June 17, 1905.1 FOREST AND STREAM. • 473 
ase they won't look at it; but if it is a small debt or a 
etty assault, he will jump at it (if the defendant isn't 
n his side of politics) and make a week's living out 
f his costs and fees. Well, Gawler wouldn't listen to 
)l;ason. He fined the poor old fellow $50 and costs, 
ad gave him a week to pay in. I would have thought 
0 all right. When the trial was over he turns and says 
) the Squire, 'It's a lucky thing for you that the hog- 
nd-cattle-reeve is your son-in-law. How is it that your 
^-oss bull is running at large all oven the country, and 
3u never get fined?' You see they allowed oxen and 
)ws to run, but there was a fine of $20 for allowing a 
iJi to range. Gawler said the bull had broken out of 
s pasture and he couldn't catch him. I thought no 
ore, about the matter and I started for home on foot. 
: was a six-mile walk, most of it over bare barrens, 
he fire had swept every tree off them, and there wasn't 
bush three feet high. 
' I was boarding with a widow at that time who 
id a daughter ten years old and a stepson about my 
vvn age. The kid was a very nice child and very fond 
f me. She used tO' study her lessons in my office, and 
;r half-brother and I were the best of friends. This 
ly she said she was coming to meet me after school, and 
rr mother gave her leave. Well, I was about "half way 
vcr the barrens, when I saw a bunch of cattle lying 
jwn in a some little alder bushes. I thought no more 
')Out it, as every one let their stock run in the summer 
onths. As I got closer to them one of them got up 
id came toward we, and I saw it was Gawler's bull, 
ave you ever seen a cross bull prepare for action? 
isn't a pleasant sight when he is in earnest and you 
e the party of the second part. Well, Gawler's bull 
eat through the entire ceremony. He hooked up the 
•Qund and pawed and bellowed, and ran. out his 
iiigue like four of a kind. I had the gafif with me and 
Inle the bull was getting up steam, I gathered a 
)cket full of rocks as big as goose-eggs. I had licked 
ipp a dozen times for chasing cattle, so I reckoned he 
oLild be of no account in this affair. 
"The bull took about five minutes to work himself 
) to fighting point, and then he came for me head 
)wn, tail in the air and the froth dripping out of his 
outh. He just missed me and I gave him a rock on 
le of his horns as hard as I could throw it. The next 
oment he was on to me again, and I tried to stab 
m in the eye with the spike on the gaff. I missed his 
e and struck him in the jaw, and then the dog mittened 
m behind. It was the only time I ever knew him 
hold on to anything. He grabbed the bull by the 
ii about half way up and held on like grim death, 
he bull wheeled and I kept plying him with rocks and 
labbing him with the gaff-spike. At last the dog 
lit his hold, and the brute turned on me again. This 
:ne I had better luck and I drove the spike into his 
'e. They I had him where I wanted him, and I kept 
e dog harrassing him and piled the rocks into him 
|itil he concluded he would be more comfortable 
)mewhere else. The dog undertook to show him the 
ay and chased him into a swamp. I was pretty well 
)ne out, I can tell you. It was a hot day to begin with, 
id I had never acted as a matador before. I hadn't 
iiished my contract five minutes, when I saw Alice, 
e kid I spoke of before, coming down the road with 
lother little girl. They both had red dresses on, and 
1 hadn't happened along they would both have stood 
first-class chance of being killed. I didn't say a word 
)out it to the children, but as soon as I got home I 
Id Hubert, Alice's brother, and we went and took out 
papers for old man Gawler. It cost him about $50 all 
told, for he fought the case and hired a lawyer. If I 
had thought a good deal, of Gipp after the affair with 
Angus, I thought more of him after the battle with the 
bull. 
