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[JULY 20, 1907. 




GANT BAG AND GUN 


Amateur Poaching. 
PHILADELPHIA, July 13.—Editor Forest and 
Stream: There are certain laws, the transgres- 
sion of which is only so far immoral in that it 
is‘a breaking of a law, the act done not being 
in itself wrong. Among such laws may be 
classed those pertaining to the killing of game 
or the drinking of alcoholic beverages unlaw- 
fully. : 
lhe inconvenience of unenforced law is the 
bringing into contempt of all law.. The Maine 
of the present I do not know, but with the Maine 
of fifteen or twenty years ago I was familiar, and 
certainly the habitual disregard’ of the drink and 
came laws showed its effect upon the characters 
of the people, and even of visitors. As far as 
my memory goes the only drink I ever took over 
a whiskey bar was in an open saloon on one ot 
the.main streets of Bangor, and the imbibition 
was the result of no other motive but the wish 
to be able to.say I had done it. A similar effect 
was produced by the game laws, loss of respect 
for law and consequently less hesitation in the 
violation of laws. In America laws which are 
strongly opposed to the common public opinion 
are very rarely enforced, hence the general law- 
lessness in minor matters of the American, tnough 
the moral sensibility is remarkably strong. 1 
would place the Japanese as the most law-abid- 
ing and probably the most immoral of civilized 
nations I have dwelt among, and the Americans, 
the most law-despising and the most moral. 
As example of this I detail two or three rather 
picturesque incidents in which I have been an 
actor, one in America, the others in Europe; 1n- 
cidents in which the American habit threatened 
serious personal inconvenience. In the olden 
time, in Maine, “mountain mutton’? was served 
in every forest hotel, and every one killed bucks 
in August. Gradually the law was more and 
more enforced, until finally no complaint could 
be properly made as to the activity of the war- 
dens. During the transition period two caribou 
one September evening before the game season 
opened jumped suddenly out of the bushes into 
the deep stream just in front of my canoe. In- 
stantly up went my rifle, but better thought con- 
trolled the sportsman’s impulse, and the gun went 
back to the canoe. At the carry, ten minutes 
later, we found the warden, gave him a covered 
firkin tub full of forbidden fruit, 1. e., venison, 
as a seat, produced flasks, told about the caribou, 
etc., had a friendly chat, and in half an hour 
went our respective ways in all comity, and I 
at least was thankful. 
Many years ago I was the guest at Glen Elgh, 
opposite the Isle of Skye, of Professor : 
of the University of Edinburgh. Our chief 
amusement was sailing on the sound between the 
Isle of Skye and the Scottish mainland, and we 
always carried a rifle for a chance at seals. One 
evening five or six magnificent stags appeared 
on the top of the mountain or hill forming the 
shore of Skye, silhouetted against the setting sun. 
They were so close that we could count their 
points with our field glass. At once the Pro- 
fessor began to urge me to try for one. Finally 
the stags came down a gully toward us, and I 
was told, “You are flying in the face of Provi- 
dence not to take home a head.” 
cussion the youthful blood asserted itself, and 
taking the gilly who sailed our boat, up and up 
I went. Of course the distance was longer than 
we thought, and it was twilight before we 
reached the spot where we expected to find our 
quarry. A deer was in sight about 200 yards 
away, and I was about to shoot when the gilly 
said: “Do not fire; you must kill him in his 
tracks, and I will come back and get the head 
about midnight. Let us get closer.’ So down 
on our stomachs we labored strenuously, wrig- 
eling and worming our way over the rough 
eround, until we were quite close to the animal; 


