Forest and Stream 
Terms, $3 a Year, 10 Cts. a Copy. I NEW YORK, SATURDAY, JULY 4 , 1908 . 
Six Months, $1.50. ’ _ 
VOL. LXXI.—No. 1. 
No. 127 Franklin St., New York, 
A WEEKLY JOURNAL. 
Copyright, 1908, by Forest and Stream Publishing Co. 
George Bird Grinnell, President, 
Charles B. Reynolds, Secretary. 
Louis Dean Speir, Treasurer. 
127 Franklin Street, New York. 
THE OBJECT OF THIS JOURNAL 
will be to studiously promote a healthful interest 
in outdoor recreation, and to cultivate a refined 
I taste for natural objects. 
—Forest and Stream, Aug. 14, 1873. 
GROVER CLEVELAND. 
A great figure in American history has passed 
I away. The nation has lost its best beloved and 
1 most respected citizen. 
Mr. Cleveland typified all that is best in the 
American character. Kindly, honest, possessing 
high powers, wise judgment and unfaltering 
courage, he was a great man and a great leader. 
Although the head of a political party, he was 
always a patriot before he was a partisan. 
His administrations of the office of President 
of the United States were marked especially by 
the inauguration of measures of reform in gov¬ 
ernment, by a strong announcement of the prin¬ 
ciple of the Monroe doctrine, and by the em¬ 
ployment of United States troops in defense of 
property rights and of government by law. 
His kindness, his forgetfulness of personal or 
,1 party advantage when the good of the country 
3 was in question, and his fearlessness and stead¬ 
fastness in carrying out what he believed to be 
right, made him a heroic figure. 
Mr. Cleveland was devoted heart and soul to 
outdoor sports. He was an ardent angler, a 
sturdy tramper of the fields after quail, an un¬ 
wearied occupant of the duck blind, and a lover 
of a good dog. He represented American sports¬ 
manship of the best type. In what must have 
been one of the last letters that he ever wrote, 
received at this office but a few weeks ago, he 
expressed the strongest hope for the passage of 
better game laws for the State in which he re¬ 
sided. 
A good man, a patriot and a wise leader has 
gone from us, but his name and example remain 
and will not be forgotten by the generations to 
come. 
A phase of Mr. Cleveland's life in respect to 
sport throws light on his whole character. 
The exacting cares and responsibilities of the 
office of President of the United States have 
broken down the health of more than one occu¬ 
pant of the White House. Precedent or etiquette 
or custom had set up certain unwritten and ham - 
pering standards for the guidance of presidents 
in their hours of rest. Mr. Cleveland was very 
I fond of hunting small game and of fishing, and 
naturally when there was an opportunity for a 
' day or two of rest his thoughts turned to the 
forests and the streams he loved so well, for 
he knew that there were to be found the rest 
and recreation he craved. 
It required courage such as few men possess 
to turn his back on public sentiment and to fol¬ 
low out his own inclinations. No doubt he knew 
that the public was awakening to the fact that 
its busy men work too hard and need vacations. 
No doubt he knew that he was right and acted 
up to his beliefs. So he went shooting and fish¬ 
ing and kept his mind and his body in condition 
to cope successfully with the problems that made 
him famous. 
His example is now commonly followed by a 
constantly increasing number of professional and 
business men, who acknowledge that they work 
too hard to retain healthy minds and bodies 
without some form of outdoor relaxation and 
rest. These health restorers are found in the 
woods and by the waters, and no one need feel 
ashamed to say that he has searched for and 
found them in the manner followed by Grover 
Cleveland. 
GOATS, TAME AND WILD. 
Possibly it has never occurred to sportsmen 
to whom, in the old days, the tame goats were 
a familiar sight in Harlem and Washington 
Heights, in upper New York city, that these 
same goats might, with a change of environ¬ 
ment, become wild enough to be hunted for 
sport; but such a thing might occur under other 
conditions, just as, in the Hawaiian Islands, the 
offspring of one-time tame goats are hunted for 
sport or because they have increased so rapidly 
as to become a pest. These Hawaiian goats, 
that have reverted to a wild state, are of the 
same common variety as those that were so 
often to be seen, silhouetted against the sky¬ 
line on the pinnacles of the rugged gneiss 
ledges that cropped out all over old Harlem and 
the still wilder regions of the Heights between 
the Harlem and Hudson rivers on Manhattan 
Island. Those were the days when the hovels 
of squatters were to be seen here and there 
among the broken hills. Nearly every shanty 
was largely home made, and its outlines were 
scarcely more symmetrical than its environ¬ 
ment was attractive to the eye, but without its 
guardian goat it would have seemed askew in 
still another sense. 
The electrification of several street railways, 
the completion of the subways, and the tide of 
building that has swept rapidly and steadily 
northward until all of the old woodcock covers, 
the haunts of gray squirrels and the playgrounds 
of the children have been replaced by apartment 
houses and homes have expelled the New York 
goat from his ancient home. The few lone 
specimens now to be seen seem but spiritless and 
faint hearted ghosts of the old-time belligerent 
guardians of the tin-roofed castles of the squat¬ 
ters. 
FOREST FIRES. 
The dry weather of the past month along the 
North Atlantic coast has not only burned up 
the pastures and reduced the size of the brooks, 
but has greatly increased the danger from forest 
fires, so great a terror to the sportsman and the 
game preserver. 
At present a woods fire is burning on the east 
end of Long Island, and has already run over 
many square miles of woodland and has killed 
great quantities of small game. The young 
quail, partridges and pheasants are as yet too 
small to make long flights and many of them 
must be destroyed. In the region devastated 
there are not a few game preserves, and the 
passage of this fire will unquestionably take 
away all hope of the club members for any 
shooting this fall. 
As yet the fire has not reached farms or vil¬ 
lages, but has been confined to the woods, burn¬ 
ing only the leaves and old brush. Yet the dam¬ 
age to the young growth and to wild life is very 
great. 
Parts of Quebec, Canada were also severely 
damaged during June by fires that originated in 
the forests. Showers assisted the foresters in 
some cases to arrest the spread of fires, but 
elsewhere the fires caused large losses in trees 
and in houses and other property as well. 
Direct advices from Newfoundland confirm 
the stories that were sent over the wires a fort¬ 
night ago concerning the mishap that befell the 
Rev. Dr. Grenfell, the missionary and promoter 
of the plan to stock Labrador and northern New¬ 
foundland with Lapland reindeer. While re¬ 
turning across the ice after taking the reindeer 
inland, the doctor was caught in a storm, the 
ice broke up, and he was driven offshore. At 
one time he, with his dog team, was thrown 
into the water and the dogs nearly drowned him 
in trying to save themselves. Eventually he was 
found after being adrift two days. He was 
badly frostbitten, and only saved his life by 
killing two of the dogs, whose skins gave him 
some small protection. He brought back sev¬ 
eral wounds to show that these fierce brutes are 
not safe to travel with, and while he admits that 
reindeer are slower than he anticipated, as beasts 
of burden, they are superior to the dogs. 
K 
The Grand American Handicap, which was 
so successfully concluded at Columbus, Ohio, 
last week, had a total of 362 entries, of which 
332 were starters. Considering the industrial 
hard times and the consequent necessity to ob¬ 
serve economy more or less according to whether 
one’s purse is short or long, this Grand Ameri¬ 
can Handicap will compare favorably with prior 
great Grand American Handicaps. The fully 
illustrated report, which appears in our trap 
columns, will be found of great interest. 
