Aug. 30, 1902.] 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
160 
general health. Nature made man to live and exercise in 
the open air diiring a greater part of his time. To en- 
I'orce attention to this provision of law she made it neces- 
isarj^ for him to gather most of the gear required for his 
well-being by means of the chase. The arts of man have 
• rrgelj' done away w"ith the necessity of the chase as a 
'iicans of livehhood, but the needs of a healthy body are 
mchanged. Then if game is preserved by statute law 
In the end that man may observe nature's law and con- 
vinue the chase, let whoever goes in pursuit of such game 
iTOt evade the exercise and recreation by shifting it upon 
a guide. The guide should not carry the pack. Neither 
■ihould he paddle the canoe or pitch the camp. The guide 
should be the professor who should teach the beginner 
how to do these things for himself. When he is compe- 
tent to fake care of himself alone in the woods, then he 
may be instructed in the art of stalking game and so 
forth. When such a course is pursued and the sports- 
man brings in his moose, then we may know that the 
claim of the sportsman has been lived up to. So long, 
however, as the angler in search of healthy outdoor ex- 
ercise requires an attendant to row his boat, bait his hook 
;md take off the hsh. so long will the falsehood of his 
claim be made apparent and he. with many deserving a 
I'.ctter fate, together w-ith the laws they advocate, be 
held in more or less contempt. 
All mankind and most animals have the hunting iir- 
stinct. E.xercised, it is a safe element. Dormant, it is 
fiangerous, and accounts for much of the wantonness in 
war, riot and revolution. Only a few days ago on the 
outskirts of a small town I saw this. A butcher was pre- 
j/aring to kill a beef. He had the animal tied by means 
of a rather long rope, giving it considerable play. A rifle 
was to be used to kill it. The village schoolmaster was 
]>resent, and asked the privilege of doing the shooting. 
Me had no use for hunting or hunters, and was unskilled 
ill the use of a rifle. The consequence was that it took 
four shots before the poor brute was finally murdered, and 
for five minutes it was bellowing, straining at the rope 
and charging its tormentor in helpless agony. No such- 
brutal scene could have been enacted had the man been in 
the habit of exercising his hunting instinct. 
There is no reason why the man who does not need 
game should be debarred from shooting it, provided he 
sees that none of the game he shoots goes to waste, and 
provided, of course, the shooting is done by rule as laid 
down by law. The rich man is as apt to have a relic of 
ihe barbarism (?) of his ancestors, who got their living 
by the chase, in his nature as is the poor man. -Neither 
should the poor man be debarred from shooting the game 
he needs in the interest of any one except in the interest 
of the game supply which should not be allowed to become 
extinct or dangerously near it. But one thing is certain, 
v/hoever kills any game for heads or skins and leaves the 
meat to w-aste is guilty of a crime against nature and of 
wanton destruction, and is a disgrace to the very name of 
hunter. 
Where one shoots for sport he should make it the oc- 
casion of a grand outing, as prolonged as possible, and 
limit his kill to the circumstances. As wild game and 
fish is the connecting link that leads men back to nature, 
they should let it lead them to its very heart and make 
them better thereby. If a man is unfortunate in not 
having a long time to spare, he should not be debarred 
from his share of field sports, however. 
It is the strenuous life of the cities that drives men in- 
sane, and, no matter how long that strenuous life may 
he continued, when release from it does come the healthy 
mind turns back to green fields, woods and waters, and 
all things that are "fresh from the hand of their Creator. 
Primeval man was a hunter; he was nearer to his 
Creator than man is to-day. The last man will be a 
hunter, for no matter how far removed from it we may 
be, at some period we always turn back to nature. Then 
let us not weigh too seriously the claim of the ultra good 
that all hunting is cruel and vicious. Let us not be wiser 
than our Creator ; and above all, let us not hunt too as- 
siduously our fellow man while crying aloud against the 
hunter of beasts. 
