jui^E 24, 1899] FOREST AKD STREAM. 4^3 
had been in the stable for three or four days, and were 
full of go.. On the first good long down-grade stretch of 
road they proceeded to "turn themselves loose," as the 
driver expressed it, and shake up things until they started 
every seam in the boat. Jack held on bravely" for half 
the distance, and then came out over the tail gate like 
a flying squirrel, alighting on the frozen road in a heap 
and rolling after the wagon for 30 or 40ft., giving his 
entire anatomy a fair chance for bruises without the 
slightest show of partiality. He was neither happy nor 
comfortable when we overtook him, but his fine flight 
of vehement oratory in describing the conduct of the 
untamed steeds indicated that he was at least warm 
once more. 
His peroration, as he rubbed the largest contusion on 
his head, with one hand, and sought to free his gar- 
ments from the accumulated dust of the road with the 
other, was to the effect that "he had rather sail the 
stormy seas with an ice floe for a ship than ride behind 
a pair of fool mules with ambitions to make records." 
Every experience teaches more or less wisdom, and 
this episode was no exception. 
Jack walked the rest of the way, as he should have 
done, but there was a pronounced impediment in his 
gait. The special providence that is said to watch over 
fools and bad boys brought us safely home at last, and 
our dreary old dens looked like paradise after the awful 
experience we had passed through. 
Aside from the fact that no ordinary fire satisfied us the 
entire winter through, we had, strange to say, suffered 
no great amount of lasting harm from the exposure, and 
at the next opportunity we went again, which is "an- 
other story." Lewis Hopkins. 
Making Aquaintance. 
Editor Forest and Stream: 
One of the first things that an old hunter does when, 
he moves into a strange community is to size up his 
neighbors for signs of good fellowship, and if he is for- 
tunate enough to discover a well-kept dog here and there 
he knows he is all right, for he rightly judges that he who 
has a fondness for dogs is a good man to tie to, while, 
on the other hand, the man who despises a dog is a 
good man to stay away from. 
Jim B lately moved from a suburban town to a 
suburb of the city. 
When he and his wife started out on their house-hunt- 
ing expedition there was a conflict of ideas between 
them as to location, convenience and comfort. He want- 
ed a spacious yard, with roomy outbuildings and a house 
with an isolated room that he could fit up for a snuggery, 
where he could keep his books, guns and paraphemaha 
in as much disorder as he pleased — where he could be 
boss and let his dog lie on the floor, if it suited him— ^-to 
all of which his wife made little objection; but she in- 
sisted on having her own way in certain things that a 
woman knows more about than a man, and with a view 
to find as nearly as possible what both wanted, they spent 
many weary days of searching, until they found a place 
which, though not up to the requirements, was a sort of 
compromise; and as they stood viewing it after the de- 
cision was made, Mrs. B., with a sigh of relief, remarked 
that "the house was neat in appearance, and such a lovely 
yard for a flower garden." 
"Yes, and such a nice place for a dog to run in," re- 
plied Jim. 
"Oh, I believe you think of nothing but that nasty 
dog; but I won't have him tracking up my walks and 
porches, and you'll have to keep him chained in that shed 
you think will make such a nice kennel." All of which 
made Jim smile, for he knew that his wife liked the dog 
as much as he did, and she also liked Jim, but possessed 
thalt womanly tact of bossing a man around that com- 
mands obedience without any feeling of humility, and 
he promised to keep the dog chained — sometimes. 
