Forest and Stream 
A Weekly Journal of the Rod and Gun. 
Copyright, 1902, by Forest and Stream Publishing Co. 
Terms, $4 a Year. 10 Cts. a Copy. / 
Six Months, $2. j 
NEW YORK, SATURDAY, MAY 24, 1902 
j VOL. LVIII.— No. 2j. 
j No. 846 Broadway, New York 
SUBSCRIPTIONS* 
The date of expiration of your subscription is given on the 
address label on the wrapper. A change of date on the 
address wrapper is equivalent to a receipt for money sent for 
subscription. Take note of ihe date rn your address label. 
In a well-intended editorial the other day in support of 
Mr. Lacey's bill to protect the game of Alaska, the New 
York Tribune gave this picture of what was happen'ng up 
there : 
The urgent need of such legislation is made manifest when it is 
understood that for the last two years Alaska has been without 
game protection of any kind, and tha't the natives have been and 
are killing deer and other large animals in the same wanton fashion 
that characterized the buffalo hunting of our plains Indians. It is 
not at all unusual for them to drive a herd of five hundred deer into 
the deep snow of a canon and there to butcher the whole herd with 
clubs. The "market hunters" who supply the settlements with 
fresh meat are also guilty of wholesale killing, but perhaps the 
most blameworthy of all are the tourists and pseudo-sportsmen 
who hire the Indians to slaughter the rare and beautiful moun- 
tain sheep, the giant moose and the caribou, merely that they may 
bear away the heads as "trophies." Scarcely less criminal and 
hardly more sportsmanlike is the conduct of those men who kill 
only for the sake of a 'record-making "bag," frequently leaving 
scores of their animal victims untouched where they fell. 
It would be difficult to put into the same space a more 
ridiculous and fantastic statement of game conditions in 
Alaska or anywhere else on this continent. The plains 
Indians did not. kill buffalo wantonly ; if the Alaska In- 
dians govern their killing by the demands of necessity and 
by the practicable utilization of the meat as did the plains 
Indians, there would be no necessity of game laws ; it is 
the white man, not the red, who kills wantonly. But 
even so, the men who, killing for a bag, are alleged to 
leave scores of their victims untouched where they fell, 
are as mythical creations of the Tribune's fancy as are the 
herds of five hundred deer clubbed to death in the snows. 
A growing tendency in the fishing and hunting 
world is toward concentration of ownership. The control 
of the forests and waters of Maine would long since 
have been in the hands of the wealthy few, but for that 
greater interest of the timberland owners. Generally 
they have refused to sell, even the hunting and fishing 
rights of their great possessions, to the wealthy sportsmen 
who have desired to purchase. Once or twice during the 
past twenty years wealthy men have formed syndicates of 
sportsmen and tried to purchase the entire Rangeley 
region, but the owners have declined to sell. The design 
of the sportsmen has been to control the fishing and 
hunting rights of that section, and to keep out all not 
owners. Lately there is a report that the entire Jack- 
man region is soon to pass into the hands of a syndicate, 
and no longer to be a general shooting and fishing resort, 
but to be under control of the syndicate, which will allow 
fishing and shooting only under certain restrictions. It 
is current that Mr. C. S. Cook, of Boston, who last season 
purchased Kinne's sporting camps at Holeb, has during 
the past winter obtained possession of Attean Camps, 
of Fred Henderson's camps at Heald Pond, and of Aaron 
Wilson's Long Pond Camps. The camps already acquired 
are all of the best in that region, including over 300 
square miles of territory. News from that section makes 
out that Mr. Cook desires to interest a sufficient number 
of sportsmen and hold complete control of that region, 
barring out the public. 
•t 
Dr. Tarleton H. Bean, Chief of the Department of Fish 
and Game of the St. Louis World's Fair in 1904, sends us 
the classification of his department, which is substantially 
that of the World's Fair at Chicago. Liberal space has 
been assigned for an exposition of the hunting and fish- 
ing resources of the country, and we may well anticipate 
that the display will far exceed anything yet seen. The 
classes will comprise hunting equipments, products of 
hunting, fishing equipments and products, and fishculture. 
