JAN. 6, 1906.] 
lake, and by keeping a due north course we were 
able to find the lake and locate our where- 
abouts.’ ” 
The Falk boys, referred to in the article, found 
their experience rather unpleasant. When, if 
they had Only read Nessmuk’s injunctions and 
kept them well in mind they might have enjoyed 
(?) the trip. The main trouble with them was, 
they simply made up their minds that they were 
lost and would have it no other way; also, they 
concluded they were to die there, and only the 
sight of the north star changed their minds. So 
sure were they that they were to die that they 
even speculated on the likelihood of their bodies 
being found. They even decided that no one 
would venture into that awful place. Of course, 
they did not know that there are more men in 
northern Minnesota who would trail that swamp 
from end to end and know all the time where 
they were than those who would hesitate, and 
who would do it in the night, if they knew that 
any human being was suffering there. 
The richest part of the whole thing is, that 
James Falk is the game warden for that district, 
appointed by the State Fish and Game Commis- 
sion that indorses the present game law which 
permits a non-resident to kill a moose and pro- 
vides for no disposition of it except that it may 
be shipped to any point in the State that said 
non-resident desires. ha Ps eB: 

Bryn Mawr, Pa., Dec. 24.—Editor Forest and 
Stream: Congratulations on the new Forest 
AND STREAM. May it continue to give us the old 
substance in its proposed new form. The day of 
the “blanket sheet” is past, and I am glad that 
Forest AND STREAM has at length seen the way 
clear to join the ranks of the periodicals that are 
easy to handle, easy to read and easy to file. 
The current discussion as to what may or may 
not be learned from printed woods lore is an 
interesting one. It divides lovers of the woods 
into two groups, as it seems to me—those whose 
good fortune has placed them in a position that 
renders printed hints unnecessary because they 
have imbibed woods lore naturally from their 
environment in or near the woods; and those 
who from bad fortune have matured in the cities 
and have discovered comparatively late their in- 
born (atavistic?) fondness for the wilds. There 
may be plenty of variations between these two 
types, but these are the types that split on this 
question. Mr, Hardy belongs, or at any rate 
takes sides, with the first type; Mr. Kephart, as 
one who has given much good advice to ama- 
teurs, sides with the second. There is much 
truth on both sides, but the key to the situation 
seems to me to be in the old principle of “the 
man behind the gun.” Doubtless, many men 
with a real love of the woods exist who would 
be incapable of extricating themselves by any 
number of rules from the predicament of being 
lost in the woods. They lack, whether innately 
or from insufficient experience, the ability to 
profit by what they have heard or read. 
What can you do, for example, with a man 
who has no sense of direction even in his own 
city? Only the other day I had occasion to enter 
with a friend one of our large department stores 
in Philadelphia, for, at this season, a man will 
sometimes risk the dangers of a battle at the 
bargain counter, and when we left the store after 
an interval of less than ten minutes and passed 
out of a side entrance, my friend was twisted 
just forty-five degrees. He thought that the 
street ran west instead of south. Such a thing 
might easily happen to a woodsman in the city, 
because the conditions would be strange to him, 
but when it happens to a city man in the city, it 
is clear that this man lacks something funda- 
mental in endowment or power of observation 
that would make it very dangerous for him to 
essay any sort of a trip alone in the woods. On 
the other hand, there are many who pick up 
woods lore with marvellous quickness, whether 
practically in the woods from one who knows or 
from such truth-telling guides as old Nessmuk. 
In the latter case they are often able to go into 
the woods and with a very little experience work 
out successfully the principles which they have 
gained by simple reading. 
The case narrated by Mr. Edward French in 
your issue of Dec. 23 is an instance of this. In 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
other words good books—note the adjective— 
on the woods are certainly of great value to a 
large class of men who through no fault of their 
own have not had experience in the woods in 
their boyhood and youth. Of course, they are 
not able in every situation to apply what they 
have read, but if they keep cool and have time 
to think a problem over, the chances are that 
good results will come from their reading. 
_ I alluded above to the sense of direction, and 
it occurs to me that many of your readers might 
be able to throw some light on this peculiar en- 
dcwment. Is it purely an endowment or is it a 
faculty for observation, often subconscious, re- 
sulting from environment and experience? I 
haven't looked up the psychologists on this 
point, but they would be forced to gain much of 
their data from us lay brethren, anyway. That 
a part of this faculty is born in a man probably 
all will admit, but I am of the opinion that per- 
sonal experience will prove that the orginal ele- 
ment is vastly developed and strengthened by ob- 
servation. The problem is: By what mental 
processes does a man successfully find his way 
through a forest or swamp or, if you will, a city? 
Have any of your readers had experiences in 
which they could, so to speak, check off the steps 
by which they reached their results? 
ARTHUR L. WHEELER. 
Mississippi Headwaters. 
AITKIN, Minn., Dec. 26.—Editor Forest and 
Stream: Your correspondent from St. Paul hav- 
ing again brought the lumber trust under the 
lime light, I wish to make a few more remarks 
in passing. It is doubtless true that a great 
amount of timber was stolen under the dead 
and down timber act, but the greater steal came 
when certain reservation lands were set aside 
for park purposes. This was the crowning act 
of forty years of timber frauds in Minnesota, 
and was originated to get at reserve timber, 
which heretofore had resisted all encroach- 
ments. The opening of timber lands in Minne- 
sota seems to have always been done at signals 
from the lumber trusts just when they had their 
forces best organized to gobble it all. To do 
this, of course it would seem as if they had to 
keep their own men in office. Having gone to 
this expense, why not go a little further and 
ease the road to take the logs to the mills. The 
same organization can do both works at the 
same price. Result: A great reservoir system 
at the head and along the river. The specious 
plea under which the reservoirs were builded 
was that by damming the outlets of the great 
lakes and closing the gates in freshet times, 
floods could be prevented, and by opening them 
later, an even flow of the rivers could be 
maintained. The reasonableness of this propo- 
sition is at once apparent. 
