800 
FOREST AND STREAM, 
[June i§, 1904. 
without obtaining more than two or three antelope." 
Captain Lewis tried to arrange with the chief to return 
with him to the Jefferson, meet the party, and bring them 
over the mountains, and then trade for some horses. The 
chief readily consented, but it subsequently appeared that 
he was more or less suspicious, and he repeated to Cap- 
tain Lewis the suggestions made by some of the Indians 
that- the white men were perhaps allies of their enemies, 
and were trying to draw them into an ambuscade. The 
chief, with six or eight warriors, started back with Cap- 
tain Lewis, and it was evident that the people in the 
village thought that they were going into great danger, 
for the women were crying and praying for good fortune 
for those about to go into danger, while the men who 
feared to go were sullen and unhappy. Nevertheless, be- 
fore the party had gone far from the camp, they were 
joined by others, and a little later all the men, and many 
of the women, overtook them, and traveled along cheer- 
fully with them. Two or three days later Captain Lewis 
sent out two of his men to hunt, and this seemed to re- 
vive the suspicions of the Indians ; and when, a little later, 
one of the Indians who had followed the hunters was seen 
riding back as hard as he could, the whole company of 
Indians who were with Captain Lewis whirled about and 
ran away as fast as they could. It was not until they had 
raced along for a mile or two that the Indian who re- 
turned made his communication understood that one oi 
the white men had killed a deer, and instantly the whole 
company whirled around, each man eager to get first to 
the deer that he might make sure of a piece to eat. _ 
Meantime the main party had struggled on up the river, 
and on August 17 were met by a messenger from Captain 
Lewis, Dtewver, together with two or three of his Indian 
friends. The two parties met, and, through the medium 
of Chaboneau's wife, all suspicions were allayed, and the 
friendliest relations established. The usual councils were 
held and presents given. Efforts were now made to learn 
something about the country to the westward, and the best 
method of passing through it. The Indians said the way 
was difficult, the river swift, full of rapids, and flowing 
through deep cafions, which passed through mountains 
impassable for men or horses. The route to the southward 
of the river was said to pass through dry, parched desert 
of sands, uninhabited by game, and was now impossible 
for the horses, as the grass was dead, and the water dried 
up by the heat of summer. The route to the northward, 
though bad, appeared to present the best road. 
Obviously, if it was practicable, the river presented the 
easiest passage through the country, and m the hope that 
its difficulties had been exaggerated, Captam Clark set out 
to inspect its channel. On the way they met Indians, all 
of whom were friendly, but passing as ar down the river 
as he could, the leader convinced himself that it was use- 
less to attempt its passage. Game seenied to be quite 
scarce and for food the party depended almost entirely on 
the salmon which they could purchase from the Indians, 
and which in some cases was freely given them. 1 he bho- 
shoni Indians led a miserable life, depending chiefly on 
salmon and roots. They ventured out on the buffalo plain 
to kill and dry the meat, though continually m tear ot 
the Pahkees, "or the roving Indians of the Sascatchawan, 
who sometimes followed them even into the mountains 
These Pahkees were undoubtedly the Piegan tribe of 
Blackfeet, known for many years as bitter enemies of the 
Snakes. George Bird Grinnell. 
[to be continued.] 
there need be no dispute; it is older than the church even, 
for it was cast in 1356, and on its rim is engraved in 
Spanish a prayer to St. Joseph. It formerly hung in the 
church, but seems now to be regarded with as much vene- 
ration as are the pictures. ' Cabia Blanco. 
"L'Habitat." 
New^^York, June 4.— Editor Forest and Stream: The 
story, "L'Habitat," which appeared in your last week's 
number, is one of the best that I have ever read in your 
publication. The writer of the story possesses the haopy 
faculty of so picturing the surroundings of his camp that 
one could almost inhale the fragrance of the mountain 
air and actually see the beauties of nature from the porch 
of the cabin. There are probably very few of your readers 
who, after having read this enticing story, "do not feel 
like hieing away to the wonderful green hills of Vermom. 
1 want to thank you for the great pleasure this story has 
given to me, and to express the hope that more of such 
material may appear in your paper from time to time. The 
splendid illustrations are a most interesting part of this 
article, which, as I have already said, is one of the best 
that has appeared in any magazine within the past year. 
