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THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY. 

Could we but know 
The land that ends our dark, uncertain travel, 
Where lies those happier hills and meadows low, 
Ah, if beyond the spirit’s inmost cavil, 
Aught of that country could we surely know, 
Who would not go! 
Might we but hear 
The hovering angels’ high imagined chorus, 
Or catch, betimes with wakeful eyes and clear, 
One radiant vista of the realm before us,— 
With one rapt moment given to see and hear, 
Ah, who would fear ! 
Were we quite sure 
To find the peerless friend who left us lonely, 
Or there, ‘by some celestial stream as pure, 
To gaze in eyes that here were lovelit only,— 
This weary mortal coil, were we quite sure, 
; Who would endure ! 
E. C. STEDMAN. 

—<3-6 
DYSPEPSIA. 
oe eee 
HAS me! what mischiefs from the stomach rise! 
What fatal ills, beyond all doubt or qnestion! 
How many a deed of high and bold emprise 
Hath been prevented by a bad digestion! ; 
I ween the savory crust of filthy pies 
Hath made many a man to quake and tremble, 
Filling his belly with dyspeptic sighs, 
Until a huge balloon it doth resemble. 
Thus do our lower parts impede the upper, 
And much the brain’s good works molest and hinder 
We gorge our cerebellum with hot supper, 
And burn, with drams, our viscera to a cinder,‘ 
Choosing our arrows from Disease’s quiver, 
Till man in misery lives to loathe his liver. 
— 0 
For Forest and Stream. 
A PASTORAL PARADOX. 
Oh! why doth the Granger grimly groan, 
And wherefore the mower he seythe ? 
Ah! well may he sigh, for his (s)teers are dry, 
And for water he vainly crieth. . 
J.J.R. 

—> ¢ eo 
THE ADIRONDACK PARK. 

Eprror ForEsT AND STREAM:— 
Your agitation of the question, ‘‘Shalla portion, at least, 
of the Adirondacks be made a perpetual preserve,” is timely 
and strong. Keep it up. Your theories are correct and 
your facts incontestable. Mr. Headley disputes the posi- 
tion, He asserts that there is no less water in the Hudson 
River to-day than when the Indian paddled his canoe in it, 
a hundred years ago. How does Mr. Headley know? 
What proof does he give? The case needs something more 
and better than his naked assertion. If an exception ex- 
ists in the case of the Hudson, then nature must have some 
very singular—possibly pardonable—American favoritism. 
This is a question with which fact has more to do than 
theory. We are first to know if it be a fact that the cutting 
away of forests diminishes the amount of water in springs 
and water courses. 
This faci, if established, ought to determine Legislative 
action this winter in favor of preserving the Adirondack 
forests. After that, it may be well enough to attend to the 
theory. 
Having devoted some attention to the points here involved, 
let me indicate a few facts which will be admitted to bear 
upon the question: : 
A scientific gentleman who has lately traveled extensiveiy 
in Syria learned from the Savans of that country that with- 
in the last twenty-five years there has been a great increase 
of tree-growth upon the mountains. Keeping pace with 
this, has also been a marked increase of humidity in the at-. 
mosphere, occasional showers and a restoration of some 
springs, which have long been dry. Observing a cloud 
wreathing around one of the mountain summits he called 
the attention of a scholarly Englishman to the phenomenon, 
who remarked: ‘‘ Twenty-five years ago such a sight as 
that was never seen here.” 
The historian Strabo says that the country of Babylonia 
used to be in great danger of inundation. To prevent it, 
required constant precaution and labor. The menace was 
from the river Euphrates, which became swollen in spring 
by snows melting on the mountains of Armenia. Not so 
now. ; 
M. Oppert, a French traveler through Babylonia, recently 
reports that the volume of water in the Euphrates is much 
less; that there are now no inundations; that canals are 
dry; that the marshes are exhausted by the great heat of 
summer, and that the country is no longer unhealthy by 
the miasma from morasscs. 
He affirms that this retreat of the waters can be account- 
ed for only by the clearing away of the mountains—forests 
of Armenia. 
Now, as the Hudson River never does such damage by 
either flood or fen, no such reason for denuding the Ad- 
irondacks can be pressed. 
Long ago, that well-known traveler and geographer, Do 
Saussure, proved that the diminished volume of water in 
the Swiss Lakes, especially Lakes Morat, Neurchatel and 
Bienne was due to the foray upon the surrounding forests. 
In the time of Pliny, the river Scamander was navigable. 
Tts bed is now entirely dry. Choiseul Gouffier was not 
able to find it at allin the Troad. The significant fact to 
read with this, is that all the cedars which covered Mount 
Ida, whence it rose, as well as the Simois, have been 
destroyed. : P 
Is this coincidence merely, or effect and cause? 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
Oviedo, the historian of Venezuela in the 16th Century, 
says that the city of Nueva Valencia was founded in 1555 
at the distance of half a league, (14 miles), from the Lake of 
Tacarigua. In the year 1800 Humboldt found that the 
city was distant 3} miles from the lake, and asserts that the 
retreat of the waters has been due entirely to the destruc- 
tion of the numerous forests. This authority, it might be 
rather audacious in Mr. Headley to dispute. 
To thé same cause Mr. Boussingault directly traces the 
diminution of waters in New Granada. Sixty years ago 
two lakes, near which the village of Dubaté is situated, 
were united. -The waters have gradually subsided, so 
that lands which only thirty years ago were under water, 
are now under evlture. 
In the Island of Ascension, |a fine water-source discovered 
by Richemont at the foot of a mountain became dry as the 
neighboring heights were cleared of forest trees, but has 
been fully restored since the forests have been allowed to 
grow. 
From these and many other facts which might be stated, 
it is not only fair but inevitable to conclude that extensive 
clearings anywhere do diminish the quantity of spring or jlow- 
ing water in aw country. 
It is not claimed that the removal of forests does aloays 
produce a diminished rain fall. 
Indeed the pluviometer shows that in some instances the 
rain fall has increased—as in the experiment at Marmato, 
Bolivia. 

