FOREST AND STREAM. 
6 
Down the OH Mississippi. 
A YEAR ago last summer I went over a part of the 
me ground (water) from St. Louis to Cape Girardeau, 
now being explored by Mr. Spears. But I went on a 
Mississippi River steamboat. 
When moving about the country I like to study faces 
and then make deductions — usually inaccurate, and as 
the lawyers would say, "having no foundation in fact." 
In due course the supper bell rang and we gathered 
in the saloon and took such seats as the oily son of 
Ham obsequiously allotted us. 
And as I spread my napkin and tucked it into my 
lowest vest recess between the buttons, I scanned the 
assembled guests. My attention was at once arrested 
by the man seated at the end of the table as well as 
by the man on his left, for if Henry Clay and Daniel 
Webster were ever "doubled" in life, certainly here 
they were, seated cheek by jowl. The waiter bowed 
and scraped to these two men (why, I never knew, un- 
less the "waiter was particularly afflicted in the joints 
and couldn't help it) in a way that made one suspicious 
of their great importance, and this lent a glamour of 
reality to the situation, for would not a colored waiter 
be justified in kotowing long and low were he wait- 
ing upon two such distinguished guests in the flesh? 
Neither of them spoke, both Clay and Webster seem- 
ingly being weighed down by heavy matters of state. 
The meal through, Webster gave his high choker and 
black cravat a settling twist and left for the outer deck, 
and there paced up and down in measured tread until 
bed time. Henry Clay went straight to his stateroom. 
I called my companion's attention to the two men and 
he agreed with me. When he was a boy, in his school 
room had hung an engraving, each of Webster and 
Clay, and they were familiar faces to him. The like- 
ness was certainly striking, and as Webster paced the 
deck, his heavy head slightly tilted forward until his 
chin rested upon his chest, we could only conjecture 
as to what was passing in his mighty brkin; and when 
we retired that night we went to sleep with Clay and 
Webster in our minds. 
The call for breakfast found Webster and Clay in 
their se^ts of the night before— more like their name- 
sakes than ever. We watched them closely,: and were 
we believers in reincarnation, we certainly^ Would have 
had nothing to doubt that the two great men were 
once more on earth to startle us with their eloquence. 
Breakfast over, Henry Clay went to his stateroom, 
and once more Daniel Webster paced the deck in 
meditative strides. We made a landing, or, in other 
words, the boat poked her nose in the mud. and out 
shot the swinging gang plank, and away the negro 
stevedores ran on it like ants, each man carrying a 25- 
pound keg of powder under each arm. My friend 
watched Daniel Webster as he mixed in with the 
crowd up forward, who were watching and listening 
to_ the singing of the negroes. I was close by, and 
this is what I heard when my friend, in a neighborly 
way, to draw Daniel, asked where he might hail from. 
"I'm from Milwarky, and I'm bound for Gape Girar- 
deau. I'm a stone mason by trade. Milwarky would 
be a fine place if it were not for them d— — d Dutch. 
Would you belave it, I am thinking there are 100,000 
Dutch in Milwarky. I had some Dutch neighbors, and 
one morning over comes Mrs. Frankfurter, and said 
she to me, 'Have ye ere a ham about the house? 
Would yez be loaning it to me for a short time, as I 
would like to bile it with my cabbage!' And what do 
yez thinks of the loikes o' that. And tell me, what 
would I be doing with that 'ere ham after them Dootch 
had had it? D the Dootch, anyway." 
I went behind the pilot house and bracing myself in 
a corner just simply exploded. And then I thought of 
Henry Clay. He kept to his stateroom, and I lost all 
track of him until after I reached the hotel at Girar- 
deau, when at noon I saw him vanishing up the stairs 
ahead of me. "And who may that be?" I queried of the 
hotel clerk. Without answering he pointed to a bunch 
of freshly strewn circulars upon a near-by table. I 
picked one up and read: 
<!> ^ 
1,000,000 dollars 
Thrown Away Annually 
in 
OLD HATS 
Cleaned and repaired and made good as new iFor 25 cents. 
Hats called for and delivered. 
