Feb. 2S, 1905.] 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
ertv and even life. ' And the reader will find it difficult to 
ijilearn any sufficient reasons for their being left by the 
Government without the institutions of civilized society. 
Their condition is truly deplorable. They are liable to be 
/j arrested for debt or crime and conveyed to the jails of 
T Canada ! Arrested on American territory by British offi- 
cers, tried by British tribunals, imprisoned in British 
prisons, and hung or shot by British executioners ! They 
cannot trade with the Indians. For, in that case, the 
business of British subjects is interfered with; who,_by 
way of retaliation, will withhold the supplies of clothing, 
J: household goods, etc., which the settlers have no other 
-'means of obtaining. Nor is this all. The civil condition 
of the territory being such as virtually to prohibit the 
. emigration, to any extent, of useful and desirable citizens, 
'Sithey have nothing to anticipate from any sensible increase 
'of their numbers, nor any amelioration of their state to 
look for from the accession of female society. In the 
8 desperation incident to their lonely lot, they take wives 
^: from the Indian tribes around them. What will be the 
ultimate consequence of this unpardonable negligence on 
the part of the Government upon the future destinies of 
Oregon cannot be clearly predicted. But it is manifest 
that it must be disastrous in the highest degree, both as 
to its claims to the sovereignty of that territory and the 
moral condition of its inhabitants." 
Farnham's original intention was to explore_ Oregon 
during the winter just beginning, and the following sum- 
mer to have returned to the States with the American fur 
traders. Already the rainy season had begun, however, 
and his intended course was impossible ; and it was uncer- 
tain whether the fur traders would return to the States 
next year. That plan had to be given up. Finally he de- 
termined to take ship from the mouth of: the Columbia 
River either for New York or California, as the oppor- 
. tunity might offer. But before starting for the mouth of 
3 the river, he gives a long description of the geography of 
Oregon and its productions. ^ 
At Fort Vancouver he found a number of Hudson s 
Bay people, with whom the time passed very pleasantly. 
Then, again taking to his canoe, he passed down to the 
mouth of the river, where he found the good ship Van- 
couver, Captain Duncan ; and shortly after, passing out to 
sea, Farnham's travels in the great Anahuac were ended. 
George Bird Grinnell. 
Tk. Samttel Patfcef. 
It was my privilege to know personally Dr. Samuel 
Parker, referred to in Mr. Grinnell's "Tales of the Path- 
finders," Forest and Stream, January 28. 
In the middle '70s, or nearly forty years after the ex- 
pedition referred to. Dr. Parker was one of a number 
of people who came out from Ithaca on the old Ithaca 
and Owego turnpike to conduct "revival" meetings ih the 
King schoolhouse. I remember Dr. Parker as a little 
spare man, with a complexion that never permits its pos- 
sessor to look old. His sparse hair and "scraggly" beard 
conveyed small intimation of advanced age, both being of 
a peculiar flaxen color that rarely gets gray. Indeed, I 
at that time hardly believed Dr. Parker to be much past 
middle life. He was not a ready nor in any sense a 
magnetic speaker, and I greatly fear that he found in the 
King schoolhouse gatherings a large per cent, of hearers 
less attentive, and in many instances less respectful, than 
the untutored children of the plains, whose simple life, 
but lost religious state, appealed to him so strongly. 
Dr. Parker was a man of strong convictions, deeply 
sincere, and thoroughly, in earnest, and in the mixed 
assembly of South Hill farmers he enjoyed a friendship 
that grew to respect and appreciate his varied attainments 
and kindness of heart. I think that - at that time Dr. 
Parker practiced medicine to some extent and also con- 
ducted a patent soliciting business of considerable propor- 
tions. He died some years ago esteemed and _ widely 
known as a man of* broad information, whose life was 
lived in the open andJ;devoted to doing good. 
M. Chill. 
Mississippi River Fishermen. 
They said it was fifteen miles to the mouth of the 
St. Francis, and in the morning, after running a bad 
sand-bar, I pulled away, half expecting to make the 
mouth by noon. The narrow river, and the gloomy 
tales associated with its drainage area, as well as the 
natural attraction of the big Mississippi, made me 
anxious to get out of the cotton land. 
