hiking that he was going for a rifle, as I did. But that 
bear did not surprise me half as much as did three big 
dogs one morning in the Meramec woods. I _ had 
passed from the thick woods into a persimmon thicket 
and was exploring for this fruit when a peculiar sound 
attracted my attention. It was low but deep, and was 
not unlike that emitted by a bull now and then while 
feeding. As a big red seahorse adorned the front of 
our tent, I thought it best to make sure whether there 
was a bull near us, and crept through the scrub toward 
the place whence the sound came. The grass was high 
among the small bushes and I could see nothing, but in 
pushing through I almost stepped on three dogs, which 
were lying in the grass, gnawing the bones of a rabbit 
they had evidently just killed. They burst out at me, 
all yelling and with hair standing on end. Taken off 
guard as I was, I might have turned about had the 
surprised been less sudden, but the actions of the biggest 
dog of the three mongrels prevented any such move, 
for he lunged straight at me while the others circled 
about. ■ I had a cartridge in the chamber of my rifle and 
four in the magazine, and knew that the little automatic 
would rid itself of all these in a second, if necessary. 
The temptation to kill the dogs was very great, but I 
knew full well the exaggerated value a backwoods 
farmer places on these mongrels, and depended on using 
the rifle as a club, and my heavy shoes, with a few 
vigorous "cuss words" thrown in, as further argument. 
The rumpus was a lively one for a while. It was 
heard by Noble, far away in camp, and by the owner 
of the dogs, who was husking corn in a field beyond 
the woods. Luckily he began to call the dogs, and 
finally they heeded his voice and drew away, where- 
upon I resolved once more never to shoot a dog under 
similar circumstances if there was any other way out 
of an encounter with one. 
Not far from camp there was a series of exceedingly 
crooked chutes among the islands, and it was interesting 
to watch the raftsmen navigate these waterwaj^s with 
their long and flexible rafts of ties. These were all 
"one tire wide," as they say — that is, the width of the 
cross-ties as they lie on a railway roadbed. The lengths 
vary. Perhaps a hundred yards or less. The binders 
are spiked along the edges of the tire of ties and are 
capable of much bending. The "bow man," a husky, 
raw-boned native, handled a long pole with admirable 
skill in guiding that end of the raft into the tortuous 
channels, while his helper, two-thirds of the distance 
toward the stern, pushed first on one side, then on the 
other, often by signals shouted, or rather "tooted," by 
his chief, who might at the time be. invisible round a 
bend in the stream. Near the stern a square hole was 
left in the raft, and the opening was reinforced with 
heavy timbers. Its use we learned one day when a raft 
became slightly unmanageable in the rapid current. In 
answer to a series of toots the man at the stern dropped 
his push-pole and grabbing a timber twelve feet in 
length and six inches in diameter, shot it down in the 
■ opening and athwart the current, then wedged another 
one in the opposite direction, so that the tops crossed 
like those of a sawbuck while their bottom ends ground 
on the bottom of the stream. These bumped along but 
a short distance before they began to , lift that end of 
I the raft bodily, and, although it seemed utterly im- 
possible for them to break the great headway of the 
raft, this they did to such an extent that it reached the 
still water beyond with no momentum of its own. Then 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
the bow man tooted again and the drags were pulled 
out and stowed in their rack amidships, where low 
limbs could not sweep them off the raft. Whereupon 
both men joined in a warbling chant, such as one 
hears nowhere else. These men are a remarkable lot. 
During the several days occupied in floating down to 
the towns, where the ties are taken out of the water 
for shipment, they are in the icy water from dawn 
until dark. So heavy are the waterlogged ties that the 
men are always standing or wading in six inches to a 
foot of water. Their clothing consists of calico overalls 
and shirts, hats and shoes, with a wet coat for evening 
wear. Few of them have blankets, but instead they 
build up a huge fire at night when the raft is tied up, 
eat their supper of bacon and bread, dry their cotton 
clothing slightly, and sleep on the bare ground. Harder 
work I have never seen men perform, but for it they 
obtain a dollar a day and "grub," and a more cheerful 
lot canot be found. So skilful do they become that they 
will sit and chew tobacco and talk while their un- 
gainly raft, perhaps in the form of a letter "S," plunges 
through a chute that is equally crooked, keeping in 
the center all the way, apparently by chance but really 
as the result of the nicest of calculations while the 
fifteen-mile-an-hour rapid is still 500 yards away. 
Our week was ideal as to weather. Rain fell but 
twice, in showers. Squirrels were plentiful enough for 
our needs, which were modest. Best of all was the 
clean gravel beach before the tent, where we spent 
hours just sitting on the warm gravel, basking in the 
sunshine and tossing pebbles in the water, boy-fashion. 
Now and then we tried the pools and rififles with 
spinners, but it was not until we had given up in 
despair that a friendly farmer who happened along in- 
formed us that during the. previous -week some "sports- 
men" from St. Louis, as he called them, had camped 
near these pools and had dynamited all the pools nearby, 
killing thousands of fish of all sizes and frightening 
others away, so that none would take any sort of bait. 
