1S6 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
[Aug. 12, 1905. 
casional bullets through pilot house windows have 
brought about a mutual understanding between cabin- 
boat and steam boat people. Nevertheless, cabin- 
boaters prefer not to be run down, of which fact the 
pilots of the steamer Mississippi will please take notice. 
On March 16, I saw Sherman’s famous 60-mile ditch 
by which it was hoped to get supplies past Vicksburg 
without incurring danger from Confederate shot. Big 
trees were growing in the bottom of the canal. Grant’s 
shorter cut across the peninsula opposite the city was 
high above the water level as we passed down, although 
the river was rising rapidly, and the spring flood would 
soon put the stream out of the banks and back to the 
levees. 
We fought the wind now, and though in sight of the 
hills and soft coal smoke of the city, we were tantalized 
by rough water and adverse breezes. Many times we 
started from the bank, determined to bull through, only 
to be thrown back into some eddy, and on one oc- 
casion, we had only just reached a little caving bank 
pocket when a squall came along which raised waves 
many feet in height and half filled my boat with rain 
water in fifteen minutes. 
We worked down stream a little at a time. The banks 
were cleared on the west side, and past river history 
indicated by numerous sections of levee coming at 
various angles to the jumping off place. In one short 
bend I counted nine different levee ends at short in- 
tervals, representing vast toil soon rendered vain by the 
sawing current undermining the bank. 
At last we got a strong south wind, which promised 
to last a week, more or less. The Medicine Man was 
out of tobacco, and groaning like a whipped baby most 
of the time. He was looking ahead to a “good tirne” 
at Vicksburg so anxiously that he could think of nothing 
else. My own feelings were also on the raw edge. I 
had been with the man nearly seven weeks, and tasted 
the floating cabin boat life as deeply as possible. My 
notes covered practically every phase of cabin-boating — 
in a bayou, on a sandbar, and “tripping.” It was getting 
late in the year, and, however alluring the Medicine 
Man seemed, there was much more to be seen,_ and I 
couldn’t stay with him longer without washing time. I 
determined to travel ©n from Vicksburg as rapidly as 
possible in my skiff. 
In spite of the wind we shoved from the bank and 
were driven diagonally across the river. When half 
way to the far side, four miles above the city, we saw 
a vast bank of black and blue clouds coming up with the 
wind out of the south. “Hit looks like a cyclone!” the 
Medicine Man said. “We better pull!” _ 
We pulled the sweeps, but the wind jumped up and 
up, until we were teetering and the boat timbers 
creaked. Our effort was to keep from running into 
the bluff bank on the east (north) bank. We succeeded 
in holding off till we got down to a short, narrow 
sandbar, where we cast the anchor and rode the squall 
ill safety. A little store-boat some distance below, was 
reached when the wind fell away, and here we were told 
the way into Vicksburg. 
“Theh’s a big eddy at the mouth of Yazoo,” we were 
informed. “You all want to keep to the middle of the 
river, skirting that eddy.” ^ 
In the morning we dropped down. We couldn’t see 
the eddy, and the river was booming with the great 
head rise that was coming from thousands of miles 
up stream. One seemed fairly to see the slope of the 
oncoming water. It looked as though we’d be carried 
far toward the Gulf of Mexico if we kept to the middle, 
so we compromised and went down a few rods from 
the shore. The eddy caught us and we worked an hour to 
get out of it. Next time we went further out, and butted 
into the eddied drift and were carried back up stream 
eighty rods. Then we went ’way out, and just skinned 
the brim of the whirling, saucer-shaped suck. We were 
taken to the mouth of Yazoo, and a curious little man 
on whose head was a wide-rimmed cowboy hat, his 
face a weather-beaten goateed one and his figure built 
like that of a miniature athelete, hailed us with a 
cheery “Howdy!” 
“Hello, Doc White, hello!” said the Medicine Man. 
“I be’n a pulling this old boat of mine to pery blimmed 
shanty boat between here an’ Lake Providence, hoping 
I’d find you into hit.” . . , 
The eddy at Vicksburg has sucks within sucks. There 
were three between the mouth of Yazoo and the main 
river current. To see water flowing in opposite direc- 
tions on lines not a foot apart was one feature of the 
eddy. We cordelled the cabin boat into, a pocket just 
off the end of the $75,000 rip-rap levee which keeps the 
Mississippi from filling the Yazoo with sand and mud, 
to the detriment of Vicksburg water front privileges. 
