FOREST AND STREAM. 
t§EPT, 6, tgd^2. 
expenditure questiotied, analyzed, probed and frequently 
resurrected is exceedingly irritating to aiiy orte who is 
weary of counting-house methods, and whose anticipated 
enjoyment is not associated with and cannot be estimated 
by dollars and cents. 
As to laws for governing the relationship of hunters in 
a wilderness, the proposition seems an absurdity and en- 
tirely uncalled for, because the word hunting as applied 
to big game implies that an individual, independent and 
untrammeled, is busily engaged and much preoccupied in 
summing up all his inherited or acquired cunning, and 
measuring it with the keen sensibilities and instincts of 
the wary animals. Nowadays this mortal picture of a 
hunter must, usually, include a guide for the reason 
that few men can devote enough time to pleasure to 
learn the ramifications of the wildernesses. Still-hunting 
in groups (two hunters with guides) is apt to be as 
unsuccessful as unusual, but, nevertheless, becatise many 
would-be hunters are so devoid of resources and so afraid 
of the initiative, it becomes necessary to frame a law or 
an agreement in order to protect the ingenuity or methods 
of procedure and the pleasure of one from incursions of 
the other. Possibly a pertinent rule would be, after a fair 
shuffle and deal of the nearby hunting grounds and guides, 
each member of the party must play his own hand in ac- 
cordance with his understanding of the requirements of 
the sport. 
While sitting in camp in the Canadian woods one 
autumnal evenings after a hard day's hunt and a com- 
mensurate and rehabilitating meal, watching the shadows 
of the fir trees slowly efface the light from the surface of 
the adjacent lake, a canoe emerged from the twilight, 
traversed the remaining little circle of reflected sky and 
soon beached at my feet, a lithe, clear-eyed, resourceful- 
looking young man, appropriately clad and altogether pre- 
possessing, stepped out and giving an order to his guide 
approached and introduced himself. After a request for 
ray latest news from "the States," he having been absent 
for some time, the following remarks prefaced our even- 
ing's conversation; "Are you alone?" he asked. "Yes." 
"By the aid of wisdom or good fortune?" "I haven't 
analyzed the matter beyond the fact that it was ray 
choice." "Then surely you chose wisely, for I came into 
the woods with a friend — a friend of long standing— but 
we have separated, and are now traveling our diverse 
ways with our respective grievances and considerable re- 
grettable hard feeling toward one another. My friend 
relied so entirely and constantly upon me as to recall my 
experience with ill-trained hunting dogs, which would 
not be sent home and would persist in flushing the birds. 
He had the whole of this broad country in which either 
to hunt or fish, and still, he would remain quiescent with 
absolutely no preference, until my plans were perfected 
and would then elect to do the same thing at the same 
time. I tried to be patient and self-contained, but the 
pressure per square inch finally exceeded my resistance 
and I exploded." 
When two or more men resolve to go Imnting together, 
tbey should invariably be prepared with guides and equip- 
ment to, at any time, go it alone, and should not hesitate 
to thus exercise their pent-up individualism. The very 
fact that they agreed, as herein suggested, t© be inde- 
pendent of each other, sought to prevent too much com- 
pression and prove a cushion for relieving possible dis- 
agreeable jars. 
In the majoirty of cases of extended partnership hunt- 
ing trips, more or less friction is the natural concomitant 
of individual strenuousness, ambition and, maybe, bitter 
disappointment. 
Some of the causes of disagreement would at home 
seem trifling and at times even laughable, but wheii much 
is to be accomplished in a brief period, any seeming in- 
terference with what would appear to each to be the 
logical and most promising plan of procedure is apt to 
cause restiveness and irritation. 
There are, however, at times, happy unions of con- 
genial temperaments which dovetail in a complete and 
desirable manner, making the camp a delightful recollec- 
tion for years to come and a subject of conversation as 
inexhaustible as are the reminiscences of a campaign by 
members of the same regiment; but the "fishermanic" 
disposition, placid, deliberate, good-natured and con- 
tented-with-any-outcome, is not incidental to hunters 
whose prototype would seem to be an earnest, energetic, 
probably taciturn, determined specimen of humanity, and 
therefore composed of a more inflammable material; 
hencfe, the chances for happiness are against a combina- 
tion, and however highly the companionship of a friend 
may be rated in the abstract, far preferable to the danger 
of spoiling one's friends, or one's own outing— which is 
intended to be the salve for a whole year's wear and tear- 
is the vanishing into the wilderness in company with an 
inhabitant thereof as a companion and guide. Thus the 
entire environment becomes a consistent and responsive 
whole — an entity — which engulfs one and dissipates the 
perplexities and anxieties, incident to the every-day ex- 
istence, by the aid of an irresistible and overwhelming calm. 
