168 
POREST AND STREAM. 
IfAuc. 26, 1903. 
small creek, where we decide to refresh the inner man, 
and so off-saddle and let the ponies go free. They at 
once go to the water and then settle down to graze close 
alongside us. We squat down on the soft, dry grass and 
tackle the sandwiches which fcrm our lunch with the 
cool, clear water from the creek. The last bite disappears 
and then pipes are set going and we bask in the sunshine, 
feeling a little lazy after our morning’s tramp. The day 
is simply perfect, a warm sun and a clear blue sky with 
just enough breeze to rustle the tall rushes by the creek. 
Overhead a large hawk wheels lazily to and fro, seeming 
to know just when he is out of range. Now and then a 
rat splashes into the water from some retreat on the bank, 
and the tues or parson birds, so-called on account of their 
glossy black plumage and white frill of feathers round 
their necks, flit here and there through the scrubby trees 
around us. 
At last pipes are knocked out and we saddle up again 
and ride toward a native pah or small village close by, 
consisting of small thatched houses with a crowd of pigs 
and mongrel curs running around in all directions out- 
side. We are hailed with a chorus of wild barks and 
snarls from the dogs, who are at last silenced by their 
owners, with whom, we have a few minutes’ conversation, 
most of them speaking English more or less fluently. We 
take leave of them at last and proceed on our way toward 
a large field of maize, bounded on one side by a rough 
grass paddock. Elere we tie up (he horses to the wooden 
fence rails, or in Colonial parlance, we hang them up and 
decide to run through the standing maize for any outlying 
pheasants. The corn cobs are about ripe for plucking, 
but the natives have as yet not .‘Started work in this field, 
so the thick stems are close together and the leaves and 
cobs rattle as the dogs brush through them. 
We employ the same maneuvers here as up in the val- 
ley, one takes the dogs and drives the birds out toward 
the open paddock, where the other two are ready to re- 
ceive them. The man with the dogs gets an occasional 
shot, but owing to the thickness and height of the corn 
stalks he does not get very tempting chances.^ The birds 
run ahead under the sheltering maize, till. obliged to take 
wing, and then offer some nice shots to the waiting gun. 
Here we manage to account for three more brace of 
pheasants and also three California quail which the dogs 
flush just as they come put into the open. As by this time 
the afternoon is beginning to advance w’e decide on trying 
a large swampy paddock with a dense patch of marnuka 
scrub in the middle of it, for bo-keka or swamp hen. 
These birds resemble the coot in appearance. Their heads 
are brightly marked with red, the back is covered with 
fine blue feathers, and the breast white. Their short, 
stumpy tails are also white, and they are kept in con- 
tinual motion, up and down, as the birds walk around. 
They fly with a slow flapping flight, but the pace is very 
deceiving to the gunner, as they generally seem to be go- 
ing far slower than is really the case. We pursue the same 
plan here as in the maize field, though the scrub is very 
dense and hard to scrabble through. The two in waiting 
keep close in the shelter of the scrub, but these white- 
tagged hens are the cutest of the cute, they fly forward, 
settling here and there in the low trees on the approach 
of the dogs, but never come quite near enough the open 
for a shot. They seem tO' know something is wrong and 
keep doubling back in the scrub again and again, and we 
cannot persuade them to leave their shelter. However, we 
manage to down three of the wily creatures and our 
friend in the scrub gets one, bringing the grand total up 
to four birds. We pick up the dead and get back to the 
ponies again, one od which has managed to rub his 
bridle off against a fence post and stands there looking 
rather sheepish as we adjust it. 
Climbing into our seats again and stuffing the birds 
into the game bags fixed to the rings on the saddles, we 
make tracks down the trail leading to the sea shore, in- 
tending to try for a rabbit or two among the sand hills 
on our way home. Coming out of the last paddock, before 
we reach the shore, a rather amusing incident occurs. 
