2iO 
FOREST AND STREAM 
[Sjsft. 9 , 190S. 
Many of the troughs are continuous, and intersect each 
other, so that a large lair may appear netted, which is 
uncommon.* This place soon showed an unfortunate 
change. Rifles were presented within 6 feet of each 
bull, and the bullet sped through the brain box, partly 
flattening on the blubber of the opposite side. Now, 
slits with sharp knives are run dorsally in the long 
direction, and out rushes venous-like blood to stain 
the little bay in a few minutes. From one seal some 
sixty fountains of blood rose in oblique directions to a 
height of 2 feet, and all from the single cut on the back. 
Against the skyline this miniature double line of foun- 
tains looked strange, and the spray of a city corpora- 
tion water van is not to be compared to its delicate 
and colored sprayings. In the viscera I was surprised 
at the length of the small intestine, which I found to be 
25s feet in length and capable of rough haulage. It 
stood the pulling over the grass from the carcass with 
only a small distension. 
The method of procuring “elephants” is a simple, 
though not an easy one. Three boats, each with a 
crew of five men, row from the anchorage to the shore, 
haul up their boats, prospect the field, and with four 
loaded rifles drive the animals down to within a few 
yards of high-water mark and shoot them. There they 
lie for the coming of the tide, and get anchored tem- 
porarily in a few feet of water. Some of the seals 
give considerable trouble before they will leave the 
high lands (100 yards from the beach on a medium in- 
cline), and as many as three hours may be spent in 
annoying them with the lance before they decide to 
go. If the seals carry their own skins down it saves 
much labor and time of the men. The boating is quite 
enough trouble to bear, as the harbor winds are treach- 
erous and strong; so powerful are they, that I have 
observed half the body of a “v/aterfall” blown back 
many yards before it could leave the ledge where gravity 
was strongest. Should a gale prohibit the boats leav- 
ing the ship, the crew will sleep ia during the day, and 
with the lull toward midnight leave for the scene of 
operations. Many a time they have had to row miles 
against a tempest to save being out all night, and many 
hours it has taken. Under such conditions, boats have 
been swamped, the skins floated overboard, and a 
landing arranged for fresh efforts. I shall not be likely 
to forget one intensely cold night while going on 
board with my birds and cameras. The helmsman got 
a renewed attack of tropical fever, and? almost col- 
lapsing, I was given charge of the helm. For three 
hours mittens and oilskins seemed like miserable calico, 
an then I fully sympathized with the men, who had their 
wellingtons partly filled with icy water. 
Daily the boats wend their way in much the same 
manner, and in exactly the same way the skins are 
taken from the bodies. Roughly speaking, each skillful 
man can skin the smaller seals — ten in two hours and 
a half, or fifteen minutes for each. This time is for 
animals which are not too large for a man to handle. 
The carcasses in our takings were generally of large 
size. The following is a case of quick work: After a 
I o’clock dinner (of plum duff) the boats were rowed 
three miles. Seventy-two seals were killed, and all but 
fourteen skinned. Twenty-three' of the largest were 
taken on board, and the last was upon the windlass at 
9:30 P. M. Two skins of fair size are enough for a 
small boat, or one of a large bull. The last trip in the 
above raid took two hours and a half in rowing three 
miles; this wasted time and much more was spent in 
endeavoring to get around a certain point. We agreed 
without a dissenting voice to call this headland Cape 
Horn of Royal Sound. 
This uncharitable point is the type of many another. 
To leave a harbor for a second one is the event most 
trying to the constitution, for one never knows until 
the anchor is safely dropped where the howling wind 
will drive you. Altogether we tried six harbors, of 
which four were well worked. The fifth (Swains Bay) 
took us three days to enter, and after being ten minutes 
inside trying to get up the channel, our clever captain 
put his ship about, and thanked his lucky stars he had 
got safely out of the treacherous “hole.” Down this 
fiord the wind without notice struck the foresails, while 
the wind astern drove her forward. Here the trouble 
started, but fortunately quickly ended by good manage- 
ment and good fortune. Had we touched the entrance 
island the ship would at once have been broken into 
matchwood. From this place I carried pleasant recol- 
lections, more on account of the bold contour and 
strangeness of the island than because it pleased my 
friends to chart it as a tribute to myself. Strange as it 
may read, among the finding of shipwreck remains 
there were letters arid bottles from a sealing captain 
mentioned in Prof. Moseley’s “Challenger Notes” 
twenty years ago. Capt. Fuller is an old hand at the 
business, and evidently has the indomitable pluck of 
the American in the making and losing of fortunes in 
rough waters! As for ourselves, we managed to quit 
the land safely on Feb. 18, although for a few hours 
we could not get over a severe loss we made at the 
last moment. Having on the 17th killed, skinned and 
anchored a batch of skins to the value of £250, all hands 
on board heaved anchors next morning to stand into 
a near bay to take them off. Tv/o storms now showed 
their effects; one in driving all the skins ashore and 
burying them in the sand; the other in driving us off 
the bay altogether. 
