S04 FOREST AND STREAM. Uua«*,igw. 
The mate dragged the negro to the purser's window 
and asked for the man's time. He had refused to work, 
The negro, as the mate spoke, hit him in the face. The 
mate jumped at the nego thereat, but being hampered 
by a heavy overcoat, was not able to do the occasion 
justice. The two reeled round the curved forward end 
of the cabin past the doors, One of these was flung 
open from the outside, and I got a glimpse of a score 
of darkies, some of them reaching to clutch the mate 
and drag him outside. Also I saw the gleam of two or 
three revolvers. One of the gypsies came up on the 
run and kicked the negro in the face with a heavy shoe 
and stunned him. The mate jumped back and drew his 
revolver; passengers who gathered round scattered, one 
discreetly behind the big cast iron stove. But at this 
juncture the captain came on the scene, and as the mate 
drew down to shoot, the captain grabbed the gun hand. 
The negro was sent. below, and the mate, with my .38-40 
Colts tucked in his bosom, followed, and the crew went 
to work instanter. The trouble began the day before, 
Avhcn the crew thought it was so near home that they 
need not work any more. They broke into the locker 
and threw all the cotton hooks overboard so that the cot- 
ton could not be got out of the hold. The mate made a 
cotton hook from old iron, and then the negroes refused 
point blank to go to work, and refused to be discharged 
also. The mate had been too easy with shirkers during 
the trip. Moreover, the negro waiters had struck in the 
morning — of which the passengers did not learn till 
they became very sympathetic with the negro whom the 
mate fought. Then they had it pointed out to them that 
there were about three times as many negroes on board 
as white men, and that so long as there were white 
women on board, the negro hadn't better be encour- 
aged too much. As a matter of fact, there wasn't any 
danger of a free fight. But I have wondered if there 
was not some connection between a disorderly gang of 
roustabouts and the fire that destroyed the City of Pitts- 
burg and sixty odd lives three weeks after my trip on 
her. 
Save for the boy musician accusing the gambler of 
. stealing a gold ring and getting the ring back again, 
there was little to be remembered of the rest of the 
trip to Cincinnati, where I caught the Keystone State 
for Pittsburg. 
At Pittsburg S. J. Henderson, manager of the steam- 
boat line, telephoned to the railroad office, and my ticket 
was sent down to the wharf for me at his suggestion, 
I was assured that my baggage would be checked by 
the boy who brought the ticket, but when I got to the 
railroad station across the river, the baggage man as- 
sured me that the basket wasn't checkable, but that 
doubtless I could "make it right with the baggage man 
on the train." I preferred to make it right over at the 
general office, and there the B. R. P. R. R. man told 
me that it would be right. When I went back to the 
baggage room they checked my basket with a murmur; 
I asked where the passenger agent could be found, and 
there was no more murmur. In fact, they checked my 
canvas bundle, my rifle and paddle, and took care of 
my camera till I got ready to board the train some hours 
later. The excuse for making me make it right was a 
rule to the effect that nothing save trunks and satchels, 
or canvas-wrapped bundles should be checked. Never- 
theless, "one can make it right with the baggageman," 
I got on the train at last. All night I rode home- 
ward. In the morning, at Rochester, I changed cars 
and quickly I was at Utica, from whence I went to 
Prospect, where I left the cars for a comfortable buggy. 
At 4 o'clock on' the afternoon of March 25, I was at 
Northwood. I had been going since 10 A.M. on Oct. 
4 — five months and twenty-one days. 
It was worth making. I can think of no other way 
of living that would give so great a variety. Nor any 
one calculated to quicken one's perception more as to 
what constitutes "living." A man discontented with his 
style of life, fancying that it is pretty mean and con- 
temptible because it is in a smaller house than his neigh- 
bor's, will find plenty of reason to be satisfied after he 
has shivered in the wind-swept 'unchinked log cabin of 
a mountain side, or waded through the mud to a drift- 
wood shanty threatened by a yellow torrent. Drawn, 
trouble-worn faces were everywhere along my route. 
Once in a while there were cheeks and eyes that showed 
the imprint of laughter, but these were few. A moun- 
tain trapper, a Dunkard preacher, the Bogans (.Vir- 
ginia), the widow of Thomas Berry, in the Clinch River 
feud country, and Johnson and his wife — an old farmer 
couple in New York, for whom I dug potatoes — were 
about the only ones who seemed perfectly contented 
with their lot. 
