450 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
f Sept. 22, 1906. 
and lodged him in the county jail, on a charge 
more serious that that of moonshining. 
In due time, a United States deputy arrived 
in our midst, bearing a funny-looking hatchet 
with a pick at one end, which he called a “devil.” 
With the pick end of this instrument he punched 
numerous holes through the offending copper 
vessel, until the still looked somewhat like a 
gigantic horseradish-grater turned inside out. 
Then he straightened out the worm by ramming 
a long stick through it, and triumphantly carried 
away with him the copper-sheathed staff, as legal 
proof, trophy, and burgeon of office. 
The sorry old still itself reposes to this day in 
Jack Coburn’s backyard, where it is regarded 
by passersby as an emblem, not so much of 
Federal omnipotence, as of local efficiency in 
administering the law with promptitude, and 
without a pennyworth of cost to anybody, save 
to the offender. Horace Kephart. 
Dayton, Ohio. 
A Pennsylvania Relic Ground. 
Pennsylvania, with which Dame Nature has 
been rather lavish in gifts of varied scenic 
beauty, is strikingly destitute of lakes, the largest 
within her borders being Conneaut Lake, in 
Crawford county, a pretty sheet of water about 
three miles long. 
Some four miles to the west of this, however, 
in the same county and extending into Ohio, lie 
the remains of a much larger body of water which 
contains within the solitudes of its mysterious 
depths a number of striking memorials of the 
past. 
The place itself, known as Pymatuning Swamp, 
for it is now a lake no longer, comprised an 
area of 9,000 acres at the time of its survey by 
the Government in 1864, but has since then suf¬ 
fered a good deal of contraction through natural 
drainage and the gradual encroachments of sur¬ 
rounding farms upon its infinitely rich soil. But 
there still remains a tract of several thousand 
acres into which few care to penetrate except as 
the search for wild cranberries or game attracts 
the hunter after each, or the wandering of stock 
secures the unwilling attention of near-by far¬ 
mers. Even the roads that cross it in its most 
pronounced area, though regularly traveled, are 
not without their dangers, as the places wide 
enough for teams to meet are not always con¬ 
veniently near, and efforts to meet in places not 
prepared for the purpose are rich in possible 
disaster from the seemingly bottomless bog on 
either side. 
The swamp itself consists of three . distinct 
zones of desolation, the first being a belt of alder 
bushes almost too thickly set and intertwined to 
be penetrated, and carpeted by a constant quag¬ 
mire menace. Once safely through this outer 
jungle, one comes to a forest of lofty tamaracks, 
interspersed with an occasional tree of some other 
sort. Among these the ground is dry and free 
from entangling alliances upon the surface, but 
the removal of a thin covering reveals a semi- 
liquid bottom of water and muck of unknown 
depth, while the ease with which the ground can 
be shaken for rods is another forcible reminder 
of the unstable footing. 
Within this timber belt, and broken occasionally 
by tamarack knolls, lies the open prairie, the 
great heart of the swamp, where hundreds of 
acres present in the autumn an infathomable 
wilderness of tall weeds and coarse grasses, and 
earlier in the season a succession of alternating 
hummocks and pools of shallow, dirty water. 
During the dry season these regions become 
fairly safe walking, and venturesome farmers an¬ 
nually surrender some of their young grazing 
cattle to the luxurious meadows, depending 
largely upon the brute instinct of the animals to 
keep them out of serious trouble. If the full 
number appear at each subsequent visit and at 
the autumn round-up, the farmer is fortunate, 
and so have been his cattle; if not, a hunt is 
instituted which is sometimes successful. 
Somewhere within the borders of this prairie 
are the remnants of an ancient ship to which the 
early Indian residents gave an antiquity superior 
to that of their own local traditions. Various 
white men, sortie now living, have stood upon 
and wondered at it, and of course a great variety 
of tales concerning it have been handed down 
from mouth to mouth. To those who knew it in 
its better preserved condition, it seemed to have 
been unfinished, as if the unfortunate people who 
budded it were driven back or killed in the midst 
of their labors. 
In an article published in a scientific periodical 
a few years ago, the claim was made that this 
boat was fastened together with copper rivets and 
an attempt made to establish with it some con¬ 
nection to Phoenician architecture. This state¬ 
ment was wholly in error. A friend of the writer 
who, in his boyhood, passed hours around it, 
states that it was fastened with wooden pins, as 
if the builders were thrown wholly upon the re¬ 
sources of the forest and their own industry. 
For some years after the encroachments of 
civilization had driven the Indians from the 
vicinity, a band of them came once or twice a year 
in quest of salt, which at that time the white 
settlers were obliged to cart overland from Pitts¬ 
burg 100 miles away. Penetrating this wild 
jungle with their empty kettles and defying the 
wiles of their occasional white followers, this 
band would disappear for a day or two and then 
return, each carrying his kettle of black, impure 
salt; but neither bribe nor threat would induce 
one of their number to reveal the source of their 
supply. 
One very old Indian finally promised a settler, 
for whom he seemed to have formed a strong 
attachment, that on their next trip, which would 
be the last they would ever make before their 
departure for the then far West, he would reveal 
the secret, but at the very last he refused, claim¬ 
ing that his mates would surely kill him if he 
yielded. He said, however, that the salt spring 
was in the bed of the creek near the old ship, 
that it was covered over with a flat stone and 
that no white man would ever find it, a prophecy 
which has thus far proven true. That some such 
place exists there can be no reasonable doubt; 
that it will be revealed to the plow at some 
future time seems probable; that its commercial 
importance has long since passed away with the 
opening of other available salt deposits and the 
advent of the railroad is still more certain. 
