Nov. 12, 1904.] 
F O REST A ND STREAM. 
408 
of nature which makes him happier in the unspoiled 
wilderness than anywhere else. What wonder that the 
discomforts are as nothing- to him, that he views the 
wilderness through rose-colored glasses, that "nothing re- 
mains but its charm?" A. L. W. 
get him to do much running," I told him. "That horse, 
when he did have to run, got his 12 pounds of corn and 
all the hay he could eat every day." 
Incident and Comment. 
His Last Day on Earth. 
The following statement is given without any attempt 
tc exaggerate it. I give it for what it is worth. Whether 
the man knew that this was his last day on earth, or only 
thought so, no one except himself could tell. 
We had been following a band of Comanch.es who made 
their headquarters on the edge of the Staked Plains west 
of the Double Mountains in Texas ever since 1867, and 
while getting a few of them from time to time for years, 
never could capture their main camp. 
We had driven them across the plains in 1871, and the 
following year had put in the whole summer hunting for 
them, and finally found them late in September, 1872, on 
the north fork of the Red River, a few miles above where 
McClellan Creek falls into it. We had got a large party 
of recruits that spring, and among them was a boy named 
Kelly from Pittsburg. On account of his having come 
from there, and his being only a boy (he was not yet 
19 years), I took an interest in him, and when I had any 
chance to do it made his work as light as possible for 
him. 
When we first came in sight of the camp that day, we 
were riding in column across the prairie, but on seeing 
the camp, two miles away, we formed our left front into 
line at a gallop. As I rode to my place on the left of the 
line— [ was left guide— I found Kelly next to me. A 
corporal should have been here, but he was absent. 
When we had come down to a trot again after forming m 
line, Kelly held out his hand to me, and calling me by 
name, instead of rank, something that he had never be- 
fore this done, he said: "I want to bid you good-by 
now; this is my last day here. I will be killed over 
yonder." . 
"Now, don't get scared, Kelly," I said to him. None 
of us will be killed. Those fellows yonder could not hit 
a haystack. I know it; they have tried to hit me more 
than once." , 
"They will hit me, then," he said ; but you won t have 
to drive me in. I am going in." . . 
The "file closers" were supposed to drive a man 111 it 
they saw him hanging back. I never had to drive but one 
man in anywhere, and he never had to be driven 111 
again after that. I hated to do it then, but that is what 
1 was there for. He would be in no more danger there 
than I would be ; less, in fact, as die might be told to he 
down, while I might have to keep standing. 
We rode up to the very edge of the camp without be- 
ing fired on. We had taken the camp by surprise. 1 hen 
our troop was dismounted and sent in on foot. We were 
the only troop present who had magazine guns. 
We drove the Indians out of the lodges and down the 
river bank into the water, where they made a stand be- 
hind rocks and trees, while we lined up on top of the 
bank and opened on them. Hardly half a dozen shots 
had been fired when Kelly fell with a ball through his 
breast I dragged him down behind the bank under 
cover " He was not dead ; in fact, he lived nearly 24 hours 
after this; so this was really not his last day here, after 
al The next man to fall was another recruit named 
Doras. He never knew what had hurt him, a ball going 
through his head killed him instantly. 
These were the only men we lost, but about 130 ot the 
Indians had spent their last day here before the trumpet 
sounded "Cease firing." 
Cavalry Horses and Bugle Calls. 
It is well known that an old cavalry horse will recog- 
nize the calls connected with him when he hears them 
sounded on the trumpet. He can often tell each call bet- 
ter than his rider can. One call that the horse never 
fails to obey is the water-and-stable call. He knows that 
if he don't know the others. 
During the Boer war in South Africa, a herd of Eng- 
lish cavalry horses were out on the plains grazing, when 
a dust storm struck them suddenly, starting them off on 
a stampede directly toward the sea. A trumpeter, who 
seems to have had all his wits about him, seizing his 
trumpet sounded the "forage call," which corresponds 
with our stable call. The horses stopped the moment they 
heard it and came back, walking quietly, to be fed. 
It might be supposed that the trumpeter would have 
been given the Victoria Cross, or at least_ the distin- 
o-uished service order for doing what he did. He got 
nothing of the kind, but did get a confinement of ten days 
in barracks as a punishment for sounding a call without 
orders to do it. 