The misery of most of those that I saw was because 
of failure to make money. One old man with 300 or 
so acres on the Holston River, was in a state of mind 
because he couldn't lift a mortgage on a farm adjoin- 
ing which he had purchased "cheap." On the rafts they 
trembled for fear they would tear up, or the mill owner 
would not give them all they expected for the logs. In 
only one place was there actual hunger — there it was 
because the son wouldn't work for the wages offered, 
He took oil out of the lamp to put in a lantern, and 
for the evening we sat in the gloom, intensified by the 
damp wood burning in the fireplace. 
In the mountains of Tennessee the trouble was that 
one's neighbors had a high "sense of honor," and one 
could not be sure but what some offended person might 
shoot from behind the brush — yet they were nearer to 
happiness, I thought, than those in less sensitive, less 
primitive localities. 
The ease with which a living is secured by men who 
are never known to work four hours at a stretch, Was a 
cause of perpetual wonderment to me. They hunted 
and fished, dabbled in the garden, sat around the stove 
or fireplace when it rained, never six days' rations in 
the house, and never without a meal ahead. There were 
more of these the further South I got, and in the Holston 
River country there was no house so poor, no front 
yard so barren, or side hill so comfortless that fruit 
and pork and corn were not to be had in savory abund- 
ance. A man with a family of ei,ght told me that he did 
not see 50 cents a day the year round, but his wife put 
up 365 two-quart cans of fruit sauce every year. The 
chief item of expense was sugar to put down the berries 
in, That was not exceptional, but just an ordinary 
mountain river family. All his neighbors did likewise, 
To sell corn and other produce arid get rich at it was 
what worried the people who ate good fruit and meat 
and bread every day in the year., Some of these men 
were migrating to Texas and the West, thinking life 
would be better there. They could not understand that 
contentment comes from one's own head. 
In northern Alabama was the most misery. Corn and 
pork seemed to be the only article of diet for man and 
beast, and for three years the corn crop had been prac- 
tically a failure. Corn was dearer than wheat, but every- 
body bought it. They had the corn habit and had to 
have it. 
Probably, surely in fact, there was up other way in 
which one could get so good an idea of the size of the 
nation. The distance from Utica to Owego. N. Y.. 
must always seem to me to be further than that from 
Buffalo to New York, because I walked that way, and 
the other I know at best only by the bicycle — and this 
last is much further than by the railroad trains. 
I may say in closing that the idea of walking across 
country was given to me by reading some of the books 
of Thoreau, who walked further into the regions of 
nature than any one whose writings I have read — but 
he seldom went more than ten or twelve miles from 
Concord, Mass. I saw no country so tamed that a 
camping place could not have been made where there 
were thick woods, and on the river I traveled scores 
and scores of miles unseen by mankind — could have gone 
the whole length of the river down to Mussel Shoals 
without sleeping in a bed. and speaking only when it 
was necessary to buy supplies. But it was better to be 
sociable. 
I was surprised at the wildness of the land. 
"All good things," Thoreau says, "are wild and free." 
"I believe that there is a subtle magnetism in Nature, 
which, if we unconsciously yield to it will direct its 
aright. It is not indifferent to us which way we walk. 
There is a right way" — and each one must decide for 
himself whether he will go through a park, around a 
town, cross lots, or straight away along the side of 
a mountain range. 
Last of all. It was not easy. There were physical 
hardships, and worse mental ones — for one is not al- 
ways his own best companion. But a young man could 
not fail to profit by thus brushing along the rough sides 
of Nature, and he appreciates the soft places when he 
comes to them, as he does not fail to do at intervals. 
Raymond S. Spears. 
, ' 1 Old-Fashioned Coon Hunt 
with Bill Jones. 
If a friend had not presented me with a full-blooded 
English foxhound, I probably should not have made Bill 
Jones' acquaintance, and in that event this story would 
not have been written. The dog — he was a beauty — was 
delivered at my suburban home, and four nights later 
he mysteriously vanished. I consulted the bald-headed 
commuter. He scratched his chin thoughtfully. "Better 
see Bill Jones," he said. 
He was painting his front gate, but seemed to know . 
me the instant I accosted him. I thought I detected a 
momentary gleam of pained surprise in his mild blue 
eye, but his greeting was effusive. His freckled face 
kindled in a smile that fairly scorched the roots of his 
chrome-yellow thatch, thereby calling attention to the 
fact that his four upper front teeth were missing, and 
the grasp of his great hairy paw lost nothing of its 
cordiality from the fact that it was copiously smeared 
with moist, green paint. There was six feet one of Bill 
Jones — mostly paint and smile. He was raw-boned and 
shambling; long of limb and somehow suggested that 
the several parts of his anatomy were strung together on 
wires like that amusing little toy, "the climbing monkey." 
