1S4 
FOREST .AND STREAM. 
comfortable one moflliiig last October as I walked 
along the road during the first snow. I was stopping 
at a farm ill New Hampshire and carried an opmion 
I should like a partridge for breakfast. Well, I carried 
the opinion back home, but the grouse flew away. 
The wind blew the flakes across the road and stung 
my cheek, but when I passed tlirough a bar-way and 
into the shelter of the pines, what a change! Com- 
pared with the boisterous open, it was warm and com- 
fortable in the woods, and what a marvel of whiteness! 
The snow was too dry to adhere to the deciduous 
trees, but the thick foliage of pine, and spruce, and 
hemlock, supported it. I looked ahead along the trail, 
thinking "No fool-creature out but myself," but step- 
ping carefully and noiselessly as the few mches of 
snow enabled me to do, my trail was not a quarter of 
a mile long, when from the rear I heard the yap, 
yap." which is only Mr. Fox's way of mquirmg who 
ivas after his partridge ahead of him. Dawn now made 
things visible at some distance, and scanning ground 
and trees I crept silently_ forward. Suddenly, hke a 
bomb exploding, a parttidge jumped into full flight 
amid a cloud of snow. Hit him? I didn t even fire- 
never could hit skyrockets under full speed. Home 
to eat a breakfast big enough for two. 
It is summer, and Diana and I are outfitted for trout. 
We are, in fact, beside the brook, watching the play 
of sunlight through the trees, showing in patches on the 
white sand at the bottom of the still pools, and listen- 
ing to the music of the splashing, gurgling water.^ Is 
there any sweeter music to the real, genume, dyed-in- 
the-wool, trout fisherman than that of a mountam 
brook' None that I know of. Baiting our hooks (.the 
trout are too sophisticated where we were to accept 
feathers for food, and Diana too well-seasoned a trout 
fisher to balk at a barnyard-hackle), we cast into the 
purling waters arid once more feel the 'wireless te eg- 
raphy" (ante-dating Marconi) of Salmo fontmahs— 
the most beautiful thing that swims— a living, palpitat- 
ing, scintillating, speckled trout, fresh drawn from the 
swift flowing element in which he darts and flashes. 
I call to mind one particularly pellucid pool m which 
it did not seem a trout could find cover. Still, keeping 
low down, almost creeping, a squirming bait is dropped 
into the water, and instantaneously a substance, thougti 
seeming shadow in its swiftness, has that blessed worm 
in its mouth and is unceremoniously jerked out on the 
bank. Only eight inches long, but a subject ot much 
gloating and a true joy of life- 
His shape, his spots and color, all may be truly 
transferred to canvas-but his life, the electric flash 
from under bank to your bait, the sunlight, the bab- 
bling water— these may not, yet they are the joys of 
life. As Whittier says, 
"Aloft on sky and mountain wall, 
Are God's great pictures hung," 
"and happy is he who appreciates his opportunities of 
seeing the daily panorama of earth, and sky and the 
wild life of nature's children. Nimrod. 
Past, Present and Future. 
r.diior Forest and Stream: ^ _ 
Somewhat frequent reference m your colu^fs are 
made to the fact that pigeons, once so plentiful. Have 
almost entirely vanished, and a very interesting ques- 
tion related to their disappearance is. Where have they 
ffone"^ When I was a boy there were more pigeons 
than there were people, and in those days I saw smgle 
flocks which, it seemed to me, outnumbered the popu- 
lation of the State of New York. In their flights such 
flocks would cast dense shadows upon the ground, and 
the humming of the flight could be heard long dis- 
tances away. Large numbers of exhausted birds would 
drop from the flocks only to be caught by both men 
and boys, upon the ground, and pigeon nets would 
catch them by the thousand, to be sold for twenty-five 
or fifty cents a hundred, according to circumstances. 
In my judgment, their extinction must be accounted 
for on some hypothesis other than their slaughter 
though they were persistently hunted m field and at 
roost Their disappearance was exceedingly sudden 
much as was their coming, but armies of hunters could 
never have killed the last one . , ^ , , , 
Is there not a natural, perhaps indefinable law ot 
nature which has always been in operation— an evolu- 
tion, if you pleas»— which may have been responsible 
for the decrease or extermination of the last animal, 
fish or bird of certain kinds? Must we believe that 
the last wolf and the last moose absolutely met death 
in the Adirondacks? Was it absolutely the rifle which 
almost exterminated the bufifalo? Have many other 
animals disappeared before the hunter.'' And have cer- 
tain fishes, once plentiful but now quite unknown, 
found their last resting place in the anglers creel? 
