Sept. ^, 1^.] 
FOREST_AND STREAM. 
24B 
every fifteen square miles in New England. It stands 
to the credit and honor of the Old Folks' Association of 
Charlemont that for thirty-one successive years it has 
met annually, with ever increasing interest, a joy to its 
members, a pleasure to all the people of its region. Much 
of this marked success must be attributed to good man- 
agement, but much also is due to the hearty co-operation 
of all the old people of the surrounding country. Long 
may the Old Folks' Association of Charlemont live and 
flourish! 
Did I speak of old associations and old memories? 
Blessed are they who have them in plenty, and good 
ones. Those that cluster around the old homestead and 
the home? life of one's youth are the most tender, the 
most distinct, and the most enduring of all. Five times 
this summer season I have been dut for a day's ride 
among the hills of the adjoining town of Williamsburg, 
arnong the abandoned farms and vacant cellars and 
ruined wells and fields once cultivated, but now growing 
mostly brush and stately trees. In a ride of about two 
miles over and around "Petticoat Hill" I counted twenty- 
five empty cellars. Seventy-five or eighty years ago 
houses covered these cellars, and happy homes were 
there, with large families of children, and life and thrift 
and contentment were abundant. Seventy-five scholars 
attended the district school in the winter. The land was 
fertile and crops were good. Two deacons were among 
the residents and one captain of a mihtary company. 
Some distinguished people have lived there. Oliver 
Smith, the founder of Smith charities, spent some of his 
early years there and laid the foundations of his large 
fortune in dairying. Mrs. ^Olive Cleaveland Clarke, 
mother of Rev. Edward Clarke, was born on one of these 
abandoned homesteads and lived to enter the I02d year 
of her age. Dr. Benjamin Ludden and his brother^ Prof. 
William Ludden, of Brooklyn, were born there, on a 
spot now covered with growing timber. Dr. Thomas 
Meekins, a leading physician of the town for half a cen- 
tury, was a native of one of these deserted homes; also 
his brother, Stephen Meekins, the founder of the Meek- 
ins Library, which so fittingly commemorates his indus^ 
try, wisdom and generosity. Not a single house where 
tliese people lived is now standing. 
One after another of these families disappeared, until 
all were g-one. None came to take their places. The 
unoccupied houses and barns speedily went to decay, and 
to-day not a board nor a stick of timber remain to re- 
mind one of these foimier habitations. The cellar walls 
have tumbled in, the chimneys have fallen down, the v^ells 
have been filled, and nothing remains to remind one of 
the scenes of life and gayety that there existed. From 
some of these vacant cellars large trees are now growing, 
and where the densely occupied school house stood there 
now is a forest of oaks, maples and birches. The fields, 
once tilled, are growing up to brush and heavy timber; 
ihe roadsides are filled with trees, overarching the drive- 
way; neglect is seen in the dilapidated fences, and the 
highway is left to be washed by the heavy rains, with 
rarely a visit from the highway surveyor. Aside from the 
empty cellars, the principal reminders of these former 
settlements are a few decrepit apple trees, relics of the 
orchards that once were the delight of these homesteads, 
but now storm-beaten and bearing the evidences of age 
and neglect. 
What memories crowded in upon me as I stood upon 
the ruins of these ancient homesteads! On one of them 
I was born seventy-two years ago and spent my early 
boyhood. I knew the rocks and the trees and the hills 
and the brooks and even the fishes in the streams. I 
could tell where to find the best apples, the best nuts and 
berries, and the largest trout. I knew all the people who 
lived there. My feet have pressed almost every rod of 
the roads, the fields and the watercourses in that region. 
Everything seemed familiar, and pleasing recollections 
of youthful enjoyment came uppermost. Once it was, to 
rne, home. 
As I go there now there is stillness in the air and lone- 
liness around. Few human residents are seen there, 
desolation abounds, and only occasionally there comes 
a wandering stranger, who knows but little of and cares 
less for the life that once was there. Six houses only 
remain of what was once the most populous section of 
the town. The little school house has been closed and 
the few school children left are carried in a buggy to the 
center village for their education, at the expense of the 
town. 
