see 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
[Nov. 5) i8g& 
way. Mr. Wheeler informs me that when his party 
reached the summit of Mount Rainier in 1894 there was 
neither mound nor monument of any description to in- 
dicate that any human being had ever set foot on the 
summit. Under the application of the rule of evidence 
which Mr. Owen declares is "convincing and "unim- 
peachable," Mr. Wheeler and his comrades may claim 
the honor of being the first men to reach the summit 
of Mount Rainier. Mr. Whymper had an analogous 
experience on his return from his ascent of the Aiguille 
Verte. He says: "Chamounix stood on its rights, 
and he relates that the jealous inhabitants, incensed be- 
cause a stranger had come in and borne off the honors 
which they had hoped to claim some time for themselves, 
denounced him and his guides as liars, because he left 
no flag on the summit of the mountain. 
I have devoted more time and space to the answer 
to these last two arguments of Mr. Owen than their in- 
significance deserves. They are hardly entitled to re- 
spectful consideration, but they indicate to what length 
Mr. Owen is willing to go in his anxiety to claim the 
honor belonging to another. ,'*»". « u 
The remaining point of Mr. Owen's unimpeachable 
evidence" is thus stated by him: "Thomas Cooper 
swears that Stevenson admitted to him that he and Lang- 
ford did not reach the summit." 
There can be nothing more certain than that such a 
declaration was never made by Mr. Stevenson, He often 
said that the slab inclosure was not on the summit, and 
Mr. Cooper may have heard him say this, and so con- 
cluded that we did not reach the summit, but every cir- 
cumstance, apart from Mr. Cooper's bare words, points 
to the fact that Mr. Stevenson never made any such 
statement. I do not know who this man Cooper is. 
Mr. Owen says that Cooper "is personally acquainted 
with Langford, and knew Stevenson during his life- 
time." Mr. Cooper seemingly seeks, by this claim, to 
make it appear that he was in a position to know all the 
facts and to interpret motives. I have no recollection 
that 1 ever met Mr. Cooper. If so, that fact made no 
impression upon my mind, and he was in no sense ac- 
quainted with me. I do not know whether he is or is 
not a man of honest intentions — whether he is or is not 
one of the class of men whose imaginations have such 
unrestrained play that they are ready to say as well as 
do all that their employers desire of them. I do not 
know whether he may or may not be classed among those 
men who deem it necessary to ratify with an oath any 
statement they may make in order that it may be be- 
lieved, and who do not realize that the affidavit of such a 
man rather increases than diminishes the doubt. If he 
does not belong in one or the other of these classes 
then he has made a grievous mistake — for there is 
nothing more true than that Mr. Stevenson never made 
the statement attributed to him by Mr. Cooper. 
I spent portions of each winter from 1872 to 1884 in 
Washington, and I frequently talked with Mrs. Steven- 
son and her husband, in the presence of friends, concern- 
ing our achievement. She was proud of her husband's 
part in it. Stevenson was well acquainted with many 
members of Congress, and in the course of the few 
years following he introduced me to probably as many 
as one hundred members and friends as the man who 
went with him to the top of the Grand Teton. 
The Snake River branch of the United States Geolog- 
ical Survey in 1872 was in charge of Mr. Stevenson. 
Excepting the special and scientific reports of the profes- 
sors, all the general information concerning the expedition 
was given to Dr. Hayden by Mr. Stevenson. Hayden 
knew nothing of the general work of that branch of the 
Survey except what Stevenson reported to him. Hay- 
den's report for that year declares the fact that Stevenson 
and I ascended the highest pinnacle of the Teton. This 
fact was part of the report of Stevenson to Hayden. 
Does anybody believe that a man of Stevenson's char- 
acter would for sensational purposes make such a state- 
ment as this and have it published in the geological 
report if it were not true? The one thing that gives 
value to such a report is its truthfulness. Is it probable 
that Mr. Stevenson, who owed his position in the Sur- 
vey to his integrity and capacity, and who was noted 
for his straightforwardness — a man trusted in these re- 
spects to an extraordinary degree — a man who had been 
connected with the Survey in a position of responsibility 
lor many years, ever made such a report knowing it 
fo be untrue? And is it probable that he looked upon a 
falsehood of that kind as such a trivial matter that he 
afterward shamelessly confessed it? Such a confession 
would have been his utter ruin. If Mr. Stevenson ac- 
knowledged to Mr. Cooper or to any other man that he 
had been guilty of a falsehood in making his report to 
Hayden, why was not that fact given publicity while Mr. 
