Forest and Stream. 
A Weekly Journal of the Rod and oun. 
Copyright, 1904, by Forest and Stream Publishing Co. 
G 
Terms, 
t A Year. 10 Cts. a Copy. 
Six Months, $2. 
NEW YORK, SATURDAY, APRIL 9, 1904. 
{ 
VOL. LXII.— No. 15. 
No. 346 Broadway, New York. 
, The Forest AND Stream is the recognized medium of entertafn- 
. ment, instruction and inforniation between American sportsmen. 
The editors invite communications on the subjects to which its 
pages are devoted. Anonymous communications will not be re- 
garded. While it is intended to give wide latitude in discussion 
of current topics, the editors are not responsible for the views of 
correspondents. 
Subscriptions may begin at any time. Terms : For single 
copies, $4 per year, $2 for six months. For club rates and full 
particulars respecting subscriptions, see prospectus on page iii. 
"UNEXPLORED" LABRADOR. 
The lonely death of Mr. Hubbard, of which much has 
recently been heard, is full of pathos, just as is the lin- 
gering, lonely death of any helpless human being. Noth- 
ing is sadder than to read of a little child, playing about 
the farmhouse and wandering off into the forest, to be 
found dead days afterward, perhaps within sight of its 
home. The tale of the Babes in the Wood has appealed 
to human beings for many hundreds of years. 
It is not unfair to compare the members of the Hub- 
bard party with little children lost in the woodlot next 
to the farmhouse, perishing of hunger, while, as Dr. 
Morris showed in his letter last week, meat and drink 
were all about them, if only they had known where to 
look for it. 
Since these young men started off with insufficient 
food, determined to live on the country, and since they 
failed to provide themselves with the -knowledge and the 
means necessary to procure that food — to capture game 
and iish, to gather berries or dig roots — it was a fore- 
gone conclusion that if they left the beaten paths they 
must perish. Of the uncertainties of travel in a wild 
country they were apparently quite ignorant, and they 
did not fear the dangers they did not know, nor have 
any idea of what they might meet with. 
It is well understood that reindeer are uncertain in 
their migrations, and that even when deer are plenty 
in a country they do not always come up to travelers 
and stand, waiting to be shot. 
Few things are more melancholy than to see a bright, 
strong, courageous young life blotted out, without reason 
and to no purpose. Such a death was Mr. Hubbard's. 
People who know nothing of the region are accus- 
tomed to talk of Labrador as an unexplored wilderness, 
when, as a matter of fact, it has been known for not 
far from 200 years. Delisle's map of 1703 is a fairly 
good one. 
The two great rivals in the fur trade, the Hudson's 
Bay Co. and the North West Co., came to an agreement 
and consolidated in 1821, and soon after nine or ten 
trading posts were established and maintained in Lab- 
rador, of which three are still kept up. In 1849 John 
McLean published an account of his journeyings there 
undertaken between 1838 and 1840. Again in 1862 H. Y. 
H. Hind, for the Canadian Government, did some ex- 
ploring there and published two large volumes, and in 
1870- and 1871 Geological Survey parties explored the 
country between Lake St. John and Lake Mistassini. 
From 1884 to 1888, and again from 1893 to 1897, and 
since, Mr. A. P. Low, of the Dominion Geological Sur- 
vey, was engaged in traveling backward and forward 
through the district, and in 1887 and 1891 Messrs. 
Holmes, Carey, Cole, Bryant and Kenaston made ex- 
peditions to the country. 
Ignorant of all this, it ha,s long been the practice of 
persons whose explorations were confined to regions like 
the Adirondacks, to talk of Labrador as if it were ab- 
solutely unknown— as much so as northern Greenland 
or the islands of the Arctic Sea — and they have repre- 
sented the difficulties of travel there as equal to those of 
any Arctic expedition. Many of our readers will re- 
member the fabulous tales told years ago of the wonders 
of Lake Mistassini and of the difficulties of reaching 
it, and the way in which these stories were refuted by 
persons of experience in the North. 
