t)EC. 10, 1904.3 
FOREST_ AND_J51 REAL* 
487 
were of common occurence. Men killed duckSj twisted 
off their heads and" threw away the carcasses. The man 
who brought in _ the most heads was the best man. 
Deer were killed for their hides — one party recently 
arrested had nineteen green hides in their possession. 
Wild turkeys were shot and sent to market to "cover 
expenses." The Swamp Angel found himself hunted 
out of his own meat. 
Then when game began to get scarce, some St. 
Louis men formed a club and bought up a lot of land, 
from which hunters were to be excluded. I couldn't 
learn just what happened when the attempt to keep 
the swamp angels from the wild lands was made, for 
I did not know that such an attempt had been made 
until after I was out of the St. Francis. But the situ- 
ation was handled effectually. After fuming a while, 
the swamp angel burned buildings, took a few shots 
at obnoxious persons, and then raised his voice, til! 
it was heard in the Legislature of his State. Then the 
Arkansas non-resident law was passed. It is not en- 
forced against men who do not hog the game, nor the 
hunting lands, nor interfere with the swamp angels; 
but the club that tried to overwhelm the swamp angels, 
found itself thrown out of the State bodily. The club 
sportsmen of the Arkansas swamps are, without ques- 
tion, the meekest sportsmen on the continent as re- 
gards the natives of their favorite hunting grounds. 
Throughout the St. Francis Lake region, the dead 
trees have furnished two classes of men with inter- 
esting occupations. It is only a few years since the 
dead trees ceased to be cut for the purpose of rafting 
the logs to the saw-mills. Hunters, during the over- 
flow, used to cut down enough of the dry standing 
timber to make rafts, on which they lived while they 
hunted. The nearest dry land might be several miles 
from this raft, and the hunters came and went, of 
course, in canoes or boats. If one became lost, he had 
to tie his boat to a tree and wait for daylight. A 
stranger sort of hunting cannot be imagined. Of 
course there were places back in the woods which were 
not overflowed, and here the game congregated in 
vast quantities — deer, turkeys and the rest. One would 
find deer standing around in water up to their knees, 
on ridges that were not quite high enough. The poor 
things became emaciated with hunger, and no one of 
the natives killed them, unless for meat. It was the 
visitor who came in and knocked them over with shot- 
guns at a range of ten feet. The swamp rabbits — hares 
— are seen sitting in rows on logs half submerged. 
But these rabbits take to water like deer when the 
dogs pursue them, so the water is a hardship, merely as 
it keeps them from their food. They become so weak 
and careless, that clubs are used to kill them. And 
wild turkeys are shot from trees with equal ease. It 
is in such features as these that the tourist gains some 
idea of what the Arkansas swamps are. In a mountain 
country game goes to "high ground" in wet weather. 
But here, for a breadth of eighty or ninety miles, and a 
length of 300, an elevation of ten feet means more, rela- 
tively, than 500 in the Adirondacks — much more, for 
when a deer is up to its knees in water near the freezing 
point, a further rise of ten inches soon spells death to it. 
Here and there along the way were sticks jutting up 
from the water, on the ends of which were bits of duck or 
fish, and inshore from them the reddish line of rust 
marking the presence of No. 1 or 2 steel traps. The traps 
were only six or eight rods apart, and in none that we 
saw was there any catch. It was a glimpse of past 
industry worth noting emphatically. Years ago these 
bottoms furnished furs in vast quantities, and the 
regular trappers were men who made western history; 
but in these later days, the trappers make a scant living, 
at best. The man who set these traps told me that 
he began in early September, and trapped as long as 
he could catch any. He said he began so early, in 
order to get ahead of other trappers — with the usual 
result of "blue" hides, scantily furred and worth only 
a few cents. If the trappers would wait till late 
October, even the present catch would-treble in value. 
But it is not done; and trapping is merely a piecing- 
out process, utilized by men who, for the most part, 
eke their livings from as many and as easy sources as 
possible. 
. Years ago Mitchell trapped in the bottoms for fun, 
and made money at it. The channel up which we went 
to look at St. Francis Lake was the scene of many in- 
cidents memorable in swamp trapping, one of which 
was Mitchell and Charlie Gunlock coming down in the 
dead of a black, cloudy night, with a load of furs, in a 
dugout sunk almost to the gunwales, and only the feel 
of the bottom at the end of a paddle to go by. Gun- 
lock mentioned that incident almost the first thing when 
I met him a hundred miles or so further down the St. 
