242 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
tSEPT. 28. lOOI. 
— . 
Gens des Bois* 
Ct C. Dow, 
Under the shadow of Potato Hill in the town of Danvis, 
or Lincoln, as it is called on the maps, lives Chiveychase 
Dow, a big-framed, kindly mannered woodsman of the 
old school. Himself a type that might have stepped 
directly from the pages of one of Rowland Robinson's 
books, he had gained, through reading, a wonderful ad- 
miration of the author, but though living less than a day's 
drive away, he had never summoned up courage to call 
on Mr. Robinson until one day last summer, when it was 
too late. On his return to his mountain home his grief 
that he had missed the chance of knowing Mr. Robinson 
was so great that he broke down and cried. His daughter 
in relating the fact excused her father by saying: "He's 
eighty-three now, and perhaps a little childish"; but such 
an explanation is not needed for those who have met the 
old man and recognized his simple kindness and brightness 
of heart. 
Mr. Dow is a very modest man, and not given tO' dis- 
cussing his hunting achievements. He is probably the 
best-known bear trapper in Vermont, and one of the best- 
posted in matters relating to the habits of wild animals. 
It would take a long acquaintance with him, however, to 
unlock his store of knowledge, and the following sketch 
is merely an outline. 
Mr. Dow, it should be said, is marvelously preserved 
for his age. His teeth, hearing and eyesight are all good, 
and his hair still dark, and that his physical powers have 
not decayed is indicated by the fact that last summer he 
cut, split and piled a cord of hardwood from the log in 
four hours. In stature he is just under six feet and he 
weighs 180 pounds. 
March 15, which was the one hundred and eleventh con- 
secutive day of sleighing for the past winter, I crossed 
Lake Champlain on the ice to Vermont and traveled east 
into the Green Mountains on a little spur railroad which 
struggles bravely upward till brought to a standstill by a 
bit of landscape which is pretty nearly straight up and 
down. Under this rock escarpment lies the town of 
Bristol, celebrated for its maple sugar and woodworking 
industries. Here I made inquiries for Uncle Chivey 
Dow. and was told that he was stopping with a married 
daughter, Mrs. Briggs, two miles arid a half further back 
on the road to Lincoln. 
I secured passage for the Briggses with the Lincoln rnail 
carrier. I was wedged in behind a leather mail sack, which 
made a tight fit in the limited space in the cutter. _ A 
sugar snow was falling — ^big, feathery flakes, gyrating 
slowly downward. The air was mild, and already some 
enterprising farmers were at work in their sugar orchards 
tapping the trees. About a mile out from Bristol _ the 
mail carrier looked hard for some minutes at a man in a 
cutter talking out of the depths of his fur coat to one of 
the sugar makers. Little besides the man's nose and a 
curling moustache could be seen, but just as we passed 
the mail carrier established io his satisfaction the identity 
of the stranger, and drew up his flea-bitten mare with a 
jerk. "That's Billy Briggs right now," he announced, 
and twisting around as far as the mail sack would per- 
mit, he called out, "Say, Billy, is Uncle Chivey to home?" 
The upper part of the fur coat turned lialf-way round in 
our direction, and from the opening under the hat Mr. 
Briggs asked, "What's that?" 
"I've got a man here that wants to see Uncle Chivey." 
"What does he want to see him for?" 
The mail carrier looked at me inquiringly, and I took up 
the dialogue. 
"I want to have a talk with Mr. Dow about hunting. I 
understand L^ncle Chivey is a great hunter ?" 
"He is right smart. He's off hunting now." 
"When will he be home?" 
"Not before night. Better turn around and come up 
to-morrow. He'll be home then, I'll warrant — so lame he 
can't walk." 
Learning that Uncle Chivey was only out after rabbits, 
and assuming that he would not be far from the house, I 
pushed on. The mail carrier left me at the hanging rocks, 
where the road passes through a narrow gap between two 
immense boulders, and taking a left-hand forking road 
I climbed .one of the steepest hills that man ever tempted 
Providence by building a road upon. 
From time to time I caught glimpses of the flea-bitten 
mare toiling up a considerable hill below, in a course 
nearly parallel to my own, but where she climbed one foot 
the road I followed ascended two. At the top of the 
hill was a plateau hugging the base of another rocky, 
wooded mountain, and here was the house. The door 
opened, in answer to my knock; and a loose-jointed hound 
flopped out and cavorted around in an extravagant appeal 
to be taken hunting. 