As the Louisiana Purchase, which event the Fair will 
commemorate, had such an important influence upon the 
exploration of the great West and the development of 
its game resources, this feature of the exposition should 
have adequate representation. 
- K 
The announcements in our advertising columns of the 
illustrated literature sent out by the transportation com- 
panies there represented are suggestive of the grpwth in 
this country of the custom of "taking to the woods" in 
summer. The variety and enormous mass of this tourist 
literature give some notion of the extent of the annual 
exodus from town to country. The folders and circulars 
.and booklets are distributed over the land literally in mil- 
lions, and not less noteworthy than the tremendous vol- 
iime of the material is the highly artistic quality which 
most of it possesses. The perfection of modern illustrat- 
ing and printing processes is employed at lavish expense 
to produce the most attractive effects, so that the railroad 
book given gratuitously has in many instances come to 
rival and even to supplant the expensive book of views 
which tourists of an earlier day were accustomed to pur- 
chase. Nothing in the way of illustrations of scenery 
could be finer than some of these railroad and steamboat 
booklets, which through the medium of our advertising 
columns find their way to Forest and Stream readers 
practically without cost; they are so pleasing, indeed, that 
we fancy many an application may be made for them by 
persons who will never actually visit the pleasant places 
described, but will content themselves with this picturing 
of them in these books. 
The Forest and Stream Information Bureau is at the 
service of every reader without cost for such help in 
direction to shooting and fishing resorts and such informa- 
tion about routes, accommodations, guides and other par- 
ticulars as may be available. A host of anglers and 
shooters 'have been aided in this way, and we shall be 
glad to extend the service to others. 
at 
Mountaineers and those who live on the wide-streteh- 
ing plains where the view is extensive and the vision un- 
obstructed, have very different eyes from those of the 
dwellers in towns, where the outlook is restricted and the 
gaze is habitually fixed upon nearby objects. Your moun- 
tain man will discern objects at a distance which to his 
city visitor appears astonishing and incredible, and will see 
game where one unaccustomed to the life can see nothing 
but a mass of scenery. The person whose eyes are fixed 
for hours on his work within four walls and whose out- 
look is bounded by the buildings across the street, be- 
comes of necessity myopic ; and it is not until he gets out 
into the wide-horizoned world and into the companion- 
ship of one who lives in that world, that he discovers for 
the first time how short-sighted he is. The ability to< see 
far, to distinguish objects at a distance, and to recognize 
them when seen, is one of the qualities which sets apart 
the guide from the city sportsman. It is perhaps in the 
short vision of the novice that we may find partial ex- 
planation of the mistaking of men for game. 
«* 
Lobster and crab canneries and fish curing establish- 
ments are useful and necessary institutions in their way, 
but there is no sentiment in them nor any poetry ; and 
they are not such local features as the managers of sum- 
mer resorts extol in their circulars. As little do they fit 
in with the romance which invests a spot famous in fiction. 
It is with something of a protest then that we read the 
press dispatches announcing that the Government of Chile 
is about to colonize Robinson Crusoe's Island of Juan 
Fernandez, to develop the rich fishery resources. This 
will speedily make an end of the poetry which has clung 
to the spot since the day De Foe wrote his immortal 
work ; but the new order will bring the Pacific island into 
conditions quite in keeping with the spirit of the age, and 
perhaps the Robinson Crusoe brand of canned lobsters 
may prove so excellent as to reconcile us to the change. 
Mr. Charles H. Townsend, for many years connected 
with the United States Fish Commission, has been ap- 
pointed director of the New York Aquarium, a position 
he is admirably well qualified to fill. Mr. Townsend is a 
naturalist of wide repute, and has had extensive experi- 
ence in marine investigation and study. His accession to 
the Aquarium directorship in place of the preposterous 
Jones means a distinct advance in the development of the 
institution.. 
*! 
Col. W. W. Brown, a citizen of Springfield, Vt., has 
taken a very practical way to enlist the interest of the 
young folks of the vicinity in the value of bird life, by 
giving a prize for the best essay on the subject by the 
pupils of the high school. 
