Forest and Stream. 
A Weekly Journal of the Rod and Gun. 
Copyright, 1904, by Forest and Stream Publishing Co. 
Terms, $4 a Ybar. 10 Cts. a Copy. I 
Six Months, $2. J 
NEW YORK, SATURDAY, DECEMBER 3, 1904. 
J VOL. LXIII.— No. 23. 
) No. 846 Broadway, Nbw York, 
HE PAYS HIS FINE. 
For a long time it has been known that a young 
New Yorker who visited Montana in the summer of 
1903 was guilty of serious infractions of the game law. 
ifhe Montana game wardens learned of this, and have 
been pressing him hard ever since. A dispatch in the 
papers of last Tuesday, November 29, announces that 
the New Yorker has plead guilty, been fined the sum of 
$500 for killing a mountain sheep, and has paid the fine. 
The incident is therefore regarded as closed. 
It is well understood — and the fact is referred to in 
the article on the mountain sheep in "American Big 
Game in Its Haunts" — that this man was taken with 
his guide to a well-known "lick" in northern Montana, 
and that during the first part of his watching a bunch 
of nine rams came there. There was much shooting, 
and finally the rams all went away. The day following 
seven rams came to the lick, and the New Yorker, with 
or without the assistance of his guide, killed three or 
four of them. The matter became known to the forest 
ranger of the locality, and to other people, and the 
New Yorker, hearing of it, left the State, as did also 
his guide. 
It is well recognized that the punishment of infrac- 
tions of game laws by a mere fine has bad features. It 
tends to make people think that there is one law for the 
rich and another for the poor. A wealthy man, caring 
little for a mere fine, is perhaps ready to break the law 
and to pay the penalty; the poor man, unable to pay a 
heavy fine, may be shut up in jail if he breaks the law. 
The law should provide that infractions of the game 
laws may be punished either by fine or imprisonment, 
or by both. If this were the case, the rich man, know- 
ing that he might be imprisoned for his offense, and 
having before his eyes the fear of the sturdy common- 
sense of the average justice of the peace, would hesitate 
a long time before committing any glaring violation of 
the statutes for the protection of game. 
The curious way in which laws and regulations for- 
bidding the killing of game are regarded by the aver- 
age man was well exemplified a few years ago, when 
an eminent New York preacher openly killed an elk 
in the Yellowstone Park, and then went to the com- 
manding officer, and telling what he had done, asked to 
be allowed to pay the fine. The remarks made by the 
commanding officer to the divine are probably still re- 
membered by him, and we venture to say made much 
more impression than any fine would have done. 
THE CAMEL. 
Cabia Blanco has long since shown himself a much- 
traveled Ulysses, who has visited many places, known 
many men, and seen many things. Not long ago when 
Capt. Wm. F. Flynn wrote of having been on a bear trail 
on the top of a remote mountain away in the South- 
west, Cabia Blanco responded the next week with the 
story of how he had been on the same trail on the 
same mountain, and had run from — or was it pursued 
after — the same big bear. And when we printed some- 
thing about the killing of a whale, in which was dis- 
covered a harpoon which had been imbedded in its car- 
cass many years, he capped the story with a reminis- 
cence of a whale which his own ship had taken in the 
Pacific having a long time carried harpoon in its 
body. This wide range of experience, his faculty of 
seeing things, and his happy way of telling of them, 
all contribute to the interest of whatever comes from 
his pen. His simplicity, directness and sincerity are 
qualities we can all appreciate. To-day he writes of 
his "meeting up" with one of the stranded relics of the 
band of camels which were imported by the United 
States Government. The incident is a concise and 
graphic ending of a comic story, which is humorous in 
no less degree because it happens to be an historical 
monograph on an official enterprise involving generous 
expenditure of public funds. The utter futility of this 
camel enterprise of the United States authorities could 
not have been more completely summed up than it is 
in the picture Cabia Blanco draws of that lone beast, 
with camelesque obstinacy refusing to budge, or to do 
anything else than to stand stock still in the corral and 
"eat its head off" at the fodder rack". 