Whereupon we put the rods away sadly and said things 
it- would not be well to repeat. But these people could 
not kill the squirrels with dynamite, and although they 
were wild, from being shot at with ten-bores and black 
powder, by careful hunting we obtained all we needed. 
Even though these were mostly young grays,, fox 
squirrels being scarce in those bottoms, where formerly 
they were very numerous, several of those killed by us 
.were found to contain shot. 
Saturday afternoon our friend with the white mules 
arrived promptly on the hour set to take our outfit to 
the station. There we learned that the 4 o'clock train 
was three hours late, and the jovial agent, thinking 
to help us pass away the time, related all the circum- 
stances connected with the killing of a detective by two 
bank robbers and murderers, and offered to take us 
out to the house — four miles away — where the bullet 
holes of the posse could still be seen. We declined, but 
he insisted in taking us to the village rum shop, where 
a cigar box was proudly handed out by the boy who 
"tended bar," and its contents explained. There were 
three buckshot cartridges of a well-known brand, a 
bit of red sealing-wax and a mouldy portion of a plug 
of black tobacco, the contents of the pockets of the 
detective who was killed. It was all the village had to 
be proud of- — except a new summer residence a wealthy 
man was building on the stony hills overlooking the 
river near the town. The county tax collector was 
IMarch 4, X90S. 
also waiting for the belated train, and the villagers soon 
informed us with great pride that he was the man — 
then sherifif— who hanged a man whose name was 
known all over the Union a decade ago because of the 
atrocity of his crime in killing his wife and babe. He 
was tried four times. And it was even said that a 
decoy was hanged in his stead. This the ex-sheriff 
stoutly denied, he insisting that the man who was tried 
was duly executed. He was a pleasant old fellow who 
told us how, when he was a boy, before the rocky hills 
were denuded of their forest growth to feed the lum- 
ber mills and supply the railways with crossties, trout 
were found in every brook and the streams were clear 
as crystal, whereas they are highly colored now except 
at their lowest stages. And how the deer browsed in 
the edges of the clearings and black bears annoyed the 
farmers. 
Seven o'clock came, whereupon the agent announced 
that our train was five hours late. The ex-sheriff and 
his son, a traveling salesman who had called on the 
grocer and was also waiting, and several other persons 
thereupon adjourned to the "hotel," where a pleasant- 
faced matron served a country dinner that was worth 
all the waiting. At 9:30 o'clock our train arrived. For 
an hour it whirled along at high speed, but in sixty odd 
miles It was "laid out," as the drummer told us, four 
times because of break-downs to the engine; and at 
2 o'clock on Sunday morning we arrived home, some- 
thing like nine hours behind the schedule time. By way 
of variety, however, there was a free fight in the car 
behind ours, which the conductor settled by quick use 
of his fists; and several passengers, noticing that the 
ex-sheriff and his son conversed with us, queried softly: 
"Don't you know who that man is?" or "Did you know 
that's the man who hung D ?" 
Q«anah Parker. 
Editor Forest and Stream: 
I notice by a dispatch from. Dallas, Texas, that the old 
Comanche, chief, Quanah Parker, has been converted to 
Christianity, and has begun to preach the Gospel to the 
Indians, having been converted by his daughter, who was 
e.ducated m one of the Northern schools. The old chief 
can do the preaching all right, if he takes a notion to do it. 
1 had always considered him to be the most intelligent of 
all the Comanches. He used to get newspaper notices, 
but he seems to have been almost forgotten of late years. 
A good many of the yarns that the papers would get 
up about him had no foundation in fact; but one of the 
last of these stories that I ever saw about him sounds a 
good deal like Parker. - It would be about the way some 
white m.en would have treated him, and Parker would 
not forget it. According to this story, he was building, or 
having built, a new house, and some of his white friends 
clubbed together to get him the furniture for it, and con- 
sulted him as to what he would want. Among other things 
he wanted an armchair and a rolltop desk. They were 
curious to know what he wanted with the desk, since he 
could not write. He wanted to sit in the chair, he told 
them, then put his feet on top of the desk, hold a paper in 
front of him and smoke a cigar, then when a white man 
whom he did not care to see would call on him, he could 
blow the smoke in the white man's face and tell him to 
call again at some other time, that he was busy now. 
Cabia Blanco. 
The Diamondback Terrapin. 
No REPTILE in this country is more famous than the 
diamondbacked ^terrapin of the south Atlantic seaboard. 
Its best knownvcenter of abundance is in Maryland, and 
from there it is found north and south at least as far as 
Buzzard's Bay, Mass., and Yucatan in Central America. 
There are a number of species belonging to the genus 
Malaclemmys, all of them edible; and indeed among the 
ordinary terrapin of commerce there are two or three 
which are commonly called diamondbacks. _ , 
The Bureau of Fisheries has recently issued an inter- 
esting paper entitled "A Revision of Malaclemmys, A 
Genus of Turtles," written by Prof. Wm. Perry Hay, 
who has devoted two summers to the study of the life 
history of the diamondbacked terrapin and its adaptability 
to artificial propagation. The field of work covered 
Chesapeake Bay and its tributary rivers, but most of the 
time was spent at Solomon's Island and Crisfield, Md., 
where may be seen not only the terrapin native to the 
Chesapeake waters but those from other localities which 
are brought and kept there in ponds to fatten for market. 