Doc White welcomed us heartily. He is the son of one 
of the heroes of Memphis — a physician who fought yel- 
low fever in one of the epidemics of the ’70s. The son, on 
losing his wife, lost his grip, went West for his health, 
and is now living luxuriously in a cabin boat 24ft. long, 
8ft. wide, and having a hull 40m. deep. The boat is the 
most substantial one on the river. The bottom stringers 
are 4x4 and the bottom plank 2in. thick, sprung on 
and edges beveled in. Dr. White called it a “trunk,” 
for it would stand any kind of a storm or up-ending. 
The full sweep of so-called cyclones and attendant river 
waves failed to spring the boat in the least. 
Our music stirred Dr. White. He tried to dance, and 
did execute some remarkable double and triple shuffles. 
But he admitted that his knees were too weak to do 
the music justice. However, he contributed his share 
of the entertainment by singing the song that begins: 
“It was away last spring— 
. I b’lieve in May — 
That old Si Hubbard to me did say, 
T hear a circus is coming to town; 
S’pose we go an’ see the clown?’ 
So we sold our barley, oats and corn — 
In fact, we most cleaned out the barn — 
And went and bought two bran’ new suits, 
White plug hats and red top boots.” 
Dr. White, having lived as a cowboy in Indian Terri- 
tory for a long time — he was 54 years old — gave me 
this “infallible” snake cure, which is the Indian’s favorite 
and “unknown to science.” 
“Selagmella apus (snake moss) ^ drachhl- Macerate 
m an ounce of sweet milk and give at once. Also apply 
some of the moss to the wound.” 
Dr. White sent_ this receipt to the Medical Record, 
from which I copied it. 
Vicksburg is built on a hill — river bluffs — with streets 
so steep that the second stories of most houses on the 
up-and-down streets are on a level with the basements 
of the next door, while the basement door is level 
with the street, also the front door of the first floor. 
Somewhere up the railroad track, along the Yazoo, 
was the soldiers’ cemetery, with monuments commem- 
orating the days when the heights there were plunging 
round shot down upon Farragut’s fleet, and reminding 
visitors and residents of grim swamping and fighting 
on all sides of the city. Somehow, long association 
with tie hi.g river, had dulled my appetite for historic 
scenes. Fi.e psychology of a heroic people divided 
and at war, seemed of less interest than the swaying 
river current, and the banks caving in. The war had 
lasted only a little while, but the river was pouring 
on forever with no ripple on its surface to indicate the 
clash of souls and bodies of men. Close association 
with the river dwarfs the human interest in war and 
such things. I read of a man who once said it was not 
good for men to study astronomy. It is not good for 
the human understanding to know how little it is pos- 
sible to know — to feel that the human comprehension 
is not even capable of knowing time, space or other 
dread things. Realizing what these infinite unknowable 
things indicate^ the man said, is to deaden ambition 
and stunt the efforts, for one is apt to say, “What is 
the use?” Association with the Mississippi gives rise 
to similar reflections. The little ditch that Grant’s 
army dug — the Mississippi would soon cut out more 
dirt in five minutes, just below Vicksburg, at Lake 
Palmyra than thousands of men could cast out in 
months. 
River life became oppressive, and I wanted to get 
away from the mental malaria of cabin boat associa- 
tions. The Medicine Man disappeared on a spree. He 
turned up with a whiskey boat gasolene, and towed his 
craft up the Yazoo to the wharf. The gasolene was 
Hull’s, and in the pilot house were many bullet holes — 
he had a fight with a sheriff at Leota, a few miles be- 
fore, and with his wife, beat the posse off, killing three 
men, it is said, and wounding others. He and she looked 
the part — cold, grim countenances. I packed up, ready 
to start when the weather should clear. Squall fol- 
lowed squall, and then the Medicine Man showed up 
once more. A comely woman was with him, her hus- 
band being a prisoner in Vicksburg jail. She had paid 
one fine for him; she vowed she wouldn’t pay another. 
While she was discussing with the Medicine Man what 
she should do, I loaded my skiff and bade the Medicine 
Man good-by. Raymond S. Spears. 
^mml 
— — 
Recurrence of Canine Distemper. 