But it is claimed, and susceptible of the most abundant 
proof, that extensive destruction of forests does diminish, 
and occasion the disappearance of sowrces, and will in time 
reduce the bulk of even so vast a river as the Hudson so 
,much as seriously to impair navigation upon its upper 
waters. Does any one say that the incursions of lumber- 
men upon the great North Woods are not extensive? 
There is one saw mill in the John Brown tract which con- 
sumes spruce butt-logs enough to make half a million feet 
of “fiddle stuf,” as it is called, for one piano factory of 
New York city, annually. 
Last June, while I was whipping the waters of the Lower 
Raquette, one single drive of 200,000 logs went down to 
Colton and Potsdam, This was only one of many. The 
havoc goes on remorselessly. What the Potsdam saw mil- 
lers do not lay low in the forests with the axe, they flood 
and destroy by their gigantic dam at, Raquette Pond. If it 
were not melancholy enough to row your boat among dead 
and dying trees for forty miles, each tree a silent but 
eloquent protest against cupidity, the saddening cup may 
be filled by the complaints and wails of the smaller mil- 
lers whose water-power these menstrous monopolists have 
ruined. 
This matter must not rest. Legislature will soon con- 
yene. With such a list of advocates of forest preservation 
ds your journal once published, and which might easily be 
increased to a legion, our legislators might be memorialized 
on this subject with an emphasis and dignity which they 
would heed. Yours truly, 
J. CLEMENT F‘RENCH. 
eS ee 
A BANK THIEF. 
—_—_—>—_——- 
Eprror Forest AND STREAM:—~ 
I think, as you cast your eye on the heading of this let- 
ter, you will be inclined to consign my manuscript to the 
oblivion of your waste basket, from an impression that it 
was intended for the Police Gazette, or some financial jour- 
nal, but it isnot. Just at this time the hunters who have 
been making game of the bulls and bears in the «wiles of 
New York, with little regard to game or any other laws, 
are doing all that is needed to fill the columns of journals 
that note breaches of trust (not breech loaders), and, with- 
out desiring to add one more to the instances that render 
bondholders and share-owners distrustful of all their race, 
I premise by saying that the case now to be stated was in 
good old specie days, and happened in the secluded woods 
wherein we do so pin our faith on absence of peculation. 
Knowing that in late May and early June there are a 
few days during which the red maple is so beautiful, and 
the tassels of the aspens are drooping, when trout bite, 
and the mosquitoes and flies do not, I went with our chosen 
friend into the wilderness that lies north of John Brown’s 
tract, and west of the tramping ground of the many who 
come in from the. Adirondack region proper. This was 
then a glorious place. The guides were trappers—unso- 
phisticated and full of simple wood lore—and the few who 
went in with them were men ready for hard work, and 
hard work it was to get in when roads were not, and no 
chains of lakes made water routes feasible. 
We had some fine boating up the Oswegatchie, and on 
Cranberry Lake, a beautiful water then, but now ruined 
by being raised by a dam, that has drowned out all the sur- 
rounding forest. Desecration it was, indeed, but he ii 
known to the favored who seek information in your col- 
umns that teem with the hints we all so value, where this 
back water has set up the inlet, flooding miles of swamp 
growth, there remains a tangle in which trout do now find 
refuge, and the angler who can lead them by dainty work 
from the maze of trunks and branches will now and then 
get afish that willmake a worthy record on the scales. 
From this inlet a two hours’ tramp took us, with all our 
possessions on our backs, to Umpsted’s Pond, a small sheet 
of water; but I would like to own it and its environs as a 
preserve. Inashell canoe of red cedar I sat with a pad- 
dle, while my companion was drowning a large trout that 
died hard, when a deer came out on a shallow beach 
within six rods and dipped her dainty feet in the water 







