424 
frozen lakes. With him was Clay Smith, son of Garrett 
A. Smith, a wealthy citizen of Cherry Valley, N. Y., and 
owner of Adirondack timber lands, who was notable for 
his sympathy with John Brown. Young Smith and 
Harvey Moody were in camp several days. The former 
having expressed a wish for some trout to take out along 
with the venison, Mart volunteered to secure the fish. 
With his lines and ice chisel he went over to Hoel Pond. 
"He had cut three holes in the ice and was busily en- 
gaged in his work when he heard a noise that sounded 
like the swish of the wings of a large bird flying. Looking 
up he was startled to see a deer bounding frantically across 
the pond in his direction with half a dozen wolves in pur- 
suit. 
Only one of the wolves was directly behind the deer. 
The others were dashing from either side toward a point 
ahead, where they would intercept it. These flanking lines 
converged at no great distance from where Mart stood. 
Quicker than it takes to tell it, the frightened deer had 
whirled to avoid collision with the wolves on either hand, 
had slipped and fallen, and simultaneously felt the cruel 
fangs of the trailing wolf, the others piling on a second 
later. 
Mart, who had stood spellbound for the moment, was 
moved with a desire to take a hand in the game, and se- 
curing a firm grip on his ice chisel, he advanced toward the 
wolves, who were so engrossed with their prey that they 
paid no attention to his approach. When less than a rod 
away he yelled and the wolves hastily decamped, leaving 
Mart in possession of the field, whereupon he decided to 
have some of the venison, and with his chisel severed the 
hams from the carcass and made his way back toward his 
lines. 
The wolves had only retreated a short distance, and the 
moment they saw Moody leave the deer they returned, 
and in an incredibly short space of time had devoured 
the part that remained. 
Mart cut a limb off a birch tree and hung up the hams 
out of reach of the wolves, and made tracks for camp, 
carrying the ice chisel for protection, and keeping a sharp 
lookout for the wolves on the way. He was not pursued, 
however, and having secured his rifle, he returned to the 
spot where he had left his fishing tackle and the venison. 
Nothing was to be seen of the wolves. Investigation 
showed that they had followed Mart as far as the tree 
where the venison was cached, and that they had circled 
around the tree but had not ventured to approach its 
base, apparently fearing a trap. Afterward they had taken 
the back track across the pond. 
Hunted fay a Panther. 
When Mart was a boy living with the Ames family, he 
set out one evening after dark to borrow an axe from a 
neighbor. The road led down through a sandy hoUow, a 
few minutes' walk from the house, and on reaching this 
place Mart heard some animal jump into the road just 
ahead. It had evidently been running and was panting 
like a dog, and Mart whistled to it in a friendly way. 
Instead of responding, however, as a dog would have 
done, or else making off, the creature sulked and circled 
around at one side in the bushes, and Mart had an un- 
canny sensation that he was being hunted. His errand 
suddenly lost importance, and he determined to return to 
Ames'. He^ retreated slowly, realizing the danger of 
appearing to be frightened, and to his dismay the strange 
animal followed, pressing him closer and momentarily 
growing bolder. 
" Decisive action was necessary, and Mart cautiously 
groped around for a weapon, but there were no stones of 
any size in the road, and nothing that he could find in 
the nature of a club. In his extremity he gathered a 
handful of the damp road sand, and as the creature ap- 
peared on the bank threatening his Hne of retreat, he 
dashed at it, throwing the sand and scolding it, as he 
would have scolded a dog. Reaching for a second 
missel, his hand came in contact with a small tree that had 
been half-cut through with an axe, and bent back to form a 
rough fence for the neighboring pasture. The tree came 
up, roots and all, and Mart sent that flying as a second 
shot. Then he took to his heels and ran. He reached the 
house safely, but said nothing about his adventure. He 
did not feel altogether sure as to the character of the 
creature that had threatened him, and he did not want to 
be guyed for running away from something which, for all 
he knew to the contrary, might after all have been harm- 
less. After breakfast the next morning Mart's father and 
Daniel Ames happened to have an errand in the direction 
of the hollow, and Mart went along. Ames discovered in 
the' road the tracks of a large animal, which he said was a 
bear, but the elder Moody at once announced the foot- 
prints were those of a panther. 
