FOREST AND STREAM. 
108 
to bed. I to the sitting room bed, they to the bed 
room. The couch of the little girl, long since asleep, 
was drawn up before the fireplace. For another hour I 
watched the red firelight flicker around the room. It 
died slowly away, till at last only a red glow was to be 
seen, broken from time to time by a sharp crack, a sigh 
or a whistle, as the heat found new fuel to flare over. It 
was like the nights I passed in a tent 'way back in Penn- 
sylvania. I chuckled when I recalled the fashion in 
which I was treated at the Pennsylvania camp by the 
hunters, there, and by the Virginian hunter. 
People in Pennsylvania who were willing that I should 
sleep in barns, gasped when I told them that I was com- 
ing down into West Virginia and along the Alleghany 
Mountains. 
"Why," they said, ''you'll be murdered down there. 
They'll shoot you for your pack. They're desperate 
people. Aren't you afraid?" 
I rolled over on the soft bed, threw down the top 
blanket because it was too warm, and went peacefully to 
sleep. The situation was suggestive of a song I found to 
be a favorite down this way: 
"Oh you talk about your rough coons," 
I'm one of them mese'f ; 
With a pistol in me pocket 
And a razah in mah ves'. 
I'll shoot you an' I'll cut you, 
And stabs you to your heart, 
And drink down your blood like wine." 
This is sung in fierce tones. Then, sweetly, with a 
soft anneal in every word: 
"The ham bone am sweet 
And the bacon am good, 
And the possum meat 
Am mighty, mighty fine; 
C But gimme, oh, gimme, 
I really wish you would, 
That melon a-smiling on the vine." 
I don't think any one will blame me for saying that I 
like the West Virginia and Virginia mountaineer better 
than the Pennsylvania and New York farmer. I have not 
forgotten Mr. Johnson or Mr. Williams or any of the 
others who treated me like a son. Nor have I failed to 
consider that I have had to pass on to the next house 
on several occasions before I could get place to sleep 
since I got into the mountains — like at Upper Tract, 
W. Va., for instance. The only ones, in fact, with whom 
it has been difficult to get a meal and a place to sleep 
so far have been prosperous farmers and store-keepers. 
AH day Sunday I stayed at Bogan's. There were 
many visitors, most of them relatives. Some of them 
refused to let me take their pictures because it was Sim- 
day. Some of these came around on Monday morning, 
and I took their pictures then. Miss Ginger and War- 
wick met at the house that "evening" about 2 P. M. 
Miss Ginger and Mrs. Bogan (sisters) sang some re- 
ligious songs. Their voices were clear and high-pitched, 
but less musical than the faces were pleasing. When I 
asked for the words of the songs I'd heard the night 
before they were given in monotone. I was told that 
"in the morning" I could get the tunes "because he 
couldn't repeat the tunes without fingering the banjo." 
They were German Baptists or Dunkards. 
So many visitors were present at one time that the 
chairs would not go around. Then the wives sat on 
their husbands' laps. 
A generous fire was kept blazing in the fireplace. The 
dog irons were kept piled with wood — oak from 2 to 6 
inches in diameter. The back log having burned 
tli rough, another was brought in. It was 3 feet long 
and over 20 inches in diameter. To bring a blaze fat 
pine was shoved under the wood into the coals, from 
which the blaze climbed into the logs and stuck its many 
heads out of the crevices caused by the criss-cross way 
of piling it on. 
"A more peacable community it'll be hard for you to 
find," I was told. It certainly seemed so. 
About 9:30 o'clock Monday morning I started down 
the road, heading for Warm and Hot Springs. A mile 
through the woods brought me in sight of a clearing 
in the far side of the run. A man was down the field 
from the house. It was Ryder. I put down my pack 
and crossed over to let him know I'd slept well at 
Bogan's. 
"Did you hear about John Pritz?" he asked the first 
thing. "Well, sir, three men came to his house — little 
log house down by Muddy Run — last Friday night. They 
had 'bout a gallon, and wanted Pritz to drink with them. 
Pritz wouldn't, and they cussed around some; so Pritz 
ordered them outdoors. They went, and then all three 
d rawed their revolvers and shot a lot of shoots through 
the door and through the chinks in the logs. One bul- 
let like to have killed Pritz's wife; planted itself right 
in the mantelpiece where she was standing. They fired 
fifteen or twenty shots, or maybe 'twas only twelve or 
thirteen. Pritz said he never was so scared in his life. 