W. L. Taylor. 
the ice m central Sweden, from 62 degrees north and 
above the Arctic Circle. The climate there may be about 
the same as in that part of Labrador where Mr. Hubbard 
died, and in spite of a very intimate knowledge of the 
lakes and rivers, teeming with fish, he has had many a 
blank day," although amply provided with suitable bait 
and tackle. The chances for a starved man, like Mr. 
Hubbard and his partners, to sustain life by fishing in 
unknown waters, with probably unsuitable bait and 
tackle, and through ice of considerable thickness, and 
in all kinds of Arctic weather, anybody can understand 
to be extremely small. D_ x. A. 
Montclair, N. J., June ^..—Editor Forest and Stream: 
Permit me to express my great pleasure and appreciation of 
the delightful story "L'Habitat," which appeared in your 
issue of June 4. Nothing that I have read in the columns 
of Forest and Stream for many years can be compared 
with it. It would seem as if the author, Mr. W. W- 
Brown (I was so glad to see his name in full), had found 
the true secret of happiness, and as I read the story a 
second time I envied him as I never envied the richest 
of men. Through your columns I wish to thank the 
writer for the valuable information he has given me on 
the subject about which he has so charmingly written, 
and to assure him that I am one who has read his de- 
lightful tale to the very end, and shall go and do likewise. 
Leland M. Burr. 
— « — 
Good Work by Bob White. 
In the year book of the Department of Agriculture for 
1903, Dr. Sylvester D. Judd, Assistant Ornithologist of 
the Biological Survey, has an exceedingly interesting arti- 
cle on the "Economic Value of the Bob White." Writing 
fiom the scientific standpoint, and carefully exact in all 
his statements. Dr. Judd nevertheless shows for Bob 
White the sportsman's enthusiasm, and has given a charm- 
ing sketch of the bird. A beautiful colored plate by Mr. 
Louis Agassiz Fuertes adorns the article. We quote from 
Dr. Judd's article the paragraphs bearing directly on the 
economic value of the bird. 
Santa Fe. 
Editor Forest and Stream: • • ,1, 
How many of the thousands of tourists who visit the 
Pacific Coast and go thence by the southern route on the 
A. T. & S. F. R. R. every year, stop over while en route 
long enough to pay a visit to Sante Fe, and examine one 
of the oldest, if not the very oldest, cities on the conti- 
nent? That it is off the main line is no doubt one reason 
why it is passed by, but it will well repay a visit, and an 
hour or two of a ride from Lamy Junction carries one up 
to it. Here are buildings that are centuries old side by 
side with those that have been built only yesterday. 
How old this city really is, no one knows. There was 
an Indian town here, not a camp, but a permanent town, 
when Juan Coronado, the Spanish explorer, first visited 
it, about the year 1541- He named the city he^afterwards 
built here Santa Fe de San Francisco (Holy Faith_ of St. 
Francis), and the present metropolis of California was 
given the same name by the Spanish; we cut it down to 
San Francisco. Coronado and his wanderings are seldom 
heard of now. When riding across the country that he 
explored three centuries ago, I have often thought of him. 
His chaplain, who followed him in all his wanderings, has 
given us an interesting account of them. He seems to 
have been part soldier and part priest ; he could use the 
sword or the cross, and did use each in turn, if he could 
not make good Catholics of his Indians, he could make 
good Indians — dead ones — of them. 
When New Mexico becomes a State, if it ever does, i 
would be glad to see it given his name. It would be just 
as appropriate as is Colorado; in fact, far more appro- 
priate; he first found this country and told us about it. 
The greatest curiosity here is the old church of San 
Miguel. To a tourist from the East it looks like a rum ; 
the only wonder is that it is not one ; but while it does not 
appeal to the eye of an artist from the outside, the mside 
of it will well repay a visit, and the visitor will never 
regret the dime or quarter he has paid to the brother who 
admits him. There is always one who can speak English 
(some of them cannot), and who points out the different 
things he thinks will interest a visitor. 
The church itself is a square, ugly looking structure of 
sun-dried brick or adobes ; the walls are from five to seven 
feet thick; these are the walls that were first erected, 
about the year 1600. The roof has been destroyed by fire 
a number of times when one of the many wars that swept 
over this country took place, but the old walls always en- 
dured, ready for a new roof. 
