lytAy jr,. 1898.] 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
36S 
"Mr. Culbertson tells me that these animals can endure 
hunger in a most extraordinary manner. He says that 
a large bull was seen on a spot half way down a preci- 
pice, where it had slid, and from which it could not 
climb upward, and either could not or would not descend; 
at any ,rate, it did not leave the position in which it 
found itself. The party who saw it returned to the fort, 
and on their way back on the twenty-fifth day after, they 
passed the hill and saw the bull standing there. The 
thing that troubles them most is crossing rivers on the 
ice; their hoofs slip from side to side, they become fright- 
ened and stretch their four legs apart to support the 
body, and in such situations the Indians and white hunt- 
ers easily approach and stab them to the heart or cut the 
hamstrings, when they become an easy prey. When in 
large gangs, those in the center are supported by those 
on the outposts, and if the stream is not large, reach the 
shore and readily escape. Indians of different tribes hunt 
the buffalo in different ways; some hunt on horseback 
and use arrows altogether; they are rarely expert in re- 
loading the gun in the close race. Others hunt on foot, 
ttsing guns, arrows or both. But I will give you the man- 
ner pursued b}' the Mandans. Twenty to fifty men start, 
as the occasion suits, each provided with two horses, one 
of which is a pack horse, the other fit for the chase. They 
have quivers with from twenty to fifty arrows, according 
to the wealth of the hunter. They ride the pack horse 
bare-back, and travel on till they see the game, when 
they leave the pack horse and leap on the hunter, and 
start at full speed, and soon find themselves amid the 
buffaloes, on the flanks of the herd, and on both sides. 
When within a few yards the arrow is sent, they shoot 
at a buffalo somewhat ahead of them, and send the arrow 
the leader of the herd will be restless at the sight of the 
precipices, and if the fence is weak will break through 
it, and all his fellows follow him, and escape. The same 
thing sometimes takes place in the pen, for so full does 
this become occasionallj'' that the animals touch each 
other, and as they cannot move the very weight against 
the fence of the pen is quite enough to break it through; 
the smallest aperture is sufficient, for in a few minutes 
it becomes wide, and all the beasts are seen scampei'ing 
over the prairies, leaving the poor Indians starving and 
discomfitted. Mi'. Kipp told me that while traveling from 
Lake Travers to Mandans, in the month of August, he 
rode in a heavily laden cart for six successive days 
through masses of buffaloes, which divided for the cart, 
allowing it to pass without opposition. He has seen 
the immense prairie back of Fort Clark look black to 
the tops of the hills, though tlie ground was covered with 
snow, so covered was it with these animals; and the 
masses probably extended much further. In fact it is 
impassible to describe or even conceive the vast multi- 
tudes of these animals that exist now, and feed on these 
ocean-like prairies." 
Audubon's expedition to the mouth of the Yellowstone 
was made for tlie purpose of collecting the materials for 
the "Quadrupeds of North America," the joint work of 
himself and his two sons together with Dr. Bachman. 
The record of this trip, except as it appears in the 
"Quadrupeds," was wholly lost until the summer of 1896, 
when it was discovered by Miss Audubon and her cousin 
Miss M. E. Audubon in the back of an old secretary. 
The value of the discovery can hardly be overesti- 
mated. 
After his return from the Missouri River trip, Audubon 
EAGLE AND LAMB. 
From "Audubon and His Journals." 
Copyright, 1897, by Charles Scribner's Sons. 
in an oblique manner, so as to pass through the lights. 
If the blood rushes out of the nose and mouth the ani- 
mal IS fatally wounded and they shoot at it no more; 
if not, a second and perhaps a 'third arrow is sent be- 
fore this happens." 
