SOS 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
[April i6, 1898. 
Frank Lundell and Gus Poison bagged 46 birds one 
day and 23 another. John A. Gregg killed 15 mallards 
one day. Messrs. Gould, Mohland and Walden have had 
fair sport during the past ten days. 
At Hennepin Club Chan Powers and Dick Merrill 
Avere shooting for a couple of weeks last month, and 
they are reported to have killed large bags of mallards, 
though I do not have figures at hand. 
Shooting in Nebraska, more especially along the Platte, 
has been good this spring, as earlier reported. Messrs* 
John M. Fairfield and F. Moore last week killed 225 
ducks near Woodlake. Neb., of which 160 were redheads, 
24 mallards and the rest mixed dudes. E. Hough. 
1206 BoYCE Building, Chicago. 
Xenophon entered their brain, and within a few moments 
they had flushed the cove3'^ again, and were in hot pur- 
suit. The fences were stiff, but the going was fairly good, 
and for over two miles the erratic youths kept the covey 
in sight. Then a hidden wire brought the chase to an 
unpleasantly abrupt conclusion. The disciples of Xeno- 
phon are still in bed. — Sporting and Dramatic News. 
Jacfcson^s Hole and the Park, 
Jackson, Wyo., April 4. — Editor Forest and Stream: 
At a meeting held here the following resolutions were 
adopted unanimously: 
Whereas, The Jackson's Hole country is the only terri- 
tory south of and contiguous to the Yellowstone National 
Park which is susceptible of settlement and cultivation; 
and 
Whereas, The constant agitation of the question of ex- 
tending the limits of the National Park by annexing ad- 
joining territory has a tendency to retard the normal de- 
velopment of our community. 
Therefore, Be it resolved by the bona fide settlers of 
Jackson's Hole in mass meeting assembled: 
First — As a satisfactory and permanent settlement of 
all plans for the future enlargement of the National Park 
by an addition of territory on the south, w^ d'^TP.ost 
earnestly recommend the immediate extension of Park 
control over the tcTitory now embraced in the Teton 
Timber Respn'e, believing that such addition to the Na- 
tions' Park will amply suffice for the further and better 
piotection of large game. 
Second — ^While we favor the extension of the National 
Park to the south line of the Teton Timber Reserve, we 
are unalterably opposed to any other or further extension 
of the south boundary of the Park so as to encroach 
upon or curtail the present limits of the Jackson's Hole 
settlement. We do not believe that it would be either 
good poHcy or economy for the National Government to 
incur the enormous expense necessary to oust the bona 
fide settlers of a large and prosperous community, merely 
to extend the game area of the National Park; and fur- 
ther, we are firmly convinced that the addition of the 
Teton Timber Reserve will satisfy all reasonable de- 
mands for an extension of the National Park toward the 
south, and at the same time allay all apprehensions of 
actual and intending settlers in the Jackson's Hole coun- 
try proper. 
.S. N. Leek, Chairman. 
Frank L. Peterson, Sec'y. 
The Boston Sportsmen's Exhibition. 
Boston, Mass., March 27.— Editor Forest and Stream: 
What has become of that "Plank?" Has its substance 
been destroyed? Dry rot has been the death of many 
would-be great reforms, and caused mainly by the plea 
that the time was not ready for their presentation,^ or for 
aggressive action. I hope the plank has not got "dozy," 
nor Forest and Stream abandoned its position that 
no game shall be in possession in close season. When 
my last week's Foke.st and Stream came to hand 1 
looked over the views of the Boston Sportsmen's Exhi- 
bition with much satisfaction, and confidently expected 
to see a full-page cut of one particular exhibit of game 
made by a market man, When I passed by the exhibit 
in question, which I did several times, the thought 
would flash through my mind, "This is a sportsman's 
exhibition! Curious that such prominence should be 
given 10 the arch-enemy of the true sportsman." And 
when I looked at the broken-necked grouse and quail 
I could not help internally anathematizing a management 
that would allow such an exhibition to be made. _ Why 
didn't they have a corps of grouse snarers and quail net- 
ters devote some time to showing how the game is killed 
by poachers? Would it be out of taste, so long as it was 
shown how: the poacher's middleman handled it? 