The failure of the camel importing attempt was not 
so unfortunate after all. This is a land of railroads, not 
of camel trails. The genius of America is expressed 
in the snort of the locomotive, not in the camel's 
squeal. As the development of the half-century inter- 
vening has abundantly demonstrated, we can conquer 
the deserts in an American way, which has in it noth- 
ing of the Sahara. We have outgrown the camel stage 
of human progression, and have relegated the beast to 
the category of those wild creatures which, thinking 
we have no better use for them, we shoot, if we can 
get within range; and afterward, growing older and 
wiser, and moved by motives partly practical and 
partly sentimental, we would not see utterly destroyed, 
but strive to save from extermination. The camel to- 
day has a place with the elk and the mountain goat 
and other big game of Arizona, under the protection 
of that clause of the law which forbids its possession 
dead or alive. If any living specimens be still chewing 
the cud of contentment in the security of the arid Ari- 
zona wastes, they take good care to avoid the prox- 
imity of man, and in particular of troopers who would 
persuade them to carry United States mails. 
Another American camel enterprise is worth noting 
in this connection. In the early part of the last cen- 
tury, camels were introduced into Cuba to transport the 
copper ore of the Cobre mines to Santiago. The beasts 
proved to be well adapted to the work; and perhaps 
because the Spanish tongue had some resemblance to 
the gibberish they had been used to, the Cobre camels 
were fairly tractable burden carriers. But the animals 
were killed off eventually by the ravages of a most 
insignificant creature, the niqua, or, as it is called in 
the English tongue, jigger, a minute insect classified 
by scientists as a cross between Satan and a woodtick. 
This little pest burrowed into the feet of the camels 
and eventually proved their destruction. 
MONOLOGUES OF KIAH. 
As became sportsmen good and true, the campers were 
early risers. They had slept sweetly and were dispatch- 
ing their simple but abundant breakfast by the light of 
the camp-fire, before the dawn. With admirable two- 
handed sweeps at every dish in sight far and near regard- 
less of sequence, they maintained a graceful rhythm of 
knife and fork; consequently the hillocks of edibles van- 
ished with speed, volume and accuracy. This expeditious 
manner of tossing food is oftentimes a peculiar feature 
of some sportsmen when living close to nature. Without 
interrupting his intake in the least, Ruben remarked: "I 
confess that I always feel cross and sour in the morning, 
particularly at breakfast. After a good meal like this, 
however, I feel that I am my sunny self again. I attribute 
it to the vital forces being low, therefore not to any true, 
blemish of disposition. In the morning everyone needs 
an hour or two in which to pull oneself together after a 
night of slumber before one can hope to attain full, 
normal sweetness of temper; then one can heartily con- 
cern one's self in promoting the comfort and interests of 
one's fellows, while betimes not forgetting one's own. 
True sportsmanship enjoins, as Kiah wisely said — " "I 
was thinking of that very subject myself," Kiah hastily 
interposed, "and I find that there are very, very few 
sportsmen who agree with me on a subject which is clear 
as the sun at noon. There indeed are few who accurately 
know what sportsmanship enjoins. Besides the heart-to- 
heart talks so dear to all of us, the friendships of old 
comrades in sport, the privilege of forming an acquaint- 
anceship with members of the guild who are strangers, 
the delights of living close to nature and numerous other 
correlated pleasures and benefits, I know that true sports- 
manship is a matter of set forms. Do you hunt birds? 
Then such should be done in a ceremonial manner. So 
of fishing. These set forms admit of no deviation what- 
ever, if you would be a true sportsman. I would suggest 
to you, purely in the interest of sportsmanship — a sug- 
gestion free from all egotism — that if you desire to know 
the precise forms to which I so earnestly allude, you will 
respectfully and studiously observe your good friend 
Kiah fish and shoot. Then you will behold the refined 
gold of true sportsmanship. All others are base, spurious. 
