122 
FOREST AND STREAM: 
[Aug. is, 1903. 
men soon longed for fresh meat. They grumbled more 
or less, because they were delayed by the water in get- 
ting into the buffalo country, and to satisfy them Capt. 
La Barge told them that the first buffalo they saw- 
they should Irave, even if it were necessary to stop half 
a day in order to get it. The first mate of the boat, 
John Durack, had been on the river before, but knew 
nothing about buffalo. 
"When the boat reached the vicinity of Handy's 
post, four buffalo bulls were seen swimming the river. 
'Man the yawl, John,' said La Barge. 'I will go with 
you and we will have a buffalo before we get back.' 
The captain gave orders to the men on the boat to 
shoot the buffaloes, and he would lasso one of the 
wounded ones and drag it to the boat. He put Durack 
in the bow with a line, while he took the rudder. The 
men on the steamboat fired and wounded two of the 
buffaloes. To get to the wounded ones, the boat had 
to pass close to the two uninjured ones. The captain 
supposed that Durack fully understood the programme, 
but the mate was not 'up to buffalo,' and to La 
Barge's consternation slipped the noose over the head 
of one of the uninjured animals. Too late Capt. La 
Barge shouted to him not to do this— that he did not 
want to anchor to a live buffalo. 'Oh,' replied Dur- 
ack, 'he's as good as aiiy.' The buffalo kept straight 
on his course. Finally his feet touched bottom and up 
the bank he went with the boat and its helpless crew 
after him. They might indeed have taken a boat ride 
over the bare prairie had not the stern of the yawl 
given way, being wrenched entirely out of the boat 
and carried off by the terrified animal. There stood the 
sorry crew, shipwrecked on a sandbar across the river 
from the steamboat— and with no buffalo. A whole day 
was consumed in getting back to the boat and in re- 
pairing the broken yawl. Meanwhile the crew kept 
on eating salt pork and navy bread." 
If amusing incidents were frequently occurring on 
the river, not less was it a scene of fights with Indians, 
of desperate crimes by white men and of perils of a 
hundred kinds. It was during one of Capt. La Barge's 
voj'ages in 1851, that the cholera broke out on the 
boat. Among the passengers were two distinguished 
Jesuit missionaries, Father Hoecken and Father De 
Smet, as well as a Dr. Evans. Father De Smet was al- 
ready ill, but the other two worked heroically over 
passengers and crew, and Father Hoecken so ex- 
Tiausted himself that he fell a victim to the disease and 
died, sacrificing himself to the call of dutj--, as have 
so many noble men belonging to his order. 
Father De Smet was one of the best known .Jesuits 
in all the Western country, and he is still remembered 
and talked of on the upper river. One of the tales 
given of him by Capt. Chittenden is as follows: 
"Although the spring of 1851 had been very back- 
Avard and wet in the lower country, it was not so 
higher up, and when the St. Ange arrived at the Ari- 
cara villages, the corn crop of those Indians was found 
to be actually suffering from drouth. The Aricara 
chief, White Shield, came on board and said to La 
Barge, who understood his language well: 
" 'I am glad to see you, and I hear the Black Robe 
is on board.' 
La Barge repHed that that was so. The chief then 
continued: 
" 'I want to ask him a favor. It is very late in the 
season and no rain. Corn ought to be up now. We 
want the Black Robe to send us rain.' 
"La Barge took the Indian back to De Smet's room 
and said to the priest: 'Father, here is the White 
Shield, who wants you to make it rain, for the corn is 
not yet up.' 
"De Smet, who knew the White Shield well, laughed 
heartily, and said he would do all he could. He then 
asked La Barge if the boat was going to remain there 
all day, and being informed that it was, he said to the 
White Shield: 'Go to your villages and put your lodge 
in order and call in some of the chiefs. I will come and 
offer prayer to the Almighty and ask him to be merci- 
ful and grant your request, and I am satisfied that, if 
you deserve it, the Great Spirit will look down and 
favor you.' 
"Capt. La Barge and several of the passengers went 
along with the father, and the interpreter translated 
the prayer to the Indians. They left the Indians satis- 
fied, and at noon had them on the boat for a feast, 
after which they returned to their villages. As good 
fortune would have it, along about three or four o'clock 
in the afternoon there came up a heavy thunder shower, 
which fairly deluged the place. Father De Smet laughed 
and said: 
" 'They will think I did it. They will give me all 
the credit for it.' 
"Some time after the shower Pierre Garreau, a 
French-Canadian, who had spent all his life among the 
Indians, and had become almost an Indian himself, 
came to the boat and said to La Barge: 
" 'I want you to help me, I want to find out bow 
Father De Smet did that.' 
" 'Did what?' asked La Barge. 
" 'Made it rain. I will pay a good price if he will 
tell me. I will give him ten horses.' 