Mr. Hay enumerates five forms of the genus, of which 
two are now described for the first time. 
All species of this genus like salt or brackish water and 
are found in low-lying swamps and in protected bays or 
inlets as well as in many rivers emptying into the sea, 
which they often ascend to points where the water is quite 
fresh. 
The northern species, or true diamondback (M. cen- 
trata), lives somewhat in this wise. Its period of hiberna- 
tion begins soon after the advent of cold weather, but for 
some weeks it emerges v/henever there is a warm day. 
Eventually, however, it buries itself completely at _the 
bottom of some pool or stream and remains until spring. 
Very soon after the winter sleep is over it seeks out 
others of its kind and the process of reproduction begins. 
Conj ugation usually takes place at night or in the very 
early hours of the morning and always in the water. 
The eggs are laid for the most part during May or June. 
The female with her hindlegs digs in some convenient 
bank a hole for the nest to the depth of five or six inches 
and deposits from five to twelve eggs. She then crawls 
out, carefully covers up the nest, effaces every trace of her 
work, and departs. If the weather is warm, the eggs hatch 
in about six weeks, but if the season is a cold one, the 
process may be twice as long. Soon after hatching, the 
young go to the marsh and dig into the ground, where 
they spend the first winter and possibly a part of the 
second summer. The average increase in length is about 
one inch a year until about five inches have been reached, 
when it becomes slower. Growth probably continues dur- 
ing the life of the individual, but in old age is so slow as 
to be almost imperceptible. 
A table given by Mr. Hay shows that terrapins measur- 
ing four inches, or a little more, on the bottom shell, 
weigh from 10 to 16 ounces, while one of about 7 inches 
may weigh four pounds. 
The diamondback terrapin feeds largely on such crus- 
taceans and mollusks as it is able to catch, but its jaws 
are rather weak, and it is compelled to feed on the softer 
and smaller animals of this group. 
"During exceptionally high tides it sometimes follows 
the water into the grassy law lands, and may be seen to 
catch and eat insects. The tender shoots and rootlets of 
some of the marsh are also eaten, and undoubtedly at 
times form a very considerable portion of the food. 
Fresh water seems to be a necessity to the well-being 
of the diamondback terrapin, though it can live for a long 
time without it. Although it is a common belief in 
many places where this turtle is found that it is nomadic, 
moving restlessly from place to place, and that it is able 
to make considerable journeys in a very shorty space of 
time, there is no evidence to support these notions. On 
the contrary, the individual bprn in, or accidentally trans- 
planted to, a favorable locality, probably stays there in- 
definitely; no other theory will explain the numerous 
local races and the stories of the reappearance of certain 
marked terrapins season after season. The former 
abundance of the diamondback is a matter of record. At 
one time hundreds could be seen in a single day where 
now perhaps only one or two can be found in a season. 
Thanks to lax laws and ruthless hunters, the species is on 
the verge of extinction, and before long, linless proper 
measures are taken, must be numbered sunpng the great 
host of animals that man has exterminated." 
Is the Fox a Grouse Killer?,! 
From many years' experience in the ways of country 
life I have come to the conclusion, that even in the 
wildest and most isolated regions of the Adirondacks, 
and, certainly, in those bordering on Lake Champlain 
where Reynard does mightly abound, it is not he who 
does the harm to the hens, chickens and poultry, as 
a rule. For the first ten years of my life I lived on a 
farm_ famous for the number and size of its foxes. It 
was in a valley between two high ranges of mountains 
wooded to their summits and full of old lumber roads. 
There were some swamps, and the waters of old 
Champlain were less than "a mile distant. We kept 
quantities of poultry, about two hundred head every 
year, and they were allowed to wander at will all over 
the place. Indeed, we never had such a thing as a 
yard or fowl house. The birds roosted mostly on trees, 
on the fences or under an open shed fitted in the old- 
fashioned way with a set of poles up under the floor 
of the loft above, and the nests were located on 
shelves projecting from the roosts. Neither chickens 
nor hens ever suffered from foxes to my knowledge, 
but the eagle owls, not the horned owls, by the way, 
but the great owl with a leg the size of a boy's wrist 
and a six-foot spread of wing, were a different proposi- 
tion. These were the marauders that used to eat the 
heads off hens on their perches in the barn and under 
the sheds. How do I know it? Because we took one 
in a brace of fox traps one night red-handed. Also 
in the fall raccoons killed quantities of turkeys and 
chickens, just eating their heads off and leaving their 
fat carcasses all about the roosting places. We caught 
several of these gentlemen in the act and some in traps. 
And as for skunks, no hen and chickens was safe, un- 
less her coop was tightly boarded up and braced every 
evening. 
I have known one of these hideous vermin to destroy 
a whole coop full of broilers in a single night, and 
once, after r had descovered one at, his mischief, he 
went on steadily with the work of slaughter, not heed- 
ing my presence any more than if I had been a bush 
or tree. Every unprotected nest of turkey or f9wl 