Those men didn't have any right to do that. If a man's 
trying to quit drinking they'd ought to let him alone; 
but some men haven't got any more principle than a yel- 
low pig in a cornfield. My pigs are all black. I like that 
kind better. I ust to" — — 
Just then the mail carrier hove in sight on a buck- 
board, and Ryder and I cut for the road on the run, so 
that I could put my pack aboard to send it to Warm 
Springs. "The pack adjusted on the buckboard, Ryder 
told about a corn shucker he had made, which there 
wasn't a blacksmith in the country could have done, so 
folks said. 
The Reverend Miller came along in a few minutes, 
driving a horse and buggy. Ryder hailed for a ride for 
me, and I got in with the rider, a large, heavily whisk- 
ered, twinkling-eyed man. He drove on quickly, ob- 
serving, perhaps, that Ryder had wet his lips for a new 
start. 
"Did Mr. Ryder have anything to say?" Mr. Miller 
asked, around the bend. Perhaps Ryder has a reputa- 
tion in that region. 
A mile up grade followed the crossing of Muddy Run — 
a stream that got its name from the discovery of In- 
dians up the creek by the mud they stirred up, I think — 
and then on a wooded ridge top we came to a house of 
rough boards. Here Mr.Miller stopped for a few minutes. 
He talked to the woman there while half a dozen children, 
all less than eight years of age, , looked on, wild-eyed 
and open-mouthed. When he came to the buggy, in- 
stead of getting in, Mr. Miller reached under the seat 
and drew the mouth of a bushel or larger bag around. 
From this he took out handsful of apples and filled the 
arms of the little'Hots with enough for eating, and some 
over for sauce. • 
"They never forget anything like that," the Dunkard 
preacher said. "I like to see the way they laugh when 
they get apples." 
At Warm Springs I got my dinner in the jail. For the 
first time in weeks I ate pie — berry pie. It tasted good. 
Warm Springs is a summer resort — so is Hot Springs, a 
few miles further on, and Healing Springs, still further. 
People come there "from all over to get washed," the 
darkey I rode to Healing Springs with on a load of 
iron intended for a bath house, told me. "Folks that 
need it gets benefited a mighty, too," he added. 
A few miles away I came to a store known to post- 
masters as "Carloover." I stopped there and found that 
I could get a place to sleep there at the charming home 
of H. W. Hoover. It was raining hard in showers, mud 
forming. The prospect of a walk to Covington on the 
following morning — thirteen miles — was not a pleasing 
one. The room to which I was shown after supper was 
a large and comfortable one, the chill damp having 
been banished by a fire in a stove. On the table were 
many books — "Ben Hur," the "Deemster," "Portraits 
and Principals," the Bible, "Sappho," "An Original 
Belle," "Commercial Law." I skimmed through "An 
Original Belle, following the hero from his maculate to 
his immaculate state — after E. P. Roe's usual course of 
description. 
In the morning the weather was changed. A film of 
ice covered the mud, thick enough to bear one's weight. 
It was clear, moreover, and good walking. For a ways 
the road kept down in the valley, with a flank of large 
houses and fine farms on either side. I hurried on. 
Toward noon the road clawed up on the sidehill, the 
ends of jagged rocks appearing on the right .(up) side 
of the road. Soon I was a hundred feet above the valley. 
Coming around a point, far below appeared a watercress 
farm, clear, level, green, in a setting of broad hillside 
acres of brown. The water where the cress was growing 
steamed, for it is a natural warm spring there. The 
cleared valley ended abruptly ahead in a gulch of rough, 
treed and rocky slopes. 
At the blacksmith shop I learned that I could get 
dinner in the house on the hillside a hundred yards 
away. It was lucky that I stopped. Not only was the 
dinner good — hot biscuit, sausage, several kinds of 
preserved fruits, milk and coffee — but it was the last 
house, with one exception, for seven miles. 
