448 
words he , grasped the girl’s horse by the bridle ‘and at- 
tempted to drag her from the saddle. She shrieked and 
held on firmly,, and then Wolverine sprang upon the old 
man, hurled him to the ground, wrenched his gun from 
him and flung it far ; then he sprang lightly up behind 
Piks-ah'-ki, dug his heels into the pony’s flanks and we 
were off once more, the irate father running after us and 
shouting, no doubt for assistance to stop the runaways. 
We saw other Gros Ventres approaching, but they did 
not seem to be hurrying, nor did they attempt in any way 
to stop us. No doubt the angry old man’s words had 
given them the key to the situation, and, of course, it 
was beneath their dignity to mix up in a quarrel about 
a woman. We went on as fast as we could up the steep, 
long hill, and soon ceased to hear the old man’s com- 
plainings. 
We were four nights getting back to the Piegan camp. 
Wolverine riding part of the time behind me and part of 
the time behind the girl, when we were on the trail. We 
picked up, en route, the precious bundle which Wolver- 
ine had cached, and it was good, the next morning, to 
see the girl’s delight when she opened it and saw what 
it contained. That very day while we rested she made 
herself a dress from the red cloth, and I can truthfully 
say that when she had arrayed herself in it, and put on 
her beads, and rings, and earrings, and a lot of other 
pretty things, she certainly looked fine. She was a very 
comely young woman anyway, and as I afterward 
learned, as good as she was handsome. She made Wol- 
verine a faithful and loving wife. 
Fearing that we would be followed we had taken a 
circuitous route homeward, and made as blind a trail as 
possible, and upon our arrival at camp learned that old 
Bull’s Head had got in there two days ahead of us. He 
was very different now from the haughty and malevolent 
man he had been at home. He fairly cringed before 
Wolverine, descanted upon his daughter’s beauty and 
virtues, and said that he was very poor. Wolverine gave 
him ten horses and the fuke he had taken from the 
Indian he killed the night of our flight from the Gros 
Ventre camp. Old Bull’s Head informed us that the war 
party were Crees, and that his people had killed seven of 
them, and that they had not succeeded in. stealing a single 
horse, so con^letely were • they surprised and attacked. 
Well, I went on no more girl-stealing raids, but I be- 
lieve I did other things just. as foolish on the plains in 
my youthful days’. ■ 
Love of Nature and Character* 
As Illustrated in Hon. J. Sterliog Morton. 
Editor Forest and Stream: 
The recent article about a monument to the “Father 
of Arbor Day” brings, freshly to mind some incidents of 
travel with Mr. Morfori-, which may interest your read- 
ers. In the ’8 o’a we. were both abroad, and meeting near 
London, agreed- to , travel together for -a while. Matters 
of social and "political economy interested both, and he 
was a most congenial and profitable companion. His 
intelligent alertness was remarkable — his purity and sim- 
plicity of character not less ,so. 
On a bank holiday in London he arose early and went 
to Haymarket to study conditions of life as there mani- 
fested. He said he saw more drunken women that 
morning than in all his previous life ; also, that the 
“billingsgate” was the worst he ever heard. The shock 
to his moral nature was evident. 
At Antwerp the guide employed asked that we go out 
with him at night and “see the sights,” at the same 
time intimating quite plainly their nature. He seemed 
surprised at our refusal. In referring to the incident 
afterward. Senator Morton said : “What a commentary 
it affords on the average American traveler! It makes 
me ashamed that because he found we were Americans 
he should have felt at liberty to make such proposals.” 
Mr. Morton’s interest in the art galleries at Antwerp was 
keen, and his criticisms intelligent and appreciative. 
The one hour’s . ride from Antwerp gave some charm- 
ing scenes of country life — all the ground was cultivated 
and the whole appearance was fine. Mr. Morton was en- 
thusiastic. At Brussels another side of his character was 
manifested. Visiting the Palais de Justice we admired 
its exterior appearance very much. It was lofty, massive 
and impressive — a combination of Corinthian, Doric and 
Ionic styles in Belgian limestone. But the interior whs 
disappointing, saddening. Massive columns, well-propor- 
tioned tO' the building, were of crude material covered 
with mortar in imitation of the exterior limestone. The 
sham was apparent to a little scrutiny, and Mr. Morton’s 
remarks about all shams showed the through and through 
fineness of his grain. 