Lonely? The time is too crowded with engrossing oc- 
cupations to permit the wedging in of such a feeling. 
From the break of day, or, rather, from the very promise 
of it, until nightfall, a hunter is busy with his many in- 
terests. Each morning he is impatient to be up and away 
to read the new story to be found on the trails of his 
woodland neighbors—of their kind, nnmbcr, sex, age, the 
directions of their travel, etc. Then, since he lives upon 
the country, in so far as fresh meat is concerned, he is apt 
to find the days too short not only for the satisfying of 
his greatest ambition, but also his necessities, and a resort 
to fishing or fowling is by no means an uncommon re- 
quisite. There is no evening to dispose of, because crav- 
ing for his evening meal is not more marked than impa- 
tience for his bed of boughs, and long before he can ex- 
haust his interest in the whispered confidences of the trees 
in their varied moods, or tire of his attempts to analyze 
the blended w.podland odors which pervade his tent, or 
cease to glpvy lin the wondrous beauty of a moonlit 
forest, he -will have lapsed into insensibility. 
Reserved for languorous days is the fund of desirable 
information in the close keeping of his associate, whose 
familiar knowledge of the denizens of the woods, and 
close observation of nature's laws make of him not only 
an instructor in the interesting department of natural 
history, but also in a homely philosophy which prompts 
IP |;h wholesome introspection. Lippincotx. 
Old and New. 
Aw old Mocfc house stands in Pittsburg, Pa., which 
is almost the only monument of ante-Revolutionary days 
in and about Pittsburgh. It marks the site of fortifica- 
tions which were built and held by the French as Fort 
Ditquesne from April, 1754, to Nov. 25, 1758, when they 
fell into the hands of the English, who remodeled and 
strengthened them at a cost of £60,000, and ocupied 
them as a military post under the name of ^ort Pitt 
till October, 1772, when they were abandoned. 
Of these fortifications nothing remains except the 
block-house. It is now owned by the Daughters of the 
Revolution, who have undertaken to maintain it as a 
relic of the city's earliest history. 
As time moves on, relics of the early history of the 
country become more and more prized and sought after; 
even persons who are yet living can see where they 
conid h-Jvz secured something in the past which, at the 
time when it could have been secured easily, appeared 
to be of no consequence, but which, if it could be had 
at this day, would be of almost inestimable value. 
To one who is fascinated with every thing pertaining 
to pioneer days, the sight of any of the relics of the long- 
ago starts a train of thought and produces a reverie from 
which the victim is aroused only by the necessary activi- 
ties of the present. 
Through the campus of the State University of this 
city extends a deep ravine, along the sides of which are 
a few giant oak and beech trees, which have been wisely 
and thoughtfully allowed to stand. Of the throngs of 
people who pass them daily, perhaps ninety-nine per 
cent, of them, if they see them at all, merely see old, 
gnarled, ill-shaped trees, to them les sattractive than 
the beautiful well-pruned shade trees of the lawns, and, 
indeed, some whose natures must be dwarfed to an 
alarming degree, have remarked about the folly of leav- 
ing the old "eye-sores" remain standing. 
Noble old patriarchs which have stood the storms of 
perhaps two centuries or more; which have looked down 
upon the bear and deer gathering the nuts which they 
dropped, have witnessed tragedies of the woods which 
no human eye has seen; and have seen the silent Indian 
as he stole noiselessly through the woods in search of 
game, long before the white man trod the banks of the 
old Monongahela River. 
Never do I see these silent monuments without think- 
ing of their significance, and reading as plainly as if 
chiseled on monuments of granite, what they stand for 
Having stood silently through all these ages, and seen 
every change, from the solitude of the unbroken wilder- 
ness to the present active, industrial city, it would be 
easy to imagine their sighing for the good old times 
of long ago, like some old pioneer pining amid the ac- 
tivities and din of civilization, for his old wilderness home 
where quiet reigned, and where only the voices of nature 
broke the solitude. Unlike Daniel Boone and other like 
characters who could not and would not live in society 
but continued to move back as civilization advariced, 
the old trees must bear the din and turmoil of civiliza- 
tion and dense population and fall where they stand. 
