FOREST AND STREAM. 
hunters 1 saw did not have pleasant eyes, too cold 
and keen for that. Neither was their gait lovely. Per- 
haps I imagine, but what I saw was a swing, almost 
soldier-like, but chillingly precise. Sparks was build- 
ing a 2sft. gasoline launch and had an eight-horse- 
power engine for it — an automobile outfit. But two 
young men— say twenty-five years old — were there to 
begin hunting. One was caulking up a sneak-boat, 
putting a little launch — gasoline— into shape for tow- 
ing this boat up the river, that he might float down, 
and otherwise preparing for the season. One day he 
went to Reelfoot and got fifty-three ducks. He was 
going to hunt the river mostly, however. The other man 
was from Iowa. He said in my hearing that he didn't 
have any professional license, that he had a non-resident's 
licence, however, and that he was going to hunt on Reel- 
foot, and take his ducks right to Burdick. He claimed to 
have seen Richard D'Ailly, Lake county's warden, and 
been told he could sell his ducks so. 
Here is another phase in the contest for the posses- 
sion of Reelfoot Lake. D'Ailly i^ one of the nicest 
men any one can care for. He_ knows as much about 
the nature of Mississippi Valley as years of study can 
give. He has bird skins, butterflies, mineral speci- 
mens, books, notes, and the greatest of interest m natu- 
ral history — and his wife is equally interested in these 
subjects. He lives half a mile from Reelfoot, two miles 
from Tiptonville, on a place where he proposes to 
raise blue ribbon poultry, study botany and otherwise 
enjoy the rest he has earned in a life spent as an en- 
gineer. Coahoma knows him. 
When D'Ailly was appointed warden, Frank Sparks 
had been suggested for that office. A petition was 
circulated around for names to endorse his appoint- 
THE WILD TIGER LILY OF THE PRAIRIES. 
From life, by Oscar D. Turner. 
ment. Sparks opposed the Harris claim to Reelfoot 
Lake. A D'Ailly petition was circulated, and Sparks 
received a . letter from Game Warden Acklen saying 
that the D'Ailly petition had-reached the game warden's 
office first and had been acted on when the Sparks 
petition arrived — though it was sent with a special de- 
livery stamp on it, and started the day before the 
Harris petition did — so one hears. 
"If a man violates the law in Obion c,ounty he has 
to look out. The game warden has settled some of 
the men there^ — many fined and six or eight cases com- 
ing up next court sitting," Sparks remarked. There 
never was a game warden who gave complete satis- 
faction to everyone. 
It is difficult to come to any conclusion in regard 
to any stated feature of Reelfoot Lake. The Harris 
estate is reaching out for control of Reelfoot Lake, 
and the pot hunters and sportsmen are ranged to- 
gether against this project. The pot hunter, however, 
has not been above getting permission to hunt from 
an estate, if by so doing he can sell his game to a 
market dealer without a license required by law. A 
professional hunter, in addition to paying $25, must 
furnish bond of $200 not to violate the provisions of 
the Tennessee law. The bond feature drew down the 
face of the Iowa young man. For many years he had 
shot on Reelfoot for market, and coming back he 
found things in a mess — from his point of view — and 
so it is from almost any other viewpoint. 
This much is certain : The sportsman who is a non- 
resident of Tennessee and does not pay $100 taxes in 
that State must put up for a license. My State, New 
York, does not charge a non-resident for hunting 
therein, unless a New Yorker has to pay in the non- 
resident's State. The Tennessee law is the same, only 
one must have a license in Tennesse, so I got mine 
easy — some swearing to be done before a notary, and 
some small office fees to pay were necessary. The 
would-be visiting sportsman can hear from Game 
Warden Acklen at Nashville in regard to these things. 
