Oct. 15, 1898.] 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
307 
CHICAGO AND THE WEST. 
The Passing of the Kankakee. 
Chicago, III., Oct. 7. — I rather like the above head- 
ing, for it seems to have a fine literary flavor, such as I 
try to sling into all of my writing. It is admittedly cor- 
rect to write about the "passing" of some body or some- 
thing. As a matter of fact, the Kankakee River has been 
passing for some time, and has not yet got past. But I 
want to write about it in a figurative and not a literal 
sense. 
A great deal of mention has been made in these col- 
umns of this same famous Kankakee stream, whose vast 
marshes in Indiana and Illinois have afforded sport for 
a generation of Western shooters. I recollect at one 
time, many years ago, an uncle of mine, who resided in 
Chicago, was setting forth to me the glories of that city. 
I urged it as an objection to city life that one could not 
go shooting or fishing anywhere near the city. "There 
is where you are wrong," said he. "You live out West 
and think you can have great sport close to where you 
live, while as a matter of fact Chicago is ahead in this 
respect as in every other. You can just step on a train 
and run down to the Kankakee River in a couple of 
hours, and see more ducks than you can anywhere else 
in the world. Every time I cross that country on a rail- 
way train I can see great black clouds flying alt over the 
marsh." 
Something of the truth of these assertions I have since 
then had occasion to learn. When I first joined the 
Forest and Streasj 
family, ten years ago. 
the glories of the Kan- 
kakee were just begin- 
ning to lessen. From 
that time until now the 
shooting has steadily 
deteriorated, until for 
the past few years it 
has had little import- 
ance in the annals o^ 
sport for this region 
This fact is partly du" 
to change of the mi 
gratory flight of wild- 
fowl, partly to the fact 
the supply of wildfowl 
in the United States has 
been, reduced to one- 
fourth of its former vol- 
ume, and perhaps to 
the fact that the Kan-, 
kakee marshes have 
themselves been stead- 
ily changing, so that 
they no longer offer 
the same attractions as 
feeding grounds to the 
fowl- 
In the earlier days 
the Kankakee marsh 
was really a morass, im- 
passable and wide- 
reaching, full of quak- 
ing bogs whose depth 
was unknown, one of 
the wildest and most 
dangerous countries the 
hunter could easily dis- 
cover in any portion of 
the West. I have 
earlier written of the 
peculiar class of in- 
habitants who have so 
long clung tenaciously 
to the edges of this 
great game country, a 
class peculiar in itself 
and not to be dupli- 
cated in the entire 
country. Really there, 
was room for the class. 
Nowhere else in the United States does there exist so 
large a body of untilled land so close to any great 
center of population. The average distance of the great 
Indiana marsh is about fifty miles from the city of 
Chicago, and it is crossed by nearly a dozen of the 
great trunk lines of railroads running out of Chicago. 
It lies in the heart of a farming region where land is 
worth from $50 to $100 an acre. To say that this land, if 
fit for farming purposes, would be worth $25 an acre 
would be putting a very low value upon it. 
In company with friends I have many times wan- 
dered over many different portion of the Kankakee 
marshes, and it never occurred to me that that ground 
would be worth more than fourteen cents an acre at 
the outside. Upon the other hand, I have no daughter 
married to the Viceroy of India. If I had had per- 
spicacity and a daughter, the positions might have 
been reversed between Mr. Levi Z. Leiter and my- 
self. This is the way the worthy get thrown down, all 
through life. We will let that pass. What I was going 
to say is, that Mr. Leiter and other great Chicago capi- 
talists did see the value* lying under this wide Kan- 
kakee realm of mud and water, and wild rice and cat- 
tails. They quietly went to work and bought up great 
tracts of this land at low prices. The Maksawba Club 
holdings practically passed into the hands of others 
through purchases of the stock, the 5,000 acres of that 
body of land being capitalized at about $5 an acre. 