Devastating floods are of common occur- 
rence along the great river. With a sufficient 
number of reservoirs along all its tributaries, 
these floods could be completely controlled. 
The start was made some thirty years ago on 
the Upper Mississippi; but why does it stop 
here? Why is it not extended to all the other 
rivers? Simply because there would be no 
graft connected with those other streams; there 
would be no private pull connected, and men do 
not work as strenuously for the general good 
as for a private snap. 
The reservoirs to date are grotesquely inade- 
quate to control the floods of the Mississipp1. 
The greatest flood ever known just below the 
last reservoir would not raise the river at 
Davenport, Ia., more than one foot, and one or 
two inches at New Orleans. If that is the plan, 
and supposing the water supply above to be 
adequate, the capacity of the channel here 
would have to be multiplied by five. Furnishing 
water enough from this source to float a shingle 
at New Orleans would cause a perpetual flood 
at Aitkin. The reservoirs are of sufficient capa- 
city to completely control floods as far down 
as Aitkin, Minn., if they were used for that 
purpose, but they are not. The order is com- 
pletely reversed, and their great capacity 1s used 
in such way as to cause floods. Fall, winter 
and spring the reservoirs are collecting water 
13 
out of the natural flow of the river. May, June 
July are the months when the rush of logs are 
sent to the mills, and the stored up water is 
used to carry them. That is the the rainy sea- 
son, too, and floods are inevitable. 
Last spring the War Department, at the dic- 
tation of the lumbermen, held back water almost 
to the limit of their capacity, having been col- 
lecting for three years back. They were ex- 
pecting a dry season, but the greatest rainfall 
since records have been kept came. The double 
dose was too much for the channel of the river, 
which nature had provided for a reverse order, 
and a disastrous flood followed. Put the case 
fairly before any twelve men of average intelli- 
gence and they would assess the damage against 
the Government, and if the settlers. should or- 
ganize and force payment it would cost the 
Government $300,000 for this year’s work, 
This year the scattered logs were not gath- 
ered up and put back in the river until October. 
The river kept up until the last log was off 
the banks, and then it began to drop very 
rapidly. In three days it had gone down five 
feet. They were loading up for next year’s 
flood. This rapid fall of the water spoiled a 
contemplated canoe trip for ts, as six feet of 
slimy bank was scarcely a pleasant adjunct to 
the gildings of October. We had waited all 
summer for a favorable time, but the waters 
spread through all the wood, and there were no 
favorable camp sites. Then the finish of our 
hopes came with the sudden drop of the water 
just as conditions began to get right. From this 
point heavy rains kept the river at a standstill 
for over a month, and then came snow and the 
ireeze tip. With the sharp, freezing weather, 20 
below zero, the river began to drop rapidly, as 
is natural under freezing conditions. This lasted 
tor several days, and then with continued zero 
weather and bright sunshine it began to raise 
again, until it spread out over the lowland, and 
ice formed around the trees to the thickness of 
eight inches. Then down goes the water, leav- 
ing the ice, which is clinging to the trees—peel- 
ing them, too, in a great many cases. Hundreds 
of dead trees next year will testify to this year’s 
work. All this on a river that, with its great 
natural reservoirs, should have the most even 
flow of any in the world. 
Your St. Paul correspondent can hardly con- 
demn the timber thieves too harshly; but let us 
abandon the reservoirs, or at least empty them 
until such time as river improvement and honest 
management makes them safe. They will be 
abandoned, anyhow, when the lumbermen have 
no further use for them, just as the reforested 
park plan will drop out now that they have got 
what they were after. 
Now that the subject is up, there is one more 
point I want to call attention to. In the con- 
tinuous flow of logs down the river many be- 
come water-soaked and sink. This would soon 
fill up the channel of the river until there would 
be no channel, and the water would spread over 
the country, and floating logs would come to a 
stop. To guard against this condition, the 
Government has a snag boat and crew at work 
all the time taking out the snags. This is a 
very necessary work, of course, but the meth- 
ods pursued do not seem at all necessary. To 
remove the snags dynamite is used, and I have 
heard a dozen of shots in a day. What effect 
does this wholesale dynamiting have on so im- 
portant a fishway as the Mississippi River? It 
is not like blasting rock out of a channel, where 
the blasting is all done in one place, but the 
shots are placed here and there for a hundred 
miles up and down the river. It would seem 
the snags might be removed without this. Add 
to this the fact that this crew kept a man in the 
woods all summer in 1904 with dogs and 
Winchester repeating shotgun in quest of deer, 
partridge or any other game that might offer, 
and it will be seen that there are quite serious 
faults with this part of the service. All this is 
done in the name of the War Department; but 
it goes without saying that the Commander-in- 
Chief of the Army knows nothing of this need- 
less waste, or it would come to a very sudden 
stop. Perhaps Forest AND STREAM might do 
well to see that it comes to his notice. 
E. P. JAQUES. 

