472 
the living room comfortably warm, and by leaving the 
doors to the bedrooms open, sufficient heat would enter 
them to make them warm enough to sleep in. 
We would tecommend that the living and bedrooms 
have a ceiling. The space above would be found handy 
for storing luggage, sleds, snow shoes, canoes, in fact 
anything and everything. A rough board floor above is 
all that is necessary, and the garret or attic could be 
reached by means of a ladder through a trap. 
No cellar would be placed under the cottage as it would 
be expensive and is not necessary. The sills of the house 
would rest upon and be securely fastened to cedar posts 
buried in the ground with the bark on to a distance of 
three or four feet. The cottage would look better if 
built close to the ground, but there is no reason why it 
could not be raised if certain local conditions made it 
necessary. 
The house is to be of two by four-inch stud construc- 
tion covered with seven-eighths-inch boards outside. The 
roof and walls to be shingled with either cypress or cedar 
shingles laid about syi or 6. inches tO' the weather. The 
porch posts to be of chestnut or cypress six inches square, 
stained with creosote. The only paint to be used on the 
exterior will be on the windows' trim, sash, doors and 
shutters. 
If the cottage is to be used only in summer the inside 
can be left with the studs showing. If for use in the fall 
and wnnter the interior walls should be covered with 
compo board and the space between the studs filled with 
mineral wool. This latter material is cheap and is not 
- only vermin proof but makes a house much warmer in 
winter and cooler in summer. 
Compo board comes in sheets about four feet square 
and is about seven-sixteenths of an inch thick. It is 
easily applied, being nailed or screwed to the studs. It 
presents a good surface and can be papered, painted or 
covered with stuff. It is comparatively cheap and is far 
better than tongue and groove sheathing for this purpose. 
A double floor should be laid on the two by ten-inch floor 
beams, which are placed about sixteen inches on centers. 
The only masonry work necessary is on the chimney 
and the living room and kitchen hearths. If stone is 
plentiful it should be built of that material, otherwise 
iDrick will have to be resorted to. 
Good flat stones, if of any size, make a desirable floor 
for the porch. 
The exterior could be made more attractive by putting 
metal lath on the sheathing and plastering the walls. The 
roof in any case should be of shingle. 
Water may be had at all seasons if a well can be driven 
under the kitchen. A pump by the sink would add much 
to one's comfort, and if the pipes are properly packed 
they should never freeze. 
A complete list of the materials required in the con- 
struction of this cottage, with prices of labor and ma- 
terial in New York, will be sent to anyone who writes 
to this office for that information. 
The Mississippi Cabin Boaters. 
Editor Forest and Stream: 
It may be that I was misinformed in regard to the New 
Year's celebration at Friar's Point, but the cabin-boater 
remarked what I said he did, though perhaps not in the 
exact words that I used. It seemed to me that shooting 
up the town would be a natural proceeding, for I had 
seen Christmas celebrated with guns and fire crackers in 
southwestern Virginia, and exuberant deer hunters rid- 
ing a buckboard through an Adirondack town working 
the levers of their Winchesters and Marlins as they went. 
What Coahoma says of my associations on the river is 
true. I was taken in by the cabin-boater as a friend and 
a brother. I told them I was going to write them up and 
they helped me get the facts of cabin boat life — and that 
was the main object of my trip down the river. I got 
300,000 words in notes from which the Forest and 
Stream stories have been wHtten. When I came to read 
up on the Mississippi before starting on the trip I could 
find only one article about the cabin boaters. This one 
was a story in Scribner's Magazine, written admittedly 
from the outside. There is only one way to get the truth 
about a people, and that is to live and do as they do. _ It 
is hard on the stomach sometimes, but it is worth doing 
and ought to be done by writers before they stamp "im- 
pressions" as "true." 
I did not say "pine logs" were on the Mississippi. What 
I did say was "pine timber" — sawed stuff. As I said in 
my article "With the Mississippi Cabin Boaters," the elec- 
tric belt man preferred pine for fire wood above any other 
sort, and during the week I was with him he was always 
on the lookout for it. He used cedar for kindling. He 
found the stuff in the shape of planks; beams and chunks, 
the wreckage from boats, barges, houses and the waste 
from mills and ship yards far up the river. The Swede, 
John, known as "the Chinaman," just above Helena, 
where he watches the rafted logs, built a 60ft. (aboiit) 
cabin boat from a stranded barge right there— "all pine." 
