FOREST AND STREAM. 
[Feb. 13, 1909. 
256 
that an eagle did not like to get wet and when 
the- blue peters (American coot) saw one com¬ 
ing they would swim close together, and put¬ 
ting their heads and necks down would make 
the water fly with their feet, which would pro¬ 
tect them from their enemy. For many years 
Mr. Knowlton owned part of Ragged Island in 
Currituck Sound and spent the winter season 
there shooting ducks, geese and swans. After¬ 
ward he went in the late fall to Ormond, Fla., 
for his winter residence and he told me of a 
remarkable flight of robins on their way north. 
It was about the middle of March some ten 
years ago, when for two and a half days the 
air was full of these birds, passing and repass¬ 
ing, but not all pointing for the north, although 
that was the general trend. He had not sup¬ 
posed there were so many robins in the world 
as he saw then. He had seen blackbirds by the 
mile and ducks by the hundreds of thousands, 
but nothing to equal this. He heard of this same 
flight ten miles across country, showing that it 
was not confined to a narrow lane. He saw 
nothing like this again. 
In the middle sixties I was living on a sea 
island plantation near Beaufort, S. C. In the 
spring, jack curlew, willets, black-bellied plover, 
red-backed sandpipers and some other kinds of 
shore birds were plenty. I had good shooting 
at them; there was no law against it and no 
one realized how soon their numbers would be 
diminished. My decoys were skins of the large 
birds properly cured and stuffed full with cotton 
horizontally. No attempt was made to stand 
them up as though alive; but from the bushes 
I cut crotched sticks like the letter Y. some of 
them extra long, to be used where the water 
was a foot deep, as the sands were sometimes 
covered to about that depth. Each decoy was 
placed across two sticks. A few of these were 
better than many of the ordinary decoys, the 
birds coming to them readily. Anyone who tries 
them will, I feel sure, agree with me. Results 
tell the story. 
Having been told that many ducks were there, 
I decided to go to the Combahee River—a shoot¬ 
ing ground unknown to me—and see whether I 
could get some of them. 
I started on the 27th of November, 1865. My 
outfit was unique. Two pairs of wheels with 
a plank platform and a dory resting on it, two 
mules and a driver, my guns and baggage stowed 
in the dory, and myself on horseback made a 
very comfortable and satisfactory way of travel¬ 
ing the twenty miles of sandy roads from Beau¬ 
fort to my destination. It was about ten miles 
across Port Royal Island to the ferry, then six 
miles to Gardner’s Corners, and four miles more 
to the house where I was to stay. 
At this point the water in the river is fresh, 
but there is an ebb and flow of several feet, as 
the ocean tides force it back. As I remember 
it is mpre than a mile across the river and rice 
fields from the high ground on each side. When 
under cultivation the water is kept from the 
fields by a system of dykes, but as it was just 
after the close of the war, many of the dykes 
were out of repair and allowed the river water 
free ingress. This was lucky for me. for I had 
better shooting from blinds in the fields than in 
the river. Being on new gunning ground, I had 
to learn by experience where to go, what to do 
and how to do it. 
In the daytime the American widgeon (bald 
pates), pintails, greenwing teal, shoveller ducks 
and bluebill widgeon were to be found in the 
fields from one to five miles up the river—the 
mallards and white-fronted or laughing geese 
were mostly five miles or more down stream, 
flying to the upper rice fields late in the after¬ 
noon to feed at night. After three times trying 
the fields down the river I gave it up as too 
uncertain, and afterward always went to the 
upper fields. 
My forty decoys were of wood—of really first 
class shapes and finish and painted quite artis¬ 
tically and accurately. As the water in the fields 
was from a few inches to a foot or so in depth, 
the non-diving ducks could feed by immersing 
their heads and necks. The baldpates, graceful 
and handsome, were the most numerous with 
their soft, sibilant whistle of three notes, musical 
and sweet. The pintails, also handsome birds, 
were very shy, but their flight was remarkably 
steady—no fancy style for them. They were 
more likely than the baldpates to circle around 
the field too high to be within shot, sometimes 
finally coming to the decoys. The beautiful 
little greenwing teal were a delightful study. 
They are lightning-like in their movements and 
the moment they catch sight of any motion by 
the gunner the flock will split to pieces like the 
fiery stars of a bursting rocket and go up in the 
air like so many bees—lucky for the shooter if 
he gets one bird with the first barrel, and unless 
he is as lightning-like as the teal, the rest will 
he out of range before he can get on another 
with the second. 
