854 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
[May 28, 1910. 
the upper end of the lake at Mission \ illage, a 
collection of twenty or thirty log huts full of 
Indians of all ages, and we were greeted with 
great interest by a large portion of the popu¬ 
lation. Wc sat on the wharf for a couple of 
hours, and about 1 o’clock Chief Peter arrived 
with a couple of saddle horses. We at once 
saddled up and started over the mountain in 
pursuit of Ferguson, who had started on foot 
two hours before, making great time. 4 he trail 
wound diagonally up the mountain for about six 
miles and it was 3 o’clock when we reached the 
top. We sat down under a tree and ate our 
lunch, which we had brought with 11s from the 
hotel. It was raining on the top of the moun¬ 
tain, but as soon as we had started down the 
other side in the valley of the Bridge River, the 
rain stopped and it remained moderately good , 
weather. 
We pushed on as fast as our horses and the 
nature of the ground would allow and reached 
the valley of Bridge River a little after 4 o’clock. 
From there the trail, which was merely a broad 
well-kept path not adapted for wagons, wound 
up Bridge River along the banks much as the 
main wagon road had gone up the Fraser. We 
pushed on rapidly, but when darkness came on 
there was still no sigil of the house, and we 
could not help the uncomfortable feeling that 
some way or some how we had lost our road. 
Still there was nothing to do but keep on, and 
after about an hour’s riding in the darkness, w'e 
made out a light ahead of us and finally drew 
up at Jones’ ranch. 
Jones proved to be a big, fine looking man 
who so greatly resembled Adam Moore, my 
former guide in New Brunswick, that he seemed 
an old friend. Ferguson was already there, and 
they were expecting us, so that we found supper 
nearly ready. We were both sore from the un¬ 
accustomed use of the saddle and very tired, 
but we sat talking with Jones and Ferguson 
until late that evening. Jones had been out that 
day and killed a bear, and he was going out 
the next morning to bring it in. He wanted 
us to go with him, but we declined as we were 
in a hurry to get to White s ranch, which was 
about ten or twelve miles beyond Jones. \\ e 
were provided with very good beds and the next 
morning were up early and off. 
As we neared White’s ranch we passed several 
sloughs where the river had come in and left 
expanses of dead water, all of which had num¬ 
bers of ducks feeding in them. About 11 o’clock 
we came in sight of Grant White’s ranch, a 
comfortable looking log house situated on a flat 
in the valley of the Bridge River. We rode up 
to the house and were welcomed by a number 
of dogs and an assorted lot of cats, and soon 
the door opened and Liza, Grant’s Indian wife, 
came out. She told us that Grant had not yet 
arrived, but she expected him that evening, that 
she was sick with tonsilitis, and that a man 
named Sharp, who was staying with White to 
take care of the place, would take care of us. 
This was not a very cheering welcome, as Liza 
was evidently very sick, but Sharp soon came up 
from the vegetable garden where he had been 
getting in potatoes for winter, and made us wel¬ 
come to the kitchen and the rear part of the 
house. We spent that afternoon target shooting 
with the rilles, waiting for White, but he did 
not show up, and we finally went to bed on the 
kitchen floor, wondering very much-what we 
should do, as we were impatient to get started, 
and afraid some accident had delayed Grant. 
Liza, however, was positive that he would be 
in the next day at any rate, and Sharp the next 
morning told us that a neighboring guide named 
Williams, who lived about a half mile up the 
river, wanted us to come out and see him that 
day. 
Meanwhile Chief Peter had come up to Grant’s 
with all our baggage, which was unloaded in the 
yard, and there was nothing to do but wait till 
our guides turned up. The next morning we 
went up to Williams’ house and he proposed 
that as there was nothing else to do, we go 
duck shooting. We got our shotgun and one 
of Williams’, and taking one of the dogs that 
was supposed to be a retriever, started up to¬ 
ward the sloughs we had passed the day before. 
At the first slough I hid in some grass where 
the creek flowed out of the bottom of it into 
Bridge River, and Cutler and Williams went 
up to the other end of it and tried to get a shot 
at the ducks then in the slough. They did not 
get any shots, but they scared up a number of 
ducks which came within shotgun range of me 
and I was able to drop four of them) into the 
water. The sloughs looked very shallow, so I 
first took off my shoes and stockings and started 
to wade after them. The water was icy cold 
and I soon found that I would have to go in 
up to my waist. I then tried that and found it 
was so deep that a person would have to swim 
to get the ducks, and I abandoned that with¬ 
out much hesitation and waited for the return 
of Cutler and Williams and the retriever. 
