166 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
[Aug. ^6, xSgg. 
the true hunter on the right trail. In tune he might have 
attained to better things" than his vanquishers, for none 
of them knows the history of his development nor the 
of his Adam. 
The aboriginal tribes of tHe Pacific Coast, fof WHoffl JiWr 
linguists have provided no fitter designation tlian Digger 
Indians, no syllable of which is in any degree significant 
or suitable, were perhaps the least worthy of all the North 
American tribes. But if there were no vestiges of them 
remaining but the obsidian arrowheads, stone mortars 
and woven baskets, yet found everywhere in California, 
those alone are mute but indisputable proofs of some ot 
their traits. Man has been distinguished as a tool-using 
animal, long ago by some learned professor, and he might 
well have observed that to have been the secret of his 
sway over all other creatures in the world. Iii our re- 
membrance the most potent implement has been and is 
now the gun. Give even a Digger Indian guns and gun- 
ners enough and he could rearrange civilization. 
When Bodega Bay, where the fancied Golden Gate lets 
ocean commerce into San Francisco, was first discov- 
ered by a pirate, he found people there capable of the no- 
blest kind of hospitality. The result has been as has been 
the result throughout history; no civilized power has ever 
been great enough to be humane or even honest in its 
contact with weaker barbarians. The weaker need not be 
very barbarous, either. It all depends upon which is the 
mightiest hunter. 
A red savage standing waist deep in the ice-cold moun- 
tain stream for hours, patiently waiting for a salmon to 
come within reach of his spear; another tracking with 
noiseless steps and anxious eye the deer that he must 
slay with his barbed stick or starve; the old mother grind- 
ing dried berries and acorns in the stone mortar, hour hy 
hour, to furnish sustenance for her children and braves, 
are never again to be familiar scenes in the territory oc- 
cupied by the United States of America. The land is oc- 
cupied by a mightier host, an entirely difTerent people; 
and yet there are hunters and fishers in plenty, greatly 
superior in man}'- ways, but lacking in a kind of nobility 
for which civilization has, at most, no monopoly. 
If the problem, "What is the chief end of man?" has 
been sufficientl}' answered, we ought to inquire something 
as to the chief end of civilization. If it is wealth and lux- 
ury we ought to remember the fate of the first republic — 
Senatus populusque Romanns; and if it is to propagate 
the greatest number of a given race, we might consider 
the accomplishments of the Chinese ; if it is to be expan- 
sion or imperialism, we ought to be more clearly assured 
as to just what to hunt for. 
After examination, it appeareth that this essay about 
hunters savors too much of an indefinite kind of expan- 
sion, but I cannot let go of the subject without the addi- 
tion that, in my opinioin, the Czar of all the Russias (if 
not of all the Russians) is one of our very mightiest 
hunters. I hope he will drive center on Mars eventually 
and effectually prevent pot-shooting the dove. It is a 
pity the Peace Conference was not called by an American. 
In concluding this epistle, while I retain the belief that 
we are all hunters fundamentally. I have derived from a 
compilation by one Noah Webster information that I am 
at times, moreover, a potwalloper. Hermits have no 
wholesome way of dodging that affliction. They are for- 
tunate if they are skillful enough at hunting to get things 
to potwallop. And so this ceaseth. 
Ransacker. 
Shasta Mountains, Cal., July. 
CHICAGO AND THE WEST. 
Movements of "Western Sportsmen. 
■ Chicago, III., Aug. 17.— Mr. H. O. Wilbur, of Philadel- 
phia, writes me as below regarding Western small game 
country : 
"As usual I come to you for information regarding 
shooting. A friend and myself expect to go to Jackson's 
Hole for elk shooting the last of this month, and after 
remaining a month desire to find some small game shoot- 
ing which we may conveniently take in, on our return 
trip. Can you recommend some place or places where we 
should be likely to find some of this kind of shooting not 
far from the Union Pacific or Chicago Northwestern rail- 
way, east of Pocatello, Idaho? Believing you have the 
best facilities for knowing these places, and are to-day 
the best posted man I know of, have taken the liberty of 
writing you this letter. I hope to see you in Chicago as 
we pass through, but would like to get this information 
before starting if possible, that I may make arrangements 
accordingly." 
I have advised Mr. Wilbur to stop as he goes east about 
the central part of Nebraska, where he should find good 
quail shooting, and perhaps a few chickens, though the 
latter are being killed now in good numbers ahead of the 
season, and may be scarcer yet by the time the big game 
season ends. For a better chicken country a party would 
better go further to the northwest, in the sand hills of 
the Loup region, for instance, but I have about given up 
advising anybody on chickens, for the shooting is pretty 
much all done before the legal season begins over the 
greater part of the Western country. The quail is a better 
factor now in Western sport than the chicken — a hundred 
to one. Mr. Wilbur will find abundance of quail in 
Nebraska. 