As for his age, call him twenty. He had not seen my 
dog. 
"Bill Jones," I said, "if you find that dog before to- 
morrow night and deliver him at my place, there is $5 in 
it for you. If, on the contrary^ through any unforeseen 
concatination of fortuitous circumstances, that hound 
shouldn't reach home before my return from the city, 
there will be trouble. Bill Jones, big trouble — and may 
the Lord have mercy on your soul ! Do I make myself 
perfectly clear to you?''* Jones said he reckoned so, and 
when he turned up the following evening with the dog 
and a circumstantial story of how he had rescued it 
from the cow corral of a nameless Portuguese rancher 
out near San Anselmo, I solemnly complimented him 
upon his ability as a detective, handed him the half-eagle, 
and by so doing won the lasting regard of Bill Jones. 
Six months passed before I met him again. The deer 
season had come and gene ; so too the ducks and the 
quail. The trout streams had been fished out; the striped 
bass had deserted their customary feeding grounds about 
the rocky points at the mouths of the sloughs. It was 
that uncomfortable portion of the year when the well 
man, eager for exercise, is reduced to a choice between, 
golf and ping-pong. I had been passing the evening at a 
friend's house, and at 11 o'clock was strolling homeward 
down the eucalyptus-bordered avenue, lighted only by a 
harvest moon, when I became conscious of a slouching 
figure, followed by three dogs, rapidly approaching. It 
was Bill Jones. His smile and the missing teeth betrayed 
him instantly. Yes, those dogs were his — he was going 
'coon hunting. "There's slathers of 'coons up around 
the vineyards," he remarked. "You know Mike Bass? 
Well, me and him and the dogs got four last night — big 
ones. What do I do with them? Skin 'em for their 
pelts ; eat 'em sometimes. Don't care an awful lot about 
'coons for eatin', Them dogs is trained a-puppose. You 
jest oughter see that old three-legged setter work on a 
scent. Fun? Well, say, it is jest the funniest kind o* 
fun you ever seen — funnier than a three-ringed circus. 
Say, mister, why don't you come along some night? I'd 
be real proud to have you" — and before I realized what I 
was doing, I had pledged myself for a 'coon hunt with Bill 
Jones. 
The rendezvous was my place, the hour 10 P. M., and 
after a hearty collation, for we intended to hunt until 
daybreak, we sallied forth into the crisp night. There 
were four in the party— Bill JoiieS, a friend of his whom 
be casually addressed as Razors, a friend of mine, whom 
for the purpose of this narrative I shall call Bob. and my- 
ielf. Bill Jones had his three dogs with him. and frowned 
down Bob's suggestion that the pack should be increased. 
"Them dogs 0' mine knows their business," he remarked, 
sententiously ; "most fool dogs don't. That Irish tar- 
rier thar can come, however," indicating my Paddy; "he 
looks kinder smart." 
A brisk walk of three-quarters of an hour placed be- 
tween us and the slumbering town a projecting ridge of 
the coast range, wlrch we crossed by a narrow gap, 
locally known as the Porter Swallow — doubtless Puerta 
Suela, a reminiscence of Spanish days. Before us lay a 
great salt marsh extending far out into the silver-streaked 
waters of the bay. This sea of shimmering tules rippled 
and broke at the foot of the granite bluff 'long which we 
walked in Indian file, the dogs quietly following. Here 
Bill Jones called a halt. "Hold that tarrier of yourn. 
Here. you. Rocks, git," addressing his old three-legged 
setter. "Daisy, git a move on you !" Tlrs to a curious- 
looking mongrel, two parts terrier and the re t conun- 
drum. To his third dog, King, a noble Virginia deer 
hound, displaying strong bloodhound characteristics, he 
gave no orders, and the animal remained passively beside 
us. and assumed an expression of utter boredom, as 
though he took not the slightest interest in the pro- 
ceedings. At first sight, the appearance of Bill's curiously 
assorted canine live stock had awakened doubts in my 
mind as to their prowess, but this speedily resolved itself 
into admiration as we watched the intelligent ammals do 
their work. The lame setter ranged and quartered widely 
through the tules. casting to the right and then to the 
left, and covering every inch of the ground, a silent, 
throbbing, thinking engine of bone, sinew, muscle and 
electric force. The cur on the contrary was everywhere 
at once and nowhere long, ki-yiing voiceferously the 
while, and although he was mvisible in the tules. most of 
the time, we had no trouble in tracing his movements 
by his falsetto squeaks. Suddenly, frcm away out near 
the center of the marsh, arose a short, sharp bark. It 
was the old setter. A second later it was repeated. 
