Ute* ^9, 1898. J 
M— i. 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
back at full speed. A few rods, further and he learned 
the cause. Daunton's pine tree in falling had driven 
:hem off for the time being. Disappointed in not find- 
ing the lost man '.here, the guide rushed along the 
tracks, only stopping to pick up the empty flask. 
The footprints were only a few hours old, but evi- 
dences of the constant falls showed the Indian plainly 
hat he might still be too late. Next he came on Daun- 
ton's rifle, and the space from this point to the pool, a 
short distance that Daunton had only traversed with the 
utmost effort, the Indian covered with a few bounds, and 
an hour before sunset he found the form of Daunton. 
Alexander Francois leaned over the American for a 
moment, and then lit his pipe with deliberation. He 
was not too late. Madison Grant. 
In the Louisiana Lowlands,— VI, 
BY FRED MATHER. 
{Continued from lait wejA.~\ 
The proprietor of the plantation where the corn 
shucking was to come off was a young man, not over 
forty, but he seemed older, There is something in 
the isolation of a man from his fellows, or at least 
those whom he considers to be his fellows, which tends 
"-.o age him. He gets into a habit of self-communion, 
a sort of introspection or whatever you may term it, 
that makes him feel himself to be a special creation, and 
on an entirely different plane from that of other men. We 
see this in all the old woodsmen whom we employ as 
guides, and who live in seclusion for more than half 
of each year. It is also noticeable in the isolated South- 
ern planter, who makes stated visits to his neighbors for 
social purposes, and who, surrounded by hundreds of 
human beings, leads a lonesome life. 
My notes are blurred as to names, and they are a 
job lot of notes anyway, but memory retains the facts 
and the scenes, and I drop the notes in the waste basket. 
The name of our host for the evening is lost, so. as his 
cognomen is now an unknown quantity, I will call him 
Mr. X. He insisted on our coming into the house 
and keeping in reach of the sideboard, but the boys, 
George and Jack, were too young to care for the side- 
board, and the Doctor and I preferred to see the darky 
bands arrive and hear the greetings. 
"Here we is, fum General Cole's plantation; how you 
does. Unc' Pete? An' dere's of Unc' John from Ver- 
non Parish, an' I ain' shuck yo' han' since de las' shuck- 
in' awn Gunnel Law's plantation las' yeah; I'se pow'- 
ful glad fo' to see yo' all. An' heah's Aunt Liza, the bes' 
possum cook in de whole parish; we got twenty fo' you, 
Liza, an' yo' mus' do yo' bes' awn 'em to-night. Well, 
I 'clar', ef dah ain' dat little buck-dancin' Sam! Say, 
Sam, yo' mus' rub a extra lot o' rawsin awn yo' feet to- 
night, fo' dey's a buck-dancah from Vernon come to 
contes' wid yo' to-night, an' dey say he can lay yo' out. 
Dey's to be some contes' in straight jiggin', but yo' ain' 
in dat, an' I don' know who dey is. Good ebenin", Miss 
Melindy, I wants to shake a foot wid yo' w'en dc shuck- 
in's done, I spec' I'm awn time." 
This was a sample of the talk, as I caught it, but the 
names are not those of the locality; they are lost, but we 
must have names in order to tell the story. 
Parties streamed in with torch and song until there 
were at least 300 negroes, 100 women and a lot of pick- 
aninnies, not taxed. We were on the alluvial side of 
the Red River, where corn and sugar cane grew in pro- 
fusion, and some distance north of the rice country. 
There was a mountain of corn in the husk, or "shuck," as 
they call it South, and when the forces gathered to at- 
tack it there seemed no prospect of its being done in 
one night. But I had not seen a Southern corn shucking. 
It was, in its cpiick work, somewhat like a "raising bee" 
at the North, where the neighbors put up a man's house 
( r barn from material already prepared, and it arises like 
Aladdin's palace. 
Corn Shucking. 
When all was ready a very dark and very large darky 
climbed to the ridge of the long pile of corn and called 
out: "Now we begin, an' yo' mus' all pay 'tention to de 
shuckin' an 5 to de song, an' not do any talk-in' w'ile yo's 
a-shuckin', fo' yo' can talk w'en it's done. Now begin!" 
'and he. sang: 
<; De cawn's in de shuck, but we g'wme to get him ou* 
O, roun' up, roun' up de cawn. 
