616 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
[Oct. 15, 1910. 
took him to my cabin an’ we had a right so¬ 
ciable time. 1 even blazed a trail to my cabin 
for him so that he could go it alone, but he 
didn't tackle it very offen durin’ the winter. He 
wuz a smart man an’ could talk fine. I used to 
like to listen to him, for he seemed to know 
about everything but the woods. 
“One day we got to talkin’—I think it was in 
the spring—an’ I spoke of going out with my 
furs. He looked sad, an’ before I left he up 
an’ told me about himself. He had a wife an’ 
darter back there in Boston. The girl was four¬ 
teen, he said. They’d lived happy, he a-makin’ 
a good livin’ for them in the law bizness. He 
said he gave them all he had of brains and 
strength, but that wuzn't enough for his wife, 
who wanted to mix with the society folks. He 
didn’t, an’ couldn’t afford it, he said, and there 
they split. His wife kept on his trail so steady 
that, finally, bein’ desperit an’ unhappy he left 
for the woods to git where he could have peace 
o' mind, he said. Ain’t it strange, boy, how a 
woman will do even when she knows a man is 
doin’ his level best for her and the child? Well, 
he said he hadn’t found peace of mind in the 
woods. He kept a-thinkin’ of that little girl and 
that made him think of the mother in a softer 
way. Perhaps he’d done wrong, but he had 
‘severed the ties,’ he said, an’ must ‘try to ’cept 
the situation gracefully.’ I ast him if he loved 
the folks back home. ‘Love ’em ?’ sez he; ‘love 
em? Uncle Hi, I love ’em with all my heart 
an’ soul.’ 
"Well, Hinckley lived here four years. He 
was growin’ older an’ grayer, an’ it wan’t age, 
boy. One afternoon I was putterin’ around my 
cabin—it was in May, I think—when I heard a 
man call ‘Halloo.’ I went out an’ up on the 
ridge I saw a man and woman cornin’ down the 
trail. It turned out to be a guide from over to 
the railroad an’ the woman was young and as 
purty as they make them. ‘I am lookin’ for Mr. 
Hinckley,’ said the lady, ‘an’ I have learn’t that 
he is in this neighborhood. Can you direct me 
to him?’ ‘I know Mr. Hinckley,’ I said, ‘but it 
is a long, rough walk from here to his cabin, 
an’ we can’t get there much afore dark. Ye 
must be tired now.’ ‘No, I’m not tired,’ she 
said, but she was so game she lied, boy. ‘I will 
pay you well if ye’ll take me to him to-night.’ 
‘I’ll take ye,’ I sez, ‘but ye can’t pay me nothin’.’ 
She thanked me an’ I got the lantern an’ we 
started. Her guide stayed at my cabin. Well, 
I led her through the woods an’ all the time my 
ole head kept -a sayin’, ‘It’s the darter.’ It was 
a long walk,' but that girl never whimpered. I 
led her to the edge of that ridge over there, 
pointed at the cabin an’ turned to go back. The 
girl held out her hand to me, boy, an’ tears ran 
out of her eyes. Then she grabbed’me ’round 
the neck and kissed me—yes, sir, kissed me. 
She ran down the hill and I watched her until 
I saw the door close behind her an’ then I 
started fer home. 
“Early in the morning of the second day, jist 
as I wuz washin’ the breakfast tins, who should 
come up from the river but Mr. Hinckley an’ 
that purty girl. He wuz lookin’ ten years 
younger and there was a smile in his eyes. 
‘Uncle Hi,’ he sez, ‘I want to introduce ye to 
my darter, Miss Mary—she looks jest like her 
mother did twenty years ago. I am goin’ home,’ 
said .Hinckley, ‘an’ I’ve left everythin’ but the 
books in the cabin fer ye. Ye’ve been good to 
me. I don’t know what I’d a done without you. 
I can’t thank ye enough. I’m goin’ home now 
an’ may never see you again, but I’ll never for- 
git ye.’ 
“I went with them out as far as the road that 
leads to the railroad, an’ there we shook hands 
and that purty girl kissed me agin.’ After 
they’d gone quite a ways Mr. Hinckley turned 
and waved his hand an’ shouted, ‘God reigns, 
Uncle Hi.’ An’ that’s the last I ever saw of 
him.” 
Fred L. Purdy. 
Hawk Captures Sandpiper. 
New York City, Sept. 29. —Editor Forest and 
Stream: Several weeks ago, while snipe shoot¬ 
ing on the meadows of Great South Bay, I wit¬ 
nessed an occurrence of such peculiar character 
that I am impelled to transmit the details to the 
readers of Forest and Stream. 
During the forenoon there were many least 
sandpipers flying about our stools, but later they 
seemed to disappear. There were a very few 
hawks and some gulls in the air at the time. 
