THE AMERICAN SPORTSMAN'S 
Tctdi, Poor Dsllora n Year. 
Ten C«Dln a Copy. 
NEW YORK, THURSDAY, MAY 9, 1878. 
I Volume 10. -Re. 14.1 
I No. Ill Pullen Hi 
N. Y. 
For Forest and Stream and Ilod and Gun. 
THE LOON. 
A LAKE <lark and lonely, from Nature’s own hand, 
Midst high towering mountains, wild, savage and grand, 
Lies hidden secure, in Its trameworK of green, 
And reflects every objeot— rook, forest and stream. 
From Its dark surface oft, at olose of the day, 
Comes a cry, loud and shrill, from a far distant bay. 
The sweet, timid doe, from the fastnesses still, 
Seeks Its lone sandy shore, to wander at will ; 
To nip tender^lly leaves, bright grasses green, 
And to playfully wander, a brown forest queen. 
She listens ! Again comes the sound loud and clear, 
In shrill clarion tones to her listening ear. 
The lone hunter Bleeping 'neath rough-slant'of bark, 
In the shade of the forest trees, sombre and dark, 
Is roused from his slumber when daybreak Is near ; 
With his head raised he listens I What sound strikes hla ear 7 
Far oil on the lake, 'mid the darkness and gloom, 
He hears through the forest the cry of the loon. 
with voice of a flend comes that sound from the gloom, 
Now laughing, now shrieking, like ghost from the tomb; 
Now. taunting, now crying, now screaming like mad, 
As he rocks on the waves of the lake, free and glad. 
He rouses the wolf from his brash tangled lair, 
And laughs, Ha ! ha I ha ! In the lightning's red glare. 
At crack of the rifle, down under the wave 
Like a flash he Is gone— to a watery grave? 
No, no 1 See, he rises and shakes his black wing, 
And he floats free as air; on the wave he Is king. 
Yes, king of the solitude, king of the wave, 
Then hurrah for the bird so blithesome and brave. 
When the Storm King's abroad and wild breakers dash, 
Oh, he laughs and he screams at the thunder’s loud crash ; 
In the elements dire he Is king of the wave, 
The wind and the waters his black plumage lave. 
Then hurrah for the bird of the wilderness wild. 
In darkness and tempest thouYt Nature’s own child. 
Oh, bird of the woods and the waters so wild, 
Thy praises I’ll chant, thou true Nature's child. 
’Windsor, Conn., April 7, 1878. 
Balsam. 
Scenes in the ffjioctmv 
Ration. 
No. 3. 
N EXT morning, after picking up our traps, we searched all 
around the glade for some sign of our road, but without 
success, and as the next best thing we could do, we struck 
through the woods in a north-east direction, knowing that we 
would in time strike some regular trail. We had no compass, 
and the sun was not up when we started, but we easily told our 
position by the moss on the tree trunks. In Marcy’s “ Army 
Life on the Border,” I find the following paragraph relative 
to this mode of guidance : 
«‘It is said that the moss upon the firs and other trees in 
Europe gives a certain indication of the points of the com- 
pass in a forest country, the greatest amount accumulating on 
the north side of the trees. But I have often observed the 
trees in our own forests, and have not been able to form any 
positive conclusion in this way.” 
My experience in this respect has been different from Col. 
Marcy’s. 1 paid particular attention to this point during this 
iourney, and noticed that every tree which had moss on at all, 
—and most of them had more or ldss had the greatest amount 
on the north side of the trunks. These trees were mostly 
oaks, and perhaps in forests of other trees the rule would not 
hold good. . , 
After travelling for several miles we met with an agreeable 
surprise in the shape of a traveled road; that is, a road in 
which were visible the tracks of wheels. It was the first 
sign of real progress we had seen in the Nation. We did not 
of course know whether this road led to Graham's Ferry, but 
we determined to follow it. It was fortunately the right one, 
and after a short ride along it, we arrived at Little River. 
This stream was not very wide, only about twenty yards or bo, 
but the current was rather strong, and the water was appa- 
rently very deep. It ran behind steep banks, in which 
gulches had been cut to enable travelers to reach the ferry. 
A short distance- from the river bank was the but of the 
ferryman, a very intelligent Choctaw, who spoke English 
tolerably well. His wife was a veritable squaw, a foe simile 
of those we bad met on the road between Red River and 
Shawnee Town. There were, however, several bright-eyed 
boys, and one girl of about twelve years, who might well be 
called good looking, despite the coppery hue of her skin. 
Her features were regular, and her eyes were as large, dark 
and lustrous as a fawn’s. If slie retained her beauty for 
another decade one might easily imagine her a heroine of 
some border romance. Even young as she was, her superior 
appearance partially redeemed the whole red race from the 
not very favorable opinion I bad formed of them. The old 
man and his boys ferried us across the river, and gave us 
directions as to the road to McCain’s store, which he said 
was about twelve miles distant. He also gave us a couple of 
pounds of cold venison, for which, as well as for the ferriage, 
we paid him the customary “ two bits.” 