An' de possum's in de gum tree, but wc gwinc to get him out, 
O, roun' up, roun' up de cawu. 
W en de cawn's in de tossel, an' de punkin's 111 de bloom, 
O, roun' up, roun' up de cawn. 
Den de darky take a res' an* he watch de harves' moon, 
O, keep on a-roundin' up de cawn. 
Den skin off de shuck an' tear out his heart, 
But keep awn roundin' up de cawn; 
Tell de gals an' boys not to make too much noise 
Wen dey keeps awn a-roundin' up de cawn." 
There were yards, rods and furlongs of this verse, and 
Jake seemed competent to spin it out forever. Doctor 
Gordon and I stood and listened to it in a spirit that 
I dare not describe as ecstacy, but Will merely say that 
it was a thing to our mutual taste. The fire-light, the 
picturesque costumes, which were heightened by that 
light, and the quaint songs and chorus in the rich voices, 
were beyond description. Mr. X. and the other white 
men occasionally looked on, but the Doctor and I seldom 
left it. 
The problem of the Doctor's nativity was far from 
being solved, and I loved to work on it. He was an 
American, surely, but so much a man of the world that 
he had words, phrases and other characteristics of all 
parts of the country. At the sideboard he expressed 
a preference for "red likkah," and I credited him to 
Kentucky, but when he spoke of the heavy dew and called 
it "doo," I put him down as from the North. 
"Doctor." said I. "these darky songs seem to in- 
terest us more than they do the other guests, but I 
suppose it's an every-day matter with them, at least the 
peculiarities of the plantation darky don't interest them," 
"True, they do not, for to them they are not pecu- 
'•aritieSj but common e\*ery-day traits. They live among 
these people so much that they never think them at all 
out of the common." 
Then came a mighty shout from hundreds of throats, 
hundreds of ears of corn were tossed in the air, and then 
followed a stampede to the barbecue; the last ear had 
been shucked and tossed into the great pen, which was 
literally rounded up as the singer and his chorus had 
advised. The Doctor and I agreed that we preferred 
to go to the barbecue, but the host had invited us into 
the house, where a dozen of us sat down to a midnight 
dinner, which began with a clear soup, rippled over 
olives and celery, held a large boiled fish awhile in a 
pool, then meandered over venison chops, and finally 
ran into a great roasted wild turkey. The flow was 
aided and abetted by juices of various grapes, but I 
was wrecked on an enormous plum pudding, and could 
go no further; the Doctor also stopped at this point. 
Such a dinner, at such an hour, needs a stronger stomach 
than mine, but I ate it, all but the pudding, and for- 
tunately there was no room left for that most indigest- 
able mass. The other articles were tempting, and then 
one "may as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb," and 
what if I did suffer some for a few days? One has 
to pay for all good things in this world. 
After we had left the table the Doctor proposed that 
we should go to the barbecue, and I and two others 
agreed; the rest preferred to sit on the porch with their 
feet on the rail and smoke. We saw the pits and the 
great spits resting in crotches, with cranks and ropes to 
hold the spits from turning with their burdens of 
quarters of beef, whole hogs and sheep, which had been 
roasting over live coals. A few pickaninnies were feast- 
ing on the remains with great gusto, for there was 
plenty left. But we heard shouting back near the shuck- 
ing place and the mansion, and turned toward it and 
found that the dancing had begun. Mr. X. gave me 
the number of pounds of beef, pork and mutton, and I 
recorded the information in my notes, which were thrown 
away. I hate statistics, and am not sorry; all I remem- 
ber is that there were twenty possums, and these were 
reserved for a favored few by the master of cere- 
monies. 
At the Dance. 
Cotillions were first in order, on the smooth, hard- 
beaten ground, and then the old fiddler appeared. Old, 
frosty-headed and lame, he did not promise much music 
to the eye, but as he slowly mounted the platform, which 
had been put up about 3ft. high for the jig and the 
buck dancers, he realized his importance, and spent 
much time in tuning up, for it would never have suited 
his dignity to have done this in private, he called "All 
ready"; the master of ceremonies shouted: "Gran' 
salute!" and he shook "Gray Eagle" out of that fiddle 
in great shape. 
"I 'clar' to goodness, Miss Lucinda, yo' docs dat 
pigeon-wing de bestes' I ebbah seed, yo' does, fo' a 
fac'." 
"Go 'long, Sam, yo' is alius flatiron; yo' know yo' does 
de wing to 'fection, an' I jess try to pattenise aftah yo'." 
