Forest and Stream. 
A Weekly Journal of the Rod and Gun. 
Copyright, 1904, by Forest and Stream Publishing Co. 
Terms, $4 a Year. 10 Cts. a Copy. I 
Six Months, $2. f 
NEW YORK, SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 9, 190B. 
j VOL. LXV.~ No. 11 
( No. 346 Broadway, New York, 
MORE NATIONAL PARKS. 
The fine progress made in setting aside forest reserves 
under the Act of 1891 is something on which every 
American may congratulate himself. In less than fifteen 
years vast tracts have been reserved from settlement to 
be used by the people at large as adjuncts to the water 
supply of the West, and as carefully guarded sources of 
timber supply for the neighboring public. This is all as 
it should be — a great advance over old methods. 
Forest reserves are good and useful, but their purpose 
is wholly utilitarian. Their game may be hunted; cattle 
may be grazed on them ; settlers may take up claims on 
non-forested areas within their borders ; prospectors may 
run over them, sinking holes for mineral, or .washing 
the gravel bars and running the mud into their streams. 
In the few National Parks which we possess, on the other 
hand, these utilitarian pursuits are forbidden. Like the 
parks in our great cities, they are set aside as breathing 
places for the people, pleasure grounds which every one 
may visit and enjoy with the utmost freedom, so long as 
he does not encroach on the rights of his fellows. The 
game, the fish and the timber belong to all, and hence 
are subject to such rules and regulations as seem for the 
greatest good of the greatest number. For reasons well 
understood by all, the game may not be pursued or 
harmed; but visitors may use timber for fuel or fish for 
food. 
Our important National Parks have commonly been set 
aside in rough mountain regions, characterized by great 
beauty of natural scenery. The towering peaks, lofty 
cliffs, and rough rock slides of the Yellowstone, the 
Y’osemite, or the Crater Lake parks offer little to attract 
the permanent resident; on the other hand, at certain 
seasons of the year they are visited by great multitudes 
of people, who derive very great pleasure from them, and 
who pay out much money, which passes into the hands 
of those who aid them to enjoy their trips. 
The American people have too few places of this kind, 
and this is coming to be well recognized by thoughtful 
persons. There are certain regions which are so incom- 
parably more beautiful than others that they ought by all 
means to be protected and saved for the public by the 
Government, just as the Yellowstone Park has •been 
saved and protected. 
Such spots too often lie far from the beaten track 
followed by money-grubbing man, and are therefore un- 
known to people who might talk and write about them 
and so call them to the public attention. They may lie 
in States or Territories where those residents who give 
any thought to the beauties of nature and the happiness 
and w'elfare of coming generations are few, and the vast 
majority of people are more occupied in chasing the 
almighty dollar over the prairie and trying to throw a 
rope over it than they are in thinking of what may hap- 
pen ten or twenty years from now. The people residing 
in the States in which lie the areas which should be 
made National Parks are obviously those who should 
petition Congress for the legislation required to establish 
such parks, yet too often the very people who would be 
most benefited by such legislation are the last ones to 
think of the matter. 
Of the seventeen National Parks of the United States, 
five are military, on the sites of battles of the Civil War, 
six are more or less wild and natural, and three are 
wholly artificial. The Yellow.stone Park with its two 
mnllion acres, and the Yosemite of one million, are by far 
the best knowm. These National Parks lie in Wyoming, 
Montana, California, Washington, and Oregon, though 
Montana’s interest in the Yellowstone is a narrow one. 
Colorado' has no park, and neither have Idaho, Arizona 
or New Mexico, though in each there should be one. 
Mr. Hamlin Garland, the eminent novelist, has re- 
cently been hard at work trying to arouse in Colorado 
a public sentiment which shall call on Congress for the 
setting aside as a national park of the region west of 
Gray’s Peak, the White River Plateau. This beautiful 
region is almost the only one in all Colorado that is as 
yet unmarred by the encroachments of civilization. Pick 
and. ax have as yet done little to scar its hills and mesas, 
and the effort to save the region is worthy of all praise 
and should succeed. It may be hoped that Mr. Garland’s 
written and spoken eloquence may serve to stir the Col- 
oradans to action. 
