BBO 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
[April 30, 1904. 
Floating Down the Mississippi. 
XX.— Reelfoot Lake -Part Two. 
Few regions offered such hunting as Reelfoot Lake in 
old times. The dead stubs of the drowned trees were 
filled with the nests of various wild fowl and countless 
swarms of bees. Pigeons flocked to the nearby hills for 
oak' and beech mast. Crockett, in spite of his efforts, had 
not killed all the bears or deer "using" in the moist 
brakes. Muskrats, mink, otter and beaver were count- 
Jess. And the migrant fowls ! 
Swan Basin got its name, tradition says, because, when 
the nights were cold, these magnificent birds, would fiy 
round and round it, "'dragging their feet in the water, 
and so keeping it from freezing," though the rest of 'the 
lake congealed. It's nearly twenty years since the last 
swans came to Reelfoot, but one looks at the lake and 
thinks it fitting they should be gone, that the dt^cks and 
wild geese should come there in numbers that decrease 
year by year, that the bees should not 'bt" as- thick as 
thej^ used to be, that the swarms of wood ducks should 
not- show the thinning of market hunters' guns, and that 
men should war in the courts for the privilege of buying 
the fish and game taken from these remarkable waters 
and shores. 
Living forests are desolate to some people, the sea 
heaving and rolling "moans" in the ears of many^ the 
wind "wails" through the pines, and the wide Mississippi 
is said to have "desolate" shores. It is not often, how- 
ever, that nature displays her dead in gaunt nakedness. 
Let a tree fall in the forest and soon the leaves bank up 
against it, sweet green moss veils the crumbling bark, 
though one knows the worms are boring and the rot 
disintegrating, the thin covering of life hides the cold 
horror beneath. Not so at Reelfoot and other lakes of 
the Sunk Lands. Here nature, in one of her most ter- 
rible moods, with fire-quakes from the Isthmus, and- 
water from the skies — by means of her two greatest 
forces — has laid her dead entirely bare. 
The trees drowned, and such ones as oak, beech, pecan, 
gum and the like, qaickly rotted and fell into the water, 
but the cypress did, not rot. The wind broke away its 
drf branches, and the lightning split its trunks, but they 
did not often rot. It was only at the water line that 
nature showed her intention of ever doing away with the 
standing trunks. 
As in most bottom lands of the South, the water in 
Reelfoot varies its level as much as 25 feet according, 
more or less, with the Mississippi. At low water, or 
within two or three feet of it, one can see that these dead 
stubs are being worn away where the waves, big and 
little, have lapped-lapped ; for in the process of wetting 
and drying, tiny splinters are loosened, and finally struck 
away, and in this fashion tree trunks up to four or five 
feet in diameter are cut through and allowed to fall to 
STUBS, REELFOOT LAKE. 
the water, where they float till waterlogged and then sink, 
at least out of sight. 
Reelfoot is a lake where one cannot row without getting 
hung up on the stubs of trees which have already been 
v.'orn off in the fashion mentioned. But, in spite of these 
slubsj the wind raises great waves, and there are storms 
so severe that boats cannot ride them. In this bbn€yard 
of a forest boats are swamped, by coming down- and:xsv,er- 
turning on the fragments. The man who essays to swinij 
his feet hitting stubs of one height, his kness those of 
another, while his breast comes down on the jagged 
tops— protuberances of only an inch or so' long on the 
stump, and hard enough to bore a hole through wood, 
if it has a chance to catch a boat swinging--is soon done 
for. Many and various are Reelfoot's dead. 
If its distances were less, or its waters musty, Reelfoot 
would be merely a gloomy, niiasmic mud hole- but, as 
tilings are now, it is not so. The American lotus, its 
Wossoms 10 inches in diameter, grows there by the acre. 
There are numerous other marsh flowers. 
One may go- around the borders of the lake and almost 
rid himself of the graveyard feeling, so long as he merely 
looks at the flowers, or, in the autumn, at the hues and 
shades of the ripened leaves. I found the autumn colors 
njost beautiful there. 
They were not so rich in tone as those of an Adiron- 
dack ridge, were less vivid; in fact, the red was a rustier 
red ; the yellow a less pure hue, but still lovely. In the 
late afternoon the soft level lines of sunset darting 
tlirough the tree tops, some large leaved, some the cypress 
haze, made one forget all else. But at the moment of 
utmost beauty, so it seemed, that piercing chill, which is 
not wind, but like it, came thrusting along, and in a 
moment all these beauties, these wonderful colors, become 
just the ornaments of open sepulchres. 
In the' '30s a man named Stone established a ferry 
about ten miles south of Tiptonville, in order to carry 
the dwellers on the ridge across to the Obion county 
seat, which was Troy. Harris later succeeded in getting 
Lake county formed, with Tiptonville the court house. 
DEAD FOREST, REELFOOT LAKE. 
Where . the old feriy ran is now dry most of the time in 
many places. Stone "was something of a fighter," and 
when one Mitchell moved into the region and disputed 
with Stone _ successfully in a fight, Stone, at night, 
through a window, avenged himself by shooting Mitchell. 
It was "the first tragedy, or killing, that occurred west 
of Reelfoot Lake, in what is now Lake county." Stone 
v/as sentenced for life to prison, a notable fact in a 
region where murderers are these days fined for carry- 
ing revolvers, contrary to law. The administrator of 
Mitchell's estate found, among the papers, his own pocket- 
book of which he had been robbed while at New Orleans 
Vvith Mitchell to sell a flat-boat load of hogs. 
