Full text of "Outing"

See other formats

TUFTS COLLEGE LIBRARY.

PURCHASED WITH

TERM BILL FUNDS.

Oy^L<^^cL (2*^4. ■ '9 sf~

6 ?£-7¥-

OUTING

SPORT : ADVENTURE

TRAVEL : FICTION

VOLUME LXIV

APRIL, 1914— SEPTEMBER, 1914

OUTING PUBLISHING COMPANY

OUTING VoctTfinj 0-W-T-I-N-6 HANDBOOKS
14II45 WEST 36th ST NEW YORK 122 S. MICHIGAN AVE. CHICAGO

, c '

, < < < c < ' '

,_' , r < , •

k>U7y-

CONTENTS OF VOLUME LXIV

APRIL, 1914— SEPTEMBER, 1914
SPECIAL ARTICLES page

Athletics Helping the Filipino. Illustrated with photographs.

0. Garfield Jones 585
Back of Beyond, In. Illustrated with photographs. Stewart Edward White

3, 131, 282, 410, 535, 662

Ballistics of Cartridges. Part VI and VII Charles Newton, 89, 735

Big Four in Tennis, The E. B. Dcwhurst 472

Breast Stroke for All-round Swimming, The. Illustrated with photographs.

John D. Brock 482

Building a Tackle Box. Illustrated with diagrams T. Case 79

Canoe, Camp, and Canal. Illustrated with photographs C. H. Claudy 571

Care of Gravel Tennis Courts R. N. Hallowell 97

Casual Cartridge Case, The C. L. Gil man 308

Coaching a Varsity Crew Hiram Connibear 315

Cooking the Beans in Advance 185

Cradle of Polo, In the. Illustrated with photographs Lewis R. Freeman 486

Dub Tennis for Tennis Dubs. Illustrated with diagrams C. II. Claudy 422

Easier Eating in Camp George Fortiss 372

Effective Nail, An F. E. O. 722

Elusive Musk-ox and the Delusive Dog-rib, The. Illustrated with photo-
graphs and maps David E. Wheeler 649

Emergency Rations Horace Kephart 84

Featherweight Camping in England. Illustrated with diagrams.

Horace Kephart 715

Fine Art of Barratry, The David A. IVasson 181

Fins and Finis Ladd Plumley 94

First Aid in Camp William II. Best, M. D. 570

First Automobile Race in America, The Charles F. Carter 499

First College Pitcher of Curves, The William G. Murdoch 121

First Hunters, The. Illustrated with drawing by Walter King Stone and

Phillipps Ward Walter Prichard' Eaton 148

First Yachtsman, The. Illustrated with drawing by Walter King Stone and

Phillipps Ward Walter Prichard Eaton 464

Fishing the Salmon Pool, On A. B. Baylis 593

Game Laws in 1914 759

Gathering Bait at Night 201

Getting Ready for the Trout Stillman Taylor 4::

Going Alone Horace Kephart 601

Going Fishing with the Major C. A. Cain 178

Golf Problems for Women Isabel Harvey Hoskins 557

Good Grub for Short Cruises George Fortiss 633

Grasshopper Fishing for Trout. Illustrated with photographs O. W. Smith 202

iv CONTENTS

PAGE

Home with the No-see-ums, At A. L. Wooldridgc 186

How to Build a Canvas House. Illustrated with diagrams.

William C. Stevens 434

How to Be Healthy in Camp. Illustrated with diagrams../. Clifford Hoffman 116
How to Hit Things with the Rifle. Illustrated with photographs.

Edward C. Cross man 332

How to Overhaul Your Automobile Siillman Taylor 210

Hunting Togs Edward C. Crossman 223

Jenkin's Mule K. W. Baker 569

Journeying to Babylon. Illustrated with photographs William War field 739

Late-Season Use for the Fly Rod, A Robert S. Lemmon 689

Learning the Game of Trap-shooting C. O. Proivsc 347

Little Folks Along the Shore. Illustrated with photographs.

Hamilton M. Laing 227
Love of Sport, For. Illustrated with drawing by Walter King Stone and

Phillipps Ward Walter Prichard Eaton 366

Massacre on Cedar Creek, The Cidlcn A. Cain 430

Men and Ducks and Things A. Y. MeCorquodale 674

Moccasin Time, In Robert E. Pinkcrton 123

Mosquito Net in Camp, The. Illustrated with diagrams A. E. Swoyer 554

Muskrats and Muskrat Farming Edward T. Martin 626

New Idea in Gymnastics, The Mack Whelan 243

New Sport of Aquaplaning. The. Illustrated with photographs.

L. Theodore Wallis 143

New Wrinkle for the Fishing Kit, A 115

Night Casting for Bass. Illustrated with photographs A. E. Swoyer 108

Night Paddle, A John Matter 683

Noted American Golfers and Courses Harry Vardon 466

"Old Sharpnose" of Bone Valley Joseph T. Bowles 723

Outfitting for Newfoundland Salmon A. B. Bay lis 368

Over the Portage John Matter 597

Packs and Packsacks. Illustrated with photographs W. Dustin White 360

Paddling Her* Own Canoe Kathrene Gedney Pinkcrton 220

Plea for the Small Fur-Bearers, A Edzvard T. Martin 238

Polo — "The Greatest Game" Mack Whelan 340

Portable Dark Room, A. Illustrated with diagrams A. E. Swoyer 345

Relaxing Your Bamboo Rod. Illustrated with diagram Thomas J enkyns 375

Riding the Surf at Waikiki. Illustrated with photographs hy Gurrey,

Honolulu George Marvin 24

Road to Betatakin, The. Illustrated with photographs John Oskison, 393, 606

RucKSACKE, The — A Traveler's Best Friend. Illustrated with photographs.

Harry Knowlcs 751

CONTENTS v

PAGE

Safety First Edward C. C rossman 56

Saving All Parts of the Picture. Part I. Illustrated with diagrams.

Warwick S. Carpenter 728

Sensible Outfit for Amateur Hikers. Illustrated with diagrams.

Will C. Stevens 172

Shank's Mare in Harness Ladd Flumley 603

Small Boring with the Smallest Bore. Illustrated with photograph.

Edward C. Grossman 685

Sportsmanship in "America's" Cup Races Herbert L. Stone 630

Spying on the Tribe of Wawa. Illustrated with photographs.

Hamilton M. Laing 13

Squaw Wood C L. Gilman 190

Stealing Baseball Signals Edward Lycll Fox 444

Swimming the [deal Exercise, Illustrated with photographs. .L. dc B. Handley 710
Swimming Stroke of the Future, The. Illustrated with photographs.

L. de B. Handley 99

Tarpon and the Movies. Illustrated with photographs by Julian A. Dimock.

A. IV. Dimock 265

Temperament in Tennis. Illustrated with photographs Mack U'hclan 521

Three Men and a Fish C alien A. Cain 303

Too Much OF A Good Thing Charles Askins 104

Top-notch of Outdoor Photography, The. Illustrated with photographs.

R. P. Holland 192

Tourinc; in a Pelerine. Illustrated with photographs Harry Knowles 235

Trail of the Wavies, ( )\ i hk. Illustrated with photographs.. Hamilton M . Laing 701

Trap-Shooting on the I louse Tod 206

Trolling for Lake Trout Still man Taylor 599

Twenty-five Years of Big League Basebau Clark C. Griffith, 36, 164

Uncertain Temper of Wild Animals, The Ben Burbridge 216

Vanderbilt— A University of the New South. Illustrated with photographs.

Henry Jay Case 320

War Bags. Illustrated with diagrams A. W. Warwick 310

Washington — A University of the Northwest. Illustrated with photographs.

Henry Jay Case 448

What About the Sharp-tail? Illustrated with photographs. Hamilton M. Laing 351

What Became of All the Pigeons? Edward T. Martin 478

What Can Be Done with Concentrated Foods George Fortiss 249

What an Old Market Shooter Thinks About Game Protection.

Edward T. Martin 59

What Readers Think 380, 510, 639,756

With Apache Deer-Hunters in Arizona. Illustrated with photographs.

John Oskison, 65, 150

Woodcraft Tips Worth Knowing Horace Kephart 207

Wrestling with a Bull Moose Robert E. Pinkerton 63

Youth's Encounter. Illustrated with drawing by Walter King Stone and

Phillipps Ward Walter Prichard Eaton 624

vi CONTENTS

FICTION

PAGE

Blind Trail, The Kathrene Gedney and Robert E. Pinkerton 293

Finding of Mose Bates, The Cullcn A. Cain 562

Last Days of Jerry, The Cnllen A. Cain 677

Other Side of the Shield, The John T. Rowland 49

Snowshoes that Swung Wide, The. .Robert E. and Kathrene Gedney Pinkerton 547

Trail of the Painted Woods, The Ncvil G. Henshaw 691

Two Fish and Two Fishers William C. Harris 111

VERSE

Civilization John Matter 314

Maps. Illustrated with photograph C. L. Gilman 534

Open, The Charles Badger Clark, Jr. 443

Packing. Illustrated with photograph C. L. Gilman 171

Prairie Dog, The G. F. Rinehart 171

Trail Song Charles Badger Clark, Jr. 120

SPECIAL PHOTOGRAPHS

Canoe Rolled Gleefully Over, The Julian A. Dimock 264

Gorge of Rock, Great Falls of Potomac 520

He Is the Wildest of a Clan Long Known for Its Wildness. 648

Lava Beds Near the Edge of the Pines, At the. 392

Rope Ford of the N'Gouramani River, At the 2

When They Begin to Rise 277

When You Go Hunting Deer with the Arizona Apaches 130

JUST A CHANCE-THATS ALL

Some sing the praise of the sweet, shy trout
And some of the bold, bad bass;
And some of the salmon that leaps for the fly
A nd some of the tarpon that dazzles the eye
Or yet to the ouananiche pass.

I sing the praise of the whole fish tribe,

The cast, the lure, and the stride,

Any kind that will chase my dull cares far away

And give an excuse to play hookey to-day

Is the kind of fishing I like.

— From the Boss's Calendar.

OUTING

IN BACK OF BEYOND

By STEWART EDWARD WHITE

Illustrated with Photographs axd a Map

BEING THE STORY OF A SPORTING PILGRIMAGE
INTO A NEW GARDEN OF EDEN

/ I VHERE still remains a large section of the earth's surface where
A the white hunter is unknown and where big game roams in
literal thousands. The story that Mr. White tells in this and suc-
ceeding issues is of such a region. His narrative is of a dream that
came true — the dream that all good sportsmen have of turning back
the clock of the ages and coming again into a world of animal life
all new and unknowing. He and R. J. Cuninghame were the first
white men to see this wonderful paradise of sportsmen, and they
are the last to whom this experience can be vouchsafed, for there
are no other such regions left anywhere in the world. They have
written the last paragraph in this particular chapter of the Book
of Sport.

1 HE story that follows is
the journal of nry second
African expedition. Dur-
ing the past year (1913)
I have discovered and
partly explored a virgin
game field. This will never again hap-
pen, for the region comprises the last
possibility of such a discovery. There
are now no more odd corners to be
looked into; that is to say, odd corners
of a size worthy to be considered as a
new game country.

That at this late stage of the world's
history such a place still remained to

be disclosed is a very curious fact. The
natural question that must arise in every-
one's mind, and that must first of all
be answered, is how this happens, for
the prevalent belief is that English
sportsmen have pretty well run over all
the larger possibilities. This is a legiti-
mate question and a legitimate wonder
that should be answered and satisfied
before full credence can be placed in
so important a discovery. That un-
known to sportsmen there still remained
in the beginning of the year 1913 a coun-
try as big as the celebrated hunting
grounds of British East Africa and even

OUTING

better stocked with game is due, briefly,
to three causes:

In the first place, the district in ques-
tion has escaped the knowledge of Eng-
lish sportsmen because it is situated in
a very out of the way corner of a Ger-
man protectorate. The Englishman is
not at home in German territory; and,
as long as he can get sport elsewhere —
as he has been able to do — is not inclined
to enter it. In the second place, the
German himself, being mainly interested
in administrative and scientific matters,
is rarely in any sense a sportsman. The
usual Teuton official or settler does not
care for shooting and exploration, and
the occasional hunter is quite content
with the game to be found near at home.
He does not care to go far afield unless
he is forced to do so. In the third place,
this new country is protected on all
sides by natural barriers. Along the
northern limits, whence the English
sportsman might venture, extend high,
rough ranges of mountains through
which are no known tracks. On all
other sides are arid and nearly game-
less wastes. Until we entered the coun-
try there had been no especial reason
to believe these wastes were not con-
tinuous.

Why It Was Left

Thus the people naturally given to
adventure were discouraged from taking
a go-look-see by a combination of nat-
ural barriers, racial diffidence, and politi-
cal and official red tape. Besides which
the English had not yet come to an
end of their own possibilities in British
East Africa ; and the race in possession
simply did not care enough about sport
to go so far merely to see more animals
than they would see nearer home. In
other words, from the German side this
patch on the map was much too far :
from the British side it was practically
inaccessible.

With this brief but necessary explana-
tion accomplished we can go on. It
must be remembered that when R. J.
Cuninghame and I first began to con-
sider this matter there was no suspicion
of the existence of any unexplored hunt-
ing fields. South Africa is finished ;

Nyassaland offers good sport, but is un-
healthy, and the species to be obtained
are limited in number; small open areas
in the Congo, Uganda, the Sudan, offer
miscellaneous shooting, but are isolated
and remote; Rhodesia and British East
Africa are the great game countries par
excellence, and these, while wTonderful,
are well known. There is no lack of
game in these countries — indeed, it
would be difficult even to convey a faint
idea of its abundance to one wTho had
never seen it — but in a rough way they
are all knowTn, they have all been more
or less hunted, and conditions have been
to a greater or lesser degree modified by
the white man and his rifle.

Nowt I think you wTill all bear me
out that from earliest boyhood the one
regret that oftenest visits every true
sportsman is that he has lived so late,
that he has not been able to see with his
own eyes the great game fields as we
read about them in the days of their
pristine abundance. It is an academic
regret, of course. Such things are not
lor him. Trappers' tales of when the
deer used to be abundant on Burnt
Creek; old men's stories of shooting
game where the city hall now stands;
the pages of days gone by in the book
of years — we listen and read and sigh
a little regretfully.

At least that is what I had always
thought. Then in 1910 I undertook
rather a long journey into the game
fields of British East Africa. There
I found the reports not at all exag-
gerated. The game was present in its
hundreds, its thousands. If I had done
what most people do — hunted for a few
months and gone away — I should have
felt the fulness of complete satisfaction ;
should have carried home with me the
realization, the wondering realization,
that after all I had lived not too late
for the old conditions. But I stayed.
I became acquainted with old-timers; I
pushed out into odd corners of the known
country. And by degrees I came to see
that most of British East Africa is a
beaten track. Shooters are sent by the
outfitting firms around one or the other
of several well-known circles. The
day's marches are planned in advance;
the night's camps. There is plenty of

OUTING

game, and the country is wild; but the
sportsman is in no essentially different
conditions here than when with his guide
he shoots his elk in Jackson's Hole or
his deer in the Adirondacks.

And again I heard the tales of the old-
timers, varying little from those at home
— "in the old days before the Sotik
was overrun, the lions would stand for
you" — "I remember the elephants used
to migrate every two years from Kenia
across the Abedares" — "before Nairobi
was built the buffalo used to feed right
in the open until nine o'clock." In short,
spite of the abundance of the game ; spite
of the excitement and danger still to be
enjoyed with some of its more truculent
varieties, the same wistful regret sooner
or later was sure to come to the surface
of thought — I wish I could have been
here then, could have seen it all when
the country was new.

And then unexpectedly came just this
experience. There still exists a land
where the sound of a rifle is unknown ;
as great in extent as the big game fields
of British East Africa or South Africa
in the eld days; swarming with un-
touched game; healthy, and, now that
the route and method have been worked
out, easily accessible to a man who is
willing to go light and work. Further-
more, I must repeat, this is the last new
game field of real extent. All the rest
of the continent is well enough known.
Therefore we have the real pleasure, not
only in opening a new and rich country
to the knowledge of sportsmen, but the
added satisfaction of knowing that we
are the last who will ever behold such
a country for the first time.

Where the New Land Lies

This new game field lies in German
East Africa, between Lake Natron and
Lake Victoria Nyanza, and extends
from the British boundary south for
several hundred miles. Along the
Anglo-German boundary runs a high,
wide range of mountains.

In 1911, while on an expedition with
R. J. Cuninghame, we pushed a short
distance into these barrier mountains
far enough to realize their rugged beauty
and their equally rugged difficulties, and

to entertain a natural wonder as to
what might lie beyond them. This idle
speculation hardened into a genuine
curiosity when all our inquiries among
the native tribes elicited either abso-
lute ignorance or the vaguest rumors
of "some plains; some bush; very little
water, someone says."

When we returned to civilization we
began to proffer inquiries, but to our
surprise were unable to find anyone any-
where, either in or out of official cir-
cles, German or English, who could or
would tell us the first thing either of
the nature of the country, its extent,
whether it was flat or hilly, watered or
dry, bare or wooded ; whether it was
thickly or thinly inhabited or whether
there dwelt there any people at all;
nor could we get track of anyone or
any report of anyone who had ever been
there. In the early days probably a
few slavers had been in, and in more
modern times two or three reconnoiter-
ing German officers had marched
through. Gradually it dawned on us
that (from the sportsman's standpoint)
beyond those mountains lay practically
an undiscovered country. We resolved
to go take a look at it.

Mind you, we had no very high an-
ticipations. There is plenty of waste
desert land in Africa. The country be-
tween Natron and Kilimanjaro — to the
east — is arid and unproductive of much
of anything but thorn bush; there was
no real reason why the corresponding
country between Natron and Victoria
Nyanza — to the west — should be any
different. Only that the former was
useless was a well-known fact; while of
the latter the uselessness was only sup-
position. Cuninghame and I resolved
to take a chance. We might find noth-
ing, absolutely nothing, for our pains;
but even that would be knowledge.

As far as we could see, our difficulties
could be divided into several classes.
In the first place, we must get per-
mission to cross the boundary between
the English and the German protector-
ates at a point where there is no custom
house. This was a real difficulty, as
those who know the usual immutability
of German officialdom will realize. It
took us a year to get this permission ; and

OUTING

in the process many personages, includ-
ing Colonel Roosevelt, the German Am-
bassador and high officials in Berlin, were
more or less worried. Once the matter
was carried through, however, we re-
ceived the most courteous treatment and
especial facilities from the German gov-
ernment.

Our second important difficulty was
that of water. We anticipated this as
far as we could by constructing water
bags according to our own patterns.

Our third great difficulty was to feed

for our whole transport for the reason
that, in this land of strange diseases, we
could by no means feel certain of their
living; and we could not take a chance
of finding ourselves stranded. Each don-
key would carry two loads — one hundred
and twenty pounds — and would not re-
quire feeding.

For these twenty beasts Cuninghame
had built pack saddles after the Ameri-
can "saw buck" pattern, the first, as
far as I am aware, to be so used in
Central Africa. The usual native

IN CAMP ON THE WAY TO THE MOUNTAIN BOUNDARY

our men. In an explored country, or in
a country known to be inhabited, this is
a simple matter ; one merely purchases
from the natives as one goes along. In
an unknown or uninhabited region, how-
ever, the situation is different. Each por-
ter must receive, in addition to meat, a
pound and a hall of grain food a day
to keep him strong and in good health.
That is forty-five pounds per month
per man.

As a porter can carry sixty pounds
only, it can readily be seen that supplies
must be renewed at least every month.
To overcome this difficulty we resolved
to use donkeys for the purpose of carry-
ing grain food — or potio — for the men ;
and to cut down the numbers of the men
to the Lowest possible point. We did not
feel justified in depending on donkeys

method is to fasten the loads together
and string them across the beast. On
the level this works well enough, but up
or down hill the loads are constantly
slipping off. Then the donkey must be
caught, held, and the loads hoisted
aboard. It takes a man for every four
donkeys, and the pace, as can be imag-
ined, is very slow. We hoped to be able
to train natives to pack American style;
and trusted that by means of the special
saddles the usual objection to donkey
transport — viz. : its extreme slowness and
uncertainty — would be overcome.

Our own outfit we cut to a minimum,
taking advantage of every expedient
known to either of us to lighten our
loads. Thus at the last we found our-
selves with thirty porters and ten other
men, twenty donkeys equipped with pack

THREE MAINSTAYS OF THE EXPEDITION' — LEFT TO RIGHT — KONGONI, MEMBA

SASA, SANGUIKI

saddles, and twenty-five other donkeys
rigged in the native fashion, hired to take
their loads of grain potio over the moun-
tains, there to leave them, and then
immediately to return. The porters car-
ried, beside our light tents, beds and
seven boxes of provisions, such matters
as trade goods, river ropes, ammunition,
medicines, mending materials, and the
like. The ten extra men included don-
key men, gun-bearers and utility men in

camp. These were all carefully picked
men, some of whom, notably M'ganga,
Memba Sasa, Kongoni and Al, had been
with me before. Others were personally
known to Cuninghame. As provisions
we took merely the staple groceries —
beans, rice, coffee, tea, sugar, flour, and
some dried fruit.

As will be seen by the journals we
encountered many difficulties. Were it
not that we later discovered a better

ON THE GRASSY PLAINS OF BRITISH EAST AFRICA

[9]

OUTING

way into the country, I should advise
the trip only for the most ambitious and
adventurous. Even so, I would impress
it on my readers as emphatically as I am
able that this is not a soft man's coun-
try. The "adventurer" who wants to
go out with a big caravan and all the
luxuries should go to British East Africa.
The man too old or fat or soft to stand
walking under a tropical sun should stay
away, for, owing to prevalence of tsetse,
riding animals are impossible. The
sport will not like it; but the sportsman
will. This country is too dry for agri-
culture; the tsetse will prohibit cattle
grazing; the hard work will discourage
the fellow who likes his shooting brought
to his bedside. But the real out-of-doors
man who believes that he buys fairly his
privilege to shoot only when he has paid
a certain price of manhood, skill and de-
termination, who is interested in seeing
and studying game, who loves exploring,
who wants extra good trophies that have
never been picked over, in whose heart
thrills a responsive chord at the thought
of being first, such a man should by all
means go, and go soon, within the next
five years. It is a big country, and much
remains to be done. He can keep healthy,
he can help open the game fields for the
future brother sportsmen, and he can
for the last time in the world's history
be one of the small band that will see the
real thing!

Nevertheless it is fully appreciated
that, to the average man with limited
time, even a virgin game district is of
no great general value unless it can be
got at. The average sportsman cannot
afford to make great expenditures of
time, money, or energy on an ordinary
shooting trip. The accessibility as well
as the abundance of British East Africa
game is what has made that country so
famous and so frequented. It would be
little worth your while as practical
sportsmen to spend a great deal of time
over descriptions of a game field so
remote as to remain forever impossible
except to the serious explorer, nor would
in that case the value of discovering an
unshot country possess other than acad-
emic interest.

If future safaris had to retrace our
footsteps in this expedition, the game

would hardly be worth the candle.
It would take too long to get there; it
would involve too much hard work;
it would involve also the necessity of do-
ing just what we did in regard to food;
viz., carrying it in on expensive beasts
that will surely be fly-struck and die soon
after crossing the mountain barrier. But
fortunately this is not necessary. We suf-
fered only the inconveniences inseparable
from the first penetration of a new coun-
try. We paid for mistakes in route that
need only be paid once. The problems of
food, transport and water still remain;
but we have worked out a solution of
them that makes the country practicable
to the ordinary sportsmen.

At the close of these articles details
will be given. In the meantime, speak-
ing broadly, the scheme is to go in where
we came out, viz., by the lake. The
route would be to Victoria Nyanza by
rail through British territory; south by
boat to Musoma or Mwanza, and thence
eastward on foot. The scheme at present
involves considerable prearrangement and
some plans, but no excessive amount of
time. Two days to the lake by rail,
two days by boat, and a ten days' march
will place one at the edge of the new dis-
trict. You are among game, however,
at the end of the second day's march.
In other words, a fortnight all told —
surely a small enough toll to pay for get-
ting into fresh fields.

I am convinced that these are the hunt-
ing fields of the future, that they will
be as extensively visited ten years from
now as British East Africa is at pres-
ent. British East Africa is still a won-
derful hunting field; but it is passing its
prime. The shooting by sportsmen
would never much diminish the game ;
but the settler is occupying the country,
and game and settlers cannot live to-
gether. I can see a great difference even
in three years. In time the game will be
killed or driven far back — game in great
numbers — and even now, abundant as
the animals still are, it is difficult to get
really fine heads. They have been well
picked over.

This particular part of the German
country, on the other hand, as said be-
fore, will never be occupied. It is not
fitted for agriculture, the rainfall is

OUTING

slight, water is scarce; it is not adapted
to grazing, for tsetse is everywhere. The
game has it all, and will continue to have
it all. Indiscriminate shooting over a
great many years and by a great many
people would hardly affect this marvelous
abundance over so great an area; but,
of course, indiscriminate shooting in these
modern days of game laws is impossible.
The supply is practically unlimited, and
is at present threatened with no influ-
ence likely to diminish it.

For the next five or ten years this
country will, in addition, possess for the
really enterprising sportsman the inter-
est of exploration. Our brief expedition
determined merely the existence of the
game country, and, roughly, its east-to-
west extent. We were too busily en-
gaged in getting on, and in finding our
way, to do as thorough a job as would
have been desirable. Even along the
route we followed months could be spent
finding and mapping water holes, deter-
mining the habitat of the animals, search-

ing out the little patches where extreme-
ly local beasts might dwell, casting out
on either side one, two, three days'
marches to fill in gaps of knowledge.

To the south of us lay a great area
we had no opportunity even of approach-
ing, and concerning which we heard fas-
cinating accounts — for example, the Se-
rengetti, a grass plain many days' jour-
ney across, with a lake in the middle,
swarming with game and lions; the
Ssale, a series of bench plateaux said to
be stocked with black-maned lions be-
side the other game; some big volcanoes
(some of wThich we spied forty miles
away) with forests and meadows and
elephants in the craters; and so on. All
this remains to be looked over and re-
ported on. As the water holes are found,
the possibilities of reaching out farther
will be extended. We have really only
made the roughest of rough sketches.
The many sportsmen wTho will follow
us must fill in the picture.

( To be continued)

The next instalment of Mr. White's narrative carries
his party through the earlier stages of their trip up
into the hills that lie between the much hunted plains
of British East Africa and the land of their desire.

OTHERS WERE WHISKING ABOUT OVERHEAD

SPYING ON THE TRIBE OF WAWA

By HAMILTON M. LAING

Photographs by the Author

A Tale of Days Spent in Posing the Wild Geese of Manitoba Be-
fore the Watchful Camera

i HE wawas had arrived;
there could be no doubt
of it. Fully two weeks
previously the speckled
fellows (White-fronted)
had come tittering down
through the night, as is their custom;
the past three days the grays — Hutchins,
Cacklers, and White-cheeks, by their
yells — had streamed by in scores and fif-
ties each evening from the north and
northeastward, plainly newcomers every
one of them; and now even the wavies
(Snow Geese), the most tardy migrants
of the clan, were coming, for this morn-

ing the glasses picked up two hundred
or three hundred glistening white on the
blue lake, where yesterday there had been
seventy-five and the previous day but a
score. The goose battalions, most inspir-
ing division in the whole autumn host of
migrants, plainly had arrived.

As dusk settled upon the water, the
go-to-bed clamor of the goose throng
centralized and grew fainter toward the
southwest, and I knew that they were
drifting into the big bay there to spend
the night. For a goose loves to get his
feet anchored while he is on the night-
roost, and I knew well that this bay, with

[13]

THEN CAME A RUSH AXD A TREMENDOUS CLAMOR

its low, pastured shore, had seen the go-
ing to bed and awakening of innumer-
able goose thousands each autumn for a
generation. Also I knew that it had seen
the midday sun-bathing of the same thou-
sands— all of which was of much more
concern to me.

Out of the dusk, on the skyline five
miles distant, twinkling directly back of
the go-to-bed goose racket, was the little
light in the shanty of the game protec-
tionist. I was interested in that light in
conjunction with the goose noises, for I
saw here one of my theories in imminent
danger of being shortly relegated to the
realm of discards. For when a month
previously he — the G. P. — had come
along from the East with a shooting
lease in his pocket (the rights for the
whole ranch shore) and had built a
shanty upon the very spot where for-
merly, remote from even a farmhouse,
I had stalked cranes and pelicans and
things, I told him plainly, bluntly, that
he had spoiled all the poetry of the place
— that I couldn't sleep there any more
with the same all-alone-to-goodness feel-
ing as so often before when I had rolled
in my blanket in the lee of the canoe;
and I told him, also, that the geese
wouldn't frequent that shore-line any
more.

But now I had come to know the G.

[14]

P. better. All through the September
open season I had scarcely heard the
sound of his gun, though some of the
other preserves rattled daily like battle-
grounds. Also, I had spent a day or
two under his roof and found that the
canvasbacks drifted about beside his boats
below the window and tolled to the frisk-
ings of Bess, the setter, while a family of
Canadian geese sunned themselves in the
shallows at no great distance. So now I
was almost ready to believe that the
thousand gray geese whose gabble was
dying out of earshot in the darkness were
bent on spending the night about his
doorstep.

The last of the morning flight of noisy
wawas going fieldwards were streaming
from the water when I pushed out in the
canoe, bound for my neighbor's shanty.
About an hour later I reached my desti-
nation, and the reply to almost my first
query was something like:

"Any geese? I should say! If you
had tried to sleep here last night you
would have thought so! That bay up
there is about full of them every day at
noon. Now is your chance, and I have
a blind there ready for you."

The blind did not suit me. It was a
pit dug on the edge of the abrupt bank,
here about three feet high, and it com-
manded a view of the curving line of the

AS THE SHALLOWS IN FRONT OF ME WERE CLEARED

bay. But it was shallow and there were
sods piled around it, and while it might
have served first rate for a gunner, I felt
that it was not cunning enough to serve
my purpose. So I got the spade and four
or five laths and set to work. I expended
a great deal of myself on that pit, but I
had plenty of time. I dug it deep ; I
threw all the loose earth into the water,
covered all fresh signs with some dry
pond-weed matting, and then planted
goldenrod sprigs around the mouth of
the hole — not thickly, but just as they
grew on the soddy bank beside me. Next
I placed the laths across half the pit-
mouth and thatched it as artfully as I
could with grass. Whereupon I felt
satisfied with my handiwork and sat
down to watch patiently for the return-
ing flight.

At ten o'clock I went below ; the geese
were coming back high and doing their
apparently idiotic tumbling performance
over the water. Eleven o'clock: dread-
ful monotony in the pit, and the goose
situation unchanged. Twelve o'clock:
aches and pains, and the geese gabbling
sleepily fully a mile distant. One o'clock :
a wolfish appetite in front and several
dorsal vertebrae getting out of place be-
hind ; the geese apparently well satisfied
with their midlake quarters. One-thirty:
a tittering of speckled geese closer at

hand, and I felt that the curtain was
about to rise.

Risking a slow, canny peep, I saw the
newcomers stealing up low over the wa-
ter, headed directly toward me. They
rose presently and edged in toward the
shoreline and circled back again, then
turned, and with their heads a-wiggling
as they peered and peered, they came out
over the sod a distance, then veered
around again and settled in the water
about one hundred yards from shore.
Scouts! And what scouts ever knew
their work better?

But more were coming, and quickly —
flock after flock, and all speckled chaps.
Soon some were lighting in the water,
others swimming in steadily, cannily to-
ward me, while others were whisking
about overhead, so that I had to crouch
back under my little roof till they went
by. So thorough was their inspection of
the shore that some of them saw the pit-
mouth and swirled away with warning
calls; but as nothing stirred to increase
their alarm, they immediately were reas-
sured and forgot their fright. Soon the
air was filled with a tittering and squeak-
ing and gabbling (these geese never honk
like the rest of the clan), and I judged
by the clamor, for I dared not peep,
that a goodly number were in the shal-
lows within thirty yards of me.

[15]

OUTING

Then there came a fresh hurrah of
honking and shouting and the black-
necked grays were coming. They did
far less maneuvering; it was plain that
they trusted to the leadership of their
speckled brethren ; and now they flapped
into the bay, took a turn and dropped
into the shallows. What a glorious din !
Aches and pains were forgotten. I looked
at my watch — 2 :30 ! They had been
coming for an hour and I could have
sworn it had been but fifteen minutes.
The bay must be full. With some
goldenrod tops stuck in my hair I dared
a slow, cautious peep. It was a glorious
sight! I was on the end of the congre-
gation ; the bay for two hundred yards
north of me was living with geese. They
were in the water and up sunning on the
sand ; they were sitting, standing, stretch-
ing, flapping, preening, fighting, and frol-
icking. It was time for a picture.

Company Come!

At this precise moment I was fright-
fully positive that I heard a snuff at the
landward side of me, and, lowering my
head, I pivoted around to — gaze right
into the face of a big, red steer. He was
standing not ten feet distant, with his
head lowered and with a "What-in-the-
name — !" expression on his phlegmatic
countenance. Behind him I could see the
backs of some fifty more of his kind, and
— horrible thought! — they were feeding
directly toward the bay. With a sick,
now-or-never feeling at the pit of my
stomach I examined the camera fixings
again — I had done it already the Nth or
Mth time. Then I bobbed up, swept the
bay with the finder, and released the
shutter.

I had expected to get one picture and
one only from the pit, and I held my
breath in anticipation of the rush and
roar that must follow as the shoreline
was cleared. But there was merely a
slight commotion, a sort of "Did-I-see-
something?" giggle from some of the
nearby geese, and nothing more. Quick-
ly I made adjustments and rose — to find
1,000-odd pounds of beef towering in
front of me! I let out a horrid "Gr-rr-r
r-ow-woff!" and a scared shiver shot
through the brute as he jerked back an

inch or two. Then he advanced again,
wonderment and curiosity written in
scare headlines all over him.

Then came another and another — an
inquisitive yearling, a silly, two-year-old
heifer, and a blinking old Nancy with
rings on her horns. By that wondrous
telepathy practiced by the animals, the
news had gone abroad, and all came over
to ogle and ogle and snuff and edge
nearer, an inch at a time. Soon all the
standing room in the front was taken
and the late-comers began to use rough
tactics, till I feared that I was in imme-
diate danger of having company in the
pit and thrust up head and shoulders
above the pit-mouth.

The geese paid scant heed to the cattle,
and they saw so little of me among my
intrusive visitors that they failed to rec-
ognize the species and showed no sign of
leaving. But the cattle showed the same.
There were 450 head on that ranch, and
all, jointly and severally, were bent on
coming to the show. They were getting
unruly now. One big, rakish red steer,
that thought he was a bull because he
had a rough voice, thrust himself in so
close that his front feet narrowly missed
a plunge through the frail lath roof ; and
he stood there and said "Ba-a-a-ow!" and
pawed dust over himself and me and
snuffed and shook his head. And, on my
part, I cursed him impotently ; I gathered
handfuls of wet sand and slammed it into
his eyes, making him at least wink hard ;
I called him names that would have
shocked a sixth century pirate; I threw
slurs upon his ancestors and with malev-
olent precision spat on the end of his
beslobbered nose.

But worse was coming. A number of
the animals now jumped down to the
water's edge and under pretext of drink-
ing a mouthful here and there routed the
geese close at hand, then deliberately
turned down the bay to do the same
with the larger throng there. I realized
now that the game was up, and rose and
snapped through the first opening that
was presented. Then, as the geese in a
seething clangor stormed off lakewards,
I sprang over the bank, seized upon the
sun-bleached jawbone of something — it
wasn't an ass — and for the next several
minutes consecrated my life to vengeance

OUTING

— dark, deep, unchristianlike, but at the
time mighty satisfying.

About the time that my wind was fall-
ing short of immediate demands the G.
P. appeared from somewhere close at
hand, where he had been watching from
behind the scene. He did not laugh —
not even once. Now that I look back
through a cooler, saner distance, I feel
that he was too gentlemanly; then I felt
that he didn't dare to. Instead, he took
me into the shanty and with liberal
bounty fed the wolf within me.

Whereupon I got into the canoe and
set off campward to satisfy myself as to
what was on the two precious plates I
had exposed. When, a few hours later,

sitting before the little ruby light in my
hole-in-the-ground dark-room, I found
there was not much of anything on the
first one and but an indifferent image on
the second, I lost the last shred of an
already ruined vocabulary and vowed
that I would return on the morrow.

I did so, and when next I disembarked
at the landing of the G. P. I carried, in
addition to my photographic outfit, my
little .44 calibre double-barrelled shot-
gun, and my pockets rattled with shells.
At the sight of it the G. P. did laugh.
Also, he offered to lend me a full-grown
12 gauge for the occasion. But I de-
clined the well-meant offer and at ten
o'clock went off to the pit on the shore

I SAW THE NEWCOMERS STEALING UP, HEADED DIRECTLY TOWARD ME

THEY NOW SHUNNED THE SHORE IN FRONT OF MY PIT

The geese were clattering noisily in
midlake and the cattle feeding half a mile
distant when I loaded the little gun,
tucked it away in a handy corner of the
pit, and then holed up beside it. Of
course I was hoping my bovine visitors
wouldn't come, but if they did I prayed
that the first might be a big, red steer
with an abominable voice and a broken
horn-tip. But they did not come, and I
am not sure whether I was pleased or
sorry to find, an hour later, that they
were a mile or more distant.

Sharp at twelve the geese came ashore,
and in so doing they repeated their pre-
vious performance to the letter. The
speckled scouts led them in, and soon

were standing in the shallows directly
below my bank blind. The grays, by
far the more numerous, followed them
quickly and lined the bay. Last of all,
several hundred snow geese anchored
their white squadrons just outside the
ranks of the others. It was a goodly
sight, and as I had artfully arranged a
safer lookout I was the better able to
enjoy it.

The din was tremendous; it droned on
unceasingly like the symphony from a
huge organ. Above the shooting and
honking of the grays, the teeheeing and
tittering and cackling of the speckled,
and the high-pitched yelling of the snows,
there sounded a deep, pulsating under-
do

A HUNDRED GEESE, UTTERLY UNCONSCIOUS OF THE SPYING EYE OF ANY FOE,

tone — strong, vibrant, rhythmical. There
were diminuendos and crescendos in this
barbaric monotone, but it died low or
ceased only when some suspicious gander
shouted a sharp warning and all necks
were stiffened anxiously in alarm. Upon
the alarm proving a false one and safety
being assured, it rose again, strong and
insistent.

How different is the wild thing, ani-
mal or bird, when we catch him truly
himself — quite at home as it were — to
the creature we usually meet: on the qui
v'we, conscious, afraid. Here, at fifty
feet, a hundred geese, utterly unconscious
of the spying eye of any foe, showed me
little sides of their goose nature that are
seldom revealed. It was plain that,
though four or five species of the birds
were here in one congregation, each spe-
cies held aloof and showed actual dislike
to all other than their own kind. The
speckled fellows formed one unit, the
Hutchins or Cacklers another, and so on
through the assembly. They were mere-
ly allies united in a common cause — self-
preservation. Also, each species plainly
was broken into families. The young
were still trusting to the leadership of
the parents.

Though more difficult to discern

among the black-necked grays, where the
brownish coats of the young were the
chief color-evidence, with the speckled
geese differentiation was easy, as the juve-
niles wore no black breast markings nor
white facial crescents. And there were
introductions of family to family there
just as plainly as could be. Though
somewhat informal, they were all rather
much alike. When family met family,
everyone arched his neck and pumped his
head a few times, and, advancing, they
passed through among each other a time
or two and then rearranged close to their
respective parents.

Also, some of them played a game, or
what to me was mighty like one, for they
chased each other around in a circle on
the water, half running, half flying, after
the manner of a young duck. I could
not get the point of the affair, but it may
have been merely the old "keep the pot
boiling," for they raced hard and lashed
the water into a turmoil with their
wings.

But I had to disturb this rare scene.
With the camera ready I bobbed up like
a jack in the box, snapped, and jerked
down. There was a moment of impres-
sive silence; then came a rush and tre-
mendous clamor as the shallows in front

SHOWED ME LITTLE SIDES OF TITI-IR GOOSE NATURE THAT ARK SELDOM REVEALED

of me were cleared. But they had not
all seen me ; and now, encouraged by
many of their comrades that had remained
behind, the scared fugitives dropped into
the water again. My ear told me this;
for now, in the face of one thousand or
more eyes sharp focused upon my exact
location, I dared not even peep. Soon,
to my surprise and joy, I could hear that
the shallows were well filled again, so I
popped up as before. There was another
clangorous exit ; yet again they returned
and again I shot at them.

Now, however, the birds had come to
the limit of their credulity. It might have
been an hallucination once or even twice,
they argued, but three times — never!
And they now shunned the shore in front
of my pit. Soon they began to fly off
in detachments toward the prairie, and
as I could not rise to watch them I had
to surmise that they wTere going off to
the fields. They rose noisily, flock after
flock, barely cleared the low bank, and
strung out over the sod. A hundred
streamed over my head so low that I had
to throttle an almost irresistible desire to
grab for some of them. It was impossi-
ble to photograph them, and I knew it,
but I tried all the same, and squirmed
and contorted into a dozen positions and

shapes and hoisted my feet and sat on the
back of my neck till all the world seemed
black in the face.

The last plate was gone. It was three
o'clock and my outraged bones and stom-
ach were crying out vehemently as I
stood up and turned to the westward to
follow the last stragglers from the shore.
Blunderer! Fool! Imbecile! Less than
a hundred yards away, on the bare sod
knoll, standing with necks fear-stiffened,
were acres and acres of geese. All the
goose clans in the Canadian Northwest
seemed to be there, and as I frantically
rummaged for another plate that of
course wasn't there, the whole mass rose
in a seething pandemonium and flowed
by in front of me to settle in the lake a
quarter of a mile from shore. They
were thoroughly alarmed now, and their
excited jabbering made a tremendous
din.

But I was not through with them yet,
and as I hurried off toward the shanty I
was to see still another side of goose na-
ture. The great throng had scarcely
more than settled than some of the birds
rose and returned. They did not come
in flocks, but in ones and twos, and they
straggled back to the knoll where former-
ly the whole congregation had camped,

[21]

SPYING ON THE TRIBE OF WAWA

then circled and called and circled
again. They paid no more attention to
me than if I had been a tuft of grass,
and soon I saw why: they were young
birds, just out of the lonely North, and
they knew not guileful Man. In the
hurried scramble from the sod the birds
had quickly lined up in ranks, as is their
wont always, and many of the young had
lost the other members of the family.
They were now trying to find them and
naturally returned to the place where
they had been seen last.

They were not easily discouraged in
their hopeless quest, for during the next
half hour, as I was very busy at the little
table in the G. P.'s shanty, a score or two

of the birds were constantly hovering and
circling over the prairie. Then they
moved down and invaded the very prem-
ises. This was too much for even the
G. P., and he loaded the gun. He
dropped two among the boats as I ate,
another he shot from the door, and once,
when he was busy, I surreptitiously fired
through the open window and brought
down a fourth.

Thus some of these young geese did
not find their kin ; but whether or not
the others succeeded I am unable to say,
for at four o'clock the whole assembly
filed off in flocks to the grainflelds, and I
loosened my belt two holes and set off
in the canoe homeward.

What has become of the shore birds? That is the question
that Mr. Laing asks and answers in the May OUTING

under the title LITTLE FOLKS ALONG THE SHORE

■_v.

ONE OF THOSE OUTRIGGER CANOES, WITH TWO HUSKY KANAKAS PADDLING IT.
BELONGS TO LINDA, THE DILATORY, WHO IS KEEPING US WAITING

RIDING THE SURF AT WAIKIKI

By GEORGE MARVIN

Illustrated with Photographs

"C^VERY country has its own customs in sport as in other things.
*-^ It has remained for Hawaii to reign preeminent in the manly
sport of surf-riding. The conformation of the beach and the bot-
tom along the island shores brings the waves in in long, carrying
swells that shoot the expert rider toward shore with the speed of
an express train None but a strong swimmer dare venture out,
but for those who can do the trick there is nothing can beat the
sensation. The article which follows is a narrative of a typical
experience at Waikiki, where the conditions are perhaps the best
in all the islands, as recounted by a newcomer.

AST us as we sit on the sand
waiting for Linda runs Duke
Paoa, stripped to a blue breech
clout, with his light "alaia"
like a dark mahogany ironing-
board under his arm. Makaele

hail

s him
Hai,"

in his sing-song voice, wait
for us; what's your hurry?"

"Goin' out with Kahola," the Duke

calls back without stopping, heading off
down the beach where Kahola's mighty
back makes a warm-colored break on the
white sand.

"The two best surfers in the islands,"
says Makaele, watching them. "See,
they're goin' to ride the big surf this
mornin'."

Sure enough Kahola, grabbing up his
big board, joins Paoa, and the two to-

[94]

RIDING THE SURF AT WAIKIKI

gether, moving still farther away to the
left, slosh out through the shallows.
Pretty soon, waist deep, they slap their
boards down and begin paddling through
the broken white water where spent roll-
ers come creaming up the sand.

"Yes, surely the two best here at Wai-
kiki — not counting yourself, Mak. Paoa
is wonderful. Kahola slower, not so
graceful. But how about the other is-
lands, Niihau or Hawaii? Those wild
stories of Hilo Bay?"

"Everyone says the best in the world
are here," says Makaele, throwing hand-
fuls of sand on his coppery legs. "But
those are not wild stories. After a big
kona (south wind) at Hilo I have seen
men come in standin' three miles across
the bay, fair tearin' up the ocean. At
Niihau, the reef is very far out there,

farther than at Hilo, five miles even they
ride in that surf, though I have not my-
self seen them. But in those places they
have big boards, 'olos.' Your 'alaia' is
not seven feet. Paoa's and mine less
than six. Now at Hilo Bay they are
often ten or twelve, sometimes more. To
manage an olo like that takes a very
strong man, like the old chiefs."

"Like old chief Kahola there navigat-
ing that barge of his. Anybody else
would have to lug it out in a canoe."

The two champions, outward bound,
are hurdling their first breakers. Three
or four other "kamaainas" (old-timers)
are riding in on the "big surf," their
poised, glistening bodies coming zipping
ashore, picked out against the dark tree
line over toward Diamond Head. In the
"canoe surf" in front of us some dark-

PICK A STEEP SURF WITH A JAGGED, DANCING EDGE AGAINST THE

SKY

OUTING

skinned kanaka boys are playing, and
westward, near the Outrigger Club, a
couple of canoes are launching in what
they call the "cornucopia surf," where
the neophytes, the "malihini," learn their
first lessons in riding the rollers.

The difference in these three parts of
Waikiki beach lies simply in the way the
coral and sand shoal out to the reef, a
mile or so offshore. From where we sit
the whole sunny sweep of sparkling ocean

One of those outrigger canoes up there
belongs to Linda, the dilatory, who is
keeping us waiting. She's got that pretty
Mrs. Neave with her, who came in yes-
terday on the Tenyo Maru from 'Frisco,
"just crazy to try surf-board riding," as
she calls it. So Linda is taking her in
an outrigger to-day to see it done and
give her a long coast back in the canoe.
Makaele and I are part of the Roman
holiday, a very willing pair of barbarians.

TILS LEGS IN THE AIR LIKE THE SPARS OF A DERELICT

seems the same, as from one wooded point
to the other the long, onward-marching
ridges reach clear across in even succes-
sion. Hut when you get into the water
there is a whole lot of difference between
the big surf, where eastward a more
abrupt shoal piles incoming waves up
steep and strong, and the serener cornu-
copia rollers where the bottom goes out
almost flat for half a mile or so.

We don't mind waiting much either,
for it is very comfortable lying here in
the sun-warmed sand. Makaele has got
started on his folklore about the extraor-
dinary stunts of the old Hawaiian chiefs,
who "used to run seven and eight feet
tall, sure kela" Some chiefs, those, as
the pretty Mrs. Neave would say — and
their Homeric surfing on twenty-five foot
boards that no modern man could lift.

FLAT ON HIS CHEST, HIS LEGS CHURNING THE WATER BEHIND IN THE TRUDGEON
STROKE, HE KEEPS HIS ARMS GOING LIKE PADDLE-WHEELS EACH SIDE

SURFER AND CANOE FINISHING TOGETHER WELL DOWN AT THE BASE OF A NEARLY

SPENT WAVE

THE DUKE GOES STREAMING BY, LIGHT AS THE SPRAY SMOKING

AFTER HIM

Punctuating Makaele's monologue come
the shouts of the laughing kanaka boys,
beginning now to paddle out together to-
ward the reef, and from time to time I
can hear the drone of the Honolulu trol-
ley car with its changing note as it hits
the bridge back of ex-Queen Liliuoka-
lani's house. The blue sky comes down
clean and sharp, to the darker blue of the
deep Pacific beyond the reef where the
white sails of fishing boats are heaving.

"There they are," says Makaele, sud-
denly breaking off in the maritime
amours of Kalea and Kalamakua, and

summoned out of our sun-baked laziness
by Linda's familiar whistle, we are of!
down the beach to meet two graceful fig-
ures drifting in long white bath wraps to
the sea. Behind them Linda's French
maid comes mincing like a cat, trying to
keep the sand out of her tight patent
leathers. The kanakas in the outrigger
have sighted them, too, and are coasting
along toward us, both paddles going.

"You wouldn't believe what a time
I've had to make her leave her skirt off,'*
laughs Linda. "That's what has kept us
all this time. I tell her," with a wink of

[28]

RIDING THE SURF AT WAIKIKI

her long-lashed eyes to us, "there's a per-
fectly good chance of our upsetting out
on the reef or turning turtle coming in,
and then where would you be, Mrs. Pro-
priety, with an old skirt wrapped round
your legs?"

Mrs. Propriety hugs her bath wrap
round her. She is the color of shell-pink
coral, with a wisp of gold between that
and the deeper shade of her bewitching
bathing cap.

"But, Linda, darling, at Narragansett
I have swum — swum, swam, swimmed,
which do you say? — as far as that sev-
eral times, and always in my bathing suit.
These Annette Kellermans of yours are
worse than the front row in the chorus —
I feel like an aborigine — there "

And so saying she gives the bath wrap

a whisk and a kick to Celestine and
makes a dash for the canoe. Linda takes
her white mantle off slowly and hands it
to the maid. She makes a fine contrast
to the lady from San Francisco, her
arms, shoulders, neck and face almost as
brown as Makaele's, her uncovered mass
of black hair coiffed tightly, her figure as
straight and strong as Kalea's must have
been.

The two girls splash laughing up to
the outrigger, Linda helps the coral-pink
in amidships, then she and the two kana-
kas start paddling easily out in the soapy
water. Makaele and I are right after
them, running with our boards like sleds
in both hands as far as we can keep our
knees free, then, souse! flat out we shoot
alongside them. The pretty Mrs. Neave,

TWO YOUTHFUL TRITONS SHOOTING DOWN AT US

OUTING

watching Makaele, forgets all about her
bathing suit.

This is one of his specialties. Flat on
his chest, his legs churning the water in
the trudgeon stroke, he keeps both arms
going like paddle wheels each side, the
front end of his alaia scowing over the
water like the bow of a launch. Every-
one goes out more or less that way; I'm
doing the same thing, but only two or
three others can make such speed as Ma-
kaele, even when he isn't showing off.

you are going to wear your short ribs
right through the skin from the chafing
of your position on the hard "koa" wood,
and for the first week of your malihini-
ship you contract pains like inflammatory
rheumatism in your shoulders, the back
of your neck, and the small of your back.
But the sun and the exercise bake and
work the soreness out of your muscles
long before you make sufficient progress
in the science to take the soreness out of
your spirit.

A KAMAAINA (OLD-TIMER) BALANCING ON ONE LEG AT THIRTY

FIVE MILES AN HOUR

"Keep way over to your left," calls
Linda; "we must see the Duke and Ka-
hola coming in." So our squadron
changes its course and, swimming and
paddling diagonally in the long intervals
between waves, we work over eastward
inward the edge of the big surf and al-
ways outward toward the reef.

This matter of navigating out with
your board is an important part of surf-
ing and good fun, too. At first you think

This is the leeward side of the island,
you see, so there is never a pounding surf
inside the reef, even after a storm. Also,
over this flat, level bottom the surf forms
slowly and is slow to break. Conse-
quently you often have long distances
where you can make speed going out ;
sometimes, depending on the tide and
wind, the sea all about you will be like
a plain ; then, especially half a mile or
more from shore, where most riders turn,

THE SURFER HAS JUST RISEN ERECT AT THE MOMENT OF BREAKING THROUGH

THE TOP OF THE WAVE

A BROWN MERMAN, STRETCHED OUT HALF SUBMERGED ON HIS LIGHT SHINGLE,
WAITING FOR THE RIGHT WAVE TO ARRIVE

A DULL, HEAVY-MOVING WAVE WITH A LUMPY SURFACE. LET THIS KIND GO BY

RISE HEAD AND BACK TOGETHER, FEEL FOR THE BALANCE CENTER, THEN STAND

ERECT

RIDING THE SURF AT WAIKIKI

the surf will come in series, three or four,
or even seven, crests at a time, rolling
very grandly in a sea procession.

Soon we strike our first big waves.
Over the first two broken ones Mak and
I coast. Then I see him dive headlong
into the third, which is curling to break,
and in a minute I follow suit, depress-
ing the front of my board with a sharp
forward thrust. On the reverse slope,
looking back, we see the outrigger lift
drunkenly over the white ridge and come
down, ke-slosh! ke-zop! — Linda a vic-
torious figurehead in the bow. In ne-
gotiating these big toppling fellows you
must be careful to duck the front of
your board just right as you dive
through, otherwise she is apt to plumb
the depths without you or set you back
shoreward with a big drink of salt
water.

Now comes a level space and way
ahead of us we make out the dark heads
and shoulders of the Kanaka boys sitting
on their boards waiting for a good wave.
There it comes, its mounting top shut-
ting out the sails of the fishing boats.
We hear them calling to each other ex-
citedly "nalu-nui!" (big wave) and
"hoe, hoe, hoe" (paddle, paddle) ; then
with a shout the row of dusky figures
out at sea leap upright on their boards
and come tearing in. Theirs proves to
be a lumpy wave, badly chosen. We slip
over it as they go cheering by to the
west of us, but on behind come some
hummers, and right on the crest of the
second stand two figures glorified.

"Look, look," calls Makaele back to
the canoe, "the Duke and Kahola!"
They must have seen us coming out and
swum across, and a good thing they did,
too, for now the eager visitor will see
the finest sight at Waikiki, the last word
in surf riding. No race in the world is
so beautifully developed as the Poly-
nesian, and these two men are the pick
of their race. Without changing a line
you could put them into a Greek frieze,
but you would have to animate or elec-
trify the frieze to keep it in key with
their poised grace supreme in this im-
memorial pastime of their people. Both
are as much at home on the streaming
mane of a breaker as a Pawnee brave on
the bare back of a galloping bronco.

Ducking through the top of the wave
ahead of theirs, we emerge to find their
glistening brown bodies against the sky
surging down a smoky green hillside.
A familiar sight, it is nevertheless a
miracle, for the boards are nearly hid-
den in spray so that we behold shooting
down at us two youthful Tritons not,
as they really are, obeying the course of
the wave they ride, but directing it; rul-
ing, triumphing over, the ocean.

"Ai-i-i-i-e-e-e-e!" yells the Duke, as
he goes streaming by, light as the spray
smoking after him, the last of his yell
swallowed by the half-drowned work I
make of that breaker because of watch-
ing him too long.

Waiting for a Good One

It is still a good long hoe out to the
reef and Mak and I, already half a mile
offshore, decide to mark time hereabouts,
the outrigger going on to the "kulana
nalu," place where the surf begins to
form, so as to give our now highly en-
thusiastic gallery a longer ride in. Off
they go seaward, disappearing and re-
appearing, and one of the kanaka boys
we lately passed, who has lost his wave
and with it his companions, paddles up
to join us. He and I, sitting on our
boards, shove them all but the tip under
water. Makaele, a brown merman
stretched out half submerged on his light
shingle, kicks his feet lazily.

In this seventy-eight degree water we
are even more comfortable than on the
sand ashore, and the view is finer. Off
to the eastward old Diamond Head,
couchant like ourselves, stretches out
into blue water, the iron pyrites at its
base shimmering like myriads of real dia-
monds. Millions more of sparkling wa-
ter diamonds the sun makes far west-
ward over the sea to the purple head-
land of Waianae. Straight ashore, in
interrupted views, stretches a long, white
band of beach with the parallel green
band of palm and rubber trees above it
broken by square hotels and angular,
ugly houses.

We have not long to wait before we
hear a distant hail from the sea and,
looking back over our shoulders from
the top of the next low swell that heaves

OUTING

us up, we make out a fine series of surf
charging toward us hot off the reef, the
canoe chasing down the face of the first
hill.

Now it is all action with us, for to
catch a wave just right you must get go-
ing at top speed before it overtakes you.

"Hoe, hoe, hoe," yells the kanaka boy,
but "No!" Mak sings out; "wait, wait,
no good."

Checking my headway I see he is
right, for this first wave is a dull,
heavy-moving one with a lumpy surface.
In spite of its threatening height it will
peter out before it gets ashore and be
absorbed by the following surf. You
must let that kind, or double ones, go
and wait patiently for a precipice with
a jagged edge toppling over you.

The canoe goes sifting by down the
steep slope we climb, a burly, naked
mariner high in the air astern straining
over on his paddle to keep her head
straight, a cloud of fine white spray
whisping up from her forefoot. There
is a brief dream of fair women, starry-
eyed, their mouths open and their arms
outstretched, and back on the wind comes
a Gabriel-horn kind of noise, the result
o; Linda's contralto jeer at us mingling
with her friend's high soprano shriek of
delight.

We let them go with their inferior
wave, and the next one, too, but the
third, a high green comber with a dan-
cing ridge of spray, we mark for our
very own. There is a lot of excited yell-
ing in the process of making this judg-
ment unanimous, but then each man is
down on the tail of his board with never
another look behind, legs churning madly
and arms whaling the water for dear
life.

Now the surf has caught us, towers
over us. I feel my feet lifted in the air,
the board shoots forward, higher and
faster I drive till in a sudden white seeth-
ing I break through the top of the wave.
Then, lost for a second in the foam, quick
my hands slip back, legs gather up, one
foot in front as though kneeling, and I
rise head and back together, feel for the
balance center, then stand erect. Just
ahead on my right Makaele is calmly
standing in a smother like the wake of a
motor boat; behind on the other side the

kanaka boy is whooping, and we are off
all together, forty miles an hour, for the
coast.

What It Feels Like

Anyone who has sailed a racing canoe
in a fresh breeze, or held the tiller of a
sloop running free in a heavy following
sea, will have some idea of the sensation
of surfing. Only j^ou must multiply
those other sensations by at least ten to
get the exhilaration of riding a big surf
at Waikiki. The lift and yawing thrust
of the wave under you is something like
that you feel in a boat, but a twenty-
pound board is, of course,' far more sensi-
tive. When you first stand erect, it feels
as though you had suddenly spurred some
gigantic marine monster with the wild
response of a thoroughbred hunter rising
at a fence, or as though the Ancient
Mariner's Spirit of the Deep had reached
fathoms up a great hand to hurl you like
a javelin at the beach.

As a racing canoe is balanced on a
rigger out to windward, so we, standing
upright on our racing boards, balance
them by anticipating the whim of the
wave, keeping them coasting forever
down hill and never reaching the valley.
While the surf is high and steep I stand
back on the board ; when it begins to
flatten out I slip forward. The danger
point ahead is in driving the alaia nose
under, when she is very sure to throw
you and dive for coral; yet I must not let
her climb too high or I shall lose the
wave and be dragged backwards over the
crest as though someone had suddenly
tied a flock of peach baskets on behind.
And all the time, like a shying colt, she
is apt to slew sidewise ; sometimes I let
her slide off on the bias and then
straighten her with a flip of my legs,
when she shoots ahead again, obeying the
tread of her master's feet.

Sunlight and flashing color! A great
wash of air and water; tingling life and
speed, speed! We are chiefs of old back
in the springtime of the world, in the un-
discovered Pacific!

And so at length we drive into the
"kipapa," the place where the long roll-
ers from end to end break and come
foaming down in white ruins. Here is
the canoe close at hand. Makaele, in

RIDING THE SURF AT WAIKIKI

sheer exuberance, stands on his head on
his board and goes on so, his legs in the
air like the spars of a derelict. I tread
back from the ''muku" to the "lala" side
of the wave, am caught in the drag, and
stop as though I had run into a rope.
My board sinks slowly and I swim with
it alongside the canoe.

"I'm going to learn to do that," says
the extraordinarily pretty Mrs. Neave,
"if I have to stay here a year." And
then to show how reconciled she has be-
come to Annette Kellermans she stands
up slowly and proudly in the canoe and
makes a beautiful porpoise dive over the
side.

The acme of photography is the catching of wild
birds awing or at rest. Mr. R. P. Holland writes
of his efforts in this difficult art in May OUTING
and gives some sound advice for amateurs.

TWENTY-FIVE YEARS OF BIG
LEAGUE BASEBALL

By CLARK C. GRIFFITH

Manager of the Washington Americans

STARS OF YESTERDAY AND TO-DAY

,\I/'HICH Was the best catcher, Buck Ewing or Archer? Was
* * Comiskey a better first baseman that Hal Chase? How
did Clarkson compare in the box with Mathewson? So run the
questions and the arguments that follow any attempt to answer
them. Mr. Griffith has been in and of big league baseball for a
quarter of a century — practically during the lifetime of the or-
ganized game. He has seen and studied and thought and compared
until to-day he is highly qualified to offer an opinion that is expert
and as near complete accuracy as it is possible to arrive in such
a tangled web. He holds no brief for men or teams. His article
that follows is a careful, unbiased comparison of the stars of
yesterday and of to-day as he has seen them in action.

HE older generations fa-
vor the things of the old;
so does the new, the new.
Not only is this true of
customs, but of public
persons, preachers, actors,
or ball players, for instance. I presume
you are a follower of baseball. Perhaps
if you have watched the game for many
years, if you have seen it grow from a
mere pastime to a great big business, your
sympathies and admiration are with the
older generation of players. This is nat-
ural. Likewise your son, if you have
one, is intolerant of the old-time player.
Besides the Johnsons and the Cobbs, he
rates the star of the . "early nineties,"
for example, as more or less of a joke,
as a mere beginner, thinking that be-
cause "modern baseball" had barely be-
gun its players were not as proficient as
they are to-day. That is not so.

Bring together a number of fans. Be
careful to see that they are not all fans
of the present day ; turn the conversation
on a comparison of the stars of yesterday

[36]

and to-day and what a wrangle you will
raise! Just as those theatregoers of yes-
terday will take their dying oath that no
actor of the present day even approaches
Booth or Forrest, so will these older
fans deny that Mathewson was as good
a pitcher as the first Clarkson or that
Speaker was as valuable to a team as Bill
Lange. I suppose what I have consent-
ed to do — to give you a talk on old ball
players and new — may bring down a
storm of comment and controversy upon
my head. But I shall try to make a
sharp and clean-cut comparison between
the stars of other days and to-day. Also,
I think I am able to make this compari-
son from a perfectly unbiased view-
point. This is why:

It may be news to many fans, but I
have been in big league baseball twenty-
five years. I started when I was seven-
teen. During that period I have seen
every generation of ball players. The
first generation of real "big league" men
were just going out when I was coming
in- I saw these very old-timers in the

TWENTY-FIVE YEARS OF BIG LEAGUE BASEBALL

last years of their careers. Since then I
have seen hundreds upon hundreds of
youngsters come into the big leagues;
som : fail and disappear, others play bril-
liantly for a few years and then go the
way of those who did not make good;
fewer play wonderfully and continue
that pace for almost a score of years.
Think of Wagner!

During all the time I have been in
baseball, actively associated with it, I
have watched the changes that have
come over it. I have seen how the
style of play has varied and with it the
work of the stars. Before basing my
judgments, I have taken all these things
into consideration. Of course, I do not
expect that everybody will agree with
me. If baseball fans agreed, baseball
wouldn't be nearly as popular as it is.

We shall consider first the pitchers.
Of the very old-timers there are Clark-
son of Chicago and Keefe of the Giants.
They belong in the generation that end-
ed about 1893. They pitched when the
distance from the home plate to the box
was only fifty- five feet. They had, thus,
an advantage over the Walter Johnsons.
Clarkson had everything that any pitcher
of to-day has. By this I mean that in
equipment, possessing different curves, he
was equal to the best of the modern
pitchers. Keefe was what we call a
"foxy pitcher." He had a wonderful
slow ball. It wasn't like Mathewson's
fadeaway, it didn't "break," it was just
slow and tantalizing. These men were
the king pins of their time.

Then came three wonderful pitchers,
Amos Rusie of the Giants, and Cy Young
and "Kid" Nichols of Boston. Young had
tremendous speed and accurate control.
His career is still fresh in the minds of
present-day fans. Perhaps Rusie cannot
be recalled so easily. I remember him
when he first came into the league. He
had terrific speed and tricky curves. He
was terribly wild, though, and we didn't
think he would last. He surprised us all
by developing the most perfect control I
have ever seen. Nichols, the Boston
man, used a fast ball that was a terror.
It had a peculiar jump and the star bats-
men of his day were often made to look
ridiculous.

Clarkson and Keefe and Nichols were

not quite as good as Walter Johnson of
my own club and Mathewson of the
Giants. Cy Young and Rusie, however,
were right with Johnson and Matty.
Young and Rusie could be worked more
frequently than Matty, but not more
than Johnson. Johnson is the greatest
pitcher of to-day. I am paying those old-
timers a high compliment in rating them
as good as Johnson. What I think of
Johnson is best illustrated by this inci-
dent:

Just before the world series last
autumn, I was in New York and a news-
paper reporter came to see me.

"Do you think the Giants' pitchers
will be able to stop the Athletics?" he
asked.

My only answer was: "I have seen
the Athletics hit Walter Johnson."

That was enough. When it was print-
ed and baseball men saw it, they knew
what would happen to the New York
pitching staff.

With the catchers, however, it is not a
stand-off. The stars of yesterday and
to-day are not equal. I have never seen
a catcher the equal of "Buck" Ewing.
I call him the best ball player in the
world. He first caught for, then man-
aged, the New York Giants. When I
broke into the league, Ewing was king.
The only man who approached him was
Mike Kelly of the Chicago White Sox.
Kelly and Clarkson, you know, made up
the famous "ten thousand dollar bat-
tery," a price unheard of for ball play-
ers in that day. Ewing was a wonder.
He was a great thrower, not as fast, per-
haps, as Archer, the star of to-day, but
marvelously accurate. He was the man
who invented most of the tricks that
modern catchers use. He was what ball
players know as a "foxy guy."

Catchers of Yesterday and To-day

In one game I saw him cut loose a
new trick on Fogarty, a Cincinnati play-
er, the best base runner of his day.
Ewing was catching and Fogarty was
on first base. Ewing dropped the pitch-
er's throw and Fogarty, trying to steal,
was easily thrown out. After the game
I learned that Ewing had dropped the
ball purposely, that, confident in his

OUTING

wonderful throwing arm, he had muffed
deliberately so as to entice the speedy
Fogarty into a dash for second base. It
was a trick that Ewing subsequently
worked with excellent results. I saw
him pull it on Billy Hamilton of Boston,
one of the best base runners of his day.

As a catcher pure and simple, Archer
does not suffer by comparison with
Ewing. I rate Ewing superior because
of his all-round ability. Archer is just
as good a catcher but not as good a ball
player. It is worth money just to see
Archer catch. I would pay it myself.
Perhaps he has gone back a little, but
even so, he is a wonder. His throw to
second is perfect. As I said, it is even
faster than Ewing's throw. Archer
stands head and shoulders above the pres-
ent-day catchers.

In making this statement, however, I
am considering that some of our younger
catchers are not in their prime, and that
they give promise of being Archer's
equal. On my own club I have two such
men, Henry and Ainsmith. Both of
them give promise of being stars. They
are improving year by year, and when
they reach their prime, watch them.
Connie Mack has another youngster of
this type. He is Schang, who did so
many sensational things in the last world
series against the Giants. Then Chi-
cago has a youngster, Shank by name,
who will be heard from later.

At this writing the other young and
very promising star, Killifer, appears to
have signed with the Federal League.
This is too bad for Killifer's own sake,
as the experience he would get in the
majors would be invaluable at this stage
of his career. I judge Meyers of the
Giants a good catcher, as good as any in
the old days, with the exceptions of the
stars I have mentioned. He is what I
call a valuable man, steady and con-
scientious.

Making First Base Play

A comparison of the first base situation
interests me more than the catchers.
Perhaps it is because we have had so
many really marvelous first basemen.
Perhaps the average fan thinks first of
"Cap" Anson, who has been exploited so

much of late in the newspapers. That is
why the name of the "Grand Old Man
of Baseball" is so much more familiar to
the fans of to-day than is that of Charles
Comiskey. The average young fans only
think of Comiskey as the owner of the
Chicago American League Club. Unless
it has been brought to their attention,
they cannot think of him as one of the
greatest first basemen. When Comiskey
was playing with the St. Louis Browns,
he absolutely revolutionized first base
play. It seemed he was the first man to
realize the possibilities of the position.
Before his day, the first baseman was
only a basket. That is, he stood glued
to the bag and held out his hands to
catch any balls thrown to him. He
never thought of moving away from his
position. Comiskey changed all this.

One day when the Browns took the
field he was discovered playing about ten
feet on the right of first base and about
ten feet back. People thought he was
crazy. His own teammates kicked. But
when Comiskey began to stop ground
balls that had formerly scudded safely
into right field, and picking up those
balls darted to first base in time to put
out the batter, everybody opened their
eyes. Comiskey had changed the style of
first base play. He had made it a field-
ing position, instead of a mere receiving
station.

Soon Comiskey began to do other
things. He played even farther behind
the base. On certain ground balls he
made his pitcher run over, cover the base,
and take the throw. This was unheard
of — a first baseman tossing a ball to
someone else on his own bag. So well
did it work, however, that Comiskey
soon had every other first baseman in
the league doing it. Among his other
qualifications he was a splendid batsman
and base runner and above all he had
''baseball brains." Also, he possesses
ample of the other kind of brains as his
present-day financial success as owner of
the Chicago White Sox will attest.

Anson played four more years of base-
ball than did Comiskey, quitting the
game in 1897. Anson was a great first
baseman. Think of his batting average
— never under "three hundred," for
twenty-two years of big league baseball.

TWENTY-FIVE YEARS OF BIG LEAGUE BASEBALL

Anson was not quite Comiskey's equal.
He was not as fast a base runner, or as
quick a thinker. He was not as foxy a
player as Comiskey. There was one
other notable first baseman of that day.
He was Dan Brouthers, of the New
York Giants, not, however, on a par
with Anson.

Since Comiskey's day there was no
really great first basemen until Hal
Chase came to me. I got him when I
was "on the hill" — the baseball term for
Frank Farrell's New York American
League Club. From 1905 until 1911,
Chase was one of the greatest first base-
men in the world. Then there came
along three youngsters who give prom-
ise of being better first basemen than any
who have gone before them. By these
men I mean Mclnnis of the Athletics,
Daubert of Brooklyn, and Gandil of my
own club. Possibly of the past genera-
tion Tenney was one of the cleverest at
making trick catches, that is, taking the
ball back handed. Mclnnis excels Ten-
ney at this, his own game.

Daubert, being a left-hander, has a
shade on either Mclnnis or Gandil in
making plays to second base. Gandil has
a wonderful reach. Chase was always
renowned for the way he would take
wide throws. Gandil can get a wilder
ball than Chase. He is, moreover, the
best man on low throws, pick-ups, that
I have ever seen. They are a wonderful
trio, Gandil, Mclnnis, and Daubert, bet-
ter than any trio of the older days that I
can think of. Even now — for they are
young — they are the greatest first base-
men in the world.

Of the second base stars there are two
who stand head and shoulders above the
old-timers. They are Fred Pfeffer of
the White Sox and McPhee of the Cin-
cinnati Reds. Pfeffer was an artist. He
stood out among them all. For touch-
ing runners at second base he has had
no equal. He was only a fair hitter, but
a great base runner. His throwing arm
was wonderful. I played on the same
team with Pfeffer two or three years.
He was just ending as I was coming in.
I have never seen a better second base-
man.

It was Pfeffer who invented the play
that is used to-day to cut down the

double steal when men are on first and
third. You know the play I mean. The
runner on first goes down to second, the
catcher throws to second, the man on
third races home. All the teams of the
day were successfully using this "steal"
until Pfeffer stopped it. He devised the
scheme of running in and intercepting
the throw and relaying it to the plate, if
the man on third went home. If he
didn't go home, Pfeffer would back out
to second and, taking the throw there,
touch out the runner coming from first.
How in the world he ever managed to
get to second in time to do this I don't
know. But he got there. He seemed to
possess uncanny intuition as to whether
the man on third would go in or not.
Just think of it. Pfeffer carried out this
play alone, a strategy that to-day always
brings the second baseman and the short-
stop into action.

v McPhee — eighteen years, by the way,
with the same team, the Cincinnati Reds
— was the last man to play the infield
barehanded. He did this for ten years
after infielders' gloves were invented, dis-
daining to use one. I know that when
the Cincinnati fans made him a present
of nineteen hundred silver dollars, he
had never used a glove. That was in
1895. He played all the tricks of the
base and two years of his prime coin-
cided with two years of Pfeffer, so I had
a chance of seeing them both in action
against each other.

A Great Second Baseman

From their day until the coming of
"Eddie" Collins, there was one really
great baseman. I have in mind the big,
graceful Lajoie. For eighteen years his
hitting was always well above three hun-
dred. He was an accurate fielder, a fair
base runner. He was a perfect machine,
yet a machine. He was always the most
reliable bit of mechanism in the team.
He was the star of the highest magni-
tude, but a mechanical player. Lajoie as
the brilliant star of the day was suc-
ceeded in 1904 by the peppery Evers of
the Chicago Cubs, who in turn gave way
to Collins.

When we consider "Eddie" Collins,
there's no use talking about any other

OUTING

second baseman of to-day. He is what I
call a naturally great ball player. He
has a rare baseball head. He can go up
to the plate and if the situation demands
a safe hit, you can pretty generally de-
pend upon it that he will wallop the ball.
If the stage of the game makes a base
on balls advisable, he will somehow man-
age to get that base on balls. Collins is
a remarkably good guesser. He always
uses his head and figures out in advance
several possible outcomes to a situation.
He is the kind of a player — and they are
rare — who knows every kind of ball his
pitcher is going to pitch. He never
misses a catcher's signal and plays his
position accordingly.

It has sometimes struck me as odd that
the players who are called upon to do
the hardest work generally last the long-
est. Catchers and pitchers, as a rule, re-
main longer in fast company than do out-
fielders. Likewise with the shortstops.
There have been more stars at shortstop
than at any other position of the infield.
This is surprising because the position is
supposed to be so difficult to play; yet it
has developed more stars and they have
lasted longer than any other infielders.
Indeed, there have been so many star
shortstops that I hesitate long before
mentioning those whom I consider best.
Even now I unintentionally may have
missed somebody.

The old shortstops, those of the first
generation, were just quitting when I
came in. I remember Williamson of the
Chicago White Sox. He was a big man
and a fair hitter. He finished with the
Brotherhood in 1890. In his day he was
a wonder; I've seen him do things like
this:

A hot grounder would come at him.
He would stand with his heels together
and meet the ball with his toe. It would
leap into the air and, nipping it with one
hand, he would fling it across to first and
get his man. Obviously his was a won-
derful throwing arm.

After Williamson there began, in 1890,
a generation of great shortstops, each of
them better than any to-day. There
was Herman Long, of Boston, the best
shortstop I have ever seen. I do not
know his equal. George Davis, Dahlen,
Cockran, Jennings, Wallace and Wag-

ner make a list that cannot be equalled.
Davis was a past master at catching men
off second base. Long was a perfect
fielder, fast, possessing baseball brains
and a comical nature that always kept a
team in good humor. Jennings, one of
those who revolutionized baseball at Bal-
timore in 1894, was continually thinking
up tricks. Then there is Bobby Wallace,
who for twenty years, season in and sea-
son out, has been a remarkable shortstop.
Bobby is still in the ring with the St.
Louis Browns.

About the time of Jennings came Hans
Wagner. And Hans is still in the game,
and still a star. With the exception of
Wallace, he has survived all the great
shortstops of his generation. Wagner
has a barrel of ability. He is not what
many people think, a foxy ball player.
He has hands the size of hams, but, un-
like hams, possessing the properties of
grappling hooks. I never saw a short-
stop so endowed by nature as Wagner.
Of course, everybody knows what a hit-
ter he is. Although his star is fading, he
must also be considered with the genera-
tion of shortstops of to-day.

On a par with Wagner, just as a
shortstop, not as a batsman, I would rate
Barry of the Athletics and McBride of
Washington. McBride is a weak hitter,
but he is a wonderful defensive man, the
best in the business. Save George Davis,
he has had no equal in catching a man
off second. Besides, he is the finest ball
player who ever put on a uniform, "all
white." If McBride could hit like
Wagner, he would be the greatest short-
stop of all time. He will outplay Barry
in the field, but Barry will out-hit him.

Some Great Old-timers

Fletcher of the Giants is an awfully-
good ball player, who has had the misfor-
tune never to shine in a world series.
When I managed the Cincinnati club a
few years ago, I had plenty of opportuni-
ties of seeing Fletcher in action. Con-
sidering the years of usefulness he has
ahead of him, I would rather have him
than any shortstop in the National
League. None of these men of to-day,
however, come up to those of that great
generation of shortstops, Long, Dahlen,

TWENTY-FIVE YEARS OF BIG LEAGUE BASEBALL

Wagner — for I prefer to think of Wag-
ner in his prime.

There are few star third basemen.
Indeed the position has fewer real stars
than any other in the infield. Beginning
with that first generation, there was
Whitney in Boston, Latham of the St.
Louis Browns, Burns of Chicago, and a
little later Nash of Boston. Nash was
just about getting through when Mc-
Graw and Collins of Boston came in.
Latham, who, up to a few years ago, was
carried by the New York G;ints as a
coach, was a strong hitter and base run-
ner but only an average fielder. He was
with Comiskey when the Browns won
four pennants. I am rather hazy on
Whitney, the old Boston star, but there
was nothing about him that makes him
stand way out, nor was there with Nash.

Perhaps of all third basemen Mc-
Graw and Collins were the best. Mc-
Graw didn't get good until 1894. He
was foxier than Collins, a better fielder
and a better batter. Collins, though,
was by far the better third baseman. He
was the most graceful fielder of the posi-
tion I have ever seen, and for third base
play I rate him the best.

The only men of to-day you can com-
pare with him are Baker of the Athletics,
Foster of Washington, and Gardner of
Boston. Baker is a very poor fielder.
He is awkward. By his very awkward-
ness, he brings down criticism upon him-
self; that is, he is accused of blocking
base runners unfairly. The truth of the
matter is that Baker cannot help it; he
is so clumsy. He is such a wonderful
hitter, though, that his bat lifts him up
among the top-notchers. Baker is one of
the few psychological hitters in baseball.
He always goes up to the plate and
smashes the ball when it means the game.
In this respect he is the most timely hitter
there is. Foster is a foxy fielder and a
foxy batter. Forgetting Baker's hitting,
Foster is the best third baseman of to-
day. Gardner of Boston is good but not
quite in Foster's class. Baker's hitting,
of course, makes him stand out.

Let's run down the list of clubs and
see how few really great third basemen
there are. The New York Nationals
never had one. Devlin was only better
than ordinary. Of the two Boston teams

only one has developed a star, Collins.
The Philadelphia Nationals never had a
third baseman. Neither did Brooklyn,
St. Louis, nor Cincinnati. Chicago
came fairly close to it with Zimmerman,
so did Pittsburgh, with Tommy Leach,
Cleveland with Bradley. All in all,
though, the third base stars are few, and
of them Collins is the best.

The outfield presents a chance for
many interesting comparisons. It has
developed many wonderful players. We
shall first cispose of the old school. Of
it, I well remember Fogarty. He was
one of the greatest base runners that ever
lived. There was Dicky Johnson, a re-
markable fielder. Neither Fogarty nor
Johnson was a great batter. Boston a
little later had Hugh Duffy, a splendid
hitter. St. Louis in McAleer has a fast
fielder, who, if he had hit heavier, would
have been renowned.

Tom McCarthy of St. Louis gave the
outfield its first trick play. It was Mc-
Carthy! who devised the stunt of "trap-
ping" short fly balls and trying for double
plavs. Then there was Billy Hamil-
ton o, Boston — out of the ordinary as a
hitter and base runner but a poor fielder.
Considering these men in their prime,
they gave way to Bill Lange, star of the
Chicago White Sox. From 1894 to
1898 Lange was the king pin of all the
outfielders. He had everything. He
could hit, run the bases, and make the
most sensational catches. One year he
stole 115 bases. He invented the delayed
steal. He was continually Using his head
and doing the unexpected. He was the
star of his generation and that following
it. He was not, however, as good as one
or two outfielders of to-day. As you
doubtless have noticed, his period of use-
fulness was short, for he got heavy
quickly.

About that time there came Burkett,
Hendrick, Kelly, Flick, and Keeler.
They were all terrific hitters and sure
fielders. All were stars, Keeler standing
out. By the time of the opening of the
American League, the best days of most
of these men were over. They had just
a few good seasons left in them. It was
then that Fielder Jones of Chicago ap-
peared as a star; Fred Clark came into
his prime, so did Donlin, always a great

OUTING

hitter but an uncertain fielder. Sheckard
of Brooklyn had some good seasons left
in him, so did Keeler. What a pair they
were, both little men, somewhat similar
in their style of batting, both deadly field-
ers and trouble-making base runners!
Of course, by reason of his batting, Keeler
stands out. Sam Crawford of Detroit
had also begun to be a star at that time.
Crawford has stood the test better than
most of them for he is still of rare value.

After Fielder Jones, Clark, Sheckard,
and the rest had their day, there were no
really high-class outfielders, until the
coming of Schulte in 1906. McGraw
at that time was winning pennants with
very ordinary outfields. Then came the
discovery of Speaker, Cobb, Jackson, and
Milan. It is significant that most of
these men are American Leaguers. It is
to be supposed that I would favor the
American League. Not in the last ten
years, however, has the National League
developed a star outfielder. I regard
the prime of Clarke, of Pittsburgh, as
being outside that limit. On the other
hand, the American League has devel-
oped four stars.

Speaker is the most remarkable fielder
that ever lived. He is the best man on
fly balls I have ever seen. Let me show
you why that is. Watch Speaker some
time and you will see that he plays un-
usually close to the infield, no matter
who is up. In this way he manages to
catch short hits that would otherwise
go for "Texas leaguers." I'd like to see
the man who can score from second base
on a short single to Speaker. His
throws are deadly and he cuts down
many men at the plate. Playing as close
as he does to the infield, I marvel how he
ever catches the balls he does. Batters
seem to hit a mile, but somehow Speaker
cuts out for the fences and pulls down
drives that with another man would
mean three base hits or home runs.

It is hard to judge accurately who is
the better man, Cobb or Speaker. The
only difference is that Cobb is a better
base runner and a little better batter,
while Speaker, as a fielder, stands out by
far. Of course Cobb's base running is
too familiar for me to discuss it.

Jackson, of the Cleveland Club, is a
wonderful batter and thrower. As a

base runner, however, he does not shine.
He does not think quickly enough. He
does not "protect the game" and he is
not valuable for "inside work." Never-
theless, his terrific hitting and his rare
throwing ability bring him 'way above
the level and make him a star.

Milan, of Washington, is a better bail
player than Jackson because "he can do
more stuff." He is a splendid base run-
ner and fielder and is a consistent three-
hundred hitter — different, however, from
being a four-hundred hitter. He is a
splendid man to send to bat in a pinch.
He possesses that very admirable quality
in some few ball players, "cold nerve."
He is continually using his head.

Comparing these outfielders with the
star of the old generation, Bill Lange,
the old generation suffers. Cobb and
Speaker are Lange's superior. Cobb is
just as good a base runner and a better
batter. Lange was only a three-hundred
man. Speaker is also a better hitter and
is, moreover, Lange's superior as a field-
er. I think that Milan, of Washington,
is almost as valuable a man as Lange.
While he is not as good a hitter, he is
about as good a base runner; their field-
ing is a stand-off.

So as I look upon the great players of
to-day and yesterday, I think I have
made these comparisons in all fairness. I
have said that the pitchers of to-day are
as good as those of yesterday, that the
catchers are not. It is my observation
that no first baseman of the olden days
is equal to any of three first basemen of
to-day. So is the best second baseman
of to-day superior to the best of other
generations. The old short-stops were
better, so were the old third basemen.
But in the outfield it is all "to-day."

The standard of baseball has been
raised — wonderfully so. Likewise the
general standard of playing. But the
old days developed so many individual
stars that, were we to consider the whole
mass of players, those of to-day would
not stand out. I have given you my
honest opinion, gained by watching or
playing with them all for twenty-five
years. Of course there will be those
who disagree with me. Every man to
his opinions.

(To be continued)

GETTING READY FOR THE TROUT

By STILLMAN TAYLOR

Things That Should Be Known and Done Before the Speckled
Beauties Land in the Creel

And as a ship in safe and quiet roade

Under some hill or harbor doth abide,

With all her fraight, her tackling, and her

loade
Attending still the winde and wished tide,
Which when it serves, no longer makes abode,
But forth into the wat'ry deepe doth slide,
And through the waves divides her fairest

way,
Unto the place where she intends to stay;

So must the angler be provided still,
Of divers tooles, and sundry baytes in store;
And of all things else pertaining to his store;
Which he shall get and lay up long before,
That when the weather frameth to his will,
He may be well appointed evermore
To take fit time when it is offered ever,
For time in one estate abideth never.

HESE quaint lines taken
from John Denny's " Se-
crets of Angling," printed
at London in the year
1613, contain much time-
ly counsel for the angler
of to-day, for the time spent in getting
the fishing kit ready for the angling sea-
son are enjoyable hours to the true mem-
ber of the clan. Although most of us
agree that not all of the pleasure of fish-
ing is dependent upon the number of fish
we catch, few anglers will deny that the
day's sport largely rests upon the selec-
tion of a good and dependable fishing
outfit, which is well suited for the fish
we are going to catch.

Trout fishing, and fly-fishing for trout
in particular, is unlike any other phase
of angling; and as success so greatly de-
pends upon accurately placing the fly
lightly upon the surface, the question of
a suitable rod and appropriate tackle is a
most important consideration. The en-
joyment of the invigorating life of the
open is, after all, the important factor
with most anglers, and good rods and
tackle will ever be found a joy to handle,

while the poorly balanced rod and cheap
shoddy equipment is pretty sure to mar
the trip by handicapping the unlucky
owner, who being thus rudely initiated
in the gentle art, will very likely be
tempted to "swear off" permanently after
his first experience.

The brook trout of the Eastern states
is at once a gamy and a wary fish, and
to creel a fair number, the angler should
know something about their habits, and
likewise possess a certain skill in handling
his tackle. Of course trout may be
caught on a length of twine, tied to an
alder pole and baited with a worm. The
secret of the barefoot lad, thus rudely
outfitted, lies in his intimate knowledge
of the fish in the nearby stream; he
knows where the fish are, and he succeeds
in landing a good string despite his crude
equipment. That he could do much bet-
ter with a good rod and tackle goes with
the telling.

However, the skilful fly-caster can,
under equally favorable conditions of
weather and water, easily duplicate the
bait caster's success, and his average
catch will generally run very much high-
er. Fly-fishing is for several reasons the
best method for capturing the brook
trout, and there is a fascination in hand-
ling the feathered lure which bait fish-
ing can never give. It requires a more
complete knowledge of the fine art of
fishing to achieve success writh the arti-
ficial fly and light tackle, but this requi-
site skill is quickly acquired by a little
practice, and once the knack of casting
the fly is mastered, the angler will but
seldom make use of the more clumsy
bait-casting method.

The choice of a rod is the first im-
portant item to be checked off in getting
together a good fly-fishing outfit. The

[43]

OUTING

purchase of an ordinary "fishing pole"
requires little thought, but success in fly-
fishing calls for a light-weight rod that
is pliant and resilient from tip to butt;
one that possesses sufficient strength or
"backbone" to stand up under the class
of fishing to be done, and last, but by no
means of least import, it must balance
well with the particular reel you intend
to use. The only material which pos/
sesses these qualities in the fullest meas-
ure is split bamboo. Other materials
make good fishing rods, but the three
cardinal points of the ideal fly rod —
lightness, strength, and elasticity — are
only fully met with in the well-made
split bamboo.

There are rods and rods; some are
machine-made and others hand-made,
and while all are included under the
caption of "split bamboo," the supply of
machine-made rods of inferior quality
greatly outnumbers the good and service-
able tools. The principal difference be-
tween the good and the cheaply made
split-bamboo lies in the making, since
the supply of first-class cane is easily
secured. In making the hand-made
bamboo, the cane is split with a knife,
the sides only being used, since the front
and back sections of the natural cane or
pole contain numerous knots. These
hand-split strips of cane are then straight-
ened and planed down to the correct
shape from the inside, thus removing the
soft and punky part of the wood, but
leaving the hard and springy outside
enamel uninjured.

The machine-made rod is made from
bamboo strips obtained by sawing the
cane with a fine saw, which cuts the
bamboo at a bevel all ready to glue to-
gether. The entire cane is thus utilized,
knots and all, and the proper taper is
given the rod by planing away the out-
side, which is the most valuable part of
the material. An examination of a Cal-
cutta or Tonkin bamboo pole will dis-
close the fact that the grain never runs
in a straight line from butt to tip, but
that it curves somewhat at the knots
and leaf shields. In making the ma-
chine-made rod, the saw cuts the cane in
a straight line, and by sawing across the
knots and leaf shields the bamboo is
weakened to an undesirable degree. In

brief, only the choicest and strongest
parts of the natural cane are used in
building the hand-made rod, while all
the cane is u»ed in fashioning the ma-
chine-jointed affair.

The harder male cane is preferred by
anglers and rod makers to the lighter
and softer kinds, and in picking out a
rod it is well to choose the darkest (un-
stained) bamboo, which will weigh a
trifle more than other rods of the same
class. The dark color of the enamel
indicates that the fibers of the cane have
not been planed away, while the greater
weight and relatively shorter distances
between the leaf shields point out the
more durable male cane. Look the rod
over carefully and note that the glued
joints are closely matched throughout
the length of the joint, and discard that
rod which shows the evidence of glue or
openings where the strips are joined.
Also carefully note if the fiber or grain
runs straight with the strip; if it does
the rod is a hand-made one, but if the
grain turns out against the jointed strips,
it is unquestionably machine-made.

The Best Ail-Around Rod

The best all-around fly-rod for general
trout fishing is one of nine or nine and
one-half feet in length, weighing six to
seven and one-half ounces. The good
rod will have an even taper from butt
to tip and the action will show an even
curve throughout its entire length; an
even flexibility is the chief quality to be
sought. Good elasticity and pliability
are essential in a fly-rod, but the rod
must not be too "whippy," neither should
it possess a stiffish action.

For small brook fishing, where the
overgrown nature of the banks makes
long casts the exception rather than the
rule, a shorter rod may be chosen, while
a longer rod of greater weight may be
selected for river angling in the "white
water" streams of the north and west.
The skill of the angler must, of course,
enter into the choice of the rod, and
while the old hand may safely elect to
use a six ounce rod for even the heaviest
fishing, the less experienced fly caster
will do well to pick out a rod an ounce
or an ounce and one-half heavier.

GETTING READY FOR THE TROUT

When purchasing a good hand-made
split bamboo fly-rod, the angler will only
be fully satisfied by thoroughly testing
out the rod by affixing his favorite reel
and line as in actual angling. By fasten-
ing the free end of the line to a weight
resting upon the floor, the angler can
well test the bamboo for spring and
elasticity by reeling in the line and trying
the spring under varying tensions. A
little careful experimenting in the sales-
room will bring out all the good points
and also show any existing weaknesses
which many well-made rods often pos-
sess. The rod should fit the angler and
it should balance to suit the individual's
requirements, and the owner is obviously
the best judge when it comes to deciding
whether the "hang" or feel of the rod in
the hand is to his satisfaction.

For the fly-rod, the single-action click
reel is the logical choice, and the most
satisfactory type is the so-called "English
style," which has the handle screwed or
riveted direct to the revolving side plate.
A balanced handle is a constant source
of annoyance, possessing no advantage
for the quick recovery of the line, but
rather hindering the angler because of
the liability of the projecting handle to
foul the line when casting. A multiply-
ing reel of the bait patterns is an abom-
ination on the fly rod, destroying the
proper balance of the best rods and seri-
ously interfering with long and accurate
casting.

The best click reel is one having a
relatively large diameter, but narrow be-
tween the plates. Hard rubber or vul-
canite is the best material for the side
plates, while German silver or hard
aluminum form the best metal trim-
mings. The most useful size is one
holding about forty yards of No. E size
waterproof line, the plates or spool diam-
eter being about three inches, with a
width of about seven-eighths of an inch
between the plates. With a narrow
spool reel of this kind, the angler can
recover his line almost as rapidly as he
can handle the multiplying reel.

The chief point to remember in buy-
ing a reel is to secure one of proper
weight to balance the rod. The proper
position for the reel on the fly-rod is
below the grip, and a comparatively

light-weight reel is therefore essential,
since a slight increase in weight added
near the butt end is likely to make the
rod butt heavy and render casting diffi-
cult after an hour or so of fishing.

The silk enameled double-tapered line
is decidedly the best line for fly casting,
because the tapered end allows the angler
to drop his fly with the utmost delicacy
on the water. Single-tapered lines are
less expensive, but as the taper is on
but one end, the line cannot be reversed
to equalize the wear of casting. The
level line, having the same diameter
throughout its length, is more commonly
used, but the cast cannot be drawn so
neatly and fine with the level line. Size
E is the most useful, but a size smaller,
known as F, may be used for small brook
fishing, while Size D is only suited for
the heaviest kind of fishing.

The commonsense rule in selecting a
line is to use one suited to the weight of
rod — a light line with a light rod, and
vice versa. A comparatively heavy line
on a light rod will rob it of its elasticity,
while a light line and a heavy rod is
surely an impossible combination, re-
sembling an ox whip more than a fly rod.
However, a rather stiff action rod may
be limbered up to a considerable extent
by using a slightly heavier line, while
the very willowy, whippy rod demands
a very light line.

Selecting the Leader

The single gut leader is preferred for
fly casting for trout, and the leader
should be as fine as can be safely used for
the fish to be caught. It is of course an
advantage to use a leader wTith a break-
ing strain much less than that of the line,
for wThen a breakage occurs the leader
will first part and the line will be saved.
Leaders may be purchased tied up ready
for use, or the angler may make his own
by knotting as many single lengths of gut
as he desires to secure the wanted leader
length. A three or a three and a half
foot leader is amply long enough, for a
longer length is likely to catch in the tip
ring when reeling in the fish close
enough to reach it with the usual landing
net.

Leaders may be bought with a loop

OUTING

at each end, or with loops for using two
or three flies. The two-fly cast is the
best for average fishing, and the single
fly the more killing for lake fishing. For
the two-fly cast the leader should be pro-
vided with three loops, the extra loop
being tied in about fifteen inches from
the lower loop. The first or upper fly
is called the "dropper" while the lower
one is known as the "tail" fly. When
but one fly is used the leader requires
but two loops.

When purchasing leaders or lengths
of gut for tying, select only those lengths
which are of uniform diameter and well
rounded, discarding all lengths which
show flat and rough spots. Gut is very
brittle when dry and should not be
handled roughly until well soaked. The
leaders should be soaked overnight previ-
ous to the day's fishing, and should be
kept moist and pliable by coiling them
up and placing them between the felt>
pads of the leader box. When through
fishing, it is a good plan to dry out the
leaders by placing them between the
flannel leaves of the fly book.

Artificial Flies

To the fly caster the subject of arti-
ficial flies is one of the most interesting
phases of his art, and the list of flies is
so long and personal opinions differ so
widely regarding their merits that only
the best-known favorite flies, attractive
throughout the territory where the brook
trout makes his home, can be mentioned.
The list of standard flies includes some
five dozen varieties, but the universal
favorites may be boiled down to about
twenty-four patterns. To enable the in-
experienced angler to recognize the sev-
eral kinds, a concise description of each
fly is here given.

Caldwell — Body, claret silk, ribbed with
gold tinsel; wings, pintail duck; hackle,
brown; tail, three fibers wood duck; tag, gold
tinsel.

Cinnamon — Body, brown worsted; wings,
speckled brown hen's feather; hackle, brown;
tail, three strands black hackle; tag, gold
tinsel.

Coachman — Body, peacock berl; wings,
white; hackle, brown.

Green Drake — Body, straw silk, ribbed
with loose coils black silk; wings, wood
cluck; hackle, brown; tail, three fibers, wood
duck.

Grasshopper — Body, brown worsted;
wings, jungle cock's feather, above it one
strip of yellow color, dyed, and one red ibis,
about three fibers of each; hackle, scarlet;
tail, yellow, swan and pintail duck, three
fibers of each; tag, gold tinsel, and about
1-16-inch green silk; head of peacock berl.

Grizzly King — Body, green silk, ribbed
with silver tinsel; wings, pintail duck;
hackle, grizzled; tag, gold tinsel; tail, red
ibis.

Jungle — Body, scarlet silk, ribbed with
gold tinsel; wings, jungle cock's feather, sin-
gle; hackle, white with black center; tag,
gold tinsel ; tail, three fibers red ibis.

Montreal — Body, dark crimson silk, ribbed
with gold tinsel ; wings, turkey's wing feath-
er, hackle, scarlet; tag, gold tinsel; tail, red
ibis.

Pale Evening Dun — Body, yellow silk,
ribbed with gold tinsel ; wings, mallard's
under wing feather; hackle, yellow; tag,
gold tinsel; tail, three fibers of mallard's;
wing.

Professor — Body, yellow silk, ribbed with
tinsel; wings, pintail duck; hackle, brown;
tail, three fibers red ibis.

Red Ant — Body, scarlet silk ; wings, red
ibis; hackle, red or scarlet; tag, peacock
berl.

Seth Green — Body, green silk, ribbed with
yellow silk twist; wings, lead colored mal-
lard's feather; hackle, brown; tag, gold tin-
sel; tail, three strands mallard's wing.

Soldier Palmer — Body, scarlet silk, ribbed
with gold tinsel ; hackle, brown, one short
above, one full at head; tag, gold tinsel.

Stone Fly — Body, gray silk, ribbed with
silver tinsel; wings, mallard's wing feather;
hackle, gray; tag, silver tinsel; tail, black
hackle.

Broivn Hackle — Body, peacock berl ; hackle,
brown, wound thick; no wings.

Canada — Body, red worsted, wound with
gold tinsel; wings, light brown and mottled;
hackle, brown ; tail, red worsted.

Gray Hackle — Body, green silk, ribbed
with silver tinsel; hackle, gray; no wings.

Blue Jay — Body, claret mohair; wings,
matched English blue jay; tail, red ibis.

Jenny hind — Body, yellow; wings, blue;
hackle, red.

Page — A red fly with wood duck wings.

Parmacheene Belle — Body, yellow, re-
mainder red and white mixed.

Rube Wood — Body, white chenille, finished
with red silver tag; hackle, brown; tail,
brown mallard.

Scarlet Ibis — Body red, ribbed with gold
tinsel; wings, scarlet ibis; hackle, ibis; tail,
ibis.

Silver Doctor — Body, silver tinsel, wound
with red silk, finished with red tag; wings,
mixed yellow and red, with wood duck, and
bars of wild turkey; hackle, blue and guinea
hen; tail, golden pheasant.

For mid-spring fishing, Coachman,
White Miller, Professor, Brown Hackle,

GETTING READY FOR THE TROUT

and Gray Hackle are splendid flies.
The cast for the latter part of April and
the month of May should certainly in-
clude all the above. For Northern
waters, Jock Scott, Brown Hackle, Par-
macheene Belle, and Silver Doctor are
especially killing lures, while Montreal,
Parmacheene Belle, and Silver Doctor
are the three invincible flies for Canadi-
an waters.

In addition to the above patterns, the
appropriate flies to use during the fly
fishing season include these representa-
tive casts:

April — Red Ibis, Cinnamon, Stone Fly, Red
Spinner, and Parmacheene Belle.

May — Yellow Dun, Turkey Brown, Iron
Blue, Spinner, Montreal, and Red Fox.

June — Silver Doctor, Alder, Black Gnat,
Gray Drake, Orange Dun, and Green Drake.

July — Grizzly King, July Dun, Pale Even-
ing Dun, Red Ant, Brown Palmer.

August — Coachman, Seth Green, Governor,
August Dun, Shad, and Royal Coachman.

September — Willow, Whirling Dun, Black
Palmer, Blue Bottle, and Queen of the Water.

Flies tied on eyed hooks of the Pen-
nell style are preferred by a great many
anglers, and the smaller range of sizes
are the most used, numbers six and eight
being the standard hook sizes for all
average fishing. For small brook fishing
during the opening month, the small
midge flies tied on number twelve and
fourteen hooks are the most killing, and
the most attractive patterns are those in
which brown and gray colors predomin-
ate— the Palmers and Hackles being
always good.

The Knack of Casting

The knack of casting the fly is far
from being as difficult an art as many
are inclined to believe, but to secure a
mastery over the rod and line consider-
able patient practice must be indulged in.
The first point to be attended to is to
hold the rod correctly, for little can be
accomplished if the proper grip is over-
looked. The hand should grip the butt
at the point where the rod balances the
best, with the thumb extending in the
direction of the tip, the reel lying below
the rod with its handle on the right-
hand side. Casting is not done with a
free reel as in bait casting, but is ac-

complished by reeling off sufficient line
for the desired cast.

For the first practice casts, twenty feet
of line is sufficient, and this amount is
reeled from the spool and coiled at the
foot of the angler. Now with a quick
upward snap of the wrist, carry the rod
upward, checking it when the tip points
over the shoulder, not more than twenty-
five degrees from the vertical. The
impetus of this snappy up stroke is
known as the "back cast," and whips the
line high in the air to carry it behind the
angler. As soon as the line straightens
out behind, the rod is brought forward
with a sharp snap of the wrist and fore-
arm, and the line is projected ahead of
the angler to make the long "forward
cast."

The description of this very useful
cast, known as the overhead cast, may
appear difficult, but a few trials will
teach the angler how it should be exe-
cuted and future skill rests upon prac-
tice. The chief thing to keep in mind is
that fly casting is almost entirely a mat-
ter of wrist action, and no shoulder
motion must creep in or the accuracy of
the cast will be interfered with. By
keeping the arm and elbow close to the
body the correct muscular effort is more
easily controlled.

The properly executed overhead cast
consists of three motions, and the second
or back cast is the most important and
difficult of all to master, because the line
is back of the angler and the eye cannot
aid the hand. Just how long to pause in
order to let the line straighten out behind
is the crux of the whole cast, and this
can only be acquired through practice.
After a little experience, the tension of
the line' communicated to the rod will
inform the angler when his back cast is
complete, when the rod must be quickly
snapped downward to send the fly in the
direction the angler is facing.

The best manner of learning how to
cast the fly neatly and with precision is
to practice on the open banks of a pond,
or in the back yard if there is space to
swing a fairly long line. Begin by mak-
ing short casts and endeavor to aim at
accuracy and delicacy rather than to at-
tain long distance. The line should be
kept well up in the air on the back cast,

OUTING

and the rod should neither be carried too
far backward, nor should too long a
pause intervene between the back and
forward casts. The beginner will find
it an advantage to time the cast by count-
ing, "one" for the up stroke, "two and"
for the line to straighten out behind his
back, and "three" for the final forward
throw. The success of the fly caster on
the stream chiefly depends upon handling
the fly lightly, and delicacy together with
reasonable accuracy are the two principal
things to attain. By using a newspaper
for a target in the back yard, one may
become quite proficient with a little sys-
tematic practice.

The skilful handling of the flies on the
water is a much finer art than mere ex-
pertness in casting and means a great
deal more to the average fisherman. The
seasoned fly-caster prefers to wade with
the current, and casting before him, he
flicks his flies to cover every bit of
promising and flshable water. Just
where the trout are wont to hide de-
pends upon the season of the year, the
nature of the stream, and also upon the
trout, since the characteristics of the
brook trout in different localities and in
different streams will be found to vary
considerably, while the habits of the rain-
bow and brown trout are, of course, dis-
similar.

One of the common mistakes which
the novice is likely to make is to en-
deavor to imitate the flight of natural
insects as they alight upon the water.
Now this imitation may be correct in
theory, but the practice of skipping and
twitching the flies about in the fond be-
lief that you are fooling Mr. Trout is
about the worst kind of amateur fishing.
If you are anxious to catch a few trout,
do not attempt to formulate an original
system for their capture, unless you are
more interested in putting your theories
to the test than in catching trout. The
experienced fly-caster will invariably
wade with the stream and the majority
of his casts will be made across the cur-
rent at right angles to the stream's flow.

The flies are cast above the likely-
looking places and the current allowed
to carry them along in a partly sub-
merged and wholly natural manner,
while the angler is enabled to keep a

fairly taut line. As a general thing, the
slightly submerged fly insures the better
luck, yet there are numerous exceptions
to this. But submerged does not mean
fishing with the fly dragging deep in the
water, unless the stream is flooded and
discolored by recent rains, when deep
fishing is the most successful method.

From the standpoint of sport, surface
fishing is recommended, and when cast-
ing is done under favorable conditions
of wind and water, the surface fly will
creel as many fish as any method of fish-
ing. To keep the fly on the surface, the
tip of the rod should be carried fairly
high and the line kept taut by taking up
the slack with the free hand. The flies
should float down with the current in a
perfectly natural manner, and advantage
should be taken of any bits of floating
foam to cast your flies upon it and let
them float with the current.

The brook trout is a hard fighter and
will generally make a savage run at the
fly, and in quick water the fish more
often hooks himself. The psychological
moment arrives when the fish rises to the
fly and the hook is in his mouth. This
is the time to strike, which is done by
checking the line with the forefinger and
turning the wrist to plant the barb; just
how much force to use depends upon the
current and the size of the fish ; if the
trout run small and the stream has some
current, very little force will suffice ; but
in pool fishing, where the water is still
and the fish run large, considerably more
force is required to hook the fish.

Skill in striking the fish comes from
experience, and not a few good trout
will be lost by striking too early or too
late, until the angler gets the "hang" of
judging the behavior of the fish. When
hooked the common error is to rush the
trout to the net as quickly as possible.

However, if slender tackle is used, the
fish must be humored in until his ex-
hausting strength enables you to safely
reel him in. In playing a fish the only
points to remember are to keep a taut
line. Let the fish feel the tension of the
line always; keep the tip well up and let
the rod curve evenly from joint to tip.
A good angling maxim to remember is
this: When the fish pulls, you don't;
when he doesn't, you do.

THE OTHER SIDE OF THE SHIELD

By JOHN T. ROWLAND

Which Shows the Price That Some Must Pay for the Safety

of Others

FREE trader who does busi-
ness on the theory that
flour is worth what he
can get for it doesn't
naturally look for much
love and admiration from
the mission folk; so it wasn't any sly
hankering after affection that led me into
their harbor on the Straits that after-
noon. Rather, it was the sight of a
long, skinny Marconi pole up back of
the hospital, combined with the fact that
the first hard gale of the fall was due
from all indications to bust out of the
nor'west butt-end-first in a matter of
hours and that the owner of the schooner
Sarah Timmons would not be the only
one to wonder where she was when news
of the "terrific blizzard raging over the
Gulf of St. Lawrence" came to be duly
chronicled in the Rockport Daily.

I was trying hard to be proud (and
chewing my whiskers) from the time
that bloomin' stick on the top of Signal
Hill showed up over the horizon until
it got plumb abeam, with Cutthroat
Tickle opening out fair underneath.
Then I lost my nerve.

"Main sheet, all hands!" I sung out,
and to the man at the wheel, "Head on
the wireless, yonder."

Fifteen minutes later the Sarah was
hooked up securely to both anchors just
off the foot of Signal Hill; and before
we'd finished getting the mainsail stowed,
whoopee! here she came, business-end
first as predicted — snow and hail and a
gale of wind that set the old packet back
on her tackle and turned the funnel-
shaped little harbor into a sure-enough
imitation of Peary's winter quarters at
Cape Columbia. We got the yawl boat
half full of water just pulling ashore,
which shows the kind of song-and-dance
old Boreas was passing out. You can

plant your ground tackle on it that I felt
all-fired tickled I'd come in after all
when I got up in the operator's little
kennel on top of the hill and handed
him a message that went the full limit
on words.

"Ain't you scared this coop will foun-
der?" I asked him as an extra-heavy
gust landed just after he'd finished send-
ing. "Now it seems to me" — but he in-
terrupted me quickly — "Shut up, some-
one's calling," and reached for his pencil
and pad with a mighty interested look
on his face.

This Marconi business was one fine
thing, for sure; all this gale of wind and
hell-in-general going on outside, and yet
here we few human beings on a desolate,
God-forsaken coast were talking back and
forth, sending word home just as comfy
as a Wednesday afternoon hen party at
a church sociable; and if anybody ever
got into trouble, why, all they had to do
was just tell the "wireless" to send for
help and haul 'em out!

When the operator had finished scrib-
bling and unshipped his ear-tabs I told
him my sentiments.

He looked at me kind of queer. "Yes,"
he said, "just send for help, but God

help " He stopped short and rapped

on the arm of his chair; then he shoved
me the pad. I read the message twice
through — and took a long look out the
window; here was what it said:

Dr. Bond,

DEEP SEA MISSION STATION, CARRINGTON.

Steamer put into Flower's Cove for shelter.
Two men dying from accident. Come at once
if possible.

Hare,
Commanding R. M. S. S. Hyperion.

^He'llnot try it, surely!"
"Come and see," the operator snapped,
and the next minute we were both racing

[40]

OUTING

for the hospital. All I could think of,
stumbling down the hill (for it might
as well have been dark) was the way
that little dink of a hospital launch would
look out in the Straits in this. Great
God, he surely wouldn't try it!

We found the doctor in his study
reading in front of an open fire, with
slippers on and a big brier pipe in his
face — where it fitted. He nodded to
me kindly enough and — "News, Mar-
shall?" he asked the operator.

"Yes, sir," said Marshall, dropping
the slip on the table like it burned his
fingers and lining up 'longside of me.
The doctor reached out and opened the
paper — and the slow puffing of his pipe
never jumped a beat. I'd counted ten
of them before he laid it down. Then
'he pulled out his watch and studied it for
a few seconds before he swung around to
face Marshall.

"Ask Captain Hare, for me, to com-
mence blowing guiding signals every
thirty seconds at about eleven o'clock
and to continue the same till I get there
— or until 1 a. m. Thank you." That
was all.

I don't rightly knov- just what hap-
pened the next few minutes. I've been
through some pretty tight passages my-
self and kept my head; but this thing —
Jehoshaphat! it got my goat. It was so
cold-blooded !

At any rate I sha'n't forget the wind-
up in a hurry. The doctor was stand-
ing in the doorway with his oilers on. I
was inside facing him.

"If the schooner was mine I'd let you
take her/' I bhirted, "and you might
stand a chance — but that damn little
launch 1"

The doctor's gray eyes lit on mine,
and for some reason I felt like a kid.
"Thanks," he said slowly. "I don't
want the schooner, but I do need you."

Hypnotism? I don't know, was kind
of hoping it might have been something
different. Anyhow we went out to-
gether.

By this time the early winter night
had shut down black. With the sinking
of the sun behind the Bradore Hills the
mercury must have dropped off close to
zero. The snow didn't sting any more;
it cut like steel dust, and the wind — well,

sometimes I expected to feel the whole
bloomin' island starting to turn turtle.

At the end of the hospital wharf we
groped our way on board the launch and
down into the dinky hole that was en-
gine-room, cabin, and foc's'le all in one.

"Now, any suggestions, Captain
Webb?" says the doctor, striking a light
and getting ready to limber up the
motor.

"Just where is this Flower's Cove
place?" I questioned back, Yankee fash-
ion.

"Seventy-two miles east - south - east
from here, diagonally across the Straits."

"That must be inshore from Flower's
Ledges," said I, thinking of the Sailing
Directions' description of those same as
"the most serious menace on an extreme-
ly hazardous stretch of coast."

"It is; in fact, we have to enter be-
tween the ledges, so it will be necessary
to steer a very straight course all the
way. An eighth of a point deviation
either side," he added in the same easy
voice, "will be sufficient to pile us up on
the Ledges."

Now, it's no easy matter to hold even
a sizable vessel true within an eighth of
a point of her course in fine weather,
and as for a little tub like this and on
such a night! "Man," I cried, "you're
daft. It's impossible — it's suicide!"

"Well," he said slowly, looking up
from the engine, "the pier is still along-
side."

"You'll not go!"

"I? Why, yes, / shall. They've
sent for me "

Do you ever remember t^ing to stare
down the principal when you were a kid
in school and called up for heaving a
ball through the window? That's the
way I felt glaring at the doctor. It was
no use.

"Sing out when you're ready," I said,
making for the hatch.

"All right," cheerfully, "cast off the
shore fasts when you hear the engine
start; then take the wheel and hold her
south-a-half-east for the harbor mouth
till I can come up."

As we scudded down the harbor I got
to reckoning up the chances in this
fashion :

First. We were to drive almost

THE OTHER SIDE OF THE SHIELD

straight down the wind for seventy-two
miles and fetch up on a lee shore where
we had to hit a mark about three miles
wide. That just possibly might happen
— on a fluke.

Second. The engine was likely as not
to quit when she got to standing on her
head outside; — so long, Jack!

Third. There was plenty of drift ice
in the Straits that she'd split herself in
two on at the first swipe; — in the hand
of God, since you couldn't see ten feet,
or, say, a 1-to-l shot.

Fourth. It was more than likely we'd
get frozen stiff or washed overboard
when the old gray-backs had begun to
climb over her; — seventy-five per cent
against us.

Fifth. And last, but not least, would
the boat herself stand the gaff if properly
handled? This last count interested me
most, and I'll come back to it pretty
quick, but for purposes of argument let's
give her the benefit of the doubt and
call that 3 to 1 in her favor. Then
here's the way it stacked up:

Out of five things which could be
counted on as likely to happen, any one
going wrong was enough by itself to
dump the whole apple-cart, so that the
actual expectation of life (as the insur-
ance books say) for the next few hours
came down to the product of those va-
rious chances, or, as near as I could fig-
ure it in my head, about a half of one
per cent!

I'd got used to figuring out risks that
way in my trade, and now I was glad
of it, because it relieved my mind alto-
gether— when you realize there's no
chance at all you get past worrying and
just sort of take a mild interest in what's
going on. That was the way I had got
to feeling when the doctor joined me on
deck.

He began explaining to me how he'd
figured the boat would act. As I said,
this point had interested me, so I got
plumb curious to see if he would prove
correct. Here's the idea: Imagine a
bottle corked up and ballasted so that
one side will float up. Then imagine a
couple of bugs fastened on topside and
the bottle tossed into some rapids. Of
course, the bottle will be under water as
much as it is on top, but unless it caves

in or hits something solid it will continue
to float, and the bugs will continue to en-
joy the ride-— so long as they don't
drown or freeze! Well, we were to be
the bugs on the bottle.

The doctor had brought up some half-
inch manila out of the cabin. With this
I lashed him fast to the wheel-box.
Then I passed a bight of the line over
the Comfort's stern and made a bowline
in it that I could slip into myself in a
hurry when it was needed. Finally, I
ducked down into the cabin at the doc-
tor's direction and got a bottle of glycer-
ine, with which I smeared the little win-
dow in the after bulkhead of the cabin-
house through which the helmsman
looked in at the compass. The heat of
the cabin lamp just inside would prevent
ice from forming on the outside of the
glass, and this glycerine was to keep it
from fogging. You have to hand it to
a doctor sometimes!

I had just stowed the bottle below
and slammed the cabin hatch tight shut
when all at once, without any warning,
the old Comfort gave a buck jump that
sent me sprawling.

"Hold fast!" bellowed the doctor.
Next instant all the waters of the earth
sat on my back. "That's the first one,"
I thought. Then I got a gasp of air and
heard the doctor's voice sing out: "We
must be clear of the harbor. Come aft
now." Which I did, and sat with the
bowline under my arms! I'd figured
for some years back that I was a sailor,
but this submarine business was a new
breed of fish to me.

Pretty soon I got some of the brine
out of my lights and saw he'd hauled
her off E.S.E. for Flower's. Then the
old Comfort did another flip and half of
the North Atlantic jumped over us; but
when she had freed herself — shaking like
a Spaniel pup — the lubber-line was just
the least shade to the right of the E.S.E.
di-amond, and as she coasted down the
next planing chute it swung a hair to the
left. For a good ten minutes I kept my
eyes glued on that card all the time it
was in sight, and in that time she only
swung an eighth off, which single error
was evened up by a similar swing in the
other direction immediately after.

It was evident that the doctor was a

OUTING

master helmsman, but equally clear that
he was continually exerting his whole
force of nervous energy and a good share
of the physical. Moreover, his skill was
nine-tenths due to absolute familiarity
with the boat — in which I would be to-
tally lacking. In other words, he would
have to steer the entire distance! Sev-
enty-two miles! Could he last it out,
at that tension?

But what matter! My clothes and
moustache were frozen solid now and
every sea that broke over the old Com-
fort's deck seemed to give her a body
blow. Still it was mildly interesting —
like a hunting trip, where the hunter is
sure to win, only turned around.

The minutes slid past. We were al-
ternately dropping plummet-like into
deeper and deeper pockets and shooting
skyward over loftier and loftier crests.
Sometimes a crest would break before we
topped it and then even the roar of the
wind would be smothered out. In the
whole world there was nothing but
water and wind and the compass card —
the latter alone visible. Our confused
senses were tortured by uncanny leaps
and twists and wriggles which the boat
made in addition to the rhythmic rises
and swoops.

However, one took little count of
these minor sensations. One time the
rope pressed against my chest so hard
that something gave — with a sickening
jab — and another time when a se-. burst
ever us I heard the doctor give a stifled
cry.

What was the use ? A thousand times
I made up my mind to implore him to
broach her to and end it; but somehow
the compass card each time fascinated
me and took my mind away. I got to
betting myself that the next sea would
swing the lubber point 'way off the
course, but it seemed glued there!

Pretty soon it began to irritate me, and
I got to taunting it under my breath —
daring it to move away, go clear around
the compass if it liked.

Then I heard the doctor's voice, sharp
in my ear — "The engine's stopped. Get
up!"

Something woke up; I remembered
suddenly that I was a ship master, a
man. The doctor pulled me over beside

him and put his lips to my ear, "I'm fro-
zen solid here with this lashing," he
shouted. "You will have to look to it."

I watched, or rather felt, for my
chance, and managed to get below with-
out being swept overboard. Then I
held an autopsy on the motor. Gas-
engines are not just in my line, but it
didn't need an expert to con this one's
trouble. It was a broken connecting-
rod.

So it had happened — we were help-
less!

The doctor took the newrs without
comment. Instinctively I looked again
at the compass. With his wonderful skill
he was still holding true on the course,
but this could not last long. We were
fast losing steerage way. Soon she must
broach to and then roll over. Well, it
would be best so.

Again the doctor pulled me over to
him. "You must rig a sail," he shouted.
A second time something seemed to wake
up inside of me, something that was al-
most dead in my numbed, dazed being.

"I unbent all her canvas last week and
stowed it on shore," the doctor was say-
ing, "but there's a patent drogue in the
forepeak; see what you can make of it."

Here was my own sort of work, to get
a jury rig set up, and quickly — before
she had lost way and become unmanage-
able.

I'd come to myself altogether now and
went about it in a hurry. There was a
great collection of junk stowed away
forward, but I yanked everything out on
the cabin floor and pawed it over. Here
was what I wanted — a yard about four
feet long with a square piece of heavy
sailcloth bent onto it. Next I hauled out
a coil of stout manila and took enough
for a set of halyards. Then I got hold
of the lower corners of the canvas and
saw they were fitted with grommets.
Into each of these I secured a piece of
lighter line for sheets. This done I
started for deck.

Then just as I got to the companion-
steps and was reaching for the hatch fast-
ening the whole world suddenly turned
upside down.

Simultaneously there was a crash; I
seemed to be falling through a great
space and then to land very softly.

THE OTHER SIDE OF THE SHIELD

When I came to there was a new pain
in my chest and splitting ache in my
head — the cook-stove was sitting on my
legs and a general assortment of pots,
pans, lanterns, and spare gear lay all
over the place. But the sight that really
interested me was the cabin lamp. This
was one large ball of flame; also the air
was thick with the acrid stench of burn-
ing varnish.

Somehow I got clear of the stove and
ripped up the cabin floorboards. A
bucket was handy, so I dipped it into
the bilge-water, then located my sail —
so I could find it in the dark — and let go
at the burning lamp. Followed a great
puff of steam, a sudden roaring flash, and
— darkness. The fire was done for; so
also the lamp!

I got on deck as quickly as I could
and forward to the mast. How that
young square sail ever was rigged is be-
yond me, but sailors do such stunts by
instinct, when there's nothing else on the
job. It had only sixteen square feet area
and set just a foot or two off the deck,
but in that gale of wind a napkin would
have done the job. The old girl jumped
ahead again and the doctor let out a
shout of joy.

I went back to him. "What hap-
pened when I was below?"