They followed the trail up into the pasture, and there 
lay a two-year-old colt, dead and partly consumed. The 
panther's panting the night before was no doubt due to 
his pursuit of the animals in the pasture. Now that the 
matter was settled beyond a doubt, Mart told his story and 
felt duly elated at having beaten off so formidable an 
antagonist. 
Though it was not thought likely the panther would re- 
turn, the elder Moody set a bear trap on the possibility, 
and was fortunate enough to capture the beast the next 
night. The panther got rid of the clog in some Avay and 
carried the trap into a tree top, where he was eventually 
fotind and shot by Jacob Moody. 
A Memorable Pleasure Trip. 
Where the village of Tupper Lake sprang up in a 
mght in William McLaughlin's cow pasture, on Raquette 
Pond, boasting a population of 2,000 souls and the largest 
saw mill in the world, a town government had to be pro- 
vided, and upon Mart Moody's shoulders a major part 
of the work and responsibility rested. He organized the 
first board of registry and town meeting, but as soon as 
matters were on a working basis, stepped out, not liking 
the game of politics as it is too often practiced. 
Several years ago Mart had a sunstroke, and was out 
of sorts for some time afterward as a result. To hasten 
his convalescence and show their appreciation of the 
man, a number of his city friends got their heads together 
and decided that a pleasure trip was the thing for Mart, 
and for a month they kept him traveling and sight seeing. 
Though Mart tried to do so, he was unable to spend a 
cent on the trip, and he actually had $85 more in his 
pocket when he got back to Tupper I^ke than he had on 
leaving. It is whispered that the increase is due to his 
financially expressed confidence in the speed of a certain 
horse, Joe Shelby by name, that tried conclusions with 
other horses at the Coney Island end of New York, and 
vindicated Uncle Mart's judgment by winning, but the 
postmaster at Moody's preserves a discreet silence in the 
matter. 
In the course of his travels. Mart visited New York, 
Brooklyn, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Washington, Annap- 
olis and the Gettysburg battlefield, and at each place 
was met by some friend and shown all that was worth 
seeing. 
If Mart had depended on his own unaided efforts he 
could not have seen as much in a solid year of sight 
seeing. In Philadelphia he went through Franklin Insti- 
tute, Girard College, Wanamaker's store, and dined with 
wealthy bankers and men of affairs. He visited In- 
dependence Hall and Tammany Hall, which were never 
before mentioned in the same breath, and he saw Mary 
Anderson, the Eden Musee and the pictures in the Hoff- 
man House, and many other things of beauty, art and 
notoriety. He met Billy Edwards, the boxing man, and 
saw Flood Rock blown up, and if he missed anything that 
was worth doing or seeing it was not the fault of his 
friends. 
Finally he was turned around in New York, and could 
not get the lay of the land, even though he went on top 
of the Produce Exchange and remained there with paper 
and pencil trj'ing to figure it out from sun up till 9 
o'clock. 
This is the one thing that Uncle Mart doesn't know 
about New York. J. B. Burnham. 
Samoan Pigeon Shooting. 
The only fowling in Samoa that is worth the powder 
and shot is the pursuit of the island pigeon, which is 
found in one or two varieties as far to the northwest as 
New Guinea. The Argus pheasant has recently been in- 
troduced and seems to be taking kindly to the Samoan 
jungle. They are thriving, and there is a good prospect 
that in a few years they will be quite at home in the 
islands. In the meantime, the white people refrain from 
shooting them, and the Samoans, who would not pay 
the slightest attention to any game law that might be 
devised, are ignorant of the food value of the imported 
bird. In certain spots where there is a little flat land near 
the sea and the undergrowth is not too dense there is 
some chance at the island rails; not a great chance, how- 
ever, for the rats are keen after eggs and fledglings, and 
only a small proportion of the birds comes to maturity. 
And at best, it is no more than a test of marksmanship 
and a proof of the ability to hit a streak of greased light- 
ning hurrying on an important errand, for the rail is 
small and thin, and mighty little pickings when it comes 
to table. It is not only their' speed that warrants pride 
in a dead rail, but it is in an even higher degree their 
cheerful willingness to make things interesting for the 
gun artist. No one shoots over a dog in Samoa, for it 
would be a shame to take a broken and respectable dog 
into such a country for the sake of the little cover work 
that could be had. The native curs — all sorts of European 
mixtures on an indigenous stock — are no more than de- 
jected masses of red mange. I think they catch jt from their 
masters. At any rate, you have to find your bird for your- 
self, and the first sight is most likely all that you will see of 
it until it stops running, and there is no telling when that 
will be. The bird has wisdom; he knows just what you 
are going to do, and he devotes his massive intellect to 
fooling you if he can — and mostly he can. I have 
flushed a rail into a little 3-foot clearing with a single 
bamboo in the center. I have caught the right swing 
of the gun to land the bird after passing the bamboo. At 
the appointed moment I have fired and shot a hole in the 
ground only to see the rail stroll back in the direction 
he had come with apparently full comprehension of the 
exact time it would take to pump another shell into the 
gun. The bamboo was all the cover needed, for I am 
confident that the bird knew that such a stalk could not 
be so much as dented even by a Mauser bullet. 
