July 13, 1901.] 
FOREST AND STREAM 
variety, and is an excellent appetizer when fried or 
browned in the camp spider. The Indian cucumber root, 
which any field botanist can unearth for you in the fall, 
iy not much behind the garden cucumber in succulence 
and flavor. The Indians used it for a relish, and the 
woodsman will find it a welcome addition to his bill of 
fare. Serve with vinegar, pepper and salt. 
The roots of the yellow pond lily, chopped fine and 
fried, have a very pleasant taste, and make a wholesome 
and readily accessible vegetable food in the woods. Wild 
■radish, if you know it and can find it, is a really crisp 
and pungent relish, with much the same taste as the 
garden radish, whicli was derived from it. 
Almost every boy should remember the watercresses 
Ife used to gather in the cool brooks about his native 
town. The camper will find it in the quieter reaches of 
mountain streams, and under the banks of mountain 
lakes. In the latter, too, he will find the wild celery 
of which ducks are so fond, and which is grateful also 
to a discriminating human palate. How nicely either 
the cress or the wild celery spices the guide's biscuits 
and the flaky pink flesh of mountain trout! Wild mus- 
tard and horseradish, too, will put a keen edge ©n a 
dulled appetite, if you cannot find watercresses. 
In Thoreau's "Maine Woods" he speaks of using hem- 
lock leaves as a siibstitutes for tea. The woodsman 
should know of several other and better brews than 
that in case the tea caddy gets empty. Wintergreen 
leaves make a far better tea than hemlock. The leaves 
of red root (Cearwthus americanus) yield a pleasant 
drink, and wild chicory is better than either of the fore- 
going. Common dandelion roots, dried and crushed, 
furnish a cofifee that is both palatable and wholsome. 
I have not mentioned berries or high bush cranberries 
as one of the resources of the woodsman's husbandry 
because such a resource is evident to all. And yet many 
a camper in the summer and fall will allow himself to 
get half sick on perpetual meat and biscuits, rather than 
spend time to gather a few quarts of the luscious and 
abundant fruits witli which the burned-over clearings 
abound. How differently he would feel physically, and 
how much more benefited he would be on coming out 
of the woods, if he would forego a little of his sport 
to supply the camp with a dai|f tjiess of berries! Let 
each man take his turn at berry picking; and who knows 
if he carries his rifle along with him whether the most 
faithful in this duty may not be the first of the party to 
add to his trophies the hide of a berry-loving bear? 
James Buckham. 
Gigging a Dolphin. 
F.'VR, far out on the mighty ocean, hundreds of miles 
from land, thousands of miles from our desired haven, 
oppressed by the vast monotony of sea and sky, we sped 
along through days that seemed almost changeless. We 
were on a sailing vessel, seven passengers of us, bound 
from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, to New York. Our ship 
was a barque, the Adelaide Pendergast, owned in New 
York. She had been long out from her home harbor; 
first to Cadiz, Spain, with merchandise; thence to Rio de 
Janeiro, for coflee, with which she was now laden. 
Her crew Avere Norwegians, her master, Capt. John 
Lawson, as jolly an Irishman as ever sailed the salty 
waves. 
We had sailed out of port with a breeze which bore 
us southward, hoping bj'' tacking to hold our own in a 
measure luitil the wind shifted. But Eolus did not favor 
us, and for days we pursued our course toward the 
southeast, below the Tropic of Capricorn, and our best 
efforts at tacking only brought us nearer the coast of 
Africa, instead of that of North America. To land 
lubbers, as we were, the delay was trying and the days 
seemed of interminable length. 
Only those who have experienced it know the longing 
of the seabound for land, and when the captain remarked 
one morning that Africa lay just ahead of us, we declared 
that it smelled balmy, until chagrined by the information 
that it was 500 miles distant. 
After the engrossing diversion of sea sickness was 
over, and we had been entertained by all of the tricks 
of Gyp and Blanco, the captain's poodles, and had seen 
the fattening hog, and fed the cooped chickens and ducks 
as many times as we desired, we settled down to the 
contemplation of sea and sky. 
It is all photographed on memory's walls; the -shift- 
ing, tinted cloude across the azure of the tropic sky, the 
long charge of the "white horse" across the watery 
plain, the phosphorescence of night, or the yellow' moon 
overhead with the reflection below: 
"Like a golden goblet falling. 