I shall not attempt to explain what changes m ter- 
restrial conditions have effected these changes, for i 
do not know; nevertheless, I believe that science could 
account for them. We know much of the changes in 
animal life which occurred in the long gone past, cen- 
turies and ages ago, and if extinction and creation 
was the order then, then why not now? Let some 
philosopher pursue the subject and question further. 
I have also noticed in your columns frequent al- 
lusions to red squirrels and their habits, and last week 
some one discovered that they love meat. \ es, they 
do but it must be sweet and tender meat, like birds 
in' the nest, and the very young of mice and other 
sauirrels I have seen all these eaten by reds. They 
are fond, too, of the eggs of birds, and m various ways 
are ravenous little creatures, akin to crows in cun- 
ning and in taste in these particulars. 
Speaking of squirrels, I observe that Didymus is 
skeptical in relation to that Mississippi story about 
multitudes of them having been gathered in bags while 
they were swimming across the river. I have forgot- 
ten who wrote the story, but he was a good joker. 
He left the fact unstated, but, of course, those squir- 
rels all escaped when they reached the shore. Why 
should they have refused aid? _ , , , . ^ , 
And then that funny deer. But here s his match. 
In years long ago a missionary was sent mto the 
western country to establish a congregation in a rude 
church in some settlement. He apparently met with 
much success, and his Sunday services were well at- 
tended. On a certain Sunday morning the little church 
was unusually well filled, which gave such inspiration 
to the clergyman that he was at his very best. In the 
middle of his discourse all eyes were upon him and 
he felt that his truths were sinking deep into the 
hearts of his hearers. Suddenly the tongues of hounds 
were heard, and in a twinkling the little church was 
deserted, except that one man on crutches remained. 
The minister was so overcome with blasted hopes and 
misjudgraent of his own intensity of speech that he laid 
himself across his pulpit and literally groaned with 
disappointment on seeing the congregation so readily 
chase a strange god in the form of a deer. His heavi- 
ness of heart so excited the symnathy of the lame 
man that he sought to console the minister, and said 
in sympathetic tones, "Don't you worry, deacon, I 
know them dogs well and that deer'll never get away; 
they'll git him inside of a mile, or you may cuss me 
for guesser." 
I have read every number of the Rod and Gun and 
Forest and Stream printed these many years, and seen 
the constant evolution, until I dare to say that Forest 
AND Stream has no equal in the wide, wide world in 
the field it occupies. This is not to flatter the editors 
and the management, but to give utterance to truth, 
which I believe every one of its many thousand read- 
ers will affirm. It has come to be not only an ex- 
cellent story paper, but also a superior educator. It 
is always clean, too, even in its advertising, which, by 
the way, I read as regularly as I read its other pages, 
for in that there is also much to be learned. I do not 
always agree with its views upon some subjects, but 
it ought not to change its own views on that account, 
yet I wish it would print one or two pages more of 
its well-written editorial matter, even if it should go 
wrong, according to my beliefs and opinions. 
Although Forest and Stream has been instrumen- 
tal in my expenditures of several hundred dollars, aye. 
D. E. H., May 30, 1833. 
Baltimore, Jan. 2g.— Editor For est and Slncain: 1 was 
much interested in an account, which you recently pub- 
lished, of the finding of a stone in the Missouri River 
with the initials of some of the old trappers scratched 
on it, and the date of the engraving. _ 
I came across something similar this fall on the Lewis 
Fork of the Snake River, about three miles above Jack- 
son's Hole, at the nearest point to the lake where you 
could ford the river. 
On a large cottonwood tree about 2>< feet in diameter 
were cut the initials "D. E. H., May 30, 1833." _ The 
downward cut in the "E" had grown to be five inches 
wide. As the tree had been badly cut by the beavers 
some time ago, and was rotting fast, I had the tree cut 
down, and brought the section containing the inscription 
home with me, in order to preserve so interesting a relic. 
You will recall that it was late in the preceding fall 
that Vanderbourg, of the American Fur Company, was 
killed by the Blackfect, a little to the northwest of this, 
in his effort to follow the trappers of the Rocky Moun- 
■ tain Fur Company, and it was only a month later than 
the date of this inscription that Bonneville crossed the 
lower end of Jackson's" Hole and passed up the Hobacit 
River from his wintering place on the Snake River, in 
what is now Idaho to his spring rendezvous on the Green 
River. 
Kit Carson, the famous -scout and trapper, - who was 
afterwards -guide for Captain Fremont in his exploring 
expeditions, had his winter camp in .1832 and 1833 a little 
to the northwest of where this tree was, and itHvas near 
here that he had quite a -fight with the Blackf eet ;Indians, 
who had stolen his horses. In the spring of '33, when 'the 
carving was made, he and his party were trapping some- 
where on the Lewis Fork of the Snake River, but Whether 
on the upper or lower portion I do not know.. 