THE AMERICAN FUR TRADE. 
THIRD PAPER. 
Although wagons began to be taken west by the north- 
ern route at an early date, it was not until almost the time 
of the gold discovery that they began to travel across the 
continent. In 1843 a well-defined route was established 
from the Missouri River, at the mouth of the Kansas, to 
the Pacific Ocean, at the mouth of the Columbia, and this 
route is known as the Oregon Trail. Many of its features, 
the towns- through which it passed as it started, the vari- 
ous crossings of rivers, and landmarks such as rocks, 
mountains and springs, are familiar to every traveler in 
the Western country — even to every reader about the 
Western country. The route from Independence, Mo., to 
Fort Vancouver, opposite the month of the Williamette, 
. had a length of 2,020 miles, and from this point to old 
Astoria was i04»miles, and to the mouth of the Columbia 
114 miles. 
Having discussed at length, and most interestingly, the 
American fur trade in the north — always within the 
United States, for Captain Chittenden does not touch on 
the operations of the Hudson's Bay or the old Northwest 
Company, except incidentally — he now turns to the south- 
ward and considers the Santa Fe trade, giving its history, 
its character, the route which it followed, and many in- 
cidents of the trail, one of the saddest of which was the 
killing on the Cimarron, in the year 1831, of that heroic 
figure of early days, Jedediah S. Smith, already alluded 
to. Smith and his party had become lost and were un- 
able to find water, and men and animals were alike frantic 
for the want of it. Smith declared that he would find 
water or perish in the attempt, and set forth alone to 
search for it. At last he came to the. valley of the Cimar- 
ron, but found the stream dry, and while digging in the 
sand for water was approached by Comanches and shot 
with arrows. Smith fought bravely, and before he died 
killed two of his enemies. 
Part III. of the work is devoted to contemporary events 
connected with the fur trade. Among these are the war 
of 1812, the Yellowstone expedition of 1819 to '20, and 
that of 1825, the Arikara campaign of 1823, the smallpox 
of 1837, and the entrance into the. country of troops, 
scientific explorers and missionaries. 
Following these comes a series of thrilling chapters 
entitled "Notable Incidents and Characters in the History 
of the Fur Trade," and of these there are surely many in 
that forty years of wild journeying, and yet the story of 
not more than one in a hundred of such adventures, was 
told. The unwritten history of the old-time West, if it 
could be set down in order, would fill many a volume 
with thrilling incidents. A curious case was the killing 
of Antoine Godin, who a year or two before in Pierre's 
Hole had killed a Blackfoot chief as he was shaking 
hands with him to make peace, in revenge for the murder 
of Godin's father by Blackfeet on Godin Creek. Two 
or three years later a party of Blackfeet made their ap- 
pearance on the banks of the Snake River, opposite Fort 
Hall. They were led by a man named Bird, formerly in 
the employ of the Hudson's Bay Company, who was living 
with the Blackfeet and had become a chief among them. 
Godin was invited to cross the river and purchase the 
Indians' furs, and he complied. He sat down to smoke 
with the company, preparatory to making the trade, and 
some of the Indians shot him in the back, and while he 
was still alive, Bird scalped him and cut in his forehead 
the letters N. J. W., which were Wyeth's initials. This 
, man Bird died only a very few years ago, and was well 
known to many men still alive, as his children and grand- 
children still are. Another interesting story is of the battle 
of Fort McKenzie, when the Crees and Assiniboines at- 
tacked a few Piegans who were camped without the fort. 
Many of the Piegans escaped into the fort, others fought 
bravely outside until morning, when the assistance of the 
whites and the arrival of reinforcements drove off the 
enemy. The story is frequently told to this day among 
the Piegans. 
One of the most extraordinary of these accounts is an 
adventure of Hugh Glass, better known in those days as 
old man Glass, who as early as 1823 was one of Ashley 
and Henry's men. Glass was one of a party which accom- 
panied Henry to the Yellowstone River after the Leaven- 
worth campaign was over. One day he had been sent 
ahead as hunter, and "was a short distance in advance of, 
the party, forcing his way through a thicket,, when, f|| 