On the eastern borders of the swamp are the 
remains of two ova! forts or breast-works, with 
trenches in their rear, most of which may still be 
traced and both of which the writer has himself 
seen within a few years. Others, still more 
sharply defined, are said to exist on the western 
shore; all tending to prove that at a remote time, 
probably while the swamp itself was still an open 
lake, some wanderers in Pennsylvania’s early 
wilderness, either from necessity or choice, so¬ 
journed for a considerable period of time upon 
the borders of this inland sea. 
Of the game to be found in this stretch of 
wilderness the hunters of the past and present 
have had various tales to tell. Bear has been 
often credited to it, nor is the claim unreason¬ 
able, since the surrounding country was an abid¬ 
ing place for them a century ago, and with the 
press of civilization it is more than likely they 
would make their last stand in this stronghold of 
Nature’s wilderness. Deer and wolves were also 
credited to this lonely region long after they had 
disappeared from the surrounding hills. Even yet 
there are a few who somewhat doubt the entire 
extermination of the wildcat family. Only a 
few years ago, comparatively, the pigeon roosts 
of Pymatuning were deservedly famous, the 
branches and young trees being bent down and 
broken under the thousands upon thousands of 
birds that weighed them down. Many an old 
hunter has stories almost beyond belief to tell 
of the grain-bags he -has filled with the living- 
birds without the use of fire-arms. 
To-day the pigeon roosts are practically de¬ 
serted, and the great trees listen only to the fall 
of their fellows before the lumberman’s ax. 
Various schemes of drainage and reclamation are 
under serious discussion. The probable route for 
the proposed ship canal from Pittsburg to Erie, 
once regarded as a fanciful chimera, but now 
looked upon by some as highly probable, passes 
so near this place as- certainly to work marvelous 
change upon it if the great ditch should mater¬ 
ialize. Within the last two years one railroad, 
venturing to penetrate one of the ancient lake’s 
numerous spurs, has sent many lengths of piling, 
load upon load of slag and cinders, and at least 
two heavy steel cars to a final resting place in 
this unfathomable sea of mud, while the survey¬ 
ing party of a trolley line is at this time said 
to be struggling through a portion of its wilder¬ 
ness. It seems probable, therefore, that the en¬ 
croachments of commerce will soon bring this 
“Old Guard” of Nature into complete surrender 
while the present century is still young. Some 
of her secrets and historic relics may then be 
disclosed. Others will probably be obliterated. 
Taken in its present inaccessability, there are per¬ 
haps few places in the State more interesting to 
the lover of mystery and relics of the past. 
Xeno W. Putnam. 
Sporting in China. 
These running notes would be more imperfect 
if I omitted to refer to the native Chinese sports¬ 
man and his equipment. There is no character 
in the sporting field as unique and original as a 
sure enough Chinese sportsman. Although his 
dress and other equipments appear lacking in 
every essential to ensure comfort and success, 
the result of a day’s shooting, nevertheless, often 
renders doubtful the answer to be returned to 
the question, is the breechloader really more 
effective than the matchlock? 
During the season of 1904, I was shooting on 
the Yangtsze River, and on one occasion 
anchored my houseboat near the bank on which 
stood a small straw thatched hut. Early the fol¬ 
lowing morning there came on board a young 
Chinaman of splendid physique, and at once 
began an animated conversation with my 
Chinese boy servant, and as the latter spoke 
English and Chinese, I soon learned that my 
boat was anchored near the “happy hunting 
ground” of my visitor; but he extended a cordial 
welcome, because, as he said, he was out of 
ammunition and hoped that I would give him a 
few loads for his gun. Appreciating the some¬ 
what selfish element in his welcome, I m^de 
the condition, that I would supply him moder¬ 
ately if he would pilot me to his shooting pre¬ 
serves, which he readily consented to do. While 
eating my breakfast my boy opened some car¬ 
tridges, loaded with Schultze’s powder, and 
poured enough for several loads into his primi¬ 
tive horn, putting the shot into a small, coarse, 
cloth bag which he carried for the purpose. 
Curious to see his gun and how he would load 
it, that also, at my request, was brought on 
board, and I soon understood that he was most 
anxious to instruct me as to how a gun ought 
to be loaded. 
The gun was of the matchlock pattern, with an 
iron barrel about five feet long, and would weigh 
about 16 pounds. The stock was made of wood 
and in shape like a carpenter’s plane. At the 
breech the barrel was provided with a small 
aperture into which a bit of iron plate was 
inserted and which served the purpose of a pan, 
the ignition being effected by a smouldering 
match rope. The bore of the muzzle was smaller 
than at the breech, indicating that the Chinese 
knew the advantage of shooting with a choke 
bore gun long before the idea entered the brains 
of western gunmakers. 
As I did not wish to discredit the mechanism 
of my visitor’s gun, I did not uncover my own, 
which was the perfection of Greener’s work¬ 
manship, until the hour warned 11s that the sun 
had dried the grass fields, and that one could 
walk over them without getting uncomfortably 
wet bv the heavy dew which, on a starlight night, 
comes down like rain in the valley of the Yang¬ 
tsze. But when we were ready to start I noticed 
that the appearance of my gun gave my visitor 
no apparent concern. After handling it a few 
moments and studying the mechanism of the 
opening and closing of the breech, and the in¬ 
jection and ejection of the cartridges, he handed 
it back to me with an air that plainly said, 
“Mine is good enough.” And in that plain 
answer may be seen the principle which guides 
the Chinese mind. However crude or primitive 
the machinery may be, if it fulfils the office for 
which it was intended, the Chinaman seldom 
recognizes any necessity for change, although 
the saving of time is so evident. But I was 
more interested in his gun than he in mine, and 
