336 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
[Aran. 30, 1904. 
The Owego Rod and Gun Club. 
Realizing that extreme measures must be taken in 
order to protect the forest, fish, game, song and in- 
sectivorous birds of Tioga county from destruction, a 
number of sportsmen and others interested in the pre- 
servation of animal life met recently in the village of 
Owego, N. Y., and formed the Owego Rod and Gun 
Club. 
The following officers were elected: President. John 
D. Ringrose; Vice-President, G. Writer Smith; Secre- 
tary, Phillip S. Farnham; Treasurer, Eugene F. Barton. 
As stated in Article 11 of the constitution: "The ob- 
ject of this club shall be to foster a public sentiment 
in favor of better fish, game and forest protection; to 
stock the waters with fish and the forests with game; 
to suggest and aid the enactment of laws for the pro- 
tection of fish and game; for the preservation of the 
forests; to aid in the enforcement of the laws for the 
protection of song and insectivorous birds, and to pre- 
vent the wanton killing of any harmless bird or mammal; 
to seek and destroy all illegal devices used for the cap- 
ture of fish and game, and to prosecute all violators of 
the law relating to the foregoing that we are able to 
apprehend in Tioga county." 
Although the club is less than a month old it has 
over 177 members; it has restocked the streams of Tioga 
county with 25,000 trout; it has placed an order with 
the State fish hatchery for 2,000,000 pike; it has com- 
pelled several saw-mills to cease dumping sawdust into 
trout streams, and it has made an appeal to the public 
by causing the following notice to be published in the 
leading newspapers of Tioga county: 
"With a view to protect animal life generally and 
enforce the laws the club asks the public to assist it 
in the following ways: 
"ist. To report any violations of the game law to 
its officers. 
"2d. To prevent the killing of birds or the destruc- 
tion of their nests by boys ; by forbidding their children 
to do so, by threats of arrest, by warning sus- 
pects not to break the law, and by reporting violations 
of the law to the club. 
"3d. To protect the song and insectivorous birds 
throughout the county by providing them with nesting 
boxes, and by fastening small bells about the necks of 
house cats, which will often alarm birds before the cat 
approaches them within springing distance. A stream 
from a garden hose or a few dippers full of water will 
effectively stop persistent visits by cats to trees and 
bushes where nests containing young birds are located. 
"4th. To help exterminate the English sparrow by 
shooting into flocks in the fall and by destroying their 
nests during nesting season. 
"The club confidently believes that after it has pro- 
cured a few convictions much of the wanton destruc- 
tion of animal life will cease, and the laws regarding 
fish and game will be better respected." 
The club wishes to co-operate with anyone in the 
matter oi animal and forest protection. With a view 
to keeping up the interest among its members the club 
will open a reading room, where the leading sports- 
men's periodicals will be found. Any literature bearing 
upon the subject in which the club is interested will be 
thankfully received. 
Phillip S. Farnham, Sec'y. 
Owego, Tioga County, N. Y., April 1. 
A Report on Quail. 
Waynesburg, Pa., April 16.— Editor Forest and 
Stream: I clip this item from the Pittsburg Leader: 
Cumberland, April 16, 1904.— The body of Captain S. 
A. Bradley, residing near Sylvan, Pa., was found in 
the woods near his home, and, from the indications, he 
had been accidentally killed by his own gun. He had 
been hunting wild pigeons. What do you think about 
wild pigeons here? 
This has been the longest and the coldest winter I 
ever knew, and I remember very well the winter of 
1855 and 1856. I was about ten years old. The spring 
of 1856 and for several years after that year we had 
great flocks of wild pigeons in this part of the country. 
But not one pigeon has been seen for twenty years in 
this county. 
My father died in April, 1856, and he had possibly the 
only double-barreled shotgun in our county. A Ger- 
man named William Baker, who served in Mexico, 
drifted back to our village with the few volunteers who 
represented our county in the war. Somewhere in the 
South he became possessed of this double-barreled gun 
and brought it to Waynesburg, and my father bought 
from him. The gun was of English make and a good 
one. That was the beginning of my field shooting, and 
I have kept it up ever since and hope to put in a few 
more seasons yet. 
As I have said, the present winter — although this is 
the i6th day of April, snow fell here tO-day — has been 
the longest and hardest in my recollection. Yet I am 
glad to report that we have some quail left over. For 
years I have made it a rule to make inquiry of my 
friends in the country about the birds, especially in the 
spring. Here is my record: 
Feb. 24, Joe Patton saw eleven big, strong birds^; Feb. 