Francis as one of the best feats of swamp craft he had 
known in twenty-five years' experience; Mitchell was 
the pilot. 
We returned to the club house in the late dusk. It 
was the time when the swamps — as all wild lands — 
accentuated their individuality. The loneliness, the 
chilled humidity, the dense forest brakes and the flat- 
ness were most plain. When the poet of the swamp 
lands begins to sing, he will unquestionably dwell on 
the blunt twilight of his favorite land. No one who 
goes into the swamp and feels the wonderful compres- 
sion there which is the antithesis of mountain exhilara- 
tion, can help but understand the men who go hunting 
in noisy crowds because they cannot bear the natural 
spiritual depression incident to the lowlands. The 
quack of a duck, the cheep of a muskrat and the wash 
of the wind through the flag belong more to the moist, 
forest-clad lowlands than do human voices raised to 
shatter the stillness. 
Of the river, down which I was to go, I could hear 
little definite information. Mitchell had not been down 
it in twenty years, and none of the others were ac- 
quainted with the region. But wilderness, frontier 
cabins and clearings might all be found there, and if 
I was to get through at all, it was time to start on. A 
freeze might come any time, which would hold me fast 
for days. It was Dec. 11, and time to start on. 
It was morning when I loaded my boat and made 
ready to start on. A trapper was at the boat house 
getting ready to go down stream a half-mile to camp 
in a tent for the winter. All his duffle, tent, stove, a 
hundred traps, bedding, and the like were piled in a 
dugout ten feet long and twenty inches wide. The 
sides were only half an inch clear of the water when 
the mass of stuff was in it, and he had only room for 
his feet as he stood in the stern balancing. He landed 
against a foot high bank, sawed by a three-mile cur- 
rent, without mishap — but I don't know how he did it. 
The canoe was unloaded when I came past him a few 
minutes later, guided by a paddler who was to show me 
the way through an intricate maze of quake-river 
stumps and logs. 
Through the maze, I came to a youth in a board 
canoe, on his way from his line of traps to the cabin 
boat at the foot of St. Francis Lake. His guidance was 
welcome, for without it I would surely have hung up 
on numerous shallows on the way. 
The foot of the lake was indicated by a scarcely per- 
ceptible rise in the ground, and the appearance of 
river banks. The cabin boat was on skids, and beside 
it was a gasolene stern-wheeler for tender. I drove 
past in the quickening current and a hundred yards 
beyond I was alone, and very much so. The most ardent 
seeker of solitude will go far and wide before he finds 
a lonelier place than the Arkansas Bottoms when a 
winter's day is coming to a close, even though the sky 
be clear and the weather warm. Indeed mere warmth 
of weather in winter is a matter of suspicion as that 
night impressed upon me. 
I pushed, instead of pulled the oars, and the current 
was considerable, but I did not make fast time, and 
when dusk came I was still far from Marked Tree. I 
tied to a stump, unrolled my hammock; spread the 
canvas over the gunwales, without hoops, and crawled 
down in, and by dark I was asleep. For hours I slept 
blissfully, soundly and restfully, but suddenly the wind 
veered with a swish, and in a moment I was awakened 
by the rain-bearing chilling wind that comes from the 
north. There was nothing to do but turn out, brace 
up the canvas on tripod and sticks to shed the water 
and then try and sleep again — a try that was success- 
ful. In the morning the oil-stove warmed the tent, and 
some hot cocoa and some of the lunch Mitchell put up for 
me served for breakfast. 
The rain was not yet come, but held off in the clammy 
fashion that characterizes weather in the bottoms. I 
soon started on, because my boat contained no grub, 
and, rain or shine, I must reach Marked Tree. The 
wind brought a faintly perceptible mist, which in- 
creased in density, until the water gathered in globules 
on everything. When these broke and ran down the 
sides of the boat, one knew that it was raining. After 
a time the mist drops increased in size to such an ex- 
tent that their pelting on the face was perceptible. In 
a couple of hours, when I reached Marked Tree (upper 
landing), the rain was pouring down. I stopped in a 
trapper's tent for a time waiting for it to cease. The 
trapper and a visitor were knitting hoop nets, and one 
listened with manifest pleasure when I told them that 
a steel trap half a mile above town contained a 'possum 
busily engaged in chewing a log close by. 