Then the great dredges began their work. For years 
we have seen them cutting their way toilsomely across 
the great marshes, but the old marsh still seemed to 
hold its own. At length shooters began to notice that 
there was more and more dry ground around the 
marshes, less and less feeding ground for the jack- 
snipe. The fall flight of snipe and ducks steadily de- 
creased, so that it was only in the spring that many 
birds could be found on the marsh. Now it is doubtful 
if even in the spring there can be found much longer 
any shooting of consequence. The great ditches are 
nearly done. The river has been straightened until it 
now is shortened by one-fourth, or perhaps one-half in 
fcume places, Meek and subdued, shallow and Vijnddv. H 
runs along through straight-cut banks constructed by 
the hand of man. The great mallard holes which the 
Kankakee once held in the hollow of its arms are now 
dry and dusty, This fall the shooters kicked up dust 
in walking over what was last spring the best of the 
jacksnipe ground. The porous bog has sunk and set- 
tled and changed into some of the richest black fanning 
soil that ever lay out of doors. The meadows are run- 
ning out into the marsh, and the cornfields are following 
the meadows. The Kankakee is whipped, beaten, de- 
feated and subdued. A shallow, trivial stream, a 
mockery of its former self, it hurries on through the 
wide realm which was once its own as though glad to 
leave the scene of its departed greatness. The marshes 
are no more. In time the farms will spread still more 
widely over them. This is the passing of the Kankakee. 
Colorado Buffalo. 
From a gentleman who asks that his name be not 
given I get word that he lately talked with two Denver 
sportsmen who told him of a Colorado point where 
there is still to be seen a small band of buffalo, of 
which one has now and then been killed, but of which 
four or five are thought still to be alive. The informant 
thought they were wood bison. I take it that this is the 
little bunch of buffalo already reported from time to 
time in the Forest and Stream, but am glad to have 
the news, which may also be of service to the game 
authorities of that State, if it should chance ttFlJ ear in 
be news to them. * 
A MINNESOTA RABBIT HUNTER'S CAMP. 
Photo by Mr. James Dougall. 
Quarantine and Quail. 
The fever scare in the South has affected the fall shoot- 
ing. New Orleans shooters complain that they can- 
not go out anywhere without meeting the quarantine 
restrictions. Memphis is under an air-tight quarantine, 
as well as other parts of Mississippi and Tennessee. The 
situation has interfered with sport in many branches, and 
it is hardly apt to be relieved until the first frosts, which, 
however, should soon be anticipated. 
Ducks. 
The northern flight of ducks is not yet down in this 
part of the world, if we are indeed to have any flight at 
all of that sort this fall. They tell me that it is usually 
along in November that the northern flight strikes the 
California marshes. It is a little earlier in this part of 
the world, and our duck season may be said to be well 
advanced in Minnesota and Dakota. In the neighbor- 
hood of Chicago I hardly think we mav expect any 
very heavy shooting unless on such preserves as the 
Hennepin and Duck Island Club grounds, on the 
Illinois River. 
Mr. John E. Willing, Jr., and Mr. Ed. E. Richard- 
son, of La Crosse, Wis., returned last week from a 
.shooting trip near Arlington, Minn. They brought back 
about 200 mallard ducks, besides many which they dis- 
posed of before coming home. 
The duck . season is well on in Kansas. Near Cairo, 
Kan., Messrs. O. B. Stocker and C. H. Smyth, of 
Wichita, bagged 125 ducks on a trip this week. They 
report quail and chickens scarce, but ducks in good 
numbers. 
Reports from Sanborn, Minn., state that game is fair- 
ly abundant in that neighborhood, duck shooting being 
good, while the chicken, crop was good during the brief 
season. 
It seems that out in Salt Lake City the sportsmen do 
not devote themselves entirely to shooting grizzlies (al- 
though, by the way, I was talking with a gentleman 
this week who said that he recently obtained from. Salt 
Lake City a grizzly bear skin over gft. long). The 
opening of the duck season at Salt Lake City brought 
out an enthusiastic showing of sportsmen, although a 
universal report of poor luck seems to have been the 
main result. 
Many Northern and Southern sportsmen will be in- 
terested in the information that the famous Mitchell's 
Lake, near San Antonio, Texas, is this year full of water 
again and has some feed. The ducks are in now, and the 
San Antonio sportsmen are making pilgrimages with 
something of the old-time regularity. 
Gokey, of Dawson. 