27, Jack Cummins saw seven; Feb. 28, Wendal ' Scott 
saw twelve; March 10, A. A. Purman, our Burgess, 
had a friend report to him that he had seen six on 
Stewart run; March 10, Will Bork heard two calling, 
and two days later saw ten in the same neighborhood; 
Sunday, March 12, myself heard two quail calling late 
m the evening, but it got dark before I could find them; 
March 15, David Lapping saw eight or nine quail on 
his place. These birds had been seen frequently by. 
Mr. Lapping early in the winter, but disappeared for 
several weeks, but turned up after the severest part of 
the winter had passed. Sunday, March 20, I found 
three quail. John Stephens reports that he heard sev- 
eral quail calling one evening during the week ending 
March 26, and that one of his neighbors had lately 
seen a covey of ten or twelve the same week. Joe Pat- 
ton found five quail on his place April 14. John Steph- 
ens found seven quail April 16 on his farm. These re- 
ports come from widely separated districts, so you see 
that we are likely to have some quail the coming season. 
W. L. A. 
The Alcohol Tax Bill. 
Galesburg, N. D., April 19. — Editor Forest and Stream: 
1 have noted with very great interest your editorial on 
the unjust tax on ammunition because of the stringency 
of the laws on the taxation of alcohol in the United 
States and beg to remark that very many other industries 
are similarly handicapped by this taxation. In the United 
States Government crop report for February or March, 
1003, I saw an article on this subject, where it was stated 
that the condition of the whole German nation had been 
benefited some 50 per cent, by the use of alcohol in 
various ways after it had been rendered unfit for bever- 
age, or denaturized, as it is technically known. They 
make it over there out of potatoes, and it is used for 
lighting and heating and motive power in place of kero- 
sene, gasolene and coal to a very large extent. It is sold 
at about seventeen cents per gallon when denaturized. 
You can readily see that such a bill as Hon. Mr. Boutell 
is advocating would interfere with many interests in the 
United States backed by considerable influence. In fact, 
1 reckon he is up against the fight of his life to get it 
passed, but if it will benefit this nation as much as it has 
others, as I am convinced it will, it certainly ought to be 
made law at once. J. p. "wr. 
AM) 
Some Angling Experiences at Long 
Lake, Michigan. 
Indian Stone Implements — Enoch the Hermit — Present 
Attractions. 
Under the greenwood tree, 
Who loves to lie with me, 
j: ■ 7^ And tune his merry note 
Unto the sweet bird's throat — 
I , Come hither, come hither, come hither! 
i ! Here shall he see 
No enemy 
' But winter, and rough weather. 
—As You Like It. 
Long Lake is a clear, deep, forest-girdled tarn, with 
glimpses of meadows and fields; and dear to the writer 
because some of his first real fishing of boyhood was 
enjoyed there. 
Such small, inland lakes are enshrined in the memo- 
ries of far more men and women than is supposed. In 
distant cities, breasting the onrush of heavy business 
duties, joying in a strenuous life, practical, abrupt, they 
yet cherish recollections of happy days when they went 
a-fishin* on some especially loved lake or stream. 
« * dear the schoolboy spot 
We ne'er forget, though there we are forgot." 
Gone, but treasured up, and thought of in what night- 
watches, child-days when the first sucker was snared 
in the creek, when they first fished at night beside the 
fire built on the shore of the pond; and it was so fear- 
some to get those biting, horned bullheads off the hook 
without a puncture of the hand that made it ache for 
an hour! And then followed the years when the boy 
came home from school, and the vacations of midsum- 
mer were spent beside and on that lake, which will 
always have a place by itself in his heart, no matter 
what trout and salmon waters he may have visited if 
he has become a veteran angler. In like measure, the 
scribe yet joys over his first boat ride and real fishing 
experience, nearly fifty years ago, at Long Lake. 
It is situated about two miles north of Fenton. Mich., 
a station on the Grand Trunk System— just a blue tarn 
a mile wide and five miles long. But when I first 
saw it witfi th@ ©yes and heart of a child, i% wa? ^ 
boundless blue ocean, hauntingly beautiful, dangerous, 
and full of mystery! 
