Forest and Stream. 
A Weekly Journal of the Rod and Gun. 
Copyright, 1904, BY Forest AND Stream Publishing Ca 
tkkms,$4 aJbak.^^^^^^^ new YORK, SATURDAY, JUNE 4,1904. \^o. mBb^f^T^^^'io... 
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PICTURE SERMONS. 
The pictures of the Supplement printed this week 
possess a special interest, as showing two widely differ- 
ent phases of American scenery. 
On the one hand are the rough, bare mountains of 
New England, where the civilization is old, where towns 
and hamlets have flourished for hundreds of years, where 
the game has all been killed off, or in the few places where 
any is to be found, it comes from restocking or from 
rigid- protection extending over many years, and where, 
notwithstanding this old civilization, there are close to 
populous towns and cities, many wild spots to which 
the nature lover may retreat, feeling sure that he will 
not be disturbed. 
On the other hand, we have the mountains west, which 
are new in the public estimation— though to the old-timer 
in the West they seem old enough— a country where 
thirty years ago railroads were unknown; a country 
where, owing to wise action by Congress, beginning in 
1872, and continued later, and by the faithful and hearty 
co-operation of half a dozen army officers and a very 
few others, nature remains to-day somewhat as she used 
to be. Game has been protected, and is so tame that, 
as told by the President in his recently published article 
in "American Big Game in Its Haunts," the animals 
are no wilder than so many Alderney cows. 
To readers all over the land these two series of moun- 
tain scenes will bring many memories, and will arouse 
many aspirations. Those of us who live in the East 
would all like to go to the West and see her mountains 
and her big game; while those who live in the West, but 
v/ho originally came from the East, may well enough wish 
to revisit the scenes of their youth, or to show these 
scenes to those whom they love. 
From the illustrations of The Mountains East may 
be seen how, by the expenditure of very little money and 
considerable energy, a mountain — or wilderness — home 
may be erected, full of comforts, amid that solitude 
which from time to time we all wish to enjoy, and possess- 
ing also — what is of better wqrth than any other of its 
qualities— a wealth of association that will endure through 
the builder's life, and will be a constant joy to him. 
The lesson taught by the pictures entitled The Moun- 
tains West is not less impressive, though it has less of a 
practical bearing on the life of the individual man. In 
these pictures, and in others taken by Major John 
Pitcher, now the Superintendent of the Yellowstone 
Park, we are shown in singularly effective fashion what 
the results of his work have been. 
It is no new thing to see near the Yellowstone Park 
deer and sheep that are very tame, but it is a new thing 
to have the Hot Spring and Fort Yellowstone and the 
Gardiner Canon regarded by the game as a permanent 
abiding place and winter feeding ground, and it is a new 
thing to see big game come galloping down from the hills 
to eat its meals when a wagonload of hay starts out to be 
distributed at the customary feeding places. 
Since the Park was placed in charge Of a military 
officer as superintendent, there has been a very high 
standard of excellence among the men detailed to that 
command. Major Pitcher has well maintained that high 
standard, and has besides enlisted the sympathies and 
secured the support nf practically the whole of the popu- 
lation of Montana and Wyoming, adjacent to the Park. 
If Mr. Brown and his companion could build for them- 
selves on a rocky ridge of the Vermont hills a camp as' 
charming as the one here described and figured, why may 
not almost any of us prepare for our own occupancy some 
similar retreat, which, while it may by no means equal 
that described here in situation, comfort and massiveness, 
may yet — because it is our own — be for our^ purposes just 
as good or even a little better than UHabitat. The money 
cost will not be great. There are few of us who do not 
know of some place where permission, or a lease, or the 
fee of an acre of ground might be had at a cost absolutely 
nominal, on which one might spend his vacation days 
with a joy and an interest that would increase as each 
vacation came around. It matters little whether such a 
retreat be on the mountain, in the forest, by the stream- 
side or the seashore, if it is one's own— the work of 
one's own hands— it will have a value that can never be 
measured by dollars and cents. 
And if Major Pitcher can teach the deer, the antelope, 
the elk, and the mountain sheep to live peaceful and un- 
disturbed lives under his very hand, why may not those of 
us who live in the country— if we will but take the pains 
to do so — establish like friendly relations with the wild 
creatures that live about us? Almost by instinct these 
wild creatures know whether men are their friends or 
their enemies, and they early and easily learn to trust 
those whom they know to be their friends. 
_ PACKS, AND PIECES. 
The letter on "Inland Packs," published elsewhere, 
comes to us like a breath of the old fur "trading times, 
now gone forever. In these days of luxury and con- 
venience—of steamboats and railways and telegraphs and 
telephones — we cannot realize what journeying into the 
wilderness meant when traders left the salt water in 
birch bark canoes and pushed their way further and 
further westward and northward through a thousand un- 
known ways, until they came again to the salt water — the 
waters of other seas. Then every day's journey was long, 
hard work with the paddle, interrupted only by arduous 
and back-breaking foot work when canoe and baggage 
were carried on men's backs over steep ascents, through 
difficult marshes or along sidehill trails, where a misstep 
might throw the bearer and his burden down into the tor- 
rent which rushed along far below. 
