J UNK 28, i>)02. I 
FOREST - AND STREAM; 
508 
"Well." he panted, "I don't want to be funny, but I'm 
just within an inch o' ftiy life, ain't I? I'm afraid I'll 
have a hard time to pull through to seven pounds— you 
see, I've got to make a livin' on my own hook. Put 
me back now, if it's the same to you. That otter has 
gone down stream, an' I'll get along swimmin'ly." 
I let him slip quietly into his native element from my 
palm".' 
"An rcvoir," I waved after him. "Take care of your- 
self, my little man." And I raised my cabbage-leaf hat 
politely. 
Faintly, from the dubious shelter of the rock under 
which he had darted, quick as b'glit, came his generous 
farewell, poignant with meaning. 
"Goodby an' good luck!" 
Srj-IT Bamboo. 
A Walk Down South —XXXV. 
(Conc/ns/on ) 
I went back to Lock Six after my boat was gone, 
thinking what would be best to do. 1 had less than 
§6, I would have to pay board till the arrival of the 
steamboat Avalon. and the fare to Paducah, Ky., where 
I would get money, was $6. That was the one thing 
that made the accident all embarrassing. But this was 
solved by Captain Curtis. He would introduce me to 
the captain of the Avalon, and I would be able to go 
to Paducah without difficulty. I telegraphed for more 
money than was to be sent, anyhow, so that I could 
go on the boats without worry as to whether the money 
would see me through or not. I may as well state, now 
that the total cost of the trip up to the loss of the boat 
was less than $125; for this sum I made my way over 
600 miles on foot. 200 in stages, trains, wagons and other 
rides, and nearl}' 1,000 miles down the river, not. count- 
ing the 414 miles down and up in the steamer N. B. 
Forest. From Lock Six to Paducah, 300 miles — to the 
mouth of the Tennessee that is — cost $6; from Paducah 
to Cincinnati, $7; from Cincinnati to Pittsburg, $8 (or 
$9); from Pittsburg to Utica. N. Y.. $10.80. That is 
less than $150 all told for five months and Iwenly odd 
days. 
The four days at Lock Six were the first really rest- 
ful ones that 1 had on the way. I sat around or walked 
about, refusing the offer made hy Assistant Engineer 
W. S. Winn to lend me his skiff to make the rest of the 
trip to Paducah in it. I heard of the cotton-mouthed 
snake, rattlers and copper heads, and was glad that I 
was not to be along -the river when these reptiles would 
come from their lairs. I was an interested spectator 
when the old cook was catching blue and yellow cat 
out of the canal from a barge. I watched the flow of the 
water down the turhulent shoals. The second day two 
men came down the canal, as I had done, in a boat on 
the oars. They said that they had heard of me at in- 
tervals along the river, and had been pursuing me from 
Chattanooga, in the hopes of overtaking me "for com- 
pany's sake." One of them said he was Dr. A. E. 
Chamberlain, a physician and surgeon, from Kent City. 
Mich., and his partner, a professor of music. They had 
come to Chattanooga, the doctor said, with a load of 
potatoes in a freight car, and decided to "bum it home" 
on the river and from Cairo on the "bumpers of the 
railroad trains." Pie told of other experiences on the 
road. He was sorry that I had abandoned the river 
rowboat life. But I was not, though it would not have 
reduced the novelty to have had traveling companions. 
The doctor had felt the suspicion which all men who 
follow the river in small boats arouse. There are many 
suspicious characters on the large streams known as 
river rats, some of whom have left hard thoughts in their 
trail. House-boatmen, for instance, are generally 
thought to be thieves, especially on the main rivers. It 
is so easy to pick up a pig, or a few chickens, and be 
beyond pursuit before night or morning. 
Engineer Winn is an enthusiastic quail hunter, and 
has many sportsmen friends. Two of them visited him 
at the Canal last fall and in a week killed nearly 250 
of the little dandies. Mr. Winn did not hunt. In low 
water, especially during November, I was told, the bare 
rocks which make the shoals are covered with countless 
wild geese, in flocks of 2,000 or 3,000 or even 5.000 
birds. In addition to these are the ducks, equally count- 
less. And yet the men who knew the river twenty 
years ago say that the ducks arc not nearly so plenty 
as in the old days. They have grown scarce rapidly 
in recent years, so everyone with whom I talked from 
the time I got on the Holston in Virginia said. But 
there was one place that I found where several of the 
natives said that the "blue pigeons are growing plenti- 
ful" again, and that only two years ago, thousands of 
them had come among the mast trees. That was in 
Tennessee, in a river wilderness country, where they 
arc not likely to be rediscovered soon. 
On March 10, about ao o'clock at night, the steamer 
Avalon came down the canal, all aglow and agleam with 
electric lights. Its coming had been announced hours 
before from the. head of the canal, for it takes long for 
a boat to come through the locks, and especially around 
the curves, which arc a mystery to the later day engi- 
neers, the first ones having followed the shore line of 
the river, instead of cutting across, as they might have- 
done as easily. 
I went aboard the Avalon and to bed. At day break 
the watchman called me so that I could see the sun- 
rise over the shoals, and to see the boat go out of the 
lower lock and down the shoals below. The steamer 
was too large to make it exciting. 
T still had some notion of going down the Mississippi 
and home on a sailing vessel, but this faded away after 
a look at the map. Such a trip would be too hurried 
to see much, and it would be better to go up the Ohio. 
So I settled down to a comfortable ride in the cabin. 
There was a passenger who made the piano thrill the 
boat, as well as the listeners, in moving fashion. Like 
any music on a craft in motion, it sounded better -than 
music elsewhere. 