The method of capturing buffalo in pounds, by Black- 
feet, Gros Ventres and Assinaboines — the primitive In- 
dian way — is given in the following language: 
"These pounds are called 'parks,' and the buffaloes 
are made to enter them in the following manner: The 
park is sometimes round and sometimes square, this 
depending much on the ground where it is put up; at 
the end of the park is what is called a precipice of 
some iSft. or less, as may be fpund. It is approached by 
a funnel-shaped passage, which, like the park itself, is 
strongly built of logs, brushwood and pickets, and when 
all is ready a young man, very sAvift of foot, starts at 
daylight, covered over with a buffalo robe and wearing 
a buffalo head dress. The moment he sees the herd to 
be taken, he bellows like a young calf and takes his way 
slowly toward the contracted part of the funnel, imitating 
the cry of the calf at frequent intervals. The buffaloes 
advance after the decoy; about a dozen mounted hunters 
are yelling and galloping behind them, and along both 
Panks of the herd, forcing them by these means to enter 
the mouth of the funnel. Women and children are placed 
behind the fences of the funnel to frighten the cattle, and 
as soon as the young man who acts as decoy feels sure 
that the garhe is in a fair way to follow to the bank or 
precipice, he runs or leaps down the bank, over the bar- 
ricade, and either rests or joins in the fray. The poor 
buffaloes, usually headed by a large bull, proceed, leap 
down the bank in haste and confusion, the Indians yel- 
ling and pursuing till every bull, cow and calf is im- 
" pounded. Although this is done at all seasons, it is 
more general in October and November, when the hides 
are good and salable. Now the warriors are all assembled 
by the pen, calumets are lighted, and the chief smokes 
to the Great Spirit, the four points of the compass, and 
lastly to the buffaloes. The pipe is passed from mouth 
to mouth in succession, and as soon as this ceremony 
is ended the destruction commences. Guns shoot, ar- 
rows fly in all directions, and the hunters being on the 
outside of the inclosure destroy the whole gang before 
they jump over to clean and skin the murdered herd. 
Even the children shoot small, short arrows to assist 
in the destruction. It happens sometimes, however, that 
remained at his home on the banks of the Hudson River 
in New York until his death in January, 1851. Old resi- 
dents of that section of the city still remember the tall, 
white-haired old man, and the romantic surroundings of 
his home. 
The character of Audubon as depicted in these jour- 
nals, and so revealed in the free, frank manner 
in which one would show himself to his im- 
mediate family, is very different from the esti- 
mate usually had of him. He is often repre- 
sented as mercurial in temperament, vain, fond of display, 
careless and thoughtless of others. Certainly when writ- 
ing of his daily life for his wife to i^ead he shows none 
of these characteristics. Though passing easily from 
depression to cheerfulness, his naturally volatile charac- 
ter received the balance which it needed from his en- 
thusiasm for nature and his great love for his wife. As 
a very yovmg man he had a young man's faults, but as 
soon as the responsibilities of a family were assumed he 
grew in steadiness and in seriousness. Tender hearted 
he always was — ready to sacrifice himself to others and 
to empty his pockets on the relation of any plausible tale 
of woe. He was a character in fact of great sweetness 
and sensibility, childlike in his simplicity, in his enthusi- 
asm and in his impulsiveness, an ardent worshipper 
of nature and passionately devoted to his family; but 
withal possessed of a singleness of purpose, which, after 
he had once discovered what was his real object in life, 
led him to press steadfastly onward to the goal toward 
which he had set his face. 
It might not have been difiicult for a biographer with 
this material before him to have injected into it so much 
of himself as materially to have changed the pleasing and 
the true picture found in these pages. Discretion such as 
has been shown in this task by Miss Audubon no doubt 
arose in part from her true appreciation of the character 
of her grandfather and her enthusiasm for his work. 
These gave her a keener eye and a sharper discrimination 
than might have been had by one who was not connected 
by blood with Audubon the naturalist. 
In preparing this work Miss Audubon has had the 
valuable assistance of Dr. Elliott Coues, who has con- 
tributed many zoological and other notes which add 
much interest to one aspect of the work, and render it 
more complete. 
The mechanical part of the book is quite beyond crit- 
icism. _ - 
The Wild Pigeon. 
Our records of this species during the past few years 
have referred, in most instances, to very small flocks 
and generally to pairs or individuals. In The Auk for 
July, 1897, I recorded a flock of some fifty pigeons from 
southern Missouri, but such a number has been very 
unusual. It is now very gratifying to be able to record 
still larger numbers and I am indebted to Mr. A. Fugle- 
berg, of Oshkosh, Wis., for the following letter of in- 
formation, under date of Sept. i, 1897: "I live on the 
west shore of Lake Winnebago, Wis. About 6 o'clock 
on the morning of Aug. 14, 1897, I saw a flock of wild 
pigeons flying over. the bay from Fisherman's Point to 
Stony Beach, and I assure you it reminded me of old 
limes, from 1855 to 1880, when pigeons were plentiful 
every day. So I dropped my work and stood watching 
them. This flock Was followed by six more flocks, each 
containing about thirty-five to eighty pigeons, except 
the last, which only contained seven. All these flocks 
passed ever within half an hour. One flock of sonic fifty 
birds flew within gun shot of me, the others all the way 
from 100 to 300yds. from where I stood." Mr. Fugleberg 
is an old hunter and has had much experience with the 
wild pigeon. In a letter dated Sept. 4, 1897, he writes: 
"On Sept. 2, 1897, I was hunting prairie chickens near 
Lake Butte dcs Morts, Wis., where I met a friend who 
told me that a few days previous he had seen a flock of 
some twenty-five wild pigeons and that they were the first 
he had seen for years." This would appear as though 
these birds were instinctively working back to their old 
haunts, as the Winnebago region was once a favorite lo- 
cality. We hope that Wisconsin will follow Michigan 
in making a close season on wild pigeons for ten years, 
and thus give them a chance to multiply and perhaps 
regain, in a measure, their former abundance. 