With a threatening sky our tight and dry little brig, 
the Edward, now headed for Melbourne, and we started 
a direct homeward course of 3,400 miles. This was 
duly accomplished in twenty-two days, and we ex- 
perienced a phenomenal wind for the latter fourteen 
days, which was from the north instead of the prevail- 
ing one from the west, a circumstance of exceedingly 
rare occurrence. 
*In one trough there are very often two bulls or two cows, the 
broad part of one and the tapering part of another at one end, 
and the corresponding parts toward the opposite pole. This in- 
sures the trough being well filled. 
All communications for Forest and Stream must be 
directed to Forest <md Stream Pub. Co., New York, to 
receive attention. We have no other office. 
An Angler^s Wild Flowers. 
Charlestown, N. H., Aug. 23. — Editor Forest and 
Stream: I do not want to poach on Mr. Weed’s “Wild- 
flower Manor,” but on looking over the short letter I 
wrote you a few weeks since, I find one or two more 
words to say on the habit of wild flowers to group 
themselves in certain localities, and remain there. I 
omitted one flower which I have always found in what 
I called my “forest garden,” viz., the little two-leaved 
Solomon’s Seal (Convallaria bifolia), while along the 
roadside leading up the hill, I found a little 
later, two other varieties of the same genus, the 
“many flowered,” with flowers drooping from the axils 
of the leaves, and a larger species, often two feet high, 
with a terminal spike of small white flowers. Along this 
hilly road also, were frequent patches of the Epigea, or 
May flower. 
The Lady’s Slippers, of which I spoke as being ex- 
terminated, were in quite a different locality, the valley, 
or gully, parallel to the channel of the mill brook, 
probably formed long ago by the changes in the current 
of the brook, or perhaps by springs from* the hillside. 
Here the foundation soil is a thick bed of blue clay, 
on perfectly parallel strata, of different density and 
shades of color, probably deposited millions of years 
ago, when this section of the valley was the bed of a 
great glacial lake, held back by the converging hills at 
Bellows Falls. Here I found both the white and yellow 
Lady’s Slippers, and on around the little hillock between 
this gully and the brook, the showy Orchis. The Orchis 
is still there, but a road to the meadow has been cut 
through the gully, and the flowers are gone. 
The yellow Lady’s Slipper I find now in a different lo- 
cality, in a gorge on the hillside, where quite a brook 
comes down in the spring, from the melting of the snow 
in the pastures above, and where more or less water 
trickles unseen on the surface, among the stones at 
the bottom, keeping the gully always damp. At the 
foot of this, where.it opens out on the pasture it has 
formed a long talus, which supports another group of 
flowers, entirely. At the upper end are the Lady’s 
Slippers, the Purple William, the Arum, or Jack in the 
Pulpit, the Wild Ginger, the red-berried Actes, and the 
Skunk Currant, while the lower end of the slope bears 
a profusion of Columbine, and the round-leaved Winter- 
green, mentioned by Mr. Weed, and which reminds 
me much, by its flowers and fragrance, of the cultivated 
Lily of the Valley. The other Wintergreen, the um- 
belled, or long-leaved, the Indian Pipsissewa, mentioned 
by Mr. Weed, I used to find, when a boy, in a strip of 
old pine woods just beyond the gully where I found the 
white Lady’s Slippers, being a continuation of the 
plateau on which the village stands, and which, as I 
have said, is in all probability the bottom of an old 
glacial lake; but the old pines have long since been 
converted into lumber, and I have not seen the flower 
of late years. Another flower which I still find on the 
corner of the bluff, where the plateau overlooks the 
river, is the tall yellow Girardia, a beautiful spike of 
straw-colored flowers, some three feet high, like a tall 
yellow Foxglove. 
