488 
FOREST AND STREAM 
I 
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tt)EC. l 4 1965. ' 
learn, their woodcraft in the pages of St. Nicholas, nor 
did their humble pupil, the writer. We depend more 
often upon natural signs of direction here than we do 
upon the compass — in fact, I never knew a native moun- 
taineer who had a compass. 
It is a common, and perhaps pardonable, _ weakness 
of sportsmen to claim great things for their favorite 
guides. “Incomparable trailers! The best woodsmen 
I have ever known!” and so forth. Why should they 
not be, on their own home hunting-grounds? I claim 
nothing superhuman for my companions in the 
Smokies; but I do claim that they know the pecularities 
of their own grounds most thoroughly, so far as they 
relate to the hunter’s and herdsman’s crafts, and that 
from this intimate local knowledge they have gained 
certain general signs of direction that are fairly reliable 
throughout all these mountains, so that they have not 
the least hesitation about traveling into unknown parts 
without a compass, even though they may get into fog 
so thick that, as they quaintly say, “You could stick your 
butcher-knife into it and hang up your shot-pouch.” 
But there is no dog-like or pigeon-like instinct about 
this. I can take one of these same men to the city 
of Boston and get him thoroughly lost within_ half a 
mile of his hotel. If he had the homing instinct he 
could find his own way back on the city streets; but he 
has not the ghost of such endowment. He is bewildered 
by the maze of things new to him, as a city man is in 
the forest. His attention is attracted by other things 
than signs of direction. So he goes astray like a child. 
Mr. Hardy’s advice to “never get lost” is equivalrat 
to saying, “Never let go of your guide s coat-tail. 
There are men who need it. Most of us prefer to be 
more independent. We would rather risk getting lost 
once in a while than miss those joys of real wilderness 
faring that are only felt when one is alone in the^woods 
with his life in his own keeping. My advice is, “Learn 
how to bivouac, how to rustle; then, if you do get 
lost, keep your shirt on.” I know all about the panic 
fear that seizes a man when, for the first time in his 
life, there conies to him the thudding consciousness 
that he is alone and lost in the great forest. But I have 
been in much worse fixes than that, and I say that 
sensible instruction about what to do when, you are 
lost can arm a novice pretty well against horror and 
stampede. There are just two situations in which an 
able-bodied man’s case, from losing his direction, is 
really desperate, namely, to be lost in a blizzard on a 
treeless plain, or to be lost in a cavern and without a 
light. Otherwise, if one will keep his wits about him, 
he always. has a good fighting chance. Horace Kephart. 
Medlin, N. C. . 
A Fourth of July on the Plains, 
r 
Editor Forest and Stream: 
We had been out across the staked plains all summer 
in 1872, going first as far west as old Fort Sumner, then 
up and down the Pecos River, looking for a band of 
Indians that we could not find just then. We found 
them later in the season, though, in a different part of 
the country. Then, after we had visited Fort Bascom 
for supplies, we headed east again, and the 3d of July 
found us in camp on a small pond of good water, some- 
thing that is not found every day in that country. 
Here the commanding officer, _ General _ Makenzie, 
turned -the command over to the senior captain, and tak- 
ing one troop as an escort, went off somewhere. This 
old captain, who was now in command, was Gen. Napo- 
leon B. McLaughlin. He was quite a character in his 
way. He had entered the army as a private just before 
the Mexican War, and had been in it ever since. He 
was at this time over sixty years of age, and was retired 
a few vears after this ; he died only a year or two ago. 
He was generally called “Maginniss” by the men, not 
when he was close enough to hear them, though. Fle 
dressed in a uniform that looked as if he had first put 
it on about the close of the war and was trying to see 
how long he could keep it on. When out on the field 
he lived on just what we did — coffee, bread and bacon, 
with generally buffalo roasted, three times a day, if we 
eat that often; he said that the officer who could not 
eat what his men did ought to go home and stay there; 
“they never found him hunting Indians with a pack mule 
loaded with canned goods.” Ihen he would give one of 
his peculiar laughs. 
When the War of the Rebellion began his regiment 
was in Texas, and his officers went over to the Confed- 
eracj' and gave the men who wanted to follow them per- 
mission to do so. Those who refused were to be sent 
north, but they would have to turn in their arms first. 