"King, go see what Rocks has got," said Bill Jones in 
his ordinary conversational voice. King uncurled him- 
self lazily, smoothed the deep wrinkle of chronic ennui 
from his forehead, stretched himself and struck a bee 
line for the point whence Rocks' bark had come. "It 
took me a powerful long time to learn him that." com- 
mented Bill Jones. "Any fool hound will follow a scent, 
but I learned this hound to follow his hearin' until he 
strikes the scent. Rocksy gits fooled on scents ence in 
a while, but nothin' ever fools King — hark!" Across the 
marsh boomed the deep-chested bay of the hound and the 
rocks caught up and echoed it. We sprang to our feet. 
"Sit still, sit still !" cried Bill ; " 'tain't no use trapezing 
round in them tules. Jest as likely they will tree him 
this side as t'other." 
Like Napolecn, B : ll Jones believed in destiny, and he 
also knew that it was no part of the duty of a great com- 
mander to throw himself into the thick of the fighting. 
So coolly resuming his seat upon a boss of rocks and 
motioning to his field marshol. Razors, to pass him the 
fag end of his plug of tobacco, he watched the tide of 
battle ebb and flow at his feet. But sitting still was out 
of the question for the rest of us. The dogs were now 
in full cry, Paddy included, and the marsh resounded 
with the uproar — yelps, howls, barks and bellows blended 
to make a doggy symphony that stirred the blood and 
made the pulses tingle. So it was that primeval man 
did his hunting, and centuries of "biled shirts," to say 
nothing of a decade of stalking with the camera, have 
wholly failed to eradicate the savage thrills which pulsate 
through his gentler progeny when, with glowing cheek 
and kindled eye, he hears his fellow hunters of the long 
ago pursue their prey. It was with amused astonishment 
that I observed that my usually placid friend Bob was 
hopping up and down and howling like a dancing der- 
vish, until it dawned upon me that I too was displaying 
undue excitement, and that the roars, "Give it to him. 
Paddy," which smote my ear now and again, proceeded 
from my own throat. Even Razors, to^ whom it was 
an old story, caught the infection, and brandishing a long 
pole which formed part of his equipment, yelled his en- 
couragement. The din of the chase swung over toward 
the uplands, across the marsh, and then swung back- 
again. It was coming our way. The hound was in the 
lead, nose down, the others tagging after. Outward they 
circled around a promontory a thousand yards beyond us. 
Bill Jones sat up. "They'll tree him sartin 'tween hyer 
and the brick yard," he remarked ; "Razors, give me an- 
other chaw." Just then an obligate of howls rent the 
air. "Treed," cried Jones, and he began running. We 
all ran. Over rocks, through brush and briars that mad 
chase lay. Up over a hill, around the point of rocks and 
down the slippery slope of a well-wooded gulch, we 
sprawled and stumbled, the howling of the pack resound- 
ing in our ears. At the edge of the timber Razor-' 1 ng 
pole became entangled in Bob's legs, and he shot down- 
ward twenty feet head first, bringing up in a snarl of 
blackberry vines. Nobody minded, least of all Bob. 
"Jimminy Christmas !" he said, and was up and off 
again. The bottom of that canon was as dark as the 
proverbial inside of a cow. Bill Jcnes' long legs brought 
him to the tree first — it was a gigantic laurel with wide- 
spreading limbs and dense foliage. The dogs crouched 
around the bole gazing upward with eager-eyed expec- 
tancy, and giving tongue for all they were worth. "Shet 
up," said Bill Jones. "Razors, gimme that pole and flare. 
Mister" — this to me. who bore the only weapon rf the 
party, a .22-caliber rifle — "when I flash him, you sli30t." 
While he was speaking, Razors had filled an old tin cam- 
paign torch with coal oil, and had screwed it into the 
socket of the pole, and Bill Jones had kicked off his 
boots. While these preparations were going on the pack 
stood around and drooled in rapture. With monkey-like 
agility, Jones swung himself into the tree and reached for 
the torch, and at that very moment a large, black body 
whistled past my ear and struck the ground a few feet 
beyond me with a thump. The next instant I was on my 
back, while the pack in full cry raced over me. "Ginger, 
that was a fox !" cried Jones, and we were immediately in 
hot pursuit. Up the hill, across a rocky ravine, then up 
it. through a beflowered mesa, and then down hill again— 