After a time I went up town in a hard rain to buy 
supplies. Marked Tree is said to be on the route of an 
old Indian trail that crossed the bottoms, and that here 
the Murrell gang had a hiding place for stolen slaves, 
and other plunder. It is a town on stilts, these days, 
- very noisy with the whine of handsaws and exhaust of 
steam. The buildings are all on stilts, or dirt embank- 
ments, thrown up because the region is liable to be 
flooded under any spring. At night, electric lights 
illuminate the clearing, and beams dart far among the 
trunks of a wilderness in the taming. 
I bought supplies, of which quinine and lemons were 
an important part, for a weeping cold and malarial 
aches had seized me. A soap box full of stuff was 
brought to the landing for me, and I went down stream. 
The saw-mills had two booms across the river just 
below the railroad bridge, and I had a time passing them 
both. After seven miles' rowing, I came to Marked 
Tree again, and by land about a mile from the upper 
landing. When I was down stream out of sight of 
town it was forest on both sides of me again. I grew 
hungry, and on examining my stuff, I discovered that 
the chubby-faced clerk had left out my chocolate, po- 
tatoes, tomatoes, etc., to the value of forty cents at the 
store, but whose absence I felt for the next 250 miles. 
I hoped the clerk's dinner, for which he was in such 
haste, didn't taste good to him. I should have ex- 
amined my stuff when it was delivered. But there was 
no help for it, so I cooked dinner without potatoes 
and the other things. 
I tied in some miles below town for the night. I had 
cane hoops to hold up the boat cover and a piece of 
oil cloth purchased at Marked Tree, covered the bow, 
so that neither the rain nor wind was unbearable. Still 
at frequent intervals all that long night the warm 
zephyrs of rain,_ followed by freezing gusts, kept rousing 
me from sleep in most wearisome fashion. The swamp 
traveler during winter weather ought to have a per- 
fectly wind-proof covering for his boat. Toward morn- 
ing the cold wind held steady, the sky cleared and ice 
formed around the boat an inch thick. Dressed for the 
cold, especially the feet, it was not uncomfortable. 
Shortly after daybreak I awakened to a cold and 
raw morning. But the oil-stove warmed the interior 
of the tent, and thawed the frozen canvas. Breakfast 
was as poor a meal as I ever ate; for my baking 
powder was damp and the pancakes were clammy and 
bitter in consequence. But a cup of thick chocolate 
made the mess digestible and I started on. It was a 
clear day and I heard occasional gunshots, and saw a 
pair of hunters at Horseshoe Lake— one of the couple 
of hundred horseshoe lakes of the Mississippi Valley 
which were formed by the streams taking short cuts 
across peninsula necks. The hunters told of Turkey 
Jimmy killing twenty-seven coons in one night by 
1 leans of a headlight of his own invention. This 
sounded pretty steep, but it is true, probably, for there 
seem to be more raccoons on the Mississippi bottoms 
than in any other part of the land. 
It was a long, hard day because the water was so low 
that at the shoals there was usually but one channel 
down which I could make my way. Sometimes the 
keel hung in the sand, and I had to back out and try 
again. The sand bars were moving down stream in 
waves, the faces of which were steep, reaching far down 
into deep green pools of water, while the crests were 
just under water. I was aground a dozen times before 
I thought to put the weight in the boat well toward the 
bow. When I struck then, by shifting the stuff back 
a couple of feet I could pole myself out of the false chan- 
nels that lured me on and seek the true one a yard or 
so to right or left. 
The river was utterly sinuous. Ahead of me was a 
bend, and behind was a bend only a few rods distant, 
if I "was not already in the curve. The straight reaches 
were fifty or seventy-five yards long usually. The 
stream would bear to the right until one felt as if he 
was coming back to the upper stream again, and then 
the bend would be to the left for as long a time. On 
one side was the steep bank into which the current was 
cutting slowly, and on the other the sloping bar, with 
willows and stream-side shrubs which hid the gum 
iorests in that direction. Though I watched the sun, 
I lost the sense of direction, and my compass seemed 
to point anywhere, except to the north. Had I been 
on foot. I could not have been more completely turned 
around. The current of the stream at the ripples alone 
assured me that I was down-bound. 
At intervals I flushed flocks of mallard ducks, and 
sometimes I had glimpses of squirrels among the trees. 