Some years ago, while wandering through the open 
parks in the then unfrequented parts of the Rocky Moun- 
tains, old bleached buffalo skulls could be found scat- 
tered here and there all over the country, where the 
remnants of the once vast multitudes of these anirrials 
had sought refuge from their destroyers on the plains, 
and had finally been found and killed in their mountain 
fastnesses. 
Not merely bleached and decaying skulls did they ap- 
pear to me as I used to come upon them in rny travels, 
but monuments, to which were attached a history not 
only interesting but sad. Often have I sat for long 
periods looking at these relics of the past, picturing in 
imagination the noble beasts roaming in wild freedom 
with none to molest them; then the slow but sure de- 
struction, starting from the far east and working its way 
westward, steadily and surely, like a great canker worm, 
until it reached and devastated the uttermost parts of 
the West, leaving only these monuments to show where 
they were, but are not. I say it is not interesting but 
sad, and often have I continued my way after some of 
these reflections feehng that of all animals, man was the 
most abnormal and cruel. 
Travehng along streams where for miles the bottom 
lands have been flooded by the damming of the waters 
by beaver, and where old stumps of trees which they 
have cut, can be found in great numbers, the reflective 
person can see in all the vast amount of work that has 
been done, monuments which recall the d-ays when these 
industrious animals owned the waters, wisely directing 
and executing a most wonderful work, which, when ex- 
amined in detail, shows a knowledge of engineering 
which would seem impossible of execution merely by 
instinct, but would suggest thought and reason, which, 
of course, we are not allowed to credit to these wise 
little workers. An eastern sportsman whom I knew 
was so interested in what he saw of their work that he 
had a stump of their cutting, which was 14 inches in di- 
ameter, taken up and shipped to his home as a relic of 
the past. Of all the resources of the once great rm- 
settled and undeveloped West, the beaver was the first 
to be sought after. Long before any other inducements 
hired men into the great unknown territories of the W est, 
the abundance and value of these animals caused men to 
undergo all manner of exposure and peril to secure their 
fur. 
Recentbs while hurrying along the street on business, 
I saw across the way an old man with white hair and 
beard, carrying on his shoulder a long, old-fashioned, 
full stock muzzleloading rifle. I know not who he was, 
from whence he came, or whither he went, but recog- 
nized in him a relic of the past, a pioneer; a living, mov- 
ing monument so interesting that I forgot, for the time, 
the demands made up my time, and watched him as 
long as he could be seen; thinking, as I did so, how like 
the buffalo his kind once figured so prominently in the 
life of young America, and how, also, they have been 
crowded out and have vanished until only a few stragglers 
are left. No modern sportsman with modern hunting 
suit and modern firearm can ever be the ideal type of 
an American, hunter, as is the old pioneer with his long 
niuzzleioading rifle, who has played so important a 
role in the drama of American life. 
After all has been said and written about the merit-, 
of the dift'ercnt hunting rifles, which merits, of oour.se, 
have all been based on their powers of destroying life, 
the use of none of them will be as lasting in history a.^ 
that of the; old muzzleloading rifle; and it is -with a 
feeling akin to reverence that I handle one of these an- 
cient arms, and think how much more interesting is the 
history connected with their use than that of anj^ of the 
more modern rifles. After all that has been said and 
written, and laws that have been enacted for game pres- 
ervation, if there had been a law passed one hundred 
years ago that no firearms should be used for hunting 
purposes other than the ones then in use, and such a 
law had been enforced up to the present time, the peo- 
ple of to-day could kill more game with such guns and 
have more pleasure and less expense in doing so than 
is now possible with the best guns made. 
In thinking of the long ago, witlr the natural, regret- 
ful feelings at the passing away of so many of the inter- 
esting conditions, we associate with those days that 
which most vividly recalls them, and in so doing it would 
seem that the tlirce most distinctive representatives o{ 
that time would be the Indian, the buffalo and the pio- 
neer. Aroimd these three center the most interesting, 
of early American history, and if a monument were to , 
be erected to represent "Young America," it could not ' 
be complete without all three of these being represented. 