And then I could see how I was no nearer to Clay 
than to Daniel Webster— and yet I had some mental 
relaxation even if my deductions were somewhat 
erronenous. " 
Mr. Spears speaks of the telltale yellow flood marks 
on the houses far from the banks of the stream. Hav- 
ing been frequently to St Louis of late, I saw abund- 
ance of these marks over in East St. Louis. And they 
remind me of a story. 
A northern tenderfoot wanting to invest in some 
Cottonwood timber in the South, was being shown over 
a most thriving bunch of trees in the bottoms. They 
were of gigantic size and showed no peculiarity other 
than a brown, muddy discoloration of the bark six 
feet up. The Northerner saw and remarked on this, 
and the planter met his query so: "You see. my friend', 
we have down here in this kentry a powerful tall breed 
of raZorback hogs. They run free and wild. They, like 
all hogs, delight to waller in the mud, and they'then 
rub themselves against the bark of the trees, and there's 
your mud." The planter told this iii preference to stat- 
ing that "at times" the water was six feet deep where 
they were standing. Charles Cristadoro. 
Scene— The banks of a Hampshire stream in the gray- 
ling season. 
Angler (the rise having abruptly ceased)— "I think 
they're taking a siesta, Thompson." 
Keeper— "I dessay they are, sir, but any other fly with 
« touch o' red in it would do as well." — Pungb. 
— ^ — , 
The Natural Language of Animals. 
Having got through with the Red Gods, and no- 
body hurt, let us get back to our mutton. (3ne of the 
interesting topics under discussion just before the lit- 
erary outbreak among the brethren, was the question 
whether or not the various cries of animals are an in- 
nate or an acquired faculty. My wife has reminded 
me of a circumstance which seems to have some bear- 
ing on the case. Many years ago we had a cat that 
never uttered any cry. I don't wish to be thought as 
attempting any pun, but she was perfectly mute, as she 
never mewed. The kittens she produced mewed all 
right, but the mother cat never responded to them by 
any cry. I am sure they never hearfl any other cat 
mewing, for there was no other cat about the prem- 
ises. This seems to me a very strong argument in 
favor of those who claim this factulty to be inborn. 
The cries of animals are a soecies of natural lan- 
guage. The older grammarians, I remember, taught 
us that crying, weeping, laughing, etc., were examples 
of natural language; they were expressive of feeling 
natural to men, and were understood by all intuitively. 
The origin of , spoken, or artificial language, as it is 
called, is a large subject, and I do not propose to 
enter upon it; but T presume that all forms of natural 
language, including the cries of beasts and birds, are, 
as the term implies, natural to them, that is, born with 
them; and the specific cry of any species must be de- 
termined by some peculiarities of the vocal organs in 
that species. For example, a crow croaks and a 
rooster crows, because by the peculiar structure of 
their vocal arrangements, they can utter those sounds 
more readily than any other. Yet, by training and 
effort, some of the lower creation become able to imi- 
tate and reproduce other sounds than those most nat- 
ural to them, just as the first natural outcries of the 
infant give way through culture to the myriad utter- 
ances of artificial language. 
The bawling of a cow and the roar of a lion are 
quite dififerent sounds, and, as things stand now, the 
sound uttered by one of these animals would be quite 
impossible to the other; yet, as I read Darwin, either 
of these outcries might in time come to be the natural 
cry of the other. If the two species of animals could 
be brought to live peacefully together, and to the lion 
it should become apparent that the voice of the cow 
would be of great value to him, say in the matter of 
securing his food, there is no reason to doubt that he 
might in the course of time, from effort transmitted 
from generation to generation, come at length to pos- 
sess the dulcet notes of the cow. 
If the giraffe, which was originally only a large 
antelope, has developed his high forequarters, his 
elongated neck, and his long, flexible upper lip, from 
his efforts to browse on the higher branches of the 
trees; and if the flounder, which when young has its 
eyes on the opposite sides of its head, as any well- 
regulated fish would be expected to have, is able 
through long continued effort to transfer the eye that 
rests disagreeably on the sands around to the other 
side of its head, where it may be of some service, there 
is no telling what varieties or modifications of voice 
or shape may be wrought in nature in the course of 
the ages. 