After a hurried lunch we rushed for the 5 o’clock train, 
and missed it. But we soon learned that it was better so, 
as the Cologne train did not leave till 5 : 5 o. Senator 
Morton then said, “This illustrates that many of the ills 
of life are but irnaginary.” 
Regretfully we bade him good-by at Mayence, once the 
home of John Guttenberg, of printing fame. The im- 
pression made by Mr. Morton during those self-revealing 
days of travel was indelible and treasured. And that there 
was an intimate relation between his love of nature and 
his sterling worth of character is the firm belief of 
Juvenal. 
All communiications for Forest and Stream must be 
directed to Forest and Stream Pub. Co., New York, to 
receive attention. We have no other ofHee. 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
The Sang Digger. 
The Parson, the Professor and the Superintendent 
waited until the Sang Diggei-’s wife and the older chil- 
dren had gone off in the dark to the little village church 
when they slipped across the street to- sit by his warm, 
bright kitchen stove. Flis youngest girl had remained at 
home and she was sitting at the table near the lamp 
working out her problems, in multiplication for the next 
day of school. The Sang Digger, a small wiry man, 
browned by the weather to the color of a late autumn 
leaf, was pottering around the stove and the table looking 
over some fishing tackle preparatory to a trip for bass 
the next day. He seemed very glad to have the visitors 
call on him and did his best to make them feel at home. 
The Parson was tired. He is a heavy man, and the 
day’s phfeasant hunting . over the mountains had pretty 
nearly played him out, and after he had lighted his Pitts- 
burg stogie, he sagged down into his chair like a lump of 
dough. The Professor had not slept well the previous 
night. Fie is a small man, and as his bed fellow weighed 
nearly three hundred pounds, and in addition to occupy- 
ing the middle of the bed had snored terrifically when- 
e-\'er he lay on his back, the Professor had put in the 
night between cat naps and spells of kicking the big man 
awake and over into his. own side of the bed. So the 
task of interviewing the Sang Digger and making him 
talk about hig experiences in the woods and along the 
streams fell to the Superintendent. 
The Sang Digger was given to much circumlocution 
in his conversation. He would back a»i fill, start over 
again, get ahead of his story, and tell the same thing 
again with slight variations, so that it was somewhat 
difficult to get him to make progress in his story. One 
favorite theory of his— that if you found that the bass 
would not bite .in one pool, and you would go down to 
the next pool where they would bite, and then return to 
the first pool you would find them ready to bite there — 
he told over, so^ many times and with such slight changes 
that the Superintendent was compelled finally to switch 
him off to keep the Parson from falling out of his chair 
with inward laughter. 
But finally he was headed in the direction of his ex- 
periences in the digging of ginseng, which he followed 
from the middle of August until the heavy frosts so 
broke down to- the tops of the plants that he could not 
find them in the woods, and when well started he proved 
an entertaining talker. 
He had a theory that ginseng plants and butternut 
trees are always associated in the woods and that the 
presence of red oaks always indicated the absence of gin- 
seng. B,ut his one example seemed to prove only the one 
section of his rule. He and his partner had climbed to 
the top of a high knob and were debating which direction 
to take next. Just below them was a small flat covered 
with little red oak saplings, and the Sang Digger said 
that there was no use to hunt down there. But after 
some further argument his partner plunged down over 
the bank into the red oaks and the Sang Digger fol- 
lowed. Near the edge of the red oak tract the Sang 
Digger discovered a few scattering plants which he 
stopped to dig. In the meantime the partner wandered 
away some little distance and soon found a large patch 
of plants from which he finally dug several dollars’ 
worth, ^f roots. And, to cap the climax, the Sang Digger 
found ,:in the same localityja still larger patch. From the 
two patches they dug in all some seven or eight dollars’ 
worth. All of these plants were among the red oaks, but 
when he canie to examine more closely he found that 
near each patch-;was a Small butternut tree. 