"She stood on her ear," he yelled back;
and, by the great Horn Spoon, there
was a laugh in his voice! "I let her
round-up too much," said he, taking the
blame on himself, "and one caught her
under the counter. She rolled clean
half over and back onto her keel — so
quick I hardly got wet. How are things
below?"

"All over the lot!" Then I remem-
bered, and it seemed as if somebody had
suddenly hit me in the stomach. "The
lamp's finished, blown up, done for; I've
got no way to light the compass for you."
We were finished.

This time there was nothing to say.
The doctor just kept steering. A skil-
ful sailor can approximate a course pretty
closely by the feel of the wind — which
was, of course, the only thing left to do
— but we both knew that now there re-
mained not one chance in a thousand of
striking the far. coast where we had
aimed at it.

Yet somehow about this time I began
to sort of get a second wind. About
everything had happened that seemed as
if it could, and here we were still alive
and afloat. It may have been partly that
my clothes had frozen solid (except at
the joints) and kept out the wind so
that my body was less chilled — or maybe
it was just a case of getting used to it.
At any rate, I had begun again to figure
on the chance of getting through the
Ledges — when the big surprise was
sprung.

The doctor must have been thinking
about the same thing, because he asked me
to see what time it was. I ducked down
below and managed to find a dry match.
The clock showed eleven-thirty, which,
at ten knots' average speed, would mean
we had come within fifteen miles of the
destination. I wanted to cheer; then a
curious glint underfoot caught my eye,
and just as the match went out I saw a
tongue of water snake up between the
cracks and glide across the cabin floor.
I sat still in the dark and waited for
about ten minutes. Then I struck an-
other match. This time the whole cabin
floor was awash. I went on deck.

For that next half hour I envied the
doctor his job at the wheel. It was hell
just to sit still — and sink! Various
schemes went through my head. The
wind seemed to be moderating. I won-
dered if we could'nt sneak off south for
the nearest point on the Newfoundland
shore and take a chance on running into
a lee behind some island.

The more I thought of this scheme the
better it seemed. St. John's Island
would be handiest. We should be about
off it now and not more than three or
four miles out. The wind certainly was
moderating, and the snow seemed less
impenetrable; one could see some little
distance now!

My hopes began to beat high. As we
rose on the next crest I looked hard to
the southeast. Was that something
darker than the sky ? The next time we
rose I looked again, with my heart in
my mouth. It was still there! Then I
shut my eyes, counted a hundred, and
looked again ; yes, there could be no mis-
taking if — the dark loom of high land!

I threw up my arms and let out a

OUTING

shout, "St. John's Island, Doctor! By
God, we're saved — we're saved!"

"How's that?" he asked. I was sur-
prised at the new note of weakness in his
voice. The strain had surely been gruel-
ing.

"St. John's Island," I cried, shaking
him, "over there — harbor — d'you hear?"

He was silent for a few moments.
Then —

"Yes, we should be about off it now,"
he replied without special interest.

"But, for God's sake," I yelled, dumb-
founded, "what are you doing? Aren't
you going in?"

"The mail steamer is at Flower s" he
answered simply.

I confess it; I wept.

Half an hour passed. We were still
afloat — waddling like a drunken goose.
At the end of an hour every sea swept us,
though the wind had moderated consid-
erably. I was near numb with cold.
Neither of us had spoken.

Then suddenly something white flashed
out ahead.

"Ice!" I yelled, pointing. There it
went again! — a long white rim gleam-
ing for a moment across the sea before us.

"No, the Ledges," said the doctor
quietly. Every sea we rose on showed
the white line of breaking water nearer.
Presently we could hear its crashing
above the roar of the wind. It lay di-
rectly to leeward and stretched as far as
one could see to right and left. There
was no escaping it.

The doctor's hand fell on my knee.
"We have missed the channel clean. It's
too bad," he said simply.

I couldn't speak, but I gripped his arm
tight, and in that instant I loved this
iron man as I never knew one man could
love another. We sat there waiting — -
drifting closer — not even caring to delay
the finish by dousing the sail.

"Look!" cried the doctor suddenly.

I followed the direction of his arm.
Well off to starboard there was a small,
dark gap in the white wall of spume.
We watched it while another sea piled
over the ledges and saw it stay in the
same place — an opening in the reef!

"God! if we only had the engine!" I
groaned. A curious rasping sound came
from the doctor's throat. I looked and

saw he was struggling like a madman
with the frozen lashings that held him
to the wheel. With numb hands I tore
open my oilers and fumbled for my
sheath-knife, but before I could draw it
out the man beside me had thrown him-
self forward and cast all his great
strength into one convulsive effort. The
next instant he fell crashing, free, on the
deck.

"Cut away that sail!" the doctor
called to me, as he kicked open the cabin
hatch and leaped down. Ten seconds
later I joined him in the cabin and took
an improvised kerosene torch from his
hand. At our feet stood the engine
whose restoration to life might save ours.
It was a two-cylinder machine. The
connecting-rod in the forward cylinder
had loosened and ripped off the bottom
half of its crank bearing, whereupon the
rod itself had jammed in the crank-case
so as to prevent the shaft from turning.

If one could dismantle the injured
cylinder and remove the rod the engine
would probably run on its after cylinder
alone, but to do that would mean the
unscrewing of many nuts and bolts, a job
for minutes with all facilities — while we
had seconds only and no facilities. The
doctor stood silent with head bent for-
ward and massive shoulders bowed. The
seconds of our life ticked out.

Then suddenly he had leaped to the
forward end of the cabin and from the
forepeak was dragging out a cumbersome
iron object — the launch's spare anchor.

"Look out!" he shouted. Quick as
lightning he had swung the heavy cast-
ing up over his head in both hands,
poised it there for a moment, and
brought it down with the sweep of an
axe upon the top of the disabled cylinder.

There was a shower of iron and — •
thank God! — it was the cylinder that
was shattered ! With his bare hands the
doctor tore the wreckage apart and hove
out the piston and the bent connecting-
rod on the floor. The engine was free!

Next he grasped the flywheel and gave
it a spin. Nothing happened. I picked
up a priming-can and opened the pet-
cock of the remaining cylinder. While I
was priming it the thunder of the Ledges
shut out all other sound. Would we
be just too late, after all?

THE OTHER SIDE OF THE SHIELD

On his knees in the water over the
cabin floor the doctor cranked the motor
as you might spin an empty coffee mill.
Again there came the crashing roar of a
sea on the Ledges almost at hand.
Would the engine never start — God, it
was too much! Suddenly in the uncer-
tain flare of the torch my eye fell upon
the ignition switch. It was turned off!

I thought my hand would never reach
it ; yet it could not have taken more than
a minute fraction of a second.

Instantly the engine came to life. A
big shape hurled itself past me up onto
deck. The wheel was spun hard over.
The boat seemed to respond.

Fortunately it occurred to me to look
at the carburetor. I saw that the water
in the cabin was nearly up to it. I
grasped a bucket and thrust it down in
the water until I had passed its rim un-
der the carburetor, then let it rise as far
as it would. It took all the nerve I had
to sit there in the cabin and hold that
bucket. I had felt the vessel round up
toward the wind and knew that the doc-
tor was using the best of judgment in
edging his way toward the opening; but
the question was whether he could still
make it before the send of the sea and the
weight of the wind had carried us down
on the Ledge?

I counted the seconds — then the min-
utes— surely the little boat was at least
making a game fight!

All at once I felt her bow swing off,
and at the same instant the doctor
shouted. I dropped the bucket and
leaped for the hatch — was it salvation or
death ?

On deck I saw at once that the climax
had come. We were being shot forward
on the crest of a high, steep sea. Just
ahead lay a narrow gap of black water,
for which the doctor was struggling to
hold her true — the sole break in a great,
tumbled line of seething spume which
stretched off to infinity on either hand.

Now white water was roaring and crash-
ing on both sides of us — a scant five
yards away. The fury of it was past de-
scribing; it numbed my brain. Then,
like a flash, all had been left astern and
we shot into the quiet, sheltered water of
Flower's Cove — through a hole in the
Ledges !

• • • • •

Hot blankets, followed by dry clothes
and some steaming soup, will sure work
wonders for a man. By 2 a. m. the
Hyperion s cheerful smoking-room looked
good to me. I wandered in with the
ship's first officer, and he ordered drinks.

At another table Dr. Bond, likewise
in borrowed clothes, was explaining to
Captain Hare the theory of splints and
bandaging. You might have thought he
had been there all, the time.

Most of the passengers had been un-
able to go to sleep on account of the noise
of the gale, and now they had drifted
into the smoking-room and were gath-
ered in groups, listening to the doctor or
trying to pump me.

"I tell you what it is," said one smug,
satisfied, twentieth-century hobo of the
drummer variety, "man's dominion over
nature will soon be complete. Look at
this wireless, for instance — marvelous
thing — here we put into this little port
stormbound, with two fellows dying up
forward — and, lo and behold! We just
whistle their salvation out of the very
air. Nothing can harm us any more
with the wireless. It is the invulnerable
shield of Hector come true!"

Across the table the mate caught my
eye and looked up at the man with a cu-
rious grin — the same look which I had
seen hours before on the face of the op-
erator at Carrington. "I don't know a
whole lot about this Hector person and
such," he observed drily, "but it occurs
to me that Captain Webb here may think
there's a reverse side to this particular
shield !"

HELP FOR THE AMATEUR HIKER is offered
by William C. Stevens in May. If you like to walk and
want to know how to get the most pleasure out of
it with the least effort and hardship, read his article.

SAFETY FIRST

By EDWARD C. CROSSMAN

Cases Which Prove That a Gun Is Never as Safe as the Casual

Handler Thinks

^^HESE little instances are
facts, not fiction, told ex-
actly as they happened,
and happening either
within my own sight, or
else told me by men whom
I know to be accurate, and not drawers
of the long bow. There's no moral to
be pointed out, it runs too plainly
through the tales. Also, as I've used a
gun since I was ten, I have some twenty-
two years' gun experience back of me.
Also, with this experience and the usual
proportion -of the gun accidents that
happen to every man who uses a gun
enough to run with the law of chances,
I have reached certain fixed conclusions.
They are:

That I'm more afraid of a gun now
than when I first started in; not afraid
of its recoil or its report, but of its devil-
ish uncertainty, its certainty of being
loaded just when it should not be.

That if a man accidentally points a
gun at a human being he should be re-
minded of the fact in no uncertain terms
so that he will take heed next time.

That if a man deliberately points a
gun,at a human being, save at one whom
he is entirely willing to harm or intimi-
date, he should be clouted alongside the
head with the first heavy object to hand.
He is but a peg above the sort of fellow
who would put a live rattlesnake in your
blankets for a "joke."

That if a man fires a gun without be-
ing reasonably sure that his target is not
a human being, and that his bullet or
shot will not injure someone beyond, his
arms should be taken away from him,
and his name posted in every sportsman's
magazine in the country as a fool unfit
to own firearms.

The only apology for printing these

[66]

incidents is that they are true, and but a
jew of those that every observing man of
long gun experience can recount.

From where he sat the hunter could
look down into the little meadow below
him. In its center lay a hundred-yard
patch of tangled brush. Its skirts were
clear for a few yards, then came the
brush of the surrounding hillsides. Be-
yond the patch, away from the hunter, lay
the green of the little mountain cieraga.

As he watched, a big four-point buck
stepped out of the brush of the hillside,
walked swiftly across the few yards of
clear space, and entered the center patch,
which concealed him again.

Presently the brush on the opposite
side began to wave, and the hunter above
could see dimly the dark body moving
through. The sight of the powerful rifle
fell on the object, but to the mind of the
hunter came his old rule, be sure. Not
one chance in a million was there of an-
other human being in that remote can-
yon, but he waited.

In a moment more the disturbance in
the brush reached the edge — and out
stepped a man, dressed in khaki, the
color of a deer, unaware of the presence
of the buck on the other side of the patch.
Lying perdu, the cunning buck broke
and ran only when a shot crashed over
his head a few moments later. He had
not gone ten feet into the patch before
he heard the rustle of the hunter on the
other side, then he stopped and waited.

It was in the days of the old Naval
Militia of Chicago, the good old First
Ship's CreW. The discipline was strict,
a veritable martinet commanded.

Standing at attention on the upper
"deck" of the old building, a man raised

SAFETY FIRST

his hand and straightened his cap. A
moment later he was on his way to the
"deck" below, with a guard over him
and orders to walk up and down with a
forty-pound sack of shot over his
shoulder.

The sentry was a friend of the culprit.
The rifles in those days were the old
Remington-Lee .45, with box magazine
and magazine cut-off. The prisoner jest-
ingly refused to walk, and equally in
jest the sentry took aim at his head and
snapped the rifle. Then he slammed the
bolt out and in and again snapped it at
the prisoner — all in fun of course. Then
he happened to glance into the open mag-
azine when he again opened the gun.

Five neat cylinders of lead and brass
snuggled therein, left by some bone-head
who had been to the target range and
who forgot to remove the filled maga-
zine. Only the "off" position of a little
catch lay between the "prisoner" and the
bloody death that comes from a .45 cali-
ber lead bullet at ten-foot range.

It was an automatic .22. The ex-
tractor was not well designed, and if it
snapped forward when the gun was
apart, it became bent inward and refused
to grasp the rim of the shell. The sales-
man in the store took the little rifle, re-
moved the magazine, pulled back the
bolt twice to make sure the chamber was
empty, and set it up in the rack, to be
cleaned when leisure permitted. Ordi-
nary precaution had been taken.

A customer a bit later asked to see the
new rifle. The salesman took it down,
pulled back the bolt, let it snap forward
— and the rifle remarked viciously, "Pa-
ack." The bullet went up through the
ceiling.

Investigation proved that the extractor
had in closing, because of being bent,
failed to grip the rim of the case. In-
stead it struck the rim of the shell, and
the third time had battered the soft cop-
per enough to fire the fulminate. And
the "Smart Aleck," the "Wise Guy,"
the fellow who knows all about guns be-
cause he owns one, says that "It ain't
dangerous, I know it ain't loaded."
Luckily the salesman who handled this
gun knew guns and the tricks thereof.

The shell was a bit damp and did not

chamber freely in the pump gun. The
shooter closed it and tried to let down
the little, slippery, miserably inadequate
hammer. It failed to slip down when he
pressed the trigger — the action was not
quite closed. He released the trigger,
gripped the stock, and slammed the slide
handle forward to complete the closing.
Luckily only a few pellets struck the
feet of the other man and did not even
get through his shoes. It was a pleasant
trick of this particular gun that if the
trigger were pulled when the bolt was
not quite closed, but near enough
to appear shut, it would not re-engage,
when released on the hammer failing to
fall. Then, when the gun was forced
shut, the hammer fell of its own accord.
No, this gun was not dangerous, "I
didn't even have my finger near the
trigger."

'Til fix it," quoth the husky when
the lady could not get the trombone
rifle closed. He slammed the action-
slide-handle home with all the force of
a husky forearm — then stared with green-
ish countenance at the hole a soft point
.30 automatic bullet made just to the
right of his big toe — said hole luckily
in the ground, not in his foot. No, the
rifle was not built to fire this way, it
could not possibly do it — but trial proved
that the rifle could be fired just as fast
as the action-slide-handle was slammed
home, without finger being near the trig-
ger. "Perfectly safe, I didn't have my
finger near the trigger."

The gunsmith and the owner of the
Mauser both tested it. The set trigger
had been changed over to an ordinary
fixed one, with Zy2 pound pull, not the
ordinary double draw with which bolt
guns are usually equipped. The bolt
stood their handling perfectly well — and
the gun was passed as safe.

It fell into the hands of a person used
to a bolt action rifle, who made a turn
bolt slam home with the speed of a
straight pull. The first shot missed the
goat, then the bolt slammed open and
shut with the speed that comes from
training.

"Pow," bellowed the rifle, in the ac-
cents of a Springfield 1906 cartridge. A
jet of dust flew up on the hillside. A

OUTING

second time the bolt was yanked open
and shut, the hunter cursing himself for
apparently holding back on the trigger
with what must have been a third hand.
Again the gun roared. A "safe" gun
had once more illustrated how safe a
gun is.

The safety was on, therefore the man
who knows it all stood the gun against
the fence, loaded, barrels closed. A
safety is a safety, isn't it? The other
fellow wiggled the top rail of the fence
as he climbed down, and the double ham-
merless slid slowly along the rail, cleared
it, and dropped heavily on a stone, muz-
zles toward the man who had just slid
down from the fence. The safety was
on, it was harmless.

The doctor got there too late; a
charge of shot through the upper thigh
at a range of ten feet leaves little for
the doctor to do, anyhow. And the
safety was still on, although they found
that the sear had jarred out of the bent
in the tumbler, from the blow of the
gun on the stone. The safety was on,
the young fellow must be still living, it
is all a mistake of some sort.

The old gentleman, not so very old
after all, for he loved to hunt and was
as fond of guns as ever, stepped up on a
rock beside the trail to gaze down the
lovely canyon. He dropped his hands
to his hips to hitch up his belt, standing
there in plain sight with his handsome
face, his short white beard, and his gray
hair.

A heavy blow whirled him half around
and his right hand went suddenly numb.
The bellow of a rifle echoed and re-
echoed up the canyon.

By the luck that protects a few men
from fools, the spitzer from the heavy
army rifle had merely gone through the
right hand without breaking a bone,
struck a glance blow on his side, and
departed without entering the body.

The horrified fellow with the rifle,
who had met the old gentleman on the
trail but a few moments before, had wild
cats on the brain, saw wild cats in every
bush, and said that when he saw the old
gentleman with the white beard step up
on the rock a couple of hundred yards

away, he thought he was a wild cat!

It was the usual variety of take down
.22 caliber repeater. The cautious own-
er threw down the lever three or four
times, then pulled out the magazine tube
and tipped up the rifle so any cartridges
in the magazine would run down into
sight. Then it was taken down to put
in the case. Snugly ensconced in the
mouth of the magazine, but caught so
the follower did not drive it down into
the carrier, lay a long rifle cartridge. So
loosely was it held that a slight jar of
the receiver released it, and it slid down
to the cartridge stop, ready to move into
the carrier when the lever was depressed.
"It's not loaded, I worked the lever and
looked in the magazine, go ahead and
snap it to see how you like it."

He was the usual fool, and he held in
his hand a powerful automatic pistol.
"Want to see it?" he asked of his friend,
"I'll unload it for you." He knew all
about automatic pistols, he owned one
and had owned it for fully an hour. He
depressed the magazine catch and slid the
full magazine out into his hand. "Go
ahead, she's safe now," he assured his
friend. Had he not taken out the maga-
zine, how could it be otherwise than
safe? A moment later it was as safe as
guns ever are, for the friend fired the
cartridge that remained in the chamber,
and that had nothing to do with the
ones in the magazine. The man in the
office across the street spent a month in
the hospital. It was a powerful gun.

He had one of the old Single Action
.45 's with the solid frame and the little
gate at the right side of the frame by
which empties are removed and full car-
tridges are slid into the cylinder cham-
bers. He loaded it carefully, being a
careful man with guns, then showed his
two friends how the sliding rod below
the barrel drove out the cartridges
through the opened gate. Carefully he
removed the cartridges and spun the cyl-
inder to make sure that every one of the
six chambers was empty. He was called
away for a few moments, and left the
gun and box of shells lying beside it.

A half hour later he started to put the

GAME PROTECTION

gun back into the holster, still talking to
his friends. From force of habit he
dropped the gate and again spun the cyl-
inder. Across the gate there moved the
head of a cartridge, just one. One of
the friends glanced at the gun at his
exclamation, then turned red.

"I loaded it up to see how it worked,"
he said, "but I counted the cartridges as
I took them out, and I took out all five
I'm sure. Holds six and I left one in?
Why that's funny, I got a Forefoot and
Johnson home and it only holds five."

It was an old muzzle loader, with the
barrel badly breech-burnt as was the
fashion of those old guns. For years it
had lain around a garret, then the owner
decided to have the barrel screwed out
of the receiver, the burnt end cut off, a
new nipple put in, and the old gun put
into shape once more.

The smith ran down the old worm
charge extractor, pulled out a wad that
lay on top of the shot, poured out the
shot, took out the powder wads, and
poured out the powder. Surely there
could be no safer gun.

He took it off the stock and put the
breech in the fire to enable him to turn
off the barrel. A streak of fire and blue
smoke drove across the shop, and a thim-

bleful of shot, nearly as one shot, drove
out the shop window.

Theories are all right and luckily the
smith lived to theorize, because he re-
fused to trust his body before the muz-
zle even of an old gun half torn to
pieces. Apparently in yean gone by
someone had tried to fire the old gun,
failed, jumped at the conclusion that it
was empty, without checking up by the
ramrod, and had rammed a second charge
home on top of the first. A farmer boy
is full of such tricks, with a contraband
gun and a small knowledge of gun lore.
The smith drew the first charge and the
gun presented him with the second when
the breech grew hot enough.

Purposely I have avoided the long,
weary list of the performance of fools
with guns, saving a few exceptions that
show "how it happened."

I've tried to show you how the most
careful of men and the most experienced
ones can be caught napping by the demon
that lurks in gun barrels.

I like guns as some men like race
horses or yachts or dogs. I own a cabinet
full of them, but not one would I trust
for as long as a watch tick, were its
muzzle turned on someone that I would
not dream of harming.

WHAT AN OLD MARKET SHOOTER

THINKS ABOUT GAME

PROTECTION

By EDWARD T. MARTIN

The Man with the Gun Is not the Only Enemy Against Which
Our Birds Should Be Shielded

N the Western mountains, cats, cou-
gars, and hawks, aided by big gray
timber wolves and their coyote cou-
sins, undoubtedly destroy more game
than all visiting huntsmen. In places
where a vigorous war, prompted
by high price of fur and liberal bounties
offered by State or county, has been
waged on these game eaters, so far as

the writer can learn, there has been an
increase rather than a decrease in the
number of deer, grouse, and rabbits, an
increase rather surprising in view of the
constantly growing body of visiting
shooters.

If on the outskirts of civilization and
in thinly settled parts of the land, it has
been deemed wise to pay bounties for

OUTING

the killing of these game destroyers, why
in the farming country would it not be
showing equal wisdom to pay directly
for game protection? Courts have de-
cided that game is the property of the
state. Both nation and state unite in
making laws for its protection. Why
should they not also unite in paying
bounties for its increase?

In some states the planting of trees
has been encouraged either by a reduc-
tion of taxes or by actual cash.

They tell us a tariff is necessary for
the protection of infant industries, and
to increase the output of home-made
goods. They argue in Congress in fa-
vor of a subsidy for American shipping,
so why should not something be done
along the same lines for American game ?
Every dollar paid in bounties would
come back a hundred-fold and more.

Game laws sometimes protect and
sometimes they do not. A farmer argues :

"Well, I'm feeding those birds; why
shouldn't I kill some when I want a
mess for my table, law or no law? My
crops have no closed season. The chick-
ens or quail or ducks eat my corn and
wheat when they are hungry, and I can't
stop them. Seems to me turn about is
fair play."

To get perfect protection for the birds,
something must be done to make this
kind of man change his mind. A bounty
would do it. Game wardens are not
ubiquitous. There are only a few — per-
haps but one — to a county with a thou-
sand farmers and twice as many farmers'
sons to watch. They can't do it; be-
sides, perhaps these people are their
friends; possibly their relatives. Then
they may have been raised on a farm
themselves, anyway among farmers with
the same ideas of right and wrong; con-
sequently it is very easy to get on the
blind side of them.

Escaping Conviction

If an arrest should be made, the trial
would come off before a local justice
with a jury dominated by the granger
influence. What a chance for convic-
tion ! Such cases always go one way.

The writer once was present at a deer-
killing case in a Western state. A poor

homesteader shot a doe a few weeks the
wrong side of the law. A neighbor with
whom he was on bad terms saw him car-
rying the meat home and next day swore
to a complaint before the nearest justice
as the law provided. It was a serious
matter; a minimum fine of $25, which
meant fifty days in jail, as the offender
was troubled with the usual backwoods
scarcity of cash.

The evidence was clear and positive.
The complainant was within a few yards
of the hunter. He swore he saw him
walking down the trail carrying a rifle,
with part of the deer slung across his
shoulders. The only question asked in
cross-examination was:

"Will you swear it wasn't a sheep?"

The witness, with a snort of derision,
blurted out, "Do you think I'm a fool
and cain't tell a doe when I see one?"

That was all; no character witnesses,
no arguments, nothing. And the case
was submitted for decision. The writer,
who had hired the offender to help on a
fishing trip for which supplies were al-
ready bought, was sure nearly two
months would pass before his man could
climb a mountain side again, and was
surprised to see the judge hesitate. Still
more so when he heard him say:

"I ain't a-going to convict nobody on
sech evidence. It might have been a
sheep. If it wa'n't, why didn't the wit-
ness say so when I asked him 'bout it?
Not guilty."

"Lucky boy," the writer remarked.

"Lucky nothin'," the "sheep" toter re-
sponded quickly. "You see, I knowed I
was in for trouble when I met that
skunk, an' soon as 'twas dark I hung a
hindquarter of that 'mutton' in yonder
old rooster's barn," pointing to the jus-
tice, "an' he had some of it for breakfast
this morning."

Local Feeling

That is the feeling all over the land.
Farmers stand by farmers. Residents of
the same localitv help one another. Of
course, if an outsider is caught, even
with a doubt in his favor, it goes hard
with him. Nothing like turning good
money loose in a community and keeping
it there, too.

GAME PROTECTION

In a rural settlement a little easy
money goes a long way. Where birds
are scarce — and does anyone know where
they are plentiful? — some small bounty,
some remission of taxes, would cover
everything and stop seven-eighths of the
illicit shooting, for in almost every town-
ship there are resident shooters enough
to decimate many a covey, to bring home
many a horn-wearing "coon."

Then, if the bounty did not furnish
sufficient incentive for the land-owners
to provide, or, more properly, to spare
from the plow, spots of grass, or brush,
or briers, nesting-places for grouse and
quail, and shelter as well, let the state
go a step farther and either require by
law that such be done, or pay out a little
more easy money for rental of some
tracts of almost waste land — the farmers
surely would meet the authorities more
than half-way. A small amount of
money only would be required; one or
two such tracts in each township and the
problem would be solved. In a few
years grouse and quail would be back to
their own again.

Let us see. One pair of chickens or
quail, a dozen eggs, with full protection
from man, eight young birds should live
and reach maturity. That would mean
forty birds the second year, a hundred
and sixty the next, and six hundred and
forty the next. Looks well on paper,
does it not? Well, it might look even
better in fact, unless the chickens were
to become restless and migrate; but then,
with uniform laws, the country some-
where would receive benefit from their
increase. The quail would remain at
home and so would the ruffed grouse.

Vigorous Action Needed

There should be no half-way measures.
Vigorous action should be taken. Shoot-
ing should be stopped on all birds ex-
cepting water-fowl for a period of, say,
five years, stopped all over the land.

With the farmers as allies, the present
army of game protectors would have lit-
tle trouble in silencing the guns of the
country lads, as well as those of the city
sportsmen, and with "elbow room" for
the birds to live and breed, even in the
lifetime of some of us old fellows for-

mer conditions would to a considerable
extent be revived.

And the water-fowl? First of all do
away with your reserved grounds and
baited ponds; or, better yet, close them
against all shooters and let the birds have
the benefit of them. Places of refuge
in Southern waters are very good as far
as they go, but they should go as far as
the Stars and Stripes fly. Such spots of
refuge should dot the land from the wa-
ters of the Gulf to the Canadian line,
and what better locations could there be
than those places which for years have
been slaughter pens for the ducks?

Few have an idea what a farce on
game protection this reserved land and
baited pond business is, particularly west
of the Rockies. I have before me the
records of some shooting clubs, records
to be sure, over a year old, but official
and undoubtedly correct.

On the reserved lands of one club dur-
ing the season 9,200 ducks were killed,
6,025 by the members of another, while
scores of between 4,000 and 5,000 were
rather common, and a club that could
show only 2,000 was indeed unlucky.
And this is the way they shot. "Of
fourteen members shooting on the Blank-
Blank ponds, twelve had the limit by
10 o'clock." Of the Weedy-Weedy club
members "some obtained the limit in half
an hour." Isn't this as bad as the old
market shooting days?

The writer has been guilty of market
shooting. He has killed very many
game birds, but never while shouting
for the Other Man to be stopped in his
shooting, or crying for laws that would
shut everybody off but himself. Neither
has he ever baited birds until they be-
came as tame as barnyard chickens and
required no more skill to kill than a hen
coming to get her morning rations of
corn, and then bragged of how many
straight limits he had made.

While the man inside the fence was
doing so much slaughtering, the man
outside, the fellow made of common clay,
"hardly averaged a duck to a gun."

The same authority, in giving a
resume of the season, says: "Owing
to the fact that some of the clubs do not
keep records of their shooting, it is im-
possible to complete an accurate data of

OUTING

the number of birds killed, . . . and
the figures were better not ^published
even if available.'* I should say not.
No, indeed ! People would know then.

Do away with the reserved land as
shooting grounds. Give every one a
chance alike, but confine water-fowl
shooting to the lakes, the bays, the riv-
ers, the big waters, and soon the birds
will learn to care for themselves in the
far West even as they do in the country
of the big lakes. No one will kill the
limit in half an hour, and the tally of a
shooting club will be under 900 rather
than over 9,000. Besides, the ducks will
breed locally as in days of long ago,
when from Minnesota to New Madrid
thousands of mallard, teal, and wood
duck were hatched and taught to fly each
summer and fall. Even in the Calumet
marshes, now a part of the city of Chi-
cago, bags of fifty and sometimes a hun-
dred home-raised ducks were made on
opening days.

Once more my authority tells me how
the Bang-Bang Club wound up their
season by having, on the final day, a mud-
hen shoot — an annual event — at which
it is estimated this time over four thou-
sand mud hens were killed. What for?
Sport? Game protection? And what
was done with the dead birds? The
coast mud hens are even less palatable
than their Eastern kindred, and the wri-
ter has been told that on none of these
mud-hen shoots, which are somewhat
common, are the killed birds retrieved —
simply counted and left where they fall.
Think what a day to talk about! Four
thousand birds killed! What sport!

"Those birds are no good; they are
unfit to eat," says one, apologizing for
the slaughter.

True, and isn't that the very reason
why they should be permitted to live?
All they are fit for is to skim over the
water ahead of a shooter, dragging their
legs and splashing as they go; to cluck
and gabble as they feed on the seeds of
aquatic plants, to sun themselves on some
grassy bank, and to live. Why should
anyone grudge them that little?

The writer once heard it estimated
that in California there were upwards
of 250 shooting clubs having enclosed or
posted grounds and many of them bait-

ing their ponds. A conservative esti-
mate would be a kill of 2,000 birds to
each club; add to this cripples that die
and dead not gathered, and we have a
total that the Kankakee in its palmy
days never equaled. This is why almost
the first law passed should be one which
would protect the water-fowl from such
protectors. Isn't it always the way with
some people? "Bar the doors to every-
body but us."

Good Wardens Scarce

The trouble with this game protection
business always has been to get wardens
who are honest and competent. In the
old days, particularly so far as the large
cities were concerned, many were neither,
consequently the laws wTere openly vio-
lated.

A certain firm of game dealers, doing
business in a large Northwestern city,
advertised broadcast, "Ship us your
game. We, and we only, can send game
East, and so obtain a good price," which
was true, all except the good price. This
firm grew rich by standing in with the
powers that be and crowded their rivals
out of the game business.

In another city the writer was packed
and all ready for an all-winter shoot,
when, early in December, he called on a
middleman to whom he wished to sell
his birds.

"Yes, I'll take them," the dealer said,
when the price was named without ask-
ing, "How many?"

"Isn't there any danger we will fill
you up?" he was asked.

"Not a bit of it," the man replied.
"Send all you can kill or buy." Then
said, "Come up the street a little way
and I'll show you something."

The "something" was a cold-storage
room filled with boxes of quail. "I have
twenty thousand dozen of those boys
here and in another place. They will
not last through the holidays," he said,
"and I am in the market for as many
more."

"How about the closed season and the
game warden?" I asked; then remarked,
"They must stand you a little over two
dollars a dozen."

He nodded.

WRESTLING WITH A BULL MOOSE

"And it would put a crimp in your
bank account if they were to be seized."

He winked, then, laughing, said,
"There is more danger of being struck
by lightning. You see, we helped get
the chief warden his job, and — but never
mind."

In the spring he told me his "handle"
for the winter was over fifty thousand
dozen quail, besides other game in pro-
portion, a single purchase of contraband
from a northern Michigan dealer poli-
tician being fifteen thousand partridges
(ruffed grouse).

The writer only has the man's word
for actual numbers, but from what he
saw and from what others told him he
believes there was but little exaggera-
tion, if any. He also thinks, in these
later days, there is much less of this
business done, yet undoubtedly some, par-
ticularly in the East and Middle West.
Where politics is supreme one is always
suspicious of graft. Where an official
obtains position, not from any great fit-
ness, but because he helped elect some
man, he would not be human unless he
favored that man's friends.

As a consequence, all game wardens
and their deputies should be under civil
service rules, should be appointed only
after a competitive examination, and
should hold office during good behavior.
This done, they will owe their places
neither to politics nor politicians and will
be fearless in arresting the man with a
pull, doing so as quickly as if he were
only a plain, everyday citizen.

A great benefit of having farmers on
the side of game protection is that many
less birds will be shipped from the small
towns as cores for barrels of produce, or
as poultry, eggs, and butter. Often kegs
of butter have gone into Chicago in
which the butter was but skin deep;
cases of eggs of which only the two top
layers ever saw a hen. The illicit game
concealed therein sold to hotel or restau-
rant and was served as "broiled snow-
bird on toast," or as "baked prairie
owl."

If farmers were deriving even a little
financial benefit from the preservation of
game, Mr. Country Dealer could get
nothing to ship in this way, unless possi-
bly some boy smuggled him a few birds
unknown to Dad ; then the risk of ship-
ping would be so great, it is doubtful if
he would care to take the chance, for in
a small town everybody knows what
everybody else is doing and detection
would seem almost certain.

With the farmers working side by side
with other forces for game protection,
with- water-fowl shooting restricted to
big water, with reserved lands made into
homes and breeding-places for the birds,
with a closed season over the entire na-
tion for a short period of years, the bat-
tle would be won, the problem solved,
and the Feathered People of America
show such rapid increase that in a few
years they could again be shot, this time
in moderation, and there would be sport
for rich and poor alike, with no favored
class to monopolize it all.

WRESTLING WITH A BULL MOOSE

By ROBERT E. PINKERTON

T is difficult to make any one believe
that a man could wrestle with a bull
moose, grasping the great antlers in
his hands, and come out alive, or
even uninjured. It would not be
difficult were one to see Colonel

D. Douglas Young, retired, of King

George's Canadian army, the man who

did it.

Colonel Young to-day weighs more

than three hundred pounds, and he is

not tall. Neither is he exactly fat. He
is just big. When he was nineteen years
old he weighed 230, and none of it was
fat. He was all-English boxer at
twenty and champion single-sticker of
the mother isle. No man weighing 230
could be those things and carry any sur-
plus weight. He was an exceptional
horseman, either in the saddle or with
the reins, and has been shooting a life-
time. He commanded the Canadian

OUTING

troops sent to maintain order on the
Canadian side of the Alaskan line in '98
and piloted his detachment through the
White Horse Rapids without losing a
man.

To-day, after his retirement, the
Colonel is not content to sit in a Toron-
to club and sip his Scotch. He has been
superintendent of Ontario's newest game
preserve, Quetico Forest, and is now
supervisor of fisheries in Western On-
tario.

The Colonel wrestled the first moose
he ever saw. It was not a pugnacious
spirit that prompted the encounter.
There was nothing else for the Colonel
to do.

Long ago, before there was thought of
game preservation, Colonel Young was
hunting caribou in Quebec. With a
French-Canadian guide, he had gone
north toward St. John's. There was no
limit in those days, and when the Colo-
nel saw a herd of caribou on a small
lake, he shot six. He was a good shot,
and he did it with nine cartridges, leav-
ing one in his rifle. Hurrying across the
lake after the retreating herd, he took
off his coat, in the pockets of which were
his extra shells. He reached the other
side of the lake and entered the thick
spruce. His guides had stopped by the
dead caribou.

As soon as he had stepped into the
brush, Colonel Young saw his first
moose. It was not more than fifty feet
away. Colonel Young fired and wound-
ed the bull, which immediately charged
him.

It was a typical North Quebec winter.
The snow was six feet deep. The bull
floundered toward the Colonel, who was
trying to find another shell in the rifle
or in his clothes. When he realized
that his gun was empty, the bull was
upon him, and there was nothing for
him to do but grasp its antlers.

The first pressure of the bull's rush
was too much for one of the Colonel's
snowshoes, and the frame snapped. He

could not give ground, because he could
not walk backward with the webs on
his feet. He says that he did not realize
the danger of the sharp hoofs of the fore-
feet because he knew nothing of moose,
and he ascribes his ultimate escape to the
fact that the snow was too deep for the
moose to strike successfully. Anyone
who has seen the Colonel's mammoth
arms can understand that they had some-
thing to do with it.

As soon as he grappled with the moose
the Colonel began to call for his guide.
He braced himself with his disabled
snowshoes as best he could and held the
moose away. But he knew that he could
not last long under the strain and in-
creased his calls for help. The guide
did not come, and the Colonel felt his
strength slipping.

Then the saving idea came to him.
Beside him was a spruce tree. Slowly
the Colonel forced the moose sideways
until the tree touched his right arm.
Then, when the moose had momentarily
eased the pressure, the Colonel released
the antlers with his right hand, shot his
arm around the tree and obtained a
fresh grip.

With the antlers pressed tightly
against the solid tree trunk, holding the
moose was comparatively easy work, and
the Colonel put more energy into his
calls. Leisurely the guide approached.
When he pushed through the fringe of
brush and saw the moose, he was too
astonished to move until his employer
had gasped directions. Then he cut the
moose's throat with his hunting knife,
and the Colonel released the antlers.

Colonel Young does not believe he
could have escaped as he did had the
moose been able to get all four feet on
solid ground. He says the six feet of
snow made his success possible, although
wrestling on big, awkward snowshoes
is by no means easy. But a hogshead
chest, Percheron shoulders, and arms
like the legs of a 200-pound man played
their part.

PICKING OUT A TRAIL ALONG A

DING. CRUMBLING BANK

WITH APACHE DEER-HUNTERS
IN ARIZONA

By JOHN OSKISON

Illustrated with Photographs

,^TOT often is it given most of us to take the trail Indian fashion
^^ with the men who have matched their wits against keen-
scented, quick-eyed, swift-footed animals all their lives. The In-
dian does not hunt as does the white man, but no one can say that
he does not give the game a chance. If anyone thinks otherwise, let
him read Mr. Oskison's description of the region in which these
red men hunt and note the steadfast persistence with which the
trail was followed over all sorts of country. To add to the piquancy
of the situation the principal figure in the party was a full-blooded
Apache who was a stranger to his own people and their lives and
language.

R. MONTEZUMA sent
me a letter from Chicago
full of the most alluring
phrases about Arizona — a
letter I can heartily rec-
ommend to promoters as
a model to arouse the interest of the
sophisticated. Hear some of the doctor's
candied words:

"We shall go to the Fort McDowell

Agency, where we will see the Mohave
Apaches — the real primitive Indians of
the West. They will entertain us where
we shall have a chance to fish, swim, and
live out of doors. They will provide
horses for us on a great hunt and sight-
seeing trip among the most picturesque
scenery of Arizona. One week or ten
days, the Indians will show us how to
hunt and show us where battles were

f65]

OUTING

HAYES COMING IN FROM THE HUNT

fought between them and Pima scouts
and soldiers forty years ago. . . . Every
step of the way we will be guided by
the Indians, all of them related to me."

You may not know that the doctor is a
full-blooded Apache, who was captured
when a small boy and sold by his Pima
captors to a white man; that this white
man educated him; and that the doctor
is one of the top-notch physicians of
Chicago. Take my word for it, the doc-
tor has learned how to prescribe for city-
wearied folks!

Four of us (the first to arrive) gath-
ered in Phoenix, the nearest and most
convenient railroad town, three days be-
fore the hunting season opened. And
next morning down from McDowell,
thirty miles away, came the delegation
of Apaches who were to act as our shop-
ping guides when we started to outfit
and be our hosts at McDowell — Char-
ley, George, and Richard Dickens, and
Yuma Frank, the chief. Charley had
brought his two boys and his wife ; some-
where Richard had picked up two
friends, and out of the void sprang other
welcoming Apaches who should have
been at home under the sheltering wing
of the agent. It was a brave party of four-
teen Indians and four white men; and
we entertained Phoenix by our marching

and countermarching that first day, until
the evening's moving picture show was
over and the Indians went back to their
wagons in a feed yard to sleep the sleep
of the well-fed and princely entertained.

Another day we waited in Phoenix
for three others of our party, while the
Indians hitched up and hauled every-
thing we had bought out to the little
store Charley Dickens keeps on the Mc-
Dowell reservation.

While buying supplies we asked Char-
ley Dickens "How many Indians are
going on the hunt with us?" And Char-
ley, looking dreamily out of the window
of the lawyer's office in which we had
gathered to make out our list of things
needed, studied a moment and replied:

"I think it will be twelve, le's see — it
will be me an' Richard an' George, an'
Yuma Frank, an' Mike Burns, an' Cap'n
Jim, an' Johnson, an' George Black, an'
John Black, an' Jose, an' Frank Look,
an' my brother-in-law, an' Tom Seama,
an' Frank Richards, an' "

"Charley!" interrupted Hayes, who
was keeping tally with a pencil, "you've
named fourteen already — how many
more?"

"Oh, I guess fifteen, then, altogether,"
said Charley, abandoning his roll-call.
And so we provided supplies for fifteen
Indians and eight white men. One of
the Phoenix newspapers said that we
were to take the whole McDowell tribe
into the hills on a great hunt — 270 men,
women and children — and when we read
that paper we laughed scornfully. In
our minds, we were to be a quiet, busi-
nesslike little party.

Dr. Montezuma had told us that there
was to be a dance the night before we
started for the hills — an old-time Apache
dance of welcome. And when darkness
came on the day the pioneer four ar-
rived at McDowell, and we had finished
supper, a great fire was lighted in the
middle of the dancing ground. I believe
that every member of the tribe came
to the dance — the last to arrive being the
Indian policeman and his wife, the po-
liceman driving the agent's car, with the
agent sitting beside him, and his wife
in the back seat with the wife of the
agent.

Then all night long, to the rhythm of

THAT MORNING'S RIDE TOOK US THROUGH LUXURIANT GROWTHS OF MESQUITE

OUTING

THE LITTLEST BURRO HAD NEVER BEEN
PACKED BEFORE

a beaten drum and the voices of young
men singing a galloping, stirring chant,
the Apaches danced. They danced their
simple, primitive dance — two women,
facing one way, on either side of one
man who faced the other way, stepping
rhythmically backwards and forwards.
And at the end of each song, a war
whoop from the young singers sitting on
logs in the firelight.

Now and then Yuma Frank, the chief,
would employ the time between dances
to talk to the groups of Indians gath-
ered about the fire. All night the drum-
ming and the dancing went on — un-
weariedly, the women, advancing in
couples, circled the fire at the beginning
of each dance to tap a singer on the back
— their signal that he was to be their
partner. For it is the Apache woman
who is head of the family, who chooses
her man, who builds the shelter in which
they shall live, and who leads in all social
matters.

Heavy-bodied, straight-backed, their
thick black hair hanging straight down

over their ears and neck, the women
wore their brightest shawls, their full-
est skirts (cut to the heel), and their
softest moccasins. And those who were
too old to dance, or who were burdened
with the care of small children, camped
in the edge of the firelight, wrapped (it
seemed to me inadequately) in quilts and
blankets against the biting chill of the
October night. Slender, wide-hatted,
and full of a sort of shy gaiety, the men
wandered in and out of the firelight.
Except those who sang, they stuck close
to their seats on the logs.

Until ten o'clock we four visitors sat
up to watch the dance. Then the
Preacher Man — who has been a staunch
Baptist for seventy-two years — remark-
ing that he couldn't see much in that
kind of dance — went to crawl into the
blankets he had spread under a brush
arbor built by Charley Dickens close to
his store. Then "Gibby," the sybarite,
put on his tourist cap and sank heavily
upon his mattressed cot. But ''Monty"
and I watched until after midnight, until
after the roosters down at the camps of
some of the Indians had crowed and be-
come quiet again, before we gave up the
vigil. And every time a dance ended
and the singers gave their shrill whoop,
I woke. And my brain throbbed with
the memory of the drum beats and the
stirring rhythm of the young men's songs.

At daybreak, the Indians began to
leave — wagons rattling away over the
hard, dry roads, horsemen flashing among
the mesquite trees, and those women who
lived nearby footing it silently over the
crest of the little mesa, their babies car-
ried on their backs.

McCutcheon and Brice had been de-
layed again — Morgan and Hayes had
stayed in Phoenix to bring them out. At
noon they came, and they brought Grind-
staf, also of Phoenix, with them. We
were ready to start.

There were nine of us, instead of eight
— we must have another horse for
"Grindy." Then it was discovered that
the gray horse and the small mule pro-
vided as pack animals could not carry the
loads — of grub and bedding — piled up
beside the store. The Indians ques-
tioned "Gibby" courteously about his

WITH APACHE DEER-HUNTERS IN ARIZONA

cot and mattress — and "Gibby" declared
that he couldn't do without them. They
"hefted" the suitcase Brice had added to
the pile and looked inquiringly at its
owner; Brice, too, stood pat. I think
that if they had laid hands first on Mc-
Cutcheon's war bag, he would have
started a lightening campaign — I never
saw a man on a camping trip more sub-
missive and adaptable than John Mc-
Cutcheon. But

"Well, we get two more burros," said
Charley Dickens, and brother Richard
spurred away toward a field to round
them up.

That littlest burro had never bsen
packed before — we watched the process
with the simple enjoyment you see ex-
pressed on the faces of the audience when
the naughty boy pulls a chair from under
grandma; at the end, the littlest burro
was quite buried under a mountain of
bed rolls, resigned to follow his elder
brother who staggered under the weight
of the cot, the suitcase, and McCutch-
eon's war bag.

Before we started, the camera fiends
had to have their chance. We lined up
— nine visiting hunters, and — fifteen In-
dian hunters? Fifteen? — we counted
'em — and there were twTenty-seven !

"Say, Charley," began Hayes, but the
rest of us wouldn't let him say it. The
more the merrier — besides we couldn't
have driven a single one of the twenty-
seven back if wTe'd tried!

"Well, I'll be darned!" said Hayes.
He was thinking of the grub. But he
needn't have worried on that score — be-
hind the saddles of an even dozen of
those Indians were tied grub sacks and
cooking utensils. They meant to be with
us, though they could not be of us; and
we recalled what the Phoenix newspaper
said with abated laughter.

It was nearly four o'clock when we
got away from Charley's store. We in-
sisted upon the Preacher Man taking the
lead on his gentle, flea-bitten roan. He
is a little man, seventy-two years old,
with graying chin whiskers, a smooth-
shaven upper lip, a bald head, and the
spirit of eternal youth gleaming in his
eyes. He wore a straw hat — the kind
you see bathers at the beach wearing to
prevent sunburn; and he had turned up

MC CUTCIIEON READY FOR THE FIELD

the brim in front. With a long straw
in his mouth, a fierce red bandanna
around his neck, elastics to hold up the
sleeves of his flowing gray shirt, his vest
flapping as he rode, the Preacher Man
became the needed precipitate to bring
all of us — visitors who had never met be-
fore, and Indians who were shy — into a
quick comradeship.

"Don Quixote!" shouted "Gibby,"
and Morgan added:

"Follow the tracks of the stout Rosin-
ante!

It was quite dark and there was a
threat of rain in the sky as we came to
our first camp on the night of October
first. Half a dozen of the Indians, and
all of the pack animals, had got there be-
fore us, for we had stopped often to
shoot quail and adjust saddles. And
blazing up beside a great log, illumina-
ting the silver leaves of a giant cotton-
wood, was a roaring fire. The fire
showed us the exquisite beauty of the
scene — an oval of packed river sand as
big as a basket-ball field, shut in by thick
willows. We unsaddled and unpacked;
the Indians cooked supper; and we ar-

OUTING

ranged our beds in a great circle about
the edge of the oval clearing.

As we ate, the big wind began to blow,
and there was thunder — in the fire's
glow the tall cottonwood swayed and
rattled like a million voices chattering.
Out of the gloom, which began where
the willows grew thick, our horses stuck
their heads — only the littlest burro had
been left untied, for there was no graz-
ing, and we meant to make an early start
next morning.

John McCutcheon produced a box of
cigars from his war bag — and Morgan
led a procession past his sleeping place
proffering the brand of friendship that
won't rub off. Brice had cigarettes, and
he passed them among the twenty-seven
Indians. Twenty-seven of them ac-
cepted, saving their bags of Bull Durham

and packages of brown papers (a part of
our supplies) against a time of greater
need.

The rain drove us under our blankets
and tarps; and it was past midnight be-
fore the clouds blew away and a great
round moon sailed into view. I began
to complain about an elbow I had inad-
vertently thrust into a pool of water
which seemed to be slowly freezing. I
was interrupted by McCutcheon, lying
close at my right, who spoke in a small,
tired voice as he dried his hair with a
towel :

"Good Heavens, he complains about
a wet elbow! Did you hear him,
Brice?" Brice answered:

"I'm wet and sore and wide awake — I
never learned to sleep in the bath tub!"

After that "Monty" joined sleepily in

THREE OF THE CRACK HUNTERS OF THE EXPEDITION

ADJUSTING THE PACKS AT CHARLEY DICKENS' STORE

the post mortem ; Morgan, who had kept
quite dry on his cot, said a heartless
thing, and the Preacher Man reproved
him in a tone which roused a sudden ex-
plosion of mirth from Richard Dickens,
lying on the other side of the fire from
me. After that, the other Apaches, who
had lain quiet in their water-soaked
blankets, began a fusillade of good-na-
tured comment. One of them rose to
pile wood on the fire; and presently the
rest were squatting on the sand, their
backs to the bla^e, rolling cigarettes
and chattering like a kindergarten.
"Grindy" sat up, lit his pipe, and wanted
to know what excuse "Gibby" had for
sleeping and snoring on such a fine night
of moonshine.

So we waked "Gibby." A great vol-
ume of meaningless swear words was
flung at us as "Gibby" fell out of his
comfortable cot to reach for a shoe.
But Morgan had forstalled that move,

and "Gibby" had to promise to be good
before Morgan would restore his foot-
gear. McCutcheon requested "Gibby"
to tell us all about his ascent of Mount
Ararat the summer before. "Gibby" is
a far-traveler, and likes to tell about
what he has seen. Richard Dickens ex-
ploded again — that mirthful Apache has
the quickest reaction of any joke-lover I
know.

Long before daybreak we had break-
fasted ; our blankets were nearly dry by
the time to pack up, for we held them
before the blaze while the Indians cooked
breakfast. One of my blankets was not
a blanket, but a stuffed comforter cov-
ered with thi' ', cheap print stuff of a
wonderful design. A great corner of
that comforter had got wet and made a
perfect "transfer" of its design on a spare
shirt I was cherishing in my bed roll.
Morgan begged me to give that shirt to
the Preacher Man ; he assured me that

[71]

■m

THE INDIANS FORMED IN SMALL GROUPS, EACH BUILDING ITS OWN FIRE

V
«

1 1

WHERE WE STRUCK IT, THE VERDE IS A BROAD, RACING STREAM, ALMOST CLEAR

OUTING

MONTY AND THE PREACHER MAN

Rosinante wouldn't shy at it, and argued
that Don Quixote ought to be more
brightly attired. Richard Dickens lis-
tened to Morgan with commendable in-
tentness, but he couldn't quite get the
point; pushing ahead to show the
Preacher Man the trail up a spur of the
rocky hills, Richard managed to convey
the impression that it wasn't fair to in-
dulge in jokes he couldn't understand.

That morning's ride took us up and
up in the hills west of the Verde River,
through luxuriant growths of cactus,
over great stretches of cinder-brown lava
rock, along a dim trail which dipped and
rose with frightful suddenness, until, two
hours after noon, we came to a corral
and an unexpected spring.

It was on this trail that we became
acquainted with the "strawberry" cactus
— a thick-stemmed bush from two to five
feet in height which bears clusters of
silver-colored balls, nearly as big as ten-
nis balls, set thickly wTith inch-and-a-half
steel-hard spikes, barbed.

Whenever a horse touched one of
those brilliant balls, it seemed to spring
away from the cluster wTith a glad cry of
relief, and sink its barbs deep in the flesh;

and then wTe had to get down, hold our
squirming horse with one hand and brush
the "strawberry" off with a stout stick
held in the other. After brushing off the
terrible thing, we had to pick out, one
by one, the deeply imbedded barbs it had
left behind. If it were put up to me to
contrive a purgatorv for my enemies, I
should send them all on a thousand-year
journey through the land of the "straw-
berry" cactus.

Richard Dickens was our guide;
Yuma Frank and another Apache were
piloting the gray horse and the excellent
brown mule ahead of us; and John
Black, Jose, "Sunny Jim," and one other
were prodding the two burros behind us.
Somewhere, scattered over the hills, were
the rest of the twenty-seven, hunting
deer.

It was about twelve o'clock, and we
had dropped down into a pleasant stretch
of fairly level ground. We had finally
come out of the region of the "straw-
berry" cactus, and the rain, which had
commenced again soon after we left camp,
had ceased. Richard Dickens pointed
toward the top of a ridge two miles or
more away, and called our attention to
three figures on foot. He said that they
were his brother Charley, his brother
George, and Frank Look. He showed
us their horses, standing tied to some
small trees.

"They got on track of one deer," said
Richard. We watched them, tiny figures
among the rocks, while we rode for half
a mile perhaps, and then we heard the
sudden, sharp crack of a rifle. Its echo
came back from a hill at our right, whi-
ning and shrill. Then another crack of a
high-powered gun, and another and an-
other— the hills were full of sound.
Richard saw the deer quartering down
the hillside, leaping the rocks and dodg-
ing among the cactus like a gray ball of
light. He turned his horse and spurred
to a point where he would get a shot —
though a long one — as the deer came
down into the flat we had crossed. And
as he spurred, he drew his rifle from its
saddle scabbard ; he flung his reins to the
ground, dropped to one knee, and fired.

It was random firing, and Richard
knew it. He stood up and began to yell
to the group who were coming behind us

WITH APACHE DEER-HUNTERS IN ARIZONA

with the two burros. Then the three
Indians on the hillside who had jumped
the deer joined in the yelling; and we,
standing stupidly beside our horses, rifles
held aimlessly, watched the deer climb
the very hill we had lately descended
while we thrilled at the wild, exultant
yells of the Indians who were after it.
None of us fired a shot!

Just at the crest of the hill, the deer
met the Indians who were with the bur-
ros; it swerved sharply, and exposed its
side to their fire. There were six or
seven shots, then Richard shouted to us
that the buck had been killed. We raced
back, most of us on foot, and found John
Black, Jose, "Sunny Jim," and Richard
hard at work skinning. They said that
John Black had killed the deer; and
when the meat was parceled out, John
took the skin for his own.

Before the skinners had finished, and
while the rest of us were getting back
to our horses, more shots were fired by
Charley and George Dickens and Frank
Look ; another deer came rocketing down
from the hillside; there was another
fusillade from the hunters gathered
about the slain deer; but that second
deer got away without a scratch. The
Apaches are not good rifle shots.

At the spring, under the corral, we
dismounted. It was two o'clock, and we
were so hungry that we could have eaten
saddle leather; some of us, too, were so
tired and sleepy that we appealed to
Charley Dickens to camp there for the
night. But Charley watched the faint
trickle of water from the spring for a
moment, and shook his head. There
would not be water enough for the
horses. The best we could do was to
unsaddle for an hour and eat. Fresh
venison, Dutch oven bread, made with-
out baking powder (the young man we
had sent back for the forgotten baking
powder had not yet caught up to us),
and strong coffee — then some canned
peaches. It was a delectable feast ! But
"Gibby" wanted pie — he asked Richard
Dickens, very earnestly, why there was
no pie. For a moment Richard was
apologetic, then he laughed.

"I think you don't want pie, Gibson,"
said Richard accusingly, as he smiled up
from his dishwashing.

II EAVY-BODI ED, STRAIGHT-BACKED,
THEIR THICK, BLACK HAIR HANG-
ING STRAIGHT DOWN

We saddled our horses again, rode
over another rocky ridge, and then struck
into a sandy wash, now bone-dry, which
led us in an hour and a half to the Verde
River. Then we were glad, indeed,
that we had not camped overnight at the
spring.

Where we struck it, the Verde is a
broad, racing stream, almost clear; it
runs between high cliffs set far back ; and
between the cliffs and the river spread
borders of willows and narrow orchards
of mesquite. Under the lee of one of
the rocky bluffs we made our camp, and
until sunset we swam and fished. The
Indians started target shooting, picking
out the short, barrel-shaped cacti grow-
ing in the rocks across the river to punc-
ture with their shots; and for half an
hour the river canyon rang with the
sound of firing.

Again that night there was rain. It
swept upon us in a fury of thunder and
lightning; but we all slept soundly, in-
different to the occasional rivulets which
found their way under the rubber blank-
ets and the tarps we were learning to
arrange properly. In the morning, after
breakfast, we rolled up our beds, still

AT INTERVALS THE CAMERA FIENDS HAD TO HAVE THEIR CHANCE

wet, saddled our shivering horses, and
started on a six hours' march to our per-
manent camp. Until we left the Verde,
two miles away, the rain followed and
drenched us; but when we mounted up
a zig-zag trail from the river canyon to
a tongue of rocky land running back for
miles and miles to where the Four Peaks
rose blue and wooded, the sky cleared as
if by magic. Quail called in the mes-
quite far to the right of our trail; the
sun came out warm; most of us had got
over the worst of our saddle soreness;
and we followed the tracks of the
Preacher Man and his sturdy Rosinante
with actual gaiety.

That day we began to get some idea
of the true character of the horses we
rode. They were not horses, but moun-
tain goats! Along trails two hand-
breadths wide those ponies would trot,
while we, gazing down across the rocks
and cactus falling dizzily to the bottom
of a gulch some hundreds of feet below,
would hang desperately to our saddle
horns. We were scared half to death,
but afraid to show our fear.

All of the rocks in the world must
have been piled up on the hills of Ari-
zona at one time, and those titans who
were given the task of scattering them
among other states and countries got
tired long before their work was done.
I believe that a corner of a huge boulder

[76]

sticks out of every square foot of surface
in all of the country we hunted over;
and I know that if you ride or walk a
mile you or your horse must kick and
slide over ten thousand small stones.

All over that country, too, the prickly
pear, the palo verde, the cat's claw (a
deliciously green and delicate looking
bush with the most hellish stickers on it
that I have ever felt), the iron wood, the
mesquite, and an infinite variety of cacti
struggle for footing in the scant loam of
the hillsides. Underneath these spiny
growths, the succulent mountain grass
grows; and it is to crop this grass that
the deer leave the high mountains around
the Four Peaks when the autumn comes.

Just when it began to be plain to all
of us first-time visitors that nowhere east
of the Verd'e lies a single square yard of
level country, our horses scrambled out
of a sandy wash to the top of a tiny
plateau. Mesquite trees dotted it, like a
farmer's back-yard orchard, and it was
tramped bare by cattle. Beyond the
plateau, a few yards up the wash, pools
of clear spring water shone in the sun-
light.

Charley Dickens smiled a relieved
smile when he saw us all (I mean, of
course, the nine visitors) assembled under
the shade of the mesquite thicket. It
was to be our permanent camp —
"Monty" told us so as soon as he saw

IT WAS TWO O CLOCK AND WE WERE SO HUNGRY THAT WE COULD HAVE EATEN

SADDLE LEATHER

George Dickens begin to scoop a hole in
the moist sand convenient to the fire
Jose promptly built.

That day we had ridden ahead of all
the pack animals, but when we came to
our camping place we supposed that they
were following close behind. So we sat
down to wait for the grub with all the
sweet patience of harried, famished
wolves. One by one, the Indians drifted
in from their detours across the hills,
and they formed in small groups, each
building its own fire. From their saddle
packs they began to dig pieces of venison,
almost black from its quick drying of a
day, and stores of mesquite bean meal.
"Monty" wandered among them, pick-
ing up a thick hunk of meat and a bowl
of meal. He came back to us, his round,
dark face shining with triumph.

Plastering his slice of venison on a
bed of live coals, "Monty" began to tell
us how good the mesquite meal was. I
asked for a taste and "Monty" offered
a generous spoonful. Before I could get
it all out of my mouth, I had made up
my mind that I didn't like it. I wasn't
in doubt about that at all. Mesquite
bean meal (made from the dried bean
that grows on the mesquite trees, ground
by hand, and mixed with water) has all
of the repulsiveness of taste — and some-
thing of the same sicky sweetness — of a

Chinese dish I once tasted in a restau-
rant of New York's Chinatown.
"Monty" assured me that the Apaches
could live on this meal for weeks at a
time and never lose strength.

As he turned his piece of venison on
the coals, stooping heavily to do the trick
with his fingers, "Monty" told us about
his own boyhood among these hills, about
how the old-time Apaches lived .wholly
on deer meat and the products of the
trees and plants growing in the moun-
tains and along the rivers.

"Monty" is a wonderful word-painter
of the impressionist (I'm not sure that
he's not of the futurist) school. We
listened to his poetic improvisations con-
cerning the old care-free life of his peo-
ple until we began to believe that civili-
zation is a horrid mistake. But when
"Monty" had finished his broiled veni-
son and his bowl of meal, he sought the
shade of a mesquite, lay down and drew
his hat over his eyes, and let us under-
stand that he meant to get some rest.

It was nearly three o'clock — and we
had waited for the pack animals for two
hours. Released from the spell of
"Monty's" oratory, we turned savage
questions upon Charley Dickens; and
Charley walked down the wash fifty-
yards to listen for the coming of the
pack mules. Morgan then appealed to

[77]

OUTING

Richard to go and find them and save
us from starvation. Morgan was low
enough to remind Richard, at this time,
of the pair of eighteen-dollar chaps he
had given him. So Richard caught his
horse and rede away. Ten minutes later
he came back accompanied by Mike
Burns, Yuma Frank, and the four pack
animals. Richard was laughing.

''What's the joke, Dick?" asked "Gib-
by." "Did those fellows stop to make
some pie?"

"Naw!" and Richard broke out laugh-
ing again. Then Mike Burns, who is
a graduate of a Kansas normal school,
told us in forceful English how he had
accidentally come upon the four pack
animals in the bottom of a gulch wTith
their feet sticking up in the air. And an
hour later, when George Black and the
other two young men who had been in
charge of the pack train came into camp
with a deer, we understood.

Across the wash the Preacher Man
discovered a cave, the bottom of which
was just big enough to hold his blankets,
spread out, and which offered a natural
shelf for the disposal of the contents of
the handbag he had carried slung from
his saddle horn.

Before we crawled into our blankets
that night, two other deer were brought
to camp — Johnson and Frank Richards
had killed them. Somewhere back in the
hills, each of those wiry, keen-eyed
Apaches had come upon fresh deer tracks,
had tied his horse, had followed on foot
until the chance to shoot arrived, had
skinned the deer, had carried it back to
his horse, and had come silently into
camp to eat supper and go to bed.

But that night we would not have it
so — we gathered round the three who
had killed — Johnson, George Black, and
Frank Richards — to beg for details.
Just where were the tracks found ? How
long was the deer followed ? How many
shots were fired ? How far from their
horses were they when the deer was
killed? Charley Dickens was our inter-
preter; and at first he smiled tolerantly
when we asked a question. But presently
he and the hunters became actually inter-
ested in recalling the incidents. Not by
what they said through Charley Dickens
did the successful hunters stir us, but

there was something in the droop of their
tired bodies and the gleam of their eyes
which gave us to understand that hunt-
ing over those hills, following a deer un-
til you get him, is a thrilling experience.

"Three deer to-day — by golly, that's
good!" I think that was my classic com-
ment; and from what the others said I
judged that they were equally elated and
incoherent over the good luck of the
hunters.

"Who wants to go out with the hunt-
ers in the morning?" "Monty" inquired
before we dropped to sleep.

"If I thought I could keep up I'd like
to try it," answered McCutcheon. "How
about 30U, Brice?"

"I'd like to try it," said Brice.

"Count me in, 'Monty,' " I urged.
But to all of us I know that "if" voiced
by McCutcheon loomed large. Coming
to camp, we had followed a trail long
used by the Indians and the cowboys
when they rode into the hills; we had
dismounted at times to lead our horses
down and up grades that had not troub-
led the Indian riders in the least; and
the walking we had done had shown us
the awfulness of the going. Still, we
three said that we'd like to try to fol-
low the hunters.

As for Morgan, "Gibby," "Grindy,"
"Monty," Hayes, and the Preacher Man,
the answer was "no." Only Hayes ven-
tured to excuse himself — he had once
strained his heart climbing, and he must
be careful not to do it again. I am
sorry, now, that we did not urge the
Preacher Man to go out, for I'm sure
that he would have got us out of our
blankets in time.

As it was, we became dimly aware
of sounds in the camp while it was still
dark. The firelight flickered in our
faces, and we heard the rattle of tin
plates and voices subdued. It was cold,
with the still cold of a frostbound world
wrapped in darkness ; and we were very
comfortable under our blankets!

With dawn came courage to crawl out
and stagger down to one of the pools
in the sandy wash to bathe faces and
hands. Beside the fire we found1 our
breakfast cooked and waiting for us;
but every Indian had gone.
( To be continued)

BUILDING A TACKLE BOX

By T. CASE

Just Take Almost Any Old Kind of a Box and Then Follow the

Author s Specifications

ing

MADE my tackle box last summer,
working mostly on the cottage
porch, and having no bench but a
camp chair or a corner of the dining
table. Proud as I am of the result,
I never open the lid without seem-
to hear faint feminine echoes of
"Such a litter," and "What a place to
get about in" ; and I realize that the job
is one better suited for the workshop and
for that period in the late winter months
when an unnamed something drives
every angler to the revision and improve-
ment of his outfit. It is for those who
may undertake a similar task at a more
seasonable time that I give my experi-
ences.

The object of building one's own
tackle box is to have it fit exactly one's
individual needs. I give the details of
mine, not because any one else will wish
to copy them, but because they may serve
as hints and points of departure for mak-
ing other designs.

In its primitive state my box was a
rough board affair, 7 x 9 x 12 inches in-
side measurement. I found it in the
Doctor's garage, and the Doctor, who
has built himself a magnificent tackle
case of leather and precious woods, con-
descendingly gave it to me when I hinted
that it might be made into something
that would meet my modest needs. Like
many packing boxes made for shipping
bottles, it had dovetailed corners, and
these were probably useful in keeping the
parts square and true during the process
of construction. After the partitions are
in and the canvas cover is on any well-
nailed box would be strong enough.

The first step, after smoothing up con-
spicuous roughnesses, was to nail on the
cover board securely and to mark where
the box was to be sawn apart. I did this

so as to make two sections — a bottom
section 4^2 inches deep for trays, reel
compartments, etc., and a recessed top
section 2^4 inches deep for tools, snelled
hooks, and other light tackle. After
marking the box all around, I sawed
through the side intended for the back
and screwed on the hinges, making sure
that the center of the hinge pin came
just over the saw kerf. I also screwed
on the hasp in front, and then finished
the sawing. Hinges and hasp were then
removed until the two sections of the
box were finished. Then the screw
holes were found by pricking through
the canvas covering with a needle, the
fittings were replaced, and the box
opened and closed perfectly true.

I have found by experience that it is
not always easy to get equally good re-
sults by putting on hinges after a box
is in two parts. Hinges, hasps, escutch-
eon pins, and other small brass fittings
may be procured at most hardware stores
and five and ten cent stores and of mail
order houses. In order to secure a fine
appearance it is best to refinish and re-
lacquer them, as described below.

The inner edge of the sides of the box
should be beveled a trifle, as shown in
Figure 4, to make room for the heads
of the brass nails or escutcheon pins that
hold the edges of the canvas covering.
At the outside edge, where the sides are
not beveled, the canvas just about fills
the saw kerf, making a good joint when
the box is closed.

Next, both top and bottom sections
should be lined with whatever cloth is
selected for the purpose, firmly glued in.
I used a smooth linen such as is some-
times employed in lining suit-cases. This
looks well when first put in, but soils
easily and does not hold the glue quite

[79]

OUTING

8 C

TTrT

-JL.

FIGURE 1

so well as a more loosely woven fabric.
Possibly a man whose work was not giv-
ing offense to the domestic powers could
secure helpful feminine advice on choice
of material.

The bottom and the top sections of
the box must now be treated separately.
In my box the whole top of the bottom
section is occupied by a shallow tray,
7/s inches deep. The plan of this is
shown in Figure 3. Below this are three
reel compartments, a smaller deep tray,
and other compartments as shown in the
accompanying diagrams, Figures 1 and
2. The permanent partitions, between
compartments A, B, and C, Figure 2,
are made of three-ply birch veneer 3/16
inch thick, and are fastened in place with
brads driven from the outside of the box.
They should, of course, be filled and
varnished before they are
finally put in place.

For the trays I used
mahogany and brass bot-
toms— an effective com-
bination, though work-
ing mahogany is not al-
ways conducive to keep-
ing one's temper. The
sides and main partitions
of the trays are Y\ or
3/16 inch thick, the
smaller divisions y%.
When it came to this
point I was fortunate
enough to have the use
of a friend's trimmer for
an hour or two, and
with this I cut miter
joints. These are to be

preferred, but if a good miter-
cutting apparatus is not avail-
able a cut-in corner, as shown
in the diagram, Fig. 6, answers
* well. The inside partitions are
gained or notched into the sides
about 1/16 inch, and glued.

To make the gains quickly
and neatly take the try-square
and a sharp penknife and rule
or cut squarely across at each
side of the gain. Take out a
chip by a slanting stroke from
the middle of the gain to the
bottom of this cut. Repeat the
process until the gains are deep
enough at the edges, and clean out the
center with a narrow chisel.

In order that small articles may be
easily picked out of the compartments it
is necessary that the bottom of the tray
curve upward at the edges like that of
a cash drawer. The outer lower cor-
ners of the crosswise partitions are
rounded off. The thin brass bottom is
bent upward around these curved ends
of the partitions, and the edge of the
brass slips into a shallow groove in the
strip that forms the outside of the tray.
The arrangement may be seen from Fig-
ure 5.

After the woodwork is put together
make very carefully a stiff paper pattern
of a bottom that will exactly fit, and cut
the brass by this. Spring the bottom into
place, first shaping the edges, if neces-

FIGURE

BUILDING A TACKLE BOX

sary, by bending them around
a base ball bat, an oar, or
something of similar shape.
When it is exactly in position
scratch with a knife blade or
a fine point along the inner
edge of the end pieces and
along both sides of the parti-
tions. Remove the bottom
and punch holes between
these parallel scratches that
indicate the position of the
partitions. After the wood-
work is varnished and the
brass is lacquered replace the
bottom, being sure to get it
in exactly the original posi-
tion, and fasten with Y% inch
brads.

The wood should be filled before be-
ing varnished. Patent wood fillers may
be bought in various colors and applied
according to the maker's directions, but
for small jobs I have found it more satis-
factory to mix a filler of silex. Silex is
a white mineral powder used by dentists
in some of their mysterious processes and
is inexpensive. To make a filler, mix
the powder to a smooth paste with lin-
seed oil, thin with turpentine, and for
dark woods color with mahogany stain,
or a bit of artist's oil colors. Brush well
into the wood, letting the final brushing
be crosswise, in order that the bristles
may not wipe the paste out of the grain.

After the filler is fairly stiff, but be-
fore it sets hard, remove all surplus with
a rough cloth, rubbing crosswise of the
grain. Then varnish, rubbing down be-
tween coats with number 00 sand-
paper, and taking the cheap-looking gloss
off the last coat with a little pumice-
stone and oil.

To give brass the effective "brush fin-
ish" take number 0 or 00 sandpaper and

. ^

. . *

H D

' 9 •

iliiS,

. V

ft «

FIGURE 4

FIGURE 5

FIGURE 3

rub, always with parallel strokes, and
not too hard until the metal is bright
and marked with fine uniform lines or
striations. Lacquer may be obtained of
an instrument maker or a dealer in elec-
trical fixtures. My own success in ap-
plying it hardly warrants me in giving
advice to others. On small articles, such
as hinges, it is easy to get satisfactory
results, but on a large sheet like a tray
bottom it is hard to avoid a patchy effect.
I have learned, however, that the lacquer
should be put on rapidly with a flowing
stroke of a good quality camel's-hair
brush ; and that no matter how uneven
the work looks, an attempt at retouching
invariably makes it worse.

It is necessary that the recessed top
section of the box be fitted with a lid
which fits flush with the bottom edges,
and which when the box is closed forms
a tight cover to the tray compartments.
For this I used three-ply birch veneering
3/16 inch thick. In order that this
may swing properly the backs of the
hinges are screwed to the face of the lid,
as shown in the diagram,
fy Figure 9, and gains are

cut in the edge to close
over the other part of the
hinge. A simple friction
catch holds the lid in
place, and a knob, which
can project into one of the
tray compartments, serves
as a pull. The face of
the lid is filled and var-

OUTING

FIGURE 6

nished. The inside, or top, is covered
with linen canvas glued on, and on this
are tacked loops of linen tape for hold-
ing pliers, scissors, screwdriver, one-
drop oil-can, and the other tools which
the angler wants instantly at hand.

Narrow strips of brass with the ends
bent up at right angles and drilled with
holes to form bearings hold bobbins of
a pattern that can be filled on the family
sewing machine, and these carry colored
silks for windings. (See Figure 11.)
A narrow strip of wood 3/16 inch thick
(L, Figure 1; D, Figure 9) fitted
around the outside keeps the edges of the
canvas from fraying and makes a sort of
shallow tray, so that tools cannot slip too
far in their loops and interfere with the
closing of the box.

To a man who has been annoyed by
the tangling and curling of snells on
hooks the most comfortable feature of
the box is a leaf made after the general
style of a Bray fly book. For this I
tried to get thick sheet celluloid, but
failing took what is perhaps equally
good, a sheet of press or binder's board,
covered with a smooth buckram and
varnished. This is about an inch nar-
rower than the cover and is hinged to a
3/16 inch strip of wood J4, inch 0

wide, which is fastened at the
back of the cover, about 24 inch
inside the lid. (See G, K, Fig-
ure 1.) This arrangement al-
lows the leaf to open out over
the lid.

The mountings of this sheet
are of brass, and are alike on
both sides, the same rivets pass-
ing through opposite fixtures.
The general plan is shown in
Figure 7. The strips at each
end into which hooks are to
be caught are made by taking
strips of brass x/i or $/% inch

wide, punching a row of holes through
the middle, and cutting lengthwise
through the centers of the holes. (See
Figure 10.) Some finishing with a file
is of course necessary. To make the
springs in which the snells are drawn is
needed a spool of No. 26 or No. 28 brass
spring wire, a vise, two blocks of soft
wood, and a rod or mandrel with a hole
at one end through which the wire can
be thrust. I got satisfactory results with
a cast-iron vise bought at a ten-cent
store and the ramrod of a .22 rifle, but
a mandrel of smooth steel rod and a
heavier vise would be preferable.

To wind the spring, stick the end of
the wire through the hole in the mandrel,
give it a turn or two to hold it, and
place mandrel and wire lengthwise be-
tween the blocks of wood in the vise.
Turn the rod, tightening the vise as
mandrel and coil sink into the wood, and
being sure that the wire runs smoothly
and squarely between the blocks. If it
runs at even a slight angle the result
will be an open, not a closed spring.
Once the coil is properly started and the
vise well tightened up there is nothing
to do but to keep turning and feeding
in the wire.

These springs are strung on strips of
brass y% inch wide or a little less, with
holes drilled at the ends and in the mid-
dle for rivets. Since the rivets pass
through a pair of strips, one on each side
the sheet, the holes should be accurately
placed. In the Bray fly book the strips
are bent down where the rivets go
through, but I found it easier to block
up with rings or washers made by cut-

FIGURE 7

BUILDING A TACKLE BOX

ting links from a small brass
chain. Be sure that the
blocking is high enough to
allow the spring to slip easily
on the strip. A similar con-
struction is shown in the dia-
gram of a spinner-holder
(Figure 12).

Cut the springs about %.
inch shorter than the distance
between rivets in order to
allow for spreading when
snells are drawn in. Ordi-
nary brass paper fasteners
may be used to attach the
hinges to the binder's board.
I used four lines of springs,
and notched strips for hooks
at each end. The sheet, if
completely filled, would hold six dozen
snelled hooks, each of which is in plain
sight, and can be instantly removed, or
almost instantly replaced, with one hand.
The inside of the top board of the box,
behind the sheet for hooks is arranged to
hold line winders, scales, wooden min-
nows, small spinners, etc. The general
plan may be seen from the diagram, Fig-
ure 8. The compartments for wooden
minnows have wooden sides J^ inch
wide bradded to the outside of the box,
and the front is of transparent celluloid
such as is used for windows in automo-
bile tops. The line winders are strips
of ^ -inch mahogany notched at the
ends to hold the line. The catches that
hold them in place are the brass right
angle screw hooks, to be bought at any
hardware or ten-cent store, turned into
the wood at such distance apart that the

r 0

FIGURE 8

end of the horizontal just touches the
next upright. To remove the winder
give the catch a quarter turn. The
holders for small spoons, etc., are made
from the brass scraps left from the leaf
for hooks. Sections of the coiled spring
about an inch long are threaded on y%-
inch brass strips 2l/2 or 3 inches long, as
shown in Figure 12.

To fasten the fixed end straighten out
a little of the spring and heat it red hot
for a moment to anneal it, and make it
flexible. To prevent spoiling the temper
of the rest of the spring slip a thin slice
of raw potato, apple, or other moist sub-
stance over the free end to guard the coil
from the flame. Give this soft end two
or three turns, making a little coil
through which the brad or escutcheon
pin that holds one end of the strip in
place can pass. This coil serves the

-000-

FIGURE 10

r-r

FIGURE 9

FIGURE 11

OUTING

FIGURE 12

double purpose of a blocking for the
strip and a fastening for the end of the
spring.

Bend the other end of the spring to
form a hook and set in line with the strip
a small brass screw hook or angle. The
spinner is stretched between this and the
hook on the spring, is always in place,
and is instantly detached.

As soon as the partitions which re-
quire nailing from the outside are all in,
the box may be covered with canvas.
A light duck, about six-ounce, is best.
Set it in white lead mixed with oil to
the consistency of very thick cream, and
spread on the wood liberally. I rubbed
it with the flat of my hand until I could
see the white lead oozing through the
cloth ; but the cuticle would hardly have
lasted for a much larger box, and the
Doctor, who has had experience in cov-
ering canoes, tells me I should have used a
rubber roller such as is made for mount-
ing photographs. Bring the edge of the
canvas up over the edges which come
together when the box closes. Hold
these and other doubtful places with
small tacks, to be removed and replaced
later with brass escutcheon pins.

After the white lead has set for a few
days the canvas may be finished with
two or three coats of a paint made by
mixing white lead, the desired tinting
color, and varnish. Green seemed the
best color to match with the brass handle
and protecting corners which were to be
added later. For the canvas as well as
for the wood work I used a quick-drying
spar varnish, which a friend enthusias-
tically recommended this summer.

Of my various attempts at "making
things" I enjoyed most the building of
this tackle box, partly, I think, because
the different operations of cabinet work,
brass work, canvas covering, and finish-
ing afforded so great a variety. Al-
though I am the veriest amateur and
have but a scant equipment of tools I
found most parts of the work easy. As
to the result — its practical convenience
was a constant joy through the rest of
the fishing season. It looks well, if I
do say it. As it neared completion the
domestic mutterings began to be mingled
with hints about work boxes and silver
cabinets; and even the Doctor has pre-
tended to be envious of some of my
devices.

EMERGENCY RATIONS

By HORACE KEFHART

Their Good and Bad Points and the Real Nature of the Problems
That Experts Are Trying to Solve

N 1870 there was issued to every
German soldier a queer, yellow,
sausage-shaped contrivance that held
within its paper wrapper what looked
and felt like a short stick of dyna-
mite. No, it was not a bomb nor a
hand grenade. It was just a pound of
compressed dry pea soup. This was

guaranteed to support a man's strength
for one day, without any other aliment
whatever. The soldier was ordered to
keep this roll of soup about him at all
times, and never to use it until there was
no other food to be had. The official
name of the thing was erbswurst (pro-
nounced airbs-voorst) which means pea

EMERGENCY RATIONS

sausage. Within a few months it became
famous as the "iron ration" of the
Franco-Prussian war.

Our sportsmen over here are well ac-
quainted with erbswurst. It is their last
call to supper when they have had no
dinner and see slight prospect of break-
fast. Besides, it is the lazy man's prop
on rainy days, and the standby of inex-
perienced cooks.

Nobody can spoil erbswurst in the
cooking, unless he goes away and lets it
burn. All you do is start a quart of
water boiling, tear off the cover from a
quarter-pound roll of "dynamite soup,"
crumble the stuff finely into the water
with your fingers, and boil for fifteen
or twenty minutes, stirring a few times
to avoid lumps. Then let the mess cool,
and go to it.

It never spoils, never gets any punkier
than it was at the beginning. The stick
of erbswurst that you left undetected in
the seventh pocket of your hunting coat,
last year, will be just as good when you
discover it again this year. Mice won't
gnaw it; bugs can't get at it; moisture
can't feaze it. I have used rolls that
had lain so long in damp places that
they were all mouldy outside, yet the
food within was neither worse nor better
than before.

A pound of erbswurst, costing thirty-
two cents, is about all a man can eat in
three meals straight. Cheap enough,
and light enough, and compact enough,
God wot. However this little boon has
a string attached. Erbswurst tastes
pretty good to a hungry man in the
woods as a hot noonday snack, now and
then. It is not appetizing as a sole main-
stay for supper on the same day. Next
morning, supposing you have missed con-
nections with camp, and have nothing
but the third of that erbswurst, you will
down it amid tempests and storms of
your own raising. And thenceforth, no
matter what fleshpots you may fall upon,
you will taste dynamite soup for a week.

In its native land, this iron ration is^
no longer popular — I am told that it has"
been thrown out of the German army.
Over here, we benighted wights keep on
using it, in emergencies, simply because
we know of no better substitute, or
because it is the easiest thing of its kind

to be found on the market. We all wish
to discover a ready-made ration as light
and compact as erbswurst, as incorrupti-
ble and cheap, but one that would be
savory at the second and third eating,
and polite to our insides (which dyna-
mite soup is not).

Good Emergency Rations Hard to Find

Now I am not about to offer a new
invention, nor introduce some wonderful
good grub that has lately arrived from
abroad. At the present time, I believe,
all armies have discarded all the emer-
gency rations that they have tried. And
yet all of them are searching for a bet-
ter one. Which goes to prove that a
satisfactory thing of this sort is most de-
sirable, but the hardest thing in the
world for a commissariat to find. We
wilderness prowlers join heartily in
praying that somebody would find it ; for
we, too, like the soldiery, may be cut off
from supplies, no telling when, and with
the added dilemma, perhaps, of being
lost and alone in the "big sticks."

So it is quite worth while to review the
best that has been done along this line,
show wherein the most promising experi-
ments failed, and restate the problem
anew — then let fresh inventive genius
tackle it. And a few suggestions may
not be out of place.

Beginning again with erbswurst, as
the prototype of such foods: it is com-
posed of pea meal mixed with a very
little fat pork and some salt, cooked, so
treated as to prevent decay, desiccated,
and compressed into rolls of various sizes.
It is about the same thing as baked beans
would be if they were dried and pow-
dered, except that it tastes different and
it contains much less fat. I understand
that the original erbswurst, as prepared
by its inventor, Grunberg, included a
good proportion of fat; but the article
sold nowadays has so little of this valu-
able component (by analysis only
3.08%) that you can scarce detect it.

Theoretically this pea soup is highly
nutritious, though less fit for continuous
use as a sole diet than baked beans, even
though the latter were desiccated. Prac-
tically it soon palls on the palate, up-
sets the stomach, and causes flatulent

OUTING

dyspepsia or other disorders of the diges-
tive tract.

The British army tried it, and Tom-
my Atkins let out a howl that reached
from South Africa to London. The
War Office replaced it with another
German invention, Kopf's soup, which
also had pea meal for its basis but had a
higher content of fat (17.25%). This
was superior in potential energy, but the
after effects were similar to those of erbs-
wurst. It was plain that an exclusive
diet, if only for a day or two, of
legumes and fat would soon put a man
to the bad. England discarded the iron
ration and placated Tommy with jam —
a wise move, as we shall see.

In 1900 a new kind of emergency ra-
tion was introduced in our own army.
This was made up of eight ounces of a
meat-and-cereal powder, four ounces of
sweet chocolate, and some salt and pep-
per, all put up in a tin can eight inches
long and thin enough to slip easily into
one's pocket. This pound of food was
calculated to subsist a man in full
strength and vigor for one day. Details
of its preparation are here copied from
official sources.

A Pound of Food

"The chocolate component consists of
equal weights of pure chocolate and pure
sugar molded into cakes of one and one-
third ounces each. Three of these go
into the day's ration.

"The bread and meat component con-
sists of:

" ( 1 ) Fresh lean beaf free from visible
fat and sinew, ground in a neat grinder
and desiccated so as to contain five per
cent or less of moisture, the heat never
being allowed to cook it in the slightest
degree. The dried product is then re-
duced to powder and carefully sifted
through a fine-meshed sieve, the resulting
flour being the meat component.

"(2) Cooked kiln-dried wheat, the
outer bran removed, is parched and then
ground to a coarse powder. This yields
the bread component. Sixteen parts of
the meat, thirty-two parts of the bread,
and one part of common salt, all by
weight, are thoroughly mixed in such
small quantities as to be entirely homo-

geneous and compressed into four-ounce
cakes. Three of these go into the day's
ration. The bread and meat may be
eaten dry, or be stirred in cold water
and eaten : or one cake may be boiled for
five minutes in three pints of water, and
seasoned; or one cake may be boiled for
five minutes in one pint of water to
make a thick porridge and be eaten hot
or cold. When cold it may be sliced, and,
if fat is available, may be fried. Three-
fourths of an ounce of salt and one
gramme of pepper are in the can for
seasoning,"

At first glance it might seem that the
meat and bread components of this ra-
tion were essentially the same as the
jerked venison and rockahominy (pul-
verized parched corn) that were the
mainstays of our Indians and white
frontiersmen in olden times. And it is
quite likely that the inventors had those
primitive foods in mind, seeking only to
condense them still further without im-
pairing their famous nutritive values.
Practically, however, there is little re-
semblance. "Jerky" retains much of the
meat juice, which gives it its pleasant
flavor. Desiccated meat contains no
juice, and its taste is altogether different.
Pulverized, parched wheat is a sort of
rockahominy, but in this case it was first
cooked, then parched, and the flavor is
inferior.

Finally the meat powder and grain
powder were mixed and sifted into a
homogeneous mass, compressed, and
sealed up in an air-tight tin. One need
not even taste such a product to know
that it could not possibly satisfy the
palate like the old-time preparations.

The emergency ration gave satisfac-
tion for a time, but eventually there were
many complaints that it was indigestible.
There had been no such trouble with
the food when it was fresh, but our army
has seldom had any actual use for it, and
the stuff deteriorated after long storage.
Of course, in time of a big war this ob-
jection would vanish. The worst fault
that developed was not in the food itself
but in the can that held it, which was
so thick and heavy that it made the gross
weight of the article almost as great as
that of the regular haversack ration,
which cost much less and was more

EMERGENCY RATIONS

palatable. For these reasons our emer-
gency ration was ordered discontinued
last year. Still the project has not been
given up. Food experts of the Depart-
ment of Agriculture are now at work
trying to produce something that will
meet all requirements.

As I said long ago, in my Camping
and Woodcraft, the problem of an emer-
gency ration is not merely one of con-
densing the utmost nutriment into the
least bulk and weight. One cannot live
on butter or peanuts alone, however high
their caloric value may be. The stuff
must be digestible: it must neither nause-
ate nor clog the system. When a man
is faint from hunger (and that is the
only time he will ever need an emer-
gency ration) his stomach must not be
forced to any uncommon stunts. And
so I hold that a half ration of palatable
food that is readily assimilated does
more good than a full quota of stuff
that taxes a man's gastric strength or dis-
orders his bowels. And there is a good
deal to be said for mere palatability.
Food that tastes bad is bad, for nobody
can work well on it.

Of course, an emergency ration is not
intended to be used long at a time. It
is not meant to interchange with the
regular reserve ration of hard bread,
bacon, or preserved meat, dried vege-
tables, coffee, sugar, and salt, that sol-
diers carry on their persons during a
campaign. The iron ration proper is a
minimum bulk and weight of unspoilable
food that is complete in itself, packed in
a waterproof and insect-proof cover, and
it is never to be opened save in extrem-
ity when reserve rations have run out
and supply trains cannot connect with
the troops. However, this is the very
time when men are likely to be exhausted
and famished. It is the very time when
their systems demand food that tastes
good and that assimilates easily.

In this connection it is well to con-
sider the peculiar merits of sugar as a
component of the emergency ration. All
old-timers know from experience that
one has an unusual craving for sweets
when working hard afield. Hunters and
lumber jacks and soldiers suffered from
that craving long ages .before scientists
discovered the cause of it, which is that

during hard muscular exertion the con-
sumption of sugar in the body increases
fourfold.

It may sound odd, but it is true, that
when hunters or explorers are reduced
to a diet of meat "straight" the most
grateful addition that they could have
would be something sweet. Men can
get along very well on venison, without
bread, if they have maple sugar or
candy and some citrh acid (crystallized
lemon juice) to go with it. And there
is good reason for this. Sugars have
about the same food uses as starches, be-
cause all starch must be converted into
sugar or dextrin before it can be assim-
ilated. Mark, then, that sugar needs
no conversion ; therefore it acts quickly
as a pick-me-up to relieve fatigue, while
bread or any other starchy food would
have to go first through the process of
changing into sugar before it could sup-
ply force and heat to the body.

A great advantage of sweets is that
every normal person likes them. An-
other is that they are antiseptic and pre-
servative, which adapts them perfectly
to use in rations that may have to be
stored or carried a long time before us-
ing.

These are not merely my own indi-
vidual opinions, although all my experi-
ence backs them. Since the worth of
sweets in a sportsman's or soldier's food
supply is commonly underrated, or even
ridiculed, through sheer crass ignorance,
let me quote from Thompson, one of the
most eminent of our dieticians:

"The value of sweets in the adult
dietary has of late years found recogni-
tion in armies. The British War Office
shipped 1,500,000 pounds of jam to
South Africa as a four months' supply
tor 116,000 troops, and one New York
firm, during the Spanish-American War,
shipped over fifty tons of confectionery
to the troops in Cuba, Porto Rico, and
the Philippines. The confectionery con-
sisted of chocolate creams, cocoanut
macaroons, lemon and other acid fruit
drops. . . .

"An old-time custom among soldiers
in the field is to fill a canteen with two
parts vinegar and one part molasses as an
emergency sustaining drink. . . .

"Sugar furnishes, in addition to heat,

OUTING

considerable muscle energy, and it has
been lately proved by Mosso, Vaughn
Harley, and others, to have distinct
power in relieving muscular fatigue.

"Vaughn Harley found that with an
exclusive diet of seventeen and one-half
ounces of sugar dissolved in water he
could perform almost as much muscular
work as upon a full mixed diet. The
effect in lessening muscle fatigue was
noticeable in half an hour and reached a
maximum in two hours. Three or four
ounces of sugar taken before the ex-
pected onset of fatigue postponed or en-
tirely inhibited the sensation.

"The hard-working lumbermen of
Canada and Maine eat a very large
quantity of sugar in the form of molas-
ses. I have seen them add it to tea and
to almost everything they cook. Sugar
has also been found of much service upon
polar expeditions."

Many of our sportsmen, when going
light, substitute saccharine (saxin, crys-
tallose) for sugar, thinking thereby to
save weight and bulk. This is a grave
error. It is true that saccharine has
enormous sweetening power, and that
moderate use of it on an outing trip will
probably do no harm. But the point
overlooked is that sugar is a concen-
trated source of energy, easily and quick-
ly assimilated, whereas saccharine pro-
duces no energy at all, being nothing
but a coal-tar drug.

One fault of the concentrated rations
hitherto tried was that they contained
no acids. Owing partly to this omission,
such rations generally were constipating
and had a tendency to cause scurvy. It
would be easy to supply the deficiency,
in very concentrated form, by adding
tablets of citric acid. One or two tab-
lets of this acid added to a cup of sweet-
ened water make a refreshing lemonade.

As a meat component for the emer-
gency ration, I know of nothing better
than pemmican — not the sweetened kind
used by arctic explorers, but unsweet-
ened, since the sugar item should be
separate in the ration. Desiccated meat
is disagreeable, and not nearly so nutri-
tious as pemmican, which is already con-
centrated as much as meat should be.
Pemmican also has the advantage of con-
taining a proper amount of fat.

The man difficulty in compounding
a good iron ration is in getting a con-
centrated substitute for bread. The
Germans have been experimenting with
flour or grits made from peanuts. It is
claimed that a pound of peanut flour
contains as much nutritive material as
three pounds of beef or two of peas. It
can be made into porridge or into bis-
cuits. Its flavor is pleasant in either a
cooked or a raw state. Peanuts are
rather indigestible when roasted whole,
and whether the flour is easy to assim-
ilate remains to be shown.

Of course, a generous component of
sugar and chocolate would largely offset
a deficiency in bread, so far aj energy is
concerned. Still there should be some-
thing in the cereal or peanut line, for
two reasons. First, because a food that
digests quickly will soon leave a feeling
of emptiness in the stomach. It does not
"stick to the ribs" like one that takes
several hours to digest. Second, the
stomach craves bulk as well as nutri-
ment— there should be something to
swell up and distend it. This is im-
portant, for, if concentration be carried
too far, it defeats its own purpose. If
we could condense a thousand caloric
portions of food into a single tablet, a
man would not feel that he had eaten
anything after taking it.

As for combinations, I think it is a
mistake to mix meat powder with leg-
umes or cereals and seal the mass up in
an airtight cover. In such case, each
food taints the other. The combination
has a stale, nondescript taste, whereas
each component would preserve its natu-
ral flavor if packed separately. It
seems more practical, in the light of
present knowledge, to put up the emer-
gency ration in two or three separate
small packets, each containing only such
components as will not taint nor steal
flavor from the others.

Waterproof paper is better than tin
as a covering. The mere weight of the
tin was a serious objection to our late
U. S. A. emergency ration; and the can
was hard to open, besides. The paper
covering of erbswurst, by comparison, is
much cheaper, easier to apply, weighs
practically nothing, impermeable, and
can be torn off with the fingers.

BALLISTICS OF CARTRIDGES

By CHARLES NEWTON

The Results of Some Experiments in Trying New Arrangements

with Old Calibers

'HEN the adaptation
of smokeless powder
and metal-cased bul-
lets to rifles was fol-
lowed by the adop-
tion of this almost
revolutionary development in ballistics,
and we stood amazed at the flatness of
trajectory, penetration, and power in
proportion to weight of weapon and re-
coil developed, we naturally wondered
what was to come next, and where we
would stop. Those weapons, with their
2,000 f.s. velocity and consequent bal-
listic advantages, seemed not only mar-
velous but adequate for any purpose.
But the far-seeing rifleman appreciated
that the epoch thus opened was but at
its beginning, that the powders were
crude and unreliable, and that if this
line of investigation and development
did not show far greater results in the
future, it would be a unique experience.
Therefore, as soon as he had familiar-
ized himself with his splendid weapon,
he was at once moved by the desire to
learn the limitations of the new force
thus placed at his disposal.

The only sure method of ascertaining
the exact size of a field is to try the sur-
rounding fence, at every point, and to
the best of our ability; otherwise we
may some day be surprised to find an
extra hard push in some direction has
suddenly vastly widened our range and
opened to us new fields, at times bear-
ing "long grass" and other pleasant re-
wards. Hence this metaphorical fence
has been long and earnestly tested during
the past twenty years — and much that
was good lay beyond. The problem
was, and is, how much? Some points

have been the object of constant assault
and have withstood it well; others have
given way more or less; with the result-
ant more or less widening of our oppor-
tunities.

In view of the fact that many will
never be satisfied, whatever stage of effi-
ciency in our weapons may be achieved
it seems well that our failures in some
directions be chronicled, as well as our
successes — since we often learn as much
from failure as from success. One book
for which the writer has long yearned is
that which shall set forth the failures of
the experimenting rifleman, and it is his
purpose to here record some of these fail-
ures, as well as those efforts which re-
sulted more satisfactorily.

It being the privilege of each to de-
scribe the results of his own efforts, this
article will be confined to those car-
tridges designed by the writer during the
past ten years, while he was earnestly
testing the aforesaid fence.

It all began with a woodchuck — one
of the common or garden variety of
woodchuck — which so tantalizes the
farmer's boy with its accurate judgment
of distance as related to the carrying
power of the aforesaid boy's rifle. The
.30-30 and Krag cartridges were some-
what of a surprise party for the 'chuck,
but their power rendered them a source
of some actual, but vastly more fancied,
danger to the community. What we
wanted was a rifle which would drive a
light bullet at the velocity of the Krag.
We had to make .22 caliber metal-cased
bullets on the kitchen table, but we did
it and the close of 1905 saw us getting
2,150 f.s. velocity with a 66-grain bul-
let.

[893

OUTING

Then Uncle Sam speeded his gun up
to 2,700 f.s., and the little .22 followed
suit. As the .22 Savage High Power,
alias "The Imp," it now needs no intro-
duction to the American rifleman. The
accompanying table shows its ballistics,
and its eight-inch trajectory curve at 300
yards, and muzzle energy equal to the
old .40-82, have well earned for it the
appellation of "the biggest little gun in
the world."

While this rifle was going through the
natal delays in the factory we were still
rubbing against the fence. The result
was the production of a cartridge made
by necking the Krag shell down to .22
caliber and loading it with the Savage
bullet, and it appears in the table as the
".22 Special." This was tested for ac-
curacy from muzzle rest, with telescope
sight, by a gentleman in Colorado. The
result was eight groups of five shots
each, the largest Ay2 inches in diameter,
the smallest 3^ inches, and the average
3)4 inches. These are group diameters,
not "mean deviations." This was the
fastest load produced, beating out the .25
caliber with 100-grain bullet by 5 f.s.
This load, when used on woodchuck,
showed the remarkable fact that the
higher the velocity given a bullet (mush-
room, of course) the less flesh it would
penetrate, other things being equal.

Naturally, different loadings were
tried, giving various velocities. Up to
about 3,000 f.s. velocity this bullet would
shoot through a woodchuck crosswise;
at this velocity and above it would not,
but invariably stopped in the 'chuck if
hit anywhere near center. But "it didn't
do a thing to" that woodchuck. When
he had stopped the 1,600 foot-pounds of
energy of that bullet and entirely ab-
sorbed it he suddenly lost all desire for
that last mad kick into the hole. The
bullet could never be found, it having
entirely disintegrated.

The next caliber which was thorough-
ly overhauled was the .25, it being the
next larger in popular use. This was
represented by .25-35 at a muzzle veloc-
ity of less than 2,000 f.s. for its 117-grain
bullet. Loading it with 25 grains Light-
ning and the 86-grain bullet speeded it
up to 2,550 f.s., but this would hardly
do. The Krag shell was necked down

and gave 2,965 f.s. with the 117-grain
bullet, but when we necked the Spring-
field shell down to .25 caliber and loaded
it with the 117-grain sharp-point Reed
bullet, the chronograph showed a muz-
zle velocity of 3,103 f.s. Let us examine
the ballistic figures of this cartridge,
shown in the accompanying table.

A fair subject for comparison is our
popular model 1906 Springfield car-
tridge. Compared with this the .25
Special has over 400 f.s. more velocity
at the muzzle, which alone counts for
little. But it has a longer bullet, of
greater sectional density, hence better re-
tains its initial velocity. In power, that
is actual striking energy, it has 49 foot
pounds more than the Springfield at the
muzzle, 142 pounds more at 100 yards,
198 pounds more at 200 yards, 234
pounds more at 300 yards, and 250
pounds more at 500 yards. As to trajec-
tory, its maximum height, when shoot-
ing 1,000 yards, is but 8.53 feet as
against 14.5 feet for the Springfield. As
to velocity it has 1,016 f.s. at 1,500
3-ards to the Springfield but 1,068 at
1,000 yards. In other words, it has but
52 f.s. less velocity at 500 yards greater
range. Therefore it is substantially as
good a target cartridge at 1,500 yards
as the Springfield is at 1,000.

Rifles for the New Cartridge

No factory has as yet undertaken the
manufacture of rifles for this cartridge
regularly, or to manufacture the cartridge
itself, but the writer has made up a num-
ber of these rifles for Western men, who
require a flat trajectory at long ranges,
for wolf, etc., using Springfield, Mauser,
and model 1895 Winchester actions
adapted to the Springfield cartridge.
Mr. Adolph, also, has made hand-made
rifles and three-barrel guns for it, using
the .405 Winchester shell necked down
in double and three-barrel guns, where
the rimless shell is impracticable on ac-
count of the extractor used, and the
Springfield shell in the Mausers. Proph-
ecy is always dangerous, but we venture
the prediction that the ballistics of this
cartridge, together with its light recoil,
which is far less than that of the Spring-
field, in fact nearer that of the .30-30,

BALLISTICS OF CARTRIDGES

will ultimately lead to such a call for it
that we shall soon see it, or its practical
equivalent, regularly manufactured by
our factories.

A modification of this load was made
by using a 100-grain bullet, giving a
muzzle velocity of 3,271 f.s., but as the
117-grain bullet is so much superior for
practical use, ballistic tables for the 100-
grain weight are not given. It works
splendidly on woodchuck, but is too light
for an all round big game cartridge.

Before dismissing the .25 caliber we
must record our failure. We felt, as has
many another, that "if a little does good
more will do better" and we applied it
to chamber room. We necked down the
.40-90 Sharp's straight shell to .25 cali-
ber, and loaded with powder up to 71
grains, but the best velocity we could get
was but 2,850 f.s., with the 117-grain
bullet. We concluded that there was a
limit to the benefits obtainable from in-
creasing chamber room.

The next caliber worked out was the
.280, or 7 mm., which is its practical
equivalent. Using a 7 mm. barrel and
the 139-grain U. M. C. spitzer bullet,
with a necked-down Springfield shell,
we obtained a muzzle velocity of 3,034
f.s., but 16 f.s. less than the Ross .280,
or about one-half the variation in indi-
vidual cartridges. The 7 mm. is .005
inch smaller in diameter, across the
grooves, than the .280, and this differ-
ence just compensates for the six grains
difference in bullet weight, giving the
same ballistic coefficient and consequent
carrying power. Therefore the ballistic
table for the Ross .280, already pub-
lished, approximates very closely that of
this cartridge, hence its ballistics are not
given. Owing to its slightly lighter bul-
let, its striking energy is four per cent,
less than that of the Ross. Its remain-
ing velocity and trajectory are practically
identical. The shells are, to the writer's
mind, superior in form, more compact,
smaller, and, owing to the smaller interi-
or cross section, impose less strain on
the rifle action. Likewise they can be
used in any action which will handle the
Springfield shell.

The Ross copper tube bullet is a splen-
did one, and owing to the fact that there
are no soft-point spitzers made in this

country for the 7 mm., this cartridge was
loaded with the Ross bullet, 145 grains
weight, and shot from a 24-inch .280-
barrel, giving a muzzle velocity of 2,885
f.s., or 165 f.s. less than the Ross. In
considering these figures, however, it
must be borne in mind that the 3,050 f.s.
velocity of the Ross cartridge is obtained
with a standard testing barrel of thirty
inches in length. As indicating the dif-
ference in velocity due to the shorter
barrel, experiments conducted by the
London Field and reported in the issue
of December 20, 1913, show that with
the .22 high-power cartridge used in the
regular twenty-inch barrel, a velocity of
2,734 f.s. was obtained, while when the
same cartridge was used in the thirty-
inch barrel it resulted in about 3,000 f.s.
velocity, an increase of over 250 f.s.

Inasmuch as the powder used in the
.280 cartridges is slower burning than
that used in the .22 high power, the va-
riation in length of barrel would give
even more variation in results. There-
fore we can readily see that this car-
tridge would equal the Ross in velocity
if shot from the same length barrel.
This cartridge works well through the
action and magazine of the Springfield
rifle in which it was used, without al-
teration of the rifle except as to the
barrel.

The .280 caliber was also to record a
failure. The 145-grain Ross .280 cop-
per tube bullet was tried in a decidedly
larger shell, the same as the "Adolph
Express," later described. This wTas ap-
parently another case of too large a
chamber space, as the best velocity ob-
tainable was under 2,900 f.s.

The .30 Caliber

The next caliber to be investigated, in
point of size rather than of time, was
the "old reliable" .30. For this a great
variety of bullets were obtainable, as well
as Springfield rifles and barrels. The
result of this was "twins," or rather two
cartridges, having the same chamber
space, but differing in form. The first
was made by necking down the .40-90
Sharp'i straight shell to .30 caliber, and
the second, made at Mr. Adolph's sug-
gestion, by necking down a foreign car-

OUTING

tridge, much thicker in the body, hence
shorter, for use in repeaters. Both
have the same powder space, both use
the same bullets, and both give the same
ballistics.

Mr. Adolph christened the first, made
from the .40-90 shell, the "Newton Ex-
press," and the latter, made from the
foreign shell, the "Adolph Express."
He uses the Newton Express, which is a
long, slender cartridge with a flanged
head, in his double rifles and three-barrel
guns, and the latter in his Mauser and
Springfield repeaters, the cartridge being
of the same length over all and hav-
ing the same sized head as the Spring-
field cartridge. The column designated
"Adolph Express" gives the ballistics of
both cartridges.

From the table it will be seen that this
cartridge, with the 150-grain service bul-
let, has everything except the .22 Special
high power beaten in both velocity and
trajectory, and the .405 Winchester de-
cidedly beaten in power at the muzzle.
At the longer ranges its superiority over
the .405 becomes more and more marked,
being over fifty per cent more powerful
at 300 yards. It has more power than
the Ross .280 up to 500 yards, likewise
a flatter trajectory.

However, the premier sporting bullet
in this cartridge is the 172-grain. This
has practically the same energy at the
muzzle as the 150-grain, and holds it
much better. It has 900 foot-pounds
more energy at 200 yards than has the
.405, and over twice as much at 500
yards. It has fifteen per cent more
power than the Ross .280 at the muzzle,
and this proportion increases as the range
is lengthened. Its trajectory is practi-
cally identical with that of the Ross at
500 yards, and the greatest excess of
height within that distance is but .06
inch, or one-fifth of the diameter of the
bullet. Its velocity is but 50 f.s. less
than that of the Ross at the muzzle, and
lacks but 2 f.s. of equaling it at 300
yards; beyond this point it is the faster.

Lieutenant Whelen says of it that:
"The recoil is so light that good long
range practice can be done with it, even
by a light man." And this with a muz-
zle energy of 3,440 foot-pounds, or five
per cent more than the .405, and twice

as much energy as the latter at 300
yards.

The Adolph Express, with the 220-
grain bullet, is primarily a cartridge for
extreme long range. At 1,500 yards it
has as much velocity and fifty per cent
more energy than the Springfield, model
1906, has at 1,000 yards. This gives
something to "buck the wind."

The 190-grain "Adolph Express" is
a compromise between the 172-grain and
225-grain weights, superb for long range,
but inferior to the 225-grain; a good
sporting bullet, but inferior to the 172-
grain. However, the bullets are easily
procured in this country, which counts
for something, the 225-grain bullet hav-
ing to be imported. This shell will also
take any of the other weights of .30-cal-
iber bullets with correspondingly good
results.

The above covers the more important
types of special cartridges designed by
the writer. The purpose of these car-
tridges is to furnish something better
than any factory product for some par-
ticular purpose; in other words, special-
izing as far as possible in each direction.
Some are adapted to extreme long-range
target work, others to game shooting at
short range and others to game shooting
at long range, and within the limits of
power developed, which in the case of
the Adolph Express reaches well above
that of the most powerful American-
made rifle, the .405 Winchester, the rifle-
man who is desirous of owning the very
best weapon for any particular purpose
can find his wish gratified, provided he
does not object to using hand-loaded car-
tridges. One notable result obtained in
the working out of this series of car-
tridges was a pronounced reduction of re-
coil in proportion to energy developed.

Americans cannot be said to be always
discontented. Many are the rifles which
have been pronounced to be "Big enough
for the biggest game." This has been
applied to the muzzle loader, the .44
W.C.F., the .45-70, and to the later
high-power cartridges as they came out,
in succession, up to the most powerful
of them all, the .405 Winchester. This
statement, however, represents but the
individual opinion of the weapon as
meeting the individual wants of the user

BALLISTICS OF CARTRIDGES

and the field of the rifle abroad is vaster,
both in its actual requirements and in
the power deemed desirable to meet
given requirements. Therefore, while
the American, prior to the smokeless
powder era, termed the old Sharp's
buffalo guns ''coast defense," the foreign
sportsman was using rifles of 10, 12, and
8 bore commonly, and occasionally 4
bores. Since the smokeless powder era
our foreign friends have substituted .450,
.500, .577, and .600 caliber cordite rifles,
giving muzzle energies up to 7,000
pounds and butt plate energies which
certainly secure for them respect, as
witness the reports of the users of the

.450 cordite, the smallest of those men-
tioned, when used in a rifle of 12 pounds
weight.

While we have in this country no use
for rifles of the terrific power of those
mentioned, the problem suggests itself
that, inasmuch as the reduction of cal-
iber and increase of speed to obtain a
given power result in a vast reduction in
recoil, the same principle might be ap-
plied to these gigantic "elephant guns"
with good results. It was, and a subse-
quent chapter will show results obtained.

The following table shows the ballis-
tics of the cartridges discussed in this
article :

Range. Bullet.

Muzzle Velocity, ft. sec 2800 3276

Energy, ft. lbs 1190 1625

100 Yd. Velocity, ft. sec 2453 2891

Energy, ft. lbs ,911 1268

Trajectory, ft 052 .038

Time, Fit., sec 114 .098

200 Yd. Velocity, ft. sec 2131 2537

Energy, ft. lbs 687 959

Trajectory, ft 242 .174

Time, Fit., sec 246 .209

300 Yd. Velocity, ft. sec 1833 2208

Energy, ft. lbs 510 740

Trajectory, ft 666 .451

Time, Fit., sec 408 .336

500 Yd. Velocity, ft. sec 1341 1631

Energy, ft. lbs 272 401

Trajectory, ft 246 1.70

Time, Fit., sec 784 .653

1000 Yd. Velocity, ft. sec 869 943

Energy, ft. lbs 114 136

Trajectory, ft 20.1 14.90

Time, Fit., sec 2.24 1.93

1500 Yd. Velocity, ft. sec 641 694

Energy, ft. lbs 62 73

Trajectory, ft 71.8 46.37

Time, Fit., sec 4.26 3.82

a. bo"*

S3u

tn u
bo
a **

C °* •

Geo •

t»H(J

<J~ OO

o-3°?

~-3 ^

0*0 ,•

~\c

Or-oo

o -*<

OT3 •

<fcs

3103

3034

3208

3000

2745

2610

2504

2848

3445

3440

3192

3470

2891

2814

2950

2804

2559

2470

2176

2456

2910

3010

2774

3060

.04

.042

.038

.043

.051

.056

.100

.103

.098

.104

.112

.118

2689

2605

2707

2618

2379

2333

1884

2106

2445

2631

2394

2723

.173

.181

.166

.185

.219

.238

.208

.213

.204

.215

.234

.244

2496

2406

2477

2439

2206

2202

1626

1793

2040

2287

2052

2430

.417

.442

.409

.44

.532

.562

.323

.333

.320

.333

.365

.375

2133

2030

2049

2100

1880

1949

1182

1279

1395

1685

1482

1913

1.35

1.46

1.37

1.44

1.74

1.77

.583

.605

.586

.598

.66

.665

1383

1288

1223

1395

1246

1413

491

514

495

739

646

990

8.53

9.49

9.73

8.76

10.89

9.86

1.46

1.54

1.56

1.48

1.65

1.57

1016

973

928

1032

975

1087

269

290

285

408

399

585

30.47

33.85

35.6

30.5

36.9

31.3

2.76

2.91

2.98

2.76

3.04

2.80

TARPON AND THE MOVIES is what Mr. A. W. Dimock
calls the story of his experiences in landing a leaping tarpon on a
moving picture film. It will appear in the May OUTING.

FINS AND FINIS

By LADD PLUMLEY

The Duty of the Good Fisherman Is Not Ended When He Has the

Fish In His Basket

P on the Neversink there
used to live a long-legged
bear hunter. That man
could walk almost as fast as
an ordinary mortal can run.
It is a great thing to have
long legs for stumping around through
the mountains, and the Catskill hunter
could cover twenty miles of bear country
and be ready for twenty miles more.

It is to be regretted that my Never-
sink friend did not have a heart as big as
his legs were long. In his bear-hunting
he used steel-traps. Those torturing con-
trivances should be made unlawful, but
the hunter of long legs looked upon all
bears as his enemies to be slaughtered by
any method whatever. He set steel'
traps every fall, and in November there
were always bear hides drying against
the sides of his woodshed, and the neigh-
bors for ten miles around had bear meat.
One October I was up in that country
with my wife. The weather had turned
to what was really uncomfortably hot,
and during the heated spell a young bear
took a chance with one of the long-legged
hunter's steel-traps. The hunter was a
generous old fellow, and knowing that
my wife had never eaten bear meat, he
brought over to our boarding-house a
nice chunk of the poor young bruin. But
I had my doubts as to the manner of the
death of the bear.

"Did you shoot him?" I asked.
"Wall, yer see, it were onnecessary,"
replied the hunter. "Bern' as how we've
had such a peculiar spell of hot weather,
that thar b'ar fit hisself to death."
"How was that?"

"Jes' fit hisself to death," replied the
hunter. "Th' clog on th' trap got
cotched between two little birches, and it
were entirely onnecessary ter use a rifle."

[84]

"You found him dead?" I pursued.

"Dead ez a porcupig under a dead'
fall," the hunter replied.

It is "onnecessary" to say that we
thanked the hunter, took the meat, but
did not eat any of the bear that was
caught in the cruel jaws of a steel-trap
and had "fit hisself to death." The meat
may have been all right for human nutri-
ment, but most of us would hardly care
to make a venture.

Many fishermen are as careless as was
the Catskill hunter as to the manner of
the death of their quarry. I have actual-
ly known a trout angler to say that he
likes to hear his trout flopping and
thumping to their end in his creel. As
he puts it, "I know when my creel shakes
and I hear 'em floundering that for sure
I've caught something." And a bass
fisherman whom I know throws his catch
into the bottom of his boat, where they
flop under a midsummer sun on the
boards until they struggle and gasp to a
wretched end.

Maybe a deer that has come to its
death by drowning would be as good to
eat as one that had died quickly and
painlessly with a bullet through the heart
or head. For one I doubt it. And I
think that most sportsmen would prefer
to eat steaks cut from the latter. And
the gasping to the death in air of a trout
or bass is strictly analogous to the drown-
ing of a deer in water. Yet I suppose
very few would pause before eating to
consider how a fish met its death.

I do not know that with the smaller
fish it has ever been proved that the fla-
vor is really impaired by a lingering ter-
mination of its life. But salmon fisher-
men will tell you that among guides
there is a riverside prejudice against the
flesh of a salmon that has not been killed

FINS AND FINIS

and bled immediately after the use of the
net or gaff.

But leaving aside for the moment all
questions as to the flavor or healthfulness
of salmon, trout, or other fish that have
been quickly despatched after the lift-
ing from the water, there is much, very
much, to be said as to the cruelty of the
practice of leaving the finned game to a
lingering, gasping torment, until death
mercifully brings the end. Because the
object of our sport of angling is really
the death of the fish that is pursued, there
is no reason why that death should not
be given to the game in an expeditious
and merciful manner.

If this is scientifically done, then we
have the Hest reason for believing that
there has been no real cruelty connected
with our sport. For under natural con*
ditions almost every fish of river, stream,
or lake must die a more or less cruel
death. Among the dwellers of the water
such a thing as an end caused by old age
would be almost an impossibility.

The Humane Way to Kill

Let us examine the methods for the
humane killing of fish. And, although
this may not be a particularly pleasant
subject, yet as the sport of angling, as has
been said, is the endeavor to kill fish,
then the actual killing should be a part
of the streamside or lakeside technique
of every fishing sportsman. And he
should know how to practice this part of
his art, just as he should know how to
practice other parts of his art, and should
know a means for killing his fish in a
manner that will be the quickest and that
will inflict the least possible pain.

After netting their trout some fisher-
men place their thumbs in the mouth of
their fish and bend the head far back-
ward, thus breaking the backbone at the
base of the skull. There can be no ques-
tion but that this mode instantaneously
ends the life of a fish. But for some of
us the process is peculiarly disagreeable.
Then, too, a large trout has sharp teeth ;
and the angler's thumb, if not protected
with a glove, may suffer to an extent.
Also, every angler prefers that if pos-
sible the trout in his creel shall present
an attractive appearance, and trout that

have had their backbones broken, as has
been described, are not very sightly; they
almost immediately begin to discolor near
the head, and if left long in the creel will
soften at the place of rupture.

Against this practice there are also
other arguments. For rather esthetic
reasons trout are generally cooked with
their heads left on the bodies. When
trout have been killed by breaking the
backbone at the base of the head, the
process of frying or broiling frequently
causes the heads to drop quite away, thus
injuring the appearance of the fish when
served on plate or platter.

There can be no question that break-
ing the backbone of trout or other fish
ends its life mercifully, but a heavy blow
on the base of the skull is equally pain-
less, perhaps even more so. Be an ani-
mal small or large, finned or legged, of
necessity such a blow must either stun or
kill.

To practice the latter method, the
trout fisherman can carry in his pocket a
heavy fishing-knife. He will need a
stout knife for many purposes. The one
I have carried for years is, for me, an
ideal tool. It is made of the best of
steel, has a long handle, and weighs
three ounces. It has three blades: a
long, thin blade suitable for cleaning fish,
a short, stout blade which is good for
cutting down saplings for poles to dis-
engage flies from the limbs of trees, and
a smaller blade for those uses where such
a blade is appropriate.

With this fairly heavy knife a trout
can be instantly killed. To effect it, the
trout is grasped firmly in the left hand
and with the closed knife the right hand
strikes a sharp blow at the base of the
head of the fish — where the skull joins
the backbone. It is better to deliver two
or three blows after the first to make
certain that the trout is not only stunned
but that it is killed.

Within the method that has been de-
scribed it will be found that on a hot day
the trout in the creel will remain firm
much longer than if their backbones had
been actually broken. And when the
trout are cooked the heads have no tend-
ency to fall away, and at the table are
entirely presentable and are not beheaded
fish. As to the mercifulness of the

OUTING

death: from the moment the blow has
been given, if given correctly, the fish
has surely lost all sensation.

If fishing from a canoe or from a boat,
or if angling for very heavy trout — say
upwards of two pounds — a stout, heavy
stick, about a foot or so long and prefer-
ably cut from a green sapling so that it
will not break easily, is better for ending
the fishing battle than a heavy knife.
Some anglers carry such a weapon in
their creels and make use of it in prefer-
ence to a pocket-knife. My own practice
is to use my knife for ordinary stream
work and a stick for Canada lake ang-
ling, or, generally, for very heavy trout,
such as are sometimes caught in the Lake
Superior regions, and for sea trout in
Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island.

The humane killing of other fish than
trout — bass, pickerel, and pond fish —
can be effected with a stout piece of sap-
ling such as has been described, or, if
preferred, with the large blade of a fish-
ing-knife. The latter method for pond
fish is sometimes more convenient. As
pond fish are not generally cooked with
their heads, and as the coarser and larger
fish are the better when they come to the
table after they have been bled at the
time of death, the backbone of such fish
can be severed with a knife just at the
base of the brain. If this is carefully
and quickly done death is quite as instan-
taneous as death caused by a blow of
knife or stick.

Killing the Big Fish

To kill such monsters as muskellunge
and salmon, it is usual to use a heavy
cudgel in the same manner as has been
described for smaller fish with a stick or
knife. Scottish anglers frequently ad-
minister the blow or blows with a stone
held in the hand. Afterwards it would
seem to be the usual practice in Scotland
to "crimp" the salmon immediately after
killing. Stoddart says, in his "Compan-
ion," "Crimp the fish immediately on its
being killed, by the waterside, making
the cuts slantwise and at a distance of
two inches from each other; separate also
the gills, and, holding it by the tail, im-
merse the body in the stream for the
space of three or four minutes, moving it

backwards and forwards, so as to expe-
dite the flowing off of the blood." Else-
where, Stoddart refers to "crimping"
(cutting) such large fish as pike in the
same manner that he describes for
salmon.

But "crimping" salmon at the river-
side and at the time of killing injures
their appearance. Therefore, on many
American salmon rivers the guides bleed
the fish in some other manner. The
guides in some parts of Newfoundland
are so careless in respect to the appear-
ance of the fish that they sometimes sep-
arate a salmon into two pieces, making
the separation at about the middle of
the fish. Doubtless this is done not only
to bleed the salmon, but to make it easy
for transportation to camp or boarding-
house. At any rate, there seems to be
a consensus of opinion among salmon fish-
ermen that bleeding the fish at the time
of landing it with gaff or net, and im-
mediately after killing, very much adds
to its keeping qualities and increases the
flavor when brought on the table.

