Forest and Stream 
Terms. $3 a Year. 10 Cts. a Copy. I 
Six Months. $1.50. 
NEW YORK, SATURDAY, JULY 25, 190R 
: VOL. LXXI.—No. 4. 
I 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. 
i 2 7 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 
taste for natural objects. 
—Forest and Stream, Aug. 14, 1873. 
VANITY AND VANDALISM. 
A form of vandalism that is extremely com¬ 
mon, at least within a day’s journey of a large 
city,’ is the practice of painting, cutting and 
otherwise marring the beauty of natural objects. 
That a boy who has just come into the pos¬ 
session of a new knife cannot resist the temp¬ 
tation to carve his initials on the bark o a 
beech tree every man who loves the woods 
knows; but why man or boy should daub pamt 
on stones and cliffs passes understanding. 
There is a certain pass in the higher Rocky 
Mountains. So natural are all of the surround¬ 
ings that, as one approaches the summit after 
hours of toil, only the road and its immediate 
vicinity give evidence of the presence of human 
beings. At the summit, however, the beautiful 
aspen trees present a startling appearance. From 
roots to branches all the trees along the road¬ 
side are marred with initials and dates. The 
number of boys who pass over the range is 
small and it must be inferred that many adults, 
boy-like, have added their records to the long 
list. Perhaps the impulse to do this is akin to 
that which prompts staid old men to cariy 
buckets of water from a distant brook and pour 
it on the exact summit of the Continental 
Divide, so that it shall flow both east and west, 
the theory being that eventually the water will 
reach both the Atlantic and the Pacific oceans. 
But it is the painting of stones that seems es¬ 
pecially without justification. All along the 
lower Hudson River the larger stones near the 
water’s edge bear the names of persons and 
camps with dates. All colors are in evidence, 
and oil paints that will withstand the elements 
are used. What possesses a boy to carry a can 
of paint and a brush in his camping or cruising 
outfit is not easy to understand, much less the 
desire to daub his surroundings with names and 
hieroglyphics. A person possessed of average 
intelligence must know that the appearance of 
a name in such a place will arouse the wrath 
and disgust of every one who cherishes a love 
for natural objects. Yet the. motive that leads 
boy or man to write his unimportant name in 
public places is presumably vanity. 
CANADA’S CELEBRATION. 
Three hundred years ago, at the point of 
Quebec, then covered with nut trees, Samue 
De Champlain set his men to work to cut down 
these trees, saw boards, dig cellars and make 
ditches to construct a habitation. Now, looking 
down from the heights that it has occupied for 
these centuries, Quebec celebrates the tercen¬ 
tenary of its founding. _ , 
Before the coming of Champlain, Canada had 
yielded to the French vast quantities of furs and 
skins and had enriched many a trader, but it 
remained for this great explorer to see in Canada 
something more than a mere ground for the 
trapper and trader—a home for people, a veri¬ 
table New France, a land where a France, vaster 
and more powerful-as it would be more exten¬ 
sive than the France of the Old World might 
be founded. In the accounts of his voyages he 
described with enthusiasm the land, its people, 
its animals, its timber, its plants and its minerals, 
and on these products he based prophecies of 
a great future for this land—prophecies which 
time has abundantly justified. 
The celebration which is now being held in 
Quebec possesses a deep interest for all Cana¬ 
dians and all Americans. The English, French 
and Indians north of the boundary line may 
well regard it as their peculiar festival and cele¬ 
brate it with reproductions of the old time life 
which prevailed when the city was founded. Yet 
we of the Eastern United States, and above all 
the dwellers in New England, owe to Cham¬ 
plain more than most of us imagine. Northern 
New York and New England were fields of his 
exploration, and it was he who charted the 
coasts of the North Atlantic nearly to Con¬ 
necticut, making surveys that have not been 
greatly altered to this day. 
The work of Samuel De Champlain may fitly 
be celebrated by Americans as well as by Cana¬ 
dians. 
THE OLD-TIME NEGRO HUNTERS. 
In Mr. Tucker’s story of the South, which 
begins in this issue, many of the old-time sports¬ 
men will find that which will recall memories 
of other days, when they hunted or fished with 
darkies like old Cauge. Few men of this type 
are left, and these few have rubbed elbows with 
adversity so long that they have lost the interest¬ 
ing traits and quaint ways of the negroes who, 
“befo’ de wah,” were better natured if more 
indolent. 
We may pride ourselves on our woodcrai', 
but there are few who command more knowl¬ 
edge of the ways of small woodsfolk than the 
negroes who lived on the edge of the woods. 
Naturally superstitious, if they did not under¬ 
stand the ways of an animal, they credited it 
with occult powers it did not possess, and ac - 
counts of its supposed actions were believed by 
their fellows and passed down from father to 
son as gospel truth. 
Always willing to entertain, the old negro 
hunter made a good companion as well as guide, 
and the picturesque yarns spun by some of them 
around the camp-fire or in the cabins in the 
South have, when put in print, enlivened the 
leisure hours of sportsmen whose fortune it has 
never been to know them well and to appreciate 
them at their true value. 
Unlike their offspring, the old-time negroes 
respected the breeding and the nesting seasons. 
With them there was a time to hunt, a time to 
fish, and a time to refrain from both. They 
observed nature’s laws better than their progeny 
observe the laws of the State, for to them the 
game and the fish represented feasts in the 
cabins on certain occasions, to which they looked 
forward with pleasure. 
“Doings,” a monthly publication, issued by 
Alameda Lodge, 1015 B. P. O- E., contains an 
interesting plea from Dr. Frederick W. D’Evelyn, 
the President of the lodge, for the preservation 
of the elk. An urgent request is made that mem¬ 
bers of the order abandon the use of the tusk 
emblem. Dr. D’Evelyn calls attention to the 
extermination of the elk over almost the whole 
of North America, and points out that the use 
of the tusk emblem cannot fail to promote the 
continuation of this destruction. He quotes 
Walter B. Anderson, author of “In the Lodges 
of the Blackfeet,” as having declared that “the 
custom of tusk emblem was the cause of the 
death of hundreds of elk.” 
Lodges of the order of Elks in many sections 
have, we believe, declared themselves against the 
use of this emblem, and it is to be hoped that 
the feeling will grow and spread. All sports¬ 
men and a very large number of members of the 
order of Elks are agreed that the wearing of 
elk tusks by men is as bad as the wearing of 
native bird plumes by women. If the order of 
Elks will take this matter up in the same hearty 
fashion that Dr. D’Evelyn has taken it up, they 
can do a great deal of good. 
v. 
For some little time forest fires have been burn¬ 
ing in the Adirondack region, as, owing to the 
terrible drouth they threaten the whole north 
Atlantic coast. In the early part of the month it 
was reported that Col. Fox, of the State Forest, 
Fish and Game Commission, had declared that 
the fire situation in the Adirondacks was well in 
hand Late dispatches, however, from the borders 
of that region say that as yet little has been done 
to check the progress of the flames. The New 
York Central Railroad and the Delaware & 
Hudson Company are engaged in fighting the 
fire, and it is said that other fires are constantly 
starting. The woods have been exceedingly dry, 
and it is almost impossible to check a fire that 
once starts. 