"La Barge took him back to De Smet, where he pre- 
sented his request himself. De Smet told him to be 
a good Christian, and pray when he wanted it to rain, 
and if he deserved it, it would come. Garreau went 
away disappointed, for he fully believed that the Father 
had some secret art by which he produced so signal 
a result. After he had gone, De Smet laughed, and 
said: 'Did I not tell you they would say I did it?' " 
Naturally the volumes abound in anecdotes of Capt. 
La Barge who, besides being a man of great courage 
and energy, had also no little sense of humor. A 
story of one of his early voyages is perhaps the basis 
of several similar later talcs that have been published 
of other people. 
It is said that on one of the captain's trips up the 
river there were several Englishmen among the pas- 
sengers. They had a map, and for the first day or 
two spent much of their time trying to identify the 
various places marked on it with those that they 
passed. They were in the pilot house a good deal, and 
one of them questioned La Barge rather officiously 
about the geography of the country: 
"What place is this that we are approaching, Mr. 
Pilot?' he asked. 
" 'St. Charles, sir,' La Barge replied. 
"'You are mistaken, sir; according to the map it 
is ' 
"La Barge made no replj'. He stopped as usual at 
St. Charles and then went on his way. Presently they 
came to another village. 
" 'What place, captain?' inquired the Englishman. 
" 'Washington, Mo., sir.' 
" 'Wrong again. The map gives this place as ' 
"This experience was gone through several times, the 
captain's temper becoming more ruffled with each repe- 
tition, though no one would have suspected it from 
his unruffled exterior. Presently a flock of geese passed 
over the river and drew the attention of the passengers 
and crew. The Englishmen were standing on the hur- 
ricane roof immediately in front of the pilot house. 
" 'What kind of birds are those, captain?' asked one 
of them in eager haste. 
"The captain, whose language still smacked some- 
what of the French idiom, replied: 
" 'Look at your map; he tell j^ou.' " 
Capt. Chittenden's Avork is in two volumes, uniform 
with Dr. Elliott Coues' "Forty Years a Fur Trader" 
and "On the Trail of a Spanish Pioneer." It is illus- 
trated with sixteen plates, one a map of a short stretch 
of the Missouri River channel, showing the different 
courses followed by the river in the years 1804, 1852, 
1879 and 1804. A number of the illustrations are por- 
traits of historic characters, such as La Barge, Cul- 
bertson and Kenneth McKenzie. 
We have earlier called attention at some length to 
the very valuable work that is being done by Capt. 
Chittenden in gathering historical material concerning 
the old West. It is gratifying to see how rapidly the 
interest in this great section of our country is grow- 
ing, and to observe the starting up of historical socie- 
ties all over the West. Capt. Chittenden is a young 
man, and we may look forward to much of value from 
his pen in the years that are to come, but even if he 
should never write another line, his fame may well rest 
on the volumes that he has already produced. Of these 
the history of boating on the upper Missouri is one 
of fascinating interest. 
The proverbial Virginia hospitality is again in evi- 
dence. That State has a new game law this year of which 
one feature is a non-resident license exaction. As at first 
adopted, all non-residents other than non-resident chil- 
dren of resident landowners were required to take out a 
license, but the spirit of hospitality which is linked with 
the name of Virginia recoiled at this. From a time be- 
yond which the mind of man runneth not to the contrary, 
it has been a fashion with Virginians to invite their 
friends from other States to visit them for shooting; and 
it was perceived that the new law would put an end to 
this pleasant custom. A modification was thereupon de- 
manded and granted. As it now stands, the non-resident 
law expressly exempts the visitor, -the text reading that 
the non-resident guest of a resident landowner shall be 
allowed to hunt on the lands of his host as though he 
were a resident of the State, when accompanied by the 
host or a member of his family, and provided that the 
host receives no compensation from the guest. 
This is excellent in so far as Virginia hospitality is 
concerned ; but we fail to appreciate the logic which finds 
it reasonable to tax one sportsman who is obliged to 
pay board in Virginia, while exempting him who is so 
fortunate as to have friends there who may entertain 
him. ■ 
In the Wilds— A Memory. 
The joys I have possess'd are ever mine; 
Hid in the sacred treasure of the past. 
But bless'd reuicmbrance brings them hourly back. 
— Dryden. 
Emerson Carney, in Forest and Stream of May 
2, regretted that there are so many stories of woods 
and plains remaining untold, which determined the 
writer to record a memory of many years ago, at the 
first opportunity, hoping that it may stimulate other 
old sportsmen to do the same. 
