^.--CT.. iil»l-r0.iff-.i'i..-— -I. ,,,.,»ISI.aStWM»li»»rMM^^ 
side to Side aiid fastened tci the top boarda with Hails 
or screws. 
If the boat described is fitted with a sail, and nearly 
every such boat is, it greatly facilitates the going from 
place to place, for otherwise the principal means of 
progression is by sculling, or what the Chinese say is 
: ii-loing, which is done with an oar about 22 feet long 
uiid fitted on an iron pivot and worked by two or more 
men. The head of the oar is shaped to resemble 
the tail of a fish, and the pivot on which it moves 
is an iron rod, somewhat the size of a man's thumb 
and not more than a few inches long. The rod is driven 
into the piece of timber which holds together the 
upper part of the extreme aft of the boat, and the oar 
is held in its place on the pivot by means of a hole 
in the handle at a proper distance between the ends. 
To attain the greatest propelling power, . there is a 
.^mall rope attached near the end of the handle where 
it is grasped, whil^ the other end of the rope is 
securely fastened to the side of the boat nearest to 
which the iron pivot is fitted, it never being fitted in 
the center of the aft of a boat. The oarsman who 
grasps the handle of the oar steadies it while the one 
who pulls the rope back and forth generates the power 
that propels the boat. By such a unique arrangement 
large boats, as long as a hundred feet and heavily 
laden, are swiftly driven through the water without any 
very apparent great exertion on the part of the 
oarsmen. 
To navigate such a boat as indicated, the number of 
the crew should not be less than five, and one of these 
the captain, or, in Chinese phrase, "the lao-dah." And 
if the sportsman is fortunate in getting a crew that is 
willing and obedient it will add very much to his suc- 
cess and pleasure. 
The lao-dah is one of the noted characters of Shang- 
hai. As nearly every sportsman has his own house- 
boat, there are quite a number of such characters at 
Shanghai. They are very annoying when so disposed, 
for when one is not in a willing mood he can easily 
ground the boat in a narrow creek, or find water too 
shallow for it to float in, and with the most assuring 
;ountenance declare how sorry he is that the boat can- 
;iot proceed. The sportsman will find it very much to 
liis advantage to have a lao-dah who has some knowl- 
edge of the geography of the territory in which he 
aroposes to shoot, for in order to save time he must 
lo his traveling mostly at night, and unless his lao- 
lah is somewhat familiar with the "lay of the land," he 
rnay wake up in the morning to find himself a long 
distance from the place he wished to reach. Great 
;are should, therefore, be taken to engage a reason- 
ibly intelligent lao-dah who will command the services 
3f the crew when needed, or else the success of the 
shooting trip will be constantly interfered with and 
ts pleasure destroyed. 
After arriving at the place where it is desired to 
jhoot, the boat is made fast at some convenient land- 
ing on the banks of the creek or canal, and, as a 
jreparation, the sportsman will select his boy to carry 
lis cartridges and one or more of the boat's crew to 
:arry his bird bag and to beat the places where the 
triers or other obstructions may be too thick for his 
iog to enter. If he expects to remain away from the 
boat during the entire day he will have lunch prepared 
md another one of the crew may be selected to carry it. 
Being ready, and before entering the field for his 
jshoot, the sportsnian will do well if he takes his 
pearing and fixes in his mind one or two conspicuous 
'andmarks of the surrounding country as a guide to 
:he location of his boat. However familiar he may be 
.vith the country, there are times when such landmarks 
N\\\ guide him to shorter paths and save him much 
-innecessary walking. If he be a true sportsman, he 
.vill not think or care about the points of the compass 
n the intensity of his pleasure and excitement, and the 
.miumerable ditches and small streams he will have 
FORESt AND STREAM, 
td ei'osg Would . t)erpleit the ttlost expert ttavigatol'. 
By no compass could he take his reckoning vyhen 
following their meanderings. 
Under the present treaties foreigners can travel in 
the interior of China, and when one preseives his 
teir.perament there has seldom been a wanton attack 
made by the natives. The Chinese are more ir>clinc;d 
to share the sportsman's enjoyment than to attempt 
or wish to molest him. Frequently the inhabitants of 
an entire village will follov/ Lim to see him shoot, and 
if he throws away the empty shells the boys, and often 
the grown men, will keep him company to pick them 
up. If he is diplomatic he may learn from some of 
them the places mostly frequented by game in that 
neighborhood. There is rarely any reason for a sports- 
man to get into trouble with the natives. If he will 
put a Mexican dollar or so in his pocket there is 
scarcely a wound that he may accidentally inflict with a 
No. 6 shot which will not heal at the sight of that 
coin. However loud the bewailing when inflicted, he 
has only to put into the hand of the sufferer a Mexican 
dollar, and there is quiet and peace. But when a shot 
has gone astray and entered the leg of a Chinaman, it 
is advisable, if the boat be near a village or town, to 
have it moved at once to some other place, or other- 
wise the majority of the population will pay him a visit 
with the view of also being compensated to "finish any 
trouble." 