After leaving the ferry the road was easily followed, and 
we saw much to interest us. The houses (log) became more 
numerous, and many of them were inhabited. We saw a 
number of corn fields, some of them surrounded with rude 
rail fences. In these fields we noticed Indians, male and 
female, engaged in cultivation. We noticed that invariably 
the men were better looking than the women, and some of 
them might have even been called handsome. Some of theso 
corn fields were in natural openings, or glades iu the woods, 
while’ others were planted in “ deadenings," a method of 
clearing greatly in vogue in the wooded districts of the south- 
west. The settler selects the grouud for his farm, and then, 
instead of cutting down the trees, kills them by cutting a 
circle around the trunk deep enough to prevent the upward 
and downward flow of the sap. Land cleared in this manner is 
called a “ deadening,” and is equally as available for cultiva- 
tion as though the trees had been cut down, while the labor 
involved is infinitely less. 
About noon we reached the Arkansas ling, and ju9t across 
it was McCain’s store, known to map makers as Ultima Thule. 
It consisted, so far as we could see (we didn’t explore the 
suburbs), of a single farm house, with the store building about 
a mile distant, and not another building within sight. A 
negro whom we met directed us to Ihe store, and we rode up 
to it, though it was somewhat out of our route. We found it 
filled with loungers, whites and Indians, who stared at us as we 
entered, os though we had been persons of some importance. 
The store was a regular museum, and its contents, having 
nearly everything one could wish to purchase, or at least, that 
was likely to he called for in such a jumping-off-place os 
Ultima Thule. The only eatables they could furnish, how- 
ever, were soda crackers, and there was not an implement in 
the store with which we could extract the broken tube from 
Nichols’ rifle. We purchased some crackers, and took a 
lunch while our ponies were resting. During lunch we made 
a calculation. We had not brought much money with us, 
expecting to live principally by our guns, which, we had been 
assured, could easily be done, and on counting up our change 
we found that between U9 we had exactly seven dollars and 
forty-three cents, with which to reach St. Louis, a distance 
of nearly five hundred miles ! Thus far the game had not 
shown itself, and now that my rifle was lo9t, and that of 
Nichols’ broken, it would not matter whether we saw any 
game or not. Our only dependence for food was now our 
ready cash, and this was disagreeably scarce. 
Our route from this time on lay over mountains of igneous 
rocks, pieces of which, strewing the road, made sad work 
with the unshod hoofs of our ponies. Near the summit of 
one of the mountain ridges, we passed a small scrubby oak 
tree heavily festooned with Spanish moss. It stood all alone, 
and seemed out of place so high up, and so isolated from all 
its kin. I did not know that the Tillandria ueneoides grew as 
far north as this, for it had always been associated in my 
mind with live oak swamps and everglades. It might, how- 
ever, have been planted, or transplanted, in this place by 
accident. We saw no other specimen during our journey. 
Traveling along slowly, we were overtaken by another trav- 
eller who carried a pair of enormous saddle bags, each of 
them containing a water-pail full of groceries. He informed 
us that he worked in a mine up in the mountains, and made 
pretty good wages. The metal obtained was principally 
copper, though small amounts of gold had been found. Ho 
said the woods around here were full of game— deer, hear and 
panther— and that a small village not fur off bad been named 
Panther from the abundance of those animals in that neigh- 
borhood. 
All that day and the next we met with nothing of in- 
terest, if I may except the purchase of six eggs at an old hut, 
and two of which proved to be rotten. The people in the 
few houses we passed seemed extremely poverty stricken, 
and could rarely spare us anything to eat, and as a result we 
began to grow distressingly hungry. The next day was Sun- 
day. Early in the morning we came to a store, the owner of 
which lived in a hut close by. We asked him to sell us some 
crackers or anything else he had to eat, and, to our astonish- 
ment, he refused to do so on the ground that the law forbado 
the selling of anything on that day. It was in vain that we 
expostulated, and declared that we were as empty us contri- 
bution boxes. The most he would do for us was to advise us 
to stop at the first house and perhaps they might sell us some- 
thing, as the law did not apply to private parties, hut only to 
stores. 
At the house to which the store-keeper directed us we man- 
eged to procure a quart of com meal and some salt, and this 
made into a mush in a tin pail, was all we had to eat till the 
afternoon of the day following. Had our guns been still 
available we could now have lived like fighting cocks, for 
here the game was very abundant. Quails and rabbits were 
often seen, and the cheerful “ Boh White ” of the former was 
constantly in our ears. At night, the lonely cry of the whip- 
poorwill, and an occasional hoot from an owl, imparted an 
additional sense of loneliness to the woods. The blackberries, 
and the crops generally, were not nearly so far advanced here 
as those in tne Nation, though the difference in latitude 
was only a few miles. At one spot we stopped for some time 
to examine What was to us a curious collection of mausole- 
ums. When we first saw it we mistook it for a cluster of 
hen coops, but on a second glance wo saw that it wns a grave- 
yard. Over every grave was built a small pen of narrow 
slabs, for the purpose, I suppose, of preventing the wolvea 
from exhuming the bodies. We uf ter wards saw several ceme- 
teries guarded in a similar manner. 