Here it is nearly April, and yet quail and pinnated 
grouse are being marketed in quantities in Quincy mar- 
ket and Market street, while cold storage warehouses are 
filled with meat and birds to be brought out as "first of 
the season" next fall. No one who knows the method 
of securing this supply of game needs to glance at the 
daily press for intelligence of the weather conditions at 
the game grounds of the country. Deep snows are 
surely followed by a plethora of venison, grouse and 
quail" in the markets, and their appearance on the street 
or in the market is an unfailing sign that a blizzard has 
struck the fields where trapping, snaring and crusting is 
a profession. If sportsmen are to hold annual exhibi- 
tions, let them at least be in a sportsman's line, rather 
than in the interest of poachers and miarket men, or anj^- 
thing tending toward it. Eltsac. 
Coufsing: Partfidgfes. 
Unless my memory greatly fails me, it was a friend 
of my youth, Xenophon by name, who in a thrilling 
narrative called "Anabasis" describes very_ graphically 
the way in which certain young bloods of his time were 
wont to amuse themselves by galloping across country 
in pursuit of bustards, which, he adds, resemble and fly 
like partridges. Whether "the pampered favorites of the 
young monarch" behaved in this erratic manner, "in the 
spring of the year. B. C," or after they had retired into 
winter quarters, as they constantly appear to have been 
doing, I cannot quite _ remember ; but in either case the 
sturdy young Greeks must have been uncommonly well 
mounted if the bustards which they chased so recklessly 
flew anvthing like the February partridges of 1898. Pos- 
sibly, however, it was the baneful examples set by the 
blades of Xenophon's generation that lately led astray 
two young men in the Midlands. As they were jogging 
homeward after a poor day's sport a covey of partridges 
suddenly rose from a field beside the road and alighted 
in a meadow a few hundred yards away. Instantly the 
brilliant ides of chasing the birds across country a la 
Fishing Up and Down the Potomac. 
Harper's Ferry. 
The beautiful! Nature held here her carnival after 
that day when the mountains were built, and showered 
upon the spot with lavisli hand her gems and robes of 
beauty. There is no grandeur here, save the mimic 
grandeur of the pageant, but like the masterpiece of 
some great scenic artist all beauties are suggested. No 
cloud-capped towers hem it in; no peaks of snow, no 
mountain giants, bald and bare, look down upon the 
twin streams that meet here, to go thereafter, hand in 
hand, laughing to the sea. 
The wedge between the Shenandoah and the Potomac 
lias riven the Blue Ridge to break a passage for the 
dancing waters, and Maryland Heights on one side and 
Loudoun on the other are but the ancient gateposts to 
this ruined stronghold, whose portcullis fell in that long 
ago — and left it since an unfortunate strategic point, 
whose possession is a fatality; easy to take and hard 
to hold. 
It Avas a fa-Vorife spot with Thomas JefYerson. who 
said of it, "One of the most stupendous scenes in na- 
ture, and well worth a voyage across the Atlantic to 
witness." 
This only measures the limits of his experience and 
the exuberance of his enthusiasm. 
He had not seen the mile-high cliffs of the Yosem- 
ite or the Colorado Canon. Even the gorgeous gorges 
of the near-by Great Smokies would have robbed these 
1,500ft. hills of any title to "stupendous." A thou- 
sand places in Europe, from the fiords of Norway to 
the Bay of Naples, would as well repay an ocean voy- 
age. 
Yet it does not suft'er by comparison with any spot 
on earth, save in the legendary lore which makes so rich 
every view abroad. 
There, behind the coign of vantage of every rock, 
lurk%the memory of some myth, and Ave are children 
still, and fairy stories are ever our delight. We laugh 
at home at the superstition of our neighbors — ^^the easy 
credulity which swallows tales of Baldur or the Druids; 
the gods of ancient Rome, or the legends of the Rhine — 
and in our busy everyday life only hear them mentioned 
to wonder hoAv one can find the leisure, or having found 
it so waste it as to pay any attention to this flotsam 
of history. 