"No, father hasn't come a-back yet," said Mrs. Briggs. 
"He won't be home till night — not if I know him." 
I inquired the course he had taken when leaving the 
house, and was directed to a wood road leading up the 
mountain. When I spoke of following his trail .in the 
snow I noticed that she smiled. 
The Trail of a Rabbit Hontef. 
It was then 11 o'clock. Refusing an invitation to din- 
ner, I walked out past the barns and across a meadow 
to a barway into the woods. Briggs or some one had 
been drawing logs from the mountains, and there was 
good footing in the hard-beaten sleigh tracks. The road 
ran through a maple growth skirting a ledge of gray- 
lichened rock, while far below one could look over the 
tops of a sea of evergreens and picture the ice-locked 
brook that tumbled down between this and the neighbor- 
ing mountain. There was a sugar house under the ledge, 
with its pile of half-rotten firewood indicating it had not 
recently been used, and if further proof was wanted that 
the sugar industry had languished, the tap holes in the 
maples were grown up and obliterated. In the soft snow 
were many squirrel tracks, crossing and recrossing to 
favored trees, and the string of fleur de lis of a walking 
partridge, ending \yith "the fresh imprint of Jts win|s, 
where it had taken flight. Skunk tracks and fox tracks 
were common, and then I came upon muddy woodchuck 
tracks, radiating from the hole in the brier thicket, where 
the 'chuck had passed the coldest third of the year below 
the frost line. 
By and by Uncle Chivey branched off from the road and 
went higher up the mountain side. I felt sure of the trail 
because it was punctuated occasionally by the impres- 
sions of his gun stock. Up and up it climbed, till I realized 
the warmth of the day and took off my overcoat. Pres- 
ently the trail led into a dense thicket of young firs, and 
I was kept busy mopping my face and neck to remove the 
perspiration and snow which showered down from the 
trees. 
At first the crust had been sufficiently strong to bear a 
man's weight, but under the evergreens it began giving 
way, and letting one down half-way up to the waist. For- 
tunately I had a broken trail to follow, but I could not 
help pitying Uncle Chivey wallowing through the deep 
snow. I had nearly two hours of such traveling before 
coming up with the object of my search. The trail 
crossed and recrossed itself, and had it not been for the 
continued snowfall which enabled me to single out the 
most recent foot tracks and avoid the detours, I should 
have been much longer in finding him. For sotne time I 
had heard a beagle barking in a thick growth of cedars, in- 
terspersed with little open glades, and presently, as I ad- 
vanced, I caught a glimpse of a brown hunting coat and 
saw a man, gun at ready, peering under the boughs for a 
sight of the rabbit. 
The rabbit passed safely by ifi the thick undergrowth, 
and the old man turned and walked toward me. He shook 
hands and upon my mentioning his visit to Rowland Robin- 
son's home, he spoke regretfully of his failure to meet 
the man he had set his heart on knowing. "Procrastina- 
tion is the thief of time," he remarked, with an accent that 
made the words seem fresh once more. "I waited for a 
more convenient season, which didn't come." There was 
a pause, and Uncle Chivey waited, uncertain what was 
wanted of him, yet too polite to learn at once. I asked him 
if he would tell me something of his life. 
"Yes," he said. "I was born in Weare, Hillsboro 
county, N. H., in the month of May, 1818. I moved to 
Lincoln — my folks did; I moved with them, of course — 
when I was six years okL in 1824, and I've lived here 
ever since — ^hum, excepting there was a couple of years I 
was in the northern part of Kansas." 
Uncle Chivey had taken out his pipe and filled it as he 
talked, and now he opened his canvas coat and drew the 
sulphur match down the dry surface of his vest. After a 
few starting puffs at his well-worn pipe, he continued : 
"My name is C. C. Dow?. I was named after Chivey 
Chase. There was a place in Scotland where there was a 
fight — the clans fit. You know, I think the name sprung 
from that place. Cliivey is spelled with an i — yes, al- 
ways" — the old man was looking over my notebook. 
"One think about that book of yours, if you lose it 
you're safe. No one else can read it. 
"Yes, I've ketched a few bears — twenty or thirty, per- 
haps, never did much at it. I've hunted ever since I 
was pretty small, but it never amounted to much. I got 
a few blackcats, saple and the like, too, but I never killed 
a catamount, and never killed a wolf." 