And sinking into the sea." 
Strange, with such scenes to charm us, that we longed 
for incident. 
But we did, and every little diversion of the long forty- 
four days' of our voyage was hailed as of interest. 
We watched the schools of porpoises, whirling in black 
circles above the waves, admired the flying fish as they 
fla.shed by on their silver wings, and the nautilus, with its 
inflated sails, gave us the colors of the rainbow to delight 
our eyes. 
We loved the Mother Carey chickens that followed 
the wake of our vessel, the only path over the blue plain, 
and were wild with admiration of a mighty albatross, 
which went with us one long bright day, sometimes far 
ahead, then far behind, its snowy wings untiring in their 
flight. What did it seek? Was it lost? Such were our 
unanswered questions. 
"Hurrah!" cried the captain one day. "Here is some- 
thing new for you! Come and see a dolphin, the most 
beautiful fish that lives in water." 
W^e made a rush for the bulwarks, and to our delight 
saw swimming along with us several emerald kued fish, 
from three to five feet long, graceful in shape and 
motion. 
Their bodies were like satin, of a delicate green, shading 
to a deeper hue at the fins. Darting and whirling, they 
changed places rapidly, moving from one side of the 
ship to the other. 
"I'll give you a sight you never saw before," exclaimed 
the captain. "You shall see a dying dolphin." 
He brought out his gig, a small harpoon, vnth. its cruel 
fishhook darts, and fastening a line to its long handle, 
made it secure around his wrist. 
"Can't hook these fellows with a hook and line," he 
said. 
We had already been regaled with shark and barracuda 
from the line that hung at the stern. 
The' captain leaned over the rail. With lithe motion 
the fish daited under the weapon suspended over them. 
A quick plunge, with sure aim, a green flash through 
the air, and the struggling, leaping victim was landed on 
the deck. And now we saw the dying dolphin. Let 
scientists explain how it changes its colors; we can but 
make record of its appearance. 
The glowing green died away into silver. This became 
spotted with blue, which gradually spread until the whole 
fish was a sapphire color. Waves of gold flashed over 
it, growing deeper until it was a golden fish, only to be 
transformed into a roseate one by spots which came and 
extended. Thus from color to color changed the gleam- 
ing sides of the quivering beauty of the deep, until pity 
was almost forgotten in admiration, and we exclaimed: 
"Never have we seen anything more beautiful than a 
dying dolphin." 
We were practical enough to enjoy the fried fish of a 
delicate golden brown, which was a welcome relief to 
our salty bill of fare; but that is a commonplace recol- 
lection compared in , the mind's eye with the memory of 
the fish, which, swanlike, yields \p chief charms in the 
dying hour. y\NNA R. Henderson. 
The Breaking of a Door Handle. 
The breaking of a door handle is not ordinarily a seri- 
ous affair, but if it has been in constant use more than a 
hundred years, has been familiar to your touch since your 
hand could first reach it and has opened and closed the 
old door for beloved and revered forms to whom earthly 
portals long ago closed forever, one feels a personal loss. 
So I feel it, and the more keenly for remembering so well 
my good grandfather, whose cunning hands fashioned this 
slender bow of hickory so many years ago, very likely by 
the winter evenings' firelight of this same hearth where 
I sit, telling stories meanwhile to his children as I to mine. 
Since then the fireplace has scarcely changed, and the 
room but little. A high-posted, curtained bed stood in the 
corner such as this generation of children never saw, and 
in another such obsolete furniture as the big spinning 
wheel for wool or the little one for flax. But the old 
cracked looking glass hangs between the windows and the 
high "chist o' draw's" stands in its place. Outwardly 
there has been a change that I can scarcely realize. 
The smoothest of the few cleared fields was rougher 
then than the roughest now, and thick set with blackened 
stumps. Within a little distance stood the prirneval forest, 
its huge trunks fencing the clearings like wide-set pali- 
sades. 
