A Still-Hunter’s Memories 
The Last Cartridge — The Hanging Gardens of 
Squaretown — The Right of Asylum 
By SAMUEL MERRILL 
Samuel Merrill is a newspaper man, having been for more than twenty-five years past a member of the 
editorial staff of the Boston Globe. A native of Charlestown, N. H., he 
was born on New Year’s Day, 1855, and graduated at Dartmouth College 
in 1876. 
Mr. Merrill’s interest in firearms dates from boyhood, and he is now 
president of the Massachusetts Rifle Association, and is a member of the 
Boston Revolver Club and the United States Revolver Association. His 
first trip into the Maine.woods was in 1886, and his hunting trips since 
that time have taken him into all parts of the State, and into other big- 
game territory as well. His successes with the hunting rifle have been 
notable, and for six successive years, 1901 to 1906, he killed in Maine each 
year the legal limit of big game—one moose and two deer. Two of the 
moose were exceptionally fine specimens, their horns having in each case 
twenty-one points. One of the heads is now in the Butterfield Museum at 
Dartmouth. 
The article, “A Still Hunter’s Memories,” was written last November 
while the author was resting in a Maine camp from the labors of a 
strenuous hunting trip, thirty miles from a farm or settlement and 
SAMUEL MERRILL. more than forty miles from a railroad. 
A t dinner the other day in a French restau¬ 
rant I was seated opposite one of those 
pictures which the French artists of a 
generation ago singularly loved to paint-—a scene 
in the inglorious war with Prussia. The picture 
represented a corner of what was evidently an 
upper room in a dwelling house. On the floor 
lay a soldier, seemingly dead; against the wall 
leaned another, desperately wounded, while at 
the window stood the central figure, a man in 
kepi, blouse and baggy trousers of the French 
infantry, grim determination and Gallic ferocity 
stamped upon the face, and as he stood there, 
steadying his musket barrel against the window 
casing, he aimed downward as if into the street. 
Whether it was an incident of the Commune, 
or of some outpost skirmish in a frontier vil¬ 
lage, the title did not explain. But it explained 
enough —“La Derniere Cartouche.” A man left 
alone, his comrades helpless, his musket, too, 
helpless as soon as that last cartridge had been 
fired—what would he not seek to accomplish 
with that cartridge if it lay within the bounds 
of human possibility! And that hapless French 
infantryman showed in his attitude, in the ten¬ 
sion of every muscle of his face, that he was 
determined that cartridge should not be wasted. 
Before the entree had been served I was mus¬ 
ing over an incident of my own experience 
with the rifle, and contrasting in my mind two 
pictures, very unlike in their claims upon painters 
of historical scenes, but the same theme inspir¬ 
ing them both—the last cartridge.. 
Far back in the wilderness of Northern Maine, 
above where Munsungan Stream weds the Mill- 
nocket, thus forming the Aroostook River, a 
camp of logs nestles among the trees on the 
shore of Munsungan Lake. We left there one 
November morning, hunted along the ridges 
back from the camp, and had dinner in the 
woods three or four miles from the lake. 
Atkins, the guide, had not finished his after- 
dinner smoke as we ventured toward the lake 
by a different route, when he suddenly became 
attentive to the ground at his feet. 
“Made this morning,” he declared with con¬ 
viction, which did not admit of dispute. 
Sure enough. There was the familiar hoof 
print of a good-sized moose. The short after¬ 
noon was half spent before we had traced the 
wandering animal through feeding grounds 
where he had nibbled such delicacies as he could 
find, past beds where he had lain to enjoy brief 
seasons of repose, to a little ridge on the crest 
of which we had surprised him at one of his 
frequent siestas. It was quick work to discover 
the bed just vacated, to run across the narrow 
ridge, following him in his retreat, to catch a 
glimpse of him as he made a short stand to 
look back and measure the character and 
strength of the enemy, and then to fire a quick 
shot as he turned to seek safety in flight. 
We were not long in discovering evidence of 
a hit, and then began a stern chase, with occas¬ 
ional running shots, as the wounded animal 
found his strength decreasing and the difficulty 
of escape in the same ratio increasing. I al¬ 
ways blamed the bullet, and its failure to 
mushroom properly, but the fact remained that 
as dusk began to gather, an hour and a half 
after the opening of the battle, the moose was 
still able to travel, though, as ultimately ap¬ 
peared, he was hit by four or five bullets. 
The moose was still able to travel, the battle 
was still unfinished, and my cartridges were all 
gone, save one 1 I had improvidently carried 
only ten cartridges or so, and now, with ammu¬ 
nition in plenty at the camp, I was following a 
wounded moose and my magazine empty. 
Meanwhile we were rapidly nearing the lake. 
The moose had a good lead, and I could not 
afford to risk a running shot at him in the dis¬ 
tance, as he occasionally appeared for a fraction 
of a second through the trees. But we could 
not reduce the’ intervening distance, and I saved 
my one cartridge as if life depended on it. 
Finally we reached the shore of the lake and 
there saw the head and mane of the fugitive, fol¬ 
lowed by a broad wake as he swam, 150 yards 
offshore, headed across to possible safety. 
The last cartridge! What a pity that my pic¬ 
ture is so much less heroic than that of the 
French soldier at the window! But it made 
my blood tingle when the picture on the restau¬ 
rant wall suggested this episode of a hunting 
trip of years ago. The last cartridge! With 
what care I studied the distance and aimed the 
rifle in the growing darkness, everything de¬ 
pending on that one shot! A small mark, and 
none too near, but the distance was not grow¬ 
ing less, and, after seconds which seemed like 
minutes, I pulled the trigger—and won ! 
The joys of our holidays, who can measure 
them! The present pleasure of the days them¬ 
selves is not the only, nor the chief, enjoyment. 
The schoolboy’s anticipation of the sports of 
vacation is to be added to the pleasure of the 
vacation itself—and then the memory of it after 
it is past, how much more this memory adds to 
the sum total of the enjoyment which the vaca¬ 
tion brings! The schoolboy remembers the 
afternoons at the swimming pool, the happy days 
in the woods or by the stream long after he 
has forgotten the irksome duties of school or 
farm; the same boy, older grown, remembers 
with pleasure the victories of the college athletic 
field long after he has forgotten how to conju¬ 
gate useless Greek verbs; and the same man in 
later life—if he is a sportsman—^recalls more 
often and with more satisfaction the day when 
he caught his record-breaking salmon, or shot 
his first moose than he does the day when he 
was elected to office, or when he cleared up a 
few thousands in a stock transaction. 
Oh, the unpublished epics, the unpainted pic¬ 
tures of scenes by the camp-fire, of thrilling 
moments when the moose, or deer, or bear, long 
and patiently and silently followed, at last offers 
opportunity for a shot-—pictures of the quarry 
