IDec. 2§, ipor.j 
FOnjeBT AND BTHEAM. 
,808 
birds, the stillness that marches before the silent foot- 
falls of the night. I sat there idlj' glancing at the rifloj 
and thought of the careful preparation I had made for its 
efficient use from what point soever prey might 
come. The ford on the right leading to the further island 
was perhaps 200 yards away, while the marsh on the left, 
as also the ford beside the island on which I was, were 
all substantially within point blank range of the .45-90 
I had with me. With a view to being promptly ready for 
either event 1 1 ad therefore, on arriving, screwed up the 
peep-sight on the stock of the rifle to just short of the 
200-yard mark, then turned it down ana turned up tne 
point-blank straight-edge leaf-sight half-way down the 
barrel, thus being "prepared for either fortune." If an 
animal came across the further ford it was but turning 
up the peep-sight. If one came across the marsh it 
must pass within fifty or sixty yards, while, if one crossed 
the nearer ford, it would be but a few yards from my 
r.ght elbow. 
Dusk had almost come. I glanced at the further ford, 
and then turned my eye to the patient Indian by my side, 
and simultaneously he glanced at me. Out of the forest, 
on the main shore, at the further ford there came slouch- 
ing, with a loose, high-shouldered shamble, as line a bear 
skin as one is at all apt to meet in ordinary society. My 
right hand stole to the rifle, but in an instant relinquished 
it. The scattered rocks lying in the ford kept hiding the 
bear so that he appeared and partly disappeared among 
them as he came across. It was palpable that he must 
cross the island, and evident, also, that when he crossed 
he would come out on the marsh, fair in the open and 
afford an easy sho|:. The situation was too plain to need 
discussion, and we sat silently watching him slosh 
through the twenty or thirty yards of shallow water 
among the rocks and disappear into the bushes that 
[ringed the further island. Presently the rustling in the 
bushes ceased and a cracking twig on the top of the island 
told us that he had mounted to its crest and that we 
would be well hidden from him by the trees temporarily 
surrounding him, and might leave our shelter to approach 
nearer. Silently we rose, passed, quickly down the narrow 
runway to the outer edge of the island on which we 
stood, and crouching below the cover of the island's 
bulk, trotted silently up to its very point where, with the 
httle 20-yard bay in front of us and the marsh lying be- 
yond it. we came to a halt. At the same time a rustling 
and scraping in the bushes on the fiu'ther side of the 
island in front showed that the bear was coming down 
and about to come out on the marsh. In a moment he 
emerged, following a diagonal line across the marsh, 
which brought him steadily nearer, evidently with the in- 
tention of following round the side of the mountain along 
the line which the caribou had taken. Another example 
4 of the progress of all nature along the lines of least re- 
sistance, skirting the mountain being always preferable 
to. facing its slope. We had paused behind a rock wliich 
lay on the shore and was perhaps a scant eighteen inches 
high, I put m- left foot on it, rested my left elbow on 
my knee, laid the rifle in the palm of my hand, and me- 
chanically turning up the peep-sight I turned to the sim- 
ple savage and said: 
"How much is his hide worth?" 
"Vaut bien dix piasti'es," said the savage. 
"I'll sell it to you for five," said 1. 
And sighting behind his unconscious left shoulder only 
forty yards away, I slung 300 grains of lead, I presume, 
about a foot over his back. In the absolute stillness of 
the forest the report echoed and roared and bellowed, 
and seemed to fill the valley with a great deluge of sound. 
Unconscious of having used the peep-sight while it was 
still set for 200 yards I was for the thousandth part of a 
second astonished that he did not fall; but my astonish- 
ment was nothing to that of the bear's. He fairly jumped 
of? all four feet a foot into the air, wheeling round to the 
left toward us as he did so. 