"He made a good bird dog after his own peculiar 
style, and when he went after a rabbit he almost always 
brought it round in shot of me. He would keep to 
heel like a retriever, and stand a bird like a setter; and 
he would carry a wounded bird a mile and not ruffle 
its feathers. In that section the woods were full of 
traps and snares, all the fall, and unless a dog knew 
enough to keep clear of them, he was likely to get 
caught or strung up. I taughet Gipp to give all such 
things a wide berth, and if he found them to let me 
know. He had a certain kind of howl he used to give 
when he found a trap or a snare, and if by any chance 
there was live game in them he would make a racket 
you could hear a mile on a still day. I spoke "of Long 
Angus' boy. He was grown up by this time and he 
turned out a worse man than his father. He had all the 
craft and subtlety of the devil ; and he had it in for me, 
on the old man's account, and his own, too. I cut up 
over twenty of his snares in one day, and he knew it 
was I. Unlike his papa, he never threatened me. That 
is the kind of man I'm scared of. Give me a fellow 
who_ is all the time saying what he's going to do, and 
in nine cases out of ten, I'll show you a rank coward 
when it comes to the point. 
"Murdoch never had a word to say about me. If I 
met him he always spoke civilly, and at the same time 
I was sure that he v/ould poison my dogs or murder 
me if he could do it without being found out. One 
day in October I took three days' grub and started 
on a snare hunt. Some city men had been down shoot- 
ing, and they ran on to Murdoch's line of snares and 
found a dead cow moose in one of them. They sent 
word to the chief commissioner that I was neglecting 
my duty, and he sends me a letter, with a check for 
$20 and instruction to go in and cut down ever snare 
I could find. I went in and lit on two batches of 
snares and let a moose go by shooting off the rope 
which held it. I also found the snarer's camp with a 
lot of rope and a lot of snares ready to set. I cut the 
rope into foot lengths outside the camp and then I set 
the camp on fire with all there was in it. Maybe I 
went too far, but it made me mad to see the place where 
the poor devil of a cow had starved to death. That 
sort of thing makes me mad. I have seen a good many 
moose shot and I haye killed my own share of them; 
but when a man sets snares and is too lazy to tend them 
and lets his game starve to death in them I can't stand 
that. Murdoch was on his . way to the woods that day, 
and he got to his camp just in time to see the last 
embers of it going out. It came on an early snowstorm 
and he nearly froze to death, as his ax was burnt and 
he had no chance to build a shelter. The drenching he 
got brought- on pneumonia. But with the assistance of 
the doctor and the devil he pulled through. He was 
too weak to do much poaching that winter and that 
was worth something to me.. 
"Next fall he started in again and I went to the 
woods after snares as usual. I was coming down an 
old woodroad just at dusk one evening when master 
Gipp, who was just ahead of me, stops at a little wind- 
fall spruce across the road, and sets up the confoundest 
ki-yi I ever heard. I sung out to him to quit fooling, 
but he only yelped the more. When I got up to him I 
found a bear trap set in the moss. If I'd stepped over 
the windfall my foot would have gone into it, and you 
can figure the result. 
"The trap was set so that no man would ever suspect 
it was there, and there wasn't a particle of bait near 
it. It was set for me, and I knew it at once. I had 
a friend camped about two miles from here. I went 
through the woods and told him about it, and he 
said he would watch the trap with me. We made a 
dummy out of my clothes and put it in the trap and 
laid it face downward. Then we started to watch. We 
spent two whole days at it, then on the morning of the 
third day we saw Murdoch coming down the road with a 
musket under his arm. He came in sight of the trap, 
and saw the dummy lying on its face. 'Got you at last,' 
he sings out, and then he leaned on his gun and 
laughed; then he laid the gun down and started for the 
dummy in the trap. I jumped from the bushes and lit 
on him, like a cat lights on a rabbit. He had no chance 
with me, and when my friend got us apart I had pretty 
badly used him up. He went out of the woods 
and tried to get law on me, but he soon found he was 
in for all the law he wanted, and he packed up and went 
after his father. 