We noticed a large hawk settle behind a fence some hun- 
dred yards ahead of us, my friend made an attempt tO’ 
get near enough for a shot, by galloping his pony as hard 
as he could tear, up to the fence. Just as he arrived at 
the said fence he pulled up the pony and the hawk got up ; 
he raised the gun, but the mare objected to firearms and 
swung round; he pulled her back and sent her over the 
low obstruction in pursuit, letting off both barrels at 
the hawk to an accompaniment of violent bucks from 
his mount. The hawk escaped.' 
This little escapade, over we emerged on to the sand^^ 
hills and 'sat down to wait till a little before dusk, before] 
tackling the bunnieS. As it is a trait of the Colonial thati 
he will never walk if he can get anything to ride, that is,- 
if the nature of the ground allows of riding at all; we; 
stuck to our mounts and cantered after my old cattle dog, ; 
as he pushed up the rabbits from among the furze bushes. ; 
As only one of the horses was used to being shot over, i 
the game was fast and furious while it lasted, and thought 
the total bag was only fi\|e rabbits, we had a heap of fun j 
for our money. My friend’s mount being a newly broken] 
mare, she promptly bolted at the first barrel he fired, but' 
as galloping in deep sand gets somewhat irksome to thet 
most fiery of steeds he soon pulled her in. j 
The shadows were now beginning to fall in earnest, so 1 
we picked up the slain and started for home along the j 
hard sand at the water’s edge. It was a lovely evening, | 
the sinking sun casting a yellow glow over everything, ’ 
with the sea washing gently on the shore and the ponies _■ 
snatching at their bits when they felt the hard sand under > 
their feet. We cantered on without a sound to be heard. i 
but the crunch of the iron-shod hoofs and the murmur : 
of the surf. Pulling up as we near the house a small flock 
of ducks come in over our heads making for one of the-: 
large pools on the shore. My friend sees them in time,.' 
though his mount shows his decided objection to the busi-- 
ness, manages' to secure one of them, thus closing ouri 
day’s sport. Total bag, 19 pheasants, 3 quail, 4 swamps 
hens, I hawk, i duck and 5 rabbits; not a large count 
in these days of big battues and record bags, but entirely 
satisfactory to those who participated in the shooting, anff 
with the variety and beauty of the scenery, coupled with 
the pleasure of watching two good dogs work, making: 
ample amends for any deficiency in the number of the' 
slain, i 
L — LiLJ 
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Jills/ X. 
1 
- 
Frogs of the Illinois River 
My object in writing anything' on this subject is sim- 
ply to call attention to the mighty' chaifges that may be 
wrought in the animal life occupying^ peculiar rivers by 
natural means. The Illinois River is'. a peculiar river, 
very peculiar. It is but little more than a great slough, 
having but twenty-one feet fall in its 220 miles, from 
La Salle to its mouth, with a very sluggish and at times 
hardly perceptible current, and its bed throughout this 
entire length is a muddy, nasty, slimy silt from say five 
to forty feet or more in tMckness. Its width in low 
water averages about 700 feet, in high water two to eight 
miles, and the overflowed bottom lands^ have a surface 
very similar to the bed of the river. Therefore all life 
of temperate climes, botli animal and vegetable, _ that 
found a congenial home and an abundance of food in the 
richest of mud wa.s' found along its course before the 
advent of the man with the gun -in ' well-nigh unequaled 
abundance. All inland waterfowl, froni the tiny plover 
to the magnificent swan, found along it perfect feeding 
grounds, and many of them a perfect place in which Jo 
breed. Fish of many species fairly swarmed within its 
waters in myriads, and size far beyond what the newer 
generation along its banks would dream of. Water breed- 
ing and other insect life was correspondingly plentiful; 
Illinois malaria and “skeeters” were a great terror to the 
early Settler. 
How vast the change in this great mass of life to-day, 
wrought wholly by the occupancy of its shores by the 
man with his gun and other surroundings. The water- 
fowl life of summer time has nearly or entirely disap- 
peared. Scarcely a duck dare risk the rearing of her 
downy brood in the widest and most impenetrable of its 
marshes. The graceful swan in her semi-yearly migra- 
tions no longer dares to rest her weary pinions on the 
wddest of its lakes ; she knows the man with the gun is 
omnipresent. What was only a few years ago a vast 
morass stretching over thousands of acres, the perfect 
home of the turtle, the frog, the coot, the rail, the heron, 
etc., is now solid land. If the muskrat believed in the 
adage, “In numbers there is strength,” he felt that he 
was .safe from all harm. 