Hon. Jas. H. Eckels, ex-Comptroller of the Currency 
for the United States, and now president of the Com- 
mercial National Bank of Chicago, called at my office 
this week for directions in regard to a Western shooting 
trip which contemplates both large and small game. Mr. 
Eckels will be one of quite a large party who will go in at 
Sisseton, S. D. — Old Fort Sisseton, built in 1864 and 
abandoned some years since — after prairie chickens. The 
party will be under guidance of Minneapolis gentlemen 
and will be made up as below: Messrs. Jas. H. Eckels, 
Geo. M. Eckels and John Crerar, of Chicago ; W. F. Har- 
rity, of Philadelphia ; Judge E. Koon, of the Minneapolis 
bench ; W. Thayer, cashier of the National Bank of Com- 
merce, Minneapolis; W. Jeffry, cashier of the First Na- 
tional Bank, of Minneapolis; C. F. Folds, also of Minne- 
apolis. They will have plenty of money along to pay all 
the bills, and if they run short they can telegraph and get 
more from home. They go to a country naturally very 
good for chickens, and if the wardens can hold down the 
law breaking element which is this year worse than ever 
m its open defiance of the chicken date, thoy will have 
som.e sport with the chickens. 
A.t the close of the chicken trip Mr. Eckels, with his 
friends, Dr. John B. Murph}'-, the distinguished surgeon 
of this city, and Mr. Edward W. Paige, of New York 
city, will go on out West still furtlier, and have a big 
game hunt. It was regarding this part of the trip that 
Mr. Eckels wished advice, not knowing whether to go 
overthe Great Northern or the Northern Pacific Railroad. I 
gave him the names of guides on the Blackfoot reserva- 
tion for the Two Medicine and also the St. Mary's 
country, also the addresses of Billy Holer, for the Park 
region and below, and of E. Van Dyke, at Red Lodge, for 
the country lying east of the Yellowstone Park. Mr. 
Eckels will consult with his friends before deciding which 
of these trips to make. He very wisely thinks it might 
not be imperative to turn around and come right back out 
of the mountains if they got into a good game country, 
and says that, while his time ought to be two weeks, it is 
capable of stretching. A man never so much needs an 
elastic calendar as when he is in the Rocky Mountains. 
It is a hard place to get away from, as many a man has 
more than once discovered. Mr. Paige is an old moose 
hunter in the East, but, as I understand it, has never 
made a visit to the Rockies, so he has the best part of 
his life before him at this writing. I feel very sure this 
party will have a good trip, whichever locality they de- 
cide upon. They will round up at Fargo, N. D., after the 
chicken shoot at Sisseton, and go west in September for an 
indefinite stay. 
Mr. James Hunt Cook, Secretary of the Cotton Ex- 
change, Vicksburg, Miss., comes to me this week with 
letters from Mr. Horace Kephart, of St, Louis, and with 
the intent of looking around in the biggest and dirtiest 
city on earth, which is Chicago. Mr. Kephart is the best 
posted man on rifles in America, and Mr. Cook comes 
from the State where men have very large hearts. After 
a while Chicago is going to annex both Mississippi and 
St. Louis, and it might do worse — indeed has done worse. 
Mr. J. H. Harrow, of Greenville, Miss., passed a few 
hours in this city this week, on his way to State Line, 
Wis., where he will get experience with the muscallunge 
and bass. 
Hon. Willis Vandeventer, Assistant Attorney-General 
of the United States, arrived in Chicago this week from 
Washington, on his way to Wyoming, where he is going 
fishing for a while. 
Mr. Geo. F. Murphy, of Sodaville, Nev., is in Chicago 
this week, purchasing material enough to suppress an 
Indian uprising if need be. 
Mr. L. Boyce, of this city, left this week for Lac du 
Flambeau, Wis., for a session with 'lunge and bass. 
Mr. C. H. Ferry, of Chicago, is another gentleman to 
try the Flambeau Chain. He departed for that region 
early this week. 
Mr. Geo. Murrell, secretary of the Chicago Fly-Casting 
Club, tliis week tried the Fox River near Algonquin for 
bass. He did not find the bass coming to the fly, so went 
to the bait rod. He took one very hne bass, a 41b. fish, 
very fit and good, and also got five little fellows around 
a pound in weight. 