The old fiddler played the bass with his boot, and 
the time was perfect. He shifted off to "Money Musk" 
and "Devil's Dream," and as the Doctor said, was "no 
slouch." 
This remar.k placed the Doctor in Chicago. 
Two more "cowtillions" and a Virginia reel iollowed, 
and the "ladies" retired, for the night had waned per- 
ceptibly. Then the M. of C. vociferously announced: 
"Dey's a buck dancah fum Vernon Parish come heah 
to-night to dance ouah Sam. Dey is a prize o' five 
dollahs," an' Col. X. is gwine to 'pint three w'ite men 
judges w'at fum ouah parish o' in Vernon. Any man 
w'at wants to bet awn hees man, I'll hole de stake." 
Straight Jig and Bock Dancing. 
Our host had seen that the Doctor and I had a 
taste for this kind of amusement, and proposed that 
we be two of the three judges. "My dear sir," I re- 
plied, "I feel fully competent to judge a straight jig, but 
I do not even know what buck dancing is." 
"I know," said the Doctor, "and your ear for rhythm 
and knowledge of the intricacy of the straight jig will 
make you a competent judge. Of course, the straight jig 
is the ideal dance, the neatest, cleanest expression of 
music by the human foot. It makes no claim to a 
'poetry of motion," but it is a dance to be heard as 
well as seen. The buck dance is of the same order, but 
coarser, and the dancer moves all over the stage. Ac- 
cept, and be a judge." 
Sam came forward and proclaimed himself as the . 
champion buck dancer. He was followed by a slim fel- 
low from Vernon, and they shook hands after the man- 
ner of prize fighters, to show that there was no ill- 
feeling.' A Mr. Petro, from New Orleans, had joined 
us as a judge. He understood the dance, and we made 
him referee. ' He called the dancers and warned them 
that wing steps, all straight jig steps, such as "weed 
corn," "kiver taters," etc., would be discounted, and 
the contestants retired to rub the soles of their bare feet 
with rosin. Four minutes was allotted to each, and 
the- tune was something in the jerky time of "Johnny, 
get yer gun, gitcher gun," and the boys put in their 
best licks; Sam was the winner, and insisted on showing 
a few more steps that < time did_ not permit him to 
bring in. I was greatly interested in this, because it was 
a characteristic dance, evidently evolved by the planta- 
tion negro. It is common now in the music halls of 
the North. It was rhythmical, sometimes graceful and at 
others grotesque, as suited the fancy of the performer, 
The more delicate straight jig, danced in thin- 
soled shoes on a sanded floor, is not a negro dance, 
what he has of it he has learned from such minstrels as 
travel with the "kid shows" of a circus, and the per- 
former tries to hold the same spot and move nothing 
but his legs, while he puts in light doubles and triples; 
but these boys were not light of foot, and the Doctor 
said to me: "Old as I am, I can do better than that, at 
least I believe I can." And I replied: "If it was not 
infra dig I'd like to show these boys a few things in 
that line, for once upon a time — " 
"We'll have it out when we get hack to the Colonel's," 
said the Doctor, and the boys agreed to remind us of 
the promise. 
"For the Rain it Raineth Every Day." 
It was daylight and raining when we reached the 
Colonel's mansion, and throwing our bridles to some of 
the men, we went to bed, our two boys being hardly 
able to keep awake until their room was reached. We 
met at an evening dinner, where the boys were the only 
ones whose digestions had not been impaired by the 
great midnight dinner, and as they alone of our party 
had tackled the plum pudding, the Doctor and I caught 
each other watching them eat and knew that we both 
were wondering at what a boy's stomach could assimi- 
late, and were harking back to our boyhood days, when 
we could stow away any reasonable, or unreasonable, 
quantity of boiled dough in the shape of plum pudding 
or in its other forms of "dumplings," things we now 
regarded as either instant death or long sickness. 
Old Tom was in the Colonel's room, where he had 
been since we left him the night before. The Doctor 
unbandaged the ankle and said: "Tom, you have done 
well, the inflammation has gone down wonderfully. I 
don't know but I had best go and leave you in 
charge." 
"Yes," said the Colonel, "if I stirred in the night 
the faithful old man was by me ready to dress my 
ankle, but it has been a long day. Pull up your chairs 
and tell me about the shuckin'." 
