Forest and Stream. 
A Weekly Journal of the Rod and Gun. 
Copyright, 1900, by Forest' and Stream Publishing Go. 
Terms, $4 a Year. 10 Cts. a Copy. ) 
Six Months, $2. j 
NEW YORK, SATURDAY, AUGUST 4, 1900. 
( VOL. LV.— No. 8. 
■j No. .846 Broadway, New York 
The Forest ano Stream is the recognized medium of entertain- 
ment, instruction and information between American sportsmen. 
The editors invite communications on the subjects to which its 
pages are devoted. Anonymous communications will not be re- 
garded. While it is intended to give wide latitude in discussion- 
of current topics, tlie editors are not responsible for the views of 
correspondents. 
Subscriptions may begin at any time. Terms: For single 
copies, $4 per year, $2 for six months. For club rates and full 
particulars respecting subscriptions, see prospectus on page iii. 
THE SHUT-IN SPORTSMAN. 
Of all who are kept indoors by bodily infirmity one 
might naturally think the confinement would be most irk- 
some to him whose recreations are entirely of the outdoor 
world; yet actual observation docs not furnish proof 
that he bears the privation with less fortitude than fellow 
mortals of different proclivities. 
What substitute can he find inside four close walls for 
the exhilaration of the sports of woodland and water? 
What, compared with those the scholar finds in his 
books, the artist in his pictures, the romancer in his 
dreams, or the poet in his fancies? Even the man with- 
out these resources may at least stolidly endure, one 
would think._ But strangely enough he who loses least 
chafes most. 
The sportsman has the mem.ory of past pleasures to 
comfort him, and if he be of the sort who enjoy most 
keenly, he has imagination and invention to call to his 
aid. 
His well and long used gun, companion oi many a day 
of supreme happiness, brings back vivid recollections 
of many of them. 
Not the least of these was the day when the delicate 
penciling of the browned barrel was untarnished, the 
polished stock unmarred by dent or scratch, and the 
whole shining masterpiece of the gunsmith's art was 
redolent of the faint oily smell that only the gun diffuses. 
How proud he was to be its owner, to feel its perfect fit 
and balance, and to have such faith in his ability to hit 
his bird every time with such a weapon. He smiles now 
as he recalls how effectually the overweening conceit was 
taken out of him. For all that humiliation the unfor- 
gotten day was full of happiness. 
The softly soughing July wind brings in at the open 
window some subtle reminder of the spicy fragrance of 
pine and hemlock distilled by a September sun, and he 
sees again the asters shining in the woodland shade, the 
yellow of fading wood plants, the red glow of huckle- 
berry leaves among the haze of blue fruit, the feeding 
partridges, unseen till they burst upward with a roar 
that quite upset his nerves and caused the waste of two 
charges. Then after reloading from the brand-new 
spring-top flask, the lever-charger shot pouch, and the 
wads, homemade from cardboard, all marvels of celerity 
in their day, the cautious search for the scattered birds, 
with the firm resolve to keep steady next time at all 
hazards. His good resolution was presently rewarded, 
when a bird that sprang up almost in his face was cut 
down and killed clean by a shot fired at just the right 
moment, and so glad was he to have regained mastery of 
himself that the whole scene is so distinctly imprinted 
on memory he could go directly to the very spot after 
all the years of change. 
Some slight thing in some quite unlike scene, some 
sound, some^ smell, recall other happy days of the past, 
which he lives over again and again. Some befell where 
the silver channel winds through countless acres of marsh, 
now when it is all in the sameness of summer green 
save where the blooming button bush, thronged with 
nesting redwings, adorns it with its profusion of white 
blossoms; now when a tinge of yellow pervades it, 
varied with splashes of russet, orange and red, and the 
tangled copses of button bush are islands of green, with 
here and there a flame of Avater maple burning like a 
beacon, and all a-whirl about the passing boat, thick as 
bees around a hive, and a renewed uproar of thunder- 
ing wings at the rounding of each bend; or in winter, 
when the broad level of marsh and water wss a whiter 
silent plainj to the eye, lifeless and deserte'd,- though 
there was a stir of busy inhabitants under the snow- 
covered thatch of the muskrat houses. Faint and far 
comes the echo of a hound's voice, and following its 
direction two dark specks were seen apparently creeping 
nearer, their speed increasing as they grew and took on 
the forms of fox and dog,, and the heart beat fast to the 
swelling music, till at last came the opportunity and the 
shot, and triumph of success. His nerves thrill again 
at the memory of it all, and. he is glad to have lived in 
those days, and to remember them. 