As time works wonders, it soon brought relief from the 
strain of settling down, and when the last carpet-tack had 
been driven, pictures hung and things brought to rights 
generally, Jim began to take his bearings. Thus far he 
had not seen enough of the "men folks" to judge of their 
congeniality, nor any dogs except on either side a silky, 
long-haired lap poodle, which puzzled him to guess 
which end the head was on, and when, one day, one of 
them fell off the steps, and he heard the murmured "tootsy 
wootsy" compassion of its mistress, he concluded that 
so far as that side was concerned he need look for no 
bond of sympathy. But, what does he see? Two hand- 
some English setters coming up the street, followed by a 
man, and that man the husband of the woman who was 
bemoaning the accident to her pet. When the gate was 
opened and the two setters bounded up the steps, greeted 
by the vigorous barking and joy of the poodle, who was 
not hurt at all, the transformation was complete, and 
Jim said to himself, "That man's all right, and I must 
make his acquaintance." Less than a week afterward 
Jim's dog was frolicking with his neighbors, and the two 
masters were blowing smoke at each other across the back 
fence. Jim's neighbor was short of stature and broad of 
girth. His face was jolly and he smoked good tobacco, a 
fact which came to Jim's knowledge when his pipe was 
smoked out and his neighbor forced his pouch upon him 
to refill it. When he returned the pouch and had passed 
UDon the quality of its contents, his neighbor remarked: 
"T am an inveterate smoker; it is one of my comforts, 
and does me no harm. If there is anything that will 
cement the bond of good feeling between congenial spir- 
its it is a companioinable smoke. When I am hunting 
my pipe is as necessar}' to me as my ammunition, and I 
think that the hunter who does not smoke misses a good 
thing in an outing. When lunch time comes, the best 
part of it is the smoke that follows." " 
"I think as you do," said Jim, "and besides the com- 
fort of a good smoke and siesta at noontime, I find pleas- 
ure in taking observations. If it is a familiar spot, I 
note the changes that have taken place since my last 
visit. Old trees have fallen, to take the places of old 
logs decayed, and new trees have sprouted. The rav- 
ages of time and v/eather have given a general, if slight, 
change to the appearance of everything. I may also 
note the spot where I dropped a grouse on some pre- 
^^ous visit, and the memory serves to occupy my thoughts 
for a time. Then I talk to my dog, and his happy, in- 
telligent look is sufficient answer to all that I may say 
to him. And my gun, too, comes in for a share of ad- 
miration. I contemplate the symmetry of its proportions 
and the beauty of the engraving on its locks, and bring 
it to my eye, because it is natural to do so. I imagine 
how easy 1 could drop another grouse in the same place 
if one should spring up then. An evanescent odor of 
dead leaves and rotten wood that might be offensive at 
home seems pleasant here, and there is such a fascination 
about the place that I am loath to leave it. All this may 
seem like gushy sentimentalism to an unappreciative per- 
son; but it is my hobby and affords me pleasure. In fact, 
a man without a hobby of some kind loses a good deal of 
the best part of life." 
"We seem to have many feelings in common," said the 
neighbor. I frequently overhaul my outfit, not because 
it requires attention, but because there is satisfaction in 
doing it. A sportsman is much like an overgrown boy, 
and liis outfit his paythings. He will have many things 
in it that he will never make use of, but he gets them be- 
cause they strike Ms fancy when he sees them, and he 
finds satisfaction in handling them and imagining what 
a convenience they will be if needed. I suppose I already 
have more loaded cartridges than I shall use in several 
seasons, but I am still loading more because I like to do 
it, like the boy who never wearies of doing a thing over 
and over again, which to us might seem like useless oc- 
cupation; yet we once found amusement in doing the 
same things." 
'All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy,' " said 
Jim. "I hope you will find it agr&eable to go hunting 
with me this fall. I have several places to go where we 
will find royal entertainment among my farmer friends. 
In the meantime, I wish you would come over to my 
house and rummage among my things. I have books, 
relics and a wheelbarrow of other things that I think will 
interest you." 
"It will be very agreeable, I'm sure, provided that you 
will also go with me to some of my resorts, and " 
Just then feminine voices were heard coming through 
the back door, as the two wives were approaching, Jim's 
wife being the last: "It will be too lovely for any- 
thing — cut bias and trimmed with — my goodness! 
There's my man talking to yours, and I'll bet all he's 
talking about is guns and dogs." 
"No, we were only discusing new bonnets and gored 
slarts," lied Jim. "Is supper ready?" J. S. B. 
Pittsburg, Pa. 
June Prospects. 
Cache County, Utah, lies on the Idaho boundary of 
the State. It is divided longitudinally by Bear River, 
which, with its tributary streams, affords the best of trout 
fishing in season. The trout and a few deer in the hills 
are all that there is to protect, and up to date protection 
has been decidedly scant. Last week the fish and game 
warden of Cache arrested and secured the conviction of a 
lad for trouting out of season. This so surprised and pleased 
the county commissioners that they raised the warden's 
salary from $20 to $30 per month. Henceforward the 
warden will devote himself more assiduously to his official 
duties and pay less attention to dry-farming and fruit- 
growing in a region where the fruit is frost-nipped in 
June. 