Meantime, for near a hundred years, generations of 
white and Indian residents of Labrador have been tra- 
versing it by routes of travel as well known there as 
Pennsylvania Avenue is to a Washingtonian, or Clark 
street to a Chicagoan. Maps have been made of the 
country, which are obtainable at the office of the Do- 
minion Geological Survey at Ottawa, and from the Hud- 
son's Bay Company's posts, and at these posts can usually 
be had guides absolutely acquainted with the country. 
Labrador is not unexplored. 
IMPROVED POSTAL SERVICE. 
The Postal Progress League is an organization for 
the promotion of a better postal service. The specific 
reform to secure which the League is working is in the 
transmission of merchandise. In this branch of our pos- 
tal service the United States is far behind that of other 
nations. Thus, our rate on merchandise or fouilh class 
mail matter is one cent per ounce, with a weight limit 
of four pounds, for which the postage is sixty-four cents.' 
In Germany the limit is eleven pounds, on which the 
postage is twelve cents. Like proportions hold in com- 
parison of the American rates with those of other coun- 
tries. We are as far behind the rest of the earth in 
international merchandise postal rates. Of fifteen nations 
represented at the World Letter-Post-Union at Paris in 
1878, the United States was the only one which refused 
to approve the organization of an International Parcels- 
Post-Union, a service which was put into operation in 
1880, without our co-operation. "To-day this service 
covers nearly all the civilized world outside of the United 
States." What this means in the loss of mail orders for 
American goods for the foreign markets is hinted in the 
estimate of Consul Louis H. Ayme in Guadaloupe that 
the sum so lost to American firms in the West Indies 
alone is not less than $2,ooo,ooq a year. 
The loss of domestic business due to excessive trans- 
portation rates is also a sum vast beyond reckoning. 
The postal limit of four pounds and the high rates drive 
the shipper to the express company, and the exorbitant 
charges exacted by the express are a constant repression 
of business. The Postal Progress League proposes a 
new classification of postal matter, putting the present 
third class (books) and fourth class (merchandise) to- 
gether, with a weight limit of eleven pounds, and rates 
as follows: "On parcels up to three ounces, one cent; 
over three ounces up to six ounces, two cents; over six 
up to nine ounces, three cents; over nine up to twelve 
ounces, four cents ; over twelve ounces up to one pound, 
five cents; for each additional pound or fraction thereof, 
two cents, making the rate on an eleven pound parcel, 
twenty-five cents. No parcel shall be more than three 
and one-half feet in length or occupy more than two 
cubic feet of space." Under this rate a dealer in New 
York could mail a shotgun to a customer anywhere in 
the country for a quarter; and a fishing rod would go 
for postage so ridiculous that it would not be thought 
of by seller or buyer. 
The business man who sends goods by mail, or who 
might send them, may figure out for himself what such 
a postal system would mean to him in the course of a 
year's trade. The' Postal Progress League may well have 
the active and concerted support of all firms whose ad- 
vertisements appear to-day in Forest and Stream. 
FLIES. 
The sleeping sickness is an African disease in which 
the patient first shows indolence, then sinks into a leth- 
argy, falls asleep and dies. The cause of the disease, 
which has long puzzled European investigators, has now 
been traced to a teetse flj', which communicates the 
deadly microbe to man. In some regions the fly gets 
the microbe from big game, the koodoo, impala, buffalo, 
wildebeest, and other species; and when the game has 
been killed off by the hunter's gun the sleeping sickness 
disappears. This shows that there are regions— away 
across the seas in Africa— where game extermination is 
not an unmixed evil. Indeed, if the teetse depends on 
the large game for its bad offices, a West African decree 
might well go forth putting a bounty on the head of 
every koodoo in the land. 