I now began to realize how tired I was after the 
months of steady endurance. I grew sleepy and dozed 
most of the hours away. I read some, but paid little 
attention to the river, and had little talk with any one. 
Yet I saw the overflowed lauds, for the river was very- 
high. Tn that respect 1 could see better from the upper 
deck of the steamer than from my rowboat, but day 
for day one sees twice as much from the small boat. 
There is no comparing the two sorts of lives mile for 
mile. One in a slow and self-manipulated craft sees 
far more and a great deal more thoroughly. 
One fancies that Southern cities are like Mark Twain's 
river towns, all mud and pigs and straw-chewing house 
bracers, but the reality is often disappointing — Padu- 
cah. for instance. It isn't a Northern city, its inhabitants 
are not the kind of people one sees in Buffalo, or Brook- 
lyn, or Utica. They walk softly, have sweet voices, 
and mild eyes, and the men are handsomer, and the 
women more willowy. There is less of the rush and 
hurry, as if the people had more time to live and talk 
and found greater interest in what was under their eyes 
than what- they could find around the corner, or in the 
next township. But there was a distinct absence of 
straw-chewing and loutishness. A languid good nature 
was apparent everywhere, but this must not be mis- 
taken. The type which looks and is capable of smil- 
ingly killing its man was there, with all its calm and 
yet gleaming sway of figure — the knife-like man who 
first struck my gaze on the east slope of the Allegha- 
nics, back in West Virginia. To see a place where ten 
per cent of the men one saw on the street were of that 
sort — not all perfect types, but variously shaded — was 
an event. 
I got a ticket for the City of Pittsburg, after I was 
identified at the postofiice by one of the Avalon's 
pilots. The City of Pittsburg was due in a few hours 
and would take me clear to Cincinnati. I ate a lunch 
in a sort of circus tent where everybody knew every- 
body. Soon after dark the boat for which I was waiting 
came, and I went aboard. Five minutes later, in the 
brilliantly lighted cabin, a man with several days' growth 
of beard and a crafty eye, asked me what might my 
business be? I was seeing the country, and learned that 
he was a tanner with ulterior motives and a desire to play 
cards, and proud of his prowess in that line. "Yes," 
he said, "I am something of a gambler." A few minutes 
later he was dancing a jig in competition with a man 
of sixty years, rather thickset and of an Italian cast 
of countenance, the head of a band of gypsies which 
was on board bound North for the summer. 
There were nearly twenty of the gypsies, but I was 
told that as many as seventy or eighty sometimes made 
the trip north from Memphis on a boat. They travel 
first class, and put hundreds of dollars into the hands 
of the* purser to be cared for. "They lead lives of per- 
petual picnic," one passenger said to me, and from 
what I saw of the eighteen or twenty on board, they 
were all smiling and happy, enjoying themselves in most 
undignified fashion. They had dogs that visited the 
cabin, to the horror of the colored porter, good horses 
and fine wagons. 
There was music at every meal, rendered by a boy 
of fifteen or sixteen, whose talents are wasted on rag 
time and other "up-to-date" music, though he played 
pieces of meaning with feeling. 
Among the passengers was Theodore McKay. He 
had been down in Louisiana for the winter and had 
spent twenty days trapping for pleasure. Here is what 
he got: 
Thirteen traps set: First day, 2 coons; 2d, 2 coons, 
3 mink; 3d, 1 coon, 1 mink; 4th, 3 coons, 1 mink; 5th, 2 
coons, 3 mink; 6th, 3 coons; 7th, 2 coons; 8th, 3 coons; 
9th, 3 coons, 2 mink; 10th, 1 coon, 2 mink, 1 wildcat; 
nth, 3 coons, 2 mink; rath, 2 coons ; 13th, 1 coon, 2 
mink; 14th, 1 mink, (shot 8 mallards); 15th, 2 coons; 
16th, 2 coons (shot 1 turkey, 2 ducks); 17th, -4 coons; 
i8th, 1 coon, 1 mink; 19th, t coon (shot); 20th, 1 mink. 
Total. 38 coons, 17 mink, 1 wildcat, 10 ducks and 1 
wild turkey. Beside these he killed 13 coons before he 
began to trap. The traps were set along bayous and 
were shifted from time to time. The skins of the ani- 
mals sold for $45.35 at Memphis, this including six 
"possums. There are many trappers along the Missis- 
sippi who follow the sport as a business, but they miss 
stretches of good territory where the fortunate amateur 
can learn a thing or two about the ways of the wild 
animals, judging from what I saw and heard, there is 
no more novel a life open to the sportsman than that 
on one of the big navigable rivers of the middle West. 
A day or two here, and a day or two there, dropping 
down these streams, will take one into strange lands, 
no matter how familiar he may be with certain sections. 
On the Pittsburg there were two young married 
couples who went afloat on the Ohio thirty miles below 
Cincinnati last fall in a house-boat store. They sold 
goods till they were below Memphis, then sold out for 
what the boat had cost them, and came home with con- 
siderable profits — more than ordinary day wages — in 
their pockets, and an experience that they had never 
dreamed of. They took banjoes and guitars with them 
and had something doing every clay. On the Pitts- 
burg one evening we had music of guitar, piano, auto 
and French harp, which was delightful. In few places 
is it more easy to become acquainted than on one of 
the river steamers. Especially is this true of the spring 
— April and May, I was told, for then there are crowds 
of pleasure-seekers who make the inexpensive trip round 
from up the Ohio to New Orleans. Nor does the trip 
often lack for excitement. 
At noon on March 18 we were all standing around 
waiting for dinner when there was the sound of a scuffle 
outside, followed by a door being thrust open and the 
husky mate of the boat came in scrapping with a negro. 
The negro was hitting back, which was tempting fate. 