In the adventures of the old fur traders and explorers, 
which, as the "Trails of the Pathfinders," are now being 
told of in Forest and Stream, frequent mention is made 
of the "packs" and "pieces" which made up the lading of 
the canoes. In a general way we know what these packs 
and pieces were, but the details given by the veteran fur 
trader who tells of them this week are of very great inter- 
est in connection with the series of articles now being 
published. 
The writings of the early _ fur traders— the Henrys, 
McKenzie, Ross, Franchere, Cox, and half a hundred 
others— all tell of this method of travel, and often with 
m.uch detail; but these works are quite without the reach 
of the general reader, and it is good to have these things 
told of to-day by one who saw and was a part of them. 
A FAR REACHING DECISION. 
The more we study the recent decision in the Colo- 
rado deer hide case, the more important it appears. This 
importance rests not only on the fact that it settles, a 
vital question of law for the State in which the opinion 
was rendered, but that , it gives to . all legislators a 
model on which may be drawn hereafter game laws 
which shall be eft'ective. 
For years Judge D. C. Beaman has been striving to 
impress on game protectors and game law makers a 
point, very clear to his own mind, but apparently not 
so clear to the minds of most lawyers. The highest 
court of the State has finally ruled on this precise point, 
and decided that the game law of Colorado ' stands on • 
solid ground, and hence that a law- drawn as this one 
is drawn will stand, and can be enforced. 
This game law vests the ownership, of the game in 
the State as "proprietor," and then declares that "no 
right, title, interest or property . therein can be acquired 
or transferred, or possession thereof had or maintained 
except as herein expressly provided." The law then goes 
on to specify the time and manner in which game may 
be killed, held in possession, transferred, and- so on. 
A law sucb as 'this obliges the pian. in. the ,pos§essiQn 
of the game to point out the precise provision in the law 
expressly permitting the possession contended for. If he 
cannot do this, his contention of legal possession or 
ownership fails. . , 
Most game laws leave the interest of the State as at 
common law, which simply makes the game or fish public 
property, to be taken and held in possession, unless there 
is some statute forbidding it, and then proceed to make 
certain prohibitions. This throws the onus on the game 
protector, and obliges him to point out the precise words 
in the law which prohibit the act in question. This 
gives many opportunities for the violator of the law to 
escape. The difference is so obvious that it needs only 
to be pointed out to be clearly recognized. 
A very few States have in part followed the sugges- 
tions originally made by Judge Beaman, but over by 
far the greater part of the country the game laws are still 
in many respects in a chaotic condition. In some 
respects the game laws of Colorado are not as they were 
originally drawn by Judge Beaman, but notwithstanding 
some interference with his draft by the Legislature, they 
still remain— in the opinion of many lawyers — by far the 
most perfect model of game laws in existence. 
The decision of the Court of Appeals is final in this 
matter. The case cannot be carried higher, and the law 
will stand. 
A SNAKE STORY. 
The papers on the treatment of snakes at the New 
York Zoological Society Park in the Bronx, have inter- 
ested many readers and have brought us many comments 
and inquiries. Right on the heels of those articles comes 
a happening in the New York Central Park Menagerie, 
in which one keeper was badly bitten by a python and 
another one badly squeezed. 
It appears that a number of the pythons in the Central 
Park menagerie have recently died, and that it was 
thought necessary to administer to the survivors medicine 
by the mouth. Three keepers entered a cage to perform 
this operation. The duty of one man was to hold the 
snake's head and open its mouth, of another to administer 
the medicine, while the third was a guard for the snake's 
tail, to keep him from coiling about and squeezing either 
of the keepers. Matters went well enough until one of 
the snakes, becoming excited, grasped the keeper's hand 
as he tried to catch its head and tried to coil itself about 
the mai>i,N The struggle of the three keepers with this 
snake excite® the. other snakes in the cage, and one of 
them took a part in the fight. For a while it seemed as 
if the two snakes would get the better of the three men, 
and one of them— a 12-footer— did coil itself about the leg 
of the keeper, and gave him so severe a squeeze that his 
leg was badly bruised. After an active and more or less 
dangerous struggle, the two other men freed the one that 
was in the coils, and the 12-foot python was thrust into 
a sack, where he was powerless. 
The moral of this is that in dealing with wild animals 
of any sort, eternar vigilance, together with extreme cau- 
tion and deliberation of movements are most important. 
A ten or twelve-foot python is capable of .inflicting severe 
injuries on a man— perhaps of even killing him— but it 
may be imagined that if these pythons had been as large 
as some of the great snakes in the Bronx,' one of the three 
men would have been killed before the struggle was over. 
The time for shifting to summer homes has come, and 
many subscribers to Forest and Stream naturally desire 
to have the addresses of the copy of the paper which goes 
to. them changed from winter to summer residences. 
This is a matter that it is well to attend to in time, so 
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This may be convenient for those who are spending . the 
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