It might be thought strange that small-
er fish of the salmon tribe, the various
species of trout, are not frequently bled
immediately after they have been caught
and killed. If any one cares to make the
experiment, I think that he will discover
that even a small brook trout is the bet-
ter for having been bled at the streamside.
Some of us know what a wonderful fish
a trout can be if cooked a few moments
after being caught, and it is not unlikely
that the high flavor is due to the almost
immediate letting away of the blood be-
fore it has a chance to coagulate in the
veins. For those who have not tasted
trout that are put into the pan fifteen
minutes to a half-hour after they have
taken the fly, they have an Epicurean ex-
perience still coming their way and one
well worth the trial.

The actual killing of the glittering
trophy is not pleasant to "rub in," but
we who make it our sport to pursue to
the finish the brave little warriors of the
water should attempt the task of seeing
that the end comes with the very mini-
mum of pain. Among anglers perhaps
there is a little thoughtlessness in this
regard. It is no wonder. The young
fisherman is instructed how to cast his

CARE OF GRAVEL TENNIS COURTS

bait or flies; he is told how to handle the
tethered quarry after it has taken the
hook; and he has much said to him as to
how to land or boat the finned knight
when the battle in the water is well-
nigh over.

Frequently there is nothing said to
the novice about what it would seem
must be a somewhat important subject
to the vanquished of the spots or the
scales. It might be almost thought that
when the net envelops the fish, the per-
formance were over for him, and that
dragging to the grass or sands ended all.

But the most important event is yet to
come, and the event which the brave
battler of the gills has done his sporty
uttermost to avert.

It is hoped that this brief paper may
call attention to the thoughtless and need-
less cruelty of leaving fish in boat or creel
to linger and gasp away to a slow and
suffocating end. To make amends to the
Creator, who has placed at our disposal
the beautiful tribes of river and lake,
surely the least that we of the wand can
do is to make their fishy exits as quick and
painless as possible.

CARE OF GRAVEL TENNIS COURTS

By R. N. HALLOWELL

How to Get the Court in Shape in the Spring and Keep It So All

Summer

T first thought the mat-
ter of maintaining grav-
el tennis courts seems a
trifling one, but in nine
out of ten cases, serious
mistakes are made by
the caretaker and much inconvenience
results before the details of watering,
raking, brooming, and rolling are thor-
oughly mastered. After a week of train-
ing an average laborer will be found
quite capable of taking care of gravel
courts in a satisfactory manner. But it
is a mistake to suppose that even fair re-
sults may be had from a man who has
not been carefully taught the particular
methods involved in the work.

The first problem that presents itself
in the spring is that of getting the courts
in condition for the use of the players
who want to round into form early in
the season. At this time the ground will
be more or less soft and moist and will
continue so for some weeks, so that it is
out of the question to expect to develop
a very fast playing surface before the
first or the middle of June. Unless
the court is the exception it will be
found to be covered by a layer of fine
pebbles that have worked to the surface
during the winter. These must be

swept off before rolling is attempted.

When the stones have been removed
the court should be tested for high and
low places, the best method being to
flood the area and carefully note the
spots that are in need of attention. A
smooth surface may often be secured
merely by using the rake and broom and
sweeping a small amount of gravel from
the raised places to those that are de-
pressed. In case the depressions are so
decided that this is impossible gravel
may be applied, a little at a time, until
the surface is brought to a perfect grade.

About the middle of May it is highly
desirable to make use of a one to three-
ton steam roller or a horse roller. A
three-ton tandem steam roller in the
hands of a competent engineer can ac-
complish wonders on a tennis court in
the course of two hours. When the
steam roller is at work a laborer should
be on hand to smooth out all inequalities
with the rake and broom and to water
lightly with the hose. Under no cir-
cumstances should the roller be allowed
on the surface of the court until it has
dried out to the extent that it will not
"pick up" when the roller passes over it.

For a high-grade gravel court the use
of a lead tape is almost indispensable.

OUTING

The nails used should not be less than
three inches long nor more than four
inches apart if a line that is absolutely
true is desired. After the tape is laid
it is usually painted with a white lead
paint. A coat of paint is not absolutely
necessary at the outset, however, because
a new tape is very shiny and readily seen
by the players.

Much time will be found to have been
saved if the work of watering and roll-
ing is carried on about as follows. The
space is first wet down lightly with a
stream from a three-quarter inch hose,
using the medium spray on a single court
for about fifteen minutes. The surface
is then allowed to dry until it is almost
dusty after which it is worked over with
a broom and every inequality brushed
out. Lastly it is rolled with a hand
roller of moderate weight. If the
brooming has been well attended to one
rolling will produce just about as satis-
factory a surface as two or three. The
tapes are then swept off and the height
of the net verified. For this last pur-
pose it is very convenient to keep a meas-
uring rod on hand with a nail in it to
indicate the proper height for the top of
the net.

One of the most common of the com-
plaints from the players is that with
reference to the dust. The dust nui-
sance may be overcome by the use of a

great deal of water; not, however, with-
out the water having a tendency to
render the court a trifle "slow." A
treatment for dusty courts that has been
found cheap and effective consists in ap-
plication of calcium chloride. This salt,
which costs less than a cent a pound
when purchased in quantities, requires to
be applied with considerable care; other-
wise a dark brown, overmoist, and dirty
surface will result.

If several hundred pounds are shov-
eled on at a single application, as has
often been recommended, the gravel will
become wet and sticky and the court will
be out of service for five days or a week,
a very undesirable situation at the height
of the playing season. Four hundred
pounds of calcium chloride will keep a
court free from dust for a season and, if
applied as follows, not a day need be lost
from play and the players may be spared
the inconvenience of dirty balls, rackets,
and shoes. A solution of five pounds of
the salt and ten gallons of water is
sprinkled over each court with the aid
of a watering pot daily. This applica-
tion is so small as to show no tendency
to "slow up" the court and small tend-
ency to soil balls or rackets. In addition
to the applications of the solution, a
watering with the hose should be given
daily, five to ten minutes being sufficient
for this purpose.

■N

BUD GOODWIN, HOLDER OF ONE MILE AMERICAN SWIMMING RECORD, ILLUS-
TRATES NARROW THRASH OF CRAWL HE USES IN DISTANCE WORK

THE SWIMMING STROKE OE THE

FUTURE

By L. deB. HANDLEY

Illustrated with Photographs

It Is the Trudgeon Crawl That Has Put Hebner, Frizelle and
McGillivray at the Head of the List

OME eight or nine years ago,
when the crawl swimming
stroke was beginning to win
recognition in this country and
our watermen were devoting
close study to it, Frank Sulli-
van, one of Chicago's leading instructors,
conceived the idea of combining with it
some of the features of the trudgeon, in
order to try out a theory which he had
formed.

It may be remembered that, at the
time, the majority firmly believed the
action of the crawl too punishing for
distances beyond one hundred yards and
thought it useless except in sprinting.
Sullivan, however, felt confident that
by making the slight change which he
had in mind the stroke would become
available for all purposes. It was his
plan to introduce into the leg drive of
the crawl — which is an alternate up and
down thrash of narrow scope — the dis-
tinctive scissors kick of the trudgeon,
then universally favored for the longer
courses. He proposed to time it with
the pull of the top-arm, as in the latter
stroke.

Sullivan's contention that this com-
bination would yield results was based

on good logic. He reasoned that since
the leg drive of the crawl was solely
responsible for its sprinting superiority
over the trudgeon and only inability
on the part of the crawl exponents to
hold it for the needed period to cover
the quarter, half, and mile prevented
its proving best in all-round work, the
addition of the scissors kick would re-
duce the effort and overcome the diffi-
culty.

"Once momentum is imparted to the
body by the trudgeon kick," he argued,
"it should take but very little power
to keep it under way. A mere fluttering
of the feet will do it. Thus, with no
appreciable expenditure of energy, the
swimmer should maintain the acquired
speed between kicks, avoid the check in-
curred in the trudgeon, and advance
smoothly and continuously."

The theory was worth a trial, any-
how. But when it came to finding the
wanted material for this practical test
Sullivan faced an unexpected barrier.
None of the successful contestants he
approached would consent to adopt the
unknown stroke, even as an experiment.
It was too risky. They might lose their
speed instead of increasing it.

[99]

THE LEG THRASH OF THE CRAWL IN SPRINTING

Realizing that there was no hope of
interesting the better swimmers, Sulli-
van decided to take the bull by the horns
and use green recruits. He persuaded
four boys under sixteen who could not
swim at all to let him teach them, and
he put them at the new stroke, which
he named the trudgeon-crawl.

It was a pure gamble, with the odds
heavy against him, for natural ability
plays an important role in the production
of a champion, wThether in swimming or
in any other branch of athletics. Still,
it was the only road open to him under
the circumstances, and being eager to
ascertain the value of his views, one way
or the other, he took it.

A remarkable thing happened. Be-
fore one year had elapsed all four of
the novices had developed into most
promising swimmers. At first they fig-
ured only in handicap races, but con-
spicuously, for they improved so rapidly
that their allowances could not be cut
fast enough to keep them from winning.
Then they began to score in important
scratch events and before the second sea-
son had drawn to a close they were bid-
ding for honors in the championship
field.

One of them, Leslie Chiville, made his
mark in Marathon swimming and re-
tired not long ago; another, Richard
Frizelle, captured a number of district
and national titles, then migrated re-
cently to Central America. But the
other two, Perry McGillivray and

[100]

Harry Hebner, are to-day the greatest
pair of all-round swimmers in this coun-
try, probably in the world.

Within the past twelve months Mc-
Gillivray has wiped out the standards
created by Charles M. Daniels at 110,
440, 500, and 880 yards, while Hebner,
besides establishing world's records for
swimming 50, 100, and 150 yards on
the back, recently shattered Daniels'
world's figures for the furlong, lowering
them from 2 minutes 25 2-5 seconds to
2 minutes 21 seconds.

Even when taking into consideration
the advantage enjoyed by Hebner in ac-
complishing the latter feat, he having
made ten turns and Daniels only eight,
the new mark shows fully two and two-
fifths seconds below the old one, for it
is estimated that one second at most can
be gained at each turn. And let it be
added that Daniels himself spoke of the
quoted 220-yard performance as his best,
while competent authorities looked upon
it as the most difficult of all interna-
tional records to dispose of. Hebner,
then, may now be credited with the fast-
est bit of swimming ever done by man.

Coming to the point, it was the
trudgeon-crawl which enabled McGilli-
vray and Hebner to exhibit such sensa-
tional speed. Both still use it. True,
the clever coaches who have handled
them since Sullivan left Chicago to as-
sume the post of instructor at Princeton
University, and particularly William
Bachrach, the man who has gradually

DRIVE OF THE TOP-ARM

brought them to their present state of
wonderful efficiency, changed their style
slightly and improved their form. But
one feature of their strokes has remained
unaltered, the leg drive taught them dur-
ing their novitiate, the chief character-
istic of the trudgeon-crawl.

To the casual observer the leg thrash
of both McGillivray and Hebner may
appear similar to that of scores of racing
men who use the crawl, but the close
student of swimming will notice at once,
sharply emphasized, a more vigorous
snap of the legs as the top-arm finishes
its drive, rhythmically marking the time
and showing that a narrow scissors kick
is then taken, in accordance with the
principles which govern the trudgeon.

Weighing these facts in the balance,
does it not seem logical to conclude that
the trudgeon-crawl is the stroke of the
future ?

Of course, swimming history is being
-written so swiftly, nowadays, that there
is no telling how soon new discoveries
may come to upset all calculations, yet
the evidence in hand strongly supports
the belief that this variety of crawl will
at least outlive all other types of stroke
at present in existence.

In the writer's opinion the great swim-
ming of George Hodgson, of Canada,
holder of the 400 and 1 ,500 meter Olym-
pic titles and records, is another proof
of thr. superiority of the trudgeon-crawl,
altho igh partisans of the trudgeon cite
it as their principal argument in favor
of the stroke they advocate.

Hodgson's method of swimming, in
fact, bears only faint and remote traces
of the stroke to which Trudgeon gave
his name. The action of both arms and
legs is different. This is just another
illustration of the frequent errors of
nomenclature incurred through the un-
fortunate custom of classifying strokes
at their first appearance, then retaining
the names in spite of alterations which
practically make them unrecognizable.
The system is hard to improve because
the process of evolution is usually marked
by so many slight changes that to tabu-
late each would be even more confus-
ing, but it is decidedly unsatisfactory as
it stands.

In this case, for instance, Hodgson is
supposed to swim the trudgeon on the
strength of his using a double over-arm
action and a scissors kick, although the
movements of the arms are no longer
the same and the kick has been com-
pletely remodelled. It is with this kick
that we are chiefly concerned, however.

The type shown by Trudgeon is now
obsolete. It called lor drawing the legs
up toward the chest, bent hard at the
knees, then throwing them wide and
bringing them together with strength.
Where do you see at present such a
kick? Certainly not in the competitive
field.

As to Hodgson, he opens the legs but
little, almost straight at the knees, and
does not draw up the thighs at all. A
marked difference already. But what
deserves special attention here is that

[101]

102

OUTING

sor, fs taken, and one or more minor
ones; that Hodgson uses one pretty wide
scissor and adds a narrow one. Is the
claim unwarranted that the Canadian's
stroke more nearly resembles the
trudgeon-crawl than any other type?

In taking up the trudgeon-crawl two
things should determine the number and
width of the kicks, or thrashes, to be
made : the distance in sight and the char-
acteristics of the individual.

In sprinting a mere accenting of the
scissor will prove best, for one of great-
er scope may establish a drag. On the
other hand, the following drives may
be made almost as full, so as to give a
strong, continuous impetus. As the dis-
tance increases, however, the scissor may
be gradually allowed more scope, while

HARRY HEBNER

Reputed to be the fastest all
round swimmer in the world.
Holds all the international back
stroke records and recently
lowered the free style 220 yard
standard considered by experts
the best on the record lists.

he allows his feet to cross in snapping
the legs together, so that they must pass
again a moment later in order to get
into position for the next drive. And
in passing the second time, on the return,
the young Canadian makes the move-
ment with some vigor; the legs don't
float back, they are driven. Actually,
then, another kick is performed.

Dissecting the Crawl

Consider, now, that any crawl thrash,
when dissected, is found to be composed
of a series of drives, each in itself a
narrow scissors kick; that in the
trudgeon-crawl one major drive, or scis-

PERRY MC GILL1VRAY

National all round swimming
champion of 1913 and American
record holder at 110, 440, 600,
and 880 yards.

THE SWIMMING STROKE OF THE FUTURE

103

the accompanying beats should steadily
be made smaller and less powerful. Over
the longer courses a rather good opening
is advisable in the kick, but the minor
drives should be just a fluttering mo-
tion of the feet, as already indicated.

This, in a general way. For the rest,
the swimmer must decide for himself
just how fast and how wide to make
the thrash. Obviously, a man with un-
usually powerful legs can adopt a type
of action quite beyond his weaker rival.
The question can only be solved by ex-
perimenting.

The Arm Stroke

Although the arm strokes of trudgeon
and crawl are alike, it may be well in
concluding to say a word about them.
The arms drive alternately and prac-
tically equidistantly ; that is, as the one
is about to catch, the other should be

RICHARD FRIZELLE
National 440 Yard Swimming Champion of 1912.

FRANK SULLIVAN

Now swimming instructor at Princeton Uni-
versity. Inventor of the trudgeon-crawl swim-
ming stroke.

finishing. The hands dip in front of the
head and close to it, then push forward
under water, so that by the time the arms
are comfortably outstretched and ready
to catch the hands are a few inches be-
low the surface and the arms at such an
angle that the applied power at once be-
comes effective.

With a vigorous, even pull, the arms
are then swept under the body and car-
ried to within touch of the thigh, when
the muscles are completely relaxed, the
elbows bent and lifted, and the hands
brought out of water without jerking.
From here the arms are thrown forward
above the surface, still bent at the elbow
and raised, so that in passing beyond the
head they may be in the right position
to make the slanting entry mentioned
above.

TOO MUCH OF A GOOD THING

By CHARLES ASKINS

The Sad Truth of a Hunter Who Could Have Been Happy with
Either "W ere Either or T'other Away"

T was early September, and after a
long, hot summer, the cane was rus-
tling under nearly spent but still re-
freshing breezes from frostier lands.
The home-bred woodducks were
strengthening their wings daily on
the long stretches of Little River, and a
few Northern teal had come down to
pay us an early and protracted visit.
Cat squirrels chattered from every pin-
oak tree, and the "red" deer were polish-
ing their horns on the rough bark of the
sweetgum.

Having noted where many game ani-
mals went down to the river to drink, I
resolved that my best chance to bag
either turkey, panther, or bear was to
hide in the edge of the cane, with a clear
view of the bar and river, and there wait.
A bear is sure to go to water over some
certain path, his habits being as regular
as the clock. I found a comfortable
seat with my back to a tree and meant to
remain until something worth while ap-
peared. In any event, I could not have
hunted through the tangled cane with
any expectation of success — every wild
thing would have heard me rods away.
Along in the afternoon I could hear
my bear threshing around in the brush
back of me, but he seemed to be taking
plenty of time about coming to the river
for a drink. Now he broke a canestalk
with a snap as clear as the crack of a
rifle, again it was the gentle shaking of
a blackhaw tree, the berries of which I
had sampled myself more than once.
His dilatoriness did not worry me, for I
said to myself: "You can't get me that
way, old fellow. I have all the time
that you have, probably more, because
I expect to live longer."

I rubbed my back against the tree un-
til the moss fitted more smoothly, dug

[104]

my feet into the sand as a brace, and
thought well of the world. What a
wonderful city of wood-folks this was
around me, with its homes and houses,
its streets and water-courses, its bosses
and his followers, but the great body
honest, self - respecting wood - citizens.
How busy they all were, and how man-
like the vanity of every one! Having
detected a badly concealed trap, the coon
says, "Now, if that had been any other
coon he'd have got his foot into it sure."
The wild drake quacks a warning when
the eagle's shadow hovers over the
stream, and, with his flock safe around
the bend, chuckles to them softly and
a wee bit boastingly, saying, "With any
other leader you would be no better than
dead ducks now." The red-headed bear
over in the cane doubtless knows that a
woods-loafer is waiting for him under
the big tree, and he cracks his own bear
joke as he snaps the cane.

Having a corn or two that hurt, I
concluded to pull off my shoes and dig
my toes into the cool sand. It was
queer, but the moss on that tree felt as
soft as a cushion when I sat down there,
and now some kind of a knot had ap-
peared right between my shoulders. I
pulled off my coat and placed it over
that knot.

Maybe I went to sleep and maybe I
didn't, but I had sat there like the
stumpish knee of that old tree a very
long time; the weather wasn't too hot
and it wasn't too cold; the wind fanned
me and sung from the tops of the cypress
trees; there was peace in the great
swamp woods, and I remember a feel-
ing of perfect indifference as to whether
bears and panthers ever were killed or
not.

Of a sudden I was wide awake, con-

TOO MUCH OF A GOOD THING

105

scious of having received a severe peck
on my bare foot. Then I saw an amaz-
ing thing: lifting his head to peck again,
close enough for me to reach out my
hand and touch him, a great black gob-
bler stood before me, his eyes gleaming
into mine in a friendly way. Followed
a confused rush and swirl of dark fig-
ures! The gobbler's broad wing struck
my hat off; a creature as large as a
horse chased across my extended legs,
and the rank smell of a bear was in my
nostrils.

Too stunned to move hand or foot, I
saw the Black Gobbler clear the under-
brush with a roar of powerful wing-
beats, and, after a half-comical, half-
snarling grin at me, the Red-headed Bear
plunged into the cane, which snapped
and bent as he tore through ; then, vi-
brating, demoniac, ventriloquent, there
came a wailing, feminine cry from across
the river — the yell of the Timber Lake
Panther. He had been watching the
whole tableau from across the river and
now voiced his disgust.

I never caught a glimpse of him,
though, but I picked up my rifle and
went home. Major Jones was unable
to get any particulars out of me.

It was cotton-picking time in the Ya-
zoo Delta, and every man, woman, and
child above the age of eight was busy in
the fields. As a visitor, and the only
man of leisure about the plantation, Ma-
jor Jones gave me three tasks which to
me were most congenial. He wished
me to kill the Black Gobbler, the Red-
headed Bear, and the Timber Lake
Panther.

The Black Gobbler was a notorious
bird. He had escaped from some river-
men, hunters who had come down from
the north on a flatboat. They had used
him as decoy, staking him out in the
woods and shooting the wild birds which
he called. He was an immense gobbler,
wary and wise, and knowing beyond
others of his kind. No man could call
him, none had ever been able to stalk
him; he knew every device of the turkey
hunter, and fully understood the fatal
nature of firearms. He was half-wild,
half-tame. Anybody could get close to
him provided he had no gun, but, good-
ness! that big fellow knew guns.

What provoked the Major, though,
was that Black Gobbler had stolen all
the turkey hens on the plantation that
spring, coaxed them off to the woods
from which they never returned. Con-
sequently the genial planter was without
his customary roast turkey. My strict
instructions were to kill this gobbler,
whereupon the hens might come back
with their broods.

There are plenty of black bears in the
swamp country lying between Little
River and the Yazoo, but usually they
remain in the depth of the forest, rarely
seen unless chased by dogs. This red-
headed fellow, however, — he was called
red-headed because his head was a red-
dish tawny, while his body was jet black
— had taken to ranging on the planta-
tion. He didn't seem to have any actual
meanness in him, had never hurt anyone,
but was full of mischief, and from too
much familiarity with them had lost all
fear of the negroes.

Twice he had chased Uncle Ben's
black brood out of the cotton field. He
had entered the yard where Jonas, the
coon-hunter, was finishing up a hard day
by chopping stove-wood one evening, and
after the wood-chopper had thrown his
axe at him retaliated by charging the
man, who barely escaped with a split
coattail as he bolted through the door.
Bill Evans was riding home from town
one night, when the bear suddenly
sprang into the road in front of him,
so frightening the old white mule that
he pitched his rider over his head and
ran away. Bill didn't know what hap-
pened after that, for he struck his head
on a stump when he fell. The Red-
headed Bear was marked for slaughter — ■
fear of him was demoralizing the field
hands.

The Timber Lake Panther had his
den in the impenetrable canebrakes bor-
dering the lake of that name. From
one darkey he stole a pig, from another
a sheep or a calf — almost nightly there
were marks of his visit somewhere on the
plantation. Moreover, he was consid-
ered dangerous. He had a most trying
habit of following the people in the dark,
squalling as he came, and the poor blacks
dared not pass through the woods after
sunset. He just had to be killed, the

OU [7NG

Major declared, and the task was turned
: me. I elected to camp
ga isl the bear first, and the result has
just c led.

Being in the employ of the I
rnment, 1 was call*
shortly after that, and did not get back
until a h s rhanksgiving.

earned that the turk ither, and

bear were still "footloose and free," but
just at that particular time the Mi

i| ig for turkey — nothing but tile
ck Gobbler would satisfy him for a
Than _ » dinner.

I made up my mind that the
char.; -cure the veteran was te

"roost" him. to find where he had
to roost and be there in the morning
fore he awakened. Knowing :
I put on a pair of waders and solas
out into the swamp - where I

waited for him to "fly up." You know
Id turkey like that will always
roost high and invariably over the wa
The noise so large a bird will make
mounting to a tree can be heard fully a
half mile on a still evening. At last
strnctly heard his flight, and from my
ge of the ground could select the
clump of cypres s in which
he would be found in the morning. Sat-
J that my opportunity had come. I
went home to wait as patiently as pos-
sible for daylight.

Any man who has tried it will bear

ut that i: is neve: to be up

and out at three o'clock in the mo:: g

as he thought it would be when he made

his plans the night before. The Mexi-

- mahana appeals to you as good

horse sense about an hour before sunrise,

when the north wind begins to whistle

and there is ice in the washbowl. N

ertheless. I was in the edge of that

mp, two miles from the house, long

ere it.

As I waded through the water, here
but a few inches deep. I heard something
or someone softly following. I H course
I stopped to listen, and. equally of course,
the thing halted, whatever it was When
1 moved on it came after me. pat. pat.
pat, not many yards behind. Exasperated,
I whirled with gun at shoulder, but there
only blank darkness and dead si-
lence. It was provoking to be stalked

like a ewe lamb and not be able even to
bleat.

By and by. in one of the halts I made
trying to see him. the animal purred like
:. and that was what he was —
the panther. I wished I wasn't there or
the panther wasn't there or it was a
trifle lighter. I wondered if the scoun-
drel wasn't just about fool enough to
jump on a man even when he had a gun.
The Major had a nag with claw-marks
on her hip. made by this very brute since
my last experience with him. and one of
the blacks was on the horse at the time
it happened. "1 ou may be sure that I

- careful not to trip or fall, for
that might be a signal for him to
close in.

It is one thing to hunt a cowardly
brute like a panther in daytime and an-
other thing to be stalked by him on a
dark night. He might pass me. climb a
tree, and I couldn't see him until he fell
on me like a battering ram. Besides. I

sn't out for panther that morning, but
for turkey, and I never like to shoot the
things I didn't start after. It was bet-
ter to go on than to stand still, so I held
my course, but nobody could say that I
didn't keep a sharp eye on my back trail.
and I fully resolved to see that the
Major put hounds after this impudent
np right away, fully intending to fill
his yellow hide with buckshot as soon as
he was treed.

jently I reached deeper water, and
the rascal stopped with a slight squall,
hich my turkey gobbled from his
cypress perch. I went on. both relieved
and elated. I was convinced that the
puma would not take to deep water, cold
as it was that morning, and I now knew
exactly where to find the turkey.

One cypress towered above the others,
and I knew that was where the gobbler
would be. though I could not see him.
L nder the group of trees lay a great log.
and with infinite caution, taking care
not to make a sound or a splash, for the
gobbler was awake. I made my way to
the log and crawled upon it. confident
that I had the Major's Thanksgiving
turkey. I: was still too dark to shoot,
that darkest time before dawn when the
sun drives the night out of the sky and
down among the trees.

TOO MUCH OF A GOOD THING

107

While sitting astride the log waiting
for daybreak, I was startled to see a dim
figure crouched on the other end about
fifty feet away. I knew it wasn't a knot
on the log, for it moved a trifle with a
distinct rasping of the bark. Here was
more trouble! Had that miserable pan-
ther followed me anyhow? It didn't
look like a cat — sat too erect. Could it
be the bear? That mischievous red-
headed brute wasn't much afraid of any-
body. I believed it was he, but — it
might be a man. Others were anxious
to kill the Black Gobbler as well as my-
self. Like me, he might be undecided as
to whether his vis-a-vis was man or beast,
and he, too, might be waiting to find out
before he shot.

Whichever it was, bear, panther, or
hunter, the fellow knew I was there and
was waiting for me to open the game.
If I shot at the figure I might kill a man.
and, on the other hand, he was liable to
mistake me for a bear and blaze away.
Should I speak to him and it wasn't a
man, the creature would escape by sli-
ding off the log into the black darkne-s.
and the turkey would hear my voice and
fly away. I had always wanted to kill
a bear, and a better opportunity would
never come. Wasn't it worth while to
take the risk? No. I dare not chance
shooting a human being.

I could see nothing for it but to wait
for light, and waiting was dangerous.
If the figure was that of a man. and if,
getting impatient, he concluded to take
a crack at me, I couldn't believe that he
would hit me elsewhere than right in
the stomach, tearing a hole as big as my
hat. I knew that I should fall off the
log into the water, which would run
through me from end to end. My stom-
ach sickened with the notion. I had a
dozen buckshot in one barrel of my gun.
plenty to kill a bear, but too many to
put into a man. I speculated as to what
kind of a gun and load the other fellow
had — a rifle wouldn't spoil one's looks so
badly at the funeral.

All this time I knew in my heart that
it could be nothing but a bear, that ma-
licious, red-headed, black imp of a bear.
I had my gun covering him with the
hammers raised, but could not detect a

single outline which vvould absolutely
prove him to be either bear or human.
He sat erect without sound or move-
ment, and, daring neithe/ to run nor to
shoot nor to yell, I sat tight and shook
till the log quivered.

The coming day lightly touched the
tops of the tall cypress. Glancing up
cautiously, keeping one eye on the bear
or the fool hunter — if such he was — I
saw the Black Gobbler, light glinting on
his feathers where the wind ruffled them.
He was almost above me and easily with-
in range. Nothing prevented me from
shooting him except the bear, but I
wanted bear worse than I did turkey.
He had scared me and I resented it.
Wait a minute, you black villain, till
the light comes down!

All at once there came a wailing,
laughing, crying, crazy yell from behind
and in front and all around me. It beat
down on me. glued me to the log like a
cowboy to a bucking bronco. Certain
the beast was right above me, that he
was preparing to spring, when I did
move I went up as suddenly as jack
from his box — my only thought to kill
the beast before he landed on my shoul-
ders. I couldn't see the panther, never
did see him, never knew precisely how
close he was to me.

At the puma's scream, quick as a flash,
v\ith a loud whoof, whoof, whoof, the
bear plunged off the log into the black
swamp-water. I ran to his end of the
log, but. swimming low. passing behind
trees. I couldn't catch the least glimpse
of him — never saw him again until long
afterward.

Disturbed and indignant at all the
uncalled-for commotion beneath, the tur-
key let loose a tremendous gobble and
then fairly shook the tree as he launched
his forty pounds of solid turkey flesh into
the air. As he crossed an opening be-
tween me and the brightening sky I noted
that he was jet black, that he was as big
as an airship, and that his wings roared
like a cyclone.

.As I waded home, empty-handed, hun-
gry, and highly exasperated. I could
think of nothing but what would have
happened had either of the others been
away.

NIGHT CASTING FOR BASS

By A. E. SWOYER

Illustrated with Photographs

The Ambitious Fisherman Need Not Stop Just Because the Supply
of Daylight Is Exhausted

NCE upon a time some ar-
dent fisherman, with a
bravery akin to that of
the man who first ate an
oyster, reasoned that since
bass were night feeders he
ought to be able, by risking the ridicule
of his fellows, to do some good work
with his trusty casting rod between the
hours of sunset and sunrise; to this man
we owe the introduction of the newest
form of angling. In short, his experi-
ment was a success, and from that time
on reports of big catches made by the
"moonlight" fishermen have been of com-
mon occurrence.

The sport of night casting opens up a
vista of pleasant possibilities to the busy
man tied to his office in the daytime and
hence deprived of the "plop" of the well-
cast lure and the music of the singing
reel ; under the new conditions he can
close his desk with a clear conscience at
the end of the day, drop a few "plugs"
into his pocket, and seek the nearest lake
or river with every prospect of having a
few hours' fun.

And it is fun, believe me; the mystery
and quiet of the night, the coolness, the
sense of aloofness from all ordinary cares
— above all the outdoor sounds and
smells would well repay him even if he
failed to catch a fish. To connect up
with a big one (and not only does the
catch run larger than in day fishing, but
because they are invisible even the small-
er fish seem to you potential record break-
ers) ; to know that bre'r bass is putting
up a fight for his life somewhere out in
the dark, your knowledge of the battle's
progress being conveyed to you along the
tingling line — there's nothing like it!

[108]

Perhaps you've tried the game, and if
so nothing that I can say will increase
your interest; if you have not, it may be
that a few words as to the modus oper-
andi will do no harm. At first glance,
this sport might seem closely akin to day-
light casting, implying the same methods
and lures ; to a certain extent this is cor-
rect, and the same skill and much of the
same tackle which have won success in
ordinary casting will prove effective in
the newTer style. On the other hand,
the darkness — for even moonlight is not
essential — introduces other factors whose
consideration will add much to your
comfort.

Thus, while the ordinary lures will
work well as far as connecting with the
fish are concerned, they are going to
cause you unlimited trouble in casting
among the pads and close to the weedy
shores which your quarry frequents. It
is sometimes hard enough to place a lure
exactly where you wish even when you
can keep your eye on it, but when you've
got to cast with only your sense of dis-
tance and direction as a guide ! Further-
more, you will at least double your pro-
portion of backlashes, the difficulty of un-
tangling which is increased by the dark-
ness; with an underwater bait this is
either going to mean mighty quick work
or a deal of stump pulling.

But as at night bass usually feed near
the surface and in shallow water, some
type of surface bait will not only prove
the most effective but will float itself
and your line while you are untangling
a snarl ; besides, to lessen the difficulty
of directing your casts, as well as to
make their lures more effective, many
manufacturers have placed luminous

NIGHT CASTING FOR BASS

109

SOME

baits of this type upon the mar-
ket. Such lures may be placed
with comparative nicety, which
is the fundamental principle of
good casting,' and they serve as
a guide not only during the pro-
gress of the fight but when the
time comes to use net or gaff as
well.

Several lures of this style are
illustrated, and may be taken as
typical; the one with guarded
hooks may be cast into the thick
pads or rushes where large-
mouth bass are apt to be found
without danger of fouling. The
luminous quality of each of these
is due to the paint with which
they are coated ; to secure the
proper effect of this finish one must
expose them to light (not bright sun-
shine) for half an hour, and then leave
them in an open box until ready to begin
casting. Non-luminous baits of other
types may be used with success, also, al-
though their handling is attended with
more or less difficulty.

In a preceding paragraph mention
was made of the increasing tendency to
backlash in the darkness; should you in-
tend to do much night casting, an in-
vestment in an anti-backlash or self-
thumbing reel might well repay you.
Apparatus of this kind is fitted with inte-
rior brakes whose application is governed
entirely by the speed at which the bait
is taking out the line; as it slows up —
either due to the pressure of a strong
wind or as the end of the cast is reached
— the action of the brake is increased,
and the reel kept from overrunning.
About the only possible way in which
standard makes of this type may be
fouled is when the line is wound un-
evenly upon the reel, thus causing the
line to pile or slide and bind a coil or so

A SELF-THUMBING REEL WITH SPOOLER
ATTACHED FOR NIGHT CASTING

TYPES OF LUMINOUS LURES FOR NIGHT
FISHING

in beneath; to avoid this, spoolers or
even-winders to be fitted to the front of
the reel are on the market, and do the
work more or less satisfactorily.

The illustration shows the writer's
self-thumbing reel with spooler attached,
which has proved an effective combina-
tion— although one which he would not
recommend for daylight use as robbing
the sport of a desirable element of uncer-
tainty. At night you don't have to worry
about giving a bass a fair show — he'll
take it!

So much for the tackle — now for the
method of handling. Long casts are un-
necessary and need not be attempted, but
the boat should be rowed or paddled gen-
tly to the feeding grounds where the
angler may either cast to the rise, if the
bass are jumping, or else cast into likely
spots as in everyday work. The boat
should be a wide, flat-bottomed affair
and but one man should cast — as much
as possible from a sitting position and
from the end of the boat farthest from
the oarsman. A standing position is a
menace to safety, while the greatest pos-
sible distance between caster and oars-
man is none too far — several burrs of
treble hooks actuated by a powerful arm
and a short, stiff rod will make a horrible
wound, and should, therefore, be treat-
ed with the respect accorded to a can of
nitro-glycerine.

Even with a luminous bait your strike
will have to be governed largely by in-
stinct, and for this reason a large pro-

110

OUTING

portion of the fish striking are eventually
lost; this simply increases the sport. To
offset this disadvantage, should you con-
sider it such, is the fact that at night the
bass are feeding and not playing; the
result is a savage, whole-hearted smash
at the lure that will send a tingle up your
action arm and make you think that
you've . stuck the rod into a buzz-saw.
More skill, too, must be exercised in
playing your fish, and a false move with
the landing net is to be avoided ; the saf-
est plan is to exhaust your fish entirely
before making any attempt to land him.
Night casting is effective at all seasons,
even during the sultry weather of July
and August, when the day fisherman
finds difficulty in winning a strike; they

may lie half-dormant in the deep water
during the day, but at night enter the
shallows to feed. Moreover, in those
lakes where bass are known to exist but
where they refuse ordinarily to take an
artificial bait they will often respond to
this newer method of angling.

The new sport is well worth a trial to
the fisherman who is in search of both
fish and thrills ; it is not in any way tak-
ing advantage of the bass, for the odds
are even more in favor of the latter than
in day fishing. At any rate, the busy man
may thus enjoy his favorite sport under
ideal conditions and without the neces-
sity of asking "The Boss" for a day off
— and we all have a boss, you know,
whether it is ourselves or another.

^ ~^V

In the May OUTING Mr. Oskison tells how he hit
the trail with one of the Indian hunters and paid in
fatigue and dust and hunger and thirst for his deer.

TWO FISH AND TWO FISHERS

By WILLIAM C. HARRIS

Both Sides of the Struggle That Ensues When Craft Above Meets

Craft Below

THE article which follows is in the nature of treasure trove.
It has lain for many years buried and unknown in the editorial
files and now comes to light as fresh and readable as when it was
first put on paper. There have been few writers on fishing who
could endow that sport with the quiet charm and acute sense of
perception that were the secret of the wide popularity of Mr.
Harris, and no apologies are due or offered for the late appearance
of the article which follows.

^iWO meditative black bass
lay at the bottom of a
three-foot pool, side by
side, under the protecting
shadow of a shelving
rock. Meditative, because
in that thoughtful, self - appreciative
mood, the keen enjoyment of which, by
mortals, is often marred by the slightest
movement of a muscle.

The bass lay still, but conscious, their
tails silently seesawing the quiet waters;
their pectoral fins gently waving up and
down, as if to the music of some sub-
marine melody.

One of these two basses knew a thing
or two beyond his brethren of the pools.
He was the heftiest of them all, and a
sort of patriarch among the in-dwellers
of the rocks and riffles. They knew and
called upon him as Old Scales, and many
a young fish had a narrow escape from
the pan, when heedless of the old fellow's
sage counsels.

His companion, or pool mate, Young
Fin, was some years his junior; in fact,
his spawn-child, and was content to bask,
or rather lave, in the consciousness of
Old Scales' knowledge of the ins and
outs of fish life.

Above

The day was getting old, and here and
there the irregular hills on the western

side of the pool threw dark bands of
shadow upon the bright surface of the
water. It was the hour for sentiment
and fishing.

Two anglers stood upon the eastern
bank of the pool, beyond the reach of the
shadows of the hills, with the glare of
the sun broad upon the bronze and lily
of their respective faces. Behold the
Master and the Tyro!

Both were young; indeed, it would be
hard to tell over which the most years
had passed, as they stand a little back
from the margin of the pool, pre-
paring their tackle for the work that
lies before them.

The Master, he with the bronzed
cheek, leisurely inserts the line through
the rings of each section of his rod, and
joints and lines them alternately, while
the Tyro nervously and clumsily joins
all the three sections, and then roughly
pulls his line through the guides, his rod
arching like a hard-drawn bow, and the
delicate tip bending under the strain,
with breakage danger not far to leeward.
He is nervous for fear his companion get
the first cast upon the likely pool before
them, in whose cool depths repose in
kingly content Old Scales and Young
Fin.

Without the capacity of originating a
nomenclature, mankind would have been
Babel-ruined forever; hence our tyro is

[in]

112

OUTING

known as Tuck, and he of the bronzed
aspect as Gill.

Tuck, having joined his rod and ad-
justed his line, takes from the breast
pocket of his coat an overgrown pocket-
book, vhose bulging sides indicate its
well-packed contents. He calls it a fly-
book ; Gill says it is a hybrid between an
old woman's reticule and a butcher's
passbook.

As Tuck opens it and takes from a
pocket a cranky coil of silken gut we see
an ample store of feathered lures within,
ranging in color and size from the dimin-
utive gray gnat to the half-ounce rain-
bow bass fly; the latter made by a crack
fish tackier, and sold with a guarantee
that it is sure to kill, which it would be
certain to do were it to hit the head of a
bass either in or out of the water.

Tying his leader to the handline with
a knot as big as a horse-fly, Tuck selects
three of the largest bugs in his book, and
with eager hands loops them, six inches
apart, to the gut of his leader, which,
owing to its dryness, dancing and dan-
gling in the air, coils around his hand.
Determined to have the first cast, Tuck
steps hastily to the brink of the pool,
then, raising and throwing his arm be-
hind him, and bracing every joint from
shoulder to finger end, with a stiff, rapid
movement he slaps the tip of his rod into
the water, and line, leader, and flies,
bunched and knotted, are sent with a
great splash, kaslosh, on the quiet bosom
of the pool.

"Tuck, old boy, hold up there!" cries
Gill, who, with his back to the pool, is
quietly making up his delicate cast of
flies. "Hold up, don't throw stones into
the water, you'll scare every bass away."

Below

If it be the power of fish to chew the
cud, and I sometimes believe that this
happy gift of blended action and repose
is within their reach, Old Scales and
Young Fin were certainly in that happy
state of contentment with things below,
and ignorance of things evil above, when
they were suddenly startled by the tu-
mult of the water caused by Tuck's first
cast.

No old fish, true to his instincts, but

has a danger hole for refuge in times
commotional, and Old Scales, in a flash,
was imbedded, body and tail, between
two rocks overhung with river grass.
Young Fin, with no wise precautionary
measures, darted hither and thither, be-
reft of all sense, except the one acutely
startled by the splash of Tuck's cast. He
at last found quiet and apparent safety in
the channel of the river.

The pool, which a few moments be-
fore was alive with fish, became in an
instant as dead and barren as a burned
prairie. Not a fin was to be seen. Even
the circling water beetle had disappeared
from the surface, and the silvered min-
now from the shallows.

Ten minutes passed and, one by one,
its scaly denizens peopled again the wa-
ters of the beautiful pool. Old Scales,
with the caution of years upon him, was
the last to find his way to the sheltering
rock, where Young Fin was found as
happy, and as forgetful of the past, as the
veriest fry that ever was spawned.

"I guess that noise was made by a
hawk who nipped a young one from us,"
said Old Scales, as he stiffened the rays
of his dorsal, a sure sign that his spirits
were slightly perturbed.

"I think so, too," was Young Fin's
reply, made from courtesy, backed by the
knowledge of the throat capacity of Old
Scales, who had been known on lesser
provocation than an uncivil answer to
swallow an offensive youngster.

"Come back, you young fool," cried
Old Scales, as Young Fin darted upward
like a streak of lightning at the rough
semblance of a May fly which appeared
on the surface of the pool. "Come back,
I say ; can't you see that great rope drag-
ging the bug 'gainst stream? Come
back!" and Young Fin halted, cast a
wistful eye upward, turned tail and
floated once more stationary under the
protecting fins of Old Scales.

"Don't do it," replied Old Scales, as
Young Fin asked tearfully for a snap at
a black bug above. It was the last of a
dozen or more that had lit with a thud
upon the waters, and the youngster was
getting hungry. "Don't do it," repeated

TWO FISH AND TWO FISHERS

113

Old Scales. "Don't you sec that man up
there with a stick and a string? Don't
you see him? He's right there with the
sun on him. He's got dead bugs to his
string. Can't you see him throw 'em?"

Above

"I threw no stone," replied Tuck; "it
was my confounded leader and flies, that
seem to be all tied up in a knot. Can
you account for it, Gill?"

"Certainly! You did not straighten
your leader by putting it in the running
water of the rift, which you should have
done before adjusting your rod and line.
Bring me your cast of flies and let me
see them."

Tuck bundles up rod, line, flies, and
leader, the three latter in an inextricable
tangle, and makes his way to Gill, who
exclaims as soon as the half-ounce flies
loom up in Tuck's leader:

"Why, man, do you intend to brain
your fish instead of hooking them, that
you use these heavy weights?"

Taking the jumble in hand, Gill soon
unravels it, and quickly replacing the big
gorgeous flies with three hackles, tied
Palmer fashion, thick and bunchy, but
not too heavy, in color, black, brown,
and gray, he dismisses Tuck with a word
of advice:

"Try these, Tuck, and try also to un-
joint yourself when you make a cast. In
the forward cast use your wrist, not your
shoulder, and don't be in such a hurry to
recover your line. There, go about your
business. I can't teach you, no man can
teach another how to cast a fly. So go,
and be happy and do your best."

Gill wades quickly across the river to
a favorite hole, where he knew the cop-
pery beauties ought to be.

Tuck goes back to his old pool and
splashes its bosom most industriously, but
without a rise. At last Tuck gives up in
despair, and wades across to Gill, who
has depleted his pool of all the biting fish
it contained.

"I say, Gill, I can't catch any over
yonder; suppose you try it."

"Not I, Tuck — at least not for half an
hour. You have either driven every fish
out of that pool or made them so shy
they will not rise. Let them rest for a

while, and I will see what I can do."

So saying, Gill passed over to an ad-
jacent rapid, made a cast, got a rise, and
landed a skittish pounder after a play of
a few minutes, during which, in his
frantic efforts to loosen the hook from his
mouth, the bass came out of the water
three times.

"I do really believe, Tuck, that a
pound bass gives more sport and fights
harder and with more spirit than the
big fellows — those six-pounders that we
hear so much about, but never catch. I
have never landed a bass with a fly that
weighed over three pounds, and I don't
believe that anyone else ever did out of
Pennsylvania waters."

Humming a tune in accord with his
deep convictions, Gill repeated his casts
with varying success until the allotted
half hour of rest for Tuck's pool had
expired. By this time the shadows had
broadened upon the face of the river, and
the hush and beauty of a calm twilight
was silently spreading over the water and
the hills.

"If fish are to be caught, this is the
hour, and here is the place," said Gill,
as he noiselessly waded into the rapid at
the head of the pool, where Tuck had
exhausted muscle, and fly-book, and pa-
tience without success.

"Why do you go out of your way to
reach the east bank, when you can get
such a lovely cast from this rock?" asked
Tuck, as he saw Gill make a wide cir-
cuit in order to reach the right bank of
the pool.

"Move gently, Tuck, and I will ex-
plain. Although it is twilight, my rod,
in the act of casting from the western
bank, with the setting sun behind me,
throws a shadow over the water, a slight
one, to be sure, but sufficiently dense to
alarm a suspicious fish; hence I intend
to make my casts from the eastern bank,
where the reflected light that comes from
the west will fall upon me, so that no
shadow of self and rod will be seen by
the wary fish."

Gill had now reached the spot desired,
and was quietly examining his tackle,
tightening the rod joints, testing the gut
of his leader, and making up a new cast
of flies, of which he used only two. He
neatly looped to his leader a black hackle

114

OUTING

as a stretcher, and a gray and black one
as a hand fly, placing them about thirty
inches distant from each other. These
flies were of his own make. They were
ugly, but good. He had a seven-ounce
split bamboo, about ten feet long, and he
used a nine-foot leader.

Going above the rapid, his first cast,
about twenty-five feet, was across its
head, then inch by inch he corduroyed
the rift with the drift and skitter of his
bugs. No fish. When his flies reached
the foot of the rapid, where it lost itself
in the pool below, he stepped farther
back to make a longer cast, rightly judg-
ing that the greater the distance the
greater the security from the keen senses
cf the bass.

It was a beautiful throw — at least
fifty feet — with the black hackle flutter-
ing through the air, hovering ere it fell,
like a feather, upon the deepest patch
of shadow that rested on the bosom of
the pool.

A break in the water — a splash — little
white caps here and there — a turn of
the wrist — and the fight began.

Below

-r

The growing twilight above had dark-
ened the pool below, and the dusky forms
of Old Scales and Young Fin could
scarcely be traced as they lay side by
side, under the hanging rock. The old
one, grown suspicious from seeing the
big body of incautious Tuck on the bank,
and the awkward trailing of his line in
the water, has -restrained himself, as
well as Young Fin, from wandering in
search of food, until both of them began
to feel the gnawings of a growing ap-
petite.

Not an insect had alighted on the face
of the pool, nor a bug, nor a worm, had
drifted down from the rapid above.

Suddenly, Old Scales expanded his
great dorsal fins, raised his body almost
perpendicular, and then, with head erect
and eyes bulging to the full in their sock-
ets, he seemed to be straining soul and
nerve in hungry expectancy. He had
seen the fluttering hackle which Gill had
so deftly thrown over the pool, as it

poised in the air. At last it fell upon the
water. With the speed of light Old
Scales struck the lure and the cruel barb
was in his throat.

Above

The fight began. Out of the water at
least three feet, with his big head shak-
ing like a terrier's when killing a rat,
Old Scales came thrice, seeking and now
and then getting, a slack line, but only
for a moment, for the obedient rod took
up the spirit and the skill of its holder.
It seemed to be gifted, in its yielding
resistance, with an intuitive foresight of
every movement of the fish.

Old Scales had been there before, and
had conquered, and he fought the harder
from his knowledge of the past, try-
ing every fish-dodge known und'er the
water.

At last, finding that coming out of the
wet did not avail, he went down and
staid there. He sulked.

Gill, like all other experienced anglers,
knew well that this trick meant rest —
recuperation — and that when the fight
was renewed his fish would contest it
inch by inch with all of his original skill
and vigor.

What was to be done?

Strike the hook deeper and deeper in-
to the sulking rascal ! The only response
is a succession of tugs from the fish,
only to be compared to the sturdy, per-
sistent jerks that a dog gives when one
attempts to take a cloth, or a rope, from
his mouth.

Startle him with a pebble or two
thiown into the pool?

He only settles himself deeper and
deeper until the bottom is reached, and
stays there.

There is but one resource left, and
Gill avails himself of it. He puts his
tackle to the test, and by main force
drags Old Scales from his lair. No
sooner does he feel the tightening strain
upon him, than once more into the air
he springs, but being skilfully met, and
tightly held, he can do no more than
surge and surge across the pool in des-
perate efforts to free himself.

"Ah! one more, if a last chance," he
gasps, as he draws his muscles taut, in

A NEW WRINKLE FOR THE FISHING KIT

115

his struggles to reach a roek, which lies
a few inches under the water.

No you don't, Old Scales; that dodge
is known, and you can't rub your nose
against a rock or press the silken line
around its sharp angles.

Gill, having tried the strength of his
tackle and found no failure there, holds

his fish well in hand, and after a few
more wild efforts Old Scales floats upon
his side and surrenders his knightly spir-
it, to animate, if such can be, some lordly
salmon, or great leviathan of the deep.
They could not own a greater. The
Master Craftsman had conquered, above
and below.

A NEW WRINKLE FOR THE FISH-
ING KIT

AMATEUR fishermen may be di-
vided into the "fussers" and the
"anti-fussers." Those who, like myself,
belong in the latter category and yet
find workable and fairly sightly tackle an
essential to the joy of the day will ap-
preciate this little scheme. Dental floss,
if taken on the fishing trip, will find
many uses. It is cheap, purchasable
anywhere, ready-waxed, strong, and flat.

As an emergency or even permanent rod-
wrapping it can be applied with a quar-
ter the expenditure of time and trouble
demanded by ordinary rod-silk ; is water-
proof, much more durable, and presents
an attractive semi-transparent appear-
ance. It is usable even for emergency
fly-tying and for any little repairs requir-
ing wrapping, even so serious a matter
as a broken rod.

HOW TO BE HEALTHY IN CAMP

By J. CLIFFORD HOFFMAN

Illustrated with Diagrams

Common Sense Measures That Every Camper Should Take to
Insure Freedom from Disease

'HE average camper, par-
ticularly the novice, who
goes to the country, into
the woods and along the
streams for an outing or
in search of health, loses
si2ht of the fact that sanitation there is
just as essential as about the home. The
out-of-doors is the greatest panacea for
tired muscles, nerves, and brain, but in-
difference and a tendency to carelessness
on the part of the camper is liable to
make his surroundings a menace.

Since there is no organization among
camping parties in state or nation, sta-
tistics are not available of sickness and
death directly traceable to unsanitary
conditions. A cursory investigation in
one's own neighborhood will show a
number of such cases each summer, and
when an estimated aggregate is consid-
ered the disease and mortality rate will
be found to be exceptionally high.

Camp sanitation in the United States
Army has been making great strides of
late, as witness the recent Government
reports, which show that in a year there
have been but two cases of typhoid fever
among 30,000 men in the field, and both
of these with doubtful histories. From
this the civilian camper can draw a valu-
able lesson. A well-groomed and health-
ful camp does not entail more labor than
will add zest to the outing. Ordinary
watchfulness and a few simple devices
easily constructed are all that is called
for to keep a camp healthful.

The selection of a good camp site is of
prime importance and calls for good
judgment and care. In a general way
the following principles will govern:

Choose a location convenient to an
abundant water-supply of unquestioned

[116]

purity. Investigate the source of this
supply, and if it is found to be contami-
nated with surface drainage that cannot
be readily prevented, or if the slope of
the ground or pitch of rock strata indi-
cates that there might be seepage from
barnyards, cess-pools, and the like near-
by the site is undesirable. If the water-
supply is a spring or well otherwise un-
contaminated except by surface drainage
the pollution can be stopped by building
a rim of puddled clay several inches high
around the spring or well or on such
sides from which the drainage comes. A
gutter around the uphill side which will
lead the objectionable water away from
the spring or well will also answer.

The site should be high enough and
with such a slope that storm-water will
drain off readily and, if the weather is
warm, so located that there will be a
free circulation of air. It should not
be in proximity to marshes or stagnant
water because of the dampness and the
mosquitoes. Porous soils underlaid with
gravelly subsoil will insure a dry camp
at all times. A site on clay soil or where
ground-water comes close to the surface
is damp, cold, and unhealthful, as are
likely to be alluvial soils and ground near
the base of hills. The dry beds of
streams are undesirable because of the
danger of freshets. A site moderately
shaded is always better than a dense
woods or where vegetation is thick.

Whenever possible avoid old camp
sites. If about to pitch tents on such
ground, however, thoroughly clean the
place of all refuse such as straw, paper,
leaves, tin cans, etc., and burn the rub-
bish before the tents are erected. Pay
particular attention to the burning over
of old sinks and places where organic

FIGURE 1

Cross Section Plan of Camp Fire and Incinerator.

A — Fire Jack. B — Surface of Ground. C — Broken Stone in Pit.

refuse has been deposited. Old camp
sites are often permeated by the elements
of disease, which persist for long periods,
hence too much care cannot be taken in
the cleaning up.

Granted that a sanitary camp site has
been selected, it is necessary to keep it
so. The greatest sources of contamina-
tion about the camp are the kitchen and
the soil sink. Flies and mosquitoes are
the instruments which carry disease. The
source of contamination is also the breed-
ing-place of flies and mosquitoes, where-
fore if the kitchen and the sink are kept
clean there will be no flies and no dis-
ease.

The carefree life in the open is apt to
make the camper indifferent as to where
the offal from the kitchen is deposited
and in what condition the sinks are kept,
just as long as his senses are not offended.
Fire is a positive destroyer of germs and
that upon which germs thrive. Burn all
solid kitchen refuse and dispose of the
liquids in seepage pits carefully screened
from flies.

The camp-fire is the best means of dis-
posing of all solid kitchen refuse, and, if
properly constructed, can be utilized to
get rid of the liquids as well. Such a
camp-fire can be constructed as follows:

Dig a trench of a width so that the
firejack — sometimes called buzzacott —
will rest firmly on the edges without
danger of caving in when the weight of
cooking utensils is upon it. Make the
trench about a foot longer at each end
than the length of the firejack and slope
the bottom from each end of the trench
toward the middle to a depth of from
eighteen inches to two feet. This will
make a trench somewhat like a basin.
Fill in with large stones — slate or stones
with many seams should be avoided — to
within a few inches of the top of the
trench, this to be determined by the
height of the firejack and the size of the
wood to be burned. Upon these stones
build the fire.

With such a fireplace all kitchen ref-
use, liquid and solid, can be poured into
the trench at each end. The liquids will

A— Pit.

FIGURE 2
Cover Excreta. I — Muslin or Board Screen Around Seat
B — Wooden Funnel into Pit. C — Earth and Sod Covering. D — Sticks Forming Support for
Covering. E — Lid over Funnel. F — Screen. G — Porous Earth.

[117]

FIGURE 3
Cross Section Detail of Sink Seat with Self-closing Lid.
A— Self-closing Lid. B — Seat. C — Supports for Back Rest. D— Back Rest. E — Post to Support
Screen. F — Trench. G — Braces to Support Seat. H — Earth Taken from Pit and Used Again to
Cover Excreta. 1 — Muslin or Board Screen Around Seat.

go to the bottom into the interstices be-
tween the stones, and will be evaporated
without smothering the fire. The sol-
ids, which will remain near the top, will
be burned.

A similar fireplace can be used when a
firejack is not at hand. The trench
should then be made just wide enough so
that the kettles can span it and the spaces
between the kettles can be filled in with
stones and clay, leaving a flue under-
neath in which the fire burns. The
draft in such a fireplace will be im-
proved by erecting a clay or stone chim-

D181

ney at one end of the trench. It is ob-
vious that a similar fire trench will an-
swer when the cooking is done in kettles
suspended from a pole. Many campers
use old stove tops which are supported
by clay or stone walls, erected on three
sides, upon which to do their cooking.
Such a stove can be used as an incinera-
tor by digging a hole inside the walls and
filling it up with stones to the required
height.

When a camp range is used dig seep-
age pits in which to dispose of liquid
waste. Place these in porous ground if

A— Posts.

FIGURE 4
Plan for Screen about Sink.
A to A — Muslin Screen. B — Entrance.

C— Sink Trench.

such is to be found, and where they will
not endanger the water-supply. The
size of such pits will depend largely upon
the number of persons in the camp. To
construct a sanitary seepage pit simply
dig a hole of the required size and cover
it with sticks laid closely together over
which place sod and earth, leaving an
opening through which to pour the
water. Provide the opening with a wire
screen — if this is not available a piece of
burlap or other coarse cloth will answer
through which to drain the water to re-
move all organic solids. Always keep
the opening in the top of the pit covered
with a board, stone, or piece of sod.
Burn the solids collected by the screen in
the range or a fire kept burning for that
purpose.

When canned goods are used to supply
the table always burn the cans before dis-
posing of them. The indifferent cook who
throws these cans indiscriminately about
the camp is responsible for the presence
of many mosquitoes. These pests breed
in stagnant water, and just a small
amount in a tin can is an ideal place for
their propagation. If these cans are
thrown together on heaps or loosely
about the ground they soon gather water
from the rains, or even from the dews,
and the mosquitoes get a start.

Throw all tin cans into the fire.
There whatever of foodstuff remains
upon them will be burned and in a short
time the solder of the joints will melt so
that there remain but loose pieces of tin,
which can easily be flattened out and
which no longer will form receptacles for
the lodgment of water.

If no one has prepared the camp site
in advance of the arrival of the party, the
first thing to be done after tents are
pitched is the construction of the soil
sink. This is a matter of great impor-
tance, and to slight any precaution in its
proper construction is to court sickness
and death. The most serious diseases
contracted in camps are spread from hu-
man excreta.

Locate the sink where it will not pol-
lute the water-supply, either by seepage
or overflow, where it will not fill up
from surface drainage, out of sight of
the camp if convenient, and where the
slightest odors will not permeate the
area occupied by the tents. The size of
the trench will depend upon the length
of time the camp site is to be occupied
and the number of persons in the party.
For ten or more it should be at least
six feet deep and about two feet wide.

Provide the sink with seats and back-
rests of poles or better material if at

[119]

120

OUTING

hand. In camps extending over long pe-
riods in summer steps should be taken
to have seats covered with muslin down
to the ground and provided with self-
closing lids, since open pits are danger-
ous during the fly season. A piece of
board over the hole in the seat, fastened
at the back with a hinge made of iron,
leather rope or coarse canvas, will make
a lid. If the back rest is so placed that
when the lid is open it is at an angle
with the seat of less than ninety degrees
it will always close automatically by
gravity.

The danger from flies, however, can
be greatly reduced by covering the ex-
creta with earth. Lime, if available, and
the wood ashes from the fire should also
be placed in the pit every day. The en-
tire area of the trench should be burned
thoroughly by means of combustible
sweepings from the camp such as straw,
leaves, and grass. Sprinkling the soil
in the trench every day with oil is an
excellent sanitary measure, and oil on
the material burned in the trench will
aid greatly in making the fire do the de-
sired work.

Clean up the camp-ground every day.
Keep the kitchen tent well screened
from flies and the foodstuffs in cool

places where the flies cannot get at them.
Pay particular attention to keeping the
milk free from contamination. Thor-
oughly ventilate the tents inside every
day by raising the walls so that there will
be a free circulation of air. Expose
blankets to air and sunlight at least an
hour every day if it is possible. Fill
up pools of water that may form about
the camp. Insist on a free use of boiling-
hot water when washing the dishes, par-
ticularly if granite-ware dishes are the
ones used.

When leaving a camp site which is
likely to be occupied soon again by an-
other party you owe it to your neighbor
to clean up the place thoroughly before
departure, just as you would expect a
householder to clean the premises before
moving out. Such would be a golden-
rule policy.

All this may appear like piling a lot of
seemingly unnecessary labor upon the
camper, but when it is summed up it
will be found that it all amounts to less
than it seems. In fact, all measures here
suggested entail only enough labor to add
zest to the outing and give, one an appe-
tite which will not be gained by lounging
about and letting one's health take
chances.

TRAIL SONG

By CHARLES BADGER CLARK, Jr.

A I ! our cheery riding-trail to Any-place,
Trail that beckons on across a world of shining space-
Bird in sunny skies, we love because we're wise —
Stirrup-leather singing and the sun across her face!
Ai ! my dreary riding-trail of tender lies,
Steely blue above me where a hungry buzzard flies —

Snake among the dust, we love because we must —
Stirrup-leather creaking and the wind across my eyes!

THE FIRST COLLEGE PITCHER
OF CURVES

By WILLIAM G. MURDOCK

Edmund Davis, Who Introduced the Drop and the In-Curve at
Princeton Nearly Fifty Years Ago

^OR some years after the game
was played such a thing as
a pitcher curving a ball was
unheard of. It is frequent-
ly asserted that A. J. Cum-
mings, the famous pitcher of
the Excelsiors of Brooklyn, was the first
pitcher to do this. Cummings did use
a curved ball as early as 1867, and he
was probably the first well-known pro-
fessional pitcher to pitch curves after the
baseball convention in the spring of 1867
made a ruling that pitchers had to de-
liver the ball with a straight arm move-
ment ; that is, they would not be allowed
to bend the arm at the elbow, a ruling
which delayed the adoption of our mod-
ern methods of pitching for ten years.
At this time all balls were pitched under-
hand and not thrown as they are to-day.
One of the best-known pitchers of that
time was McBride, of the Athletics of
Philadelphia. He had a very effective
underhand ball, but in delivering the
ball he bent his arm at the elbow, and his
friends asserted that the ruling requiring
a straight-arm delivery was brought
about by the clubs which could not easily
hit his balls. McBride, however, was
able to adapt himself to the new ruling
and continued to pitch successfully for
the Athletics for several years longer.

The most famous college pitcher of
that day, and undoubtedly the first pitch-
er to use curved balls intelligently and
successfully, was Edmund Davis, of
Princeton. In the spring of 1866 Davis
began to develop several styles of curves
which afterward made him famous. He
had been raised on a farm near Milton,
Pa., and was sent to the Edge Hill Pre-
paratory School at Princeton. Here, for

the first time in his life, he saw round
baseball bats. At home he and his com-
panions had always used flat paddles
with which to bat balls, and Davis soon
figured it out that if a speedy ball with a
fast perpendicular rotary motion were
pitched, the ball, upon hitting the round
bat, would very probably be deflected
either upward or downward and the bat-
ter easily put out.

With this idea in view he worked
hard, practising until he could pitch an
effective ball with enough of a curve to
puzzle all the batters on his school team.
In the summer of 1866 Davis attained
that ability as a pitcher to which he as-
pired. After returning home from Edge
Hill he practised daily pitching a ball
against a brick wall for the purpose of
acquiring such control over, and giving
such a twist to the balls that he could
tell just how they were going to bound
if hit fairly. In this way he developed
a drop ball and an incurve over which
he had complete control.

Before returning to Princeton as a
freshman he organized a ball team in
Milton in the summer of 1866 to play
the teams from the surrounding towns,
and he had the satisfaction of proving
that his theory of pitching was correct,
as the opposing teams could do nothing
with his delivery, the batter striking six
or seven inches above his drop ball, and
his incurve, when hit, usually resulted
in the ball going straight up in the air,
so that either he or the catcher could
get it.

For several years after baseball was
introduced at Princeton the games were
confined to the different teams in the
school, matches being played every week.

Cm]

122

OUTING

The first game with an outside team was
played with the Orange team at Orange,
on October 22, 1860, which resulted in
a tie score, each side getting forty-two
runs. The first game with another col-
lege was not played until four years la-
ter, when the Nassau team, as the first
Princeton team was called, defeated, the
Williams College team at Princeton on
November 22, 1864, by the score of
twenty-seven to sixteen.

When Davis entered Princeton in the
fall of 1866 there were six different
baseball teams in the college, and he was
given a trial to see which of the teams
he could make. To the surprise of
everyone the diminutive freshman was
made the regular pitcher of the first
team, displacing a senior who had been
the acknowledged leading pitcher for
two or three years. One of the first im-
portant games in which Davis pitched
was the Freshman-Junior game, which
was played shortly after he entered col-
lege, and in which the Juniors did not
succeed in batting the ball outside the
diamond. From that time his position
on the first team was assured.

Presbrey, in his ''History of Athletics
at Princeton," published in 1901, in
speaking of Davis says, "All members
of the Nassau nine of '66-'67 who are
yet alive are firm in their statements that
curves were first pitched at Princeton
by Davis," and that "during the winter
Davis would pitch in the long hall at the
west end of North College where the
students gathered to watch and to at-
tempt to catch the balls he would pitch."

At that time "live" balls were used,
that is, balls which had a good bit of
rubber in them, and when they were hit
fairly they went far and fast. No
gloves were used, and such a thing as a
catcher's mask was unheard of, conse-
quently injuries from foul tips and
thrown or batted balls were more fre-

quent than they are to-day. The pitcher
in those days was handicapped by some
of the rules of the game which have
since been changed, and the odds were
greatly against him and in favor of the
batter. Balls were called against him,
but the batter could let three good ones
go by before a strike would be called.

The batter had the privilege of calling
where the ball must be pitched, whether
knee-high, waist-high, or shoulder-high.
The games were long, and as there were
no foul strikes the strain on the pitchers
was great. Whenever Davis was in the
box the opposing batters would endeavor
to wear him out by not striking at the
balls.

Davis continued to pitch effectively at
Princeton every week until June 1, 1867,
when in the game between Nassau and
Camden, whose players were mostly of
the Athletics of Philadelphia, after three
balls had been pitched the rule prohibit-
ing the bending of the arm at the elbow
was enforced against him and he was
ruled out of the box. That was the last
game in which he pitched at Princeton
against an outside team, but during the
summer vacations he pitched for the
team of his home town of Milton where
many victories over the teams from
neighboring towns were credited to
him.

After Davis quit pitching at Princeton
it was eight years before another pitcher
there used curves, which from that time
was recognized as the only effective style
of delivery.

The name of Edmund Davis may be
unknown to any of the present-day base-
ball players Outside of Princeton and
Milton, where he is still living after
many years of an active and successful
career as a business man and banker, yet
he is one of the men whose name should
always be associated with the develop-
ment of the great game of baseball.

The next instalment of Mr. Griffith's story of his TWENTY-
FIVE YEARS IN BIG LEAGUE BASEBALL will
deal with the Milestones of the Game. He has seen it grow
from practically nothing to its present huge proportions and
knows the various stages that have marked its development

IN MOCCASIN TIME

By ROBERT E. PINKERTON
Pleasures of the Footwear That the Red Man Made Famous

*T means something more than just
putting on the lightest, easiest,
warmest footwear ever made —
moccasin time. It brings with it
the swish and creak of snowshoes,
• the desire for great and satisfying
physical exertion, the long, swift run at
the tail of the husky-speeded toboggan.
The peculiar, alluring odor of the In-
dian tanning quickly passes from nos-
tril to brain and arouses desires and im-
pulses that may have been slumbering
for generations. The moccasin is some-
thing more than a shoe; it is a token, a
fetish, a symbol. It leads, rather than
carries, to the northland.

In the forest country the moccasin is
a necessity as well as a pleasure. Last
Winter there were four months without
a thaw, four months of dry, clean, feath-
ery snow. When the first cold and
snows of October come, the shoepacs
and cruisers' shoes are laid aside for the
leather-topped rubbers. In dry weather
there is a return to the shoes, and then,
in November, comes a cold snap and
snow, and for half a day moccasins may
be worn.

Mercury's feet were never more
winged than those of the man who first
steps out in the light, soft, pliable af-
fairs. A fly would not be crushed be-
neath his feet, he is certain, so soft and
light are his footfalls. On the trail a
mile is easily added to the hourly total.

After the heaviness of stiff leather and
rubber, buckskin is feathery.

And then, in December and later,
when it is forty and fifty below, the un-
restrained, uncramped foot remains as
warm on the trail as it was beside the
red-hot heater. Even in the lowest
temperatures there is not a suggestion of
chill during the long dash with the dogs.

There are many sorts of moccasins,
and there are few good ones. The av-
erage purchaser can hardly do better
than to buy the factory-made affair, al-
though he must pay a good price to get
anything that will wear. Such moc-
casins are linen-sewed, and the best of
such sewing will not withstand the strain
of 'the trail. For the short journey they
are adequate.

The Indian-made moccasin is better,
but harder to get. Indian moccasins of
a sort are on sale at any trading post
or north woods town, but most of them
will wear out in a week or two. It is
only the man traveling over a wide
country who knows just where he can
buy efficiently tanned buckskin or moose-
hide, just which squaws can furnish dur-
able footwear. The best moccasins will
be sewed with animal sinews. They
will not rip, even after the soles have
been worn through. The usual Indian
tanning robs the hide of all life and
makes it thin, dry, and shoddy. There
are a few Indians who can make won-

[1*3]

124

OUTING

derful leather by using the brains of
the deer in tanning.

Most Indians make moccasins with
cloth tops. In many ways these are an
advantage. They keep out all snow,
and there are no stiff uppers to be
rubbed into shape and chafe the ankles
the morning after a wet day. The cloth
will wear and tear in the brush, though
I once wore a pair every day for five
months. They were cloth-topped buck-
skin and cost one dollar.

Two pairs of hand-knit socks within
a pair of moccasins are sufficient for
any weather. The wearer must be care-
ful in selecting moccasins that fit to at-
tain the maximum warmth, however.
It is not on the thickness of the leather,

but upon the freedom of the foot's
movements that warmth depends. The
fit must be snug, but there must be
ample room for the foot to spread and
bend. A tight moccasin means frosted
feet. A loose one robs the foot of its
sureness and fleetness.

There is no compromise between the
soft moccasin and the waterproofed foot-
wear. Oil-tanned leather is impossible
in cold weather. It becomes stiff as
steel and so slippery it is dangerous. But
even with wet moccasins the traveler
will be warm if he keeps moving. For
that reason, and because of the wear of
the trail, one or two extra pairs should
be taken to provide dry footwear in the
morning.

THE

WORLD

SPORT

Fi»h English anglers have been
Color- aroused by a letter to the
BUnd Times by Sir Herbert Max-
well on the value of color in salmon flies.
Sir Herbert's contention is that there is
no real reason for using gaudy colors for
salmon, inasmuch as that fish has no
sense of color. From the standpoint of
fifty years' experience as a fisherman he
says: "I should be perfectly willing to
use no flies except those composed of the
feathers of native game birds and barn-
yard fowls, dyed or undyed, with silk
and tinsel to smarten them up to human,
if not piscine, vision." This opinion is
especially pertinent in view of the argu-
ment that has centered around the prohi-
bition of the importation of plumage into
this country. Many good trout fisher-
men have predicted the end of real trout
fishing as a result. Fly fishing is the
only really sporting method, they argue.
Good trout flies can be made only from
the prohibited feathers, most of which
are obtained from other countries. There-
fore, no more flies and no more fishing.
Perhaps we may discover that the trout
is not so discriminating in the matter of
color as we have thought.

What Is Dr. Francis Ward, an Eng-
tke lish angler-scientist who has
e made experiments to deter-
mine the relative values of various kinds
of flies, and particularly the appearance
of the flies when viewed from the under-
water position of the fish, concludes that
it is not the color but the flash and light
of the fly that attracts the fish. As he
says, "The only use of feathers is that
by their movement in the water they

suggest to the fish that the 'fly' is alive."
The reason that one fly is more deadly
than another on certain days or in certain
water is explained by the more lifelike
character of its flash or reflection. The
same fly, as experiments have demon-
strated, will have an entirely different
appearance from different locations dur-
ing the same cast. Flash apparently is
only partially, and frequently not at all,
a matter of color. In fact, the general
tendency of all colors under water is to
simulate the shade of their surroundings
as a result of reflection and refraction.
That at least is the opinion of Dr. Ward,
based on numerous experiments.

Coach The Football Rules Com-
on the mittee has solved the prob-
Bench lem of the coach on the field
by restricting him to the bench on the
side lines. That is, he may not follow
the play up and down the field, as in
the past and watch his team from a posi-
tion only a little less advantageous than
that of the referee. This is a good step
and probably as long a one as was safe to
take, at least at this time. Of course,
it might have been possible to put him
off the field entirely, perhaps up in the
press stand; a coach might find a far
worse place from which to see what his
team is really doing. The new rule will
not prevent a coach from sending in sub-
stitutes as he chooses, whether for pur-
poses of actual substitution or to carry
instructions to the quarter-back. This is
an evil that can hardly be eradicated by
rules. Its elimination must await the
growth of sentiment against it. Now
and again even good coaches discover to

[125]

126

OUTING

their sorrow that a quarter-back who
knows his business is frequently a better
judge of the next play than the expert
on the sidelines. A poor quarter-back
will probably make a hash of his big.
crisis, no matter how specific his instruc-
tions from headquarters may be.

Rights From the standpoint of the
of the coach, that gentleman has
^^ certain rights that the Rules
Committee was bound to recognize and
respect. On his shoulders rests the ma-
jor responsibility for the formation of
the team. If this is doubted consult the
alumni of any college at the end of a
disastrous season. Nine times out of ten
it was the coach's fault, of course.
Usually the undergraduate sentiment is
the same, and probably stronger. That
being the case, the coach must be given
as free a hand as is consistent with the
^general good of the game in working out
his problems. The big game is the trial
by fire for him, no less than for the play-
ers on the field. He stands or falls by
the outcome. Then common fairness de-
mands that the support which has been
permitted the team all through the sea-
son should not suddenly be withdrawn in
the crisis, especially since no jot or tittle
of condemnation of the coach will be
abated in case of failure.

One Impor- If it were possible to minim-

tant jze the emphasis now placed
Change Qn ^ WQrk Qf ^ QQ^

throughout the year, it would not be a
matter of so great importance where he
sat during the game. But there is no
indication that this is likely to happen.
A few coaches are able to efface them-
selves without damage to the team, but
they are few. One result of this esti-
mate of the necessity of the coach is the
constant shifting and piling up of rules
to which we have been subject. This
year only one other change was deemed
necessary in the football rules in conse-
quence of this steady pressure of the
coaching staff in devising new plays that
are possible under the rules as they find
them, but this one change throws the
situation out in bold relief. Last fall
Notre Dame demonstrated to the Army
how the forward pasa might be effectu-

ally guarded against interception in case
the receivers were all thoroughly covered
by the defense. The expedient was the
simple one of throwing the ball on the
ground for the loss of a down, the ball
going in play at the old position. The
Army noted this maneuver and used it
against the Navy. It was then entirely
permissible under the rules. The Rules
Committee also noted it, and have now
prohibited it. Henceforth the pass must
be attempted, or the passer runs the risk
of being downed for a loss behind his
own line.

Need of It is to be regretted that
Fewer rules are necessary in such
Kues complexity and with such
constant shifting and variation, but un-
der present circumstances it is unavoid-
able. It is one of the penalties we must
pay for keeping the game fluid and pro-
gressive. The alternative is a static con-
dition with the ever-present danger of a
decay in interest consequent on the re-
duction of the game to routine methods
and principles. The great danger in re-
liance on rules is that we may expect
them to accomplish more than can ever
be secured by law. It is an American
tendency to expect to make men good by
passing laws to punish them for being
bad. Examples will spring to mind at
once. Morality in sport, no less than in
business, can hardly be brought about
by passing laws against immorality.
Amateurism and the proper attitude on
the playing field are matters of the spirit
rather than of rules, and the really ef-
fective laws are those which are but crys-
tallizations of the spirit. Too often a
new rule is merely an added temptation
to break or evade it. We must have
them, of course, but let us have as few as
possible.

Against Coach Courtney — "The Old
Four-Mile Man" to thousands of Cor-

Kowing nellians the country over — is
opposed to four-mile rowing. He be-
lieves that the average student must
choose between insufficient preparation
for this gruelling contest and neglect of
his studies. Our own idea exactly, and
we are glad to hear Courtney speak out
so plainly. Any way you look at it, it is

THE WORLD OF SPORT

127

too hard an event for most of the young
men who take part in it, and if statistics
were carefully taken we should be great-
ly surprised if four-mile rowing did not
show a higher proportion of serious in-
jury and strain than football, despite the
condemnation that the gridiron sport has
received at various times. Not only is it
too hard, but there is no fun connected
with it. This is a more serious objec-
tion than may appear on the face of it.
On the other hand, a two-mile race or a
mile and a half is not so brutally hard
as to obscure the natural pleasure that
comes to a healthy, well-conditioned man
from a contest of any sort. If you don't
enjoy your sport, half the good of it is
gone at one stroke.

Too Much Another statement that is
Intercollegiate credited to Courtney is rath-
Sport er surprising as coming from
a man who makes his living by coaching
a varsity team, but none the less appears
sound in principle. He says: "We have
arranged at Cornell for this year eighty-
(six races and games (presumably he
means intercollegiate). Have you ever
stopped to think of the amount of time
it takes to prepare the teams and crews
for those games and races and to play the
games and row the races, many of them
out of town? Sit down for a day and
figure it up and see if the faculty is not
justified in saying that if the boys gave
more time to their proper work and less
to their athletics the university could
turn out better men." In other words,
a pyramid is a highly commendable form
of construction, if we don't make the
mistake of standing it wrong end up.

Baseball The Melbourne (Australia)
Too Age, having viewed a game
between the two American
teams on their recent visit to the Antipo-
des, has no very high opinion of Amer-
ica's favorite sport. In fact, it finds
it rather suggestive of a large garden-
party. "It reminds the Australian on-
looker of his first open-air picnic. It is
not, to tell the truth, the kind of pastime
over which a crowd, other than an
American crowd, would be expected to
get excited. It is not calculated at this
stage to supplant either cricket or foot-

ball as a means of making a Melbourne
holiday." There's an old adage about
one man's meat being another man's poi-
son, and adages are sometimes truthful.
After all this isn't half as harsh as the
things an American baseball reporter
could find to say about a cricket match.
And there you are.

Support the An appeal for funds is being
Boy made by the Boy Scouts of
Scout* America in order to carry on
and extend the work of this organiza-
tion. There should be a wide and gen-
erous response. The Boy Scout move-
ment has passed through its formative
stage and is now an accepted part of the
training methods of the boys of the land.
It is sound, healthy, and progressive in
its aims and in the men and methods it
has enlisted in their prosecution. The old
bogies that were conjured up against it at
the outset have disappeared and now its
problem is one of extension and support.

On Open- There is really only one
i°g thing that many of our good

Day and faithful readers are
thinking about at this time of the year.
The first of April is approaching — sin-
ister date — and the ice is out of the
streams. The big fellows may not rise
very well so early in the season, but to
wet a line on opening day is still a sacred
duty. What matter if the air is raw and
cold with more than a hint of depart-
ing winter as the shadows^ lengthen in
late afternoon? Who ever heard of a
fisherman catching cold — or caring if he
did? Perhaps the ice still clings to the
banks in the deep shade or the brook
runs dark and roily with snow water
from the hills. What of that? Cold
and hunger are nothing compared with
the possibility of someone else lording
it over you with a full catch while you
sat snug at home because the weather
was unfavorable. Better a dozen poor
days than one good one missed because
you were too lazy or soft to be at your
post on the first possible day.

Fishing Others may write of the
Just for technique of fishing, of rods

Fun

d flies and casting and

playing and the rest. The list is end-

128

OUTING

less and the call not to be finally an-
swered ever. For us, we know nothing
of this side of fishing, except by observa-
tion and hearsay. Men there be who
can tell you to a fraction of an inch how
far to carry your rod on the back cast
and describe to a hair the exact turn of
the wrist that drops the fly lightly on the
water to the undoing of the unsuspecting
trout that lurks below. We know that
this is true because they have told us;
but the instruction has left us unchanged.
Our method is still the same bungling
fling that it was in the beginning. And
sometimes we catch fish and sometimes —
more times — we don't. But always we
have fun. This is not to say that the
scientific angler doesn't enjoy himself
also. Probably there is no joy in the
world so keen as that which lies in know-
ing any subject to the uttermost cranny
— and sometimes beyond. This state-
ment is offered in a purely conjectural
spirit. It has no basis of experience in
our own case. But as for the fun of fish-
ing; that we know to the last line. Good
method or bad, good luck or ill, wet day
or dry, fishing is fun and don't you for-
get. Don't be kept at home because you
don't know all there is to know about
the way to do it. Get out and try, some-
how— anyhow. The other man may
catch more fish and catch them better,
but he won't catch any more fun.

Sport for The old style gymnasium
Every- drill has received another
grievous wound in the house
of its friends. Columbia University has
decided to try the experiment of substi-
tuting instruction in rowing, swimming,
track work, and basket ball for the class
drill on the floor of the gymnasium hith-
erto required of freshmen and sopho-
mores. The new plan started off with
a rush so far as the interest of the stu-
dents was concerned. Doubtless base-
ball and soccer will be added to the list
in the appropriate seasons. The squads
will be under the direction of the uni-
versity coaches in the respective sports,
and at least one-half of the required
gymnasium period must be spent in
some one of the sports named above.
There are numerous good points to this
plan. In the first place, it should go

far beyond the stereotyped gym drill in
the interest aroused. If there is anything
in the shape of exercise more dull and
spiritless than the work of the average
class of this sort we have yet to know
what it is. Games of the sort prescribed
should be better for all round develop-
ment if proper instruction is supplied.
Finally the ultimate result should be to
raise the general level of athletic per-
formance and spirit. One great diffi-
culty in university sports of the organ-
ized variety is to secure the backing of
intelligent interest. This method should
insure it.

Better The principal point that
Motor struck the close observer at
Boat9 the recent Motor Boat Show
at Madison Square Garden was the
higher quality of the boats and engines
displayed in comparison with former
years. As a reflection of the healthy
growth of the sport the Show was inter-
esting, and indicated that those who take
to the water for pleasure are becoming
more "boat wise" and discriminate in
their judgment. The character of the
boats showed beyond a doubt the pre-
vailing drift from the high-speed, lightly
built open boat or hydroplane to a more
substantial craft, and especially toward
the small cruiser. This is a healthy sign
and shows that power boat men are get-
ting to be more appreciative of the pleas-
ures of cruising, and want a boat in
which they can take long trips along the
coast or inland waters with safety and
comfort. The whole trend of cruiser
design was toward a more seaworthy,
comfortable and easily handled type of
craft. There were almost no speed boats
exhibited at the show, and the fast runa-
bouts for day use were of a much more
substantial character. In fact there were
no bad boats at the show this year, which
can not be said of shows of the past.
The greatest amount of pleasure to be
derived from any boating is in navigating
the craft yourself and getting into un-
familiar waters. To do this, something
more than a smooth-water speed crea-
tion is wanted. The boatbuilders and
engine manufacturers are waking up to
this fact, and giving to the boat users
the kind of a craft that they want.

THE GOLFER'S PRAYER

f^lVE me a day of clear sunshine and crisp wind, a
turf that springs like velvet beneath the feet, and a
green that plays fair with a rolling ball. Grant that my
brassey may clip the ball clean from a fair lie and that
my niblick ma^ n°l fa^ me 'n the hour of need. Help
me to pitch my approach shots fair to the green and lay
my long puts dead to the hole. Above all give me
strength of will to keeP Tr)y eife on the ball and my tem-
per under a firm check- Then will my partner bless and
praise my name forevermore, nor will I find that all the
matches have been made up the day before.

*%?•> --J^r >***%,

WHEN YOU GO HUNTING DEER WITH THE ARIZONA APACHES, THE TRAIL

takes you far [nto the hills and among canyons that are huge
slits in the tortured earth ; this one was called by the indians

"devil's canyon"

Illustration for "With Apache Deer Hunters in Arizona," page 150.

OUTING

IN BACK OF BEYOND

By STEWART EDWARD WHITE

Illustratf.d with Photographs
II

HITTING THE TRAIL FROM NAIROBI

LAST month Mr. White outlined the character of his recent
travels in German East Africa which carried him into un-
known hunting fields. He told of the general character of the
country, the advantages that it offers for the sportsman and natural-
ist, and the reasons for its having remained unexplored and
unknown until this late date. Now he takes up the tale of his
actual travels. It is preeminently an American expedition, out-
fitted and handled in plains and mountain fashion, rather than
according to the methods of the British safaris that have made
British East Africa famous.

— * VERYTHING being as
near ready as human fore-

a thought could make it, we

left Nairobi in the first part
of July. It took us all the
^ morning to get our men and
donkeys under way, and we followed
gaily a-mule-back a couple of hours later.
Once clear of town our way led' us out to
a rolling, wooded, green country of glades
and openings, little streams and speckled
sunlight. Forest paths branched off in
all directions. Natives were singing and
chanting near and far. There were
many birds.

Toward evening, we passed a long
safari of native women, each bent for-

ward under a load of firewood that
weighed sixty to one hundred pounds.
Even the littlest little girls carried their
share. They seemed cheerful and were
taking the really hard work as a tremen-
dous joke. We passed them, strung out
singly and in groups, for upwards of half
an hour, then their road turned off from
ours, and still they had not ceased.

After a pleasant nine-mile ride we
camped at a spot at which it had been
arranged we were to meet guides to
take us across the waterless tracts be-
yond N'gong. In order to be good and
ready for said guides we next morning
ate breakfast in the dark, and sat down
to wait. About eight o'clock they

[131]

THE SUBMARINE DONKEY EMERGES

drifted in. Then, of course, as usual
in Africa, we found that the track we
were on and had been advised to take
was all wrong. Therefore, after a long
council, we headed at right angles for
the Kedong. It was a park country all
day with forests, groves, open mead-
ows, side hill shambas, or native farms,
and beautiful, intimate prospects through
trees. Kikuyus were everywhere.

Everything went nobly until about
ten o'clock, when we came to a little
boggy stream, insignificant to look at,
and unimportant to porters, but evi-
dently terrible to donkeys. We built a
causeway of branches, rushes, earth
and miscellaneous rubbish, and then set
in to get our faithful friends to use it.
Right there we discovered that when a
donkey gets discouraged over anything,
he simply lies down, and has to be lifted
bodily to a pair of very limber legs be-
fore lie will go on. Luckily, these were
-mill donkeys; we lifted most of them.
After a time we topped a ridge and
came out on rolling grass hills, with

I I32J

lakes of grass in valleys, and cattle feed-
ing and a distant uplift that marked the
lip of the Likipia Escarpment.

At two o'clock, we made camp in
the high grass atop one of these swTells,
and all afternoon we worked busily
remedying defects in our saddlery, rivet-
ing, sewing and cutting. That night
we heard again our old friends, the fever
owls.

Daylight showed us a beautiful spec-
tacle of lakes of fog in the shallow val-
leys belowT us, and trailing mists along
the hills, and ghostlike trees through
thin fog. We stumbled for a time over
lava debris under the long grass. At
the end of an hour or so the sun had
burned the fog — and dried our legs.
We came to the edge of the Escarpment
and looked down at the Kedong. Atop
the bench we saw our first game — a
herd of impalla and twelve zebra. Then
we went down twenty-four hundred
feet, nearly straight. We did not do it
all at once — not any! Not until nearly
sundown ! The men went all right, but

IN BACK OF BEYOND

133

the donkeys were new to the job, the
saddlery not yet adjusted, and we igno-
rant of how to meet this sort of trouble.
We had to adjust packs every few min-
utes, sometimes to repack.

About noon some of the beasts lay
down and refused to get up. We un-
packed them and took off their saddles.
They stretched out absolutely flat and
looked moribund. We thought three of
them dying. Not a bit of it! They
merely wanted to rest and had great
singleness of purpose. After half an
hour they arose refreshed, but promptly
lay down again when we suggested they
carry something. So we drove them on
light, and left their loads by the trail
to be sent for later. We got in about
sundown very much fagged out and
sent porters back for the load's. They
had had a hard day's march doing their
own job, but started off most cheerfully.

Some of them were out all night, but
they did not grumble. I think every-
body had enough travel that day. The
donkeys fairly mobbed us, begging to
be unpacked, sidling up insistently and
suggestively.

As a consequence we made a short
march next day around the base of an
old volcano called Mt. Suswa. I went
ahead of the caravan with Kongoni in
order to get some meat, and had quite
a conversation with him. We exchanged
all the news of the last two years. Kon-
goni was, as usual, very courtly.

"Now," said he in conclusion, "when
you were here before you shot well.
See that you shoot well now."

It is always amusing to listen to na-
tive comments. Thus, this morning,
while making up loads, I overheard
M'ganga scolding a porter preparing my
box for the march.

OUR GUIDE FOR BUFFALO

136

OUTING

"If you put that meat on that box,
it will smell; and the bwana will say
something; and he'll say it to me!"

For two days now the travel was
through a broken, Arizona-like country
of outtes, cliffs, and wide, grassy sweeps.
Against Mt. Suswa, we saw many steam
blowholes like camp fire smokes. Foot-
ing bad, being broken lava in tall grass,
but the donkeys traveled well. Perhaps
they are getting used to it — or perhaps
we are ! They want to lie down in every
sandy place ; and if they succeed we have
to unpack and get them on their feet.
Beginning to see game herds here and
there, and it is pleasant to encounter
them again.

In the Land of Bad Water

The water is in holes or rock tanks,
and is green and very bad ; in fact rather
awful. Sun fierce and strong. Cuning-
hame and I crawled up the stream bed
until we found a natural bower and
there we ate and sat until the heat of the
day had passed. One of the boys, out
looking for better water, found a fresh
lion lair, so we made the donkeys very
secure by pitching all the tents in a cir-
cle, and tethering the beasts in the mid-
dle.

With our small outfit we had not
planned to keep night fires; it is too
much to ask of tired men ; but one of
them, Sulimani by name, was once an
askari, and he has taken it on himself.
To this end he has deserted his tent
mates and sleeps in the open by the fire.
Periodically as the blaze dies down, he
arises, buckles on a cartridge belt, seizes
his gun, puts a stick on the fire, lays
down the gun, takes off the cartridge
belt, and stretches himself out to sleep.
It is very amusing, but he must have
his little routine.

Our last march before reaching the
N'gouramani, or Southern Guaso Ny-
ero river was a long one, down one of
the Arizona-like interminable scrub
slopes, miles and miles wide. Beyond
and above the bordering escarpment, we
could see the Narossara mountains.

The men as well as oursehe- knew
this was to be a long, hard march, and
they were all improvising songs the bur-

den of which was " campi rnbale, campi
in bale sana." — "Camp is far, camp is
very far," to all sorts of variations of
tune and words; but not of sentiment.
We saw little game until within four
or five miles of the river. Then appeared
Robertsi, zebra, kongoni, one herd of
oryx, ostrich, many warthog, and six
giraffes. Also of the bird tribe brilliant
bul-buls, hornbills, mori, and many
grouse. Near the river were hundreds
of parrots.

Owing to the length of the march
we were very glad to get to the river, but
our joy was modified by the fact that it
was in flood. It was here nearly a hun-
dred yards wide, and. up to a man's chest,
with a very swift current. A rotten old
rope spanned it. By means of this wc
crossed several men, who pulled over our
own sound rope and strung it between
two trees. I was to take charge of the
farther end, and the moment I entered
the water the men set up a weird minor
chant to the effect: "The bwana is en-
tering the water; the bwana is in the
water; the bwana is nearly across; the
bwana is out of the water." They
tightened our new rope by song also:

Headman (sings) Ka-lam-bay!

Men Huh!
Headman (sings) Ka-lam-ba!

Men Huh!
Headman Kalambay oo cha Ka la fa

Men Hu-a-ay!

The pull comes only at the very last
word, but it is a good one. On the cable
we strung a snatch block and a light
line, and thus by stringing the loads to
the block we pulled them across. The
donkeys we left until the morrow. We
were tired. A long march and the han-
dling of seventy loads one at a time is
some work.

A night's rest put us in shape again to
tackle the river. Leaving Cuninghame
to rig the tackle, I took a three-hour
jaunt down stream to get meat. Game
was scarce in the little strip between the
Escarpment and the river, but inside an
hour I had my hartebeeste. Saw in all
three waterbiick, fifteen kongoni, twelve
zebra, one dik-dik and some impalla,
and heard lion and hyena. Game birds,
however, were in swarms. At every

> >

\ ^

Wk '■ '-SMI

K/ .a&* ->s~i3£\

>■.§ |

140

OUTING

step I flushed grouse, quail, guinea fowl,
or pigeons.

At nine o'clock we were ready for the
serious business of the day. The method
was as follows: Cuninghame and half
a dozen huskies hitched a donkey to the
end of a long rope, the other end c:
which was held by myself, across the
river. Then they lifted that reluctant
donkey bodily and launched him in. I
tried to guide him to the only possible
landing-place fifty yards or so down
stream. This was easy enough with the
two mules — I merely held tight, let
them swim, and the current swung them
around. Not so donkeys! They swim
very low, the least thing puts them
under, they get panicky, they try to re-
turn, they try to swim up stream; in
short, they do everything they should
not do. Result: about twenty-five per
cent, went across by schedule, the rest
had to be pulled, hauled, slacked off,
grabbed, and hauled out bodily. Some
just plain sank, and them we pulled in
hand over hand as fast as we could haul
under water, in the hope of getting them
over before they drowned. We suc-
ceeded, but some were pretty groggy.
One came revolving like a spinner, over
and over.

Each animal required individual treat-
ment at the line, and after two experi-
ments with the best of the men, we de-
cided I'd better stick to that job. Talk
about your tuna fishing! I landed
twenty big donkeys in two hours!

Then we had lunch; and to us, out
of the blue came the German trader,
Vandeweyer's man, Dowdi, saying that
his master's donkeys and loads of sugar
had been camped twenty-two days wait-
ing for the river to go down so they could
cross, and would we cross them? Now,
besides doing a good turn to Vandeweyer,
we had counted on hiring some of these
same donkeys for a short time to help
us across the mountains with potio (pro-
visions), which obviously we could not
do if the beasts were on the wrong side
of the river. Dowdi told us there were
twenty-five, so we took on the job. The
men crossed the loads by the cable and
Cuninghame and I went to submarine
donkey fishing again. Muscularly it
was hard work, but actually it was

rather fun, with a d'ash of uncertainty
and no two alike.

After we had worked an hour or so,
more donkeys appeared. Instead of
twenty-five, they proved to be forty-
seven. Wily Dowdi had lured us on!
We got quite expert. The moment the
line was hauled back by means of a
cord, Cuninghame clapped on the hitch,
the donkey was unceremoniously dumped
in, and I hauled him across any side up
he happened to be. We had long since
got over being tender of these donkeys'
feelings! My men received him, yanked
him to his feet, and left him blowing
and dripping to take care of himself.
We crossed twenty-one in the last hour!
In all sixty-seven donkeys and two
mules.

Remained only to reclaim our tackle,
and we were ready for to-morrow's
march.

Up the Likipia Escarpment

This we began good and early — 6:10
to be exact — and the first step of it was
the surmounting of the first bench of
the Escarpment. It was here a cliff
something over a thousand feet high ;
formidable looking enough. However,
we struck a Masai track and so went up
rather easily. On the way we met four
Masai runners, their spears bound in
red indicating that they were the bearers
of messages. At the top we journeyed
through a steppe of thin scrub and grassy
openings, with occasional little hills.
Passed some Masai villages, with the
fair ones seated outside polishing their
ornaments while the naked children and
the dogs played around them. Shortly
after saw some Robertsi gazelles far
down the valley to the left, and got lured
away after them. In the course of my
stalk I passed thirteen giraffes, very
tame, that looked on me with mild curi-
osity, and then made off in the loose-
jointed Russian-toy manner of the spe-
cies.

Got my meat after some difficulty, and
took up the trail of the safari. This led
us across the plains, through a low pass,
and into a pocket in the hills just like
some of the little valleys in our coast
range. A dry wash ran through it, but

142

OUTING

some holes contained enough water for
our purposes. The mountains round
about were covered with chaparral. In
this, rather to our surprise, we saw ze-
bra. In fact later we found a great deal
of plains game in the brush hills, driven
from the plains by the increase of Masai
cattle. Cuninghame thinks that the fu-
ture of the plains game in British East
Africa is just this, and not extermina-
tion. If so, good-bye to the millionaire
safari ! Too much work and skill re-
quired! And, incidentally, the zebra, so
conspicuous in the plains, is very hard to
make out, even near to, in the brush.
Protective coloration chaps, please take
notice! Even the natives often overlook
them at distances of less than one hun-
dred yards!

At three o'clock Cuninghame and I
sauntered up into the hills to pick up
men's meat, if possible, and to see what
we could. A few Granti in an opening
and two giraffes were about the size of
it until late, when we made out a herd
of zebra on the mountain opposite. I
sneaked over, stalked within range, and
missed through the bush. The herd
clattered away up the side hill, dodging
in and out the brush. I caught a glimpse
of a darker object, and when the thing
hesitated for a moment I took a quick
sight and had the luck to bring it down
dead. It proved to be a fine old bull
wildebeeste that had strayed off with
the zebra! Another plains animal in the
hills!

Leaving the men to take in the meat,
we went home along the very top of the
ridge, enjoying the cool sunset and the
view far abroad over the land. On this
top we found impalla and kongoni in
numbers! They, too, had deserted their
beloved flats, in this instance for the
very top of the ranges. This evening the
camp, which has been rather silent of
late, burst into many little fires and the
chanting of songs. Meat once more was

roasting and frying and broiling, and
everybody was happy!

Another day's march through a rocky,
brushy pass and out over high rolling
grass hills brought us to the Narossara
River. Saw a great many zebra in the
hills, but no other game until we had
emerged into the open country. Then
we came across occasional scattered herds
of wildebeeste, and one small lot of
eland. I made a long and careful
stalk in good cover to leeward of one
solitary wild'ebeeste, but he was very
wary and was frightened away by the
birds. However, by careful work I man-
aged at last to get within two hundred
and forty yards, when I hit him low in
the shoulder. He ran some three hun-
dred yards, but then went down.

While we were preparing this trophy,
M'ganga came with reports of eland
in the next valley. Cuninghame and I
at once set off and found our cow lying
under a tree and guarded by several
hundred zebra. To get within range we
had to slip down the side hill, practically
no cover, taking care to be seen neither
by her nor the zebra. We took much
time and got as near as we could. She
was lying down, facing away from us,
and to get her I had to hit about ten
inches of spine. Rested up from the
crawling and tried the shot. Had luck
and hit the exact spot.

Got in to Vandeweyer's trading boma
about one o'clock, and camped in our old
place. Vandeweyer has shaved off his
beard. He still trades with the Masai,
and tames chickens to sit on his shoulder.
We had a talk, got some trade goods of
him, and had him to dine. Cuninghame
opened the one box of cigars in the out-
fit. Vandeweyer's dog has a litter of
puppies down an old warthog hole and
refuses to bring them up.

Note. — The steeper the hill the louder
the porters sing. Whence do they get
their breath?

( To be continued)

The next instalment of IN BACK OF BEYOND
carries the party through some hard mountain climb-
ing that barred them from their Promised Land.

THE NEW SPORT OF AQUA-
PLANING

By L. THEODORE WALLIS

1 1 irs i k'A i i ii with Photographs

A Game That Gives All the Fun of Flying without the Danger

or the Cost

THE PRIMARY POSITION

WITH the price of aeroplanes and
flying boats beyond the reach
of ordinary beings, it is good
to know that the wonderful sensation
of shooting through the air and skim-
ming the surface of the water may be

enjoyed in another and much less ex-
pensive manner by the use of the water-
board or aquaplane. This sport is just
coming into its own, and there follow a
few details concerning its mechanics and
possibilities.

[143]

144

OUTING

The "plane" (five by two and one-
half feet) can be made by putting side
by side two or three ordinary boards and
fastening them together by three cross-
boards or cleats, which, of course, appear
on the upper side when the plane is in

through a kneeling to a standing posi-
tion, feet wide apart near center of the
plane, and hands grasping the "reins."

The throttle is gradually thrown
wide open, the boat attains top speed and
he's off at over twenty miles an hour,

THE ROCKING MOTION"

use. Next bore a hole at each of the two
forward corners and attach "reins" and
towing rope as shown in accompanying
photographs.

With the board in position behind the
boat, which is moving forward very
slowly, the rider dives overboard, ap-
proaches the board from the rear, and
lies out upon it with a hand grasping it
on either side near the front. Then, as
the speed of the boat increases and the
board begins to ride more nearly paral-
lel with the surface of the water, he rises

shooting along so fast that only the back
edge of the board brushes the water and
momentarily expecting to lose his bal-
ance and be swept off the plane. These
expectations are often fulfilled at first.

Such was the initial experience of all
of us who tried this "water-toboggan-
ing" at Camp Mishe-Mokwa last sum-
mer.

However, practice and increasing con-
fidence soon made it possible to hold the
position just described' almost indefinite-
ly, precarious as it was, and experiments

he's off, at over twenty miles an hour

■' 1 . ' -

|HH

BROADSIDE PROGRESS OUTSIDE THE WAKE

146

OUTING

by way of departure from the primary
position were next in order.

By pressing down with the left foot
and pulling up with the right hand it
was found possible to make the board
skid to the right, and by reversing the
pressure, i. e., pressing dowTn wTith the
right foot and pulling up on the left
"rein," the board would slip rapidly
toward the left. With this knowledge
came the first "stunt" — an alternate
right and left short skid, producing the
rocking motion familiar to us through
watching a slack-wire performer. Inas-
much as this was a near "tip-over,"
w7ith, sometimes, only one corner of the
board touching the water, it proved am-
ply exciting, especially on "rough" days.

Once the man at the wheel had a

bright idea ; veering suddenly to the
right, he threw his "trailer" across to
the edge of the wake so that he slid
down on the outside of the right stern
wave and found himself traveling side-
ways just as fast as he had gone for-
ward a moment before (with the tow-
ing rope now at almost right angles to
the course of the boat.) This sensation
was so entirely novel that he lost con-
trol just long enough to let his front cor-
ner get under and, for an instant, all one
could see was spray.

We picked him up and he tried it
again wTith more success; this time he
found that by using the "sideways skid"
pressure he could get back into the mid-
dle of the wake and ride easily again.
Broadside progress outside the wake

A PURE CASE OF NERVE AND BALANCE

SPREAD EAGLE

proved to be so exhilarating that we soon
learned to get there without the help of
the boat's swerving, although, in rough
water, we did not always get back.

Constant practice gave automatic bal-
ance,— almost.

The next question was, "Can we stay
on without the hands holding the
'reins'?"

The first affirmative answer was the
"Spread Eagle" (knees bent, arms wide
and "reins" held in teeth). Picturesque,
but difficult!

Soon the "reins" were dropped* alto-
gether, and then, with nothing to hold
to and a constantly shifting and uncer-
tain base upon which to stand, it became
a pure case of nerve and balance.

To be a good swimmer is necessary
for both fun and safety if one is to ride
on the water-board. Another requisite
is full and flexible control of the motor-
boat by the man at the wheel, who must
see to it that the propeller is not revolv-
ing when taking aboard a swimmer.

In the event of a cramp, or other
emergency, it is well to have on board
the boat several life-preserving pillows,
— I say pillows advisedly, since they can
be thrown or scaled more accurately and
for a longer distance than the other
more conventional forms.

With these cautions strictly heeded,
the sport of aquaplaning at once becomes
as thoroughly safe as it is wonderfully
exciting, exhilarating and healthful.

[147]

THE FIRST HUNTERS

By WALTER PRICHARD EATON

Drawing by Walter King Stone and Pi-iillipps Ward

IT is hard to say when a country boy begins his first hunting. Living close
to nature, the instinct to hunt, that most primitive of all instincts, allied
directly, of course, with the sensation of hunger (though we to-day can
realize it only with our brains), manifests itself in his very early years. The
country boy often carries a gun when the weight of it bows him, and the kick
of it is prodigious. I can remember my old muzzle loader laying me flat
on my back. But earlier than guns, he carries less deadly weapons, and
chief among them are — or used to be — slings.

What has become of those old slings? I rarely see them any more, and
I never hear our boys exclaiming when on a walk through the woods, as we
used to exclaim, "Oh, there's a dandy crotch!'' Then out would come a
knife, and the perfect Y was severed from the sapling. There was a mar-
velous shop, kept by a no less marvelous old maid with a deep bass voice,
where we purchased slates, marbles, toy soldiers and sling elastic. This elastic
was half an inch wide, thick, gray in color, and possessed a powerful snap.

Two strips of this elastic, a foot or more in length, were lashed to the
ends of the crotch, and a leather pad, cut from an old shoe, was made fast
to hold the missile — often David's missile, a brook pebble, often a round lead
bullet made in grandfather's bullet mould, less often buckshot bought by the
pound. Such a sling was not to be despised. It would throw a bullet two
or three hundred yards, and kill a bird, a frog, or a telegraph wire insulator,
with ease. Insulators were a breed of game we hunted on our way to school.
The more serious work was done on Saturdays "up at Duck" — which meant
Duck Pond, where the bull paddies basked.

You know, of course, that first warm evening of spring when your ear
is suddenly serenaded by the shrill phee, phee, phee of the Pickering frogs!
That was a sign that the hunting season had begun. At the first opportunity
we were at Duck Pond, the lower end of our sling crotches grasped firmly
in one hand, the leather holding the missile pinched firmly between the thumb
and forefinger of the other, our eager eyes fixed on the shining rocks and the
weeds inshore. "Paddy got drunk," the bullfrogs were supposed to say.
"Paddy got drunk" would suddenly come like a taunt from the waters of the
pond. A green head, two bulging eyes — and then the snap of elastic and the
splash of water about the poor fellow. Sometimes he disappeared with a
startled glug; sometimes he floated out, white belly upturned, his hind legs
spasmodically twitching, to be drawn in with a pole in triumph.

There was legend that frogs' legs were good to eat, and I seem to remem-
ber at least one attempt to test the truth of it. We built a fire, and in a frying
pan purloined by Frank Nicholls we set several legs to sizzling. But I have no
recollection that the experiment was repeated. Perhaps the art of cooking them
is French. At any rate, I am sure we did not hunt the bull paddies primarily
for food. We were small boys with destructive slings, and they were simply
available live things to be fired at. Some of us get over such instincts in after
years. Others don't. There remains much of the boy in every hunter.

[148]

A GREEN HEAD, TWO BULGING EYES, AND THEN THE SNAP OF ELASTIC

YUMA FRANK, CHIEF OF THE MCDOWELL BAND OF APACHES. HEADED TPTE

PARTY OF TWENTY-SEVEN INDIANS THAT WENT INTO THE HILLS. IN THIS

PICTURE HE IS WAITING TO FIND OUT WHY CHARLEY DICKENS IS SHOOTING OVER

THERE WHERE THE HILL CUTS THE HORIZON

WITH APACHE DEER HUNTERS
IN ARIZONA

By JOHN OSKISON

Photographs by John T. McCutcheon

In Which the White Men Take to the Hills and Trail Their Deer

Indian Fashion

FTER breakfast, Morgan
and ' ' G i b b y ' ' and
"Grindy" spent two
hours in a housewifely
rearrangement of their
sleeping places, stretch-
ing a tarp over their cots against the
rain (which did not come). To as-
suage our keen disappointment, "Monty"
and the Preacher Man proposed to lead
McCutcheon, Brice and me to the top
of a mountain three or four miles away,
to get a view of the country. But I
induced "Grindy" to come with me
quail shooting instead; we went up the
wash from our camp.

The re were plenty of quail — the top-

[160]

knotted mountain variety that can run
faster than you can walk, that can hide
quicker than a mouse, and1 are harder to
kill than anything I have ever tried to
shoot. Hunting them turned out to be
a series of dashes down precipitous,
rocky slopes and painful, slow toiling up
again. I said to myself that if the deer
hunters had a harder time following
the tracks of the bucks than I had in
chasing those agile and loud-voiced
quail, it was truly no game for a tender-
foot.

"Grindy" and I parted soon after we
struck the first bunch of quail, and after
a while I ceased' to hear him shooting.
But I kept on, toiling up the slopes of

HERE IS JOHN BLACK, WITH THE GRAY HORSE THAT LED THE PACK
ANIMALS. ONLY ONCE WAS JOHN TEMPTED TO LEAVE HIS JOB J THEN
THE GRAY HORSE AND TWO BURROS TUMBLED INTO A NARROW GULCH

152

OUTING

the high hills, kicking an occasional rab-
bit out of the cactus, scrambling down
slopes so steep that I hated to look to
the bottom. I forgot that noon had
come and gone; and the sun was getting
pretty close to the hills in the west be-
fore I finally dropped into the wash
which led back to camp.

I had bagged seven quail and two rab-

FRANK LOOK WAS ONE OF THE YOUNG
APACHE HUNTERS WHO GOT A DEER

bits; I was sore and tired; and I found
out that "Grindy" had been back in
camp for hours. Some of the deer hunt-
ers had returned (the day's score at that
hour was three), and they watched me
empty my hunting coat pockets with a
sort of parental tolerance. Then the
Preacher Man, recalling his boyhood
hunting days on an Illinois farm, set
to work enthusiastically to clean and
cook the quails and rabbits. At supper,
while the Indians broiled their venison
and tore their thin tortilla bread with
their fine white teeth, we feasted on
what I had bagged. And it all seemed

worth while! We ought to have been
humiliated over being left behind to
guard camp, but we weren't. We were
having the time of our lives!

Now the fifth day of our hunt was
nearly like the fourth; Hayes and the
Preacher Man did the quail hunting in
the morning, and Morgan and "Gibby"
in the afternoon, while "Monty," Mc-
Cutcheon, Brice and I went away into
the hills carrying a desperate hope of
finding a deer. Instead of a gun.
"Monty" carried a pair of field glasses.

The four of us climbed for a mile up
the sloping backbone of a rock-strewn
mountain before "Monty," resting while
he mopped his dripping brow, outlined
our hunting plan. Old Mother Hub-
bard proposing to start a game of ring-
around-a-rosy would have seemed more
congruous to us at that moment.
"Monty" certainly doesn't seem to be
built for chasing deer over the hills of
Arizona!

But we followed, soberly and prompt-
ly, the directions he gave; Brice and I
kept on up the backbone of the moun-
tain, while McCutcheon and "Monty"
swung away to the left, along its flank.
All of us were to meet in a "saddle"
of the ridge — then proceed farther ac-
cording to developments.

Brice and I arrived first; and as we
stood on the wind'-swept ridge waiting
for McCutcheon and our field general,
we searched with our eyes the splendid
canyon below us, to our right, and the
mountain which rose beyond it. My eye
caught a ribbon of white sand at the
canyon's bottom, close to some cotton-
woods, and just as I was about to call
Brice's attention to it, I saw three four-
footed animals cross it, single file. I
grew excited and tried unsuccessfully to
point them out to Brice before they were
lost to sight. I felt sure they were deer.

When "Monty" arrived, we trained
the field glasses on the canyon's bottom,
but my deer had long since passed out
of sight. The thing to do, said
"Monty," was to spread out and go
after them. He thought that they must
have come down to a water hole, and he
believed that they would climb up the
mountain sides after they had drunk.

To McCutcheon, "Monty" assigned

WITH APACHE DEER HUNTERS IN ARIZONA

153

the job of patrolling the top of the rocky
ridge on which we stood. Brice was
to go half way to the bottom of the
canyon with us, and then scout along in
the direction I saw the deer taking.
"Monty" and I would go down to the
water hole, pick up the tracks, and give
a high-class imitation of Apaches trail-
ing deer.

We followed a wash to the bottom of
the canyon — a rock-lined and precipitous
spout down which, after a heavy rain,
you could picture a volume of water al-
most literally falling the six or seven
thousand feet to the racing flood below.
Here and there, as we slid and rolled
and scrambled, we came upon sheer prec-
ipices from ten to thirty feet in height ;
and1 around these "Monty" picked the
way. Brice we left on a sort of plateau.
Eager to pick up the trail, I plowed
on ahead, clambered across a half acre
of huge granite boulders, and came out
on the ribbon of white sand.

HIDE, HEAD. AND HORNS WERE THE

EVIDENCE OF JOHNSON'S SKILL AS

A HUNTER

sand

ran

broad,

BRICE RETURNED FROM THE HUNT
WITH A SETTLED SMILE OF ENJOY-
MENT ON HIS FACE

And across the
plain cattle trail !

"Monty" came up to where I stood,
legs shaking from the hurried climb," and
mopped his face. I pointed hopefully
to the tracks of some calves, but
"Monty" merely said:

"Nothin' doin' — let's take a look up
there." He pointed up the mountain-
side, directly at a towering mass of
rocks and cat's claw bushes Brice and
I had agreed was inaccessible.

"The hunters nearly all went over on
the other side of that mountain this
morning," said "Monty," "and they
may run a deer over to this side. We'll
work our way up toward the top, and
then along the side."

"All right," I agreed meekly, and
waited for "Monty" to pick the way.
He is heavy and short, but there is a
wonderful power stored1 in his stocky
frame; we climbed, turning and twisting
to get around those forbidding walls of

TO THIS CAMP, HIGH UP IN THE HILLS, FOR FIVE WEARYING, HAPPY DAYS IN
OCTOBER, NINE VISITING HUNTERS AND TWENTY-SEVEN APACHES CAME AT

NIGHT FOR FOOD AND SLEEP

rock, pulling ourselves up with the aid
of cat's claw bushes, the spiked branches
of scrub palo verdes, and crumbling pro-
jections of soft, red rocks. We crossed
a dry water course, gashing the moun-
tainside, to get upon a rounded swell
where the grass grew thick and high;
and when we got there found that we
must inch along its side with infinite
care to keep from sliding to a painful
death among the rocks we had left.

"So this is the way the Apaches hunt
deer!" I gasped, lodging my rifle against
the first conveniently projecting rock I
had found in half an hour, and looking
back at "Monty" who was holding to a
bunch of grass with one hand and mop-
ping his face with the other.

"We get around this knob," he said
placidly, "and we'll have a fine view of
the whole mountain."

"All right," I agreed, and began to
struggle on. After a year or more of
that heart-breaking sliding and climbing,
I came out on a cattle trail.

"Well, I'll be darned!" I said. I had
a picture of old bossy cows leading their
young calves up and down this moun-
tainside i they came and went from
grass to water, and I wondered how it
was that the cattlemen had got a suc-
cessful cross between the white-faced

Durham and the Rocky Mountain goat.
None other, I felt sure, could survive
among those mountains.

"Look! There's one of the boys,"
said "Monty." Far up, and ahead of us,
standing clear against the sky on the
top of the mountain, was an Indian.
"Monty" waved his hat, and the Indian
waved his gun. We sat down to wait.

There is a satisfaction in merely sit-
ting d'own that transcends every other
satisfaction in the wTorld. I know it
positively. When every fiber of your
body is sore and stretched, when your
eyes are dimmed with the sweat of a
toiling, persistent effort, when your
breath comes in short, inadequate gasps,
and your legs are trembling, you sit
down without the least reluctance.

" 'Monty'," I observed weakly, "if I
ever get away from here and back to
camp, I swear that I shall never make
another threatening move against the
deer of Arizona."

"We'll take it easy for a little while,"
said "Monty". He uncased his field
glasses to search the opposite mountain-
side for Brice, and then began to scan
the slope on our sid'e for the deer the
hunters might have run over toward us.

Ten minutes passed, and then some
miracle of restoration swept over me. I

[154]

«*i .**"\

^^■r~. . ;^ >

DOG-TIRED AFTER FOUR HOURS OF HILL-RIDING, T1JE INDIAN HUNTERS CAME
TO A GROVE OF MESOUITE AND A SPRING FOR NOON CAMP

felt fresh and buoyant, my eyes took in
the rocks and the yawning canyon with
delight — the reflection that I had come
over them successfully elated me. My
breath was coming regularly, and I had
stopped thinking about Hayes's unfor-
tunate experience when he strained his
heart climbing.

For another half mile we climbed,
quarteringly, crossing other cattle trails ;
and then we heard shots.

''Wait here — the deer may come right
over to us," said "Monty," dropping
behind a clump of prickly pears. And
for a quarter of an hour we waited.
Then we moved on again, climbing until
we were able to look over the top of
the ridge on which we had left Mc-
Cutcheon and on across the billowing
ridges clear to the high swells which
rose fifty miles beyond the Verde.

There were more shots, and we
dropped to earth again to wait. And
this time, as we waited, I realized that
I was really tired. How many miles
back to camp it was and how we were
to get down from that mountainside and
across that other rock-studded ridge I
did not know. I looked at my watch to
find that it was nearly one o'clock.
Breakfast seemed a long way past, and
the next meal a longer distance in the
future.

' 'Monty'," I ventured, "how wTould
you like a thick steak, rare, and a plate
of French fried potatoes just now?"

"Well, I guess we might as well get
back to camp," said "Monty," unemo-
tionally. So we followed a cattle trail
down to a beautifully clear water hole
in the bottom of the canyon. We
stopped down there to drink copiously
before tackling the climb we thought
would bring us to the top of the ridge
on which we had left McCutcheon.

When we had climbed up nearly to
where we had left Brice, and failed to
find him, there came riding towaid us
John Black and Richard Dickens — Rich-
ard mounted behind John. They were
on their way back to camp ; and Richard
dismounted to pilot us. All thought of
Brice and McCutcheon left us when
Richard began to lead us around that
ridge, over the shale rock which scat-
tered like loose snow underfoot, across
cliff-faces where the trail pinched out
and left onlv casual sloping footholds.

And when we had rounded that ridge,
lo, there was another! But Richard let
us rest a few minutes before we tackled
that; and he also took my gun to carry.

About four o'clock, we came in sight
of the camp — half an hour later I was
posing beside one of the pools as "Octo-
ber Morn." "Gibby" saw me and

[155]

156

OUTING

A BIT OF TRAIL DOWN WHICH THE
WHITE HUNTERS LED THEIR HORSES

rushed for his camera — he swears that
he has had that picture made into a
lantern slide, and that he came near
throwing it on the screen at a lecture
he delivered before a woman's club.
Anyway, that was the most satisfying
bath I have ever taken.

And the broiled venison, the slice of
thick bread, the bacon and quail, the
raw onion, the hunk of yellow cheese,
the half can of peaches, and the tin
cup of black coffee which followed the
batch — Shucks!

I felt insolently fit. I told "Monty"
that I was going out the next morning
with some of the Apache hunters if I
had to get up at midnight in order to
trail them. McCutcheon and Brice,
who had beaten us to camp by half an
hour (they, too, had had their hard fight
with the rocks and canyons), declared
that they would go also. McCutcheon
and I went off to shoot quail until it
was too dark to see.

There is a sense of elation, of trium-

phant joy, of a wonderful uplift of spirit
following a day of effort like that, when
you know that you have stood it like a
man, when neither tobacco nor the usual
after-supper session of joshing seems
worth while, when the reaction which
comes throws you on your blankets dead
asleep, when after two hours of unstir-
ring slumber you wake to straighten
your legs and pull the blankets over you,
when your blood runs like wine through
your veins when tired muscles seem to
recover their spring almost before you
give them a chance to relax.

You know that you are not yet the
city's victim ! You know what utter
content must be the portion of those
Indian hunters who come trudging in
as the dusk creeps down the canyon,
fling off their heavy burdens of deer
meat, wash their hands, and squat silent-
ly beside the fire to eat and drink. You
hear them talking about the day's hunt
as they roll cigarettes, and you wish
that you could understand their clear-
cut, desultory sentences.

"You fellows ought to have been with
us!" It was Brice (who later confessed
that his highest ambition is to write a
book) that addressed this illuminating
remark to the five who had stayed in
camp or scouted over the nearby hills
for quail. And, somehow, Brice seemed
to have said all there was to say, so
inarticulate had we become. No words
then at our command could express what
we felt, deep down, as the stars came
out. But Brice, McCutcheon and I were
positive that we wanted to go out with
the Indians next morning. So "Monty"
spoke to Charley Dickens about it that
night.

As soon as it was light enough to see,
next morning, our horses were rounded
in from the hills, and the three of
us saddled and started after the three
Indians who were to be our tutors.
George Dickens led off, Charley Dick-
ens (who had caught up the excellent
brown mule) came next, and I shoved
my roan pony in behind Charley. Be-
hind me rode Jose, and then McCutch-
eon and Brice.

Up the steep hillside spurred George
Dickens — where the grade was less than
twenty per cent, George urged his horse

WITH APACHE DEER HUNTERS IN ARIZONA

157

into a fox-trot. Early morning is the
best time to get out after deer.

About a mile from the camp we
came to a hill so steep that I did not
believe it possible for a horse to carry
a rider down ; yet George Dickens took
it without slackening the fast walk he
had forced his horse into; and Charley
kept close at his heels.

"Well, here goes!" I muttered, as I
forced my little roan down the faint
trail. He groaned and slid, and we
were safely down ; he began to paw his
way up the steep bank on the other side,
and then I dismounted. But I hustled
along, breathing gaspingly; also, when
I got to the normal hillside going, I
scrambled aboard and whipped my roan
forward. Jose had passed me and was
trotting just behind Charley Dickens.
I looked back to see that McCutcheon
and Brice had dismounted to lead down
the hill. I waved to them to come on
before I passed out of their sight over
another hill.

y&rlK- •* >*- : *p&5*l

■*&'

*&* \

'■>:

■A

■■■Nfl

kf •'■

r-s.

