a compass, and 
said that the heavy sky bothered him to keep hia course. 
Moving to the front, I announced my intention of taking 
the lead and laying a course for the lake. After noting care- 
fully our surroundings, we struck out about east northeast, 
which was thought would correct Fred's error and bring us 
to the lake. 
Determined to maintain a course as straight as possible, I 
led them over ledges, among windfalls and up steep gulches, 
until Fred vowed we were moving off into a section of 
country that looked strange to him, and he advised camping 
where we were until morning. We proceeded, however, and 
after some tough climbing over an awful rough country, we 
turned the corner of a high ledge and began to descend a 
gully, when Fred gave a joyful shout and announced that 
we were near an old shakedown of his, which was at the 
end of his winter line of sable traps, and that we were 
headed straight for the lake, which was only half a mile 
distant. He declared his ability to lead the rest of the way, 
and not till sleep closed his eyes that night in camp did he 
cease to importune me to tell him how a stranger to the local- 
ity could lay out and follow a course for nearly four hours 
over such rough country, without either sun or compass. I 
presume he is still wondering. 
The next day it rained lightly; Gill and Fred, not daring 
to go out across the country without a compass, went down 
the outlet of the lake, making the trip out about twelve 
miles. On the way out, as we learned afterward, they 
jumped an otter, and after a lively scramble down the brook, 
he was holed under a ledge. They made a big bucket from 
birch bark, brought water from the brook and drowned him 
out, Fred shooting him in the head with a Idng-barreled, 
muzzle-loading pistol which he carried hanging at his belt, 
and whose murderous look had previously excited our won- 
der. The above truthful account of oar trip in is given to 
show, as was the case on the marsh, that one can travel and 
lay a course without either sun or compass, if his eyes are 
used to reading the signs of the bush. 
Old bushmen, who may chance to read these notes on 
bush lore, may recognize old friends that have stood them 
in good stead in days gone by. While those who go into 
the woods only for a few days annually, these notes on the 
signs of the bush, collected from among those who have 
hunted and camped in nearly every section between the St. 
Lawrence and the Caloosahatchee rivers, may cause to feel 
more friendly with their surroundings while courting a 
closer acquaintance with mother nature. 
Gbo. W. Deakbokn. 
TEXAS AND THE SOUTHWEST. 
The best evidence that the new Texas game law is pro- 
tecting the game is the dark brown frown of the hotel men 
and restaurateurs of San Antonio. Heretofore it was dead 
easy to regale the palates of epicurean guests with succulent 
birds and tender venison steaks; but now, owing to the 
scarcity of game on the open markets, instead of receiving 
"quail on toast," or "venison a la creole," the festive drum- 
mer must content himself with the toast without the bird, 
and the creole sans venison. It is claimed by some that this 
is working a great hardship on that portion of the public 
that sees no fun in gadding about field and forest accom- 
panied by the ubiquitous canine, but I don't know; they are 
not so warm. One of our local dailies not long since advo- 
cated editorially that the American people ought to eat corn 
bread, so that we should then have that much more wheat 
to sell to foreigners, which would materially increase our 
trade balance and put more shekels in our sock. Following 
the same line of reasoning, why should not the non-shooting 
people eat more cornbeef and cabbage, so that the sports- 
man should have more quail to shoot and eat. In addition 
to the benefit that such policy inures to the sportsman, think 
of the increased demand created thereby for cabbage and 
cornbeef. The ranchman and gardener should hold hands 
with us and say Amen 1 
Quail are worth 12 J cents apiece and venison 15 cents per 
pound, and both are scarce at thai, which shows that game 
is not being brought in by the express companies as of 
yore. 
Quail Plentiful. 
I went to Beauregard last week and put up about thirty 
bevies of quail, and, while the cover is scarce, the birds are 
plentiful enough to keep up the sportsman's interest for half 
a day. It is the same old story all along the line of the 
Aransas Pass Eailway. Game is more plentiful than ever. 
On the Nueces. 
Lieut. Pegram Whit worth, of Fort Sam Houston, who has 
been on the Nueces River for the past four weeks making 
war maps for Uncle Sam, told me that the Nueces Canon is 
alive with deer and turkey. He killed several bucks, and 
also fully supplied his camp with turkey, 
Crltzer, the Dosr and a Snake. 
A. B. Critzer has several pets— a fox, a civet cat, and an 
abbreviated Thomas feline, to say nothing of Mongolian 
pheasants, and dogs ,of all sorts of pedigrees and fleas. If it 
is a cold Sunday, the quaU and doves catch it good and 
plenty. If it is warm, he and Tom Brown, the tall Pecan of 
the Arroyo de la Jewelry, sally forth in quest of succulent 
morsels for the menagerie. They generally go armed with 
.33-caliber rifles, and chippies and hawks are the birds 
sought, which, when bagged, are fed to the pets. 
A saucy woodpecker was sighted, pecking his way to a' 
