144 
FOREST . AND_STREAM. 
(Feb. 21, 1903. 
being widows to-day, always remember that." 
I was not as much of a lawyer then as I am now, or 
think I am, and did not know but what if that man 
should die I might be tried and hung for this affair. 
We met with no more trouble, and when we were 
just above Bayou Sara, our owner boarded us and 
told us to go on to New Orleans; he had sold the coal 
there. The market there happened to be bare of coal 
then; he had got nearly two prices for this and was 
in a good humor. 
He paid us off now, paying us $5 extra for taking 
the boats to New Orleans; he need not have done it, 
though; we would have had to land them where he 
ordered. 
We tied them up at the coal landing above the city; 
went to town and found that we were still in luck. A 
Pittsburg steamer lay here ready to pull out this after- 
noon, and we got passage on her right away. I was 
at home on this boat. A little more than four years 
before this I had shipped on her as cabin boy. I was 
going West to fight Indians then. I had stayed on the 
boat then all that summer, only to be stranded at St. 
Paul, when the boat lay up for the winter. The old 
captain and clerk were on the boat yet; they owned it 
between them. 
An hour after I had paid my fare I was passing the 
office, when the clerk said, "Johnnie, I have been told 
that you have quit hunting Indians and have gone to 
hunting river pirates, how is that?" 
"The pirates began it, sir; they started to hunt me; 
T had to shoot one of them." 
"I wish it had been one dozen." 
Then opening his drawer he took out the $20 I had 
paid him — half fare— and handing it to me, said, "You 
travel free on this boat, Johnnie; it is the captain's or- 
ders." 
"I think I know whose orders it is, Captain Mason; 
I thank you for it, sir." 
The clerk had done this himself. Morrison and he 
were old friends, and Morrison had told him about the 
fight. 
When I and Morrison were talking about this af- 
fair the day after the fight, I asked him what he imag- 
ined these men expected to get out of us, for there was 
not $20 among the whole of us. 
"Is there not?" he asked; "let me tell you something. 
I have nearly $500 right here. I brought it down to 
clean out a gambler, and I'll do it, too. You watch 
me. 
He did, but that is another story, and this one is too 
long already. Six of them were playing, four of them 
passed out on the first raise and left the gambler and 
Morrison to fight it out. The gambler had been call- 
ing for new decks of cards every few deals to-day, 
paying for them, then throwing the discarded deck on 
the floor, and we were watching him. Morrison called 
him, and the gambler had four aces. This was before 
General Schenck invented his straight flush to fill a 
long- felt want; and four aces beat the deck then. That 
is, they generally did; but not to-day. Morrison had 
five more of these aces and also had fifty coal boat 
men at his back. He took down the money, and the 
gambler went ashore at the next wood yard. He had 
gone broke on four aces. Cabia Blanco. 
The Crowing of the Cock. 
It is said that our cotmnon barnyard "rooster" is 
descended from the Callus handiva, or jungle fowl of 
India. This is probable enough, seeing the resemblance 
between them. The jungle fowl (of which there are many 
specimens now in this country ; some of them being at the 
"Zoo" in the Bronx, if I am not mistaken) is much 
smaller, but otherwise has atl the general characteristics 
of the "rooster" — the plumage, the strut and the crow. 
I have sometimes asked myself what was the origin of 
the habit of croAving, especially in the early mormng. 
The popular answer to this question is, to salute the dawn, 
or express joy at the birth of a new day. But I suspect 
there was reason more than this for it. Perhaps, in addi- 
tion, it was intended as a rallying call to the hens scat- 
tered among the brush, or as a challenge or defiance to 
another feathered knight of the spur. _ 
Whatever may have been the origin of the habit, it Is, 
in my opinion, at least, a matter for sincere regret that it 
was not left in its native jungle. There are not^a few 
complimentary references among the poets to the "song ' 
of chanticleer, and I will admit that on a fine clear day, 
in the depths of the country, it is really poetical and 
charming to hear it echoing from some distant hillside. 