This ten-acre meadow east of the buildings was a black 
ash swamp in which grandfather got lost one day and 
wandered a long time till he came upon a strange house, 
but upon going to it he found it to be his own. When 
the frame of the house across the yard was raised, a fine 
buck jumped inside it, looked about a moment and 
bounded out and away into the woods. On the ledge, 
the favorite playground of the children, grandfather's 
" 'prentice boy," Bill Howard, shot a lynx. 
It was a half-day's journey to the creek, only a mile 
away, over the rough and miry road that led to it. There 
were licks in the woods much frequented by deer and 
later by domestic cattle. They were very distinctly to be 
seen within my recollection — ^broad paths of naked earth 
among the thick herds grass. 
To get to the nearest neighbor's, grandfather must go 
through the woods, often by blazed paths, and the nearest 
mill and store were miles away. 
It was to such a half-wild region, then the youngest of 
the fourteen United States, that grandfather came from 
the long-established civilization of Rhode Island and the 
Providence Plantations, where he was born, as were his 
father and grandfather. When informed of his purpose 
one old neighbor cried out against it, "Tommy Robinson, 
what possesses ye to go up there, beyond the reach of all 
God's masses!" Rowland E. Robinson. 
Notes from Central America. — I.! 
As to-night I reclined in my hammock, hanging in "el 
portico" of my Honduras home, with the Southern Cross 
radiant just above the high mountains, on whose slopes 
the pueblo of San Juan^ito is located, I could not help 
thinking that the untraveled Northerner really ought to 
see the Southern Cross and Honduras scenery through 
other eyes than those of the author of "Three Gringos in 
Central America," who found so little to admire in either 
— but then, you see, he admits that he did not visit San 
Juancito. 
It certainly is not pleasant to ride three or four hun- 
dred miles on muleback over Central American caminos— 
climbing mountains approaching 10,000 feet in height, 
fording-, rivers, and, at times, losing the trail when it 
diminishes to a mere path in the dense underbrush and 
is intersected by others of the same class leading to 
various destinations. It is true that during the dry sea- 
son the sun's rays beat down at mid-day with intense 
heat, and that during the rainy season travel is both diffi- 
cult and dangerous. But there are compensations in the 
landscape, the cool shade, the refreshing baths — in moun- 
tain scenery hardly surpassed anywhere in the world, and 
the, general adornments of a tropical clime. 
Then, too, it must be admitted that there are garapatas 
that there are pulgas (fleas) in abundance, that tortillas 
and frijoles are almost always in evidence, and that there 
is generally a dearth of good food along the journey; 
and yet one who speaks the language (Spanish) and 
understands the manners of the country, seldom travels 
hungry or destitute of rude comforts. 
This morning as I threw open my window at break 
of day and heard the quail whistling in the bush, I couKi 
not help wishing that I had with me one of the various 
good bird dogs I have owned in "the States" and time for 
a trip afield — for good gun and ammunition I have. There 
are plenty of quail in Central America — and pheasants 
and turkeys, too — but the underbrush, except on cleared 
plantations, is very bad and usually too full of garapatas 
(a sort of tick) to tempt invasion. Deer and other large 
game also abound in the mountains, but my time is fully 
occupied with my work, and as yet I cannot give, from 
personal experience, any details of hunting in Central 
America. Nor have I cast a line into the streams, in 
many of which are found excellent fish for the table, in- 
cluded a variety of bass that, when hooked, fights with a 
zeal to delight the angler's heart. But I am not un- 
familiar with the method of fishing, altogether too com- 
mon in the country, having, only a few days ago, ampu- 
tated the remains of a hand and forearm, shattered by a 
stick of dynamite with short fuse that was not thrown 
quickly enough into the stream. 
Here, as elsewhere. El Medico works Sundays as on 
other days, and it is patent to any observer that the 
natives in this — as in other mining camps — would be far 
better employed on the Sabbath if occupied with their 
usual daily labor, instead of following the regular Sun- 
day programme of drinking, gambling, cock fighting and 
fighting among themselves. 
Though hardly reliable at any time, the Central Amer- 
ican native is decidedly reckless after having poured out 
liberal libations to the god of festivities in the form of 
agtiardiente — or, as the Gringo "frequently terms the clear 
native rum, "white eye." A discussion regarding the re- 
sults of a throw at dice, a defeat in the cockpit, or even 
more simple difl'erence of opinion, frequently results in 
knife thrusts or bullet wounds^ — the former generally ex- 
tensive but seldom dangerous, the latter frequently fatal. 