Multitudes will obstinately contend that as sportsmanship 
has merit according to the pleasure which it confers, the 
methods which any individual finds pleasurable accord- 
ing to his own ideas, skill and money, are legitimately 
entitled to recognition in sportsmanship so long as they 
violate no written or moral law. This, if allowed, 
would reduce sport to a variant according to the whim or 
gratification of the individual. It is a perversion of sport 
to have any enjoyment in violation of the forms which I 
practice. I elaborated them from years of experience, and 
I know them to be correct because of the delights I de- 
rive by observing them in pursuit and capture. Thus 
they are not according to the bigoted emotions of those 
individuals who would force sportsmanship into their 
selfish measurements. They base all their conclusions on 
impressions and aspects. All their concepts are of aspects. 
Therefore, considered properly, as a chaotic psychological 
phenomena, whose component parts are a heterogenous 
hodgepodge of freak concepts and distorted aspects,- I 
submit to you, Ruben, whether or not you know what 
true sportsmanship is." 
"I don't know anything about it, Kiah," Ruben humbly 
replied, "and after your heart-to-heart talk, I don't think 
I ever knew anything." 
We are glad to have the appreciation of Henry P. 
Wells, written by Mr. Hyde. It voices the feelings of a 
large circle of friends and angling acquaintances. One 
quality of Mr. Wells, which must have impressed all 
who come in contact with him, and a quality which is 
everywhere manifested in his books on angling, was 
the thoroughness which led him to investigate to the 
ultimate attainable factor a difficult problem in mechan- 
ics. Mr. Wells was a patent attorney; the work of his 
profession cultivated his natural bent in this direction; 
the integrity of a patent might depend on some recon- 
dite basic principle, to the complete mastery of which 
he applied himself with a zest like that which made 
him the enthusiastic angler playing a salmon. When 
he came to write his fishing books, this taste — or shall 
we say passion — for investigation contributed in gener- 
ous degree to the value of his studies and writings. 
The preface of the book "Fly-Rods and Fly-Tackle" 
illustrates this quality of its author in the paragraph 
telling of his planned study of the conditions under 
which the fish in the water sees the fly: 
Though these experiments were many in number, that which I 
regarded as of first importance was the further investigation -of 
how lines, leaders and flies appeared to trout under the varying 
conditions of light and water which confront the angler when 
rod in hand. It is not my nature to be content with one experi- 
ment when another and a more conclusive method of investiga- 
tion suggests itself. My plan was to procure a diver's outfit, 
together with the necessary skilled assistance, and at various 
depths beneath the surface of the water, and over light and dark 
colored bottoms, and in sunshine and shadow, myself impersonate 
a fish while a friend angled for me, as it were. Thus, and with 
aid of telephonic communication and a stenographer, I hoped 
in two or three weeks' time to make quite an impression on the 
problem. 
The idea of public preserves for wild game, whether 
for game in general or particular species most in need 
of special fostering, is growing in popular appreciation. 
The current report of the Biological Survey illustrates 
this in its record of two reservations so widely apart 
as Florida and California. The Florida one is the 
Pelican Island preserve for pelicans, situated on the 
East Coast. Through the co-operation of the American 
Ornithologists' Union, a warden has been maintained 
and the birds have been practically undisturbed. That 
the Pelican Island preserve may be a permanent insti- 
tution must be the wish of every winter visitor to the 
East Coast, where the birds make such an attractive 
feature of shore life. It would be hard to say how 
many thousands of persons find pleasure in the sight of 
these immense birds flying in groups and squads and 
companies, in courses parallel with the shore; now sail- 
ing majestically before the wind, and now beatjnp- up 
heavily against the gale, or swinging in long curving 
lines to and from the roosting grounds. As a com- 
mercial proposition, the pelican is one of the outdoor 
attractions of Florida which are good investments. 
The other preserve noted in the report is the pre- 
serve for the elk presented to the Government by Miller 
and Lux, established in Tulare county, Cal., on the 
Middle Fork of the Kaweah River, just within the 
boundary of the Sequoia National Park, the details of 
which were given in our jggue of November 19. 