It was. at about this point that Coulter, who was-^ith 
Lewis and Clark and left them on their return near the 
mouth of the Yellowstone, crossed Jackson's Hole on that 
THE RECORD OF THK COTTONWOOD. 
twenty of them, for hunting and angling outfits, -all the 
'way from a patent lamp that wouldn't burn to a big 
•tent which I didn't need, I forgive it; yes, I hea:rtily 
-thank ''it. ' My life has been made longer and happier 
■^by'^he possession and use of this collection of every- 
''thing="having not only the nearest but also the^ most 
; distant relationship to the field, forest or stream, or 
even to- places other than these, such as were but 
ninth cousins to them. . 
I Can no longer "chase the antelope over the plain, 
not even "draw a bead" on a woodchuck, but ^I can 
'still hunt- and get good' fishing right here in my "den," 
■filled with remembrances, almost the faces, of many, 
many friends whom I have met a-field. And here I 
, recall what W. H. H. Murray (Adirondack) wrote in 
■dedicating one of his books to me: 
"As' years go on and heads get gray, how fast the guests do gol 
Touch hands. Touch hands with those that stay. Strong hands 
to weak, old hands to young around the Christmas board. Touch 
hands 1" 
How hard it is for every lover of nature to bear to 
see the devastation of that so dear to us by not only 
the individual, but by the State of New York. Our 
forests are almost wholly without protection from van- 
dalism, save those goodly portions which men of wealth 
have taken from the people and inclosed with dead 
lines. The people are paying large sums of money for 
so-called protection, yet lumbermen go where they 
please and do as they please, even to the subsisting 
of their men engaged in nefarious work upon deer 
which, like the timber, belong to the people. No other 
country but "free America" would tolerate for a mo- 
ment these abuses of our forests which began long 
ago and will continue until the last tree outside of 
the. wire fences of vast "preserves" is cut. And this 
will go on with the tacit sanction of the State in direct 
coiitraversion of "protective" laws passed to hide some 
of ;"tiie shame, but which it never enforces, in fact. 
I do not wonder that Forest and Stream is dis- 
couraged with the lawlessness of State law-makers and 
now looks to the Congress for the last hope of relief. 
.SvRACL'SE, N. Y- Feb. 7. D. H. B. 
Skunks and Q«aiL 
Parkersburg, W. Va., Feb. 3.— Our sportsmen blame 
the skunk for the scarcity of quail this fall, as under the 
protection skunks have become very numerous and a 
great nuisance. C. L. Slayton. 
memorable trip that resulted in the discovery of the won- 
ders of what are now known as the Yellowstone Park. 
Weyth, that unfortunate New Englander, whose at- 
tempt to force himself into the fur trade resulted in the 
loss of all of his men and outfit, had just returned from 
his trip down the Columbia River, and at this date was 
at the spring rendezvous on the Gxttn River with Fitz- 
patrick, of the Rocky Mountain Company, who was the 
man that led Vanderbourg into the Blackfeet country, 
where he lost his life. . . 
I doubt if there is a period in the early history of the 
West of which we have more records than in that particu- 
lar year, but I can find no name to fit these initials. Pos- 
sibly some of your readers can furnish it. 
I am sending you a photograph of the carving under 
separate cover. Tahena. 
The Southwest. 
Editor Forest and Stream: 
No doubt many readers of Forest and Stream will 
join the writer in thanking Cabia Blanco for his unvar- 
nished and therefore intensely interesting stories of life 
in the Southwest about the end of the Indian and buffalo 
period. That day is as completely a thing of the past now 
as if a century had gone by instead of a single generation. 
Cabia Blanco is doing the cause of history a real service 
in writing fully of his experiences. I hope he will visit 
this region again and thereby refresh his memory and 
give us some more extensive histories of the stirring 
days of the sixties and the seventies. There are not many 
men left who can say of those days and events, quorum 
pars magna fui, and not many of them are able to tell the 
story as simply and clearly as this ex-Comanche. By the 
way, the first half of his name bothers me. Is it Indian? 
I do not recognize the word as Spanish. Aztec. 
San Antonio. .- ' 
Honduras Boars and Bears. 
Editor Forest and Stream: ■ , -r^ 
In my mention of the wild animals found m the De- 
partment of Mosquitia, Flonduras, in "Notes from Cen- 
tral America"— v.. Forest and Stream of February 7, 
"wild bears" should read "wild boars." While there are 
said to be bears in the mountains of Honduras, the writer 
has never encountered any there, while, on the - other 
hand, he has found the wild boar (jabaW) comparatively 
common in the region of the Wauks and Patuca rivers. 
J. Hobart Egbert, 