LTncle Chivey evidently had a deadly fear of being 
thought a boaster. He had a way of stating the fact con- 
tained in the first part of his sentence, and then trying to 
hedge by a second, apologetic sentence. To turn the sub- 
ject from his prowess as a hunter, he wound up with the 
remark: "But there used to be, fifty or sixty years ago, 
pretty nice fishing for trout in these rivers." 
I brought the subject back again to bears by asking if 
he had had any luck with his traps last year. "No, I 
got no bears," said Uncle Chivey, and then, with deadly 
afterthought, "I set a couple of traps late and caught my 
neighbor's dog, and I didn't set no traps ag'in." 
In the Good Old Days. 
I mentioned having seen a map of the town of Lincoln 
which had marked upon it records of certain bears and 
deer at various places during the last century. Uncle 
Chivey had not seen the map, and was interested. 
I told him that one of the records were of a woman 
who killed a deer in 1869 between Lincoln and South 
Lincoln. LTncle Chivey's face had such a vacant ex- 
pression that I imagined he had not heard. It struck me 
that the date was much earlier, and I corrected my state- 
ment, putting it back to 1829. At once the old man's face 
lighted, and he said, emphatically: 
"That'll do ! I know who it was. It was Esther Hoag. 
Her folks wasn't home. The dog ketched a deer going 
through the fence, and she took the axe and knocked it 
in the head. _ It happened half a mile from us, but what 
year I can't just say." 
I remarked that the woman had done well to secure the 
venison. 
"Yes, sir," said Uncle Chivey; "wimmen in them days 
waa'nt afraid of their shadder — wimmen waa'nt. Wim- 
men didn't have the luxuries they have now," he con- 
tinued, "but I think they enjoyed themselves as well as 
they do now. I'm sure they did, for I " The rabbit 
was coming our way again, and Uncle Chivey raised his 
gun to his shooting shoulder, which is his left. 
Bear Habits. 
Getting back again to bears, in the abstract Uncle Chivey 
said that he never baited his bear traps, but preferred to 
set them in the bears' paths. In July and August the male 
bears are in search of mates, and travel long distances 
after them. The females with their cubs keep a much 
more restricted range, and in all his trapping Uncle Chivey 
has only captured one female bear. 
LTncle ChiA'ey says the bears bite their sign trees during 
the mating season. He has followed their trails four or 
five miles, at a time by the worn ground and bitten trees. 
At this season the bears are overheated and love to wallow 
like hogs in the mud. They do not care for clear streams 
or ponds, but frequent the same mud holes year after year. 
One lx;ar Uncle Chivey admitted having followed three 
days after it had broken the trap's chain and gotten free 
from the clog. The bear had smashed a dog's ribs which 
came too close, and gave indications of being an ugly cus- 
tomer, but just as the affair promised to develop into a 
good story, Uncle Chivey recollected hirnself and ^rave the 
credit of the killing to other l^vinters, 
A Gunsmith ol the Old School. 
Uncle Chivey's gun was a single-barrel, muzzleloading 
shotgun, with straight, rifle-shaped stock and rifle sights 
on the barrel. I asked him if it were not an old rifle 
rebored. He said it was not, that it was a gun made, lock, 
stock and barrel, by Pat (or Albert) Gove, of Lincoln. 
"Pie made it all," he continued, "and can make the best 
of rifles and shotgims, but nowadays it's cheaper to put 
on machine-made barrels, so he buys them. He's a very 
ingenious man; he'll be missed in Lincoln when he's 
gone." 
While talking, Uncle Chivey, who was keeping a strict 
record of the dog's whereabouts from place to place, 
from time to time broke through the crust. 
"It's been pretty tough going to-day," he remarked on 
bne of these occasions. "I thought I'd a gin half a dollar 
for a pair of snowshoes. I'll be eighty-three next May if I 
live, but r can give young men some points in traveling 
yet." He puffed once or twice on his pipe, and then 
came the apologetic second sentence for which I had been 
waiting: "Oh, well, they ain't used to it like I be!" 
Uncle Chivey looked up and smiled. "Well, now, if 
you're through, I guess I'll go and kill a rabbit." 
J. B. BURNHAJvr. 
In the Ranger Service. 
I.— In Old CoQoecticut. 
BY ROWLAND E. ROBINSON. 