For six days we continued our journey over thoso eternal 
mountains. It was up hill and down hill from morning tiff 
night. Wc passed through several towns— Waldron, Boone- 
ville, Ozark (on the Arkansas), Kingston and Berryville. 
Between the towns the houses were farther apart than angel’* 
visits and not nearly so inviting, a general uir of squalidness 
seeming to pervade them all. By stopping at nearly every 
house and trying to purchase focal, wo contrived among them 
all to procure enough to keep us from starvation. In the 
towns we usually laid lu u good square meal, uud, deceived 
by the genial influence of this, neglected to provide for the 
journey beyond. Wo got many interesting glimpses of 
unique characters, such as are probably commonplace enough 
in that region, but which struck us us being original. We 
noticed niauy queer ideas and many strange expressions. This 
last was especially true of their nomenclature of distance. 
During our ride we stopped at many houses to inquire the 
distance to the next town, and in no instauce were wo given 
intelligible answers. The people seemed devoid of all idea of 
distance as divided by miles. Some answered our Inquiries 
with, “ Waal, it’s a right 9inart 9copo, I reckon.” Others de- 
clared it was “ a right Buiart chance of a ways." One in- 
formed us that it was "a nnghty big step, I reckon," and 
another, most unique of all, asserted that it wns not far, 
“only two straights aud a crook." This last reminded me of 
the answer of a small boy to a traveler in Maryland, who had 
asked the distance to some point, “ About two barks and a 
howl.” Even when we pinned them down to a definite an- 
swer we found by experience that their miles were very eta*, 
tic, and usually stretched to treble tlieir length. I remember 
once, the day after we left Ultima Thule, wishing to get some 
idea of our rate of traveling, we asked a boy how far It waa 
back to that place. He replied, os softer as a deacon, “A 
hundred miles," a distance our ponies had walked in less 
than ten hours! One day we passed three different guide- 
boards, each about five miles from the others, and on each one 
we read: “Waldron, 45 miles." Not satisfied with such 
indications of slow progress, we asked the next man we met 
how far it really was to Wuldron, and he confessed ho did 
not know ; that ho hud lived in this place fifteon years and 
had never been ten miles up that road I 
’There was another trait possessed by some of these people, 
which jarred harshly on our preconceived opinions. We had 
heard much of the hospitality of the (Southern people, and 
that many of them are hospitable it would he black injustice 
to deny. But we found exceptions. One night, just at dark 
we came to a house and stopped to get some food. We hud 
had nothing that day, and were as ravenous ns wolves. The 
woman of the house had only some corn meal, of which we 
bought a quart, offering for pay a dollar bill, the smallest 
change we had. The woman could not clinogo this, and, us 
we had nothing smaller, she refused to let us have the meal 
until my companion untied his bundle and offered her a 
quire of note paper for the meal, when she reluctantly con- 
sented to the exchange. On another occasion, when the gross 
had almost disappeared on the mountain sides, and our ponies 
were nearly famished, we came to u farmer who had corn for 
sale, and procured ‘ * two bits ’’ worth of him. Ho could not 
change a dollar bill, and talked as though wo wonted to swin- 
dle him out of his corn, telling us, at the same time, of a man 
who went along that road not loDg before with a twenty-dol- 
lar bill, which no one could change, and boasted, when lie ar- 
rived at Springfield, that the journey liud cost him nothing. 
To silence this fellow’s suspicious grumbling, I gave him an 
emerald doublet bosom pin which had cost me two dollars, 
which, I sincerely hope, amply repaid him for two dozen ears 
of corn. Even in Texas, the land proverbially hospitable, I 
have met with similar exceptions, having been forced on one 
occasion to pay ten cents for a bucket of water for my thirsty 
pony I 
Our observations on the personal appearance of the people 
iflere not very favorable. The men had mostly Ihe appearance 
of being extremely ignorant, lazy und filthy, and the women — 
well, perhaps it may he in accordance with Arkansas taste to 
see women smoking rusty clay pipes and chewiug the eternal 
snuff stick, but it gave my conceptions of woman’s inherent 
superiority over man a sad shock indeed. The younger 
women were, some of them, fair looking, but though women 
and the dead should never be spoken ill of, I must declare 
my belief in the superior persoual charms of our Northern 
damsels compared with their sisters of the backwoods of “he 
South. One thing caused us surprise. During the entire 
journey from Ultima Thule to Springfield, Mo., we saw only 
two negroes, and they appeared to be of a superior graue. 
The blacks of Arkansus must all be grouped in the eastern 
portion of the Stale. , .. 
As we proceeded northward wc noticed that in direct pro- 
portion as the cotton fields became less abundant and wheat 
fields took their pluce, the appearance of the inhabitants like- 
wise improved. There may have been no connection between 
these two circumstances, but the facts were there. The 
houses improved, the farms had a neater and thriftier appear- 
euce, and the countenances of the people seemed to bespeak 
more intelligence. Will some philosopher satisfactorily ex- 
plain this phenomenon? 