A region which should be set aside as a National Park 
■yvithout delay is the Grand Canon of Colorado, Jt 1 $ 
true that the puny efforts of man cannot do much to 
injure such stupendous natural works as have here been 
wrought. Nevertheless the Grand Canon ought to be 
under the control of the Government and properly pro- 
tected by it. 
Still another country — practically without inhabitants, 
yet marvelous in its wonderful beauty and grandeur — is 
that known as the St. Mary’s country in northwestern 
Montana, lying in the main divide of the Rocky Moun- 
tains between the Great Northern Railroad and the 
Boundary line. It is a region of marvelous lakes, tower- 
ing peaks, vast glaciers and deep, narrow fiords. Few 
people know these wonderful mountains, yet no one who 
goes there but comes away filled with enthusiasm for 
their wild and singular beauty. 
All these parks might be set aside by Congress at 
practically no present expense, since the work of improv- 
ing them could be postponed almost indefinitely. Presi- 
dent Roosevelt has more than once expressed an earnest 
wish that all of these regions should be made National 
Parks, but he recognizes, as every one must, that the 
demand for such legislation must come from the people 
of the regions where these areas are situated, and may 
well enough feel, as others do, that if the inhabitants of 
these States or Territories do not care enough about the 
matter to move actively, nO' branch of the Government 
can be expected to do so. 
LOST IN THE WOODS. 
When one considers the many millions of people scat- 
tered over the United States, it would seem that getting 
lost on the prairie or in the woods was likely to- become 
a forgotten art, and yet it is not so. Every summer the 
newspapers are filled with accounts of men, women and 
children who get lost, and remain out of doors for a 
longer or shorter time, finally to be recovered in a con- 
dition of more or less misery. A vast amount has been 
written about getting lost in the woods, how tO' avoid 
being lost, and how to find oneself when lost; but, so 
far as we have been able to study this literature, it con- 
tains very little that is practical. 
Advice to children, to women and to people who have 
spent little of their time out of doors is not likely tO' be 
of great value, and these are the very people who are 
likely to get lost. On the other hand, the man or woman 
who is familiar with outdoor life knows a certain number 
of essential things about being lost, and does not need to 
have these repeated. One of the most frequent recom- 
mendations by persons writing on this subject is that the 
traveler should remember in which direction he is going, 
so that when he desires to retrace his steps, he may do so- 
by going in the reverse direction; but how is this to be 
done? Nothing is easier than to lose one’s sense of 
direction when getting out of known surroundings, but 
on the other hand, a few simple suggestions, if recol- 
lected, may help one to keep his direction. A compass is 
a good thing, but to be of much use it must be fre- 
quently consulted, and the distances varying from a 
direct course must be computed. In a more or less open 
country there are usually land marks, hills or mountains, 
noteworthy and easily recognizable, trees on elevations, 
water courses or other natural physiographic features 
which one may use as guides. On the other hand, if the 
country is wooded, the sun must be the guide, and if this 
is obscured and one has lost his sense of direction, he 
should simply camp until he gets it back again. Often 
the timber looks all alike, and in a burned over forest in 
the Western mountains, if the sun is hidden, one may 
stand among the slender gray tree trunks thirty or forty 
yards from camp and absolutely lose his sense of direc- 
tion, finding his way back only by listening for the camp 
sounds. 
It is on the sun that we must chiefly depend for direc- 
tion if we become lost. We know that it rises in the 
east, sets in the west, and is in the south at midday. At 
this time, it casts a very small shadow, and a person of 
slight powers of observation can notice this. He is likely 
to know where the sun was when he started from camp in 
the morning, and thus to recognize the direction in which 
he at first traveled. If he knows the points of the com- 
pass when he finds that he is astray, he should be able to 
reverse his morning’s direction and to go back toward 
camp. 