These whitewashed walls are hung with paintings that 
a collector would give a fortune for. Two that hang 
above the altar, both pictures of the Annunciation, were 
painted in the thirteenth century by some Italian painter. 
The pictures look strangely out of place hanging on the 
whitewashed walls above the plain wooden benches. 
Standing on the floor is an old bell, about whose age 
New York, June 11. — Editor Forest and Stream: Allow 
me to compliment Mr. W. W. Browii upon his article en- 
titled, "L'Habitat," which appeared in your edition of 
June 4. 
It makes the true sportsman long to shake the dust of 
Broadway from his feet and dig for the woods as fast 
as his legs can carry him. 
Comparatively few persons realize the enjoyment to be 
gotten from this sort of life, and it is my desire to some 
day spend the greater part of my time in just such a place. 
Although it is impossible for me to enjoy it myself, I 
take great pleasure in reading about it, and sincerely 
hope you will publish more such articles. 
Andrew Le Massena. 
I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree, 
And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made; 
Nme bean rows will I have there, a hive for the honey bee, 
And live alone in the bee-loud glade. 
And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow, 
Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings; 
There midnight's all a-glimmer, and noon a purple glow, 
And evening full of the linnet's wings. . 
I will arise and go now, for always night and day 
I hear lake water lapping, with low sounds by the shore; 
While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements gray, 
I hear it in the deep heart's core. — Yeats. 
Nordenskjold as an Explorer^ 
Editor Forest and Stream: 
In your issue of April 9, Mr. Charles Hallock, com- 
menting upon the untimely end of Mr. Leoniadas Hub- 
bard in Labrador, says : 
"Even the Nordenskjold Arctic exploring party per- 
ished of starvation in their tents on the Lena River in 
Siberia because they did not think to try for the fish be- 
neath them, or know how to catch them, if they did." 
This is a gross mistake regarding Nordenskjold. He 
did not starve to death in the Arctic regions, nor did 
any of his party, during his long career as ah Arctic 
explorer. _ Nordenskjold died of ripe old age some years 
ago at his home in Stockholm, Sweden. In cotinection 
with this statement it may be well worth mentioning that 
Nordenskjold had a well established reputatioiivamong 
Scandinavian Arctic travelers for the/great care.he took 
in outfitting and provisioning his many expedition^ above 
the Arctic Circle. The attempt to reach the North Pole 
in 1872 with reindeer instead of dogs, may serve as an 
example that he surely did not risk to starve to death 
through inability to live on the "fat of the land." When 
the two ships — one steamer and one sailing vessel — that 
brought his expedition to Mosselbay, Spitzbergen, ar- 
rived there they were suddenly and unexpectedly "bottled 
up" in that bay by drift ice, and compelled to remain 
there until the next summer. Under these unfortunate 
circumstances he succeeded in sustaining the crews of the 
above mentioned vessels and his own men, and further- 
more managed to save from starving two othej: crews 
belonging to two small sailing vessels, who also were 
prevented by the same cause from returning home as they 
had intended. Of course he had to abandon the planned 
northward journey in order to save the lives of all these 
people. 
That fishing in the Arctic regions during the winter 
is a rather uncertain thing to depend upon for a grub- 
stake is verified by too many to be doubted. When Nor- 
denskjold got ice-bound at Pittekaj in Siberia, only a few 
hundred miles away from East Cape, during his northeast 
passage around Asia, he met at that place a small party 
of Tschuktshers (Esquimaux) who had settled there 
solely for fishing purposes. Durifig that winter, on the 
night of September 28, 1878, heavy drift ice set in on 
that coast and remained unbroken until July, 1879. This 
ice prevented, with a few exceptions, the people from 
catching any fish worth while speaking of ; fortunately 
there were plenty of provisions to spare on board the 
Vega, so the Tschuktshers did not starve that winter. 
The writer has had some experience in fishing through 
The Bob White as a Weed and Insect Destroyer. 