These old horses never forget the calls, no matter how 
lon°- it has been since they last heard them. _ 
One day =ome years ago when I was passing an open 
lot in the outskirts of Chicago, I found a boy trying to 
play an old cornet. While the boy and I were at work 
on the cornet, an old negro ash hauler came along driv- 
ing an animal that had once been a good horse, but was 
now only a collection of skin and bones. The horse 
stopped when he heard us and stuck up his ears. I came 
to the conclusion that he had once been a cavalary torse, 
and asked the old negro where he had got him 'From 
a farmer " he said. I could not find a U. S. on the 
horse ; he had probably been given his discharge so long 
aa-o that his brand had been worn off. But taking the 
cornet I sounded the stable call, and the horse began to 
dcincc. 
"Hold fast to your lines, now, Uncle," I warned the 
old negro, "I am going to make that horse do some of 
the fastest running he has ever done since he left the 
cavalry" Then beginning with the call for the gallop, 1 
next sounded the charge, and the old plug went plunging 
up the road at his. fasest gait, dragging his wagon after 
him I °ave him the recall next, and he came down to a 
walk much to the relief of the old negro. He said that 
this was the first time he had ever seen the horse run. 
He had never been able to get him to go faster than a 
slow walk before. "You don't feed him well enough to 
The town of Oil City, Pa., has a smart dog, a cocker 
spaniel. When he was still a puppy his master taught 
him to sit out on the front porch and wait for. the local 
paper, the Oil City Derrick, to be thrown into the yard, 
then the dog would bring it into, the house and get 
petted for doing it. Half an hour after he had brought 
in his own paper the other day. his master, when going 
into the sitting room, found a pile of six more papers 
here which the dog had collected out of other yards in 
the block. It took his master half an hour to- hunt up 
the owners of those papers and return them. 
Cabia Blanco. 
Floating: Down the Mississippi 
Done. 
If one has the feeling that he was born too late, a few 
weeks on the river is likely to increase it. Most of his 
time will be spent in listening to- tales of old times. The 
market-hunters will describe the countless flocks of game 
birds, and wonder where they have gone to. Steamboat 
men will tell of old-time races and doings, and curse the 
railroads, in spite of the fact that modern towboats carry 
more stuff to New Orleans on a single trip than was done 
in six months of old-time traffic. The cabin boater 
mourns the days when there were a hundred cabin boats 
to the one of nowadays. 
But the tourist of an observing- turn of mind will soon 
note that however interesting the old times may have 
been, the present is not less wonderful from any view- 
point save that of numbers. The river is unchanged in 
nature; market-hunters are giving way to a clean breed 
of sportsmen; the view from the steambots is far more 
varied now than formerly, the cities being larger, the 
plantations as picturesque, and the wilderness as wild. 
A vaster problem than any of the old days is presented 
year by year in the fact that the river bed is filling up, 
and. that to meet this filling the levees have to be built 
higher. The narrowed course along the upper valley — 
to Cairo — thrusts the water past Arkansas against 
Louisiana, and the Mississippi promises to send its cur- 
rent in a new channel some time — perhaps soon. Cabin 
boat life is at a low ebb now, and yet there are thousands 
of old-timers on the river, and the people who hunt novel 
vacation pastimes have already turned their eyes to the 
wonderful journey of a thousand miles from Cairo to 
New Orleans, which is best made in cabin boats. 
Probably there is no place more interesting from the 
viewpoint of a river observer on the Mississippi than 
the suburb of Memphis which is called Cockle Burr 
Ridge. Cockle Burr Ridge is the Memphis shanty boat 
town, and it gets the name from the weeds that grow 
there. Mrs. Haney said that many of the ever-changing 
population of the Ridge were not respectable, and that 
she did not approve of some of the doings there. "If a 
woman wants a man, I think she ought to marry him 
and live with him, don't you?" Mrs. Haney has been 
maried several times, and her husbands either died or 
were divorced according to the church and law. 
"There's always something happening on the river," 
Jesse said. "Lots of times you don't know about. Maw, 
what was that man's name up on. the barge and his 
woman fell overboard- and got drowned? I clean forgot." 
"Why, it's Weston; he's right down in the slough 
now on a barge watching it for the lumber company. 
Weston said he was coming down last summer or last 
fall and his wife died, or I expect she's up to> Cairo now, 
I disremember which, and he got this woman to keep 
house for him. He lived on a barge and they tied up 
about Island 40 somewhere, waiting for a load of logs. 