I am inclined to discuss the cabin boater's dialect, espe- 
cially with Coahoma. I think that probably half or more 
of the cabin boaters are from above Cairo. They come 
from Pennsylvania, Indiana, Illinois, Ohio, Iowa and 
other up-river States. If he is a storeboat, medicine or 
grafter cabin boater, his associations are with negroes who 
are his customers from the start. He "shades the white 
man." There is no "impossible combination of Yankee- 
isms and negroeisms." Had Coahoma met Mrs. Haney, 
the Gambler, Applegate, or other river people he would 
have heard the real river dialect. A combination of Indian 
Territory, Kentucky mountain, Indianapolis, Pittsburg 
and St. Louis English is not an uncommon thing to hear 
in the big eddy at Helena, or in the mouth pf Old Ar- 
kansaw. At Lake Providence I met a man off the Coney 
Island of New York, at Memphis and Greenville, a boy 
who had lived on First avenue. New York city, for years. 
At Arkansas City was a photograph boat whose owner 
had an Irish brogue comingled with expressions from the 
North, South, East (India) and West (California). I 
did not find the cabin boaters ignorant, and, I am bound 
to say, that some of them knew the river much better 
than most of those beyond the levees. Most of those I 
met could read and write. Their experiences, their range 
from Pittsburg to Shreveport and New Orleans, and their 
business relations give the cabin boater a dialect to which 
any expression is admissible if the cabin boater has use 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
for it — and he usually has need of slang of all descrip- 
tions. His "business" is frequently "making easy money" 
by selling cheap things dear. But some of the store boats 
compete successfully with taxed bank commissaries. The 
fishermen are, some of them, makers of better wages than 
carpenters or other tradesmen. 
Coahoma's most serious charge against my narrative is, 
to my mind, "there is evidence, however, that he (Spears) 
has to some extent yielded to the inclination to write 
picturesque narrative at some sacrifice of the verities." 
If this is so, the story of "Floating Down the Mississippi" 
loses most of the value I place upon it. I should be glad 
if it is interesting, but if it isn't true to the last, least de- 
tail it isn't worth doing. 
"Huckleberry Finn," Bishop's "Six Months in a Sneak 
Box," Doubleday's "A Year in a Yawl," Mark Twain's 
"Life on the Mississippi," etc., give various views of the 
river, and no one will ever describe floating in a fog bet- 
ter than it is done in "Huckleberry Finn", but in none of 
the things I have read did I find any more than an ink- 
ling of the real floating population, the cabin boaters, 
shanty boaters and river rats. They are as distinct a race 
as the gypsies, and they have hit upon an alluring mode 
of existence — a Hfe very close to that of perpetual vaca- 
tion. Raymond S. Spears. 
LiTTLK Falls, N V. 
Mongrel Gipp. 
The game warden was a bachelor. After the filthy 
sitting room of the hotel — filled with stable boys, loafers 
and fourth-rate commercial travelers — his snug quarters 
seemed almost palatial. A Franklin stove full of hard- 
wood logs imparted a pleasant warmth to the atmos- 
phere. Several comfortable chairs offered themselves 
to our weary bodies — tired by a hard day's cock shoot- 
ing — and an array of guns, rifles and fishing rods deco- 
rated the walls. Two or three good engravings, a 
stuffed wolf's head and a set of moose horns, used as 
hat-rack, filled up most of the space. Over the mantle- 
piece a glass case, containing a yellow and white 
mongrel fox terrier and topped with a most formidable 
looking salmon gaff, filled the space usually allotted to 
a mirror. 
"That," said the game warden, noticing my look at 
the stuffed mongrel, "is all that remains of the best 
dog I ever owned." 
I glanced at King Agrippa, the bull terrier, a mass 
of bone, muscle and pluck, as he lay asleep in an easy 
chair. From him I looked to Old Floss, the setter we 
had been shooting over all day, and little Harmony, the 
best beagle bitch in the province, who was taking her 
ease in a whiskey case lined with old carpet. "Must 
have been pretty good dog then," I remarked. 
"Care to hear the story?" asked the game warden. 