His adventures had been mostly with rattlesnakes. In 
his hunt for gia.'seng he was compelled to travel the 
mountains for fifty and sixty miles around, and his trips 
sometimes lasted for weeks, at which times he would live 
in the woods like an Indian. One evening he had come 
down a, small mountain stream until he reached a fall, 
and near this fall he found a little lean-to camp made by 
a fisherman. It was nearly dark and a light rain was 
falling; He threw his coat and bag of ginseng in on the 
dead boughs that had made the bed of the former occu- 
pant of tne shelter and hurriedly prepared and ate his 
supper. He then built up a good fire for the night and 
went to get his coat to - dry it. As he picked up his coat 
he heard a rattlesnake “sing out,” as he expressed it, and 
on making light enough to see inside, he found that a 
large yellow rattlesnake had rounded out among the 
boughs a depression that looked not unlike the nest of a 
hen and was lying coiled up in this nest, with head and 
tail both' up. But a snake that he could see he had no 
fear of, and he soon killed it, and after determining that 
there were no others in the neighborhood, he calmly lay 
down and slept until rnorning. 
At another time he and a companion had made camp 
at the foot of a mountain after a long and hard day’s 
trarrq); After eating supper and getting ready for the 
night both .had pulled off their boots to rest their feet. 
Just before lying down to sleep the companion stepped 
outside the light of the fire in order that he might see 
if he could tell what the weather would be on f he mor- 
row. In a minute the Sang Digger heard him call in an 
alarrned* way for a light. The Sang Digger snatched 4' 
burning stick from the fire and hurried out when he 
found his companion standing with his feet wide apart 
and a coiled and rattling snake exactly between them. 
He had known from the sound that it was very near and 
had not dared to move for fear of stepping on it. And 
from between his legs the Sang Digger had killed it with 
neatness and dispatch before the man had dared move 
an inch. 
Once in daylight he was coming down a mountain side 
that was bare of anything but scattered vegetation and 
covered with thin, flat rocks. He had cut a long, stout 
pole to assist him iri the descent, and when near the 
middle, of a patch of stones he heard a snake rattle. 
Standing still he managed to turn over with his pole 
many of the flat stones nearest to him, and under nearly 
every one he found a snake. After killing ten or twelve 
he made a more violent movement than usual and heard 
a snake rattle under the large stone on which he was 
standing. Moving back a little he pried up this stone 
and found under it three rattlers, all of which he killed. 
The odor given off by these snakes nearly made him 
sick. 
Ho was once bitten by a rattlesnake, and his behavior 
IIDec. a, 
on this occasion shows how little he could be stampeded 
in an emergency. He was hunting ginseng on the side 
of a mountain thickly covered with big timber and the 
moss-covered trunks of fallen trees. In getting over one 
of these trunks his foot broke through, and, to catch 
himself, he put a hand behind him, when a rattlesnake 
bit him between the thumb and forefinger. After killing 
the snake and cutting open and sucking the wound in 
his hand, he went down to the road at the foot of the 
mountain for mud to plaster over the 'cut. At this p».int 
he missed the little pick he used in his work and went ' 
back up the mountain and got it. At the first house he ; 
came to he procured indigo and whisky, and his descrip- i 
tion of the pain when the indigo was applied was very 
graphic.. A physician did not see him until the next day, ' 
but the effects of the bite were gone in a few days. He : 
only remembered that there was a peculiar constriction ’ 
of the chest that was very painful while it lasted. He is 
a very vigorous man whose heart and circulation are 
probably perfect, and this may account for the slight , 
effects of the poison. Or is it possible that he was bit- 
ten in a spot where there are few blood vessels, or that i 
the snake did not get a fair whack at his hand? 