Mr. Perce, of the Fly-Casting Chxh, is absent in Indiana 
at Hudson Lake. He has sent up some nice baS5 to 
friends and apparently has had sport. 
Mr. B. W. Goodsell, abas "Pa" Goodsell, also of the 
Fly-Casting Club, is out in the pine woods after trout, 
though it is late in the trout season. None the less he 
seems to have located them, for he has sent down 125 nice 
trout this week to friends. The locality is shrouded in 
secrecy just at this writing. 
Mr. R. Mansfield, of San Francisco, the undisputed 
tnaster of long-distance fly-casting in America, is ex- 
pected to be present at the meeting of the Chicago Fly- 
Casting Club this coming Saturday. This is looked upon 
as something of an event by the local experts, and the 
occasion is apt to be a red-letter one to the best of the 
ability of the Chicago men. 
Mr. H. G. McCartney, of this city, left early this week 
for Kabekona Camp, Minn., of which camp he is pro- 
prietor. He purposes a stay of some daj^s. Mr. Mc- 
Cartney is one of the general committee on arrangements 
for the Congressional trip which will be undertaken this 
coming month by the Minnesota National Park and 
Forestry Association, and his advice will be valuable to 
that body, as he is thoroughly acquainted with the region 
to be visited by the distinguished guests of the organiza- 
tion. I understand that several railroad men are now up 
in that country looking it over carefully with a view 
to completing their own plans for handling the big 
party. 
Theatrical Depaitment. 
Last night I went out to see the play "Arizona," being 
attracted by the name, as w^ell as by the fact that Mr. 
Bruning, a very good friend of mine, is in the cast, and 
Mr. Bruning is also a Forest and Stream sort of man. 
Mr. Augustus Thomas chose a good field for a play 
when he got into the Spanish Southwest. I understand 
that he paid the country a visit before he wrote his play, 
w^hich is more than some writers on Western topics ever 
did, albeit it is a very useful custom. We do not look 
for the accuracy on the stage that we expect in literature, 
but Mr. Thomas disappointed anybody who went there to 
carp by presenting a play the greater part of whose setting 
is accurate. One can fairly feel the sand in his teeth again 
as he looks at the sets of the piece, and the ranchman is a 
ranchman for a fact. The cowpunchers wear their belts 
long and low, and their chaps are fair to middling any- 
how, even if they do wear their kerchiefs more like 
sailors than cowpunchers. I understand that most of this 
excellent costuming is due to the supervision of Mr. 
Frederic Remington. The soldiers are some of them 
real soldiers, fresh from Tampa, and on the whole one 
gets a ver}' pretty and satisfying sense of the sunshine 
and sand of the real Southwest. As for the play, it shows 
the master hand of one who Icnows his business. Of 
course, there must alwaj'^s be remembered the point of 
view of the stage. The real Arizona would not do from 
the standpoint of the playwright. The heroines in silk, 
the bloodthirsty Greaser in such very tight trousers, the 
champagne with ice, and that sort of thing, one hardly 
finds in actual life in the cactus country, but he may love 
it on the stage and pass a pleasant evening watching it. 
But that is not what I wanted to write about. It was 
something which carried me back still more strongly to 
tbat land of mahana which I knew in one of the yester- 
days of my own life. As I sat watching the play, hoping 
in spite of myself for the ultimate foiling of the villain — 
though I knew personally that off the stage the villain is 
a most com.panionable and delightful sort of man — ^I was 
a bit surprised to hear the neighbor on my left, to whom 
I had not been introduced, break the silence which fol- 
lowed a bit of the applause. 
"Well," said he, in a rather discontented fashion, "it 
may be that they have cracked ice with their champagne 
down in Arizony now, but they didn't never use to when 
I was there. Not in a hundred !" 
As the speaker apparently addressed this remark to me, 
I responded that when I was in that end of the country 
they didn't very often have either ice or the champagne — 
especially ice. 
"I've saw the time when I'd of give a dollar a pound fer 
it," said my new friend. "You see, I'm a cow man my- 
self, an' that's why I come in yer to-night. I've been all 
over that country — Texas, New Mexico, Arizony and 
them places. I'm ranchin' it now down in southern 
Oklahomy — got about 1,100 acres down in there, an' a 
nice biinch o' stock. Cows is lookin' up now — prime steers 
brung $6.25 on the market here at the yards yesterday. 
Yes, well, as I wus sayin', I never did see no ice down on 
no ranches when I was in them parts. Not nowaj^s 
where the roofs was made out of mesquite poles yet. I 
don't know what you call it, but seems like to me the feller 
that runs this thing has shore slipped his cinch a leetle 
bit on this yer ice business. An' no more did I ever see a 
s'argent speak to a lady in a officer's house, not in my 
time, though it may be they do that way now." 