THE AUTHOR AND GIBBY BEING PHO-
TOGRAPHED BY MC CUTCHEON

RICHARD DICKENS, AN APACHE WHOSE
SENSE OF HUMOR IS KEEN

The three Indians led me over two
more rocky hills, and I came up to them
as they were dismounting where the
backbone of a long ridge swayed and
broadened. Here the ground was soft
and free from stones. Two or three
stunted trees grew out of this oasis —
palo verdes, whose green bark and
strong spikes suggested cactus — and un-
der these there were likely to be found
deer signs.

George Dickens was scarcely off his
horse before he called, in a low-pitched
tone, to Charley, and pointed to tracks.
Tying their horses and drawing their
guns hastily out of their saddle scab-
bards, the Indians tumbled down the
hillside in the direction the deer had
taken.

I came plunging forward, and ranged
alongside Charley, with excitement and
questions bulging out all over. Charley
took time to whisper:

"Three — three of them!" And
there wras a sort of singing note in his

158

OUTING

voice, a rapid filming and unveiling of
the jet black of his eyes. He flashed
three outspread fingers toward me to
make sure that I understood that we
had by a fortunate chance come upon the
tracks of three deer.

"All bucks— big fellows!" added
Charley, and as I slid noisily down over
some loose stones and came to a sudden
stop in the granite bottom of a wash,
Charley held up a hand; he admonished
me gently:

"You walk easy — make no noise!"

Up the steep hillside which seemed
to lean toward us, he sprang with the
silent grace of a cat. My heart was
pounding with excitement and the sud-
den effort, as I followed ; and it may
be that I actually did not make as much
noise as I had in coming down the hill.

George and Jose were leading, stoop-
ing swiftly now and then to verify their
guess that the three deer were following
a twisting, easy way (not easy, either,
but the least difficult) up the steep slope.
At the top, they came to a stop, and
Charley joined them in rapid recon-
naissance. In a minute they were plung-
ing back down the hill to the bottom of
the wash we had just crossed.

On the Trail in Earnest

Down there, a careful study of the
ground was made ; and then the three
Indians came together for a whispered
conference. At the end, George and
Jose set off toward the north, while
Charley motioned me to follow him;
and as we climbed the steep slope again,
Charley took time to explain :

"Two go off that way" — he pointed
to where George and Jose were speed-
ing across another hill — "and one go
this way; we follow him."

So Charley Dickens and I set out on
the track of one big buck, with the
beating hearts and the shining eyes of
two schoolboys on the way to the swim-
ming hole for the first time in early
summer. I had never in my life shot at
a deer; Charley has tracked down and
killed scores — yet I believe that he was
quite as excited over the prospect of
coming upon this one as I could possibly
be.

"He's fresh track!" Charley kept re-
peating, turning now and then to make
sure that I was keeping close up.

We came to a sloping expanse of bare
rock, where the tracks of the buck were
lost. Charley followed the course he
thought the deer must have taken, but
when we came to the other side, where
there was dirt enough to show a track,
it was not to be found. Charley shook
his head impatiently, then started to
climb among the loose rocks and cactus.
But no track was there, so he came
racing down to scout over the lower
ground. And all the time I followed
as close at his heels as I could.

Far down went Charley, but did not
find the tracks. Up again, then, and
up and up, until I thought that we must
be going straight to the top of a tower-
ing peak which was throwing its shadow
across the hills we had crossed. At last
Charley turned toward me with a smile
and pointed a lean brown finger; I came
up panting, and stooped to note the
faint, delicate outline of a deer's foot.

For a time the tracks followed a level
cow-trail, and I was given a chance in
some measure to recover my breath. A
breathing spell was granted me, too,
every time Charley crept, bent low, to
the top of a ridge. I followed his ex-
ample, stepping slowly and softly until
we had scanned all of the country opened
up to view by topping the ridge.

We had followed the trail for per-
haps an hour, when we were introduced
to a series of meanderings; the tracks
led us far down toward where the plung-
ing dry washes ran into a main wash,
and then took us up and up to the good
grazing near the top of the high peak.

Charley Dickens is about one inch
over six feet; I should say that he has
a twenty-six inch waist, and that he
weighs about 155 pounds. He was born
among the hills, and he moves among
the rocks, over whatever grade he
meets, with the ease and thoughtless
sureness of a mountain creature. Keep-
ing alongside of him, hour after hour,
I found was a different matter from
trailing "Monty". I needed more
breath than I seemed to have with me
that day.

But fate was kind — just as I decided

WITH APACHE DEER HUNTERS IN ARIZONA

161

that I would quietly drop behind some
sheltering palo verde and go back to
camp when I had recovered my wind,
Charley would lose the tracks. When-
ever that happened I stopped dead, try-
ing to make Charley believe that I was
astonished at the twistings of the deer's
trail. And sometimes, before Charley
had picked up the tracks again, I would
be so far recovered that I could make a
bluff at searching the ground for signs.

Then (I think that it must have been
in the third hour of our pursuit) I actu-
ally found the trail! I called Charley
by a hissing whisper and a wave of my
hand. Thereafter, each time we lost
the dim tracks, Charley would send me
one way to search while he went the
other. To me that was the highest com-
pliment I could have been paid ; I ex-
ulted, though it cut out my resting per-
iods. Thereafter when I set out to ex-
amine my allotted territory — breath
whistling from my lungs and sweat all
but blinding me — I prayed to the gods
of luck to help me find the tracks if
they happened to be on my side.

I made a good record — only once did
Charley come into the territory I had
scouted over and pick up the tracks after
I had missed them.

So we went, hour after hour, with
just enough time for creeping to the
tops of ridges and reconnoitering the
valleys to save for me a remnant of
breath. The shadow of the tall peak
became short, and was lost altogether.
We had left our horses at a quarter to
seven o'clock, and it was now a quarter
to twelve.

We were getting higher and higher
all the time, following what seemed to
be a perfectly random trail. Every now
and then Charley's brown finger would
jab one of the delicate outlines of the
deer's foot, and he would whisper ex-
ultantly:

"He's very fresh — maybe, over that
hill!" Then we would creep, rifles
snuggled close under our arms, to the
top of another ridge, to stand motion-
less while we scanned the rock fields
mounting ahead of us.

It was nearly one o'clock; we had
climbed almost uninterruptedly for half
an hour; the blood was pounding, mon-

strous drum-beats, in my head ; I had
loosened my woolen shirt to the last but-
ton and rolled its sleeves back as far as
they would go; I was sweating so that
my eyes were bathed by the acrid flow;
every muscle in my body was shrieking
for release from strain; and I was think-
ing with envy of the good fortune of
McCutcheon and Brice in being left be-
hind before the trailing began. Then
we lost the tracks.

Charley, choosing the most likely
ground, swung to the left and waved me
toward the right. I stole a few seconds
for breathing before I began my search.
My trembling legs took me very slowly
up and across the rocks — I was hoping
that we would have to search a long time
before we came upon the tracks.

I looked around for Charley, after a
minute. He had gone over a ridge and
was out of my sight. Right there I
was tempted to lie down flat on my back
and bid good-by to the chance of ever
seeing a deer ; but some obstinate spirit
of protest against giving up urged me on.
I stumbled ahead, to cut the trail of
the deer twenty feet behind Charley,
who was climbing along the side of the
ridge which led straight up to the top
of the high peak.

The Game in Sight

Then, suddenly, I saw Charley drop
to one knee, his rifle came up to his
shoulder with a steady, thrilling swift-
ness; the whining crack punctured the
silence of the hills; and I heard the
rattle of hoofs against stones three hun-
dred yards ahead and above us.

Full into my view, broadside on,
scrambled the big buck. Mine was the
second shot — Heaven knows where the
bullet went, for I could no more fix
the bead of my rifle sight on that gray,
antlered creature mounting toward
where the sun was rimming the top of
the high peak than I could have stopped
to recite Scott's poem.

Turn and turn, as fast as we could
throw the loads into our guns, Charley
and I fired, the crack and echo of the
shots mingling in a kind of maddening
roar of sound. My last bullet (Charley
told me later) struck just behind the

162

OUTING

deer as he went across the ridge square
into the sun.

As the deer disappeared, I began to
shove more cartridges into the maga-
zine of my rifle, running to speak to
Charley in a voice choked with excite-
ment.

"I think," said Charley, shoving his
broad hat back and reloading swiftly,
"my first shot hit him here." He jabbed
the extended fingers of his left hand
against his hip. And when he had fin-
ished reloading, "Come on, I think we
get him now!"

Then up toward the top of the ridge,
toward the peeping sun, toward the spot
where the glorious buck had topped the
rocks, began* to run that lank Apache!
He ran — actually — up a mountainside
which seemed' always rearing backward
as if to hit us in the face, so steep it
was.

And I tried, gaspingly, despairingly,
to follow. Within fifty yards, I found
myself stopped dead, with the last atom
of breath gone and with every muscle
balked. I tried pulling myself up by
grabbing the cruel cat's claw bushes, in-
different for the moment to their
scratches; and for a few more yards I
struggled on in Charley's wake.

I stopped, breathed with my mouth
wide open a few times, then tried' step-
ping along the hillside, on the level.
That was all right — I found that I
could move in that way. After that,
I climbed again — for perhaps twenty
feet — rested for a moment, then tried
the level going. All the time Charley
was steaming on, getting farther and
farther away from me. Just before he
came to the spot where the deer had
stood when he fired first, Charley looked
back and with a beckoning wave of his
hand, directed1 me to circle the ridge over
which the deer had disappeared.

"All right!" I tried to shout, but I
found that I couldn't spare the breath
for the words. So, as fast as I could go
over the stones, I began to swing around
the hill toward the left, picking out the
level way with the sure instinct of the
Utterly tired climber.

Presently, to my amazement, I found
myself able to run. Yesterday's miracle
of rejuvenation was being outdone to-

day! I know that I shall never have a
moment of more unadulterated joy than
the one in which I discovered that I
could run' along that steep mountainside.
I had dug deep down to at least a third
reservoir of physical stamina, and

Charley appeared on the top of the
ridge, far above and to the right. He
waved to me violently, and I understood
that the deer had' turned in my direction
and headed for the bottom of a dry wash
which yawned almost canyon-like in size
and depth at my left.

A few steps farther along, I came
upon the trail of the deer — a splash of
blood on a rock, tracks which went un-
steadily.

Charley was coming down the hill
with the speed of a young avalanche —
I resolved that he should not beat me
to the bottom of that wash, anyway,
and I began to plunge ahead recklessly.
Fortunately there was a long "slide" of
loose stones for me to plunge down upon
— they carried me twenty feet at a
leap, giving way before the violent shock
of my impact instead of sending me roll-
ing.

Charley was still fifty yards or more
behind me, and I was within thirty
yards of the bottom of the hill,
when straight ahead I got the flash of
tossing horns as the wounded buck be-
gan to hobble quarteringly up the op-
posite slope. He was not forty yards
away, he was going slowly, broadside on ;
the quiet assurance that, he was our
meat helped to steady my gun as I
turned it upon him.

Bringing Ho?ne the Bacon

My shot beat Charley's — his kicked
up a spatter of dirt just over the shoulder
of the deer which had plunged and
slumped when my bullet struck him.
Before he half tumbled and half slid to
the bottom of the granite-lined channel
of the wash, the velvet smoothness of
his side was stained by blood. Down
in the bottom of the wash, the buck
struggled feebly, and Charley, rushing
down beside me, was about to fire again
when I begged him not to spoil the skin
with another bullet.

I assume that there is a hunters' law

WITH APACHE DEER HUNTERS IN ARIZONA

163

which disputes my title to that deer ;
but I am no hunter, and I know that
I fell to and helped Charley skin and
pack it over the hills to the horses with
all the delight of a new owner. I have
the horns over my desk now, and I look
upon them as my own trophy, even
though I know that except for Charley
I should never even have seen the deer.
So indifferent to some details do we be-
come, and so tenacious of others — I have
actually found myself wondering at
times whether Charley might not have
been mistaken in thinking that his first
bullet crippled the deer, and whether
it might not have been that last shot of
mine (as the deer disappeared over the
ridge into the sun) which set him on
three legs and made him at last our
victim.

No, he was not all my deer; but do
you imagine that I admitted it when,
liberally stained with blood, I rode into
camp with Charley to pose while Mc-
Cutcheon and "Gibby" trained their
cameras upon me! After I had changed
my shirt and eaten a thick venison steak ;
after the weariness had gone from my
body, "Grindy" (who had made a rec-
ord shooting quail that morning, and
wanted to go out again) asked me to
go up on the hills with him and chase
a big bunch of quail he had located.
Morgan saved me from refusing.

"You give me a pain, 'Grindy'!" he
broke in scornfully. "Let McCutcheon
take his own gun" (a beautiful 20-
gauge quail gun which all of us except
its owner had been using) "and go with
you. Why, 'Tsan-usdi' is a deer hun-

ter

George Morgan's sarcasms do not
wound — they are delivered with such a
wide-eyed stare and such an apologetic
smile as take out the sting. This one
actually soothed. I waved my hand
deprecatingly, and in a few minutes
"Grindy" and McCutcheon were on the
way to the hillside where the quail
called defiantly. Then George wanted
to know the truth about the killing of
the deer. Charley assumed an air of
having forgotten altogether just how the
deer did meet his end, and nodded his
head loyally whenever I asked him to
confirm a statement. Finally, I took out
of my pocket the flattened bullet Charley
had found under the skin — the one
which had tumbled him into the bed of
wash. I put it into George's hand and
asked him to verify my statement that
it fitted my gun.

"Now, are you satisfied?" I de-
manded ; and I think he was almost per-
suaded. Anyway, when Hayes, "Gib-
by," "Grindy," and Brice began to ques-
tion my right to the title of deer-slayer,
George came to my assistance.

' 'Tsan-usdi'," he asserted (using with
delicious unction the Indian name my
Cherokee relatives gave me when I was
a small boy, and which I had revealed
to him in an unguarded moment)
"killed that deer! He has established
his claim to my satisfaction; and as his
counsel I ask the court to put a stop
to this persistent heckling by counsel for
the prosecution." Then "Monty" and
the Preacher Man, constituting them-
selves a court of inquiry, ordered all pro-
ceedings stopped. With Morgan's help,
I won my point — the deer was mine.

(The End.)

The international preliminaries in lawn tennis for
the Davis Cup begin in July. Therefore, read
E. B. Dewhurst's article in June OUTING on THE
BIG FOUR OF THE TENNIS WORLD.

TWENTY-FIVE YEARS OF BIG
LEAGUE BASEBALL

By CLARK C. GRIFFITH

Arranged by Edward L. Fox
II

MILESTONES OF THE GAME

' I VHE development of baseball, as Mr. Griffith shows, has been
-*- marked by two broad tendencies. On the playing side, most,
if not all, of the changes have been directed to the speeding up
of the game and the sharpening of the attack. From the stand-
point of managers and owners there has gone on at the same time
a steady movement toward making the game more stable and profit-
able commercially. What are the prime changes from year to
year that throw these tendencies into bold relief? Mr. Griffith
answers this question in the article which follows.

F course a subject like
baseball is possible of di-
vision in many ways, and
I am not positive that I
have located its milesones
properly. Nevertheless, I
prefer to divide baseball into two parts.
I like to think of what happened before
the formation of the American League
in 1901 and what happened after that
date down to the present day.

Such a division will do nicely if we
are only considering the vital things in
the moral development of the game. By
that I mean the attitudes of crowds,
players, and club owners toward their
profession. In this respect the changes
since 1901 are remarkable. But to locate
other milestones, we must use certain
points of interest, which date the or-
ganization of the American League. I
have read not a few histories of baseball.
To trace the development of the com-
mercialism of baseball, however, is dif-
ferent from simple history. This com-
'mercial development I shall consider
later. Also, I shall tell what I know of
the scientific development of the game,
of the changes in the style of play, in

[164]

fact everything I can remember that
has not to do with dollars and cents.

The baseball of to-day is approaching
pretty close to the ideal. The reason for
this is that everybody concerned in it
has developed a" sense of sportsmanship
utterly lacking in the past. Despite its
professionalism I have noticed a clearly
defined spirit of "the game, for the
game's sake." I have seen this mani-
fested not only in players, but in own-
ers, umpires and fans. But more of this
later.

I began in baseball, professionally that
is, around the end of the eighties. Be-
fore that, a number of important changes
in the technique of the game had oc-
curred. Let us consider them chro-
nologically. In 1863, the "Call Ball"
rule was adopted. That shortened the
playing time of a game. Six years later
a catcher used a glove for the first time.
He was Allison, of the Cincinnati Reds.
Three years later there came the "bunt,"
that offensive play which is the basis for
much of our modern attacking strategy.
I believe that a man named Pearce, of
the Brooklyn Atlantics, is credited with
the discovery of the play.

TWENTY-FIVE YEARS OF BIG LEAGUE BASEBALL

165

Then in 1879 came the first catcher's
mask used by John Twyng, of Harvard,
and that further quickened the game.
Everything was tending to speed up base-
ball. In 1882 the ball that rolled foul
was called foul. In 1884 overhand
pitching was officially allowed. You see
the game was becoming more difficult.
The opportunities for doing things suc-
cessfully were being cut down. That
meant that games were constantly being
played quicker. The whole trend was
for speed, more speed.

That was natural. It is trite to say
it, but America has been striving for
speed in everything. This includes base-
ball. The smart player of to-day is much
faster than his rival of twenty years
ago. I say twenty, not twenty-five, for
it was in 1894 that modern baseball be-
gan.

All teams to-day are developed along
the lines of speed. I know that is the
system I use at Washington. I have
even carried it to the extreme of not
permitting my men to run long distances
in the spring training camp, instead
making them sprint. The old ball play-
ers could run and hit and throw as well
as the men of to-day. But the whole
game was not as fast. The" old players
did not think as quickly. They weren't
trained to. There was none of the
lightning-like strategic moves that you
see in the parks to-day. To be sure some
of the old timers were just as foxy, but
they were foxy as individuals not as
teams. They did not work together along
tricky, speedy lines.

That is, they didn't until 1894. Well
do I remember that year. Like all the
other clubs, except one that we didn't
know about and which opened our eyes
the first games wTe had with them that
season, we were playing straight-away
baseball. We were pounding the ball,
and running and fielding at high gear.
But wre lacked team work. This team
I speak of had suddenly come into the
possession of team work. They were
the Baltimore Orioles.

I recall a game we had with them.
McGraw, Kelly, Robinson, Gleason,
and more of those foxy old timers were
on the Baltimore team. We met them
with our old style, straight-away game.

There came an inning with Kelly on
first and McGraw at the bat. Kelly
raced down to second. Our shortstop
hurried to cover the bag, when to our
amazement McGraw hit the ball, driv-
ing it cleanly through the gap in the
defenses that our shortstop had left.
Kelly kept on running until he reached
third with McGraw safe on first. We
called it a fluke. A few innings later,
however, this same play was duplicated ;
then we knew there was something new
in baseball. It was "the hit and1 run."

That was only one of the many stra-
tegic plays that the Baltimore team de-
veloped and that changed the entire
game. They pulled all sorts of intricate,
clever little plays. They even went so
far as to reconstruct the baseball field at
Baltimore to suit their purposes. Before
practice one day, I discovered that the
base path from home to first was graded
down hill. Obviously this was for the
benefit of Baltimore's offensive tactics.
They had a number of fast runners and,
as I learned in a game that afternoon,
the down hill baseline had been built to
increase their speed'. They uncovered a
sensational series of bunts, invariably
beating out the ball to first.

Making them Roll Safe

That same day we were marveling
why so many of their bunts fell safe.
You know, the bunt is an extremely dif-
ficult play. To tap a ball so that it rolls
tantalizingly along the third baseline,
just out of reach of the pitcher and the
baseman, requires some pretty delicate
work. All the Orioles' bunts went right
in the same place, the same groove. It
occurred to me to look at that part of
the field, too. I discovered that from the
foul line the ground sloped down to the
infield. In other words, those foxy Ori-
oles had erected a ridge so that it was
difficult for any of their bunts to roll
foul.

To repeat, that transformed baseball.
Soon all the teams were doing the Bal-
timore stunt, not changing the typo-
graphy of their diamonds, but playing
scientific baseball. Led by Tenny and
Long, Boston soon got into Baltimore's
class. So did Chicago, of whose men

166

OUTING

Lange and Dahlen specialized at tricks.
There began an era of "foxy baseball."
It started foxy pitching. Before that
most pitchers had gone up and mowed
down the batters by sheer speed or va-
riety of curves. Now, pitchers began to
use their heads more. "Brain pitching"
came to be favored. This sort of pitching
interested me, and I think I can say with
all modesty that I got as much out of it
as anybody.

I have often been asked how those
old teams, Boston and Baltimore, would
do if they were placed in competition
to-day. Boston would be a well-balanced
ball club, even to-day. Not Baltimore.
The Orioles were not an all-round strong
team. They were weak in the pitcher's
box, in the outfield, and at first base.
Because of the tricks they used', unknown
at the time, they were able to show
head and shoulders above clubs that
were just as strong. You can see what
would happen to the Orioles to-day, be-
ing a poorly balanced team and facing
clubs that knew all the tricks they did.
With Boston, however, I would call the
Orioles the great modern ball club.
Neither one, however, compares with the
Philadelphia Athletics of to-day.

Let us consider for a moment the
really great baseball clubs. After these
teams came Brooklyn. The Superbas,
you may remember, raided Baltimore
and took away nearly all the stars ex-
cept McGraw. Then Pittsburgh, with
that wonderful pitching trio, Tannehill,
Phillipi and Chesbro, was a great ball
club. So were the Boston Americans,
when they had Parent, Ferris, Freeman,
Dougherty, Criger and Dineen. The
Chicago White Sox had a wonderful
club, powerful in the pitching box with
Walsh, White, Smith and Altrock. Go-
ing to pieces they gave way to Detroit's
team of terrific sluggers, that smashed
their way for three successive years to
American League championships. Un-
derstand, I am only mentioning great
ball clubs, so next come the Chicago
Cubs and when that machine went to
pieces, there is the Athletics. Unless I
am wrong the Athletics have a few more
years as an unusual club. They have
natural ability, which is the underlying
reason for their success.

I have observed a decided change in
the attitude of crowds. As I said, a
keener sense of sportsmanship appears to
have been developed' in the baseball fans
of the country. Let us go back to 1894.
I recall how the Baltimore crowds acted
when Tebeau led his Cleveland team
against the Orioles that year. It was nip
and tuck and Tebeau's tactics were ag-
gressive. On more than one occasion
his team was stoned and egged. I have
seen ball pla5rers come out of parks, their
uniforms smeared with decayed vegeta-
bles, eggs, and lumps of sod. I have seen
them cut by flying bottles. All this has
changed. Not in the last twenty years,
but since the formation of the American
League.

In the old days, a crowd of 12,000 was
remarkably good. To have 20,000 peo-
ple in a ball park was unheard of. In-
deed the largest park twenty years ago
held only 15,000 people. You know that
a crowd of 40,000 is not uncommon to-
day. I do not think that the attitudes
of crowds wholly changed until after
1900. Indeed it was since then that the
Alderman of St. Louis had to pass an
ordinance making the throwing of bot-
tles in ball parks a misdemeanor.

What the Crowds Want

Club owners realize to-day that they
are obligated to guard and protect their,
patrons and players. In a theater, if
you hiss an actor you are invariably
thrown out. You ought to be. So it is
with baseball. If a man in the stands
persistently abuses a player, he is put
out of the grounds. This is only some-
thing recent, but it marks the final step
in establishing baseball as a decent pro-
fession. Crowds to-day demand great
talent. They want to sec a great ball
game. They want their pets to win. If
the home team loses, however, they go
home more or less satisfied provided they
have seen a good game of ball.

In Washington, for instance, when-
ever Cobb, Baker, or any other star
comes to bat, he gets a big hand from
the crowd. That is significant. The
Cobbs and Bakers are playing against
the home team, yet Washington fans
applaud. So it is with all other cities.

TWENTY-FIVE YEARS OF BIG LEAGUE BASEBALL 167

The crowds of to-day are not narrowly
partisan in that they will not applaud
good work by another team. In other
words, they have developed the sense
of sportsmanship.

I have observed that it is only in those
cities where there is a peculiar mixture
of foreign blood that this is not true.
I mean especially Cincinnati. Cincin-
nati was about the last city to get an
idea that such a thing as sportsmanship
in baseball was possible. I know they
were the last city to give up the practice
of running players out of town. Indeed,
I doubt if they've given it up yet. I know
that for days there was a group of fans
who got together, sat in the same place,
and hissed and hooted every move that
Steinfelt made. They succeeded in
driving him out of Cincinnati. Of
course, this turned out fortunately for
"Steiney" as it landed him a berth on
the championship Chicago team. I man-
aged a ball club in Cincinnati, and I
know. When they get a man down there,
they jump on him. The psychology of
Cincinnati baseball crowds is a fearful
and wonderful thing.

In following the development of um-
pires, I can see no very significant
changes. Umpires have always been
fearless. When I broke into the league
I heard a story of Ferguson, a player
who finished as an umpire. One day
an angry home team mob surrounded
him and threatened to kill him. Fergu-
son seized a baseball bat and shouted
"I'm only one man to your thousand,
but if you don't think that I can protect
myself, just pitch in and give it a trial!"

The old timers spoke of Ferguson
as the nerviest umpire of his day. I
think the best exhibition of nerve that
I know of was given by Joe Cantillion.
He was umpiring a game of ball in De-
troit one Saturday, and he was mobbed.
He was told that if he showed up at
the park on the following day, he would
get worse. Cantillion showed up. And
because there was a disturbance he for-
feited the game against Detroit in spite
of what the home crowd had threatened.;
then he faced them all down.

I dare say just as plucky things have
been done by present day umpires. I
know that Billy Evans has been mixed

up in some pretty close escapes. I have
heard he was the victim of a bottle
throwing affair that nearly ended in a
fractured skull. Yet Evans came back
and faced that same crowd the next day.
Technically, umpires haven't im-
proved. That is, as a class. Some are
better, some are worse. They have some
umpires to-day who are worse than any
I ever saw in the old days. The reason
is that they are using twice as many as
they used to, and there are not enough
good ones to go around. Men like Gaff"-
ney, Lynch, and Sheridan, I recall as
being especially good umpires.

An Umpire Has No Friends

I want, however, to say a word for
the umpire. Baseball fans do not realize
his peculiar position. An umpire's first
requisite is nerve. I have never ques-
tioned that in one of them. I have only
questioned their ability. The umpire's
is an extremely undesirable position be-
cause he must isolate himself. He has
no friends. That is, no baseball friends.
I do not think the average fan knows that
an umpire is not allowed to associate
with players. When he is traveling
around the circuit he must keep to him-
self. He rides in another part of the
train ; he stays at a different hotel. When
he is not working at the ball park, he
cannot keep the company of the players.
If he happens to speak to anybody in
his hotel lobby, it may be some fan who
has a grudge against him. On him there
is a curse. He is one of the loneliest
men in the world.

To hold an umpire's job takes spirit.
To stand the gaff, he must be game. If
he isn't game, he will look for alibis and
try to square his decisions. If he does
that he's lost. He can never please
everybody. Everybody says he's "rot-
ten," newspapers included. Put your-
self in his place. How do you imagine
it would feel? I wish to emphasize the
fact that none of us, managers, players,
or friend's, give the umpire the credit
that is due him.

It was Ban Johnson who changed
things for the umpire. Before the
American League, $2,100 was a high-
water mark as an umpire's salary. To-

168

OUTING

day, the best of our American League
umpires receive as much as $4,000.
Among the many other wonderful things
that Ban Johnson has done for base-
ball is to systematize the umpire prob-
lem. He has done his utmost to secure
the best umpires obtainable. He has
raised their pay and their standards. He
has been scrupulous in keeping them
apart from the players, — a very impor-
tant thing. By association an umpire
might become unconsciously prejudiced
in favor of a certain player. But more
than anything, Johnson was the first
man of power in baseball to stick by
his umpires, and to back them up in any
thing they did. Did you ever hear of
an American League umpire being in-
timidated?

Origin of the Scout

It was Johnson who conceived the idea
of scouting for umpires just as play-
ers are scouted for. This scouting sys-
tem is a very new thing. In the old
days, and by the old days I mean not
ten years ago, organized scouting was
unknown. Men did not tramp the coun-
try looking for promising players. We
heard about youngsters or read about
them and then sent somebody out to sign
them. During the early years I had
charge of the New York American
League Club I never paid a scout a
nickel. All the men I got from the
Yankees wTere picked out of the bushes.
I was either tipped off to them by
friends, or I read about them in local
papers. But I judge every fan under-
stands to-day the modern scouting sys-
tem.

To-day, baseball is a big profession.
As a profession it is a thousand per cent
better than when I started. Then it was
full of "rough necks." It was common
belief that to be popular a player had to
be a "rounder." Not until the forma-
tion of the American League did things
begin to get really better. The present
generation of ball players is as clean as
any other profession. I can best com-
pare them to civil engineers. There are
many reasons for this, many college men
have entered the game. But that isn't
the basic reason.

A word about college men in baseball.
Ten years ago it was considered more
or less disgraceful for a man with a
college education to enter baseball. Now
many college men look forward to base-
ball as a profession. They do this for a
very good reason. In contrast to the
fellow who comes up from the lots, they
have two angles on the game. They can
either play until they are about thirty
years old and make enough money to
set them up in business or their chosen
profession ; or if they fail, they can still
go back to their profession without hav-
ing suffered the loss of much time. They
can either win, or remain as they were
before they took the chance. The college
man in baseball cannot lose.

But the real reason for the change in
baseball as a profession is a far deeper
thing. Perhaps I can put it best by say-
ing that the modern ball player has the
spirit of a soldier. He has a pride in his
work that you do not find anywhere
outside the Army or Navy. He is as
lo}Tal to the honesty of the game as the
soldier is to the flag. He is proud of
the game. If you were to ask a ball
player of to-day to throw a game, he'd
probably knock you down. Twenty years
ago — if you happened on the right man,
he would have listened to you, and
asked how much there was in it for
him.

Baseball is a melting pot for charac-
ter. I have seen all classes take it level,
which is, pride in the profession. I have
seen the rankest "kids" — and I have
one in mind, a fellow who could do
anything, a rat picked up off the lots —
get into professional baseball to-day and
be changed completely. By association
with the men around him, the "kid" in
this instance developed honesty and pride.
I would trust him if he were on my club
with anything.

To-day, ball players work with har-
mony. If one man finds out a weakness
in an opposing pitcher, he tells it to his
team mates. He doesn't keep it to him-
self so that he can star individually.
There is a wonderful spirit of corps in
baseball to-day.

The status of the manager has
changed. In the old days he used to be
sort of a watch-dog. One of his functions

TWENTY-FIVE YEARS OF BIG LEAGUE BASEBALL

was to see that certain players kept sober.
A man who doesn't observe strict train-
ing rules has about as much chance in
baseball to-day as would a blind man.
Managers have no use for the "rounder."
I recall one manager who used to spend
his evenings following his players about
town. To-day, the players will come vo
the manager instead of avoiding him.
They have confidence in him. They
not only discuss baseball, but often
personal affairs, and seek his advice.
Obviously the manager of to-day has
to be a little more than a watchdog.

As far as the playing of the game is
concerned, he has become a decided fac-
tor. At all critical stages he must ab-
solutely be ready to direct the play. In
the last analysis of crucial games, it all
devolves on him. Do not get from this
that baseball teams of to-day are merely
machines. I never believe in subor-
dinating the individuality of a player. I
know that Connie Mack doesn't either.
As I often say to my men, "Any time
a man drops his guard, hit him! Don't
wait to be told." By this I mean that
if there is ever a hole shown in the
front of the opposing team, take advan-
tage of it.

Before pointing out certain important
steps in the development of baseball
commercially, it may be wise to con-
sider some statistics that are significant.

Twenty years ago, the rent of the
Chicago park was $3,500. To-day it is
$15,000. I remember when the Polo
Grounds, including Manhattan Field,
rented for $10,000. To-day I'm given
to understand that this propertv costs
the New York club $70,000 a year. In
the old days it used to cost us $10,000
a year for traveling expenses, that is,
to play the out-of-town games. The
individual cost per man was figured at
$2. To-day, the average bill is $27,000.
We stop at $4-a-day hotels. The best
of trainers, rubbers and railroad ac-
commodations are engaged. In the old
days, men had to rub themselves. Now
it has come even to the point where
if a critical series is impending, we do
not trust our players to riding in public
conveyances. There might be a meet-
ing with some overkeyed fan. We do
not take chances. We engage taxicabs

to carry our men from railroad station
to hotel, from hotel to ball park.

When Philadelphia and Detroit were
having such a race of it for the pennant
a few years ago, there was not a little
bad feeling caused by Cobb's uninten-
tentional spiking of Baker. During those
closing games in Philadelphia, Manager
Jennings, of the Detroit team, took the
utmost precaution to keep his players
in strict privacy. I would do the same
thing if such a situation arose this year
with the Washington club.

Beginnings of Big Business

But the days of $10,000-a-year travel-
ing expenses didn't come for a long time.
The first significant step in the com-
mercializing of baseball was the tour
of the old Cincinnati Reds. Harry
Wright, his tour with the Nationals
failing, conceived the idea of organizing
a baseball team in Cincinnati and putting
it on an out-and-out salary basis. So the
Cincinnati "Red Stockings" were formed
with an open salary list. Wright de-
cided to uniform his men in knicker-
bockers to make them distinctive from
the amateurs who played in long trous-
ers. He also imported players by the
wholesale from the East, thus establish-
ing early the non-resident principle upon
which all our professional teams of to-
day are founded. Another big step
toward a sound business basis for the
handling of his and other teams to come
was in Wright's making all his players
sign contracts. These bound them to
give their exclusive services as ball play-
ers to the "Red Stockings" between
March 15 and November 15, 1869. For
this period they were paid an average
of $100 a month, absurdly small when
one considers the salaries of to-day. But
as a matter of fact the entire annual
salary list of Wright's team was only
$9,300, or less than some managers of
to-day, who do not even play, receive.

As a money-maker baseball began to
boom. Meeting with instant financial
success, the "Red Stockings" soon went
on tour, playing everywhere before big
crowds. They crossed the continent. The
whole country watched them. News-
papers began to show f their scores on

170

OUTING

bulletin boards and Harry Wright be-
came the first baseball impresario.

After this successful tour, there came
five black years— 1871 to 1876— that
almost killed the young business. Gam-
blers infested baseball. The country
became "baseball crazy." Hundreds of
diamonds were laid out, hundreds of
dollars taken in at the gate, hundreds
of dollars paid the players for throw-
ing games the way gamblers wanted them
to go. Disgusted with the situation, the
few remaining amateur teams had passed
out of existence and by 1871 baseball
passed into the hands of the first pro-
fessional league — the National Associa-
tion. So far as solidifying the business
basis, introducing system, clearing and
defining professionalism were concerned,
this was a great step forward. But there
was the parasite of gambling eating out
everything clean and decent that was in
the commercialized baseball of the "Red
Stockings."

Slowly at first, then swiftly, the at-
tendance at games all over the country
began to fall off. Respectable people
would have none of baseball. Gate re-
ceipts grew smaller and smaller. A num-
ber of clubs closed their parks. The
owners lost money. From the pulpit
preachers began to storm against base-
ball. Political reformers made it an
issue. Editorials in newspapers warned
against it. Of the visit of A. G. Spal-
ding's clean players to a middle Western
town the local newspaper wrote: —

"They comported themselves more like
Christians than like professional ball
players."

Demoralization had set in. What had
promised to be a thriving business was
toppling and would have fallen, had not
the little decent element left in baseball
seen the need for instant action. But
they did— A. G. Spalding, W. A. Hul-
bert, Harry Wright, and others — and
in 1876, they planned and executed a
coup that snatched baseball from the
hands of the gamblers and delivered it
to the National League, an organiza-
tion of their own conception, which laid
the foundation for the great business
that baseball is to-day.

When William Hulbert, whose money
was invested in the Chicago team asked

Spalding to bring his championship Bos-
ton club out to Chicago, Spalding re-
plied:—

"Not for a million, while those gam-
blers are out there."

That set Hulbert to thinking. He
saw that baseball in the hands of the
players had been a failure, and had let
in the gamblers. He realized that the
failure would be irretrievable unless
baseball was immediately put into the
hands of clean principled and able busi-
ness men. After the Chicago and Boston
teams had played their series, Hulbert
and Spalding got together. After days
of conference, they conceived the idea
of the National League. It was to be a
combination of the owners of the largest
ball clubs, its purpose to make baseball
a solid business, conducted on uniform
rules and with one central governing
body, the National League. It was or-
ganized in 1876, all the club owners
agreeing to bar out the gamblers, to dis-
qualify players who associated with gam-
blers, to dismiss any club that failed to
fill a schedule date and to observe all
rules regarding the breaking of contracts
and the jumping of players.

Evils of Free Competition

Under this centralization, baseball
began to prosper. By making attractive
schedules, advertising their dates in ad-
vance and filling the dates with clean
baseball in clean parks, the National
League club owners began to make
money. In fact, they made so much
money that by 1880 other shrewd busi-
ness men had seen the opportunity and
were putting teams and leagues in the
field. By 1881 the competition of one of
these leagues — the American Associa-
tion— had become intense. Players of
the National League were breaking con-
tracts and jumping to the American As-
sociation and vice versa. The players
went where they were paid the most
money, and to hold them the club own-
ers boosted salaries all out Qf proportion.
Obviously expenses began to overbalance
receipts, and in 1883, the American As-
sociation suffering as well as the Na-
tional, an armistice between the two
organizations was declared.

THE PRAIRIE DOG

171

This lesulted in the drawing up or
the National agreement — a document
that gave to baseball the necessary execu-
tive machinery. It bound the different
organizations to a code of rules for the
settling of all inter and intra league dis-
putes. It established the player as the
property of the club to which he was
under contract and forbade any other
club to acquire that property until the
holder was done with it. Reasonable lim-
its were placed upon salaries. Perfect
co-operation between the different leagues
was secured and the administration of
this new machinery was placed in the
hands of an executive body called the
National Board.

Then fighting began. In 1884 and
1890 the players revolted and formed
independent leagues, each of which

lasted one year. This showed that beyond
all doubt baseball had to be in the
hands of business men. The players
could not run it. Then came the next
step in 1891, when the National League
took four of the American Association
clubs into partnership, thus increasing
its own circuit to twelve cities. This
the National League enjoyed until an-
other group of men saw their opportu-
nity, went after it, and got it — the men
of the American League.

From my experience as a player, a
manager, a club owner, I have seen all
phases, considered all sides of baseball.
I can honestly say that the present high
standard of the game, its increasing spint
of sportsmanship, is due more than any-
thing to the organization of the Ameri-
can League under Ban Johnson.

THE PRAIRIE DOG

By G. F. RINEHART

HE plats a town upon the plain
And booms it in advance of man,
Without a thought or hope of gain,
By giving lots to all his clan.

Erect he stands upon his feet,
Alert with ever-watchful eyes,

Nor cares he for the county seat,
Nor bonded railroad's coming ties.

Ambition has no charm for him,
Proud peer of socialistic clan ;

No office-seeking fad nor whim
Could make of him an alderman.

Without the selfish greed of men,
No fortune does he hoard and save;

He lives contented in his den,
And, dying, finds a ready grave.

O how I would love to be
Such a lucky dog as he !
Never has oppressive cares,
No one stabs him unawares;
No one smothers him with lies,
No one takes him by surprise.
O how I would love to be
Such a lucky dog as he!

SENSIBLE OUTFIT FOR AMATEUR

HIKERS

By WILL C. STEVENS

Illustrated with Diagrams

The Things to Take and Not to Take to Make Your Walking

Trip a Success

IKING over country roads
and woodlands is a de-
light to an ever-increasing
army of city men. The
desk man who works in
~H> store or factory gets but
little opportunity to indulge in this sport,
except at vacation time, and it seems es-
pecially adapted to him, for by selecting
the proper route he may get a pleasant
mixture of wilderness, rural life and
summer-resort pleasures.

It is a splendid physical and mental
recreation, if properly indulged in, giv-
ing moderate and sustained exercise, in-
teresting experiences, and valuable in-
formation gained in a pleasant manner.

We have nothing to do just now with
routes or equipment for hunting or fish-
ing. It is assumed that the vacationist
wishes to get his pleasure principally
from the exercise of walking and from
the adventures and scenery and from
the experience of sleeping and preparing
his meals out of doors. The suggestions
offered are designed especially for the
man who has but two or three weeks
at his disposal and who wishes to equip
himself properly for that length of
time.

The experience from which the follow-
ing suggestions are drawn covers the
north central section of the United
States, but as the same general condi-
tions exist in many other localities, the
ideas may be equally applicable over a
considerable area.

Do not spend a lot of money on an
elaborate outfit. You will be more com-
fortable and less conspicuous in ordinary
clothes, which will be just as practical

U72J

if properly selected. You probably pos-
sess most of the essential articles. If
you travel in the heat of summer, avoid
woolen underdrawers and woolen outer
shirts. Any authority who disputes this
has never suffered from hives or prickly
heat, or he would change his mind.

Get the drawers full length and of bal-
briggan, and be sure they fit. Balbrig-
gan dries almost as quickly as wool and
is far cooler. Your knees will become
chafed from dust and perspiration if you
wear knee-length drawers.

Your undershirt should be of very
light-weight wool if you can wear it, or
of ribbed cotton. Exercising in the hot
sunshine will make you perspire freely
about the waist and upper body, so you
need an absorbent covering there, and
one which will protect you from the chill
of a sudden cold wind. Wool is best for
this purpose.

A nice shirt of this kind is the sleeve-
less, buttonless, snugly fitting athletic
jersey. It absorbs freely, is easily
cleaned, does not wrinkle and will serve
as part of a bathing suit if necessary.
Have it light in weight, however, for you
will be miserable if your body is con-
tinually smothered in its own heat.

The dark blue or black chambray
shirt with the soft collar attached can-
not be excelled for the outer shirt. It
is sometimes called "the working-man's
shirt," and if dark in color will not show
the dust or perspiration stains at the
waist or arm-pits. The wool army shirt,
so much affected by hunters, is too hot.

Let the trousers be light in weight
also, but they should be of wool and
dark colored. A sound pair that has

SENSIBLE OUTFIT FOR AMATEUR HIKERS

173

seen its best days is just the thing.
Either suspenders or a light belt may
be used to support them. Suspenders
are apt to chafe your shoulders, but they
allow loosely fitting waists, which give
coolness and muscular freedom. Have
flaps on the pockets, arranged to button
in the contents.

Wear a soft hat with a fairly wide
brim, and replace the leather sweat band
with one of cloth. Flannel is good.
Sweaty leather poisons the skin and does
not hold on your hat as well as cloth.
A cap does not give sufficient air space
above your head to break the force of the
sun's rays.

Have the stockings fit perfectly, of
lisle or cotton, and either fast color black
or with white feet.* They should be
light in wreight, but heavy enough to be
absorbent and to form a slight cushion
for the feet. Do not wear an elastic
garter that encircles your leg, for it will
retard the circulation which this form of
exercise stimulates. A safety pin answers
the purpose perfectly.

A "hiker's" shoes are really the most
important part of his outfit, and are the
feature most often neglected or mis-
judged by the amateur. They will make
or mar your outing, and do it in a hurry,
too.

Don't make the fatal mistake of wear-
ing heavy, cumbersome, high boots, of the
"storm" variety, thinking you will look
picturesque. You may succeed in this
effort, but the expression on your face
after a ten-hour, twenty-mile ordeal will
make you a fit model for a picture of
intense disgust and misery. They are
hot, they hurt, and they don't help.
Their only purpose is to protect against
thorny bushes and deep mud and for this
purpose leggings are better and can be
removed when not needed.

It is almost, if not quite, as fatal to
wear new shoes, for these will chafe your
heels, skin your toes and tire your
ankles. As the Irishman said, "any-
one of those miseries is two too many."

Have them of ordinary height, reach-
ing above your ankles so as to keep out
pebbles, waterproof them if you wish,

* This is contrary to the usual advice,
which is heavy wool for the feet.

although this makes them hot, and have*
them sound with only a medium thick
sole. Above all things have them well
broken in to the action of your foot.
Remember that the success of this form
of outing rests primarily on your feet
standing the strain, so help them all you
can. Your feet will probably become
swollen and fevered anyway, but a cold
bath will cure that.

Your shoes and stockings must be
right, or it will be "back to the fire-
side" for you in a hurry, with the women
folks rushing for arnica for their poor,
frail boy.

The reader will have observed that all
the clothing so far recommended is best
adapted to hot weather, and it is inten-
tionally so. Most of the weather you
encounter or select for this kind of an
outing is warm and walking with a
burden makes it seem still warmer. If
you feel too cool, you can warm up by
exercising, but if you are too warm you
cannot cool off without trouble and
danger.

The Uses of the Sweater Coat

To provide against cold winds, for
protection after a cold or exhausting
swim, and for use on damp or cold
nights, carry a good sweater coat. You
can hardly get it too thick. When you
do need extra warmth, you need it quick
and plenty.

An ideal garment of this kind has a
shawi collar and is of a weave known
as "Shaker-knit." The shawl collar
keeps the neck and base of the brain
wrarm, two sensitive points. Have your
sweater pure wool in any event, and of a
coarse weave, so that there will be plenty
of the tiny air chambers in the texture
which help so greatly in giving or retain-
ing warmth.

Do not bother with a coat of any kind.
It will be useless and in the way.

Opinions differ as to the best way of
preparing for the night when you are
sleeping out of doors. Some favor carry-
ing a silk "A" tent, which is so collaps-
ible that it can be crushed into the pocket.
Any tent which is small enough to be
portable by a pedestrian is sure to be
"stuffy," it shuts away your view of

174

OUTING

the stars, and serves no theoretical pur-
pose but shedding rain and keeping out
mosquitoes, both of which it does with
poor success in practice.

It is a lot more fun to be right out in
the open when you sleep, and you can be
made perfectly safe and comfortable.
You need a woolen blanket, a rubber
cloth, a piece of mosquito netting, and
some kind of a bed.

Your wool blankets should be of pure
stuff, of full size, clean and fluffy, and
of a dark color which will not show
dirt or attract insects. It need not, be
heavy weight, for here again the tiny
air chambers in the fabric will do much
to keep 3?ou warm, and if the suggestions
regarding the bed, later on, are adopted,
you will have sufficient extra covering to
make up for a light weight blanket.

Your rubber cloth is satisfactorily
supplied in the army "poncho" sold by
most sporting goods houses and army

A BED ROLL

WHICH IS ALSO
EASYCHAIR

salesrooms. It has a slit cut in the
center to admit the passage of the head,
but the slit is protected with a button
flap which makes the surface practically
unbroken if you wish to use the cloth
on your bed, or as a tent in case of rain.
Oilcloth may be used, but it cracks
easily from heat and usage, tears and
frays quickly from wear, and is not as
waterproof as rubber.

This cloth serves a number of useful
purposes. It may be worn while walking
to keep off the rain or break the force
of the wind ; it may be spread over a
mattress of wet leaves or grass, or on
your bed ; you can sit on it if the ground
is wet, or use it as a wind break after
your camp is established. The army
"poncho" has eyelets along all the edges
so that the cloth may be easily tied in
any desired position.

Mosquito netting may hardly be con-
sidered as a blanket, although one old-
timer once remarked that
he thought it "kept out
the coarsest part of the
cold."

It is essential to peace-
ful sleep, however, for
mosquitoes can keep you
awake all night, their
stings are often poison-
ous, and long walks are
so fatiguing that sound
sleep is very necessary.

Black is preferable.
White attracts insects and
other colors are poisonous.
Arranged over the head
of your bed with the help
of sticks forced into the
ground, with the edges
falling on the bed clothes
or tucked in, it works ex-
cellently. While you are
moving about on your
feet, drape it over your
wide brimmed hat so that
it falls all about your
head, and tie or tuck the
edges snugly about your
neck. This, with the pro-
tection afforded by your
clothing and carbolated
vaseline on your hands,
will give you ample pro-

II AM MOCK AND

SENSIBLE OUTFIT FOR AMATEUR HIKERS

175

tectlon in almost any northern locality.

One of the cleverest and most useful
articles ever devised for out of door
sleeping is the bed roll herewith de-
scribed and illustrated.

It weighs little, costs little, may be
made at home, and serves its purpose
excellently. In addition to its value as
a bed, it is also a knapsack, pack cloth,
hammock, and easy chair. In one form
or another it is in wide use among
"hikers," campers, and men whose life
takes them into the open.

It should be made of mattress ticking
or light canvas, perferably tan. It con-
sists of a strip six feet long with loops
or hems on the long edges. These per-
mit the insertion of long poles, cut at the
camp ground, which rest on parallel logs
or mounds of stone or earth, which lift
it off the ground, making it springy and
keeping it dry.

If you do not mind the slight added
weight, this simple style may be im-
proved on in many practical ways.

Make the strip twelve feet long, in-
stead of six. Fold over one end until
you have a compartment eighteen inches
by the width of the goods, which should
be about three feet. Then sew together
two of the open edges, and you have a
place to store your small articles. If this
compartment is padded with leaves or
grass at night, and folded over until it
rests on the main section, it makes a
good pillow.

Three feet of material at the bottom
may be folded over the sleeper's legs,
thus preventing him from kicking out his
feet during the night, to serve as mos-
quito bait. Eyelets placed in the two
corners of this flap will enable you to
tie it securely in position by means of a
connecting string run under your body.

Another addition which will prevent
you from becoming uncovered during the
night, from restlessness or the wind, is
in the form of two strips or "wings,"
sewn on the two edges of the central six
feet. These may be folded over your
body, and tied if necessary by strings
running beneath the bed. If the top
"wing" is folded in the direction of
the wind it protects you from its effects.

By placing sticks between the two
long poles, yoa get a practical hammock,

a sure enough luxury for a man who is
"roughing it."

With a little practice, one may also
arrange the sticks so that a serviceable
steamer chair is obtained.

When you break camp remove the
padding from the pillow, insert your
cooking utensils, roll your wool blanket
up in the canvas, and you are packed.
This pack may be in the form of a long
roll, to be worn across the body from
shoulder to hip, as the soldiers wear it,
or it may be arranged to sling from your
shoulders with straps, or to carry in the
hand. Fold and tie on your sweater coat
and rubber cloth separately, so they will
be easily and quickly accessible.

Cooking utensils depend somewhat on
the amount of food you must prepare at
each cooking, on the game-producing
qualities of the country, and on how far
you stray from civilization with its sup-
plies of partially prepared foods. It is
here assumed that the vacationist will
keep within fairly easy reach of farms or
villages.

All You Need for Cooking

A two-quart pail with a cover, a ~arge
cup, a deep soup plate, all of seamless
metal; a small frying-pan of ordinary or
government style, and a knife, fork and
spoon meet all requirements when pieced
out with what Nature can supply. Slabs
of clean wood or bark make excellent
plates, a sharp stick makes a good fork, a
spoon is easily made of wood, and most
fish and game may be cooked in a mud
casing or broiled on a stick. These
makeshifts do the work required of them
with surprisfng success, and make you
feel like a real woodsman, to say noth-
ing of enabling you to boast of your clev-
erness to "the boys" when you get back
home.

How to cook and what to cook are big
subjects, and well worth study by those
needing the information. Several good
books are published, devoted particularly
to the preparation of food in the open.
Horace Kephart's "Camping and Wood-
craft" is among the best.

It will be sufficient to point out here
that the exercise of walking stimulates
the action of the appetite and bowels and

176

OUTING

uses up lots of energy, so that nourishing,
digestible food is very necessary. A con-
stant or generous diet of canned goods or
greasy food will quickly upset your
stomach and weaken you.

Building good fires and making them
do as you wish under all conditions is a
fine art only to be acquired by experi-
ence. A few hints will help, however.
Never try to cook over a fire that is
flaming or smoking. Let it burn down
to coals, running a second fire to supply
hot coals if necessary.

In building any fire lay on your sticks
crisscross, so as to allow air to freely cir-
culate. This supplies the draft and is
the very life of the fire. Build up a lit-
tle tower first, with your paper or leaves
free from weight, and lay on your larger
sticks after the fire is going well. Al-
ways start the fire with dead, dry wood.

For a cooking fire, arrange two logs
or two rows of earth or stones about ten
inches apart and a foot high, in a long
trough. If you use logs, bank them well
with earth so they do not begin to blaze.
Then put your coals in this trough. You
then have a good "fore-and-aft" support
for your cooking utensils, and you have
plenty of room to work conveniently on
several "messes" at once. ■ Two forked
stakes at either end of the trough, con-
nected by a pole, afford a frame for sup-
porting the wires or notched sticks on
which you may hang your stew and sim-
mering pails.

For a fire for heat, you need not chop
up your sticks. Place the ends on the
fire so that the sticks resemble the spokes
of a wheel, and keep shoving the sticks
up as they burn off. In Jeaving camp
always put out your fire. This is an un-
written and important law of the open.

A hiker has need of a strong sheath-
knife, but it should not be of the con-
ventional "Bowie" pattern. The point
on this knife is too long for skinning or
slicing. It is designed for stabbing, and
it is extremely improbable that you will
meet any cave men or lions, and if you
did, you would be a "goner" anyway.

The blade of a sensible, useful knife
should not be over six inches long; it
should be thin and not too highly tem-
pered, and should be blunt-pointed. An
ordinary butcher-knife or a steel table-

knife that can be kept sharp will be bet-
ter than the usual hunting style. If you
carry it in a sheath at your belt, be sure
that it slips down tightly or is fastened
in, so that it cannot fall out when you
bend over.

If you plan to eat and sleep outdoors,
a good hatchet or hand-ax is a positive
necessity. In choosing between a sheath-
knife and a hatchet take the hatchet
and put a little more work on your
pocket-knife. This is a tool on which
you can sensibly afford to spend enough
money to insure getting a good one.
The head should be of the curved
edge variety and should weigh one and

GOOD TYPE OF HATCHET AND KNIFE FOR
THE HIKER

one-half or two pounds. It should be
of high-grade steel and have a flat top.
The style sold for household use, with a
beveled edge, is poorly fitted for the work
you will use it for. The handle should
be. about eighteen inches long and should
be curved like the handle of a large ax.
It may help your grip on it if it is bound
with tape or twine.

Unless you are in a locality where you
use it continuously for clearing a path,
carry it in your pack. If you do carry
it in a sheath at your hip sling it from
your shoulder with a strap, for it will
give you a stitch in your side if you
hang it from your belt, and it will be li-
able to catch in bushes. If you carry
your ax and knife or other tools on a
belt, provide a belt for that purpose
alone, and let it sag well down over one
hip. This relieves your waist of the
weight and strain. Swell a loose handle
tight by immersing the ax-head in water.
A carborundum stone is an excellent
sharpener.

Do not worry too much over possible
mishaps, and carry a lot of remedies.
The chances are that you will suffer only
from blisters and sunburn and lameness.
and cold water will take away most of
the fatigue or foot fever.

SENSIBLE OUTFIT FOR AMATEUR HIKERS

177

Carbolated vaseline is an ideal, all-
round remedy for most of your other
troubles of this sort. It is antiseptic,
healing, allays pain, soothes sunburn, and
lubricates a skinned heel to perfection.
It also discourages insects who are bent
on a bite or two, prevents or allays the
inflammation of a blister, and does count-
less other useful things.

Wrap a bottle or large tube of this
medicine in a yard of clean cotton sheet-
ing, for bandages, tie up the package
with a generous amount of cotton string,
add a good-sized needle for puncturing
blisters, and you have as efficient an
emergency kit as you will probably need.
In pricking a blister, begin your punc-
ture a little distance from the raised skin,
which will thus remain unbroken and
will not become raw.

Of course you will wish to become
sunburned, but try to pick it up gradu-
ally. Vaseline smeared on the skin will
prevent it. The moment you feel your
face or neck begin to burn, arrange your
handkerchief or hat so as to shade that
part,- for that is Nature's warning that
that spot is beginning to "cook," and that
means a lot of pain and a raw spot
later on.

Some "hikers" like to carry a canteen
in order to insure a supply of drinkable
water. This is a good idea if you travel
far from a source of supply. Frequent
drinking while on the march is unwise,
however, and a tiny, round pebble held
in the mouth will stimulate the flow of
saliva and will do much to relieve your
thirst. If you drink frequently while
exercising you will first be bothered with
"cotton mouth," then with the stomach,
and then with biliousness or fever.
When you do drink, drink moderately,
and of water that is not exceedingly cold.

You will need a stout pocket-knife and
a small coil of soft, stove-pipe wire, the
latter for binding shelter poles, or hang-
ing pails. A watch is not at all neces-
sary as a rule, but may be carried, and
should be fastened to your clothing with
a string.

Many sportsmen have had satisfactory
results from the "safety" match which
strikes only on the box. They have the
advantage of being small and of not
igniting accidentally. On the other

hand, they are useless, though dry, if the
box gets wet, though they may be ignited
by friction on glass, which you probably
will not have. In any event carry them
in a moisture-proof carrier, either a
screw-top box or a suitable bag with a
drawstring.

Carry your money in special holders,
your change in a purse, and your reserve
fund in a pocketbook attached to your
clothing. Most sporting goods furnish-
ers have a special article for this purpose,
which has compartments for coins and
bills, which snaps shut and can be pinned
or buttoned on the inside of the waist-
band.

Don't carry a lot of paraphernalia for
improving your looks. Our forefathers
kept clean for centuries before soap was
invented, by using lots of water, and so
may you. The warm sunshine is an ex-
cellent towel, and your hair will not stay
brushed ten minutes anyhow. The ar-
ticles necessary for a complete toilet do
not weigh much, however, nor are they
bulky, but try to limit them to razor,
soap, comb, and towel.

Most sporting publications and auto-
mobile houses can supply you with re-
liable maps of any desired region. The
Geological Survey of the United States
has maps showing the contour of the
country, the location and extent of wa-
terways and forests, and the location and
character of roads, for almost every part
of any state.

Varying conditions found in various
parts of the different states, the depend-
ence the "hiker" wishes to place on fish
and game, and the probability of his
finding places where he will wish to
"dress up" will possibly necessitate addi-
tions or alterations to the outfit just sug-
gested, but this is a sensible equipment
with which the traveler may form the
basis of his plans.

Do not try to break any records on a
trip of this kind. Enjoy the scenery and
the country life, rest often, watch the
birds and the clouds, and breathe deeply
of the pure air, and you will return to
your daily occupation vastly benefited in
mind and body.

Above all and beyond all, brother
"hiker," do not lug along a lot of
"junk," and wear easy, sensible shoes.

GOING FISHING WITH THE

MAJOR

By C. A. CAIN

To Say Nothing of the Shaggy Dog That Barked with Joy When
the Major s Float Went Under

MEN the major asks a
friend to go fishing
with him, why it is
that man's lucky day.
The other day the
major asked the ed-
itor to go down on Lynn creek and spend
the day with a hook and line. The
editor accepted with joy and came back
at dark with a dozen little "bull-head"
catfish and a heart made whole again
from the sunshine and the major's phil-
osophy.

The fishermen stopped at the old Lynn
place, fourteen miles south of town. It
is quite a place, this old Lynn farm.
Colonel Lynn came to the state from
Kentucky in 1859 with the major's
father. The old Kentucky colonel
looked at the hills on one side of the
creek and at the meadow lands on the
other side and swore that "this was the
finest spot in the State." No prairies or
bottom lands for him. He wanted a
placed that looked as if it had been
picked from a Kentucky landscape and
this spot was made to order. He set
stakes and settled down. He died there
and his grave by the creek has been cov-
ered with plum tree blossoms for forty
summers as a token of the resurrection.
Colonel Lynn's daughter still serves
Kentucky dinners at the old place.

At table rock, where the creek runs
over a flat rock formation at the lower
end of the Lynn farm, the fishing used to
be fine. The fishing hole just below
this rock is a classic in the annals of
the neighborhood that have to do with
fact and fiction about the catching of
fish. Indians used to camp at table rock
and catch fish for breakfast. And after

[178]

them came Colonel Lynn and his friends.
And then the men who buried Colonel
Lynn fished at table rock. Now these
men are old and their sons fish there.
Now comes the major and "wets a line"
where his father used to fish.

Small wonder that the major forgot
what law was or judges had been when
he landed at table rock the other day.
He wore a flannel shirt and his coat lay
on the bank. He smoked a pipe and
talked philosophy instead of politics.
The lines were smoothed out of his face
by the wind and sun. The memories of
fifty years of bygone fishing days of the
flat rock came up out of the water and
talked to him and he answered in that
forgotten tongue now unknown to all
men but him and a chosen few.

Some one asked the major at dinner
time why he went to table rock when
the fishing was better up the creek.

"I like to hear the water talk and
fuss as it falls over the rock," replied
the major.

In the afternoon the major and the
editor wandered up the creek, away
round the bend to a place the major
chuckled reminiscently about when he
mentioned it in blissful contemplation.
"Best fishing hole in the world," he said.
"Bull-heads there will swallow your bait,
hook and sinker."

It was a noble place to fish. Water
dark and deep. Big trees growing right
at the edge of the stream with their
roots stretching along the bank to form
a fine seat for a lazy fisherman. The
major perched himself in a giant crotch
formed by two of these tree-roots, called
for a fishing worm, baited his hook,
loaded his pipe and threw his line far

GOING FISHING WITH THE MAJOR

179

into the creek. He looked like a pirate
chief of the old South Seas, crouched in
the cross trees of his ship, looking for
a Spanish sail.

The sun was hot and the major's chin
sank forward contented on his chest. He
told a story about a famous coon dog
of that locality and how, years ago, this
dog engaged in fierce battle with a coon
at this very spot.

The major's cork went under and he
pulled up a crawfish. His remarks were
concise, emphatic, clear and to the point.

Then followed a happy little discourse
upon Alexander Hamilton, his life, work,
and writings. Thomas Jefferson came
next, and then John Quincy Adams in
the swirling procession of the major's
fancy. The editor interpolated a few
remarks about D'Artagnan and Captain
Brazenhead. A little breeze blew up
the creek, and the sun grew hotter still.
It was such a scene as John Boyle
O'Reilly delighted in when he wrote:

"And I long for the dear old river,
Where I dreamed my life away."

It was a perfect afternoon in the early
springtime, ideal for any fisherman,
whether farmer boy leaving his chores
to catch a "mess" for supper, or city man
on a grand day's vacation seeking to be
young again. The trees that lined the
creek had budded out just enough to lace
the water and the bank with light and
shadow. There was a seductive smell
from the rich brown earth.

The influence that they call fisher-
man's delight was abroad in the land.
Men leave offices and stores to find it.
They cannot tell why or wherefore, but
at certain seasons certain men forget
about family and money and business and
every pleasure that the town has to offer
and go to seek a creek bank and the
gleam of sunlight through the trees and
the ripple of water under the hand of
an April wind, and the siren influence of
a cork that bobs and flutters and sinks
like a message and a token from the un-
seen that is more to be desired than
aught else.

And just about this time the major got
another bite. He pulled out a bull-
head that weighed a pound, and the sat-

isfaction in his face was worth a farm
and a city lot and a sea-going yacht to
see.

Then the talk on that creek bank
drifted back to Hamilton and Jefferson
and Franklin, the founders of the repub-
lic. The bull-heads in the water seemed
to know that the major was weighing
heavier subjects and they waited before
sampling the worm on his hook.

Still another page of history was
turned back in the big book. Frederick
the Great marched again into Silesia.
Time moved on with quick feet and the
French revolutionists cut off the heads
of the Bourbons. Napoleon came upon
the scene and stabled his horses in every
capital in Europe. The editor joined in
with the major and between them they
carried the great little Corsican from
the Bridge of Lodi to St. Helena.

There came a bull-head and grabbed
the worm on the editor's hook. A jerk,
and the bull-head was flapping on the
bank, but perilously close to the water.
The fish slipped the hook and the major
dropped his pole and pipe and clapped
his hat down on that twisting fish as a
boy traps a bumble bee. It was great
work and quick as when a cat catches a
mouse.

And the little old creek slipped along
in the sunlight. The fishermen could
hear the water lapping the bank.

The World Forgetting

The major is assistant United States
attorney for this state, and accounted
the noblest and best Roman of them all.
But the other day, down on Lynn Creek,
he was only a man in a flannel shirt who
sat in the forks of a big tree and 'fished
earnestly for bull-heads and talked in
retrospective fashion about old statesmen
and coon dogs and grape-vines and mul-
berry trees and why some blackbirds had
a red feather in their wings.

The major had brought his brown
shaggy dog along on the trip. This dog
came and sat by his master and watched
his master's cork. The cork shivered
and moved erratically. The dog barked
and trembled with excitement. The
major's cup ran over with happiness.
This was a prince among dogs. The

180

OUTING

major missed his fish in pride of his
dog's interest and understanding.

The afternoon wore on and the bull-
heads grew shy and more shy of the ma-
jor's bait. Then did he shift from milk
worms to crawfish tails and caught a
likely fish instanter.

The sun dropped a foot or two. The
voices of the world seemed far away.
The major, as he sat and watched his
cork and admired his dog, might have
been an Indian chief of the Shawnees
who flourished here before the white
men came. No chief who ever stole a
pony or made a squaw dig a garden
fished so wholeheartedly as did the
major.

At this time came the story of Car-
thage. Few people know that Carthage
is the oldest settlement in this part of
the state, but the major, who keeps as
close tab on the country as he does on
the town, knows it, and he told about it
the other day on the banks of Lynn
Creek, while his brown shaggy dog
watched his cork for him.

Beauregard had not yet made up his
mind to fire on Fort Sumter in those
days of which the major spoke. And
Carthage flourished as did its namesake
of old when Cato used to worry the
Roman senate about the threatening as-
pect of its greatness.

There was a well in the center of
Carthage, U.S.A., also a blacksmith
shop, a store, and a few houses. Then,
one day, a horse fell into that well. The
good people of Carthage counseled to-
gether what to do, remove the horse or
fill the well. They filled the well, and

Carthage was destroyed, destroyed as
completely as its namesake on the Afri-
can coastline of the Mediterranean Sea.
A country road and an apple orchard
now hide the new Carthage as effectual-
ly as do the sands of the desert and the
shadows of Rome's ancient wrath hide
Carthage of old. Ill-fated town of a
new world to bear such an unlucky name
and to have a citizen who owned such
an unlucky horse!

The story ended about the time the
major's cork went down, and no one
had time to sigh for the vanished glories
of any Carthage. The major landed
his fish, looked at the setting sun, sighed,
and prepared to go.

We drove home in the early twilight
and the brown dog made friends with
every big and savage dbg on the way
and whipped every little and fretful dog.
The major gloated over the intelligence
of a dog that knew enough to sit still on
a creek bank and watch a cork and bark
when the fish bite well.

It was a great day. Anyone who is
lucky enough to win the major's favor
can go to Lynn Creek with him and
see table rock, and eat Aunt Sally's old
Kentucky dinner, and see the plum blos-
soms, and hear the water sing its eternal
song among the shallows, and grow
young again while the major catches
bull-head fish and talks philosophy as old
as the stars as he sits on the banks of
the creek discovered by Colonel Lynn,
of old Kentucky.

And, in addition to all this, he may
be favored enough of the gods to win
the friendship of the shaggy brown dog.

WAR BAGS is what Mr. A. W. Warwick calls his
article in the June OUTING on a new device for
packing your personal outfit on camping and tramping
trips. It is the result of his personal experience.

THE FINE ART OF BARRATRY

By DAVID A. WASSON

Showing that the Deliberate Wrecking of Ships Is Not so Rare a
Crime as Has Been Claimed

N October, 1909, the New York
power yacht Senta, Captain John
Albert Fish, owner, was burned to
the water's edge in Long Island
Sound, off New London. She was
^* insured for $15,000, and the un-
derwriters paid up without complaint.

Why should they complain? Captain
Fish was ostensibly a yachtsman and a
gentleman, and credited with an honora-
ble career. He had taken part in the
Matabele war, fought under Lord Rob-
erts in the Transvaal, helped defend La-
dysmith, and been of the force that re-
lieved beleaguered Mafeking. He had
received a Victoria Jubilee medal for dis-
tinguished service, sailed the seven seas
in ships of all kinds, written insurance
on his own hook in New York. It was
not for the underwriters to be sus-
picious.

So Captain Fish, being an ardent
yachtsman and not wanting to be out of
the game any longer than necessary, im-
mediately bought from one Thomas
Sloane of East Orange, N. J., a some-
what larger auxiliary schooner yacht,
paying for her just $1,500 in coin of the
realm.

Exactly a year lat£r the Senta II was
destroyed by fire in the harbor of Ed-
gartown, Martha's Vineyard. An oil
heater was responsible for the mischief,
said Captain Fish, and he dared not
fight the fire because of the large amount
of gasoline on board. Moreover, the
fire occurred at a very inconvenient
time, in the middle of the night, with a
number of guests aboard. It looked as
though Captain Fish was running in ex-
tremely bad luck.

But some of the guests were unkind
enough to recall that the explosion of the
oil heater had followed the alarm. And

just before, as it happened, Captain
Fish's automobile had gone up in smoke
too, and for it he had been paid $3,500
insurance, though the car had not been
an expensive one.

Thereupon the District Attorney be-
gan to prick up his ears. As a result
Captain John Albert Fish, rolling-stone
and soldier of fortune, instead of being
paid his $15,000 insurance on the luck-
less Senta II, was placed on trial in the
United States District Court in Boston
in December, 1913. As a further result
a jury convicted him on January 21,
1914, though his lawyer promptly ap-
pealed the case and Fish was released
on $10,000 bail.

The offense charged against Captain
Fish was not arson ; it was barratry, — a
word which is Greek to an astonishingly
large number of intelligent people.

Barratry has been called the rarest of
crimes. The mariner's profession, there-
fore, would seem to be the most scrupu-
lous of all callings. His healthy, clean,
open-air existence, statistics seem to
agree, conduces to a wholesome view of
life and consequent upright living.

It is a pretty fancy, this of an Utopia
'twixt azure sky and crystal surges. It
is a shame to shatter it. But the plain
truth is that barratry is the rarest of
crimes only because it is the hardest of
detection. The blackguard who decides
to make away with a ship or her cargo at
the expense of the underwriters doesn't
labor under the disadvantages of his
brother malefactor, who touches off his
house with oil-soaked rags.

On the high seas there is no block-to-
block surveillance by the police. There
need be no disconcerting witnesses or in-
criminating accessories to pop up and
spoil carefully rehearsed testimony.

[181]

182

OUTING

There must be at most only a satisfied
crew, and often the skipper can get away
with it alone. Nothing is easier, for
proof consult Robert Louis Stevenson.
There is little doubt that numbers of
vessels are wrecked deliberately each
year. There is no denying that there
are many shipmasters afloat who would,
like Kipling's Sir Anthony Gloster,
"run her or open the bilge-cocks, exactly
as they are told."

But failing to prove it the underwrit-
ers must pay up, suspicious or not. Their
only satisfaction may be that of the com-
pany which, as it paid a policy on an old
hooker strangely cast away two days af-
ter she was insured, grimly asked "Why
this delay?" Just how seriously the
crime of barratry is regarded is shown
by the penalty -for it prescribed by the
Federal statutes: "Imprisonment for
life or any term of years."

Off the Course That's All

Barratry at its best is a fine art. A
friend of the writer could unfold' an in-
stance of it, which would be likely to
start underwriters' eyes star-like from
their spheres, up-end locks a la fretful
porcupine, and all the rest of it. But
there would be little use in it all. The
underwriters found nothing tangible
against the owners of the vessel, and
paid wTith as good grace as do any of
their ilk who accept marine risks and
lose. The writer's friend has got over
the mortification of being called a good-
for-nothing lubber. He has recovered
from his impotent rage at being made
the scapegoat. For it all happened
thirty years ago.

To-day the writer's friend is a Boston
business man. At that time, before this
country had lost its enthusiasm for
things nautical, he was cooling his ad-
venturous young blood with a berth as
able seaman aboard a trim little Ameri-
can bark. The bark was fully insured.
They were running eastward in Long
Island Sound one fine, clear, moonlight
night. With a part cargo of coal aboard
as ballast they were bound from New
York for Boston, where they would load
lumber for South America. It was the
mate's watch. The writer's friend was

at the wheel. He was carefully steering
the course given him by the skipper.

As time went on the course began to
look queer to the young helmsman. He
confided as much to the mate, who called
the seaman a meddlesome young cub.
The young cub insisted that the course
wasn't right. The mate said reluctantly
that he'd speak to the skipper about it.
He went below, spoke to the skipper,
and stayed below speaking to the skip-
per,— and then the bark piled up on
Sow and Pigs Reef at the entrance to
Vineyard Sound and was totally lost.

It was all perfectly plain ; a* stupid
seaman had balled up the course and run
her ashore. Very deplorable, of course;
a fine little vessel, and all that, but one
of the fortunes of seafaring; and there
you are. The writer could give names
and dates, but he would only bring a li-
bel suit about his ears. In the courts
everything was settled in shipshape fash-
ion years since. So what would be the
use of stirring it up again?

This was barratry at its best, but as
few equally skilful and successful jobs
become positively known, the innermost
intricacies of their consummation can
seldom be described. Instead the annals
of the American merchant marine hold
only the details of a few bungling at-
tempts of the commission of the rarest
crime.

The case of the little coasting
schooner E. H. Pray, of Pembroke, Me.,
was a famous one, but one remarkable
for its stupidity; the more so as the per-
petrator was suspected, like Captain
Fish, of having been a professional bar-
rator. The late Mr.' John F. Baxter, of
the Baxter Wrecking Company, of New
York, first saw the dismasted schooner
afloat in the North River and sent a tug
out to her. A wrecking pump was put
aboard, and she was run ashore and
partly freed of water.

Then it was found that holes had
been chopped in her deck, and that her
sides and bottom were bored full of au-
ger holes. Her name and official num-
ber had been removed, and for some
time her identity was a mystery. Finally
an und'uly talkative person turned up
in the person of a disgruntled cook. It
developed that Captain Melvin Clark,

THE FINE ART OF BARRATRY

183

who was also her owner, had brought
her out from Maine with a cargo of
lime; bought a worthless old schooner,
the Guide, and transferred the Fray's
fittings and gear into her.

One dark night they had scuttled the
Pray in the Hudson, cargo and all. But
the lime casks burst, the lime slacked,
and the Pray came to the surface. At
that the artful skipper abandoned the
Guide and fled for parts unknown. The
authorities never got him, and he is said
to have died in the West lately.

Before his death he saw the error of
his ways. Back in Kittery, Me., where
his deserted wife lived, the natives still
chuckle over the only letter she got from
him, and which became public property.
It ran: "I would give half what I'm
worth to see you again, and the other
half to know why you were fool enough
to marry me." All of which the prospec-
tive barrator may reflect upon.

The master of the steamship General
Meade, of the old Merchants' Line, no
doubt thought himself a marvel of cun-
ning and sagacity. At any rate his mode
of operation was a little unusual. The
Meade, bound from New Orleans to
New York with a cargo of cotton,
stranded on a Florida reef. A bargain
was made with the wreckers, and after
the Meade had been lightered of some
of her cargo she came off the rocks. So
little was she damaged that she pro-
ceeded to New York under her own
steam, the skipper perhaps expecting to
be commended for his skill in saving the
big craft at all.

However, it happened that her own-
ers had thought there was little excuse
for her going ashore in the first place,
still less for the expensive contract with
the salvors. When the Meade reached
port Mr. Frederick Baker, her agent
and a member of the famous firm of
William F. Weld & Co., boarded her
just as the master was getting ready to
go ashore. Once there the astute agent
lured the captain to his stateroom, locked
the door, and frightened him into dis-
gorging several thousand dollars, his
share of the job from the wreckers. The
captain had planned to make a prompt
getaway, letting the job "go hang."

Unfortunately the burden of his ras-

cality fell upon the underwriters even
then. There was no proof that the skip-
per had run his vessel ashore intention-
ally, much less of criminal collusion with
the wreckers. The latter argued that
there was nothing wrong in giving the
captain a commission, and their heavy
claim for salvage was eventually recog-
nized.

There are few people who have not
heard of the case of the American brig
Marie Celeste, which in 1872 was inex-
plicably abandoned in calm weather off
the Azores by a crew never after heard
from. Few, however, know that she
ended her career many years later at the
hands of the barrator.

Last Days of the Marie Celeste

On her last voyage she cleared from
Boston for Port au Prince, Hayti, osten-
sibly with a cargo of valuable general
merchandise, insured for $30,000. When
within a few miles of her destination
she went ashore near Miragoane and
became a total w7reck. Her captain, Par-
ker, promptly sold the cargo, sight un-
seen, to American Consul Mitchell, for
$500. Mitchell saved it at some trouble,
but lived to wish he hadn't.

The weak line in this chain of knav-
ery wTas the testimony of one of the sea-
men. He swrore that he was steering a
safe course when the captain ordered
him deliberately to head for the rocks.
The master's bribe of liquor failed to
close his mouth ; indeed caused the
w7hole scheme to collapse.

When the underwriters' agent arrived
on the scene to investigate, he found sev-
eral funny things about the cargo. One
case shipped as cutlery and insured for
$1,000 contained dog collars worth $50.
Barrels supposed to contain expensive
liquors were full of worthless dregs, a
consignment of salt fish insured $5,000
was rotten, and other articles mentioned
in the bill of lading proved to be in keep-
ing.

Consul Mitchell, not only duped, but
outlawed, stood not on the order of his
going, but cleared out for the tall tim-
ber. The captain of the brig was tried
in the United States District Court in
Boston, convicted and sentenced to a

184

OUTING

long term in prison, where he died three
months later. The various shippers were
adjudged guilty of conspiracy, and one
of them, unable to bear the disgrace,
committed suicide.

The man who commanded the bark
L. E. Cann was a wily rascal, for he
chose to abandon his vessel off Cape
Hatteras. That dread headland' is the
undoing of more good ships in a year
than any other on the coast, and the sin-
ister propensities of tide and wind off its
hungry sands have frightened crews of
better vessels than the Cann. When the
captain and crew reached shore in small
boats they reported that the bark had
sprung a leak and foundered at sea while
bound from a Central American port to
New York wTith a cargo of coffee in her
hold.

But the faux pas in this conspiracy
was that the captain miscalculated the
specific gravity of hay and shavings; for
the coffee bags were found to be full
of these valuable commodities when the
waterlogged derelict, with her bottom
full of auger holes, was picked up and
towed into Hampton Roads some time
later. Had the master stopped to re-
flect that his cargo would have made
a better bonfire than ballast, all would
have been well.

Not Well Enough Wrecked

A man who thought his share of the
swag hadn't been big enough made
ducks and drakes of the brilliant scheme
of a trio of confidence-men who not
long ago reached a southern port in a
dinghy and announced that their craft,
the schooner yacht Calliope, had sunk
sixty miles off Frying Pan Shoal, N. C,
in a heavy gale. The unsuspecting un-
derwriters dutifully paid up, but re-
gretted it a short time later when the
third member of the "shipwrecked"
crew reappeared and intimated that
there might have been something shady
in the affair. An investigation showed
the Calliope hauled up in a creek in
Albemarle Sound. Just so near had
she come to meeting an honorable and
tragic end off-soundings. Incidentally,
the yacht, like Captain Fish's two un-
fortunate craft, was insured for the

modest sum of $15,000, while a third
as much had bought her.

The Gloucester fishing schooner Twi-
light, bound home with a cargo of fish
from Bay of St. Lawrence waters, sank
suddenly off Beaver Harbor, Nova
Scotia. Not until some time later, when
she was raised, contrary to expectation,
was it found that she had been scuttled
by a rascally captain. Luckily the dis-
covery was made before the insurance
company paid over the $3,000 policy,
which it may be safely assumed' was her
full value. The Twilight lived long
after this affair, and a few years ago,
while in the coasting trade, sank with
all hands in the course of a thirty-mile
trip in the Bay of Fundy.

Another instance of the rarest crime
in the Gloucester fleet was that fur-
nished by the fishing schooner Pocum-
tuck. She stranded near Ship Harbor,
Nova Scotia, and was abandoned to the
underwriters. They condemned' her and
authorized the skipper to act as their
agent and sell her on the spot for what-
ever he could get. The bereaved mas-
ter, however, pocketed the small re-
ceipts of the sale and made himself
scarce. From that it was an easy step
to the discovery that she had been run
ashore purposely. The vessel was in-
sured for $2,652, while her value was
given as $3,000; but there are few so
unsophiscated as to believe that those
concerned expected to lose $348 in the
wreck of the Pocumtuck.

Some five years ago the little schooner
Fortuna, a Maine coast packet, was
wrecked off Portland Harbor, her crew
reaching port in the yawl-boat. They
told a harrowing tale of hardship
brought on by the Fortuna's stranding
on a jagged reef while running in for
shelter, and indeed the story seemed a
perfectly reasonable one.

But there was one untoward occur-
rence, and the least of its results was
that it blasted the skipper's hopes. Sev-
eral weeks later the hull of the For-
tuna, which her master had fondly be-
lieved was safely ballasted on the bottom
of Casco Bay by her heavy load of dry
fish, drifted ashore on Cape Cod', over
a hundred miles away. Her cargo had
worked out of the hold, the schooner had

COOKING THE BEANS IN ADVANCE

185

come to the surface, and there was the
usual discovery — her bottom was full
of auger-holes.

But in case the regulation auger-hole,
torch, and ran - her - ashore - purposely
types of barratry begin to pall, there's
another less hazardous and more gentle-
manly kind. The trouble with this
brand is that it takes a good while to
get rich out of it, but for the skipper
who doesn't care to take too big chances
it is highly recommended. Be it known
that barratry includes every breach of
trust committed by a shipmaster.

Not a hundred years ago the three-
masted schooner Ellen M. Mitchell —
she's wrecked now and her skipper is
afloat in another craft — arrived ofr
Portsmouth Harbor, N. H., with her
headsails blown away. An obliging tug-
boat, and the writer was a guest aboard
at the time, pulled her into port for the
reasonable sum of $5.

"Receipt me a little bill for fifty, will
you, Cap ?" asked the schooner man with
a wink.

"I ain't doin' business that way," said
the tug captain virtuously.

COOKING THE BEANS IN ADVANCE

AST December we gave a recipe
for cooking beans at home and tak-
ing them so prepared in advance into the
woods or on that fishing trip. A reader
in Pittsburgh, Mr. James K. Bakewell,
has tried the plan and has this to say of
his experiments:

"In making the experiments twenty
ounces of baked pork and beans without
tomato sauce were dried for twelve
hours in a warm oven, with the door
open to prevent cooking. This removed
the moisture but not the grease, and the
beans were thoroughly stirred and al-
lowed to stand in the pantry for thirty-
six hours, at the end of which time they
were dry and hard and ready for use.
But, to make the test more perfect, they
were allowed to remain in the food-bag
for four days. This drying reduced the
bulk of the beans nearly one-half
and the weight from twenty to eight
ounces.

"These dried cooked beans may be

prepared for the table as follows: Place
a half pint of the dried beans in the
middle of an eighteen-inch square of
cheese cloth, gather up the corners and
intervening loops and tie with a piece of
white string, thus forming a bag much
too large for the beans. Place the bag
of beans in a vessel of warm water and
allow them to soak for half an hour or
more.

"Remove the bag from the water,
drop it into a kettle of boiling water and
allow the beans to boil in the bag for
ten minutes; but the water should be
well salted, to restore the salt removed
by the soaking. Take the bag from the
kettle, open the bag and serve the beans.
Or, if baked beans are desired, place the
beans with a couple of pieces of boiled
pork or bacon and a little hot water in
a pan and bake until brown. The beans
should retain their shape, and I have
found them equal to if not better than
beans taken directly from the can."

AT HOME WITH THE NO-SEEUMS

By A. L. WOOLDRIDGE

A Sad Tale of a Tenderfoot and the Humble but by No Means

Insignificant Fly

HE next time any one
comes to me and says:
"Bill, I know a place
where there's speckled
trout so thick they'll
wear you out taking them
off the hook — a place where it's cool
and where you can sleep at night
far from the madding throng," I'm
going to make business for the man
who owns the glass carriage that usually
heads the procession and goes slow. I'm
going to demonstrate the process of self-
elimination as it can be demonstrated by
a man in earnest.

I had one of those alluring tales whis-
pered in my ear during the season past —
whispered at a time when the city was
hot and the air sticky and humid and
every one was sweltering in the fearful
heat. "Pudge" Hobson sang this siren
song to me, and "Pudge" and I don't
speak now. If I ever get the opportu-
nity, I'll kill him yet. He came into
my office that afternoon and talked
something like this:

"Bill, you owe it to yourself and to
your family to take a rest. While the
wife and the kiddies are down at At-
lantic City, let's you and I take a little
run up to the north shore of Lake Su-
perior. We'll go to Duluth, take a boat
out of there, and hit it up the Brule.
You know the signs you always see in
summer, 'It's Cool in Duluth!' Well,
that's so, Bill. And furthermore, there's
trout in the Brule River, like there ain't
anywhere else in the world.

"Bob Galloway and Hank Orbison
have just come back and Hank told me
they caught up to the limit the law al-
lowed each day, and caught 'em by ten
o'clock in the morning. We'll get a camp
outfit and a guide in Duluth and for

[186]

two weeks we'll just lay round camp and
fish and smoke our pipes, and rest and
read magazines and come back here feel-
ing like different men. This town's too
infernal hot for any man with moral
tendencies. Let's go up where there's
almost frost at night."

That's the tale this brute sang into
my receptful ear. And I, untutored in
the woods, listened.

"Pudge," I said, "I couldn't catch a
fish in a sack, even if it was in a pan
and poured out. I was never introduced
to a fish in my life except at the butcher
shop. I wouldn't know the manner of
approach among strange fish. I wouldn't
know what to say, much less what to
do."

"Leave that to me," Pudge replied.
"I'll teach you. I'll take you to where
there's the best fishing on the known
globe."

Of course, I went. I locked my desk,
took my two weeks off, — the two I was
to have for vacation, and "Pudge" and
I climbed in a sleeper that started for
the "head o' the lakes."

"Aha! Fie on thee, O busy Care!" I
exulted as we drew away from the lights
of the cityr. "Swelter, you slaves!" I
shouted gleefully as we passed the pump-
ing station by the reservoir.

"O Lordy! O whitened sin!" I think
now as I reflect upon those exultations.
"O idiot that I was! O 'Pudge'!"

Every time I let my thoughts return
to that trip, I want to murder some
one in cold blood. Mind you, what hap-
pened up on the Brule isn't Pudge's fault.
Let me say right here and now in open
meeting— let me rise like a fully ac-
credited delegate from the Ninth Ward
with a large white badge on my coat
lapel — let me rise and pay my respects to

AT HOME WITH THE NO-SEEUMS

187

the Brule. It is a great fishing stream;
it is so full of trout that on good days it
keeps you busy taking them off the hooks,
or flies, and it probably does afford as
wonderful trout fishing as any stream
in America.

But — and I say it with full knowledge
whereof I speak. But! there are other
things on the Brule which I am going
to tell about, but which "Pudge" didn't
mention to me. If he had, I probably
wouldn't have been so wild to get there
and eventually so wild to get away. But
to continue my story:

"Pudge" and I got our camp outfit and
a guide in Duluth — a half-breed Chip-
pewa named "Jim." He claimed to know
all the good trout holes on the map, and,
to tell the truth, he did. "Jim" agreed
to take us to the places where the trout
held mass meetings, introduce us to the
most promising and influential leaders,
and assist in the massacre, for $2.50 a
day. So we took him on. "Pudge" had
a note to the general manager of the
steamboat line, who agreed to stop the
ship at the mouth of the Brule to allow
us to get off, and we left the Zenith
City at ten o'clock in the morning. A
cool wind was blowing over the great
lake and we sat for'rd to enjoy its fresh-
ness and mutually feel sorry for the fel-
lers plugging away back home. We got
into camp by night, stretched our tent,
and had a good dinner cooked by our
guide. Afterwards, we built a strong
fire and sat around to smoke.

O! those were glorious hours! It was
the first time I had felt cool and con-
tented and tired in a month. We let
"Jim" fill us up with wonderful stories
of life in the Minnesota and Wisconsin
woods, and sat and talked till eleven
o'clock. The fire was burning low. The
night birds and the night noises were
lulling us into a state of drowsiness. The
little waterfalls in the Brule at our
feet sang songs of adventure that was
to come and the night wind sighing
through the pine trees made us glad of
the peacefulness.

"Jim" broke the silence:

"Bring any ile?" he asked.

"I never drink," I replied firmly.

"No! no!" he urged. "Ile for mos-
quitoes and No-seeums."

I looked at "Pudge" blankly. I thought
we had bought all of Duluth when we
finished paying the bill for outfitting.
But I guess we hadn't. "Pudge" didn't
know anything about "ile" for mos-
quitoes and to buy any sort of a present
for such a pest was something entirely
beyond my usual manner of procedure.

"But," I began wondering, "what
are these 'No-seeums' that Jim speaks
about?" I had never heard of such
reptiles or animals, or whatever they
were, before. So I turned to our guide
and remarked:

"Jim, what kind of 'ile' do you usually
bring mosquitoes, and what is a No-
seeum r

The Chippewa looked disgusted. I
had tried to keep him from discerning
that I was not an old timer in the woods,
that I didn't know all about nimrodding
and Izaak Waltoning and other out-
door hardships. But I was willing to
concede ignorance of mosquito "ile" and
of No-seeums.

"Ile keep away 'skeeters an' No-
seeums,' " Jim replied.

"But what's a 'No-seeum?' "

"You find out 'morrow mornin'."

I know now what a "No-seeum" is.
I learned up there on the Brule. I be-
came a sort of packing-house product
for them. I've tried to find out some-
thing about No-seeums in the books
since I came home. The scientists who
are up on bugs say that a fly is "a two-
winged insect of many species" ; that a
flea is "a small blood-sucking insect of
the genus Pulex, remarkable for its agil-
ity and irritating bite" ; that a mosquito
is "an insect of the genus Culex, the
females of which puncture the skin of
men and animals, causing great cutaneous
irritation and pain" ; that a gnat is "a
small stinging winged insect of several
species, allied to the mosquito" ; that a
tick is a "parasite that infests dogs, sheep
and one species attacks men." But no-
where do the books tell of the No-seeums.
Hence, this definition now to be given
cannot be disputed authoritatively:

"A No-seeum is a species of guerrilla
gnat having two stingers in each foot
and nine in the head. It carries in its
flight a poisoned stiletto and a two-
tined fork with which it attacks anything

188

OUTING

that moves, doing great execution. A
No-seeum is carnivorous, devoid of
morals, and frequently is consigned to
a hotter world than this by irate fisher-
men. But it has never gone."

That gives some idea of what a No-
seeum is. You couldn't send through
the mails what the fishermen think they
are. Such language has no place in
print. I remember full well that morn-
ing up on the Brule when I met up with
my first one. I was rigging up my new
nine-dollar fishing pole when something
kicked me just beneath the left eye. A
bump came up immediately.

"Pudge!" I called, "either somebody
kicked me in the face or else I've been
shot."

Pudge came to my side and started to
look at the wound when he suddenly
ducked his head and staggered back-
ward.

"What'd you do that for?" he asked,
turning red in the face.

"Do what?"

"Stick me with your knife!"

"I didn't touch you, sir. I wouldn't
strike a friend, especially with one of my
lamps going to the bad."

"Well, look at my forehead. I guess
that bump just took root and came up
like a mushroom, all of its own accord,
ehj"

"Honest, Pudge, I didn't touch you.
I had called to you to come look at me
when "

I clapped my left hand onto my right,
dropping my nine-dollar fishpole, reel
and all, and wheeled around to glare at
Jim. The halfbreed was cleaning up
the breakfast dishes, his hands immersed
in a pan of water. I knew he couldn't
have thrown anything at us. A grin
was on his face, however, and we sus-
pected him.

"Jim," I said gravely, "I can enjoy a
practical joke as well as anyone and
I'll stand for anything within the bounds
of reason. But if I catch you up to any
more of your medicine-man tricks, I'll
throw you in the river."

" 'Smatter with eye?" Jim asked,
looking at my swollen optic.

"That's what I say," I retorted.
"What is the matter? Did you throw
something?"

"Huh! No!" Jim replied. "No-
seeum git yo'."

The truth was out. Running loose,
right there in those woods were some
sort of flying devils, armed with forks,
sabres, stilettos and cutlasses, and war
had been declared.

"How can you tell when they're go-
ing to call?" I asked of Jim.

"Feel 'em."

"Don't they say anything, send in a
card, remark about the weather, or do
anything of that sort? How can you
tell 'em when you see 'em?"

"No-seeum," said Jim bluntly.

We stood there blindly fighting imag-
inary spots in the air. Every now and
then Pudge would let out a howl and
clap a hand to some part of his head or
start suddenly rubbing his wrist. It all
became ludicrous. By the time the sun
was up good and warm, we were leaning
up against trees, our hands in our pockets
to keep them from being eaten off or
stung off, whichever the No-seeums were
up to.

"I dare you," I said to "Pudge," "to
take your hands out of your pockets and
go fishing."

"You go to Texas!" Pudge replied
hotly. "I'd give a twenty dollar bill for a
bottle of that 'ile' Jim tells about."

The half-breed was still grinning.

The No-seeums apparently looked on
him as a hardened character, because they
didn't seem to bother about him at all.
Suddenly Pudge shouted':

"Bring the gun! Quick!"

"What is it?" we asked breathlessly.

"I just saw mine! I hit at 'im but
missed, and he's dancin' away there just
out o' my reach."

A respite from the bandits came a
little while later and we got to the river
to fish. The trout were literally eating
the flies alive, too, that morning. Yet,
for every strike we got from a trout, we
received two kicks or bites or stings from
the No-seeums, and I never spent a more
miserable, perspiring forenoon in all my
life. Along about sundown that evening,
the No-seeums withdrew for rest. Un-
questionably, they had put in a hard day.
Then Pudge and I surveyed each other.
His face looked as though it had been
painted, then put up by the fire to dry, as

AT HOME WITH THE NO-SEEUMS

189

it was all puffed out in spots. He said
I looked like a punctured pneumatic tire.

But there we were, up against it. I
have never taken a vacation in a nest of
hornets, but if anyone gives me the
choice of them or the No-seeums, the
hornets for mine! There is this advan-
tage, that no self-respecting hornet will
come and insert his stinger in your cuti-
cle, causing that "cutaneous irritation"
the bug-men tell about, without letting
himself be seen. He isn't that kind of a
bee. We were wondering what we
should do to relieve the situation, when
Jim said :

"Me make ile 'morrow mornin' dat
keep away No-seeums. Yo' go sleep an'
no worry."

Honest, we wanted to fall on his neck.
Any man who could make an "ile" that
would keep those marauders off of us,
was entitled to first prize, or else the gold
watch or sack of flour. The pleasure
of having some annointment on us that
was too much for the No-seeums wTould
be worth any kind of money. We slept
that night with all the confidence in the
world in Wonderful Jim — our guide.

Early next morning, before time for
the bugs to be moving, I got out and
walked up the river about a mile. I
wanted to feel the dew on the grass
and I wanted the air to cool my puckered
face. I wanted to meditate upon what a
good time I was having. I thought of
Bob Galloway and Hank Orbison back
at home, probably spending their eve-
nings at Munchauenhausen's garden
with mugs of that beverage which has
foam on top, sitting before them, while a
band played and cabaret dancers made
merry. Then I thought of myself up on
the Brule with a half-breed Chippewa,
Pudge Hobson, and the No-seeums. I
sat down at the side of a little waterfall
and watched the trout leap for flies.

It was glorious there in the early
a. m., before the No-seeums got to work.
I hated to go back to camp, but an in-
nate habit of eating food acquired in
the early part of my life drove me back.
I loitered on the way, picking wild ber-
ries and watching the squirrels jump
about in the trees. About a quarter of
a mile from the tent, I met Pudge com-
ing after me. I noticed that his face

and hands were covered with a yellowT-
ish substance of some kind, and I re-
marked :

"Got some arnica?"

"Arnica, nothin'!" Pudge replied.
"That's some of Jim's 'ile.' "

He came closer and' I got a smell of
something that was awful. Pudge be-
ing to the windward, I instantly sur-
mised that the smell came from him
and from the stuff Jim had smeared
on him. I've smelled glue factories
when the weather was hot, have sniffed
limburger when it seemed at the point
of disintegration, and have been near
escaping acetylene gas, but those odors
were as fragrance from lilies of the valley
compared with what Jim had handed
to Pud'ge.

"Go way!" I yelled. "Go bury your-
self! Go fall in the lake! Jim's put
up an awTful trick on you."

"No, no," Pudge expostulated, fol-
lowing me toward camp. "That's the
stuff that keeps the No-seeums away."

"They got nothing on me," I replied.
"It'll keep me away, too. Until you
go wash, don't come near me."

As I entered camp, Jim started toward
me with an empty can and a swab made
from a stick and a piece of cheesecloth.
I grabbed up a stick of wood and
turned.

"You just dare poke that swab at
me and I'll break every bone in your
head," I essayed. "I got a wife and
family back East and I want to go home
some time. If I went back with that
smell fastened to me, they wouldn't let
me in."

"It wear off," Jim assured me.

"Not off of me, it won't," I retorted,
"cause you're not going to get it on
me."

And he didn't. All that day I fought
No-seeums while Pudge went about with
his odor and was not molested. I noticed
at dinnertime, however, that Pudge
was a little pale around the ears and' he
remarked that he guessed he'd not put
any more on next morning.

I promptly offered prayer.

That night I took a blanket and slept
out on the ground to be away from
Pudge, and next morning I caught a
boat back to Duluth. Pudge came on in

190

OUTING

the afternoon after the tent was packed.
We paid Jim for full two weeks' work
and went to a doctor for a prescription.
The medical man wouldn't let Jim
come in, but I got the recipe for insect
bites while Pudge got a bath. On the
way home I told' him of the delightful
time I'd had on the vacation trip he
planned for me and of how I hoped to
be able to do as much for him some
day. Pudge got peeved and we hardly
spoke to each other by the time we got

back home. I haven't seen him since.
We found the fishing on the Brule all
it was said to be. There's trout there
till you can't rest. And anyone who is
curious can go find No-seeums in the
same locality. Other fellers have been
there who were not bothered at all. It
may be that we got there on Home-
coming Week or while a national cam-
paign was on, but at any rate we got
there when the No-seeums were not
away on visits.

SQUAW WOOD

By C. L. GILMAN

Camp-Fires Are Made of Wood, and the Woods Are Full of It,
but There Are Ways and Ways of Gathering It

™INDINGfirewood for wood fires
in the wooden woods would
=^ seem to be a simple matter. Yet
only last summer a party made
up of university professors sent
an embassy of two in a canoe,
through the rain, across three-quarters of
a mile of northwoods lake to the land-
ing of The Man from Tennessee to
negotiate for fuel.

He admits that he thought they were
kidding him, and declares that his small
son, sent to the cabin for his gun, was
half-way back before he realized that
they were in earnest. In all gravity,
avers this transplanted mountaineer,
these collegians explained to him that the
timber where they were camped had been
wet by the rain and that, unless he
should confer some dry wood from his
shed upon them they were like to suffer
both cold and hunger.

Personally, I believe every word of
this story, for I've seen some few ex-
amples of how foolish folks can act about
wood myself. More than once I've
watched some man born, raised, and
grown gray in the woods shoulder a five-
pound, double-bit ax and go surging
through the underbrush in quest of a
suitable stub on which to display his
prowess — and I've kindled a fire, got the

pot boiling, and laid by enough wood to
get breakfast from the lot he broke off
and trampled into convenient lengths on
his way. Were it not that I don't wish
to seem to exaggerate I would say that
they have "busted off" enough for a
lunch fire also, but desiring to keep strict-
ly within the facts, I'll merely play the
bet for supper and breakfast.

Then, on the other hand, there's a
camp site across the river from the shack
where transient Indians have played
one-night stands since time out of mem-
ory, where they camp yet, on the average
of one party a week while the canoeing
lasts. There is at least one fire to each
of these encampments.

Yet from no single one of them have I
ever heard the unmistakable whang of an
ax cleaving wood. The squaws go out
and get it with their hands — and they
don't wear gloves to do it, either.

The female of the Ojibway species
may be neither lovely to look upon nor
brilliant in conversation, but as a hewer
of wood, with the hewing left out, she
is absolutely and entirely there.

Rotten pine logs, so soft they disinte-
grate at the kick of a moccasined toe,
yield her fat pine knots, fair nuggets of
resin. She shoves over the popple sap-
lings which have been drying since Wau-

SQUAW WOOD

191

bose, the rabbit, girdled them during
last winter's starving time, and breaks
them across her knee. She can spot the
dead branch hanging low on the spruce
or jack-pine, and kept dry in the wettest
rain by the living branches above it, as
far as the average tenderfoot can see the
tree. She knows that any progressive
alder clump produces a half-dozen fin-
ished sticks of dry firewood a season.
She's onto the virtues of birch bark for
kindling like a boy scout. And she's a
willing worker when it comes to drag-
ging windfalls and driftwood to where
they can furnish a solid night fire.

"Squaw wood" the progressive lumber
jack who essays the role of a guide in the
summer-time calls her plunder in high
disdain. And the trustful tenderfoot,
who regards him as a sort of cross be-
tween the late esteemed Nathaniel
Bumpo and the well-known D. Boone,
likewise snorts, spits on his hands, and
slams his ax against a rock.

Much has been written, sometimes in
prose and sometimes in rhyme, and al-
ways knee-deep in sweet, sticky senti-
ment, about The Woodsman's Ax. But
the fact remains that the durned thing
weighs from two to six pounds all the
time, raises blisters most of the time, and
lops off a foot or two once in so often.

It is a vital article of equipment for
the man who must chop new portages
across virgin country in summer or pro-
vide chunks for the camp stove in win-
ter. But in a country of trails, in the
summer-time, a little study of "squaw
wood" will enable one to eke out a fairly
comfortable existence without it.

Unlike a stove, and the habitual ax-
man always thinks in terms of "stove
lengths," a camp-fire is not particular
about the size or shape of the wood it
burns. Anything light and loose enough
to handle and dry enough to burn im-
presses it as fuel.

With the brittle sticks which can be
broken across the knee for the cooking
flame almost every camper is familiar.

Nor are those slightly heavier pieces
which must be "busted over a rock"
strangers to ordinary camp routine.

But the cooking fire is only the begin-
ning of the possibilities of "squaw
wood." Drag in two wind-felled logs,
logs as heavy as two men can handle,
and cross them over the cooking fire
when supper is done. By the time the
dishes are washed the fire will have cut
them into four logs. Cross these four
logs over the fire, and by the time the
good-night pipes are smoked they have
become eight heavy chunks. And eight
heavy chunks, stacked on the coals, will
cast a warm glow into the opened tent-
front all night and leave enough embers
to kindle the breakfast fire.

Not all windfalls can .be handled thus.
Some, like one which figured through
three days of a November camp in the
snow, can only be handled to where one
end rests in the fire and must be pulled
farther in as that burns off. In fact, so
wide a field for the exercise of judgment
and ingenuity does reliance on "squaw
wood" afford that its use might almost be
classed as a sport by itself.

The habit of using "squaw wood" is
one which grows. Or rather, one who-
practises it at all so rapidly develops skill
in discovering wood which requires no
modification by the ax that he quickly,
though imperceptibly, loses interest in
that tool.

First he leaves it sticking in a stump.
Next he neglects to take its muzzle off.
Finally, he leaves it at home, along with
the cook stove, and goes rambling off
through a snowstorm to camp with his
pack lighter by the difference in weight
between a one-pound tomahawk and a
five-pound ax. He'll use the tomahawk
to carve the bacon, blaze trails, drive
tent-pegs, cut pot-hangers, and dismount
his gun.

But when he wants fuel for his fire
he'll stretch out his bare hands and take
what he needs from the forest's bounty of
"squaw wood."

Early in June England and America meet again in polo.
Read the June OUTING and you will find an answer
to the question, What makes polo the greatest game of all?

THE TOP-NOTCH OF OUTDOOR
PHOTOGRAPHY

By R. P. HOLLAND

Illustrated with Photographs

VI7E have published many articles dealing with the art of out-
* * door photography. We have presented many photographs
showing what can be done. If our luck holds we expect to publish
many more. But we would call especial attention to the article
which follows. It is the work of a man who is at once an amateur
with pen and camera. This is.said in a spirit of highest praise for
the world holds no more admirable person than the gifted amateur.
Mr. Holland approached the game first from the standpoint of
the sportsman. His first hunting was with the gun, and he is still
far from being a deserter from the ranks of the devotees of the
double barrel. But he has found a pleasure in the camera like none
that comes to him from the gun. The two games supplement each
other — save that that of the camera is a much more difficult art.

^ HERE are no game laws
for the man that hunts
with a kodak. Most of
us have read this several
times in our lives, and
those of us who always
read the advertisement section of the
magazines before we undertake the
magazine proper have become very fam-
iliar with it indeed. This is meant
solely to catch the eye of the big-game
hunter, and we always associate it with
such. The first thing most people think
of when wild game photography is men-
tioned is an inquisitive looking deer with
ears cocked forward toward the camera,
standing out in bold relief against an
inky black background. There may also
be a few pure white tree trunks in the
picture, but for that matter the deer in
these pictures generally has white antlers,
so why not white brush, trees, and
boulders.

Haven't we all read about the flash-
light game until we feel thoroughly com-
petent to go out with flash gun and
jacklight and do the trick ourselves?

[192]

In all big game photography the trick
is to find the game, then get close
enough to take the picture. The taking
of the picture itself is a minor detail.
But when a man goes out to take pic-
tures of birds, especially on the wing,
he will find that the difficult part is not
to find the birds but the taking of the
picture. And as for getting your sub-
ject close, you have the big game cam-
era hunter shoved clear off the map.
You must have Mr. Bird where you can
almost reach out and touch him if you
want a real good picture.

Most any duck-hunter would be glad
to take you and your camera along on a
duck hunt where the ducks are thick.
You can sit and watch them go by flock
after flock. They are in range for the
shotgun, for your friend is killing them,
but they are too far for you! If they
are thirty yards or over they will only
make specks on your film, so you might
as well hold your fire. Then when you
have about decided to risk a long shot
anyway, a flock of spoonbills will whip
by you out over the weeds, scarcely fifty

THE TOP-NOTCH OF OUTDOOR PHOTOGRAPHY

193

feet away, and a pair of
mallards trailing them will
nearly knock your head off.
You shoot with your noise-
less gun, and wonder all the rest of the
day if the speed of the shutter was cor-
rect, if the focus was right, and finally
if you hit them.

Only a direct view finder will do you
any good at this game. You haven't
time to look down into anything to see
if your machine is steered straight. It
takes all the eyes you have with you
to see those ducks through the direct
finder as they whiz by you. Perhaps
they are traveling a hundred miles an
hour. That isn't so fast when you are
a spectator from a hundred yards dis-
tance, but when a duck passes close to
you, going his best, you realize what
speed is.

All such matters as focus must be at-
tended to before your ducks show up.
Set your focus for forty or fifty feet or
closer, and if the ducks don't fly right
for you, that is your
misfortune. You can't
change your focus at the
last minute, because your
game will not wait for
you. As for shutter
speed, the faster the bet-
ter. It reminds one of
the old duck-hunter who
advised the beginner "to shoot ahead of
'em ; if you miss 'em, shoot farther ahead
of 'em; if you still fail to connect, shoot
still farther ahead of 'em." That's the
way with the shutter business. It must
be fast, the faster the better.

I believe it is impossible to get any
results with a shutter that works slower
than 1/300 of a second. And at this
speed a duck would have to be going
very slow or the wings would be sure
to blur. The shutter that I have had
the best success with works up to 1/2000
of a second and I have taken good sharp
pictures with it wound up to the last
notch. However, this speed, unless the
light is very strong, will always give
thin negatives, and I find it more satis-
factory to work at between 1/1000 and
1/1500 of a second on ducks and geese
and bird's that attain a high rate of
speed. Of course the diaphragm must

Photograph by Robert Rockwell
THE GREAT BLUE HERON TELLS THE PHOTOG-
RAPHER WHAT HE THINKS OF HIM

be wide open or nearly so on all speed
work.

Regarding lenses, any standard make
will do ; nearly every crank swears by
one particular kind, in which case the
others are nil. I have this failing my-
self. Necessarily the lens must be fast
or it would be useless with a high speed
shutter. One thing the bird-hunter
must make up his mind to is that he
will develop many and many a negative
that will go direct to the waste-basket.
But when he gets something, he is sure
to have something that the other fellow
would like to have. That's the reason
it's so much fun, so seldom is it that
you get a good one.

This isn't the first time the camera
has broken into the duck-hunting game,
we all know that. Who hasn't seen the
picture of some noble hunter with dead
ducks hung all over him, his trusty

s 5JT
K

- -

f/" S.,<

E • J

Si ' a

.'*!"'

;

H -V99 sji

./i1

^| I % ^5di®H ol

>».

^*§bp^^^i

**L

;

^ <^iiili§^il^

<3 ^

I /

H " !

fit

1 * I J

■Hi

SINGLES WILL OFTEN PASS NOT TWENTY FEET DISTANT

weapon in his right hand, while the left
supports more dead ducks or maybe a
goose. These fellows generally have a
grin on their faces that would do credit
to the proverbial Cheshire. Occasion-
ally one of these pictures slips by and
gets into print under the title of ''The
AUTHOR and his day's bag." Can
the camera be put to a worse use than
in photographing several dozen dead
ducks, quail, or grouse, strung on the
person of the butcher himself?

Even the camera fiend whose hobby is
landscape and scenery must admit that
a touch of life adds to any picture.
Then why not, when next you take a
pretty water scene, arrange wTith a flock
of ducks or even a pair, so that they
appear in the foreground of the picture?
Try it and see how much it adds to the
already beautiful picture. Is there a
man living who can let a flock of ducks
or geese pass over him in flight, with-
out stopping and' watching them on their
way ? When a bunch of waterfowl
spring from a roadside pond, is it the
ducks you see or the cat-tails and rushes
reflected in the splashing water?
Whether you are a hunter or not you
can't help w-atching the ducks as they
circle off, absolutely blind to the most
beautiful of scenery that may be be-
neath them. It's the same way with the
photographs. Your friends will see the

game first no matter how pretty the pic-
ture as a whole may be.

Should you intend to take up speed
photography, gulls or pigeons make the
finest kind of practice material, gulls
especially as you also will get pictures
worth saving, where in the case of the
pigeons it is practice pure and simple —
learning your machine and to hit your
game. If you have an ocean handy, go
down along the surf and shoot gulls to
your hearts content. You can often
walk within five or ten paces of them
before they fly. Then the singles
trading back and forth will often pass
directly over you not twenty feet dis-
tant.

After you have become proficient on
the gulls, speed up your shutter and go
after the ducks. Don't forget that the
ducks will travel a great deal faster
than the gulls, and that you must be
absolutely hidden or they will not come
near you. When they do come right,
shoot at them. Do not be discouraged
if when you develop you have nothing.
It is like most everything else in this
world', the old game of solitaire not ex-
cluded ; if you keep trying you will win.

When it comes to taking pictures of
ducks sitting still on the water, I can
not tell you much about it. I have tried
it often enough but have only one really
good picture to show for my trouble.

[106]

THE TOP-NOTCH OF OUTDOOR PHOTOGRAPHY 197

This though I am sure of: When you
become proficient enough at sneaking to
slip up on ducks or geese, in water open
enough to photograph them, you are a
past master at the art. When you can
do that you can go up in the north
woods, and slip up on deer and hogtie
them before they know you are around.
I am not talking about tame wild ducks
in preserves, but the real out-and-out
wild duck. He can not smell you, but
the chances are he will see or hear you.
Then again it is only once in a hundred
times he will light where it is possible

to take his picture. When the chance
comes, go for it for all you're worth.
One morning I saw a white fronted
goose light in a river slough. Knowing
every inch of the slough bank, I de-
cided that this was an opportunity to
take Mr. Goose with the camera, in
place of the shotgun. After about fif-
teen minutes of the most careful crawl-
ing, which seemed like an hour, I
reached the edge of the high bank with
no brush between me and my game.
Do not think I mean the "hands and
knees" variety of crawling, far from it.

I POTTED ALL FOUR WITH ONE SHOT

198

OUTING

What I had to do was to get down flat
and "snake" it up to the edge. On
the trip I passed several little depres-
sions that might have been termed damp.
To things like this you must do as
the old dark)- said, "pay no mind." I
was all set and just ready to shoot when
with a splash three mallards, two hens
and a drake, lit right down in front of
me. There was no skill about this, just

little birds she will hatch out of them.
Get a long release cord for your camera,
so that you will be able to shoot from
some distance away from the nest.

In addition to this get a black box
that somewhat resembles your machine.
With this box get your bird accustomed
to seeing the camera around near the
nest, moving it closer and closer until
you get it as close as you think neces-

A TOUCH OF LIFE ADDS TO ANY PICTURE

plain luck. They looked carefully
around to see if everything was all right
and started to swim upstream toward
the goose. As I pressed the trigger, I
saw the feather rise on the back of the
old drake's neck for he had seen me,
and the next second they were all above
the threetops. Little did he realize that
he had moved too late, for I had potted
all four of them with one shot.

Another game you can play with the
camera and the birds, is to photograph
setting birds while on the nest. This,
while a great deal easier, is very inter-
esting and a great many valuable pic-
tures can be obtained. One should al-
ways go about this carefully so as not
to annoy the old bird too much, or you
might cause her to desert her nest and
eggs. If you are careful though you
should have no fear, for you will find
that the mother bird thinks almost as
much of those eggs as she will of the

sary. Spread the brush away from the
front of the nest in order to secure an
unobstructed view, change your box for
your camera, and all you have to do is
to wait somewhere in the brush near
by for the old bird to return to her
nest; then press the button. Of course
wThen you pull the brush from around
the nest you will frighten the bird
away, but I have seen birds that would
allowT you to get your machine, after the
picture had been taken, without leaving
the nest.

When you have graduated from all
the above then go out and try to photo-
graph some member of the heron or
crane family without the use of the
nest. The best picture I ever saw of
this kind was taken by Mr. Robert B.
Rockwell of Denver, Colo., and is pro-
duced herewith (page 193). Those
who are familiar with the herons and
cranes know that of all the birds these

THE TOP-NOTCH OF OUTDOOR PHOTOGRAPHY

199

are perhaps the hardest to approach.
Therefore this picture of the great blue
heron is a masterpiece. These birds are
often very methodical in their habits.
For instance if they are feeding in a
certain river slough, they will have a
certain place where they will invariably
light when first coming in from a dis-
tant flight. Or if they have a nest near
by, they will always light some distance
away before going to the nest.

The thing to do is to locate this spot
as nearly as possible and then work the
black box scheme, leaving it around for
days until your quarry becomes accus-
tomed to seeing it. When you think the
time is ripe, trade your camera for the
box and be sure your string and your-

most your own distance, and many beau-
tiful pictures can be obtained, snowing
the bird houses with the martins
perched on top while others are hover-
ing around. On these birds you can cut
your stop down and make longer ex-
posures, getting wonderful detail, for
pictures of birds in flight.

Should you ever take up this game,
you will soon become a faithful con-
vert. It is interesting. The camera
will show you many things that the eye
cannot see. Most of us think we have
pretty good eyesight, but if we were
told that a duck's wing in flight moved
so fast we could not see it, we would
immediately ask for proof. The camera
will give this proof. Watch a flock of

BLACK-HEADED GROSBEAK ON NEST

self are well hidden, before Mr. Heron
shows up. Then be quiet, do not even
bat an eye, for you can gamble he will
see you if such a thing is possible. Per-
sonally I have never photographed any
of these birds while they were at rest,
but Mr. Rockwell has the proof that it
can be done.

Another place where you can use your
speed camera to good advantage is
around a colony of purple martins.
These birds will allow you to get al-

teal, blue bills, or any fast flying ducks,
and you will swear that their wings are
almost stationary, seeming only to flutter
or vibrate at the tips. At best we can
see only a half stroke. Photograph this
same flock of ducks and you will find
one duck with his wings all but touching
beneath his body, while perhaps the first
duck in the flock ahead of him will have
both wings straight up, parallel above
him. Another will have one wing
straight up and the other straight down,

GATHERING IN BAIT AT NIGHT

201

flying, you might say, on his side with
his breast toward you. No matter how
good your eyesight you can not see these
things.

There is no better time than the pres-
ent spring to try this new game of speed
photography. Since Uncle Sam has de-
cided to protect all migratory birds on
their spring migrations, we will find the
marsh that once accommodated a dozen
or more guns free to the camera hunter.
In place of the sharp crack of nitro
powder, our ducks this year will be met
only with the click of the shutter, to

remind them that man is still after them.
Undoubtedly the presence of the camera
man on the marsh will help enforce the
law, for it's going to be a big job. Were
the marsh deserted entirely, some nat-
ural born lawbreaker would slip out and
shoot a time or two, and maybe get
away with it a time or two. The pro-
tection of the ducks and geese on their
northern journey is one of the biggest
jobs Uncle Sam ever tackled, but we be-
lieve, and sincerely hope, that our Uncle
is big enough for the job that he has
taken on his shoulders.

GATHERING IN BAIT AT NIGHT

IT is out of the experience of many
men that the great art of angling
has been developed to its present pitch.
And the developing process is not yet
finished. Every now and then some
new tip comes drifting in from the
outer world to which this magazine
goes.

For example, Mr. W. R. Wilmot, of
Detroit, sends us this bit of informa-
tion which should be welcomed by the
many fishermen to whom the catching
of bait is the most toilsome and least
agreeable part of the fishing trip. We
give it in his own words.

"I went spearing one night with a
party of four and found we could get
only one boat. We had a couple of
small incandescent flashlights with us
and two of the party took the boat and
went spearing while the other two of
us walked down to the bank of the lake

and discovered that by holding the flash-
light directly on one spot on the water
and throwing small pebbles in about the
center of where the light hit the water,
minnows of all sizes congregated there.
"In fact, by leaving it there for a
very few minutes, and at intervals
throwing in the pebbles, the larger min-
nows would come in to drive out the
smaller ones. It looked as though they
thought there was something to eat.
Since that time we have never had any
trouble in getting minnows in the even-
ing in a very few minutes. Take a net
anywhere along the bank of the lake,
drop it in, and hold the spotlight in the
center of it, and throw the pebbles in
as mentioned before, and you will be
able to get a bucketful at any time,
which, as you know, is a mighty diffi-
cult thing to do at times on most any
lake."

GRASSHOPPER FISHING FOR
TROUT

By O. W. SMITH

Photographs by the Author

A Method of Circumventing the Finical Midsummer Trout
without Violating the Sacred Angling Conventions

ID you ever go trout fish-
ing along toward the last
of July or the first of
August, when those hot,
enervating, lifeless days
arrive, "Dog Days" I
think they call them, and trout refuse to
rise to the fuzzy wuzzy lures, no matter
how adroitly handled? No? "You
never went fly-fishing without securing
a catch?" Well, I can only say without
intent to insult, that you are a better
fisherman or a greater liar than I, and
I am something of both.

I have more than a modicum of skill
with the fly-tying implements and fly-
rods, yet I have seen days when trout
absolutely refused to rise to my lures.
Perhaps conditions are otherwise in
broad and deep wilderness streams, but
in our much fished brooklets when "Dog
Days" arrive and streams dwindle to
mere threads of liquid silver, trout be-
come unimaginably wary, fleeing for
shelter to overhanging bank and deep
pool at the first sound of approaching
feet. If one succeeds in reaching the
stream's bank without alarming this shy-
est of all shy fish, the midsummer trout,
he will see them lying in the shallows,
heads pointed upstream, almost motion-
less, perhaps dreaming. Attempt to cast
a fly and at the first shadow of ap-
proaching lure, presto, the open water is
fishless.

Last August I was fishing one of the
most famed streams in the Middle West,
for a generation the mecca of fly-fisher-
men. Some evil genius timed my visit
so that I reached the stream, as my friend

[203]

Pat would say, "At the height of low
water." Trout were there, plenty of
them; great lusty fellows, but rise they
would not. Some forty rods or so from
our tent was a broad and deep pool with
white sand shallows at the upper end.
Time and again I crawled through the
grass and peeped out, always I would
see three great fish, great for that stream,
lying just above the deep water. To
cast, standing so near the water's edge
was of course to frighten the fish, but it
made no difference if I cast from a dis-
tance, the result was the same — a silent
retreat upon the part of the fish.

One day, having wormed my way to
a vantage-point from wThich I could
watch the pool, I lay and waited for the
particular fly to happen along, for I have
always held that if trout do not take
what the fisherman offers it is because he
does not offer what they will take. While
I waited, a grasshopper, one of those me-
dium-sized, red-legged fellows, came ad-
venturing through the grass, evidently to
investigate my motionless hand. Watch-
ing him out of the tail of my eye, while
my attention was fixed upon the surface
of the pool, I said to myself, "If that
hoppergrass comes within reach of my
fingers, I'll snap him into kingdom
come." So I doubled my business finger
and continued to wait.

That small cousin of the mule did
come within snapping distance and I let
loose the finger that knows how to send
a carrom ring five times across the board.
Plump into the pool went Mr. Grass-
hopper. More trout than I supposed
the whole stream sheltered went after

ML'CH PREFER TO FISH DOWN STREAM WHETHER FOLLOWIN

WADING

HE BANK

that luck. g nast and for a few

onds the surface of the water was a
moil and turmoil of expectant and dis-
appointed fish. I held the key of the
situation.