McLaughlin was his company’s first sergeant then, arid 
when the company was paraded one morning to turn in 
their arms, he stepped out and taking his musket by the 
barrel, smashed the stock of it, then throwing it at his 
captain’s feet said, saluting him, “I turn in my gun, sir.” 
He was sent north and in a short time was given a 
commission, and at the close of the war coprnanded a 
brigade of infantry. He was now only captain in Troop 
I, the white horse troop of our regiment. 
While at breakfast this morning, the Fourth of July, 
several of our men announced their intention of going 
hunting to-day, “that is, if Maginness would let them, 
but he probably would not.” 
I wanted to go myself, and thought he would let me ; 
he had never refused me any request I made ; but I knew 
how to go about asking for it. 
The old fellow was a brevet brigadier general, and if 
a man addressed him as general he got what he wanted. 
If he called him captain he got his head snapped off, and 
was a marked man. After that he need not ask for any- 
thing; he would not get it. 
One of the men who wanted to do this hunting to-day 
had been a school teacher in civil life; he called himself 
Professor Smith; I had given him his title, and it had 
stuck to him. He spelled his name Smythe, but much 
to his disgust could not get the company clerk to spell 
it that way ; he made it Smith. This troop of ours 
seemed to get about all the representatives of the learned 
professions, who found their field of active service re- 
stricted — by the police in most cases — in the East and 
had come out here to hunt Indians. We had several 
lawyers, or rather young men who had begun the study 
of law, but had dropped it on the advice of the last old 
police judge they had been given an interview with, I al- 
ways thought, and had gone West to fight Indians. 
We had doctors; several of them were doctors in fact 
as well as in name, but we never had a minister; we had 
his son, though, his father was a noted minister of the 
Protestant Episcopal Church in London, the son was so 
worthless that he left us after five years, carrying a bob- 
tail discharge, one with the character cut off. 
Another man that we had was both a chemist and a 
civil engineer ; he had made a fortune out of a stomach 
bitters that he invented ; it was one of the best known 
of any thirty years ago; he had lost all his money now. 
Another young fellow, the son of a railroad president, 
had entered college and had graduated in three months 
without a diploma ; then had run away from home to 
prevent being again graduated by his father with a cane. 
He kept on fighting Indians up to the beginning of the 
Spanish War, then got a commission; he has it yet out 
in the Philippines, if the Moros have not killed him. If 
he should see this, he may remember the time that he 
and I went into a civilized Indian’s big cornfield down 
near Caddo, and started to draw an extra feed of corn 
for our horses that they did not need very bad, but just 
missed drawing a load of buckshot that the Indian sent 
after us. 
I told Smith after breakfast to go up and see if the 
general wanted any hunting’ done to-day; and taking his 
prbine he went ; but came back in a few minutes wear- 
ing a face a yard long and said : “He don’t need any 
hunting from us; we don’t belong to Troop I, you 
know.” 
“What did he say to you?” 
“He told me to go back to where I came from and 
stay there.” 
I thoLight I knew what was wrong. Smith had either 
called him captain, or what was nearly but not quite as 
bad, had not called him anything. I took my rifle now 
and went next, taking care to> address him as general. 
He told me to go, but to keep a good lookout for Indians 
v/hile out. “It is true, we can’t find any here,” he said, 
“but it has been my experience that just when we don’t 
want to find them they find us.” And he gave one of 
his peculiar laughs. 
There was a small canon off to the left of camp, about 
a mile south of it, that I wanted to explore. It was a 
box canon, as I found out next day when I went clear 
to the head of it. We were still in New Mexico, I knew; 
but I thought we must be close to the Texas line now, 
and if so, then there should be a monument, a round 
pile of loose stone, built somewhere on the edge of this 
canon to mark the boundary line. I found it next day 
at the head of the canon. The canon was less than one 
hundred yards wide here, and a small stream of water 
stood in pools — there was not enough of it now to run 
— right in the middle of the canon. 