But the Samoan pigeon, the lupe, combines good 
shooting with the best of good eating, and is altogether 
a satisfactory sort of bird from start to finish. 
So far as I have been able to make out, there are at 
least three main groupings of pigeons in Samoa. You 
cannot tell by the Samoan names, for there may be a 
handful of different names for the same bird, according 
to its stage of development Just to show to what a 
ridiculous extent they carry this system, the common 
cocoanut affords a good example. From the blossom to 
the fruit in its maturity there are no less than eleven dis- 
tinct names, yet the whole period is included within six 
weeks. 
The most common of the pigeons, and at the same time 
a quite worthless member of the family, is the manu- 
tangi, "the bird that cries." In size and plumage it 
much resembles the American wood dove. In the forests 
it most domraonly affects the arcades below the foliage 
of the lofty trees, and is commonly seen perched on the 
low spindling shrubs of the undergrowth. It is so fear- 
less that it may without difficulty be tolled into the hand 
with small pieces of fruit. This ease of capture accounts 
in a measure for its frequency in captivity as a house 
bird. Pretty nearly every Samoan house has its manu- 
tangi, which in fine weather is hung out of doors in the 
shade. The cage is a large bottle-shaped affair of open 
basket-work, and the bird is tied to a cross perch, with 
sufficient length of cord to allow flapping the wings for 
a foot or so. The bird is fed with pellets of bread fruit 
or banana the size of a marble, which the owner chews 
into the proper consistency for the pigeons. The sole 
occupation of the manutangi is to sit blinking all day on 
a perch and to keep up a cooing which is as musical 
as it is unnecessary. The meat is scanty, insipid, and, ac- 
cording to the Samoans, positively unwholesome. The 
islanders, being a very practical lot of people, do not 
keep these pets solely from a fondness for animals. Ac- 
cording to the Samoan theory, the manutangi works his 
passage by serving as a sort of police against the "aitu," 
or combination ghost and devil, which makes the island 
nights such things of terror. If a caged dove is heard 
to coo during the night the waking Samoan knows that 
the treacherous approach of some evil-working aitu has 
been detected by the vigilant guardian of the house, and 
the goblin put to flight, and the etiquette of the situation 
demands that the grateful householder shall express his 
thanks to the bird by murmuring "fa'afetai" before re- 
lapsing into sleep. 
The rarest of all the pigeons is one that is found no- 
where else than in Samoa, and not often there, for it 
seems to be dying out even without being hunted. This 
is the manuma, the first cousin to the dodo, which has 
only within historic times become extinct on the Mascar- 
renes. This little dodo of Samoa differs from its bulky 
relative in that it stiU retains the power to fly. It is 
found only rarely, and then is shot only under the im- 
pression that it is a lupe. 
The lupe is a credit to his country, and always an honor 
to the gun to which he has fallen. On the wing he is 
both swift and a baffling flyer, and frequently practices 
one trick which is most deceptive. At the click of the 
trigger the bird will come to a dead stop, and you shoot 
over or under. Even in a perch shot there is nothing of 
pot-hunting, for it is always a long shot at a dimly seen 
object which it is quite impossible to feel sure is the bird 
or a clump of dead leaves. 
My first pigeon shooting experience only served to 
make me anxious to go after these excellent birds, for 
on that first experience I was forced to bide at home 
while my Samoan companions went through the motions 
of pigeon hunting, only for the purpose of getting from 
me a supply of powder, which is contraband in the 
islands, and yet greatly needed in the conduct of their 
wars. It was on a visit to Falefa, engineered by the 
Vaiala chief Tofaeono, who had not at that time been 
found out, and who was making his hay while the sun 
shone, and his official neighbors could be exploited for 
his personal benefit. Tofaeono had arranged this trip to 
Falefa for the purpose of exhibiting his gold mine to 
his wife's relatives, and we had the dignified position of 
paying the bills. I do not regret the trip to Falefa, which 
has already been described, nor do I regret the price, 
since the discovery of the deviousness of Tofaeono was 
cheap at any price. 