In a mountainous country all springs and brooks and 
Qre?k§ How toward some main riveu and along the main 
rivers are usually roads, settlements and other unmis- 
takable evidences of human beings. To be sure, there 
may be sections where the following down a stream will 
involve a long and tiresome journey through tangled 
swamp and forest; but, on the other hand, a journey 
down the stream may be the speediest way of finding ' 
camp or some one who can tell you where camp is. 
When going into camp, it is always well to acquire from , 
your guide, or from some one who is familiar with the ■ 
country where you are to be, all the infonnation possible 
about the region — what streams are in it, what river do . 
they flow to, what sort of country do they pass through. 
In old times the men who traveled over the then track- 
less plains and mountains came at last to be as observant 
as an Indian of the features of the landscape. Almost : 
unconsciously they counted the streams they crossed, cal- 
culated the directions in which they flowed, compared 
them with other points where they had crossed them, 
noticed the hills, the bluffs, the rocks, and the trees in 
the river bottom, and at the end of the day’s march could, 
if so disposed, draw a very correct map of the country 
passed over. 
Nevertheless, it was possible for the oldest trapper and 
for the old-time Indian to become lost, if land marks • 
were not seen, and thei'e was nothing to give the sense 
of direction. The heavenly bodies are a better guide than 
any compass. But if they be obscured and there are no 
land marks, one cannot travel. There is no inherent 
sense of direction or peculiar wisdom of locality in the 
trained persons that travel so readily through regions 
which possess absolutely nothing recognizable to the new- 
comer; it is simply that certain powers and senses in- 
herent in us all have, in these special individuals, been . 
brought out and trained to a very high degree. 
A VANISHING GAME BIRD. \ 
The general prospects this season for good prairie 
chicken shooting — one of the keenly popular upland sports ■ 
with dog and gun — seem in the main to be unfavorable. 
Undoubtedly there are small areas here and there, mere 
nooks in comparison to the whole vast prairie habitat of 
the pinnated grouse which contain birds aplenty, and 
which will afford ample sport for the favored few who 
have access tO' them ; but for the hundreds of chicken 
shooters who take their chances without preliminary in- 
vestigation, much failure and disappointment are in store. 
The reports, from many of the prairie districts where 
the pinnated grouse in times past were in abundance, or’ 
at least plentiful enough to afford good sport, indicate an 
unusual scarcity. 
Undoubtedly the destruction of the pinnated grouse is 
greater than its reproduction. This decrease in its num- 
bers seems to be steadily progressive with the passing 
years. The area of the habitat of species also is gradu- 
ally diminishing, though this is not manifested by the 
entire and sudden extermination of the chickens in a cer- . 
tain section, nor their sudden abandonment of it. 
The changes from abundance to dearth come about 
gradually. Some sections, in former years, which afforded ' 
sport for weeks, in later years afford sport for days only. 
From abundance, the supply becomes meagre. Often-:' 
times, the changes from plenty to poverty, the lamentable 
results of extermination or abandoned habitat, are not ’ 
noticed by the sportsman till he is confronted with the 
fact when diligent seeking for sport afield with dog and 
gun ends in failure. 
The enormous decrease in the numbers and the decreas- 
ing habitat of the prairie chicken are not realized by the 
younger sportsmen of the present time. Nor do the - 
older sportsmen realize it by any comparisons of more 
recent years. A comparison of present conditions con- 
cerning chicken shooting with those which obtained fif- 
teen or twenty years ago, will bring into conspicuous re- 
lief the progressive decrease which has resulted in the . 
scarcity of the present. Twenty years ago the habitat of 
the prairie chicken, beginning in western Louisiana and 1 
Texas, extending through the prairie region of the Middle 
South and West, far up into British America, and plenti- , 
fully stocked with chickens, was far in excess of the : 
prairie chicken habitat of the present. Plentiful as were 
the birds then they occupied a lessened habitat and were 
far less in number than they were when Audubon, in a 
visit to Kentucky, wrote of them as being so over plenti- 
ful there and destructive to crop§ that they were littl? 
short of being a jpest, , ; 