I started on after eating, and half a mile away I was in 
a wild woods, looking at a fine waterfall over a ledge of 
rocks. Having felt as much of the poetry of the situation 
as possible, I traveled on to the top of the divide. The 
road clung to the mountainside, and in a sort of gap the 
grade changed from up to down. North and south led 
the valley, with a great mountain range on yon side — 
a range which led one's gaze further than did the valley 
— so far, indeed, that the most distant sugar loaf peak 
seemed to blend with the gray-blue sky. It was diffi- 
cult to fasten one's gaze on any point of the mountain. 
|Repeatedly my eye was led along the range from straight 
across the valley to the most distant rise in the south, or 
to the north. As usual with such scenes, the vastness 
brougth a feeling of lonesomeness and smallness. I 
went marching down the slope, playing "Home, Sweet 
Home" on a French harp, with as many variations as I 
knew. 
. Many hundred feet below I caught glimpses of the 
Jackson's River, which I left above Bogan's. When the 
road led round an aerial cape I could see farms on the 
bottom and miles of the sidehill I was following. The 
road was like a Z, a W, a U and other letters in various 
places, for it had to zigzag back into gullies and out on 
points in its effort to» keep the decline gradual. 
There w^ere signs that fire had swept the mountainside 
at least once. Jack and bull pine grew tall among the 
scrub oak. There were patches of hardwood trees here 
and there, and the promise of a thicker growth in some 
saplings. The air grew softer and sweeter as I gradually 
made my way down toward Covington, smoke from 
which I saw from the divide. The road was good. It is 
cared for by contractors, just as all Virginia roads are. 
It makes the New York system of every man working 
out his road tax look expensive, when one compares the 
roads. 
I met a man on horseback when half way down the 
divide. The horse was partly harnessed. Later I learned 
that a flock of pheasants had raised with boisterous 
wings in front of the horse and scared it off the road 
down 50 feet of sliding embankment to the scrub trees, 
wrecking the carriage and accounting for the man's cross 
look in response to my greeting. 
I walked so slowly that it was nearly dark when I 
reached Covington. The more beautiful a region is, the 
more exhausting it is to travel through it. One stops 
oftener, looks for commanding sites, and travels further 
generally. I was unusually tired and hungry when I 
reached a stopping place. I intended to stay in Cov- 
ington a couple of days, but learning that there were a 
"hard road to travel," and a "mighty mean country" 
ahead, and that the "people were pretty rough" on my 
proposed route, I left Covington on the following morn- 
ing, spurred somewhat by the hotel fare. This was on 
Wednesday, Dec. ti: 
Raymond S. Spears. 
Five "Wounded by One Bullet. 
Last evening, just before 6 o'clock, native policeman 
No. 477 accidentally discharged his revolver at the Parian 
station in the Walled City. The bullet rebounded on the 
stone floor, and split into five pieces, each of which took 
effect in the body of a Filipino prisoner, two of whom 
were women. One of the women had an artery severed 
and almost bled to death before she could be conveyed to 
San Juan de Dios Hospital. One of the other wounded 
prisoners was also conveyed to the hospital. The police- 
man himself was wounded in the foot, and has been placed 
under arrest, although it is thought th« affair was entirely 
accidental. — Manila Times. 
The Southern Forests. 
Editor Forest and Stream; 
As the resources of nature become wantonly exhausted 
— as with other instances of natural human depravity — 
the remedy enforced by nature for this ill usage is tanta- 
mount to our own invention of hard labor as a penalty 
for ill-doing. This fact comes home to all of us when 
we think of the wanton destruction of the rapidly dis- 
appearing forests and the inevitable penalty even now 
suffered in waste of land and dearth of timber. The time 
will never come in which the use of timber will be sub- 
stituted by other materials. Indeed, with all our iron 
and steel and stone, which go to make up the present sky- 
scraping edifices necessary for very scarcity of land on 
which to build in our crowded cities, all the more they 
are used the more is the demand for timber. As a small 
but interesting instance of the dearth and value of timber 
I may mention the example of a little bit of land I once 
owned in New Jersey, near New York, which had a few 
only of good sized original trees, the rest being hoop- 
poles, saplings and other small timber, and for which I 
paid two hundred dollars. When the land was cleared 
to square out one of my fields, the timber on it sold for 
considerably more than the purchase price, and there was 
not a stick on it left to burn off, even the brush being 
sold to a nearby baker for oven wood. The thinnings of 
a hill side grown up with young chestnut trees, large 
enough for fence posts, brought more than the actual 
value of the land, and still left a valuable grove of young 
trees for future harvesting. The fact is that the re- 
planting of thousands of acres of land within sight of 
the city of New York would be far more profitable than 
its present culture is, except so far as the intensive cul- 
ture of the market gardens may go. And to this com- 
plexion must return the bulk of the rougher lands of the 
North, now under unprofitable, if not wasteful culture. 