with no idea of fear, and lingered about usa long time. 
It was not shooting season, and we did not disturb her. 
Often little herds, with fawns, would come out on the shal- 
lows, and we watched them with infinite interest and plea- 
sure, but harmed themnot. So far allwas honesty, Leav- 
ing this pond with regret, we tramped nine miles over 
mountains, carrying all our packs. Snow fell, and so did 
we. The leaves were wet and greasy under the snow; the 
snow was slippery above and below, and the tracks we 
made did no credit to our temperance reputations. It was 
a hard tramp, and a long one, but in a small pond splendid 
trout bit during the snow fall, and made our noonday 
lunch. 
We slept that night near Bog River, just by Great Trout 
Pond (justly named), and slept without soothing syrup or 
bromide, The next day was cold—no fish; so we set our 
men at work upon a tall pine, and at even tide eighteen feet 
of it were in the form of an excellent canoe. The follow- 
ing day was milder. As we were by the river bank an old 
hunter drifted down with the skin of a panther, just killed 
near by (howling had been noticed), and the head of a five 
pound trout; the latter he nailed to a tree as a sample. 
In the afternoon we floated down Bog River, getting fine 
fish, on our way to the ruins of an old dam, made many 
years ago to gain a flood for running logs, and abandoned 
when the pine near the stream was cut, Here I was left 
alone, my friend going on with our guide. The water 
rushed in volume into a deep boiling eddy, and every fish- 
erman knows how such a pool fills one’s mind with bright 
anticipations, and I felt that good sport was surely mine. 
With my rod I crept out upon one of the timbers that had 
resisted many annual floods that were recorded upon its 
abraded form. From its top I commanded a full sweep 
over the pool, free from brush, and a perfect stand. Hardly 
did my hook catch in the whirling stream before a trout 
seized it, and was saved. The slippery, agile thing was 
mine, but hard to land. There was no place by me on the 
log, I had no basket, and it was too big for my pocket. I 
could not get down with it, and was: in a quandary, when 
I saw below me a shingle beach, cast up by some unusual 
flood, lowest on the shore edge, with bright fresh grass— 
as dainty a place to lay my fish as Nature ever provided. 
Tt was a long toss, but the fish fell fair, and many a silver 
sided one followed him. Once and awhile they would 
slip too soon from my hand, and, to use an equivocal phrase, 
land in the water; but more than enough were cast on the 
green sward. Deeming any further captures a waste, I 
ceased fishing, crept back dry shod, and sauntered on to 
meet my companion, . 
His string was a fine one, and with pride I guided him to 
my shingle beach and bade him give me congratulation. 
He looked very politely interested, but rather blank, and I 
discovered an incredulous smile getting the better of his 
confidence. I joined him to share the pleasure of gazing 
upon the picturesque group Thad left there; but did my 
eyes fail me? There was nota fin nor even a trout spot 
there! JIlooked all around; there was the dam, and the 
old log; before me the hill rose in familiar form, and the 
tree that shaded the fish hung over me, and, by Jove, there 
were the prints of the fish on the weak, damp grass; but 
the superb fish—where were they? Police, detectives, 
where were they? But there were no police on that beat, 
and my outraged honor was powerless. 
I assured my skeptical companion that I had caught 
many fish, declared I had not been dreaming (how could I 
dream on tbe end of a log?), and never had told a fish story. 
But where were the fish? A closer examination told the 
story. Just under the water worn roots of the tree that 
overhung the spot we found a hole leading into the bank— 
a round burrow, evidentiy well travelled, and it was evi- 
dent that its respectable occupant, doubtless honest all his 
life up to this offence (a great shock to his family and 
friends, the well-known minks and fishers), had been un 
able to resist the temptation of my delicious trout, and had 
deliberately stolen them, or, in modern parlance, become a 
defaulter to that extent. 
Tt became evident that there was no hope of recovering 
my treasures. The blamed otter was in his own bank, and 
suspended; availed himself of sixty days notice, and didn’t 
mind a crowd atthe door, even if they were ragged and 
hungry. It was alesson to your correspondent, and be 
assured that if he ever gets any good thing out of a pool 
he will not put it on a margin again. It remains unknown 
whether the bank alluded to remains open, but beyond 
doubt the slippery fellow can be interviewed by some of 
the reporters, and the real truth, or an authorized state- 
ment, obtained. L. W. L. 
——___+-—______ 
A REMINISCENCE OF LAKE SUPERIOR. 
ee ees 
HAT indifference to hardships and even to perils 
of life, so frequently displayed‘in the Indian char- 
acter, is to sportsmen a subject of constant remark. Our 
use of Indians as guides on lake and river, or as we follow 
their noiseless steps through the forests, makes us look 
upon them sometimes as wonderful beings. 
T remember a little scene which happened under my ob- 
servation while passing a few months fishing and shooting 
on Lake Superior during the autumn of ’63. The wind had 
been blowing steadily from the northeast. for the previous 
three days, and the waters of old Superior, as far as the eye 
could see, were covered with white caps. The thunder of 
the surf on the shore could be heard many miles inland. for 
a northeaster on this lake is one of the things to be most 
dreaded. 
One steamer during this fall had laid her bones on the ~ 
bottom of the lake, leaving only one survivor to tell her sad _ 

