Forest and Stream 
A Weekly Journal of the Rod and G 
Copyright, 1902, bv Forest and Stream Publishing Co. 
UN. 
Terms, $£ a Year. 10 Cts. a Copy. I 
Six Months, $2. f 
NEW YORK, SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 22, 1902 
VOL. LVIII.-No. 8. 
No. 34fi Broadway, New York. 
The Forest and Stream is the recognized medium of entertain- 
ment, instruction and information between American sportsmen. 
The editors invite communications on the subjects to which its 
rages are devoted. Anonymous communications will not be re- 
garded. While it is intended to gwi wide latitude in discussion 
of current topics, the editors are not responsible for the views of 
correspondents. 
Subscriptions may begin at any time. Terms: For single 
copies, $4 per year, $2 for six months. For club rates and full 
particulars respecting subscripiions, see prospectus on page iii. 
THE ADIRONDACK FORESTS. 
We publish to-day two communications relative to the 
proposed amendment of the New York Constitution in 
order to open the State Forest Preserve to the lumber- 
men. All that Mr. Von Hoffman, the writer of one of 
these letters, has to say in advocacy of scientific forestry 
is in the abstract sound and reasonable, and we opine that 
Mr. Wolcott, whom he criticises, is as thoroughly con- 
vinced as he himself of the merits of scientific forestry in 
its theory. That Mr. Wolcott and the rest of us oppose 
this proposition to open the forests to the lumbermen, is 
not because we are insensible of the advantages that would 
accrue from a rightly established system of forestry for 
the State lands, but because we recognize in this measure 
a scheme which, if carried into effect, would inevitably 
work havoc with the forests. No one can read the Com- 
mission's report in which this step is recommended with- 
out reading between the lines the impelling motive, which 
is not to perpetuate the forests, but to supply pulp to the 
pulp men and lumber to the lumbermen. 
In the face of this menace of spoliation of the forest 
possessions by official connivance, the people of the State 
of New York are not in a mood to concern themselves 
with the pros and cons of theoretical scientific forest ex- 
ploitation. The one thing immediately demanded of them 
is to thwart this attack upon the Adirondack forests. 
After this shall have been done, there will then be 
abundant time and opportunity to discuss scientific for- 
estry. 
The communication from John R. Spears is written by 
one whose knowledge of Adirondack conditions has come 
from the study of years ; we commend his paper to the 
careful reading of all who would know the actual con- 
ditions prevailing in the North Woods, and the actual 
results which would follow the putting into execution of 
this foolish scheme of surrendering the people's forest 
to the pulp men. 
THE BIG RIVER. 
Far from the homes of men, among the cold, gray 
rocks which lie beneath the vast snow fields and slow-mov- 
ing glaciers of the Rocky Mountains, the Big River takes 
its source. Along a hundred mountain sides trickle a 
thousand unseen rills and rivulets and streams, which, 
uniting at last in mountain torrents, pour down the 
ravines and over the tall precipices until they reach some 
gathering place not far above, the level of the prairie. 
In the lakes which form these rendezvous, the waters 
pause for a little, marshaling their forces for the onward 
journey, and then with a more deliberate haste set forth 
again. And now from every side valley come streams, mut- 
tering or babbling, moaning or roaring, to join themselves 
to the advancing flood, and little by little the crowding 
waters push out for themselves a way wider and wider, 
until rill and rivulet and creek and stream are united in 
a mighty river, that surges ever toward the distant sea. 