As soon as the dog appeared, he ran out into 
the water with great courage and got one duck 
and brought it ashore. After that we showed 
him the other ducks, but it was no use.. Every 
time we showed him a duck he ran up into the 
woods and came back with a stick, and the more 
we tried to get him to go into the water, the 
more he pretended there was something in the 
bushes we wanted. There was absolutely no 
hope in either force or pursuasion, and after 
throwing him in once or twice for luck, we gave 
up the ducks and any further shooting for that 
day, as we did not care to shoot anything that 
we could not get and use. On the way home 
I also flushed and killed a partridge, which was 
almost the only one we saw on the trip. We 
afterward learned that partridges had formerly 
been very thick in this district, but that some 
disease had broken out among them, and that 
they had almost entirely disappeared. 
We got back to Williams’ in time for dinner 
and were sitting around smoking and talking 
that afternoon, when we saw Grant White s pack 
train' come over the edge of the ridge above the 
river and begin to wind down to the valley. 
There was a long line of pack animals and we 
looked anxiously for sheep heads on some of 
them, for we knew they had been out twenty- 
six days, and if they had no sheep it looked bad 
for our chances of success. However, when they 
finally came close to us, we saw that they had 
no sheep, but they had some good deer heads 
and two or three goats. This was very dis¬ 
couraging, but I was somewhat consoled when 
I found that the party consisted of a man and 
his wife and a friend of his. I felt sure that 
the woman must have been a great handicap to 
their chances of success, although she did not 
appear so, being dressed and riding exactly like 
a man. Later wc found this to be so, as they 
were unable to camp in the roughest part of the 
sheep country, and being forced to camp in bet¬ 
ter places, they hunted throughout at a great 
disadvantage. We knew nothing about this until 
we had gone out, and it seemed as if we stood 
a mighty small chance to get any sheep. 
Russei.l Mott. 
[to be continued.] 
Massachusetts Legislature. 
Boston, Mass., May 21 .—Editor Forest and 
Stream: If the prediction of Commissioner 
Wentworth, of New Hampshire, shall prove 
true, the people of the five Western counties of 
Massachusetts “will be sick of the open season 
on deer’’ after a year s trial. 
The bill as reported by the Committee on 
Fisheries and Game was engrossed by both 
houses. During the week commencing the third 
Monday of November one deer only may be 
killed with a shotgun by any person having a 
hunter’s license, but whoever wounds or kills 
a deer under the provisions of the law is re¬ 
quired to report the same to the commission 
within twenty-four hours. The law does not go 
far enough to satisfy men who desire the speedy 
extermination of all the deer—a sentiment that 
has manifested itself in the recommendation of 
the secretary of the Board of Agriculture that 
all protection be removed from deer. 
The friends of the deer in the eastern portion 
of the State feel thankful that the privilege of 
killing is not given the hunters in their section. 
The law is in reality a compromise measure 
and the result of the experiment will be watched 
with much interest. 
The wanton slaughter of deer at all seasons 
under the cover of fictitious claims of injury 
to crops is greatly to be deplored. The deer 
question is as yet an unsolved problqm. 
On Thursday the bill calling for an appro¬ 
priation of $25,000 for the establishment of a 
fish hatchery was reported adversely in the 
House. Chairman White, of the Committee on 
Ways and Means, stated that three of the pres¬ 
ent Hatcheries had proved failures and uiged 
economy in expenditures. Representative Perry, 
of Marion, defended the bill, saying that New 
York has nine hatcheries on which it expends 
$65,000 a year and gets a return worth half a 
million dollars. The House refused to reject 
the bill by a vote of 78 to 109, a substantial vic¬ 
tory for the Committee on Fish and Game. 
The bill appropriating $10,000 for a bird farm 
brought out an interesting debate in which poli¬ 
tics played quite a figure. By a vote almost 
unanimous the bill was rejected. Many of your 
readers are aware that there is a large tract of 
land under the control of our commission in 
Martha’s Vineyard, where there are about one 
hundred heath hens, and many of our sportsmen 
believe that affords - an excellent place for the 
breeding of quail, and further that the State 
should not continue the breeding of pheasants 
nor undertake the work of rearing ruffed grouse 
at the present time. 
The bills providing an open season .on gray 
squirrels and several others recommended by the 
commission are having smooth sailing and bid 
fair to reach the Governor before many days. 
Henry H. Kimball. 
