Dec 5, 1903-] 
FOREST AND STREAM, 
4SQ 
Painting by H. O Walker, in the Library of Congress. 
There was a Boy; ye knew him well, ye cliffs 
And islands of Winander ! — many a time, 
At evening, when the earliest stars began 
To move along the edges of the hills, 
Rising or setting, would he stand alone, 
Beneath the trees, or by the glimmering lake ; 
And there, with fingers interwoven, both hands 
Pressed closely palm to palm and to his mouth 
Uplifted, he, as through an instrument. 
Blew mimic hootings to the silent owls. 
That they might answer him — And they would shout 
Across the watery vale, and shout again. 
Responsive to his call, with quivering peals. 
And long halloos, and screams, and echoes loud 
Redoubled and redoubled; concourse wild 
Of jocund din ! And, when there came a pause 
Of silence such as baffled his best skill : 
Then, sometimes, in that silence, while he hung 
Listening, a gentle shock of mild surprise 
Has carried far into his heart the voice 
Of mountain torrents; or the visible scene 
Would enter unawares into his mind 
With all its solemn imagery, its rocks. 
Its woods, and that uncertain heaven received 
Into the bosom of the steady lake. 
This boy was taken from his mates, and died 
In childhood, ere he was full twelve years old. 
Pre-eminent in beauty is the vale 
Where he was born and bred : the churchyard hangs 
Upon a slope above the village school ; 
And, through that churchyard when my way has led 
On summer evenings, I believe that there 
A long half-hour together I have stood 
Mute — looking at the grave in which he lies ! 
We had two horses. 
We were short of water and we looked for a creek. 
We reached it and drank, and a Httle bird came near and 
sang, "Well ! well ! well !" 
Then he sang "He ! he ! he ! !" 
That little bird made us merry. Then we all laughed. 
If anybody passes this trail, don't get low spirited. 
If a man gets low spirited he may get sick. 
I say that for everybodi'. Joe. 
As a check on the accuracy of the translation, I offer 
an exact copy of the original which omits only the fiat 
and unprofitable advice at the end. 
As if we got a sick turn turn on purpose! 
Now there is a truthful story of simple men. 
I imagine this half dozen of Indian hunters, weary 
exceedingly, out of meat and short of water. (I hard- 
ly see how they could have missed water far in such 
a network of streams, but the stump says "short of 
water.") They reach the creek, drink eagerly and go 
to bed for three days with a "sick tum-tum." This 
might have been the result of over-drinking or under- 
eating, or the use of roots that give a most unattrac- 
tive kind of starch to the Indian diet, or, perhaps, they 
were bed-ridden by reason of unseasonable rains or 
mere dark depression. On this point the stump is 
silent. Then comes the halcyon bird, harbinger of bless- 
ings, and he laughs to them, "Well! Well! Well' He, 
He, He!" and they all laugh together, and their rifles 
bring down game, and they eat abundantly, and dry 
their surplus meat (we saw their drjnng scaffolds), and, 
as a guide to the wayfarer, they tell the story of the 
stump and draw the moral: 
Excellent men! 
And now we, too, began to gather fruits of the 
chase; fool hens that were stoned to death, grouse, 
rainbow trout, goats and deer. 
The trout were caught in a small lake with bait. 
One of them weighed about 2 pounds, others a quar- 
ter as much. The salmon colored band on the flank 
was bright and their red flesh was firm and good. 
The deer, though proclaimed a tremendous fellow by 
the Indians, did not rank with mule deer that I have 
seen in Wyoming and Idaho. The spread of his horns 
was only 19 or 20 inches, and they were neither heavy 
nor long. A similarly disappointing smallness was 
noticeable in the ram's horns brought in by three par- 
ties out of many that went hunting this autumn. Four- 
teen inches around the base and 33 inches on the outer 
sweep, were considered large dimensions. This is a 
matter of the tape line and cannot be laid to a senti- 
mental exaggeration of the glories of vanished 
times. 
Either the big fellows have learned caution or the 
game, harassed by continual pursuit, does not have 
time to grow big. 
Goats did not entirely satisfy our ambitions, and 
we crossed the Bridge River and followed it down 
looking for sheep grounds, unoccupied by other hunt- 
ers, where we would not be spoiling someone else's 
sport. 
To one acquainted only with the upper reaches of 
the Bridge River, it would seem to have earned its 
name from having two rope ferries and numerous fords. 
But I am told that there is a fine government structure 
at the river's mouth, which replaced the Indian bridge 
that spanned and gave a name to the stream wiien the 
miners first poured in. 
The Indian bridge was made on a plan, of which 
some specimens still remain in other places. Trees 
trimmed of their branches were supported and weighted 
by stone piles on the opposite side of the river in such 
a way that their small ends projected toward one an- 
other and left only a moderate gap to span. A long 
stick of timber was then lashed to the ends to fill the 
gap and then the passer, with one foot on either tim- 
ber, just skated or shuffled along the two parallel sticks 
as best he might, on so uncertain a footway. 
Horses were always taken across by swimming or 
fording in Indian times. And in one unaccustomed to 
this kind of engineering I am told that great strength 
of will was required to make the crossing, though an 
old squaw, or kloochman, as they call her, would trudge 
across with a heavy load on her back without a sign 
of hesitation. The old timers speak of the plan of the 
Indian bridge as the cantilever principle. At all events, 
its construction showed mechanical ingenuity and en- 
terprise. 
When we had made one or two fruitless halts for 
hunting along the Bridge River, my holiday time came 
to an end, and I turned from the diapason of the pines 
and the song of falling waters to the rattle of ordinary 
existence. 
The chief of the Liilooets agreed to drive me out 
to the railroad, and he did it worthily, though much 
against his will, for it was raining hard, and he told 
me that nothing but his pledged word would have made 
him take that uncomfortable drive. The day I spent 
with him was full of interest. He was a fine-natured, 
broad-minded man. A linguist speaking Shuswap, 
Thompson River, English, Lillooet, a little Spanish, 
Chinook and I know not what other jargon. In spite 
of his accomplishments, he said that there were too 
many languages, one ought to suffice, and he con- 
sented that English should be that one. His English, 
indeed, was fine; not Major's glorified baby talk, nor 
Aleck's terse mumble, but idiomatic, weighty, reason- 
able, and I sat literally at his side, but metaphorically 
at his feet, learning some little part of the secret of the 
hills. H. G. DuLOG. 