And at intervals along the stream were the evidences 
of men being in that neighborhood. Every dozen rods 
or so were fish heads, tails and chunks on the ends of 
short sticks jutting from the water. Inside, at the edge 
of the bank was the rusty form of a steel trap. Beyond 
the trap, out in the way was often another stake, "the 
tangle stick," around which a victim would wind the 
chain and so accomplish its own drowning. In one of 
the traps was a sparrow hawk, his body half submerged 
in the icy water. He was a most disgusted looking bird, 
and seemed ashamed of himself. 1 did not attempt to 
kill him, nor any of the other victims that I saw on the 
way. One time a man was found dead, shot through 
the heart, on a fish box in the Arkansas River that was 
not his. An action in the neighborhood of a trap might 
be misconstrued, so I kept my distance from the traps. 
Late in the afternoon I came to a new house built Of 
rough boards, but vacant. A couple of hundred yards be- 
low I came to an old log house, in front of which was 
a gallows-like frame from which were suspended a lean 
wild turkey hen and a big swamp hare. I ran in below a 
log at the ford and after tying went up to the house. 
A tall, lean man before the fire-place shrunk before my 
voice when I addressed him from the door, and he in- 
vited me in to "warm" in a voice that was not welcoming ; 
nevertheless I "warmed." I spoke of the game, but he 
was not communicative. On asking about the region he 
said it was thickly settled. "There are twenty-five people 
and three houses within five hundred yards of this place," 
he said. "Did you see that new house when you come 
down the riveh? Theh's a fam'ly going to move in theh 
d'rectly. And theh's a house about a mile below here that 
was built only las' spring. This country's settling up 
fast; hit sure is." He volunteered the information that 
he was a carpenter, and was profiting by the boom that 
had struck the locality. In the morning he was gone 
hunting when I went up to say good-by to him. A suspi- 
cious man I was to some of the swamp people that I met 
The time when detectives hunt the "wanted" in the 
Arkansas swamps is not yet over with. And when a little 
while after starting down stream I met three men in a 
flat boat towing a dug-out, the thought that perhaps these 
men were less than they should be was confirmed that 
night by an old man who was seeking information about 
a sassafras dug-out which pearl fishers were supposed to 
have stolen. 
The three men were the advance of the army of pearl 
fishers which was making its way up the St. Francis. At 
Big Eddy was a gasolene" boat — a home-made affair with 
canvas top, with which a' man was making his fortune 
carrying the shells he was digging to market. When I 
climbed to the top of the twelve-foot high bank, half a 
dozen fox squirrels darted among the leaves seeking tree 
trunks from. behind whicli they peeked at me impudently; 
and a swamp hare, startled from its form, ran within ten 
feet of me,iheaded for the swamp depths. "The woods 
were full of game," as wild turkeys scratching in the 
leaves and deer hoof prints in the moist soil showed. 
I wished a thousand times that I had a proper com- 
panion with me. Those miles of forest would then have 
offered vast pleasure instead of loneliness worse than that 
of a crowd. To leave the boat was to invite theft by some 
one of the many whose dug-outs scratched the sand at the 
shoals, but who seldom came in sight To stop was to 
make a delay that would, perhaps, result in my being 
frozen in by the ice. And yet a month could have been 
passed there in seeing the swamp forests, which are 
wildest America, perhaps. 
Moss-grown, vine-hung gum cypress and willow trees 
with occasional patches of cane on higher and richer 
ground marked the wilderness brims that were at the edge 
of the river. The moss covered whole tree trunks, and 
began to show the ragged edges and flying ends which in 
the Louisiana swamps becomes the loose purple-gray 
tresses of Spanish moss. The trees looked awkward, for 
their trunks were big and clumsy, while their top branches 
were heavily jointed and gnarled. So many of the trees 
were diseased and fungus-grown that the mind was filled 
with a cold horror. Many of the trees were of vast size, 
splendid columns with beautifully marked bark, on which 
the sun marked the ridges and crevices with lattice- 
work distinctness. But frequently the searing coils of 
ivy were sunk deep into the bark, and the breaking 
branches and the discolored wood that was disclosed 
showed the slow strangled agony of the parasitic victims. 
So many of the trees were in trouble that one fancied him- 
self in a land stricken by pestilence. It was a shuddering 
horror this of silent trees of wonderful size and strength 
giving way slowly to the damp, rot in their hearts The 
healthy tree, thrown to the ground by a shattering thun- . 
derbolt, was a pleasanter spectacle. 
Stopping at a house of sawed boards to ask where I 
was, I found only women there, and they were frightened 
to see a foreigner come up from the river. One old one 
whose thin clothes and fleshless bones sugested one of A 
B. Frost's most pathetic pictures, answered the questions 
as she stood before the door arms akimbo. The next 
house was a right smart distance." "Parkins' is that- 