But— well, I would like to ask a poet what he thought of 
\i at 3 or 4 A. M. - 
I contend that as a murderer of repose there is nothing 
can compare with the "song" of chanticleer— not bells, 
not steam whistles, not the rumble of wagons, not the 
sound of revelry, not the cry of the milkman, nor yet of 
Thomas cat. Country ears, of course, are impervious to 
it, but to the average city ear it is a very sword. 
I have had some tragical experiences of it, the which if 
I attempted to record, I might, I fear, fall into the use of 
language that would certainly bar my article from 
Forest and Stream. But my last experience was so 
thrilling that I cannot resist the temptation of recording 
it, even at the risk of forgetting myself. Being on an 
outing not a hundred miles from New York, but in a sec- 
tion which has remained primitive in spite of the sur- 
rounding march of civilization (that is the way they express 
it, I believe), I put up at a little hostelry, half hotel and 
half farm house. It was evening when I arrived, and to 
amuse myself before dinner (or supper, as they called it 
tliere), I went for a stroll about the premises. Among 
other things, I observed that the hen-house was a con- 
siderable distance in the rear of the dwelling house. This 
afforded me the liveliest satisfaction, which was not 
diminished by the appearance of the "roosters"— great 
Insty looking fellows, suggesting a calliope— who with 
their harem began to seek the seclusion of the hen-house. 
If I hear them at all in the morning, I told myself, it will 
be only faintly, so I shall not be seriously disturbed. I 
took the precaution, however, to inform my landlord that 
if he enlarged the bipeds before 7 o'clock I would leave 
without paying my bill. At any rate, I thought, they will 
be kept prisoners, ^ 
Well, I got to bed, though not until decidedly late for 
those parts (having sat up over an old local history which 
smelt of Indians- — figuratively speaking, let me hasten to 
add), and immediately fell asleep, lulled by the solemn 
sough of the elms above the roof. I could not have been 
asleep more than a couple of hours when I started up 
with fear and amaze. "Cock-a-doodle-do 1" had sounded 
so close to my ears that it seemed the author of it must 
have roosted on the top of the old canopied bedstead. I 
listened intently for a few minutes and then the reveille 
was repeated, but this time it seemed a little more remote. 
I got up and struck a light and proceeded to investigate. 
Presently I found that my enemy (I use the term ad- 
visedly and not with especial reference to the present oc- 
casion) had posted himself on the branch of a tree directly 
outside my window. I looked at my watch. It was ex- 
actly 2 :30 A. M. ! 
If the reader please, I will leave to his imagination the 
rest of the history of that eventful night, and return to 
the question of the origin of the habit of crowing. 
Now, if chanticleer did not awake the echoes until day 
had dawned, it would be quite clear that his crowing 
was a salutation to the new day. But as I have shown, 
and as is a matter of common knowledge, he crows hours 
before dawn and sometimes, indeed, tlie whole night long. 
Has not Shakespeare, who noted everything, noted this? 
'''Theiird of dawning s ngeth a.l nightlong-." 
A plausible theory of the origin of the habit, it appears 
to me, is this : Before the domestication of Callus 
handiva, or in his primitive state in India, he was wont 
with his harem to pass the night among the brush. To 
arouse the luxuriously disposed dames now and then or 
keep them on their guard against prowling enemies, is 
it not probable that their watchful lord and master had 
recourse to this habit of crowing? Of course, the habit 
has clung to him in domestication, but that it is dying out 
to a certain extent at least there appears reason to believe. 
Some "roosters," I am told, never crow until dawn. (I 
wish this kind were more popular with the farmers.) At 
all events let us hope that my theory is correct, and that 
the day will come (though, alas, we may not hope to see 
it) when the denizen of the city, inevitably fated to 
"nerves," may retire to the country without fear of having 
his early morning slumbers murdered by this aerial 
dagger from the hen-house. Francis Moonan. 
Recollections of Antler. 