Dreams are there uttered as current coin of narra- 
tive, until one forgets to doubt, and all the groves are 
peopled Avith shades of endless procession — the ideal as 
substantial as the real, for both are but memories. Down 
every valley, up every hill, arc hordes from the Northern 
bee hive SAvarniing tOAvard the sunny South, or steni'- 
visaged crusaders like AA'aves pouring to the East, or 
Moors coming from the south, or Romans conquering 
as they go' to the Ultima Thtde in the West. And in 
every age, on the outskirts of every passing throng, are 
the motley individuals Avhose brighter dress, or Avit, or 
chance, has lent them some distinction, or attracted the 
local kodak fiend, who has preserved for us their "coun- 
terfeit in little;" or the romancer of that day, or some 
subsequent, has given to the coinage of his diseased 
brain a "local habitation and a name," and to-day, as 
in the long ago, every tree has its Dryad, every stone 
its spirit. We are matter of fact, and smile at the child- 
ish fancy, and yet when Ave put aside the burdens of the 
hour and approach their sacred haunts, we search as 
eagerly as any for the fabled oak, or cave, or stone — the 
exact spot where Schinderhannes did his deeds of der- 
ing-do; the Avriter Aveakly treasures a bit of modern 
stucco from the house where the doughty robber lived— 
his story seems so unassailable Avhen you have a real 
piece of mortar to prove it — and another bit from the 
keystone of the Brig of Ayr, which ought to satisfy 
any but a misanthrope of the scientific truth that Avitches 
cannot cross a running stream. 
We stare Avith aAve at the Tarpeian rock, where pitiful 
wretches Avere cast down to certain death, and it is not 
suggested till we leave the halloAved spot that in this 
country the boys would probably turn somersaults from 
it. But these fables are the fairies, Avho borroAV from 
their miraculous grottoes of dazzling splendor the gems 
and color that tint and brighten the commoplace abroad, 
and Avhose lack leaves nature's greatest beauties here 
almost commonplace. At the best her beauties are with 
us but compositions of still life— their pictures have all 
the animation of the biograph. 
Harper's Ferry has its memories too, but they are 
like all of those of the new Avorld, too recent, and lack 
the glamour of ancient days — ^Jefiferson's Rock— John 
EroAvn's Fort, the half dozen times it was taken and 
retaken during the Civil War. The town is only a thou- 
sand feet above the sea, and from the Heights, 500ft. 
higher, it is so, easy to drop shell into it that it cannot 
Avithstand an attack. A dozen regiments surrendered 
in one of the engagements. ^ 
We used formerly to lodge on top of the hill with 
the Mayor of the town, who had a little hotel on the 
Heights, and at that time the hotel in the loAver town 
was not well kept. But the hill was too far aAvay from 
the railroad and the river for our comfort; our friend 
the Mayor died; the lower hotel changed hands,_ and 
just now is conducted by a model anglers' Boniface, 
who makes any arrangements Avired for, and feeds us 
so Avell that it is one of our favorite trips; the fish, 
hoAA^ever, continue to grow scarcer. The place is easy 
of access, and is consequently overfished; and the refuse 
from the pulp mills accumulates year by yeatj and the 
condition of the water is clearly getting worse, from 
that and otlier causes. 
One of the easy methods of fishing the Potomac at 
this point mostly followed by anglers who use . bait is 
to take a boat — and these are kept in the quiet water 
on the Shenandoah side — and pole up under the bridges 
to the pools. 
As one starts out on this trip for the first time he 
will be surprised to find the bed of the river covered 
with shavings, refuse of the pulp mills, and when the 
harm they do is considered it seems a pity the mills will 
not destroy their Avaste. It is a little cheaper for them, 
perhaps, to dump it in the river, but it is expensive for 
the public, and there is no doubt the revenue to the 
Ferry from the visitors would be appreciably increased 
if they could be encouraged with just a few more bass. 
The water in the pools of the Potomac above the 
bridge is deep, and we have never had any considerable 
success Avith a fly by this route. 
The easier and pleasanter way is to ride a mile or 
two to the Island Park, a picnic ground of some seven 
or eight acres, kept in excellent order by the railroad for 
summer excursions. 
Two or three good wells, one strongly impregnated 
Avith sulphur, are on the island; numerous paA'ilions 
scattered about, and in one of these we mount our rods, 
and leave our extra baggage, Avhich is principally lunch, 
and a spare rod, Avith the obliging keeper. 
A boy for each carries our landing nets and camera 
or canteen of water — ^for we do not return till time for 
noon coffee. There is good fishing all around the island. 
The stream we cross to reach it, before the moss and 
weeds fill it in the Ioav water of the late season, is both 
good wading and good fishing, but the large bass are 
either taken by resident professionals, or do not care for 
this part of the stream, as 2lb. fish are rare; but the 
smaller ones are more plenty than elscAvhere in the neigh- 
borhood. 