Facts about eastern Michigan's early Indian history 
are rare, and often lack confirmation. Detroit "anti- 
quarians" mention that history in generalities. Books 
and manuscripts in the Library of the Historical So- 
ciety at Lansing have little more than mention of a 
few earh'-^ chiefs, and the supposed locations of some 
of the tribal villages. The remaining void is full of 
imaginary "legend" and "tradition." No real history 
of the early_ redskins of that region exists. Instead, 
bands of Ojibways or Chippewas, Mohawks, Algon- 
quins, Hurons, Wyandottes, Sioux, Blackfeet, and even 
of Delawares or Lenapes, are said to have roamed 
south and west of what is now Detroit. Amusingly 
shy references are made to their customs and habits — 
methods of courtship, marriages, birth and death rites, 
hunting, war and shadow dances, and computation of 
time by leaf-falls and moons; and to how their medicine 
men wailed, and had trances and practiced incantations; 
and what were probably their weapons, costumes, re- 
ligions, tribal totems and badges of rank, only chiefs 
being allowed the wearing of eagle's feathers. 
In an anonymous manuscript of the Moravian Soci- 
ety's library at Bethlehem, Pa., is a casual statement 
that a party of Indian dignitaries and warriors, with 
Father Marquette traveling with them as a guest of 
honor, once camped "for some days on the east shore 
of Tobique Pond (now called Long Lake), south of 
Flint." He even visited the "large island" in the lake, 
and "found only woods, wild bees, crows and pigeons." 
This statement lacks proofs. A dozen places claim the 
honor of Pere Marquette's grave. No real history 
exists of those years preceding his work in Michigan. 
A few memories handed down from father to son 
and changing their facts in passing, a few disjointed, 
pitifully isolated and uncertain statements jumbled into 
mostly unread books! Nearly all the real history is 
lost in oblivion. Recognizing what would be its vital 
interest if even fragments of it were known, local poets 
and prose writers around Long Lake the beautiful, 
have occasionally mentioned in print, the usual self- 
created "legend" of a fair but dusky maiden, who, at 
some remote date, was the daughter of a fierce chief 
named, say, War- Eagle or White Cloud, whose lodge 
or wigwam was pitched on the island. This young 
woman was loved by a bold young warrior, who always 
"laid the fruits of the chase at her feet" Her "sir©" 
always helped eat them, but had ordered her to marry 
an ugly, cruel aborigine from the North; presumably 
he lived near Flint. The lover is told to begone, and 
bides his time; the lady becomes thin and pale. But 
soon the signal-cry of a seeming whippoorwill in the 
woods sets her young heart a-flutter. Stolen interviews 
in the forest, words far sweeter than wild honey, vows 
under the starlight as winds sigh and water ripples. A 
great storm at night, stealthy elopement, pursuit, an 
upset canoe and a double drowning! Two corpses 
buried in one grave, while the squaws stand about in 
their blankets and wail! The repentant chief and 
father lingers, fades, and dies while his daughter's 
spirit returns from the Happy Hunting Grounds to 
assure him of forgiveness. 
This same legend has worked overtime around many 
a little Michigan lake, with its incipient Coopers and 
Longfellows. 
A few relics of the actual handiwork' of those van- 
ished aborigines are, however, actually left to us — 
wonderfully interesting messages written in stone by 
hpnds long crumbled to dust. Mr. L. B. Shipley, of 
Fenton, has a fine collection of prehistoric stone tools 
and weapons found around Long Lake. It contains 
over 800 arrow and spear heads of flint, jasper, horn- 
blende and agate, and pestles, mortars, knives, drills, 
bscttle-axes, tomahawks, and green and plain-band 
charms; also many pipes of curious design. He has 
two or three of the hammer-stones used by those 
workers in fashioning these implements from rock; 
and the "pits" worn into them as they were grasped 
between deft thumbs and forefingers are wonderfully 
eloquent and interesting marks by hands forgotten 
ages ago. For some of these tools bear the distinguish- 
ing features which experts like Mr. Abbott, who wrote 
"The Stone Age," declare are the marks of the work 
of the Stone Age people. 
Another and most notable collection of stone pre- 
historic relics found near Long Lake, is owned by Dr. 
A. R. Ingram, of Fenton, consisting of stone axes, 
celts, chisels, hammers, corn-crushers, stemmed and 
barbed arrow and spear heads, drills, perforators, 
scrapers, knives and pipes. 
Ne^r the north end of the lake, as late as 1840, were 
traces of the flint quarry where the Indians had made 
stone tools, — ^piles or "pockets" of bits of rock partially 
fashioned, and then rejected. There were also two 
Indian burial places; o|ie about a hundred rocfs cas| 