It was a great relief to come from the icy plateau of 
Cache to the sunny land of market gardens between Og- 
den and the great Salt Lake. Heretofore I had supposed 
the region west of Ogden to be principally salt marsh, but 
it is very different. It reminded me much of the market 
garden parts of Long Island or of New Jersey between 
the Passaic and the Hackensack rivers. The soil is a 
sandy loam streaked with alkaline clav strips, the latter 
being devoted to alfalfa or to pasturage'. Natural sloughs 
abound, and in these the water is only slightly brackish. 
These carry off the surplus water of irrigation, and are an 
important factor in the leaching out of the "saleratus" 
that permeates to a certain extent all the soils of the old 
Bonneville basin. 
In the swamp grasses that border the sloughs, the 
Limicoljs have their Garden of Eden. Last Sunday I 
devoted to ornithology. The friend with whom I spent 
the day drove me some three miles to show the beauties 
of the land— the asparagus and green peas and ripening 
strawberries, and the less developed but none the less 
attractive artichokes, cauliflower and brussels sprouts. 
While he expatiated on these things, I was noting down 
Bullock's oriole, hummingbirds and especially one tern 
(silvery and with the top of the head black) that poised 
over a little brook and darted downward and dived and 
devoured minnows for my individual benefit. We left 
the buggy and walked across a potato patch, planted on a 
genuine sand knoll. Suddenly I was aware of a couple 
of kildeer runnig before us and endeavoring to attract our 
attention. When we would not be attracted they came 
back and circled about us. I could not understand their 
actions until we almost stumbled over two nests, right in 
the row between a couple of diminutive potato plants. 
The nests were simply little hollows scooped out of the 
sand, and the brown, speckled, conical eggs were all 
placed point downward. 
"If you are interested in birds," said my friend, "I can 
show you a sight when you get back to the house." 
He was right. No sooner was the horse stabled than 
we walked out through the currant patch, scarce Soyds. 
from the kitchen door, and came abruptly upon a little 
slough that widened in the level ground into a shallow 
carex-grown marsh, freckled here and there with patches 
of glistening sand. Never had I beheld such a picture. 
There were a few ducks in pairs, mostly greenhead and 
teal, but the waders, the typical shore birds, were in- 
numerable. How I wanted my Cones or Ridgeway. They 
well knew that they were not only protected by law. but 
that their visitors were perfectly harmless, so I had every 
opportunity for close observation. Phalaropes, snipe, 
plover, avocets, curlews, were all ifl ^evidence, and the 
dunes Avere fairly dotted with noisy sandpipers. I only 
hope that the avifaunal exposition will be in full blast 
in the autumn. I saw here many species that I did not 
know were to be found in the intermountain region. Jack- 
snipe predominated, and the bird here called the "black- 
snipe" (a little larger than golden plover) made a good 
second. Among the snipe nesting was the order of the 
day, but most of the ducklings are hatched. Of course 
the region is beyond compare for hawks and muskrats. 
My next move was southward into the vicinity of Utah 
Lake and its tributary rivers. The season has been utt- 
usually backward, and upon the higher ranges snow has 
scarcely begun to melt, and high water cannot be eJc- 
pected for a couple of weeks yet. This means only 
poor fishing at the. opening of the season (June 15), but 
the indications are that during the summer it will be 
better than usual. 
Doves (a game bird under the new law) are through nest- 
ing, and are bunching for their annual campaign upon 
the grain fields. They may bunch in safety for three 
more weeks — then look out. Chickens and grouse, owing 
to late storms and severe weather, do not give as good 
promise as they generally do at this time. 
Game warden Newell is having considerable trouble with 
the Telluride Power and Transmission Company, overtheir 
power plant dam in Provo River. Being a foreign cor- 
poration and having no interest in the country save for 
what money they can take out of it, they have determined 
to ignore the "fishway" section of the law. Their dam ia 
quite high, and last year they made no provision for the 
passage of trout up to the spawning grounds. As a re- 
sult, the best of the trout became exhausted in trying to 
leap the dam, fell back disabled among the rocks, and 
floated helpless down the stream. It is no exaggeration to 
say that, during the height of the run, a wagon load of 
fish were ruined in this way every day. One farmer told 
the Commissioner that he picked from the head of an 
irrigating ditch sixteen large and helpless trout in a 
single hour. This year the company has put in a fish- 
way on the "fall and pool" plan, but it is not adequate 
to the exigencies of the case, and the Commissioner refuses 
to accept it, The soulless corporation refuses to make 
the necessary modifications, and there the matter rests so 
far as Utah county is concerned. But Wasatch county, 
higher up the river, has been deprived by the dam of its 
trout fishing, and it proposes to make a test case. In 
the meantime, the Telluride Company may learn that a 
charge of dynainite well placed is far more expensive 
than a proper fishway. 
