one with the sculling skill, gave all the 
orders, and kept telling me to “trim the 
boat.” Trim nothing! I wish I had 
trimmed him before we left. 
No one had seen any ducks yet that 
Spring, but, I will bet six prescriptions, 
and write them myself, against an 
empty shotgun shell, had any one 
“honked,” we all would have answered 
to the call. Very gently we let the ark 
adrift and felt her move serenely down 
stream for twenty or thirty feet, then 
suddenly stop. No persuasion with our 
one paddle could coax another move out 
of her. When the depths were explored 
we learned we were stranded on one of 
those coy, shy, submerged icebergs— 
the kind that have not the nerve to 
come out and look you in the face. Any 
way we got off. No, this is not all. 
This was just experience number one. 
We had lots of them that afternoon 
dodging logs and icebergs, and doing 
tail spins in whirlpools until we were 
so dizzy we could see heliotrope ele- 
phants and humming birds playing to- 
gether in the cock pit. When the 
*steenth one happend I did not remem- 
ber enough about all the rest to chroni- 
cle them. ; 
Safely, I should say blissfully, we 
sculled along. Each time our Captain 
sculled I got water down my neck. You 
know, he was the kind who sculled 
from both sides of the boat. He knew 
all about that art. On we went to 
where the raging water had taken a 
short cut across a bend. It was in a 
hurry, we were not, so we went around, 
besides, we knew there would be ducks 
in this still water. Reaching the place 
where this terrific current came through 
it caught the front end of our tub, and 
around she went nose first into a willow 
tree, the top of which was just stick- 
ing out of the water. The nautical 
gentleman up in front reached out and 
grabbed hold of the branches. I have 
since been told that this is an exceed- 
ingly unethical proceedure in any boat. 
Say, brother, we had not had anything 
happen to us until then. The stern 
swung round, and still the lad held on, 
she dipped water once, I trimmed her, 
but I put on too much trimmin’, and 
there was no boat under us at all. 
The Captain shouted “jump,” bat 
this was all superfluous, as far as the 
head end man was concerned. He 
simply swung himself up into the tree. 
I grabbed a branch about as big as a 
lead pencil—did not have time to pick 
out a larger one—and started in to 
gurgle. I wonder if you ever jumped 
into a cocktail made up of melted snow 
water, floating sand, cracked ice in 
cakes some of them forty feet square, 
the rim of your cocktail glass somwhere 
out there about a mile, and Lord only 
knows how deep. Well, sir, I came up 
Page 739 
that twig like a monkey cutting capers 
on a hundred yards of grapevine, and 
did not stop until I could see daylight. 
Of course my coming up was not help- 
ing to keep this tree up out of water, 
and it was rather worrying the nice 
dry dude up in the top. At least he 
kept telling me he would just as soon 
I would continue the submarine stuff. 
He was nice and dry—and warm. The 
Captain got on around down that tree 
trunk some way; I was mostly covered 
up with the contents of that river while 
he was doing it, hence I do not know 
exactly how. Anyway he was stand- 
ing with his head out. 
After what seemed a few more hours 
in maneuvering, I sat down tailor- 
fashion in a crotch under water, and 
surely was anchored peacefully, with 
nothing to do but watch those cakes of 
ice go floating past. Sonny boy, up in 
the top, wouldn’t even give me his old 
musket to keep the ice from taking the 
hide off my knees and shins as it went 
by. Pretty soon I felt a jar about four 
degrees to the right of the center of 
my equator; my old dollar ticker was 
full of water and swelling, and my new 
pants were full of water and shrinking; 
these diametrically opposed forces ex- 
ploded the crystal of my watch. 
I presume you wonder if we hollered. 
Yes, we did, that is the immersed ones 
did; the third was very comfortable, 
and certain some one would come to get 
us. Nevertheless we made him fire 
all his ammunition as rapidly as he 
could reload, and each time that old 
rusted cannon went off it brooded ill 
for our perch. I did not do all holler- 
ing, for there down stream a hundred 
yards, caught upside down in the 
branches of another tree, and _ still 
staggering, was our iron friend. I 
talked considerably to it. 
A chap out on the road heard all the 
noise and went to town to see if any 
one had gone on the river to hunt. The 
first man he asked was my Father. 
Then things commenced to move. An- 
other boat was brought down and 
launched, but could not get to us for 
the current, so back to town for rope. 
With this tied to the boat, men were let 
down to us, and one by one, we were 
removed to shore. I was still on my 
back, legs paralleling my body and 
forming a letter “X,’’ when I got home 
at five thirty, just four hours after the 
launching, and blue, poor business since 
has never made me quite that shade. 
Here was once in my life that my pro- 
hibition Dad asked me to have a drink. 
Did we catch anything? Yes, we didn’t 
even catch cold. Did we get any ducks? 
Uh huh, two of us did. I don’t reckon 
it was all the boat’s fault, do you? 
Dr. CHARLES F. HARRIS, 
Bayfield, Wis. 
The Squirrel Color Problem 
DEAR FOREST AND STREAM: 
NOTE in your October issue an ar- 
ticle by Don Cameron~ Shafer, 
“Blackie of the Tree Tops.” We have 
the gray squirrel here, whose home is 
in dense cane brake country. The 
large red squirrel who loves river 
banks, low swamps and cypress brake 
and bayou country and the black squir- 
rel of equal size and general character- 
istics. In shooting over the low land 
and swamp country, the black is most 
numerous. On the river bank, the red 
is in the majority. It is rare that you 
find the black in broken hilly places. 
The red and the gray, are in ratio of 
five or six grays to one red. I have 
found both red and black young in the 
same den or hollow tree nest, when 
their eyes were hardly opened and gray 
with black in about equal proportions 
as to pelage. There have been a large 
number of reds killed here and about 
as many blacks, several hundred in the 
past 12 months, 20 to 25 miles east 
and in the Yazoo River bottom, they 
are nearly all grays. A party of hun- 
ters killed over 75 last winter and all 
were grays except 4 of them. 
R. E. STRATTON, SR., 
Clarksdale, Miss. 
Against the “Porky” 
DEAR FOREST AND STREAM: 
I HAVE just finished reading the 
second argument you have published 
in defense of the “porky” and would 
like to say a few words against him. 
My father is the owner of sporting 
camps, and mice, squirrels, and bears 
all together don’t do one-third of the 
damage that one porky will in a single 
season. 
True as Mr. Shaw and Mr. Mac 
Vicker both say, the porky is the only 
animal a man can kill without a gun, 
but how many men are there that get 
lost without a gun. Not one out of 25. 
It is impossible to leave an axe, 
canoe, or any part of a camping equip- 
ment in the woods for any length of 
time without its being wholly or par- 
tially destroyed by the porky. 
Only the other evening a man came 
into the camp with a fine setter dog 
whose nose was completely filled with 
quills. ; 
An unwritten law in this part of 
Maine among the guides and camp- 
owners is “kill the porky,” and we al- 
ways kill every one we see. 
I could give a good many experiences 
of camping out where one porky has 
destroyed as much as $15.00 worth of 
supplies. 
GRACE SOULE, 
Ox Bow, Maine. 