I followed up close to the edge of the stream. I knew 
that there were both deer and antelope in the country, 
and I might meet a bear; we had seen one yestrday 
when coming in here, but had not been given a chance 
to go after him. The Indians I did not keep any 
lookout for. The ones we were after would be sure 
to get as far from us as possible now, and keep just 
that far off until we had left the country. We had been 
after them for years now; and they knew by this time 
about how long we would keep hunting them here; 
then when we quit, they would come in here again. I 
expected that if we found them at ah, it would be up 
in the Texas Panhandle; and that was where we did 
find them two months after this. 
I had gone about two miles up the canon, when I 
saw where some anin'jals had come to drink lately; the 
stones were still wet where they had splashed the 
water on them; amj as soon as I found their trail I 
saw that tfiey were either deer or antelope. The trail 
led up the right' wall of the canon, that was here over- 
grown with bu.shes, or I hardly could have climbed it 
and carried a gun. 
When I had got to the top, I raised my head slowly 
above the edge of the bank and now saw the antelope. 
There was a large: bunch of them, but they were half a 
mile away. 
There was not a breath of air stirring; but I did not 
want to walk across the prairie in plain sight of the 
antelope, and it was too hot to crawl over it. When 
coming up , the ca-iion I had noticed another small 
one coming into it from the right, and thought that it 
might head close to where the antelope were. Getting 
down to the floor: of the canon again, I went down to 
the small one, and started up it; this one was only a 
ravine. When I ' thought I had gone far enough up, I 
climbed up again and found the antelope still about 
where I had left them and not over two hundred yards 
away. 
Still keeping below the bank, I rested the gun on top 
of it and had two shots fired before the antelope had 
begun to move. Then standing up, I kept on shooting 
until they had got out of range; then going over I be- 
gan to count the ones that had stopped here. I had 
four; two of them had been hit before they had begun 
to run, another had fallen one hundred yards away, and 
the last one lay about that much further off, or four 
hundred yards from where I stood to shoot; but I had 
a .45-90 Marlin rifle, and when one of these *big balls 
did hit an antelope he quit right there. 
I had next to drag them to the bank, one at a time, 
still holding on to my gun; there might be no Indians 
about, but if any were in the country this shooting 
would bring them. After getting all the antelope down 
into the ravine, I next had' to get them up into trees to 
keep them out of reach of the wolves, which were 
about; and now it was near dinner time and I did not 
want to miss mine to-day. It would be a little better 
than usual to-day; this would be the only difference 
here between this and any other day. Had we been 
at home we could have celebrated it with a horse race 
in the forenoon (I had one I could enter), then divide 
the afternoon between a ball game and a target match. 
After dinner I got my horse and a good pack mule, 
and going out again found my antelope just where I 
had left them. The wolves out here had not learned to 
climb trees yet, though when I came in sight I saw 
several of them, waiting for the trees to fall down on 
them, I suppose. 
I left one of the antelope with the General’s cook, he 
had a mess here composed of officers, who, like the 
General, did not “hunt Indians with a pack mule loaded 
with canned stuff.” Cabia Blanco. ' 
Future of the Mississippi River, ji 
II 
The Effect that Destruction of Forests will have upon |l 
its Headwaters, ii 
CHARLES CRISTADORO, IN “FORESTRY AND IRRIGATION.” j' 
The forests have been looked upon by the settler both j 
as an enemy and a friend. Unless the land was cleared - 
of trees-, no crops could be raised, and so with ax and | 
saw he felled them. Yet, they gave him the lumber for ji 
his house, and kept his fireside alight and warm during > 
the long winter days and nights. So fared the giant ■; 
black walnuts of Indiana in the early days when the mas- 
sive logs were split and hewed into fence rails, ' those i 
remaining in excess of the winter’s need for fuel piled 
high afield and burned, as one would to-day in clearing 
a field of so much brush. ■ 
The great Michigan forests of white pine, that nodded 1 
to- the summer’s breeze and swayed before the winter’s -i 
blasts; appeared not many years ago as inexhaustible and 
limitless, yet they in time disappeared and vanished as 
snow upon the yet warm earth, before the ax and saw ■ 
of the settler and lumberman would make the lumber : 
operators of the present day bankrupt were they to fol- ; 
low them. 
As the millions of buffalo- disappeared from the face 
of the earth so have gone the forests of white pine that 
stoo,d in a continuous, unbroken chain for hundreds of 
miles. 
