FOREST AND STREAM. 
GAIMIE IBAG A\ 
. 
[JUNE 2, 1906. 
ND GUN 

The Old West. 
YEARS ago—it seems a great many years ago to 
me—lI decided to take Greeley’s advice and “go 
West.” It required some little nerve for a young 
man raised on a farm in New York State to leave 
his friends and make a break alone into the then 
almost unknown West. There was a “frontier” 
then; now there is none. 
I went to Junction City, Kan., and then on foot 
south to the Santa Fé Railroad, which was then 
just being built, and finally stopped where the 
city of Wichita now is. At that time it was a 
military post. I could stand there then, and look- 
ing southwest across the Arkansas River, see the 
whole country speckled with buffalo as far as the 
eye could reach. I stayed there a few days, and 
then went on up the river to what is now Hutch- 
inson. Here I met a man who told me about the 
Medicine River country, which was about 125 
miles further southwest. He represented it as 
being a weil timbered country, with quite high 
bluffs along the streams, and as all the country 
where I was then had scarcely any timber, it 
looked very dreary to me; besides, I had an idea 
of going into the cattle business, so I decided to 
go and look at the Medicine River country. 
I bought a pony and we started. We had 
heard of a camp of hunters, at the junction of 
the Medicine and Turkey Creek, who had a 
wagon trail into Wichita. We went south, so as 
to strike the wagon trail and follow it to their 
camp. I proposed taking along some provisions, 
but my new friends said there was no use buying 
or carrying supplies, as we could get all the game 
we wanted; so we went without any provisions. 
Well, we started out, and there seemed to be a 
break in the buffalo, as there were none in sight, 
and we went on all the first day without a chance 
to kill anything; and slept that night on the 
ground by a “chip” fire, with nothing to eat and 
no timber in sight. We were on what I after- 
ward learned was the north fork of the Ninis- 
quaw River. The following day we traveled all 
day and killed nothing until night, when we 
stopped on the south fork of the Ninisquaw, and 
I killed a bird about as large as a robin, which 
we roasted and divided between us. 
The following day we began to see buffalo, and 
about noon came to a timbered stream, and within 
half an hour I had killed a big turkey; and I 
think that I never tasted any other turkey quite 
so good as that was. We camped there in the 
timber, No one knows just what a luxury tim- 
ber is to camp in for fuel, until they have camped 
on the bare prairie and burned chips. 
That afternoon my friend killed a buffalo. I 
was. greatly surprised at the size of the animal. 
I had seen the buffalo robes that we used in the 
East, and which at that time could be bought for 
from $5 to $10, but they were small, and I learned 
that the large ones were never made into robes, 
as their great thickness called for too much work 
to dress them. White men never dressed robes; 
the Indians did that, as their time was worth 
nothing. A squaw would work a month or two 
tanning a hide; then her lord and master would 
trade it to a white man for a plug of tobacco or 
a pint of firewater. 
We went on the next day and reached the 
hunters’ camp, which was owned by Captain 
Griffin, formerly of Dutchess county, N. Y. The 
following fall Captain Griffin was killed by the 
Indians about thirteen miles from his camp on 
the head of Mule Creek. He was a fine shot, and 
although he had a wooden leg below the knee, he 
was one of the best horsemen I ever saw. It was 
by means of the wooden leg that we were able to 
identify his bones when we found his remains. 
He had a needle gun, and in the buffalo wallow, 
where his bones were, we found about 100 empty 
shells, which showed that they had fought there 
for some time. There was a man from Pennsyl- 
vania by the name of Van Buren with Captain 
Griffin at the time. We buried their bones to- 
gether, 
The Medicine River country was an ideal one 
for game. The bottoms were well timbered, and 
there were plenty of red deer and turkeys in the 
timber; the prairies were alive with buffalo and 
antelope. Sometimes the buffalo would mass to- 
gether and form a vast herd, and when once 
started to run, would go for no one could know 
how long. I have seen a mass of them, say half 
a mile wide and perhaps two miles long, all on 
the run in a solid body. They would come to 
a stream and go roaring over the bluff and’ 
through the water, and come in sight on the 
other side, and the great black river of living ani- 
mals would go pouring on across the prairie. If 
something ularmed those in. front they would 
wheel like a body of cavalry by the flank, and 
on they would go in another direction. While 
this great mass of animals would be sweeping 
past, others would be grazing or lying down, and 
would not appear to pay any attention to the 
galloping herd, unless in front of it, and then 
they usually joined the herd and went with it. 
The numbers were so great that it simply went 
past the power of enumeration, and one might as 
well attempt to count the sands on the seashore. 
I saw them once in June so thick that they nearly 
drank the small streams dry, and poisoned the 
water so that it was almost impossible to get any 
to drink. 