I shall not have an opportunity this year to grumble at 
the lawbreakers who have been dynamiting and weiring 
the trout out of Strawberry, and peddling trout in the 
mining camps a month before the season opened. The 
Indian agent at Ft. Duchesne has put the Strawberry 
country (Uintah Reservation) in charge of' the Indian 
police, and poachers will find little grace in their eyes — 
for which Heaven be praised. Shoshone. 
Provo, Utah, June 9. 
Red Lights and Juniper Greens, 
Editor Forest and Stream: 
Accept thanks for memoranda clipped from your issue 
of Dec. 6, 1896, regarding the so-called "stump" bear, 
though I am not familiar with the term as applied. I 
recall the interest I experienced in reading the same at 
the time of publication, especially in respect to the in- 
dividual variations mentioned in the Ursidte family, as 
designated under the modern system of differentiation, 
though I had already added at least three to Dr. Mer- 
riam's elongated list of thirteen or more — ^there being 
twenty years ago not more than three recognized species 
as you state. And I had previously in your columns in a 
series_ of letters entitled "Winter Sports in North 
Carolina," treated incidentally of the same old stump 
bear (so-called), under the name of Sinnaker, by which 
name alone he is locally known in Hyde county, where 
the natives are said never to shave or to own a mirror. By 
these simple but thoroughbred backwoodsmen, he is re- 
garded as a maneater as well as a cattle-killer, and as 
distinct from the ordinary hog bears and cattle bears of 
that wilderness district as is the man eating tiger of 
India from its kind ; perhaps more so, because of physical 
characteristics, particularly the distinguishing white 
spot, as big as one's hand, which invariably marks its 
breast. This totem is as unique in zoological annals as 
the mark on Cain's forehead, which stamped him as a 
murderer ! 
The sinnaker is the only bear I ever heard of which 
relishes human flesh and systematically hunts for it when 
he cannot get other food. But I have never heard him 
called a stump bear; though I am sure of having read 
somewhere, perhaps in the Forest and Stream^ of a 
plausible explanation of the cognoman. Reckon it is a 
paraphrase for swamp bear, which is more appropriate. 
However, as there is a good deal of timber cutting in 
all Southern swamps, especially of white cedar (locally, 
juniper) and cypress, these bad bear.s, lying low in wait 
for a mouthful of African logger casually passing, might 
readily be mistaken for the stumps which concealed them ; 
just as stumps have been mistaken for bears by school 
children from time immemorial. 
By the way, I fancy I can impart some interesting and 
perhaps novel facts in this connection, about logging and 
milling in these juniper greens, as the timber tracts are 
called, which cover at least three-fifths of the intersound 
peninsula which lies between Albermarle and Pamlico 
Sounds, and embraces the counties of Beaufort, Tyrrell, 
Washington and Hyde. The geographical center and 
crown of this expansive area is occupied by Lakes Pongo 
and Phelps, which are phenomenal bodies of water like 
Lake Drummond in the Dismal Swamp, out of which 
flow numerous streams with an ample fall for mill power, 
say from 7 to i8ft. Artificial canals connect these lakes 
with the sounds, and give access to small sailing vessels 
which are employed in shipping the products of the in- 
terior farms. The principal operator in this region is 
Capt. John L. Roper, of Norfolk, Va., from whom the 
lumber town of Roper, in Washington county, is named. 
In_ all its features it is almost the counterpart of a 
Minnesota or Wisconsin lumber town of fifteen years' 
growth, with neatly-painted houses of the modern class, 
five churches, a line of stores and warehouses, graded 
and lighted streets, sidewalks, and two sawmills with an 
output of loo.oooft. of lumber per day. The population 
■ ■ about 800, and as thrifty and full of push as any North- 
ern community. Between the towns of Roper and Pongo, 
twelve miles distant, six tramways penetrate as far as 
seven miles into the juniper and cypress swamps, where 
camps of negro immunes defy mosquitoes and malaria, 
and manufacture first quality shingle by hand, They 