In Forest and Stream of Sept. 25, 1897, is a short 
notice of "Wild Pigeons in Nebraska," by W. F. R. 
Through the kindness of the editor he placed me in cor- 
respondence with the observer, W. F. Rightmire, to 
whom I am indebted for tlie following details given in 
his letter of Nov. 5, 1897: "I was driving along the high- 
way north of Cook, Johnson county, Nebraska, on Aug. 
17, 1897. I came to the timber skirting the head stream 
of the Nemaha River, a tract of some forty acres of wood- 
land lying along the course of the stream, upon both 
banks of the same, and there feeding on the ground or 
perched upon the trees were the passenger pigeons I 
wrote the note about. The flock contained seventy-five 
to one hundred birds. I did not frighten them, bnt as I 
drove along the road the feeding birds flew up and joined 
the others, and as soon as I had passed by they returned 
to the ground and continued feeding. While I revisited 
the same locality, I failed to find the pigeons. I am a 
native of Tompkins county, N. Y., and have often killed 
wild pigeons in their flights while a boy on the farm, 
helped to net them, and laave hunted them in Pennsyl- 
vania, so that I readily knew the birds in question the 
moment I saw them." I will here take occasion to state 
that in my record of the Missouri flock (Auk, July, 1897. 
p. 316') the date on which they were seen (Dec. 17, 1896) 
was, through error, omitted. — Rnthven Deane, in Auk. 
Wild Pigeons of the Northwest Coast, 
Champoeg. Ore. — Editor Forest and Stream: In your 
issue of March 26, about wild pigeons: Would say 
they have not all gone the way of the buffalo, as they 
arrive here in good numbers during the month of May 
and stay with us until November. I have seen flocks 
with from 200 to 300 birds together, and I killed up- 
ward of 150 last fall. Their principal food here is berries, 
of which their favorite is the salmon berry, although 
they eat all kinds of berries, as well as grain. We can 
always kill enough to go around at the numerous min- 
eral springs which abound in the Willamette Valley, 
when they are here. When they leave us I do not know 
where they go, neither do I believe they breed here, as 
I have never found their nests or young ones. 
Capt. Jack. 
[The bird here described is not the passenger pigeon, 
commonly known in books as the wild pigeon (Ectopistes 
migratorius) , but the band-tailed pigeon (Colimba fas- 
ciata), a bird common on the Pacific slope, but extend- 
ing eastward into Colorado.] 
An Aditondack Wildcat. 
A BooNViLLE, N. Y., reader sends us this story from 
the March number of the Northern Tribune: "For 
the first winter in many j^ears wildcats have been numer- 
ous along the Fulton Chain. Bill Harwood, an old-time 
Adirondack guide, was around last w-eek wdth his head 
and arms done up in bandages, as evidence of the willing- 
ness of a wildcat to fight when in close quarters. Har- 
wood and his big deerhound Spot had been making a 
tour of the lakes for winter game when they were caught 
in a snowstorm on Black River Mountain near Rocky 
Point. They camped for the night in a shack left by a 
party of surveyors. Along in the morning Harwood was 
awakened by the barking of the hound. Turning over 
in his blankets he saw the shining eyes in a corner of the 
shack. Harwood knew it was a wildcat. The cat had 
crawled to the entrance when the hound leaped ahead 
and blocked the w^ay out. A terrible battle followed. The 
cat leaped for the hound and literally tore the dog in 
shreds. Then the decayed trees holding the shack fell 
over the entrance and the cat and Harwood were literally 
penned in to fight a duel to the death. The odds were 
plainly wnth the cat, for Harwood's gun had fallen with 
the brush outside the shack. He was crawling to reach 
the weapon when the cat came down upon him, tearing 
its claws through his face and down his right arm. If 
the cat had followed the attack immediately the battle 
would have been over there and then. Harwood's life 
was saved by luck and a clever idea. As the cat leaned 
back for a second attack Harwood fell forward. His 
hands struck a box of red pepper, which he had brought 
with his provisions. Quick as thought he snatched a 
handful of pepper, and arising threw it at the head of the 
cat. The aim was good. The cat Avas blinded until Har- 
Avood could craAA'l outside and reach his rifle. Then he 
dropped under the edge of the shack, and locating the 
c»± *-ac tlte noise, fired until the animal was dead." 