Of course there are low degrees among hunters. Un- 
der the guise of sportsmen, men wantonly destroy that 
A"hich should be held in trust, but there are those who 
violate manhood in every other line that is followed by 
men. I once knew a man who had a supreme contempt 
for "gun loafers," as he called them. He was perfectly 
vicious at the mere mention of hunting. Said he could 
not understand how- man could be so cruel as to kill 
the birds. He was, however, a great consumer of j^el- 
low-legged chickens, which had to be killed before they 
could be eaten. One day riding along a road far from 
timber, he noticed a large fox squirrel running in the 
road : as there were no trees near for it to climb, he 
thought he might catch it, and after it he went, whip in 
liand. Well, he ran till he was completely exhausted, and 
finally, by accident, he stnick it with the whip and stunned 
it, and then and there whipped it to death with the car- 
riage whip. The hunting instinct of his nature had been 
pent up and when it broke out it was a fury that would 
flisgust any one who hunted squirrels for sport and in- 
cidentally lor the pot. I have noticed, too, that those 
who have a general contempt for habitual sportsman, but 
who occasionally go out with a gun themselves, are the 
ones that shoot into every flock of harmless birds that 
l omes along. Too lazy or indifferent to find game, the3- 
take it out in shooting song birds. 
If societies for the prevention of cruelty to animals 
Avill turn their attention to the cruelties that are prac- 
ticed on men, women and children in every community, 
:and especially in large cities, imtil they have done away 
w'ith that I will think more of their efforts; but so long 
as they go round neglecting people to prevent cruelty to 
wild beasts or even preventing the shooting of pigeons at 
the trap, which seems a far less abhorrent way of killing 
tlum than that practiced in poultry houses, where they 
are bung up by the feet and bled to death, I shall think 
tliey are only playing to the grand stand and are frivolous 
in their motives. 
But let us turn to the green fields again. We of the old 
times have lived too long to understand the rules laid 
down for our guidance in the new. We only grope 
blindly on hoping we may not stray too far to one side or 
the other. Running to extremes is bad. Zigzagging back 
and forth has kept the old world crossing and recrossing 
the right path of equal and exact justice to all, but never 
following it long. I would dispossess the farmer I see 
plowing in the field over there and have the antelope back 
on the hills beyond. Then I woidd go out there and hurl 
vengeful lead at them, ripping great trails in the sod and 
Imrling handfuls of loosened earth into the air, and the 
poor frightened beasts would bound away and disappear 
over the hills as of old. But what a thrill it would give 
to do it all once more and even follow on to the top of 
the next rise and hurl other vengeful lead at them as they 
pause to look back a thousand yards away. 
Perhaps I should have the satisfaction of seeing the 
dust fiy fifty, sixty or even a hundred yards to the rear 
as they sped away again. But more often, at such ex- 
treme range, I should only have the satisfaction of know- 
ing I had sent a bullet over that way somewhere. But 
it is no use, I can see from where I sit that my progress 
would be barred by at least two tall hedges before I 
got half a mile, and if I succeeded in breaking through 
them I would be stopped by the farmer on the other side, 
who would tell me he did not allow hunting on his farm. 
And that too in the face of the fact that I trod thone 
hills when he was still a subject of Germany. Well, well ! 
Have things come to such a pass? We must give way our 
dearest rights to ameliorate the condition of crowded 
humanity. I doubt if we would, though, if we could help 
ourselves. With the human societies who devote 
their efforts to bettering the conditions of beasts, we 
would say "Never mind humanity, w^e must protect the 
antelope" — in the interest of the antelope, of course. 
After the antelope come the wild geese to feed on the 
first few scattered fields. How many there were, and 
how they swarmed ttpon the green wheat fields and 
aroimd the scattered corn shacks. What a fine thing it 
was, too, to go out in the early morning and watch for 
the first gray line against the breaking day. The pin- 
nated grouse came, too, and boomed out a thunderous 
welcome to the spring. What a soothing sound it was, 
uiufiled by distance, through which it penetrated for 
miles, it was one of the most impressive sounds that 
ever swept a western landscape. But that made no differ- 
ence when they thundered from the sedge at our feet, we 
bowled them down right and left — and fried grouse was 
a common thing. Too many people came, though, and 
there Avas no room for geese or grouse, and they followed 
the antelope. Could we have stayed the march of progress 
at that point I could have been content. 