After long dis-, 
then I raised up to fire, when lo! my stag was 
a horse! Then the stags appeared not far from 
us running wildly. ‘‘The keepers are after us,” 
said the gilly.. We slid and jumped down that 
mountain madly, climbed into the waiting boat 
and were off before a stiff breeze. Then was I 
for a second time thankful. 
I once spent some weeks in Norway with an 
educated gentleman who talked English fluently 
and yet kept a summer boarding house to which 
he told me no Americans nor English had ever 
before penetrated. In Norway no dogs are ever 
allowed to cross the frontier, consequently, al- 
though rabies are common in Russia, it is said 
no case has ever occurred in Norway; conse- 
quently also, “bird dogs’ are hard to procure. 
Our landlord owned a large tract of land, also 
a high bred setter. At an expense of twenty-five 
cents a day I procured a first class guide who 
was said to be the best carpenter in the valley. 
Over the estate we tramped from early morning 
until nearly 10 o’clock at night, when it was still 
light enough to read easily. What wonderful 
days we had in the mountain woods, 5,000 feet 
above the sea, close to the arctic circle, in great 
forests where the willow and birch roots were 
always soaked with ice water, while, although 
dwarfed by polar cold and blizzards, the trunks 
soared to at least four feet above the ground. 
What lunches were eaten with arctic appetites 
in the brilliant sunlight by mountain torrents, 
with overhanging snow-clad peaks and dazzling 
waterfalls, solidly set about us against a light 
blue sky; what jolly hours with the maidens and 
their herds in the lonely saeters, where a half 
kroner coin (twenty-five cents) made one 
worshipped as the God of Riches, and where the 
luscious yellow blackberries, known as mulder- 
berries, gave, fresh from the vines, a flavor as 
agreeable as it is disagreeable when the berries 
are served in a mushy, half-fermented mass in 
the Norwegian hotels. Almost every hillock had 
a nest of lemmings (Myodes lemmus), the field 
mice-like rodent of the fells, each nest contain- 
ing three to six of the soft brown creatures with 
which we half filled the side pockets of our hunt- 
ing coats in order that we might warm our hands 
when they grew numb in the brisk air and colder 
water everywhere about us. The mothers never 
flinched nor ran away, and with the wantonness 
of boys on a holiday some of them we tickled 
with a twig until they fought themselves into 
such a rage that they died in an epileptic fit, 
though we had not injured nor hurt them save 
as to their dignity and pride as fiercest of all 
warriors. Here might a Roosevelt get the adorn- 
ment for his coat of arms, for the lemming abhors 
race-suicide and breeds and breeds and breeds 
until the fells are so full that food fails and emi- 
gration ensues en masse, and not to be checked by 
earthly foes or obstacles, goes steadily on until 
the incoming Atlantic tides heap up in windrows 
their bodies upon the beaches. Can it. be that 
they are moved by some sub-conscious memories 
or instinct inherited from miocene ancestors, who 
when the Norway fells were overcrowded, sought 
refuge in the now submerged continent of Atlan- 
tic? Perchance instead of perishing from the 
slow tortures of famine an emigration fever east- 
ward might be preferable for the over-breeding 
human masses of China and India. 
Best of all, however, of the novelties of my 
days upon the fells, was the joy of discovering 
the root stock of the Norwegian language. The 
old cock willow grouse, with his brilliant plum- 
age and three pounds of bone and muscle, always 
hke a thunder bolt shoots downwards, 
screaming, Kak!: kak! kak-ka! a cry whose 
harsh dissonance could be heard an eighth of a 
mile, so that when the guide talked it was easily 
perceived that so far as language was concerned 
he and the cock grouse were birds of one feather. 
The last day the landlord wished for a large 
supply for the party which he always gave at 
rose 
the end of the season, so he himself went with 
us, taking my guide to carry the flour sacks which 
were to be used as game bags. I supposed we 
went over his estate, but there is reason to be- 
lieve that he had forgotten its boundaries. 
We started a little after 8 o’clock in the morn- 
ing, and about 10 P. M., although it was light 
enough for accurate shooting, I gave out, and 
much to the disgust of my sturdy host we had 
to go home with not,more than one hundred and 
fifty pounds of birds in the flour sacks. Noth- 
ing more was thought about the matter until 
three months later, at my residence in Philadel- 
phia, I received a letter from the Norwegian 
consul notifying me that he had been directed by 
the home government, through the Norwegian 
mumister, to notify me that for shooting on gov- 
ernment ground without a license I had been 
fined so many kroners. He headed his letter, 
“Diplomatic Correspondence, 1506.’ ,Not to be 
outdone I headed my answer, “Diplomatic Cor- 
respondence, 5606,” and proceeded to ask at 
what court I was condemned; why I was not 
notified and offered an opportunity to plead not 
guilty and be represented by counsel, etc., ete. 
This brought me an answer, and so the corres- 
pondence proceeded until the consul was con- 
vinced that I was an impregnably entrenched 
irreconcilable and dropped the subject. But 
what simplicity to trace up a foreigner for kill- 
ing ten dollars’ worth of birds, and pursue him 
5,000 miles with the expectation that he would 
pay ‘a small fine under the pressure of an over- 
sensitive conscience! Almost as unconceivable 
to the American as the sight which I witnessed 
of men sitting in deep content day after day 
sawing great fir and birch logs into boards for 
the market with hand saws, although they had 
learned in the wood mills of Michigan the ways 
of machine driven saws. ; 
My unwitting poaching in Norway came near 
becoming an international episode. I happened 
to have friends living in Christiania who were 
high enough in the social world to dine with 
royalty, and at the royal dining table the matter 
was talked over. Perchance this was the reason 
that our correspondence: was dropped. 
Only one other time in my life have I come 
S09 near to touching the hem of a royal robe. . At 
a dinner given in Berlin to the celebrities of the 
great Medical Congress held there in 1890, Karl. 
Herzog von Baiern, presided in a chair whose 
high back was at its apex. carved into a royal 
crown. I sat next to Billroth, the most renowned 
of living or dead Austrian surgeons. Prince 
Karl, desiring to talk with Billroth, asked me 
to change chairs, so I sat becrowned until I 
neatly shared the fate of the frog in Esop’s 
‘able. 
A picturesque character is Prince Karl; an 
oculist of renown. To us he was a bon cama- 
rade, a simple dignified member of a profession 
whose worthy members are worthy to dine either 
with prince or pauper. Because high priests of 
humanity they recognize that all men have pains 
to be assuaged and death to be postponed. and 
in this all are brothers in the sight of God and 
therefore of those who do Christ work on earth. 
Never demeaning himself by taking fees from 
the rich for service, Karl, Duke of Bavaria, 
gives his time to the poor of his kingdom, main- 
taining at his own expense a hospital for diseases 
of the eye. “I must hasten off to-morrow,” he 
said, “to take my sister (the then Empress of 
Austria) to Biarritz, and get back to my need- 
ing patients as soon as possible.’ For him mav 
the blessing of Bartimeus make smooth the rough 
places of the here and the hereafter. 
H. C. Woop. 

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