She went out on the stage plank and fell off in the river. 
Well, it was two, three weeks, maybe a month, and 
Charlie Weston he come along down in his boat and tied 
up on an evening to a sandbar, the water falling and 
night coming. He was feeling pretty tired, but he seen 
something out on the bar a ways and went out to see 
what it was. When he comes up to it, he sees 'twas a 
body, and a woman's. Lie give a good look and then 
went back to his boat and cut loose for the sandbar 
further down. He hung up all night. Next day he got here. 
"I fell off the stage plank once myself. Lottie — she's 
Sam Cole's wife, was a baby then. It felt like I was 
going to sleep with a pillow or blanket over my face. 
I hugged her tighter and tighter, and I always did believe 
that if they'd found me, Lottie'd been in my arms yet. 
But my husband pulled me out. There's a sight of babies 
and children falls into the river. Mrs. Breller and her 
husband was waiting on some niggers in their store boat 
when she missed the baby. So everybody went to look- 
ing, and begun to wade around in the water for it. 
Pretty soon Breller's feet hit something soft in the yel- 
low water and it was the baby — warm yet, but 'twant 
no use working over it, for it was dead. Mrs. Breller 
showed me the baby's clothes, and she cried over them. 
It was the only one they had, you see." . 
A negro cabin boatman with whom Carlos and I tied 
in the night before we got to Memphis — in Beef Island 
Chute — had two babies. "This chile done fell ovahboard 
once, and my husband he had to swim foh hit — he shore 
swum, he did !" the mother said. "Like to got drownded 
himself." 
But for all that, considering the opportunities, the 
casualties among the babies of the cabin boats are few. 
One sees the little tots sitting beside the piles of ropes 
hanging their feet over the gunwales and rolling over 
and climbing to their feet, with just the cap of their 
knees holding them from sliding into the water ; some- 
times they slip, but their arms are strong, and they pull 
themselves up perhaps with a wet foot, but not minding 
it. At Fort Pillow, McKey's three-year-old insisted on 
going out to' help get wood. The ground was frozen and 
the wind out of the north raw. Twice the boy had to 
carried indoors to be thawed out, crying. But he came 
out the third time. With round, chubby, and streaked 
faces, the children are not the least interesting of the fea- 
tures of the river, but one hears only the tragic side of 
their lives. They are well provided for, however, and 
have dolls and candies and doll carts half full of big red 
apples. Around their lips is always a clean space from 
quarter to half • an inch wide, showing that they never 
lack for something to put between the lips. The streaks 
elsewhere around indicate that something is either juicy 
or sticky or bright colored. The' candy of the valley 
towns which goes out to the children before or behind 
the levees looks like water-color paints. Of the stuff one 
buys in the stores, candy is the worst; it is made of flour, 
a little sweetening, and some deadly flavoring and color- 
ing, No wonder "the babies eat so much of it they get 
sick." 
There is a considerable glamor about cabin boat life 
when seen from a distance which appeals to people of 
romantic inclinations or imaginations. It is related of a 
very estimable lady of Memphis that she wished to learn 
something about cabin boaters, and came down to Wolf 
River to become acquainted with some "river heroines." 
She visited the heights of Cockle Burr Ridge, "where the 
women smokes cigarettes," as Mrs. Haney says. Mrs. 
Haney smokes a pipe, and is not in the cigarette-smoking 
class. The visitor found the place without any heroic 
embellishments. The casual view of a cabin boat town 
shows only sordidness and vileness unspeakable. 
One hears men say that they cannot afford to- travel. 
One can get to Pittsburg for $15, build a cabin boat there, 
or buy it, for less than $75. It costs nothing to float 
down the river except for food and clothes. Carlos, in 
his catamaran, left Toronto with $42. He went to Mon- 
treal, and thence along the Great Lakes, to the Fox 
River, down to the Mississippi, and down to Montreal. 
He had $2 left when he reached that place. In my own 
experience I have gone 3,000 miles, paid fifty dollars 
fares, and eaten for over five months on about $140; this 
was a land trip, and far less comfortable than one in a 
cabin boat. Mrs. Haney allows fifty cents per day for 
the expenses of her son and herself, and saves money 
out of it. She lives better on that than many a back- 
woodsman. 