Yet not' all has departed. Though the people and the 
houses are nearly all gone, there still remain, brighter 
and dearer with the advancing years, the memories and 
associations of long ago. • These are ever precious, and 
I cherish those that remain with me as the choicest 
treasures of my life. The hills are there still, grand, and 
imposing as of yore. The same blue heavens are above, 
and the same earth beneath. The same sun shines over 
all the region; the same balmy summer breezes play upon 
the hilltops: the same pure, sweet air, fragrant with scent 
of vine and flower and evergreen tree, is there yjgt; and 
the far-reaching view from these heights is ever the same 
—charming, delightful, unchangeable. 
"Be it ever so humble. 
There's no place like home," 
and there are no memories and associations so rich in 
enjoyment, so comforting to the aged, as those which 
are connected with one's youth. 
Have T described a section, of country whose history is 
unlike that of any other? No. You have them all 
around in Franklin county. Go to Hawley and other 
lowns in that region and you find the same empty 
cellars, the same story of former life and thrift, and the 
same evidence of past and present decay The same in 
true, to a greater or less extent, all over the hilly regions 
of New England. It is a melancholy picture, from one 
point of view, and yet there is that connected with it 
which possesses an interest and a fascination which lin- 
ger long with the native born and are ever welcome 
companions. Sincerely yours. 
Henry S. Gere. 
ITih ITtJRRST ANTt Stream Is put to prtss eaeli weelc on Tuesday, 
rnrrfspondence intended for publication should reach us at the 
yateit by Monday and as much earlier as practicable. 
The White Goat in Domestication. 
The Gardens of the London Zoological Society now 
possess for the first time a living specimen of the so-called 
white goat (Oreamnus montanus), which, up to the pres- 
ent time, has been one of the rarest animals to be had in 
captivity. Occasionally the young of the white goat have 
been captured and domesticated by ranchmen in the 
West, but we recall only one case where it was exhibited 
to the public in a zoological collection. This, if we 
recollect aright, was many years ago at Woodward's 
Gardens in San Francisco, Cal. The specimen was there 
for a short time only. It arrived in bad health and soon 
died. 
The specimen in London was captured as a kid about 
two weeks old by a Mr. La Montagne, who shot the 
mother in the mountains of British Columbia. 
At various times the Washington Zoological Park and 
the New York Zoological Park have been in negotiation 
with Western men who had j-oung Rocky Mountain goats 
in captivity, but we believe that nothing has ever come of 
these attempts to buy and sell. 
More than ten years ago an extended account was 
published in FotiEST and Stream giving what was then 
known of a number of individuals of this species that 
have been had in captivity in the West. One of the most 
interesting of these was contributed by Mr. John Fannin. 
Curator of the Provincial Museum of British Columbia, 
form which we quote tlie following paragraphs : 
"A little bullet-shaped head surmounted by a pair of 
"tiny, sharp-pointed ears, a mere handful of a body propped 
up on four long and clumsy-looking legs, it was certainly 
the most ungainly animal 1 had ever seen. Its coat was 
of pure white wool, very short and slightly curly, and 
with very little appearance of hair except in the beard, 
which ju.st showed it.self beneath the lower jaw. There 
was no sign of horns, although slight protuberances could 
be felt beneath the skin where these would come. It was 
a male, and probably not over a week old, and the Indian 
had run it down on the side of a mountain after shooting 
its mother. I gave the Indian his price, $2, and, picking 
the little waif up in my arms, carried it to the house. 
"For two weeks I fed it on cow's milk, weakened with 
water, feeding it about every hour and allowing it only a 
very little milk at a time. Then for a day or two I 
added a little oatmeal to the milk, and before long almost 
anything of a vegetable nature was eagerly gobbled up by- 
it. It appeared to be always hungry, but, strange to say, it 
would allow no one to feed it but myself. It soon be- 
came a little troublesome, though, for, no matter where 
I went, the goat followed at my heels like a dog. At meal 
times it would accotnpany me to the hotel, and repose at 
my feet under the table. It would follow me into the 
Avoods on my short trips after grouse, and the report of 
my gun had little or no effect on it. If I climbed up on 
a stump and sat down for a smoke, the goat would climb 
up too and sit down on its haunches by my side, and 
with its nose straight out in front gazing solemnly into 
the gloom of the deep forest. So long as I kept quiet it 
would remain motionless. The chirrup of a squirrel or 
twitter of a bird failed to attract its attention in the 
slightest degree, but if I made the least motion to get 
down, it was up at once and ready for a spring. 