He was lying one night beside and partly under a large , 
fallen tree, near which he had built his fire, when he was 
aroused by something touching his cheek. He brushed it ; 
away with his hand and dozed off again only to be partly : 
aroused by the same thing again. After this had oc- 
CLired several times he was so wide awake that he got up 
and proceeded to investigate, when he found that a big ' 
porcupine had been rubbing its nose across his cheek. He ^ 
seemed to think that it would have been very funny if 
the porcupine had used its tail instead of its nose, or if, , 
when he was brushing it away, he had struck its quills j 
with his hand. | 
But the Parson’s stogie was smoked to the smallest 
point, the Professor, who is a great botanist, had ex- 
tracted all the_ information, scientific and otherwise, that 
he could get from the Sang Digger, the Superintendent , 
had learned as much as possible about the mountains 
and streams that he hunts and fishes, the little girl, with 
her head pillowed on her curls on the table, was sound 
asleep, and the lanterns were coming down the road 
showing that church was over; so the three tired and 
sleepy hunters stumbled back through the dark to their 
own lodgings to sleep and perhaps to dream of a better 
day with the pheasants to-morrow. Chas. Lose. 1 
Pennsylvania. } 
The Biography of a Bear* — XL 
When we awoke next morning I felt that our first ' 
night s sleep in the tent, had not been as refreshing to me 
as it might have been. For some reason the fishing I had 
dreamed about, while it had seemed full of excitement, 
had made me tired. I have only given a synopsis of it in 
the foregoing chapter, to establish beyond question my 
veracity as a historian. I submit to my readers that there 
are many temptations attached to any account in which 
fish cut a figure,^ and I point with emotion to the 
evidences of integrity with which I have chronicled this j 
nocturnal attack of delirium with which I contended. ; 
Had I not been scrupulously conscientious in regard to j 
details, I vvould scarcely have refrained from some little | 
license with which to make the account thrilling. I would j 
not have been content with landing plain salmon, mack- | 
erel and a few codfish, where I had an inland ocean of i 
unknown resource from which to produce sea serpents, ■ 
crocodiles or whales. It is true we hooked fast tO' some- ^ 
thing that threatened to be extraordinary, but plain print i 
bears me; out in the assertion that I refrained at a criti- ' 
cal moment. ■ ! 
Nevertheless, as I saw the sun peep fiery red above the i 
blue summits to the eastward, and as I scanned the wav- i 
ing grass and rushes of the dry lake, I felt regret that it i 
could offer ho such possibilities as I had vividly experi- 
enced in my dream. The very notion of fishing for smaller 
fry_ now palled upon my — my — ^“piscatorial propensities.” i 
Neither of those words were premeditated. I use them i 
only m emergencies. What I am getting at is the fact ' 
that I had lost interest in fishing for a while. I coaxed 
Dick and Enochs to try the little stream, which they ■ 
finally ^ did, and reported that there were only a few ' 
fingerling trout dodging about among alders, willows 
and other impediments to any efforts to catch fish there. 
The swamp, as far as we explored it, offered no suffi- , 
cient inducements to cause us to attempt excavating a ‘ 
lake big enough to make it attractive as a fishing place. 
It was attractive enough in other ways/- and we gave our 
time to other pursuits. 
The first day we did little more than pike around 
camp, or collected a little wood, added to the comfort 
of our tent furniture, and the cooking equipment. We * 
overhauled our supply of provisions, which embraced ; 
considerable stuff in cans, that we had learned to look : 
upon with suspicion and sorrbw. Our coffee, teas, i 
spices, sardines ; in fact, about everything we had in ' 
tins or peckages put up by American firms, were either 
adulterated or they were so inferior as to have made 
adulteration too expensive. It may be we had gotten a ' 
bad lot, but as most of them were put up in San Ffan- ' 
cisco and marked absolutely pure, “So and So’s best,” ‘ 
positively warranted,” with many other trite maxims, 
we wondered what something different could possibly 
be like. 
American ingenuity and inventive talent has not ’ 
wholly exhausted itself upon mechanical devices. It is j 
true, however, that the Patent Office has a bewildering ; 
collection of hardware' on hand, fashioned after the 1 
fancies of a very versatile population. I believe that, 
properly speaking, it is the world’s museum for misfit 
machinery, both mechanical and administerial, and I had > 
a little to do with that confederation of the sciences a 1 
few years^ ago. I had invented, or I had become en- 
tangled with the fancy that I had evolved, a new thing 
in clocks. I wanted to run them all by electricity, upon ^ 
a similar system to the telegraph. My plan and its ’■ 
mechanical method was to have all the clocks of San 
Francisco, New York and the less important centers of ‘i 
the_ world strung upon a wire. I wanted a central dock, S 
which would open and close the electric circuit as its i 
pendulum swung to and fro, thus furnishing motive i 
power for the thousands of secondary dials. By this i 
system all the docks would just have to be correct to ^ 
