





































































































616 
FOREST AND STREAM. 

[Oct. 19, 1907. 

An Iowa Blizzard. 
Editor Forest and Stream: 
In the autumn of 1880 I was living in north- 
western lowa in a house that stood on the 
crest of the divide between the Mississippi and 
the Missouri River valleys; the rain that fell 
on one side of the house found its way into 
the Mississippi and that falling on the other 
side going into: the Missouri. 
The 20th of October was a day of peculiar 
weather; warm and cloudy with fitful winds 
from various directions, but the peculiar thing 
about it was the feeling of uneasiness that per- 
vaded everything alive. I felt that some terrible 
catastrophe was going to happen, but had no 
idea what it would be. I was hunting on the 
prairie and noted the uneasiness that prevailed 
among the ducks and prairie chickens. The 
chickens rose very wild and flew for miles, 
and the waterfowl were in motion all the time, 
not flying in any regularly defined lines, but in 
every direction. Cattle sniffed the air and then 
ran as if from some unseen enemy, and when 
they stopped, walking among each other as 
if for protection by getting into the middle of 
the herd 
Some time inthe following night we were awak- 
ened by the roaring of a northwest wind which 
blew with great violence. We were young and 
not nervous, sO we soon went to sleep again. 
When we next awoke, the dull gray light of day- 
break was in the room, and although we lay 
there for some time after waking, it got no 
lighter, and the roaring of the wind sounded 
like it was at a distance. There was a chilly 
feeling in the air in the house, and I got up 
to make a fire, and found, as was frequently the 
case, that I had neglected to get coal in the 
night before. 
The house stood “square with the world” and 
the coal house stood ten feet northeast from 
the northeast corner of the house, the south 
side of the coal house being on the same east 
and west line as the north side of the house, 
and as the wind was from the northwest, that 
space between the two buildings was a place 
for furious wind. The kitchen door was twelve 
feet from the coal house, and when I opened 
the door and looked, there was no coal house 
visible; in fact, there was nothing visible but 
white, so thick that things three feet away 
could not be seen. It looked more like dense 
fog than anything else, and seemed to be mo- 
tionless. But it was not fog; it was snow, as 
fine and dry as flour, and the air was so full 
of it and it was traveling so fast, that the eye 
could not follow its motion. I started for the 
coal house, expecting to get there in about four 
jumps. but the wind instantly blew me away, 
and the fine. dry snow was driven right through 
my clothing and lodged against the skin with 
a chilling sensation that made me wonder how 
long a man would last in that sort of thing, and 
made me catch my breath like a boy does when he 
breaks through the ice, and the air was so full 
of fine snow, that it was difficult to breathe. 
Fortunately, I fetched up against the “ell” part 
of the house, and by keeping close to it, worked 
back along the wall to the kitchen door, took 
a new start, and this time, by being more 
careful, I got to the coal house and safely back 
into the house with some coal, and so far as 
we were concerned, there was no further in- 
convenience from the storm, but there were 
many cattle on the prairies, and they drifted 
with the wind, many of them going so far that 
their owners never heard of them again and 
others drifting into low places where the snow 
was deep, and were suffocated in the fine snow. 
There was a place in the Boyer River, where 
the bank was sloping on the windward side, and 
ten feet_of perpendicular bank on the opposite 
side. This place was filled with the drifted 
snow till all was level. Some days afterward, 
the snow was mostly melted, and I was hunting 
along the river and saw twenty dead cattle in 
the partly melted snow. The bodies were in 
all sorts of positions, some lying prone, some 
sitting like dogs and others standing, where 
they had been held up by the snow until they 
stiffened. 
This storm lasted but about twenty-four 
hours, but during the following winter the 
blizzards raged with unabated fury for days at 
a time, and with such violence that people did 
not dare to go out of their houses without 
ropes to hold to, and in some cases this lasted 
for a whole week at a time. It was impos- 
sible to operate the railroads, and coal became 
scarce. Some of the people were compelled to 
burn the corn stored in their cribs, and then 
burn the cribs, and later not only their wooden 
furniture, but the interior wood work of their 
houses. During the time these storms were 
on, it made no difference whether one’s nearest 
neighbor lived forty rods or forty miles away. 
In either case no communication was possible. 
In addition to the terrors of the blizzards in 
winter, were the tornadoes in the early sum- 
mer, when the wind was more destructive than 
it was from the blizzards. 
In the summer of 1879 a cyclone picked up 
an open frame iron railroad bridge near Wall 
Lake, Iowa, and landed it on the hillside. In 
that region at that time, the cyclone cellar was 
no joke; it was a necessity. I have never wit- 
nessed one of the most violent of the cyclones 
of that region, but no blizzard story or cyclone 
story can be told so big that I would not be- 
lieve every word of it. 
It is but fair to the people whose interests 
lie in this region, to say that the land is very 
productive, and the hardy people who settled 
it have made themselves rich off its products 
and have fortified themselves against the 
blizzards until there is little inconvenience from 
them, and the cyclones have become less fre- 
quent as the lands were cultivated and build- 
ings and groves of trees grew up. 
O. H. Hampton, 