For years I have been a lover of 'hop-
per fishing, and have had many a bitter
quarrel over its _ rimacy with purist
fly artists. I knew just what I wai
in the way of tackle and hurried back to
camp. I selected my lightest rod. a
three and a half ounce fain- wand, and
an aluminum reel. My line was a r eg
lation double tapered enameled, to the
end of which I fastened a three foot
leader and Xo. b sprout hook. N
came the hunt for the right grasshoppers
for bait.

Now I am particular as to what sort
of grasshopper I use. believing that the
trout are more particular. I have found,
when it comes to trout fishing, that not
all grasshoppers that hop are 'hop
During my entomological days in col-
lege I learned that most of our g
hoppers were true locusts, and when I
use 'hoppers for trout bait, it is a locust
and not a grasshopper that turns the

trick. I pass by the green, soft-bodied
insects, true grasshoppers: also I never
look a second time at the great, dry-
winged brown fellows, locusts, but
a medium-sized, moist brown-bodied fel-
low, almost luscious in appearance, that I
select. Those particular 'hoppers are
common, only desire a supply and they
are uncommonly hard to get. At least
ured an even dozen, foolish to set
out with less, which I confined in my
drinking cup for want of a better recep-
tacle, and made my way back toward the
pool.

When within extreme casting distance
I paused to bait up. I thrust the hook
through the in :?late" and up

out of the head, so pinning head to body
it were. 'The hook's barb holds
better in the head than elsewhf
^ itb so willowy a rod, built for em-
power, a long throw is an easy matter.
I sent the hopper through the air. stand-

a so that I cast with the wind.
"Blump!" "Bang!'' In grasshopper fish-
ing as in fly angling, the cast and strike
must be closely related, or nine times
out of ten the result will be the same.

I-::::

204

OUTING

One can not well strike too soon when
trout are feeding on 'hoppers.

It is not my purpose to tell you of
that first battle, it would be impossible to
do it justice. Once the fish was hooked
I walked boldly up to the pool and
played him where I could observe his
every rush and cute scheme. My capture
happened to be a rainbow, a more re-
sourceful fish than our native charr, but
backed up by the perfect action of my
rod I was able to vanquish him in due
time, a pound and a half fish. I was
morally certain it was not the large fish
I had seen "sunning" himself, but of
course the fishing was off for the time,
so far as that particular pool was con-
cerned.

Shouting to my daughter, who had

THE RISE TS INSTANT AND TTTE FTSTT MUST BE

PULLED FROM HIS REFUGE AT ONCE BY MAIN

STRENGTH OF ROD

given up trout fishing in disgust, to try
the pool with 'hoppers after it had
"rested," I set out down-stream.

In fishing with grasshoppers I much
prefer to fish down-stream whether fol-
lowing the bank or wading; somehow
I can give the insect a more natural mo-
tion when the 'hopper is going away
from me, than I can when it is approach-
ing, as is the case if one fishes upstream.
Another point in favor of down-stream
fishing is that one can make his way
more quietly than when fighting the cur-
rent, no mean advantage when trout are
shy. As to which of the two methods
to follow, bank or stream fishing, the
character of the particular creek must
determine, but always the secret of suc-
cess is care, quietness, and skill. Do
not for a moment think there
is little skill required in 'hop-
per fishing, you can employ
all the finesse of the accom-
plished fly fisher and then
some.

Where the current sets
back under overhanging wil-
lows or alders, your trout-
sense informs you that the
ceaseless action of the water
has mined out no inconsider-
able hole, the home of many
a fine fish. The question is
how to attract the attention
of those mighty leviathans
with your grasshopper, an
animated floating fly. 'Hop-
per fishing as I practise it is
always surface fishing; no
shotted and sunken bait for
me. When I come to such
a place as I have described I
often toss my 'hopper upon
the brush just above the pool
and wait until all disturb-
ance of the water is over,
then gently twitch the 'hop-
per to the surface. The rise
is instant and fierce. The
fish must be pulled from his
refuge at once by sheer
strength of rod, or else the
battle will not be to the
strong.

If you think good tackle
and good judgment are not

YOU CANNOT CONVINCE ME THAT LIGHT TACKLE AND GRASSHOPPERS TRANSFORM

ME INTO A PLUGGER

required for such practises, you have
another think coming.

The same tactics can be employed in
meadow fishing. Instead of casting into
the water, just cast upon the far bank
and wait until the fish have forgotten all
about the shadow of the line, then gently
pull the grasshopper into the water and
see what happens. The scheme can be
worked in bank fishing as well, just
cast clean across the stream.

Upon the particular day of which I
write, a strange and amusing thing hap-
pened. I had reached a place where the
stream spread out and made its rather
sluggish way through a bit of marshland,
the rank grasses, golden rods and black-
eyed susans standing well above my head
on either bank. Thinking that the bend
below offered a pretty good opportunity
for fly fishing, I stuck my rod under my
arm and opened my fly book to select
a fly, allowing the 'hopper to float away
upon the current. While studying the
pages of my "Essay on Silence," a trout
darted out from beneath the downhang-
ing grass and swallowed the 'hopper.
A more surprised disciple of Father
Izaak never creeled an adventitious fish.

In due time I found myself with ten
trout, all of them good ones, and as ten
was my limit for a day's fishing, per-
force shouldered my rod and made my
way campward, quite certain that my
daughter would have one of those trout
from the first pool, but I was not alto-
gether prepared for what I found. She
not only had the daddy of those first
trout, a speckled monster, but fifteen
fine fish taken from pools above and be-
low ! Verily grasshopper fishing for
trout is a success when wet fly, dry fly
and deepfy sunken fly fails.

Just a concluding word regarding out-
fit. I carried my bait in a collapsible
cup because I did not have a more con-
venient receptacle with me; but there
are many better contrivances for that
especial purpose. Probably the best is
what is known as the "hopper-coop," a
simple tin box with sliding cover. I
have one and could not ask for a better,
were it not made of metal — metal draws
the sun, therefore the insects die
quickly.

One can make a good "hopper-coop"
out of an ordinary cigar box, one that is
handy and will keep the 'hoppers alive

[205]

206

OUTING

for some time. The bags with a wire
gauze bottom are not as convenient as the
"hopper-coop." Let the tackle be of the
same quality used in fly fishing, rod as
light as you dare use, other tackle to pre-
serve the unities, and you have an out-
fit of which you need not be ashamed.

As to the sportsmanship argument, I
will say nothing, for if you do not agree
with me, anything I might say would
not change your opinion a hair's breadth.
To my way of thinking, the difference
between a sportsman and a plugger is
something deeper and finer than a mere
matter of feathers or 'hoppers. I have
seen pluggers fishing with flies, and I
have seen true sportsmen using so un-
orthodox a bait as worms. You can not

convince me that light tackle and grass-
hoppers for bait transform me into
a plugger. Many the "whale" I have
lured from the stream whose every rapid
and pool is as familiar ground to me as
is the main street of my home city.

If the water is low and the trout ap-
parently few as well as impossibly shy,
try 'hopper fishing with your expert fly
tackle, employing all the skill and finesse
of which you are capable; see if it will
not return "net results" and discover for
yourself that one may handle bait with
fly-fishing tools as though it were not
bait. That is the secret of successful
'hopper fishing, handling the
insects as though they were
expensive of English dry flies.

gymnastic
the most

TRAP-SHOOTING ON THE HOUSE TOP

Photo by J. F. Lloyd, N. Y.

FIRING SOUAD IN ACTION ON THE ROOF OF THE GRAND CENTRAL PALACE

IF the office worker can't go to the
traps then the traps must come to
the worker. That is the reasoning
that is behind the plan to conduct trap
shooting on the roof of the Grand Cen-
tral Palace, twelve stories above the
street, in the center of New York City.
The plan was tried first during the re-
cent Sportsman's Show and was a com-
plete success. On one day over a hun-
dred separate shooters competed and over
fifty thousand birds were broken during
the week. Then, the reasoning ran, if
they will do this for a week, why not
for a month, a year? So a permanent
open club has been established where
anyone may find admission for a nominal

fee with the customary charges for birds
and ammunition. A sheet steel back-
ground has been set up to catch the shot
and stop the unbroken birds. Groups
of shooters who wish to reserve the traps
for certain hours will have that privi-
lege and it is expected that inter-club
shoots will be arranged with this roof-
top serving as neutral grounds. Certain
times will be set apart for beginners who
wish instruction and professionals will be
on hand to teach the inside arts of the
game. The whole effort is to place trap-
shooting as close as possible to the
shooter. The situation is comparable to
that of a billiard-room, used for an hour
or two of relaxation in the afternoon.

WOODCRAFT TIPS WORTH
KNOWING

By HORACE KEPHART

Something About All Sorts of Things from Tents for Moun-
taineers to Fly Dope

\ — — 1|— =^ ents for Mountaineer-
ing.— To my mind the
Hudson Bay pattern is
best. It is easier to set
up than other kinds of
enclosed tents, since it re-
quires less pegs in proportion to size.
When supported by a rope stretched
from tree to tree, its ridge does not sag
like that of an A tent. Where poles
must be used to support it they need
not be long nor straight. It can be
warmed by a fire in front, or be closed
securely against insects, smoke, and dri-
ving storms. It is staunch in a blow,
no matter how the wind whips around.
It sheds snow better than most forms of
tents. Finally, this is the lightest of all
enclosed tents of a given size and ma-
terial.

Map Cases. — Large-scale maps, such
as the U. S. Geological Survey's topo-
graphical sheets, must be cut up into sec-
tions, and either mounted on cloth in
such way as to fold without breaking,
or left separate and numbered. If
mounted, the map is soon soiled. It is
likely to be ruined if you open it in a
rainstorm, which may be the very time
when you will need it most. Anyway,
the humid air of the wilds is apt to
loosen the map from its cloth backing.

A better way is to use what the
French call a liseur de cartes, such as is
issued to army officers. There are many
models and sizes, from the simplest to
quite elaborate ones, but all are alike in
principle. The one shown in the ac-
companying illustration measures 16x24
cm. (about 6^x9^4' inches) and retails
at six francs ($1.20). It consists of a

LISEUR, OR

MAP CASE

rear pocket roomy
enough to contain
many map sections,
and one in front,
faced with transpar-
ent celluloid, for the
particular section in
use at the time. In
this way there is no
risk of the map being
soiled, or torn, or
blown away, or in-
jured by rain. The
celluloid front is ruled in little squares
of 12 mm., by which distances can be
read according to the scale of the map.
I presume similar map cases are used
in our army. They would be conven-
ient for sportsmen and explorers; but
none of our outfitters lists them. For
us, of course, the squares should be
ruled in fractions (say quarters) of an
inch.

Edible Wild Plants. — Some of my
correspondence is amusing. A nature
student, having read the chapter on
"Edible Plants of the Wilderness," in
my "Camping and Woodcraft," wrote to
inquire whether I "had any personal ex-
perience in eating any of these plants."
How he could suspect I had not is hard
to imagine, unless he was misled by my
citations of authorities here and there,
and inferred that the whole thing was
cribbed. Whenever I make use of other
people's discoveries or original ideas it
is a point of honor with me to give credit
where credit is due (a practice, by the
way, that some other writers might well
follow). However, during the many
years that I have lived in the woods I

[207]

208

OUTING

have tested a great variety of wild "roots
and yarbs" — tried them in my own
stomach; otherwise I would not have
written a line on the subject. Here is
one example, taken from my notebook
under date of May 10, 1910, at which
time I was boarding with a native fam-
ily on upper Deep Creek, Swain Coun-
ty, North Carolina:

"Mrs. Barnett to-day cooked us a mess
of greens of her own picking. It was
an olla podrida consisting of (1) lamb's
quarters, (2) poke shoots, (3) sheep sor-
rel, (4) dock, (5) plantain, (6) young
tops of "volunteer" potatoes, (7) wild
mustard, (8) cow pepper. All of these
ingredients were boiled together in the
same pot, with a slice of pork, and the
resulting "wild salat," as she called it,
was good. This is the first time I ever
heard of anyone eating potato tops; but
a hearty trial of them has proved that
the tops of young Irish potatoes, like the
young shoots of poke, are wholesome and
of good flavor, whereas the mature tops
of both plants are poisonous."

The plant here named cow pepper re-
sembles toothwort (Dentaria diphylla),
but bears a yellow instead of a white
flower, and develops a "bur."

Lemonade Tablets. — My reference
to "Wyeth's lemonade tablets" in
"Camping and Woodcraft" was an er-
ror in name. Wyeth does not make
such a thing. Another firm — the same
that makes the well-known tabloid tea
— puts up citric acid in tablet form.
This is used by travelers where acid
fruits cannot be obtained. Citric is the
acid to which lemons and limes owe
their sourness. It is prepared from them
by chemical treatment and crystalliza-
tion. Observe that it is only the con-
centrated "sour" of the lemon, lacking
all other flavor. A real lemonade tab-
let could be prepared by adding a little
oil of lemon.

An effervescent drink may be made by
dissolving citric acid in water, sweeten-
ing to taste, and then adding sodium bi-
carbonate (common baking soda) in
double the weight of the acid ; but this
partially or wholly neutralizes the acid
and defeats its purpose, which is to cor-
rect a too greasy or starchy diet. If one

can carry fresh lemons or limes, they are
better than any substitute; but when he
cannot a vial of the acid crystals or tab-
loids is a pleasant and wholesome addi-
tion to the food supply, and it weighs
next to nothing.

Fuels. — In enumerating the woods
that will scarcely burn at all when
green, I inadvertently omitted basswood,
cucumber, white pine, black pine, and
various other pines that have a watery
sap instead of an oily or resinous sap like
that of yellow pine. Among the first-
class fuels I somehow skipped white oak,
perhaps just because it is so well known
to everybody. I also failed to note
white oak as one of the best woods for
splits to be used in basket making, for
camp brooms, etc. Select a straight-
grained sapling, cut in lengths wanted,
rive these into strips as wide as desired,
then, with a knife, split these strips bas-
tard (along the rings of growth) to the
proper thickness. Of course, this must
be done in spring or summer, when the
sap is up. The inner bark of white oak
makes fair cordage.

Tea, Coffee, and Tobacco Sub-
stitutes.— Governor Brown of Geor-
gia once said that the Confederates, in
wartime, got more satisfaction out of
goldenrod flowers than out of any other
makeshift for coffee. "Take the bloom,"
he directed, "dry it, and boil to an ex-
tract" (meaning tincture). A favorite
"tea" was dittany.

One of my friends in the Smokies,
who went through this period of storm
and stress and knows all about its priva-
tions, assures me that the best substitute
for smoking tobacco is to go, in winter,
to one of those white oak trees on which
the leaves dry tight to the twig without
falling (there are many such in this re-
gion), gather the leaves, and smoke
them. He affirms positively that they
satisfy one's craving for tobacco. I have
not tried it.

Hacks and Blazes. — The age of a
hack or blaze in a marked tree is deter-
mined by chopping out a billet of the
wood containing the mark and counting
the annular rings of growth from bot-

WOODCRAFT TIPS WORTH KNOWING

209

torn of scar outward, allowing one year
for each ring. In counting annular
growth, some begin with the first soft
lamina (porous part of year's growth),
jumping the first hard layer, to the sec-
ond lamina, and so on. It is more accu-
rate to count the hard strata, for the
following reasons: Soft laminae are
formed in the spring, when the sap is
rising. If a hack is made at that time
it may not show until a hard ring forms
over it the next fall or winter, when the
sap is down. If the season has been very
dry, there may be two runs of sap, hence
a double soft ring that year. A mark
made in wood when the sap is down
(after the fall of leaves) can have its
age determined very positively, but if
made when the fresh sap is up it may be
hard to say whether the mark goes
through that year's growth or only to it.

On some kinds of trees, if a blaze goes
through to the sap wood, the scar on the
bark is hard to identify as an ax mark,
because the wood, in growing, spreads it.

The age of an ax mark is hard to de-
termine in birch, and impossible in
tupelo or winged elm.

A blaze on a frozen tree makes a bad
wound.

A mark on the sheltered side of a tree
does not look nearly so old as one oppo-
site, because moisture accumulated makes
the bark rot off from the weather side.

Blazes on chestnut, tulip poplar, young
white oak, many locusts, and some other
trees, are not apt to be permanent be-
cause these trees shed their bark more or
less and do not retain marks so wTell as
beech, black birch, Spanish oak, moun-
tain oak, and other close-barked trees.
Bark that scales does not hold moss.

Surveyors' Marks. — Surveyors are
careful to space their marks more uni-
formly than hunters and trappers and
loggers. They cut rather square into the
tree, at right angles, so that the weather
may not wear away the marks nor the
tree become diseased and so obliterate
them.

The old states of the East and South
were surveyed before there were any
Government regulations for such work,
and had methods of their own for mark-
ing lines and corners, varying from place

to place. In the rougher regions such
work was likely to be slipshod. Old-time
surveyors in the mountains often ran
lines that were winding, because they had
no flagmen to keep the line straight. It
was difficult to keep sight marks. Meas-
urements often were inaccurate. The
chain was likely to go too low up a ridge
and too high in crossing hollows. Mere
surface surveying was practised over logs,
rocks, etc. Chains were intentionally
made over-length to allow for this.

The practice of measuring by half-
chains in rough country led to many er-
rors of counting, by dropping a link, and
so on. Few of the old surveyors were
careful about variations of the compass.
In fact, I have known backwoods survey-
ors of the present day who were ignorant
of the change in magnetic meridian.

Fly Dopes. — Nearly all fly dopes are
shotgun prescriptions — if one ingredient
misses, another may hit, is the principle.
Here is a new one, absolutely unique,
that I got from a drug manufacturer:
"If the hands and face are anointed with
antiseptoil to which a few drops of oil of
cedar or oil of lavender have been added,
calcium sulphide, in large doses, being
taken internally, black flies, gnats, and
mosquitoes will not prove troublesome."

Antiseptoil is sold ready-made, but
there is no secret about its formula:

Camphor gr. 2/3

Menthol gr. 2/3

Carbolic Acid gr. 2/3

Thymol Iodide gr. 2/3

With oil tar, cassia and eucalyptus
q. s., in a purified vegetable oil vehicle.

This, of course, is a healing applica-
tion for wounds and inflamed surfaces.
The cedar or lavender is added because
insects seek their prey by the sense of
smell alone, and the oils here mentioned
are repugnant to them.

But calcium sulphide internally! Here
is where novelty roars (nay, smells to
heaven). This drug is a remedy for va-
rious ailments ; but the point here is that,
when taken in full doses, calcium sul-
phide imparts to the breath, skin, and
secretions a strong odor of sulphuretted
hydrogen! It's like eating onions, — 'if
one fellow in camp uses it, everybody
must follow suit.

HOW TO OVERHAUL YOUR
AUTOMOBILE

By STILLMAN TAYLOR

Follow These Directions and You Can Save Garage Charges and
Keep Your Car in Good Condition

===^HE modern motor-car is a
particularly well-designed
and constructed machine,
but, like any complicated
and high-speed mechan-
ism, it demands a certain
amount of systematic attention and care
to keep it in good running condition. To
neglect the car in any way is certain to
impair its condition, shorten its period of
usefulness, and cause a marked deprecia-
tion in its value. Although the automo-
bile should be given a thorough examina-
tion at frequent intervals to determine
the actual condition of the several parts,
this periodical attention must necessarily
be more or less superficial when the car
is in constant use, and once a year, be-
fore the touring season opens, the entire
mechanism should be given a complete
overhauling. That this annual cleaning
may be a thorough one, practically the
entire car must be taken apart, cleaned,
lubricated, and readjusted. To do this
in a workmanlike manner requires some
little time, and the "man on the job"
must expect to perform a certain amount
of manual labor, unless the services of a
handy man are secured.

It is partly on this account that the
work of overhauling is generally turned
over to the garage, yet if the autoist
elects to do the work himself there is no
reason why he cannot and do it well, in-
cidentally saving enough money to buy a
set of new shoes. Indeed, there is no
better opportunity for the driver to fa-
miliarize himself with the many parts
which enter into the construction of his
machine, and to a person having a liking
for machinery the hours devoted to over-
1 auling will be assuredly time well spent.

[MO]

Providing the car has been given ordi-
nary good care while in use, it should be
in pretty fair shape, and as there will
probably be no particular need for ex-
pert labor, the average man will encoun-
ter no difficulty in knocking down and
assembling his machine with his own kit
of tools.

To avoid confusion and mixing up of
the component parts (there are about
fourteen hundred parts in the modern
car) the amateur mechanician should un-
dertake the job in a methodical manner.
Do not fall into the common error and
unscrew every convenient bolt and screw
in sight, but take one unit apart at a
time. Before beginning work call up
your merchant and have him bring up
a number of wooden boxes of various
sizes. These will be found most con-
venient for holding the numerous small
parts as they are taken apart, and there
should be enough boxes of ample size to
hold all the parts of each unit separately.
If this is done it will prevent confusion
when the car is re-assembled and effect-
ively obviate the mixing up of bolts and
screws of one unit with another. For
the same good reason it is desirable to
finish cleaning one part before taking
down the next unit, and the cleaning
should be thoroughly done, not rushing
the job "a la contract," but taking plenty
of time to do everything well.

Though the principle of construction
is the same in all cars, there are, however,
many modifications and variations met
with in cars of different makes, and the
exact procedure of "knocking down" and
assembling varies somewhat in different
models. It is the mission of this article
to cover the most important points in a

HOW TO OVERHAUL YOUR AUTOMOBILE

211

general way and if any special informa-
tion is wanted the autoist should consult
the instruction-book supplied by the ma-
ker of his particular car.

For the sake of convenience, it will be
well to first remove the body from the
chassis and support the frame on strong
horses, or by blocking up if no horses are
at hand. When the latter method is re-
sorted to care should be taken that the
blocking is built up firmly, lest it sud-
denly collapse and let the frame fall to
the floor. This may be avoided by ar-
ranging the blocking in the form of a
crib or hollow square, by placing two
blocks on the floor and laying two more
upon them at right angles, finishing up
with a couple of smaller blocks at the
top.

Getting at the Power Plant

After the body, wheels, and fenders
have been removed, and the frame is
propped up solidly at both ends, the
power plant is naturally the first consid-
eration. Although one may begin with
any part of the car, the engine, by rea-
son of its greater importance, is generally
the first unit to be attended to. Com-
mencing with the motor, the first step is
to strip the engine of lubricator, carbu-
retor, pump, wiring, spark plugs, inlet
and exhaust manifolds, magneto, outside
oil leads, fuel, water-pipes, and their con-
nections. In taking off the exhaust
manifold it is unnecessary at this stage
of the work to remove the exhaust pi-
ping and muffler. Disconnect and free
the engine by unscrewing the union at
the manifeld end.

In taking apart spark and throttle rods
and other parts about which some doubt
may be felt as to their exact relative po-
sitions, a check mark made with punch
or file should be made on both parts.
This is a much surer way than to trust to
memory, and if this system is followed
in taking apart the entire car much labor
will be saved when the work of assem-
bling is attempted. The magneto should
be removed from the engine but not ta-
ken apart. When the motor is complete-
ly stripped the lower half of the crank-
case should be removed.

In the garage, where help is always

within call, it is the custom with most
repair men to uncouple the big ends of
the connecting rods and to lift the pistons
and cylinders off together. This is not
practicable in the case of a one-man job,
as the combined weight of pistons and
cylinder castings is too much for one man,
unless a portable hoist or crane is at hand.
The best way is to remove the holding-
down bolts which fasten the cylinder to
the upper half of the crank-case and lift
the cylinder off the piston. When the
motor is cast en bloc the weight of the
casting is considerable and the assistance
of a helper will be required, or a tackle
hoist may be rigged to do the trick for
you.

Most cars nowadays are made with
cylinders cast separately or in pairs of
twos and threes, and they may be easily
lifted by one man standing astride the
frame. To prevent the possibility of
straining and springing the crank-shaft
and connecting rods, the castings should
be lifted up and pulled off with the pis-
tons in an upright position. The pistons
and their connecting rods may then be
removed by uncoupling the big ends to
free them from the crank-shaft. Each
piston should be marked with file or
punch, that they may be assembled in
their respective cylinders. This is im-
portant to observe, otherwise the com-
pression of your motor will likely fall off
to a very noticeable extent.

The cylinders should now be wiped
clean on the outside and either soaked in
a bucket of kerosene, or the inlet and
exhaust ports and spark-plug openings
plugged with corks or tightly fitted wads
of waste, and filled with kerosene to
remove the old oil and soften the carbon
deposit. If the inside walls are found
to be badly encrusted with carbon, this
must be removed, either by scraping or
by the use of a solvent. A convenient
tool adapted for this work may be had of
the dealer, or an improvised tool may be
made by turning over the end of an old
half-round file and grinding the edge
sharp. Many motorists are now using
one of the several carbon removers so
largely advertised, and while the writer
has not given these preparations a thor-
ough trial, much is said in their favor.
As is well known, kerosene is a good

212

OUTING

solvent, and will soften and remove all
ordinary deposits of charred oil.

This done, the pistons should be ex-
amined, and if the rings show signs of
wear they should be replaced with new
ones. If the rings fit tightly in their
grooves and the rubbing surfaces are
smooth and bright, they will probably
require only a good cleaning. A small
bristle brush (such as is used in the
kitchen to scrub vegetables) will come in
handy for cleaning bolts and screws
and other small parts. The piston or
wrist-pin should be examined, and, if
loose, the set-screw which secures it in
place should be tightened. If looseness
is the result of wear, a new piston-pin
will be necessary.

It is important that the piston-pin be
a good tight fit, and as most cars are
fitted with some kind of an anchoring
arrangement, trouble of this kind is not
so prevalent as formerly. A loose pin
is a source of danger, as it is likely to
work out beyond the face of the piston
and so score and cut the soft iron walls
of the cylinder.

After the several pistons have been
thoroughly cleaned and the rings snapped
back into place, the valves may be at-
tended to. It will probably be found
that the valve gear is in good shape, and
requires only to be cleaned. The en-
tire valve-operating mechanism may be
readily removed by unscrewing the plates
fastened to the upper part of the crank-
case. Although the large majority of
American cars make use of the roller
plunger rod, some few are equipped with
steel balls, and a very few still cling to
the older - fashioned solid-steel heads
working against the steel cam. All of
the devices seem to perform their func-
tions remarkably well, and as the balls,
rollers, and pins are made from special
hardened steel it is seldom necessary to
replace them because of wear.

For valve-grinding one may use any
of the abrasives put up for this purpose,
or employ powdered glass, carborundum,
pumice, or emery as preferred. All are
in use and give satisfaction ; but what-
ever grinding medium is selected the
motorist should make it a point to pro-
cure only the finest grades. A coarse,
gritty abrasive is altogether unsuited for

valve grinding, and it will be found im-
possible to do a good job with the coarser
grades. The object of valve grinding is
primarily to remove the carbon and pit
marks due to excessive heat, and while
it is advantageous to first dress off the
face of a badly pitted valve with a flat
single-cut file, this preliminary smooth-
ing up must be followed with the usual
grinding with emery.

A valve which has been properly
ground in will show a bright ring of
polished steel over the entire bevel face
and seat, and it should be practically
free from score marks and scratches.
High compression can only be secured by
keeping the valves and their seats clean
and bright, and in view of its impor-
tance the motorist should not slight this
part of the work, but take ample time
to do it well. To grind in the valves,
put a little, of the fine emery or other
abrasive in a tin cover, add a teaspoonful
or two of kerosene to make a fluid-like
paste, then add a few drops of heavy
lubricating oil to give the mixture a lit-
tle more body and prevent it from run-
ning too freely. Smear a little of this
on the bevel face of the valve and also
on its seat, and rotate the valve by in-
serting the blade of a screwdriver in the
slot in the valve-head.

Grinding the Valves

A screwdriver having a smooth, round
handle is preferable, and the grinding is
most easily done by rotating the handle
between the palms. That the grinding
may be uniform, the valve should be
given a dozen or so turns in one direc-
tion, then lifted up and rotated in the
opposite direction, repeating this alter-
nate grinding and lifting until the sur-
face of both valve and seat is smooth
and bright. All the valves should be
ground in after this manner, and when
all have been attended to the valves and
seats should be wiped off with gasoline
to remove all trace of the grinding com-
pound.

In case the stem of the valve is found
to be warped or worn thin near the head,
the damaged valve should be replaced
with a new one, which must be ground-
in in the same way as outlined above.

HOW TO OVERHAUL YOUR AUTOMOBILE

213

Valve springs should also be tested and
replaced where required. The springs
of the exhaust valves are far more likely
to lose their elasticity or "set," owing
to their being subjected to the extreme
heat of the exploded gases.

Before the cam-shafts can be taken
out it will be necessary to remove the
radiator. This is easily accomplished,
as it is only necessary to unscrew the
bolts which fasten it down to the frame.
It is a good plan to remove the fly-wheel
also, as the bearings may be more readily
adjusted if the crank-shaft is free and
light. The cover which encloses the
timing gears may now be removed, and
the cam-shafts taken out of the opening.
It is the practice of present-day manu-
facturers to mark the proper meshing
point of the gears by means of punch
marks on the crank-shaft, cam-shaft and
magneto driving gears.

These meshing points or timing marks
are sometimes designated by letters, but
are often indicated by a single punch
mark, one being on the tooth and the
other straddling the two teeth in which
the first should mesh. In case the timing
is not indicated on the cam-shaft of your
motor, these check marks should be
made with a punch before the gears are
disturbed. If this is done, considerable
trouble will be saved when the motor is
assembled, as the timing of the valves
must be correct if the marked teeth are
assembled to mesh in the proper indi-
cated positions. The cam-shafts will
probably only require cleaning, but in
the event that the cams are considerably
worn, a new cam will be needed. If the
cam-shaft is of the integral type, a new
piece of metal will have to be welded
on to build up the damaged part. Re-
pairs of this nature can only be properly
made by expert workmen, and the fac-
tory is the proper place for doing the
work well.

Clutches of the multiple-disc design
may be removed as a unit by simply ta-
king off the cover of the clutch-case, dis-
connecting the clamps connecting clutch
with transmission shaft, and unscrewing
the bolts fastening the two clutch mem-
bers. In some cars using clutches of the
cone type it will be necessary to discon-
nect the rear dust-pan and remove the

set-screw which secures the sleeve to the
universal joint, which may now be
moved forward. The radius and brake
rods must also be disconnected, which
will allow the transmission to be moved
backwards in its yoke, and the tumble
shaft will drop out. Drive the univer-
sal coupling off the clutch hub, detach
the side links, and remove the ball race
and clutch spring. The cap screws
which fasten the clutch ring to the fly-
wheel are now readily removed, and the
entire clutch may be taken out.

In other makes of cars which the wri-
ter has overhauled the clutch is most
easily taken down by removing the pedal
shaft, the central member of the clutch
coupling, the nuts holding clutch shaft,
and the spring nuts and springs. The
exact manner of taking down the clutch
varies with different cars, but if the
coupling shaft which connects the clutch
shifting sleeve is first uncoupled, there
is generally sufficient room between
clutch and gear-box to take the clutch
apart.

Making the Clutch Work Better

In case the leather face of the cone
clutch is in good condition, with the ex-
ception that it is worn down so as to ex-
pose the rivets, much additional service
may be had by resetting the heads of
the rivets below the surface. A cone
clutch which takes hold with a "fierce"
grip may often be remedied by resetting
the rivets. If the leather is dry and the
action harsh, give it a couple of dress-
ings of castor oil.

In case the main or crank-shaft bear-
ings have considerable play, this loose-
ness must be taken up. In many motors
this adjustment is effected by means of
shims or thin strips of metal, which are
inserted between the bearings to allow
for natural wear. When adjusting the
bearings it may be necessary to remove
one or perhaps two of these shims from
each side of the bearing. After the
shims are removed the nuts should be
tightened, and the bearings will be found
to fit closer to its shaft. Though a bear-
ing should fit snugly and without undue
play, it must not be set up so tight as to
bind and pinch the shaft, and where the

214

OUTING

metal shims are found too thick to make
the proper adjustment the insertion of
paper shims will often do the trick.

When the center and rear bearings are
mounted in disks, adjustment is made by
wedges lying on top of the caps. These
wedges are provided with two nuts, and
it is only necessary to turn up the nuts
until the play or looseness is taken up.
The crank-pin bearings are generally
provided with brass or copper shims, and
one or more may be removed and the
nuts set up to make a proper fit. Care
should be taken not to pinch the bear-
ing, lest the cap be bent and thus bind
the shaft.

Owing to the fact that almost all mo-
tors are provided with annular ball bear-
ings, it is not likely that the change-speed
gear will require anything further than
a thorough cleaning. If the gears are
found to be badly worn at their edges
through improper gear shifting, the in-
jured gears should be replaced with new
ones ordered from the manufacturer.
Where the transmission is mounted as
a separate unit, the removal of the cover
will expose the mechanism, and the box
should be raised off and filled with kero-
sene to remove the old lubricant and
any grit that may be held in suspension
in the old oil.

In the floating type of rear axle—
which is most widely used in modern
cars — the differential may be taken down
without difficulty. After the rear axle
shaft, hub cap, driving clutch, and
wheels have been taken off, the axle-
shafts should be partly withdrawn from
their protecting tubes. The removal of
the top case gives access to the differen-
tial housing cap screws, which hold the
differential gears in position. Removing
these screws (generally six in number)
the bevel driving gear roller bearing
must be taken out to make room for the
removal of the assembled differential
gears. The live rear axle and differen-
tial gears seldom give trouble if kept
clean and supplied with suitable lubri-
cant.

In case any great amount of play is
found in the bevel driving gears, the
looseners between the crown and bevel
pinions may be taken up by adjusting the
gears to riesh closer with each other.

This adjustment requires good judg-
ment, since a very slight change in the
position of the two gears is likely to in-
crease the friction in transmitting power
to the wheels, and the inexperienced
should consult a competent automobile
man in case the differential requires ad-
justment. The oil in the housing should
be drawn off and washed out with kero-
sene, opening the drain plug provided
for this purpose, and then filling up with
the proper quantity of oil or light grease
recommended.

The mechanical oiler or pump should
be taken apart and thoroughly cleaned
out with kerosene or gasoline to remove
the old oil. The oil pipes and leads
should likewise be cleaned out by forcing
a gun or two of gasoline through' them.
Where a sight feed is fitted to the dash,
this should be taken apart, cleaned, and
the glasses washed out with gasoline.

Looking After the Wheels

The axles and bearings of each wheel
should be cleaned with kerosene or gaso-
line. The roller or ball bearings will
probably be in good condition, but if
found otherwise the damaged part must
be removed. The tires should be re-
moved, the rims cleaned of any rust that
may have accumulated, and the metal
sandpapered smooth. Further rusting
may be prevented by either painting the
rims with a couple of coats of black en-
amel, or by the application of beeswax,
melted and applied with a brush.

The brakes should be taken down and
well cleaned and examined for possible
wear. If the frictional lining or ex-
pander shoes are worn to any extent,
these should be renewed. Toggle joints
and all adjusting bolts and screws should
be attended to and any looseness taken
up. The brake-lever and foot-pedal
should be examined to ascertain if they
have the proper amount of travel re-
quired for efficient braking. The adjust-
ment of the brakes should, however, be
left until the car is assembled, and as
the maximum braking power applied by
the equalizing bar can only be secured
if both brakes are adjusted as nearly
alike as possible, this important matter
can only be properly determined to a

HOW TO OVERHAUL YOUR AUTOMOBILE

215

nicety while the car is driven on the
road.

As the tires are by far the most expen-
sive item in the maintenance of a car,
the matter of shoes and tubes should be
given careful attention. After removing
them the tires should be cleaned of any
adhering mud and the inside brushed out
to remove the old chalk. The tread
should be examined for cuts and holes,
which should be cleaned with gasoline
to remove the dirt, and then sealed with
rubber solution. Large cuts can only be
properly repaired by vulcanizing. The
motorist should make it a point to repair
all cuts and punctures in the shoes at
once, thus preventing the entrance of dirt
and moisture. If this is promptly at-
tended to, sand blisters and mud boils
will be done away with and the life of
the tire will be considerably lengthened.

As soon as the tread begins to show

signs of excessive wear, the worn shoes
should be removed from the wheels and
sent to the factory to be retreaded, after
which they will be good for many hun-
dred additional miles of travel. When
laying up the car, the shoes should be
cleaned and wiped dry and stored in a
cool, dark place. The tires should never
be allowed to bear the weight of the car
while in the garage for any extended pe-
riod, and although the car may be idle
but for two or three days it is a good
plan to jack up the axles to keep the
weight off the tires. Tubes should be
tested for leaks, and after being repaired
should be folded flat with the valves up-
permost and secured with wide rubber
bands (old tubes make the best and
strongest rubber bands). Talcum pow-
der or soapstone should be liberally used
inside the shoes and sprinkled freely in
the folds when folding up the tubes.

Vanderbilt Llniversity is in Nashville, Tennessee. Like-
wise it is a college with a short but entirely honorable
athletic record. If you don't believe it read the article
on Vanderbilt by Henry Jay Case in the June OUTING

THE UNCERTAIN TEMPER OF
WILD ANIMALS

By BEN BURBRIDGE

Cases Which Show That You Never Can Be Sure What Your Big

Game Will Do

N my wanderings in remote
places prying into the haunts of
wild animals, from the jaguar in-
habited fastnesses of Mexico to
the dark Alaskan forests, where
lives the great brown bear, and
into the depths of Africa's wilds, I have
found no fixed rule worth recording as
to what any wild beast will do under
stress of pain, excitement, or anger.

Indeed it is because the wearers of
those much coveted horns and pelts are
so prone to do the opposite to the stereo-
typed line of conduct some are wont to
ascribe to them in cases of emergency,
that the sportsman sometimes unwit-
tingly and* quite suddenly finds himself
in a perilous position, or on the other
hand comes out easily from a very close
corner.

The savage beasts of the wilderness
undoubtedly breed individuality in their
solitude; we can almost believe it a
stronger individuality than that of hu-
mans who are bound by laws and pre-
cedent. We can almost believe them
thinkers, deep thinkers, each studying
out the problems of life .alone. Their
life is one of savagery and cleverness,
so closely interwoven that it is but a
guess to say what will happen at the
eleventh hour. That they may fly like a
craven at the first glimpse of the pur-
suer, that they may charge or stalk him
in the glare of day, that they may hide
from him on the summit of the highest
mountain or in the gloom of the deep-
est forest, or snatch him at night from
the midst of his companions all adds to
the great gamble in the game of their
pursuit.

While on safari in the African wilder-

[216]

ness I encountered two lions which
strongly demonstrated the uncertainty
of mood and temper in dangerous game.
One of the beasts, although un-
wounded, had charged and been killed
when he could have escaped with ease.
A moment afterward' we encountered
the other who swung off and plunged
into the donga. I threw a line of
beaters across it and when pressed by
my men the lion sprang into the open,
his mane all a-bristle, and roared. The
beaters, terror-stricken, dropped their
iron mess kettles and shinned up the
nearby trees. I was new to the game of
lion-hunting, and after my experience
with the other expected this fellow to
come tearing down upon us, but he
didn't. He just stood there lashing his
tail and the rumble of his mutterings
came to me like the roll of distant
thunder.

I had been waiting for just such, an
opportunity and called to the beaters to
cease their clamor, for I was afraid the
lion would charge and get a man or
slink back to his stronghold among the
reed beds, either of which was undesir-
able. From my place on the sloping hill-
side I dared not shoot for I knew that
just beyond him, directly in my line of
fire, were several of my men crouching
near the edge of the reeds, so I walked
rapidly to one side and the lion, seeing
the movement, turned and glared in my
direction. Then he suddenly flattened
to the ground, as if about to charge, and
I threw up my gun hastily for a shot,
but at that moment the brute wheeled
and slunk like a shadow into the donga.

The quivering of the tall grasses
showed the direction of his passage, but

THE UNCERTAIN TEMPER OF WILD ANIMALS

217

when I rushed down to the edge of
the marsh, all was quiet and still, and
the lion was nowhere to be seen. Then
from across the swale came a volley of
commands from Magonga, my gigantic
headman. He was calling to the men
to resume their beating, and he himself
strode into the marsh howling insults
to the lion in guttural Swahili.

As he entered, the reeds almost en-
tirely covered him, and I could see his
red fez, bobbing up and down like a
cork on the bosom of a pond. The other
blacks followed reluctantly, and those
perched in nearby trees came down cau-
tiously until the marsh again resounded
with their yells and the harsh beatings
from their metal kettles.

Between the bare, thorn-rimmed hills
the donga, fifty to a hundred yards in
width, lay green and glistening, a moist,
oozy marsh of jungle growth, reeds,
and giant grasses. From the forest on
the east it entered the broad plain and
disappeared far to the north in a twist-
ing, serpent-like course. A lying up
place it was for all the carnivora? that
infested these wild open places.

The blacks knew the dangers that
lurked in its silken folds, but the savage
Magonga kept them at it and as I ran
forward, hoping to gain a place of van-
tage from the hill ahead, I could hear
their wild yells behind and knew that
the lion would soon be forced from his
place of concealment into the open
country, when the unexpected hap-
pened as it always does in lion-hunting.
In rounding the edge of a thick bunch
of cover I saw just before me the lion
standing. He was looking back over
his shoulder toward the beaters. I
threw a bullet at him then and by all
the laws of sport and rifle-shooting he
should have been mine, but it is a well-
known fact that even the best of high
powered rifles are short in their driving
force when fired at close quarters, the
bullet not having had time to gain the
proper spin. So the lion was wounded
only and with a mighty spring disap-
peared into the donga. I gave a yell
then that must have awakened legions of
sleeping monkeys for miles around, for
I wanted that lion, and soon I could see
Magonga and my Somali gun-bearer run-

ning toward me with a long line of
straggling blacks behind.

"Where simba?" (the native word for
lion), spoke the Somali, his lips peeled
back and his white teeth showing. The
desperate fight made by the first lion
I could see had also its effect on him;
we were both expecting trouble and lots
of it.

This gun-boy was a quiet, unobtru-
sive savage until the time of danger;
then when he spoke, it always reminded
me of the snarl a wild animal gives when
brought to bay. Now he peered about
him in the bushes toward the dark shad-
ows that lurked beneath the leaves and
his little eyes glistened. "See," I said,
"much blood." He nodded. Magonga,
towering over him twelve inches, black
as though carved from solid jet, stood
beside him and was looking at me with
a question in his eye for Magonga could
not understand a word of English.

"Tell him, Dogora," I said. Dogora
spat a word at him. Magonga sprang
forward and looked at the blood. "Keep
those black devils away," I cautioned
Dogora, as the men came crowding
near, for I felt that the lion, since
wounded, might charge out again at any
minute, and I didn't want the unarmed
blacks within the danger zone.

Dogora turned and said something to
them quickly, and they scattered along
the hillside as swiftly as one might blow
flakes of powder from the palm of his
hand.

Going After Simba

It was high noon and the sun was
beating down with the ferocity of yellow
javelins when we entered the confines
of the marsh, Dogora and I and the
giant Magonga. Dogora held my spare
rifle, Magonga was unarmed, and try
as I would I could not persuade him to
remain behind. A light wind was play-
ing over the tops of the reeds sweeping
them with a rustle like the swish of a
lady's silk dress and the sun beating
down through them cast dainty, lace-like
patterns upon the slime and mud be-
neath. The trail wound zigzag under
a dense tree cover with vines, then be-
yond through the slush and mud into

218

OUTING

the middle of the donga to where a
stream, black as molten tar, slipped
noiselessly through the arched growth
above.

We followed across it, floundering to
our ears in the slime. Then we heard
a faint, murmuring noise sounding almost
like a hiss. Instantly I thought of the
serpents that infested the place, but the
low growl that followed caused me to
raise my rifle and wait, expecting the
foliage to open and the lion to show
himself, but nothing appeared. Then we
advanced again slowly, Dogora by my
side. A glance backward disclosed
Magonga, half crouching. The black
had drawn his knife.

A few feet farther on and we stopped
suddenly as a warning growl issued from
the thickets ahead and it wTas then that
the nerve-racking tension of our entire
crawl through that awful place brought
the perspiration streaming from every
pore, and I remember hearing with a
start the porters laughing and calling to
each other far away on the neighboring
hills.

Beyond' a clump of reeds, shaded by
the overhanging branches of a single
Mimosa, we expected to encounter him,
when suddenly the Somali sprang up-
right and pointed. Slinking across the
sparsely covered thorn hills was the lion.
He had quit the cover and was going
toward the jungle where we were unable
to find him after hours of fruitless trail-
ing.

Now this lion, though wounded, ran
away under circumstances in which he
would have been expected to show fight.
The one previously encountered charged
under conditions that pointed strongly
to his running away. Animals are
vastly different ; to be brave or cowardly,
clever or stupid, docile or morose are
traits which vary with the individual.
And then, too, some early experience
with humans may have inspired feelings
of contempt, hatred, or fear that would
have a marked influence on the actions
of such individual when brought to bay.

While still young he may have had
the satisfaction of seeing the first man
encountered flee before him. Naturally
he would have but little fear of the
next. Or the tables may have been

reversed, the pain of spear or bullet
may have instilled1 such terror that man
and all things pertaining to him will be
always feared and avoided. Or, in-
furiated by some wound inflicted, he
may charge and kill, and from then on
be a killer whenever occasion of hunger
or escape may require.

Whole herds of buffalo, (one of
Africa's most dangerous herbivora),
often scamper off on sight while a single
individual encountered may, without
molestation, attack. Once when re-
moving the skin from a buffalo's head
I found a small steel arrow imbedded in
the socket of his eye and it was only
then that I knew the reason for his
stand when late one evening I met him
just on the edge of the jungle.

The African buffalo are as black as
the dark places they haunt, and, like a
thing detached from the blackness itself,
he sprang forward, his little eyes reflect-
ing the fury of his challenging bellow.
Afterwards I pondered the reason for
his sudden wrath, not knowing then that
a stinging arrow, not quite true, and a
flying native all but cost me my life.

A Charge Out of the Dark

One morning as a deep fog was rolling
heavily across the hills, obscuring all
in its milk-like folds, two rhino broke
from cover just ahead of our marching
safari and disappeared into the gloom. I
was intensely relieved that these two
swashbucklers of the African bush were
not picking quarrels that morning and
thought we had seen the last of them,
but a few minutes later, as the caravan
was filing down toward the Athi River,
which showed dimly through the veiled
mists ahead, from somewhere out in the
fog came the smothered grunt of a
rhino.

The carriers stopped as if by word
of command, dropped their loads, and
crouched beside them. I peered around,
but could see nothing except the faint
tracings of the African jungle along the
river that showed like the first delicate
lines of a wash drawing on a dead white
canvas. That danger was imminent, I
knew, for the rhino, swaggering bully
that he is, cares nothing for numbers

THE UNCERTAIN TEMPER OF WILD ANIMALS

219

when he takes it into his head to charge.
- We stood there waiting, the minutes
dragged slowly by, and from somewhere
out in the dim plain came the boom of
a cock-ostrich, making his salutation to
the hidden sun. Instantly as though in
echo to the sound came the screaming
whistle of a rhino, and from the white
night burst these two black warriors
with lowered heads and gleaming horns
in deadly charge upon us.

Now the rhino is said never to turn
if he misses the object of his charge
but to keep straight on in blind, piggish
fury. It is even claimed by some author-
ities that it isn't a charge at all but
merely a headlong rush up wind.

One of the beasts, Struck hard by my
bullet, sheered off and disappeared into
the gloom. The other tore through our
caravan, hooking right and left at camp
paraphernalia cast down by the fright-
ened porters. On my mount I followed
the wild rampage of the beast and saw
him make directly for a thorn bush
behind which several of my men had
taken refuge.

On reaching the bush he lumbered
around it, the men flying before his stab-
bing horn. Around and around he
swung, screaming and whistling in hys-
terical charge. A sort of whirligig it
was that I stopped with a steel pointed
bullet or, regardless of all rules carefully
set down for his guidance in such emer-
gencies, that rhino might be chasing those
natives around that thorn tree yet.

Various opinions are advanced as to
the temper of our own American ani-
mals. Some claim that the jaguar, that
leopard-like prowler of the southwest,
will rarely attack a human and a moun-
tain lion never; but I once knew an
old hunter who had killed every known
animal on the continent without trouble
until he had the fight of his life with a
bob-cat.

The charging range of a bear is said

to be less than a hundred yards. Two
Clinkit Indians and I were once crossing
a lagoon on the Alaskan coast. There
was a strong wind driving from the
sea and through the spouts of foam dash-
ing high on the rock beach I caught
occasional glimpses of a large brown
bear standing at the edge of the timber,
while her two small cubs some distance
off dug industriously upon the beach for
clams. The old bear discovered us
while still two hundred yards away and
signaled to her cubs to run for cover.
Knowing that it was now or never, I
opened up a fusillade with my rifle, but
our canoe was bucking like a bronco in
the heavy swells and the bullets went
wild, simply cutting up puffs of sand be-
side her.

The cubs did not heed the calls of
their mother and the reports of my
piece, drowned as they were by the roar
of the sea, never reached them, so they
kept right on digging like the two diso-
bedient youngsters they were. The old
bear, finally infuriated at both them and
my bullets, rushed from the forest toward
her offspring, which she cuffed into im-
mediate obedience, and galloping to a
little point jutting out into the sound,
growled hoarsely toward our canoe.

Such was the fury of her temper that
had dry land intervened the traditional
hundred yard maximum charging range
of all bears would never have stopped
her from covering the distance which
separated her from her enemies.

But the uncertainty as to what each
individual animal will do when brought
to bay is what adds to the fascination
of big game hunting, and although we
know that few of God's lower creatures
can stand unmoved before the unflinch-
ing glint of man's eye, none know the
caprices of their temper, none know the
extent of their powers, and few come
from the clash of their poisoned charge
alive.

Twilight Jack is the creation of Kathrene and Robert
Pinkerton. He is the Sherlock Holmes of the North
Woods. Read THE BLIND TRAIL in June OUTING

PADDLING HER OWN CANOE

By KATHRENE GEDNEY PINKERTON

How a Woman May Become Complete Mistress of the Indian s

Favorite Craft

NS-EE-QUAY-GEE-SICK

and his squaw, Teck-ee-
mash-ee, stopped at our
cabin last fall to make
a portage into a string
of nameless lakes in the
big swamp behind the ridge. They had
paddled twelve miles that morning, and
there were two miles of hard portaging
and more paddling between them and
the lake where they would camp that
night.

Teck-ee-mash-ee placed almost the en-
tire outfit — dishes, clothing, food, tent
and bedding, perhaps one hundred
pounds in all — in a blanket, knotted
the four corners, and swung it to her
back, one strip of blanket acting as a
head strap. Anse took a smaller pack,
laid the paddles across the thwarts of
their birch canoe, and lifted it to his
shoulders. A few days later they ap-
peared suddenly on the trail behind the
cabin, set their canoe in the water,
placed their packs in it, and were off
again.

They were making the journey to-
gether, sharing in the work on portage,
in canoe, in camp. And as I watched
them down the lake, I thought of white
men from the cities I have seen on canoe
trips in our country, men who travel
through a wonderful land of forest and
lake and stream, always in parties of
two or more and almost never with a
woman.

'Td give anything if she'd come,"
many have told me. "I know she would
like it when she understood it. Per-
haps, if I got a good guide and took
an easy trip, do you think she could
stand it?"

And here I always say: "Don't.
Guide-paddled and guide-served, she will

[220]

be shut out forever from the real wilder-
ness. Let her learn it as you have
learned it. Let her be your comrade,
not your passenger."

For paddling is one of the easiest and
most fascinating means of traversing the
trail to the real spirit of the wilderness.
And it is as possible to the woman as
to the man. What she may lack in phys-
ical strength she may more than over-
balance by her nerve force, her endur-
ance. Even before her paddling may
take her to the real wilderness it can
afford her pleasure. There is as much
joy in the quick, effectual stroke as in
any other well-played game of the out-
of-doors. Wind and current are as
worthy adversaries as one finds on links
or courts, and the victory is as satis-
fying.

I shall never forget my first rapids.
I had ascended them by tracking line
and had done much steering in the bow
while the canoe was being poled up long
stretches of white water. I had learned
all the rocks and currents in that rapids
thoroughly and had absorbed the prin-
ciples, and much of the practice, of
steering from the bow.

But writh the stern man standing,
ready with the pole to snub the craft,
and upon me resting almost alone the
guiding, I had a sudden desire, when the
current gripped us, to jump, to scream,
to do anything but accept the responsi-
bility. Ahead was a large boulder,
around and over which the water boiled.
We seemed to be rushing straight upon
it. Desperately 1 plunged my paddle in
and drew the canoe to one side. Now
I know that the parting of the current
by the rock helped me. Then I felt
only that I had conquered my fear,
controlled my nerves, and met the situ-

PADDLING HER OWN CANOE

221

ation. A feeling of exultant triumph
and new confidence came to me.

And that is only one of the many
things canoeing has done for me. It
has brought a greatly increased physical
efficiency and a new joy in the possession
thereof. It has brought calm and con-
trolled nerves, not only on the water but
with the rifle, the rod, and on the long
snowshoe tramp.

It has taught me to love the north-
land and to feel its lure, as men love
it and feel it. This, for women, means
another of those rare planes upon which
they can meet men as comrades. It
means that they can understand men
where they have not understood before,
and that men can find a new quality
to appreciate. It does not mean a cor-
responding loss in womanliness, even
though the woman ceases to expect the
usual little attentions made difficult by
the toil of portage and paddle.

A joy in maps has come, an under-
standing of the attraction of the wide
spaces for men. The adventurous, ex-
ploring spirit has been aroused, and
dim . trails have beckoned.

And the canoe has made possible an
intimate acquaintance with that strange,
silent, hard-shelled, lovable individual,
the woodsman. I have learned to know
his point of view, to understand his life,
his work, the type, and the canoe has
made it possible for me to talk to him
and, far better, to loosen his tongue and
open a storehouse of interesting, in-
timate little bits of forest wisdom. I
have spent many pleasant hours with
trappers, talking paddle blades, canoes,
traps, fur, snowshoes, dogs, toboggans,
woods, foods and clothing, and out-of-
the-way places which even men seldom
visit.

The necessity of suitable clothing for
the canoe was one of the first things
impressed upon me. Like all other sub-
jects of this nature, only fundamental
rules can apply. The individual must
build upon them to suit herself and con-
ditions. To paddle correctly and effec-
tively, the lower garments must be sup-
ported by the hips, not by the waist.
The upper garments must be sufficiently
loose to allow free movement of the
arms and shoulders. If the cruise is in

the north woods, clothing must be of
wool to prevent chills and to confine
the activities of mosquitoes to the face
and hands. Shoes should be waterproof
for there are no docks in the wilderness,
and sufficiently heavy for rocky port-
ages.

These rules may apply equally to con-
ventional attire or to riding breeches
and wool shirt. That is a question for
the individual's ideas on propriety, com-
fort and convenience. I prefer riding
breeches. Bloomers catch on snags and
brush as readily as skirts. Woman is
sufficiently handicapped by her lesser
strength without incurring an added
disadvantage in her manner of dressing.

Custom, necessity, and a skill either
instinctive or acquired in infancy, per-
haps both, have given the Indian woman
the stern position in the birch bark
canoe. The Indian man is the pro-
vider, and he provides with his rifle.
Consequently, he sits in the bow that
he may have an unobstructed shot. In-
dian girls begin to paddle as soon as
their brothers. Before maturity their
skill is marvelous.

Bow a Good Place to Learn

In the canvas canoe of the white man
conditions are entirely different.
Greater skill and strength are needed
in the stern, and there is no hunting.
Consequently, the woman sits in the
bow. This position does not, however,
deny her opportunity to exercise skill
and strength or display endurance. All
three qualities are needed.

The bow position gives the woman the
best opportunity to learn. Progress is
not seriously impeded by her first in-
effectual strokes. The stern paddler is
in a position to guide and instruct and
still keep the canoe moving on its course.

When the woman has learned to swing
her paddle well, she has only begun.
First, she should learn the requirements
of straight-ahead paddling in open water.
These are the setting of a regular, quick
stroke, for the stern paddler follows the
bowman's pace, and the utilization of
every bit of strength expended in pro-
pelling the canoe straight ahead, not
obliquely. This means that the paddle

222

OUTING

should be started out from the canoe's
side and pulled straight back, not swung
in an arc.

After straight ahead paddling has be-
come natural, ' the movement uncon-
scious, and strength established, let the
woman in the bow understand that she
must keep at work. If she becomes
tired, she should cease paddling and rest.
To stop every few strokes and fix her
hair, adjust her hat, pull on her gloves,
is most exasperating to the man in the
stern.

The next step is rough lake travel.
If the stern man is the right sort, he
is not going to take chances and will be
able to handle the canoe in the threaten-
ing waves. Be certain he is capable and
then have confidence in him. Under no
circumstances paddle frantically, and
never try to balance the canoe from the
bow, no matter how dangerously it may
careen. Safety depends greatly upon the
bowman's unshifting position and reg-
ular even stroke. Nothing is harder on
the nerves of the novice than a long
stretch of vicious white caps, and noth-
ing is more exciting or stimulating for
the woman who has experience and con-
fidence.

Picking Up the Finer Points

After a certain degree of perfection in
straight paddling has been attained, the
woman will find pleasure in learning the
finer points. Many are offered in the
bow, for, in many conditions of water,
much of the control of the canoe de-
pends upon the forward paddle. There
is the draw stroke, which pulls the
bow quickly toward the side on which
the paddle is used. Proficiency means
greater ease in turning sharp bends in
small streams, in dodging hidden bould-
ers and in approaching landings. The
throw stroke, difficult to learn and
known to few men outside the wilder-
ness, is equally important. Once ac-
quired, it permits the woman in the bow
to "throw" the canoe away from the
side on which she is paddling. It is
needed as often as the draw stroke and
is invaluable in boulder filled water.

Because it is so little known, perhaps
it should be described. The paddle is

held perpendicularly five or six inches
from the gunwale, the blade in the
water and parallel to the canoe. The
lower hand, and there must be a strong
wrist, grasps it above the blade and is
held rigidly. The upper hand turns
the leading edge of the blade slightly
toward the canoe. This results in a
terrific strain on both arms, and the
beginner's paddle will be wrenched
loose. But, if held firmly, the paddle
will shoot the canoe quickly to the side,
and the turn is negotiated or the hidden
boulder passed safely. The value of this
stroke lies in the fact that it may be
used instantly, there being no necessity
to shift the paddle from one side of the
canoe to the other.

From the first day there are other
things than handling the paddle to be
learned. Go slowly. Remember your
muscles are unaccustomed to the exercise.
Paddle only a short time, but when you
do paddle, paddle correctly.

Learn to enter and leave the canoe
easily. Do not expect to get in when it
is fast upon shore. Be willing to wade
out to it. Your waterproof boots are
partially for the protection of the craft.
Do not sit upon or in the canoe when it
is out of the water. Nothing is more
maddening to the owner than to see
his craft abused.

When you know that a portage is to
be made, and you should know it, be
ready to leave the canoe quickly and to
take your belongings with you. Do not
leave your hat, gloves, bag, and a dozen
smaller articles for the men to pick up
and hand to you. About the only way
a woman can assist on a portage is by
collecting and caring for her small pos-
sessions and not causing trouble.

Once you have become proficient in
the bow, exchange places with the stern
man and learn to paddle the canoe in
his position. Learn to paddle a canoe
alone from the center, the only position
in which one person can properly handle
the craft. This not only adds to your
skill as a canoewoman, but you are pre-
pared to meet emergencies characteristic
of forest travel and perhaps save a life.

To paddle well and to obtain the
maximum results physically, one should
paddle from the knees, leaning against

HUNTING TOGS

223

the seat or thwart. This is difficult for
anyone at first, and more so for a woman
because of her corset-weakened back
muscles. And that is only an argument
in favor of knee paddling. Learn slowly.
Try it a few minutes at a time, or until
cramps and impeded circulation compel
a return to the seat. In time, realiza-
tion of the added efficiency and value
of the exercise and the comfort of the
position will cause you to abandon the
seat forever.

Acquiring proficiency in the many de-
tails comes not so much through a re-
ligious observance of rules as from a
mental attitude. The desire to be com-

petent, to be useful, almost uncon-
sciously brings proficiency. While in
itself the mastery of canoe and paddle
is gratifying and fascinating, the day
will come when you will have estab-
lished your ability to keep on hour after
hour with that rhythmic stroke and to
meet situations as they arise, when you
will have realized the glory in physical
efficiency. Then you will step into the
canoe in the coolness of a northern
morning and, something new in your
blood, your imagination quickened,
suddenly enter the wilderness realm,
suddenly grasp the great spirit of the
out of doors.

HUNTING TOGS

By EDWARD C. CROSSMAN

Kinds of Clothing That Have Been Found Suited for Rough

Going Afield

™ HIS title, I note, is a bit
deceptive. I don't mean
• hunting for them, but in
them, which is a lot more
fun. I've never quite got
to the regions where they
hunt only in a cartridge belt and two
days' growth of whiskers, but I have
been idiot enough to hunt sheep in the
desert in July, where the mercury sat on
the roof of the thermometer and won-
dered how it was ever going to get back
into that little tube. Also have I ven-
tured into the Canuck country in the mid-
dle of winter and gazed at the face of a
thermometer where the thin blue line in
the tube sat down at 40 below.

These two foolish seances, with a few
tucked in between, have persuaded me
that some of the hunting clothes in com-
mon use are of the nature of a certain
citrus fruit, not oranges, either.

It is as natural for an American to
prefer to hunt — or to work — or to go to
church, if his wife wouldlet him, in his
shirt sleeves as it seems to be for the
Englishman to do all these things in his
coat. It fairly makes my shoulders
wriggle with discomfort to sec some

Johnny Bull portrayed in the act of
shooting a pheasant, handicapped in a
modish Norfolk coat, and a collar into
the bargain.

I regard the coat as an invention of the
evil one. It may be tolerated in civili-
zation, but wearing one when it is not
necessary is to me evidence of a throw-
back to some English forebear. Comment
on collar wearing seems to me uncalled
for. A shirt has a top button to use in
case of cold, but this top button is not
to be used except in case of necessity.

Consider the shotgun and the coat. A
man goes to work and has a gun made
to his order and fitted to him down to
the last 1/16-inch castor?. Then he pro-
ceeds to wear a hunting coat, made to fit
nobody, and nobly living up to its pur-
pose. It's bunchy at the shoulder and
binding under the arm, even if it has a
gusset as large as a subway entrance.
That poor goat of a gun couldn't fit that
man to save its poor soul. Try it, the
first time you've got on a coat — any old
coat. Bunchy coats are responsible for
more poor shooting than all the errors in
gun fitting. I haven't the faintest idea
of how a gun fits or feels, unless I get off

!24

OUTING

my coat, and it is not one of the hair-
bridge shoulder variety, either.

If you shoot the shotgun, the coat is
permissible in just two cases — when it is
wet and when you are going to and from
the hunting-grounds. Only a waterproof
coat will keep out the wet, while, of
course, the big coat is fine when you want
to lug a lot of stuff in its capacious pock-
ets, or want to keep off the chill of an
evening.

My idea is this: A big, soft, warm
sweater-jacket for comfort, when the
weather is cold, and over it a very light
skeleton coat, made of soft khaki, and the
softest that you can get. The skeleton
coat has no sleeves; it is a lot of pockets
strung together and buttoned up the
front. With the top button of the coat
fastened it lies smoothly over the shoul-
der, and having no sleeves it allows you
to raise your arms without raising all the
junk in the pockets thereof. You wear
the coat for the sake of the pockets,
therefore be it. light and soft to the end
that wrinkles and bunches be avoided.

Even in a cold wind, if it is a dry one,
I can keep warmer with a buckskin shirt
and the sweater, the arms still free and
the shoulders smooth, than I can with
a bunchy coat.

The sweater proposition is worth con-
sidering. Be not deceived in weight and
thickness alone. Some of them consist
of a lot of strips of very coarse and stiff
yarn, connected — when it is on you — by
just a little better than nothing. They
are as warm as a lath sweater would be.

I have one little affair I bought up in
Canada the relative of which I would like
very much to see. I mean I would like
to find its big brother. It is as soft as
down, and it weighs just a shade over a
half-pound. For its weight, it is the
warmest thing I ever saw, and at that
you can roll it up and stuff it in the
pocket of a hunting coat on the way to
the grounds. There is not enough of
it, it lacks the deep roll cuffs and the big
collar that a good outing sweater should
have, but if they make this garment in
heavier weight and as set forth as to col-
lar and cuffs, I have a lot of things I'll
swap for one.

A good, well-behaved sweater must
protect the wrists, coming clear down

.over the hands if you want it to, and
it must come up around the neck, four
inches up the back hair. Those two
points are the vital attack for cold
breezes. It ought to be some color that
does not show dirt, preferably an incon-
spicuous mixed gray or brown.

Yes, some fellow might take you for a
deer if you wore it into the woods, but
what would you? He'd take you for a
zebra if you wore green and yellow
stripes, or shoot you for a forest fire if
you wore flaming crimson. Protective
coloration ? Bah ! I know an old chap
who was shot for a wildcat as he stood
on a rock, hitching his trousers and
gazing over the scenery. His handsome
face and silvery beard must have looked
the very picture of a wildcat.

The jacket form has everything the
old shape has, except the habit of pulling
your back hair around in front of your
nose when you take it off. Therefore,
get the sweater jacket, not the "over-
the-head" shape.

The Leather Jacket

The greatest fender of wind is leather.
The buckskin shirt is worth all it costs
for the outdoor party. In reality, buck-
skin is not the best material, it is too
thick and heavy. Better by far is the
shirt from doeskins, or from the lady
elk or caribou. It should be soft and
pliable, and not heavy. Weight seems
to add nothing in the way of warmth,
save that engendered by the work of
carrying it around.

In its ideal form it should be of the
jacket persuasion. The cuffs should
have tabs to close them tightly around
the wrists, the collar should button up,
preferably by a cross-tab, snugly around
the neck. Don't use glove snap fast-
eners. After you've pushed your Adam's
apple clear into your spinal column try-
ing to snap one, and then have it come
loose in four seconds, you'll appreciate
why I don't advise this fastener.

All buttons should be sewed on with
waxed linen — not merely thread. There
should be two large pockets, patch per-
suasion, flared shape at the bottom, closed
by buttonable flaps. Also they should
come above where the belt embraces you,

HUNTING TOGS

225

otherwise it will bear on the contents
or close up the entrances.

The shirt should be large enough to
fit comfortably over a very heavy
sweater, and that means loosely. It
is not intended to look modish, it's
there to keep off the wind. Not a bad
idea is putting three loops on either side
of the chest in case you don't wear a
cartridge belt, and want a few cartridges
available.

If you own such a shirt and desire to
clean it, don't fuss with it yourself, turn
it over to a furrier and tell him to use
gasoline, and then put it in the big
revolving machine where they dry skins
that have been soaked.

I know of nothing better, for all
around use in the wilds, than Uncle
Sam's olive drab clothing. Not the
coat, that's a military fright, tight-
fitting, choky, and as useless as snow-
shoes to an elephant. The trousers, cut
on riding lines, are extremely comfort-
able when they fit you, loose cut in the
hips and legs, and lacing up at the calf.
The material is a greenish-brown, of a
fine quality of wool, and up to most of
the clothing Uncle Sam now buys for
his troops.

The shirt is as good as the trousers,
of a variety apparently of flannel, with
patched elbows, large patch, flap-closed
pockets, and wearing like iron. They
sell a near-soldier shirt of brown in the
stores, but it is rarely the real thing,
and just as rarely as good as Uncle's
article. I think the real shirt can be
had from the best outfitters, but if you
can, get a look at the military shirt
before buying one as the real article.

Mackinaw has the call for colder
climates than usual, or for outdoor work
in the winter. It's first cousin to a
blanket, and as usually made up, it
would make the Belvidere Apollo look
like a roughneck lumberman. The only
fit about it is the one your wife throws
the first time you appear garbed in it.
Anyhow, it is mighty warm and com-
fortable, even though it does make you
look like a cross between a bear and a
freight train wrapped in a blanket.

Being narrow-minded, I cannot see
any form of leggin, in case this is your
choice of leg-gear, except the two puttee

affairs. One is a strip of wool cloth,
two inches wide, to wrap around the
leg like a surgeon's bandage, or a spiral
staircase. When it is wrapped good
and tight it is the worst thing in the
world, but after a while you'll learn
to leave the same margin a cavalryman
does under the bridle latch, and your
troubles will cease. The other form is
a straight brown canvas leggin, with a
narrow canvas strap to wind around it
and keep it closed.

I've worn this sort through brush
so dense that it would relieve you of
your watch and pull the bullets out of
your cartridges, and I've found it to
be away ahead of the ordinary lace-up
affair, commonly wished on the leggin-
buying innocent.

The strap must be doubled over and
pulled snugly through the fastener after
it is buckled, leaving no outside loop to
catch in the brush.

Beware of Laced Leg gins

The regulars hate this form, because
they are a bit slower to put on than
the lace-up — and the regular is at times
called rudely from his couch, nor are
excuses heard by the sour-tempered first
sergeant. This lace-up is the poorest
form. In thick brush the twigs catch
in the laces, and the leggin will usually
adorn something beside your calf before
you've gone far through our California
variety of small timber. Also a leggin
with a strap below the foot is almost
pathetic. You'll walk through that strap
in about one day of rocky going. After
all, no leggin is quite so satisfactory for
all-around use as the soft, flexible, high-
topped boot, with ten or twelve inch
height from floor to top of boot.

Naturally no man, out of the care of
his parents or a guardian, should go into
the woods with city socks, but they do.
Also they sometimes take along a pair
of old street shoes for a mountain hunt —
"to wear them out and get rid of them."

There are just three things rolled up
in the one best bet for outing socks —
wool, thickness, softness. It is not a
question of climate, wool is the only safe
fabric. They must be thick to cushion
the always-tender feet for the first few

226

OUTING

days, and they must be soft to guard
against the ever-eager blister. Also
they should not be colored in any decided
shade, but a neutral gray. Dye poison-
ing is not common in these days of bet-
ter processes, but it is always possible
where abrasions of the skin are present.

Buckskin shirts and heavy sweaters
and olive-drab trousers wTon't keep out
the wet, when that comes on the pro-
gram. Waterproof coats and pants are
very hot, and should really be used
only when sitting still, say in a blind,
or where the temperature is low enough
so you won't sweat clear through to the
works of your watch.

The waterproof coat is of more im-
portance than the trousers. Your
trousers will dry fast enough in camp or
on you when the rain stops, but if you
get a big, heavy sweater soaked up, or
a buckskin shirt thoroughly slimy, then
you've got trouble. The sweater will
stay damp until the sun comes out again,
and the shirt — I've seen wet buckskin
garments shrivel right into thin air,
leaving nothing but the buttons and
thread. If your chest stays warm, it
does not matter greatly whether or not
your legs are wet, while a proper pair
of shoes should take care of your feet.

They make featherweight oilskins,
both as short coats and trousers, and as
long slickers. This is the proper sort
of garment; weight does you no good,
save it adds strength, all you wTant is
something to shed water. For a single
garment, the long coat, or slicker, does
nicely, but naturally it is not adapted
to hiking around on the hunt.

After all, if you're going to sit still,
in a wagon or in a saddle, for example,
there is nothing better than a good warm
coat with big side pockets, made out of
some such material as mackinaw, craven-
etted against rain, and perhaps lined with
thin chamois-skin. It does not do if
you are to use your arms vigorously, or
shoot; it is merely a big, snuggly, com-
fortable garment to keep you and the
cold at least a half-inch apart. Your
worn-out city coat is not "it." The gar-
ment wants to be about three sizes lar-
ger, and made for the special purpose of
keeping you comfortable against either
wet or cold.

The vital points of cold attack are
the ankles, wrists and neck. Let a cold
breeze blow up your trouser legs, an-
other down your wrists, and a third in-
sert its chill fingers into your neck — and
the garments of an Arctic explorer won't
keep you comfortable.

Don't monkey with paper or leather
vests, this is mostly rot. The warmest
part of your body is the chest, most
of your garments meet across it, and
there are other points that need protec-
tion far more. Babying the chest and
neck in all weathers as some people do
is nonsense anyhow. Consider the
slight but beauteous damsel. Given that
she has a beautiful neck — and I'll gam-
ble that she'll wear that neck and con-
siderable of its adjacent territory cov-
ered with a see-'em sort of gauze in
weather that calls for overcoats. Also
she'll get by with it, and pneumonia
will trouble her not at all.

The only sort of vest really useful
is the buckskin, again better if made
out of doe epidermis. Here it can be
made with a lot of pockets, covered wTith
flaps, in which can go the pipe, the
matches, the compass, and other things
that are apt to be needful while on the
hike.

It is light, not noticeable, and in the
occasional times when you climb per-
spiring up a slope and step into a freshly
refrigerated breeze, it does act as a safe-
guard against the quick chilling of the
body and dangers of a cold or pneu-
monia. The point is its pockets justify
its presence, while as a mere safe-
guard against cold, it wrould not be
worth while.

Mine has a tab across the bottom that
keeps it from flapping or catching in
things, and yet that allows it to hang
open and loose when things are hot.

If you go in for one, see that the
two bottom pockets are large, flare
shaped, and covered with closely fit-
ting button flaps.

In all the buckskin garments you have
made, insist upon real sewing and real
buttons, really put on to stay. Belief
to the contrary notwithstanding, it is
possible to put on a button to stay al-
most indefinitely but the art is little prac-
tised in these days.

TRIM LITTLE CHAPS ON THE WING

LITTLE FOLKS ALONG THE

SHORE

By HAMILTON M. LAING

Photographs by the Author

Why the Myriads of Shore Birds Have Disappeared from the

Tide-Flats and Beaches

NCE there was a time —
| and it was not so very
long ago, either — when
there were little people
who loved the mud, living
out upon the tide-flats and
beaches and muddy shores. They were
nomads, appearing here and there on this
or that shore at certain times of the year ;
but they were very regular in their hab-
its of life and quite dependable. They
loved the muddy and moist places wher-
ever they could find them ; and thus these
little folks were found across the conti-
nent, wetting their lively feet in the salt
ripples that washed the tide-flats of the
old Atlantic or Pacific, or in the sweeter
water of the inland lakes, or in the sea-
sonal sloughs and ponds or river mar-
gins of the inland plain country. They
were a populous race; at their trysting-
places and rendezvous of the spring and
autumn they came together in myriads;
and being half-musical and very conver-
sational, they filled the air with pleasing
chat and melody and turned many of the

w^aste and lonely flats into pleasant
places.

But it is not so to-day. These little
people — Limicolae, or the wading folk,
the books call them — are not now in
myriad flocks and their pleasant voices
are all but hushed. Of the former hosts
that fifty years ago swung down the At-
lantic coast in early autumn and back
again in the spring but a pittance re-
main. And why? Thoughtless men
made war upon these wading folk. They
came to these mud-flats in spring and
fall, carrying guns and other shooting
paraphernalia, and soon the helpless ar-
mies of the waders dwindled from the
earth. The wading folk were simple-
minded and confiding, they were small
and weak, and though the speed of the
wind almost was in their wings, the
struggle was most unequal and they
quickly vanished.

Plover, snipe, curlew, the largest and
strongest of the tribes, were the first to
fall. Their size was their curse. Their
bodies were the most toothsome, their

[227]

228

OUTING

ways most gamy, and so their ranks
quickly withered. Those that best sur-
vived by escape were the insignificant
ones, the tiny sandpipers almost too di-
minutive to be noticed by men with guns ;
their smallness was their salvation for
the time.

Very long ago it was declared quite
impossible both to have the apple and to
eat it, but these men failed to realize that
they could not have the plover and shoot
him. There is but one way in which
hunters can have any wild animal and
hunt it to any considerable extent; this
is by making up to the hunted in some
other way for the losses inflicted. Usual-
ly this is achieved by lessening the natu-
ral foes of the animal.

For example: the grouse of the plains
can hold his own against a limited
amount of shooting chiefly for the reason
that in the settlement of the land the
natural foes — hawks, owls, coyotes, foxes,
skunks, badgers, etc. — are much reduced
in numbers. But with many of the plo-
ver and snipe kind this course was im-
possible. The birds nested in the Arctic,
migrated along the coast, and wintered
in the tropics ; no help in their breeding-
grounds could be offered them, and thus
every hundred birds cut down en route
was just that many lost. There could be
but one ending. To-day, when protect-
ive laws have come to the rescue, there
are few of the little shore people to pro-
tect.

Not Real Game Birds

How many species of the wader folk,
wre may well ask, can or could ever be
called legitimate game birds? By the
term I mean birds whose greatest use to
mankind is served by their making a
hardy quest afield, their flesh being pala-
table, and these same birds, be it under-
stood, of little economic value when
alive. Of some fifty species of North
American waders, it is at least easy to
pick out the few most popular with the
shooting fraternity. Those that have
suffered most are the curlews — one spe-
cies, the Eskimo, being now extinct — the
woodcock, Wilson snipe — both strong fa-
vorites— the golden and black-bellied plo-
vers, greater and lesser yellowlegs, mar-

bled godwit, willet, and upland plover
(Bartram sandpiper).

Of all these species, undoubtedly the
Wilson snipe and the woodcock are the
most worthy of the name of game birds.
They have a fairly well-developed notion
of self-defense ; the others lack it. They
lie and hide well in cover — without the
aid of the dog man would be hopelessly
out-matched at their game of hide and
seek; they are speedy and tricky a-wing,
and their nesting grounds are far enough
south to derive some benefit from summer
protection. Yet to-day woodcock shoot-
ing is but the name of a once common
sport ; and the Wilson snipe, whose home
is from ocean to ocean, has held his own
a little better merely on account of his
greater range and numbers.

Of the other much-shot species the
golden and black-bellied plover some-
times show some shyness — they have ac-
quired it at terrible cost, but usually all
of these species may be approached by a
gunner in the most open places, or whis-
tled in to decoys and mowed down with
fine shot. These two plover species and
both yellowlegs are far-northern nesters.
They receive no extra protection during
their nesting season, and though once in
almost inconceivable numbers now they
are following the path of the curlew.
The godwit, willet, and long-billed cur-
lew are southerly nesters in the inland
plains region, and doubtless derive some
benefit from their summer conditions;
but they are by nature almost unfit to
take care of themselves when pitted
against the man with the gun.

Not one of the pictures shown here-
with was taken with a telephoto camera,
nor was any means of concealment used,
either for camera or photographer. The
willet on the shore were stalked with the
canoe — once or twice indeed in attempt-
ing to get them the canoe almost bumped
them. The northern phalaropes were
snapped from the canoe out in mid-lake
two miles from shore; the godwits were
approached on foot.

In the fishing picture — which is really
not such at all, but a snipe picture — note
the yellowlegs behind the figure. It had
followed him around at heel for some
time, and when I came with the camera
it flew an instant before I pressed the

230

OUTING

NORTHERN PHALAROPES P>OBBING LIKE CORKS

shutter release. There were times when
the bird was but six or seven feet from
the man wielding the bamboo pole, and
it was the splashing of the struggling
pike that finally scared it. Could such
birds be classed as game? What skill
would be required to mow them down
with a shotgun?

Mow them! For that was the way
the little shore folks that were orderly
and flew in ranks were cut down in the
days when the market shooter was in his
pristine rankness and the others who
shot for fun had not begun to think of
conservation or moderation in killing.
Truly they were mowed down. The
weapons used against them were barba-
rously unfair. It is morbidly interesting
to compare the weapons brought against
the snipe kind with those used against
the deer.

A snipe has an oval body of, we will
say, three inches — not counting head,
neck, wings or legs; a twelve-gauge gun
with standard load throws 954 pellets of
number ten shot; a single bird is in dead-
ly range at thirty yards or 360 times the
length of himself. A deer's body is about

three feet long — irrespective

of head, neck, or limbs — and

reasoning along the same

lines, he ought to be hunted

with an eight- or nine-inch

cannon with a thirty-foot

barrel throwing some 200

pounds of ounce missiles in

a deadly swath at 400 yards!

Were such weapons at large,

not many Nimrods would

take to the north woods in

the autumn, and the daring

few who ventured would

have even less chance of

coming back whole than is
the case to-day.

Not all of the sad killing
was done along the tide-
flats in the autumn. Many
of these birds, notably the
golden plover, during the
yearly migration followed a
somewhat elliptical course.
They came from the arctic
in the autumn by way of
the Atlantic coast to South
America, and returned in
spring inland up the Mississippi basin;
and they were hunted and their ranks
were thinned during both movements.
But the chief killing was done on the
Atlantic; and the fact that the godwits,
willet, upland plover, and other inland
migrants are still alive in considerable
numbers goes to show that the inland
basin has been the safer route.

What glorious and joyful times must
the wading tribes have enjoyed before
the sound of the white man's gun was
heard in the land. For though they had
a multitude of foes, they were far too
clever for most of them. All the hawks
loved to pick their plump little bodies;
but only the swiftest of these foes — the
duck hawk, sharp-shinned, or Cooper's —
ever made much headway at catching
such nimble victims. The owls, too,
dropping on silent wing in the darkness,
doubtless picked a few of them from the
shallows. Predatory animals destroyed
the eggs or sometimes caught the young;
but all the tribe are artful deceivers at
nest-hiding, and the young are spry little
chaps, able to run about and partially
fend for themselves verv soon after

WESTERN WILLET — BIRD SECOND ON LEFT IS
BLACK MA RSI I TERN

LITTLE FOLKS ALONG THE SHORE

231

hatching. In many ways they were a
clever tribe; their original great abun-
dance is proof of their fitness to cope
with their natural foes and life problems.
But they could not cope with man.

Also in other ways they were and are
a wonderful clan. Facts collected by the
extensive and intensive researches of the

coast, thence to South Africa; the north-
ern and red phalaropes, the able swim-
mers of their tribe, that so far have hid-
den their winter home, and probably
spend this season out on the ocean ; these
and many other wondrous facts brought
to light stir the least imaginative mind
and more than suggest that such birds

NOT A FISHING PICTURE NOTE THE YELLOWLEGS FLYING FROM THE FISHER-
MAN'S HEEL

naturalists of the Biological Survey bring
revelations about their migration habits
that are almost unbelievable ; the white-
rumped sandpiper that breeds on the Arc-
tic islands, 70° N.L., and winters 9,000
miles distant in the most southerly tip of
South America; the golden plover's
transoceanic journey of 2,500 miles from
Nova Scotia to northern South America
— supposedly one flight; the turnstone
and sanderling among others that, sum-
mering in Alaska, sweep across the 2,000
miles of Pacific to winter in the Hawai-
ian Islands; the journey of the ringed
plover from the breeding-ground in
Greenland and Ellesmere Land, south
and southeastward to the European

are far too wise and wonderful to serve
as broilers or stuffing for pies!

In a more local sense, also, there are
a hundred interesting things that may be
learned about these chaps while they are
alive. It may be the Northern phala-
ropes out on the water, bobbing around
like corks and twirling dizzily to pick up
insect prey; or the Wilson phalarope fe-
male, big, beautiful, and self-important
— a wild-life type of female emancipa-
tion— making her small hubby do the
housework; or it may be the comical
bloodless battles of the lesser yellowlegs ;
or the hoppering expeditions of the wil-
let in pasture or field; or the turnstone
displacing the rubbish on the shore in his

232

OUTING

quest of insect food; or it may be the
nest of that strange, erratic recluse, the
solitary sandpiper that uses the last year's
nest of robin or grackle for his new domi-
cile, and only recently gave up the secret
to science; always with the wader tribe
there is something interesting to be
learned.

Nor is it difficult to make the acquain-
tance of these birds. All that is neces-
sary is a pair of glasses and a small fund
of patience. They will usually meet a
visitor even more than half way. They
are a numerous family, and with the
smaller members differentiation of spe-
cies is not always easy, but most of
them are strongly and characteristically
marked, especially in the spring, and
these markings lend themselves fairly
well to classification. There is little of
that hopelessness that comes to the bird
student in pursuit of the tiny, flitting
warblers, quick darting in the tall tree-
tops, and all so alike in action and voice,
when he is studying the waders; nor lit-
tle of that provoking sameness about
them that makes so difficult the identifi-
cation of the grass-loving sparrows. Also,
the waders' confiding nature makes it
easy to get at close range.

Easy to Shoot

Early in the autumn, before the birds
become gun-shy, it is necessary only to sit
down near the mud-margin, and they are
almost bound to approach of their own
accord. I recall that I once spent an
hour trying to photograph a sanderling
family, and I failed for the reason that
they wTere too tame and insisted on run-
ning toward me at such close quarters
that they repeatedly spoiled my focus.
The lesser yellowlegs is quite as venture-
some and simple. The solitary sand-
piper is another confiding chap ; but his
neighbor, the spotted, is usually more
nervous and inclined to flit. The golden
and black-bellied plovers are timid, but
doubtless their sufferings have induced
this frame of mind.

How characteristic, too, are the voices
of the waders, and especially of the lar-
ger species! The coarse "Hai-ik!" of
the marbled godwit; the "Pilly-willet !"
of the chap that gets his name from his

cry; the "Killdeer!" of another that
names himself; the ripple and rolling
whistle of the upland plover — he is a
songbird to the plainsman in the sum-
mer; the "Tu-feu-feu!" of the yellow-
legs; the plaintive, quavering whistle of
the black-bellied plover that seems to call
in sadness over the deeds of shame done
against his kind ; these and many more
once heard and recognized can scarcely
be forgotten.

In studying the waders it is most inter-
esting to note the exact habitat of each
species, — their likes and dislikes in the
way of surroundings. Being a numerous
family, they show a very wide range of
habitat. Thus the upland plover, con-
trary to the traditions of most of his race,
prefers the high, dry country, the prairie
and the sandhills being his favorite sum-
mer home. The killdeer also loves the
dry plains, but he must have a pond or
stream close at hand where he may cool
his feet a part of the day. The wood-
cock is a lover of the oozy places in the
woods; the Wilson snipe likes the same,
but he must have a grassy cover on his
mud, preferably short cover, and a
woodsy bog or a prairie slough seem to
suit him equally well.

The solitary sandpiper likes to spend
his time about a muddy stream in the
timber or reedy brakes ; the spotted sand-
piper accepts much the same, but, better
still, he loves a rough shore strewn with
stones and fallen timber among which he
may dodge about at hide and seek with
himself. Both species of yellowlegs are
perhaps a little less partial than the fore-
going relatives, and almost any place
where they may get their feet wet will
do, providing it is out in the open. The
sanderling takes delight in running along
a sandy shore and playing tag with the
wavelets that swish in and out.

The golden and black-bellied plover,
when not out on the uplands, stick close
to the bare jutting points, the open and
wind-swept bars; the godwit and willet
choose much the same and linger about
the sandy shorelines devoid of cover —
and so on through the long list: each fills
a little niche in Nature's scheme of things
in the wet and oozy places.

The first plover voice of the spring-
time to shout across the inland prairies is

COULD SUCPI CONFIDING FELLOWS BE CALLED GAME?

that of the boisterous killdeer. And how
welcome he is! He comes at the break-
up when the first snow-water ponds
gleam blue as they ripple before the south
wind, and the first pastures and uplands
are bared of snow. Often, indeed, the
frosts must pinch him hard; yet each
spring he braves the weather anew. But
he must needs get an early start; for
though he does not go far to the north-
ward to find his summer home, he leads
a strenuous life otherwise and rears two
families. Early in April he crosses the
50's N.L., and often it is two weeks
later before any of his tenderer cousins
reach the same latitudes. But finally
they all come piping northward; they
reach the crest of their north-going wave
by mid-May, and early in June even the
most tardy are on their hatching-grounds
in the Arctic.

Yet strangely enough, at this same lat-
itude, by mid-July, while old Killdeer,
in some Dakota or Manitoba pasture, is
coaching his second family in the hard
ways of the world, many of his kindred
species already have returned from the
Arctic. Less than two months previous-
ly the pectoral and least sandpipers, the
lesser yellowlegs, northern phalaropes,
and others were north-going; now, after
disappearing into the wilds of the far
north and hatching, they are back again
southbound.

But though July sees the beginning of

[234]

the south-going movement, it is in Au-
gust that the return wave reaches its
height. Few of them are lovers of the
frosts of autumn; and by September the
grand army is in the Southland. Even
the killdeer that dares the cold of the
northern springtime does not wait for it
in the fall. The hardy chap of the au-
tumn is the Wilson snipe. He clings to
the marshes till late in October, and a
few of the most daring remain till driven
out by the freezing of the mud.

Long may they continue to live! —
these little people of the shore ; or, rather,
long may what is left of them live ! They
have suffered a persecution scarce de-
served by man's worst foe — a persecution
thoughtless, wanton, and undeserved;
yet, even now, if they were let alone
and allowed to run their busy, wonder-
ful lives unmolested, they might repopu-
late the mud-flats till their numbers be-
come at least a semblance of those of
earlier days — the days when they congre-
gated on the beaches in thousands where
now there are tens, and with their light-
hearted piping and whistling made the
daybreak world a joyous place where
now there is silence.

They come to us from afar in the au-
tumn ; they return to us from afar in the
spring; not a tithe of anything do they
seek from mankind ; they ask nothing but
a safe passport through the land. Might
they not have it?

TOURING IN A PELERINE

By HARRY KNOWLES

Illustrated with Photographs

77 Is Suited to Fair Weather and Foul, It Affords Warmth and

Protects from Rain

INCE every tourist should
carry, and must sometimes
wear, a waterproof garment,
the pelerine is to be recom-
mended because it is comfort-
able, convenient, and adaptable
to various uses as well as different kinds
of weather. A precedent for its use in
this country is found in the army cape
which, many persons regret, has not met
with popular favor for civilian dress.
The advantages of the pelerine over the
ordinary raincoat are many.

The pelerine is only a large cape,
made of a material containing sufficient
wool to assure warmth, at the same time
being waterproof. In addition it has a
hood for covering the head in rainy
weather, sufficiently large, be it under-
stood, to protect the widest brimmed
straw hat. There are also two pockets
of generous dimensions, one at either
side. They can be used for carrying
books, papers, and small articles for
the toilet or clothing.

The pelerine is adjusted like an
ordinary cape, that is, by throwing it
around the shoulders and letting it
hang freely from them. Two cloth
straps cross the chest and button
behind. The bottom is so wide
that the folds of the pelerine can
adjust themselves to the longest
stride and there is not the slight-
est hindrance in walking. One
can even run if occasion makes
haste necessary. There are two
slits in the pelerine, one on either
side, through which the hand
may be thrust for carrying cane
or alpine stock. When not
in use, these slits are closed NOT
by buttons.

So simple is this garment the tourist
will be surprised to find it has so much
adaptability for wear. It can be worn
like an ordinary cape, the collar fitting
snugly about the neck. But in pleasant
weather, the cape may be worn hanging
from the shoulders, entirely in the rear,
for full length. Thus it is not in the
way of the pedestrian, and is so light in
weight that he can make as rapid prog-
ress as he chooses.

A HUNCHBACK — MERELY A PELERINE OVER
A BUNDLE FASTENED TO THE SHOULDERS

[235]

236

OUTING

IN PLEASANT WEATHER THE PELERINE

MAY BE WORN HANGING FROM THE

SHOULDERS FOR FULL LENGTH

In rainy weather the pelerine is worn
buttoned in front for full length, the
hood over the head. It is true this
makes the wearer look not a little like
a monk in cowl, unless he smiles pleas-
antly. Being waterproof, there is no
possibility of getting wet, especially if
oiled shoes cover the feet. The suit be-
neath and nether garments as well are
kept perfectly dry. Dispensing wTith an
umbrella1, unnecessary under these con-
ditions, is a satisfaction in a windy storm
to be appreciated by all of experience.

Thus equipped the tourist is prepared
for trips in Maine or the Adirondacks

or elsewhere. He may travel content-
edly in the cool autumn air or misty
dog-days always assured that the cloth-
ing he wears will remain dry.

It is possible to adapt the pelerine to
uses for which it was not intended. It
can be rolled up and used for a pillow
or cushion on coaches, trains, or electric
cars where the seats are hard. It can
be spread over one at night when the
bed coverings are too thin or when one
is sleeping in the open, under the starry
heavens.

The pelerine is used quite generally
in Europe by the large number of per-
sons who make walking tours on the
Continent each summer. It will be seen
in the Black Forest, on the mer de
glace, at Grindelwald, on the St. Got-
thard pass, likewise in every nook and

WITH HOOD OVER THE HEAD, THE TOUR-
IST LOOKS LIKE A MONK IN COWL—
UNLESS HE SMILES PLEASANTLY

TOURING IN A PELERINE

237

cranny of that picturesque country
called the "Playground of Eu-
rope," namely, Switzerland. It is
adapted to all climates — from Na-
ples to Christiania — and to a
altitudes — from Dutch canals to
the summit of Mont Blanc.

Pelerines are worn in European
cities to take the place of raincoats.
And very acceptable they are.
They protect the wearer from fall-
ing rain or mist, and at the
same time he can carry a
large bundle under his pro-
tecting covering without any
fear that it will get wet. In
this manner I have protected
a suitcase in a severe storm
while going from railway
station to hotel.

Another advantage of the
pelerine is the small space
into which it can be folded
without any possibility of
damage or injury. The ma-
terial is so soft that the
creases will come out by
merely shaking the garment
Even the slip-on raincoats
can not be rolled into so
small a bundle as a pelerine,
which takes practically no
space when packed in a trunk
or valise, for it may be put into any odd
corner. It is, therefore, free from the
objection urged against the ordinary
raincoat, viz., that it is inconvenient to

TWO CLOTH

STRAPS CROSS THE
BUTTON BEHIND

CHEST AND

carry out of all proportion to its occa-
sional usefulness. Furthermore, as
shown, the pelerine can be worn at times
when the raincoat would be a nuisance.

Next month Mr. Knowles writes about THE RUCK-

SACKE— THE TRAVELER'S BEST FRIEND

A PLEA FOR THE SMALL FUR-
BEARERS

By EDWARD T. MARTIN

The Urgent Need of a Source of National Wealth That Is Being

Rapidly Wasted

'HE governments of the
United States, Great
Britain, and Japan have
agreed to protect certain
fur - bearing animals in
the far North. This is
right and proper. Fur should receive
protection as well as game, but why
such half-way measures? This country
was prime mover in saving the seals, but
closes its eyes to the slaughter of millions
of small fur-bearers going on continually
at home, as if the lives of mink and
skunk, of muskrat, coon, and possum
were nothing and their pelts valueless.
Many of these animals live right
around the farms, almost in the farmers'
back yards. So common are they that
people ask if they are of any account
and say, "Who ever heard of protecting
that 'broken-hearted little beast' the
muskrat, or coons, or skunks? Why
skunks are most pestiferous animals.
They steal chickens, eat birds' eggs,

and — and "

Correct. It is granted they do not
make as nice pets for my lady fair as
poodle dogs, lizards, and such, yet so-
ciety demands their fur to the extent

[238]

that during the winter just gone trap-
pers have been paid between four and
five million dollars for their raw pelts,
and the cost of their skins, when made
up, has been many times greater.

True, they occasionally have a hen or
chicken for dinner, but all in all are
less harmful than feathered game, ducks,
geese, and grouse, which are covered by
the law's protecting mantle. When
these birds visit a farm, root up sprout-
ing wheat, and eat ungathered corn,
the farmer shoos them away, counts up
the damage, and perhaps wishes he might
be permitted to use his gun; but that is
no reason why they should not be pro-
tected, so why count a few chickens
against skunk or mink? Skunks are not
so bad. Their motto is "Noli me
tangere." "Let me alone and I won't
bother you."

Nearly every state extends protection
to beavers, yet their muskrat cousins,
inoffensive and harmless, are slaugh-
tered throughout the land, spring, fall,
and winter, with but slight restrictions
and those in a very few states. Trap-
ping them commences with the first
frost of fall when they start gathering

A PLEA FOR THE SMALL FUR-BEARERS

239

roots, weeds, and swamp grass, a begin-
ning for their winter houses, although
many are but "kits" and only half
grown. It continues until the warm
weather of late spring when the rats'
hair begins dropping and the fur is of
very low grade.

Skins of these animals taken early in
the fall and late in the spring are of
little value — five or ten cents each — yet
trapping goes on as persistently as if the
fur was first class. Why? Let a truth-
ful trapper answer. He says: "I know
it is wrong, this trapping in August and
keeping it up until well into May, but
if I don't trap my neighbor will; might
as well get what I can while there is
any left."

After the marshes freeze, then comes
spearing, which is most cruel of all be-
cause it destroys whole colonies of rats.
The method is about like this: Rat
houses are built along the edges of shal-
low lakes or in sloughs and marshes
where the water is not over four feet
deep, their tops resting several feet
above the water level. They have a
warm nest, a sort of living-room inside
clear of the water, with entrance and
exit at the very bottom. The rats can
remain under water some considerable
time but must get air occasionally.
Enough penetrates the hollow of a
house for all purposes. When cold
weather freezes everything solid, there
is no place where they can breathe but
in one of these nests.

The man with a spear works on this
knowledge. He walks to the house
with as little noise as possible. If the
rats hear him, out they go. He knows
how long they can stay under water and
waits, silently, patiently. One by one-
they return. When the man is sure
they are all back, nestled together, filling
the hollow space, he drives his spear —
which is made of 3-8 round steel and
very sharp — with all his strength down-
ward through the house. Frequently it
pierces several rats, holding them
squirming, suffering, squealing, until a
wedge-shaped section can be cut through
the house and into the nest. Then they
are killed.

Whole communities are often de-
stroyed, a village of fifteen or twenty

houses gutted, the furred inhabitants
exterminated, not even a single pair left
alive. This is not all done with the
spear. If an opening is made the house
is ruined and every member of the fam-
ily using it perishes, because it gives
shelter neither from cold and storm nor
from predatory birds and beasts.

Man is not the rat's only enemy. To
have a mink enter a well-populated rat
house is like turning a ferret loose in a
rabbit warren. Wolves and all the cat
tribe are partial to a muskrat diet.
Owls and hawks have no choice between
a fat rat and quail or rabbit. With the
roof broken open, there is no way the
damage can be repaired, and between
winter storms and wandering animals,
it is drown, freeze, or be eaten. Conse-
quently the first movement toward musk-
rat protection should be in shape of a
law prohibiting spearing at any time
and under all conditions.

When the Floods Come

High water is another enemy of these
small far - bearers. Those who have
escaped traps in the fall and spears in
the winter are often driven from their
houses by a spring freshet. Then they
are more helpless than ever. They sit
hunched up in round balls on logs,
stumps, or some spot of high land. All
a shooter has to do is paddle quietly
along, or drift with the current down
stream, following the sunny bank, and
he can get within easy range of every rat
he sees. Large numbers are killed in
this manner, especially if it is a raw,
cold day and the bank on which the
sun shines is wind-protected and warm.

Again, perhaps the water has risen
gradually, lifting the ice with it until
the rat houses are submerged, then the
muskrats find a weak spot in the melt-
ing ice and gnaw and paw a hole
through to the surface. This done, they
come often for air and a gun-man, by
waiting, can exterminate the entire fam-
ily. If no freshet comes, it is traps — ■
traps everywhere, and lucky are the rats
that live through it all. They are very
prolific. But for this they would have
become extinct years ago. The second
step toward their protection should be

240

OUTING

to stop trapping in the breeding time
and, of course, shooting as well.

Is the game worth the candle? Is
there enough in the business to make
legislation desirable? The writer, until
he began getting data for this article,
had no idea of the volume of trade in
the pelts of these "back yard" fur-bear-
ers, of their value, nor of the thousands
of men and boys making money trapping
them and the many firms whose entire
business is selling their skins.

Many furs are shipped to London
and sold there at auction, sales being
held in December, January, and March,
with usually the largest offerings of
skins of the smaller animals in January.

Four prominent firms report their
offerings of muskrats in January to be
3,732,000 against 3,132,000 and 2,188,-
000 one and two years ago, the increase
being caused by a rapid advance in
prices during 1911 and 1912 which
doubled the army of trappers and made
muskrats — in common with all other
small fur-bearers — the sufferers. Janu-
ary offerings were to a considerable ex-
tent the catch of the previous winter and
for the season of 1913-14 many less
were taken, trappers reporting rats not
nearly so plentiful, which goes to show
that the end is in sight unless the law
takes up the matter.

To the January offerings should be
added March sales, skins used by home
manufacturers, and those handled by the
many other firms who make no report
and it probably would not be out of line
to say ten million muskrat skins were
sold during the season just past. Prices
ranged from thirty to forty cents a skin
for good stock — call it thirty-five — so
$3,500,000 is the toll paid to society by
the "broken-hearted little beast."

Then skunks. Three of the same firms
report their January offerings at 575,000
against 530,800 and 558,000, in 1913
and 1912 respectively. Add March
sales, home consumption, and the busi-
ness of other houses, and a million and
a half would be a very conservative esti-
mate. Prices varied from four dollars
and a half for the best to a dollar for
small Southern; say an average of three
dollars, and we have $4,500,000 paid
for skunk skins during the winter of

1913-14. Someone else can figure it for
the three years. I am afraid to.

Can one be surprised that at a banquet
given last December in St. Louis to the
buyers attending the auction of Govern-
ment furs from Alaska, the toast drunk
was:

"Here's to the skunk with stripe that's wide.
Success to the trapper that snares him.
A toast to the dealer who sells his hide,
But give thanks to the woman who wears
him."

Next comes Brer Possum, poor old
possum up a gum tree. January offer-
ings by the same firms in the London
market were 464,800 this year as com-
pared with 406,500 and 407,000 one
and two years ago. Still the increased
slaughter the same as it was with game.
The total, including March shipments
and sales by other dealers, must have
reached a1 million, probably more. Prices
were from a dollar down, say seventy
cents each. This would make $750,000
society paid the trappers for the gray,
bristly possum skins. It isn't such very
bad-looking fur, either.

Our Friend the Coon

Then we have his next-door neighbor,
the coon. According to the dealers' re-
port, he went to market 175,150 times
this year and 87,300 the other two
seasons.

Raccoons are found from New York
to Texas. Hunting them makes sport
for farmer boys in the North, who tramp
through the woods of a winter day and
when they find, high in a tree, the snow
melted around an opening leading to a
hollow, they know a sly old coon is lying
snug and comfortable inside, and the
warmth of his breath has caused the
thawing. Then with smoke or ax they
rout him out, add his fur to that already
drying on the barn, and figure a couple
of dollars more just as good as in their
pockets.

Nor are the farm boys of the North
the only ones benefited by the coon.
From Virginia to Texas, the plantation
darkies, helped by their mongrel curs,
account for many a ringtailed fur-bearer,
and the fur so taken by Northern farmer
lad or Southern negro all finds its way

A PLEA FOR THE SMALL FUR-BEARERS

241

to the nearest dealer. There 'is nothing
raised on farm or plantation, no crop,
no other fur — unless it should be that
of the possum — the money from which
is divided among so many different per-
sons, paid in such little dabs and spent
for so many small luxuries otherwise not
obtainable as this coon-skin cash.

With the lesser dealers handling so
large a percentage of the whole, it would
be fair to put the entire raccoon catch
at 600,000, which sold at from seven
dollars and a half for a few extra dark
skins down to fifty cents for small
Southern, a fair average being, perhaps,
a dollar and a half, or a total of
$900,000.

Mink, hunted persistently by a largely-
increased number of trappers, show from
their steady decrease that they will be
the first of the small fur-bearers to dis-
appear, if prices hold and nothing be
done in way of saving laws. Three
leading dealers report their January
offerings in London as 33,909. They
were 38,404 in 1913 and 38,366 in
1912.

Mink are shy and hard to catch. Few
are taken by boys. The greater part
are caught by professional trappers,
which reduces the number handled by
small dealers. Probably 70,000 would
be a fair estimate. They sold, a few
extra dark as high as eight dollars, some
small Southern as low as a dollar and
a half. If we call the price four dollars
a skin, it would give $280,000 as the
contribution of the mink tribe to the fur
business of last winter.

This makes a total for home fur-bear-
ers— those grown almost in the back
yards of the farmers — of Thirteen Mil-
lion One Hundred and Seventy Thou-
sand, caught, killed, and sold. Sounds
like pigeon-nesting time, does it not?
And for the raw skins was paid, as esti-
mated above, $9,930,000, one season's
business only. Of course this is an
estimate ; but here are some figures not
estimated.

Four prominent firms shipped and
sold at auction in London, as shown by
their reports of the January sales in
1912, 1913, and 1914, skins totaling in
number 13,989,876, all of the small fur-
bearers excepting perhaps 150,000 wolf

and bear, and this but part of the busi-
ness done by these houses. Which
shows how conservative an estimate I
have made and tempts me to increase
my totals. If the uncured skins of these
small animals sold for nearly ten million
dollars the past winter, what must their
value be when worked into garments!
The traffic in feathered game never
reached such figures, yet the greed of
man almost exterminated the birds be-
fore laws were passed that saved them.
The firms whose reports have been
used in writing this article are reckoned
as having handled more than one-third
of the entire catch. Of Arctic furs
they probably have, perhaps over that,
but not of the skins of home-caught
animals.

Only a Part of the Whole

The opening day of the before-men-
tioned Government sale in St. Louis,
there were present in the auction-room
nearly two hundred fur dealers, buyers,
and manufacturers. Fifteen came from
European or Canadian cities. The
others all represented American houses,
yet many of the smaller dealers whose
homes were at a distance did not attend.
Surely the outside firms for home con-
sumption and export must have handled
as much as estimated, very likely more.
Yes, the estimate, bold as it appears, is
most conservative.

No mention is made of otter, fisher,
marten, and badger, the catch of which
is small. They, too, certainly require
protection, particularly the badger, a fat,
lazy fellow of not much value and very
little harm. Nor has anything been
said of cougars, wolves, lynxes, bears,
and animals of a like kind for whose
scalps bounties are offered and whose
decrease is to be desired. Putting the
bear in such company may be rough on
him, for after all he isn't such a bad
sort.

"You will never get protection for
Varmints' like mink and skunk," said a
farmer not long ago, discussing these
animals and the question of a close sea-
son for them. "Why, skunks have killed
eight or ten of my chickens this winter
and my neighbor Bill Jones has been

242

OUTING

trapping them since last fall. He's
caught twenty or more."

"\ es," he was answered, "and how
much were your chickens worth?"

" 'Bout six dollars, maybe." was his
reply.

"What did Mr. Jones get for his
skunk skins?"

"Ain't sold them yet. Expects $3
;e."

"\ es," the writer said, "three times
twenty are sixty. Looks like the bal-
ance of trade was in favor of the skunk,
: it?"
! I never figured that way."
d as he walked off, rubbing
his chin and thinking.

There isn't even that much against
possums and muskrats. both of which are
very harmless. The first feeds on wild
fruit and berries, once in a while a roast-
ing ear. occasionally fish. The rats eat
roots and underwater shoots of aquatic
plants.

There is more wealth in these back
yard fur-bearers than in feathered game,
but the birds have rich and powerful
friends while every hand is against the
animals. Will not some one come to
the front in their behalf? I
prompt action is taken they will follow
the bison and pigeon to the land where
go the snows of yesteryear.

There is a sameness in human nature
the world over where something is to be
had for nothing. Get what you can, as
soon as you can, then come back for
more. It was so in the old davs with

game. It is so now with fur and will
keep on being so until the animals are
exterminated or the law raises its hand
with the command: "STOP."

Really now. isn't there as much reason
why the individual States should care
for our home fur-bearers, with values
running into millions, as for the general
government to make protection of
Alaska seals a matter of diplomacy and
treaty? Are not the proceeds better dis-
tributed? Does not the cash go more
directly to the needy ones, to homes of
little wealth, to those who are struggling
in the endeavor to make both ends meet,
than does the money from Alaska which
as a rule fattens the bank account of a
few large corporations?

Wise laws will keep this back yard
fur money many years for the common
people. First, give a close season vary-
ing according to location, but on the
average from about March 1st to Oc-
tober 1st. Stop the spearing of musk-
rats. Don't allow them shot in time of
freshet. Prohibit destroying of dens
and burrows. Protect them as are ne-ts
of birds. Go this far and note results.
If other laws are needed, conditions will
suggest them. No fear of their being
too rigid, for furs will advance beyond
even their present high level, and with
every country boy a trapper, the trouble
will be to keep the animals from extinc-
tion.

Let our lawmakers consider the matter
carefully, decide what is best, then act
promptly.

THE NEW IDEA IN GYMNASTICS

By MACK WHELAN

How a Series of Psychological Experiments at New Haven Has

Proved That the Instinct of the Small Boy Who "Hated"

Calisthenics W as Right

IN practically all the colleges of the country a certain amount of
gymnasium work is required, at least during the first two years
of the course. For years many teachers of calisthenics have devoted
their major time and attention to making these exercises as attrac-
tive and useful as possible. Yet they have usually been distasteful
to the students with the exception of the comparatively few men
who have acquired more than ordinary skill on some particular
apparatus. Pleasure, the vital element in all exercise, has been
lacking. Dr. Anderson, of Yale, one of the foremost exponents
and teachers of gymnastic work in the college world, thinks that
he has found the secret of this distaste and also the remedy. The
article which follows tells how, why, and what.

HEN a man has
spent a lifetime
building something
up and has watched
his structure grow
from a modest be-
ginning to a great, far-reaching edifice,
it shows pretty broad mental perspective
for him to turn around and help tear it
down again.

Professor William G. Anderson, di-
rector of the Yale University gymnas-
ium, and head of the Department of
Physical Training, is broad — across the
forehead as well as across the shoulders.
In addition to being recognized as one
of the half dozen authorities of the coun-
try on physical training and gymnastic
matters, Dr. Anderson, when some years
younger, was one of the ablest exponents
of difficult feats of skill. He can still
do such exploits as the "giant swing"
and "the flyaway" with a degree of ease
and form which makes it difficult for
the spectator to understand why it is
that a good many other people have
broken a good many bones trying to

achieve these proofs of mastery over the
horizontal bar.

Under his direction, a raw, skinny
freshman can receive a prescription for
exact exercises, which, if followed
throughout his undergraduate course,
will enable him to duplicate the lines of
figure wrhich artists are so fond of sketch*
ing as the silhouette of the ideal college
man, when the time comes for his ad-
miring parents to witness him receiving
his degree. Members of the faculty and
business men in New Haven have reason
to thank Dr. Anderson for a new lease
of physical efficiency.

The basis on which the Yale physical
director built up his system at New
Haven was the theory that calisthenic
and gymnastic wTork is the best means
of attaining proper physical development
for the average man. Yet, after years
of experiment, Dr. Anderson has come
to the conclusion that this basis is wrong.
To obtain the best results he believes
gymnasiums throughout the country
must throw overboard the ideas which
have been clung to in the past and build

[243]

244

OUTING

up a new system founded on the in-
herent love for competitive play.

It would be an injustice, not only to
Dr. Anderson, but to many other cap-
able physical directors throughout the
country, to say that they have just
awakened to the truths which are re-
sponsible for a revolution in the physi-
cal department at New Haven. The fact
that ideal results were not being at-
tained under the old S5^stem of calis-
thenics has been plain for some time,
and progressive gymnasium heads have
been modifying their tactics accordingly.

The particular interest which attaches
to the conversion of Dr. Anderson is
that by a series of psychological experi-
ments he has produced scientific evidence
which proves why the professors have
been wrong and why the small boy who
"hated" class drills in the gymnasium
has been right. At Yale, it has never
been difficult for a man anxious to com-
pete for one of the athletic teams to be
excused from forced work under the
direction of the physical department. Be-
ginning next fall, however, calisthenics
at New Haven will be put in the back-
ground and the entire effort will be con-
centrated on getting every man in the
University interested in some form of
competitive sport.

Out for the "Mastication Champion-
ship"

The series of tests which have led
Dr. Anderson to conclusions which will
have a sweeping effect not only in this
country but in Europe grew out of a
good-natured controversy with Professor
Irving Fisher, the Yale economist and
investigator. Some years ago the two
faculty members collaborated in a study
on the "Effect of Diet on Endurance."
Nine healthy Yale students volunteered
for this experiment in which thorough
mastication was one of the essentials.
Dr. Anderson took charge of the various
measurements by which the scientific
conclusions were obtained.

The nine men were divided into
squads, which subsisted on various diets.
Careful mastication was requested. Ex-
ercise was in no case indulged in to a
greater extent than had previously been

the custom. In most cases it was less.
That the undergraduates were consci-
entious on this point was proven by the
fact that most of them complained of
feeling "logy." This overzeal was cor-
rected, but in no case was exercise more
systematic than previously. Practising
on the endurance tests by which progress
was measured was expressly forbidden.

The students became so interested in
the study that they were particular to
avoid any exercise which could becloud
the experiment. The tests themselves
were too far apart to give any chance
for their repetition to give "knack."
They were too severe to count as bene-
ficial exercise. The outcome, which at-
tracted wide scientific attention at the
time, showed that between the first test,
recorded before they had received their
mastication instructions, and the last
one, recorded at the conclusion of the
experiment, the men achieved great
gains in endurance.

"That we are correct in ascribing the
results, especially in endurance, to diet-
etic causes alone cannot reasonably be
doubted when it is considered that no
other factors of known significance were
known to aid in this result," said Pro-
fessor Fisher, in summing up his con-
clusions on the experiment. "On the
contrary, so far as the operation of other
factors was concerned, these must have
worked against rather than for the re-
sults achieved. It is, of course, still
possible that some unobserved element
has crept into the case, to which, and
not to the diet, the improvement in
endurance was due; but in view of all
the facts recited, this is extremely im-
probable."

When Dr. Fisher and Dr. Anderson
came to discuss the significance of the
results attained, the Yale prrysical di-
rector found himself at odds with the
conclusions reached by his colleague in
the Department of Economics. Dr. An-
derson could not subscribe to the doc-
trine that "no other factors of known
significance were allowed to aid in the
result." Having personally recorded the
various measurements of individuals par-
ticipating in the tests, he had been im-
pressed with the remarkable degree of
interest which each was taking in the

THE NEW IDEA IN GYMNASTICS

245

progress of the experiment. The stu-
dents were keen to know how their in-
dividual results compared with that of
the other fellow's. Something of a rivalry
sprang up as to which man would win
the "mastication championship." It
looked to him as though the competitive
element, instead of being a negligible
quantity, had become the dominant ele-
ment in the trial.

"I believed an 'unobserved element'
played some part in that endurance
test," said Dr. Anderson, in describing
his own viewpoint. "This element was
attention to the tests which the men
often gave unconsciously and consciously.
They discussed the tests among them-
selves frequently and gave thought to
them."

At the particular time when the two
members of the faculty at New Haven
were engaged in conducting these experi-
ments, Dr. Anderson was particularly
discouraged over the progress of his at-
tempt to have that particular undergrad-
uate generation graduated, with sound
bodies as well as sound minds. In spite
of everything which could be done to
impress upon them the need for building
up physical efficiency to fight life's bat-
tle, he knew that the consensus of opin-
ion among the student body wras that the
gymnasium course was a nuisance.
Through his connection with other
branches of constructive physical engi-
neering, he realized that this spirit was
not peculiar to New Haven.

"Gym makes me tired. I'd rather
play shinny," said the small boy.

"Here's a nice afternoon when I'd
like to get out and kick a football — and
I've got to go to that cursed compul-
sory gym. class and work my arms like
an automaton," said the undergraduate.

"I hate to keep putting on weight, but
even the smell of a gymnasium annoys
me," said the stout business man.

It was no secret that they all cut
classes whenever possible. This was a
eontingency not presupposed in the sta-
tistics. Physical directors consulted their
theories. It was set forth by irrefutable
evidence that if a person would go
through certain exercises he could in-
crease his enjoyment of life, improve his
physical efficiency, add to his capacity for

work, and lengthen the span of life. Yet
the perverse human race showed a gen-
eral tendency to ignore the opportunity.
Even when at schools and universities,
they were forced to go through the drills
regularly, the results were generally dis-
appointing. Some few men would bene-
fit greatly, but most of them would not
be improved to any extent.

Thinking over the lack of interest in
his gymnastic classes and making a men-
tal comparison with the enthusiasm of
the nine students who had laughingly
set out to compete for the "mastication
championship" caused Dr. Anderson to
study his own problem from a new
angle.

With and Without Thinking

No argument was needed to prove a
correlation of mind and body. As in the
case of other live physical educators,
Dr. Anderson recognized a co-operation
between the physical and the pyschic. He
needed no thesis to convince him of the
subtle connection between the two ele-
ments in the individual striving to do
something for himself. In the case of
the student or pupil working very often
under compulsory direction, however, he
realized that to obtain the best results it
was necessary to demonstrate conclusive-
ly how the mental state affects the work-
ings of the body. Originally, with the
intention of impressing upon his classes
the importance of making their minds
work while going through the calisthenic
carriculum, the Yale physical director set
out to arrive at scientific deductions
which would prove the point with a con-
clusiveness that would impress itself for-
cibly even on the most happy-go-lucky
NewT Haven Freshman. After consider-
able deliberation he initiated a series of
experiments to showT "The Effect of
Thought upon Gain in Muscular
Strength."

For the tests, the Yale director select-
ed from the class men who were not at
all keen on gymnastics. That W. G.
Anderson does not lack a sense of humor
wTas shown by the fact that' in order to
prove his point he asked for volunteers
who disliked gymnastic work sufficiently
to be willing to become scientific experi-

246

OUTING

ments in return for being excused from
the required class exercises. So there is
every probability that the ten men he
finally selected were the most discoura-
ging propositions from the physical di-
rector's point of view in New Haven.

They were given the collegiate
strength test and then told to keep away
from the gymnasium. They were asked
to report a week later at the same hour
and were then requested to again essay
the strength tests. Of the ten, five men
had been given no intimation of the ba-
sis on which the tests were being con-
ducted. The other five were requested
to think of the strength tests, but under
no conditions to practise them.

The contrasts in the records made by
the two squads were surprising. In the
case of the five men who had had their
enthusiasm roused, a general gain in
Strength was indicated, while in the case
of the five who had not "thought" of the
work a loss in strength efficiency was
shown in the succeeding tests. One man
who "thought" showed a gain of over
230 points in the strength test total. The
average gain was over sixty points. Suc-
ceeding tests in which the process was
reversed, the squad which previously had
been uninformed being asked to think,
and vice versa, upheld the general prin-
ciples evolved from the first experiments.

"In the case of the men who 'thought'
of the work and then tried the tests,
there was one extra factor working in
their favor," said Dr. Anderson in dis-
cussing the outcome. "The power of at-
tention was helping them, while the
others had only the practice of the trials.
The entire series of experiments tended
to prove the general proposition, how-
ever. In the case of Mr. C, for in-
stance, there was a gain of 157 units
when he did not think and a gain of over
170 units when he did. In the case of
Mr. E., a particularly non-athletic type,
by the way, there was a loss of 41 units
when he did not think and a loss of only
30 when he did, hence a gain of 10 units.

"In making any study of this character
we must all recognize the value of even
limited practice, which means better ad-
justment of the neuro-muscular machin-
ery. I would not think of advancing the
proposition that these tests of themselves

prove that the total gain in strength was
due only to thinking, because it was not.
It was due to a combination of thought
and unconscious muscular contraction
plus the stimulus of interest, the gain by
limited practice, and the spur of compe-
tition. But that the 'unobserved element'
mentioned by Professor Fisher and other
students of the subject was not possibly
but absolutely a factor in the result, I do
consider evident."

As far as his own problems were con-
cerned Dr. Anderson realized that the
experiments he had conducted did not
show the way toward insuring any per-
manent interest in gymnastic work. It
merely proved scientifically something
which had always been obvious — that the
arousing of interest in the individual
meant increased efficiency in strength and
in endurance. At about this time a mem-
ber of the Yale faculty who dropped in
to see the physical director brought up a
topic which every healthy spectator at
games has discussed — the after-fatigue
caused by "working with the competi-
tors." This man, who at the time was
projecting some research work of an
exacting nature, remarked that he had
made up his mind not to attend any of
the football games on the season's
schedule.

Exercise in Looking on

"There is nothing I enjoy more," said
the caller, who had participated in ath-
letics during his undergraduate career.
"I will miss going out to the Field these
fine Saturdays, but I find that the end
of the game leaves me more exhausted
than a week's work."

The sympathy and understanding
which this man had for the sport was
such that as a spectator he experienced
almost as great fatigue of mind and body
as though he had actually been a partici-
pant. Impressed with the results of his
other experiments, Dr. Anderson decided
to attempt to throw additional light on
the relation between musculature and the
mind.

"In these tests, I did not ask the sub-
ject to exercise," says Dr. Anderson. "I
merely asked him to watch attentively
for a period of five or more minutes an-

THE NEW IDEA IN GYMNASTICS

247

other man who was contracting the biceps
against a weight. The observers main-
tained stoutly that they did no work at
the time, but the evidence proved other-
wise."

The greatest gain under these condi-
tions was made by a Mr. C, a Freshman
in the Sheffield Scientific School. His
arm was measured carefully with a Gu-
lick spring tape. The locality was out-
lined in ink and a series of measurements
were previously made in order to get the
degree of variation when the elbow was
flexed. The measurements of this stu-
dent showed an astonishing amount of
sympathetic energy expended.

"C. was a young man of the type with
ability to concentrate mind upon any
given proposition," explained Mr. An-
derson. "The increase in the size of his
biceps under these conditions was par-
ticularly notable. In practically every
case the measurements left no doubt as
to the fact that watching another man
closely while he was exercising caused a
sympathetic expansion of muscular ma-
chinery in the system of the spectator. A
second test was made with a sensitive
manometer attached to a curved tube
containing a mercury column. The on-
looker held the bulb in the closed hand
while watching the worker. There was
a noticeable displacement of mercury due
to unconscious pressure on the manometer
during the trial. When the weights be-
came almost too heavy for the worker
and he was obliged to strain the muscles
the variation in the position of the spec-
tator's muscles was particularly appar-
ent."