There has been much discussion as to the portrayal of 
emotion by animals so far as facial expression is con- 
cerned. It may be the droop of the head rather than any 
change of the face that portrays misery in the pet 
monkey; and we may all be wrong in construing the bared 
teeth which accompany the bent body and the wagging 
tail of the dog long absent from its master into the smile 
of recognition; but there can be, so far as my individual 
conviction goes, no doubt that blank astonishment was 
portrayed on that bear's face. Out of the dead silence 
of the open woods in which he found no efficient foe, 
where undisturbed he wandered, had I'isen at his side this 
terrifying clap of thunder, and there, as he faced us, a 
few yards away stood two unknown creatures, and for the 
first time he heard that which exercises a terrifying in- 
fluence on all unaccustomed animals, articulate speech 
(the latter, I regret to say, being in the tongue popularly 
known as "the profane"). The situation lasted but the 
briefest portion of time. I sa.w, as it seemed to me, if 
I have ever recognized the presence of any emotion, 
astonishment give way to rage accompanied hy involun- 
tary motion portending an attack, and then fear and 
change of iiitent followed each other almost instantly on 
the bear's face. As instantly he wheeled, as instantly 
but still all unconscious of the extra elevation of the 
peep-sight, I put the rifle again to my shoulder. My 
friend had now given up all intention of seeking the 
easy road around the mountain. Straight for the nearest 
trees he fled. Unfortunatelj'- it is but too true that a 
good sized bear can get over the ground, if in a hurry, 
at a more than respectable rate of speed. Twice again be- 
fore he reached the forest and the mountain side the 
harmless but deafening roar of the Winchester echoed 
in his ears. It was all over; the bear was gone. We 
splashed across the little bay and hunted the marsh for 
any traces of blood. We peered through the darkening 
forest trees to sec if by any chance he had sought refuge 
in any cranny of the rocks in his terror. Reluctantly we 
concluded that the probabilities were that he would 
not stop traveling for a week. 
"C'est de valeur,"" said tlie Indian. 
Silently I extracted from my pocket a $5 bill; the dif- 
ference between the patient savage's estimate of the 
value of the hide and the price at which I had sold it him. 
I handed him this balm for his wounded feehngs, meekly 
screwed down the now detected peep-sight and made my 
way to the canoe ! 1 had sold the bear's hide and the bear 
still ran in the woods. 
CsAs. Stewart Davison. 
In Lusty Manhood* 
Editor Forest and Stream: 
The return of winter at this time, coupled with your 
courteous request for a contribution to your Christmas 
issue, recalls some seasonable reminiscences of those 
old-fashioned snowstorms which used to visit New 
England in the early half of the nineteenth century, and 
bury walls and fences and sometimes flocks of sheep 
clear out of sight, requiring every available ox team in 
the township to turn out next day to break roads. Fre- 
quently the falling snowflakes would turn to sleet, zero 
weather followed, and in the morning the risen sun 
would flash and scintillate over the pure white crust 
with a brightness that was blinding, unless one wore 
goggles, though some old mossbacks (like Russell 
Terrill, who is still living at the age of eighty-seven) 
used to rub tallow and charcoal over their noses and 
under their eyes as a preventive. 
It was great fun to the boys with sleds and snow- 
shoes to "ignore farm lines and pass over frozen water- 
ways and surface inequalities, regardless. It made them 
independent in a way, and self-reliant. Sometimes we 
would start from the crest of West Mountain, 2,000 feet 
high, and coast over the pasture intervals down its 
uneven sides with electric speed, and risks never con- 
templated at the start. The sleds would often slue on 
the unequal grades, and anon turn end for end when the 
steersman's foot lost all control, or failed to check un- 
toward headway; and then the only chance for life or 
limb would be to roll oft' on the crust and let the craft 
run wild until it brought up with a splitting whack 
against a rock or some softer tree in the sugar bush. 
Even so, the tour, in corpore, had to continue until a 
dead level was reached, and the landing place was not 
always certain. 
But such hanhazard experiences were not a circum- 
stance to one adventure we had on the Barber Hill post 
road, three-fourths of a mile long, straightaway, ex- 
cepting an elbow at the watering trough, where the 
overflow froze to glare ice on zero days. There was 
very little travel in the winter season at that period (and 
less now, I ween), and my elder cousin and I used to do 
the hill regtdarly, the impetus of the down-grade send- 
ing the sled over a quarter of a mile level at the foot of 
it before it would come to a stop. One sunny day we 
were whizzing down this hill, bellygut, myself on top, 
when, just as we struck the glare ice at the turn, we 
spied a double team and a high-running fancy cutter 
coming leisurely up the ascent. We had just time to 
notice that there was a two-feet space under the body of 
the sleigh, when we shot like a streak between the 
horses as they instinctively widened on the spreader, 
both of us flat as two pancakes — and so on t© the un- 
obstructed roadway beyond. It was a very close call, 
but we never thought seriously enough of the incident to 
take chances on being forbidden the hill by telling of it.. 
Odds zooks! What inscrutable providences He along 
the checkered pathway of all boyhood! 