The Big River, the Medicine Water, the River of Life, 
the Yielder of Fat ! How full of character and meaning are 
names such as these, given by the red dwellers along 
the river's banks. The Blackfeet, journeying from a 
northern home, when they first looked upon the mighty 
flood, were impressed most of all by its vastness by com- 
parison with any streams that they had known, and 
called in the Big River. To the shaven-headed Pawnees, 
who had come from the far southwest, it was the River 
of Mystery, the Medicine Water, and who that has stood 
upon its banks and watched its tortuous, turbid tide — sul- 
len, ponderous and deliberate, but never still, turning 
over and over, now thrusting up from below and again 
being sucked down from above, its flotsam and jetsam 
from afar endlessly appearing and disappearing — has not 
felt the same sentiment that led the Pawnee to call it 
mysterious? Is it the sign of a more material nature that 
the Algonquian Cheyenne — reasoning like the Blackfoot 
— gave the Missouri its name from the fat drowned 
buffalo that were cast upon its banks and furnished food 
for the people ? The legend which comes down to us from 
the olden times tells us that when the Cheyennes, journey- 
ing westward with their dog trains, came to the banks of 
the great river, they saw many dead buffalo in the 
water, and hurrying down to see if they might be used for 
food, they found them fat. So, gratefully, they said of 
the stream. "It gives forth fat," and ever since that day 
this has been for them the river's name. 
However we may look at it, the Missouri is a stream of 
mystery and of romance. Marvellous in a thousand 
ways are the mountains from which it springs, and not 
less strange for beauty and for interest the narrow val- 
leys through which its tributary sources thread their 
course. 
The far-reaching, silent plains over which it flows are 
not less impressive. As it wound its way through their 
brown vastnesses, the riyer heard no sound save the 
thunderous tread of the moving buffalo herd or the chatter 
of light-hearted people whose cone-shaped homes stood 
close along its banks. Its quiet reaches were disturbed 
only by the dip of the swallows or the breast of the 
mother goose and her brood, except when at evening or in 
early morning, the blunt nose of the beaver clove the 
muddy waters. 
Sometimes the stream level is almost that of the prairie ; 
again it has cut for itself a deep channel, and on either 
hand rise for a thousand feet bluffs of white and yellow 
and gray and brown, scarred and furrowed by the winds 
and rains and snows of perhaps a million years. Some 
Titan sculptor of primeval time might have carved the 
strangely grotesque figures which surmount these bluffs, 
and the narrow tongues which they stretch out to divide 
ravine from ravine and watershed from watershed. 
Since the advent of the white man with his in- 
satiate hunger for gold has come also the romance of 
the river which all can comprehend. The heroes who first 
tracked along its muddy banks were stirred by no ignoble 
impulse; the early Frenchmen, a white captive or two of 
the Indians, and our own Lewis and Clarke, were pushed 
on by thirst for knowledge or devotion to duty. But 
following on their trail came those who craved only 
their own material advantage. The trapper, the fur 
trader, the hunter, the gold seeker, each sought some- 
thing that could be exchanged for dollars. These — like 
their predecessors — were men of heroic mould — at least 
when viewed through the lens of fifty years of distance. 
Most of them were brave, steadfast, enduring and devoted 
to the interests of those who hired them. They gathered 
wealth in amazing quantities, but saved little or none of it 
for themselves, and they remained to the end as poor 
as ever. 
Then came the period of the Indian wars, when death 
and destruction for red and white alike lurked among 
the willows that grew in the bottom of the big river and 
of its tributaries/ and looked out at the passer by from 
behind the great gray cottonwood tree trunks. Many a 
savage, rushing bravely upon an enemy as brave, was 
bitten by the leaden death, and never returned to his 
village. Others, defeated and penned up — as at the mouth 
of the Musselshell — sang their death song with stoic calm- 
ness, while the balls flew thick about them and their 
friends fell fast on every hand. 
Many a luckless hunter and trapper and woodhawk 
died there and left no memorial more lasting than a few 
white bones and a few cartridge shells. Known to his 
fellows only by a nickname, he passed away, and those 
who — somewhere—knew and loved him, waited and 
watched, in vain, for word of his welfare or his fate. 
Time passed on. The fur trade dwindled to nothing, 
the hoofbeat of the buffalo no longer sounded on the 
hard plain, the Indians were defeated, gathered up and 
herded on their little reservations. The cattle supplanted 
the buffalo and fed on the thousand hills where once the 
bearded, crook-backed food of the red man had grazed. 