In addition to the experiments de-
scribed, Dr. Anderson conducted others,
all of which tended to emphasize the fact
that the regular gymnastic and calis-
thenic schedule did not bear results be-
cause the men compelled to adhere to it
did not have their hearts in the work.
Mechanical following of prescribed ex-
ercises was fruitless of results because,
while all students could be compelled to
do the setting up drill at the same time,
nothing could prevent their thoughts
from being scattered. Instead of think-
ing of the exercise and what it was in-
tended for, the undergraduates could con-
centrate upon any other topic. So Dr.

Anderson has finally come to the conclu-
sion that the only kind of efficient spur
toward physical development for the av-
erage individual is competitive sport.

"Of the two great instincts that impel
men to act, the fighting or competitive
is all-powerful," he says. "I have come
to the conclusion that there is little to be
stimulated in formal gymnastics where
the boy simply follows the dictates of a
teacher. In competitive sport he can and
must see, think, judge, decide, and react.
He cannot go through the motions with-
out thinking. It is certain that, if he is
a normal human being, he must call upon
those extra reserves of energy which in
the case of a gymnastic exercise which
does not interest him are simply out of
the play."

Significant of the general tendency all
over the world to get away from the hot-
house variety of athletics are the observa-
tions made by Dr. Anderson on a trip
abroad made some months ago for the
purpose of studying conditions there. In
addition to a stay at various other cen-
ters of physical training, he spent a num-
ber of weeks at the Royal Institute,
Stockholm, generally recognized as one
of the cradles of the principles of the art
and the home of the famous Ling sys-
tem. The Yale director had tried the
experiment of introducing this system at
New Haven, but it proved entirely too
complicated, the student body showing a
universal lack of interest in the endless
detail involved. Anderson found that the
lure of the Olympic Games, the last set
of which were staged at Stockholm, had
caused a general feeling of impatience
with the complicated calisthenic exer-
cises. More and more of the younger
generation are going in for competitive
sport.

Roo?n for All

The development which makes the
contemplated change at New Haven par-
ticularly timely is that in the near future
the new Yale athletic fields, now under
construction, should be ready for under-
graduate tenancy. This will provide fa-
cilities so that all students can, when
the weather is right, take part in all va-
rieties of out-of-door sports. The main

248

OUTING

purpose of Dr. Anderson and his brother
and able assistant, Henry S. Anderson,
who is floor director of the Yale gymna-
sium, will be to interest the first year men
in some form of competitive athletics,
not necessarily as candidates for one of
the 'varsity teams, but as enthusiasts try-
ing to do something in the physical realm
better than someone else.

Instead of dividing up the student
body into large calisthenic squads, leagues
will be formed in a large number of
sports, a schedule will be worked out,
and every man given a chance to pit his
physical abilities against his fellow's.
Basketball, handball, volleyball, squash,
boxing, fencing, wrestling, football, soc-
cer, baseball, and all forms of track and
field athletics will be embraced in the
g5'-mnasium curriculum, the ultimate aim
being to dovetail the indoor work into
a preparatory course toward sending the
student body out of doors to keep the
grass from getting too long on the great
new athletic plant which is being built
around the new "bowl," where Yale
will at last have room to seat its foot-
ball thousands.

Dr. Anderson has by no means
reached the conclusion that gymnastics
and calisthenics should be entirely
thrown into the discard. With the at-
tention of the student once attracted
to his own physical condition, he feels

that instead of his having to send for
delinquents, men who are shown by their
own lack of efficiency in competition will
come to him and ask for a gymnasium
prescription which will build them up
for better work in the competition that
they select.

While other heads of college physical
departments have not given evidence of
having weighed the problem in the bal-
ance as scientifically as Prof. Anderson,
there has been a steadily increasing tend-
ency to get away from the fixed gym-
nastic routine which was followed* so
mathematically some years ago. C. V. P.
Young, an old football veteran, now
physical director at Cornell, has for
some time been pioneering in the work
of putting red blood as well as science
into the gymnastic system. Dr. Meylan
at Columbia, Prof. Walter Magee of
the University of California, Dr. Ray-
croft at Princeton, R. Tait MacKenzie
of the University of Pennsylvania, and
other leading men engaged in the work,
have been smashing old calisthenic idols
and shaping their courses, not by pre-
scribing the exercises which, if faith-
fully followed, would produce physical
perfection, but by counting as the essen-
tial preliminary awakening the competi-
tive athletic instinct.

Ps)'chology has demonstrated that the
email boy who "hates" gym is right.

WHAT CAN BE DONE WITH CON-
CENTRATED FOODS

By GEORGE FORTISS

How Manufacturers Have Helped the Camper by Reducing Bulk
without Destroying Nutritive Values

'OT so very long ago the
man who went into a new
country, whether on a
canoe trip, on a tramp, on
horseback, whether for
exploration, or adventure,
or sport, gauged the extent of his pil-
grimage by the number of pounds of food
he could carry. If he knew his business
his grub-sack contained a judicious selec-
tion of the most nourishing and at the
same time lightest foods. Generally he
took such staples as beans and cornmeal,
and a little flour, tea, sugar, salt, and a
bit of salt meat, relying on his gun or his
rod to supply a larger diet of meat and
fish, and on the country itself to afford
vegetable products in the shape of ber-
ries, etc. But as the old order has
changed in most things, it has also
changed in tr : camper's larder, and
nowadays it is possible for him who
heeds the call of the Red Gods to take
the trail with about as complete an as-
sortment of foods as graces his home
table, and in so doing to carry but half
the weight of the old orthodox beans,
cornmeal, flour, etc.

Perhaps the greatest boon to the
camper, cruiser, or other prober of the
unsettled places has been the dehydra-

tion of food products — in other words,
the removal of all water from vegetables
and fruits and their preservation in a
dried state without impairment of their
nutritive values. There are a number
of manufacturers of dehydrated food
products in this country to-day, all of
whom turn out most of the standard
vegetables and fruits in dehydrated
form. When you consider that the re-
moval of the water from the average
vegetable leaves it but one twelfth as
heavy as in its natural condition, you
get some idea of the advantages of de-
hydrated food on long journeys where
grub for the entire trip must be toted.

Some question was raised in the in-
fancy of dehydration of foods as to
whether their cell structure, and hence
their nutritive value, was impaired by
the drying process, but general opinion
to the contrary now prevails. In drying
the products care is taken not to break
down cell structure, and when the dried
foods have been soaked in water until
they have once more taken up their
natural quantity of moisture and have
regained their specific gravity, they are
considered just as good as before they
were put through the process.

The homely but nutritive bean has

[249]

250

OUTING

long been the favorite vegetable for long
trips because of its lightness in compari-
son to other products of equal nourish-
ment, and because it "went farther"
when cooked. Thirty pounds of beans
was more than the allotment by a good
deal that the average man allowed his
pack to contain when starting on even a
long trip. Nowadays he could carry
the same amount of beans in dehydrated
state at a weight of only two pounds.

Here are the relative proportions of
some of the staple products in natural
and dehydrated states.

Dry Fresh

Apples 1 lb. equals 8 lbs.

Cabbage " " 18

Corn " " 12

Carrots " " 13

Eggplant " " 16

Pumpkins " " 12

Potatoes " " 6

Onions " " 12

Peas " " 8

Spinach " " 14

Tomatoes " " 20

It requires but a moderate stretch of
the imagination to behold, when these
proportions are considered, a camp larder
replete with all the staples of a first-class
hostelry, ample to last a month, and still
well within the carrying ability of two
ordinary citizens.

Powdered Eggs and Milk

In addition to the dehydrating of
vegetables and fruits and their conse-
quent peculiar adaption to the camper's
outfit, science has accomplished a num-
ber of other stunts that the wanderers
of the wilds have had reason to be
thankful for. Among these has been
the reduction of eggs to a powder which
when mixed with water takes on once
more the consistency of the natural prod-
uct and is palatable as well as nutri-
tious. More than one weary camper has
opened a packet of egg powder weigh-
ing a few ounces as night shut him alone
in the forest, and over his camp fire has
soon conjured into being a marvelous
dish of scrambled eggs.

Manufacturers of egg powder declare
that one pound of their product is equiv-
alent to four dozen eggs. If you want
two eggs you use one and one half tea-

spoonfuls of the powder, three teaspoon-
fuls for four eggs, and so on.

Then there is that other concentrated
staple, milk powder. It is made from
raw milk, from which all water has
been removed, leaving merely the milk
solids. Four tablespoons in water equal
a pint of milk. With egg powder and
a dash of milk made from milk powder,
a mighty palatable omelet can be pre-
pared.

Milk powder is one of the latest
boons to the camper. Years ago when
condensed milk in cans, and later evapo-
rated milks, made their appearance, they
seemed to have established an acme of
concentration that would be impossible
to surpass. But cans of condensed milk
were heavy, though they did undeniably
put milk within the grasp of men in the
wilds who otherwise would have been
hopelessly out of reach of this useful
type of food. A pound tin of milk pow-
der will color a good many more cups
of coffee than a pound can of condensed
milk.

With the coming of concentrated milk
and concentrated eggs, have arrived also
concentrated coffee and tea. The coffee
is the essence of the coffee berry with all
the waste parts removed. It comes in
the shape of a fine, light, sifted powder,
and a teaspoonful put in a cup of hot
water makes a cup of beverage in a
second, without boiling or other delay.

Concentrated or tabloid tea is made
by compressing tea leaves from which
the heavier stems have been removed.
It comes in little cubes, of almost negli-
gible weight, and one cube makes a cup.
In a four-ounce packet of such tea there
are one hundred cups.

In Germany there is a concern whose
products have just begun to find their
way into the larders of the campers in
this country. This concern prepares
much of the concentrated food used by
the Germany army. In little cloth sacks,
looking like detached sausages, or for
that matter, like the old cotton bags
of tobacco we used to see, comes a dried
compound, which, when wate/ is added
and the mass heated, develops into a
thick, heavy, nutritious soup. This is
erbswurst and is compounded of beans,
peas, lentils, corn meal, meat, and sea-

WHAT CAN BE DONE WITH CONCENTRATED FOODS 251

soning. This food can be prepared in
many ways. As mentioned before it can
be thinned out to soup, or it can be
eaten as gruel or porridge, or just a lit-
tle water may be added, and it can be
fried as rice or cornmeal cakes are fried.
In all forms it is palatable and exception-
ally nourishing.

Here is a sample grub kit, using 3 good
combination of concentrated and regula-
tion foods, for four persons who wish
to go fairly light on a two weeks' camp-
ing tour or cruise:

Oatmeal, 5 lbs.
Wheat flour, 15 lbs.
Cornmeal, 10 lbs.
Concentrated sweetening,
Sugar, 10 lbs.
Coffee, concentrated, 1 lb.
Tea, tabloid, 4 oz.
Lard, 2 lbs.

bottle.

Baking powder, 1 lb.
Bacon, 8 lbs.
Salt, 2 lbs.
Pepper, 1 oz.
Soups, concentrated, 1 lb.
Cabbage, dehydrated, 1 lb.
Tomatoes, dehydrated, 1 lb.
Onions, dehydrated, 1 lb.
Prunes, dehydrated, 1 lb.
Spinach, dehydrated, 1 lb.
Potatoes, dehydrated, 5 lbs.
Egg powder, 1 lb.
Milk powder, 2 lbs.
Erbswurst, 2 lbs.
Raisins, 1 lb.

The total weight of this kit is seventy-
six pounds. Were fresh or non-concen-
trated products used to replace the de-
hydrated articles and to render equal
nourishment, the weight of the outfit
would be increased about 215 pounds,
or far beyond the carrying ability of the
campers.

THE

WORLD

SPORT

American A postscript to some re-

MoneP1C mar^s m tn*s department in
a recent issue on various
misunderstandings abroad of the con-
duct of athletics in this country comes
in a letter from Mr. Robert M. Thomp-
son. Mr. Thompson was president of
the American Olympic Committee at
the Stockholm games, and still holds
that position. Therefore what he has to
say is authoritative in a final sense.
Touching the matter of "lavish expendi-
ture" which seems to loom large in the
minds of some of our foreign critics,
Mr. Thompson says:

"The American Olympic Committee
spends no money whatever on the prep-
aration of a team. It provides tryout
games at which any athlete can present
himself and the winners compete at a
final, the winners of which constitute the
Olympic team. This, as I understand
it, is the old idea of the Olympic games.
It is thorough democracy of sport, in
which the best man wins. After the
team is selected the committee takes
charge and pays the entire expense con-
nected with the games; but as the final
tryout is only a day or two before the
departure for the games, you will see
that any expenditure made is on the
games and not in the. preparation for the
games. Our last Olympic team con-
tained men who were prize-winners, but
who were quite unknown in the world
of sport before the tryouts."

Why Why, then, do the Amer-

w-V icans win? This is not a
Win? i-i • i

rhetorical question purely,

nor is it a burst of patriotic ardor

[252]

There is an explanation, not in detail
merely, but in spirit, in broad terms.
Here is what Mr. Thompson has to
say on this point, quoting in part from
two letters recently received from him
at this office:

"We furnish splendid athletes because
the interest in athletics begins in the pri-
mary schools, or even before them, and
continues right through the univer-
sities. To my mind the advantage of
the Olympic games is that they keep the
Olympic idea before the youngsters,
make them lead steady lives, with a con-
stant high ideal before them, so devel-
oping both mind and body. A country
that can produce a team as good as the
Olympic team that went to Stockholm
(and by good I mean not only athleti-
cally but mentally and morally) is a
good country.

"There is published in Paris a month-
ly pamphlet, devoted to the Olympic
committees, which is edited or controlled
by the president of the International
Committee, Baron Pierre de Coubertin.
In, I think, the September number,
1912, there was an editorial referring
to our team, in which warning was
given to the other nations that if they
hoped to compete with America it must
be not through mere attention to phys-
ical details, but by acquiring the spirit
of patriotism which existed in the Amer-
ican team. As he expressed it, every
man on the team felt that he was acting
not for himself but for the country he
represented, and so submitted himself to
discipline and to regulations, and when
he competed put in the last ounce that
was in him, not to win honor for him-

the world of sport

253

self but for his country. I believe this
description was absolutely true."

Gould It is a remarkable record

cSTion that Jay Gould has t0 his
credit. His recent victory

over George F. Covey, claimed to be
the professional court tennis champion
of the world, was only one more in a
long string marked by only a single de-
feat in an important match. That de-
feat, be it noted, was suffered when he
was a boy of seventeen. The fact that
he can now lay claim to the title of open
court tennis champion of the world is
not so important as it might seem, al-
though valid enough. Presumably if
there were any game which only two
men could or would play, and those two
arranged a tournament, the winner
would be champion of the world at that
game. What concerns us more, how-
ever, is this demonstration of amateur
ability against a professional in a field
where the professional has usually
reigned supreme. In court tennis suc-
cess is preeminently dependent on prac-
tice— and then more practice. There is
where the professional scores. It is his
business to practice; that is what he is
paid for. Therefore the crown of glory to
the amateur is by so much the greater
when he carries off the victory. Gould
has shown again — as did Mr. Ouimet
last fall — that there is no magic in the
title of professional. As another cham-
pion once remarked, "The bigger they
are the harder they fall."

Those Wars and rumors of wars

ConfracH are convulsing tne baseball
world this spring. The ad-
vent of the Federal League has brought
confusion and discord where once were
peace and order. With the merits of
the case we have no special concern. The
destinies of the Federal League are on
the knees of the gods — in this case the
"fans." If the Federal teams play good
ball presumably a considerable number
of people will pay good money to see
them. If not, not. But there are one
or two minor considerations that are dis-
tinctly interesting. We cannot sympa-
thize in the least with the outraged atti-
tude that many of the supporters of the

two major leagues are adopting. There
is nothing sacred about a baseball league
that we have been able to discover. If
it is a sport, then the field of sport is
proverbially open to all, from cook's son
to son of a belted earl. If it is a busi-
ness, then anyone with money enough to
support a team and judgment enough to
get the players would seem to be free to
enter the field. The allegation of sa-
cred contracts broken by the players who
have "jumped" does not appear sound.
The law of contracts is measurably
clear, and the courts have never shown
any unwillingness to rule when cases
were brought properly to their attention.
A baseball player who breaks his con-
tract is liable to suit for such a breach in
the same way as is any other man who
commits a similar offense, no more and
no less. We venture the prophecy that
a test case would demonstrate the truth
of this statement. The question of the
peculiar validity of a player's contract
as against other forms of contracts is a
vague one and should be adjudicated.
The attitude of holy horror is not ten-
able; neither is the appellation of outlaw
as employed in this connection. A man
who breaks a contract is not, ipso facto,
an outlaw, and no amount of argument
or epithet can make him one. He may
be subject to judgment for damages, but
the law provides means for determining
this fact and for assessing the amount
of such damages. Therefore let us have
less loose talk and a little action.

Virginia The State of Virginia has
Marching seen jts opportunity — and

backwards .... r^., T T

avoided it. 1 he Hart-
White Game Bill, providing for the
proper organization of a State Game
and Fish Commission, with local depu-
ties, with restrictions on the killing and
marketing of game, was defeated in the
House of Delegates by a narrow major-
ity. Apparently the people of Virginia
would rather kill their game than keep
it, would rather sell it than see it alive.
The ostensible reason for the defeat of
the bill was that the State Game Com-
missioner would have too much political
power through his ability to appoint
three or four hundred local wardens.
By the same token Virginia should abol-

254

OUTING

ish the office ot Governor. It is idle
to speculate on the causes of the defeat
of this bill. As usual in such cases, it
was a combination of indifference, igno-
rance and selfishness, a triumvirate that
is hard to beat. But how does it leave
Virginia?

No Having refused to be ruled

Warden Dy a State commissioner,
Virginia now finds herself
back in her old condition in which
the local wardens are appointed by
local magistrates. There is -no central
system and no head warden. To be
sure, there is a fish commissioner, but it
is reported that his activities are practi-
cally confined to the tidewater counties,
so that the inland waters are left to the
tender mercies of the fishermen. In one-
third of the counties of the State there
are no wardens at all, and it is impos-
sible to discover a single case of a sal-
aried warden in any county. The war-
den of the county containing one of the
large cities of the State has made one
arrest in five years, and that despite the
fact that quail are sold contrary to the
law in practically all the towns and
cities. There are no resident hunting li-
censes, and in most cases no one to col-
lect the non-resident fees. It is reported
in a private letter from a man in a po-
sition to know that the State at pres-
ent collects about $125 a year from the
latter source, whereas they should be
collecting about $5,000.

Good Turkey, deer and quail are
Game killed out of season contin-
ually and are shipped to
Washington, Baltimore and Philadelphia
markets contrary to the Virginia law
prohibiting the shipping of game. The
United States Biological Survey in-
formed our Virginia correspondent that
last year there were shipped out of the
State of Virginia for Washington and
Baltimore markets 50,000 quail. The
same authority gave some very interest-
ing facts relative to the type of guns
used on the eastern shore for the killing
of wild fowl. Dr. Palmer, of the Sur-
vey, showed a photograph of one gun
more than thirteen feet long shooting
two pounds of BB shot to the load. It

is stated that these guns are manufac-
tured in Virginia and that there is a
considerable local demand for them.
The sale of quail is prohibited within
the State, but turkey, deer and wild fowl
may be sold without restriction. Under
the present laws the hounding of deer is
permitted. There is no restriction
against the killing of does or fawns, nor
is there any bag or creel limit.

One Naturally the sale of game
Mans -s a iarge ancj flourishing

I estimony , . , , , .

business throughout the
State, and here probably lies the secret
of the opposition to the proposed law.
We quote directly from a letter received
recently :

"I have seen one man bring in seventy
pounds of large-mouth bass in one day's
fishing. The markets here furnish large
and small-mouth bass constantly, and I
have seen as many as five barrels of
large-mouth bass in one fish dealer's
shop, said bass ranging from five to seven
inches in length. These are sold as 'pan
bass.' The ducks and geese on the east-
ern shore are netted by the thousands,
and these netted fowls are then hung on
racks and shot in order that the pur-
chaser may find the shot in the fowl.
This is authentic and comes from the
U. S. Biological Survey. We have no
dog laws in Virginia. The dogs roam
at large throughout the breeding season
of the birds, and hundreds of thousands
of song birds and game birds have their
nests broken up and their young caught.
To sum up the situation, we have a few
game and fish laws in Virginia, but ab-
solutely no one to enforce these laws,
and this means that the State might as
well be without them in so far as results
are concerned. Virginia ranks about
third from the bottom among the un-
protected States. Our association places
Mississippi at the bottom, North Caro-
lina next to the bottom, and Virginia
third from the bottom in the list of
forty-four States. Virginia is one of the
four States in the Union having no game
commissioner or warden system."

So stands the case for the Old Do-
minion. We trust that her citizens are
thoroughly appreciative of their proud
preeminence.

THE WORLD OF SPORT

255

A Mere Germany has prohibited the

CHrlion nunting of the bfrd °* Para-
dise in New Guinea for a
period of eighteen months. It was the
first intention of the Government to put
a stop to it altogether, but later reports
convinced them that the birds were in
no immediate danger of extinction with
proper regulation after a short period
of protection. At the risk of seeming
to be a rude and thoroughly uncouth
male being, we venture the assertion that
no good and useful purpose of sport or
anything else is served by permitting the
killing of plumage birds anywhere in the
world at any time. We cannot expect
the milliners or their customers to agree
with this, but a feather on the hat that
means a dead bird in some tropical forest
is a lingering relic of barbarism. To be
sure tastes differ, and down in the Solo-
mon Islands feathers are understood to
be de rigueur, at least on ceremonial oc-
casions, but we should give at least that
much evidence of superiority to the Sol-
omon Islanders.

When In the good old days travel
W "h d was a * earsome thing. None
but the most venturesome
and hardy or those laid under grievous
compulsion dared attempt it. And
when they did it was with fear and
trembling. In proof thereof read these
injunctions to travelers on outfit and
behavior written early in the seven-
teenth century and published recently by
the Automobile Club of Philadelphia:
"Among the requisites should be a
hymn-book, a watch or a sun-dial. If a
watch, not a striker, for that warns the
wicked that you have money. A com-
pass. Take handkerchiefs, as they come
handy when you perspire. If the tour-
ist cannot take many shirts let those he
carries be washed; he will find it more
comfortable. Let him also take a linen
overall to put over his clothes upon
going to bed lest the bed linen be dirty.
Let him learn somewhat both of medi-
cine and cookery. Never journey without
something to eat in your pocket, if only
to throw to dogs when attacked by them.
In an inn bedroom which contains big
pictures look behind the latter to see if
they do not conceal a secret door or a

window. Women should travel not at
all and married men not much."

Antoine Up in Canada they tell

m /^l weird and wonderful tales

No Chances , , , ,

about the strength and stay-
ing powers of the French-Canadian
guides on portage. A story has been
going the rounds in Montreal lately
about a test that was made to determine
the relative powers of the French and
other races. To settle an argument one
of the newspapers offered a prize of
$200 to the man who would carry a
200-pound load the farthest, without put-
ting it down to rest. The article se-
lected was salt as combining the qual-
ities of weight and reduced bulk in about
the proper proportions. The start was
made from the newspaper office and
there was a large list of entries. By the
terms the men were to walk straight
away in a prescribed direction, and the
one going the farthest entered into im-
mediate enjoyment of the $200. At 3
o'clock they were under way. By 6
o'clock all the aspirants - had fallen by
the wayside except three French-Cana-
dians, who were still going strong. Two
of these dropped out a little before 8, and
the judges rushed forward to tell An-
toine, the winner, that the money was
his. "Where's the two hundred, then?"
inquired Antoine in appropriate Drum-
mondian patois. "You'll get it at the
newspaper office," replied the judges.
"Just jump in the automobile and ride
back with us." "Not me," declared the
hardy Antoine. "I don't put down this
pack till I get that money" — and he
turned and carried the salt back to the
starting point. If you ask about this in
Montreal they'll show you the salt.

Real When the liner called at

American

Kingston one day late in
February on her way back
from the Isthmus there was a rush
among the passengers for newspapers to
discover what great things had hap-
pened in the States during their ab-
sence. Prominently displayed on the
front page of the Kingston Gleaner was
one single bit of American news — the
retirement of Charles W. Murphy from
the management of the Chicago Cubs.

256

OUTING

They may play cricket in Jamaica, but
they have also a very clear idea of the
mental inclinations of many of their
American visitors as the days draw on
toward opening day.

A Great What is an amateur ? A

Prize tremendous amount of con-
Contest , , i .
troversy revolves about this

question. The dictionary is of little use.
The Standard wisely evades the issue
in this suave fashion: "In athletic
sports, an athlete who has not engaged
in contests open to professional athletes,
or used any athletic art as a livelihood.
The term varies in usage, and is usu-
ally more specifically defined in the reg-
ulations of athletic associations, but the
definition is liable to change." How's
that for coppering the bet both .ways?
But it should be possible to come a little
nearer the mark and we have determined
upon a daring step. We will give a
year's subscription free to the man — we
use the term generically ; women and
even children are not barred — who can
furnish us with the best definition of an
amateur in the fewest words, we to be
the judge. The definition must express
the inward spirit of the word and must
also be capable of specific general applica-
tion without obvious injustice. If you
decide to enter this world-wide contest
we are of the opinion that you will earn
the prize, whether you win it or not.

Two Through an oversight wTe
0^p"Lt omitted to state that the pho-
tographs used with Mr.
John Oskison's article on Deer Hunting
with the Apaches in April were taken
by Mr. John T. McCutcheon. We
hereby tender our apologies to Mr. [Mc-
Cutcheon and also our thanks for an ex-
cellent collection of illustrations. The
same demon of carelessness was respon-
sible for the omission from Mr. Clark C.
Griffith's article of the line "Arranged
by Edward L. Fox."

Steady,

Boy,

Steady!

"His is a steady game, with
flashes of brilliancy, unfor-
tunately followed frequently
by lackadaisical play which at times
makes him the victim of a really much
inferior golfer." These burning words

are written of Mr. Frederick Herreshoff
by the American correspondent of an
English golf publication. How for-
tunate it is that Mr. Herreshoff 's play
is steady. Otherwise the "flashes of
brilliancy, followed frequently by lacka-
daisical play," might lead his friends to
place their money on the other man.

The New Word comes from the other

ChaTien e s*^e t^iat ^e Shamrock IF,
the new Lipton cup challen-
ger, is to go back to composite construc-
tion instead of being a metal boat. She
will have steel frames, wooden planking,
and probably a metal deck. Mr. Nichol-
son states that his reason for this wooden
planking is that he can get a smoother
surface than with metal plates, which
are so thin that the rivet heads could not
be countersunk without weakening the
plates — loose rivets being a constant
source of trouble in previous cup racers,
many of which leaked badly. It is stat-
ed also that Shamrock IF is to have a
centerboard. In this respect she is the
first British challenger that has ever used
this purely American device. This does
not mean that she will be of the con-
ventional centerboard type. Modern
centerboard boats are practically keel
boats as regards shape and design, merely
having a small board working through
the lead bulb on the keel to give addi-
tional lateral plane in going to wind-
ward. Under our measurement rule
draft is restricted, a penalty being placed
on excessive depth, so that additional
depth and lateral plane can only be had
by use of the centerboard, which is not
taxed. Though the racing promises to be
most interesting, the chances are all in
our favor that the cup will stay on this
side of the Atlantic. In Shamrock IF
Nicholson is designing his first boat un-
der our measurement rule, whereas our
designers have had eight years' exper-
ience in it. They have watched its op-
eration, and are able to do things under
it on the chance of producing a faster
boat, which one not familiar with it
would not dare to undertake. In addi-
tion to this we have three boats, of which
the fastest, presumably, will be chosen,
whereas Sir Thomas is having but one
boat built.

TO A BASEBALL

You're going into play ? An instant more

And yours the eyes of thousands. There's for you

Huge plaudits Welcoming the needed score,

Deep disapproval at misplays they view,

And, best of all, the eager silence there

When, swift from bat or hand, you hang in air.

— Anonymous.

P4
w
>

D
h

w
w
J
u

J
J
o

<
u

w
H
H

o r

« .5
< S

w *

fa a
O s

H £

W £

o r

i— i

fa v.

Q
W

o
o
<

OUTING

TARPON AND THE MOVIES

By A. W. DIMOCK

Photographs by Julian A. Dimock

TN this article Mr. Dimock returns to his first and dearest love,
* the tarpon. This time the Camera Man was equipped not only
with his true and tried machine of earlier days, but also with a
moving picture camera. He was to try what could be done in
fixing the leaps of the fighting fish on the little strip of celluloid
that wound through the small box. It had been tried before, but
not with success. Where the professionals failed, this amateur,
who knew nothing of moving pictures but much of tarpon and of
straight photography, was destined to succeed. It is an introduc-
tion to a new sport under wellnigh ideal conditions.

ANY have been my trips
to Florida, but the last
one had a new motif —
we carried a motion-
picture camera. My role
-**• on previous occasions had
been to supply "human interest" for the
Camera Man, and take any risk at his
command, with full knowledge that any
awkward pose might be preserved for-
ever. But now conditions promised to
be still more trying. Formerly it took
the Camera Man some seconds to change
his plates, and I had this respite, but
now his crank would register a con-
tinuous performance. How paralyzing
to consider that 1,000 exposures a min-
ute might be made and forever would
our gyrations be perpetuated and broad-
cast the impressions be sown!

The situation was serious, but there

was one means of escape. I would act
as assistant to the Camera Man and thus
keep out of the limelight. My friends
should be the actors and I would help
to record their antics!

We received our camera and films at
the railroad station, ten minutes before
the starting of our train for Florida.
We had a few minutes' instruction as
to working the machinery of the camera,
which was simple enough. The film
was to be threaded from one spool in
the camera to another in a way made
obvious by the construction of the ma-
chine. When the scene was to be pic-
tured the lens was pointed toward it
and the handle turned twice every
second. This exposed one foot of film
every second on which sixteen pictures
were taken.

There was nothing to trouble us so

266

OUTING

The illustrations on this and on
the page facing it were made from
negatives clipped from the moving
picture film. Considering the speed
of the leaping fish and the fact that
the pictures were made for reproduc-
tion on the screen and not on the
printed page, they are surprisingly
distinct.

far. Either of us could turn a crank,
and the Camera Man was the best in the
business of taking snapshots at tarpon
in the air. But another point was in-
sisted upon which if enforced would
knock things endwise for us. It was
stated to be an imperative condition that
the camera be screwed to a tripod which
must then have a solid foundation. A
battle with the Boers could be faked
among Jersey hills or a tame lion pose
for a bloodthirsty beast, of the wild,
but there are no tame tarpon to be hired
nor actors who can dress the part. No,
the motion-picture machine must be held
as we had held other cameras and the
chance be taken of the motion destroy-
ing the picture.

We had often suggested to motion-
picture men that they get a series of
tarpon pictures, but some of them
doubted the profit of the thing and
others its possibility. Yet when we
arrived at Fort Myers, ready for the
tarpon cruise, we found the profession-
als had been there and hired a big out-
fit for the work. I was told that the
camera had been fixed upon a large boat
while the hired guides fished in their
smaller boats around it, but that the
result had been failure. It remained
to be seen whether we could succeed
while violating the rules of the motion-
picture game better than the profession-
als while observing them.

There are two ways of fishing for
tarpon — one suits the sybarite and the
invalid, the other suits me.

The trend of the times is toward
specialization and even our sports are
syndicated. A tarpon guild has arisen
and individual initiative has been

TARPON AND THE MOVIES

267

crushed. The idea has permeated fish-
ing circles that to catch tarpon one must
first go to some stylish dealer to be
fitted with, or to, an outfit, as a tailor
might dress him for a dinner. There-
after, from some costly inn near fash-
ionable fishing grounds he must submit
himself to a so-called guide at a wage of
six dollars a day, plus fancy charges for
bait and such other expenses as a prac-
tical imagination can suggest.

More and more has the game grown
costly as the wonderful sport has be-
come known. Houseboats have been
constructed, fitted with every conveni-
ence and luxury and manned by meu
with knowledge of the coast and of
many of the haunts of the tarpon.

When the sportsman's private guide has
had his breakfast and his smoke, if wind,
weather and tide meet his approval, he
fills the tank of his launch with gaso-
line and takes his customer aboard.
Churning the water with his three-
horse-power engine he threads with his
craft the channels of river or pass, while
the fisherman sits in his easy, revolving
arm chair, trailing from his costly tackle
a strip of mullet as bait.

I have no thought to disparage the
game, which is really worth the candle.
If the season is well chosen and the cap-
tain knows his business, which most of
them do, the sportsman will get plenty
of tarpon with a minimum of exertion.

The practical wTay to get into the
game is to charter a houseboat from any
port on the west coast of Florida and
step aboard from your private car at
Boca Grande, Fort Myers, or any
available station on the Flagler road.
Thereafter you are in the hands of your

captain and you may be sure, if you have
selected the season aright, that you will
have the prettiest f.shing in the world,
presented in its most up-to-date form,
and available to every man, woman, or
child of your party. The expenses may
run into hundreds of dollars per diem,
although if alone, and parsimonious,
vou might manage to cut them down to
fifty.

The other extreme, of simplicity if
not of sense, calls for a companion and
a canoe. Outside of railroad fare and
the cost of the canoe, the expense of a
month's outing would be negligible,
hardly more than the bill of an east
coast hotel for a day. On a similar trip
the clothes I stood in cost less than five
dollars, and I believe that included the
cost of a dollar watch which later I
threw at a coon. The tarpon caught
by the lesser outfit would compare with
those taken by the other in the propor-
tion of several to one, while of the timid
creatures of the wild, seen by the
canoeists as they silently paddled
throueh river and bavou, the ratio

268

OUTING

would be almost as infinity to nothing.

Yet, despite all I have written, our
recent tarpon-motion-picture excursion
was of the de luxe variety. Of course,
it was in the summer, since that is the
tarpon season, besides being altogether
delightful on that coast in other re-
spects, although it would take a surgical
operation to get these ideas into the con-
ventional tourist head. That through
years of experience no summer night has
been made sleepless or day oppressive by
heat on that coast fails to impress the
conventionalist who invariably closes a
discussion with his poser:

"How about mosquitoes?"

I have suffered frightfully from these
beasts, but it was on a salmon stream.
While fishing on the Miramichi, Joe
Jefferson bet me that I couldn't cast for
salmon for five minutes without brush-
ing the insects from face or hands.
There were mosquitoes, black flies, and
sand flies, and I stood the torture for
about half the time, yielding then to
keep from going crazy. Looking back
over thirty years, if insects have seri-
ously troubled me while tarpon fishing,
the incident has left no furrow in my
memory.

Our happy little party of five set
forth from Fort Myers in pursuit of ad-
ventures. As we cruised down the
coast from Pine Island Sound there
was added to my social pleasure the joy
of reminiscence, awakened by every
curve and cape of the shore, every pass
and inlet, bay, river, and house. I had
paddled down that same coast with the
Camera Man, in a forty-pound, four-
teen-foot canoe, and I wanted to head
the big boat to the east and again run
through the surf to the shore.

As we entered the rivers, passing
rookeries familiar to me, I fancied the
birds were the same, yet how sadly de-
pleted in numbers since I first made ac-
quaintance with the streams. None of
my manatee friends were to be seen in
the waters where often I had called
upon them, and I was disappointed that
alligator acquaintances had not re-
mained on the banks where I had left
them.

I had long known the Big Cypress,
Ten Thousand Islands, and the Ever-

glades as a land without law, a country
of convicts and a home of mystery
worthy of its title of ''Darkest Florida."
There were tragedies told of each river,
many keys hid a story of crime and the
prettiest place near the coast had long
been owned by a desperado who to me
had been a kindly host.

What a thriller his story would have
made for the movies! And the terrible
drama of his execution! Nothing that
the villainous Villa could have offered
the movie men in the shape of a battle
in exchange for a share in the gate re-
ceipts could have exceeded it in horror.

This outlaw, who was well-con-
nected, was a picturesque feature of the
country which he dominated for years,
ordering settlers from near his domain
and removing with his rifle those who
neglected to depart. It was common re-
port that he settled all accounts with a
thirty-eight and the estimates of his
homicides were never less than two fig-
ures and some even reached three. Yet
with all the reports of his maniacal
fierceness that abounded, to me he
seemed "as mild-mannered a man as
ever scuttled a ship or cut a throat."

He disarmed all officers sent to
arrest him and was only eliminated by
a bunch of fourteen of his nearest
neighbors just after he had cancelled
his indebtedness to two men and a wo-
man by sending them to another world.
His executioners riddled his body with
bullets, leaving few of his bones un-
broken. Their excuse was that their
victim had snapped both barrels of his
shot gun at them and when the car-
tridges failed to explode had drawn his
revolver.

Non-explosive cartridges were not the
kind the murdered man was in the habit
of carrying, but I never commented
upon this in conversation with any of
his executioners, most of whom I knew.
There is an etiquette of that coast
which I have often ignorantly violated
by expressing horror of certain homi-
cides to men whom I learned later had
committed them. From among my own
guides or boatmen I remember seven
who were either murderers or were
murdered.

Tarpon abounded in the bayous and

270

OUTING

streams about this center of tragedy and
each day we set forth from the house-
boat, our friends with their tackle, from
tarpon to trout rods, in launch, skiff,
or canoe, while the Camera Man and
I followed in a power boat ready to
chronicle sport with plate or motion-
picture film. Much of the work was
in narrow, crooked streams where we
couldn't even keep in sight of the other
craft, but we were usually somewhere
between them, and when Tim's wild-
Indian yells or the more civilized shouts
of our friends shattered the air, our
picture craft was sent flying around the
corners of the crooked stream.

There was small opportunity to
maneuver for position and we had to
take our chances as they came. We
couldn't erind out film at five cents a

second on tarpon which had already
made several leaps and might not make
another in minutes. Yet there is time
after the beginning of the jump to get
twenty or thirty pictures of the fish and
including the commotion in the water
and the excitemen" in the craft it can
be run up to a hundred advantageously.
To the fisherman, with his mind filled
with a picture of the gorgeous creature
that has just shot out of the water and
the hope of another leap while his
muscles are tingling with the strain on
rod or line a five-minute delay is pleas-
urably filled with emotion. A motion-
picture audience of to-day wouldn't
stand for the delay and must have a
continuous performance of leaping tar-
pon. This was managed after a fashion
and the performance of scores of tarpon

I DEPOSn ED MY AVOIRDUPOIS EN THE BOTTOM OF THE CANOE AND FISHED FROM
THAT QNPICTURESQUE POSITION

A GOOD TUMP TTTAT THE MOYTE CAMERA CAUGHT CLOSE ABOARD

were utilized to fill up a reel with
action.

Yet the Camera Alan counted the re-
sult as merely educational and of value
in its promise of what may be accom-
plished. He encountered no obstacle
that cannot be surmounted. In this
experiment, pictures taken at varying
distances, with widely differing sur-
roundings, with the performers in canoe,
skiff or launch indifferently had to be
merged into one performance which
gave an abundance of excitement, but
lacked the complete smoothness of fin-
ished w7ork.

The larger rivers gave the best op-
portunity for motion-picture wyork, as
the waves and the roll of pass and Gulf
interfered with the steadiness of i.he
camera.

As the Forester was examining his
collection of rods and of reels with their
watch-like mechanism and ingenious
brakes, he exclaimed :

"Where does the conservation of tar-
pon come in. and however can he get 'a
square deal?' If I had the right kind
of influence — in Washington — I'd pass

a tarpon law

"Fine thing," said I. "What would
it be?"

"The rod must be light and the line
of six to twelve threads, with an emer-
gency rod for the big fish in the passes
and an eight-ounce rod for the little fish
up the rivers."

"Anything about the boat?"

"Surely! The fishing must be done
from a canoe and only those tarpon
counted which the sportsman lands in
his craft without help. Then he must
return them to the water unless he
should want one or two for specimens."

"Amen," I cried, "and may I be
around with the camera when your fish
gets his innings!"

Was it fate or frolic that favored us
one morning?

The Forester threw his tall form back
at an angle of thirty degrees. The tough
hickory of his favorite rod bent into a
semicircle and threatened to snap the
line that had been tested to forty-eight
pounds.

"Ouch-e-ke-wow!" I shouted, "I wish
that line wrould break."

The Forester was fighting a tarpon
of nearly his own weight. The fish

[271]

272

OUTING

was in its element and good for a half-
hour battle, while the man was in a
fickle canoe. Sometimes as the fish
leaped into the air and the line sud-
denly slackened my hopes ran high, yet
the fight was fought to a finish without
the catastrophe I longed for. It only
remained for the victor to take the tired
tarpon into the canoe and, removing one
of its brilliant scales as a trophy, return
it to its native element, unharmed but
enriched by an experience that would
make it thereafter the Depew of dinners
and diners in tarpon circles.

As the Forester staggered beneath the
weight of the tarpon that he sought to
lift bodily from the water, the canoe
rolled gleefully over. This was in the
Gulf of Mexico, just opposite the mouth
of Shark River. Our story is not of
peril, but only of playful adventure, and
not even the name of the river should
convey any sinister thought. For the
shark of our waters is harmless to man
and rewards offered for proof of one
having attacked a human being have
been unclaimed. I have sought for such
evidence myself and have chased up
many stories without getting beyond
their hearsay quality.

The single exception that occurs to
me I have accounted apochryphal. The
story was of a fifteen-foot shark that
attacked a man and took a huge bite
out of him. But my confidence in my
informant was shaken when he added
that the bite was so bi^ that although
the man died the bite got well.

We had many bits of fun with sharks,
and catching the brutes may be recom-
mended to athletic sportsmen whose
muscles ache for a strenuous game. The
toughest rod that can be bought, with a
massive reel and a thirty-six thread line
are adequate weapons. No question of
mercy to this repulsive creature is ever
raised. The shark is brought beside the
skiff, for his teeth would ruin a canoe,
and the coup de grace administered with
a revolver. Bringing the brute to bay
may take five minutes or five hours, but
no instant of the time is apathetic.

The Forester reveled in this sport and
was very successful, capturing the larg-
est number in the least time, but he
tampered with the returns, insisting that

his record be kept in linear feet and not
by number. This gives him a credit of
ninety-five feet and some inches of shark,
which if in a single piece would weigh
something over two hundred tons, which
is probably considerably in excess of the
total weight of all that he killed.

His leanings have always been toward
big game — swordflsh and tuna for ex-
ample— and he took kindly to the chase
with a harpoon of a sixteen-foot saw-
fish. He pursued the creature in a skiff
as after a conflict at close quarters with
a big sawfish a canoe would resemble
the feathered contestant in the famous
dispute between the monkey and the par-
rot. The pursuit of this branch of the
shark family is a virile sport and the
Forester made two misses before he
secured his specimen. The thought of
these failures became an obsession and
after his return he devoted spare hours
to hurling the harpoon, javelin fashion,
until he could hit his hat at a distance of
fifty feet.

The Camera Man didn't get his in-
nings in the sawfish game. There were
several reasons for this. Firstly it was
too late in the day to take a picture. As
my space is limited I omit the other
reasons.

We began our fishing at Marco, oppo-
site the Leaping Tarpon Hotel, and in
three weeks each fisherman of the party
struck nearly a hundred tarpon, cap-
turing, and releasing, nearly half that
number. With a thousand tarpon to
my credit, or discredit, I cared not to
add to the score.

Yet I spent one forenoon in a canoe
with the Forester to try out a fly rod
and light tackle. To his eighteen tar-
pon strikes I got twenty- four; that he
landed more than I was a fortuitous cir-
cumstance of which I have not pre-
served the particulars. The Camera
Man was the one who got left for his
pictures had to be suppressed. In total
disregard of his artistic feelings I de-
posited my rapidly accumulating avoir-
dupois and years in the bottom of the
canoe and paddled and fished from that
safe but not picturesque position. I
am keeping the prints the Camera Man
made of us as souvenirs, since there will
never be others like them. Henceforth

274

OUTING

when tarpon fishing from a canoe I shall
sit up like a man and a one-time canoe-
ist, and if I go to the bottom it shall be
cum d'ignitate even if sine otio.

My preference of a hand line to a
rod, excepting an eight-ounce rod for the
head of the rivers, has been esteemed by
many friends an obsession of mine, but
many of them are now coming my way.
The arrogance of the Syrian General in
his comparison of tLe rivers of Babylon
with the Jordan ^as as nothing to the
superciliousness with which the usuai
up-to-date tarpon fisherman, with his
forty-dollar reel and four-dollar line, re-
gards this form of sport. Yet there are
thrills that traverse the tautened line
between the tarpon mouth and the tour-

hands were tautly drawn and over them
passed from the human to the equine
mind a mandate that dominated, stead-
ied, held the frightened creatures from
recoiling in panic and finally sent them,
a disciplined team, straight for the bar-
rier. Over it the leaders flew, the
wheelers rose, but hampered by their
harness, fell upon it, while the stage
crashed against the great log and the
passengers looked from the opened door
down a vertical wall of a thousand feet.
More than once has the picture this
artist drew presented itself to my mind
as a tarpon has touched the bait I trailed
from a light canoe. For the person-
ality of a tarpon was in that touch and
as I struck sharply by way of challenge^

HOUSEBOATS HAVE UEEN CONSTRUCTED FITTED WITTT EVERY CONVENIENCE

ist hand which the fisher with a rod
will never feel.

Bret Harte, as in my library he "tried
on the clog" an unpublished story, pic-
tured to me in his wonderful way the
message he saw a stage driver send
through the tightened reins to his fright-
ened team as it dashed down the pre-
cipitous path across which a tree had
fallen. The eight lines in the driver's

his defiance came swiftly in the form of
a lean many fee" in the air, followed by
a wild dash that made the five-inch
freeboard of my light canoe seem like a
narrow margin between the water and
me. I sent soothing messages through
a line, firmly and steadily held, and re-
turned soft answers to explosions of
wrath.

Then when the Camera Man said

TARPON AND THE MOVIES

275

he was ready for another jump, with
twitchings of the line I sent the fish
messages that maddened him and as he
replied with savage shakes of his head I
taunted him in Morse dots and dashes
until he manifested his rage by leaping
wildly at me. Through alternate coax-
ing and teasing the gamut of tarpon

line. His broad side, glistening in the
sun, is of frosted silver, his back of
kingly purple. His wild gyrations are
puzzling to follow and only the camera
can catch the convulsive motion of his
gills. Often, too, the camera catches
and fixes in the air the hook which the
tarpon has hurled far from him.

lii^ f" tH — j

j^J

r^ **r» *4K**1 ^* '

• E^^Kk

»•

'*' ' * :?, ■-..; -

P/ioto 6y Ewttyn M. Gill

HE DEVOTED SPARE HOURS TO HURLING THE HARPOON

emotion can be run and when at last the
fish floats exhausted beside the canoe a
turn of the ha»~d loosens the hook and
restores to an honorable enemy his well-
earned liberty.

I sing praises of tarpon fishing with a
hand line from a canoe, combating the
prejudices of a generation of sportsmen.
But let us reason together. Compare
the ponderous launch with the dancing
canoe which vibrates to every mood of
the great fish even as it responds to a
touch of the paddle. Imagine the thrill
that wakens every nerve as you feel
through the line the quarry seizing the
bait and your own quick strike is fol-
lowed by the frantic leap high in the air
of the well-named Silver King.

Thereafter every twist and turn,
every quiver, heart beat, or thought of
the fish is telephoned through the tense

Do you know any other fish that can
approach the brilliant performances of
the tarpon? Do you know one of any
importance that leaps when struck or if
it chance to jump out of its element
once, ever repeats the performance while
you are playing it?

You can play the tarpon to your lik-
ing, making the fight fast and furious
and ending it in fifteen minutes by draw-
ing your canoe so near the fish that its
frantic leaps are beside or over or into
5rour canoe. Or if you don't want to
chance a capsize you can play the game
quietly and spend half an hour to an
hour in landing your quarry, to the ac-
companiment of continuous sallies punc-
tuated by picturesque leaps, often aston-
ishingly high in the air. Every mo-
ment of the struggle is alive with fun
and the excitement of anticipation.

276

OUTING

One may get healthfully tired but there
are no aching muscles. The strain is
direct and not multiplied by the leverage
of the rod. When a hand line is used
with much vigor, the tarpon often con-
serves the sportsman's time by leaping
into his arms and landing itself in the ,
canoe.

I don't care for hard work for its
own sake and I wouldn't wind a wind-
lass and hoist like a derrick for eight
or ten hours without sight of the game
for any record or even the right to
wear a button. Salmon fishing is per-
haps nearest in line to the sport of which
I write, but it lacks the picturesque
leaping which is the feature of tarpon
fishing. Then, too, the expense of the
salmon sport is becoming prohibitive.
It costs a fortune to own a section of a
salmon stream and the right to fish in a
favorite pool is beyond price, while
each captured salmon represents on the
average days of toil. I can point out
tarpon streams by the hundred miles
and pools without number where, in
the season, each hour of fishing will
average more than one tarpon and all
this wonderful opportunity is free as
air.

Are there two of you, nature lovers,
who want to get into the tarpon game
on the ground floor of cost and comfort?
Hire a launch with a skiff and engage
its owner as captain, oarsman, cook and
general factotum, a man unspoiled by
conventional sportsmen and as ready to
turn his hand to any required work as
you should be yourself. Provide by
purchase a light canoe, which you can
sell after you are through with it and
lay in supplies as modestly as your na-
ture will permit. With the fish you will
catch from the start, the oysters you
may gather from the trees, the clams,
hard and soft, you may tread or dig,
the palmetto cabbage vour factotum will
cut, the fruits you will find, and the
vegetables you will have chances to buy,
it is repletion instead of starvation you
will have to fear.

Much of the pleasure of your trip
will depend upon your choice of a boat-
man. A fair knowledge of the coast is

needed, cheerfulness is vital, while a
sense of humor goes far to make a joy-
ful outing. I have in mind a boatman
of this type who contributed to the
comfort of our recent trip by his interest
in all our plans, his anxiety to forward
them, and his humor. His knowledge
of the habits of wild creatures was
wide and often the question rang out —
"Where's Tim?" always echoed by the
cheery response — "Coming, sir!" fol-
lowed by the advent of the man, alert
and eager to be of service.

Of his scores of humorous replies I
will mention two. As we were looking
at a lot of water turkeys the Forester
asked :

"Are water turkeys good to eat,
Tim?"

"They are fishy unless you know how
to cook them, but then they are all
right."

"How do you cook them?"

"Skin them first, cut off the breasts
and throw away the rest. Then I put
the breasts between two bricks, set them
on a bed of hot coals, and keep them
there till I can stick a fork through the
brick into the bird."

The cavalry, or jackfish, is a hard
fighter, offering sport to the angler, but
not usually cared for as food. Yet
there is a broad layer of dark flesh in
this fish that has a meaty flavor which
I like. I was defending my taste to my
companions when Tim chipped in on my
side, saying:

"I like jacks first rate when they are
fixed my way."

"How is that?"

"Just as you fellers tell about plank-
ing shad up north. I split a good fat
jackfish, tack it on a board and sprinkle
it good with salt and pepper and put on
some butter if I can get it. I set it up
before a hot fire and keep up the fire
till the fish is crisp on the outside and
cooked through and through. Then I
strip it off, throw it in the fire and eat
the board."

I haven't given Tim's real name,
firstly because I am not advertising in-
dividuals, and secondly — I may want
him myself next summer.

WHEN THEY BEGIN TO RISE

This is the time of the year when all good fishermen turn away from
desk and counter and bench and whatever other humdrum appliance aids
in the stupid task of making a living, and betake themselves to the real
occupation of life. The photographs which follow are presented in the
hope that they may inspire those who can follow the lure — and irritate
those who want to but can't.

LANDING THE WILY BASS ON THE DELAWARE

[277]

A STEINBUCK. NOTE SIZE AS INDICATED BY THE HUNTING KNIFE

IN BACK OF BEYOND

By STEWART EDWARD WHITE

Illustrated with Photographs by the Author
III

THROUGH PLEASANT VALLEY

AST month Mr. White carried his caravan into the mountain
*~* range that separated him from the Promised Land of his
travels. Beyond lay the virgin game fields of German East Africa
which he was to explore. They climbed the steep ridges, hauled
donkeys across a river by main strength and a rope, hunted for
water that was fit to drink, and otherwise suffered the minor diffi-
culties of travelers in a new and unknown land. This month he
carries his storv down into a Pleasant Valley where there was grass
and water in plenty.

accompany us only to the other side of
the mountain range, where they were
to leave the potio, and then were to
return by the way they had come. All
were equipped with the native soga, a
flat pad made of cloth across which the
loads were slung in pairs. Nothing but
adhesion and friction prevented them
from falling off.

Naturally they shifted constantly, and
up and down hill tended to slide off

=^r

ROM Vanderweyer's we
started with our caravan in-
creased by forty-odd of his
donkeys in charge of his men.
Twenty-five of these were
laden with fifty loads of
potio, which we had previously sent down
to his place by ox-wagon ; the rest carried
trade goods with which Vanderweyer
intended to take- a little flyer on his
own account. These animals were to

[282]

Begun in April OUTING

IN BACK OF KKYOND

283

over the beasts' heads or tails. Then
one man had to catch and hold the
donkey, while two others lifted the load
aboard. In the meantime the rest of
the lot would be getting into trouble.
Vanderweyer's animals never got fn less
than two or three hours later than the
porters; whereas our own, equipped
with the American sawbuck saddle [the
first use made of this in East Africa],
kept pace with the men.

Our donkey men required careful
training and constant supervision in the
matter of saddling and adjusting of
packs ; otherwise sore backs were a cer-
tainty. Unless the white man is willing
to do this, the American rig might be
more trouble than it is worth ; but if
he will give the matter individual at-
tention, donkeys will make as good av-
erage marches as men, and solve the
problem for countries where there is

no local potio to be had, and where there
is no tsetse.

This day the sky was overcast and
cool. I marched ahead of the safari
through the forest pass of the Narossara
Mountains to the Fourth Bench, as in
1911. Saw many Masai, and a few
kongoni, zebra, and Robertsi. Passed
the Sacred Tree, stuffed full of stones,
bunches of grass, and charms. Memba
Sasa looked a little ashamed — but he
contributed.

That night we made camp just where,
in 1911, we turned off to our Topi Camp.
Thousands of brilliant butterflies, flut-
tering just over a water hole, made a
pretty sight. Many Masai, men and
women, visited us. I had a wonderful
success with simple coin tricks, my sword
cane, an old opera-hat Newland gave
us, and the image in the Graflex. Tried
in vain to buy spears. One of the minor

MASAI GIRL AND MARRIED WOMAN WHO VISITED THE CAMP

MALIABWANA (LEFT) AND m'gANGA. M?GANGA IS THE ONE WHOSE POINTED
REMARKS TO ONE OF THE PORTERS WERE OUOTED IN THE LAST ISSUE

chiefs turned out to be a man I had
known in 1911, when Mrs. White was
with me. Said he, "I am very glad to
see you. You did not bring any of
your women with you this time." He
offered me a young girl of fifteen — who
seemed pleased — for three rupees.

July seventeenth dawned clear and
bright, but at sunrise a heavy fog de-
scended. Very heavy dew, and the long
grass immediately wet us to the waist.
We went on our old trail of 1911 as
far as the first camp on the sidehill ;
then crossed directly over the swamp.
I looked for signs of our old camp,
but the two years had absolutely ob-

[288]

literated every trace. While waiting for
Cuninghame and the donkeys to go
around the swamp, I had a long chat
with two old Masai. They were quite
in awe of the keenness and temper of
the sword stick; told me of a lion, etc.

We then went down the side of the
swamp, and reached our old friend,
Naiokotoku's, permanent manyatta, or
village. It was different from the usual
temporary village, strongly stockaded,
with large houses. Another similar en-
closure fairly adjoined it, and several
nearby ordinary ?nanyattas completed the
entourage of so great a chief.

We marched directly through, and

IN BACK OF BEYOND

289

made camp Jn the woods. The sur-
roundings and outlook were beautiful —
great trees and vines, and vistas out
through them of valleys and green
marshes and great wooded mountains all
around. Our camp farthest south in
1911 was opposite and about two miles
away. Many very gorgeous warriors in
full panoply visited us. They said the
chief was sleeping. More likely drunk,
said we, remembering him of old.

As he had not shown up by two
o'clock, I agreed to climb the high hills
to the west and get a look abroad over
the unknown country through which we
must go. An hour's hard climb and I
gazed out over a bewildering tumble of
lower hills, ending in a sheer rampart
of great mountains about fifteen miles
away. At first glance it took my breath
away, so absolutely hopeless did it look.
Then I sat down with my glasses, pris-
matic compass, and notebook and care-
fully took stock.

There seemed to be two possible
passes, and I noted them. Of course,
the Masai must have a track down
through, and we counted on old Naio-
kotoku's friendship and promises of 1911.
Saw many impalla, zebra, and kongoni
in the brush on the mountainside, from
which I shot some camp meat.

Returned to camp to find Naiokotoku
and his court just arrived. Drink has
made him very flabby and puffy since
we saw him last. To our surprise we
found him surly, taciturn, and unfriend-
ly. To our questions as to trails, guides,
etc., he replied that there was no trail,
he had no guides. He said barefacedly
that he did not remember us ; he had no
milk, no sheep. Between whiles he
stared at the ground. His beautiful war-
riors were plainly uneasy.

"Very well," said I at last, "the biuana
m kubwa has many presents for those
that help him. He is sorry you cannot
help him. But he is generous, never-
theless: take this knife. Good-bye."

They filed out sullenly. Later we
tried through some of our men to get
information from underlings, but with-
out success, except that we learned that
two Masai from the German side were
at that moment in another manyatta,
and about to return !

Months later, on our return from
Nairobi, we found that two sportsmen
had spent three weeks in that country,
since 1911, and had obtained guides
from Naiokotoku. The sportsmen had
procured two elephants, a lion, and two
buffalo in a very short space of time,
but had had some sort of misunder-
standing with the guides, and ended by
refusing any payment. Of course, I
do not know the nature of the misunder-
standing, but they got what they were
after, and should have paid Naiokotoku
for the men he supplied. Then they
could have registered their objections.
As it was, they merely succeeded in
turning a friendly tribe hostile, and in
making it difficult for the next fellow.

We discussed the matter at some
length, but finally decided to try and
nose a way through. I have had a
good deal of mountain experience on an-
other continent.

Hunting for a Pass

Next morning we started very early
over the high hill on which I hunted
the day before, and down the other side
into the welter of smaller hills. When
we were half way down two Masai
with arms passed us on a run without
deigning us a greeting. Subsequent ex-
periences made us certain that these were
at once spies on us and messengers to
warn other manyattas to give us no
information. At the bottom of the hill
we sent Sanguiki to a village to try to
find out something. He returned to
tell us that the Masai were "kali sana'
(very fierce) and would tell nothing.
We struck into a likely grass ridge,
found a Masai trail that went our way,
and jogged on.

The ridge, after six or seven miles,
ran down into a broad grass ravine that
led to a small river. We were much
amused by a small herd of zebra that
kept just ahead of us, and seemed vastly
indignant at being repeatedly driven for-
ward. In the grass swale I jumped
seven big eland at about fifty yards —
a fine sight. We soon discovered that
the banks of the stream were too swampy
to cross, so we went down a mile or
so and camped.

290

OUTING

After lunch Cuninghame and I with
four men set out to scout a way. I
had marked the possible pass by a small
green patch on the mountainside. We
found a ford — after being scared by a
crashing old rhino at close quarters —
and ascended the mountain. The way
proved feasible until we reached a round
elevated valley below the final rise of
the escarpment. Here we found a spring
of water and marked it on our sketch
map. A herd of zebra and kongoni were
here, a happy find, for we needed meat.

Leaving the men to attend to the vic-
tim, Cuninghame and I toiled to the
summit of the ridge. Here we got
an extensive view of a wild tumble of
hills, but could see plainly a feasible
pass to a stream on the other side of
the ridge. Also across the way another
water hole, with a great concourse of
baboons sitting around it. Quite satis-
fied for the moment, we named it Gil-
bert Pass, in honor of my brother's birth-
day. A long tramp brought us back to
camp at dusk.

Wonderful moon, and very chilly
night. M'ganga, in the meantime, had
tried another Masai village for informa-
tion, but returned with no news except
that the runners had been there warning
them to give us no help.

Another day took us over Gilbert Pass
to the stream, and then down-stream
for some distance over an old Masai
trail between mighty mountains. A
honey bird followed us for over an hour,
beseeching us to turn aside, and then
flew away in disgust. Saw duiker, reed-
buck, kongoni, zebra, eland, warthog,
and mongoose. The trail ended in a
small round valley and a salt lick.

After lunch Cuninghame and I took
up our regular job of scouting. The
river here entered a deep, narrow rock
gorge, so we spent much toil in as-
cending the hill to the left, whence wTe
looked out over so tumbled and broken
a country that we immediately gave up
going south and returned for a cast to
westward. The river here was quite
big, and we forded up to our waists.
For some time we had no luck on ac-
count of dense forest, but finally dis-
covered a game trail that led us up
through a Low pass to look abroad over

so beautiful a wide, shallow grass val-
ley dotted with groves that we named
it Pleasant Valley. Here we saw a few
herds of game, including some eland.

Cuninghame climbed the south ridge
and reported precipices. Therefore, we
must go down the valley and take our
luck at the lower end. Got in at sun-
down. At midnight, two rhinos from
the salt lick blundered into the edge of
camp. Great excitement and row;
everybody out with firebrands and yells
to drive them off.

Still More Valleys

Next morning, which brought us to
July twentieth, we marched to the lower
end of Pleasant Valley. There we
squatted the safari, and separated to find
a way over. Each found a feasible
route, but the safari was nearer Cuning-
hame's, so we took that. From the top
of the ridge we looked out upon a very
big oval valley filled with thorn scrub.
Across the valley was another high ram-
part. At the lower end, about six miles
distant, there was an apparent narrow
break where a river went through. This
seemed the most likely way, so we head-
ed for that.

It was hard travel over rough coun-
try, in high grass and thorns that tore
at us eagerly. Marched high above a
canon, and camped below two enormous
peaks, one of which we named Mt. Bell-
field, in honor of the present governor
of British East Africa. A narrow for-
est bordered a stream of beautiful clear
water. Never have I seen a more mar-
velous display of curtain vines and gor-
geous flowering trees.

The outlook was now so very uncer-
tain as to whether we could continue
down the canon that Cuninghame and
I scouted ahead before breaking camp.
Enormous rugged mountains compassed
us about, and we feared the river would
end in an impassable gorge. We took
a rhino track that speedily led us into
a wonderful forest of great trees, looped,
snaky vines, lacy underbrush, tree ferns,
and flowering bushes. There were many
baboons and monkeys swinging about.
The sun rarely penetrated. Great rock
cliffs towered at either hand, and the

IN BACK OF BEYOND

291

clear stream dashed down cataracts and
waterfalls among the boulders.

The rhino track led true for some
distance, then petered out to a monkey
trail and ended in an impassable gorge.
There was nothing to be gained in that
direction, so we turned our attention to
the canon walls. By dint of crawling,
climbing straight up, and worming my
way, I gained the top of a ridge to
the right, and most unexpectedly found
it to be a spur, or "hogsback," between
our stream and another. I followed it
until I found that it did not "jump off"
at the end, then returned and shouted
for Cuninghame. He scrambled up, and
together we set to find a way down to
stream level. We discovered a blessed
— but disused — rhino trail. Cuninghame
went back for men. On his return we
each took a squad with axes and pangas
(native sword-like implements) and
slowly hewed out a good path. We
landed finally at a grove of trees near
the junction of the two streams and
from there sent the men back to move
camp.

Our river here plunged into another
gorge. A wide valley led to a moun-
tain range to the left. Cuninghame
agreed to climb the range above the
gorge, while I explored the valley. I
went up about three miles, only to find
that it ended in a cul-de-sac. Returning,
I turned aside to stalk a bull eland —
only game seen for two days — and found
a narrow tributary valley that led to
a possible pass. Very hot. At camp
I found that Cuninghame had hit on
my same route from above.

The cliffs opposite are hung with trail-
ing, rope-like cactus, and inhabited by
many baboons. Made this day only
four miles, though we walked nine and
a half hours.

We started the day following with a
terrific climb, almost straight up to the
summit of the transverse ridge. Very
sweaty, hard work for men and beasts.
Made it finally, and got a very fine view
back over the way we have come. We
wondered how we ever got through.
From here the ranges get smaller, so
that we can look out over lesser and
lesser systems until far away we could
guess at the brown of plains. When

the men saw this spread out ahead of
them they cheered.

But it looked like a puzzler to get
down. Our river had plunged hopeless-
ly, and the ridges and canons seemed
to be heavily grown with a kind of chap-
paral and to have no order or system.
Far away to the south we dimly made
out two enormous craters that must be
upwards of 12,000 feet high.

However, there was a notch opposite,
so we made for that. On the other
side of the notch we descended to an-
other small valley, and beyond that we
saw another notch. We entered the
valley. Very hot. Cuninghame took a
detour to the right, and shortly whistled
us down to him.

Looking foj- a Way Out

At the foot of the valley was a single
shady tree, with big smooth trunk, great
buttressed roots, broad leaves, and a
small fruit. It was big-limbed and
broad, and just beyond it was a water-
hole, of mud and little pools, forty or
fifty feet broad. This was enclosed with
a low thorn bo ma (brush fence), and at
the dozen openings that had been left
for the purpose, tall saplings had been
planted and bent over by means of well-
made native sisal rope. Buried loops
were to be sprung by the animals that
entered. What they could be we could
not imagine, as there were no signs of
game — probably stray bushbuck. We
sprung all the snares, and made camp
beneath the tree.

In the afternoon Cuninghame and I
made a very high, hot climb through the
second notch ; found it led nowhere ; cast
about, and finally came on a long hogs-
back that led gently down two miles to
end abruptly. We looked straight down
eight hundred feet or so on another
scrub-grown valley wTith some queer,
rounded rock outcrops about a hundred
feet in height. The descent was sheer,
but we figured out zigzags. Over op-
posite lay a big black range, but around
its lower end our river broke through
a notch.

We figured we would either go
through the notch or climb the range;
and so returned to camp, pretty tired.

292

OUTING

We were cheered by the sight of a
dozen kongoni and three Chanler's reed-
buck atop the ridge, for this was the
first game we had seen — save the single
eland — since entering the mountain
ranges. The descent by the zigzags
proved to be a terror for men, but es-
pecially for donkeys. The last of Van-
derweyer's did not get in until 6 p. m. !

Once safely down, we crossed the val-
ley by the rocks, and found ourselves in
face of another lesser drop. Thornbush
very bad, so that we moved a hundred
feet at a time and our clothes and skins
suffered. At last I found a rhino trail
down. The men dropped their packs and
set to work with pang as and axes and
finally cleared a trail. Cuninghame and
I pushed ahead, and soon found our-
selves on the banks of a fine river. A
shady thicket and great trees ran along-
side, elephant grass reached ten feet
above our heads.

We followed the rhino trails, and
after some search discovered a ford.
After consultation, Cuninghame re-
mained to place camp and cross the ani-
mals, while I pushed ahead as rapidly
as possible to scout out a way for the
morrow through the scrub to the end of
the range, and to find out whether we
could follow the river.

I soon discovered difficulties, in the
first place to get a feasible path through
the tangle of thorn scrub, and, in the
second place, to dodge rhinos. The val-
ley was about five miles by three, grown
ten feet high with thorny jungle, and
literally infested by the beasts. Their
broad, well-beaten trails went every-

where. These were a help, but there
was always a doubt as to whether their
rightful owners did not want to use
them. I went along singing at the top
of my voice all the songs I knew, in
spite of the fact that the close heat of
the thicket and the powerful sun were
not conducive to vocal exercise.

About a mile on a huge bulk reared
itself not over fifteen yards ahead, snort-
ed, and rushed down the trail toward
me. I literally could not force myself
a foot into the wall of thorns, so I
brought the Springfield into action and
fired at its head. The beast stopped
five )^ards from me and turned square
across the trail, swinging his head slowly,
and evidently trying to make up his
mind as to what hit him. After per-
haps ten seconds he showed signs of
swinging back in my direction. I, who
had been much on the alert for any
such move, gave him one in the shoulder.
This decided him. He turned around
and disappeared.

After a decent interval I followed
him. At last I reached the point where
the range met the river. A cliff only
twenty feet across seemed to bar that,
though the approach on both sides was
good. I rested there ten minutes, and
then returned to camp, blazing a way
with my hunting knife as I went. Saw
one bushbuck, the only game. Got in
at sundown, and drank a quart of tea all
at once. Quite weary and ankle-sore.
During the evening two rhinos tried to
enter camp, but we scared them off with
our Colts and firebrands. This valley
must have been full of them.

(To be continued)

Next month the mountains let go and the
expedition heads eastward for Lake Natron
through the first of the real game country.

:.**

THE BLIND TRAIL

By KATHRENE AND ROBERT E. PINKERTON

The Woodcraft of Twilight Jack
Unravels a Mystery of the North

1ND a fellow with a
green canoe who stop-
ped here two weeks
ago?" asked the stran-
ger in the office of
Sabawi's small and
only hotel.

The hotel man smoked reflectively.
Then his face brightened.

"Billy McKecknie?"

"That's him."

"Yes, he was here. Said to leave
word for Say, you ain't Twi-
light Jack?"

"Yes. Hasn't he been here since that
time?"

"No. Said he'd be back in a week
sure and that you was to wait for him.
I've heard of you two lads, the time you
went out and got the Indian that killed
the fur-buyer down on Wild Potato
Lake."

"How far is Lake Separation from
Sabawi?"

"Between fifty and sixty miles by
canoe."

"Anyone been down lately?"

"Not since the Indians came down
from Lake Kahshahpiwi for their treaty
money a month ago. Where was your
partner going?"

"Lake Separation."

The hotel man's tilted chair came
down to the floor with a thump and he
stared at his guest.

"It's not a hard trip, is it?"

The hotel man resumed his position
against the wall and puffed rapidly at
his pipe.

"It never was until this year," he
answered slowlv.

"What do

vou mean

"Now, don't get excited, lad, but
there's a funny thing about that Lake

Separation route this summer. Two
men wTent up there before your part-
ner did."

Twilight Jack looked up sharply when
the hotel man paused.

"And neither of 'em's been seen
since."

"Not seen since? Why?"

"Killed in Shee-ing-guss Rapids. Least,
that's about the only thing that could
have happened. A fellow was killed
there last fall. Men in another canoe
following saw his paddle break, and he
was drawn in."

"Why Weasel Rapids?"

" 'Cause they're white, like a weasel
in winter, all the way down, and about
as bloodthirsty. And they leap and
glide and slide along just like one of
the little white devils. No man ever
run em." ■

"Who were the fellows got killed
there?"

"First this year was Pat McConnell,
who's been prospecting in this district
ever since they found gold on Rainy
Lake twenty years ago. He went up
that way in May to do some assessment
work on a claim, and said he'd sure be
back by July first. Pat never misses
his Dominion Day spree here.

"Then, about the first week in July,
a young fellow from the States went up,
just a pleasure trip. Said he had to
be back in two weeks. He never came
back. His dad came up and hired a
couple of men. After they'd spent nearly
a month dynamiting and searching the
shores, he offered five hundred dollars
reward for the body, but the Indians
say it'll never come up. There's
more'n four hundred feet of water in the
•lake where the rapids empty into it,
and it's mightv cold water."

[293]

294

OUTING

"A fellow like Pat McConnell ought
not to get caught there."

"No, it don't seem so, but they found
his canoe, smashed up, in the lake. Old
George Marvin found the lad's canoe.
It wasn't hurt. The boy's father gave
it to Marvin for helping search.

"It's making the portage above the
rapids that's bad. You see, the river
runs through a rock gorge with straight
walls. A couple of hundred yards above
the first pitch there is a shoot and pretty
fast water between it and the rapids.
There used to be an old portage starting
above the shoot, but no one uses it.
They run the shoot right down to the
top of the rapids and then pull into the
east shore in an eddy. Right in the rock
wall is a cut, and by carrying fifty feet
through this cut and down the rocks
you can set into the lake around a point
from where the rapids come out. It
saves a long portage."

And you think both Pat McConnell
and Billy got caught there, two old-
timers like them?"

"It don't sound right, but you know
how those things run in threes. And
they found the smashed canoe."

Twilight Jack sat silently for half an
hour.

"Who lives up in that country?" he
asked at last.

"Only three men. The first is old
George Marvin, who found the lad's
canoe. He lives on Caribou Lake, an
old man who does a little trapping, put-
ters around in a garden and just about
makes a living. Ten miles farther is
Squaw Bill Dennison. He buys fur of
the Indians and, they say, sells whisky
to them, though no one ever caught him
at it. Bill's got a sort of hard name,
though I always found him all right.

"Then there's a breed lives on Kah-
shahkogwog Lake, ten miles this side of
Lake Separation. He's a bad Indian.
Ben Peters his name is."

The hotel man rambled on, and Twi-
light gathered much information about
the country and the route. He learned
that Pat McConnell had used a blue
Peterborough and that the tourist had
brought a canvas canoe from the States,
that Squaw Bill Dennison was known
for his red hair and beard, and that

Marvin suffered from rheumatism and
shouldn't live so far from town when
he was subject to "bad spells of crip-
plin'."

"Guess Mike and I'll run up and see
these rapids in the morning," he said as
he arose to go to bed.

"Didn't know you had anyone with
you."

"Mike's short for Myingen. He's
my other partner. Half wolf and half
dog, and knows more'n most men. We
always travel together."

Before noon the next day Twilight
Jack guided his canoe through the shoot
above Shee-ing-guss Rapids and dashed
down in the swift 'current toward the
crest of the first pitch. He watched the
east shore closely, turned the canoe into
an eddy and came to a stop at the mouth
of a narrow slash in the high, straight
wall of the gorge.

"It's a nasty place, Mike," he said as
he lifted out his pack and drew up the
canoe.

A long, rangy gray-and-brown dog
had jumped to the shore and stood
stretching his cramped legs. He had
the sharp muzzle and pointed ears of
the wolf, much of the gray fur and the
rangy build, but some progenitor that
had never known the wild life had given
him heavier limbs and chest and an oc-
casional patch of brown.

Together the man and the dog climbed
the side of the cut to the top of the
cliff and walked down toward the lake,
the rapids beneath them.

"No man or boat could ever go
through there and live, Mike," Twilight
explained as he looked down.

Before he and Billy McKecknie had
begun trapping together two years be-
fore, Mike had been his constant com-
panion, and even Billy's presence had not
ended his habit of discussing all things
with the dog.

"If old Billy was pulled in, there's no
use in our looking for him. But I don't
see how he could have been caught."

They went back to the canoe and
turned down the boulder-cluttered cleft
in the rock walls. Fifty feet down
grade, and Twilight found himself on
the shore of White Otter Lake, in a bay
around a long point from where the river

THE BLIND TRAIL

295

entered. He stood on a shelf of rock six
feet above another shelf which formed
a natural landing just above the level of
the water.

"Quite a handy portage, but no one
would ever find it unless they knew it
was here. Maybe Billy didn't know "

Twilight stopped speaking and
jumped down to the lower shelf.

"Come here, Mike, and smell of this,"
he exclaimed as he bent over a heap of
ashes beside the rock. But it was not
the ashes nor the charred stubs of un-
burned wood that interested him. It
was a piece of birch sapling propped
over a rock.

"No one but Billy ever cut a tea stick
like that," he cried. "He always cut
off the end square with his knife and
made a notch for the bail. See, it's
fresh cut, too. And if Billy boiled tea
here, he made this portage and never
went through the rapids. He's not
killed, Mike. He's just delayed some-
where. We'll hurry on and find where
he is."

Twilight quickly carried his canoe
and pack across and in ten minutes had
paddled out of the deep bay and was on
White Otter Lake. He studied his map
for a minute and then turned north to-
ward the portage into Caribou Lake.
After paddling a half mile, he saw a
canoe on the shore.

"There's McConnell's blue Peterbor-
ough, Mike," he said when he wTas near
enough to distinguish the color. "We'll
have a look."

The canoe was badly smashed, and
Twilight examined it with the interest
of a man who wonders just what a bad
piece of water will do to a craft.

"That's certainly a nasty bunch of
rips, when it'll do that," he announced.
"It must have been half full and then
hit a rock to cave in the side."

Suddenly Twilight dropped to his
knees and looked closely at the wreck.
Then he went over the entire outer sur-
face, carefully examining the shattered
planking.

"That wasn't any rocks, Mike, least
any rocks like I ever saw before. There
was only one rock smashed that canoe,
and that was an iron rock, an axe.
There's seven places where you can see

the clean dents it made, and not a
jagged cut on the whole canoe.

"I didn't think an old-timer like Pat
would get caught in such a place, and
we know Billy never went through.
There's another answer to this besides
Shee-ing-guss Rapids, old ninnymusher,
and we've got to find out. Maybe it
ain't too late yet to help Billy."

For an hour Twilight paddled swift-
ly. Then, as he rounded an island, he
suddenly stopped and called :

"Billy! Oh, Billy!"

Mike sat up in the canoe and looked
at the shore, whining at the mention of
McKecknie's name.

"There's his canoe, Mike," exclaimed
Twilight, paddling toward the shore.

It was the green Peterborough of his
partner, but, when twTo hundred yards
away, Twilight knew that only the wind
and waves had beached it where it was.
Lying broadside to the shore, the bow
lifted slightly onto a rock, it lay in the
water, somewThat deeply submerged at
the stern.

Twilight scrambled ashore and to the
green canoe. It was a quarter full of
water but otherwise contained nothing,
not even a paddle. There was no sign
on the shore of any one having left the
craft there.

While he had feared for his partner,
Twilight Jack did not until this mo-
ment admit the possibility of his being
dead. Now the drifting, empty canoe
told a story which he could not escape.
For the first time in his life in the wild-
erness he felt fear of something besides
the elements. Somewhere near him
there was someone, something, that had
caused the death of two men and prob-
ably three. He glanced apprehensively
out over the lake, but so far as he could
see he was alone in the wilderness. Then
he stiffened determinedly and turned to
his own canoe.

"We'll find Billy if it's the last thing
we do," he told the dog as he motioned
it into the bow. „

An hour later they arrived at the
place where the river flowed into Cari-
bou Lake. It was a swift, rock-filled
stream, and Twilight proceeded cau-
tiously. A small falls forced him to
portage. Although he examined the

296

OUTING

take-off carefully, he could not find signs
on the flat rocks that covered the shore.
It was only a liftover, and in five min-
utes he was again threading his way
between the boulders.

Suddenly he thrust his paddle against
the bottom and stopped his canoe.

"Mike, look at that," he whispered.
"There's green paint on that rock, and
some more on the one on the other side.
Billy always was careless in such places
as this. "What's a little paint, more or
less?' he always said. Billy and his
canoe got this far, Mike, but how did
the canoe drift ashore back there up-
stream beyond the portage?"

For half an hour he poled back and
forth and at last returned to the falls.

"Billy went up, but he never came
back," he decided as he stepped ashore.
"Did you notice, Mike, that all the
green paint was on the upstream sides, of
the rocks, and that there wasn't any
left by a canoe coming this way? Billy
went through here with his canoe, but
he didn't bring it back. It was towed
back light. The same thing's likely to
be true of Pat, and the other lad. What
happened to them happened north of

here, and " he stopped and looked

down the little river, "it might happen
to us, too."

For a minute he sat thoughtfully,
looking downstream. Then he pulled
his map from its case.

"We've got to back track a bit, lad,"
he announced after a few minutes. "If
we're going to find out anything, we
want to be coming the other way. If
there's anything to happen to us, it ain't
so liable to happen if we come onto it
unexpected. There's a river flowing
into White Otter Lake back on the east
shore, and by going up that we can get
into a chain of lakes and reach Lake
Separation. Then we can come back
on this route, and we'll keep our eyes
open while we do it."

Two nights later Twilight Jack and
Mike camped on Lake Separation. They
had traveled from dawn until dark, and
seventy miles of lake, river and portage
lay between them and the place where
they had turned back. Nor was there
rest the next morning. Before dawn
Twilight was at the portage into Kah-

shahkogwog Lake, and before sun-up
he had located Ben Peters' cabin on
the west shore and was hidden in the
brush less than one hundred yards from
it. Mike remained to guard the canoe
and pack.

After two hours smoke floated from
the chimney, and a boy ten or twelve
years old came out for an armful of
wood. But it was the middle of the
forenoon before Peters appeared, and
Twilight at once saw the reason. The
breed was very drunk and reeled about
in front of the cabin. The boy went
fishing in a birch bark canoe, while the
man remained outside the door, stop-
ping his wild yells and songs only for
frequent drinks. At last, just before his
son's return, he pitched forward from
his seat in the doorway.

When the boy entered the cabin, Twi-
light walked quickly to the door. Be-
yond a short stare and an answering
"B'jou," the youngster took no notice
of his presence, and Twilight sat down
to wait. He knew the Indian too well
to attempt to force a conversation, but
that same knowledge of the Indian char-
acter and of Ojibway enabled him, after
half an hour, to start the boy's tongue.

"Big drunk," said Twilight, pointing
toward the door.

"Six days. Much whisky."

Twilight knew the futility of asking
an Indian the source of his whisky, and
he turned to the summer village of
Kahshahpiwi.

"Lots of fun, summer. Lots of boys.
Good time. You there this summer?"

The boy nodded, his face brightening.

"Two months we live there in tee-
pee."

"Then everybody go to rice harvest?"

"All Indians go. Much rice, much
moose. Plenty good time."

"Better time powwow?"

"Powwow best!" exclaimed the boy.
"Go powwow, then go get treaty money.
Much good time summer. Winter,
ugh!" and he shrugged his shoulders.

Gradually Twilight accounted for the
breed's whereabouts throughout the
summer, but his most subtle questions
could not bring information as to the
source of his money. The man lying
outside the door wore a new suit, he

THE BLIND TRAIL

297

must have had a large quantity of
whisky, and there was a new Peterbor-
ough canoe on the beach, all indications
of unusual Indian wealth.

Twilight, pretending to admire the
new craft, led the boy to the lake.

"Where get canoe?"

"Wilton."

Twilight started. Wilton was one
hundred miles east in a straight line.

"Wilton long way."

"We go, my father and I. Seven
days go. Five days come. Four days
there."

That made twenty-two days, count-
ing the six Peters had been drunk.
They had left before Billy had started
from Sabawi and returned a week after-
ward. But Twilight was suspicious.

"White man's canoe go fast," he said.

"Faster than Indian canoe," and the
boy's face lighted.

"Good canoe in rapids?"

"Don't know. No rapids to Wilton.
All lake, no river."

Twilight looked at the unscarred bot-
tom of the new craft. It bore out the
boy's statements. River travel would
have left its marks.

"The breed may have got the other
fellows, but he wasn't around when Billy
was in the country," he remarked to
Mike a little later when he turned his
canoe southward.

Traveling back on the main route
between Lake Separation and Sabawi,
Twilight, a day after leaving the breed's
place, arrived at the little lake on
which Squaw Bill Dennison lived. Af-
ter crossing the portage, he waited un-
til darkness before making camp in a
bay. The next morning found him
hidden in the brush as he had hidden
at the breed's place.

But no smoke, no human movement,
rewarded his long vigil. In the mid-
dle of the forenoon he made a circuit
through the brush until he was close
to the rear of the cabin. There was
no sound. He sensed that indescribable
air of desertion with which the woods-
man is so familiar and immediately
walked openly to the door. It was
closed but not locked. Without hesi-
tation Twilight entered.

For fifteen minutes he stood in the

center of the room. Then he walked
cautiously about, moving things only
when necessary. His examination com-
pleted, he went outside and studied the
ground about the cabin and the trail
down to the lake. At the sand beach
he looked carefully for signs. Sud-
denly he gave expression to the Indian
exclamation of wonder, a peculiar cluck-
ing of the tongue. At last he walked
up the shore to the bay where he had
left his canoe and pack in Mike's care.
Paddling openly out into the lake and
on southward, he was thoughtful for
half an hour.

"Well, old wolf, we're getting some-
where," he began at last. "Finding
Billy's canoe showed that something had
happened to him, though it might have
been most anything. Finding this," and
he drew from a pocket a buckskin pouch
with the letters "W. MK." worked in
beads on one side, "shows that Billy's
been robbed, with the chances about a
hundred to one that he's killed. It's
the bag he carried his money in and he
had all his share of that Wild Potato
Lake reward and some more, too, when
he left us to come up here.

"Finding the bag in Squaw Bill's
shack seems to point pretty strong to
him being the one, and I believe he is.
But it isn't the only thing I found
there, and it's got me guessing worse
than the puzzles they have in the Mon-
treal paper. Here's what I found, and
what I think might be. You can fig-
ure it out to suit yourself.

"Squaw Bill left his shack early one
morning, about a week ago, I should
judge, expecting to be back that night.
There was a batch of sour-dough bread
on the table, all wrapped up in a cloth,
cooling off. Probably baked it while
he was eating breakfast. A man
wouldn't make a baking of bread if he
didn't intend to come back.

"Then there was a pot of beans in
the oven, just about done, all ready for
a good supper when he got in at night.
He must have had a long day's trip,
for he left in a hurry. He hadn't made
his bed nor washed the plate and cup
he ate breakfast from, and", by the looks
of his cabin, he's a neat housekeeper.

"His canoe is a birchbark, from the

293

OUTING

marks It left in the sand where he
turned it over, and there was a couple
of rocks he kept to weight it down.
I could see a place where he run it
onto the beach. It hasn't rained for
seven days, and the last time his canoe
was turned over it was raining, for
there were little holes in the sand where
the water had dripped down off of it.
There were marks of shoepacs made in
wet sand where he had lifted the canoe
and carried it to the water and where he
had stepped into it. He must have left
the morning after the rain.

"But someone else has been in that
cabin since Squaw Bill left it, Mike,
and he came in a white man's canoe
and landed right where Dennison shoved
off. The man wore smooth-soled shoes
and he went up to the cabin and looked
into everything from top to bottom. He
even pulled up half the floor poles.
Squaw Bill must have scrubbed the
floor the day before he left, for it was
mighty clean. But it's a hewed pole
floor, and the dust wedged in the cracks
has been loosened and some of it left
on top of the floor. Whoever was there
was hunting mighty close for something
he wanted.

"This bag of Billy's was lying on the
floor. If Squaw Bill isn't the man who
got Billy, how did that bag get there?
It looks like Squaw Bill, and I think it
was, but there is this point. The bag
lay on the floor, and on top of some of
the dirt that had been loosened from
between the floor poles. Now you know
everything I know.

"If I was to figure it out, I'd put it
this way: Squaw Bill is the fellow that
killed Pat McConnell, the lad from the
States, and Billy. He got them some-
where near here, when they were pass-
ing. Anyone going north would have
to turn that long point by his place.
When he saw them coming, 'way down
the lake, all he'd have to do would be
to run out on that point, pot them with
his rifle, and then go out with his canoe
and get what he could. Of course, he
didn't want to leave any tracks around
there, so he took their canoes down to
White Otter Lake and turned them
adrift. To make it look sure the rapids
did it, he smashed Pat's up a bit.

"Billy had a good stake with him,
and this Dennison, after getting it,
thought he had worked the game enough
and decided to leave the country. The
bread and the beans might have been a
blind, one you'd expect from a man
smooth enough to figure out the rest of
it. The breed saw him leaving toward
Wilton and sneaked down and got the
whisky. That would explain the
breed's being drunk, for, according to
his kid, the drunk began about the time
Squaw Bill left. The breed found the
empty bag after he had lifted the floor
poles and threw it down there. It was
his new Peterborough that landed at
Dennison's. That's all reasonable, isn't
it?"

The dog, which had been listening
attentively, carefully arose, stretched,
and then curled up on his other side and
went to sleep.

"But, listen, Mike," expostulated
Twilight. "That's only one way of
looking at it. The man who went to
Dennison's cabin had smooth-soled
shoes. The breed wore moccasins, and
I didn't see any shoes in his house. So
it might not have been the breed, al-
though the whisky makes it look so. It
might have been someone else, maybe
someone who was in with Dennison
and put him out of the way and then
came up to get his share of the loot.
That sounds reasonable, too, for the
bread and beans might not have been
a blind.

"Then there is just the bare chance
that it was someone else altogether who
got Pat and the kid and Billy and who
got Squaw Bill, too, and then came up
and left that bag there to make it appear
that Squaw Bill was the robber. Those
things are all possible, and some of them
are reasonable, though I believe the most
reasonable thing is that Squaw Bill did
it all and then skipped after getting
Billy, and that the breed came down
after seeing Squaw Bill go by.

"But, before we go any farther, I'm
going down to Caribou Lake portage
and see what happened there."

It was late in the afternoon when he
reached it. There was a muddy take-
off, and Twilight motioned Mike back
into the canoe when the dog started to

THE BLIND TRAIL

299

jump ashore. Standing up, he looked
at the ground.

"See those footprints made just after
the rain, Mike," he said, pointing with
his paddle. "Those are Squaw Bill's
shoepacs, just like those on his landing.
And they're going only one way. He
went out this way when he left that day,
but he never came back. Maybe he
went to Sabawi, getting there after dark
and sneaking onto the night train, for
he hasn't been seen down there.

"And there ain't any sign of anyone
being here since he was. That makes
it look like the breed is the one who
went to his shack. Things are just as
I figured them, Mike, except that I
thought Squaw Bill went out by way
of Wilton.

"There ain't any sign of Billy on
this portage. He went over before that
last hard rain, and tKere ain't any rocks
for him to leave paint on. Maybe the
other end of the portage is different.
We'll go across and see."

He shouldered both pack and canoe
and started. For a half mile he walked
steadily and then set down his double
burden to rest.

"Well, look here, Mike!" he ex-
claimed, bending over the trail. "That
fellow with the smooth-soled shoes came
and went over this portage. There's his
tracks, the same that were on Squaw
Bill's beach. Now why didn't he keep
to the trail?"

Twilight resumed his work, and when
he had completed the mile portage, again
looked for tracks. He found only the
imprint of Squaw Bill's shoepacs.

"That fellow landed somewhere else
and walked on the trail only in the
narrow place between the high rocks,
where he had to," Mike was informed.
"But if he was so careful here, why
wasn't he careful on the sand at Squaw
Bill's? Guess he thought the rain or
waves would wash out his tracks in the
sand."

Twilight examined the shore and the
trail carefully, but he could find no
traces of his partner having passed that
way. In the dry clay he saw the faint
imprints of many moccasined feet, traces
of the Indians who had come down for
their treaty money and returned a month

before. Only Squaw Bill's tracks were
on top of these.

"I wouldn't be sure, after that rain,
but it looks as though Billy never got
this far," he mused. "And, if he didn't,
how did Squaw Bill get him? That
don't make my reasoning appear so
reasonable, does it? The only thing
we've learned here is that old Marvin
is the man who went up to Squaw Bill's
cabin. He saw Dennison go by and
sneaked up to get a bottle. Didn't walk
on the portage because he thought Den-
nison would be right back and see his
tracks. And he's got a white man's
canoe, the canvas one the kid's father
gave him. We'll just go down and see
if he's got smooth-soled shoes and if his
canoe's got a keel. The one that landed
at Squaw Bill's didn't."

Twilight paddled southward in the
gathering darkness. In half an hour he
saw a light on the east shore, and know-
ing it could be only that from Marvin's
cabin, turned his canoe toward it.

"Now wait a minute, Mike," he
whispered after a few minutes. "We
don't want to overlook anything.
We've got our minds set on it's being
Squaw Bill when it might be this old
Marvin. Anyway, if we learn anything
from him, we can't go at it too carefully.
If Billy went by here, Marvin would
have seen him. And we can't ask the
sort of questions we would like if we
were traveling south instead of north.
We'll slip on by in the dark and come
back in the morning."

Twilight turned his canoe toward
the middle of the lake and paddled un-
til the light had disappeared behind him.
Then he made camp in a bay and went
to sleep. He was in no hurry in the
morning, and it was after eight o'clock
before he had paddled the mile to Mar-
vin's cabin.

Twilight knew the type before he had
seen more than the old man's back as
he bent and swayed over a crosscut saw
in the little clearing between the cabin
and the lake. Neat cabin, neat cloth-
ing, neat little garden within its fence
of cedar pickets, wood cut and stacked
in neat, even piles — all indicated the old
woodsman, the man who had spent all
his life in the forest, much of it alone,

300

OUTING

and who was as cranky about his house-
keeping, as methodical in his work, as
any old woman of the towns. A few
traps, an odd job now and then, and
he obtained enough to live on as com-
fortably as he desired.

Marvin greeted his visitor with the
pleasure and the close, quick scrutiny
of the lone forest dweller. He walked
down to the beach and began at once
to rid himself of long bottled and unin-
teresting gossip and opinions. Twilight
sat down on the woodpile and waited
patiently for an opportunity to direct
the conversation as he wished. While
he whittled a piece of pine he noted that
Marvin wore smooth-soled shoes, that
the canvas canoe on the beach was with-
out a keel.

"Nice little place you've got here,"
he said wThen the old man paused.
"How's fur around here?"

"I don't do much," Marvin replied.
"I'm getting a little old to have out
many traps. But there's enough to buy
flour and tea and pork. Trapping ain't
what it used to be. Too much poison
scattered around."

"Where do you sell your fur?" asked
Twilight.

"Some to Squaw Bill and some to the
storekeeper in Sabawi. Play one against
the other. That's the only way a trap-
per can get any kind of a price."

"What would be the chances of a
good buyer coming into this district?"

"Mighty good. There's a lot of In-
dians north of here, and a couple of
white men farther east. Jessup and
Squaw Bill ain't paying what they
ought."

"I been thinking of coming in here
this winter, but I heard at Sabawi that
another fellow came up two or three
weeks ago, looking the district over."

"Tall, reddish fellow?"

"I never saw him."

"Green canoe?"

"Didn't hear."

"A fellow like that did go by two
weeks ago, but he didn't say anything
about buying fur. Maybe he was keep-
ing it quiet."

Twilight stopped his whittling and
looked out over the lake, his glance rest-
ing for ;i moment on the other's face.

"The only way to work this fur game
is to combine," he said. "No use buck-
ing everybody. What sort of a fellow
is this Squaw Bill? Near's I can find
out, he would be a good buyer if he let
booze alone and 'tended strictly to
business."

"You've said it right, mister. Too
much for himself, and, they all say, too
much for the Indians. But he's a slick
one."

"Guess I'll go up and see him. Has
he been down this way lately?"

"Not for nearly a month. He don't
get down often."

Twilight snapped shut the blade of
his knife and stood up, again looking
quickly at the old man's face as he did
so. He found only honesty, honesty so
evident that for a moment he doubted
the footprints he had seen on the port-
age and at Squaw Bill's.

Puzzled, he walked toward the beach.
Marvin had seen Billy pass. He seemed
honest and simple as his type generally
was, but Twilight knew that he had
told some untruths. "Perhaps to cover
up that trip of his to Dennison's place,"
he decided.

The old man followed him to the
beach.

"Going up to Squaw Bill's?" he

"Yes. Think I'll find him there?"

"He's most generally at home. If
you're going up, you can save most a
mile of packing by taking another route.
It's a little longer but only a short
carry."

Twilight halted and turned sharply
toward Marvin, who was just behind.
But by the time the old man saw his
face he had hidden his amazement.

"Where's that?" he asked simply.

"Straight across the lake, right north
of that big white pine about fifty paces.
Squaw Bill cut it out two years ago.
The trail goes over the ridge in that
low place and into a lake just west of
this. A river flows out of it into the
lake above, and you miss that mile port-
age."

Though this information explained
several things to Twilight, it puzzled
him more, and he sparred while he col-
lected his thoughts.

THE BLIND TRAIL

301

"The map shows it as the north end
of this lake," he said.

"Yes, but this one of Squaw Bill's
is shorter. I've never been over it, but
he's told me about it."

"No one's more glad than I am to
miss a long portage, and I'll thank you
and Squaw Bill for this."

Perplexed, mystified, Twilight pad-
dled away. After a few minutes he
heard Marvin's saw in its slow, steady
movement. Turning, he saw the old
man's back, bent and swaying.

"What do you make of all that,
Mike?" he asked when he was out of
hearing. "Worse and worse. This
portage explains some things, but it
don't explain itself. If it's a short way,
why didn't the Indians take it, and why
didn't Marvin when he went to Squaw
Bill's and Squaw Bill when he came
down? And the old man says it's been
cut two years.

"It shows one thing, and that is that
it's Squaw Bill we're after. It can't be
old Marvin. I don't think he's that
sort, and, besides, how could an old
cripple like him do away with three
good men? He just let Squaw Bill
use him without knowing it."

The portage, unblazed, was hidden
in a cove, but Twilight found it from
Marvin's description. And the second
thing he found was a smudge of green
paint on the rocks.

"Billy went this way," Twilight ex-
claimed. "He landed here. And that
tells a lot of things. Squaw Bill got
him beyond here somewhere and then
packed his canoe over into White Otter
Lake and. set it adrift. And, after
making the three hauls this summer, he
skipped the country. He cut this trail
and told the old man about it, that it
was an easier way to the next lake north.
Now we're going to find out what hap-
pened to Billy."

He pulled his canoe up and, as he
lifted his pack from it, heard the sound
of Marvin's saw from across the lake.
Mike at his heels, he started across the
portage. In the brush he stopped.

"Two years nothing, Mike!" he cried.
"See those brush cuttings? They'fe
fresh, made this year. Those willow
buds were last spring's."

He picked up some of the brush and
examined it.

"Cut about the middle of May," he
muttered, "and there's no old cuttings.
The trail's hardly been used at all."

He went on, walking slowly, stop-
ping after a hundred yards at a place
in the black loam which seemed to have
been torn by a pawing buck. Mike
sniffed at it curiously and then turned
into the brush, whining and smelling as
he went. Twilight Jack followed and
saw that something had been dragged,
flattening the sweetfern and other
ground growth. He hurried on after
the dog, up a slope and into a spruce
thicket.

Together they found the body, half
hidden by limbs broken from nearby
saplings. Twilight did not need to
turn it over to see the face. He recog-
nized his partner, as did the dog, and
stood silently, while Mike whined and
the hair on his neck and back stood
erect. Later he stooped to examine it
and found a great hole in the right side.

"Buckshot, Mike, buckshot," he
whispered as he arose. "Potted from
beside the trail by that wThisky-peddling
cur of a Squaw Bill. He cut this port-
age, out of the way, and told old Mar-
vin about it so that he would send peo-
ple this way. And then he killed them
and took what they had. After dark
he would take the canoes back to White
Otter Lake so that people would think
they drowned.

"And that explains why he hasn't
been at his shack. He hasn't left the
country. He's got another cabin near
here, probably over on this lake farther
west, and he's around now, probably
waiting to pot us. Let's go back and
see if he is," he exclaimed fiercely.

Silently the man and the dog crept
back to the trail and down to the lake.
Lifting his pack, Twilight carried it
into the thick brush beside the trail and
unbuckled the straps. He drew out his
take-down rifle, assembled and loaded it,
and then, twenty feet to one side of the
trail, crept noiselessly up the slope. The
grip on his rifle tightened as he passed
the trail over which Billy's body had
been dragged, but for one hundred
yards he kept on.

302

OUTTNG

Then Mike stopped him. The dog
whined softly and started up the north
slope, his nose to the ground. Twilight
saw sweetfern crushed as it had been
where Billy's body was dragged away,
and he turned after the dog. At the
top of the ridge he found wThat he
sought. For a minute he could not
speak, so great was his amazement.

"Squaw Bill!" he exclaimed. "That's
his red beard and red hair the hotel
man told me about, and there's his shoe-
pacs. No wonder he never got back for
those beans."

He bent over and found the man's
right side torn by a load of buckshot.
Straightening, he listened intently.
From down the slope and across the
lake came the "clop, clop" of an axe at
Marvin's cabin.

"Mike," he demanded in his perplex-
ity, "what is it all? It wasn't Squaw
Bill, and it ain't old Marvin, or he
would have been laying for us. And
how could he send a man by this port-
age and then get over here and shoot
him? It's the breed, Mike. That kid
fooled me clear through, and I thought
I knew Indians."

He hurried back to the trail, where
he signaled Alike to remain. Then,
crouching, moving slowly and silently,
Twilight disappeared in the brush.
Parallel to the trail and not far from it
he crept. Often he stopped to listen,
to peer ahead through the thick growth.
Then, as he turned around a huge boul-
der, he saw that which made him aban-
don his caution and stand still in amaze-
ment.

Lashed to two strong saplings and
roofed by a piece of birch bark, wTas a
double barreled shotgun. Attached to
the triggers was a cord which, in turn,
was tied to a piece of brush thrown
across the trail, altogether the deadliest

affair a man could possibly contrive.

Twilight's astonishment disappeared
immediately he realized the significance
of what he had found. He turned past
the trap and hurried up the portage
trail. Around a bend, less than twenty
yards beyond, it ended. He ran back
to the shotgun, pausing for a moment
with his hand on the string. Faintly
there came to him the sound of old
Marvin chopping at the woodpile. Then
Twilight pulled the string and, before
the sound of the double discharge had
died away, was running back to Mike.
Leading the dog into the brush, he sig-
naled him to keep quiet.

"We've got him, Mike, old boy, the
man who killed Billy and the others,
although he nearly got us, Mike, mighty
near got us."

Twilight listened. The chopping
had ceased.

"He's coming for us, Mike," he
whispered. "He cut this trail and sent
Pat over it first, telling him it was a
shorter route. Then he sent the lad
from the States, and then Billy, and
when old Squaw Bill came down last
wTeek he told him he had cut a shorter
way into the next lake and sent him
over. After that he went up and got
whatever Dennison had and left Billy's
bag for a blind."

For ten minutes Twilight listened in-
tently.

"DowTn, Mike," he whispered. "Keep
quiet now."

He peered through the brush down
the trail towrard the lake. At last,
around the bend came the old man, his
face wrinkled in a contented smile, but
with eyes that were now crafty, evil. He
hurried on and then stopped, too terror-
stricken to relax a grin that had become
ghastly as Twilight stepped into the.
trail, his rifle ready.

Next Month "The Snowshoes That
Swung Wide." Twilight Jack defeats
the Fate that has been dogging
the heels of the Survey Party

THREE MEN AND A FISH

By CULLEN A. CAIN

A Tale of Hunger, Fatigue, Frost-Bite, and Woe on a Little

Illinois River

==5=S OUR times during the past
eventful twelve months have

< I gone forth to catch little

fishes and found hunger,
fatigue, sunstroke, frost-bites
and woe. And the last time
was the worst. Three of the experiences
were endured in Kansas, but this last
calamity happened up on the Fox River
at a point about halfway between Chi-
cago and Elgin, Illinois.

I had sworn off after the Cedar Creek
massacre. But this time I was seduced
by stories of the grand bass fishing in the
north country. The fish in these North-
ern lakes and rivers were so plentiful
and they bit so hard and often that really
it was no sport at all to harvest them
into the boat. And Fox River was the
star fishing stream of the north country.
That was the story my Chicago friends
told me, and with my experience and
better judgment hammering on the pan
of my brain for a hearing, I listened to
that story.

I give it as my opinion that there are
no fish in the world. There are none
in Kansas. None in Fox River. None
in Missouri. No, I'll take that back —
about none in the world. There are
codfish off Newfoundland and salmon in
the Oregon River. But I am offering
a reward for fish caught with a line in
my presence anywhere else inland or
outland in the waters of the rivers, the
bays or the ocean. There are no fish.

I am no fisherman. Why, I wonder,
do my friends insist that I always go
fishing when I have a leisure hour or
day? All my friends seem to be fisher-
men, but they never catch any fish —
except me.

I have fished in Mill Creek, Lynn
Creek, Cedar Creek and Fox River;

fished high, low, jack, and the game,
and never a fish has come to me for sym-
pathy. And I suppose that next winter
some false friend will want me to go
with him to break a hole in the ice and
spear the fish when they come up for air.

Yes, I went to Chicago for a change
of air and occupation and, while I wan-
dered around the loop district looking
for a restaurant that served meals for
twenty cents I met an old friend of my
boyhood, Boyles by name. We had
played ball together and I loved him
like a brother. I thought he was still
my friend. He took me to his house out
in Evanston on the lake front and there
he treated me as Foquet did the visiting
princes.

I went down in the early morning
light to the shores of Lake Michigan
and sat there and watched the little
waves chase the big ones across the face
of this inland sea and all of them die
on the shore. And the race of those
waves seemed to me like the race of
men through life, with death on the
sands of the shoreless sea at the end.

But this man Boyles dragged me away
from the lake and my rest and my phil-
osophy and comfort and regal meals and
luxurious room with his wild-eyed tales
and wilder longings for the Fox River
and the myth of the fishes that used
to inhabit its waters. Yes, and he had
a brother-in-law, a red-headed oyster
pirate named Russell, who was crazier
than Boyles over this fishing dream.
Not Peter and the other eleven apostle-
fishermen ever made such a catch the
night they burst their nets under the
spell of a miracle as had this Boyles-
Russell outfit on some previous trip to
Fox River. They lied ; ah, they lied,
did these two, about the fish in Fox

[303]

304

OUTING

River, even as the countless children
of time have lied from the beginning
about the numbers and weight of the
fish they caught in days that had gone by.

I was not entirely their dupe. I did
not believe half they said, but I evidently
believed enough, for they lugged me off
with them about fifty miles southwest of
Chicago and we took with us an army
tent and a skillet to protect us from
the elements and to save us from starva-
tion.

It's a sad story, mates, but it must
be told.

Fair but False

We landed at a town called Mc-
Henry at the noon hour of as fine a
summer day as ever bloomed in the new
world. Transhipped from train to row-
boat and started up the Fox River.
While my thoughts are bitter about
many things that had to do with that
trip, yet gentle truth bids me say that
the Fox River is the most beautiful
stream that flows down to the seven
seas. It slips along between grassy
banks that look like the parkings of a
well-kept lawn. Noble shade trees
adorn the banks back from the river.
The water is deep and blue, the current
sluggish. There are no bars or tow-
heads to vex the soul of the boatmen;
no snags, no shoals — one of those rivers
that you read about in the books where
all things are well. There were hun-
dreds of motorboats on its waters day
and night, and I should think there
would be. It is a stream made to order
for the boatman and the lover of a
noble stream.

We rowed laboriously in a boat that
was a cross between a tub and a swivel
chair and after three hours of hard
labor came to a place above a bridge
that Boyles swore was the best fishing
grounds in the universe. We landed on
the right bank. A wooden hotel stood
near the bridge on our side and a little
old Dutch town nestled in the hills
across the river. Johnsburg they called
it.

Pitched camp in a grove on the river
bank. Fine looking place. Grass and
trees and sunshine. The river rippled

in the sunlight like a beautiful story on
a crystal page.

Boyles and Russell rigged up that
army tent and the three cots filled it like
a sardine can. Then they dragged out
enough fishing tackle to catch enough
fish to keep a cannery busy all winter.
They gave me a fussy steel pole and a
silver reel and a mile of silk line and
we all climbed into that leaky boat and
went fishing.

At sunset I mutinied and threatened
to upset the boat and those stark, staring
fishermen consented to pull for the
shore. Not a bite. Not a nibble. Not
a flirtation with a single fish, turtle or
eel. Now in Kansas we would at least
have lost our bait from the visitations
of a turtle. We were fishing with live
frogs for bait. And I forgot to state
that we almost missed our McHenry
train from Chicago on account of those
frogs. Bought 'em alive from a depart?
merit store on State Street. We ought
to have done our fishing in that store.
We'd have caught more fish.

It was dusk when we landed at the
camp. That summer day had fled to
join the others that had gone before.
And the wind that blew from the north
across that river had icicles in its breath.
I was fresh from Kansas where the days
had recently been 100 and the nights
89, and I was no more fit for that night
than a Panama hat weaver would be for
hunting polar bears in Baffin's Bay.

We fumbled around in the dark and
cooked supper over the camp-fire, and
I spoke words to those fishermen cal-
culated to make the sons of Job rise up
and go to war. The supper we ate
would have lasted nine men in town for
a week. The wind picked up a little
more speed and some one turned on the
ammonia pipes full blast and it began to
get cold. That summer day just passed
seemed to have drifted so far astern that
it had become some half-remembered
recollection of my boyhood.

We fed that camp-fire with old dry
wood and sat around it and talked about
the old days and the old boys we had
known. It was all very fine, after all.
And then we crawled into that tent and
each man went to bed in his little cot.
Feeling fine. We sat up and sang old

THREE MEN AND A FISH

305

songs. Boyles called it harmony, but
his prejudice in favor of our music was
as strong as concentrated lye mixed with
a little water.

I went to sleep at last. I may have
slept an hour or an hour and a half at
the most when I waked up freezing to
death. Cold! Name of a name! but it
was cold. I had a cheesecloth quilt un-
der me and a diaphanous quilt over me
and the cold passed through to my bones
like going through a screen door left
ajar.

I got up and put on my coat and
raincoat and shoes and then crawled
under that quilt again. No go. The
cold wind from Canada walked up and
down my person with blue feet. I shiv-
ered and sighed and cursed the man who
invented fishing. Then from over on
the other side of the tent came the noise
a man makes when pain has him in its
clutches. Russell was sitting up in bed.
I heard his teeth chattering. I asked
him what ailed him. He was cold, and
he told me so with emphasis and detail
that left never a doubt in my mind.

"Let's get up and make a fire," said
Russell.

"Agreed," said I.

We did.

Russell coaxed a lighted match and
some kindling to be good friends while
I wandered around in the dark like a
duck on an iceberg looking for wood.
We made a noble fire and huddled up
closer to it than any lover to his sweet-
heart. The wood was dry and burned
out quickly. We went for more. It
was hard to find. Now a frozen man's
conscience is dead and buried at one
o'clock in the morning of a situation like
this. We stole wood. We took one of
that hotel man's tables and a chair or
two and an old door and chopped them
into firewood lengths and saved two
men from death.

The night wore on. Boyles slept in
that cold storage tent like a young sea
lion or a polar bear cub. Russell and I
sat by the fire. The wind was never
weary. We rigged up a piece of sail-
cloth for a windshield, using a crooked
stick, a chair and a tree for stage prop-
erties, working with numb fingers while
despair lurked close by in the thicket. A

chill came along and grabbed me and I
laid down on the ground. I did not
care what happened or how it was donr.
Then this man Russell forgot his own
woe and icicles and came to my rescue.
He wrapped me up in my old quilt and
added his quilt to the bundle. He made
me a cup of boiling coffee. He. added
reinforcements to that crazy windshield.
He stole more wood for the fire. And I
lay back there and watched his red
head shining in the firelight like a lamp
in the pilgrim valley of darkness. If
Captain Scott had had Russell with him
on that south pole journey he would not
have perished in the icebergs and the
snow.

In the Still Watches

The night wore on some more. It
was three o'clock by this time and cold-
er than it was before. Boyles slept on
in the tent like the Turk that Marco
Bozzaris slipped up on and murdered in
the night time. Russell and I felt like
Marco. We threw things at the tent.
We called out uncomplimentary words,
but we were too hoarse to make noise
enough to wake the sleeper. I thought
of sunny Kansas and how I had slept
out in the yard all summer, and why I
did not go to Panama for my vacation.
The moon shone on Fox River and Rus-
sell and I looked through the leaves of
the trees at the silver picture in a black
frame, laced with white and tangled
with black, clear and cold and deep and
mysterious and beautiful. We heard
the water lapping the bank. It was
worth coming up there to freeze to see.

If there had been a sentry on the
Johnsburg bridge he would have called
out 4 o'clock by this time. And if he
had started to add "all is well" Russell
and I would have had his life if we
had to swing for it.

We threw more things at the tent.
Russell threw a chair with such good
aim that it passed through the curtains
and hit Boyles on the legs. He waked
up and began to talk to himself. We
talked to him. And the things we said
would have made an abbot get up out of
the tomb and fight. But Boyles only
thrust his head out between the parted

306

OUTING

curtains to blink and grin and inquire
why we were outside.

We told him. And the echoes came
back from over the river to tell him
again. We were sore. Boyles laughed
like a hyena. He said it was not cold.
Swore he was warm and comfortable in-
side that tent. Russell stopped me as
I was crawling toward him with the
butcher knife in my teeth. Boyles said
that only descendants of a long line of
star-spangled idiots would go outside a
warm tent in the cold wind to get warm
again. He started to argue the point
but Russell hit him with a sack of
potatoes.

By daylight I had the epizootic, the
lumbago, the ague, catarrh, cough, cold,
rheumatism and several minor ailments.
Russell put me to bed in the tent, add-
ing Bojdes' quilt to mine. I still used
a tan raincoat for pajamas. Russell
slept in his clothes, shoes and cap.
Boyles kept the fire.

When I crawled out two hours later
Mister Sun was on the job. I thought
I was going to die, but after I had cut
a little wood and gone after the milk
and eaten seven eggs for breakfast I
changed my mind. And then that dia-
mond sunshine thawed me out and that
wonderful air of the north country, clear
as truth, full of miracles, came along and
cured me of all the nightmares and made
me a better man than I had been for a
year. Russell also partook of the
miracle.

We fished all over Fox River. We
fished in the bassweed and in the rip-
ples and in the bays. We fished from
Dan to Beersheba and from the Eu-
phrates to the sea. We dragged those
little frogs through miles and miles of
water. But the bass slept on in their
coral beds and we were left alone.

At this point I noted Boyles and Rus-
sell conferring together. I caught whis-
pers about the voyage from Nineveh and
Jonah, and throw him overboard, etc.
Now I have a shrewd understanding
and sensitive nerves. I seemed to scent
trouble. I spoke to them softly and
asked them if they would row me to
the bank so that I might walk to camp
and get dinner. They did so quickly
and without courtesy or a decent word.

Safe on the shore I threw rocks at them
as they rowed out into the stream. And
I added words harder than the rocks.

I walked to camp, walked through the
bluegrass and under big trees and past
fallen logs and through all the beauties
of a glorious day. And I wondered if
God was as good to everybody as He
was to me that day. The outdoors is
the most blessed miracle that can happen
to any office man this side of the shining
sands of the islands of the blest. And
that is a fact.

I made a fire at camp and placed seven
big potatoes in the ashes of the old fire.
I would have a treat for the fishermen
when they returned, a hidden treat to
be raked forth at the proper time. I
met these absent friends of mine at the
shore with a word of welcome and a
smile of eloquence. But they had no
fish and they called me names that
shocked the woods and fields to hear.

Faithful Are the Wounds —

Boyles is a star cook, but Russell is
a chef. They prepared a dinner that
had the Blackstone's feast day menu
looking like a raw onion and a piece of
cheese on a chip.

And then, just at the right time, and
with considerable flourish, I raked out
those seven potatoes from their little bed
in the ashes under the fire. They looked
like cinders from the slag in the pit. I
ate dinner in meekness and in silence.
Boyles and Russell talked constantly and
the subject of their discourse was not
pleasant. Next time I go on a trip I will
take a serpent and a savage for company.

The fishermen fished the afternoon
away. I played pool with the hotel
keeper.

For supper that night we had fried
potatoes, a dozen eggs, a can of salmon,
three pies and two quarts of milk. Rus-
sell drank the milk.

And then the dark came, and with
the dark came the cold. I looked into
the depths of the dark and shivered.
Forebodings sat with me at the fire. But
Russell tucked me in that night with
two quilts, a pair of overalls, a sweater,
a piece of sailcloth, a gunnysack, a bale
of hay, two suitcases and his blessing. I

THREE MEN AND A FISH

307

slept like the hills. I wonder if angels
have red hair.

The next morning when I went after
the milk a farmer's shepherd dog chased
me around the smokehouse seven times.
I hit the dog with a bucket and he tore
my trousers and a fat woman came to
the rescue. Russell ate so much break-
fast that he had the tummyache. The
sun came up over the tree tops like hope
to Egypt after the plagues. Boyles and
I played ball. The air was of the same
brand as the day before.

I had not felt so well in ten years.
Russell got over his tummyache and we
all went fishing. Yes, I went, too. I
cast that frog of mine upon the waters
and it returned to me, but not seven
fold. I cast him two hundred times by
actual count and then I cast no more.
I felt like a pitcher after a twelve-inning
ball game. But this man Boyles has
an arm of brass and the patience of a
man who waits for a hard elm tree to
grow. Russell also is crazy on the sub-
ject of fishing, and they cast on until
the little frogs were gone. But the
bass in Fox River were not eating frogs
that day.

Boyles called on all the German and
British gods of the Druid days to wit-
ness that he had caught fish by the car
load in that river. In his discourse he
ranged from descriptive to emphatic,
from earnestness to pathos. And Rus-
sell added his tale to the tale that had
been told and it seemed to me that the
story would never end. I did not say,
"I told you so." I did not rub it in.
I was afraid to.

Boyles and I ate dinner under the
shade of the trees. Russell made a re-
past. He rolled a banquet into a feast
and added three extra skillets of fried
potatoes for good measure.

Then we went to Johnsburg for more
supplies. We walked across that bridge
and up the rocky road and into the lit-
tle old German town. It was a pleas-
ant journey. Three men grown young
again. The voices of the world were
far away. We were ragged and dirty
and unshaven and happy. We threw
rocks and scuffled and forgot all about
the twenty years that had come and
taken our youth away. We dickered

with the shopkeepers and told outrageous
talcs about each other. We fought over
who should carry the groceries back.
We walked back across the bridge sing-
ing a little sony;.

The men that Mirza saw on the bridge
across the valley of the Bagdad carried
burdens, but all we carried on that
bridge that day was groceries. We had
laid our burdens down the day we left
the train at McHenry. And we were
to pick them up again there. But the
present was ours and it had the fairest
face and the most radiant smile any of
us had seen since we took our first sweet-
hearts to our first party. And at that
party twenty years ago it rained and
Boyles's cotton pants shrank up above
his shoe tops, and tragedy walked with
him across the stage of love's young
dream.

Back to the World

Well, Russell ate up all the Irish po-
tatoes in camp and Boyles ate all the
eggs and I ate a little bite or two my-
self. So we decided to go home. We
folded our tent and packed our skillet
and loaded them into that leaky boat
and drifted down the river toward the
world. It was a noble voyage. Boyles
and I talked philosophy and preached
contentment. The sunlight conjured
us and the river hypnotized us, and it
was all very fine. All along the grassy
banks were summer cottages. Men and
women walked under the trees. Motor-
boats whizzed by every few minutes.
Listen! Who was that singing? Boyles
started up. It was a divine voice sing-
ing a song the world has loved for fifty
years. The music came across the wa-
ters to us sweet and clear.

"Who can it be?" murmured Bo5'les.
"I had not dreamed there was a woman
on this river from the springs to the
lake who could sing so divinely."

We listened eagerly. Pshaw! it was
only a graphophone played on the front
porch of one of the cottages across the
river. But it sounded mighty fine and
we listened till the song was done.
Then Russell rocked the boat and
Boyles got his feet wet, and his lan-
guage shattered the dream of my phil-

308

OUTING

osophy and drove away the spell of the
music. Russell actually seemed to enjoy
Boyles's language more than he did my
musing on dead peoples or the song of the
German diva brought from Leipsic to be
reproduced for our pleasure.

Russell is a materialist, not a senti-
mentalist. And well for me it is so,
for I would have frozen in camp but
for his necromancy with quilts.

We had a series of adventures at
McHenry before we caught the Chicago
train that night. But I will not dwell
upon them. They were merely the
brindle fringe on the edges of the vaca-
tion card. If there is a finer river than
Fox River I have never seen the flow of
its waters. If there is any finer air
in the world than that of the north
country in early September they ought
to store it and sell it for a price. If
there are any finer fellows to make a
trip with than Boyles and Russell they
ought to be in the hall of fame or draw-
ing a thousand a week in vaudeville.

The hardships of that trip were many.
I nearly died up there. The fish were
few. The water was awful wet and the
mud sticky. But by all the gods and

goddesses! it was the finest trip I ever
knew. And I say to the office man of
Kansas, Missouri, Illinois or any other
state, if you want to renew your lost
youth and meet happiness face to face
and find something that will come to you
through the years again and again in the
form of sweet-faced memory, get a pup
tent, a skillet and a friend like Boyles
and a red-headed prince like Russell and
go to Fox River somewhere close to the
Johnsburg bridge. It will be a classic
in your humdrum life and the thoughts
of it and the good of it will abide for
long and longer still.

But you will have to be a son of Lief
the Lucky if you find a Boyles and a
Russell to make that trip. A singer like
Boyles and a cook like Russell.

Hold on ! I cannot end this story like
this! In justice to Fox River I must
add a word. I am no fisherman, as I
said before. But there was a fish. Yes,
Russell caught a two-pound bass on that
trip. And as we sailed for McHenry an
old fisherman told us the Fox River bass
were biting bacon that week and not
frogs. He caught 'em by the gross with
the meat of the hog. That's all.

THE CASUAL CARTRIDGE CASE

By C. L. GILMAN

How the Red Gods Slipped "Waubose" Olsen an Ace and the
Wilderness Lost — One Pot

OMEONE fired a rifle on the
Black Lake portage, pumped
in a fresh load, and passed on
out of this story. "Waubose"
Olsen found the spent case, a
glint of yellow on the packed
snow of the trail. He picked it up, as a
woman picks up a card left in her ab-
sence. The shell, a .40-82, denoted the
passage of a stranger unless one of the
trapper's neighbors had been guilty of
the extravagance of a new rifle.

At any rate, the shell itself was strange
to Olsen. As he kicked along on his
snowshoes he spelled out laboriously the

letters and figures stamped on its head
to denote its make and caliber. These
told him little. He raised his hand to
toss it aside.

With his hand he raised his eyes and
saw, swaying on the twig where he had
hung it to mark a retrieved and forgotten
cache, a spent case from his own .49-90.