The house where I stayed was known as the 
Lowndes place. A fine mansion, hut dilapidated, 
as it had been abandoned during the war and 
occupied by Uncle Sam. Two officers were there 
at this time and they made it very pleasant for 
me. I think I was welcome also, for I was able 
to make a change in their rations. During the 
ten days of my stay I tried the river and several 
different fields and ways of “laying” for the 
ducks, so as to get acquainted with the ground 
as far as possible—a necessary proceeding, as I 
intended to come again. 
The laughing goose is a fine bird, although not 
in the same class as the ducks for tenderness 
and flavor. We tried one and pronounced it 
good. I remember two that passed over the 
field high up. I called to them with a little 
bird whistle and they immediately tumbled down 
in a most reckless manner, gracefully catching 
themselves just above the ground and made 
straight for my decoys, offering so easy a shot 
that I got the two. Joseph R. Kendall, 
[to be concluded.] 
The Packer’s Art. 
Under the title “Pack Transportation,” the 
Quartermaster’s Department of the Army has 
recently issued a manual of packing which many 
people would have been glad to read in past 
3'-ears, and which will still be of great service 
to the army. Henry W. Daly, Chief Pack Master 
Quartermaster’s Department, U. S. A., who 
writes this manual, is one of the old-time packers 
who grew up with the pack service under Gen, 
George Crook, and of them all he is perhaps the 
most observant and certainly, by his discoveries 
and by writing this book, is the one who has 
added most to the efficiency of the pack service. 
and so has placed the cavalry arm of the service 
under lasting obligations. It is he who dis¬ 
covered the causes of the so-called bunches 
which rise on an animal’s body, and discovered 
also the remedy which reduces these bunches. 
Only the man who has endured the torture of 
working day after day with a train of sore- 
backed animals, and has seen them one by one 
become unfit for use, can realize the humane 
service and the relief to the packer that has thus 
been rendered. 
Much speculation has been indulged in in the 
past as to the antiquity of packing without any 
special light being thrown on the subject. We 
know at least that it is as old as the stone age, 
and it can hardly be doubted that it followed 
close upon the domestication of the dog—man’s 
oldest domestic animal. 
Mr. Daly devotes considerable space to the 
evolution of the aparejo and of the diamond 
hitch. He describes pack saddles, the assembling 
and care of the aparejo and above all its rib¬ 
bing, padding and setting up, for it is on the 
proper performance of these operations that the 
comfort and usefulness of the pack mules de¬ 
pends. He gives at length—and illustrated by 
many excellent photographs—a school system of 
instruction which seems absolutely complete, and 
which, beginning with the preparation of the 
ropes, ends up with how to construct a travois 
and to improvise a stretcher. He gives instruc¬ 
tion in the service of the pack train including 
loading, duties on the march and unloading. In 
his chapter on marches and loads he shows what 
may be required of the pack mule, the rate at 
which it may travel and the loads it carries under 
various conditions, and gives examples of en¬ 
durance of animals. The organization of a pack 
train and a description of the Daly aparejo, with 
a variety of details especially interesting to the 
army, close a most useful—and to many men a 
most interesting—book. 
W'ritten especially for the use of the army it 
contains much material unnecessary for the man 
who starts into the mountains merely to pack 
a few animals carrying sawbucks. On the other 
hand the whole subject is here treated more 
fully than ever before, and the volume should 
be in the hands of all packers and of all who 
would like to know how to pack. 
The work has been revised by Col. H. L. 
Scott, Superintendent of the United States Mili¬ 
tary Academy, who has had a very wide experi¬ 
ence with pack trains. Col. Scott’s knowledge 
of packing under all conditions, his great ability 
as a soldier, his powers of close observation 
combined with his keen intelligence and his 
literary skill guarantee the excellence of this 
work. .No such detailed explanation of the 
packer’s art has before been published. 
Gloomy Outlook in Oregon. 
Editor Forest and Stream: 
With fifteen inches of snow on a previously 
frozen ground and temperature about eight above 
zero, the severest cold spell for nearly two 
weeks experienced in twenty-one years, driving 
the smaller feathered occupants of the hills to 
seek food and refuge in the yards of our towns, 
half of .the quail and China pheasants have 
perished from privation and cold, though fed by 
many of the more thoughtful admirers. 
Fred Beal, Jr. 