The very prettiest fly-fishing, however, is the nearly 
square mile of tumbled rocks, and pools, and rapids, 
that have been poured out below the dam in bcAvilder- 
ing confusion. When the river is low, nearly every foot 
of these Avaters may be fished by the enthusiastic wader, 
and indeed a good deal of sport may be had dry shod 
if one is accustomed to clambering over stones. 
There are of course no trees, and the fly has plenty 
of room, but most of the pools are shallow, and as the 
angler has no cover, and there are no shadows but his 
own, or the occasional buzzard floating so calmly and 
mysteriously above, it is hard to keep from frightening 
most of the fish — as Ave mostly do. Our rubber sandal 
waders are not entirely noiseless or jarless; so many 
of the loose stones are "tippers," and it is ahvaA's new 
matter for wonder Avhen one of these, of several tons, 
lays over with your weight and slides you quietly into 
the pool— rarely quietly enough to insure your getting 
any fish in that particular one. And then you are left 
with so discomforting a sense of the instability of all 
earthly things; a mishap like this is apt to disturb one's 
fixed ideas, that is all but one, and that is the total de- 
praA'ity of inanimate objects. 
All the beauties of the scenery here are only visible 
to the man in a wading suit- — to stand knee deep in the 
swift water on a June morning, when the fog has just 
risen to the tops of the hills about, and all the slopes 
are green; the steep sides rise so suddenly that it is 
easy for imagination to carry their peaks beyond the 
clouds, and it must have been thus that Jefferson saw 
it when he said "stupendous;" and if there should hap- 
pen to be a big bass jigging at the other end of your 
line it becomes a veritable A^allcy of delight. 
This is one of the places where the old, old caution, 
never let the sun get behind you in fly-fishing, if fol- 
loAved by the angler will lose him many a chance. The 
bare Avhite stones grow very Avarm in the long summer 
days, and the only shelter the fish can find is in their 
shadow. If you fish with the sun in front of you, the 
fish are too. and can see you approach for a hundred 
yards; but if you get the sun behind you, especially 
when approaching some rock or hole AAdiere you know 
a good one bides, it is nearly your one chance of getting 
him with a long cast, over or around his cover, into 
the shadow, where he lies blinking the warm hours away 
to feeding time — that is, if a bass is ever guilty of such 
stupidity as blinking, for as a rule the proverbial weasel 
is a Dickens' fat boy to this alert fish. 
But the writer caught one asleep once — ^that is, nearly 
caught him. It was in the arm of a lake in southern 
Illinois, almost solid with clean green moss, in which 
Avere many crappies and bass. As the boat Avas sloAvly 
paddled down a narrow channel a large, apparently dead, 
bass of 3lbs. Avas lying on the top of the moss, with 
head and tail just submerged, and his bowed back as 
dry as a poAvder horn ought to be; the scales do not 
lose their sheen soon when taken out of the Avater, but 
this was a dry, dull gray. We Avere sure the fish Avas 
dead— and had been for days; suddenly it occurred to 
one of us that a dead fish Avould float the other side up, 
and we Avorked with some difificulty and no care through 
the moss within reaching distance of the fish, the net 
was extended, but fearful he was old enough to make 
the net offensive he Avas lightly touched on the back 
with the steel hoop. This electrified him, and he us. 
He went up in the air and made two or three convulsiA'-e 
springs, that spattered us both, and convinced us he was 
not quite dead. 
Several times that day we saw thoroughbreds making 
time in other parts of the lake, and were both agreed 
it was the same fish, w^hich had not yet worked off his 
surprise. We never recovered from ours— nor has any 
plausible explanation ever suggested itself why a bass 
should be sunning himself in this fashion, or permit 
such an approach. 
There are several fish dams about these rocks, now 
all abandoned but one. The illusion that these take 
nothing but eels and mullets Avas rudely dispelled here 
by finding a 2^lb. bass in one, Avhich the owner of the 
pot did not find. One of the best fish the Avriter has 
taken here Avas at the V of one of these dams, Avhich 
had been ruined by a freshet and never repaired, but 
still staved a broad pool with its wide arms. We Avere 
coming" doAvn from the dam for the evening ride home 
to supper. Avell earned and already much desired; it was 
a quarter of a mile from the trysting place, but the day's 