I tried to explain to my friend that this play w^as so 
much better than any other play ever written on a West- 
ern subject that we really had no kick coming, but he 
was hard to content about that cracked ice and the green 
creme de menthe in the glasses of the ranchman's table, 
which he declared was ag'in natur', so to speak. From 
one thing to another we got to speaking of the old days in 
the Southwest, and I discovered that my companion Rnew 
some of my old friends down in that countr}^ — for in- 
stance, Pat Garrett, the sheriff who killed Billy the Kid 
down in New Mexico, and others of that country Avhich 
was once my stamping ground. I am afraid the play was 
not the thing for the rest of the evening, for we slipped in 
a word now and then about the old days, all this spiced 
with the vivid movement of the spectacle before us. It 
was a queer experience to me, this episode of the varied 
life of the city, and took one back in an odd, compelling 
sort of way. I do not know Mr. Thomas, who wrote 
"Arizona," but I want to thank him for a very enjoyable 
evening, and to assure him that he had two very good 
lookers and listeners tliat night. We both agreed to 
forgive him that ice. As to the name of my temporary 
friend, I did not ask it, but I know he w^as the real 
article. He would know how to dig wood in Arizona and 
where to find water when there wasn't any water visible. 
■Where the Shoe Pinches. 
Chicago, III., Aug. 18.— There came into the office of 
the Forest and Stream to-day a delegation of deputy 
wardens, Messrs. Geo. Kleinman, H. Edenbord and Mr. 
Ratto, and they had a subscription paper. The said paper 
signified that the peace and dignity of the State of Illinois 
was threatened by a proposed raid of lawbreakers from 
Iowa, members for the most part of sportsmen's clubs 
of Burlington, Iowa, who own lands in the State of 
Illinoi.s, who use these lands for shooting preserves, and 
who rebel at the new Illinois game law which exacts a 
license from non-resident shooters. It was further set 
forth that the State of Illinois had no money with which 
to meet this proposed raid, and that the signature of my- 
self to the extent of about $5 worth would be very much 
appreciated. I signed, naturally, being very unwilling 
that the proud State of Illinois should be injured as to 
her peace and dignity. The fund so raised is to be devoted 
to sending these deputies down into the threatened terri- 
tory, where they will meet the invaders and arrest several 
of them very pleasantly,- if they can secure enough funds 
to pay the necessary bills to take them there at the 
time of the raid. 
This is the first attack on the license law for this State, 
and it would appear that the law is not going to prove 
altogether popular. The trouble with all game laws is 
that they pinch now and then. The shoe gets on to our 
own foot once in a while, whereas, of course, it ought 
always to be on the other fellow's foot. I confess I do 
not like to loosen from $5, even for the peace and dignity 
of Illinois, when there is a hard winter coming on, and 
I could use the $5 to pay a quarter's rent. That is where 
the shoe pinches me chiefly at this moment. As to the 
gentlemen from Burlington, they were all very fully 
represented at the midwinter convention of the Illinois 
State Sportsmen's Association, which passed a set of 
resolutions embodying its views as to game laws, some of 
which were offered and adopted in more or less altered 
form, in the much discussed and somewhat mutilated 
game bill which ultimately became our present game law. 
As I remember it, we were all very happy down there, 
everybody was a perfectly jolly gentleman, and the goose 
was hanging high. Nobody was bothered at that time 
by any possibility of a pinching shoe. We resolved, to the 
best of our ability, that we would like to have such and 
such kind of a game law. Then Av-e left the rest to a 
beneficent Providence, and a finance committee, which 
latter after a year of hard word collected about enough to 
pay its clerk hire — I know, because I ran the finance com- 
mittee work myself. At that time there were no shoes to 
trouble anyone. Now we have a game law, and it has this 
license clause to it, and the men who thought it. might 
be a good thing to have a license clause — for the other 
fellow — in order to raise a fund for the game warden to 
enforce the law, you know, are now^ nursing a much 
pinched foot. As for the fund to be raised for the w^ar- 
dens and the enforcement of the law, we have not yet 
got around to that. The law hasn't had time to work 
very much yet. Meantime we are getting funds from the 
sporting press and the sporting goods trade. This is 
the actual situation in regard to the Illinois game law just 
at present. 
C5f course, there is no use beating around the hu.sh about 
this, and the man is in a pitjable position who tries to 
straddle the fence in this question. There is but one posi- 
tion to take in regard tr "is law, or any other game law, 