Away back in the early seventies, when the scribe 
was a good many years younger than he is now, he 
ran across a local tradition while on a little fishing 
tour. This ran as follows: that there existed a small 
lake or large pond, away in the depths of the forest 
near Red Mountain (a distant neighbor of Megantic, 
in Canada), that contained the largest pike ever known 
of in that part of the country. That some years ago a 
party of three stumbled upon it by accident, and be- 
ing short of provisions they built a raft and went out 
to try for some fish. That they soon caught a monster, 
and while trying to pull it upon the raft, one of their 
number, reaching down to catch the fish by the gills, 
got his hand caught by a snap of the great jaws, and 
was promptly drawn into the water. As he was dis- 
appearing, a second man caught him by the ankle and 
was fast following the first, when the third caught on, 
and between them, rescued their droAvning companion 
from _ the jaws of — death? — the fish. The latter got 
free in the struggle, and the man's hand was so man- 
gled and poisoned that they feared for his life, aud 
they had to get out to the settlements at once, with- 
out bringing anything with them as proof of their 
story. 
Now, if there is anything on earth that fills one with ' 
a soul-satisfying fullness, it is a good fish story; and 
here was one that met all the requirements! Here the 
mystery and remoteness of the great forest; the vague- 
ness of location; the inaccessibility; the indeterminate 
greatness in size of the fish; the danger attending the 
capture of such monsters; in fact, everything that is 
needed in the telling of a fish story. 
Then, of course, after the discovery of the tradition, 
comes the investigation of the source thereof. All who 
claim to be true anglers never hesitate to believe in a 
fish story, because they want their own little tale cred- 
ited, but they like to receive it from the original teller 
or fountain head, and not to have to take it warmed 
over, as it were. 
And so it came about that after having heard this 
entrancing tale, the scribe started in to hunt the heroes 
down. At the very start he found that the party who 
had been bitten and nearly drowned, was dead. It was; 
reputed that he died of a fever, but from later experi- 
ences of his own, the scribe believes that he died of a 
broken heart, caused by the loss of so wondrous a 
prize. Then it proved that a second member of the! 
party had left the country, and his whereabouts were 
unknown to all his old acquaintances. In fact, it was; 
hinted that had he been come-atable his word would 
not carry very much weight. So the third member of 
the trio was inquired for, and it was found that the be- 
lief existed that he lived in the adjoining county, some 
thirty miles away, and was a man whose word could; 
be depended upon. The scent was getting warm, so 
on the first favorable opportunity he was duly hunted' 
down and questioned. 
The man was a farmer, and was found in his corn- 
field, where he and two sturdy sons were busily engaged 
in "hillin' up" the lush green stalks. It was a warmi 
June day, and he was very busy trying to finish the 
work so as to get a day off to "go a-fishin' " before his 
hay harvest came on; so he later informed his ques- 
tioner. 
"Wal! Wall" said he, on learning Scribe's errand»; 
as he stopped work and leaned on his hoe handle and 
wiped the sweat from his forehead with a hooked fore- 
finger, "it beats the nation haow folks has got mc 
mixed up in that story. I swan to man it doesl I've 
denied it forty-'leven times, I reckon, but it don't seerri! 
tu du no good. Guess it's 'cause everybody knows 'ti 
I like t' go a-fishin"; and he meditatively spat a large 
mouthful of tobacco juice on a June bug that was help-) 
lessly kicking its legs in the air, as it lay on its back 
in a hoe-track. 
"I'lil tell ye the hull story, as fur as I know ont; 
or Sol Jones, 't used tu live over on the concession, 
tol' me the story soon arter it happened, an' altho' ha 
was the gold-durndest liar in seven caounties, I believed 
the heft ont, 'cause he was a good fisherman." 
There it is again, you see! He believed "the heft 
ont" because the man was a brother fisherman! 
"He tol' me that he an' his brother Lem, an' a feller 
the name o' Jim Bradley, all on 'em skedaddlers froni 
the State o' Maine, come into Canada in '62 tu avoid! 
the draft. They was all lumbermen, an' old woodsmen [ 
an' hankered tu foller the old trade. So one day, thd 
same summer they come over the line, they started intcJ 
the forest, east o' Red Mountain, tu explore a bitf 
an' see 'f they cud run across some pine. They wasjl 
aout a quite a spell, an' one day they come tu a large! 
pond saoutheast o' the maountain, an' as Sol had som«J 
fishing' gear along, they built 'em a raft an' wenil 
aout a-fishin'. Putty soon iol got hitched tu an' oil 
sockdologer 't fit like the hation. Bumbye the fislil 
got tuckered aout, an' come up clost tu the raft, aiif 
Jim reached daown an' made a long grab fur his gillS(| 
an' got his thumb in the fishes maouth. The ol' cus^ 
bit ri' daown ont, sost hurt like sin. Jim wanted some] 
body tu help him leggo abaout that time, but yu kno'v 
haow them critters' teeth be, all set backards, an' tl' 
more Jim pulled the more the fish wouldn't leggc 
Between the pain an' the pull o' the fish, Jim leanei 
over too fur, an' went k'souse, headfust intu the watei 
This loosened the fishes holt, an' Sol caught him bj 
