Apttit 1904.3 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
2B§ 
within good range; and, like the elk, they certainly suc- 
cumbed more quickly to wounds of the same gravity 
than the Virginia deer. 
In the early part of September the stags are begin- 
ning to shed the velvet, the biggest doing so first, my 
guides said. Does and fawns could occasionally be 
seen in the open all through the day; but most of the 
deer then pass the day in the woods, coming out when 
the sun is low and going back in the morning, so the 
shooting is best done in the evening and at_ sunrise. 
One can get through the marshy valleys with ease, 
through the scrub or "bushes" with difficulty, and 
through the woods scarcely at all, so the game must 
be caught in the opening. My guide and I sat on a 
little knoll one evening, watching the deer come out of 
the woods and wander over the marshes, when a 
yearling walked up within thirty yards of us, and re- 
fused to go away for some fifteen minutes, though we 
stood in plain sight and pelted him with stones. He 
was a beautiful light, iron gray, and as he stared and 
pranced in excitement was a charming sight. 
It is well known that the Newfoundland caribou have 
particularly heavy and fine antlers, and that many have 
two large brow paddles, which often interlock, instead 
of one paddle and a single spike as seems to be gen- 
erally the case in Maine and New Brunswick. Our 
two licenses entitled us to six heads, which we got in 
a very few days, and all were good specimens. My 
best head had thirty-six points, each antler measuring 
three feet two inches around the curve, and with a 
maximum spread of two feet eight inches, the horns 
being of good weight and very uniform. One of my 
companions got a much heavier and finer head, though 
the two horns were less alike. Two of our party were 
college boys, neither of whom had ever shot a deer, 
and they both got good heads. 
Shortage of supplies compelled us to get back to the 
railroad, and, after this deficiency was remedied, we 
went about ten miles up the lake and camped by a river 
flowing into it. It was high noon and a bright day when 
we arrived, but I got out a light trout rod and began 
casting over a pool in front- of the camp, using No. 8 
trout flies. After taking two or three nice trout and a 
one pound salmon, my flies swept into an eddy, sank 
a little and stopped dead. I struck and put quite a 
pull on and nothing happened, so said to my guide, 
"Thats queer, but it don't feel like a rock somehow." 
Just then there was a convulsion and a. big, silvery 
speckled fish shot out a good two feet. I eased him 
down, he rested a few seconds, made a short circle and 
jumped again. So he kept it up, never ofTering to run, 
hut going out of the water just twenty times and getting 
half way out on the twenty-first, but finally was tired 
out and landed. He was my first salmon of any size, 
and a big fish for my tackle, though he only weighed 
six pounds. Next year I shall go properly equipped, 
fish systematically, and hope for something bigger. _ 
Taken all together, in ease of access, beauty, variety 
and number of fish and game, and interest of the 
sport, Newfoundland equals if it does not surpass any 
country I have visited. A. St. J. Newberry. 
Cleveland, Ohio. 
Floating Down the Mississippi. 
VIII.— A Cotton Town— Part Two. 
"King Cotton" is a suggestive title. There are "oil 
fevers," "gold fevers," and real estate booms, 4)ut in 
the main agriculture has outgrown the point where men 
become excited by the possibility of getting rich from a 
crop in the ground. New countries which promise much 
wealth in the way of tremendous returns in harvests 
create a slight furore compared to those of mines and 
precious sands. But cotton is an exception to the gen- 
eral rule, in one great section of the Basin. As the 
old prospector has "no thought, no hope, no wish but 
gold," so the confirmed cotton man can think only in 
bolls, seed and lint, and the price thereof. He "eats, 
drinks and sleeps cotton." Whatever his occupation tnay 
be, whether whittling a stick or reading the paper, it's 
the cotton crop or the price of cotton he has in^mind. 
And it is not a small subject he has to deal with'. It's 
the markets of the world on one hand and the work 
of the weather on the other. In Lake county the crop 
failures depend on three conditions— floods, weevils and 
frosts. This year flood and frost wrought disaster at 
both ends of the cotton season. _ The high water kept 
the fields covered so long that it was late or not at 
all before the seed was hilled in. In the falll, while 
the bolls were still green, the frost came hard and heavy, 
and so prevented many of the bolls from opening. All 
the cotton country which ships to Memphis was affected 
by the bad season, and when at last the bales began to 
come in it was less than a third of a normal crop — the 
high prices did not make up for the deficit in the far- 
mers' pockets. Hard times were promised for the valley 
.this winter by the existing conditions. 