The Bottle Gentian is common along the river road, 
where the springs from the hillsides make little pools 
of clear water; but the Fringed Gentian affects the 
sides of the railroad cuttings or embankments, where 
its seeds take root easily, and is often scare'e for a year 
or two, when the railroad company has made a clean- 
ing up of their “right of way.” So much for wild flowers; 
I hope that Mr. Weed will continue his delightful notes, 
with their admirable illustrations. 
Now, let me change the subject to a different “Point 
of View.” I think Mr. Kimball has rightly interpreted 
Flint Locke’s • problem as natural evolution. I have 
been through the same change of feeling myself, and, I 
think, have written to Forest and Stream how I was 
so much delighted with the antics and graceful move- 
ments of a gray squirrel, some dozen or more years 
ago, when he came almost to my feet, searching for 
nuts, as I sat on a rock under a yellowing hazel, my 
tan-colored shooting suit harmonizing with the fading 
leaves, until I raised my hand to brush off a fly, when 
he vanished like a “blue streak,” that I came home, 
put my old gum away in the case, and have not had it 
out for game since. 
Mr. Kimball is right in quoting Haeckel. We are 
slowly passing through, the various stages of creation, 
and being evolved from the savage into the perfect man. 
I well remember my first slaughter, when I knocked 
a chickadee out of our apple tree with my bow and 
arrow, and my sorrow afterward, when I picked up 
the dead body. I have killed much small game since, 
but it has all been edible, except a couple of porcupines, 
which I have shot by mistake for raccoons, and a few 
bluejays, for taxidermic purposes; but I have never had 
an opportunity to look for big game, when I could do it, 
and now that it is lawful to shoot deer in some parts 
of New Hampshire, I am physically incapable of the 
exercise involved in the sport. Still, I have had over 
half a century’s enjoyment, and many a good dinner, 
what with upland plover, woodcock, ruffed grouse and 
gray squirrels, and am perfectly content to follow the 
dictates of nature, and let the old gun, which I bought 
in 1851, rest in “innocuous desuetude.” The doctrine 
of evolution, which some of our theologians have op- 
posed as being contrary to Hebrew tradition, has come 
to stay, and any observer of nature can see it in daily 
operation. We have but to change one word in the 
book of Genesis, and substitute “era,” or “period,” for 
“day,” and the account of creation as there given, agrees 
with the “Testimony of the Rocks,” as written by the 
hand of the Creator Himself, with the exception of the 
supposition, that the sun, moon and stars were all 
created for the special use and accommodation of the 
inhabitants of this planet. We may, without irrever- 
ence, assume, that the “day” on which the Creator 
rested, is like all the other days, a period of millions 
of years, and that he is still evolving the perfect man 
out of the first crude savage. Certain it is to the 
student of history that the human race is improving, 
though gradually. 
Your other correspondent, Mr. Douglas, takes ex- 
ception to Mr. Kimball, on the ground that man is 
still fighting, and that war still prevails on ttie earth; 
but let him compare the wars of to-day, when every 
army that goes into the field is accompanied by its 
corps of Red Cross nurses, with the ambulance's and 
surgeons, and foe, as well as friend, receive all needed 
assistance, with the vee victis of the Romans, or the 
professedly divine slaughter of the Canaanites and 
Amalekites. 
We have no repetition to-day of Cannae, or of the 
inhuman massacre of Tamerlane, or Genghis Khan, 
no temples or palaces built of the skulls of the con- 
quered. Leipsic and Waterloo have become memories 
of the past, Gettysburg is fading, and Liao Yang and 
Mukden will perhaps mark the close of the era of 
great battles, and the beginning of the one of peaceful 
arbitration. Let us hope so, at least, for we can but 
note the signs of the times. 
And now from speculation to hard fact. I was sad- 
dened to see in last Forest and Stream the death notice 
of Cabia Blanco, for of all your later contributors his 
simple, graphic narratives of life on the frontier have 
to me been the most interesting reading — and have 
given me a clearer conception of the habits and 
manners of the different Indian tribes inhabiting that 
part of the country. His writings remind me more of 
those of Nessmuk, than do> those of any other of your 
more recent correspondents. I shall miss his letters 
from your columns very much. I am glad to see, 
speaking of Nessmuk, that Kelpie is yet in the land of 
the living. I had once hoped to be able to meet him on 
some northern trout stream, but those days are over, 
and I see he seems to be slowly drifting into a warmer 
climate. Good luck, and pleasant dreams to him and 
the rest of your contributors. Von W. 