Never has a fuller and more completely representative 
picture of the wild American buffalo been shown than 
that of the July S supplement to Forest and Stream. 
Could a picture of like dimensions be had illustrating 
so perfectly the Indian as he was in his natural and un- 
disturbed home, and one also showing the pioneer in his 
day, the three grouped together and framed would make 
a combination upon which to feast the eyes, and which 
would become more and more prized as time passes, 
which carries us further and further from the scenes 
therein represented. 
We now deem it a privilege to meet and talk with 
men who have taken, to any extent, an active part in 
Indian warfare and buffalo hunting. Within the lifetime 
of many who now live it will be a matter of interest , 
to see men who have seen the bleached skrrlls of the 
buffalo scattered over their range where they fell by 
the hand of the hunter. 
Sometimes in the everlasting hurry and bustle of this 
advanced and progressive age we become fairly sick of 
the turmoil and wish we might stop and go back; but 
it can not be done. We must keep up with the proces- 
sion, or, like the weaklings and stragglers of a great 
herd of stampeded bufifalo in the past, we will be 
trampled under and perish in the mad race, while the 
great mass moves on. 
It may be wicked to wish for that which is impossible, 
but from boyhood I have wished that I might have lived I 
one hundred years earlier, and have often wondered I 
whether or not any who live a century hence, when even 
all traces of a once wild and unsettled country will be 
practically gone, will continue to inherit and retain 
these tendencies to a wild-woods life. 
It would be natural to 'believe that man, as he sees 
and knows less and less of these conditions as time ; 
goes on, will naturally and gradually drift away from 1 
such tendencies, adapting himself more naturally to his 
environments until little will be left of the soirit Avhich 1 
stirred the old pioneers of long ago and moved them 1 
to perilous journeyings into the unknown, and caused : 
them to keep moving back as settlements sprang up 1 
around them, depriving them of that wild freedom which 1 
their natures craved. 
Emerson Carney. 
MORGANTOWN, W. Va. 
Sportsmen Are not a Class. 
Editor Forest and Stream: 
The position concerning classes, in the editorial in 
Forest and Stream of Aug. 23, was sound and well takem 
The periodical cry of "class legislation," whenever laws | 
are proposed or passed in favor of game protection, or 
restriction in killing, or the methods of kifling, would , 
have no harmful effect whatever, once the public is edu- ' 
cated up to discern the fallacy of it. However, it is a' 
plausible assumption, is this cry of class, wdiich is con- | 
ceded as true by the general unthinking public. | 
If a man does not shoot, he is prone to consider that / 
all other men who do shoot belong in a class by them- 
selves. He ignores the fact that the shooting privileges, ' 
under the law, are just as free to himself as they are to ; 
all others ; that the "class" is not a class at all, but is a 
number of men, from every grade of business activity, 
rich and poor, aristocratic and humble, which drops busi-' ' 
ness cares for the time being to engage in needed recrea- ' 
tion or pleasant diversion for a few hours or days. 
If the lawyer, the doctor, the clergyman, the tradesman. ' 
the mechanic, the man of leisure, take their guns and ' 
sally forth for sport, they do not by such act establish a 
class, for the whole nation has the same privilege. Be- 
cause some men shoot and others do not, the ones who 
do not shoot are no more in a class by themselves than . 
v.re the ones who do shoot. _ | 
While the legal enactments apply to all alike, there is 
a class distinction between a body of men, on the one I 
hand, who are all agreed that the good of the public is best { 
conserved by moderation in taking game, by restricting 
the methods with a view to game preservation, and on 
the other hand, a body of men wdio are agreed that to 
kill in any manner and in any quantity best agrees witli 
their purposes and their desires. 
The man who desires legislation for the public good 
i.s in a class, then the man who desires that his own appe- 
tite and ability to slay shall be the standard, is in a clas- 
also ; yet which of the two classes is the better for the 
public good? 
There is no class qualification whatever which oh- {I 
structs any man's purpose or effort to become a sports- 
man, or to engage in sportsmanship. Personal actuation 
is the only requisite. Any man can take his gun, sally \ 
forth afield, return as he lists, without in any way ' 
becoming a member of a class. In season, thousands do 
so. The next day, other thousands are afield., with n j 