Frogs. 
Yea, frogs, for it is in memory of the dear departed 
bullfrog that I indite these lines— *I mean the great and 
the largest frog pond found in Western waters. This most 
toothsome animal was in early times found every\vhere 
along this great slough and the great marshes adjoining 
in an abundance only equaled in proportion to their sizes 
by the mosquitoes and the muskrats. His sonorous voice 
was to be heard on every side, so plentiful were they 
‘that I have often heard their voices when congratulating 
each other on a hot day in June just before a rain at a 
distance of two miles from the river. The voice of this 
frog at such times is a sonorous bass, modulated roar of 
two syllables, best explained by a little story. In early 
times we had here a long, “slab-sided,” powerful fellow 
by the name of Bill Owens. Bill’s father ran the grist 
mill where we all had ground the wheat for our daily 
bread. “Uncle Rod” at times would leave Bill alone to 
look after the mill. There was a vast amount of bull- 
frogs along the stream that turned the mill. Bill was 
very fond of these, also of whiskey. He was also very 
expert in capturing the frogs. When he got a good 
mess he would take them to town and trade them to the 
tavern keeper for whiskey. Whiskey was only “two bits” 
a gallon in those old times. When left in charge of the 
mill Bill would often become both dry and hungry and 
slip oft' and . “go a^frogging,” leaving the mill to tend 
itself, then if he was successful with his frogging he 
would come home some time in the night as drunk as a 
king. The boys of the neighborhood, after taking notes 
of Bill’s failings, would persecute him by following him 
at a safe distance and bellowing after him in a- deep bass 
voice like that of his favorite frog: 
Bill Ow-e-n-s, 
Bill Ow-e-n-s, 
Got dh-r-unk. 
Got dh-r-unk. 
Then every frog along the river would take up the re- 
frain. This proved too rnuch for poor Bill’s nerves and 
he concluded that he must kill and eat all the frogs or 
quit getting drunk. The first was too great a task for 
et'en so powerful a man as he, so he became a sober man. 
When I was a boy, we had here a French quadroon 
barber and cook who was the second man to eat frogs in 
this neighborhood, and he taught all of us young fellows 
how to hunt, cook and eat them. Our plan was to take 
a small boat and shove it gently along through the lily 
pads, until we would espy a frog sitting patiently with 
his eyes and mouth just above the surface waiting until 
some insect would hover within reach of his long, slimy, 
lightning-like, elastic tongue. This tongue can be 
thrown out some five to six inches or more, and so 
quickly as to be impossible for the eye to see even its 
flash through the air. We would shoot them with very 
light loads of powder and shot. As soon as we would 
have a great plenty for a big feast, George, the Creole, 
would fry and serve them up in the best French style. 
Were they good? I would work harder to-day to get 
such a mess than for any other food in the world. 
Some years ago I had a housekeeper who was very 
fond of game, but had often expressed contempt of . frog 
eating. One day I had been along the river frogging; 
the frogs were very scarce, but with great care and per- 
severance I secured four fine ones. Going home I found 
the cooks all gone, the house deserted. Thinks I, I will 
play the cook myself and have a feast like the old time 
ones back of George’s barber shop. In due time I had 
them fried to a turn, and was just sitting down to enjoy 
them, when in came the housekeeper. She smelled them. 
They smelt good. Said she, “What have you got?” 
“The hindquarters of some woodcock,” said I, “consid- 
ered by all the best game bird in the world.” 
“Let me taste,” said she. 