It happened that I reached Tiptonville when as much 
of the cotton as ever during the present season was 
coming to the gins. . The day I got there I saw cotton 
picked for the first time — a lot of negroes, men, women 
and children, with white duck bags tied to their waists 
into which they were stuffing the seed-cotton as fast 
as they could pick with both hands. They held their 
fingers almost straight, closing on the stuff from all sides 
as it rippled from the boll. All of the sacks were two 
feet wide, but the "chilluns" had three-foot long ones, 
and others six, nine, twelve and even fifteen-foot sacks, 
. the cloth being of eight ounce duck as a rule. These 
. sacks are hung by a strap, as the hunter's bag, and on 
the same side. When it is more or less full the picker 
, takes it to the big wagon in the middle of the field 
where the farmer weighs the stuff on a steel-yard swung 
from a sort of gallows, usually. Allowance is made 
' for the weight of the sacks, and the net result credited 
to the picker in the "book." Then the cotton is poured 
into the wagon, fluffing out of the sack in a mass, 
. which one sees further across the level purple fields 
against the distant cypress of varied shade, than he can 
the wagon and mules — a pure white flash, inexplicable 
until it has been explained to the unaccustomed seer. 
The 3^x3x12 feet or so wagon box ftill, the traces of 
the patient mules are hitched up— the impatient ones are 
brought with caution from the fence — and the wagon 
joins the procession on the road. This year the cotton 
wagons were far apart in Tiptonville's district, it being 
a third-of-a-crop year. 
It's a sight of the valley to see the wagons on their 
way to town, with their negro drivers, who snap short- 
handled long-leashed whips till the reports are heard 
as far as a shotgun, some faces hideous, some so cheer- 
ful as to spread a smile all over the landscape. Here and 
there in the line a man has a "pick" of cotton between 
his lips, especially if it is cold weather — he's usually a 
white, on his way to town to collect or get the best 
price for his load — "eating cotton," as they say they do. 
My impression of a load of cotton had been that of the 
baled stuff, but. here were loads of the raw, unginned 
seed cotton, like a load of potatoes, only white, with 
black specks, in proportion to the farmer. If the farmer 
is a good man, his cotton is almost clear white, for his 
THE MISSISSIPPI BANKS AT TIPTONVILLE. 
pickers have to "pick" cotton or be docked. The sloven's, 
however, is full of bolls and twigs, showing that his is 
"pulled" cotton, and likely enough he is docked for the 
weight of the bolls at the gin. 
It's cotton- — but the wagons rumble over the baked- 
mud roads, slow driven, the panting of the teams, the 
crack of the whips, and the sound music to the farmers, 
for "the crop's moving" and cash is coming in. 2,500 
to 3,000 pounds make a load, and the stuff is sold by 
the pound — 3 cents up to 3 1-4 or 3 1-3 at Tiptonville 
this year for the seed cotton, as the farmer brings it 
to the gin. Fifty bushels of potatoes would weigh 3,000 
pounds, and might bring the farmer $40. A load of 
cotton Ijrings from $60 to $100 per load. It is interesting 
to consider that an acre of potatoes in these bottom lands 
— with two crops, would bring more than the cotton, 
as prices now run for the vegetable in the valley— but 
cotton is a good gamble. A man never does know how 
much he can get out of it, and the price may run sky 
high. 
Tiptonville has several cotton buyers. The gins hire 
men to buy for them, one for each gin. Some gins 
have their own lands, as the Harris Estate Gin, below 
Tiptonville. The renters of the 12,000 acres of Harris 
land bring their cotton to the gin, and are paid more 
than the prevailing price of cotton in the other gins. 
There are gin companies, with gins all through the cot- 
ton belt, and some little gins run by independents, who 
get out a few hundred bales and make a living for the 
owners. These little gins are "in the way" of the big 
companies, and one of them near Tiptonville was most 
aggravating. He paid more than the prevailing rate 
invariably — just enough to get all the cotton he wanted, 
say 3 1-2 when the price was 3. In early November this 
buyer had a talk over 
the telephone with a 
commission man at 
Memphis, who wanted 
to know what he 
would sell a hundred 
bales for. "Nine 
cents," was the an- 
swer. Unknown to 
the ginner, cotton had 
gone up, and the price 
next day would be 
3.25 for seed cotton, 
while to sell at the 
price he had con- 
tracted for he couldn't 
pay more than 3.15 or 
3.20. He was careless, 
and it cost him over 
$500; for when the 
other gins heard of his 
difficulty, the price 
paid for cotton went 
up to 3.30, and great 
was the glee of the 
superintendents when 
they heard of the old 
man's ravings. The 
farmers who had re- 
ceived a higher price 
on their cottom on his 
account would accept 
nothing less than the 
prevailing price, of 
course. 