Every time you see the above head in the Forest 
and Stream you may depend that it is over some 
news, and some shooting news at that, not merely a 
pleasant saunter in the October sunshine. My friend 
Gokey writes me under date of Oct. 5 to the following 
effect: 
"The Jerome Marble party of sixteen has been here 
for some time, and the whole sixteen had a good time 
and got all the birds they wanted. This party is not 
made up of game hogs, but on the contrary of gentle- 
men sportsmen. They did not care to kill all the game 
they had a chance to kill. During their stay here I went 
with them to the State Fair, at Mandan, N. D., with 
their two cars, and they have this to say, that Buffalo 
Bill s Wild West Show is not in it with what they saw 
there. They went back to Massachusetts on the evening 
of Oct, 4, with the promise that on their next annual 
shooting party they 
would come back to 
Dawson. 
"Parties here who 
have had good shoot- 
ing up to date are 
Messrs. P. M. Snyder, 
of New York City; II 
Staples Potter, of Bos- 
ton, Mass.; O. N. 
Young and C. H. Moss, 
of Chicago; W. H. 
Gray, J. W- Tape, 
George Tucker, Lorin 
Fishback and E. C. 
Cook, all of Chicago; 
D. A. Tyng and D. M. 
Cumings, of Chicago; 
A. A. Hart, C. M. Nel- 
son and George R. 
Finch, of St. Paul; W. 
H. Tubbs, Messrs. Gin- 
selnian and Leffingwell, 
of Fargo, N. D. ; G F. 
Thompson, of New 
York City; J. W. 
Strowbridge, of Cincin- 
nati. All these gen le- 
■men are having what 
shooting they want and 
a good time. We have 
had a snowstorm here, 
and it has brought 
down the birds, and for 
the next thirty or forty 
days the air will be full 
of powder and shot. 
The - W. B. Mershon 
party of nine will be on 
from Michigan on the 
10th of this month for 
. a two-weeks' shoot," 
The Saginaw C owd. 
Mr. Gokey's com- 
ment last above quoted 
received verification to- 
day, when a long, low, 
black, rakish and pirat- 
ical looking craft on 
wheels was seen in the 
offing, and later came 
to anchor in the Wisconsin Central Depot to spend 
Saturday. The craft bore the name of "W. B. Mer- 
shon," and from observations made at a distance bears 
every appearance of being manned by a desperate crew, 
armed to the teeth and with full provisions for a long 
cruise. At this writing numbers of the crew are at 
large ashore, and one or two of the more daring ones 
are reported to have been seen in the neighborhood 
of the Auditorium Hotel, though no encounters are as 
yet reported. The representative of Forest and Stream 
is upon their trail, and readers may be assured that no 
efforts will be spared to keep the public fully advised 
of the whereabouts of this craft and her crew. 
Later. — The dispatch boat of the Forest and Stream 
succeeded in landing a party on board the piratical craft 
this evening, and the worst suspicions are confirmed. 
Members of the expedition are Messrs. Geo. Dan Seib, 
of Bond Hill, Long Island; W. A. Avery, of Detroit, 
Mich.; J. E. Hinds, of Brooklyn, N. Y.; Samuel Stevens, 
of Columbus, Ohio; J. W. Meek, of Columbus, Ohio; 
R. D. Schultz, of Zanesville, Ohio, the whole party be- 
ing under the lead of Mr. Wm. B. Mershon, of Saginaw, 
Mich., who goes as pilot into regions made familiar by 
many earlier trips. The first stop will be made at 
DaAvson, N. D., then the party will proceed to the Bad 
Lands of Montana, returning to Dawson later for 
geese. 
Tips. 
Mr. Mershon is a man very fertile in sporting sug- 
gestions and improvements and ideas. Two new things 
that I saw about the car this time were a new case for 
a rifle and a new mess box for a wagon. The latter is 
a handy contrivance indeed, something like a cow cook's 
mess box, with a lid to let down for a kitchen table. 
This box, however, has about 400 pigeon holes in it for 
flour, sugar, spices, matches, salt, pepper and every- 
thing you can think of. It is made in the best way, its 
material being a triple crossed veneer so laid that it is 
impossible for the w r ood to warp or shrink. The top of 
the lower compartment is made with a neat water- 
tight hinge, so that the contents cannot get wcl, The 