I handed her a big ham, and she agreed with all that 
the “woodcock” is the best of all birds. The next day 
she was pestering me to go out and kill “some more of 
those delicious birds.” I have said that now along this 
river fullfrogs are very scarce. They disappeared from 
our river almost entirely at one time as far back as 1852- 
’53, and very suddenly. What caused their disappear- 
ance has been a question to which it was hard to find a 
satisfactory answer. I knew that feral life was subject 
to the ravages of virulent, deadly epidemic and conta- 
gious diseases, but could hear of no example of disease 
stopping a life so nearly completely over so wide a re- 
gion as this disappearance of our frogs. 
For fear that some may have begun to form wrong 
conclusions, I will state emphatically that I did not kill 
and eat them all, that Bill Owens did not return to his 
cups and his frogs, nor the Creole, nor we boys make 
any serious inroads on their numbers. No, something 
more potent and terrible than any of these used them 
up far worse than the Jews did the Philistines. What 
was it? This is the question that for years I have striven' 
to solve, to my own satisfaction at least. 
For a long time I thought that the disappearance of 
the bullfrog from the Illinois River was perhaps caused 
by the introduction into its waters of some new form of 
life that fed upon the frog, its young or its eggs tO' such: 
an extent as to nearly annihilate it. To give a coloring! 
to this theory there was a new form of life that made its 
first appearance in the Illinois River suddenly and 
numerously about that time, namely, the fish known as 
the croppie, which is said by those who should know, was' 
first introduced to the great Mississippi waters from the 
Great Lakes through the Ohio and Erie Canal as soon as; 
completed. It is certain that it was not known in Illi- 
nois waters until about thirty odd years ago. Finding a 
congenial home here it bred very fast and became very 
numerous. It is a fish that loves wide, shallow, still 
waters with a muddy bottom, the same waters where 
we found our frog, its eggs and its young. The young 
or tadpoles of our bullfrog, if my observations have 
been correct, pass two seasons or a year at least in the' 
tadpole or embryo stage — at least they pass one winter 
as tadpoles, as does also' the young of our green-backed 
smaller creek bullfrog, for I have observed myriads of 
both in the water in the dead of winter. The croppie! 
we all know feeds ravenouslv on small fish, and it is very, 
probable that it also feeds on the fish-like young of our 
frog, but I do not know this to be a fact. If such is the 
case, anyone who has studied the interaction of lives off 
each other, especially sedentary lives, knows full well 
that one will often nearly annihilate another by feedingi 
on its individuals, eggs or progeny. Therefore, I readily 
accepted it as a theory, that the introduction of the 
croppie had caused the nearly complete disappearance 
of our frog. But theory will not answer the purpose in 
the science of natural history. Facts, known facts, and, 
they alone, will fill the bill. If I could prove that the 
croppie preyed extensively on the eggs or young of our 
frog, the question would be settled, but I could not. 
But as time and years rolled on, a fresh and unread 
page of nature’s workings and means of bringing about 
wonderful and unlooked for changes in life subject to' 
her laws and forces was opened before our eyes, and it 
■vvas one which pfoved that the nearly complete annihila-' 
tion of a species or many species of sedentary life is a 
thing she may readily cause by natural forces. For in-. 
stance, the winter of 1881 and 1882 was one of extreme 
cold, continued without a break for a comparatively 
great length of time. The Illinois River at that time was 
at a low stage. The intense cold covered it with an un-f 
broken coat of ice of twenty-four to thirty-four inches in 
thickness, and it remained in this condition for about 
two months, or, in other words, this river of not very' 
pure water, and this water overlying the vast area of its' 
bottom composed of a thick layer of mud, decaying/ 
putrid animal and vegetable matter continually evolving 
gases poisonous to all animal life, was hermetically 
sealed up by this impervious coating of ice, so that these 
poisonous gases could not escape into the air. The re- 
sult of this was that the free oxygen naturally belonging! 
to the water was soon entirely appropriated and used up 
by the myriads of animal life occupying the water, and 
its place was taken by the poisonous (to animal life) car-! 
bonic acid gas exhaled by them, and by the same and 
sulphuretted hydrogen, marsh and other poisonous gases' 
being continually set free in the water by the great mass 
of underlying putrefying mud. This state of affairs re-' 