It is a matter of general opinion, not only of the public, 
but also of the medical and veterinary professions, that in 
the majority of contagious or infective diseases of man- 
kind and animals one attack of a disease confers protec- 
tion or immunity to a future attack of the same malady. 
This is to a certain extent, but not absolutely, true. 
On the other hand, there are certain contagious or in- 
fective maladies that do not afford immunity, one attack 
cr istituting a predisposition to subsequent attacks. 
Immunity varies in degree not only according to the 
period or the locality in which the disease rages, but also 
the race or breed, family or strain, or individual. 
It is asserted that some individuals are naturally im- 
mune to a particular outbreak of disease, but if these 
cases were closely observed after a first exposure to in- 
fection, it would very probably be shown that the symp- 
toms were so mild as to have escaped recognition by the 
observer, and the protection afforded during subsequent 
outbreaks to such cases would be ascribed to natural or 
inherited immunity. 
However, many cases seem to escape a former expo- 
sure, but yield to a subsequent infection. 
As regards canine distemper, there are many intelli- 
gent dog breeders, kennelmen, experienced veterinary sur- 
geons, and clinical investigators who have often observed 
second, occasionally third, and sometimes, though rarely, 
fourth attacks of the disease in the same dog. 
To show that this is no new and exceptional experi- 
ence, I shall here briefly quote from authorities on the 
subj ect. 
Delaware P. Blaine, the father of canine pathology, and 
therefore our most original and, as yet, unsurpassed ob- 
server of the diseases of the dog, says in his last or fourth 
edition (1841) of “Canine Pathology”: “Neither is its at- 
tack confined to once ; it will now and then appear not 
only a second but a third time even.” 
Youatt, at first pupil, afterward partner, and ultimate- 
ly successor and alsO' a contemporary of Blaine, says in 
his work “On the Dog”- (1845), and also in a paper on 
this subject read in 1830: “One attack of the disease, and 
even a severe one. is no absolute security against its re- 
turn, and although the dog that has once labored under 
distemper -possesses a certain degree of irnmunity; or, if 
he is attacked a second time, the malady usually assumes 
a milder type. I have, however, known it to occur three 
times in the same animal, and at last destroy him.” 
Mayhew, in his work on the dog, published in 1854, 
says : “Most people imagine a dog can- have distemper 
but once in its life, whereas I had a patient that under- 
went three distinct attacks in one autumn, that of 1849.” 
He adds that .“All the stages and symptoms of ordinary 
distemper may appear and depart unnoticed.” 
Drs. Friedberger and Frohner, professors at the high 
schools of veterinary medicine in Munich and Berlin re- 
spectively, in their world-wide recognized text-book,' “On 
the Special Pathology and Therapeutics of the Domesti- 
cated Animals,” remark that : “Although one attack gen- 
erally confers immunity for a considerable time, some 
dogs become infected several times. We have, for in- 
stance, treated the same dog for distemper four times in 
a year,” 
Glass, in his translation of Mueller’s “Diseases of the 
Dog,” describes a disease which he terms “infectious 
bronchial catarrh,” or show-bench distemper, and although 
he does not consider it true “contagious distemper,” says 
it is generally seen in large kennels, developing itself in 
dogs soon after returning from a show, and one of its 
peculiarities is that one attack does not protect from an- 
other. From his description of this disease, I conclude 
it is none other than an acute form of distemper. 
It. will be seen from these few quotations that the au- 
thoritative opinions on the recurrence of distemper have 
been held at least from the commencement of the nine- 
teenth to that of the twentieth century. 
To these opinions I myself subscribe, having repeated- 
ly seen second, frequently third, and occasionally more 
attacks of the disease in the same dog. even during the 
same year. I have also seen an animal get quite well 
after a long period of convalescence, and remain well 
for a short time, and then have a recurrence of similar 
symptoms. As a rule, however, a recurrence is gener- 
ally interspaced by an interval of complete health for, at 
least, two cr three months or longer. 
These remarks also hold good for feline distemper. In 
the cat, however, recurrences, especially in large catteries, 
are more frequent than in the dog. In 1896, when writ- 
ing on this subject in the Ladies’ Kennel Journal, I re- 
ferred to the common occurrence of repeated attacks and 
also 'relapses in the same animal, as if one attack pre- 
disposed to a future one. 