"It had a passion for high places, which 1 imagine is 
born with the animal. When I first got it I made a bed in 
one corner of the shed b}'' filling a low box with clean, 
soft hay, the goat standing by watching the operation. 
When it was finished, I picked him up and put him on 
the hay, pulling his legs from under him and making 
him lie down — in fact, giving him to understand that was 
to be his bed. But as soon as I took my hands off him he 
jumped out of the box. At tine further end of the shed, 
which was about 15 feet long, stood a pile of fir bark 6 
feet high, corded up in the usual way of cording firewood. 
When he jumped out of the box he walked over to this 
pile and stood for a moment looking up at the top of it. 
Then he backed away from it till within a few feet of 
where I stood, and taking a run, climbed up that bark 
like a cat, and lying down on the top looked at me as 
much as to say, 'This is the way we do in the moun- 
tains.' From then till the day he died, his bed was 
always on the top of the bark. 
"He was an early riser, and long before my usual time 
of getting up he would rout me out by butting against 
the door. There were two domestic animals it could 
not bear the sight of — a cow and a dog. But while it 
wouJd almost break its neck in its endeavor to get away 
from the former, the appearance of the latter aroused all 
the combativeness of its nature. One day a gentleman 
came into my shop accompanied by a setter dog, when 
the goat immediately assumed a belligerent attitude, walk- 
ing around the room stiff-legged, his little hoofs coming 
down on the floor with a loud tap at every .step. Finally 
he halted at a respectful distance from the dog, and with 
his head lowered, bracing him-self for a last effort, he 
seemed to be waiting, or about to begin, an attack. The 
dog survej^ed the little creature for a moment, and then, 
probably thinking it scarcely worth bothering with, lay 
down on the floor and went to sleep. As the dog remained 
motionless, the goat relaxed its rigid attitude and moved 
cautiously nearer, until, by stretching its neck, it brought 
its nose within an inch of that of the dog. Just then a 
fly. disturbed chc dog's slumbers, and in bringing up its 
paw to brush away the insect, it hit the goat a sharp tap 
on the nose. Like the recoil of a steel spring, quick as a 
flash, the boat spraung into the air, and in coming down 
and trying to alight as far away from the dog as possible, 
he .got tangled up in the legs of a wooden chair, which, in 
his hurry to get out of the house, he carried off with 
him. When he shook himself clear of the chair and looked 
round and found that the house had not fallen and that 
the dog was perfectly quiet, he put on a look of utter dis- 
gust and skulked off into a corner of the yard, where he 
lay down in a clump of weeds and remained out of sight 
till the dog was clear of the premises. 
"As a general rule he was quiet — in fact, mopish — but 
when he did break out in a playful mood, some of his 
tricks were simply ludicrous: One day I was sitting with 
a friend in front of my house, when the goat, which had 
been cutting up pranks, evidently for our amusement, 
came and lay down at my feet. The cutting for the stage 
road, which ran past the house about 50 feet away, had 
left a steep bank about 5 or 6 feet high — that is, the road 
was so much lower than the plot on which we were 
sitting. Presently the goat got up, and walking over to 
the edge of this bank, stood looking down this miniature 
precipice to the road. Suddenly he sprang into the air 
and pitched headforemost down the bank. I ran across, 
expecting to find the little brute with its neck broken, in- 
stead of which he was standing at the bottom shaking the 
sand out of his eyes and nostrils. When he got through 
he climbed up the bank, and turning round, performed 
the same act again, turning a complete somersault on his 
way down. He did this about half a dozen times, throw- 
ing himself on his side and rolling down, covering him 
self from head to tail with dirt and sand. 
"I allowed him the full liberty of the house — in fact I 
could not control him, and it was this unlimited freedom 
that cost him his life. He was always with me in my 
work sliop, and would always jump up on my bench and 
stand sagely watching every movement I made. He had 
a great' habit of picking up and chewing anything he 
came across, and one day he did this with one of my 
poisoned bird skins. He had taken the skin outside the 
house, and the first I knew about it was when the little 
fellow came running through the door toward me, and 
fell before he quite reached me. I suspected what was the 
matter, and lifting him, poured some sweet oil down his 
throat, but he died in alDout half an hour." 