But let us have no meandering. A kitten cries out, 
because in common with nearly all animals," it is fur- 
nished with a certain vocal apparatus; and its cry 
takes the perculiarity of a mew, because 'that sound 
best responds to its special vocal apparatus.' Hence, 
and especially in view of the little incident which I 
have related, I am led to believe that the young of any 
animal utters the same cry as its mother for the same 
reason as its mother, and not from imitation. I think 
a young rooster crows and a young hen cackles, not in 
imitation of their elders, but, like the poet who "lisped 
in numbers," because "the numbers came." Imagine 
if Robinson Crusoe had landed on his solitary island 
with a good, fresh-laid hen's egg in his pocket, and 
he had put it to hatch under his pet parrot, the rooster, 
if such had come forth, would have crowed out lustily 
of a summer morning, and never would have learned 
to say "Poor Poll!" in the world. 
T. J. Chapman. 
The Story of a Metropolitan 'Coon. 
I SUPPOSE this 'coon went to sleep when the un- 
usually cold weather came on early this winter^ and 
when the thaw came last week he came out of his 
sleep and found himself with a keen appetite. How 
he wandered into the purlieus of a large citv like St. 
Louis is a mystery. At any rate, here he was, in a 
culvert under one of the streets in Webster Park, a 
thickly settled suburb, less than two miles from the 
city limits. About every other man in the park has 
either a setter, pointer, a collie, or a fox terrier; conse- 
quently when Mister Raccoon sallied forth in quest 
of food he did not get very far before the dogs drove 
him back to his culvert. But on last Saturday night 
it was raining and the dogs were not very watchful 
and he. started out again. He doubtless thought he was 
going up a branch, but he was only following the 
tiny streamlet coming from a leaking water ping. It 
was the most disappointing branch he ever followed 
up in his life. There was not a sign nor a vestige of 
food anywhere in sight. It must be that he deter- 
mined to appeal to humanity at this juncture, for. when 
I came along hurrying from the depot to my home he 
fairly ran between my legs and almost tripped me up 
Now, I was not startled by this in the least, because 
the cats sometimes come down the road to meet me 
and do that very thing, and when I stumble I have 
to be careful not to tramp on them. So I says: 
• ,1 there, kitty, what are you doing out so late 
at night? And then I saw it was too large for a 
cat;, and when it braced up and came toward me again 
I thinking of that southwestern pest, the hydrophobic 
polecat, hauled off and kicked him a mighty hard, and 
I regret to say, cruel kick over on to a little circular 
grass_ plot, underneath a street light, where I saw 
that It was a 'coon and a large one. The kick did 
not seem to have hurt him much, for he came toward 
me agam, this time uttering a conciliatory chuckle, 
something like the cluck of a hen when -eating and 
scratching for her brood. Oh, the inhumanity of sav- 
age man! I grasped a stone and let fly at him. with 
the savage instinct of the stone age, with the thought 
of walking up the hill to the house and throwing down 
a 'coon and saying to the grasping, perhaps even ad- 
miring family. "Behold my prowess, my casual on- 
the-way-from-the-train prowess!" 
And then the 'coon climbed up a little silver maple 
and I began to come to my senses, and to make up my 
mind that this was a tame 'coon, or, at least, a very 
hungry 'coon, and that the confidence it had repui<.d 
. in me had been cruelly abused. So I betook myself 
to my dinner, after which I returned to the tree, but 
he was no longer there. The next morning I went 
there again with my pointer, who promptly took the 
trail from that tree to another one, which she' exam- 
ined as far up as she could reach, and thence to the 
culvert, where she pointed. When she had satisfied 
herself and me that the 'coon was in there, I called iier 
off. And last night, as soon as it was dark. I took a 
lantern and a piece of raw meat and repaired to the 
culvert, and before I got there I heard the dogs They 
proved to be two collies and a fox terrier, barking, at 
a respectful ^distance from an apple tree. And up there 
sat Mister 'Coon, apparently none the worse for my 
onslaught of the night before. When he saw me he 
came down to the forks of the tree, whereupon I 
reached up and gave him the meat, and oh, but he was 
glad to get it! 