Now, to take the chill off this wintry experience, I re- 
cur to the res gestae of more congenial summer time, 
and of the opening spring. What an elysium to a boy in 
his 'teens was that mountain home in western Massa- 
chusetts! Those were dulcet days indeed; the halo of 
whose phantasmagoria, has not been dimmed by the 
lapse of half a century. In those secluded Hampshire 
Hills Charles Dudley Warner began to formulate bu- 
colics; Wm. Cullen Bryant wrote his "Rivulet," the 
"Waterfowl," and his "Thanatopsis"; and the intrepid 
explorer, Marcus Whitman, learned that practical wood- 
craft which enabled him in a strenuous political ex- 
igency to make his memorable winter journey from 
Oregon to the District of Columbia over an unmapped 
wilderness in 1842. 
Almost every year for twenty years I have revisited 
(hat forest kindergarten, whose physical aspects are 
hardly changed even now by lapse of time; the bucolic 
valleys, the hillside pastures where we salted sheep, the 
eminences from whose summits we looked into the pur- 
lieus of five States, the homely farmhouses all of one 
pattern built a century ago, the tall clocks still tick- 
ing, the high-back "settles" which the surviving house- 
wife of four-score years drags into the shade of an added 
modern verandah, the old well sweep which dips its 
reach-pole into the unseen depths, the barns without 
locks, the broad chimney places glowing with hos- 
pitable warmth, the scraggy old orchards, and the iut- 
evitable sugar house in the maple woods. Here and 
there I find old potato fields reforested with thrifty tim- 
ber; all along the famous Mill Stream are the ruins of 
cloth factories, saw mills and tanneries; the public 
thoroughfares are lined with umbrageous elms and 
maples which were set out when I was a boy. Some of 
these I helped to set myself. I had early experiences 
in planting and harvesting, in fighting forest fires, in 
keeping cows out of the corn patch by the wood lot, in 
trapping woodchucks, in expelling skunks from the hen 
house and rats from the corn crib, and water snakes 
from the trout pond, in catching and taming crows 
and squirrels, in caring for live stock, in hunting 
fiddlehead brakes as an early spring substitute for 
asparagus, in squeezing fir balsam out of the bark 
capsules on the trees, in gathering plantain for sores 
and sprains, and catnip for the felines, and a hundred 
other old plantation and household odds and ends. That 
was long before the era of canned food, or even of desic- 
cated soups, what time the French cook Soyer made 
himself famous and earned the gratitude of nations by 
making army rations eatable during the Crimean war. 
All this kindergarten training, I say. had the effect to 
qualify me for roughing it later on in my long jaunts 
across the plains and over the mountains and waterways 
of Canada, and the Continental Divide, and up to the 
sub-arctic regions of Labrador (i860) and Alaska, which 
occurred chiefly in the twenty-five years which bridged 
the dates of 1854 and 1879 As I had been early taught 
to read the sybillene leaves off-hand, so I learned to 
provide for exigencies and vicissitudes and bodily com- 
forts. And during all the years until I was fifty-four 
years old, I never carried a tent. Indeed, there were 
but few trips when I could ha-re added its bulk and 
weight. Excepting on canoe voyages I have always 
traveled light; a canoe turned over and braced up by the 
paddles as a shelter in fair weather, and a hemlock bark 
lean-to in wet or a pair of rubber blankets lashed tO" 
gether in letter A pattern as a tent d'arbri for the field, 
or the unstepped mast and sail of a catboat placed 
against a ledge when cruising along shore. These and 
other makeshifts made a good camp, and with no dishes 
to wash except coffee pot and frying pan, saVed lots of 
labor and more than compensated for needless luxuries 
during a tramp. Indeed, the true inwardness and suc- 
cess of a camp is the camp-fire, whether built with back- 
log or made round, Indian fashion; and when we trav- 
eled in trios, each had to cut wood, make camp or 
cook. There were no drones or loiterers permitted in 
camp, for it was a groundhog case all the time. 
I have always carried a miniature kit of small tools 
and odds and ends, as a matter of habit and steady 
practice, and have one now, so that it has happened to 
be my lot on many an occasion to supply a strap, a bit 
of wire or a nail or a screw to a disabled army am- 
bulance or cowboy contingent which the careless driver 
or mule skinner had neglected to include in his out- 
fit. Once in the rapids above the Percefield Falls in tbe 
Adirondacks, I kept from going over the ledge or at 
least from an indefinite wait for help, by being able to 
splice a broken oar with wire and a gimlet while hung 
up on a rock in midchannel.. To many a one who 
ought to have known these things, I have taught the 
simple device of lifting a stalled pack mule or wagon out 
of the mire; of swinging across an unfordable stream 
by climbing a sapling of proper length to bridge it; of 
starting a caipp-fire- when the whole woods were vvater- 
soaked; of finding forgotten articles in dense forest, 
where every spruce tree looked alike; by deciding by 
the signs at hand, which way the stream turned in the 
woods ahead, so as to save distance by a cut-off (a very 
risky proceeding if a mistalte is made); of following a 
back trail over prairie in dry weather; of finding gum 
to pitch the canoe; of determining points of compass 
on a flat prairie in cloudy weather by direction of the 
wind and animal trails and the dirt thrown out of 
burrows; and of a dozen other labor-saving and com- 
fort-procuring expedients acquired in the sylvan school 
of applied methods. One should never get lost on a 
rolling prairie or in a mountainous country if he under- 
stands hydrography and physical geography, be-cause the 
fluvial systems and the striations, undulations and dip of 
rock are as unvarying as the Milky Way and the North 
Star which are infallible guides in fair weather. One 
ought to learn the chief constellations, too, as helps to 
direction. The worst place to get lost in is a tamarack 
or laurel swamp. 