Instead of throwing away the strange
shell "Waubose" reached down his own
empty for comparison. Placed head to
head, the two showed an equal size.
Compared muzzle to muzzle, the .45
slipped over the .40 for about two-
thirds of its length. Then the straight

THE CASUAL CARTRIDGE CASK

309

shell hound tight on the tapering body
of the other, so tight that there was a
sucking sound as he wrenched them
apart, which told of a joint impervious
to air — or water.

Un wasteful, as a woodsman must be,
Olsen stood still to consider what use
might be made of this tight brass case.

It may be that the Red Gods, who
if not given to know the future are at
least rich in the wisdom of things past,
stayed his hand as he was about to cast
it away useless. It is possible that their
medicine was strong enough that morn-
ing to force a flash of inspiration through
Olsen's brain;

At any rate he did reopen the chance-
formed box and fill it with matches — -
five of them — from the loose supply in
his pocket.

Spring was already sapping the
strength of winter. Olsen made slow
work of his long trap-line. About many
of his traps the melting snow of the
day before had frozen, rendering them
useless. By noon the snow underfoot
began to stick to his webs. In an hour
more he was compelled to cut a club and
beat viciously against his snowshoe frames
every few steps to free them from the
clogging mass.

Belated and tired, he abandoned his
farther traps to another day, left his
packed and proven winter trail and
struck the shortest line for home. Be-
tween him and his shack stretched Black
Bay, a level, untrodden expanse of snow.

Ten yards from shore Olsen found
himself fighting with cold fury to climb
out of a widening circle of black water,
a circle which marked where wind-
packed snow had masked rotted ice. As
he felt the sinking beneath his feet Ol-
sen had hurled his rifle toward the shore.
As soon as he got an elbow rest on
the crumbling ice-rim he twisted his

feet out of the snowshoe thongs, tied
with just such emergencies in view.

Then, foot by foot, with fists and
finger-nails and elbows — while the chill
of the water seared him like molten lead
— Olsen fought his way through the
sponge ice to the shore.

As he hauled himself to land his
soaked clothes froze about him. Be-
tween him and the shelter of his cabin
lay a mile of treacherous ice. Or, if he
did not care to risk that, he might wal-
low waist-deep through the drifts as he
skirted the shore of the bay. A sharper
pinch of cold summoned him to move,
make fire, or lay down his hand and let
the Wilderness rake in his chips.

From the pocket where he kept his
matches Olsen scooped a freezing mess
of wet sticks, phosphorescent slime — and
the waterproof match-box he had found,
fashioned and filled that morning.

Bark of the birch, dead stems of the
aiders, and dried branches of the spruce,
and after them driftwood, deadwrood —
all the careless largess of the woods —
kindled from the flame of the first of
the trapper's five dry matches.

Half an hour later he sat, stark naked,
with his back against a warm rock and
his clothing steaming by the fire before
him. With his rifle across his knees
he sat; listening to the thumping ap-
proach of a rabbit across the freezing
snow; waiting until his supper lured by
the flames should come into the circle
of firelight. In the bitter cold of dawn
he walked home, warm inside his dry
garments and striding freely over the
solid snow crust.

"You trappers certainly meet with
many adventures," said the summer
camper to whom "Waubose" told this
incident across the evening smudge.

"Naw," said Olsen, "nothing but
hard work."

Last fall John Oskison was in Arizona. There he heard of
some wonderful cliff dwellings across the desert to the north, A
Bureau of Ethnology Bulletin told him how to find them — and
told him wrong. The result is "The Road to Betatakin" begin-
ning in July OUTING. But he reached his goal nevertheless.

WAR-BAGS

By A. W. WARWICK

Illustrated with Diagrams by the Author

Some New Ways of Carrying the Personal Duffle on Camping

and Canoeing Trips

^^HE duffle, war, ditty,
dunnage, orwangan bag
is about the unhandiest
contrivance used by the
wilderness dweller. It
has only one merit: it
keeps things together in a small bulk;
but its convenience ends as soon as camp
is reached. Every time anything is
wanted it has to be more or less com-
pletely unpacked, for the article will al-
most surely be found at the bottom of
the bag.

Personally I regard the duffle-bag only
as a means of transport. It is worthless
as a place to store things in camp — ex-
cept, perhaps, one or two things that can
be slipped in and the bag hung up some-
where out of the way. A two years'
daily use of a war-bag forever convinced
me that it is not the contrivance for a
minister's son to keep his personal be-
longings in.

Besides the inconvenience of a war-
bag, it does not keep clothing in good
condition. Even its warmest advocate
cannot claim that it keeps things clean;
at all events, a shirt or a suit of under-
wear taken out of a bag packed in the
usual way never feels clean. As for the
smaller articles of daily use, the war-bag
is a mighty poor contrivance to keep
them in.

The "old-timer" in the Southwest
who uses a piece of eight-ounce duck
about three by four feet to make his
"roll" with has something which is not
only more convenient, but keeps the arti-
cles in much better shape. A shirt comes
out like a shirt and not like a dish-cloth.
Moreover, clothing kept this way un-
doubtedly lasts longer than if kept in a
bag, especially when the stuff is trans-

[310]

ported on mule-back. As an Arizona
prospector packs his roll, dust and dirt
cannot enter and it will stand a con-
siderable ducking without the contents
getting wet. I have seen a roll, with
8-oz. waterproofed duck, under a mule
bogged down for ten minutes in a quick-
sand of the Bill Williams Fork, and yet
nothing inside the roll was even as much
as wetted.

While I use the roll a great deal, it
must be acknowledged that it is by no
means the acme of convenience. It is
useful mainly to carry reserve clothing
and articles wanted occasionally.

One day in camp, about ten years ago,
I designed a wallet that seems to me
rational and has very greatly added to
comfort on the trail ever since. It not
merely carries things, but does so in
such a way that they can be conveniently
got at. One or two were made before
I was satisfied that the dimensions, etc.,
were just right. Then I had a wallet
made by the trunkmaker who does my
work, and it cost me, I think, $1.50.
The one I use now has traveled several
thousand miles, in all kinds of country,
during the last eight years. It looks as
if it will never wear out.

The ideas and specifications of con-
struction are much as follows: The
sketch appended is a copy of the one fur-
nished to the workmen. It shows a
piece of canvas, 8-ounce khaki duck, cut
21 by 29 inches, turned over a half inch
at each edge and hemmed with stout
linen thread, leaving it 20 by 28 inches.
The canvas strip was lined with a rrood
quality of heavy linen.

Five inches from the narrow edge of
the canvas a strip of linen, cut 9 by 21
inches, was sewn, the stitching being

WAR-BAGS

311

Tj " "'

5- 8 oz. Khaki
...le. -

Unen

\r~T

8 oz. Khaki

unen

ii-Hn

:.--l »

...'J JL-

-t)

1°

WALLET OPENED SHOWING CONSTRUCTION

parallel to the 20-inch edge of the can-
vas and passing through both canvas and
lining. Ten inches from this seam a
similar piece of linen was stitched to the
canvas in a similar way. Two flaps are
thus formed. Between these flaps, at
each end of the 10 x 20 compartment, a
linen strip, cut 9 by 1 1 inches, is stitched
to the edge of the canvas.

The edges of the linen flaps are all
hemmed. To each of the flaps pieces of
strong linen tape are sewn, so that when
folded they can be kept in place by dou-
ble bow knots. In the compartments
made in this way shirts, underwear, etc.,
are kept.

At the large, unoccupied part of the
canvas a piece of linen, cut 11 by 25
inches, is sewn so as to form a large
pocket. The mouth opens inward and is
protected by a linen flap, 5 inches wide,
sewn to the canvas. This protection is
perhaps not necessary.

The large pocket is divided into three
compartments by two double lines of
stitches. The double stitching is neces-
sary. It will have been noticed that the
linen for the pocket was cut 25 inches;
this was to allow for the bulge and hem-
ming. The extra width is divided be-
tween the pockets, so that as each is
filled the bulge is uniform. The pockets
are, respectively, 8 by 10 inches and 6
by 10 inches.

As to the packing of this wallet, much
depends upon the nature of the personal
outfit. Probably if my own outfit was
different I would modify the dimensions
of the wallet. But the following is a
list of the articles I usually carry in the
field:

In the 10 x 20-inch space:
2 Gingham shirts
1 Towel and cake of soap
1 Suit woolen underwear
Razor strop

312

OUTING

In the 8 x 10-inch pocket:
2 Pairs socks
2 Colored handkerchiefs
1 Small writing tablet, post-cards,

stamped envelopes
1 Old style thin bill wallet, with a few

fish hooks, hank of gut, silk fish line
A patch or two of khaki, etc.

In the middle pocket, 6x10 inches:
Razor in case

Shaving brush in metal tube
Tooth brush wrapped in linen
Tooth soap in ointment box
3-inch round mirror with metal cover
Metal comb
Hypodermic case
Carborundum hone, 4xlxj4 inches.

In outer pocket, 6x10 inches:

Housewife with needles, buttons, safety-
pins, thread, etc.
6-vial P. D. medical case
Pocket surgical case
Clinical thermometer in metal tube

Packed in this way the wallet is not
strained. I have often carried far more
than the above list, but prefer not to do
so, as the wallet becomes too bulky: it
measures, when packed according to the
list, about 20 by 11 by 4 inches.

This is the handiest thing I have ever
carried on the trail. Slipped between
the blankets, one hardly knows it is
there. The soft khaki duck allows it to
be used as a pillow; even if not as soft
as feathers, still, it beats a pair of trou-
sers all hollow. It contains everything
necessary for comfort and cleanliness and

THE WALLET PACKED

keeps it tidy and in good order. It is
never in the way and is as handy in
camp as it is on the trail.

By folding a blanket to the same
size as the wallet and packing the lat-
ter with the necessities for a foot jour-
ney, it is convenient as a back-pack. It
is only necessary to add a pair of shoul-
der straps. Then with a Preston can-
teen outfit one can subsist for several
days quite comfortably.

The wallet, as can be seen from the
list of contents, takes no account of

outer clothing, shoes, etc. It was de-
signed, however, merely to supply daily
wants as well as to carry a few articles-
of apparel. For a long trip extra
clothing, shoes, etc., etc., must be taken
along.

MAIL BAG CARRYALL MUCH
USED IN THE WEST

For a long time the war-bag seemed
the only feasible way in which to carry
the main reserve of clothing and I used
the mail-pouch style, so much carried
in the West. The objections to this, be-
sides those of inconvenience, are that
the tight rolling of clothing does not
improve their wearing qualities, and
moreover as the bag begins to be de-
pleted it gets flabby and the articles
shift a good deal. A half-filled bag does
not protect the contents against the bite
of the lashropes on the pack-saddle.

Besides it is often desirable, or even
imperative, to carry semi-fragile arti-
cles on the trail. The war-bag is use-
less for this purpose. For a number of
years I carried a "telescope" made in
Prescott, Arizona. It was an excellent
article^ as long as it was full ; but as
soon as it began to empty, the contents
shifted too much to be safe.

The telescope was made of hydrau-
lic canvas (a very heavy, stiff canvas)
with no pasteboard ; the necessary stiff-
ness was obtained by having two thick-

WAR-BAGS

313

CARRYALL. OR ROLL OPEN

nesses of canvas and binding corners,
edges, etc., with leather. I have car-
ried photographic plates, camera, am-
munition, etc., in this telescope with
perfect safety. It is useful when col-
lecting rather fragile articles, but for
general use it cannot be recommended.
While it keeps everything in good
shape, as long as it is full, it is not flexi-
ble enough to accommodate itself to
changing conditions.

The ''roll" in a modified form is the
best thing I have found for packing
extra clothing. It keeps everything clean
and tidy. It keeps its shape, however
slim the list of contents may become.
It is fairly convenient to keep one's
spare clothing in, while in camp. It is
expansive, carrying as little or as much
(up to the limits of its capacity) as is
desired ; and since the articles are al-
ways tightly packed, there is no wear
from abrasion.

My roll is home-made from a piece
of twelve-ounce waterproofed canvaj,
measuring when laid flat 23 by 44
inches. A piece of balloon silk from an
old. tent was cut to the same measure-
ment and sewn to the canvas by two

seams 14 inches apart. Two flaps were
thus formed of balloon silk,' each 14 by
23 inches. Two other pieces of silk,
16 inches by 20 inches, were sewn
across each of the long edges of the
canvas so that they were between the
two lines of stitches first made. When
the flaps are extended the whole forms
a St. George's cross. In the middle of
each flap is sewn a thong of whang
leather or a half-inch ring, on one flap
the thong and on the opposite flap the
ring. Under thong and ring the bal-
loon silk is reinforced by sewing on an
extra piece of silk about one inch square
to prevent wear.

In packing, the flaps are opened and
the clothing, folded so as not to meas-
ure more than 14 by 23 inches, is laid
in the center. When the pack is made
the end flaps are turned over and tight-
ened by the thong and ring. Then the
side flaps are tightened. The bundle
(for a mule pack) will now be about
23 x 16x8 inches. The canvas ends
are turned over and fastened by three
straps and buckles; one in the middle
and the two others about four inches
from the ends. A much safer tie, if

314

OUTING

not quite so convenient, is the "bed
hitch," using a ^-inch cotton rope
about 2>l/2 yards long. The turn of
the rope around the ends closes them
up and will assist in keeping out water
or dust. Well tied by a rope, the bun-
dle will be tight and hard and will
measure about 23 inches long and about
seven inches in diameter. It will fit
nicely into an alforja, which measures
usually about 24 x 16x8 inches.

In such a roll, if not packed against
anything hard, such as a bootheel, a
bottle can be packed with impunity.
The protection afforded by the tight-
ness of the roll, the canvas and balloon-
silk covering, as well as by the
alforja, will keep everything safe
against the tremendous bite of the
pack ropes. But be sure to compress
the bundle as much as possible, for bulk
counts for a great deal in mule-back
packing.

I have packed the following list,
which was to be a year's reserve supply,
in the carry-all of the size given:

1 Pair shoes

2 Pairs moccasins

3 Shirts

2 Pairs underwear

4 Pairs socks

3 Towels
Moth balls

1 Suit clothes

1 Pair overalls

Patching and darning worsted

Extra medicines

Flask, first aid

Writing portfolio

4 Books

With such a roll and a wallet I have
kept in fairly presentable shape for over
a year in a rough country where it was
impossible to replace worn-out articles.
A surprising amount of clothes and
toilet necessities can be packed in these
two useful contrivances.

CIVILIZATION

'By JOHN MATTER

T r 7QN'T somebody give me some medicine to keep me from dreamin' at night-

From dreamin' a dream that makes me seem a prisoner shut in tight?
For sure, I feel the rush of wind as I stand in the open air,
And I see the green of a world serene, wide, unpeopled, fair.
I hear the sound of the woods around, and I taste the tang of spring:
So I breathe down deep, and deeper still, and my pack on my back I sling —
And then in my hall room bed I awake to the tune of an early van,
And I ask myself, as I douse my head, "Faith! Is this the life for a man?"

COACHING A 'VARSITY CREW

By HIRAM CONNIBEAR

Coach of Rowing, University of Washington

What a Man Who Was Not an Oarsman Has Learned About the
Art of Eight-Oared Racing

AM not a professional oarsman.
Neither was I a professional coach
of rowing before the beginning of
my experience at the University of
Washington. What I know about
rowing has been learned largely as
a result of observation and study. I be-
gan with no theories except the common-
sense belief that a man who knew the
best methods of training and the funda-
mental facts of condition could teach
other men the principles of any sport in
which condition enters as an important
factor.

Personally I have never had much
patience with the attitude that regards
any kind of athletics as requiring mys-
terious knowledge in order to win suc-
cess. If a sport is so complicated that
the average man who applies himself
to it cannot soon understand its basic
principles, I think it shows that the pas-
time is not one suited for general inter-
est. Of course, after the first require-
ment— mastery of technique — has been
satisfied, the rest comes down to the
ability of the coach to bring out the best
which is in his material and of keeping
the men in condition.

I have been a coach and conditioner
of men since 1894 and now that Mike
Murphy is dead, I take off my hat to
no one in the world in this field of ef-
fort. It has always been natural with
me to observe and experiment, arriving
at my own conclusions in Yankee style.
One thing that has impressed me is
that there is never an end to the knowl-
edge which a rowing coach can acquire.
I learn something new every day and
the fact that I know there are many
more things to learn is one of the prin-

cipal reasons why my interest in the
sport never fails to keep up.

To my mind rowing of the college
variety is the highest type of sport.
There is never any question about the
amateur standing of an oarsman in a
university boat. The patience required
and the fact that there is rarely any
individual glory to distribute, limits the
candidates for a crew to men with a
high ideal of athletics. The fact that
large sums of money are spent upon
rowing when there are no receipts and
all the colleges get out of it is a few
boat races shows that it is sport for
sport's sake.

Ever since Dr. A. L. Sharpe, now
coaching at Cornell, gave me my first
lesson in the art of pulling a shell, what
I have seen of the rowing game has made
me feel that it is the cleanest, manliest
branch of athletics. It was at Chautau-
qua Lake, New York, that I met Sharpe
and he was good enough to inspire me
with an enthusiasm for rowing and some
of the knowledge gained from his own
rowing experience at New Haven, which
have stood me in good stead since.

There has been a lot of talk this spring
about the advisability of reducing the
distance of the Eastern races from four
miles to three. A good many critics seem
to feel that lessening the distance would
reduce the strain on the men. To my
mind it makes very little if any differ-
ence. The proposition comes down to
two essentials: First, material, and,
second, faithfulness of the men in carry-
ing out training instructions. At al-
most all the colleges I know anything
about, there are enough strong, hearty
young men to man the crews. These

[315]

316

OUTING

fellows can be taught to row four miles,
without injuring themselves, just as wTell
as three.

I do not think there is any coach who
would put a man in a boat who is not
physically strong enough to stand the
strain of rowing. And this speaks pretty
wrell for the standards of character
among coaches. For at every university
there are some people who want the
coach to drive home a winning crew,
regardless of everything else. They are
likely not to care how he wins, pro-
vided he does win, and they don't care
how much good he may be doing for
the physical upbuilding of undergrad-
uates, if he does not win.

Training Is the Secret

Given a fair-sized squad of able-
bodied 57oung men who can be counted
upon to train faithfully, and a four-mile
race can be entered without fear of any
bad after effects on the individual oars-
man. I have trained men for six-day
and six-night bicycle races where one
man rode all of this time and I have
trained them for twenty-four-hour races.
I have trained sprinters for the fifty- and
one-hundred-yard dashes and for the
mile and two-mile, as well as for twen-
ty-five-mile, races. I have seen men run
until they were all in and drop at the
finish of a one-hundred-yard dash, just
as I have seen them drop at the end of
distance races.

The distance does not make a bit of
difference to my way of looking at it —
provided a man has trained properly and
is fit for his event. The key to the
whole educational system is concentra-
tion and determination. The part which
athletics has in the larger work is that
of teaching undergraduates to bring the
body under the control of the will.

Keeping men under lock and key is
not my idea of a good coaching pro-
gram. If they are impressed with the
need for building themselves up into
the best condition possible and made to
understand that if they aren't willing to
do so they had best not compete for
places on teams, they can be relied upon
to do the square thing. I take it for
granted that the candidates are turning

out for rowing because they want to
and not because they have to. I tell my
Freshman to spend twenty minutes a
day in a room all by himself, looking
himself squarely in the eye.

"Have I done all I could to raise
my standard as a man in the past twenty-
four hours? Have I been fair and
square with those that I have had deal-
ings with?"

These are the questions I tell them
to ask of themselves and if the answers
are right all around, I know I have the
makings of some good crew men. What
makes a thinking, fighting, and an hon-
orable man is what he thinks of him-
self. I don't like conceited undergrad-
uates, but underneath their skin I like
them to have good opinions of them-
selves.

One season a couple of years ago,
two men were fighting it out for a seat
in the 'Varsity boat. One day I called
them together and said :

"Just now the work of you two men
is a stand-off in the boat, but one has a
better scholarship standing than the
other and to me this seems to indicate
that one has a little more personal pride
than the other."

As a matter of fact, the man who
was not up to scratch in his work was
a bit the better of the two, as far as
smoothness in the boat was concerned.
I thought the incident might cause him
to pick up in his classes. It didn't.
When the time came to make a final
selection of the eight I again called the
pair in to see me.

"It's still hard to decide between you
two. I would just as soon have you
throw a coin to decide the winner," I
said.

The man with the poor scholarship
record was the first to speak.

"That's all right with me," he said.

The other man thought for a minute.
I saw his mouth go tight. Then he
said :

"No, sir, that doesn't suit me. One
of us must be the best man. I want to
know which and to know why I am not
the best man."

Some people would probably have
thought this fellow conceited, but not
if they knew what it means for a young-

COACHING A VARSITY CREW

317

ster to put in months and months or
hard training for a crew. The second
man was of a quiet type, but after he
spoke I knew the thing which every
coach is most anxious to find out — that
he was the kind who would be pulling
hardest when his lungs were feeling like
bursting in that last hard half mile. You
can guess which man got the place. The
man who didn't was too easily satisfied.

When I take stock of my material at
the beginning of the training season I
always make my first division into
squads, not so much on the basis of the
relative physical condition of the candi-
dates as for the purpose of getting a
line on their personal characteristics. If
I see that a boy has the right sort of stuff
in him and a fair build I am willing to
spend a whole lot of time building up
his strength so that he can pull an oar.
Rowing is a great developer of men. A
skinny freshman weighing 130 pounds
will, if he has the qualities of personal
character and trains faithfully, develop
into a husky young athlete within a cou-
ple of years. That is why character is
much more important in making out an
early season prospect for producing a
crew.

Of course, I don't mean that a coach
can make a varsity eight out of a lot of
weak material ; but I do mean that, given
a bunch of good, healthy youngsters
properly built for rowing, he can de-
velop pulling power. It has been my ex-
perience that material which looks most
promising at the start is apt to be most
disappointing in the end. Your candi-
date who comes out for the squad with
a splendidly developed physique often
fails to make good.

Even as regards form — the knack of
handling an oar in the right way — the
fellow who in the beginning of the
training season seems to fall most nat-
urally into the correct method and who
has an ideal build for the boat is likely
to be beaten out by a youngster not so
well fortified. In fact. I have come to
the conclusion that as far as rowing is
concerned natural ability is a poor asset,
while developed ability is a very good
asset. It takes patience to make an oars-
man. And the candidate who has the
best natural equipment quite generally

lacks the power of application to enable
him to gain a complete mastery of tech-
nique.

One of the men who had the possibil-
A developing himself into as fine an
oar as ever sat in our boat never made
good because he couldn't carry his -
through. In his Freshman year, after
about four months of work, he broke
training and quit turning out for prac-
tice. He started in again in his Sopho-
more year, but after five months slipped
and quit again. In his Junior year he
lasted until two weeks before the race
and finally just before the close of his
course he lost his place two days before
the race. No matter how good an in-
dividual oarsman may be, it does not pay
for a coach to give a man of this type
the chance of going into the race. Even
though it might increase the speed of the
boat for one year, it breaks down the dis-
cipline of the crew.

Fit the Method to the Man

In rowing, just as in other forms of
athletics, it is necessary for the coach to
make a particular study of each n
temperament and prescribe accordingly.
When I used to coach track. I al
tried to make each man conscious of
what he was doing. The work of Hold-
man, the pole-vaulter who went from
us to Dartmouth in 1909. was not en-
couraging at the start. He used up
a lot of energy in his training, but it
was plain that he wasn't really think
of what he was doing a large part of
the time. He simply ran. dug his pole
in the ground, and went up in the air
without thinking. After watching him
for a time. I said:

'"Holdman, call your name when you
go over the cross-bar."

After about a week he got so he could
grunt as he was going over the bar.
After about two more weeks he could
call his name. Finally he got so he
could talk all the time he was in the air.
Then he was ready to learn where his
faults were and how he could remedy
them. I got him so that he could call
off every important move as he made it.
Then he could tell whether it was his
hip which knocked down the cross-bar

318

OUTING

and figure out a way of pulling his hip
up higher. As a matter of fact, he
found that he got it high enough at one
time but let down too far after he was
practically over the bar. Because the
technique of rowing is not so easily ex-
plained it is harder to show just how
this idea works out with oarsmen, but its
application is just as successful.

When one says that foot races are won
when a man is off the ground, he sounds
foolish at the first thought, but we all
know that it is so, when we stop to think
of it, for no man can keep both feet on
the ground and step nine or ten feet. I
want a man when he leaves me to go out
in a regatta to know everything about
the stroke, from the theoretical as well
as the practical side. Boat races are
won with the oars out of the water just
as foot races are won when a man is off
the ground.

Little Points Often Overlooked

An old Australian oarsman whom I
met in California where the race is
rowed in salt water, although we prac-
tise in fresh water, said:

"Don't you find it harder to pull your
oars through salt water than through
fresh water?"

I told him I did not try to have my
men pull their oars through the water
as much as I tried to have them pull the
boat through the water.

He looked at me for a while and
smiled and said, "I see."

After another discussion with an Eng-
lish oarsman, I said, "When is the boat
at its greatest speed?"

He said, "Just before you put the
oars into the water."

"Why not wait a bit and put them
in when it starts to slow down?" I
asked.

He didn't have anything to say to this.

I think these incidents will serve to
show the attitude I have kept toward
my work as a rowing coach. It has
been natural for me to ask my own ques-
tions and think for myself. Because
most everybody may have accepted some
theory has not made me accept it unless
I could see why it was right. Probably
I have made mistakes in the past on this

account, and maybe I've worked out
some ideas on my own hook which will
be interesting.

The main outline of the stroke we
are rowing is like this. Let's take a
man seated in the shell with back, legs
and arms straight. His hands are just
past his knees. This is the finish of a
stroke and the beginning of a new stroke.
He starts forward on his slide and at
the same time starts forward with his
shoulders. When he is half way up on
his slide, his elbows should be past his
knees.

He keeps changing the angle of his
body so that his slide does not stop at
one time and his shoulders at another,
but the stop comes at the same time. The
shoulders are moving at the same speed
from the time he comes to an erect posi-
tion until he has dropped his oar into
the water. His slide has been decreasing
in speed from the bow end to the stern
end of the slide. When his hands cross
his toes, he starts to bevel his blade so
that we have the man at full reach, his
weight in the keel of the boat.

I don't allow my men to twist in the
waist. They just swing in the hips. I
rig my boats for a full reach of thirty-
six inches to stern of the rowlock. That
is, come straight in from the rowlock to
the boat and then measure this distance
along the gunwale of the boat. In order
that the men may know the requirement,
during the early season I place a piece
of red oilcloth at the correct point. This
is where my men must reach to on every
stroke. They have to be loose in the hips
to do it.

To let an oarsman twist in the waist
creates friction. Suppose a man has a
tendency to lower his inboard shoulder
when he goes out for the reach. Say
he is on the port side. If he is allowed
to twist in the waist, he throws his
weight on the port side of the boat.
When he starts his pull, he has to swing
back on the keel. This slows up the
whole boat. I want my man to just drop
his blade into the water and start leg
drive back and arm pull.

When his legs are straightened out, he
must take particular pains to get the
proper lay back. This, in my opinion,
means that after straightening out his

COACHING A 'VARSITY CREW

319

arms he will lay back until the beveling
hand — the outboard hand — is over the
knee, not past it or beyond it but ex-
actly over it. I want all the power pos-
sible to bow of the rowlock — back, legs
and arms.

The legs are the strongest muscle we
have and I cannot for a moment see the
advantage of the English style of slight-
ing leg action in order to put greater
emphasis on the work of arms and back.
Of course, in order to get the best out
of the stroke I have described and to
reap the full benefit of the leg drive, it
is necessary for the oarsman to have a
strong back and arms. From the time
the oarsman starts to pull when out for
the long reach he must pull with his back
all the time. Elbows should be at the
side at the same time the legs are straight-
ened out.

One of the features on which I place
greatest emphasis is to see that my man
does not lift water with his blade. He
drops his hand until his blade is half
out of the water. Then he starts his
bevel, completing it when his blade is
clear of the water. If he completes his
beveling under the water or if he starts
to pull his hands low into his lap, it
means putting a brake on speed.

I have my men keep their heads in line
all the time when out for the reach — on
the drive — when the oars are in the
water and when they are going up on the
slides for another stroke, heads in line
all the time. My men must work their
hands in a straight line, too. After they
finish taking their blades out of the wa-
ter they lean back so that when their
arms are straightened out, their beveling
hand is over the outboard knee. They
then swing forward in the hip until their
hands are past their knees. This puts
them in position for another stroke.

To the man who is intimately ac-
quainted with rowing the foregoing de-
tailed outline has probably seemed to
contain much that is obvious. It was
written for the reader who is not an
expert. The following list of "Don'ts"
which are on my list will probably prove
more interesting to the experienced.

Don't start forward on the slide be-
fore the hands are past the knees.

Don't let the slide stop and your

shoulders keep going out for the reach.

Don't let up on the leg drive when
you begin to increase the power applied
from back and arms.

Don't have any back wash to your
oar* on the catch.

Don't let anyone see you in a boat with
a bent arm.

Every man who has ever rowed has
other prejudices of a more technical na-
ture over which they will dispute with
others who have had similar experience
but who have arrived at different con-
clusions. This is one of the principal
fascinations about the rowing game.
There is endless opportunity for experi-
ment, and no one is ever in a position
to say that his is the last word. For
the undergraduate with a high ideal of
sport and the desire to develop himself
physically for the battle of life, rowing
offers splendid inducements. The com-
radeship of the rowing squad is the finest
kind of association.

The spirit of rivalry between the row-
ing colleges is splendid. When we came
across the continent from Seattle a year
ago, most of the men had never previ-
ously been East. Naturally the distance
was so great that there were only a very
few people connected with the Univer-
sity of Washington at Poughkeepsie.
From the day we arrived, however, we
were made to feel that we were among
friends.

The one way in which I think rowing
could be put on a sounder basis in the
United States is to have more general
participation. Many more colleges could
take up the sport. It does not require
any tremendous outlay and is a most re-
markable developer of physical efficiency.
More young men in business ought to
row.

Single sculling is even more fun than
sitting in an eight-oared shell, and is
better adapted to the schedule of a work-
ing day because, given suitable water lo-
cated conveniently and a boat, a man can
get more good exercise in half an hour
than he can from two or three times the
time expended on some other sport. And
if there is any more enticing thrill in out-
door life than that of a shell sliding
through the water under your own
skilled direction I have yet to discover it.

VANDERBILT— A UNIVERSITY OF
THE NEW SOUTH

By HENRY JAY CASE

Illustrated with Photographs

' I VHREE years ago a team came out of the South, held Yale to
-*- a tie and scored on Harvard, with Harvard scoring only
twice. That wTas the first time that many people in the East had
heard of Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee. Van-
derbilt is a product of, and a credit to, the New South. There are
many institutions below Mason and Dixon's line that exceed her
in years, but she bows to none in spirit and aggressiveness. Her
graduates are making high places for themselves wherever they
land. Therefore it is worth while to inquire into the life of this
university. And since it is athletics that most fitly show forth the
spirit and scope of undergraduate life, it is athletics — and par-
ticularly football — that we shall consider.

N the football field at
West Point, not so many
years ago, a Yale coach
of the Academy team,
seeing his plays repeat-
edly stopped by a black-
haired youth on the scrubs, called this
cadet to the side lines and asked him
where he learned the game.

''Vanderbilt, suh!" answered the
cadet.

The coach reflected a moment, rubbed
his head, and finally allowed that Van-
derbilt was a new one to him.

"Where is it on the map?" he in-
quired.

"Nashville, Tennessee, suh!" said the
cadet, and then added: "But I was a
no-account player there, suh; just a
scrub, like I am here. I'll get there yet

if "

"You'll do, son," interrupted the
coach, with a grim smile; "you'll do.
Only keep on a-trying." And turning
to the officers with him he asked :

"Got any more of these Vanderbilt
persons loose? Got a few more Ten-
nessee cast-offs like this boy? Believe

[S20]

me, it's stuff like him Uncle Sam wants
in the Army."

This cadet later proved as dependable
a back as ever wore the gold and gray.
He had strength and speed, but, better
still, his real value showed "from the
neck up." He came back to the Point
to coach after graduation, is now a lieu-
tenant of cavalry, has served as instruc-
tor at the Point, of State troops, has
given valuable service as an observer at
the Army maneuvers, and at the time of
this writing is with his regiment in the
Philippines. He was a plebe at the
Point when the first reports of Vander-
bilt University began to filter through
Eastern and Middle Western colleges
and universities.

Even six or eight years prior to that
Vanderbilt had been making history in
Dixie by meeting and vanquishing team
after team from the Southern colleges
and universities — most of them Vander-
bilt's seniors in scholarship, athletics,
tradition, and social standing. Down
there this reversal of type was a difficult
thing to comprehend. Here was a com-
paratively new institution which in ten

VANDERBILT— A UNIVERSITY OF THE SOUTH

321

years took the ranking position in South-
ern athletics, defeated the famous Car-
lisle Indians, tied the Navy and Yale;
and only two seasons ago, after three
days and three nights aboard trains,
played the championship Harvard eleven
a creditably close game in the Stadium at
Cambridge.

The fact of the matter was that the
South was then just waking up to its

thing and to answer another. Probably
no three men within the inner councils
of the University would agree in their
explanation. Each would have different
ideas and each would miss the real point,
simply because every alumnus down
there is so full of the thing itself that
none of them recognize it. Vanderbilt's
rise in athletics is really due to three
things: native Tennessee stock, the same

jM \"y

i I

''tKaBttM''-'' u

^ r*f^l

' J M ' '

iSrJm m M

^E7 w ^^9

a -m&

■EffiTuji

ACTION ON DUDLEY FIELD — THE VANDERBILT-VIRGINIA, 1912, WON BY THE

FORMER

new possibilities, and in the field of edu-
cational possibilities Vanderbilt, in track
phraseology, had "beaten the pistol."
Down to last year, since the formation
of the Southern Athletic Association, in
1891, in track and field meets Vander-
bilt had won thirteen. In baseball she
had won 210 games, tied 5, and lost 89
in 304 plaved. In football she had won
130, tied 10, and lost 32 out of 172
played with some 37 different institu-
tions. This last record includes the
Southern championship, won fifteen
times, and several close and hard games
played with the larger and more power-
ful teams of the East and Middle West.
And so, while fairly successful in the
other sports, football is the game which
has put the University on the intercol-
legiate map and the game we must use
in analysis.

To ask how Vanderbilt did it is one

stuff which settled the State in the days
of Sevier and Jackson, the stuff which
gave both armies in the Civil War the
most aggressive fighters in history; a
hustling, wide-awrake alumni ; and — Dan
McGugin, coach, faculty member, and
idol of 1,300 students.

To begin wTith, Vanderbilt was blessed
with a generous endowment and fortu-
nate in starting things with a live, wide-
awake faculty. This, in turn, gave the
University the makings of a proud and
loyal alumni, and the alumni furnished
a group of enterprising sons who, riding
on the first wave of prosperity to the new
South, with their time and monev, have
been as active as any prize club of
"boosters" in the great wide West.

Dr. William L. Dudley, dean of the
Medical School, whom they kept at the
head of their athletic association for so
many years and who was for so long

McGugin. Foot-
ball Coach, Law
Professor and
Corporation Law-
yer as He Is To-
day.

McGugin in 1902,
as a Star Member
of the "Point a
Minute'* Team of
Michigan.

Dr. W. L. Dudley,
President South-
ern Intercollegiate
Ath. Ass'n, and
"Father of South-
ern Football."

Wilson Collins,
Halfback, 1911.
1912, Baseball
Pitcher, 1912, now
Outfielder with
Boston Nationals.

IMPORTANT FOOTBALL FACTORS AT VANDERBILT

president of the Southern Athletic Asso-
ciation and its representative on the na-
tional football rules committee, was the
first friend of athletics in the University.
He started the athletic spirit, and the
alumni, backed by the citizens of Nash-
ville, have ever since been getting Van-
derbilt pretty nearly everything, from
brains to machinery, that is required in
these modern days of educational and
athletic competition.

The "boosters" picked up Dan Mc-
Gugin, and before they found McGugin
they had used several other competent
men. This alumni group knew what
they were looking for, and while it took
them years to find exactly what they
wanted, in the end they succeeded. The
first man who came to coach football
was Upton, of Pennsvlvania. He stayed
one year and was followed by Acton, of
Harvard, who lasted two. Then came
Crane, of Princeton, for two, and
Henry, of Chicago, for one. Vander-
bilt, it will be seen, was looking to the
East for a solution of her football prob-

[322]

lem, but strangely enough the East did
not furnish the man she needed. He
came out of the Middle West. Drake
University started him, and the Univer-
sity of Michigan gave him his football
and furnished him with his degree.

But the finding of McGugin was only
an incident in the building. All the time
the alumni were looking for a football
coacii they kept their eyes open for prom-
ising faculty members and for students.
Students do not just come to these
younger institutions as they drift to
Harvard and to Yale. They have to be
found — "hog tied," as one Tenne^seean
expressed it, and "lugged in." So Van-
derbilt men went after their young un-
dergraduate material. They did not
look for athletes alone. These men
knew that there were plenty of stalwart
boys in the ridge country who combined
perfect bodies and brains, ambitious to
obtain an education, and who would
make proper leaders and teachers for the
new industrial South.

They watched the schools, the farms,

VANDERBILT— A UNIVERSITY OF THE SOUTH

323

and mountains, and once they found the
boy of proper type they saw to it that in
some way he eventually became enrolled
in Vanderbilt. If the boy didn't have
the funds to put him through, the Van-
derbilt alumni saw that some member
of his family did, or that he got there
by earning the money himself.

Rival colleges and universities tell
many a story on the Vanderbilt "boost-
ers" and their zeal in hunting perfect
"types" for students ; how this alumnus
while driving took a boy from a plow;
how this man found a giant in the mines
and that "old grad" picked up a scholar
in a mountain district school teacher.
Whether exaggerated or plain truth,
they do not detract from the reputation
of the University.

Vanderbilt gets many of these fine,
rugged specimens from all parts of Ten-
nessee, Kentucky, Mississippi, Alabama,
and Texas. Some turn out to be ath-
letes and some do not, but the majority
come through a credit to the University,
and once they are out they have one idea

fresh in mind, and that is to do the
University a good turn for every good
turn the University has done them.
That is where Vanderbilt gets its royal
society of "booster^."

The confidence of these "boosters,"
the undergraduates, the friends of the
University and the city of Nashville in
McGugin and his team is amazing.
They don't seem to know or care what
he happens to be up against in material
or schedule. They know that Vander-
bilt has a football team that can win and
they want to get out and see it done.
Nashville has about 140,000 population
and it turns out in impressive force ?t
every game.

Not long ago the citizens, in apprecia-
tion of what Vanderbilt and football had
done for the city, held a mass meeting
and presented the coach with a hand-
some memorial. Nashville apparently
demands football, and the University
alumni, keenly alive to the advantages
of such support and the advertising it
obtains, give the city about as good a

Tom Brown, Captain
Basket-ball and Football
Tackle — Member of a
Famous Football Family.

Zach C a r 1 i n, Quarterback,
1912, Whose Drop Kick Scored
on Both Harvard and Michi-
gan.

Enoch Brown,
Football End,
Baseball Catcher,
Three Years All-
Southern Half-
back.

THREE VANDERBILT STARS OF RECENT DAYS

324

OUTING

game as can be found anywhere in the
land.

These in brief are some of the reasons
for Vanderbilt's success. It may sound
commercial to more conservative colleges
and universities. If it does it is mis-
leading.

Vanderbilt has taken a decided stand
against professionalism in college sport.
Like other colleges and universities in
the East as well as those in the South
and Middle West who are now working
for the best in athletics, it has been
through the purging fires. Along with
the. rest it has had its house-cleaning, and
wit . the rest it is now keeping its house
in order.

There are no scholarships at Vander-
bilt and no football players have had a
so-called scholarship of any kind, and
athletes do not receive financial induce-
ments to enter. What help any worthy
students have received comes through
family connections, from friends, or
from their own efforts during vacation
time and while in college. The honor
system exists at Vanderbilt and is ap-
plied to athletics there.

Coaches wTill tell you that there has
never been a serious breach of training
rules in the last ten years, nor have they
ever heard in this time of an athlete tak-
ing liquor during season, using tobacco,
or in any way breaking the letter or
spirit of the rules. There seems to be
an absolutely uncomplaining willingness
to labor which is surely not surpassed
anywhere. The students seem to feel
that they have a sacred record to main-
tain and there is the most intense seri-
ousness imaginable.

Making Their Oivn Material

Each season there appear on the foot-
ball field an average of between thirty-
five and forty men. At least a third of
these have no football ability whatsoever.
The coaches are never embarrassed by an
over-abundance of material. It often
happens that places are vacant with no
likely candidates to fill them. The first
games are close at hand. What do they
do? McGugin and his .isMstants take
some unwilling, uncomplaining, good-
natured youth and proceed to make a

player out of him, or at least a sufficient-
ly good enough player to fill the hole.
In this way they patch up the eleven and
proceed with their schedule. They say
that after all the making of a player Is
not so much a question of natural ability
as one of personal determination, cour-
age, and patience.

The approval of the boy's fellows on
the field is also a help in "making" the
player, manifesting itself in the bearing,
the tone of the voice, confidence of the
candidate, and in many other little ways
that are at once apparent. McGugin
makes the most of all this. He adapts
his style of offense and defense to meet
the individual qualities of the men. At
Vanderbilt the coaches rate the defensive
ability of the team at about 25 per cent,
the offensive ability at 30 per cent, and
spirit at 40 per cent. In all of this there
is something that throws a light on the
reason of Vanderbilt's success.

Because of the comparatively small
enrollment, Vanderbilt, like all the
Southern institutions, plays freshmen on
their varsity teams. Such freshmen,
however, are required to enter with
fourteen Carnegie units.* Members of
the three upper classes must show at
least twelve Carnegie units acquired
from the preceding year, and with these
they are permitted to carry one unsatis-
factory subject; but if, with their twelve
units, they have two unsatisfactory sub-
jects, they become ineligible and remain
so until their work is made up to the
satisfaction of the faculty. These eligi-
bility rules are rigidly enforced by the
faculty.

For football material Vanderbilt has
less than 600 students to draw from,
probably only 500, and in 1912 the team
was approximately the age and about the
equal in weight of the Phillips Andover
and the Phillips Exeter elevens. Yet it
played most of its opponents to a stand-
still and Harvard had its hands full in
pulling out a nine-to-three victory. This
emphasizes again the courage and intel-
ligence of the men of middle Tennessee
and surrounding sections.

*Under the rules of the Carnegie Founda-
tion for the Advancement of Teaching, a
Carnegie unit means five periods weekly in
any one subject through the academic year.

VAXDERBILT GETS MANY OF THESE FINE, RUGGED SPECIMENS

When we study the enrollment records
of the. University we find that the stu-
dents from these communities of the
inland South are almost pure descendants
oAr the original settlers from England,
Ireland, and Scotland, and that there has
since been little mingling with other
races. They have sprung from the con-
temporaries of Boone, Simon Kenton,
Sam Houston, and George Rogers Clark.
The football teams of Vanderbilt are
largely made up of Browns, Blakes,
Craigs, Grahams, Whites, and other
such well-founded patronymics. "Bob"
Blake, Dan Blake, and Vaughn Blake,
brothers, were in turn captains of the
1906, 1907, and 1908 teams, respect-
ively, and there have been at times as
many as five Browns on one team.

But in referring to native stock which
goes so far in making up successful ath-
letic teams at Vanderbilt, it cannot be
said that this one Tennessee university
has a monopoly of the fighting spirit of
the South. Sewanee, the University of
the South; Auburn, Alabama; Georgia
"Tech," and the University of Georgia,
all smaller institutions, draw even to a
greater degree from this Southern stock,
the real blood and bone of those who
built the South, and who at the birth of

the Confederacy gave all they had to the
cause they believed to be right.

Sewanee, whose woodland reservation
is on a mountain tract, miles from the
more thickly settled districts, comes down
to Nashville for the annual game, be-
cause at Sewanee there isn't the neces-
sary "gate" to pay expenses. It brings
a team recruited from about 200 stu-
dents and gives Vanderbilt its closest
and hardest battles of the year. Harris
Cope, the graduate coach of Sewanee
and the latest new member on the Na-
tional Rules Committee, has the simon-
pure Southern material to work with.
If he didn't, as fine a strategist as he is,
he could not build what he does year
after year from the handful of young
men up there on the mountain. Dona-
hue at Auburn, a professional, turns out
some wonderful teams from the material
he has to work with.

I mention these particularly, as they
are removed from the Atlantic seaboard
and, unlike other and more accessible
institutions, have not the advantage of
close touch with the Eastern and Middle
Atlantic colleges.

Vanderbilt has been playing football
for approximately twenty years, and
while I am not familiar with the rec-

[32fi]

VANDERBILT— A UNIVERSITY OF THE SOUTH

327

ords of the men who made the early
teams, a few instances of players in later
years show something of the Tennessee
strain and the virile, thrifty, and intel-
lectual stock it produces.

Dr. Lucius Burch, whose last year on
the gridiron at Dudley Field was 1897,
was one of the best guards developed in
the United States during his athletic ca-
reer. He is to-day one of the prominent
surgeons of the South and is at the head
of a private sanitarium in Nashville.

John Edgerton, whose last year was
1903, was in speed and size the type
of man which made the Yale teams
of the early nineties so powerful. Af-
ter leaving college he became one of the
head masters at the Columbia Military
Academy at Columbia, and is now man-
ager and part owner of a wToolen mill
at Lebanon, Tenn.

Robert Blake was a member of the
Vanderbilt teams of 1904, 1905, 1906,
1907, and a place-kicker, punter, for-
ward-passer and an end of great ability.
He won the Rhodes scholarship from
Tennessee, made a fine record at Ox-
ford, and is now a practising lawyer in
Nashville.

Owsley Manier was a full-back on the
Vanderbilt teams of 1904, 1905 and
1906 and a great plunging back. A£-
ter his course at Vanderbilt he went to
the University of Pennsylvania to study
medicine and played one year on the
Pennsylvania eleven, as he was entitled
to by the eligibility rules. But his ef-
fectiveness at Pennsylvania was lessened
by the attempt of the coaches to change
his style of bucking a line from the low,
plunging dive to running into it erect,
knees drawn high and great dependence
upon his companion backs to "hike"
him.

Manier was four years at Pennsyl-
vania and had he been allowed to play
a year more would undoubtedly have
been chosen for the Ail-American team.
Out of a class of 146 he led as No. 1
for his whole course, and is now prac-
tising his profession in Nashville and
giving his spare time to the university as
assistant football coach.

Ray Morrison, quarterback on the
1908,' 1909, 1910 and 1911 teams was
picked by several critics as All-Amer-
ican timber during his last year in col-
lege, and as good a judge of material

FROM 1891 TO 1913 VANDERBILT WON THIRTEEN TRACK AND FIELD MEETS IN
THE SOUTHERN ATHLETIC ASSOCIATION

328

OUTING

as "Ted" Coy said publicly that any
back in America would be proud of this
boy for a running mate. Morrison, at
this writing, is a member of the faculty
of Branham & Hughes school in Tennes-
see.

Hillsman Taylor, tackle on the Van-
derbilt teams of 1905, 1906 and 1907,
is prominent in the public life of Tennes-
see, having held several offices of trust
and merit and was Speaker of the House

A FEW LAST WORDS FROM COACH MC GUGIN JUST
BEFORE THE GAME

of Representatives of Tennessee in 1909.

John Tigert and Innis and Enoch
Brown, who also passed the Rhodes
scholarship examinations with high
marks, were all football figures. Tigert
has the honor of being the first Rhodes
scholar from Tennessee. After his course
at Oxford, where he left a splendid rec-
cord in scholarship and athletics, he
returned to Tennessee as an educator
and became President of Kentucky Wes-
leyan College. In building up this in-
stitution he taxed his strength too severe-
ly and wras compelled to resign his
position on account of failing health. He
now has the chair of philosophy at the
Kentucky State University.

Frank Godchaux, a quarterback on
one of the teams in the late nineties, is
now President of the Louisiana Rice
Milling Company, a $10,000,000 cor-
poration.

Nothing could better illustrate the
spirit which pervades the athletic body at
this university than the football team
last season. Autumn saw Vanderbilt

starting with a light and green team
built around two veteran line men,
Morgan and Brown, and McGugin
playing every known combination with
this pair of "huskies" to its fullest effi-
ciency. In the Michigan game Brown
broke one of the small bones in his
ankle, and the following week, in the
Virginia game, Morgan broke his leg
just above the ankle. This put the team
in mid-November where it ordinarily
was at the start of the
season. Despite the
handicap, however, it
showed magnificent
spirit, practised pa-
tiently, quietly and with
a determination that
found itself by Thanks-
giving Day giving Se-
wanee, its old rival, all
that it could handle,
and in the end win-
ning by a score of 63
to 13.

Brown, the lines-
man, who four weeks
previous had broken his
ankle, played through-
out this game wTith a
steel brace on his leg, and the next day
was taken to the pest-house with a bad
case of smallpox. What this youth suf-
fered in that Thanksgiving Day game no
one but himself will ever know.

So much for the material, the spirit,
the university and the town. Just a
word about McGugin. He will talk all
day and all night of Vanderbilt, his boys,
the town, and the new South, but when
the topic is brought around to himself,
invariably has to go to court, or law
school, or legislature, or some other place
where football is tabooed. Nashville
citizens, when asked who McGugin is
and where he came from, will "reckon"
that "Dan" is a native of Tennessee,
always lived there, and always will.
There isn't any question about it. Dan
E. McGugin has been officially adopted
by Nashville.

Nevertheless, for accuracy on the rec-
ord, it may be stated that Dan E. Mc-
Gugin was born on the edge of the Mid-
dle West in the hamlet of Tingly, Iowa,
of Scotch and Irish descent, entered

VANDERBILT— A UNIVERSITY OF THE SOUTH

329

Drake University at fifteen; graduated
from the literary department of that
school in 1901, and entered the law
school of the University of Michigan,
at Ann Arbor, in the fall of that same
year. He was graduated from Michigan
in June, 1903.

McGugin had played football two
years at Drake, and, under the then exist-
ing rules, had two years of competition
remaining when he entered Michigan.
He played at guard in the seasons of
1901 and 1902, being a member of
Yost's famous "point a minute" team,
and had the distinction in that period
of never having had time taken out for
him in a single game. He stripped in
his Michigan days at about 185 pounds
and invariably faced men much heavier
and taller, but, according to his team-
mates, always succeeded in holding a
little more than his own throughout each
game.

"Probably the most predominate trait
in McGugin's make-up," said a member
of the Michigan faculty, recently, "is
his unfailing ability to meet every emerg-
ency. Throughout his college career

every summer vacation was spent in see-
ing the sights, either here or abroad. To
my absolute knowledge he traversed the
South and West thoroughly, spent a
number of months in Alaska, an equal
period in Mexico, also in Central Amer-
ica, and during two summer vacations
roamed Europe, working his passage
over and back in cattle-boats."

One of these migrations landed him
in Nashville, Tennessee, possessed with
a degree in law and a desire to work.
To help pay his board and lodging he
secured the job as coach of the Vander-
bilt football team, and, thus equipped,
started in to practise his profession.
That was ten years ago. To-day, be-
sides having the reputation of being one
of the most successful football coaches
in this country, McGugin is a corpora-
tion lawyer, a member of the faculty of
the Law School, has married a Nash-
ville girl, and is one of the most sub-
stantial business and professional men of
his adopted city.

A graduate of Vanderbilt told the
writer that one of the most moving ap-
peals he ever heard made was by Mc-

THE SEWANEE TEAM, VANDERBILT's DEAREST RIVALS, WAITING FOR THE

GAME TO BEGIN

both at Drake and Michigan he was
called upon to meet all expenses through
his own personal endeavors and efforts.
Many are the stories told of his ingenuity
in devising schemes to support himself
during these seven years.

"But, in addition to a college career,
'Mac' had an overwhelming desire to
see the outside world, and practically

Gugin in a locker-room just prior to the
opening of a game with Michigan, when
he, as a fiery Southerner, urged Van-
derbilt's men to wipe the field with the
Northerners, and talked of their revered
and fighting forebears and the trust, con-
fidence and pride which the South re-
posed in them as they battled that day
for the glory of Old Tennessee. This

330

OUTING

man said there wasn't a dry eye in the
room as McGugin finished, and every
player in the team trotted out on the
gridiron that afternoon ready to die, if
necessary, for the honor and glory of
Dixie. And the story isn't injured a bit
when it is added that the general of the
opposing forces was Yost, McGugin's
old instructor and college mate, the man
who taught him all the football he ever

other things being equal, this difference
tells quickly in a football game.

It is significant, however, that Mc-
Gugin will take a team which has been
beaten by Michigan and proceed to de-
feat another eleven, heavier, older, and
well coached. Note the showing Van-
derbilt made against Virginia, the Navy,
and Yale. The answer is that McGugin
will not stick to any one style of game.

ON THE CAMPUS AT VANDERBILT THE TOWER TN THE BACKGROUND OVERLOOKS

DUDLEY FIELD

knew, and who later had become his
brother-in-law. It may also be said that
McGugin hasn't yet succeeded in licking
Yost, although he has taken teams
North on more than one occasion which
came very near doing it.

Michigan's unbroken string of vic-
tories over Vanderbilt is due, undoubt-
edly, to the size and strength of the in-
dividuals who compose her elevens.
Both teams play about the same game,
fast and aggressive. The attack of both
teams is as versatile as it is rapid in ac-
tion. The generalship is the same, but
Vanderbilt's teams average in size less
than either Andover or Exeter, and,

He develops an extremely varied defense.
He is constantly looking for the new
"stuff." He trains his teams to drive
their attack hard and fast, running their
plays in quick succession, and always
trying to get away with the well-nigh
impossible, or, at least, the unexpected.
In the Yale 0-0 game it is said that the
Vanderbilt team ran about seven and
eight plays to the minute. Vanderbilt
did identically the same tiling in the
Navy 0-0 game, and every one of her
eleven men played the entire game with-
out a substitution.

Much was expected of the team that
took the long journey to Cambridge, but

VANDERBILT— A UNIVERSITY OF THE SOUTH

331

as often happens in football, a series of
unfortunate accidents just previous to
the trip changed the whole outlook and
rendered useless all the preliminary work
of the autumn in building up the par-
ticular style of play for that one game.
By the time the team crawled out of
the sleepers at Boston, its members were
a sadly crippled lot, and the fast, open
game which it had been coached to play
was not in it. Harvard even had to
loan Vanderbilt a player to make up her
eleven men.

It is said that McGugin, in the few
hours' practice Vanderbilt was able to
get in the Stadium, changed his whole
attack and defense. He early discovered
the "pockets" and "wind echoes" of the
upper air currents in the Stadium, and,
detaching the back field, kept it kicking,
passing, and catching, in order that these
men might at least be "wise" to the air.
Taking the line to one corner of the
big amphitheatre, he drilled it alone, in
an absolutely new defense. Vanderbilt
]ost to Harvard that day, but the game
was by no means one-sided and the Nash-
ville students returned to Tennessee sat-
isfied in their own minds that when in
good condition they could force the
Crimson to its best.

It has been said by a Western coach
that in fundamentals — tackling, charg-
ing, blocking, punting, and going down
under a kick — the East is superior to
the South and Middle West; that these
results are due not only to good coach-
ing, but to the wealth of seasoned ma-
terial which the East has to draw from.
Many of these Eastern college athletes
themselves come from the West, but
their athletic training has been received
at Eastern preparatory schools, where
undoubtedly they get better coaching,
in the fundamentals of the game, than
the boys at most Southern and Middle
Western colleges. The writer agrees
with this, but he also believes it to be
equally true in versatility of attack the

West and South are as good if not bet-
ter. It would be interesting to see what
would happen to an average, well-bal-
anced Princeton team if a man like Mc-
Gugin were given its generalship in a
game with either Yale or Harvard at the
end of the season.

In the ten years that McGugin has
been at Vanderbilt he has made a lasting
impression upon the undergraduates, and
after graduation when many of these
men have gone among the preparatory
schools and colleges of the South to
teach, they have taken the McGugin
school with them, and established it in
the institutions to which they were sent.
It follows quite naturally that these
schools later send many of their boys
to Vanderbilt.

Those of them who play football
come, therefore, to McGugin as well
grounded in the fundamentals as Mc-
Gugin himself could have taught them.
This is the much talked of "McGugin
machine." If it is a machine it is a
good one, and offers one more reason
for Vanderbilt's steady march to athletic
triumph.

But if Vanderbilt attracts material
from these preparatory schools of Ten-
nessee, the University of Georgia,
Georgia "Tech," and Sewanee each get
just as many more from other schools in
the South. These four colleges and uni-
versities draw more students from
preparatory schools than any other in-
stution in the South, save the University
of Virginia, really a South Atlantic col-
lege. Vanderbilt probably gets more
students from preparatory colleges of the
South than any other institution there.
However, both football and baseball, in
the largest of these preparatory schools
and colleges, while developing virile and
intelligent players, are both in their in-
fancy as games, and the strongest team
from any of them could not play And-
over, Exeter, Hill School, or Mercers-
burg, with any hope of winning.

Read Mr. Case's article in July on
the University of Washington — the
next in the series of college articles.

OF COURSE WHEN YOU REALLY WANT TO HIT THINGS, AND THE GROUND PERMITS

IT. A COMMON POSITION AMONG THE DEER STALKERS OF SCOTLAND, A RARE ONE

AMONG AMERICAN HUNTERS, THE ACCEPTED MILITARY POSITION

HOW TO HIT THINGS WITH THE

RIFLE

By EDWARD C. CROSSMAN

Illustrated with Photographs

Practical Points on Position, Grip, and the Other Essentials to

Good Marksmanship

KNOW of a number of games in
which brains count heavily, but I
do not know of one in which brains
count for more than they do in
rifle shooting. Strength, ''nerves,"
eyesight, inherited advantages, it
really makes little difference in how
great a degree you possess these desir-
ables, they neither make nor break your
rifle shooting.

If you think that eyesight makes the
difference, consider Midshipman, now
Ensign, W. A. Lee, U. S. Navy. With
eyes so faulty that he had trouble gradu-
ating from the Academy, he won in one
year the great National Individual
match with the rifle and the National
Pistol match with the revolver, in
straight, open competition against the

[332]

pick of the country. I saw an optician
testing his lenses at Camp Perry in
1913, a pair of powerful lenses, the
absence of which left the officer out of
it so far as hitting the target is con-
cerned.

The finest offhand shot I've seen per-
form outside of Dr. Hudson weighs
about 115 pounds. The finest game shot
I believe there is in the world weighs
about 155 pounds.

The man who holds the world's
record at 800 yards, with over 100
straight bulls at nearly a half mile range,
who holds the high record for the U. S.
team that shot at the Argentine Re-
public in 1912, and who won the cham-
pionship and $1 ,000 cash at that event,
besides shooting on the U. S. Pan-

. H THE

American tear

-
he n

quite neurasthenic, he
may jur.

sudden slamming of a door behind him
— b it
■

■ - I

both. - the deli: -.out

thar.

■
the offhand 200-yard work, fol-
low^

indoor i .ran rifle

clubs
rangi:

■

ins, the

■

■ -

- ■ ■ - .

-----
- - - -

i f
POSE >F F

334

OUTING

GOOD OFFHAND POSITION. BUT ELBOW RAISED TOO

HIGH FOR COMFORT. DISCOMFORT MEANS STRAIN,

STRAIN MEANS SHAKINESS

time of the recoil as would happen were
the gun fired by an electric charge while
fixed to a rest.

Literally, shooting is a case of not
letting your left hand know what the
right is doing. The thought flashes
into my mind with every shot I fire,
whether at the running deer, with its
scant two seconds of time to fire, or at
the 200-yard target.

The natural and wrong thing to do
is for the brain to keep that left hand
constantly informed as to what the
trigger finger is doing, and the instant
the trigger finger contracts for the last
ounce to telegraph to the left arm and
the muscles of the body, "Hold hard,
she's going to kick."

This is a flinch. It is not fear, not
always even anxiety to get off the shot
at the right time; it is the natural —
and fatal — disposition of the body to

tighten up and meet the re-
coil and roar. Do you watch
with lax muscles and unflut-
tered nerves the preparations
to fire the noisy cannon close
to you? Or do you clap
3'our hands to your ears and
sit with muscles tensed,
though unnoticed by you, and
nerves more or less aquiver,
waiting for the roar of the
big gun? When the brain
knows, and the body knows
through it, that the last
ounce pressure of the right
index finger is going to pro-
duce a more or less heavy
blow and a loud roar, both
of them shocks to the nerv-
ous system, then you can un-
derstand that success with a
powerful rifle is dependent
upon the mental training as
much as it is upon the muscu-
lar one.

Therefore endeavor assidu-
ously to divorce all connec-
tion through the brain, of the
trigger finger and the left
arm, and body. Concentrate
hard — this means concentrate
— on the trigger finger, keep
the left or supporting arm
lax, don't let the muscles of
the body tense up and prepare to meet
the fuss that is going to take place.

I have helped to break in a number
of new men in rifle shooting, and I am
certain that ninety per cent of the fail-
ures among riflemen, up to the state
where judgment of wind and weather
conditions count, is the lack of absolute
divorce of the firing mechanism of the
trigger finger and brain portion con-
trolling it from the rest of the muscles
and the brain guiding them. I watched
one man fire through two years with
the military rifle. Score after score
would run splendidly up to the last
shot or two, then would come the clean
miss, curses of the rifle and the ammu-
nition and the market and the weather
and all the other causes that have to
suffer the blame for failure of the bullet
to meet one's expectations.

Not until after this man shot through

HOW TO HIT THINGS WITH THE RIFLE

335

a course with the .22 rifle in-
doors did he realize that oc-
casionally he quit holding and
pulled the trigger. The re-
coil of the big rifle covered
this up, but the small one un-
charitably told him the truth.
He actually quit the firm grip
of the rifle as the trigger fin-
ger pulled out the last ounce
of sear, and his whole body
actually met the recoil before
it came. It takes an iron grip
on oneself to keep the body
still and steady while the
trigger finger does something
that the brain knows full well
will hurt and jar one.

With the trained man, re-
coil is not the disturbing con-
sideration. Speaking from per-
sonal experience I have fired a
powerful elephant rifle, developing fifty-
six foot pounds recoil energy, against
sixteen for the army gun, with no more
tendency to flinch from the terrific blow
than I would have with my own target
rifle. But let me have a rifle that has
a bad pull, one that instead of dropping
clean from the sear notch, goes "click-
grate, click-bang" and I will have to
fight myself to keep from flinching clear
out of the firing point. This is because
your control of the body can last for but
an instant, and you have learned that
the fuss happens when the sear slips. If
it slips, but the rifle fails to fire, then

EXCELLENT FORM OF THE SITTING
QUICKLY ASSUMED, USABLE ON ANY
QUITE STEADY

A LOOK AT THE OFFHAND POSITION FOR DE-
LIBERATE TARGET WORK, STRAP PASSING BELOW
ARM PIT BUT NOT OVER THE ARM. THUMB BETTER
ON GUARD TITAN AS SHOWN, ELBOW CLOSER TO SIDE

you've got the materials for a case of
flinching — after a time has elapsed that
would have allowed the bullet to clear
the muzzle.

This is different again from the con-
vulsive jerk with which the real flincher
pulls the trigger. The trigger with the
bad pull is released perfectly, the "flinch"
is a sort of involuntary relaxing of the
nerves that follows the perfect release
of the trigger.

The man wanting to make a success
of rifle shooting must think and think
hard each time he fires a shot. He must
concentrate, and must be able to tell
exactly what he did each
time he pulled the trigger.
A trained offhand shot can
call the hit within four or
five inches at two hundred
yards, before it is marked,
because he has concentrated
on those sights and the trig-
ger pull, and he knows ex-
actly where the sights were
aligned as the recoil hurled
the rifle into the air.

An empty rifle is as good
as a loaded one almost any
time, for practice, and for the
beginner it is a whole lot
better. Until the trigger
can be released without that
front sight moving in the

POSITION-
GROUND,

336

OUTING

NOT A GOOD SITTING POSITION, ELBOWS SHOULD BE
IN FRONT OF KNEES OR IN HOLLOWS

ler blades of the tractor add-
ed to the racket.

I give you my word that
the first time I fired the rifle
I did not know whether or
not it went off, and I had to
open the bolt and see the
fired cartridge before I be-
lieved it. The noise of the en-
gine and the blades drowned
out the noise of the rifle —
and I could not feel it kick
me during the half-dozen
shots I fired.

I would treat recoil in a
different way from that usu-
ally employed. If a person
is bothered by the noise and
comeback of the rifle, then
let him secure a 10-gauge or
a 12-gauge shotgun, with the
heaviest shot loads possible,
then seek an open spot with
the gun. There let him fire
twenty-five or fifty shots,
aiming the gun deliberately

slightest, it is a waste of time and money and squeezing the trigger as though try-
to fire cartridges. The es-
sential muscular training that

must take place to insure

steady holding can be ob-
tained best by a few minutes'

snapping of the rifle each day,

the arm unloaded, but the

mind intent on the practice

to the exclusion of everything

else. Better five minutes of

this — it is enough — to a half

hour desultory "monkeying/'
Fear of recoil is a mental,

not a physical, fault. The

noise has much to do with it.

Once upon a time I did some

experimental firing with a

Government rifle cut down

to light-weight sporting form,

from a flying aeroplane. The

rifle had considerable punch

in its light form, about nine-
teen pounds of energy being

developed by its backward

travel. The exhaust of the

four cylinders of the engine

was directly in front of mc

and not four feet away, while

the roar of the great propel-

THE WAY NOT TO SHOOT WELL OFF HAND, LEFT

HAND FAR OUT BARREL AND STRATN ON THE ARM,

RIGHT ELBOW TOO HIGH

HOW TO HIT THINGS WITH THE RIFLE

337

ing to hit a target a long way off. It is
a good idea to put the front bead on
some object and try to hold steadily on
this while firing.

It is not particularly enjoyable. As
a matter of fact the recoil of a 12-gauge
gun with trap loads of 3^ drams of
powder, and \% ounces of shot is nearly
double that of the recoil of the U. S.
army rifle, the New Springfield, and is
about the same as that of the "fero-
cious" .405.

There is no use monkeying with the
gunshy, or recoil-fearing person. Strin-
gent measures are the best. The big
shotgun gives us the necessary severity
of punch — and yet the average person is
ashamed to quit, merely because of the
fact that the trapshot fires two hundred
shots or more in a day, and does not
mind it. True, the trapshot fires under
different conditions, but if the kick is
there in either case, it is merely a ques-
tion of mind after all.

The clumsy, uncouth positions as-
sumed by the new hands — and some-
times held on to by the old ones — are
enough to put the teeth on edge like
the thoughts of a very sour pickle.
There is nothing in holding a rifle that
calls for the human frame to be tied up
in a hard knot.

I've watched misguided gentlemen
holding the left hand far out the barrel,
until the left arm wras on a strain and
could not possibly be steady, and holding
the right elbow at an elevation about
even with the crown of the hat. I have
never found the target easy enough to
allow me to use any such handicap as
this sort of pose.

The best position for all-round shoot-
ing is with the left arm in the half-
extended position, left elbow well under
the rifle, muscles relaxed. The right
hand should grip the rifle tightly, very
firmly, and pull the gun hard against
the shoulder. The importance of a
close-up pistol grip in holding is hard
for the average shooter to realize, be-
cause proper grips are quite rare. The
right elbow should not be raised any
higher than enough to make a com-
fortable cushion for the butt of the
stock, and the butt should be kept well
in to the shoulder in the muscle-bed

nature provided for it when she de-
signed a man for rifle shooting. Also,
don't bite on the entirely foolish "rifle
butt plate," the steel sort with the horns
on it. It fits nobody, including you,
makes the recoil more severe, and is
very slow in pitching the rifle to the
shoulder for a quick shot.

For deliberate offhand shooting,
many adopt a hold closer to the trigger
guard for the left hand, although it is
not suitable for all-round work. These
holds vary thus:

Holds for Offhand Shooting

Guard flat in the palm of the left
hand, fingers extended along the stock
or the magazine floor plate of a military
rifle, left elbow clinging to ribs, body
fairly erect. The same hold of the left
hand, but legs well apart, and the left
elbow resting on the point of the hip.

Or, the rifle supported on the thumb
and the index and second fingers of the
left hand, the thumb on the rear curve
of the trigger guard, the fingers ahead
of the guard, with the elbow either
clinging to the ribs, or else on the point
of the hip.

With the military rifle the sling is
used in various ways to supplement this.

My own preference is for the thumb
and two-fingers support, elbow clinging
to the ribs — mine are near enough to
the surface to guard against any slipping
across them — the sling pulled out from
the "parade" or tight position until
there is slack enough to slip up under
the arm pit. So held, the sling runs
from the front swivel to the rear one,
passing beneath the upper arm as close
as possible to the arm pit, but not pass-
ing around the arm at all. The weight
and pressure of the arm against the
bight of the sling acts as a heavier rifle
would do, it holds down the gun hard
against the fingers and stops the wobbles
to a considerable extent.

Needless to say, this is merely to play
the offhand, slow fire game, to beat the
target, and it is worth nothing in game
shooting, or for quick work. Holding
thus, I find a little rosin a good thing
under the thumb and fingers to guard
against possible slipping.

338

OUTING

I hate to confess myself a heretic, but
I am one and deserve the scorn thereof,
so far as the effectiveness of offhand
shooting goes. The average man who
goes afield cannot hold ten shots into
the 26-inch four-ring at 200 yards.
They can, huh? Well then, why don't
they do it when they get on the target
range.

Out here in Los Angeles there has
been a rifle club with quite complete
equipment, open to the shooter at large
since 1908. Also I've been secretary
since that year, and have watched them
come and go. During the seasons quite
a number of hunters seek the range,
either to try some of the prize shoots or
to sight in a new rifle.

I've watched them and listened to
their tales. Also have I tried to jibe up
said tales with the detestable criss-cross
black and white marker that would
creep up out of the pit, signifying a
"three," and therefore not within the
26-inch "four" ring.

Fear of recoil, nervousness, lack of
acquaintance with trigger pull, and
lack of muscular training, all of them
show up far greater in offhand shooting
than in any position. The average man,
unless he seeks his game in a country
that forbids such procedure, is very wise
to practice the sitting position, and get-
ting into it in a hurry. Too slow?
Bosh. Consider the Surprise Fire of
the National Matches at Camp Perry
and the lessons thereof.

There was allowed to the shooter the
short space of three seconds, and also
the time it took rapidly to shoot from
the pit the target that lay in conceal-
ment. The shooter had to stand, rifle
in right or left hand by the side, safety
fully on, perfectly erect in posture, until
he saw the target move. In the hands
of ordinary markers it moved like a man
who has inadvertently dropped a lighted
match into a keg of black powder. I
should say a half second would cover
the rise of the target, until the fateful
three seconds commenced to tick.

Now originally designed for prac-
tice in offhand work, the game had
been thoroughly beaten by the agile
riflemen. Probably ninety per cent, of
the shooters at Perry flopped to the

prone position on the appearance of the
target. Maybe seven per cent, kneeled,
and about three per cent, went to the
sitting position. All this was done in
the time of which I tell you, say 3*/2
seconds all told, starting from the stand-
ing position, rifle locked and held at
arm's length in one hand.

The range was 200 yards, the figure
counting five was 26 x 22 inches. Yet
possibles of ten shots were as nothing.
I own five of them myself, so that's
nothing.

Majority Favor the Prone Position

Now three per cent, or so of the
shooters at Perry went to the sit, and
ninety per cent, to the lying position,
because the target was not obscured,
the ground was level, and the prone
position is more steady than any other.
But, this is not true in the game coun-
try, nor in any other than level mea-
dow land or desert or baseball parks or
rifle ranges. Therefore take the sitting
position, nearly as steady as the prone,
usable on uphill or downhill formations,
and putting the eye and the sights from
two to two and a half feet above the
ground. This may be enough, or it
may not be, it depends upon the nature
of the country and the vegetation.

Anyhow, assume it if the conditions
will allow it, and unless the game is
actually on the run, don't worry about
time. For one thing, I've noted time
and again that an animal watching you
will gaze at you in puzzled fashion,
unable to make out what became of the
tall, slim figure seen but an instant
before.

Comfort and steadiness in the "sit"
depends upon your svelte figure. If
you're fifteen years and seventy-five
pounds away from the erstwhile svelte
stage, then the sit will make no hit with
you. For those able to assume it, the
steadiest modification of the sit is the
cross-arm position, the old Gunsling
Dave favorite of the regular army. It
is thus:

Place the arms folded across the
knees, which must be drawn up close to
the body, impossible for a heavily-built
or stiff-jointed or very long "shanked"

HOW TO HIT THINGS WITH THE RIFLE

339

man. Rest the rifle over the left elbow,
which is lying flat across the outside of
the left knee. Cross the right wrist
with the left wrist, some people prefer
to grip the right sleeve with the left
hand. The arms lie flat, knees up in-
side the elbows.

Objections! position is sensitive to
slope of ground, cannot be assumed if
the feet are lower than the spot where
you sit, slower to assume, does not give
complete control of the rifle, as it merely
lies across the left elbow, controlled by
the right hand alone.

The true sitting position may be
either with the soles of the shoes to-
gether, knees spread apart, or else with
the feet well apart, elbows snuggled
into the hollows inside the knees. To
me, this is the best, being less of a strain
on the leg muscles.

The kneel is a very much over-rated
position. California used an experi-
mental School of Musketry course for
her State shoot in 1912, and I was one
of the unfortunates following it out to
the last shot in the trials for individual
championship. One stage of it called
for ten shots kneeling in one minute,
including reloading the magazine, the
position assumed from the stand on the
appearance of the target. Dutifully
therefore we fired hundreds and hun-
dreds of cartridges in this position to
work out the last detail that might
count for points.

We found out this — that almost in-
variably the shooter .. took so much time
getting steadied down after he struck
his knee to the soil that he might as
well have sat down to it.

Later on we ran against it at Camp
Perry in the Pan-American matches of
1913. We bucked this for one solid
week, about forty shots a day from the
kneel alone. Here they allowed steel
reinforced plates in the shoes and cush-

ions to slip under the lower leg. Also
the time was not limited in the slight-
est. In spite of this, the scores were
not enough higher in this position than
they were in the offhand to make the
difference at all worth while. The
sling was used, the cushion was used,
lots of time was used, and the prevail-
ing winds had much less sweep At the
kneeling man owing to the construction
of the shooting house. Yet the offhand
scores overlapped into those made kneel-
ing until you could not tell t'other from
which.

The kneel is an extremely uncomfor-
table position, not at all a steady one,
and entirely unworthy of practice. If
you must use it, then see that the left
toe points straight toward the mark,
and that the right toe is about fifteen
inches to the rear, and two or three
inches to the left of the left heel, before
you kneel. The left foot, flat on the
ground, the right knee pointing at right
angles to the left foot, and the right
foot on which you sit, must form points
of a triangle with the three corners
separated as widely as possible.

I am an absolute unbeliever in the
silly and incompetent exhibition of for-
ever hunting for something to rest the
rifle upon when firing at game. Learn
how to shoot without this nonsense,
because the rest is usually not handy.
Also if it is, it so changes the shooting
of a modern, powerful, thin-barreled
rifle, in the direction of the sky that a
moose even can easily be missed for
this reason alone at three hundred yards.
The variation in the shooting of the
gun becomes worse as the rest ap-
proaches the muzzle, but even though
said rest be back on the fore-end, the
rifle will shoot from six to ten inches
too high at two hundred yards, if it is
sighted in normally for the grip of the
hands alone.

Through baseball the Filipinos are learning the lessons of
self-control and self-government. How much they have
learned already is shown in the article by A. Garfield Jones
—"Teaching the Filipino on the Diamond"— July OUTING

POLO— "THE GREATEST GAME"

By MACK WHELAN

pHAT was what Kipling called it. And that is what Ameri-
x cans are beginning to believe as a result of the success of the
"Big Four" in recent international matches. This year we meet
England again at Meadowbrook and the interest will undoubt-
edly be greater than ever before. The theory that polo is a rich
man's game and an affair of high society is being overthrown.
There is not a corner of the country so remote that its inhabitants
will not watch for the results and hope for another American vic-
tory. Why? What are the qualities of the game that make for
thrills and enthusiasm, even among those who do not understand
the finer technique? Mr. Whelan answers his question in the
article which follows.

HE final chance which
polo enthusiasts had to
see the American and
British players in action
before the last set of in-
ternational matches came
on a Sunday. It was not the assurance
of stirring competition which brought out
the crowd. No formal announcement
of any contemplated interruption to the
Sabbath calm of Long Island was made.
A rumor spread mysteriously that a prac-
tice match between the rival fours would
be staged. The prospect was sufficiently
attractive to draw thousands to Meadow-
brook from New York City and all parts
of Long Island.

Over the green expanse of turf which
later in the week was to be the scene of
spirited international combat, they found
calm prevailing. News circulated that
the final practice was to be held not at the
club grounds, but on the private field of
the Phipps estate. Within a few mo-
ments an endless stream of vehicles was
headed along the six miles of road inter-
vening.

When the procession reached the gate-
way leading to the Phipps principality
progress ceased. The big barriers were
tightly closed. High fences and higher
hedges prevented visual exploration. The

1340]

seneschals at the gate, declaring there
would be no practice, said the public
could not be admitted.

The big motor-cars from the neigh-
borhood which were first on the scene
could not retrace their way. The few
moments spent in parleying had been
sufficient to permit the rest of the vehicles
to catch up. Drivers who had made the
alternate choice where the road forked
had come around and made it impossible
for the early arrivals to keep on in their
original direction. A solid jam of vehi-
cles scraped axles for a very full mile.
Some few of the thousands reached the
gate, showed cards, and were admitted.
The majority essayed the great American
game of bluff. The defending force was
more than equal to the onslaught. In the
heat of repelling attack, it became evi-
dent that the dominating force was a
tall old man with a high voice, white hair
and an accent which bespoke a youth
spent in Scotland.

" 'Tis nae use!" he cried, brandishing
a long stick at the hundreds who
were attempting individual conversation
through the gate. " 'Tis nae use. I
dinna care who ye be."

Various individuals, who had claimed
to be everything from county sheriff to
head of the Metropolitan police, fell

POLO— "THE GREATEST GAME

341

back. The recession permitted a man
who seemed slightly stooped because of
carrying one arm and shoulder in a sling
and a well-set-up gentleman wearing a
panama hat pulled over his eyes to reach
the vantage point. The first man started
to walk through. True to his trust and
regardless of the crippled condition of the
intruder, the incensed guardian shoved
him back. Wincing from the shock to
his shoulder, the new arrival stepped
back upon the foot of the man behind
him.

"Let us through here immediately,"
the latter commanded in a voice of sup-
pressed anger. "I'm August Belmont."

The old Scot never wavered. With a
smile which showed most of his teeth
missing, he said :

"That's what they all say!"

So it happened that the banker who has
done as much toward improving the
breed of American horses as any man,
and Foxhall Keene, who had been cap-
tain of the American defending team
until his shoulder was broken in a prac-
tice session, stood helplessly out in the
dusty roadway with some six thousand
other enthusiasts, until Payne Whitney,
a brother of the leader of the Yankee
four, came along and was recognized and
admitted by the dour gateman. He ac-
complished the impossible for Messrs.
Belmont and Keene and without loss of
time passed the story on to H. C. Phipps.
It must have appealed to the humorous
sensibilities of the latter, for a few mo-
ments later the barriers were thrown
open, and with the native Long Island-
ers in the van, the cars of the multitude
proceeded to tear up the smooth lawns
of the estate.

The old guardian at the gate did not
prevaricate when he said that there was
to be no practice match. Several of the
English and American players mounted
ponies and spent a quarter of an hour
hammering balls up and down the green-
sward. Yet the thousands came away
rejoicing at having seen a few of the
international players in action.

It is always a healthy indication of
popular interest in any spectacle when
the man at the gate is so worried that he
fails to recognize people whose names en-
title them to treatment different from

that accorded to the common herd. Rob-
ert Gilmour, the gatekeeper who refused
to honor the face of August Belmont,
would probably have recognized the
banker under ordinary conditions, but
the crowd which was seeking admittance
was vast and so made up of all kinds of
people that personalities did not count.
More than half of the besiegers were
Long Island farmers.

As a class, farmers, in the vicinity of
New York at least, are not noted for a
habit of wasting time on trivialities.
Their nearness to the metropolis either
develops a tendency for becoming quickly
accustomed to innovations or forces them
to make a living in some other work
than agriculture. Oddities which would
make another rural population gape do
not even make the Long Island farmer
yawn. Because of this mental attitude it
cannot be claimed that the undisputed
interest which they manifest in polo at
Meadowbrook is due to its being an un-
usual interruption in their lives. To
prove the point, contrast their attitude
toward aviation.

More Thrills Than in Flying

When flying was a novelty, the na-
tive population journeyed to Hempstead
Plains to witness the phenomenon. The
time soon came, however, when the Long
Islander came to look upon the aviator
as being in a class with crows and other
enemies of agriculture. Except as a pos-
sible menace to young corn, no aviator
other than Monsieur Pegoud of Paris
can legitimately expect a single admiring
or astonished glance — on Long Island.

Polo has its risks and thrills. In many
respects it is more dangerous than flying.

The game demands fully as careful
attention to equipment as does aviation.
A loose girth-strap or a weak stirrup
presages disaster as certainly as does a
faulty propeller. The added danger of
personal playing contact occurring at
high speed accentuates the element of
danger in polo.

Some months ago, when gathering ma-
terial on the subject of Army polo, the
writer sent a note of inquiry to Lieu-
tenant Eugene V. Armstrong, of the
Thirteenth United States Cavalry. One

342

OUTING

morning a letter with a Texas postmark
came back. It was from Armstrong,
giving details of the start of the Thir-
teenth's interest in polo while stationed
in the Philippines. "Due to the great
encouragement offered by the Command-
ing General and by that all-around sport
and thorough gentleman, Governor-
General Cameron Forbes," were the
words which he used to outline the
Thirteenth's adoption of the game.

Within a few hours, the New York
newspapers were printing a fifty-line dis-
patch from El Paso telling of an acci-
dent which had occurred in a game of
polo played between two Army teams.
Armstrong, who bore the brunt of the
play for the Thirteenth, received the ball
out of the melee and headed his pony
down the field toward the goal-posts of
the Fifteenth. With the ball in position,
and intent upon his try for a tally,
Armstrong came into a collision with a
rival player and was heavily thrown.
Two days later he died of his injuries in
the Military Hospital, Fort Bliss.

Danger rides in the lap of the polo
player. But the element of risk in any
game is an attraction which palls upon
the participant just as the history of pro-
fessional automobile speed racing has
shown it will pall upon the spectator. It
is not the danger of the sport which holds
men to it. If this were its principal justi-
fication, it is not likely that the authori-
ties at Washington would have received
so quietly the report of the death of a
brilliant young cavalry officer.

Undoubtedly the hazards of play add
a thrill to the interest of player and
spectator, but it is despite, not because
of, its dangers that polo is becoming an
increasingly important factor in the life
of the service. Polo has received not the
passive sufferance of Army executives,
but their positive approval. Answering
a query similar to that put before Lieu-
tenant Armstrong just previous to the
fatality at El Paso, General Leonard
Wood, then Chief of Staff of the United
States Army, said:

"The War Department, fully recog-
nizing the value of polo in developing
quick thinking and team work and in
improving horsemanship, has practically
made the game an official institution."

There have been a great many changes
in the various branches of the Govern-
ment within the past year. The Demo-
cratic return to power has been marked
by a searching investigation into all vari-
ety of expense initiated during the Re-
publican administration. The longer a
party is out of power the more satisfac-
tion there is in reforming existing ar-
rangements— especially if it can be al-
leged successfully that the changes made
are to eliminate extravagance and bring
about economy. Polo in the service has
not escaped without a searching exami-
nation.

A member of Congress from North
Carolina, who has a record for original
ideas embodied in proposed legislation,
distinguished himself a few months ago
by introducing an amendment to the
Army Appropriation bill which, if car-
ried into effect, would have made it im-
possible to devote any money to defray-
ing expenses for transporting ponies to
be used in matches. This amendment
slipped through the lower house, but was
finally eliminated. It was opposed by the
Administration. Writing to an inquir-
ing Senator, last year, the Secretary of
War, defending expenditures made to
promote the game in the Army, said:

What the Army Thinks

"The valuable returns, as suggested,
have vindicated the policy concerned,
while the expenditures involved have
been a very small charge in the regular
transportation fund. There is probably
no sport which is more useful in de~
veloping quick thinking, team work, and
physical activity than polo."

Modern . invention has gone far to
supplant the ancient equipages of war.
Heavy artillery, machine guns, aero-
planes, and wireless have changed ma-
terially the methods and weapons of
fighting. Yet science has still to find a
substitute for the horse — and polo de-
velops exactly the sort of mount needed
for difficult service. Combining speed,
grit, endurance, and the ability to do hard
work for a protracted period on short
rations, the sturdy pony which can be
depended upon in the last chukker is the
horse which comes to the front in actual

POLO— "THE GREATEST GAME"

343

Army service. In the last letter he ever
wrote on the subject, Lieutenant Arm-
strong gave convincing evidence of this.

"In the maneuvers in Kansas last
year," he said, "about six polo ponies
were ridden by officers. Without ex-
ception the ponies proved better cavalry
horses than the big heavy chargers. In
my opinion — and it is also the opinion of
a great many other officers — a good,
well-bred, weight-carrying polo pony is
the ideal cavalry horse for our service."

The mobilization of troops on the
Mexican border has hindered the prog-
ress of polo in the Army this year, but
within the past few months steps have
been taken which insure the placing of
the game on a sounder plane in the
service when normal conditions are re-
stored. The formation of the Army
Polo Association has made the game part
and parcel of the service organization.
The Assistant Secretary of War and the
Chief of Staff are officers ex-officio of
the new body. There is no doubt that
the controlling influences at Washington
are sincerely aiming to build up the sport.
Whether some of the details of the pro-
gram they have developed are best calcu-
lated to attain the desired result is an-
other question.

The fact that polo of the first order
has been restricted for the most part in
this country to a limited number of
places and the fact that these places are
during the greater part of the year men-
tioned more often in the society col-
umns than on the sporting page have
combined to conceal the values of the
sport which Kipling has termed
"the greatest game" from a large por-
tion of the American public. The de-
feat of foreign competition has been due
to the work of a mere handful of men.
Some months ago when the plans for the
preliminary training season at Lakewood
were announced, a number of Western
authorities criticized the Polo Associa-
tion for confining the list of eligibles so
largely to Eastern players.

It does seem, at first thought, strange
that nearly all the best players should
come from one section ; but at the pres-
ent time, it is the opinion of all fair-
minded critics, whose acquaintance with
the game entitles them to express an

opinion, that, with a few exceptions, the
leading players come from a limited num-
ber of clubs. Some notable polo prog-
ress has been registered in California
within the last few years ; but the future
— not the present state — of the game in
other sections must be relied upon to
give it a truly national scope.

Discussing this subject with the writer
during the early practice sessions of the
present Spring, Captain J. M. Water-
bury shed some light on the outlook for
an increase in the number of first-class
players.

"Do I think playing interest in polo is
spreading? Without a doubt," he said.
"From various places all over the coun-
try we hear of good ponies being bred
and of players keeping in trim right
through the season. Polo is different
from tennis or golf in that one man, of
himself, can not develop into a first-class
performer. It takes team work to round
any player into form. A man with every
natural instinct toward the game may not
make progress unless he is surrounded
by enough other promising players to
make his education progressive.

Making Polo National

"If a man has the natural instincts to
develop into a great tennis player, he
can, even though pitted against mediocre
material, lay the foundation for success.
Polo and team work are synonymous.
Now that the game is developing interest
among a number of good men in each sec-
tion, the percentage of well-schooled can-
didates should increase. That polo will
ultimately develop along lines which will
promote competition for the national title
among clubs all over the United States
is my opinion."

It happens that most of the best-
known American polo players are men
whose names are familiar for other rea-
sons, but that they are far and away the
ablest players in this country is a state-
ment which cannot be challenged. Yet
they would be the first to declare that
polo does not need fashionable patronage
to win on its merits as a sport. If long,
smooth stretches of turf wTere available
near every center of population and if
good mounts could be had for the ask-

344

OUTING

ing, polo might supplant baseball as the
American national game. . If you don't
believe it ask the baseball writers, tem-
porarily released from their daily ordeal,
who saw the last international matches.
Some who came with patronizing man-
ner admitted at the end of the first period
of play that polo is the game of games.

Take the succession of unexpected
emergencies in baseball, the team general-
ship of American college football, the
thrills of thoroughbred competition in
horse racing, the technical perfection of
golf, the dangers of a cavalry charge, and
a setting which for brilliance is un-
equalled in the category of modern sport-
ing spectacles, and you have a combina-
tion of the fascinations of international
polo when played between two teams as
evenly matched as the fours which repre-
sented England and America in the en-
counter of a year ago.

No variety of competition has served
to bring out more sharply the difference
between the American and English tem-
peraments than the clashes between repre-
sentatives of the two nations on the polo
field. American ability to concentrate
nervous energy into the psychological
moments kept the trophy on this side of
the Atlantic a year ago.

The Spirit That Wins

There is no game in which the "get
there" spirit is more important. The
quartet of army officers who represented
England in 1913 were better horsemen
than America's representatives. In the
initial engagement at least the British
ponies were on a par of efficiency with
the American mounts. The verdict of a
physician examining the eight men before
they responded to the referee's whistle
would have favored the foreign combi-
nation. Yet by playing at high tension
the American quartet won — won in the
first five minutes of the contest.

Recklessly, but with the determination
of men committed to a prearranged plan,
the American team, playing a chance-
taking game from the start, swept the
challengers down the field before them.
Contrasted with the more conservative
style of the English, the tactics of H. P.
Whitney, Devereux Milburn, and the

two Waterbury brothers, who comprised
the American four, seemed free and easy.
Yet it was not the recklessness of ignor-
ance nor the carelessness of inefficiency.
Audacity, nerve, and pace were the
foundation upon which the American
scheme of attack was built.

Like a small troop of cavalry, they
came thundering down the field. By all
the time-tried rules of polo, even with
every allowance made for the increased
latitude afforded by the elimination of
the old off-side rule, Milburn, who was
playing back, should have remained in
the rear, ready to defend his own goal in
case of emergency. But he violated tra-
dition. The assumption of the Ameri-
can four was that a tally for the United
States would be registered in the first
few moments of play. It was. And
Milburn made the first scores possible.

"The American plan was to hit the
ball quickly or miss it altogether," said
a noted English critic in pointing out the
importance of the opening attack in de-
ciding the final outcome of the engage-
ment. "It was a flyaway game. It took
to the end of the fourth chukker for our
men to realize the requirements of this
style of play."

It would be a libel on the generalship
of the Yankee brand of polo to say that
the last defense of the international
trophy was successful because the veteran
Meadowbrook quartet paid no attention
to defense. They had a defense, daring
but skillfully planned, even in the first
few moments of dashing play. It con-
sisted principally of a swift exchange of
playing responsibilities. Almost always
there was one man watching for the
chance of an unexpected repulse and the
danger of an English player carrying the
ball into scoring territory. The problem
which the English could not solve was
which American had the responsibility.
Each member of the defending four was
capable of interchanging positions tem-
porarily with any other; but the Ameri-
can assumption, especially in those first
deciding seconds of competition, was that
the English team would have to do the
defending. "Yankee cheek" was what a
disgusted member of the staff of foreign
grooms called it.

From the time of the ancient Persians,

A PORTABLE DARKROOM

345

who if the evidence in European histori-
cal museums is trustworthy, broke many
a mallet-head in practice, polo has never
been a pastime calculated to soothe the
nerves of the timid. It is a hard game,
meant for hardy men and hardy mounts.
The best evidence of its prospects for de-
velopment in the future is its history.
Since it originated as an ancient test for
skill of horsemen and the handiness of
ponies, polo has continued to improve
through the study of its devotees.

The English, following the national
habit of putting every sport on a syste-
matic basis, developed it on symmetrical
lines when they brought it out of the
East. And the American, although ac-
quiring the elementary technique much
more slowly than his British teachers,
has in the end come to the front by build-
ing farther and more daringly. If future
historians seek for an example of inter-
national relationship which will serve to
illustrate clearly the difference between

the American and foreign temperaments
in this period, they can search for and
find nothing more typical than the bril-
liant, impatient success attained by
Yankee "get there" methods on the polo
field.

It remains to be seen whether, having
blazed the trail, America will be able to
maintain her leadership for an indefinite
period. At the present time the Eng-
lish standard of polo horsemanship is far
ahead of our own both as regards the
average and the riding abilities of inter-
nationalists. The margin which has ac-
counted for the American victories has
been one of nerve and brains. How the
balance rests in the next decade will de-
pend on whether America can develop
more players among her younger athletic
generation or whether England can in-
spire some of her many crack performers
to acquire some of the fire and dash
which the veteran Meadowbrook outfit
have used so effectively.

A PORTABLE DARKROOM

By A. E. SWOYER

Diagrams by the Author

ANY sportsman - photog-
raphers bent upon serious
work in the new hunting
have a decided preference
for plates as compared to
roll films, and this in spite
of the manifest convenience of the latter
in carriage, use and development afield.
This may be due to the fact that, par-
ticularly in the larger sizes, the entire
surface of the plate is sure to be in the
focal plane, whereas a film may not be
entirely taut and thus produce an image
lacking in absolute and uniform sharp-
ness; moreover, the plate lends itself,
perhaps, more readily to retouching and
other after processes.

This is not intended to be a resume
Qf the old argument upon the merits
of "Plates vs. Film," however, but
rather as a direct solution of the problem
that the plate-user meets when he wants
to develop negatives or refill holders

when he is one hundred and eighty-seven
miles from the nearest darkroom. Those
among us who have tried to do the trick
by the sense of touch while muffled up
under three layers of blankets on a hot
August night will admit that it is some
problem at that!

The writer has found that a portable
darkroom somewhat on the order of
that shown in the illustration will fill
this need nicely, while because of its
construction it may also be used to carry
camera and odds and ends of equipment,
so that it really adds but little to the
bulk of the outfit. In general design
it is simply a light-tight box of suit-
case form, having a pane of ruby glass
at the top and another at the front, to-
gether with a hinged door and arm-holes
therein through which the photographer
can conduct his operations; it is easy to
make and does the work satisfactorily.

Although such a darkroom might be

346

OUTING

made up from the foregoing brief de-
scription taken in connection with the
illustrations, there are a few little points
which might be overlooked. For ex-
ample, the interior of the box should be
painted a dead black, and the rim upon

DARKROOM OPEN

which the door closes should have strips
of felt or of black velvet glued to it in
order that no light may enter.* Then,
too, the ruby glasses must be accurately
fitted and fastened with strips so that
they are light-tight, while if the handle
is fitted with snap-hooks at each end it
may be got entirely out of the way when
desired.

The chief care, however, will be in
fitting the armlets ; these may be made of
black sateen or black velvet, and need
not be as long as shown in the illustra-
tion. They should be run through the
openings in the door and either tacked
or glued to the inner edge, allowing
plenty of overlap; the free ends should
be fitted with rubber bands or laces in
order that they may be made to fit the
arms tightly.

In size the box may be made to fit
your individual needs; if you want it
only to change plates in, it may be quite
small, but for developing it must be
sufficiently large to hold two or three
trays, with extra room for your plate-
holders. The material should be one-
half inch wood of any clear-grained
sort — whitewood is as good as any ex-
cept the hard woods, which are not
easy to work and more expensive to buy.
It should be thoroughly painted or var-

nished in order to prevent any warping.

To use the box, the photographer puts
in it the materials that he is to employ
and closes the door, then inserts his
arms through the sleeves and sees that
they are pulled well up on his wrists;
if the box faces the light, whether it be
the sun or some artificial source, the
interior will be visible through the glass
at the top, and all necessary operations
may be conducted as usual.

At first glance it might appear as if
this darkroom violated one of the cardi-
nal principles of the outdoor man not

READY FOR BUSINESS

to have glass of any sort in his equip-
ment, and that this might make it un-
suited either for use as a suit-case or for
carrying empty. But in the first place
it is not supposed that a man going upon
a rough-and-ready camping trip would
burden himself with anything but a roll-
film camera, anyway, while the camerist
lugging a plate outfit and in search of
photographs alone would find that the
darkroom required but little more care,
and was but slightly more liable to
breakage than his plates or his camera.
At that if the fear existed it might well
be eliminated by doing without the front
glass and substituting therefor a small
ruby lamp carried in the interior of the
box — the remaining glass would allow of
watching the work illuminated by the
lamp, while because of its position it
would be almost immune from danger of
breakage.

LEARNING THE GAME OF TRAP-
SHOOTING

By C. O. PROWSE

What One Ambitious Amateur Has Found Out by a Careful Study
of His Own Performance

IKE all the rest of them,
after reading the article in
the February issue of this
magazine, "The Fun of
Trap-Shooting," by Mr.
d Cushing, ]'. am forced to

exclaim, "that reminds me" of the "trials
and tribulations" of friends, as well as
my own, in wooing the fickle Goddess
of Fortune, in this, the greatest of all
sports.

Be it field, stream, marsh, or blind; be
it "horn and hounds" or the cold gray
dawn with rifle, fighting your way along
the tortuous trail or through the great
forests; be the sport in any form, few
indeed are its followers who reap greater
pleasure than the writer. And yet would
I compare the "sport" of trap-shooting,
when the game is fair and equal, as be-
ing the greatest of all games and the
equal of any sport with rod or gun. Too
much, in my opinion, could not be said
in its behalf, for, as every trap-shooter
knows, first, it proves a man's character
to be only that which it is, and, secondly,
it develops the best that lies within the
man.

The writer believes it possible for any
well-developed man or woman to climb
to the 90 per cent class, and this, permit
me to add, with a medium amount of
practice. In my second year I passed
this mark, shooting at approximately one
thousand targets per year, and I don't
believe that I have any more ability than
the average trapshot throughout the
country. Like Mr. Cushing, I began
the "game" with a field gun with re-
sults such as Mr! Cushing has described,
and therefore I shall not repeat his story,
for mine in this respect is but a repeti-
tion.

My first suggestion is to examine your
physical self and by some form of proper
exercise tone yourself up, for this means
control of the nervous system, without
which there can be no hope of success.
It will also add strength to those slug-
gish muscles, for we all know that live,
active muscles give wonderful results in
every game where quick action and ac-
curate aim are required. The physical
condition must and does play an impor-
tant part in this "game."

In taking your position for the shot,
be careful that the body is not strained
and that the feet are so placed as to sup-
port the body evenly, allowing the turn-
ing movement necessary to "follow up"
either extreme quartering target. Do
not permit the muscles of the legs and
body to become rigid, preferring always
the most graceful movement, as this
alone indicates ease, and ease will al-
ways eliminate those jerks or spasmodic
movements that cost so dearly when the
score is counted.

Purely for practice, the writer, in his
room and at such times as would be
convenient, would get out his "shooting
iron" and, assuming as relaxed a position
as possible for the body, gun firmly but
not rigidly held, face glued, would point
at and follow up right and left quarter-
ing mixed with straight-away imaginary
blue-rocks, turning or swinging in as
easy and graceful a movement as possi-
ble, until all of those "spasmodic jerks,"
born of a stiff or weak muscle, were
eliminated. And I found that this little
practice elongated many a "goose egg"
into the "straight and narrow" line we
all love to gaze upon at the end of the
score.

Did you ever go to the score, run

[347]

348

OUTING

fifteen, eighteen, or twenty straights,
then seemingly without cause miss one
or two of the easiest birds thrown ? But
why ask this question, for I know you
have, and been thoroughly disgusted with
yourself for missing, as I have stated,
perhaps the easiest target encountered.
You break your gun, extract the shell,
and, as if it were the real offender,
throw it violently to the ground, or, as
I have seen some of them do, toward the
spot where the target lay at rest. Then,
calmly and as accurately as with your
first shot, you complete the score with
the remaining targets broken clean.

Now, really, what excuse did you
have? This may not have been the one,
but did it ever occur to you that while
breaking the first fifteen or more
straights, during the acts of loading,
shooting, reloading, and waiting your
shot, you held both of your arms under
tension, and that at no time were the
muscles of either arm relaxed — no blood
allowed to circulate freely, clearing the
"telegraphic lines" of the nervous sys-
tem? Then, with the act of throwing
away the "offending" shell, you forced
through the tired and strained muscles
just the blood necessary, clearing the
clogged "telegraphic lines" of the nerv-
ous system, and with unfailing certainty
you again heard the sweet, lingering
sound of "dead" — the rasping "lost" for-
gotten. This may not have happened to
you in this manner, but it has to me, and
more than once have I seen it demon-
strated, especially with the man who has
not had considerable practice.

In regard to "anticipating the target,"
I have found the following suggestion
helpful. Forget that there is a target
coming; assume position, gun firmly
held, face glued; glance along the barrel,
both eyes open, aiming your gun at an
imaginary spot just a few inches below
the comb of the trap-house and as near
as possible at the point where the target
"breaks" into view, without relaxing
your hold on the gun in any manner.
When proper position has been assumed,
concentrate the vision along the comb of
the trap-house and about the center of
where the different targets break ; think
of following up the target that will ap-
pear somewhere near the spot at which

you are looking. This should give you,
in my opinion, the best of all shots, the
"follow-up shot," as when it appears your
aim is behind it. Now, don't take the
eyes off the target, but follow up
smoothly, not spasmodically, easy yet
with speed, and the nervous system will
make the proper telegraphic call and re-
spond with the proper pull.

I believe there is more in the fit of the
gun than in any one thing in the game,
and to this most all agree ; yet this brings
the next question: when do we know
that our gun fits? I contend that this
can only be determined by actual experi-
menting, and to illustrate this I shall
give an actual experience covering a
period of more than three years. Begin-
ning trap-shooting with the field gun,
shooting at slow-moving, high-angle tar-
gets— for this is nearly always the kind
thrown at a new club — I easily climbed
to the 85 per cent mark.

Breaking into Fast Cornpany

A shoot was given some fifty miles
away, and, being an enthusiast, nothing
would suffice but that I should make my
debut. So on the opening morning there
I was, field gun and all, anxious for the
fray. It came, and the result was start-
ling; at least, it was to me. The fast,
low-flying targets were a revelation, and
the way the "goose eggs" piled up was,
I wTill admit, a bit discouraging. About
the fourth "string" I had the good for-
tune to break a spring in my gun, and a
competitor, ready for the next string and
standing just a few feet away, seeing my
trouble, proffered his gun.

The thought of looking at the gun or
making an examination as to fit, etc.,
never entered my head at the time, my
object being to relieve the wait. So,
loading quickly and yelling pull, I was
surprised when there was but a cloud of
dust where my target had been. Smash
after smash continued for the rest of the
string, some six or eight birds. This
same gun was used for the remainder of
the day and I found out what a straight-
stock gun really meant. It is needless
perhaps to say that full measurements of
this gun were taken and a duplicate in a
cheap grade was procured.

LEARNING THE GAME OF TRAP-SHOOTING

349

Regular practice of approximately fifty
targets per week settled my score around
the 88 per cent mark, and seemingly
nothing I could do would change it in
the least. My right and left targets
were well broken, as a rule, while the
straight-away were many times barely
splintered. Here is where my experi-
menting began. Boring a hole in the
stock of the gun, four ounces of shot
were placed therein, and a little practice
with this brought my average up to 91
and 92 per cent. Placing an additional
two ounces of lead in the butt increased
my average still more, and ere the end
of the second season I found myself
making runs of 75 straight and better —
scores of 98 and 99 x 100, with my best
of 124 x 125.

This gun, being an experiment on my
part, was of the lowest grade made by a
good manufacturer, and with the two
seasons' practice began to show wear and
become loose in the breech. So a new
gun was purchased, this being made as
near a duplicate as possible, not only as
to measurement, but as to point of bal-
ance.. However, this new gun, being a
single barrel where the old one was a
double barrel, it seemed impossible to tell
the difference between the two guns in
so far as balance and the feel were con-
cerned, yet I could not shoot the gun for
some reason, and rather than repeat the
experimenting to determine the real trou-
ble, I sold this one and purchased still
another.

Determined to do some good shoot-
ing, I began a systematic practice, even
to the point of going to the traps alone
and there having targets thrown high
and low, fast and slow, and, in fact,
every conceivable position that one would
be liable to meet with in a score. A
whole season was taken up with this
kind of practice, yet out of about two
thousand shots I don't believe I ever
made a better score than 80 x 100.
Absolutely disgusted, I decided to quit
and for perhaps two or three practice
shoots I didn't go near the traps. But
"murder will out."

It happened one day that the man to
whom I had sold my first gun came to
town to have some repairs made on this
particular old "shooting iron." I hardly

knew the gun when it was shown to me,
but by inspecting. I soon found that one
barrel was in working order, and while
talking I saw some of the boys on their
way out to the traps. Telling my friend
that I would have his gun fixed up for
him provided he would let me take it out
and shoot it that afternoon, I slipped out
to the club grounds and managed to get
up my nerve to face the traps again.
The result of this practice was 91 x 100.
Then it was the gun, after all.

Convinced beyond question that it was
the gun, I again purchased one, having
the stock made very straight and excep-
tionally broad at the comb. At my first
practice with this gun, using a very light
load, I was able to average 88 per cent,
but found that my face was a little sore.
Experimenting on different angles and
heights, I soon demonstrated that high
targets were ground to dust while the
low ones were overshot, and those
broken or merely splintered were driven
downward, indicating that I was shoot-
ing too high.

Making the Stock Fit

Using a piece of glass, emery paper,
and emery dust mixed with plenty of
elbow grease, the stock was reduced in
height as well as breadth. Practice
proved about the same results, possibly
a little better, and this without a bruised
face. Again and again this operation
was repeated ; little by little the thick-
ness of the comb was reduced. All this
time and after each reduction a practice
of at least fifty targets was indulged in,
showing a slow but sure increase, as the
stock of the gun was gradually brought
to a perfect fit. This was continued for
approximately three months and I found
myself making again the long runs and
averaging weekly practices of about 94
per cent.

As much as I loved the sport, reluc-
tantly I gave it up, not from choice, but
for other reasons, and for more than
three years I never shot at more than
one hundred targets. Only once in the
last twelve months have I tried the
game, and then, with this same gun so
carefully measured and balanced, I found
93 x 100, which one could not consider

350

OUTING

bad. Therefore I contend, and that
strongly, that the average man or woman
in good health, with the proper ''post-
hole digger," can go to the traps and
stay within the 90 per cent mark. I
would not suggest a wholesale "building
up" or "reducing" of gun stocks until
you have gone to the traps, changed the
heights of the flight of the targets, tried
your gun and noted results. Try them
faster and slower, noting results with
every change, and I am sure you will
convince yourself whether or not your
gun stock is exactly right.

Have you ever shot in the face of an
exceedingly strong wind? And if so,
what was the result as compared with
your average, and why was it not as
good as, or, the question may be, why
was it better than your average? If it
was better, use a straighter stock gun ;
that is, build the stock up and get the
same results from the average target.
This can be done by lacing thin leather
over the stock, broadening the comb, and
straightening the stock.

Each individual shooter can, I firmly
believe, improve his score by watching
these things, but the majority, according
to my observation, forget every score
they ever made, unless it be an excep-
tionally good one, the moment they leave
the trap and never figure to improve ex-
cept under the one maxim, "Practice
makes perfect." Practice will not make
perfect with a tool, implement, or gun
that does not fit.

As to the thickness of the comb of the

stock, ordinarily one will look down the
barrels with face glued to the stock, and
if the barrels "line up" properly it is
considered a fit and no more attention
is paid to it. Here may be a mistake.
In sighting the barrels one may hold a
little tight; when firing a few shots and
receiving slight shocks on the face, the
gun will not be held as tight. The con-
sequence will be that one extreme quar-
tering bird will be ground to dust and
the other splintered or missed completely,
for the shooter will unintentionally draw
the face away from the stock and away
from the proper line of sighting just as
the fire is made.

I saw this demonstrated, and with the
aid of emery the width of the stock was
removed slightly with a result of in-
creased score, all of which leads me to
inquire: Do you know that your gun fits
properly? If you don't, permit me to
suggest a little experimenting sufficient
to determine this one and the most im-
portant point in the game. To prove
beyond question that this is an essential
point, take the case of any "expert"
along any line; take away from him the
tool or implement with which he does
his work, give him one that is not prop-
erly balanced or has some other slight
imperfection, and request a repetition of
his best labor. It will be anything but
satisfactory. He must have perfect
tools, they must have perfect balance
with that to which he has been accus-
tomed, and then he must have practice
to reach anything like perfection.

" Canoe, Camp and Canal," by C. H. Claudy — April
OUTING — shows that you do not need to go to the North
Woods to find pleasure with a canoe and a camping outfit.

WHAT ABOUT THE SHARP-TAIL?

By HAMILTON M. LAING

Photographs by the Author

The Beauty, Use, Problems, and Possibilities of the Favorite
Grouse of the Northwest

BEN the Great
Giver of good things
in far bygone times
planned for the com-
ing generations of the
children of men who
were to love the pursuit of things out
of doors, He planned wisely. For He
gave to us the grouse kind — a race of
many tribes, all strong, hardy, and fruit-
ful, fit to inherit the earth. They were
a rugged race and they took possession
where the climate had a sting to it,
where to live was to be sturdy. The
warm South they left to their quail
cousins, and they themselves held the
land to the northward. One tribe took
possession of the mountain land, an-
other of the spruce woods, another of
the prairies, and so on, till each had a
well-defined homeland.

All these grouse tribes are toothsome
to the palates of the hunters of beak
and claw and fang; and some in par-
ticular have ways of life that are called
gamey, and these have been much sought
by human hunters. Of the gamey grouse
none perhaps is a stronger favorite than
the sharp-tail, and to-day he has a host
of friend-enemies — men who annually
make him their excuse for getting out
in the autumn world and instilling new
blood and fiber in their business-worn
bodies.

The sharp-tail is one of three prime
favorites: the ruffed and pinnated are
the other two. He does for the sports-
men of the Northwest what the quail
does in the South, the ruffed grouse —
what is left of his tribe — in the East,
and the pinnated — also a sad remnant —
in the Mississippi Valley plainland. The
sharp-tail is the northwestern representa-

tive of this trio; and, taking the three
varieties of his race collectively, his range
extends from Wisconsin west to Oregon
and Washington, and from Colorado on
the south to Alaska and Hudson Bay
on the north.

This is a vast range, and much of
it, especially to the northward, is un-
settled ; but where it is settled well —
and these are the regions that are much
concerned with the sharp-tail as a game-
bird — the problem has become: Can he
hold it? Can he survive civilization?
Western sportsmen are well aware of
the hard fate of the ruffed grouse in the
East and the equally hard lot of the
pinnated, that also has been swept off
much of its range to the eastward, and
they cannot do other than cast an eye
into the future and speculate on the
chance of their own grouse holding his
own. In the regions where the ranges
of the pinnated and sharp-tail species
overlap, every shooter knows well that
the sharp-tail is much less able than
his relative to take care of himself. From
this view-point the outlook is black, but
there are other factors that enter the
problem, and it may not be so dark as
it would appear.

The question of grouse perpetuation
is roughly this: when the West was in
possession of the red man there was some
sort of average grouse population. This
was not necessarily fixed, for doubtless
then as now their numbers rose and fell
in cycles. Then came the farmer. He
drove his breaking plow through their
spring carnivals — they did not like this
at all, but immediately repaired to an-
other soddy knoll and cried, "On with
the dance!" — he sowed his fields and
raised an extra supply of comfortable

[351]

352

OUTING

food for them; and also at very regular
intervals he shot woeful gaps in their
coveys.

Thus at first he turned the natural
balance against the bird and started it
on that sad trail followed by the buffalo
out toward the Great Divide. But he
did more than this: he killed off many
of the natural foes of the bird and thus
gave it opportunity for greater produc-
tiveness. It is this increase, then, that
must be the yearly tribute of the gunners.
If the latter take more, they are draw-
ing on the original stock, and the bird
ceases to hold his own.

His World Against Him

That he held his own against his nat-
ural foes in the early days speaks well
for his racial strength and hardihood.
He had a host of enemies who loved
to pick his bones. The larger hawks
and owls, the crow, the golden eagle,
the wolf, coyote, fox, lynx, badger,
skunk, mink, weasel, and the ground-
squirrels all in some form or other —
from fresh-laid egg to stamping cock —
had sharp-tail written once on their bill
of fare. But the settlers made great
inroads in the ranks of these enemies.
Most of them were shot on sight, their
numbers wrere greatly reduced, and the
grouse profited accordingly.

In addition to the foregoing list of
foes, there is another that in the nesting
season must always have been a deadly
scourge. This was the prairie fire; and
it is still a menace where thoughtless
settlers burn their grass lands in the
spring. Of all these foes, but one has
really prospered with civilization. The
rascally crow, that with devilish cunning
finds and sacks the nests, has multiplied.
That this bird is more numerous than
formerly in the cultivated parts of the
sharp-tail range there can be no doubt.
In sections where to-day a flock of five
hundred black knaves is a common sight,
the old-timers maintain that twenty-five
or thirty years ago these birds were com-
paratively scarce.

In the problem of grouse perpetuation
the crow is indeed a big factor. Though
his depredations are confined to the nest-
ing season (May and June), when he

eats eggs and chicks, the extent of his
destruction sometimes is terrible. If the
hatching grouse is located in good cover,
where she is not disturbed, she has a
fair chance; but when she is in scanty
cover and is molested while there are
crows in the vicinity, her chances are
slim indeed. When she bursts from her
nest in fright and flutters off close to
the ground, or plays cripple, as she
usually does, every crow within eye and
ear-shot knows the secret, and instantly
heads in the direction of the nest. If
one of the villains gets his eye on the
eggs, that hatching is doomed.

Numerous as are these foes, the sharp-
tail has ways of his own for combating
most of them. The prairie fire in the
nesting season is quite beyond him; the
man with dog and gun creates havoc
in his coveys; but the others have to
work hard for their earnings. In sum-
mer he is fairly safe. The grass is long,
the scrubby cover is thick, and, as the
old birds are nimble of foot and wing
and very expert at hiding, it is only the
young that fall prey to any great extent
to the prowlers. But the mother is an
excellent guardian ; she has an artful way
of playing the cripple trick and decoying
an animal foe off on a wTrong scent wThile
the peepers scatter in safety; and, as
the latter can fly like bullets shortly after
hatching, this combination is fairly suc-
cessful.

I recall well a skirmish I once had
with a mother sharp-tail and her young
when a friend and I were camera hunt-
ing in some Manitoba sand-hills. We
came over a little grassy knoll and sud-
denly there was a burst at our feet and
an inflated, berumpled grouse-mother
was fluttering around us, while a dozen
little chaps scarce larger than sparrows
whizzed off in a dozen directions. The
last one to strike off got tangled in
some pea-vines and. I made a dash for
him and caught him. Then the mother
began in earnest. She darted at one
of us, then at the other, she whined and
cried and croaked in her rage, and all
but struck us. Nothing short of a pho-
tograph could have induced us to with-
stand such a plea or onslaught.

My assistant took charge of the si-
lent captive — he had cheeped like a

354

OUTING

chicken at first — while I set up the ma-
chine. It was impossible to photograph
him in the grass, so he was placed on
a perch. But the instant his feet touched
the stick he shot off like a rocket, and
for a time he proved an impossible sub-
ject. He could fly only in a straight
line, so his captor sat down ahead of
him, and caught him like a ball each time
he flew, till finally I managed to get
the shutter working while he clutched
the perch.

After the first wild onslaught the

winter that the mortality of the old birds
is highest — that is, highest from causes
other than human hunters. After the
autumn shooting is over, the winter
foes begin their devastating raids. Then
because the cover is thin, the big owls
become a menace, and the fierce goshawk,
perhaps the worst winter foe, now comes
southward and does deadly work. He
can strike down the grouse a-wing, and
their only refuge from him is in the thick
scrub.

Now also much food is locked away

HE HAS A TRICK OR TWO IN GETTING AWAY

mother had retired to the thicket about
thirty feet distant, and from this strong-
hold she kept talking away continuously.
as though advising her youngster to keep
up heart and to try again. She must
have had her eye on him all the time,
for the instant we released him she
darted from the thicket to meet him for
an instant, then whirled back at us again,
as though to prevent our pursuit. She
followed us a long way, called us con-
temptible villains at ever} breath, and
doubtless marked us down in her cata-
logue of foes with as many underscores
as she did the Krider red-tail hawk
thai half an hour later we found with

a halt-eaten \oung grouse in his nest.

Though in summer the death rate is
high on account of the many foes of the
tender chicks, it is in the long, hard

from the four- tooted prowlers and they
turn their attention to the grouse. And
against these many enemies they have
a few stock tricks. They burrow in
the soft, dry snow at night, also in the
middle of the day; and during the morn-
ing and afternoon, when they are forced
out in quest of food, they hold to the
vicinity of the serubln woods. At this
cold and dangerous time of the year
very few of the birds remain in the really
open country.

In this long array of enemies it is
eas) to pick out the most dangerous.
It is man — the man with the gun. Yet
he can he the best friend if he will, for
the grouse is everywhere a local bird and
his fate is in human hands. He can
adapt himself to civilization ; he is do-
ing it. The clearing of the woods in

£*' "

NO WINTERS

TRAMP WOULD SEEM NATURAL WITHOUT HIS
BURROWS IN THE SNOW

the East may have had much to do with
the disappearance of the ruffed grouse
there; the draining of marsh lands may
have been partly instrumental in bring-
ing the decline of the pinnated; but no
such argument or excuse will hold with
the sharp-tail. He lives upon the higher
land, and cultivated fields are his de-
light. He is very adaptable. A knoll
green with the sprouting grain will serve
as a stamping-ground ; a horse-track in
the stubble is often turned into a nest;
the standing grain makes good cover for
the birds during the summer ; the glean-

ings provide him with rich food in the
autumn. Cultivation will not bring his
downfall. If he disappears from the set-
tled portions of his range it is not the
plow that is to blame; it is the shotgun.
The mother sharp-tail shows her
adaptability to conditions very well in
her choice of nesting site. I have noted
nests in the prairie grass, in the silver-
berry thickets on the knolls, in a hoof-
print in the stubble, in the dead leaves
of a poplar wood, in a clump of dwarf
birch in a pasture field, and in a tussock
of grass on a hummock in a spruce bog.

HE IS SPEEDY AWING

356

OUTING

zZD*

GOSHAWK DEADLY WINTER FOE OF

THE SHARP-TAIL PHOTOGRAPH FROM

MOUNTED SPECIMEN

There are few spots within her range
where she cannot find a suitable nesting
site. And she is an expert at hiding it.
When she is located in the short prairie
grass on a knoll — her favorite spot —
she always snuggles under the grass a
little ; and then she is about as invisible
as the stars at noontide. Often I have
marked nests so that I knew within a
foot where the hatching bird was located,
yet, on a second visit, have had to bear
on hard with my eye and feel about for
a time before discovering the only dis-
cernible mark — her round, black eye.

This grouse nowhere shows his adapt-
ability to civilization better than in the
winter. I know well a little town in
Western Manitoba where every day in
winters of heavy or average snowfall
these birds come right into the heart of
the place and pick up grain about the
flour-mill and elevators. It is an every-
day occurrence to meet them in the back
yard, or on the fence palings in front,
or running down Main Street, or
perched upon So-artd-So's ridge-board.

A number of the townsfolk scatter grain
for them and they come to feed twice
daily. They have little fear of anyone,
and seem to know that they are protected.
Yet these same birds showred an entirely
different disposition the preceding Oc-
tober.

In the matter of grouse protection it
might be well for some of the other
States owning sharp-tail territory to take
a leaf out of Manitoba's book. A few
years ago the grouse season there opened
usually on the 15th of September and
remained open till November 1st. The
birds could not stand the drain, and about
1904 the cry arose for better protection.
So the season was shortened to twenty
days for the next 5 ear, and opened on
October 1st. This policy immediately
bore good fruit. In three or four years
the birds wTere numerous again; now
there is an abundance, and the season
stands at twenty days.

That they thrive on the cultivated
lands is shown by the fact that on the
opening day of the season of 1910 in
one of the oldest districts of the province,
settled nearly forty years ago, three
farmers known to the writer shot fifty-
four of these birds. They used no dogs;

YOUNG SHARP-TAIL FOR WHOM T?IE
MOTHER GROUSE FOUGHT

WHAT ABOUT THE SHARP-TAIL?

357

they simply drove around the fields and
potted the greater number of the birds
on the shocks and stacks. Among a
great many other things, this shows that
there could have been no lack of birds.
Such shooting as the above — it was
an exceptional day — could be done on
but one day of the season — the first.
And herein lies the whole secret of sharp-
tail protection ; the season ought to be

one* or two at a time from a single acre
and knocked down with ease, but this
does not happen often in October. In
September the man with the dog has
his innings, and as the birds then fly
short distances when flushed, it is entirely
possible to wipe out almost an entire
covey. A month later the dog is of
less advantage, except in the scrub at
mid-day, for the birds are wild and un-

THE OTHER HALF OF SHARP-TATL HUNTING

late in the fall, October 1st at least.
There is little use in opening it early
and making a bag limit. Bag laws can-
not be enforced properly, and about one
man in one hundred wTill take the shells
— loaded — from his gun when there is
a possibility of a bird getting up in the
vicinity. But wTith a late season the
birds are strong and wTild and wise;
they flush at long range — barring, per-
haps, the first day — and thus, in taking
good care of themselves, attend quite
well to the bag limit.