I stepped over to a neighbor's, and their men and 
boy folks came down and watched him eat. The lady 
of the house also telephoned to the other bov, wlio 
failed to find it on the previous night, and he. too, 
came. If he comes out to-night these boys vvill feed 
him well, and doubtless catch him and give him a 
home. He is a fine specimen, and made a brave show- 
ing up there on the sloping limb, pulling and tearing 
at the meat, and stopping now and again to regard us. 
_ George Ken.vicdy. 
P. S.— I had planned to call this story A Municipal 
Raccoon and to sign it George Jones-Kennedy, being 
particular about the hyphen; but when I reflected tiiat 
when the 'coon was lightly caressed upon his cold, 
black nose, he didii't seem to mind it any, treating it, 
as it was intended, as a caress; but when his tail was 
touched he quickly resented it, my natural integrity 
prevailed upon me to change the title to that of An 
Ethical 'Coon. For it is plain that he knows the 
geuMs Aomo, especially the small homo, being able to 
distinguish between the ethical significance of the two 
caresses. He must, therefore, have been a tame 'co.m. 
P . P S.— Two boys called yesterday, anyway, who had 
heard that I had their 'coon. 
Horse Sense. 
Editor Forest and Stream: 
First in order comes congratulations for the beauti- 
ful Christmas number. The reading matter was in- 
structive to a high degree, and the illustrations neatly 
framed would grace the walls of any parlor to good 
advantage. All in all, it was unquestionably the best 
Christmas number of Forest and Stream I have ever 
seen. 
It seems a peculiar coincidence that just as I had 
m mmd a story of horse intelligence to communicate, 
along comes Mr. Emerson Carney with something 
practically in the same line. The horse I will tell t)f 
did not "back-trail," but trailed ahead instead. And 
in so doing unconsciously secured a contract to a cer- 
tain company, for which a rival company was contest- 
ing. A Mr. Phelan, of Whitneyville, Conn., told me 
the story, and it runs like this, in his ovvn words, as 
near as I remember: » 
"I was foreman of a construction company's gang, 
out in New York State. The Delaware, Lackawanna 
& Western Railroad was being constructed at the time, 
and our company and another company had put in the 
same bid on work. The result was that I was awak- 
ened at 2 A. M. one morning, and told that I must get 
my gang together immediately, and hurry them off to 
a point a number of miles away. There was a race on 
between us and the rival company. As our bids were 
the same, the railroad company decided that the first 
one to begin work would be the winner. 
"Finally, we were off. We had a guide, and as there 
was nothing to do but follow him at the best speed 
possible, I jogged along in the rear of the gang, on 
the back of an old gray horse. The rest were in 
wagons or mounted. The morning was very dark, and 
I admit that I, aboycfc.all others, should have kept dose 
up with the party. |But I, somehow, allowed' myself 
to lag in the rear, trtisting to the noise of the others 
for a guide. Then J wanted to smoke, filled my pipe 
and found that I had no matches. An early rising 
farmer at a house close to the road supplied me with 
matches, but he was so long in doing it that when [ 
started on my way again I could neither see nor hear 
my men. I hurried the old horse along at his best 
speed, stopping now and then to listen, but to no pur- 
pose. I was in a predicament indeed; I must be 
with those men when they reached their destination 
to tell them what to do. The other company was un- 
doubtedly rushing men for the same points, and the 
first to begin work would get the contract. 
" lo make a bad matter worse, I finally came -t;0 
branching roads. Dismounting I lighted mntchcs l.nt 
each road seemed equally tracked up, and for tlie tute 
of me I knew not what to do. Filled with wcn ry and 
disgust, I started for one of the roads, but. strau-vre 
enough, my horse persisted in taking the other: l-inal- 
ly I .decided to let him have his way, and he started ulT 
faster than ever. 
"To cut a long story short, that old horse - followed 
the twistings and turnings of that road for miles ■ and 
-even cut into another, road that crossed' it. Then we 
came to a town, and I had about made up/ my mind 
we were hopelessly lost. The dawn was breaking 
