Nov. 19, 1910.] 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
821 
A Sportsman’s Mishaps. 
Berlin, N. Y., Nov. 12.— Editor Forest and 
Stream: A city man who retires to the coun¬ 
try and leaving farming to the farmers, devotes 
himself to the woods and the waters, meets with 
enough misadventures to make life at times 
mighty interesting. 
During my first summer, while fishing the 
Little Hoosac for trout, I found it necessary 
to climb over a rough farm fence. I rested for 
a minute or two on the top rail and then slid 
down to the ground. There was a loud tearing- 
sound, and turning I saw the whole seat of my 
trousers hanging from a projecting nail. I was 
only a short distance from home, but to reach 
the house I would have to walk up the main 
street for about two hundred yards, passing a 
shirt factory full of women and the house of 
the little milliner who usually sat in the bay 
window close to the street trimming her bonnets. 
I determined to wait till nightfall, which was 
hours away, but it began to rain, and I was 
ravenously hungry. Taking off my coat I tied 
the sleeves around my waist, making a curtain 
which concealed the enormous rent, and so went 
home. 
In the fall, as I had seen a number of mink 
while fishing, I set some traps. While reaching 
over a bank about a foot high I slipped and 
landed in deep water, so cold that I came up 
gasping for breath. Since then I have had a 
good many duckings, but in five years’ residence 
here have never had a cold. If I go to New 
York city for a few weeks, however, I invariably 
catch a severe cold almost at once. 
This fall fve suffered from a plague of skunks, 
and there were so many around my house that 
my son said he was afraid to.come in the back 
door after dark. I made a box trap and set it 
by the side of my wood shed door, catching six 
in as many nights. I had never seen a skunk 
at close quarters, and although I was anxious 
for a good look at them. I shook the first two 
into an empty barrel and kept it covered with 
boards. Immunity made me careless, and in¬ 
duced a belief that they were harmless, so when 
I dropped the third one in the barrel I looked 
in to see how the newcomer, was received. Then 
I was stung. The discharge was like bird shot, 
and one drop landed in my right eye. It was 
extremely painful, and only after long bathing 
with' warm water could I use it. I have read 
that wild animals always see you first, and now 
I know it. 
I have fallen so many times while on the 
mountain sides that I have lost count, and twice 
have been lost, the first time for six hours, and 
it was a decidedly worrying experience. After 
that I bought a compass, and when I lost my 
bearings the second time, looked at my compass 
and discovered that I did not know which end 
of the needle pointed to the north. It was 
cloudy, but finally I located the sun, discovered 
where the north was, and succeeded in laying 
the course for home. 
Variety is the spice of life. Sandy. 
Albino Lake Trout. 
New York City, Nov. 12.-— Editor Forest and 
Stream: An unusual exhibit at the New York 
Aquarium is a fine series of about three dozen 
albino lake trout. 
These were donated by the New York Forest, 
Fish and Game Commission, through the kind¬ 
ness of Dr. T. H. Bean, State Fish Culturist. 
These fishes, the largest of which will weigh 
about two and one-half pounds, are pure albinos, 
even to the red eyes, and make an especially at¬ 
tractive display. R. C. O. 
New Publications. 
The Danger Trail, by James Oliver Curwood. 
Cloth, 306 pages, illustrated in colors by 
Charles Livingston Bull. Indianapolis and 
New York, The Bobbs-Merrill Company. 
The building of the Hudson Bay Railway is 
a live topic, and in this story the descriptive mat¬ 
ter is full of interest for the sportsman. The 
BARNEGAT LIGHT AND A SECTION OF THE NEW JERSEY 
COAST MADE FAMOUS BY SPORTSMEN. 
Photograph by Matt Stratton. 
hero is a young engineer who is sent north to 
take the place of two of his superiors who, for 
some mysterious reason, are eager to return 
home. On his arrival the heroine appears, and 
there follows shortly an attempt on his life, the 
first one of many which beset his trail. The plot 
thickens and the action is of the galloping order 
to the end. Unlike most novels, in which the 
hero masters every situation, in this one he is 
no match for the mysterious agencies of destruc¬ 
tion that work against him. It is a rather ordi¬ 
nary story, with a flash here and there of good 
reading. 
Women’s Fishing Club. 
Navarre, south of Massillon, Ohio, boasts 
of a Suffragette Izaak Walton Club. As its 
name would imply, women only are admitted 
to membership. 
The object of the club is to promote the in¬ 
nocent and interesting sport of fishing, and the 
member who catches the most fish in a single 
summer is president of the club during the 
winter. In that way the fish cast the votes. 
The contest was close this fall, with Mrs. 
Nathan Watts and Mrs. Frank Mercier in the 
lead. They decided on a fishing excursion to 
decide the question. They stood all day on the 
bridge across the Tuscarawas River south of 
the village and the fish bit hungrily. When they 
went home each had a long string. 
“Surely this will decide it,” said Mrs. Watts 
to Mrs. Mercier. 
“It certainly ought to,” said Mrs. Mercier. 
Scales were brought and the fish counted. 
The whole catch weighed 40 pounds and each 
had caught thirty-five fish. 
“It’s a tie vote,” they said in unison. 
“We’ll both be president,” suggested Mrs. 
Watts. And so it was agreed.—Pittsburg Gazette- 
Times. 
THE TOP RAIL. 
What’s the use? Here have we been, for 
years and years, trying to solve the problem of 
getting the greatest amount of sustenance and 
comfort while in the backwoods from the least 
possible outfit of grub and camp plunder. And 
now comes the president of the Canadian camp, 
with the suggestion that food is 'unnecessary. 
Read what he said in the Times when people 
were worrying lest balloonists Hawley and Post 
should starve in “the Canadian wilderness” : 
“Dr. John Warren Achron, the ‘Woodser,’ 
of Boston, hiked his pack by trail twenty-five 
miles a day for four weeks without partaking 
of a morsel of food.” 
Pie mentioned another case of a sportsman 
we all know who, he said, “on one of his ex¬ 
peditions to Labrador, lasting several months, 
took but a day’s rations and returned in prime 
condition.” 
No doubt he inferred that these men lived 
on the game and fish and other edibles any 
woodsman can find, but he did not say so. The 
facts are that Messrs. Post and Idawley experi¬ 
enced no hardships, but only the discomforts in¬ 
cident to a tramp through the woods without 
being prepared for it. They were not far from 
camps and woodsmen at any time, and might 
have remained in the region ten times as long 
without undergoing real hardship. 
H* *1* 
In view of the fact that, despite every pre¬ 
caution, a goodly number of persons are drowned 
every summer at the seaside resorts, it might 
be worth while to test the Indian method of 
.saving life. This consists in attaching ropes to 
an elephant’s harness and the elephant, trained 
to the work, swims about among the bathers, the 
ropes trailing behind. At any rate it is said that 
during a sudden rise in the Ganges River an 
elephant accoutred as described above saved 
1,000 pilgrims who were bathing in the river, 
and who, it seems, had been marooned on a 
sandbar far from shore. Grizzly King. 