The river was so deep in its gully-like course, that I 
could see but little of the country through which I 
was passing, and that little was dreary. People were 
i encouraged to clear the lands there by the success of 
li lumbering operations which paid the first cost. Re- 
ij maining trees, the worthless ones, had been deadened, 
; and their gaunt features for miles and miles formed 
the horizon, as seen from the river banks. These 
trees rot and fall to the ground, and in four or five 
]i years from the girdling a plow runs freely through, the 
mass of humus, marking the decayed trunks. When 
the plow can go to the four corners of the plantation, land 
that was formerly worth $1.25 an acre can be sold for 
$30 per acre as "cotton land." And this "new land" 
is woefully needed throughout the Mississippi Valley. 
Some of the most wonderfully productive of cotton 
plantations have fallen off more than half. Rotation 
of crops is scarcely known, and the consequence is 
worn-out cotton fields. Nor is there much hope save 
from the Mississippi River itself. When the great 
stream decides to hurl itself through the levee and take 
a new course through the back country, depositing its 
vast quantities of fertilizing sediment on the hungry 
ground, a new lease of life will come to the old fields. 
But the river will have to do it in spite of mankind. 
Some believe that the most expensive folly ever under- 
taken by mankind, for peace or war, was the modern 
levee system. It builds up the bed of the river in- 
evitably. The levee banks are now higher than ever 
before, and each decade they must be increased in 
height to make up for the filled-in bed. Crevasse fol- 
lows crevasse, and few note the significance of these 
"disasters. _ 
A Mississippi River commission surveyor, whom I 
met at Helena, Ark., said that the river bed was un- 
questionaDly filling 'up, how fast, he couldn't say. 
"You'd have to compare the measurements of many 
terms of years. All I care about is getting my money." 
He added that the "levees must be built higher and 
higher" to meet the raising bed-level. "How high?" 
I asked, and the surveyor made an expressive gesture 
toward the sky with a toss of his hand. 
"We're living in a fool's paradise," a St. Francis 
Bottom cotton planter said to me. "We think and hope 
the levee is going to hold. Once in ten or fifteen years 
it doesn't, and we lose all our cattle and horses, a cot- 
ton crop, our houses — the profits of years. If _ we knew 
the flood was coming, we could prepare for it. If the 
Government has got to spend money for us, and won't 
let us spend it ourselves, then have the dirt that is used 
for levees thrown into mounds, where we can go in 
highwater times, and save our cattle. There are a 
good many of us planters would like to have that silt' 
on our lands. It would save the damage of the over- 
flow many times over. We got along before the St. 
Francis was leveed off — two-story houses did it. And 
if they'd only let the river build up the land with sedi- 
ment, a lot of that low swamp could be worked some- 
time with effect. I don't see why they couldn't let 
us have some of the sediment, anyhow — put locks in 
the levee, at places where it would relieve the pressure 
and fertilize the ground, too." 
On . the other hand, a mere question in regard to the 
wisdom of the levees put to a village druggist brought 
forth an emphatic approval of the dirt barrier betv/een 
the town properties and the yellow floods. ' It was de- 
nied that the river bed was filling up. "What would we 
all do if there wasn't any levees?" he asked. 
"Only fifteen miles to the Mississippi!" I said, ex- 
uberantly to myself, as I pulled down the St. Francis. 
Of late I had paid little attention to the twisting and 
winding of the stream. It was common to have the 
sunshine on me from all sides in the course of a day. 
Had I paused to consider the matter, or asked tlie 
simple question of "By land or by the river?" some 
bitter disappointments might have been- avoided. 
I started early, in order to make the river by noon, 
if possible, and Helena by night. I drove the boat 
along in the still waters as rapidly as possibly, with 
rare contentment. At 11 o'clock I was looking ahead, 
almost expecting to see the broad, yellow river before 
me at each turn, but suddenly I saw a cotton gin on - 
the left bank. That meant wide cottori plantations be- 
tween that gin and the Mississippi. It meant miles^ 
and miles down the St. Francis to the Mississippi. 
My logic might possibly have been wrong, but a 
skiffman crossing confirmed my conjecture. 
"Hits thirteen miles by water to the mouth," he said. 
The negroes, who told me it was fifteen miles, had not 
lied. They simply indicated the distance as it was by 
land. It was nearly twice as far by the river. 
With reason, the news made me dejected. The sky 
was gray and growing gloomier perceptibly hour by hour. 
There was no mistaking the signs — rain was at hand. 
I wondered that it did not fall. I cooked and ate 
dinner and then away I went and kept the water 
curling from the bow till I reached the shack-boat of 
an unsocial hoop maker. He said I had made nine 
miles. As he said it, the mist took form in the air and. 
began to fall as tiny rain drops. 
