616 
FOREST AND STREAM 
Nov. 15, 1913. 
seen of this country, and from talks with the 
natives and from reading books about the sport, 
it seems to me that there is here a wonderful 
land for a summer’s outing which is being 
neglected, because it is unknown. F. C. Selous 
says: “It is the one really wild country where 
big game is still plentiful which can be quickly 
and easily reached [from England], and where 
a shooting trip can be undertaken at a compara¬ 
tively small cost.” 
I know that during the past year there have 
appeared in Forest and Stream a number of 
good articles on Newfoundland subjects, and I 
hope that they will help to turn the eyes of 
your readers in this direction. There are fish 
enough here to last for many years. It is the 
best watered land I know of. There are count¬ 
less ponds and streams, and almost every one of 
them contains trout. There is plenty of game, 
and the open season on many of the varieties 
begins earlier up here than it does further south: 
Caribou, Aug. 15; shore birds, Aug. 20; hares, 
Sept. 1, and so on. 
The island is now easily accessible by steamer 
from Philadelphia, New York, Halifax and Mon¬ 
treal, or by boat and rail, via Sidney, N. S. The 
Reid Newfoundland railroad offers special in¬ 
ducements to sportsmen, campers and tourists, 
and will send, upon application, an illustrated 
booklet giving information about the hunting and 
fishing to be had in the country. Good guides 
are to be had; or, for a summer’s camping, some 
old fisherman with his boat can generally be 
gotten for about two dollars a day. Most of 
these men are fair cooks and good, careful boat¬ 
men, and many of them are very interesting 
characters. At the little fishing town of Brigurs, 
the home of the Bartletts of arctic fame, I had 
the pleasure of talking with one of Peary’s 
sailors and hearing tales of the things which 
happened on the trip “down north to find the 
pole.” Almost all the Newfoundlanders that I 
have known have been fine, upright, hard-work¬ 
ing, honest and most hospitable people, and I 
am happy to be able to count many good friends 
among them. 
I might go on indefinitely enumerating the 
advantage of this country, for I have told but 
a small part of them. One could write long of 
the opportunities for an artist here—the sea 
views, the mountains, and most beautiful of all 
the many colored, rugged sea cliffs of the fiords 
and headlands. S. G. W. Benjamin, once art 
critic of the New York Century Magazine, de¬ 
clared that “the coast and scenery of Bay of 
Islands was the finest in North America.” 
The innumerable bays, fiords and coves, the 
passages among the many islands, most of them 
with deep enough water and good anchorage 
places, offer special inducements to pleasure 
yachts. The shores are much like those of Nor¬ 
way in many ways. 
But the best way is to go one’s self and 
see the land of which J. G. Millais wrote: 
“I have been twice and enjoyed the best of 
sport, the best of weather, the best of comrades 
and the kindest of hospitality from friends in 
St. John’s. It seemed unlikely that I should go 
again, but here is a fine spring day in England, 
and I am putting out my reindeer sleeping bag 
to air in the sun. This means that the winds 
of the north are calling, and I shall go. Over 
there is a sense of freedom we know not here. 
There is the great sun, the wide horizon, the 
dancing rivers and the woods of everchanging 
beauty. There is the blazing moon with its 
manifold sights and moods of nature, the white- 
headed eagle and the osprey lost in clouds of 
spray, the American goshawk chasing the belted 
kingfishers, the splash of the leaping fish and a 
hundred more. There is the evening of chang¬ 
ing lights when from the darkening forest steps 
the great white-necked stag. There, too, those 
exquisite nights of twinkling starlight when you 
lie and toast your toes at the blazing logs while 
the men spin yarns and the great horned owl 
shrieks. It is the spirit of the wilderness that 
calls you, and the man who has not known and 
understood has not lived.” 
It is a land which should become a place of 
“known desire and proved delight” to many an 
American sportsman and his family. I hope you 
will be able to help some of them to find it. 
Duck and Quail Season Commences. 
BY GOLDEN GATE. 
Duck and quail shooting is now in order in 
California, and from many sections reports are 
being received of good sport. While ducks are 
fairly plentiful in the marsh district around San 
Francisco Bay, they are not as numerous as in 
past seasons, probably on account of adverse 
weather conditions. No early rains have fallen 
in California, and many of the streams that 
usually have water in them at this season of 
the year have been dry for weeks. The low¬ 
lands along the Sacramento and San Joaquin 
rivers are dry, and the birds arriving from the 
North must seek the bay marshes or resume 
their trip southward. On many of the preserves 
pumping plants have been installed, and water is 
being raised in this manner to fill the ponds. In 
the great interior valleys duck hunting will be 
almost out of the question, except on private 
preserves until heavy rains occur. 
On San Francisco Bay, sprig predominates 
at the present time, but other varieties are now 
making their appearance in numbers, including 
teal, mallards, widgeon and canvasbacks. Green 
food is quite plentiful at the Joyce Island Club 
preserves, and here some large bags of widgeon 
have been shot. Joseph Grinnell, head of the 
museum of vertebrae at the University of Cali¬ 
fornia at Berkeley, spent some time at the Green 
Lodge Club early in the season as the guest of 
W. W. Richards, making a study of game birds. 
His host brought down over twenty varieties of 
birds for him, and these were taken to the uni¬ 
versity for examination. 
While quail hunting is now permitted in 
most of the counties of California, the open sea¬ 
son in Marin county will not commence until 
Nov. r. In past seasons the supervisors of that 
county have postponed the opening of the sea¬ 
son until the middle of November, but this year 
agreed to allow shooting two weeks earlier than 
usual. The season will close Jan. 1. Threats 
have been made to make test cases of the Marin 
county ordinance, but it is generally conceded 
that the county has a right to shorten the shoot¬ 
ing season named by the State if it sees fit. 
The efforts of the market hunters and res¬ 
taurant keepers were successful in postponing 
the enforcement of the law passed by the last 
Legislature prohibiting the sale of ducks, except 
for a limited period, and this wildfowl is again 
on bill of fares, and the usual army of pot¬ 
hunters is active in the slough district. Whether 
or not the sale of ducks will be prohibited will 
not be settled until the general election is held 
in November, 1914, when the people of the State 
will have an opportunity to vote on the measure. 