Since the infirmities of age have robbed me of the busy 
activity of life and most of its idle pastimes. I find my- 
self dwelling more among the scenes of youth and prime 
than in the dullness of these later 5'ears. Alack! I am 
but a useless old man, no longer able to wield axe or rifle, 
fit for nothing but to dream of the past, and tell my 
dreams to my grandchildren. Dreams, indeed, they must 
appear to them who, dwelling in the midst of peace and 
comfort, can scarcely realize that but a generation stands 
between these piping times of peace and those troublous 
days of barbarous warfare that were our continual ex- 
perience, nor that these fruitful fields were, within the 
memory of living men, a barren wilderness, howling with 
the voices of ravenous beasts and more cruel men. 
I am no clerk, having been an infrequent handler of 
the pen. I fashioned my first pot-hooks and trammels in a 
dame's school, yet it is not without pleasure that I set my- 
self to the task of writing down some of my experience of 
those days for my grandchildren, well knowing that they 
will be kind critics when they take account of an old man's 
good intention, and may liie reading lighten for them 
some tedious hours as the writing may for me. I have so 
often told them of my childhood in the town in old Con- 
necticut, how I was left an orphan at a tender age and 
went to live with my uncle, that I need not repeat it again, 
for the simple tales of cliildhood that entertained childish 
ears would prove but dull to maturer minds. 
My uncle was a hard, stern man, and though I was com- 
fortably housed, clothed and fed during the years that 
were spent in his household, I do not pleasantly remem- 
ber them. He was a just man, according to his iiglit, and 
treated me as he did his own children, apportioning to us 
equally our hard tasks and our rare holidays. Those 
days are the brightest ones in the memory of my earlier 
years. Then I was given my choice either to join 
the other boys in their sports, or to behold the military 
pageant of training day, or to take a boy's noisy part in 
the bustle of election day. I would go a-fi.shing in the 
clear trout brooks or, when I had grown old and strong 
enough, go hunting with my father's rifle, which, with his 
love of its use, had fallen to me. 
The region had been so long settled that it was held to 
be quite safe from dangerous savage beasts and from 
the attacks of Indians, though we often heard frightful 
rumors of their depredations away to northward on the 
border of the great wilderness, so that I was free from 
every risk but of getting lost when I ranged away into 
the forest in pursuit of small game with the hope of 
killing a deer, or followed the back trails of the brooks 
into fastnesses of the hills, to where, I fancied, no human 
eyes but Indians had ever beheld the sparkle of their 
downward leap, nor other ears listened to their continued, 
unchanging music". 
My holidays were of more profit to the household than 
those of my cou.sins, for while theirs but emptied their 
pockets of hoarded pennies, mine furnished the table 
with many a mess of trout, and savory pigeon pot pies, 
rabbit stews, broiled partridges, and, upon one long-re- 
membered occasion, a grand roast turkey. Yet from my 
love of such solitary pastime, I got the name of being a 
solitary, surly fellow, and, for an occasional stolen in- 
dulgence on the Lord's day, gained the evil repute of be- 
ing an ungodly youth. 
In the winter we went to school, and a great com- 
pany of us there was gathered in a log schoolhouse to 
take our turns of freezing in the corners and of roasting 
at the huge, wide fireplace, as well as warmings not in- 
frequent with the master's rod and ferule. Though I 
was not overfond of my books and learned little of them, 
I did learn one lesson in my school days which much 
concerns this story, if so plain a narrative be worth the 
name. It was a pleasant lesson in the earlier chapters, 
though it co.st me grievous heartache before the end was 
come to. When we were but children, my little school- 
mate, Mercy Walden, was my best-loved companion, 
dearer to me than my only sister, who was early separated 
from me, being sent to live in the distant home of another 
relative on the death of our parents, so that we saw each 
other no more than twice during our youth, and on those 
rare occasions were as shy as strangers. Mercy was a 
timid little maid, and, having no brother to take her part 
against rough boys, or what I reckoned worse antagonists, 
domineering, bigger girls, I, being a stout, resolute young- 
ster for my years, became her champion. Perhaps it was 
through this relation that I became so fond of her and 
she of me, that neither of us was so happy as when 
we were together. As we grew older our attachment 
suffered no abatement of warmth, though arrived at an 
age to understand that our love was not that of a brother 
and sister, and our elders fell into a way of their heads 
wisely nodding when they saw us together, so that we 
grew shy an<l UJ at jn tl^eir presence. We began 