No reference has been made to the furniture of the 
boat, because the sportsman will select that and ar- 
range it according to his preference. Most of the 
boats are fitted with bunks, one on each side, for 
sleeping, and in connection with a bunk there are at 
least two drawers for clothes, towels, napkins, bootsi 
and such like. It would be preferable, I think, not to 
have bunks, but instead, a small folding bed, which 
could be put aside during the day, and thus give more 
room, or converted into a lounge, as one could be made 
to answer either purpose. The bunks are constructed 
so as to be immovable, and during the warm weather 
become the home for bugs, while a movable sleeping 
arrangement could be taken out of the boat when not 
in use. If the sportsman should fear malaria, or if his 
thirst should run in a special direction, he will take 
with him a bottle of quinine and, what may prove more 
palatable, a few bottles of whiskey and soda. J. 
Trails of the Pathfinders.— XXX. 
Fremont* — I. 
The inequality which which fame distributes her 
favors has always been a fertile subject for moralist and 
philosopher. One man may do great things, and yet 
tlirough innate modesty, or ill fortune of some sort, may 
make no impression on the popular imagination; so that 
his deeds are soon forgotten. Another, by a series of 
fortunately narrated adventures of relatively much less 
difficultv and danger, may acquire the name of having 
.nccomplished great things. Zebulon M. Pike, the ex- 
plorer, was a man of the first kind. John C. Fremont, 
commonly spoken of as the Pathfinder, and by many 
people believed to have been the discoverer of the Rocky 
Mountains, belonged to the second class. The work that 
Fremont did was good work, but it was not great. He 
was an army officer, sent out to survey routes across the 
continent and he did his duty, and did it well; but he 
did not discover the Rocky Mountains, nor did he dis- 
cover gold in California, as often supposed. He passed 
over routes already, well known to thefmen of the plains 
and the mountains, and discovered little that was new, 
except the approximate locationi of many points. Never- 
theless, in his two expeditions, .which cover the years 
1842 and 1843. and '44, he itrav-ersed 10,000 miles of wil- 
deriless, belweeil the Missouri t^lvef ahd the shofe^ 
the Pacific; and he connected the surveys of the State, 
of Missouri with those nia ie by the Wilkes expedition 
at the mouth of the Columbia. This involved rtiuch 
labor and hardship, and was of high value at the tirne, 
but it is not to be compared with the work done by 
Lewis and Clark, and Pike ; and the fact that Fremont 
gained great fame while his predecessors seemed mitil 
recently to be almost forgotten, seems unjust. 
Fremont's first expedition ^7ent only as far as the 
Rocky Mountams, terminating at the South Park and 
Fremont's Peak. The second, which reached those 
mountains by another route, crossed them at the South 
Pass, and procetded west to the Oregon River (the Co- 
lumbia), and northern California. 
The story of these two journeys is embodied in a re- 
port addressed to the Chief of the Corps of Topo- 
graphical Engineers, and published in Washington in 
1845. 
Although a formal report, made by an army officer, 
and written in the ordinary style of an itinerary of the 
daily march, yet Fremont's account of his travels is 
told wiih much vividness; and quite apart from the in- 
terest which attaches to it as a descript'on of the still 
unexplored West, it attracts by its graphic style. The 
accounis of the hunting, encounters with Indians, and 
mouiitain chmbing, are spirited ; and the descriptions 
of wild scenery show r^al feeling, 
Fremont's party consisted of Charles Preuss, his as- 
sistant in topography ; L. Maxwell, a hunter, with Kit 
Carson as guide. Resides these, he had engaged more 
than twenty Frenchnipn, Creoles, and Canadian voy- 
ageurs, old prairie rnc-ii, who had been servants of the 
fur companies. Among these men are such names as 
Lambert, L'Esperance, Lefevre, Lajeunesse, Cadotte, 
Clement, Simonds, Latulippe, Badeau, Chardonnais, and 
Janisse. The children and grandchildren of some, per- 
haps of many of these men, are still living, at various 
points in the West, and still bear the names of their 
ancestors. Joseph Clement, for example, probably a son 
of old man Clement, lives to-day on the Standing Rock 
Indian Reservation, in South Dakota. Nicholas and 
Antoine Jeunesse, or Janisse, a few years ago were still 
alive, one at Pine Ridge, the other at Whetstone Agency, 
in South Dakota. 