Buying cotton is an 
art, demanding experi- 
ence, a knowledge of 
market conditions and 
tact, more especially 
tact, as witness the 
commission merchant 
who caught the old 
man. It is so with the 
street buyer in a town 
like T i p t o n V i 1 1 e, 
though he receives 
The Old Cypress by the River, his instructions from 
Memphis as to what he can pay. The cotton crop value, 
depending somewhat on the weather a thousand miles 
up the Mississippi, the general conditions in the cotton 
belt and in Egypt, and market on labor ' conditions in 
Massachusetts, on industrial affairs in Europe, on the 
avarice of some unknown group of speculators and other 
whimsical world-wide features, has connections some- 
what like wheat. The buyer must be an able hot-air 
merchant, as they say, to talk to the farmers, and ex- 
plain things to them, else a rival walks off with the 
stuff. Some of these street buyers for gins come to think 
they know all that can be learned about cotton, and 
go in on their own hooks. One Arnett at Tiptonville, 
a farmer, did that. Some idea of what can be done in 
the cotton belt may be realized from the fact that when 
Arnett failed it was for about $300,000, and he paid 
seventy-five cents on the dollar. Cotton is a good deal 
like the old darky's mule. It's whimsicalities can be 
foreseen to a certain extent, and the forces guided, but 
beyond an x point, it goes into business on its own ac- 
count, and comes out yellow — but triumphant. _ Arnett 
began as a farmer, took to buying from his neighbors, 
, put up a gin, reached toward Memphis, but went under. 
When I saw him, Arnett was tearing down his gin — 
unchanged in appearance for the past twenty years, I 
was told. A long gray beard, bright "searching" eyes, 
170 pounds crowded into five feet seven, he looked, 
walked and acted the keen old farmer that he used to 
be and is. 
The town marshall at Tiptonville, being obliged to 
walk the streets most of the time by virtue of his office, 
became also buyer for the "New Gin." One Tateham, 
recently from Kentucky, whose wife is weigher for the 
rival gin, and Marshall Thurmond illustrated one phase 
of cotton buying while I was at Tiptonville. A farmer 
with eighty acres or so to pick, came to town, and, nat- 
urally the buyers wanted to get his first load, to "get 
the crop coming their way." Three cents was offered, 
and the other bid 3.05, and the price went up till one 
man reached his limit, both as to price and temper — 
"strong-minded men, both," I was told. The first hot 
word spoken, perhaps six more followed, and then 
Tateham went backward through the window of the 
post-office, with a knife in his hand. Tateham got a 
lot of broken glass in his back, and Thurmond a slash 
in the leg. Spectators intervened, the sheriff put them 
under bonds, and for a couple of days the men did 
not show up, waiting for their wounds to ease a bit. 
"It won't stop here ! No, sir ! This ain't the last 
A TIPTONVILLE COTTON GIN. 
of it. One or other of them- men will git killed, he sure 
will ! They're both strong-minded, determined men !" I 
heard on all sides. It was with interest that I gazed 
at these two men, Thurmond big, florid, and burly — an 
ex-prize fighter, it was said, and the other lean and 
dark and tall, some stooped. The prospective victims 
of a tragedy. It was said that they were both willing 
to let the matter drop right there, but "of course it 
wouldn't do for them to have any words !" 
The gin is not without its incidents. Superintendent 
Bray, of one of them, boarded at Mrs. Foster's, at Tip- 
tonville, and I came to know him of course. One night 
the whistle of his gin began to toot in short blasts, the 
signal of "Fire 1" Bray j umped from the supper table, 
and away he went — a lamp had been overturned and a 
bale of cotton almost burned up, but the gin was saved. 
"You never did see a man git like Mr. Bray did !" Mrs. 
Foster said, adding, "Once there was a gin here that 
had a fire two or three times a week, but the engineer 
v/ould toot his whistle and they all would come from 
town and put the fire out, and do you know, they never 
did git to burn that gin, but had to tear it down I" 
The gin is where they separate the seed from the 
lint, and then bale it. A fan sucks air through gal- 
vanized iron pipes, called "sucks." The end of this 
pipe drops into the wagon outside the gin, and up jumps 
the cotton, and is dropped from a trap which opens 
automatically, by the shutting off of the air, and the 
cotton is then in the cotton house, whence it is sent in 
another pipe to the gin-house, men called "suckers" feed- 
ing it to the floor-sucks with their hands and a fork. 
One sucker is white, the other black, "because, you see, 
if they was both black they'd both play, but when one's 
v/hite, he makes the other do the work, mostly." 
The distributor feeds the four gins — seventy pairs of 
saws constitute a gin — the saws snatch the lint from 
the seed, and send one flying and the other dropping. 
The lint is carried by air to the cog-rollers, which re- 
duces it to more or less regular sheets, and it is poked 
down into a box by a negro pressman, and then a steam 
press compacts the stuff, time and again, till about 500 
pounds are in the box, upon which another box, on the 
■ two-box turnstile comes under the chute of cotton, and 
the full box over a screw press, which, from beneath, 
shoves all taut, so the balers can wrap with sacking and 
loop with the iron-band ties, and key them up. Re- 
leased, the cotton, enveloped in sacking, is ready to ship. 
At the entrance, the wagon load of seed cotton, as 
brought by the farmers, is weighed, and when the wagon 
is re-weighed, and the cotton weight found, the super- 
intendent, or weigher, or weigher, makes out an order, 
showing the gross weight, the net weight, and the pric« 
I 