If one' has any knack at trading, he will get more 
money than he will spend simply by "swapping" and sell- 
ing trinkets. If he has a camera he can make his way 
and secure a collection of plates of unrivaled interest. If 
he likes nature, a few dozen traps — three or four — will 
get him 'coons, 'possums, and other fur-bearing animals 
sufficient to pay expenses. Lie would find game birds — ■ 
water fowl — in abundance at times, and could kill them. 
There are State laws which would interfere with hunting 
on shore to some extent, but inquiry along the way and 
Game Laws in Brief would cover this question. 
But a river trip would be dangerous to some kinds of 
ambition. In its way, the river has an unequaled charm. 
It carries one with it, and there is no incentive to pro- 
tracted labor. A very little chopping warms a cabin boat 
stove for a long while. The river and its banks are ob- 
jects of ceaseless interest. It requires only a few weeks' 
manual labor to furnish a year's supply of food. If the 
women folks liked it, there would be ten times the num- 
ber of river people living there now. 
Mrs. Haney would not leave her cabin boats for any- 
thing. She has a daughter in South Memphis who does 
not approve of her mother being a shanty boat woman, 
and would like to- have her come and live in town, and 
perhaps thinks inside "be respectable." But Mrs. Haney 
says she wouldn't give up her independence for anything. 
"I've owned seventy-five cabin boats, I expect," Mrs. 
Haney said one day, "and the boys is always laughing 
about me.- They say maw never does get beat selling a 
boat." 
The boats she lives in are always for sale — at her. price. 
One could buy the little blue boat for sixty dollars or 
seventy-five, with all the fixings and trimmings, and "it 
ain't often you find as big a bed as that one, or as good 
a stove as this on the river ; no, indeed." True for it, 
"the bottom doesn't leak a drop — look in there; why, you 
could blow the dust off the streamers ;" but it's cotton- 
wood, a fact not dilated on to would-be purchasers. 
Cottonwood makes a fine boat, but when it begins to rot 
it goes fast. "If this boat was good, pitchy yellow pine, 
I don't believe I could bring myself to sell it," Mrs. 
Haney said. 
The ambition of most of the river people, especially of 
the confirmed ones, is to- have a gasolene. They have in 
their minds just what they want, and in many instances 
get it ; for the river people are not poverty-stricken. I 
nave the bills of fish sent by a little red-and-white cabin 
boatman to Memphis, which day after day ran from $3 
to $7 per shipment. A man living on the river must have 
a boat, and a boat is property. Jesse Haney paid $20 and 
a $5 skiff for a big new skiff that two men traveled down 
the river in. Haney wanted it for fishing in next spring. 
Frank Sparks, at Tiptonville, a market-hunter, retired, 
but now a hotel keeper, is putting up a gasolene boat to 
hunt from for fun, and use for profit, too-, for he proposes 
to get out and buy supplies among the farmers and others 
in high water days. 
I had been in Ash Slough only a day when I went 
to the Cossitt Library with a letter of introduction to 
Mr. Johnson, the librarian. I looked over the papers 
there for a time, and then Mr. Johnson introduced me to 
Robert H. Mitchell, who sees to' it that the members of 
the Hatchie 'Coon Club, on the St. Francis, get their 
good times. While I was looking over the papers, a 
small, unshaven mart addressed me, and made motions of 
inquiry in regard to my connection with Forest and 
Stream, which he saw me examining with considerable 
attention. I forgot him in the interesting things that 
Mr. Johnson and Mr. Mitchell had to tell. Especially 
was I struck with the suggestion that I make a trip down 
the St. Francis River, and arranged my plans accord- 
ingly. I would put bag and baggage and boat on the cars 
for Pickett, and there start down the St. Francis on a 
250-mile journey. 
All the way down the river I had been warned to keep 
my eyes open. Repeatedly I was told that I would find 
men of the most desperate character along the way, and 
that they would not hesitate to do murder if a little 
money was the incentive. As my expenses were not large, 
I carried only enough to take me from town to town, so 
to speak, but nevertheless I took as much precaution as 
possible to prevent being knocked on the head. 
I did not once think_ of crime in other than violent 
forms, and when the inquisitive man of the library 
joined me late in the afternoon on the main street of 
town, I accepted _ his company and proceeded to get 
as much information from him concerning the river as 
possible. He was an undersized, chinless individual, who 