I remember the first mockingbird I ever saw in Kansas, 
or anywhere else for that matter. There had been a lot 
of peach trees planted close together, so that when they 
got eight or ten feet tall they made quite a thicket. One 
night a bird commenced to sing there, which I took to be 
a brown thrush, but the song continued incessantly all 
night long. The next night it was the same. On the 
third morning I was out l^efore daybreak trying to get 
close to the singer, so that I might see it when light 
came. But wherever I went the song came from some 
other part of the grove. I w^ould creep cautiously upon 
the; sound, but before I could get very close it would break 
out again in some more distance place. At last, just at 
daylight. I saw the bird Iea\-e a tree I was approacbing. 
but one glimpse was the best I could do. The same year 
they became quite numerous and sang all day and night, 
and might also be seen anywhere, on top of chimneys, imi- 
tating the song and dance of a bluejay, and later, after 
the quail came, on fence posts imitating the whistle of a 
quail. Their song was the song of any bird that chanced 
to be neighbors with themselves. I suppose mockingbirds 
were in the wooded districts of Kansas from earliest 
times, but only moved out on the prairies when timber 
culture made it possible. 
After the grouse and geese came the quail and the 
rabbits ; poor sub.stitutes. These remain with us still, be- 
ing plenty where in early days there were none. One 
cannot hunt them, though, without trespassing, and that 
kills sport, and so as the evening is far spent and it is too 
late to wander into far fields, we will obey the admonition 
in the old song, and "pull down the blinds." 
The Paeson. 
The Adirondack Forests. 
The Association for the Protection of the Adirondacks 
has issued a statement in which it says: 
In November, 1896, 702,802 votes were cast in this 
State against a proposed amendment designed to les- 
sen the protection throwm around the State forests by 
the present constitution which guarantees the inviolabil- 
ity of the State Forest Preserve. 
That overwhelming expression of public opinion, taken 
together with other abundant evidence, goes to show 
that any measure which tends to protect this great 
park, so vital to the material interests of the State and 
.'o valuable as a pleasure resort to thousands of its citi- 
zens, will be most heartily approved by a large majority 
of the people. 
Convinced of this fact, the Association for the Pro- 
tection of the Adirondacks has requested George W. 
Dunn, Esq., of Binghamton, N. Y., chairman of the 
Republican State Committee, and Frank Campbell, Esq.. 
of Bath, N. Y., chairman of the Democratic State Com- 
mittee, to have inserted in their respective party plat- 
forms this fall, a plank substantially as follows: 
"We regard the Adirondaclc Park, with its forests, waters and 
ffiima, as one of nature's priceless legacies to our imperial State, 
wliich the dictates of prudence, wise public policy and foresight 
require should be carefully safeguarded and protected, not only 
as a pleasure ground for the people, but as a conservator of tfie 
water supply for our rivers and canals which are so necessary for 
the continued commercial supremacy of the State. We therefore 
favor the resumption by the State of the purchase of lands within 
the limits of the Adirondack Park." 
The policy of the State in relation to its forests, from 
the time of Governor Hill's administration and through 
the successive adimuaistrations of Governors Flower, 
Morton, Black and Roosevelt, looked to their protection 
and conservation, and the effort made in the last Legis- 
lature to change that policy, has occasioned widespread 
surprise and alarm. 
The State of New York was the first to create a for- 
estry commission, the first to grant money for the man- 
agement of its forests, and the first by legislative action 
to appropriate money for purchasing and enlarging its 
holdings of forest land. The wisdom of thus making 
provision for protecting it.s water-sheds has been so 
manifest, that its example has been followed by almost 
every State of the Union. What is more, the general 
government some time ago set the stamp of its approval 
upon the policy of forest conservation by the passage 
of laws creating those great preserves or parks, the 
safeguarding of which has now become one of the 
marked features of our national economy. Any hesita- 
tion, therefore, on the part of New York Legislatures 
in regard to preserving the State's forests cannot fail 
to be a matter for deep concern and apprehension 
throughout the commonwealth. 
Woods-Loafing Near Manhattan. 
TiTE average New Yorker knows little of the grand 
sport of canoeing as it is followed by a large number of 
enthusiastic lovers of healthful outdoor recreation, and 
sees less of it than of other sports, for the reasons that 
canoes are small craft, and their owners are not given to 
parading for the benefit of the public. All they ask is a 
fair wind or favorable tide, for Saturday afternoons and 
Sundays are their own; and a quiet spot where they can 
rest until the lengthening shadows of Sunday evening 
warn them, it is time to start homeward and again 
take up the cares of business on Monday. 
Passengers on the Albany boats on Saturday after- 
noons no doubt wonder what becomes at nightfall of all 
the canoes they see sailing or being paddled along the 
river between the city and the Tappan Zee; but the main 
channel is near the New York shore of the Hudson, 
and only the canoeists themselves and persons who 
cruise along the New Jersey shore in small yachts and 
Iratnches know how these Nomads pass their day of rest. 