All this seems doubtless more apparent to me because in 
my early life I was acquainted with these conditions as 
existing in European countries, and in my abundant 
leisure, afforded during my profesional studies, I gladly 
ocupied myself with this matter of forest culture. The 
planting of thousands of acres of the blowing sands of 
the French shores with pines (P. maritima) and the 
methods of protecting the young trees from the blowing 
sands especially interested me as even then applicable 
to the preservation of our own Eastern coast lands. But 
the forest culture, for profit solely, in the European and 
English wood lands afforded a still more attractive study, 
for it brought to mind so forcibly our common method of 
butchering our valuable forests, as well as the enormous 
injury otherwise as to washing of the soil and the effect 
in our climate. All this is of supreme interest to me now 
as the owner of some thousands of acres of original 
forest lands here in the southern mountains, and the 
matter of turning all this timber here to profit when the 
time comes, as it surely will, that this fine forest will be 
in good demand for the markets. Still more so since 
the present excitement in regard to the acquirement of a 
large tract of the southern mountain lands on the highest 
parts of the Blue Ridge and Grand Smoky ranges, lying 
parallel to it, has, as it could not fail to occur to our 
National Government, an unavoidable necessity for the 
preservation of all the important rivers which rise in this 
vicinity and flow into the ocean or the Mexican gulf. 
Now the dream of a score of years, and the study of 
a forest under scientific culture for the profit there is in 
it, seem to be about to be verified, and these broad moun- 
tain slopes and flowery valleys will be spared from; the 
wasteful hands of the fire fiend, and equally from the un- 
skillful owner who leaves to undisturbed nature the care 
of the wealth lying inert, and spoiling for want of human 
care and direction. 
Let me give an instance. A lot of over two hundred 
acres joining the village and my dwelling lot has been 
spared from fire by extreme care and personal oversight. 
At first it was covered with sparsely scattered trees 
among which one might easily drive a loaded wagon. 
It was a clean hard wood forest of rough gnarled trees, 
of no value except for firewood. Now it is densely wood- 
ed, and a profitable harvest is already in sight, which, 
if transportation were available, would pay a good in- 
terest on the investment. First there is a vast quantity 
of the best of hoop poles, in some places standing thick 
enough to make the finest growth as; to length and 
smoothness, and amounting on the average to more than 
five to the square yard. This is in addition to the scatter- 
ed larger trees, many of which are two feet or over in 
diameter with straight; smooth stems forty feet from the 
ground to the first limb. There are young pines now 
large enough to saw into framing timber, but this would 
be_ a waste for the present growth I have found, "by 
measurement, is equal to twenty times as much as that 
of the first five or six years; which, of course, means 
that the future growth will be many times more annual 
value than the past has been. There is sufficient small 
undergrowth which may be utilized in various ways to pay 
the running expenses and care of the land, and. in ad- 
dition to all this, there is feed sufficient for five sheep, or 
one steer to the acre on the natural grasses on the land 
which is in no ways interfered with by the sheltering 
umbrage overhead. 
The more I study and reflect on my original estimate 
of the actual possible annual income from this vast moun- 
tain region, now. going to waste, the more sure I am 
that the amount suggested, viz. : $10 an acre as the in- 
come, not all profit of course, is in no way excessive, and 
under such careful conduct as any well informed owner 
would give, is easily posible. 
As a meadow under good culture is spoiled by disuse 
and the overgrowth strangles the roots and so 'prevents 
the renewing of it; and proper pasturing of it goes to 
thicken the growth and strengthen it, and make it more 
and more valuable, so the aerial growth of the forest is 
checked by too dense a covering of the surface at the 
same time by skillful use, as by the pasturing of a field 
so by the utilization of the sub-growth of the woods by 
annual thinning, the larger timber is forced into more 
valuable form and finer quality, the smaller lower limbs 
are killed by want of light and air, and the top growth is 
forced into the open above, leaving the trunk long, even 
in thickness, and free from dead knots. But unless the 
sub-growth is left sufficiently thick to force this upgrowth 