"Well, fill your glass again, and I'll tell you about the 
dog and the old gaff which hangs over him." And this 
was the story: 
"Gipp Avas his name. He was out of a thorough- 
bred English fox-terrier bitch, by a mongrel bull-terrier 
dog. They drowned all the litter but Gipp, and he was 
only spared to take the milk from his mother. Then a 
small kid of Peter Mitchell's begged the pup and saved 
him from an untimely end. He was always a homely 
brute to look at, and when Peter got killed in the mines 
his widow sent the dog down to me to be put out of 
the way. I hate to shoot a dog, but I know that 
when I do it, I do it right: so I never refuse. They 
fetched him down to my house and told me what they 
wanted. I took a revolver and went out to send him 
to Kingdom Come, and then I found the revolver 
wouldn't work. I had no time to tinker it, and so I 
tied the pup up and gave him a feed. I hate to drown 
a dog, and no money would make me poison one. 
When I got the mail that day I found an American 
who had shot with me wanted the mother of Old 
Floss. Well, I was hard up and I had to let the old 
bitch go, for he bid me $75 for her. Then I thought 
that maybe as the pup was out of a well bred mother 
he might come in handy as a watch dog, and I gave 
Mitchell's kid a quarter for him and started to educate 
him. 
"Before I had had him two months, I had him in 
good shape, as far as watching a wagon or looking 
after a camp was concerned. The devil himself couldn't 
have taken so much as a chew of tobacco out of a team 
when he was on the seat and in charge of it. 
"The place I lived in then was a pretty rough one — 
no police, no magistrate worth a hill of beans, and as 
tough a lot of men in the mines and lumber mill as 
any one could want to see. There was grand fishing 
and shooting, however. That is to say, when they 
didn't sweep all the salmon out of the pools, or string 
the wood roads full of moose snares. Just about that 
time they made me game warden, and I assure you 
I wasn't the most popular man in the country when' 
they found it out. They also put me in as fishery officer, 
and gave me two jackasses, who had voted the right 
ticket at the last election, as watchmen. I had no 
use for them, as they had no sand in them and were 
scared to death of Long Angus McGregor. Long 
Angus was part Irish, part Scotch, with little Indian 
thrown in. He had all the bad points of all three breeds, 
with none of the good ones. They say he murdered 
two boys who came off a vessel and stayed at his house 
one night. They never proved it on him, but the boys 
were paid off and came ashore with over a hundred 
dollars each in their pockets. They went up to his 
house and filled up on bad rum. That was the last ever 
seen of them. Well, Long Angus was all the time 
sweeping and spearing. When he wasn't at that, he 
was in the woods setting moose snares. I cut up a 
lot of his snares, and he sent me word he would shoot 
me if ever he caught me. I called myself a fair shot, 
and I'm no coward, so I sent him word back that I 
would shoot him if he gave me half a chance, either in 
the woods or out of them. He had enough Indian in 
him to make him cowardly, and he was treacherous. I 
wasn't much scared, as I always carried that old gaff 
with me when I went on the river at night, and I had 
a Snider that was rank poison up to 500 yards. Long 
Angus knew this and gave me a wide berth, though he 
used to' shoot off his mouth when he was half drunk." 
The game warden reached down the gaff as he spoke 
and handed it to me. It was a most formidable weapon 
about SIX feet long. The handle, made of knotted 
black thorn, the lower end terminating in a two-inch 
steel spike with a heavy iron ferrule, and the upper end, 
garnished with the customary gaff hook, made a 
weapon as formidable as the quarterstaff of Robin 
Hood. 
"It's a rare thing to get a black thorn as good as 
that in this country," he went on. "I gave an Indian 
a dollar for that bit of lumber, and I've seen the time 
when I wouldn't have taken a thousand for it. Just 
after I was appointed, Angus takes a salmon net and 
sets It across the river from bank to bank in broad 
daylight on a Saturday. He dared anyone to go and 
take it up, and I accommodated him in half an hour. I 
took the net to Squire Jones, and as I hadn't seen 
Angus set it he put it in his barn until Monday. He 
forgot to lock the door (I guess he was scared Angus 
would poison his cows or set fire to his wood-lot if 
he did), and on Monday morning the net was gone, 
and Angus had the laugh on me. Well, that made me 
mad, and all the next week I lay out at night hoping to 
come on him and catch him red-handed. 