Then come the soldados and practically always catch the 
injured, who is often too drunk or too badly injured to 
flee, while the victor in (he scrimmage — the more criminal 
— frequently escapes to the mountains. 
There is, outside of the jurisdiction of martial of mili- 
tary law, no capital punishment in Honduras, ft was 
abolished in order that those in authority might not have 
the privilege of life or death over the masses. To con- 
vict a political or personal enemy of murder or of crime 
punishable by death was not considered difficult in a 
court composed of those whose positions, and, perhaps, 
very lives, depended upon their loyalty to a sovereign's 
will. 
And now the Southern Cross has dropped behind the 
mountains. The night is advancing and the mommg will 
come only too soon. 
Dr, J. HoBART Egbert. 
JSanI Juancito, Honduras, C. A. 
More About the Beaver. 
Editor Forest and Stream: 
Two articles in your last issue set memory going once 
more, and I am again tempted into the animal discus- 
sion. The first article that attracted my attention was 
about beaver (always an attractive subject). Among 
other things, the writer says, "I carried that 46-pound 
beaver six miles without stopping to rest." Now this 
was certainly a most wonderful feat, though scarcely 
recognizable by the average man. 
In the waning days of the reign of the buflfalo I was 
in camp on a Western stream where beaver were quite 
plenty. I had invested in some half dozen beaver traps 
and kept them set along the steam, getting a good 
many tufts of fur or claw, and an occasional beaver. 
One day a Mr. Beardslee, now of Hennessey, O. T., and 
myself were bringing the saddle of a black-tailed deer 
into camp on our shoulders, taking turns at the carrying. 
As we were coming along down the streai^ I bethought 
rne of one of my traps that had not been visited for some 
time. Laying down the saddle, we went out of our way a 
short distance to the place where the trap was set. There 
was a large beaver in the trap which was still alive, the 
arrangement for drowning it having failed to work. We 
killed the beaver and then I gave Mr. Beardslee the 
choice of which he would carry, the saddle or the beaver. 
He promptly chose the beaver, which, while seeming the 
lighter, was soft and yielding on the shoulder. I had 
no great trouble with the saddle, as we rested often. But 
with poor Beardslee it was different; the beaver was 
perhaps heavier than the saddle, and soft and yielding to 
the shoulder, but it would not lie still. Be'ing round 
and pliable, it was constantly shifting its position; now 
pulling on this side, now on that, and never at a balance; 
and at the end of a quarter of a mile Beardslee stopped 
to rest. An eighth did the trick the second time, and 
from that on it grew less and less, and the beaver was 
constantly being shifted from shoulder to shoulder, and 
forward and backward, down and up, and sideways. 
Beardslee wanted to change loads, but I declined, and 
I can see his look of disgust yet, when after two hours' 
.struggle he threw it down in camp and remarked that 
it was the most deceiving thing he ever tackled. We 
estimated its weight at 60 pounds, but it is likely it 
would have shriveled as badly as fish in contact with the 
scales, Yes, I think the man who carried the beaver 
six miles without stopping to rest can get a fair dona- 
tion toward a medal to commemorate the feat by ad- 
dressing N. B. Beardslee, Hennessey, O. T. 
The other article that attracted my attention was that 
of the Mr. Flynn who saw beaver swimming in the day 
time in the Pecos River, Texas. My first experience 
in the field- of the beaver was like this: I was hunting 
big game (my very first), and went to a stream to get a 
drink. While there I saw six animals in the water play- 
ing very much as Mr. Flynn described his beaver as 
doing. After watching them for a time, I shot one, hav- 
ing made up my mind they were beaver. When I re- 
trieved it it did not come, up to my idea of a beaver, but 
noting its flat tail (slightly flattened like a rauskrat's), 
even though it had fur on it, I skinned it for a beaver 
and tried to stretch the pelt on a hoop, but it absolutely 
refused to be drawn into a circle, and I finally gave it 
up — that beaver was an otter. Afterward I saw six 
otters playing in the water like so many kittens, and 
again shot one. This time I knew what it was, and 
skinned it properly, and the skin brought $7. The first 
skin was spoiled. 
I 