"I had that pup for nearly ten years, and then an old 
aunt of mine died. She left me a good bit of money, 
and I had to go to Bermuda to settle up the estate. 
A decent Yankee had been shooting with me that fall 
and I wrote and asked him if he would take old Gipp 
and give him a good home. He wrote me back he 
would give me $50 for him, old as he was. I refused to 
sell him, and finally I sent him down to Cambridge on 
the understanding that he was never to he sold or given 
away. 
"It took me a year to get my business in Bermuda 
and elsewhere settled. I heard from my friend in 
Cambridge that Gipp had been ill and that they had 
had the best veterinary surgeon in Massachusetts to at- 
tend him. I went to Boston when I was on my way 
home, and the day I landed I caught a Cambridge car 
and went over to see the old dog. 
"I had telephoned my friend when to expect me, and 
when I reached his house he was talking to a gentleman 
on the sidewalk. 'This is the doctor who has been 
attending old Gipp,' says he. 'Gipp, come here and see 
your master.' The dog was lying on the piazza, and he 
started to walk down the path at a slow walk. I gave 
the whistle he knew, and in an 'instant he laid legs to 
the ground and came for me like the wind. 
"He came to the place where I was standing, jumped 
on me and tried to lick my face, then he rolled over 
on his side and the man who had him said 'That dog 
has taken a fit.' The veterinary surgeon says, 'The dog 
hasn't taken a fit at all, he's dead.' And so it was 
It seems he had some heairt trouble, and when he saw 
me and got excited it was too much for the poor old 
beggar. I sent his body to Eraser, the Boston^ taxi- 
dermist, and I had to pay quite a little sum to have him 
stuffed, but I didn't grudge it all the same. I con- 
sider that he saved my life three times at least and I 
never looked at him without thinking of those lines 
of Whyte Melville's:" 
"There are men both good and great, who hold that in a future state 
The dumb creatures we have cherished here below 
Shall give us joyous greeting when we pass the Golden Gate, 
,1s it folly that I hope it may be so? 
DiGBv, Nova Scotia 
Edmund F. L. Jenner. 
A Deadly Snake. 
Tapachula, Chiapas, Mexico, May 15. — Editor Forest 
td Stream: An Indian workman here on my coffee es- 
ite was bitten between the fingers of his left hand by a 
lake, and when he arrived at my house two hours after 
; was bitten his hand and arm was badly swollen. The 
veiling gradually went up his arm to his shoulder and 
;hind the shoulder and nearly down over his heart. He 
emed to suffer most awfully, and could not sleep during 
.e whole night. At the end of three days his people came 
3wn from their town and carried him off on their backs, 
have not heard yet the result — this was about two weeks 
The snake was green in color, about 2>4 feet long with 
very small neck and very broad and angular head, and 
as coiled in a bush about three feet from the ground. I 
nt an Indian, immediately after the bitten man arrived, 
i bring it in, as he told me that he had killed it with his 
achete and that it could be found on a certain trail 
.rough the forest. The man who went after it found 
lother larger one of the same variety coiled up on top 
the dead one, which he killed and brought the two 
ick to me. I found the fangs about one-half inch long, 
an you kindly tell me what kind of snake this is, name, 
id whether it is considered poisonous? 
Guatemala. 
[From the very general description given, it is difficult 
say what the snake was, but it is quite possible that it 
ilonged to the Fer de lance group; venomous snakes 
lund in the West Indies and in Central and South 
merica. The Fer de lance is described as a snake of 
[gressive disposition, attacking without a warning and 
owing to large size. It is known as Lachesis Imce- 
atus, arid is related to the copperhead of North America, 
here is a small green Lachesis, which has been im- 
)rted from Guatemala, not very far from ^Tapachula, 
liapas; and this may, perhaps, be the one that bit the 
dian. L. lanceolatus is sometimes sage green with 
Tker bands. It is found in Central America as well as 
South America. The little bicolor has a prehensile 
tail, and as the one referred to was found in a bush, this 
seems likely to be the animal: ] 
Preserving the Big Trees. 