"That pup had a bad trick of setting out and follow- 
ing me when he wasn't wanted, and after I had licked 
him for doing it once or twice, he grew so cute I 
couldn't catch him. He never barked or made any 
noise, and he always kept a pistol shot or so away from 
me. It was on the Thursday night after I took the 
net that we had the row. About midnight I saw a 
torch coming down the river over the best salmon 
pool I knew it was Angus, though he had his face 
blackened and a woman's skirt on. They speared six 
salmon before their torch burnt out. When they saw 
It was just going, they ran the canoe— a heavy dugout 
-—to the shore and Angus says to his boy, T guess we 
may as well land here, that cursed game warden is in 
bed, and we have all the salmon the stage will take 
out for us to-morrow.' Just as soon as Angus stepped 
out of the canoe I rose from the bushes and made a 
rush for him. He didn't see me until I had my hand 
on his shoulder. 'I arrest you in the Queen's name,' 
I , said. 'Damn the Queen and you, too,' says he, and 
as quick as a flash he pulled a knife and went for me. 
I slipped on the round stones and my foot went froni 
under me. In another second I felt his knee on my 
breast, and then just as he struck, a white flash came 
through the air and the little pup grabbed him by the 
throat. 
"Gipp was different from Agrippa there. He never 
held on, he bit like a fox, as fast as he could snap, and 
he had m him enough of the old bull-terrier that sired 
him to make his jaws as powerful as a wolf trap. The 
knife missed my throat, but it took me in the shoulder, 
and the point broke on my shoulder bone. The pup 
made his teeth meet in the side of his neck, and then 
as quick as a flash he had him by the hand he had his 
knife in. I slid from under him and my hand came 
against the gaff I had dropped when I fell. I grabbed 
it, and as he turned to stab the dog, I gave him two 
cuts on the head with the business end as hard as I 
could. He dropped like a log and then I put handcuffs 
on him. His boy had got out of the canoe by this time 
and was coming for me with a spear. 'Hold on,' says 
I, hauling out my revolver. 'I don't want to shoot; 
but n you come a yard nearer I will fill you as full of 
lead as hell is full of devils.' He didn't wait. He put 
for home. I thought I had killed Angus, but he came 
to after awhile. I made him get up and I walked him 
over to the nearest house and then I fainted from loss 
of blood. In the morning I took Mr. Angus before 
Squire Jones, and he said it was a serious offense and 
committed him to the Supreme Court and put him 
under $200 bonds to appear. Angus didn't care to take 
chances. He skipped the country and has never come 
back since. His bondsmen had to pay the bill, and the 
judge gave Squire Jones the darndest tongue-lashing 
I ever -heard. , I never minded the pup following me at 
night after that. 
"I got the canoe and eleven salmon. The boy proved 
an alibi when I fetched him into court." 
"Proved an alibi!" I exclaimed in astonishment. "I 
thought you recognized him." 
"So I did; but when the case came up for trial there 
were three or four other people to swear he was ten 
miles away at the time I took his father." 
A rap at the door interrupted the conversation, the 
newcomer was the Presbyterian minister. 
"I was telling our friend the story of old Gipp," said 
the game warden, when the visitor had seated himself. 
"Poor old fellow," said he, "I shall never forget the 
time he 'treed' the nigger minister. My friend here had 
to take a trip to Montreal, and he left Gipp with me. 
Gipp hated a nigger like poison, and he had an especial 
spite against this man, who was conducting a revival 
among the darkies. He was a good speaker and had 
a fair education, but he used to take a little too much 
whiskey when his day's work was finished. Late one 
night he undertook to cross the lower end of my lot, 
he had a little black bag with him, with two bottles of 
rum in it. Gipp met him and he had to take to a tree. 
I was in bed when I heard the most unearthly howling, 
barking, and swearing. I hurried on my things and 
when I got to the end of the lot I found his reverence 
perched in a little tree, with the dog almost foaming 
at the mouth. The man had the bag with the bottles 
in it hugged in his arms. I got the dog away, and the 
darkey climbed down. I gently, but firmly, demanded 
to see what he had in the bag, thinking that he might 
have some of my property there. I can never forget 
the look on his face when the two bottles came to 
light. Excuse the interruption, where had you got in 
your story?" 
"I had just told my friend the yarn about Long Angus 
McGregor, and his boy, the time I took the old man," 
replied the game warden. 
"It would be about two years after this that old 
Squire Gawler sent me word to come down to the mouth 
of the trout brook to look after some nets that were 
set there. I found a fellow tending the nets well inside 
the limits, and I had to take him and his nets before 
old Gawler. pa\yler was one of those miserable beasts 
who have a justice's commission and tried to make a 
living out of it. If a man has a first-class criminal 