Of course, some few men have an intuitive gift of 
noting and interpreting natural signs, which is quickened 
by the habit of close and constant observation of what 
is ahead and around, as well as of frequent turning to 
see how the land looks bahind. Landmarks should 
be always selected and located. Twigs may be broken 
and blazes scored for future reference.. One should be 
able to return unerringly to a given spot or cache. A 
good backwoods man instinctively sees and takes ac- 
count of all minutije around him and along the route, 
just as a gunner takes snap shots at his game. Everj' 
movement and sotmd and cry and call of animal, bird or 
insect, frog or water fowl means a good deal to one 
who knows the habitat of these creatures, their "tricks 
and their manners," and what they feed on. "The drift 
and contour of the clouds, the direction and varying 
tones of the wind, the tremors among the leaves, the 
soughing of the pines, the disturbance among the fallen 
leaves, a scratched log, the tracks by the spring, the 
abraded bark, the paths throup-h the woods, the tufts 
of hair or fur which cling to the thorn bushes, the body 
feathers dropped here and there in the woods or float- 
ing on the water, the lime spatters on the rocks or 
horizontal limb, the nipped twigs and cropped stems of 
lilypads, the worn slides and holes and mounds on the 
river bank, even silence itself, all have their significance; 
so that he who runs may read. By these one makes his 
way in unfamiliar rtgions or gets subsistence. But no 
one will ever cultivate or practice these things, ex- 
cepting that one, as I have remarked, who has a natural 
gift, and takes to sighs like babes to mothers' milk. 
The forest-born red man himself may err, or fail in part, 
even though he should protest in his extremity: "Injun, 
not lost. Wigwam lost!" 
No writers but Thoreau, as far as I have read, unless 
Lieut. Ruxton and Bayard Taylor be named, have ever 
written familiarly of al fresco life as I learned it in my 
youth and early manhood — as though its very essence 
were ingrained into their composition. Those who 
know woodcraft best are seldom able to write intelli- 
gently of the subject, while educated sportsmen are apt 
to leave such common places to the guides. Some learn 
the forest runes by rote, and write correctly enough of 
what they see and do and hear; yet left to depend on 
themselves, they are practically helpless. Skeletons of 
unsophisticated sportsmen who have been lost 'in the 
Maine or Adirondack woods are found every year. 
Harper's Magazine for Oct., 1857, ifcntained a sketch of 
mine on prairie tactics and emergencies, entitled, "The 
Siege of Fort Atkinson." and the following year I at- 
tempted to ilustrate by original drawings the difference 
between roughing it on the plains and tenting out with 
all the luxuries; and to just show what a crude concep- 
tion the artist (of Harper's Weekly) had of situations, 
instead of representing in the one case a man rolled up in 
his blanket beside a flickering camp-fire, with his horse 
picketed near him and a few harmless coj'Otes nosing 
about for bones to gnaw, he depicted a dead horse 
stretched out by the fire and a lot of big timber wolves 
worrying the picketed horse! In the summer of 1859 
I cast my maiden salmon fly under the falls of the Aroos- 
took, and wrote my "Life Among the Loggers"— the 
year after Henry Thoreau's '"Chesencook" sketch ap- 
peared in the Atlantic Monthly, and during seven of the 
subsequent ten years I was one of the pioneer hooks 
on Canadian salmon rivers from the Bay Chaleur to 
the Iviktuk Inlet on the Labrador coast. The frontis- 
piece of my "Fishing Tourist" in 1873 represents a 
catamaran of five logs running the Restigouche, for so 
men navigated the river on occasions before the dille- 
tanti sportsman came and a club membership was a 
bonanza at $1,000 per head. 
I fake pleasure in cursorily reviewing this halcyon 
period of a lusty manhood, when a. plank Avas alwaj#i soft, 