The buffalo was a noble animal. Its habits 
differ from those of the deer family entirely; 
with antelope, red deer, elk, caribou and moose 
there is a similarity in habits of them all, but 
the buffalo has no relatives. When a bull be- 
came old and was whipped he became a social 
outcast, and was driven from the herd, and no 
others would associate with him. He wandered 
around by himself, and finally became a prey to 
the wolves. Wherever there were buffalo there 
were wolves. They would hang around the out- 
skirts of the herds and wait for a chance for an 
old one or a ccripple or a calf. :; 
A great deal has been written about the wan- 
ton waste and destruction of the buffalo, the 
substance of which no doubt is correct; but did 
you ever stop to think that it would be impos- 
sible to operate a farm in a country where 
buffalo roamed at will? A herd sweeping down 
across the country would stamp the farm into 
the ground and a fence would be no more ob- 
struction to them than a spider’s web. Stock 
could not be herded in a buffalo country; they 
would stampede the cattle and ruin a cattle man. 
They had to go. The country that they had 
used for ages civilization demanded for homes 
for civilized men, and they had to, go the same 
as the Indians had to go. 
When the buffalo disappeared, it had one 
blessed effect; it compelled the Indian to keep 
near the military post, from whence they drew 
their supplies. When the buffalo was plenty, 
they could wander where they pleased, and 
were sure of plenty to eat; they could go on 
their devilish raids and murder settlers, who, 
with their labor, were striving to make homes 
for their loved ones. 
The buffalo are gone, and it would have been 
a great blessing to humanity if the Indian could 
have been wiped off the face of the earth at the 
same time. The buffalo helped the settler to 
meat, while at the same time he fed the settler’s 
enemy. His room was needed. He roamed 
over this continent in millions, accomplishing no 
good, except to feed a race of vagabonds that 
have left no: trace of their ownership on the 
face of the land except the graves of their 
murdered victims. Here, instead, are millions 
of homes, where dwell a happy and contented 
people. From the hilltop where the worthless 
Indian watched for some one to slay, now rises 
the church spire or the flag of the school house. 
God, in His supreme wisdom, never intended 
that this vast fertile continent should belong to 
a few wandering barbarians when suffering 
humanity demanded it as a place for Christian 
homes. HUNTER. 
A Snipe Story. 
From the London Field. 
THERE were nine of us in the smoking-rouim 
of the one inn of Ballymarsh. Most of us had 
come to different small shooting parties within 
driving distance, but without lodges. Naturally 
we became pretty friendly over dinner and in 
the smoking-room later. After comparing our 
bags for the day, we naturally drifted into 
reminiscences of other days and other bags. 
I daresay one inclines generally to remember 
good days and brilliant shots (if one has ever 
made any), and to forget bad days and worse 
misses. Anyway, there was some good shooting 
this night with the long bow, until a man recol- 
lected one occasion in an Indian paddy field 
(he said Ballymarsh reminded him of the paddy), 
when, he said, he killed nineteen snipe with 
eighteen cartridges, dropping a couple with the 
last cartridge, before he went home to breakfast. 
Our Indian hero, who, I believe had done 
bigger things which he never bragged about, 
turning rather abruptly to the last comer, a 
hitherto silent, fair-haired little man, whom none 
of us knew, asked whether he had come to Bally- 
marsh to shoot. The little man started, and in 
a low voice, with obvious shyness, said that he 
had come to try. Then we found that he stam- 
mered rather badly, and somehow that madz his . 
subsequent conversation more enthralling, so to 
speak. 
“Snipe!” inquired my friend B., looking rather 
pointedly at the mighty shikari, who had 
previously silenced us. “I’m going to t-try,” 
the little man repeated, nervously swinging a 
single eyeglass. ‘Easiest thing in the world,” 
said B., airily, “with practice.” ‘I’ve had lots of 
practice,” the little man said, meditatively, “‘but 
- ” “Any good bags?” the Anglo-Indian 
asked, casually, and the little man blinked across 
at him, and seemed to think hard, fidgeting with 
his eyeglass, before replying. “I shot a s-s-snipe 

once,” he said at last. 
There was a solemn hush, and a little ripple of 
movement round the room, as men shifted in 
their seats or leant forward to hear better. 
“Tell us all about it,’ said B.; “I never get tired 
of hearing of good sport.” The little man 
turned, and, putting up his glass, took an earnest 
look at B. and then at the other fellows before 
answering. “It was great s-sport,” he said at 
last, “I got a lot of fun out of that s-snipe. 
But you’re all such crack shots”—here he looked 
at the Anglo-Indian—“it would only bore you.” 
But we all vowed we were keen to hear about 
that snipe, so the little man began. But first he 
timidly asked Tim, the waiter, to bring him a 
bottle of whiskey, lemon, sugar, and hot water, 
and I couldn’t help seeing that he mixed a pretty 
stiff glass for himself, perhaps to give him 
courage for conversation. As I sat facing the 
door I noticed, too, that Tim, the waiter, did not 
leave the room after executing the order, but 
hung about, dusting where there was no dust, 
and grinning a grin too broad to hide, even by 
a fairly large and dirty hand. 
_ “Even as a boy,” the little man began, polish- 
ing his eyeglass carefully with a silk handker- 
chief, “I was fond of s-sport, and made a c-cata- 
pult for myself. I b-broke several windows with 
it, and once nearly hit a m-maiden aunt’s cat.” 
The Anglo-Indian here broke in with a chuckle, 