_ The forests were made for man to- use, says the prac- 
tical lumberman. ’Tis true, but only in a measure. They 
were made for man to use and for the use of man. So 
were the rivers. The water sources, trace them as you 
may, will be found in the forest. There the spring gives 
forth its swelling flow that makes the brook, that makes 
the stream and finally the river as it flows toward and 
empties itself into the ocean. 
Remove the water protecting trees and you interfere 
with the supply that the springs give forth. In other 
words, history the world around reveals the fact that 
with the tinibcr removed from a river’s headwaters, so - 
has the death knell of the river been sounded. Examples 
of this kind can be shown in all countries. 
We must have water, whether it comes from subter- 
ranean or surface rivers or flowing springs and rippling 
brooks ; . it matters not, water we must have, without it 
we cannot live. To secure this commodity of nature, the 
great cities spend millions of dollars to follow it to its 
source, store and lead it to the cites for consumption. 
The ancient Romans left us a lesson in aqueducts that 
has been a speaking example. 
With the destruction of the timber along the water 
courses, floods and drouths have followed. Many locali- 
ties once blessed with abundant flowing water are to-day, 
at times, through drouth, absolutely deprived of it, be- 
cause of the denudation of the timber on the sources 
of the river._ Each State has suffered from the encroach- 
ment upon its lumber forests and, in some cases, before 
it was' too late, the Legislature has stepped in to save the 
timber. 
When Michigan was being rapidly divested of her 
great white pine forests, Wisconsin was being entered 
by the lumberman as a fresh field for lumber exploita- 
tion. Minnesota’s pine giants were yet untouched. But 
the day came when the lumbermen cleared Michigan and 
were swarming like bees into the pine of Wisconsin and 
then Minnesota’s turn came. And now the end ot 
Minnesota’s timber is in sight, so much so, that those 
who have made millions through and by means of her 
pine forests are to-day investing them in the great fir, 
spruce and redwood lands on the Pacific coast. The days 
of the white pine trees are numbered in .Minnesota. And 
during these years one spot in the State of Minnesota 
has been kept sacred from the ax. It was the Chippewa 
Reservation covering 800,000 acres, 200,000 of which is 
water. From this spot' the strong arm of the Govern- 
ment held back the lumberman. The pines were sacred 
and under their branches the Indians lived undisturbed. 
Many were the covetous eyes cast upon this reserva- 
tion as the pines beyond its borders became fewer and 
fewer. Many were the efforts to secure this land from 
the control of the Indians. Treaties were made, and, as 
has been the case with all Indian treaties from the days 
of Columbus to date, broken. 
Then an argument was put forth that the timber in 
many cases was dead and that windfalls were frequent 
and that such could be saved and the money given to 
the Indians, could the trees be cut and removed from 
the reservation. It was called “dead and down timber,” 
the very name of which is so tainted with fraud, perjury 
and downright theft that it stinks in the nostrils of every 
man acquainted with its significance. But a law per- 
mitting the removal of the “dead and down timber” went 
through Congress, and it is stated for every actually 
“dead and down” tree a thousand thrifty, growing white 
pine giants were laid low and removed. It grew into such a 
nauseating, scandalous steal that the very man who fath- 
ered the “dead and down” bill, although 1 will say his 
intentions were good, was ashamed of its workings. 
An effort was successfully made through the Secretary 
of the Interior to stop this outrage. Then an attempt 
was made to have the Government protect and shield for 
the people, this beautiful sylvan paradise, for all time, 
like the Yellowstone Park, for never did a person visit 
this region, but that he returned with but one wish and 
one sentiment, can it not be preserved for all time for 
the people? 
Here is practically the headwaters of the Mississippi, 
although the river actually springs from Lake Itasca. 
But these are its headwaters, for here are the three great 
lakes of Leech, Cass and Winnebigosh, with seventy 
smaller lakes, the infant Mississippi connecting them all 
and meandering among them, making one great checker- 
board of stream and lake. 
'I'lie picture of the giant pines growing even to the 
water’s edge, the wild rice mantling the crystal stream 
and the phantom-like passing of an Indian-laden birch 
bark canoe made a picture that took one back to the days 