The expedition started on Friday, June 10, from 
Cyprian Chouteau's trading post, near the mouth of the 
Kansas River, and marched up that stream. Their bag- 
gage, instruments and provisions were carried in mule 
carts, of which they had eight; and the men, except the 
drivers of these carts, were mounted; and some of them 
drove loose horses, and a few oxen taken along as food. 
They marched up the Kansas River, and from time to ' 
time purchased milk, butter, and vegetables at Indian 
farms, a condition of things which indicates that the In- 
dians at that time were further advanced toward civiliza- 
tion and self-support than many of them seem to be at . 
the present day. It was the practice to encamp an hour 
or two before sunset, vvhen the carts were arranged so 
as to form a sort of barricade, or at least to mark the 
boundaries of a circle about the camp, eighty yards in . 
diameter. 
"The tents were pitched, and the horses hobbled and 
turned loose to graze ; and but a few minutes elapsed 
before the cooks of the messes, of which there were four, 
were busily engaged in preparing the evening meal. 
* * * When we had reached a part of the country 
where such a precaution became necessary, the carts 
being regularly arranged for defending the camp, guard 
was mounted at 8 o'clock, consisting of three riien, who 
were relieved every two hours; the morning watch being 
horse guard for the day. At daybreak, the camp was 
roused, the animals turned loose to graze, and breakfast 
generally over between 6 and 7 o'clock, when we re- 
sumed our march, making regularly a halt at noon for 
one or two hours. Such was usually the order of the 
day, except when accident of country forced a variation; 
which, however, happened but rarely." 
The party had the usual vicissitudes of prairie travel 
in old times. Horses were lost, and time spent in recov- 
ering them ; rain-swollen rivers must be crossed, the ani- 
mals driven in to swim, and the carts transported on an 
India rubber boat. Such river crossings were especially 
subject to accident; and on one of his first, Fremont, 
through carelessness, lost overboard some of his carts, 
and a large quantity of his baggage; though everything 
except part of the provisions was recovered. During a 
halt of a couple of days, on the Kansas River, on account 
of bad weather, the men were busy drying things that 
had been wetted, and preparing for the continuation of 
the march. Here it was noticed that "in the steep bank 
of the river were nests of innumerable swallows, into 
one of which a large prairie snake had got about half 
his body, and was occupied in eating the young birds. 
The old ones were flying about in great distress, darting 
at him, and vainly endeavoring to drive him off. A shot 
wounded him, and being killed, he was cut open, and 
eighteen young swallows were found in his body." 
During his march up the Kansas River, Fremont no- 
ticed the rich appearance of the soil of the bottom ; and 
speaks of passing a large but deserted Kansas village, 
"scattered in an open wood along the margin of the 
stream, on a spot chosen with the customary Indian fond- 
ness for beauty of scenery. The Pawnees had attacked 
it in the early spring. Some of the houses were burnt, 
and others blackened with smoke, and weeds were al- 
ready getting possession of the cleared places." . June 17 
they crossed the Big Vermillion, and Big Blue; and saw 
their first antelope; while Carson brought in a fine deer. 
They were now on the trail of a party of emigrants to 
Oregon, and found many articles that they had thrown 
away. Game began to be abundant ; there were flocks 
of turkeys in the bottom of the Little Blue; elk were 
seen on the hills, and antelope and deer abounded. When 
they reached the Pawnee country, many were the tales 
told of the craft and daring of these independent people. 
One morning they had a genuine Indian alarm ; a man 
who was somewhat behind the party, rode up in haste, 
shouting, "Indians! Indians!" He stated that he had 
seen them, and had counted twenty-seven. The com- 
mand Avas at once halted, and the usual precautions made 
for defense, while Carson, mounting one of the hunting 
horses, set out to learn the cause of the alarm. "Mount- 
ed on a fine horse, without a saddle, and scouring bare- 
CHRISTMAS SHOOT— 1904. 
Sliooters, boy, cartridge and game carriers, dog and game. The houseboat lies in the inner moat of the wall around Soochow, 
China. The front of the wall is perpendicular and has a brick face. The wall is twelve miles in circumference, and its founda- 
tion was laid 500 B. C. . ... 