Some time during the night Tofaeono claimed to hear 
the rolling note of the lupe right close at hand. Ac- 
cordingly he sent Mitaele to jab at me through the 
mosquito tent and lay this fact before me, vvitli the sug- 
gestion that the loan of the gun would surely result in a 
mess of pigeons. Naturally, I 'was on the alert to enjoy 
the sport, no matter though it was long to daylight. But 
it was explained that I was the guest of the town and it 
would be the worst of ifll breeding to slide out, in this 
informal fashion into the bush and be absent from the 
morning visits of ceremony. I lay awake all the rest of 
the night, and I listened. I heard the leap of the fish in 
the lagoon. I heard the crash of falling cocoanuts. I 
heard the scratching of the hermit crabs dragging their 
top-heavy borrowed shells over the sleeping mats. I 
heard the clatter of the claws of the larger land crabs 
outside. I heard the sonatas of the mosquitoes. But, 
listen my hardest, there were two sounds I could not 
hear. I could not hear the call of the lupe; I could not 
hear the report of the gun. 
Shortly after sunrise the sportsman chief Tofaeono 
came wearily into the house in time to lead the family 
devotions before the Falefa chiefs came in full form to 
drink our morning bowl of kava. He had a long tale 
of his fruitless search for pigeons up the valley of the 
Mulivai-to, and the weariness which overcame him and 
forced him to turn back after giving the gun to Mitaele 
to carry on the hunt. His weariness was such that he 
had to stretch out On the mats and have his wife, Va, 
"lomilomi" him with the native system of massage, which 
combines a general kneading and drubbing of all the 
muscles. It was only through the incautious revelation 
of a small child that I learned that Tofaeono had gone 
no further away than to a neighboring house, where he 
had finished out his interrupted repose. Later in the 
forenoon Mitaele came dawdling back with a story of 
seven misses and no birds, but with empty shells to 
support his statement. The value of this statement was 
somewhat vitiated by the fact that the gun barrel was 
spotlessly clean, and the seven empty shells had each 
its unexploded primer. It was all a sharp game to get 
possession of that much powder and shot, and I presume 
that it was stored away and used in the recent war of 
the succession. 
But if it did nothing else, it set my interest on edge 
to go out for pigeons when the trip was oyer and I was 
once more domiciled in Vaiala. As usual Taldlq was 
eager to gratify my desire. Although he was but a mere 
strip of a lad, Talolo's mother, or mothers, had no ob- 
jection to trusting him with firearms. To earn the 
chance to fire my "shoot gun" would compensate the lad 
for any amount of work. He had his own gun— a long 
German piece with the caliber of a lead pencil — and on 
such trips I supplied his ammunition on condition that 
he would load ander my inspection; but my gun had a 
great attraction for him; he was sure that it had what he 
called "mana," or supernatural influence, and his idea 
seemed to be based on the fact that it was hammerless, 
the first weapon of the sort which he had ever seen. 
Talolo said it was easy to get lupe on the Tuasivi, and 
if I really wanted to hunt we must go to the Falepouma'a 
and make a camp for the night. The only change I made 
in Talolo's plan was to include my maid, Tonga, and 
her gigantic husband, Laulu. There are no wild beasts 
in the Samoan uplands, but back there somewhere is a 
camp of runaway slaves, who are all cannibals, and I did 
not wish to venture on a night camp with no more 
protection than a mere child. 
The Falepouma'a, or, as it is also known, the Fale o 
le Fe'e, is not a ruin, but in the old pagan days it was a 
rude stone temple of the thunder god, who was also the 
war god of the Tuamasanga, the central district of 
Upolu. It lies just below the crest of the mountain back- 
bone of the island, and is only to be reached after a 
long climb over an ancient lava flow, where it is possible 
to hear the roar of the Vaisingano flowing through sub- 
terranean caverns. Near the ruins the. river spreads out 
in a shallow pool above and deep gorge below, and in 
the latter are found some remarkable small fish of 
brilliant colors, such as are found nowhere else in Samoa. 
The native legend is that the thunder god brought these 
fish inland from the sea, and support for the stoiy is 