A RECENT news dispatch from Washington to the daily 
papers appears to attribute to the United States Bureau 
of Forestry some remarkable statements about the repro- 
ductive powers of the Big Trees. Perhaps the Bureau is 
not to be held responsible for the newspaper interpreta- 
tion of its bulletin, but here is the dispatch: 
"Washington, June 2.— The United States Bureau of 
Forestry has reached the stage in its experiments looking 
to the reproduction of the famous 'Big Trees' of Califor- 
nia, to make the positive announcement that, contrary to 
prevalent belief, this race of forest mbnarchs need not 
become extinct, but may be greatly multiplied. In a bul- 
letin issued to-day it is said the trees seed freely, but that 
the seeds rarely germinate except when they fall where 
the ground has recently been burned over." 
Surely the Bureau of Forestry has not shared in the 
"prevalent belief" that Big Tree seeds do not germinate. 
If the Bureau ever thinks the seeds rarely germinate, it 
has overlooked the facts. There are Sequoias in England, 
grown from seeds planted forty years ago. There are 
seedling Big Trees in the Capitol grounds at Sacramento 
as large around the trunk as a man's thigh. In the Mari- 
posa Grove, more than a dozen years ago, I saw seedlings 
thicker than the hair on a dog's back. They covered the 
ground like a carpet, and they were all planted by nature 
without man's aid. 
The problem of the preservation of the Big Trees is 
not one of reproduction of species. A million seedlings 
do not compensate for the loss of one of the giants. It 
will take a thousand years for a seedling to become a real 
Big Tree, and four times a thousand years to attain the 
proportions of some that are now in danger of vandal 
destruction. Providing Big Trees for the admiration and 
wonder of posterity forty centuries hence is taking rather 
a long altruistic look ahead. Several things may happen 
before those seedlings grow up to full stature. 
It is well to provide for preservation of the species by 
planting young trees wherever conditions are favorable, 
but it is not well to rest content with that and let the real 
Big Trees be destroyed. 
Except to the eye of one having some botanical knowl- 
edge, the Sequoia of ten or twenty years' growth is not 
readily distinguishable from other conifers. Its bark is 
gray, showing no trace of the rich terra cotta coloring 
which is one of the striking beauties of the Big Tree. The 
giant Sequoia, in all its unique characteristics, is the pro- 
duct of centuries. To permit it to be destroyed by sordid 
commercialism would be a crime of the centuries. 
Allen Kelly. 
Making a Monfcey of Htmself. 
To CALL tiger the proceeding was as follows : The 
Mikir, having first ascertained that a tiger was in the 
neighborhood, would climb into a well branched leafy tree 
situated near where he supposed the tiger to be, and, after 
hiding himself among the branches as best he could, 
would commence to imitate the chattering of a monkey, 
and break and drop twigs in the way that monkeys do. 
Then he would let fall to the ground a bundle of rags, 
weighted so that the thud when it struck the ground 
would sound as if a baby monkey had tumbled down from 
the tree, and at the same time would imitate the supposed 
baby monkey cries. This would be the supreme moment, 
for if a tiger were near it would often spring out, in the 
hope of snapping up such a dainty morsel as a young 
monkey, and then a bullet from the gun of the hidden 
Mikir might find its billet in the tiger's body. By this 
means the Mikir was said to have killed a considerable 
number of tigers, and certainly the man's power of 
mimicry was wonderfully good. The call for deer was 
of an entirely different nature, the sound imitated being 
the cry of a fawn, and, as this cry sometimes attracted 
tigers too, it had to be adopted with caution, because it 
was used only in open grass land, from which the caller 
would not have had much chance to escape were a tiger 
suddenly to put in an appearance. — London Field. 