Canoeing on the Hudson is somewhat different in 
many respects from that in other parts of the country, 
as one mttst be prepared for storms and boisterous seas, 
for cold north winds following a sultry day. and for 
sudden squalls or rain when least expected. Strong 
tents that will stand up against a blow; heavy woolen 
blankets when there is every indication of 90 degrees 
of weather, and seaworthy canoes that will float with all 
on board though swamped or capsized — in fact, one 
must be prepared for anything that may come along. It 
is not like the inland cruising, where open canoes and 
summer outfits are efficient. 
The feature of this sport so many New Yorkers now 
follow from choice is the short distance from town it is 
necessary to go to find pleasant camp sites and peace. 
Of course there are no spots this side of Croton Point 
on the New York side of the river where one may 
camp, for the railwaj^ follows the river's shore too closely 
for that; but on Croton Point, in the Croton River, and 
all along the western shore below Piermont, there are 
many beautiful little spots where there is shade near 
some cold spring, and which places are not near houses 
and are seldom visited save by canoeists and small boat- 
ers. Some of these spots are near quaint old relics of 
the one-time shipbuilding villages of the '20s and '30s, 
with their equally quaint folk, who fish a little when a 
run of shad is on, work a little at odd jobs, and gossip 
with every stranger they can hold up for that purpose. 
But they are honest and feel kindly disposed toward 
canoeists, whom they have learned are quiet persons, 
who merely wish to be let alone that they may get a bit 
of rest after their week of toil in the hot offices of Broad- 
waj-. Other camp sites are far from any houses, and 
have come to be regarded as the property, tor two days 
each week, of the canoeists. It is not difficult, while sit- 
ting there by the camp fire, for one to fancy himself in 
the depths of the wildwood, so quiet and peaceful are 
the surroundings, while there is only the faint roar of the 
trains on tlie New York side, and a glimpse of some 
steamboat or yacht passing far out in the channel, te 
remind one that he is in a camp within three or four 
miles of Grant's Tomb. 
Nearly all of these canoeists are young men who are 
hard workers during five days and one-half of the seven 
in the various lines of business and professional life, and 
>'ho have come to a realization of the benefits they may 
derive from these short but healthful cruises near home. 
One need but look at them to understand that they enjoy 
good health. They are manly men in these days of gilded 
youths and effeminate persons of the male persuasion. 
While any young fellow in possession of a fair salary 
can canoe in the most appro.yed style, still there are 
many wealthy men who prefer it to other pastimes they 
can as well afford, for they like the independence and 
the ^elf-reliance that are part and parcel of it. And 
although some deny it, himian beings must have recrea> 
tion, some change, to act as a safety valve for the 
precious health that will otherwise be imdermined and 
mined. There are business men who prefer to die "in 
the harness," as they call it, otherwise at their desks, of 
some disease that healthful recration might prevent or 
cure. But the day of the men who prefer to work seven 
days and some nights every week is passing, and Ameri- 
cans arc better for the change. 
The canoes that are seen along this great river are 
modern in every way. Of course some open canoes are 
used, but they are not in the majority. The average 
canoe is i6ft. in length, and has a beam of 30in. It is 
decked completeh', save for a cockpit 5 to 6ft. in lenglh. 
There are two water-tight bulkheads, wdrich separate 
the compartments from the midship section, and these 
compartments are provided with, round hatches carrying 
pneumatic rings, which, when the thumbscrews are 
turned down, fill the space between deck and hatch 
completely, keeping out all water. Even wdten the decks 
are under water — as they sometimes are in heav^y seas 
only a drop now and then finds its way into these large 
dry compartments, and being water-tight they must be 
almost air-tight, too. To be sure, some of the skippers 
carry their duiTlIe in water-proof bags, but these are for 
use in camp as well as while afloat, and are provided 
agamst all emergencies. A majority of the canoeists 
sail to and from camp, but others paddle. Again, it is 
a general thing to see one man in each canoe, although 
several go and come in company, but experience has 
taught that each man should carry his own complete 
outfit. A number of men now cruise and camp every 
week with their wives, to whom the little vacation is a 
source of much pleasure, so agreeable are the natural sur- 
roundings along the Palisades. 
It is worthy of mention that all of the men wJiQ sail 