A long winding still-water ' marked the last four 
miles of the St. Francis, and I pulled them with the 
rain dripping from the wool fuzz of my sweater. • As I 
neared the mouth I heard a roar that increased in 
volume. Finally I could see a great sand-bar ahead, and 
willow trees — the Mississippi, unmistakably. But be- 
tween me and the big river was a low bank of mud, 
from which issued the roar. A man hailed me from his 
skiff: 
"You'd better not try to go out now;" he said, "water 
is pretty bad there — liable to get upset,.,and in that mud ' 
you'd never get out!" 
The Mississippi was very low, and the St. Francis . 
was cutting through the mud bank across its mouth, 
making a tumult of rapidsSjl lt was nearly dark. The 
rain was falling fast. I WQuld much rather have ap- ' 
proached the river in ' broad* Idaylight. ■ I didn't know 
what to do. But after the ma'n who warned me had 
passed on, I hailed a cabin' bpatman, whom I saw 
watching me. He asked me to come aboard, and so I 
made the acquaintance of Uncle Charlie Robertson. 
Uncle Charlie seemed to be the happiest and best 
natured man in the Delta Country, and his fifty-five 
years sat on him like forty. A clear gray eye, a 
stocky figure of medium size, a snap to his motions, and 
a fund of anecdote made him equally a companion and . 
a subject for the note-book man. He was living in a 
little cabin boat, warm, comfortable, with a bottle of 
whiskey on the table, the cork not too loose. The boat 
had been sold, for his busy season was at hand. He 
had to look after logs of a Helena company, which were 
due to come down on the spring rise. Uncle Charlie 
had resisted the call of the trapper's life for some time, 
but cpuldn't tell- how long it would be before he would 
come down the Missouri again in a skiff or cabin boat, 
trapping and hunting — ^getting a great deal of sport out 
of it, as well as profit. 
The rain, which threatened so much, didn't last long 
enough to more than wet the leaves, and Harry Smiley 
came down to have Uncle Charlie go coon hunting 
after supper. It was talk this, way and talk that way, 
and look at the weather and guess at it — nobody pre- 
tends to really read the weather on the lower Missis- 
sippi. It looked so threatening that it was almost de- 
cided not to go, but finally a start was made. 
They carried shotguns, and had "lamps" on their 
heads — quarter-moon shaped cans that fitted round the , 
forehead, and were fastened by canvas buckle and strap. 
A reflector threw the light from two round torch 
burners, one in each horn of the moon. Soap caked 
around the screw tops of the burners prevented leak- 
ing, more, or less. All through the Delta land these 
lamps sell for 50 cents. I didn't have a lamp, but 
tagged behind Uncle - Charlie, and found things suf- 
ficiently interesting. 
We went through a cornfield first, the tall stalks and ; 
flapping leaves in the yellow light making an impres- 
sion. Then we came to woods and here were further 
impressions— big trees, some underbrush and creeping 
vines. The hunter from the north lifts his toes as he 
lifts his feet; but the southern hunter walks with a limp 
ankle in order to . let every twig slip from the foot. 
I tripped considerably over tiny vines, and then took 
to watching Uncle Charlie's feet to see why he didn't trip, 
too. When I let my ankles hang limp, I progressed 
well enough. 
The light, turning with the hunter's head, throws the 
rays here and there. It seemed as though we walked 
pretty fast, and we made lots of noise — at least I did, 
for the flare of the torch above the reflector blinded me, 
and I lunged along, unable to see much. The ground 
was level, almost, but in the night it was easier to tell 
the grades than by day. We traveled on for miles and 
miles, it seemed, instead of the mile and a half we were 
to go to the fence, beyond which lay the Dark Corner, 
where a negro became so badly lost that he didn't 
know his own sister or home when he came out. 
We shined no coon, but we found a puddle of water 
all stirred up. "See this? A coon's been paddling 
around here within twenty minutes." 
They told me the sloughs ran east and west, and that 
to get back we would have to- go south. We could 
see Smiley's lamp flashing at intervals in the distance, 
being visible much further off than a man would be in 
the daytime. Sometimes we saw the lights of other 
hunters. Once in a while a gun would be fired, sound- 
ing loud in the stillness of the woods. Smiley saw the 
eyes of one 'coon up in a tree, and fired. He heard it 
fall, and began to look for it. He circled round a 
couple of times, called for us, and we went to him. By 
that time east was west, and west, north with him. 