Stevenson was living? Mr. Cooper seems to have re- 
garded the publication of a deliberate lie in an important 
Government report as a matter of so little moment that 
he did not feel called upon to express an opinion con- 
cerning the falsehood or to call attention to it while 
Stevenson was living. If his statement is true, why did 
be wait till Stevenson was in his grave, powerless to 
defend his reputation? If Stevenson ever made such a 
statement, why did not other members of the Survey 
know oi it? 1 am sure that I would have heard of it 
during some of the twelve following winters that I was 
in Washington, had such a thing ever occurred. To 
whom would Stevenson sooner have made such a state- 
ment before he died than to his wife, between whom and 
himself there existed the most devoted attachment and 
sympathy? During the latter years of Mr. Stevenson's, 
lite, and long after Mr. Cooper had an opportunity to 
see him, the ascent of the Teton by us was the subject 
of frequent conversation by Mr. Stevenson and myself 
in the presence of his wife and many friends, not. "one 
of whom will now credit this statement of Mr, Cooper. 
In a letter written to me since the appearance in the 
Herald of Mr. Owen's article, Mrs. Stevenson says: "I 
was his companion in everything, and we always, dis- 
cussed all matters of interest to him." 
Concerning Mr. Cooper's attempt to defame her hus- 
band's name, she says: "In stating that Mr. Stevenson 
admitted to his packer, Cooper, that he did not reach 
the summit of the Grand Teton, Mr. Cooper has sworn 
falsely. I know that Mr. Stevenson never intimated to 
any person that he did not reach the summit of the 
mountain. An honorable man would have expressed his 
doubts to the living, and would not have waited till years 
had elapsed after Mr. Stevenson's death." 
When Mr. Owen accepts as his own and indorses such 
testimony as this offered by Mr. Cooper, he seeks to 
impeach and discredit his own witness by trying to prove 
that witness to have been a liar. 
In April, 1897, Mr. Henry Gannett wrote me: Owen 
maintains that the summit is some 700ft. higher than our 
measurements make it." 
In making this statement Owen overreached himself. 
He now states that his aneroid barometer recorded the 
elevation of the summit as 13,800ft. In 1872 my aneroid 
recorded 13,762ft., and it is so given in my Scribner 
article for 1873, on page 148, line 13. This is an ex- 
tremely close approximation for aneroid registrations. 
It indicates that Mr. Owen reached no higher elevation 
than Mr. Stevenson and I did. 
The endeavor to discredit the statements of Stevenson 
and myself, and especially the attempt to prove by 
arguments such as Mr. Owen has presented that Mr. 
Stevenson was a self-confessed liar, and this at a time 
when Stevenson is powerless to make a defense, is das- 
tardly, and discreditable to those who have attempted it. 
While all the attempts to reach the summit of the 
Grand Teton made during the twenty-five years prior 
to 1898 have eventuated in failure, Mr. Owen's party may 
now rightfully claim to be the second to reach the sum- 
mit; but the avouchment made by James Stevenson and 
myself that on July 29, 1872, we stood upon the summit 
of the highest pinnacle of that grand mountain, will, 
needing neither oath nor monument to prove or estab- 
lish it, stand as the absolute and incontrovertible truth. 
Nathaniel P. Langford. 
From the New York Herald, Oct. 23. 
To the Editor of the Herald: 
Having been until recently out of the world, it was 
only yesterday that I had the pleasure of reading W. O. 
Owen's account of his ascent of the Grand Teton, in 
Wyoming, as published in the Herald of September 18. 
He is to be congratulated upon his success. 
Although he quotes me in support of his position that 
he is the" first to reach the summit of the mountain, I 
cannst agree with him, having, as I believe, good rea- 
sons for my conclusion that Messrs. Langford and 
Stevenson in 1872 succeeded in reaching the actual sum- 
mit. , 
The fact that Mr. Owen found no monument upon the 
summit is no evidence whatever that the mountain had 
not been climbed. Does he imagine for a moment that 
men who were in the habit of climbing big mountains 
nearly every day in the course of their work exhausted 
themselves by building cairns of rock upon every summit 
reached? Henry Gannett. 
"William G. Sargeant. 
A Tribute. 