^ A study of the Bob White was undertaken by means of 
held observations, experiments with captive birds, and ex- 
amination of the contents of crops and stomachs in the 
laboratory. The results obtained may be thus summed 
up : The Bob White is probably the most useful abundant 
species on the farm. It is one of the most nearly 
omnivorous birds, consuming large quantities of weed 
seeds, and destroying many of the worst insect pests with 
v.'hich the farmer has to contend. It does not injure grain, 
fruit, or any other crop. 
Food of the Bob White. 
In the investigation 801 stomachs were examined, col- 
lected in every month of the year, though mostly during 
the hunting season, and obtained from twenty-one differ- 
ent States, and from Canada and the District of Columbia 
but chiefly from New York, Maryland, Virginia, Florida! 
Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas, 
and Texas. As indicated by this material, the Bob White 
is notable for the great variety of its food. It lives mainly 
on seeds, fruits, leaves, buds, insects, and spiders, though 
myriapods, crustaceans, mollusks, and even batrachians 
have been found in its stomach. The character of the diet 
vanes with the season. The greatest proportion of animal 
matter is taken in late spring and early summer. The 
food for the year as a whole, estimated from the analysis 
oi the contents of stomachs, and calculated by volume, is 
divided thus : Animal matter, 14.93 per cent. ; vegetable 
matter, 85.07 per cent. The elements of the- animal food 
are distributed as follows : Beetles, 6.38 per cent, of the 
total food; grasshoppers, 2.56 per cent; bugs, 2.83 per 
cent. ; caterpillars, 0.87 per cent. ; miscellaneous insects, 
0.48 per cent.; other invertebrates, largely spiders, 1.81 
per cent. The vegetable food consists of grain, 23.64 per 
cent, of the total food; various seeds, chiefly those of 
weeds, 50.78 per cent.; fruit, a53 per, cent; miscellaneous 
vegetable matter, 2.12 per cent. 
Seeds. 
The Bob White is pre-eminently a seed eater. Of its 
food for the year as a whole, seeds form 50.78 per cent, 
and include those of many different plants. 
^ The bulk of this seed diet consists of the seeds of weeds. 
Fully sixty different weeds are represented in the food, 
and constitute more than a third of the food for the year 
as a whole. Some idea of the value of the bird as a weed 
destroyer may be gained from the number of seeds taken 
at a meal. Thirty buttonwood seeds, 200 to 300 smartweed 
seeds, often 500 seeds of sheep sorrel, and 700 of three-' 
sided mercury have been taken at one feeding. Crops and 
stomachs are frequently crammed with nothing but rag- 
weed. One bird, taken at Marsh Hall, Md., November 6, 
1502, had eaten a thousand ragweed akenes; another 
killed the previous November in the same place, had eaten 
an equal number of the seeds of the crabgrass, a trouble- 
some weed in truck land. Birds have been shot in Meck- 
lenburg county, Va., whose stomachs contained 3,000 legu- 
miinous seeds, mostly of tick trefoil and various species of 
bush clover. Pigeon grass, which is extremely common 
and mischievous in truck land, is a favorite food. No less 
than 5,000 seeds of this troublesome plant were found in 
the stomach of a bird shot in October, 1902, at Pinebrook, 
N. J. Finally, a Bob White taken on Christmas Day, 
icjoi, at Kinsale, Va., was discovered to have eaten 10,000 
seeds of that abundant and obnoxious pest of the garden, 
the pigweed. 
A careful computation of the total amount of weed seed ' 
the Bob White is capable of destroying is surprising in 
the magnitude of its result. In the State of Virginia it is 
safe to assume that from Septem.ber i to April 30 — the 
season when the largest proportion of weed seed is con- . 
sumed by birds — there are four Bob Whites to the square 
mile, or 169,800 in the entire State. The crop of each of 
these birds would hold half an ounce of seed, and as at 
each of the two daily meals weed seed constitutes at least 
half the contents of. the crop, or a quarter of an ounce, a 
half ounce daily is certainly consumed by each bird. On 
this very conservative basis the total consumption of the 
y/eed seed by Bob Whites from September i to April 30, 
ill Virginia, amounts to 573 tons. 
Animal Food. 
The Bob White is insectivorous as well as granivorous. 
Insects are eaten during every month of the year, and 
amount to 14.93 per cent of the food for the year as a 
whole. From May to August, inclusive, when insects are 
most numerous, the percentage for the period rises to 
31.5 per cent The variety of insect food is large. In the 