"Thank yo', sah," said Tom, as he closed the door; 
but to this day I do not know whether it was for the 
Doctor's compliment or for what I thought I saw slipped 
into the old man's hand. Experience has taught me that 
there are a few things which are none of my busi- 
ness. 
The rain beat on the windows in sheets, and there was 
a monotonous drip, drip, down the chimney. Said the 
Colonel: "Old Tom says that it will rain for three days. 
He saw the cat wash its face three times last night, and 
the rain-bird — the cuckoo — called three times to-day. 
Often the old man is right, for he watches these things, 
but the cat might have performed its ablutions when 
he was not looking at it, and the cuckoo probably 
called many times when his ear did not record it, but 
it is about time for several days' rain, and I will 
be the gainer by having you indoors." 
The boys went back to bed. They outclassed us on 
eating and sleeping, but we were in good condition to 
spend the evening with the Colonel. The Doctor no 
longer called me "sir" in every sentence, and we sat 
up with the Colonel until "the wee sma' hours ayont the 
twal," and spent three days in talk, cribbage and chess, 
not forgetting the jig dancing, which the boys could 
not be induced to forget, but which we had for- 
gotten. 
We just Took a Few Crappies. 
The rain held on for three long days, and while the 
company was congenial I had ever in mind that I had 
duties to perform. I explained my collecting mission to 
the Doctor and the boys, as a reason for my leaving them 
at an early day, and that, while I was not expected to 
collect ten hours a day, rain or shine, I had scruples 
about using too much time in the way last week was 
spent. 
Said George: "We've been talking of this, and the 
Doctor says that you can collect a whole lot of small 
life over on our pond, if you will go fishing with us. 
What are the funny names you told me he could collect, 
Doctor?" 
Evidently there had been a deep and dark conspiracy 
against me, and the Doctor was the chief criminal, who 
had intrusted the details to an inexperienced boy, and 
the boy had, in police parlance, "given him away." 
"Doctor," said I, "this is a surprise, and—" 
"Well, it has turned out so; but the morning is clear, 
and we have it all arranged to go to the pond and 
fish. The horses are at the door, so get your rods 
and tackle, and we'll be off, and I will only say: You 
can collect the fresh-water mollusks and crustaceans, 
which you said you had not done, while we fish. You 
need not fish, but may go on with your collecting; we 
will not interfere." 
"Yes," Jack interpolated, "and if any of. these — what's 
'e'r names?— -is too big for you to handle, we'll all help 
you take care of them." 
The pond was an enlargement of the stream which, 
ran back of Col. B.'s plantation and down into the 
Red River. It was about a mile long and a half as wide. 
There were three boats, and I took a darky boy in One 
for collecting specimens for Prof. Baird, while the 
Doctor and Jack took another, and George and a darky 
took the third. I kept to the shore, and with rake and 
fine-meshed dip-net rook in all the lice in sight. The 
boy who rowed me opened his eyes in astonishment 
at the harvest. "Well, I done 'clar"! Nebba see such 
cu'ious t'ing befo'. He got big eyes an' laigs, an' looks 
lak a heap o' dirt; w'at's he good fo'?" 
"Do you see that dragon fly on your oar?" 
"Yes, sah: dat's a debbil's darnin' needle; I knows 
him fo' shuah." 
"Well, this thing will change into that big fly next 
year. It will come out of the water, fly around and 
lay its eggs, which will hatch into crawlers like this 
and then "die. The crawlers will turn into devil's darn- 
ing needles the next year, and so they keep it up." 
"How does dat crawlah turn into a debbil's darnin' 
needle? He doan look laik it. An' how does—but I 
'spect yo' want to hab some fun wid a po' fool niggah, 
an' so it's all right." , . . , . «\ 
The boy amused me with his skepticism, and instead 
of trying to teach him facts in animal transformation 
I told him that the fresh-water mussels traveled down 
to salt water and became oysters; I became an authority 
on oysters in his opinion. The temptation was too great 
to be resisted. He refused my fact, but accepted the 
fiction, because one seemed impossible and the other 
looked probable. If he is living to-day he knows that 
after the first frost the frogs get wings in one night and 
fly away, to return in spring; that ghosts never go out 
on rainy nights,, and other interesting facts in nature, 
His mind was well stored with an assortment of 
knowledge in the zoological line that day. . 
With a collection of invertebrates, consisting of 
many kinds of mollusks. some crustaceans and a lot 
of insect larva;, we stopped work and joined the anglers, 