I passed one night on Reelfoot Lake. I swung my 
hammock between two cypress trees, where I could 
reach out and drop a splinter into the water. It was 
bright, October moonlight, and my cover thrown back 
so that I could look out on the water — and at those 
desolate stubs— I watched the placid surface and grew 
chilled by the things I saw. It was an awful view, 
and left an impression which cannot be quickly eradi- 
cated. A few rods away was Webster's tent; snuffling 
round were some of his "cane-rooters," now and then 
one of his dogs would whine, and perhaps a bird swim 
past in the water or a flock whistle by overhead. But 
these signs of life but accentuated the feeling. the dead 
trees standing in the water spread all around. After 
a long look at the scene — during which the moon 
changed from southeast to southwest, 1 was glad to 
turn down the square of canvas which hangs, A-fashion, 
ovef ffly canvas bag hamfflock, and so close myself iti., 
In the niornitig, a thin haze was over all— a very thm 
mist, and just right for pictures, and I took some 
then. 
Fishermen^ hunters, note niakers, , photographers, 
history gleaners oi- poets, all firid Reelfoot a curious 
and remarkable place. "You're kind of queer," a man 
told me when I said: "I couldii't stand a place like 
that." 
dncc More Afloat. 
I pulled out of Tiptonville on the afternoon of Fri- 
day, November 13, a Combination to make a 
ghost laugh. Some other things were in the com- 
bination — some disappointment, some homesickness, 
some dislike of the hardships to come, and a wide river 
over which a stormy haze threatened. Up in Putney 
Bend Jack Stevenson and I had stopped over night 
with a big medicine and stereopticon boat run by James 
Pool and S. M. Sugg. We were congenial enough, and 
it was suggested we drop down the river together after 
I had seen Reelfoot Lake. Postal cards, addressed .one 
to Tiptonville, one to Hickman, were exchanged, and at 
Tiptonville I heard the boat would pass that place about 
November 8. I waited till the 13th, and then, not hear- 
ing more, went on alone. 
, After town life in a boarding-house, and new-found 
friends and indoors, the river causes in me a bit of 
heart sinking, but there are voices in sandbars and caving 
banks and wide coiling waters which grow louder and 
louder — it was well I started on when I did, lest, per- 
haps, I had been obliged to admit myself, a river man, 
unable to resist the call of the sirens of the Mississippi. 
"He can't get off the river!" is said of some men abund- 
antly able to live in town on their savings or their 
wages. Everywhere along the river, so far as I have 
seen it, and according to river wanderers, all along it, 
are people unable to cope with the things that draw 
them back to the uneasy life upon waters that, to them, 
are completly enchanting. 
The wild birds were on their way south. Some flocks 
of ducks appeared in the distance on the water, mere 
black bobbing specks, for the most part, and yet with 
that little thrill in them which one close to nature 
feels, though he cannot explain why — the difference be- 
tween a live thing and a stick of drift which is noted 
when the object is too far off to see the head or other 
visible sign of life. Overhead, so high as to be scarcely 
distinguishable, was that sight dear to men of the gun, 
wild geese in wide Vs. Now and then a little bunch of 
ducks in bullet flight came past in their ricochet jumps 
from the north. As a spectacle to make one catch 
his breath, nothing that flies is quite so impressive to' 
me as these straight-flying birds shooting past— winged 
projectiles. Cut down by a charge of shot in mid- 
air, they tumble end over end, still like bullets. To one 
who has never hunted ducks in a duck country, but 
with only wood birds in his record, those hard, swift 
flyers on whose feathers the shot rattle, were new and 
thrilling game. 
Fresh from town, there is_ a side of nature on the 
river which is more impressive than it is a few days 
later. This is the quiet — a blessed silence, which is in- 
terrupted — if at all — chiefly by wild _things-;-geese or 
ducks or a crippled cotton gin that is shutting down. 
On the day I left Tiptonville, the water was unruffled 
by wind. I ran on till dusk — a caving bank on one side 
and a wide, inhospitable sandbar on the other, suddenly 
became ominous. Where could I tie up for the night? 
It is easy for one lost in contemplating the nature 
of a river without regard to personal application, to 
pass the last good landing, and, in the night mist, be 
lost and without a place to sleep. It was almost dark 
when, despairing of a better place, I tied in at the 
head of a bar, where the mud was pretty deep. A 
couple of chunks of wood made a place to step out; 
then a hundred yards away I said "How-do" to a shack, 
and learned that I could camp without being molested. 
I stretched my canvas hammock in the boat, drew my 
painted cover over all, and went to sleep. It was a bad 
place, exposed to the wind, with a mud landing, and not 
much chance to fix things over if anything happened. 