The boys, who are in the first enthusiasm of sports- 
manship, are wild with envy when he tells them of the 
game there was in all the woodland and marsh when he 
was a boy, and of the great fish that crowded the waters. 
As they bewail the fate that brought them into the world 
so late, he is reminded how he did the same when the 
old men told him like tales of the big game of their 
younger days, all gone before his time, and he, too, is a 
boy — not valuing present blessings, but wishing the past 
returned or the future reached wherein were all possibili- 
ties. Yes, a boy again, with his flintlock musket; and 
proud of the battered weapon, though it had tricks of 
sornetimes missing fire and flashing in the pan, and 
always kicked, due to its being breech burnt — so it was 
said. Though both eyes were shut, he ' always knew 
when it vvent off. When his young visitors tell of a 
piece of old woodland .sacrificed, of some ledge shorn of 
its trees, of river banks wantonly stripped of shade, he 
is glad that he cannot see the devastated scenes — it is 
better to dream of them as he knew them than to awaken 
to their spoiled reality and the pain of impotent rage 
against the spoilers. 
Can that be only the slow stir of wind-swayed boughs, 
so like the changing murmur of the swift river fretting 
on its gravelly bed? So like it that he can fancy himself 
stealing along the bank behind the fringe of willows, rod 
in hand, of a fine June jnorning. The lush intervale 
grass is dotted with the first buttercups, and the fra- 
grance of wild grape blossoms is in the air; a muskrat 
swims out from the shore towing a green branch to his 
burrow; a green heron flaps awkwardly from perch to 
perch; under a drooping willow a bass snaps a drowning 
fly with a swirl of the green water, inviting the angler's 
cast. He is no longer a prisoner of the sick room, but 
is fishing again in his favorite stream. 
So in autumn, when the falling leaves scurry past his 
window, in spirit he is out in the brown woods, his 
nostrils almost catching the subtle, indescribable aroma 
of ripe leaves. 
He hears the wood folk astir, the rustle of their feet, 
their various voices speaking concerning his intrusion, 
and he hears those weird mysterious voices of the woods 
that come from no living thing. In the old, old days, 
when the world was young and people were not so un- 
believing, but took their fancies in good faith, these 
were the voices of wood nymphs and fairies conversing 
and calling one to another, not the piping of the wind 
and the chafing of boughs. 
The swish of the first snowflakes against the window, a 
glimpse of snow-covered roofs, bring him visions of the 
winter woods, muffled and carpeted in white, wherein is 
written the latest doings of the wood folk, where a fox 
had made a stealthy scout. Here is recorded what might 
be taken as the story of the midnight, snowshoe sports 
of half a dozen of their kind if the tragic finis 
were not printed in blood and Reynard's fatal leap 
imprinted on the snow, where there was an end 
to all the broad pad marks. The partridge has set 
down in the neatest footprint her devious wandering 
from her last roosting place to the concluding wing- 
marks where she took flight upward to a breakfast of 
buds in a tall poplar. Squirrels have linked so many 
trees and caches of nuts together; so many woodpeckers, 
nuthatches and chickadees are seen, that one wonders 
how woods so populous can be so silent, though snow- 
muffled and echoless. Nothing is heard btit a party of 
jays clamoring over their latest discovery. 
Such clues lead the imprisoned sportsman to the frae- 
dom of outdoors. 
But there is a key that opens the door to a far wider 
range, with comrades who take him to the furthest corner 
of the wide world. One leads him among the familiar 
scenes of his youth. Another, into the pathless gloom of 
Northern forests, the home of the^ rcioose and caribou, 
or further to the frazerc haunts- o£ the musk-ox, or to the 
wild Northwest, where cnity cait he seen the last remnant 
of the wood buffalo, and to Alaska and the Klondike. 