"That coon's right within twenty yards of us now!" he 
said. I stood still, while they went circling around; 
but the coon wasn't found. Some trees were then 
marked with a knife in order to make a daylight search, 
and on we went, but not until matters were straight- 
ened out by the compass I carried. Curiously enough 
neither of the hunters had a compass, but depended on 
stars, and previous acquaintance with the forest. 
The trees and woods looked different, of course, and 
when we came to the red, fluted swell-butt cypress 
trees, the fluting caught the light along the rolls and 
were beautiful, especially when overhead the vines 
huhg down. It was among these vines that the Adiron- 
dacK habit of taking hold of twigs and grass blades was 
completely broken. I got hold of a vine with forty 
stings to the inch. Some of the hunters wear thick 
gloves, and the hardest fisted turn their elbows up and 
double their heads down into the crook when they 
buck the thickets — usually they go around, however, 
looking for openings. 
The hunters mostly had on boots, which were needed 
in the hollows which the rain during my stay at Windy 
Jim's (no relation of Uncle Charlie) had filled more or 
less. The thirsty got down on their hands and, still 
on their feet, drank this water, which proved as good 
as the cistern water which the people of the Bottoms 
depended on for drinking during the hot summer 
months; only I saw inch-long beetles skating round, and 
it took a long time to raise sufficient thirst for 
drinking. 
After a while — about midnight, to my reckoning, 
though only 9 o'clock — we came to a wire fence, beyond 
which lay the Dark Corner, where there was lots of 
game, but the canebrake was too dense. Here other 
hunters joined us, two of whom had coons slung sack- 
fashion by a string over their shoulders. They were 
horribly life-like, frothing red at the mouth, eyes star- 
ing and teeth showing — much like a wounded weasel 
cornered. 
Seven or eight of the men sat down in a circle to 
talk, and most of them put out their lights to save oil. 
The men who had brought only half a pint of oil in 
little bottles tried to borrow, from those who had 
started with a pint, but, unsuccessfully — very like the 
parable.' It was, "let's go' this way," and "that way's 
best!". Some tried half-hartedly to get somebody else 
to go with them beyond the fence, but no one would 
go far that way. Hunting in a land of canebrakes. some 
with cane twenty feet high is sport for the venturesome 
and careless; but none wanted to undertake it that 
night. Uncle Charlie and I, on going through a hay 
field of cane on our way back, came to a point where 
the compass pointed exactly wrong, but eventually 
Smiley yelled that he had found the road, and we 
walked ' down it for a couple of miles and, suddenly, I 
saw a steamer in the distance.' It was the Mississippi, 
but I couldn't have told how we got there. , It was not 
long before midnight when we turned into our bed: 
The morning was cold, with a bitter wind blowing, 
but in spite of that, there was an immeasurable sense 
of relief in being on the wide river again. I had missed 
the" deep, strong current, the- distant views and the 
companionship of other travelers. The swamp people 
were narrow in their horizon— ^"We never been thar; 
the men has, . though." On the Mississippi many of 
the cabin-boaters had traveled through more States 
in a month than most men do in a life time. 
A little' detail of that morning's trip brings a feeling 
to. my hands, even now. I mislaid one mitten that 
morning, and rowing was a hand-nipping task. I lost 
many, strokes in changing my lone mitt from one red 
hand,, to the other redder one. Six miles down, I spied 
the little red cabin boat, a wind-worn craft, where a 
tall man with a flowing light mustache, resting his 
elbow on the roof of his cabin, answered my questions. 
. "Yas," he said, "I ..bees dot fishermans Anderson — 
von't you kom in unt varm?" 
Anderson came from Sweden thirty odd years ago, 
with an outfit of home-made blankets, mittens, socks, 
mufflers made by a sister. He went west till he was 
in the Michigan, wilderness, and there he tried logging 
—quit it— and when he left the camp, sold his blankets 
of many colors to Indians, who flung them round their 
shoulders. That night, for the first time in two years, 
Anderson, found himself in need of the blankets. He 
trarhped till .night, crawled. 'down beside a log, pulled 
leaves over himself, and tried' to sleep during an autumn 
frost. Something came through the.' brush and made a 
noise hke an exhaust . pipe in a sawmill! Anderson 
climbed a, tree and remained there till : long after the 
sound of something running away ceased. "Yust a 
deer. Vat a fool I wass in dose days." 
He came into Burlington, la., and hit the Mississippi, 