I was fortunate, and nothing happened. 
Raymond S. Spears, 
[to be continued.] 
898 
Glimpses of the Past^ 
The few remaining settlers of northern ^ Iowa wild 
came to this beautiful prairie region far back in thfe early 
fifties, recall with the deepest pleasure the days that havfe 
g,oiie, although these dayS were often fraught with hard- 
ships and deprivation that, to-d^y but few can irealizte. 
P-Very where ai-ound them then were the beauties of ria- 
tare, for the hand of man had not yet defaced thfe lovfe- 
linesS of the landscape. 
The years went swiftly by and brought wondi-bus 
changes. Could the old trappers and hunters Of . this 
region then have fallen into a "Rip Van Winkle sleep" 
and awakened again in the same region to-day, no 
amount of evidence would Convince them that it is the 
same country they knew in the long ago. In lio time of 
country, in the world have such wondrous changes taken 
place in so short a space of time. The old has given 
place to the new, and change, change, is ever the order 
of being. _ ' - • 
Only occasionally here and there do the few old set- 
tlers who still remain see a reminder of the days they 
love so well to recall. Last summer was exceptionally 
rainy and wet throughout Iowa, and this condition 
brought vividly to mind the terrific rain and thunder 
storms of the times back in the fifties and early sixties. 
Along portions of the railroad tracks that were built 
across the prairies long years ago, and by the sides of 
the roads which the pioneers laid out across the track- 
less prairies of the early days, and on the rare patches 
and tracts of virgin prairie land which at long intervals 
gladden the eye to-day, was a dense growth of blue-point 
grass five to six feet in height, and besprinkled every- 
where with the beautiful wild flowers that in days gone 
by grew in such countless millions here. The stately 
gum weed, or compass plant, with the edges of its coarse 
serrated leaves ever pointing northward and southward, 
is still seen in numbers among the old friends of the 
early days. The red lily is still seen, and most con- 
spicuous in the lower lands may be observed in scattered 
groups beautiful pendant tiger lilies, which none who 
have seen them in their wild state will ever forget. 
Not long ago a friend named Wilcox, himself an early 
pioneer of northern Iowa of the days of '51 or '52, while 
breaking up an old and extensive peat marsh near Thorn- 
ton, in the northern part of the State, brought to light the 
skull and other bones of a horse, with the deeply rusted 
remains of an ancient iron bridle bit in its mouth, and 
close beside it, and apparently lying partly under the 
horse, was the skeleton of a man ; all these relics owing 
their preservation to the chemical qualities of the peat in 
Vv'hich they lay.- One hand of the man lay spread out, 
and left a singularly distinct, impression in the peaty soil. 
These may be the remains of an Indian and his wiry 
pony, or may represent the remains of a white hunter 
such as roamed the prairies in those early days, and who 
perhaps met his death here at the hands of the ever- 
watchful Sioux, who in early times claimed this region 
s.s their home and their hunting ground. In any event, 
this was the last resting place of an early hunter, whether 
white or red, who faded away with the departing glory 
of the early days. Here was revealed a chapter in a life's 
history, which doubtless few, even in that early day, 
knew of. 
Near and around these skeletons were plowed up the 
remains of perhaps fifty buffalo, the skulls and wrinkled 
/■•orns being still in a fair state of preservation. Their 
bones were in fact so abundant as at times seriously to 
interfere with the running of the breaking plow. 
A very early pioneer who settled in this immediate 
locality somewhere in the later forties or early fifties, 
told my friend Wilcox at the time that when he first 
settled here the buffalo were abundant, and during the 
late fall at evening they would come in droves, bellowing, 
to drink at this slough, which was then a fair sized lake, 
and as the ice had iformed along the edge, they would 
crowd each other over and into the water, and some 
vv'ould almost invariably be drowned. This, he stated, 
accounted for the 'finding of so many buffalo skeletons to- 
day in plowing up the old lake bed. 
The account recalls sad recollections of the wanton 
and criminal destruction by the white hunter of untold 
millions of one of the noblest wild animals the American 
continent ever knew. Clement L. Webster, M. Sa 
Charles City, Iowa. 
THE BUFFALO OF THE OLDEN DAYS. — Drawn by Oscar D. Turner. 