From this it may be gathered that the early history of 
the region, as regards its dwellers, was of a watch-dog- 
and-shotgun character. Just after the war times were 
particularly so, for guerrillas had not yet settled their 
differences, and, as Tennessee was divided in sentiment, 
lawlessness was long in passing. During this period one 
man left the country, owing to certain indictments in 
n.'gard to a distillery, it is said. He had a government 
license to sell whiskey, but the fishermen and others say 
more whiskey was rolled in barrels into the lake than 
the license allowed. It cost him thousands of dollars to 
settle. Hence one great source of traditions. There 
v/ere also some illicit stills and the revenue officers down 
to five or ten years ago had plenty to do among the 
islands which are in Reelfoot Lake. The old timer says 
he has seen good whiskey sold at ten cents a quart, and- 
rubs his nose reflectively oyer the chemical compounds 
v,'hich individuals now import for personal use, owing to 
the law forbidding minor towns to have saloons or to sell 
whiskey. 
Over fifty years ago there was a man named Thompson 
v/ho lived in a cabin on a raft, making his living some- 
what by fishing and more by keeping Thompson's Ferry 
across the Lake. . One day Thompson sent word to the 
father of the present Lockey Donaldson to come down 
fishing. , ' Donaldson went. Thompson's raft was about 
20 by 40 feet, and under the shack he had a hole cut 2 or 
3 feet square. The two men sat by the hole near the fire- 
place, lighted and warmed by its blaze, and sat and fished. 
I hey were oyer a great school of fish and, in the course 
of a few hours, had a pile of them nearly 4 feet high. 
The fish were "croppie," or "speckled perch," and this 
was their first appearance in Reelfoot waters. They had 
come in through the canal just then opened between Lake 
Michigan and the Illinois River. Lake fish are now. 
caught in most varieties, occasionally, throughout the 
length of the Mississippi. " 
They have some stories about game as it used to be on 
the Jake. "Many a duck I've shot from one of them old 
drift piles," the hunter says. Some say more than this, 
and the curious part of the yarns is, that the notebook 
maker sometimes hears pretty stiff stories, which, 
from various corroborative things heard, are true, though 
told as one of so-and-so's big lies. 
For instance, in the Memphis Cotton Gin, at Tipton- 
ville, one night, a hunter told of Old Isaac Newton's tell- 
ing about shooting a duck so high up in the air that when 
it 'hit the water it burst its gizzard out. The hunter 
thought it was a pretty steep yarn, and yet an old timer, a 
few hours later, told of the swan shooting on the lake, 
"The birds were so fat they busted open when they hit 
the ice," things quite within the experience of many salt- 
water gunners, I am sure, from stories I've read in the 
Forest and Stream. Again, Old Isaac caught out in the 
brakes one right cold night, crawled into a hollow log, 
after building a fire at each end of it. Quite ridiculous 
it seemed to some hunters at the gin — and yet men in 
Tennessee once lived for a couple of years in a hollow 
stump, according to history. 
One time Old Isaac had a visitor who asked if bees 
were not plenty around the lake. 
"Lots of them !" the old man said, "Can line a tree any 
time I want to !" 
"So? I'd like to see it done." The old man took a 
plate of honey and set it on a log near his shack, and soon 
a bee was at it, wiggling its hind legs. Loaded, it raised 
in the air, and after a couple of circles, started out over 
the lake, above the gray stubs. 
"See it !" Newton said, "See it ! there it goes ! Now 
watch it ; hit's settling — thar ! right in that cypress on yon 
side of the lake — three-quarters of a mile away. Want to 
go get it now?" the old man asked his visitor, who, some- 
what dubious, said "Yes." 
They crossed the lake, and in a cypress stub found a 
swarm. Wonderful eyesight, that old" man must have had 
to see a bee that far; but, as a matter of fact, he had 
located the tree a couple of days before. The old timers 
were not above imposing on the visitor's credulity any 
more than they are now. 
Lake county is between Reelfoot Lake and the Missis- 
sippi River — one of the extreme western counties of Ten- 
nessee, bordered on the north by Kentucky. The people 
of Lake county used to belong to Obion county, but the 
wide marsh and lake led to the formation of a new court 
house, in order that the citizens could get at their 
lawyers quicker and the sheriff be handier and clerk 
liearer. In his day James C. Harris was Lake county — 
the inan who impressed his personality on it in a most 
powerful manner. 
One hears of old man Harris on all sides. Lie was a 
muich-blamed man. He did this, he did that — he looked 
cut for No. I. 
Whatever Hari'is may have been, he at length became 
LIVING trees, reelfoot LAKE. 
a useful citizen. He got Lake county separated from . 
Obion, and proceeded to agitate such projects as railroads, 
a levee and a drainage canal. He had grown rich, and 
his land holdings increased yearly. The tirrie came when 
he put 5,000 acres of land to cotton. in one year, as an ex- 
periment, not renting the 100 acre or so plots out as 
hitherto. In business he was implacable; all that was 
coming he got. Few men in Lake county escaped hiin. 
With his own eyes he guarded all corners of his holdings, 
and if ,he had a claim on anything he exhausted all 
methods to make that . claim good — "he would law a man 
to death." Sometimes the blow fell hard on less able 
men— one comes inevitably to the conclusion that "mine 1" 
was the word the old man wished most to say; and if 
being said, he reached further for more. But when he 
had it he spent freely enough in some directions, in 
"enterprises." Mo^over^ he stood by the men with whom 