Trenton, Georgia, Feb. 10. — Editor Forest and Stream : 
My eyes have been in better condition for reading than 
for some time past, and I have been interested in ihe 
reminiscences of your correspondents, notably those of 
Mr. Venning and Mr. Roosevelt. 
My own recollections reach pretty far back — in fact, to 
the time when flint-locks were very often seen and used, 
and the most of my shooting has been done with the old- 
fashioned muzzleloader. 
Less than two years ago I saw for the first time clay 
pigeons launched from a trap, and being invited to join 
the gun club at Central Lake, where I chanced to pass the 
summer, I took a little old rusty muzzleloader which 
I had owned for near forty years, and beat the whole 
crowd. This I mention as showing that one who has been 
a fair shot at game needs not to worry much about new- 
fangled appliances. 
And I may add that late in the 6o's I looked on at a 
live bird match, and never wanted to attend another. 
I have often been interested by the singular (to me) 
lack of information displayed by intelligent persons on 
what used to be matters of general knowledge to ordinary 
sportsmen. Some years ago, somebody wrote to Forest 
AND Stream asking for a description of a bullet-mold! 
His idea was that it was somewhat like a pair of nut- 
crackers. Well, perhaps some of them are, or were. But 
long before I learned to use a rifle, one of the favorite 
amusements of "us boys" was to mold bullets in the old- 
fashioned way. They looked so bright and pretty. And 
just here I can see a shadow of doubt pass over the face 
of my reader when I mention that I have seen a hunter 
mold his bullets from lead melted in a wooden ladle. 
I have also known the bar lead to be cut in cubes, as 
near the size of the rifle-bore as possible, and then rounded 
with a more or less globular pebble on the heated bottom 
of a "Dutch oven." 
Speaking of bullet molds, I recall the fact mentioned by 
Fred Mather in his book concerning the many men he 
had fished with," that he once pulled a tooth for an old 
P'rench trapper with a pair of these implements. I saw 
the same thing done at Grand View, Tennessee. The 
subject was an old friend, "Antler," at that time eighty- 
five years old, and the opeartor a stalwart son-in-law of 
the old gentleman. 
I had a little Lefevre gun at Grand View, and as the 
people thereabout didn't know much about wing-shooting, I 
asked one of the boys to throw up a tin tomato can. This 
he did, but quite too near the gun, so I threw it up myself 
and riddled it. After this, he was very anxious that I 
should do more shooting, but there was little game about. 
Rabbits there were, and also hollow logs in plenty, so that 
I think I shot but two during the five months I passed 
on that mountain. They were usually hunted with one or 
two dogs and an ax, and this boy, having in vain attempted 
to induce me to shoot at woodpeckers, etc., brought over 
one day a live rabbit for me to pop at. I was away at 
the time, and when I returned I promptly released it, 
unhurt. The boy expressed his disgust to his grandfather, 
but xA.nt]er said : "The fact is that Mr. T. and I are such 
old hunters that we'd about as lief see the game as to 
shoot it." 
While I was at Antler's I broke the wiping stick of 
my rifle at about three-eighths to five-eighths inch from 
the muzzle. The rod had a cross-grained spot at the 
point of fracture, and a damp swab at the other end. It 
v/as several miles to a blacksmith's shop, and even had 
one been near, I should have feared to put the end of the 
rod in the jaws of a vise. Antler was a pretty good 
"gun doctor," but this state of things fairly posed him. 
We could not stir it that day, and the damp swab made 
things worse. The next morning, after breakfast, I 
proceeded to prepare a piece of hickory wood, about one 
foot long, one and one-half inches wide and five-eighths 
of an inch thick. Near the middle of this stick I bored 
a hole of somewhat less diameter than the rod, then with 
a saw split it lengthwise through the hole. Then I placed 
the end of the rod inside the hole and firmly clamped 
the hickory around the rod by means of srews. 