Another fly story comes from Ceylon, and illustrates 
the often most curious and unexpected complications 
which follow a disturbance of the balance of nature. A 
certain lake breeds a species of pestilential fly, which of 
late has become a nuisance. To aid to avert the plague 
the municipal authorities have forbidden fishing. They 
have reasoned it out that the flies, which are bred in 
the water, are in their early stages of development food 
for the fish; of recent years fishing has increased, both 
rod fishing for sport and net fishing to supply, the de- 
mand caused by a growing taste for fish food; and as 
the fish have decreased, the flies have increased. The 
theory is plausible. In America we have discovered that 
the ornamental ponds in our gardens, which are mos- 
quito breeders, may be robbed of their evil agency if 
they are stocked with goldfish, which feed on the mos- 
quito larvae. Thus in the intricate and interdependent 
ways of nature the humblest chub may serve its small 
mission of making the earth a pleasanter dwelling place 
for man. 
- THE COMING AGE. 
In our shooting columns, Mr. Fred A. Olds describes 
the systematic methods adopted at Pinehurst, N. C, to 
provide a game supply for northern visitors to that 
resort. Not content with the haphazard ways of the 
past, advertising for sportsmen guests and trusting to the 
chance stock of birds to give them shooting, the enlight- 
ened and provident management of Pinehurst has put 
into operation an extensive breeding and fostering e:i- 
terprise, to insure a renewing supply of native and inc v 
duced birds. With thousands of acres protected and 
with well devised methods of restocking, the Pinehurst 
shooting attractions appear to be permanently assured. 
A similar plan has been adopted at Fortress Monroe, 
Va., where the Hotel Chamberlin has set apart 10,000 
acres of shooting grounds for the exclusive use of its 
guests; and where approved methods have been adopted 
to insure a continuing supply adequate to meet the de- 
mand upon it. 
These two preserves in North Carolina and Virginia 
are of more than casual interest and significance. They 
are the early examples of what before long must be a 
large number of similar adjuncts of autumn and winter 
resorts. No one can question that the capital which has 
been expended in the Pinehurst and Fortress Monroe 
preserves has been well invested; nor can there be any 
question that the managers of other resorts will in grow- 
ing numbers follow the examples here set. The field 
of open shooting is everywhere on the wane ; the sports- 
man tourist must, in corresponding degree, depend upon 
preserves; and and he will favor the resorts which can 
assure him sport. Thus will it be in the coming age. 
AN ALASKA DOG CASE. 
They change their sky but not their mind who cross 
the sea, runs the old proverb; but it is not always true, 
for our estimates of values change with our surround- 
ings and circumstances. In thickly settled communities, 
w^here there are railroads, trollies, automobiles, bicycles 
and sundry other conveyances, we do not set such store 
by a horse as to hang the horse thief ; but in a new 
country where every man depends on his horse for travel, 
the horse thief is shot or strung up with short shrift. 
So as to the dog, Maine and Alaska differ on this point 
to a degree to be expressed only by the expanse of the 
continent which lies between them. In Maine the courts 
have held that a dog is a wild animal, ferce nuturw, and 
not entitled to protection as property. In Alaska, a man 
has been sentenced to nine months at hard labor and 
to pay a fine of nearly $300 for stealing a dog, and a 
cur dog at that. The case was appealed, but the higher 
court sustained the decision, in a long opinion setting 
forth the value of the dog as a draught and pack animal 
in the far north; here, said the court, the dog "is a 
chattel, and next to man is the most important factor 
in the past and present history of the country." From 
the Alaska courts the case has been taken to the Su- 
preme Court of the United States, the appellant basing 
his appeal on three grounds : First, that his sentence is 
illegal because the crime for which he was sentenced is 
not named in the Civil Code for Alaska, under which he 
was tried; second, because the Justice of the Peace who 
tried him was without power to condemn him to hard 
l.'.'bor; and third, because a dog is not, under the Alaskan 
code, subject for larceny. 
From Caribou, Me., comes a report that Bald Moun- 
tain, in the Tobique Valley, has disappeared, and in its 
place is a lake. The Maine reports from there will 
probably read, "Hunting ngt §0' good this year, but fish- 
ing the best eyer kno-yyn.." 