Another takes htm to the Rockies^ and shows him the 
elk in wonderful herds, the antelope, the wild sheep, like 
statues carved out of the rocks whereon they stand, or 
points out to him wihite specks moving along: the giddy 
crags, which, he tells him, are wild goats. Another-' 
shows him the savage grizzly, king of American beasts. 
At night by the camp-fire he listens to the wail of t^ie 
panther, the long howl of the wolf, and sleeps the restful, 
sleep of the just. These most genial companions hunt 
tigers with him in India, elephants and lions in Africa, 
shoot foxes in New England, ride after them to the 
hounds in Virginia, catch tarpon in Floridian waters, 
salmon in Canadian rivers — in short, share with him all 
his old sports and initiate him into new ones, and do 
all that brethren of the gun and rod can for one an- 
other, for these kind friends who lighten his burden of 
weariness and pain are the world-wide contributors to the 
columns of Forest and Stream. 
JOHN GOMEZ. 
Old John Gomez, the centenarian of Panther Key, 
off the Gulf Coast of Florida, has passed away. His ex- 
traordinary life span of 119 years has closed. Death has 
found him out at last. 
Born in 1781, this man was otlder than the United 
States of America. He had almost attained his majority 
in 1800, and one can but indulge the idle reflection that 
if to his one hundred and nineteen years but a paltry 
half year could have been added, so passing beyond 1900, 
he would have had part in three centuries. 
For a long time John Gomez has been a character 
familiar to Forest and Strkam readers. One and an- 
other of our correspondents have visited him in his home 
on Panther Key and made report of his continued health 
and vigor, at which the world marveled. It was only a 
few months ago that Tarpon sent a grateful contradic- 
tion of a rumor of the old man's death. Of the truth of 
this new report, however, there can be no question. Of 
the Panther Key phenomenon of longevity we may now 
speak in the past tense only — John Gomez was. 
Gomez was a native of Portugal. From his native 
land he went in youth to France, where, as he was fond 
of telling, he saw Napoleon Bonaparte reviewing his 
troops. Coming to America as cabin boy on a bark, he 
deserted ship at Charleston, S. C, and made his way to 
St. Augustine, then under Spanish rule. Thence Ijie 
passed to Central America, after many years returning to 
Florida and taking part in the Seminole War. In the 
6o's he served as pilot for the Navy in blockading opera- 
tions in Gulf waters. We reprint from one of our 1896 
issues some interesting reminiscences of John Gomez 
in those days from the pen of Capt. Charles H. Rockwell, 
who is now in command of Admiral Schley's flagship. 
The portrait given on the following page is from a pho- 
tograph made by Tarpon a few years ago. 
SNAP SHOTS. 
Here is a sporting itinerary with which one may con- 
trast his own month off for a hurried trip to the Rockies 
or Canada in quest of trophies. It is the record . of ; , an 
expedition undertaken by Count Scheibler, an Italian' 
sportsman, whose enterprise was of a method and mag- 
nitude making it worthy of record. Coming first to the 
United States, Count Scheibler hunted grizzlies and elk 
in the Rocky Mountains; then he went to British Co- 
lumbia and secured mountain goat specimens. From San 
Francisco he sailed for India, in which country he se- 
cured tiger, rhinoceros, gnu, wild buffalo and other big 
game. Then he hunted Gya and Ceylon and thence 
crossed to Africa and did the game of Somaliland, and 
afterward penetrated equatorial Africa, adding trophy 
after trophy representing the wonderful store of game in 
that country. From Africa he passed to Russia for elk. 
The experience covered seven years, in which time the 
Count acquired specimens of a large proportion of the 
big game of four continents. 
Mr. Joseph B. Thompson, of the New York Bar, con- 
cludes to-day his consideration of the Lacey bill in a 
paper which is much wider in scope than the title as an 
exposition of the principles governing game protection- 
His lucid presentatfion of these principles deserves c^C'- 
ful reading. 
It is one of the important missions of Forest and 
Stream to discover and proclaim new fields for rod and 
gun. The very complete description of Mexisan tarpon 
fishing will inevitably be the means of directing Americar^ 
anglers to those well stocked waters. 