About thirty years ago, though, the exact date is not 
certain (those assigned to the occurrence ranging from 
1869 to 1876, according to the recollections of different 
individuals), a number of white goats were captuted 
somewhere near Deer Lodge, Mont. One of these, tied 
up with heavy rope, was photographed at the time, and 
no doubt many of our readers have seen the picture. It 
is not known what became of these specimens. In the 
years 1879, eight individuals Avere captured near Phillips- 
burg, Mont., and an account of the occurrence was pub- 
lished about ten years later in Forest and Stream, and 
is as follows : 
"David Dobson, his brother Thomas and a man 
named Palmer made up the party, and the ground where 
they captured the goats was the nearly fl:at top Qf a rock- 
covered mountain about tAventy miles from the -head of 
the Bighole, near where Phillipsburg now is. ' Above 
the general level of the mountain top rise here and there 
isolated pinnacles of rock. This flat mountain top was 
the home of' a band of about thirty goats. They had 
been discovered by the men, who supposed that live 
specimens oi Mazama could ht sold for large sums of 
money. Flaving provided themselves with a number of 
dogs, one or two of which had been trained to this chase, 
they started out about June 10, 1879. Proceeding with 
their horses as far up the mountain as convenient, they 
carnped, and the next morning ascended the rocks on foot, 
taking Avith them their dogs and ropes. The goats, con- 
spicuous by their whiteness against the gray rocks, were 
soon discovered. They were quite unsuspicious, and 
permitted a near approach. Wheii they began to move 
off, the men loosed the dogs, which soon drove a part 
of the band up on to a rocky pinnacle, where they stood at 
bay, defending themselves by fierce thrusts of their sharp 
horns at the dogs. They paid little heed to the men, who 
were able to advance so close to them as to throw the 
noose of a rope over the head of one of them. This having 
been done, the loop of a second rope was slipped over the 
first one and run up close to the animal, when it was 
dragged from its perch. Two men, one on either side of 
It, each holding a rope, could so, far control the creature 
as to keep it from reaching either of them. In this way 
they caught, in three trips up the mountain, eight goats. 
At each visit the goats were wilder than they had been 
the time before, and after they were chased the third 
tinie they deserted the mountain and Avere seen no more. 
"The animals when first caught resisted fiercely and 
made vigorous efforts to attack their captors. So violent 
were their struggles that several of them were seriously 
mjured, and afterward died from this cause. They were 
necessarily handled roughly, for they would not lead, and 
the men were obliged to throw them down, tie them and 
then carry them on a litter down the mountain to a point 
Avhere a horse could come. Here they were transferred 
to a travois, and so transported to the camp, where they 
were picketed out. Of these anmials four were young and 
four were adults ; there Avere three males and five females. 
The young soon became tame, but the old were ahvays 
savage and morose. All of the latter died within a few 
days, either from injuries received at the time of their 
capture or from hurting themselves by dashing about 
when picketed. One of the young ones died, probably 
from having been given some molasses to eat. 
"Mr. Dobson stated that of the three survivors, one 
was given to the OAvners of the trained dogs, in return for 
the use of the latter; one Avas pledged for provisions, and 
one Avas left at a ranch to be cared for, and is supposed to 
have died. The subsequent history of these animals is not 
known, but it is possible that one or more of them may 
be identical with other captive goats to be mentioned 
later — ^those OAvned by Mr. Dickson." 
Sometimes about 187.=; there were two young goats 
captive in the tOAvn of Yale, B. C, in the possession of a 
Mr. McKeon, Their life Avas short. After they had been 
in captivity for about nine months the male was choked 
by the rope with Avhich it was tied, and not long after 
that the female died. One of these animals is said to 
have come from the Skeena River and the other from the 
mterior. They were brought in as little kids, were reared 
on cow's milk, but soon took to feeding on grass and 
leaves, after Avhich the owner had no more trouble with 
them. The late J. C. Hughes, of Ncav Westminster, stated 
as an, example of the jumping and balancing pOAvers of 
these animals that these kids, if put in an empty barrel, 
would jump otit of it and balance themselves on the chine 
of the barrel. / 
Another account of a tame Avhite goat was received 
through the kindness of Mr. Howard Rogers, of Fern- 
dale, Wash., who quoted in Forest and Stream a letter 
received by him from the Rev. Jno. A. Tennant, an early 
settler of the State of Washington. It reads a=; follows • 