A Burmese Snake Charmer. 
Having always had a liking for snakes I went in search 
of a Burman snake charmer, by name Moung Lo, in the 
hope that he would be able to get me some specimens. 
Almost the only Burmese word I then knew was myway, 
that is a snake, but, with the aid of my interpreter, after 
a short time, the Burmese charmer was prevailed upon 
to produce a round basket, having opened which, a head 
with hood expanded and about feet of body, sprung 
up like a jack-in-the-box and remained motionless. The 
charmer was standing near the basket. Suddenly the 
snake struck at him by letting its body and head fall for- 
cibly forward ; in this strike the body was kept perfectly 
rigid, bending only where it touched the rim of the bas- 
ket. The charmer did not move, knowing that he was at 
least eighteen inches away from the edge of the basket, 
and there was, as I have said, only eighteen inches of 
snake above the rim. His assistant now engaged the 
snake’s attention in front, while the charmer deftly seized 
the reptile by the neck and hauled out and deposited on 
the ground about nine feet of hamadryad or giant cobra 
{Ophiophagus elaps), the most formidable and deadly 
snake in Burma. Then the two Burmans went through 
what the uninitiated would consider the most daring per- 
formance ever witnessed. The hamadryad lay with its 
head raised about two feet, the rest of its body at length 
on the ground, hood expanded and fangs ready to strike. 
One of the Burmans squatted down a few feet off. The 
snake, with a fierce hiss, glided rapidly toward him, head 
still erect. When it got within range, it again struck at 
him. The Burman swiftly parried the blow with his bare 
arm, letting the snake’s body below the hood only touch 
the limb. The hood and body slid off his arm and fell 
flat on the ground. Before the snake had time to raise 
its head for another strike, the Burman had moved: off a 
few feet, and from there went through the same per- 
formance. 
Having intimated that I wished to see its fangs, the 
charmer again seized the snake by the neck and opened its 
mouth with a bit of wood. I could only see the fang on 
one side, the other appeared to be broken. When not 
ready to strike a loose bit of skin envelops these teeth. 
If the snake has its fangs pulled out it does not follow 
that it will be rendered innocuous, as there are auxiliary 
fangs behind the real one, and if the big ones are de- 
stroyed these often come forward and take their place. 
However, when I proved dissatisfied with this particular 
hamadryad’s dental arrangement the assistant was dis- 
patched, and presently returned with a similar basket, out 
of which another rather bigger serpent was produced. 
They went through a similar performance with this 
snake, and on inspection I found that both fangs were 
present. 
The Burmese know much more about snakes than the 
natives of India, and seldom, if ever, extract the fangs 
of a cobra or hamadryad, which Indian charmers almost 
always do to their cobras, with the snakes they exhibit. 
After a little bargaining, during the course of which I 
rode away and the Burman ran after me to accept my 
offer, the giant cobra became my property, and I set off 
for my bungalow, followed by the Burman and the bas- 
ket. _ Having arrived there, I had yet to learn the art of 
feeding the snake, and this my Burman friend taught me 
before leaving. A hamadryad, or cobra, when first 
caught, would sooner starve to death than eat anything. 
When used to captivity, however, it will feed well enough. 
Till then it must be fed by hand, and this is how it is 
done. The Burman opened the basket and seized the 
Snake by the back of the neck with his left hand, the 
thumb and forefinger on each side of the head, the other 
fingers loosely round the throat. As he looked round for 
a bit of stick, I handed him a penholder, which he in- 
serted between the hamadryad’s teeth. Then I got him 
some raw beef, and he selected a piece lookirig just twice 
too big to go down. This he placed between the snake’s 
teeth and slipped the penholder out. Then with the end 
of that instrument he gently pushed the beef till the 
snake gave a convulsive swallow, when he rammed the 
meat down as far as the penholder would allow him. It 
then appeared as a lump in the throat a few inches below 
the fingers of his left hand-. This he worked a foot or 
two down the body with the thumb of the other hand. 
He told me that ten mouthfuls of this size were enough 
for one meal, and would last for a week. Small fish were 
also good for a change, and the snake wanted water every 
day. 
I next bad a large airy box made for my pet, with per- 
forated zinc and a sheet of glass. Then came the rehous- 