Being now ready for business, I betook me to Antler's 
old log barn, and selecting a place where the chinking 
was gone from above the ground log, I poked the muzzle 
through, turned the hickory stick in a vertical direction, 
sat down on the ground and, taking a firm hold of the 
rifle, began to straighten myself out. Something had to 
come, and to my great joy it was the wiping stick. I 
drew the swab through the barrel, removed the hickory 
attachment from the rod, and went back to the house, 
where I found Antler sitting as usual by his big stone 
fireplace. And he wtis surprised. "Well," said he, "I'd 
just like to know how you got the rod out of that rifle?" 
Just here I am reminded of an article in your paper 
not long ago entitled, I think, "How Not to Burst a 
Gun." I will offer a suggestion. It is well in a wild 
region to guard against accidents, and if the writer of that 
article had made fast his swab to the middle instead of the 
end of the cleaning line (or strap), he might have hauled 
it down as well as up. Kelpie. 
Snowshoes. 
There are plenty of snowshoes in the market. About 
every gun and hardware dealer carries a supply, and they 
all seem to be of one pattern. They are rather pretty 
to look at and on hard, dry snow they work well. My 
objections to them are that over rough ground they do 
not last. The filling is too fine and the mesh too small. 
The toes turn up a little, but after the frames get wet a 
few times they straighten. As to the filling, some dealers 
call it caribou and others the hide of a steer. 
I have two pairs of snowshoes, one I just bought (and 
Ihey are of the kind you can buy almost anywhere), I did 
not get them to use .but to lend occasionally. The other 
pair v\rere made by a neighbor who has experimented 
somewhat on such work. They are four feet and six 
inches long by one foot in width. The frames are made 
of two pieces each and turn up at point of toe about three 
inches, and they retain this shape. I have given them 
some pretty hard usage during the past six winters and 
they look to be good for some time to come. A day or 
two since I took a tramp of a few miles, using the old 
pair. On the same afternoon I tried the new pair for the 
first time, walking about one hundred yards. Both pains 
were left on my piazza during the night, and as it rained 
the filling in both got wet. The filling in the old pair re- 
mained quite tight while in the new it. was loose and 
saggy. 
Some years ago I was talking with a Maine guide about 
snowshoes. This man made those he used and he said : 
"The trouble with the snowshoes you buy is that the 
stretch is not taken out of the filling as it should be." 
His method of stretching was to take the hide to be used, 
cut it in strips and soak well in water. He then took a 
piece of horn (he preferred part of the blade of a moose 
horn), bored a small hole through it and pulled each 
strip of the filling through the hole. It was then fastened 
together and he selected three trees standing a few yards 
apart in the shape of a triangle. One end of the filling 
was fastened to one of the trees and he then walked 
around the others, stretching the filling as much as possi- 
ble; he then cut some suitable logs and laid them across 
the filling, letting it dry with considerable weight on it. 
After drying, it was taken from the trees and soaked and 
the frames of the shoes filled. He said that filling, 
stretched in that manner, would always keep quite tight, 
no matter how wet it might get. I am told that the hide 
of a three years' old steer makes the best snowshoe fill- 
ing. In such a hide there is considerable glue and a 
greater part of the glue should be removed by either 
steaming or sweating. If too much is left the filling will 
be brittle and liable to break when using in cold, dry 
weather. 
As to fastening the foot to the snowshoe, I have tried 
\2ri0us methods, and what I find most satisfactory is a 
rigging as follows: I use harness leather of about ono- 
eighth inch thickness, and the buckles and straps are 
fastened with copper rivets. The proportions I give are 
for a number eight shoe, with corresponding arctic over- 
shoe. Over toe I use a three-fourths inch strap ; heel and 
instep strap of one-half inch. The fastening should be 
firmly laced with a strip of rawhide to back edge of toe 
opening in mesh of snowshoe. The buckles on toe and 
heel straps allow of the gear being ad j usted to any size 
of foot. This rig is easily and quickly fastened to the 
foot. After toe and heel straps are adjusted, all there is 
to do is to buckle the strap over instep and the snowshoe 
is on and will stay on over any sort of groimd. I inclose 
a rough drawing of this foot gear. ^ 