Meadville, Pa., Oct. 24— Many readers of. Forest 
and Stream will regret to learn of the death of William 
G. Sargeant, of Meadville, Pa. Mr. Sargeant and a 
small party of friends were spending a few days at 
Waterford Lake, in Erie county, Pa., hunting and fish- 
ing. He retired on the evening of Oct. 21, after a day 
on the lake, feeling a little out of sorts. In the morning 
he was dead, heart failure being attributed as the cause. 
William Gaston Sargeant was born in Somerville, N. Y, 
Nov. 25, 1837, and his home in Madison, where he 
leaves a widow and son, dates from 1844. He was a 
member of Company F, of the old Ninth Pennsylvania 
Reserves, and after the war he was for fifteen years pay- 
master on the A. & G. W. Railway, now the N. Y., P. 
& O. branch of the Erie, during which period he handled 
over $20,000,000. From 1890 to '97 he was general pas- 
senger agent on the Pittsburg, Shenango & Lake Erie 
Railway. 
Mr. Sargeant was a sportsman of the old school, and 
has hunted or fished in every State and Territory in the 
Union. He loved nature as God made it. He loved the 
songs of the trees and brooks, the whirring of wings and 
the click of his reel— these were his sweetest music, 
as a beautiful sunset was the sublimest picture his eyes 
could behold. He knew the call of every bird in the 
forest, the habits of every fish in the streams, and at 
sixty-one he was as much a boy in the woods or on the 
streams as forty years ago— with the difference that his 
riper years had taught him to feel more eloquently and 
reverence more deeply the true grandeur of nature. He 
was a sportsman of that class which has made the title 
honored, and being such, he was a genial, free-hearted, 
entertaining companion, a steadfast friend, and under all 
circumstances a gentleman. He loved his friends and 
they loved him. His death is mourned by all who knew 
him. H. S. P. 
in\nl 1§intor%. 
Proctor Knott's Rabbit. 
Ex-Gov. Proctor Knott and a distinguished profes- 
sional gentleman, of Danville, were discussing the 
claims of Sampson and Schley to the credit of smash- 
ing Cervera at Santiago. The professional gentleman 
took the ground that all the honor of that memorable 
conflict belonged to Admiral Sampson, and was in- 
clined to ignore entirely Commodore Schley's part in 
the affair. The Governor listened until his companion 
had finished, and then, with that characteristic twinkle 
in his' eye, said: 
"My dear sir, it is exceedingly gratifying to me to 
hear you take the position you have in this matter. It 
is .like a balm to my conscience and settles a point that 
has worried me many a day. 
"I was walking through the woods with a b'oy friend 
of mine when we saw a rabbit run into a sinkhole. We 
stood around the hole a while; then I told the boy to 
keep watch while I went to get some fire to smoke the 
rabbit out. When I returned the boy had the rabbit. I 
promptly took it away from him, claiming that it be- 
longed to me, because I had told him to catch him if he 
came out. 
"That was over fifty years ago, and you are the first 
man who has ever agreed with me that the rabbit was 
mine. I feel now that I was right in taking it, and my 
conscience is at rest." — Danville (Ky.) Advocate. 
The Crowing Snake of Samoa. 
At the outset of any account of serpents, either of 
well-known neighborhoods or of the remoter regions 
of the earth, the question of veracity must be met and 
disposed of. Speaking of snakes, it is just as well to 
give authorities and references as to character, for more 
often than not some listeners will say rude things. The 
writer does not vouch for the actual and physical ex- 
istence in Samoa of large serpents which crow like 
roosters. But it is a fact that all the Samoans believe 
that there are such snakes, that they attain great size, and 
that they move about the tree tops with terrifying 
speed. Furthermore, it is just as much a fact that more 
than half the white people living in Samoa believe in 
the existence of these marvelous serpents quite as im- 
plicitly as the natives. 
The question of snakes in a tropical country is one 
of much interest to a woman. It forces itself on the 
attention just as soon as one discovers how close the 
jungle or bush is to the ordinary places of residence. 