The domestic sheep took the place of the antelope, and 
may yet drive out the cattle. Yet among the desolate, 
wind-swept bluffs of the Big River, the traveler may still 
ponder over relics of ancient days— days which living men 
yet recall and declare were better days than these. 
INTERSTATE ASSOCIATION RULES. 
The revised rules of the Interstate Association are now 
in the hands of the printer, and will be ready for general 
distribution in the near future. It was an easy matter to 
arrange all the points in them, save one, that relating to 
misfires with the second barrel. On this point the com- 
mittee were unanimous in holding and maintaining that 
while all dishonest practice in the competition should be 
guarded against as vigorously as the circumstances of 
the case permitted on the one hand, on the other hand the 
rights of honest competitors should not be abridged a hair 
breadth if it were possible to avoid doing so. 
A meeting for final action on the rules was held in the 
office of the W. R. A. Co., on Thursday of last week, at 
which it was decided to impose the old restriction in 
respect to handing the gun unopened to the referee after 
a misfire. While this restriction imposes added burdens 
on the minds of the contestants, it also is a benefit to 
them in safeguarding their interests from the men who 
might be tempted to adopt dishonest methods of which 
misfires afford opportunity. 
As the rule now stands, a contestant who has a misfire 
with his second barrel, is entitled to an entirely new 
inning if he has not killed with the first barrel, but he 
must first hand his gun to the referee without having 
opened it. The referee then pulls both triggers, or the 
one trigger, in case of a single trigger,, and by so doing 
determines whether the gun is cocked or not. If it is 
cocked, clearly there could not have been a misfire. If 
it is a bona fide misfire, the contestant is entitled to a 
new inning. The referee notes whether the misfire was 
caused by the fault of the gun or the fault of the cartridge. 
If it is the fault of the gun and the contestant uses such 
gun a second time in an event, he does so at his own 
risk and must abide by the results, and the same in re- 
spect to a faulty cartridge. It is probable that the referees 
will be instructed to take possession of all cartridges 
which misfire in the competition, and if there is any sus- 
picion of dishonest practice by a contestant concerning 
them, they may be examined within am vithout, such 
contestant being permitted to compete pi : > ioionally. 
The committee held in theory that_all the details of con- 
testant's inning are essential to it as a composite whole, 
therefore giving a contestant only one sho'. at a bird after 
a misfire is a direct and destructive invasion of a con- 
testant's rights. One shot at each of two birds is not at 
all equivalent to two shots at one bird, which was the 
law under the old rules. 
It has been stated that even the present rule does not 
offer a perfect safeguard against dishonesty; that a dis- 
honest shooter could put in an imperfect or doctored 
cartridge in his second barrel, and, if he did not kill with 
the first, could hand his gun unopened to- the referee and 
that the referee could not tell whether the misfire was 
genuine or not. In reply to this, it may be said that the 
contestant cannot know whether the referee will decide 
that the misfire is the fault of gun or cartridge; if the 
former, the contestant uses the gun again at his own risk. 
If the latter was due to a reloaded cartridge, the referee 
would decide a lost bird. Two or three misfires in suc- 
cession would put a contestant under grave suspicion if 
his gun was all right, for the statistics of the last Grand 
American Handicap show that there were only three mis- 
" fires recorded in a total of about 30,000 shots, so that with 
good gun and ammunition there is about one chance in ten 
thousand for a misfire, a chance so small indeed as to be 
hardly worth considering were it not for the abuses which 
it might let down the bars to were it not properly safe- 
guarded. 
Fortunately, the dishonest contestant is a rata avis, 
and should one happen to stray into the fold, the opinion 
of the good shooters, the firmness of the management, 
etc., would make his path anything other than one of 
roses. Rules do not make men honest, but they give 
ample power to bar men who are known to be dishonest, „ 