Toward noon a sandpiper which had fluttered 
about the stools started to cross from the meadow 
to the strip of shore which separates the bay 
from the ocean. It had traveled but a short 
distance in the air when a hawk, the species of 
which we were unable to determine, and which, 
up to that time, we had not observed, swooped 
down toward the sandpiper, which made every 
effort to get away, but continued its course to¬ 
ward the strip of shore immediately opposite, 
circling and doubling to throw off its pursuer. 
The hawk followed the sandpiper persistently, 
without apparently getting any closer to it. Both 
birds were several hundred feet up in the air. 
When the strip of shore immediately opposite 
was reached, there suddenly shot up from the 
grass on the shore strip a hawk similar to the 
one which was pursuing the sandpiper, and with 
extraordinary swiftness, with unerring aim, and 
without deviating from the upward line came 
upon the sandpiper and grasped it in its talons. 
The hawks and the sandpiper were too far dis¬ 
tant for us to shoot to drive off the hawks. 
Immediately after the sandpiper had been 
grasped by the second hawk, both birds came 
down to the water surface which separated us 
from the shore strip, and for a few moments 
quarreled for the possession of the snipe. The 
second hawk, however, retained the prey and 
finally flew off along the water with the sand¬ 
piper still in its grasp to a point about 1,000 yards 
distant from us, where it sat on a bit of pebbly 
beach, uncovered by the receding tide, and pro- 
ceded to dine. It did not take the hawk very 
long to finish its meal, as it rose and flew away 
before we could get to the point where it was 
feasting. 
We discussed the incident with our guide who 
informed us that it was a very unusual occur¬ 
rence, though it was not uncommon to see hawks 
of a similar kind pursuing such large birds as 
black-breasted plover, which they sometimes se¬ 
cured by tiring them. He also said that the 
hawks never pounced upon the members of the 
snipe family, except when there was little other 
natural food for them to feed upon, and that 
there were evidently but few field mice at the 
time to furnish fhe'usual hawk food. 
Louis Hess. 
Wild Ducks Dying in Utah. 
Salt Lake City, Utah, Sept. 27. —Editor 
Forest and Stream: The duck hunters of the 
State of Utah are confronted this year with 
some sort of an epidemic among the waterfowl, 
affecting alike the geese, ducks of all kinds, 
snipe, the smaller herons and killdeer. 
The disease began in the various breeding 
grounds bordering on Great Salt Lake, as near 
as we can tell about Aug. 1 and has gradually 
and progressively increased in extent up to the 
present moment without any abatement or 
change. This condition exists at the mouth of 
Bear River, Utah Lake, at the mouth of Jordan 
River and generally throughout the Salt Lake 
valley. The disease, as I am told, attacks a bird 
or duck and in a very few days he is dead. 
They all have profuse bowel movements and 
soon become stupefied to such an extent that 
they cannot walk around, but simply sit down 
and finally topple over dead. Again, I am told 
that a duck so afflicted when in the stream will 
swim toward ,the bank and make strenuous ef¬ 
forts to climb out, but does not seem to have 
the power or strength to pull itself up out of 
the water. There seems to be also a watery dis¬ 
charge from eyes during the latter stages of the 
illness. The throat and mouth seem clean and 
clear enough, but the diarrhea is ever present. 
We can walk right up to them and pick them 
up, and except for a weak flutter the bird seems 
entirely helpless. We have many times gone out 
and picked them up for examination and placed 
them in the boat and brought them in, and where 
they laid in the boat the usual diarrhea was evi¬ 
dent from the numerous deposits of the dirty 
slimy stools on the bottom of the boat. We 
picked up and brought in a few and put them 
into an improvised chicken yard, supplied fresh 
clean water and wheat as food, and many of 
them recovered, while some few others died. 
The majority so.treated recovered in from two 
or three days to one week. 
The hatch of young ducks this year was very 
large; in fact, spring opened here this year on 
March 1, and subsequent to that time there was 
no high water. The canals and streams grad¬ 
ually went down and reached the very lowest 
stages that we have known for years, and we 
have gone upon the theory that the disease was 
a “cholera” due to the overcrowded and gen¬ 
erally unsanitary condition of the ground as a 
result of lack of water—at least, not enough— 
and an overcrowding of the waterfowl into such 
a limited space. We even went so far as to 
make numerous dissections of different birds— 
ducks of the various species—and in each case 
we find the same lesion; viz.: in the intestine. 
Just about twelve inches from crop there is an 
ulcerated condition of the mucous coat of the 
bowel. In the earlier stages it is not so pro¬ 
nounced, but as the disease advances, the process 
in the intestine progressively becomes worse and 
one can easily see the hemorrhagic and injected 
appearance, as well as the swollen and thick¬ 
ened mucosa. This swelling of the mucous coat 
extends on down toward the anal orifice and de¬ 
pends seemingly entirely upon the extent to 
which the disease has advanced. 
The first thing that meets the eye upon open¬ 
ing the abdominal cavity is the dry, hot and 
swollen appearance of the intestine. The perito¬ 
neal cavity—general abdominal cavity— is en- 