In Samoa this distance is but a step. Along the beach 
is a narrow strip of cocoanut grove, with bread fruit 
filling the spaces in between the loftier trees. But just 
behind the shore orchards the bush is as tangled and 
trackless as it would be if human habitations were miles 
away instead of yards. From cultivated ground you j 
plunge instantly into the soggy shade of forest timber, 1 
lacing boughs blocking out the rays of the sun and 
steadily dripping the waters stored from frequent and 
copious rains. In every crotch of limb and branch grow ' 
orchids and clusters of the bird's-nest fern. Every vista 
between the trunks is tangled with swaying lianas, 
which in the obscure lights might be taken for almost j 
any fearsome thing. Under foot is a thick mat of coarse 
grasses and aromatic ginger, and many tall succulent 
herbs, which shut out from sight the real surface of the t 
saturated, spongy soil. Such scenery may be all very 
well for an artist hunting after color effects and atmos- 
phere, but it has too much the look of good snake coun- j 
try to make one at all comfortable when making a trip 
through such bush. It conies as a positive relief to | 
learn that there are no venomous snakes in Samoa, al- 
ways excepting the snake which crows. 
All of the eastern archipelagoes of the South Sea from 
Hawaii to New Zealand are devoid of snakes and frogs. 
Samoa seems to be right on the line where the snakes 
begin. The eastern islands of the archipelago, the 
three islands of Manu'a and Tutuila, have no snakes at 
all. In Upolu they are rare. In Savaii, the western- 
most of the lot, they are abundant. Still their harmless- 
ness becomes a matter of easy belief after seeing one of 
the native dances in which the girls deck themselves 
out with bright red snakes on arms and neck, and a 
cluster of spare ones in each hand. 
The rarity of snakes in the Island of Upolu is well 
established. Many of the white people have never seen 
a single specimen. One resident of Apia camped out fori 
two months of every year on the mountain behind the 
town, and kept that up for six years before seeing his I 
first snake, and his camp was in about as snaky looking 
a place as could be found. Just because Upolu has* 
so few snakes of xny kind, the story of its serpent 
marvel becomes all the more conspicuous. According 
to all accounts, the crowing snake is restricted to Upolu, 
the Upolu people say so, and the Savaii people, while I 
confessing to the abundance of snakes of all other 
kinds on their island, declare that this serpent is a 
terror only of the Upolu forests. 
Naturally enough, one gets the story first from native 
sources. If you go through the bush with them along 
any of the few and poorly-marked trails which lead' 
away from the beach, you soon notice that they fre- 
quently stop and listen. Except for the long roll notel 
of the Samoan pigeon, and the distant cooing of tfce 
manutangi, the bird-that-cries, the woods are very silent. 
Yet every now and then -your native guides and bearers, 
listen and whisper and listen again. It is no good! 
asking what they hear; they may tell you they think 
they hear pigeon, they may say it is the dash of some, 
distant cataract, they may impose silence and then neg- 
lect to answer. In their way of thinking there are still 
the old gods back "in the bush, and it is just as well to 1 
refrain from calling their attention to purely human 
affairs. Afterward, if you remember to repeat the ques- 
tion in the full light oi day, when back again on the 
open beach, where the trade wind sweeps away all such, 
things of evil, then perhaps you may learn what it was| 
they thought they heard at intervals along the bush: 
trail. Perhaps you still get some evasive answer. It 
all depends on what reputation you have made among; 
the islanders for insisting on the real facts of every case. 
If you are known to insist on the truth, they will tell! 
you just a few lies as a concession to custom, and, 
then will tell you that the thing which 'scared them was, 
the crowing serpent. Samoans are scandalous cowards, 
one and all, and as densely ignorant of woodcraft as 
though they had been living in populous cities all their, 
lives, but they might well be afraid if they were in any 
danger of encountering such a snake as they describe 
under the name of the crowing serpent. 
In proof of the existence of this reptile, there may 
be offered the testimony of witnesses, eye-witnesses, ear- 
witnesses. 
Any quantity of Samoans, and white people as well, 
will give you detailed accounts of how they heard the 
snake in the dense recesses of the bush. They tell how; 
their ears caught the sound of stealthy movements in" 
the tree tops overhead, and how the faint sound stopped 
when they halted to listen closer, or how it began a?, 
soon as they resumed the march; of how their invisible 
pursuer was betrayed through the miles of his fellow 
traveling by the rustling of leaves and twigs in the 
forest canopy. Inevitably the narrator closes his ac- 
count by a description of his escape; he either overtook 
some other wanderer in the bush and found security irl 
numbers, or else he made particularly good time home- 
ward, or he remembered a charm which had much, 
power. When, for any of these reasons, the snake 
found that he was to lose his victim, he altered hja 