Musket and Sportsman. 
CuMBERLAND, Md., Oct. 12.—Editor Forest and 
Stream: Did you ever consider how many 
sportsmen have been brought fo maturity by 
that relic of the Civil War, the musket; sports- 
men of the most violent kind? 
An interesting book could be written about 
the boy and the musket, and his adventures 
afield. The youngster of the present day be- 
gins his education with the automatic ejector, 
while the youngster of forty years ago in- 
variably dates time from the day he first owned 
a musket. 
Refer to your late issues of Forest AND 
STREAM, and you will find proof of this. In one 
case it was not a big musket either, as a cor- 
respondent states the one he used had been 
sawed off. 
I have not the pleasure of a personal ac- 
quaintance with the gentleman in question, but 
if called on to furnish a horoscope of his evolu- 
tion by the Sherlock Holmes method and my 
Own experience, together with his interesting 
articles, I would pronounce him a finished 
sportsman, and he began with a musket. 
My first recollection as to the efficiency of 
the musket dates back some thirty years, to 
the time I wore dresses, and was looked after 
by “Jim,” a colored boy, whose duty it was to 
keep me from doing serious damage to the 
community. I had found an old musket about 
the house to which we had recently moved, and 
under protest had appropriated it as my own. 
The old gun had evidently seen hard service, 
being considerably battered up and shy the 
lock, but was still capable of being dangerous 
without lock, stock or barrel. 
One afternoon I conveyed it to a bend in 
the country road, dragging it by the muzzle, 
and lay behind the fence in wait for game. 
Shortly after I had concealed myself our 
minister’s family came driving by, returning 
from a call on friends up country. Under pro- 
test from Jim, when they were directly opposite 
the place we lay concealed, I raised up, caught 
the musket with both hands, drew it up to my 
side, not being strong enough to get it to my 
shoulder and cried bang! The result was ail 
I could wish. My sudden appearance, together 
with my cry as I arose, seemed to electrify 
the old horse, who broke from his easy trot 
into a dead run, hitting only the high laces, 
until he was safe at home, two miles away. 
En route the minister’s family was distributed 

along the road and the vehicle damaged. The| 
matter was brought to a close the same night, 
by my father, who with extreme pain impressed 
me with the fact, that in reality a gun is 
“dangerous without lock, stock or barrel.” 
Epw. C. DRAWBAUGH. 
New Publications. 
“FISHING IN BritisH CoLUMBIA” is a little 















| 
1 
a 
V 
k 
aT 
volume by T. W. Lambert, an Englishman who 
lived for some years on the Pacific coast of that 
country and the United States, and who en-} 
joyed his varied experiences so much that the 
story he wrote is an exceedingly valuable as 
well as an interesting one, and any angler con- 
templating a trip to the west coast will find in 
it whole pages of reliable information relating 
to every detail from railway routes and hotel } 
accommodations to the best leaders and flies for 
various waters. Unlike some of his fellow coun- 
trymen, who regard English equipments alone 
worth using in America, Mr. Lambert recom- 
mends for a certain use that article which is 
locally regarded as best for the purpose, hence | 
the book is of equal value to the angler of this | 
or any other country. There is not a dull line 
in the book, although considerable space is de- 
voted to descriptive matter, and his remarks on 
the habits and characteristics of the game fish, 
how to catch them, the best waters, seasons and 
days are interspersed with bits of personal ex- 
perience and expert opinion that carry the read- 
er’s attention to the end of the chapter. The 
final subject has to do with fishing in Catalina 
Island waters. Published by Horace Cox, The 
Field, London. 
“THE Lone LaBrapor TRAIL,” by Dillon Wal- 
lack, has been issued in book form and with his 
earlier book, “The Lure of the Labrador Wild” 
will prove a valuable addition to the library of 
sportsmen who are interested in that bleak 
region. It is hardly necessary to refer at length 
to the original expedition to “explore” that coun- | 
try—in which Leonidas Hubbard lost his life— 
more than to say that Mr. Wallace promised Mr. 
Hubbard that he would return and finish the 
work they had set out to perform. His latest 
volume tells how this’was done, and the narra- 
tive is pleasing throughout, and contains a great 
deal of information that is of value to sports- 
men who are planing journeys to the extreme 
northeastern shores of America to hunt caribou. 
In an appendix a list of the plants and lichens 
is given; geological notes and other data ob- 
tained by G. M. Richards, a member of the party; 
a map of the portage route from Hamilton Inlet 
to Lake Michikamau; meteorological notes, etc. 
The illustrations are from photographs. Pub- 
os by the Outing Publishing Company, New 
ork. 
THERE are many of the “Old Guard” and many 
other readers of Forest AND STREAM too young 
to be in that class, who will yet remember the 
pen_ name Antler which so frequently appeared 
in Forest AND STREAM for twenty years begin- 
ning in the late ’7o’s. Antler was Mr. E. L. 
Stratton, one of the New England pioneers who, 
in the early days of the last century, went west 
into the then wilderness of northern New York, 
and who passed the later years of his life among 
the mountains of Tennessee. Born in 1812, he 
died in 1899. 
His niece, Miss Hattie R. Stratton, has just 
published a little book of over seventy pages 
which contains Antler’s contributions to Forest 
AND STREAM. It is beautifully gotten up, but 
far more interesting than its beauty is the matter 
which it contains. It is a series of chapters on 
the wild life of the forest, which show the close, 
keen and intelligent observation of the hunter- 
naturalist. 
There are chapters on deer, on ruffed grouse, 
on mink and otter, and wolves; something about 
fishing and about bears; on the whole a collec- 
tion of brief, but pregnant notes which often 
embody the observations of a life time. 
Miss Stratton is to be congratulated on the 
worthy memorial which she has erected to her 
uncle. 
ae 