The disease known as typhus may also' affect the same 
dog more than once, and cause death from the subsequent 
seizure, which may occur within the year or several years 
after the first attack. 
On the other hand, Mr. A. J. Sewell, M.R.C.V.S., does 
not seem to agree with the view that distemper may at- 
tack a dog more than once. 
In his edition of “Mayhew on the Dog” he says : “Dogs 
may, it is said, have distemper twice, but a second attack, 
in my experience, is of a very rare occurrence. * * * 
I have many times kept dogs that I know have had the 
disease in a kennel full of distemper patients, and with 
‘the exception of two or three of them developing a husky 
cough, no other signs of the disease’ have occurred. There 
has been ‘no rise of temperature or loss of flesh,’ and the 
dog has generally continued to take his food as usual, 
and appeared full of spirits. A person buying a dog 
generally asks the question, ‘Has he had distemper?’ An 
unscrupulous dealer generally replies in the affirmative, 
whether such is the case or 'not. It often happens in the 
course of time that the dog contracts the malady, and 
shows all the usual symptoms in full. The purchaser 
complains, but the seller is usually ready with the answer 
that a dog may have two or more attacks. When I am 
consulted in such cases, and I find a dog suffering from 
the disease badly, I never hesitate in giving an opinion 
that he has not had it before.” 
I have quoted these remarks rather fully, so as to 
avoid being misunderstood when I state that, although 
Mr. Sewell seems, in one place, to infer that dogs are not 
liable to- suffer from distemper more than once, he gives 
facts in another place that go to show they are liable. At 
least, he indicates doubt even if not denial. Finally, his 
opinion appears to have gained ascendancy over his facts. 
It will be seen from the quotation “two or three of 
them developing a husky cough” with no rise of tempera- 
ture or loss of flesh after being exposed in a distem- 
pered ward, that Mr. Sewell throws doubt upon the dogs 
having had distemper, at least, a second time. Probably 
he does not consider a dog to have distemper unless the 
animal has a rise of temperature. If so, he is mistaken. 
But I shall leave this question for a future occasion.— 
Henry Gray, M.R.C.V.S., in Our Dogs. 
Southern Beagle Club. 
The fourth annual meeting and field trial will be held 
at New Albany, Miss., on Feb. 26, 1906. Hares are 
plentiful on the grounds selected, the topography affords 
an excellent view of the chases, the weather at that 
season of the year is suitable, and the New Albany 
hotel affords ample accommodation for those in attend- 
ance. 
Four classes will be run at the coming meeting, viz.: 
1. A Derby (Class C) for dogs and bitches from 13 
to IS inches, to which all whelped on or after January, 
1905, will be eligible. 
2. A Derby (Class D) for dogs and bitches 13 inches 
or under, to which all whelped on or after January, 
1905, will be eligible. 
3. An All-Age Class (A) for dogs and bitches from 
13 to 15 inches. 
4. An All-Age Class (B) for dogs and bitches 13 
inches or under. 
Prizes of $30, $15 and $5 will be given in each class. 
In addition to the cash prizes, a small silver cup will 
be given to the owner of the first hound in each class. 
The entry fee is $5 for each hound entered. 
The names of two competent judges . will be an- 
nounced in our final circular of Jan. i, 1906. 
The club reserves the right to reject the entry of any 
hound, which, from the best information obtainable, 
and according to its judgment, is not a pure bred beagle, 
Dogs whose owners are absent will be cared for by the 
club and handled by competent handlers, but the club 
will not hold itself responsible for accidental loss or 
damage. 
The attention of beagle lovers and breeders , all over 
the country is called to the wisdom of supporting the 
only organization in the interest of their favorite dog in 
the South, thereby increasing the number of its friends, 
encouraging the development of good dogs that will 
later be entered in the Northern, Eastern and Western 
trials in the pursuit of further honors, and opening up 
and extending a market for the produce of their kennel. 
The third annual m_eeting at Centreville, Miss.,- proved 
a great success, with a total entry of about twenty- five 
very high class beagles, proving by far the finest ex- 
hibition of these hounds and their work ever witnessed 
in this portion of our country. 
Finally, the committee invites every lover of clean, 
healthful out-of-door sport to send his application, 
together with the membership fee of $3 to the secretary. 
By becoming rnembers of the club at this irnportant 