On the 15th of September half a
dozen stupid young birds may be routed

approachable in the open ; and, though
this appears hard on the lover of a good
dog, he gets his compensation in the
increased number of birds, and no right-
thinking man objects.

Manitoba has shown, then, that it is
quite possible to have three weeks' good
shooting and still maintain an abundant
supply of birds. Now let us turn to the
game laws of some of the other States
and provinces that are concerned with
the welfare of the sharp-tail — at least
with the prairie form of the bird east
of the mountains — and see how sports-
men and legislators there deal with them.

THE MOTHER IS A GENU'S AT HIDING HER NEST. PEEPERS
REMAIN IN NEST BUT A FEW HOURS

For the year 1913 the following dates South Dakota, Sept. 10 to Oct. 10, or

represent the grouse law in seven of these 31 days.

territories: Montana, Oct. 1 to Nov. 1, or 32

Manitoba, Oct. 1 to Oct. 20, or 21 days,

days — less two or three Sundays, for the Saskatchewan, Oct. 1 to Nov. 1, or 32

Sunday law is enforced. days.

Wisconsin, Sept. 7 to Oct. 2, or 26 North Dakota, Sept. 7 to Nov. 2, or

days. 57 days.

[358]

WHAT ABOUT THE SHARP-TAIL?

359

Minnesota, Sept. 7 to Nov. 7, or 62
days.

A range of from 18 to 62 days; I think
I know, but nothing short of wild horses
could induce me to tell, which of the
foregoing territories have the most grouse
and the best shooting.

The fate of the sharp-tail, like that of
most other grouse, lies in the hands of
the people who own his range. Unlike
the pinnated he is non-migratory; and
other than a short movement to the
scrub at the coming of cold weather he
sticks to his haunts throughout the year.
He is essentially a local bird. When he
is properly protected it is possible to have
him and shoot him to a limited extent ;
but when it becomes a question of having
him or shooting him by all means let
us have him.

The October mornings would not be
just right without his resounding "Cock-
a-luk!" shouted from a poplar tip where
he mounts to sun himself ; the farmers
would miss him in the hayficlds in July
when the mother and her half-grown
brood pursue and capture the furtive
grasshoppers ; no winter's snowshoe
tramp would seem natural without his
burrows and chain-tracks in the soft
snow ; and no spring morning could be
complete without a dozen or two on the
old, time-proved stamping-ground, where
they whirr and toot as they reel off a
quadrille compared with which certain
new-fashioned dances are comparatively
tame.

If the sportsmen of the country had
combined to order an upland game bird
of the grouse kind they could scarcely
have conceived of anything more fitting
for their purpose than the sharp-tail.
He is hardy and prolific; he is fast of
wing; he may be successfully hunted by
anyone who has the time, and when he
comes from the oven he is delicious.
More than most other grouse he pro-
vides for the gunner that tingle of ex-
citement on rising, without which no
bird can be classed as gamey. In start-
ing from cover his loud "Cuk-cuk-cuk!"
combined with his explosive burst from
the ground is always a thriller.

A little more speed would be of ad-
vantage to him when flushing from grass
knolls in the open, but in scrubby cover

— his favorite retreat — he has a trick or
two to offset any slowness in getting
started. At such times he has a provok-
ing and tantalizing knack of covering his
retreat with a willow clump or poplar
tree and making it a buffer for a charge
of shot intended for himself.

Many Hunters on His Trail

Few other grouse are hunted in so
many ways as the sharp-tail. The dyed-
in-the-wool grouse hunter, of course, goes
afield with a good setter or pointer;
the small-caliber rifle crank drives about
in a buggy and pins the birds with a .22
while they perch on shock or stack or
tree — this method works well on frosty
October mornings; the ordinary, casual
shooter wanders afield and does his own
hunting and gets his birds by flushing
them from their mid-day cover; the
farmer's boy brings his shooting-iron to
the field, carries it on the plow or stands
it against the fence till the birds come
to feed in the stubble, when he pots
them ; and perhaps the newest method in
sharp-tail hunting is to shoot from the
front seat of an automobile. For, though
these birds nowadays are rather shy at
cultivating an acquaintance with a khaki-
coated chap carrying a gun, they show a
huge streak of stupidity when approached
by any large thing. Birds that flush
wildly from the hunter on foot will sit
and stolidly eye the approach of any sort
of an outfit ranging from a horse and
buggy to a light battery in the form of
a democrat load of hunters bristling with
guns.

Sharp-tail hunting at its best is only
half hunting; the other half is real out-
door enjoyment. Duck and goose days
are the raw blustery ones when there is
scant pleasure in the out-of-doors world ;
but grouse time is in October when the
days are clear and silent, and the finest
thing in the world seems just to be
abroad foot-loose — when each hour of
sun and tonic air adds years to one's life
span. It is good then to sally out into
the fields in the unfrequented places and
spend a day with the grouse. You have
your double barrel and plenty of shells,
also a liberal lunch, and if you are one
of the been-there fellows you will wear a

360

OUTING

pair of heavy-soled, spiked shoes. And
you tramp and tramp among sunny
copses and pastures and old fields and
twist about in a thousand zigzags, always
with your ear tuned for a burst of wings
and your gun ready for instant use.

Whir! Whir! "Cuk-cuk-cuk-cuk!"
There they go! You have a fresh heart
palpitation every half hour at least. You
flush them in the open and miss them
and wonder how it happened ; you drive
them from the scrub and nick a brace
neatly with a right and left and feel
pleased with yourself; you find a large
covey in a poplar wood where you have
to go in to rout the sleepy birds, and here
you get half a dozen snap-shots as they
burst up and ricochet over the trees ;
and you travel miles — if you had to re-

trace your steps, fatigue would kill you —
till at last you turn away satisfied and
throw yourself down by a shock in the
mellow sun to enjoy the other half of
sharp-tail hunting.

According to your nature or inclina-
tion this may consist of a pipe, a day-
dream or a real snooze, or just that gen-
eral feeling of well-being that comes
from being alive and out under the sky
on an October day. And so you bask
and dream an hour away without know-
ing it till the rumble of a grain wagon
brings you to more practical interests and
you rise and set out towards the road.
Soon you are perched up on the big
double box, cushioned in the new-
threshed grain, and getting a very wel-
come lift homeward.

PACKS AND PACKSACKS

By W. DUSTIN WHITE

How to Carry the Most with the Least Effort on Your Tramping

Trips

NE of the most popular,
enjoyable, and healthful
ways of spending a vaca-
tion nowadays is to take
a combination tramping
and camping trip, carry-
ing the entire outfit — food, shelter, cloth-
ing— upon the back and traveling
through the forest wherever the fancy
leads. The finest vacation land, the real
wilderness of the present day, is not
easily accessible, either by railway, water-
way, or buckboard, but lies at the end
of the hard trail or beyond the long
portage. If you go there you have to
carry your entire outfit, a part of the
way at least, upon your back. When one
starts on such a trip it is very essential
that his outfit shall combine the maxi-
mum service and utility with the mini
mum weight and bulk. The first step
toward that combination is the proper
choice of a pack and harness.

Referring to the library of sporting
goods catalogues, we find a wide variety

of packs, ranging from the Adirondack
pack basket through several models of
rucksackes, knapsacks, packsacks, and
pack harnesses to the tump line. Each
has its own sphere of usefulness and will
serve admirably the purpose for which it
was intended. What the prospective
purchaser must consider, therefore, is its
adaptability to his own particular re-
quirements. The rucksacke would be
out of place on the long up-river portage
as much as the tump line in carrying the
noonday lunch.

Working out some certain cranky no-
tions of my own, I have got together an
outfit that enables me to eliminate the
packsack entirely on the long, camping-
out trips. I'll tell you all about that
outfit and how I tote it after we have
discussed packsacks a little. No outdoor
person's equipment is complete without
some kind of a packsack, and there is
practically no limit to its uses.

My first was an Adirondack pack-
basket. I bought it several years ago,

THE NESSMUK SACK

when there were not as many to choose
from as at the present time. It stood a
whole lot of service and I thought it a
marvel at first, but it was not convenient
to pack, being rigid and not shaping

itself to the articles placed, within. It
was not waterproof and was bungling to
wear through the brush. They are now
made in a canvas-covered model which is
absolutely waterproof. They have al-

SHOWING METHOD OF PITCHING THE PACK CLOTH AS A SHELTER TENT

[361]

OUTING

THE SECOXD-mXD ARMY KNAPSACK

ways been popular with guides, who use
them principally between the home camp
and the outlying lean-tos. In many lo-
calities, however, even the guides are
now giving the packsack of some form
the preference.

The ruc^ an oblong, pillow-

shaped bag. usually about 1( 2 riches.
It was designed by Alpine mountain men
and. I understand, is much used by those
climbers. Personally I have had litt
experience with them. I always thought
they were too small and too light for
the real woods work for which I wanted
a pack. They are ideal, however, for the
outdoor woman or boy. and very conve-
nient for carrying the camera, the lunch.
and the extra garments on the short
trips. They retail for three or four dol-
lars and I decided that the second-hand
army knapsack, which I gpt foi one.
would answer my purpose for a while.

These are made of canvas and carried

by means of adjustable leath-
er shoulder straps, which are
led with brass rings.

There are extra straps for
the blanker. 1 have found a
dozen little unthought-of

for mine and it has paid
for itself twenty times over.
It has carried the extra cloth-
ing n many a mountain
climb. It has transported the
lunch on many a hunting
trip. It has toted fishing
between lakes and
s without number. I
carried it on one long trip
through the Maine woods.
m}" companion wanted
to take along a little tent to
try it out. The army knap-
sack proved a little too small
for convenience on such a
trip and I lost some photo-
graphic rilms on account of
its not being waterproof.

It you feel that you need a
better sack than the army
knapsack, buy a *'Xessmuk"
pack. This was designed by
that famous old woodsman
and author and is a good.
roomy pack, made of brown
waterproof canvas. The sides
;:pered. the pack being largest at the
bottom, which brings the weight well
down on the hips, where it carries easily.
The opening is closed with an inner
throat piece and draw-string and cov-
ered by an outer flap that buckles down.
I: is absolutely waterproof, which is a
very desirable feature in a pack.

The "'Xessmuk" is made in two
grades. By all means get the best, it
only for the reason that it has leather
shoulder straps instead of stitched cloth.
which will curl and cut into your shoul-
ders. Anyhow, it doesn't pay to econo-
mize on a pack that you intend to place
any dependence upon.

The pack harness is simply a set of

- readily adapted to tying all shapes

and sizes of bags, boxes, game animals,

or any duffle and attached to shoulder

-traps for earn :n_r.

The tump line consists of a broad
leather head band with two long thongs

PACKS AND PACKSACKS

363

attached for tying the load. The head
strap is sometimes used in connection
with the pack harness to relieve the
strain from the shoulders, but usually no
shoulder straps are used. Indian and
Canadian guides carry enormous loads
on these tump lines — some of them as
much as five hundred pounds. One ad-
vantage of this method in carrying heavy
loads is the speed with which one can get
free from the pack in case of a slip or
fall. Duffle-bags are usually used in
connection with the tump line, several
of them being tied with the thongs.

If you are an outdoor man and have
not a packsack, by all means get one at
once — either a Nessmuk or a rucksacke
or an army knapsack — whatever you
think best suited to your
needs. You will find it one
of the most useful articles
you own and one of the best
investments you ever made.
And now I am going to tell
you about my outfit.

As before stated, when
one makes up an outfit to be
carried on the back, it is es-
sential that it shall combine
maximum service with mini-
mum weight; therefore, if it
is possible to make one article
serve two purposes, we get
double service with half
weight. Now, a packsack is
a mighty fine thing on the
trail, but no earthly use when
you stop to make camp. Soon
after that thought had pene-
trated my think-box (and it
was on a hard trail where it
happened), there came the
idea of utilizing a piece of
canvas for a packsack on the
trail and a shelter tent when
camp was made. The idea
grew with each day's travel
and before the trip was over
had developed into a full-
sized plan, and the plan
was put into execution be-
fore another trip was under-
taken.

In the first place, I got a
piece of canvas seven feet
square. I bought the kind

that was woven eighty-four inches wide,
so that there would be no seams. At
each of the four corners I attached a
generous loop of the same material,
twice doubled. This cost me a little over
three dollars and a couple of hours1 work
on the sewing-machine. To make up
for wear I spread it on the floor and
laid my blankets, which I had folded
into a package about 16 x 22 inches,
diagonally across it about a foot and a
half from one corner. The blankets
were to form the back of the pack and
would come next to my back, and the
nearest corner was to be the flap or cover
when all w as complete. On the blankets
I placed all the other duffle, using a lit-
tle care to place such articles as 1 would

SHOWING CLOTH USED IN PLACE OF PACK SACK.
XOTE METHOD OF BRINGING TOP FLAP DOWN UNDER
THE LOWER STRAP AND FASTENING WITH DIPPER

364

OUTING

A NESSMUK PACK WITH SMALL TENT
ROLLED UP ON TOP

not need until I made a permanent camp,
so that they would be in the bottom of
the pack, and such as I might wish to
get at en route near the top.

When all was on I began at each side
corner and doubled it, in about three
folds over the duffle in the center.
Then, going to the lower corner, I
folded that up over in the same way and
slipped the pack harness over the bundle.
The upper corner, or cover, was left up
until each little forgotten article was
hunted up and put in, then brought
down, the loop on the corner drawn
under the lower strap on the harness,
and an open-handle tin cup hung on the
loop. Here again we get double service,
for the dipper not only serves to hold
down the cover, but is also very con-
veniently reached when we pass a cold
spring.

My pack harness is one of the combi-
nation type — with head-strap attached.

I do not use this very much, as the pack
when made up with a week's provisions
weighs but little over thirty pounds, but
it furnishes a pleasant change when the
shoulders get tired, and on slippery go-
ing or dangerous ice I sometimes slip my
arms out of the shoulder straps and carry
it by the tump alone. This gives me a
chance to throw it quickly in case of a
fall or a break-through.

The canvas may be pitched in almost
any shape as a shelter. Oftentimes,
when the weather is good, I do not pitch
it at all, but simply pull it over me as a
blanket to keep off the dampness. It
makes an endless "Baker," or shelter
tent, but I usually pitch it as shown in

THE UPPER CORNER, OR COVER, IS
LEFT UP UNTIL EACH LITTLE FORGOT-
TEN ARTICLE IS PUT IN

the photo and build the fire in front. It
keeps away the mosquitoes in warm
weather and makes a cheerful warmth
in cold.

In July OUTING- "How We Built
a Canvas House," by Will C. Stevens

PACKING

By C. L. GILMAN

V^OUR friends may drop
-*■ behind you at
Some turning of the trail,
And enemies — or rumor
lies —
Are sometimes known to
fail.
But one thing you can count
on to
Be sticking at your back
More faithful than a brother,
and
The same it is )^our pack.

No need to fret about it of
Keep feeling if it's there;

No use to hunch your shoul-
ders or
Strew cuss words on the
air;

You just forget about it,
plumb dismiss it from
your mind,

For, like old faithful Fido,
it's a-tagging on behind.

A battle with your packsack is a thing which doesn't pay,
It makes your mileage shorter and it lengthens out the day
Leave it to its devices, and you'll find, without a fail,
Your pack a-waiting for you — at the ending of the trail.

[866]

FOR LOVE OF SPORT

By WALTER PRICHARD EATON

Drawing by Walter King Stone and Pmillipps Ward

"T Y/^OA' Nellie!" "Giddup there, Bob! what's the matter with you?"
W/ "Come around there, Nellie!" "Giddup, you Bob! don't be so

yY lazy."

Tugging on the reins, your eyes too busy ahead keeping the horses at
work and on the line to look where your own footsteps went, so that you
stumbled and jolted over the broken, brown earth turned up in shining fur-
rows which glistened for half an hour before the spring sun dried oil their
sheen, you panted back and forth, back and forth, across the field — a pleas-
ant way, to be sure, to spend a bright May Saturday! But the plowing had
to be done; it had been delayed by late frost, by an April snow, by wet
ground.

"Whoa, Nellie — pull up there, Bob — pull!"

Old Bob was getting lazy again and making Nellie do the work. It was
a way he had. How big the horses were, and how strong their great, sweat-
ing shoulder muscles. They were getting a soapy lather under collars and
along the flanks. The earth was still a little moist and broke hard. The
smell of the horses mingled with the smell of the fresh turned soil.

Over in the next field Joe Shelburn was driving for his father, too.
Now and then you looked up and saw him. You tried to make the furrow
come out so that he and you would meet by the fence, where the blackberries
and goldenrods grew; and he tried for the same result. Finally, you suc-
ceeded.

"Nellie can beat Dobbin!" you shouted.

"Can't, neither!" shouted Joe.

"Betcher."

Again the teams turned and the tugging horses
farther and farther apart. But the challenge had
watched impatiently the sun's decline.

Nellie was quite as tired as you were, when the day's work was over, but
you didn't care — not just then. You unhitched her from the plow, coiled
fast the superfluous harness and vaulted to her great, broad, sweaty back, by
the aid of her mane. You left Bob for father. In the next field Joe was
already mounted on Dobbin. (Are horses ever named Dobbin any more?)
Slowly you both trotted out to the road, and the two patient horses turned
their heads toward home and supper. Only a word, a jab with your heels,
and the race was on, the two small jockeys bobbing on the great cavorting
backs and shouting words of encouragement — and defiance.

Your house came first up the road, and if you got there first, you tugged
Nellie down to a walk and taunted your baffled opponent. If he won, he did
the same. That was the way we boys "played the ponies" in those early
days. And it was for the pure love of the sport, too, for I cannot recall that
the magic "Betcher" signified anything but the bare challenge. Again the
boy is the true amateur!

pulled the two plows
been given, and you

B6G1

N TAB 1 fOUB HEEI 5. .\MV . WAS OH

OUTFITTING FOR NEWFOUND-
LAND SALMON

By A. B. BAYLIS

The Rod, the Line, the Leader, and the Fly That Have Done

the Trick

HE following lines are
addressed primarily t o
those fishermen who are
thinking of trying a bout
with the salmon of New-
foundland for the first
time, in the hope that there may be
something brought forth from my many
pleasant years of fishing to assist the
novice, and, if it is not asking too much,
to interest some of those who have the
patience to read from end to end.

To begin with the rod! Any trout
rod of sufficient strength and stiffness
to cast a fairly long fly will do, but to
my mind, the best rod is a grilse rod,
fourteen or fifteen feet long. My own
equipment, settled on after much ex-
perimenting, is a fourteen-foot split bam-
boo, and a fifteen-foot greenheart. I
like these two rods, as I have found
that the bamboo, being much lighter,
is a pleasanter rod to swing for three
or four hours at a stretch, while the
greenheart, with its slower, more power-
ful spring, will drive a line into the
wind farther and with less effort than
the stiffer, lighter bamboo, and the extra
foot of length means yards of line at
times when distance is of the greatest
importance.

On English, Canadian and Nor-
wegian rivers, the pools are so wide and
large that eighteen- to twenty-foot rods
are the usual equipment of the angler,
but the Newfoundland pools are rarely
of a size to require more line than the
average fisherman can get out with a
fifteen-foot rod. Any fisherman can
loop about two yards of line under the
first finger of his upper hand, and by
letting go just before his fly has started

[368]

to drop, add that much distance to his
cast, and more, make the fly drop on
the water without causing a ripple.
Then, when the fly has been worked all
across the pool and fished out at the
end, by drawing back through the rings
the same amount of line, he can recover
his line for the next cast quite as easily
as if that two yards of line was on
the reel.

If anyone wants to use a longer rod,
let him do so by all means, the length
I have given suited me better than any
others I tried, but the extra strong man
might want a heavier rod, while the
exceptionally long caster might cover the
same distance with shorter, lighter rods.
Every fisherman knows, or ought to
know, his own limitations in casting,
and it is for the average caster in the
usual physical condition of a business
man when he takes his vacation that I
am writing. My rods are heavy enough
for me at the beginning of the season,
but after a month's fishing I can use
my bamboo rod with one hand almost
as well as I can with both when start-
ing.

I have gone into the length of the
rod with considerable detail, as I believe
that the distance covered by the cast is
almost everything. Most of the water
fished is so rough that a small splash
of the fly on alighting is of small con-
sequence, but the sight of two moving
rocks (your legs), or the noise of a
displaced stone, will often put to flight
the waiting salmon. Where the pool ran
be fished without wading a short line
can be used, but if I am wading, I want
to cast as far away from myself as I
possibly can. If you can handle eighty

OUTFITTING FOR NEWFOUNDLAND SALMON

369

feet of line with comfort and precision,
other conditions being equal, you will
get more fish than if you can only cast
sixty feet, and the longer your rod, pro-
vided you are strong enough to use it,
the farther you will cast your fly.

I have known tournament casters to
get out around one hundred feet of line
with a trout rod (five ounces the limit
weight) and better than 125 feet with
a salmon rod, but that was done from
a platform, with no wind to bother them.
To my mind, the man who can handle
his eighty feet of line wThile standing
nearly waist deep in a five-mile current,
and against the wind, drop his fly nearly
where he wants to, is some fisherman.
The finest exhibition of fly-casting I
have ever seen was given me in the
first year I went to Newfoundland. The
fisherman was an Englishman, a surgeon
on one of the cruisers stationed off the
Newfoundland coast. He was using an
English trout rod — nearly fourteen feet
long and weighing about thirty ounces.
With one hand he swung that pole as
if it was one of the daintiest toy rods
ever made by an American maker, and
using almost no arm movement he
dropped his fly exactly where he wanted
it to go.

As I want this to be a truthful ar-
ticle I will not guess at the length of
line he was using, but I doubt if after
many years of practise, I can get out
as much with two hands and a longer
rod. His wTrist looked as if it were
made of flesh and blood, but it must
have been reinforced with steel rods for
bones and whalebone strips for sinews.
I almost gave up fishing then and there,
but instead set up that man as an ideal
and his casting as a goal toward which
I might struggle, but which was never
to be attained.

In buying lines it is always best to
consult your rod-maker. Get a line
heavy enough to bend your rod and
make it do its share of the work. I
found that with my two rods mentioned
above, I got the best results by having
three lines. On calm days I used a D
line on the bamboo rod and a C line
on the greenheart. When there was any
wind I used the C on the bamboo, and a
B on the greenheart, and on very windy

days fished entirely with the greenheart
and used a B line.

All my lines are sixty yards long,
double tapered, the C and D spliced
to one hundred yards of 12-thread Cut-
tyhunk line, and the B to one hundred
yards of 16-thread Cuttyhunk line. This
may seem an unnecessary amount of
line, but the backing takes up compara-
tively little room on the reel and, al-
though you don't often need it at all,
when you do need it you need it badly.
I have killed good-sized fish without
ever wetting the backing, and then have
had smaller ones strip out my line un*
til I could see the spindle of my reeL
Once I had the extreme anguish of see-
ing a new fly, leader, and line go rush-
ing seawards towed by a fish that un«
doubtedly was late for an appointment
there, all because I had forgotten to
make the line fast to the reel. Some-
thing wTould have gone anyway, as there
was no stopping that fish, but I might
have saved the line, and more backing
might have turned the fish. It is only
once in a lifetime, however, that you
will be so situated that there is no possi-
bility of following a determined fish
along the shore, and when it can be so
followed 160 yards of line ought to ac-
count for the wildest fish.

The Right Leaders

Use only the very best single leaders
you can buy. Two really good leaders
are worth five others at half the price,
and by buying a hank of gut a size or
two smaller than your leaders and using
a strand of this to tie on your flies,
you will be surprised to find how well
your leaders last. Look over carefully,
at frequent intervals, the leader you are
using and take out any badly chafed or
otherwise weakened strands. Beware
the knots tied by any other agency than
the maker, and pick them out carefully.
There is the place your big fish will
break loose.

I approach the subject of flies with
fear and trembling. Ask ten fishermen
what is the best fly for a certain water
with which all are familiar, and the
chances are that nine of them will each
name a different fly. I am going to be

370

OUTING

the tenth man and say, "I do not know."
From a careful record of many a fish-
ing trip, where I noted down each day
the fish taken and the fly used, I find
that in every instance the fly on which
I took my. first fish was for that season
the most successful one, but that there
were two flies which in every season fin-
ished either first and second, or second
and third.

My first season the Jock Scott was
my best fly, with the Silver Doctor the
second best. The second year they fin-
ished Silver Doctor first, Jock Scott sec-
ond; the third season the Butcher beat
them both, but Silver Doctor was sec-
ond and Jock Scott third. In many
years' fishing I have never but once
killed a fish with the Durham Ranger,
yet I know men who fish the same
rivers I have fished who use it con-
stantly and find it their most killing fly.

This is accounted for, I think, by
the psychology of the fisherman, rather
than by any peculiarity of the fish.
My theory is that the fly you have on
when the fish want to rise is the best
fly for that day, and any other fly you
might have been using would have
proved equally killing. But if a fly has
already proved itself, that fly is going
to get a whole lot more use than one
that has yet to make good. The Jock
Scott is going to get a half hour's trial
before the Silver Doctor goes on for
fifteen minutes, and then it gets another
half hour before the Durham Ranger,
or other pattern gets its trial. Psy-
chology is working on me even at this
distance from my beloved rivers, as my
first fish ever killed was taken on a Jock
Scott, and that has always been my
favorite fly, although as a matter of fact
I have killed more fish on a Silver Doc-
tor.

I notice that the London Times, and
more recently the New York Sun, has
been inviting correspondence as to
whether fish can distinguish colors. My
experience leaves me rather doubtful.
I never but once killed a fish to which
the jzolor of the fly seemed to matter,
but in that case it certainly seemed to
have a marked effect. I was fishing
a short, narrow pool, where low water
and lack of current enabled me to see

the fish I was after so that I know that
there was only the one fish in the pool.
I rose it first to a Jock Scott, waited
and tried again with the same fly, and
got no response. Then I fished over
the pool with a Silver Doctor, and then
a Durham Ranger, without moving the
fish; got a lazy flop to a Black Dose;
a slightly stronger rise to a Jock Scott
used again, and finally got him with a
Dunkeld.

I worked for that fish all morning,
going over it carefully, twice with each
fly, giving plenty of time between trips,
and when the fish was finally beached
I put up my tackle and quit for the
day. I was worn out. That fish seemed
to distinguish colors. In every case he
rose to flies in which yellow and gold
predominated. The Dunkeld — I do not
know whether the modern fly called
Dunkeld is the same fly or not; I had
these flies tied for me after the descrip-
tion given by Ephemera in his "Book of
the Salmon," page 89 — is almost all yel-
low with a great deal of Golden Pheas-
ant in it.

Size of Fly, Not Color

With all the other fish I have killed,
I cannot but feel that the size of the
fly, and not the color, made the differ-
ence. Once, fishing from a ledge, and
rising each fish in almost exactly the
same place, in an afternoon I killed five
and lost three, and I used three flies
differing as much as possible, Black
Dose, Silver Doctor and Butcher; but
they were all short tied, on No. 6 hooks.
I think that I believe that with only
one pattern of fly, tied on different size
hooks, of course, and persistence, I could
take as many fish as if I had a dozen
different patterns. And yet I like to
see my book filled with the standard pat-
terns, and every year I add one or two
freaks, maybe to be used once, on rare
occasions, like the Dunkeld, to attain an
honored position as one of the season's
best killers and a constant favorite ever
after.

To the man who, like myself, has not
the strength of mind to take only one
kind with him, I would recommend the
following, in order named: Jock Scott,

OUTFITTING FOR NEWFOUNDLAND SALMON

371

Dunkcld (see above), Silver Doctor,
Black Dose, Butcher, Durham Ranger,
Silver Gray, Nepissiquit. Any good
sporting-goods store can have the Dun-
keld tied after the Ephemera pattern
for you.

There is no use taking a lot of big
flies to Newfoundland. They cost a lot
of money and will never be used. For
very early fishing, say the first week
in June, a very few No. 2 hooks will
be useful, but after that time No. 4 and
No. 6 hooks will be what you will need.
A great many fishermen use No. 8
double hooks, but I do not like the
double hook and have found a short-tied
fly on a No. 6 single hook to be quite
as killing for low waters. The body
of this fly is no bigger than the double
No. 8, and the larger hook gives more
chance of saving the fish, while the fact
that the shank of the hook projects be-
yond the tail of the fly gives a better
chance of hooking a short-rising fish,
striking at the tip of the tag. A few
No. 4 tied for short-rising fish are quite
as useful in getting results as their
smaller brothers.

I have always had my flies tied on
Pennell downeyed hooks and fastened
to the leader with a short strand of
gut. In this way there is only a single
strand of gut leading away from the
fly, and the metal eye is far stronger
than the gut loop found on the usual f

of commerce. I like the hook because
I think that the long, straight barb
hooks a fish far more securely and makes
him more surely yours than does the
shorter, curved barb of the ordinary
Sproat hook, but that is a matter of
opinion, as is the use of single or double
hooks. I like the single hook, others
swear by the double hook. Take your
choice.

I am not going to try to tell any
fisherman how to play the fish, but to
any trout fisherman I will say: Try
and forget how to strike a fish. I think
that more fish are lost by jerking the
fly away from them just as they are
making up their minds to take it than
in any other way. Salmon are slow,
deliberate fish, until the hook really
pricks them hard, and once the fish feels
the barb, he is off at a speed that will
drive it in more firmly than any fancy
wrist motion of yours. Once the hook
is in the fight is on, and may the best
man win.

I cannot close better than by quoting
Ephemera: "I dare not think myself
orthodox, and if any kind being more
skilled in piscatorial polemics than I am
will, in a spirit of toleration, convince
me of any halieutic heresies I may have
herein promulgated I do solemnly vow
to recant them publicly in a second
edition" — if I get a chance to write any
more.

n Stealing Signals in Baseball " — This is the title of Edward
Lyle Fox's article in July OUTING. It tells of the efforts
players make to find out the instructions the catcher is flash-
ing to the pitcher, and shows the good and bad side of it.

EASIER EATING IN CAMP

By GEORGE FORTISS

Some Things You Can Take Along to Relieve the Monotony of

Beans and Bacon

HEN you have been
out on a camping trip
and have eaten, for
three days running,
bacon and beans and
soup and trout and
tea, and maybe even venison or broiled
grouse, have you suddenly awakened to
the realization that something was wrong
with your diet — that you were beset by
a longing for something that was grow-
ing momentarily more conspicuous by its
absence? Of course you have, if you
are the average town-bred American.
Perhaps at the time you have not an-
alyzed this longing and discovered what
occasioned it, but if you remember back
you recollect the rush you made to the
candy counter of the country store when
you came out of the woods after a week
or two of living on the staple foods.
What you had been missing in your daily
diet was sugar, one of the greatest heat-
producing agents in the human body,
the absence of which the average man
feels keenly after a few days.

Sugar on the one hand and acid, or
correctives, on the other are parts of a
camp diet that are quite often overlooked
by the camper when he fills out his lard-
er list. As a matter of fact it is all very
well to cut your grub list down to the
most nutritive staples when you are go-
ing on a long trip where it is imperative
that you travel light, but on the average
camping or cruising expedition the mat-
ter of minimum weight and bulk of the
grub kit is not of such great importance,
and camp diet is made a good deal more
pleasant, as well as more normal, by
taking with you a judicious, though not
unwieldy, selection of what may prop-
erly be called table luxuries, but which
at the same time have a mighty potent

[372]

value in making rough cookery agree-
able.

Under this classification of edibles
come such delicacies as jellies, condi-
ments, potted and canned meats, dried
and fresh fruits, patent desserts, pre-
pared salads, canned fish, pickles, and
other "trimmings" which, in comparison
with the sturdy beans and cornmeal and
bacon of the dyed-in-the-wool camper,
may be considered bric-a-brac, but which,
nevertheless, are as welcome to the va-
riety-longing palate of the frugal ex-
plorer as manna to the Israelites.

With a view to providing some of the
luxuries in such shape as to be practicable
to take on the trail, several manufactur-
ers have devoted some time to preparing
in convenient form a number of delica-
cies that are of real value to the man
who wants to go camping fairly unin-
cumbered, yet has arranged his trip so
that it will not be imperative for him to
resort to the extreme lightness of highly
concentrated foods, such, for instance, as
dehydrated products.

All veteran campers will tell you that
there is a good concentrated meal in a
cake of sweet chocolate, and chocolate,
requiring no preparation of any sort and
being the most nutritive of sweets, is
without doubt the most practical article
to round out the larder and meet the call
of the body for a proportion of sugar
fuel. A five-cent cake of sweet choco-
late makes a sustaining lunch when there
is no time to build a fire and go into
more extensive food-preparing opera-
tions. And chocolate is neither so
heavy nor so bulky that it cannot enter
into the grub kit of even the man who
is making a trip on which he feels that
the necessity for lightness commands the
use of dehydrated foods.

FASTER EATING TN CAMP

373

But for the camper or cruiser who in-
tends to tote his supplies to a base from
which he himself will not wander far,
the latitude for an extended and varied
larder is greatly increased. For these
campers there is a host of palatable yet
conveniently packed food articles which,
particularly if there are ladies in the
party, will render camp diet a good
deal more agreeable than it otherwise
would be.

Take jelly powder, for instance. At
least two manufacturers to-day put out
powders which need only to be put into
hot water and allowed to cool to make
extremely tasty jellies. These powders
come in little jars, weighing but a few
ounces, yet one ten-cent package is suffi-
cient to. make jelly for six to eight per-
sons. In a mold of jelly there is mighty
relief from a camp diet of bacon and
beans, particularly in the warm weather
of summer camping.

Even Fruit Salad

Then there is fruit salad. No, you
haven't got to steal the fruit from the
orchard of the nearest farmer, nor need
you take oil and eggs and the other es-
sentials to home-manufactured salads.
All that is necessary is for you to open
the round jar in which the salad comes,
all made and mixed, put it on your plate,
and — go to it. This ready-made salad
is composed of pineapple, peaches, pears,
apples, cherries, and cumquats preserved
in fruit juice or brandy or other dress-
ing, and besides being a tempting dish,
is useful in providing a sugar and fruit
food.

The canned and jarred fruits, such as
canned peaches, pears, apricots and cher-
ries, are too well known almost to re-
quire mention as articles of the camper's
diet. It is true that for long voyages,
where the travel must be light, they are
cumbersome, but such trips are the ex-
ception with the average camper, who
usually can, without difficulty, carry a
fair supply of these pleasant and useful
delicacies.

In the case of the man who feels that
canned fruits are too bulky and weighty,
there are the dried apricots and peaches,
which are extremely nourishing and

tasty when soaked and boiled, besides
being very light.

Dates, figs, and shelled nuts are three
highly nourishing yet concentrated foods,
the values of which are frequently over-
looked. Usually, in the camp larder the
place of the two former is taken by the
long-famous prune, and there is no de-
nying that the prune was one of the most
useful foods in the old-time camp grub-
sack, not alone because of its laxative
qualities, but because of the sugar in it
and the change it gives from the regular
cut-and-dried diet of the camp.

Dates and figs are fully as nourishing
as prunes, the former perhaps being even
more so. They are no heavier, and add
to the variety. A good combination to
take into camp is one composed of one-
half prunes and one-quarter each of
dates and figs.

The nutritive value of nuts has long
been recognized, yet as a camp food the
nut has been practically overlooked. All
the big grocers carry shelled nuts in jars.
A good way to do is to take the nuts out
of the jars and place them in cheese-
cloth bags, which are much lighter and
more easily stowed and carried. A hand-
ful of shelled nuts and a cake of choco-
late in your pocket when you start off in
the morning will furnish ample lunch,
and if, perchance, you get caught out
over-night, you will be a long way from
starvation in the morning.

The ingenuity of manufacturers of
canned goods seems never to rest. One
of the latest inventions is codfish balls in
cans. All you have to do is to open the
can, stick in a spoon and dig out a lump
of the moist codfish batter, and drop it
into the greased frying-pan. In five
minutes your breakfast, crisp and brown,
is ready.

From a camper's viewpoint these
canned codfish balls are a revelation in
time-saving. The old dried and shred-
ded codfish which had to be soaked all
night, however, still has its place, as it is
lighter than the canned product and,
when prepared, equally nourishing.

Chipped beef and potted minced
tongue and ham have long been known,
but the camper can now drop a jar in a
kettle of boiling water, in five minutes
remove and open it, and sit down to a

374

OUTING

dinner of beef a la mode after the most
improved hotel style.

Then there is canned Mexican tamale,
and there are jars containing whole
lambs' tongues that need only to be taken
out and sliced just as you would get them
sliced at the delicatessen. And there are
all the varieties of canned and jarred
fish and shellfish, to say nothing of
canned ribs of beef.

All these are semi-concentrated foods
that wTill keep for months, and without
exception they are valuable to the camp-
er. If you are going into a country
where you expect to catch an abundance
of fish, do not make up your mind that
you will leave out of your grub outfit the
fish that you would otherwise have
bought put up in glass jars, for the fish in
the lake or river are problematical, while
the fish in the glass jars are not. The
writer once lived for three days on a
single can *of dried beef because it took
him two weeks to find out how to catch
the fish in the lakes through which he
was making a canoe trip.

The relishes should not be overlooked
either. Pickles are perhaps the most
practicable of these for camp use. They
have a nourishing body besides supply-
ing the acid and snap which some other
sauces, etc., contain without an equal
amount of nourishment.

Cake in camp is the exception, but
there are always sweet crackers, which do
not get stale, to take its place. You
might include a box of marshmallow
whip on your list. Marshmallow whip
is nothing more nor less than melted
marshmallows, thinned out. It is an ex-
cellent substitute for whipped cream, and
at the same time can be used for cake
icing, provided you have the tools in
camp to concoct the cake. Whether you
have or not is of little importance if you
will include in your larder some large,
sweet, vanilla-flavored crackers. Upon

the crackers spread a generous layer of
marshmallow whip, and into the whip
set the berries you gather, whether they
be huckleberries, raspberries, blackber-
ries, or what not. When the dish is
completed you have an incomparable
shortcake.

To map out a delicacy larder for a
party of four persons for a two weeks'
camping trip is practically impossible,
since tastes differ so widely. One man
may prefer fish in preponderance to
canned meat; another pickles in excess
of chocolate. All that can be done is to
state a list of food luxuries that can be
added to the regular staples of a camp
larder where the exigencies do not de-
mand long and hard travel, and conse-
quently a minimum of weight to be
carried.

For four people the list might run
something like this:

Sweet chocolate, 20 cakes.

Marshmallow whip, 2 boxes.

Dates, 4 pounds.

Figs, 4 pounds.

Shelled nuts, 3 pounds.

Pickles (sweet) 2 bottles (large).

Pickles (sour), 2 bottles (large).

Fruit salad, 6 jars.

Jelly powder, 6 packages.

Codfish balls. 4 cans.

Filet of herring (wine sauce), 2 cans.

Sliced smoked salmon, 4 cans.

Canned roast beef, 4 cans.

Chicken livers (canned), 2 jars.

Beef a la mode, 4 jars.

Canned cherries, 2 cans.

Peaches, 6 cans.

Pears, 4 cans.

Mandalay sauce, 1 bottle.

Sweet crackers, 10 pounds.

Peanut butter, 2 jars (large).

The above list, added to the staples of
the larder mentioned in last month's
article, will round out a camp grub out-
fit so that it will approach luxury with-
out at the same time stepping into the
field of unwieldiness.

Would you like to know where Polo originated and how
it is played in the land of its birth ? Then read " The
Cradle of Polo " in an early number of OUTING.

RELAXING YOUR BAMBOO ROD

By THOMAS JENKYNS

How to Solve the Problem of Caring for Your Rod When It Is

Not in Use

=^HE life of a rod of split-
bamboo depends much
upon its use when on the
stream, but even more
upon its handling when
put away; in fact, prob-
ably seventy-five per cent of the rods
whose days of usefulness are over owe
their untimely demise to improper stor-
age. It is far too common a custom
to put away a fine rod in a closed closet
in a steam-heated room, or even to keep
it in an attic whose temperature fluctu-
ates between zero and one hundred de-
grees— with the equally universal result
that the maker is blamed for loosened
ferrules, softening of the glue, and gen-
eral disintegration.

The basement, not too close to heater
or chimney, is the proper place to dispose
of such tools not only during the off
season, but between trips in summer as
well; the air is sufficiently moist to keep
the rod in shape and the temperature is
much more even than that of any room.
Yet if we simply hang the rod to one of
the cellar beams, it is going to get dusty
and covered with grit in the form of
fine coal dust and ashes — particles which
when wiped off are apt to score the
rod or even to mar and weaken the wind-
ings. The solution is to build a dust-
tight cabinet that may be fastened to
one of the basement columns or hung
from a beam, and in which the rod may
have all of the advantages of the moist
air and even temperature without the
drawbacks of soot and grime.

The cabinet illustrated is intended for
short casting-rods, which are to be hung
up jointed; it is six feet long (six inches
of this length being taken up by the
tackle drawer), one foot wide and six
inches deep. Any other size may, of

course, be adopted, inasmuch as the sep-
arate joints may be hung up instead of
the complete rod. The material is yel-
low pine, matched ceiling boards being
used, and the finish applied being a coat
of filler and two or three coats of good

THE CASE FOR HANGING THE ROD WITH
THE TACKLE DRAWER AT THE BOTTOM

[375]

376

OUTING

varnish. Two or three brass screw hooks
are fixed at the top, and the cabinet is
complete.

When returning from a trip the rod
should be wiped thoroughly dry, and, if
short enough, suspended from one of the
hooks without unjointing or removing
the reel — the weight of the latter will
keep the rod from getting "set" and
will tend to take out any curve that the
day's fishing may have started. Failing
this, the separate joints may be hung up
with a weight attached to each — al-
though this will be of scant help in keep-
ing the entire rod in alignment, it will
at least keep each joint straight and free
from kinks.

At the end of the season the rod should
be gone over very carefully, and all
frayed windings rewound ; loose ferrules,
if any, should be reset, and the entire rod

be given one or two coats of good var-
nish. This latter process is often a buga-
boo to the inexperienced, who seem to
think it a job for an expert; but if you
warm the rod, warm the varnish, and do
the work near the kitchen stove, the
varnish will flow evenly, will not show
brush marks, and is not apt to check or
to crawl. If possible, the rod should be
hung to dry in the center of a warm
room; this is not often practicable, how-
ever, and the writer has produced a good
finish by hanging the varnished rod in
the cabinet.

When the rod has been thoroughly
gone over, hang it jointed in the cabinet
— and when spring comes and the music
of the streams is in your ears you will
find it straight, tight and new-looking,
instead of a warped and lifeless thing un-
fit to be called a rod.

THE

WORLD

SPORT

Rubber Core Nine up in thirty-six holes!
vs- That is the tale of the match

^*utty over the Sandy Lodge course
in England to test the respective merits
of the rubber-cored golf ball and the old
gutty, the advantage being with the rub-
ber-core. The players were Harry Var-
don and George Duncan against James
Braid and James Taylor. In the morn-
ing round Vardon and Duncan, playing
with the rubber-core, finished five up.
Then in the afternoon the same men,
playing this time with the gutty, lost
four of the five-hole lead, finishing one
up, thus giving the advantage to the
newer ball by nine holes. As usually hap-
pens in such cases, both parties to the
controversy were satisfied that all their
theories were fully demonstrated and
everybody was happy.

Which Is The difficulty, of course, is
tne in determining just what is

Better? meant by the "better ball,;
when such comparisons are made. In
the matter of length the rubber-core nat-
urally had the advantage, thirty to forty
yards, other things being equal. On the
other hand, when it was necessary to lay
a long putt close to the hole with a green
sloping away, the gutty was apparently
more obedient. Also it was possible to
hit it more decisively in the tricky putts.
On the one-shot holes there was not
much to choose, although something
might be conceded to the gutty on the
ground of its shorter roll and its conse-
quent greater tendency to hold the green
on a full, hard shot. It was noted
at Sandy Lodge that the old ball showed
up more strongly the difference between
good and bad shots. With it bad shots

were usually penalized very definitely.
There was none of the lucky run from a
half top that often makes a similar shot
with the rubber-core almost as useful as
a well-hit ball. The slice, too, seemed
more positive with the gutty, developing
earlier in the flight of the ball and, per-
haps on account of the shorter distance,
usually fetching up in a worse position
for the next shot. Of course, thirty-six
holes, played by four of the leading
players of Great Britain, is not conclu-
sive as to the merits of the two types of
ball. A full season of play by average
amateurs would provide much more ade-
quate data as to performance. In any
case, the experiment was valuable solely
as a stunt. The rubber-core is here to
stay and the gutty is an interesting an-
tiquity.

The By the time this issue is on
American sale the British amateur golf
Invasion championship will have been
decided, and we shall know whether
the American invasion has been a success-
ful one from the standpoint of matches
won. For our part, we wish to declare
here and now that we consider it a com-
plete success before it begins. We are
strongly for international sport and rival-
ry in the right spirit, and we know no
game that is better adapted to the de-
velopment of that spirit than is golf.
Messrs. Ouimet, Travers, et ah are in
England to win if possible, but, win or
lose, we are glad to see them playing at
Sandwich, and we hope that English
players will return the visit this year and
every succeeding year. Such contests
make for a better understanding and for
the clearing away of the old fogs of con-

£377]

378

OUTING

troversy that have at times tended to ob-
scure the trans-Atlantic vision from both
shores.

Good And this is a good time also

on to deprecate the attempts

Both Sides that are made frQm dme tQ

time to raise the old bogies of jealousy.
We have had occasion frequently to point
out certain peculiarities that appear to us
as shortcomings in British sports. We
have attempted to render the same ser-
vice to American sport, usually in much
more emphatic terms. This we shall not
cease to do. Conditions are not yet ideal
on either side of the water. But there
are many things that we can learn from
England — in spirit if not in method —
and vice versa there are a few things
which we modestly protest England can
learn from America. Just at present it
is the Continent that seems most anxious
to copy American methods and, as often
happens in such cases, they are in danger
of copying incorrectly. If the press dis-
patches from Berlin tell the whole truth
— which we may be permitted to doubt —
the Fatherland is in danger of profes-
sionalizing their entire force of Olympic
athletes. If the proposed plan of na-
tional subsidy goes through, we do not
see how a fair-minded Olympic Commit-
tee can avoid putting the whole Berlin
team under the ban.

The Athletics in the English or
Reason for American sense are a prod-
port uct of such recent growth on
the Continent that there is grave danger
of imitating unessential details and miss-
ing the fundamental spirit entirely. The
object of Olympic competition is to win.
The object of general athletic exercise is
improvement, physical, mental and moral.
Between these two forms of sport there
is a wide gulf. A nation that becomes
athletic merely in the hope that it may
outshine the rest of the world is debasing
a noble thing. At its best, sport is. a
flowering of the spirit of competitive play,
and those who enter it in that attitude
find the highest pleasure and the greatest
good. France seems to have set about the
task in a somewhat different state of mind
from that of Germany. For more than
a generation the specter of national deca-

dence has been hovering over all Gaul,
and some of the best minds of the nation
have seen in athletics a corrective for the
evils of alcoholism and the other vices
that threaten. This is all very well in
its way, but it is somewhat of a shock to
an Englishman or an American to regard
sport as a substitute for the gold cure or
as a form of medical treatment.

Each The prime difficulty in this
to Its Own whole business of interna-
ame tional comparisons in sport is
that it is an attempt to compare two
things that are not comparable. Potatoes
and peaches are both good, but no one
would make the mistake of saying that
one is better than the other. Yet that is
what is done too often in matters of na-
tional differences in sport. At the time
the American baseball teams were in
London English critics of the game
aroused the mingled wrath and amuse-
ment of American baseball writers by
calling the game "glorified rounders" and
declaring that while it might be very
good for people who like it, yet English-
men preferred cricket. Such statements
are of course very amusing to the young
gentlemen who make their living by
writing about America's favorite game.
Nevertheless they are strictly true. Base-
ball is a development from the earlier,
cruder schoolboy games — "glorified"
being a sufficiently elastic term to cover
any necessary amount of development —
and Englishmen do prefer cricket. There-
fore any attempt to decide which is the
"better" game is bound to be futile.
There is here no question of worse or
better. Each nation plays the game it
likes in the way it likes, and there you
are. Furthermore, a world that played
nothing but baseball, or cricket, or pelota,
or what you please, would be a very
stupid world.

Cleaner Turning for the moment to
College certain specific conditions in
Baseball American sport, it is worth
while considering the recommendations
of the baseball committee of the National
Collegiate Athletic Association. This is
a voluntary body with no real power. It
can only suggest, but that is often more
influential in the long run than drastic

THE WORLD OF SPORT

379

legislation. The only reforms that are
worth while are those that originate
from within and not those that are forced
from without. If college baseball is ever
to be the ideal game that its friends want
it to be it must be because the players
themselves see the light. Outside agen-
cies can do little more than agitate and
instruct as far as in them lies. To this
end the recommendations of the baseball
committee of the Association deal entirely
with the spirit of the game. They are
aimed mainly against the evil of unnec-
essary coaching, especially that foolish
chatter kept up by the outfield in the
vague hope of steadying a pitcher. It is
suggested also that a catcher be restricted
in his conversation with the batter to
such remarks as are necessary to the
proper conduct of the game, in the way
of caution, etc. Coaching from the bench
is frowned upon, and also that particu-
larly obnoxious form of coaching de-
signed to rattle the opposing pitcher.

Public Of the vexing question of
Opinion the summer ball and profession-
e alism of other forms the com-
mittee wisely says nothing. That prob-
lem is, in the last analysis, something that
each college must deal with itself accord-
ing to its own conditions. We do not,
however, sympathize in the least with
that attitude of some of the authorities
which makes of this a vast and perplex-
ing question. It is simply one of com-
mon, everyday honesty. We doubt if
there is any college player or athletic
committee that is greatly in the dark as
to the standing of any members of the
team if they will only be honest with
themselves. At Princeton we have seen
the heartening spectacle of the students
putting in force the honor system in ex-
aminations and making it work. We
have heard, also, the captain of the
Princeton baseball team declare in favor
of summer baseball partly on the ground
that it cannot be eradicated. Yet the
cheating in examinations would seem to
the crude observer far more difficult of
suppression by public opinion than dis-
honesty in sport. The thing that is lack-
ing in the latter case is the organized
public opinion. Given that and the prob-
lem will solve itself.

Balking in The United States Senate
tne has done all that it could to

Senate render futile its own good
work in the protection of the birds oi
the country. A year ago it passed the
Weeks- McLean bill for the protection
of migratory birds. Obviously the en-
forcement of any law calls for the spend-
ing of money, in the present instance not
a great deal as government appropriations
go, but still a fair lump of a sum. Fifty
thousand dollars was the amount called
for in the Agricultural Appropriations
Bill when it went into the committee.
Ten thousand was the sum that remained
when that committee completed its delib-
erations. This is about the same as noth-
ing at all. This magazine has chronicled
the claims that have been made in vari-
ous parts of the country that the law
need not be observed in states where
state law permits spring shooting. If
the Senate's attitude is to govern why
observe any part of it anywhere? It is
the Senate that is the chief law-breaker.

Let The excuse offered by the
the Courts Senators who oppose the ap-
Decide propriation, especially Sen-
ator Reed of Missouri and Senator Rob-
inson of Arkansas, is that the law is un-
constitutional and that the country might
as well save money by not trying to en-
force it. This is a curious attitude for a
United States Senator to adopt toward a
bill wrhich the Senate passed only a year
ago. We do not know how these two
Senators voted at that time, nor do we
care. The law once passed is the law of
the whole country, and the duty rests
upon all the Senators to provide the
means for its enforcement. As to the
question of its constitutionality we seem
to have heard somewhere of a body
known as the Supreme Court of the
United States. We have heard, too, that
it is the duty of that court to pass upon
the constitutionality of the laws placed
upon the statute books by the legislative
department of the government. Why
not leave this question to that court — if
it is still in existence? This sounds like
elementary political science, but appar-
ently there are some United States Sen-
ators who are in need of just such in-
struction.

380

OUTING

Working While the United States
f°f Senate is thus dallying with

the Birds |ts pjajn jutyj private indi-
viduals and associations are doing what
lies in their power to check the destruc-
tion of our wTild life. Herbert K. Job,
a well-known contributor to this maga-
zine, is lecturing before the Granges of
Connecticut on "Value and Profit from
Wild Birds on the Farm." His lectures
are being financed by an unnamed friend

of wild life in the hope that the farmers
of the state may be awakened to a sense
of their share in the work before it is too
late. The owners of the land can do
more than anyone else to preserve birds
of all kinds, and without their full co-
operation success is practically impos-
sible. But it will be little short of crim-
inal negligence if the Federal Govern-
ment turns back from the great work it
has begun.

WHAT READERS THINK

Two Opinions on Rugby Football and One Experience with a Gun
When the Safety Was On

Rugby or No Rugby

CALIFORNIA is agitated over the
question of Rugby. Since the
publication of the article, "Why
California Likes Rugby," in the March
Outing, several letters have been re-
ceived indicating that not all Califor-
nians do like Rugby. Two of these are
published herewith. Since the first letter
was received from Mr. Bovard the Uni-
versity of Southern California has taken
definite steps toward dropping the Rugby
game, and it is expected that several of
the high schools of that section will fol-
low the lead of the university. Mr. Bo-
vard reports in another letter that the
students are prepared to back up the new
move, and that there is every prospect
that they will greatly prefer the Amer-
ican game. Mr. Bovard is Graduate
Manager of the Associated Students of
the University of Southern California.
His letter follows:

Editor, Outing:

I was very much interested in your
March issue, due to an article on Rugby
football, page 742, and an editorial re-
mark entitled "Why This Indifference?"
on page 765.

The article on Rugby is good from
the Rugby enthusiast standpoint, from
the standpoint, I should say, of the man
who has forgotten or who knows noth-

ing of the new American game of foot-
ball.

Fans and players alike, after eight
years of Rugby, naturally are not fa-
miliar with the changes in our great
American game. In southern California
the two styles of football are righting
side by side under almost equal terms.
The University of Southern California,
the largest institution in the south, num-
bering some 2,600 students, has been
playing Rugby now for three years, and
has contended with the northern univer-
sities for the State title. Meanwhile,
the smaller colleges of southern Califor-
nia, four in number, and half the high
schools, have continued to play the Amer-
ican brand.

Last year we lost to Stanford by a
score of 10 to 0 and tied California
3 to 3. The game has come to be popu-
lar with students and players alike, but,
as noted in your editorial, page 765,
Rugby is the fly in the intercollegiate
ointment. It is a great game and fitted
to an inter-club series with regular league
officials. When it is shoved into the
place of the American intercollegiate
game that is given to the college athlete
during the period that he is pitting his
well-trained might against that of his in-
tercollegiate rival, the game is altogether
too unrestricted. Foul tactics are so easy
that apparently the man who does not
resort to them is the loser. The game

WHAT READERS THINK

381

frequently breaks from under the con-
trol of the officials.

The talk of descending to intramural
athletics in the University of California
is perhaps induced by a lack of interest
on the part of the students, but a great
deal more, I believe, by the constant in-
tercollegiate troubles with Stanford Uni-
versity. Almost every one of the recent
disputes can be traced directly to the
game of Rugby football. It is true that
this game is controlled by a Rugby
Union, but this is a very doubtful ad-
vantage.

Leaders in intercollegiate circles have
suggested time and again that radical
changes should be made in the game if it
is to be the leading intercollegiate sport.
The final answer in each case is that the
game has been good enough for Anglo-
Saxons the world over and a change
would destroy the chance of interna-
tional contests (proven to be another
doubtful advantage in football).

After our third year of experience, we
admit that Rugby is a very good game,
but, on demanding changes, we have
come to the conclusion that we might as
well adopt the changes which were made
by the big athletic men of the East and
return to the American game — at least
we are seriously considering such a
change next year or the year after.

The high schools of southern Califor-
nia are about evenly divided as to the
style of football played, but the Rugby-
ites are having so much trouble securing
competent referees (an almost impossible
feat in Rugby) that several of them are
considering reverting to the American
game in case the University of Southern
California takes such action.

I merely wanted to let you know that
while Mr. Goldsmith was right from his
standpoint, at the same time your guess
as to the fly in the ointment is right and
Rugby is not an undivided success by a
long way. Rugby enthusiasts contend
that it is less rough, absolutely devoid of
fatalities, and more open. All of these
contentions have not been borne out by
experience when the two games are care-
fully analyzed.

Yours very truly,

W. B. Bovard.

Los Angeles, Cal.

A Stanford Opinion

ytNOTHER letter has been re-
J~\ ceived from a student at Stan-
ford who has apparently had op-
portunities of observing both games and
making his own comparisons. We do
not know how widespread is the senti-
ment he represents, and therefore pub-
lish his letter for what it is worth as an
individual opinion:

Editor, Outing:

The recent article in your magazine
on "Why California Likes Rugby," il-
lustrated by "well-chosen" pictures, de-
mands an answer, for it is rather a boast
and a challenge at the same time. I be-
lieve an answer will be much more for-
cible coming from the ground of the
original statements, and rely on your
justice to put in a few words on the
other side of the argument.

The statement that after the second
game of Rugby not a man in the bleach-
ers would go back to the intercollegiate
game is typical of the exaggerated tone
of the whole article. This is an unwar-
ranted assumption, for after eight years
of "bred-in-the-bone Rugby" there are
many here who would gladly turn back
to the "old game."

Mr. Goldsmith's ideas of the "old
game," as he calls it, are likely gleaned
from "brutal" pictures, and thrilling
magazine articles, for I have not seen a
man here who has seen the intercollegiate
game played between two good teams
lately who will admit Rugby is anywhere
near the "class" of the "old game." They
judge "football" here by what it used to
be back in the "old days," and pictures
of the old mass plays. Therefore, I pro-
nounce any of these men incapable of
"pronouncing judgment" on the other
game.

Remember that Rugby's supposed popu-
larity is merely a forced popularity. You
don't see the colleges of southern Cali-
fornia taking it up in a hurry or any of
the strong college teams of the North-
west. Rugby interest centers around San
Francisco, and in northern and southern
California we find the high schools still
playing the "intercollegiate" game. The
game was forced on Stanford by the fac-

382

OUTING

ulty; California was forced to take it up,
as Stanford was her only rival ; the high
schools nearby naturally were forced to
take it up. And it is a strong comment-
ary on the status of the game that they
have to import players and teams from
other countries to play here. It does not
show the international character of the
game at all, as Mr. Goldsmith would
have you Easterners believe.

There is no doubt that "Danny" Car-
roll, an "import" from the Australian
team, won the "big game" for Stanford
last year. It is a significant fact that,
after eight years, Rugby has not spread
beyond the territory "athletically super-
vised" by these twTo schools — California
and Stanford. It is a notable fact that
there are many teams in and around San
Francisco which have stuck to the "old"
game, in spite of the "popularity" of
Rugby.

The claim that Rugby is safer, faster,
cleaner, and less exhausting I deny in
each and every count. It is another
case of comparing two things when you
haven't seen one even, as is the case with
most of these Rugby "enthusiasts" and
the intercollegiate football game. They
don't know what a "forward pass" means.
They say the "forward pass" came from
Rugby. Not so ! a forward pass is abso-
lutely against Rugby rules and is se-
verely penalized.

As for the safety of the game, there is
little to judge from. There is only one
big game. All others are mere practice
games with alumni, small schools and
athletic clubs. There is only one real
fighting game to judge from. These
practice games are played in an easy way,
many substitutes are sent in and ordered
to take it easy and not get "banged up"
for the big game. No wonder the game
isn't "brutal" and the men don't get ex-
hausted. You should see the "crowds" ( ?)
of a few hundred at these preliminary
games. They show how much interest
is really shown in Rugby, as a game.

The "big game" is a fashion show, an
alumni reunion, and a general holiday,
which takes some credit of the crowds
away from Rugby. But I was talking
about safety. The spirit of laxity in
these early games, and the soft turf field,
account in a large measure for the ab-

sence of injuries, but there is by no means
a "total absence"; strains are numerous
and broken bones not unknown. I saw
one leg broken on our field last year and
many a man carried off.

It was notable that the Stanford and
California teams used every substitute
they were allowed in the big game, and a
fight developed over the fact that the
California coach ran in one more sub-
stitute than Stanford. It was a notable
fact that one extra man wTas playing part
of the time for California, and their lone
touchdown was due to this fresh man.
Imagine such a state of affairs in the "old
game"! Such work is O. K. in this
game; as long as the other team doesn't
catch on, it is none of the referee's busi-
ness.

As for dirty work, you can imagine
with one lone referee and thirty men
scattered around there is plenty of chance
for it. It is the clean idea of sportsman-
ship here that makes Rugby a cleaner
game, in one respect, and not any power
of the referee or rules of Rugby. I no-
tice that when the New Zealand team
killed the full-back of an opposing team
on their late trip over here the Rugby
"enthusiasts" enthusiastically suppressed
all evidence in the papers. If he had
been a college man in the "old game" we
would never have heard the end of it.

Another thing which keeps down in-
juries is the careful medical supervision
and training, which prevents any man
not up to the pink of condition from
playing. Brown, Stanford's star full-
back, was kept from the big game be-
cause of minor injuries, whereas he would
have been allowed to play in many other
schools. It is a significant fact that
Stanford, having a regularly scheduled
game with Santa Clara ten days before
the "big game," called it off, for fear of
injury to some of Stanford's players. This
shows how much they care about playing
hard in practice games, and how the only
game they let loose in is the one big
game a year.

I believe it would be safe to say that
there are vastly more injuries proportion-
ately in Rugby in real contests than in
the other game. "Hurdling" is allowed;
you can kick a man and fall all over him
when he falls on the ball; the crowded

WHAT READERS THINK

383

"ruck" play and "scrum" give ample
chance for injury and dirty work.

As for Rugby being faster, you might
as well say baseball is faster, or basket-
ball, or soccer. The game is as fast as
the man. The fact that the New Zea-
land team was so fast does not show
Rugby is fast. Rugby is a pretty game
as a foot-race when one team is running
away from another, as the New Zealand
team did. Anyhow Rugby is not faster
as a game, and some of the lightning
combination plays of the "old game"
would make these boys' eyes hang out till
they could see their own shins.

Goldsmith claims Rugby is character-
ized by "clean tackling" — clean misses,
I call most of them. Why, a coach in
the "old game" would go wild over some
of the rotten tackling that goes on there.
They stand and wait for a man to come
to them, and then can't stop him even
when he don't "stiff arm." A Mahan or
a Guyon would run through a whole
Rugby team and they would wonder
what had struck them.

The only play of the whole year which
all vividly remember here (and Gold-
smith condescends to mention in his arti-
cle) was "Rougie" Macgregor's run in
the New Zealand game. It was pure
"old game" football and poor Rugby
(for you are supposed to "pass" in Rug-
by) and brought stands to their feet, as
no pure Rugby playing ever did. Mac-
gregor tucked the ball under his arm and
ran through the whole Stanford team, a
la "old game" style. Why, man, us "old
game" sports fairly wept with joy; it was
the real stuff like the good old days, and
the Rugby men had to admit that there
was more thrill in that one single-handed
run than in the whole season of Rugby
passing and kicking. Why, if there had
been a decent tackier on the team Mac-
gregor could never have done it, for he
didn't even have to use a "stiff arm." It
was awful, also, the way a team of "old"
men ran over these Rugby stars in a
mixed game at Los Angeles, Christmas —
25-2 was the score.

The fact that the boys out here wear
track "panties" should not deceive you,
for I notice the California team wear
"old style" pants clear up to the final
game, and leave them off only for speed

then. In the mud and cold weather of
Eastern fall games Rugby would be a
dismal failure, and is anyhow beside a
real game. I noticed that Carroll, the
star Australian on Stanford's team, was
careful to use headgear, etc., even in the
'-'big game."

We have been discussing Rugby as a
game; it is not a game, it is a foot-race.
The teamwork, the versatile combina-
tions and attacks, the well-planned inter-
ference, the man-to-man fight, are totally
absent. Goldsmith deprecates the efforts
of the "weight-lifting" tackle in the old
line. I guess his description of what he
thought the tackle does is a good showing
of his knowledge of the "old game," as
he calls it.

No team is given definite possession of
the ball. It is thrown in haphazard
from a "line-out," or into a "scrum," and
does not go definitely to one side to carry.
Frequent kicking "into touch," or, as we
would call it in the intercollegiate game,
"kicking out of bounds," mars the game,
however much skill in booting it displays,
for it takes out much time. This leaves
the element of pure luck a large sway,
and headwork and formations and real
teamwork go for naught.

I hope to enlist your favor in getting
Stanford and California back to the
"promised land" of the much-maligned
"intercollegiate football" after eight
years of "wandering in the wilderness"
of Rugby. Rugby is English ; Rugby is the
only thing the English ever "handed" us.
Hand it back. A pernicious faculty influ-
ence of "English" professors, and a train-
ing up of the "younger generation" here
to Rugby (in utter ignorance of a real
game) is what holds us shackled to this
track meet on a football field. I hope I
have given you a few pointers, though in
a Rambling Rameses style.

Yours very truly,
"An Eastern Stanfordite."

Stanford University, Cal.

Safety First

IT is evident that Mr. Crossman's
article, "Safety First," in the April
number, attracted wide attention as
a reasonable discussion of a vital prob-
lem. There is every prospect that the

384

OUTING

next few years will see a greatly increased
stringency in legislation governing the
possession and use of firearms. There
are few men who have done any shoot-
ing at all who are not familiar with the
dangers that arise from careless use of a
gun and who do not know of a number
of close calls or worse from that cause.
Some of the instances in the following
letter will find an echo in the memories
of all of us:

Editor, Outing:

I am writing you in appreciation of
E. C. Crossman's article, "Safety First,"
in the April Outing. I do not know
E. C. Crossman, but he should be
thanked by every careful shooter, and his
article, "Safety First," should be given
with every shooting license and posted in
every club-house and store where firearms
are sold.

As an example of how the careful
man is sometimes fooled, I will give my
experience with a box magazine rifle of
a well-known make. In the beginning
let me say that it was always my custom
when in the game country to carry the
rifle loaded and the hammer in the safety
notch.

One early fall day while walking

along a range line, I stumbled and fell at
full length, letting loose of the rifle as I
fell. I was brought out of my trance by
the roar of seventy-two grains of black
powder about six inches from my face.
An examination showed the hammer still
in the "safety" notch.

On another occasion, just after a fall
of snow, a tree unloaded about a bushel
of snow as I went under it. I was carry-
ing the rifle across my arm with the muz-
zle up and back. I was brushing the
snow off the receiver with my mittened
hand when I struck the hammer. The
rifle nearly jumped out of my hand. The
hammer was still in place in the "safety"
notch.

A careful investigation showed that
the firing-pin had enough play that when
the muzzle of the rifle was elevated the
firing-pin would rest against the ham-
mer, even though it was on the safety
notch. It was found by trial that if the
hammer was drawn back half way and
released it would fire the cartridge with-
out touching the trigger.

I wonder how many guns there are in
daily use in the country having the same
defect?

A. M. Allen.

Daysland, Alta.

THE POLE-VAULTER

Balancing 'twixt earth and sky
Unto you an instant's given
Shared with birds that soar and fly
In and from the vaulting heaven.

With a grace deliberate

That firm wand in hand retain you;

As a ladder starward set,

Yet a bond on earth to chain you.

Then: an agile twist and weave
Onward, upward, and you hover
Hawklike, as the rod you leave
Instantly, and down — you re over!

— From "The Athlete's Garland."
(Anonymous)

AT THE LAVA BEDS.

NEAR THE EDGE OF THE PINES

Illustration for "The Road to Betatakin'

OUTING

THE ROAD TO BETATAKIN

By JOHN OSKISON

Photographs by the Author and hy Charles A. McLean
I

ON THE WAY

THIS is a tale of hardship with the suffering left out. That's
the kind we all like — either to experience or to read ahout.
Mr. Oskison and his two companions had trouble enough, but
they were never in great danger of starvation, nor were they seri-
ously threatened by storm or cold. And yet it's a story of adventure
— adventure over new trails into a land new to them yet older
than history to the people who first set the monuments of a crude
civilization there. Look on the map and you will find it in north-
ern Arizona — which is a mere detail. The spirit is of the old
adventure, the desire to "go — look — see," that has characterized
explorers, large and small, from the beginning of time.

OME day I may meet Dr.
Fewkes, author of Bulletin 50
of the Bureau of American
Ethnology ; and, if I do, I shall
say to him:

"Sir, I now thank you for
the vagueness of your directions for get-
ting to the Arizona cliff-dweller ruins at
Marsh Pass. If I had happened to meet
you about noon of September 16, 1913,
however, I should have greeted you dif-
ferently!"

I took Bulletin 50 from New York,

and when I joined Martin in Chicago,

on September 5, I exhibited it proudly.

"Here's a miracle!" I said — "a scien-

tific investigator who tells how to get to
the ruins, as well as what they look like."
And while Martin gazed out of his office
window across the gray, restless lake, I
began to read :

"Three routes to the Navaho National
Monument have been used by visitors,
namely: (1) That from Bluff, Utah, by
way of Oljato or Moonwater Canyon;
(2) that from Gallup, New Mexico, via
Chin Lee Valley; and (3) that from
Flagstaff, via Tuba and the Moenkapi
wash. . . .

"The writer outfitted at Flagstaff,
Arizona, and, following the 'Tuba road,'
forded the Little Colorado at Tanners

[393]

394

OUTING

ACROSS THE GREAT SAND DUNES
NORTH OF TUBA CITY

Crossing, and continued on to Tuba, a
Navaho Indian agency situated near the
Moenkapi wash, where there is a trading
place at which provisions can be had.
The road from Flagstaff to Tuba is well
traveled " Martin interrupted:

"You've read all that. How far is it,
what kind of country does the road go
through, and how long will it take us to
go in there and get back?"

Martin is a busy man and had to be
back in Chicago on the afternoon of Sep-
tember 25.

"Why, that ought to be easy," I said,
relying upon the printed words of the
Government man. "We'll go in to the
Grand Canyon for two days, come back
to Flagstaff" on the night of the tenth,
allow one day to get an outfit together,
and pull out for Marsh Pass, 170 miles
to the north, early on the morning of
the twelfth. This book says it's five
sleeps to Marsh Pass. You see, that'll
take us to Marsh Pass for night camp
on the fifteenth. Then if we start back
on the morning of the eighteenth you
can get Number 6 out of Flagstaff after
supper on the twenty-second, and back
you'll be in plenty of time."

"Desert country?" asked Martin.

"All kinds," I said. "Dr. Fewkes had
evidently recovered from his enthusiasm
for scenery when he wrote this report;
but by reading it thoroughly I've discov-
ered that we shall have a wonderful pine
forest to go through, then a long slope
of cedar-covered country, a stretch of the
painted desert, a lake called red and one

which spreads out over a grassy expanse
at the mouth of a canyon, more cedars,
and at last a climb to Marsh Pass, which
I take to be in the mountains. Let me
read you one sentence I found hidden in
a page of talk about the peculiar culture
of the Hopi clans:

'' 'In previous years the writer had
often looked with longing eyes to the
mountains that formed the Hopi horizon
on the north, where these mysterious
homes of the Snake and Flue clans were
said to be situated, but had never been
able to explore them.' ':

"All right," Martin said. "Any
mountains which stir the imagination of
old Dry-as-dust ought to do for us. It's
all camping out, I suppose?"

"I think," I added, "that if we get a
buckboard, a driver, and two saddle-
horses we'll be sure of getting through
on time, and I'm crazy for some real
horseback riding."

"Sure, Joe Miller knows all that coun-
try between here and Tooby City; he's
rode it fer the Babbits; sure, it's a good
road into Marsh Pass — only when you
git up there you want to watch out fer
them Navahos! They have a way of
running off your stock into a canyon
somewher an' holding it till ye pay 'em
fer bringin' it back."

So said "Pop," at the blackened livery
barn down on the cross street to the right
as you go north from the Flagstaff sta-

MART1N AND I RODE HORSEBACK

LAVA FIELDS ARE BEHIND ME IN
THIS PICTURE

THE ROAD TO BETATAKIN

395

tlon. I asked "Pop" if he'd ever been to
Marsh Pass.

"No," he confessed, "I ain't never
been in any further than Tooby City."
Did he know anybody in Flagstaff who
had been to Marsh Pass? "No, but ye
git to Tooby City an' anybody can tell ye
how to git on to the Pass from there.
Joe, he knows all that country." Martin
sat his flea-bitten roan in silence, while
Joe and "Pop" loaded the last of the
bed-rolls into the back end of the buck-
board and lashed them fast. As we fox-
trotted out of Flagstaff the just-risen sun
was shining into our faces, and the pat-
terns of the great-stemmed scattering
pines against the red ball in the east
made us think of a Maxfield Parrish
picture. With his fresh team Joe Miller
hit up a fast pace on the splendid road
through the pines.

A big automobile caught up to us,
whizzed by, and was lost to sight in the
billowing pines beyond ; a Ford met us,
two women with streaming veils in the
tonneau turning unmistakable tourist
gaze upon us; another and yet another
automobile passed us, and just beyond
the sawmill (which seems to be a little
city in itself), we came to a sign nailed
high on a big tree:

"New Road and Graded Well;
Autos Now Can Go Like Hell!"

"They sure do, anyway!" said Mar-
tin, spurring his feebly-shying roan into
the road after pulling out the fifth time

A GRIM ADVERTISEMENT OF THE

DESERT — THE DONKEY'S SKELETON

SET UP BESIDE THE ROAD TO THE

NAVAHO COUNTRY

NAVAHO TRAVELERS — A MAN AND HIS

WIFE GOING TO THE TRADER'S

POST AT RED LAKE

for a whizzing, hooting car. When we
caught up to Joe Miller, at the end of the
second hour, we learned that the automo-
biles were taking tourists either to the
near-by cliff ruins south of Flagstaff or
to the lava beds which lay 25 miles out
on the Tuba road.

"Maybe it's all right," said Martin,
"but this looks too civilized to me." He
was pointing to long, straight lines of
new wire fence criss-crossing a wide,
lovely glade among the pines, and to the
neat new shacks of homesteaders. Shin-
ing pools of water lay in depressions in
the road, and over the San Francisco
Peaks hovered a flock of rain-laden
clouds.

"So far my only criticism of Arizona
is that it rains too much," he added so-
berly. It had rained most of the day we
were waiting for the assembling of our
outfit in Flagstaff; it had rained while
we were at the Grand Canyon; and as
he spoke Martin was untying his rain-
coat from the saddle. I felt sorry, but I
couldn't offer any convincing defense of
Arizona. I could only beg Martin to
look at the marvelous wild flowers which
made patches of pure color in the grass-
covered glades. That was as surprising
as the rain and the thunder — never have
I seen wild flowers of more delicate and
entrancing shades of color, more odorous,
when you got close enough to catch the
odor, or more vigorous. And the rain
and the driving wind in the tall, long-
needled yellow pines, with the sun trying
to break through a bank of whirling,
high-flung clouds!

^^|H|H

t \

fe>

■ i \ '''*

W a >,.;>

^Siwfik «®m t!> ■ v"'

. >|S^£vE| fK*

v .v.^^tB Hf •

^g^^K^M

\'V::\ .; •'. ";H

. %■*. Br .i .• ' ■ G

- s

Ji •' -

f't

' v

■mS^ i

■**«w! wtr^ . _ r— ■

THE ROAD TO BETATAKIN

397

Twenty-two miles from Flagstaff, ac-
cording to Joe's figures, we came into the
cedars at the further edge of the great
Coconino National Forest and made noon
camp. The brief rain had ceased ; the
sky was brilliant and cloudless.

It was our first getting-acquainted
time. Joe is of the cowboy breed ; he
had never acted as a guide and buckboard
driver before; he had put away his spurs,
boots and wide hat, but the sagging,
opened vest and the tiny wrinkles at the
corners of his blue eyes remained to verify
the stories he told us later of his years
of work on the Coconino range and
down on the Gila River.

Joe made some sort of feeble attempt
to play the conventional guide — I be-
lieve he called out to us that he'd unsad-
dle and feed our horses — but neither
Martin nor I would stand for it. While
Martin led our two horses to a cedar and
unsaddled, I went to help Joe unhitch
his team and convert four grain-bags
into nose-bags ; then Joe distributed some
of the oats from the supply under the
seat of the buckboard, Martin built a
fire, and I hauled off the bed-rolls which
lay atop the grub-boxes.

"You fellows hungry?" asked Joe, the
smile of a friend and intended benefactor
breaking across his sun-burned face.

"Hungry!" cried Martin, a savage
note in his voice. "It's nearly 1 o'clock,
and ever since 11 I've been expecting
you to stop and give us something to eat.
I feel like this: If I should eat a third
of all the grub we've got with us I'd be
just right for a good smoke! Come on,
what are we goin' to have?"

Joe was hungry and I was hungry,
so we opened a can of beans, a can of
tomatoes, a can of corn and a can of
peaches; we sliced some bacon and mu-
tilated a loaf of bread; we drank tea
from our shiny new tin cups. Long be-
fore we saw the bottom of the stewpan
in which we had cooked the conglomer-
ate mess of beans, tomatoes and corn we
were eating languidly and moving into
position for an orderly attack on the can
of peaches. At the very end we simply
had to leave two luscious half-slices of
peaches in the can, which we sent rolling
under a cedar. Next Joe rolled a cig-
arette; Martin lighted a pipe, leaned

back against the trunk of a cedar, and
stretched out his legs.

"Little stiffness, just there," said Mar-
tin, touching the inside of his knees.

"I'm untouched!" I boasted, reaching
for the tobacco. Joe smiled blandly in
our faces and said nothing definite ex-
cept:

"Twenty-three miles further to the
Half-way House, an' we got to sift!" He
consulted his dollar watch, then strode
forth to harness the rested team. I re-
packed the buckboard, and Martin re-
saddled — nobody washed the dishes!

Just after we started from our camp-
ing place we met a Navaho freighting
outfit — a big, wide-tired wagon piled high
with woolsacks and dried sheepskins, and,
snubbed close up to it, a smaller "trail-
er," piled not quite so high with the same
merchantable wealth of the desert In-
dians. Pulling these two wagons were
eight animals ranging in size and shape
from a big burro to a tall, gaunt-flanked
horse. As the train rattled and squeaked
up the long, gentle slope, two Indian
drivers employed themselves in energetic
assaults upon the team. A third sat
among the woolsacks in front.

"Ho, Navaho!" cried Joe, pulling up,
whereupon the tall fellow, halting the
lead team before which he wTalked, came
to a stand beside our buckboard. Joe
gave him the makings of a cigarette, and,
jerking his head back in the direction of
Flagstaff, asked "You go Flag?"

"O-o-h," said the Navaho, using the
gently spoken tribal word that means
"yes"; he finished rolling the cigarette
before he spoke again. He was one of
the tall, thin, long-haired fellows; he
wore no hat, but a band of dull blue was
about his forehead, and his hair was done
up at the back in a tightly bound flat
knot which sagged below the level of his
ears. About his neck was knotted an
ample blue handkerchief; he wore a
brown smock-like shirt outside his blue,
tight-hipped overalls. His feet, splendid
in size and toughness, were bare. Small,
crude squares of turquoise, pierced near
one edge, were tied with bits of woolen
string into his ears, while about his neck
hung a wonderful necklace of hollow
silver beads, terminating in a finely
wrought triple crescent of beaten silver

398

OUTING

A NAVAHO MAIL CARRIER

in which small bits of turquoise were
set.

"Over there — water, no?" So this
Navaho could speak English ! But Joe
replied with the slow, careful intonations
of a mother teaching her baby to say
"da-da":

"Plenty water all along — mucho rain,
sabe?" The Navaho nodded. Joe ex-
plained to us:

"He wants to know if he has to go
round by Indian Tanks to find water —
we didn't come that road." The second
driver of the Navaho outfit, a shy youth
who leaned against the shoulder of one
of the mules flicking the short leather lash
of his whip, spoke to the big Indian.

" Plenty good road?" the
tall fellow asked.

"Ah-h bueno, bueno!" as-
sured Joe (as Joe said it,
the Spanish word became
"wano!"). After another
minute of contemplation the
Navaho went back to his
team, picked up the whip
he had dropped, and began
silently to flog the pulling
stock into action. We rode
on over Deadman's Flat,
through the sprawling, or-
chard-like cedars, and out
upon the tongue of a grass-
covered promontory.

At our right the lava beds,
black and fantastically ser-
rated, rose to some small
peaks, while to the left
dropped a plain which
stretched clear to the canyon
of the Colorado, fifty miles.
Ahead of us, for seventy
miles, rolled the desert, dip-
ping to the great depression
through which the Little
Colorado River runs.

In the black-bound book
by Dr. Fewkes, that stretch
of road from Indian Tanks
to the Half-way House is
called a semi-arid desert,
"where wood and water are
hard to find." Presently,
when we were two miles or
more from the cedars, Mar-
tin recalled that description.
"Why didn't we load some wood into
the buckboard before we left the timber!"
"Gee, I'd hate to think we were pro-
vided with everything!" I protested.
"Anyway, I'll bet Joe knows how to
take care of himself in this country. . . .
Wonder what he's pointing to?" Four
hundred yards ahead of us Joe was
thrusting his left arm over the side of
the buckboard and holding in his plung-
ing horses. We spurred ahead, but Joe
did not stop.

Close beside the road, in a clump of
sparse, waving grass, knelt a gruesome,
cynical advertisement of the desert. It
was the hide-clothed, dried-up skeleton of
a burro; its front legs were doubled un-

THE ROAD TO BETATAKIN

399

der, its rump was heaved high as if mak-
ing the effort to rise; its jaws were open,
and some Indian whose sense of humor
ran to the ironical had stuffed a liberal
handful of grass between the teeth.

"Look at it!" cried Martin. "That —
that thing is one of the perfect symbols.
I've read lots about the desert, and talked
a lot with desert men, but I never before
got just this impression, and its placing
is perfect!" He looked back toward
the green freshness of the cedars, then
pointed forward to where Joe's team was
disappearing over the edge of the shim-
mering mesa-tongue.

The day rolled on, and we with it.
For the last hour and a half before we
came to the Half-way House
Martin and I rode in grim
silence. I assumed that he
was suffering as terribly as I,
and therefore refrained from
asking him what I wanted to
ask — whether he, too, was
tired in every fiber, racked
like a child who has come
dowm with diphtheria, mad-
dened by the endless jog-jog
of the ponies, furious at the
vision of Joe Miller lolling
in the buckboard seat whis-
tling his team forward.

The sun had sunk below
the top of the long mesa run-
ning away to a promontory
which Joe Miller told us
was Coconino Point when
we topped a slight rise to see,
two miles ahead, a blank-
walled stone house, with a
corrugated iron roof. Joe,
reaching it, turned out of the
road and stopped his team
close to a covered buggy to
which a pair of tiny black
Indian ponies was hitched.
It was the Half-wTay House,
built by the Indian Office as
a shelter for the Government
people who travel the ninety-
mile road between Flagstaff
and Tuba.

We forced aching and stiff-
ened muscles to the task of
unsaddling and unharnessing;
Joe slipped the feed-bags

over the ears of our horses, as I tumbled
the bed-rolls to the ground and yanked
out the grub-boxes wTith a feeling that it
would probably be the last time in this
world I should want food. There was
a completeness of desolation about this
Half-way House and its desert and rock
surroundings that seemed to make even
the symbol of the skeleton mule inade-
quate.

By now we had passed out of the re-
gion of casual pools of rain-water, and
from this time forward the thought of
where we should find the next water was
never absent from our minds. Close be-
side the Half-way House was a stink-
ing, nearly dry pond, but Joe told us

THE TWO YOUNG TRADERS WHO KEPT THE STORE
AT RED LAKE

400

OUTING

that good clean water lay at the bottom
of the deep gash in the earth a hundred
yards away. So, as the last daylight
was fading, we scrambled down to a
lovely and mysterious pool in the rocks,
leading our sliding ponies; it was dark
as we climbed up in the face of the stars.
Our fire we built of a tiny handful of
splinters and charred stick-ends, but later
Joe made short, rather unsuccessful ex-
cursions into the encroaching desert in
search of dead sticks of sage brush. A

A NAVAHO HERDSMAN

high wind fanned the flame into a wav-
ing banner of pure color — a fire of quick
flame and a little heat, as we discovered
while waiting with a desperate patience
for the coffee water (taken from a keg
in the buckboard) to boil. As we were
pouring this finally boiling water into
our cups on a prepared coffee we had
fortunately been advised to take, the
driver of the buggy came suddenly
upon us.

He was a young Navaho, taller than
the driver we had met, with a general
effect of being dressed in black velveteen.
Coming swiftly toward our fire, he stood
silent within two feet of me. By this
time the smell of something Martin and
Joe were cooking had made me wolfish,
and it was all I could do to restrain my-
self from springing upon the intruding
Navaho to push him away from our
camp. I asked him instead to join us;
he smiled an assent, and, later, after un-

harnessing his team and feeding it, he
produced from the bottom of his buggy
a round, delicious casaba melon, which
he offered us with another brilliant smile
of friendliness. I was then completely
reconciled to having him as the compan-
ion of our first desert night.

"Let's take a look at our quarters,"
suggested Martin, as Joe stolidly tackled
the job of cleaning our dishes with a
frying-pan full of hot water. It was
dark by now, though as we went round
to the door, facing the east, we could see
that a moon would soon be up. In the
pit blackness of the stone house we
struck matches and wondered why we
hadn't remembered candles.

Dirt floor, a rough stone fireplace, and
a window closed with a heavy wooden
shutter — that was absolutely all to be
seen, except for a doorway leading into
the other room, closed by a heavy steel
grating. We explored for but a mo-
ment, and as we retreated into the star-
light Martin shook the steel grating and
called out to Joe :

"One room of this shack seems to be
a prison — what's the idea?"

"They do use it for that sometimes,"
said Joe. "Whenever any of them Nav-
ahos goes wild and have to be arrested
and brought out under guard they keep
'em here over night. They's bars on the
window in the other end of the house.
You fellows goin' to sleep in there?"

"Not for a million dollars — ugh!"
Martin began to figure out the exact
spot outside the walls of the stone house
where we would be longest shielded
from the light of the now-rising full
moon. There he spread the tarpaulin,
oblivious to the circumstance that a mo-
saic of small stones made the foundation
of his bed.

"H-a-a-a-a-a-h!" Martin's sigh as he
stretched himself under the blankets was
as good to hear, and nearly as long drawn
out, as the gruntings of a tired mule that
rolls over seven times in the dust of the
barnyard.

"Same here!" I grunted, but presently
I began to twist my body just a bit to
get away from a sharp-cornered little
rock that was boring a hole between my
shoulder-blades. A little turn would do,
I thought; of course I had expected that

THE ROAD TO BETATAKIN

401

the ground would be hard with only a
tarpaulin, a rubber poncho and one pair
of double blankets between me and it.
But that durned stone jabbed me wher-
ever I moved ! I sat up to run my hand
under the tarpaulin, capture the pebble,
and heave it across the road. Now I'd
be all right !

I was — for five minutes; then other
stones began to rise up through the blan-
kets and search out my bony structure.
For the sake of historical accuracy, I will
add that just when I had decided all was
serene lor sleeping, the song of an un-
doubted mosquito greeted my ears. I
rose up cursing.

"So, you hear 'em, too, do you?"
asked Martin in a tired voice. "Mos-
quitoes at a dry camp in the desert, in a
high wind, with the temperature close to
freezing — this is the last touch !" And
it was growing cold ! Martin and I
waited the attack of the humming mos-
quitoes, but it never came ; at length we
realized that they were harmless. We
groaned, turned, watched the shifting
shadow of the stone house, refolded the
coats we had arranged as pillows, made
low-pitched conversation on the proba-
bility of being able to ride to-morrow. I
reared up again to see if Joe and the
Navaho were able to sleep. Yes; there
they lay, unstirring heaps, utterly dead
to the world, as still as though the moon
had stricken them into eternal oblivion.

Presently a faint, far-away humming,
a strangely familiar vibration, began
beating in my ears. I shifted to the

NOON CAMP HALF WAY BETWEEN

THE LITTLE COLORADO RTVER AND

TUBA CITY

JOE MILLER AND HIS OUTFIT

other side, and yet the sound did not
cease. I felt it growing more distinct,
yet by degrees so slight that it might be
some subtlety of a waking dream. Long
and long I lay quiet and listened, and at
last Martin spoke:

"What's that noise?"

"Yes — what?" I said, and once more
sat up. My eyes searched the vast moon-
lit distances — the sound might be com-
ing from any one of half a dozen points
of the compass. Grayness and silence
— except for that throbbing murmur.
Then, suddenly, a faint, far gleam of
light sprang into view on the desert.

"Say, what's that light?" I pointed
eagerly. Martin sat up, looked, and an-
swered in a matter-of-fact tone :

"Automobile — we might have recog-
nized that sound ; but she's a long way
off yet." The car was really more than
twenty-five miles away then — when we
first caught the sound of its running it
must have been almost thirty miles
from us.

Well, we had another hour of wake-
fulness until the automobile came roar-
ing up the grade, flooding us and the
Half-way House in the glare of its head-
lights as it passed on toward Flagstaff.
I laughed, and said to Martin:

"Remember what the Doctor says
about the road from Flagstaff to Tuba —
one of the best in this part of Arizona —
best traveled, I suppose he meant. I
hope we won't be kept awake all night
by passing automobiles! I'll dream
we're in New York."

"Well, it's sure a strange country!'1
confessed Martin.

But that was the. l$t mo|or we saw
on the trip! '*'

402

OUTING

Before either Martin or I woke at
sunrise Joe was out of sight on the trail
of our hobbled horses. Those intelligent
beasts must have remembered the good
grazing they passed on the road from
Flagstaff, for Joe had to walk three
miles before he caught up to them, and
by the time he came back Martin and I

stopped to ask every question we could
think of, merely to hear the slow, care-
ful reply. He was a well-dressed, clean-
limbed man, looking straight at us when
he talked.

"Is that the kind they call 'Greasers'
out here?" asked Martin as we rode up
to Joe Miller.

HERE IS TYPICAL DESERT; THE SAN FRANCISCO PEAKS IN THE BACKGROUND
ARE A LONG DAY'S DRIVE AWAY

had some sort of a breakfast ready. Joe
arrived swearing that he would never
let the blank, blank-blanks loose again.
But when he saw us two tenderfeet hob-
bling gamely about the camp he lost his
ill-humor, and over the coffee told us
that he'd met a picturesque Mexican who
had camped half a mile away on the sky-
line toward the west (with his saddle-
horse and two burros), and was now
heading for Tuba, probably on his way
to some sheep camp in Utah.

Later we had the opportunity to ob-
serve the Mexican's outfit as we passed
him on the long hill just beyond the
Half-way House. It was a good outfit —
an excellent saddle-horse, a modern sad-
dle ; the burros were strong and in good
condition ; the grub-boxes slung from one
of the pack-saddles looked like polished
rosewood bound with brass. A plain,
big six-gun was hanging from the Mex-
ican's belt, and in a scabbard at his sad-
dle-horn was thrust a modern, high-pow-
ered rifle. As we came up to him Mar-
tin spoke. The answer came in English
of an academic correctness, and in a voice
of velvet smoothness. Martin and I

"Uh-huh," said Joe, and then ex-
plained : "They's all kinds of Mexicans,
o' course — people call 'em all 'Greasers,'
same as you call all the Navahos an'
Yumas an' Apaches an' Utes an' Hava-
supais Indians. That was a mighty high-
grade feller fer a Mexican."

As the morning wore on we dropped
behind Joe, letting our horses walk, while
we shifted in our saddles, hanging first
one and then the other of our bruised
and stiffened legs over the saddle-horn in
the hope of getting some relief from the
racking pain of riding. So far we fell
behind that we had to gallop half a mile
and trot fast for another mile before we
picked up the team ; and this faster rid-
ing showed us — well — I imagine that if
Charley Brickley of Harvard went into
the annual football game against Yale
without any training, and next day had
to play the whole afternoon against
Princeton, he would be able to sympa-
thize intelligently with Martin and me
as we hit that forty miles of rainbow
desert road between the Half-way
House and the peach orchard, in which
we camped at Tuba City. None of you

THE ROAD TO BETATAKIN

403

casual readers can understand just how
we felt.

To you I will merely suggest that if
you want to understand, get some strong
friend to beat you all over for an hour
or two with a heavy wooden maul (omit-
ting no part of your anatomy), then
spend next day rehearsing with a troupe
of circus acrobats. If you'll do that, I
may count upon you to grasp the fact
that Martin and I were glad to get down
from our mounts at noon camp, miles
beyond the Little Colorado, on the edge
of a water-hole paved with three feet
of red mud. Near the opposite edge of
this rainy weather lake in the sand-hills
(to which we had been pointed by a
cairn of stones built by the Navahos on
a hill beside the road) floated a flock of
silent ducks. During the hour we stayed
there those ducks scarcely stirred.

Late in the afternoon we dropped
down from the road which runs along-
side reddish, crumbling gargoyle cliffs
and crossed the Moenkapi wash on a

"Or green and peaceful as a vale in
Arcady!" I pointed forward to the
fields of the Hopis, whose last outpost
in this Western Navaho land is the vil-
lage settlement called Moenkapi (the
place of running water!).

"Sure," said Martin. "As I get the
story from the history and ethnology
sharks, these very fields may be older
than the briar-covered and abandoned
farms of Cape Cod."

Our road ran between the fields and
the foot of a shouldering wall of red rock
in the fantastically eroded crevices of
which were erected the brush summer
shelters of the families who tilled the
fields. Children swarmed over the rocks,
companions of the goats and the dogs;
old women and young sat in highly col-
ored groups, sheer curiosity lighting their
faces as we rode past; in the fields men
worked deliberately at the corn-stalks,
hilled so high that the ears all but
dragged on the ground ; melons of all
shapes, sizes and colors lay between the

UNDER THE SAN FRANCISCO PEAKS

stout wooden bridge. A great volume of
silt-laden water rushed between the per-
pendicular banks of the wash, and close
to the bridge was the stranded trunk of a
huge cottonwood.

"This country is violent when it gets
going!" said Martin, pointing to the
drifted tree-trunk.

widely spaced hills of corn; here and
there the more vivid green of an alfalfa
patch showed, and down by the main
wash, or beside the ancient ditches which
bear the rich, silt-laden water to the
fields between rounded banks hidden by
grass, rose beautiful old cottonwoods.
There were orchards, too, their fruits

404

OUTING

ripening to a tempting redness. At
frames stretched either out of doors or
just inside the wide entrances of the
brush shelters, women were working
slowly at the making of blankets ; scarlet
strings of peppers hung about on poles
and over fences, and yellow strips of
melon (perhaps they were squash) were
drying beside piles of multi-colored corn
ears.

Color — vivid and appealing — was
everywhere, the more marvelous for its
contrast with the pale glory of the desert.
Up on the mesa top, where the perma-
nent stone and adobe houses of the Hopis
are set, there was more color and more
movement. Great piles of golden corn
were spread on the roofs to dry; an old
woman was bathing a very active and
angry child with water dipped from a
huge earthenware olla; another five-year-
old, stark naked, played with some com-
panions in the empty bed of a farm-
wagon (he resolutely turned a shy back
on me when I wanted to get his pic-
ture!).

"This is a piece of the Orient, cer-
tainly!" said Martin, as he turned the
head of his flea-bitten roan toward the
edge of the mesa and looked out across
the fields of the Hopis, across the broken
point of the long mesa beyond the wash,
and on across the Little Colorado clear
to Coconino Point and the Grand Can-
yon. He liked it!

"Unchanging, silent, vast, smeared
with color! And these people! They
aren't Indians, but Orientals." Martin
knew what impression he got from this
sudden, amazing Moenkapi — so did I ;
but neither he nor I could put it into
words. We turned our horses' heads
at last toward the grove of tall poplars
in the distance which, Joe assured us, hid
Tuba City.

Tuba City is a monument to the en-
terprise and persistence of the pioneer
Mormons. More than thirty years ago
they came upon the spring in the hills
and said, "Here we will stop and build
a settlement!" So they dug out the big
spring, led ditches away from it, cut
fields out of the rank sagebrush, and
planted two long, unbelievable rows of
poplar trees. Years later the Govern-
ment came along and bought fields,

ditches and buildings for an Indian
boarding-school.

A trader (a quiet, wise and hospitable
man whose hair is turning gray) has a
new store at one end of the long alley of
poplars. It is an octagonal affair of
white stone, lighted by skylights in a
tower roof; below, behind its heavy
doors, the store is a wonderful affair of
mounting shelves and counters which
run around the walls, topped by heavy
wire screens. Here oats for our horses
cost $4 a sack (Joe thought at that they
must come to about a cent apiece, but he
exaggerated), and we couldn't get any
alfalfa at all. As a special favor, the
farmer attached to the Government
school sold us, for $2, a bale which I
could carry under my arm.

"I feel sorry fer these horses if they
ain't no better grass from here on than
we've had so far!" said Joe with gloom.
We camped in an orchard on the school
grounds (on the very spot, the school far-
mer assured us, where Colonel Roosevelt
had pitched his camp three weeks be-
fore), and four restless cows plodded
snuffing about our buckboard all night.
There was rain in the night, just a
sprinkle, and when daybreak came we
rose up to view a freshened and glorious
world. Miraculously all our stiffness
had vanished. We moved about with
pleasure; our breakfast was a symphony
of tempting food (though I couldn't
prove it merely by telling what we had
to eat), and we were impatient to get
away for Red Lake.

"If I was in your place, boys," said
the farmer, coming upon us at breakfast,
"I'd not try to get any fu'ther than Red
Lake to-day. Let the horses rest another
hour or two, and after breakfast you
come on over into the orchard across
the road and load up with peaches and
apples."

I shall always remember Mr. Stan-
ton, the farmer, as a man with a high
estimate of true hospitality. In the lot
where our horses had been turned was
spread a liberal supply of the precious
alfalfa; while the fruit he insisted upon
loading into our buckboard proved to be
the manna we best appreciated in the
next seven days. We figured, from the
talk of the men at the trader's store and

406

OUTING

that of Mr. Stanton, that by starting at
ten o'clock we could easily make Red
Lake, twenty-five miles away, by sunset.

I hauled Dr. Fewkes's book from
under the cushion of the buckboard as
we turned away from Mr. Preston's
store and headed for Red Lake.

"Beyond Tuba," I read, "the road is
rough, running over upturned strata of
rocks and extending along sandy stretches

Moenkapi wash. About noon we looked
back and saw through the heat haze a
monstrous black thunder-cloud coming
across the desert we had passed over the
day before. An hour later it hit us; at
first, instead of rain, this fierce-driven
storm hurled sand upon

hurled sand upon us! Sand
wonderful streamers, sand in high-tossed
waves, sand in outspread, obscuring cur-
tains blown fantastically, sand in whirl-

NAVAHO VISITORS AT OUR NOON CAMP

of plain and hills to Red Lake." I wish
that we, too, could have been as happily
unconscious of the flight of hours as to
dismiss that twenty-five miles of going
in so brief a passage! But, oh, the weari-
ness of that road ! Straight out of the
Sabbath calm of the fat, green oasis of
Tuba and the lush fields of Moenkapi
we plunged, at ten o'clock of a blistering
morning, into heavy sand and sparse
sagebrush. The sand dragged at the
wheels of the buckboard, the horses
crawled ; the heat became a shivery, bru-
tal thing. Martin and I tied handker-
chiefs over our faces to protect our noses
and eyelids from the burning reflection
of the sun on the reddish sand, but Joe
drove on unnoticing.

Mile after mile this road mounted
gradually to the backbone of a mesa lying
parallel with the upper reaches of the

ing spirals, and sand in dull, level-driven
streams whipped, stung and caressed us,
sifted into our hair and through our
clothes. It was a roaring, stunning sort
of assault, but luckily it came upon us
from behind. We plodded on, hunched
against it under our ponchos, in default
of anything better to do. Then came
the torrent dow-npour.

An hour later we scrambled dowrn
over a mass of that upturned rock the
doctor spoke about in his book to a nar-
row valley covered with greasewood.
Here in new fallen pools was water for
the horses, and we made two-o'clock
camp before a ruined stone structure that,
years ago, must have been the home of
some adventurous white man, for no
Navaho ever built so solidly or took so
much care in fashioning a fireplace. Per-
haps the southward-faring Mormons had

THE TRADERS POST AT RED LAKE

tried to make this end of the greasewood
valley flourish — a cottonwood or two
hinted this. Joe came back from water-
ing his team at the rain-pools to say that
the stream in the flood-full arroyo was
too alkaline for him even to swim in.

"Is there enough water for that?"
asked Martin eagerly.

"They's enough," said Joe, "but / sure
wouldn't hop into that alkali water!"

"Why not?" Martin and I both called
as we struck across the sand toward the
stream. The sun was at full force again !

"Ye can't tell what it might do to tne
skin," warned Joe; "maybe it'll burn
right through!" but we only laughed
at him.

Down-stream a little way we came
upon one of the loveliest pools I ever
saw. It had been ground out of the soft
rock to a depth of four and a half feet,
and in the center was a perfect rock table,
its top rising just to the surface of the
pool. On both sides of the pool rose
fifteen-foot walls of soft rock, closer to-
gether at the top than at the pool's edge.

NOON CAMP ON THE LITTLE COLORADO AT THE OLD TANNERS CROSSING

[407]

408

OUTING

A tiny waterfall let the flow from the
wash into the pool.

In that pool it was cool — we forgot
our weariness there. Saddle soreness and
the excruciating tenderness of our sun-
blistered and sand-abraded faces were
both forgotten. We stayed so long in
the pool, and took so long a time after-
wards to eat the good meal we cooked
that there wasn't more than an hour of
sunlight left when we started on. We
knew that it must be ten miles or more
to Red Lake, and when we struck the
road through the greasewood we found
that the rain had turned it into a night-
mare of a road, inches deep with adobe
mud, than which nothing in the world is
more sticky or slippery.

As we splashed and slid on darkness
fell; then the big full moon came up,
turning the rain-pools by the road into
patches of quiet silver. Back and forth
across the wTide flat, seeking the dryest
going, the vague road to Red Lake mean-
dered ; now we rode for a time under the
shadow of tall cliffs, then we scraped our
stirrups against a moonlighted palisade
showing fantastic carvings and unex-
pected recesses where branch arroyos
broke in from the desert above.

Occasionally the road became firm.
Under the brilliant moonlight we could
see that the buckboard made only a faint
track ; at those times we heard Joe's faint
and cheerful whistling far ahead of us.
We had no incentive to hurry, for we
knew that at the next stretch of sticky
going we should come up to the buck-
board again ; while our horses were
fagged to the point where it was sheer
cruelty to urge them beyond a walk.

Martin began to whistle, let the notes
of his melody die away, and rode forward
with his handr, piled lightly on the sad-
dle-horn and his head lifted. I tried to
fit some of the Western songs and bal-
lads I had learned in my youth to the
mood of vast silence and remoteness
which came upon us. But they wouldn't
fit. Think of trying to fill the silver si-
lence with this:

"My ceiling's the sky, my floor it's the grass,
My music the lowing of herds as they pass;
My books are the brooks, my sermons the

stones ;
My parson's a wolf on his pulpit of bones."

or that night-herding song of Harry
Stephens' :

"Oh, slow up, dogies, quit your rovin' around,
You have wandered and tramped all over

the ground ;
Oh, graze along, dogies, an' feed kinda slow,
An' don't forever be on the go —
Oh, move slow, dogies, move slow !"

"No," said Martin, after listening for
a while, "they won't do ; the cowboy sent
his muse to bed at sunset. Daytime and
the rattle and bang of the round-up and
the dance-hall he could express, but he
was afraid to talk about the stars and the
moon !"

"What about this? — I've just remem-
bered it." And I quoted:

"The window curtain of heaven is pinned

back by the stars,
And the dewdrops are kissing the roses."

"I learned that from a cow-puncher."

"I suppose they sing 'Barbara Allen,'
too, don't they?" asked Martin. "Such
things are like imported sweets, Oriental
dates and such — you eat 'em, but you
don't regard 'em as vital to your happi-
ness. What's the realest Western song
you know?"

' 'The Old Chisholm,' of course."

"And that's rag-time!"

No, it wouldn't do! Perhaps all that
long procession of gold-hunters, Mormon
missionaries, traders and cowboys who
have passed across the vast moonlighted
desert learned that it is not sound which
expresses its spirit. Its eternal remote-
ness and silence, the great masses of light
and shadow which meet the eye as the
trail leads up and down and around the
mesas, the faintly sweet breath of sun-
dried vegetation cooling — who could put
these into rhyme? People speak of the
shrill, throat-straining yelping of the
coyote as the typical night voice of the
desert; to me, the coyote's challenge and
answer no more fits the desert night's
mood than the clanking of a steam pipe
chimes with the solemnity of a cathedral
interior.

Better is the deliberate, sweetly melan-
choly voice of the owl that lives in the
rocks. Martin and I heard it when we
were still two miles from Red Lake, and
we listened for each repetition of the
long-drawn "Whoo-hoo-hu-hoo!" with

THE ROAD TO BETATAKIN

409

every sense alert, riding so that there
should be the least possible squeaking of
saddle leather. That voice is like the
soft tap of a prompter's gong heard as the
curtain goes up on the first scene of a
desert drama. You could shut your eyes
on hearing the hoot of the rock-owl and
evoke dramas to fit exactly into the mood
of the night. Its voice is only a hint,
like a whiff of perfume you once smelled,
like the break in the voice of a friend
noted but once — yet it swings wide for
you those magic casements opening on
the perilous seas of the sand-swept desert
— and the tossing continents of memory.

But the Arizona Keats has not yet
made his songs !

Red Lake is another hexagonal trader's
store, a stout palisade corral, with a com-
bination stable and hay-barn, about as
big as a freight-car, built of stone — all
set on the barren shoulder of a hill. Up
to a height of ten feet the store is built
of stone ; a wooden second story has been
added, and there the two young men who
manage the store live in a large pleasant
room, gay with Navaho rugs and pic-
tures cut from magazines.

There are doors to this room opening
straight on space, as well as broad win-
dows; imaginary lines only mark the
boundaries of kitchen, dining-room, of-
fice and bedrooms; hats and coats hang
on spikes driven into the huge center

( To be c

pole which runs up through the floor to
the peak of the roof.

From one elevated doorway, with a
friendly, excited dog beside him, one of
the }'oung men greeted us, while the
other hurried out to help us unharness
and turn our horses into the corral.
Then he piloted us up stairs that led
steeply from the wareroom piled with
flour-sacks and boxes of canned goods.
The two made welcome guests of us ; the
Navaho beef they sliced and fried, fol-
lowed by hot cakes and syrup, tasted
about as good as anything ever set before
hungry travelers.

We had expected to unroll our tar-
paulins on the wret ground. Instead,
Martin and I piled Navaho blankets
from the stack in the corner of the store-
room, placed our own bedding on top,
and went to sleep with our heads close
to the open door. All night the cool
breath of the desert swept in ; until I
lost myself in sleep, I listened for the
faint hoot of the rcck-owls. The store
cat streaked across us unafraid, pounded
up the steps with the noise of an army,
fled down wTith the merest whisper of
sound, going about its hunting through
the store-room with all the practised thor-
oughness of a veteran. Upstairs Joe
talked long and late wTith the two traders
before occupying the bed they offered.
He did not even unroll his own bedding.

ontinued)

Next month Mr. Oskison tells how they were lost and
found again and how they found the ruined city of Kitseel
— older than history — last record of a vanished people

THROUGH THE SWAMPS TOWARD LAKE NATRON

IN BACK OF BEYOND

By STEWART EDWARD WHITE

Photographs by the Author

SWAMPS AND SWAMP-DWELLERS

TN previous issues Mr. White has described their hard grind
* through the ranges to reach the pleasant hunting ground that
was promised them. They have already encountered many of the
trials of travel in an unknown land, and unfriendly natives have
increased the difficulties of trail finding. In the last issue they
came at last into their "Pleasant Valley" on the far side of the main
range and turned east toward Lake Natron, their first objective
point. Now they begin to encounter swamps and have a taste of
native buffalo hunting.

EXT morning we all
marched by my blazes to
the bend of the river, still
doubtful as to whether we
could get around the cliff.
There to our delight we
found a monkey trail. A half-hour's
work widened it so we could lead the
animals around the forty feet of cliffs.
We then found ourselves in a wide
canyon bordered by low and diminishing

hills and thickly grow^n wTith dense thorn
scrub. The river wound from side to
side, leaving a flat, first to right, then to
left. This meant finding a ford every
mile or so and getting donkeys through it
- — no small task, as they remembered
their former experience. It meant that
we waded across several times to find a
way; that all the men had to lay down
their loads and form double lines (hip-
deep), between which those besotted

r-noi

Began in April OUTING

IN BACK OF BKYOND

411

donkeys were to go ; and that
a howling mob of us gave
each beast individual and
protracted attention to get
him into the water at all.
We were alternately wet to
the waist and baked by the
furnace-heat. When we had
had enough, which was gen-
erally by noon, we camped
in the scrub.

The trouble was we did
not seem to be getting any-
where. The small hills on
either side looked always the
same; the river did not vary.
Then one morning at about
ten o'clock we came upon a
crude dam that backed the
water up in a long, deep
pool. A friendly native —
the first human being this
side the Ranges — appeared
on the opposite bank and
shouted at us.

Since he seemed to know of
no crossing by which we could get over to
his side, I struck off to the left, soon
found a rhino trail along the side hills,

SHAVED HEAD OF PORTER

and signalled the rest to come on. Across
the river I could see bananas and other
signs of cultivation. I went on ahead,

WILDEBEESTE IN THE SCRUB AT THE FOOT OF THE RANGE

LARGE HERDS OF THE ORDINARY GAME

blazing a way. About two miles down I
struggled through a particularly dense
thicket — and came out plop ! on an old
beanfield and easy walking ! The moun-
tains had let go of us at last !

It certainly felt good to stride out up-
right and unimpeded. We went down
the old beanfield, crossed the river again
at a little rapids, and struck across an-

other beanfield. High up on the side of
the mountain we finally made out a na-
tive village, its scattered roofs so much
like the gray rocks about them that for a
long time none of us distinguished them.
Here an old man met us and signalled
us to follow him. He took us at right
angles through the field out onto a broad
path, led us past a second dam, and up to

A WASONZI HUT

[4121

THE OPEN COUNTRY. NOTE GAME ON LEFT SIDE

EXAMPLES OF FANCY HEAD SHAVING AMONG OUR PORTERS

IN BACK OF BEYOND

417

a little open patch among the scrub.
Here were some trees. He seemed to
think that a good place for us to camp.
We agreed with him, in the first place
because we were tired, and in the second
because we wanted to get into communi-
cation with his people.

A half-hour's work cleared us a shady
room in the thicket.

By this time a dozen savages were in
camp. They resembled the Kikuyus some-
what, only they were better built, wore a
negligent skin across the shoulder, and
were armed exclusively with bows and
arrows and short swords. Their expres-
sion was alert and intelligent, and they
were most eager to be friendly and an-
swer all our questions. Their ear orna-
ments were of red clay, polished, in which
had been imbedded scraps of bright wire.
The whole was molded around the lower
side of the stretched lobe, and so could
never be removed. The bows were short
and powerful, the arrows broadly headed
and with the poison smeared in back of
the head.

They told me they approached game
by feeding flocks of sheep and goats
toward the quarry, accompanying the
flocks on all-fours. Their dams they use
for irrigation ; and later we found an
elaborate system of checks and ditches
with wicker and earth gates. In their
fields they raised rape, beans and to-
bacco, beside a sort of sweet potato and a
vegetable somewhat like squash.

In times past they have been victims of
slave-raiders from Tabora and Ikoma,
and have been much attacked by the
Masai: hence they build high up the
mountain, whence they descend to their
fields, and whither every drop of water
is carried in gourds ! We told them slave
days were over and the Masai moved
away; why did they not build now in a
more convenient place ? They shook their
heads quite unconvinced. After all, what
are ten years of peace after two hundred
of war?

There is another village three days to
the south, and one four hours to the
west; that is the remnant of the tribe.

We engaged two to guide us for ten
days to Lake Natron at an equivalent of
two rupees (66 cents )each. Also we
sent a present of a blanket to the chief

with a request that he call to see us. All
this via M'ganga, who talks their tongue.
We did a little trading with beads and
snuff for vegetables.

Our guides then took us on a long hike
over the hills to a long slope of grass and
scattered bush, where we saw one herd of
kongoni, one of zebra and a single duiker.
These beasts departed the very instant
they caught sight of us at three or four
hundred yards and never even turned
back to look.

M'ganga and two of the men signal-
ized our arrival by coming down with
fever.

Preparing for the March East

Since we had planned first to go east
to Lake Natron and then to return
through this village on our way to the
unknown country to the west, we decided
to leave here in boma all the donkeys,
our own and Vanderweyer's (together
with our surplus effects), until we came
back from Natron. In charge we depu-
ted our own donkey men and all of Van-
derweyer's.

The guides were on time at 6, for a
wonder, and before we had gone a mile
three others had joined us. One beauti-
ful little red savage had in our honor
donned a horrible greasy old patched
khaki suit eight sizes too large for him.
He had been once to Moschi, he proudly
explained, when we asked him where he
had got so much finery. He certainly
looked Jike a scarecrow. The other
three, they tojd us, expected no wages,
but would go along on the chance of
meat.

We rode our mules for two hours,
then sent them back. In all we have used
said mules only about twenty-five miles.
The rest of the time we have been too
busy scouting, or the country has been
too rough.

We marched along the base of high
mountains on a plateau of long grass
and thin scrub. Far to the south, over
the edge of the world, we could see im-
mense craters. They were forty or fifty
miles away and glittered as though with
snow, each rising by itself from the plain.
At the end of ten miles we approached
the edge of the escarpment, and the last

418

OUTING

water before that plunge. As it was now
late in the morning, we camped at this
spot, leaving the precipitous descent until
the morrow.

Leaving the men to make camp, I went
out to see if it were possible to land any
meat. It had been in the dark ages since
either we or the men had had any, and
one cannot work long, even under the
equator, for ten or twelve hours a day
without meat and plenty of it. Ail the
game here was very wild. It saw you a
long way off and immediately ran with-
out waiting to stare for an instant, .as
does even the wildest game anywhere
else. We finally hit on the reason: the
Wasonzi are great on snares for small
stuff, and probably every beast in the dis-
trict had at one time or another had to
kick itself out of one of these snares. It
took a good deal of time and patience,
but finally I managed to get enough for
everybody.

I left a savage on guard at each car-
cass, hunted up camp and sent out men
for the meat.

For some time we have had a very si-
lent camp in the evenings. To-night
racks are up drying meat, spits are up
roasting it, pots bubble, bright little fires
gleam, and a continuous chanting arises.

This happy kalele (noise, row, chat-
ter), which I had not the heart to stop,
and the hot night kept me awake for an
hour. Suddenly I heard a scurrying
outside and agonized calls for "Ali! Ali!"

"Nini" says Ali.

"Call the bwana; a rhinoceros is very
near and coming into camp."

Get the point? Even a rhino attack
was not enough to induce them to over-
step etiquette and call the bwana them-
selves.

I hopped out with a Colt's. Advanc-
ing cautiously beyond the dazzle of the
fire, I could make out the great black
mass advancing steadily about twenty-
five yards away. I fired over its head.
The flash and noise turned it. Another
shot sent it crashing away.

By sunrise of the following morning
we were at the edge of the escarpment,
and looked down 2,300 feet to the broad,
lower, map-like expanse in which lay
Natron. It extended farther than we
could see to the south. Its upper end

was guarded by two great lava moun-
tains with faces that ran almost sheer for
over 4,000 feet, and about eight miles
apart. The flats at the upper lake-end
for miles and miles shimmered white
with soda. A green line marked the
meanderings of the N'gouramani, and the
nearer flats were covered with scrub.
The distance melted into illimitable
plains.

At our right was a deep-riven canyon,
to the edge of which our guides led us
for a look. After admiring the grandeurs
and blue distances of this very impressive
scenery we commenced the descent. It
was by way of a very steep little spur
jutting from the main escarpment and
went almost straight down by a series of
zigzags. Two rhinos across a ravine
stared at us and we at them. We were
both safe from each other.

Meat and Trails

It was a hard descent for men, but
everybody was happy because we were
carrying meat. The guides, Cuning-
hame, myself, and the gun-bearers pushed
ahead. I have, to the great delight of
everybody, introduced the practice of
blazing trails, of which they knew noth-
ing. Everybody blazes madly, even when
he goes ten feet from camp after fire-
wood. The next man will be puzzled
to know where it all leads.

It was sweltering hot and the sun very
strong. In the lower scrub it was fear-
ful. We arrived at an ordinary mud-
puddle in an opening at 1 1 :00, which
the Wasonzi said was the only water.
Many zebra, wildebeeste and impalla,
and hundreds of game and other birds
were here gathered. Cuninghame and
I crawled under the shade of a bush to
await the safari. One sort of brown
bird with a very long tail was so abun-
dant that when they flew they roared
like the wind, and the aggregate weight
of them bent over a fair-sized sapling.

When the safari arrived we tackled the
mud-puddle. First we dug a ditch and
drained off all the foul water. Then we
extended the hole. This accomplished,
Memba Sasa planted a staff in the mid-
dle tied peculiarly with wisps of grass
— a sort of magic. For some time we

IN BACK OF BEYOND

419

watched anxiously to see whether it
would fill again. The water started to
trickle. Reassured we pitched camp.

After a rest Cuninghame and I
scouted in different directions, and saw
much of the ordinary game — impalla, ze-
bra, wildebeeste, waterbuck, and Grant's
gazelle, dikdik and game birds ; also an
ostrich nest with two eggs. Toward
evening we came out on a coarse grass
savannah near the head of the Lake, and
there enjoyed some marvelous mirage ef-
fects on game, on the flat, and on distant
mountains. Here fed a herd of zebra.
We already had our camp meat, but I
killed one of these for the Wasonzi, to
their huge delight. They use every scrap
of a beast, even to the sinews for bow-
strings, and were much chagrined that I
would not shoot another before the herd
got out of range. They are a cheerful,
friendly lot.

This evening the little fires down the
length of our tiny glade, the light re-
flected from the leaves, were very fine.

Having a general desire to see the
other side of the flat where the N'goura-
mani enters the lake, we got up at day-
light and marched across the soda flats
at the head of the lake. The whole sur-
face looked like a map of the moon,
mountains, craters, queer knife-edge
peaks, but all in a miniature of four
inches high. When we stepped on them
they collapsed with a loud crackling.
Distances were very deceptive. An ob-
ject might be a mile away or ten yards,
and you could not tell what the thing
might be. A herd of zebra looked like
an orange grove until we came close. A
rosy cloud that we thought a product of
sunrise proved to be thousands and thou-
sands of flamingoes. Later they s'ettled
near the edge of the water and turned
the shore pink for miles. This is, in its
way, one of the most wonderful sights
I have ever seen. A white cloud proved
to be snow-geese. Another was of white
pelicans.

By and by we came to a papyrus marsh
in the water along the edge of which
were countless hordes of geese, ducks,,
waders, and many ' sorts of ibis, plover,
egrets, etc. Never have I seen so many
and so varied waterfowl. They were
quite tame and did not take wing until

we were less than forty yards away.
Over them wheeled a cloud of insect-
catching birds. A great deal of game
came here for salt — wildebeeste, ostrich,
zebra, and many giraffe.

We wanted to get over to an island,
?nd slopped about for an hour trying to
find a ford. The river had here over-
flowed for a quarter of a mile, and the
channel was discoverable only when one
fell in. Finally we made passage a lit-
tle over waist-deep, and camped on our
island, four by a half mile.

The sun here was very strong and
there was no shelter, so for the first time
we adopted the African expedient of
spreading our blankets over the tent for
additional shade.

Trying for Buffalo

About 3 :00 we went scouting for buf-
falo. Cuninghame took one side of the
island, I the other. I managed to kill a
good bull in the edge of the papyrus, but
he fell in the river and was swept away
by the strong current, so I lost him.
Splashing about waist-deep in water with
the high papyrus was very weird. Water-
birds were all about us, indignant hippos
boomed to right and left, very much on
the alert.

In the evening mosquitoes were out by
millions. Some of the boys built plat-
forms in the leafless little trees and slept
aloft.

We were up and out before daybreak
next morning, and saw three "buffs" on
the edge of the swamp across the river.
We got close by, but could not see them
on account of the high reeds. We con-
cluded that this would be a good place
in a dryer season, but now that the river
was in flood it was hopeless.

It was interesting to see the water-
fowl, however, and our rosy cloud of fla-
mingoes was again in the sky.

We decided to return to our waterhole
and take a fresh start up-river to a place
where buffalo used to be plenty. There
we found a fresh lot of Wasonzi in after
meat.

The march up-river proved to be a
very hard one, through stifling scrub and
all up-hill. It was very thorny, and we
had difficulty at times in picking a way.

420

OUTING

We thought it hot, but I overheard one
porter saying to another, 'Tine weather,
just like Mombasa."

Saw a number of rhinos and baboons.
Just before the day's end, when we were
walking in single file between heavy
thorn scrub, I saw a scurry ahead and
some animal tearing down the trail. Por-
ters were dropping loads and dodging to
left and right. I had just time to leap
aside before it tore by me. So close did
it pass to me that it caught my rifle sling
and broke it!

Memba Sasa was not so lucky. The
beast hit him square in the tummy. He
was knocked flying and fell heavily on his
shoulder.

The beast was an ordinary bushbuck
doe, frantic with terror, apparently run-
ning with both eyes shut !

A Dying Tribe

This little incident freshened us up
somewhat (all but Memba Sasa) and
we finished the day at a village of the
N'gouramani. These dwell under the
escarpment, keep goats, and occupy indi-
vidual bomas. They resemble the Wa-
sonzi, but are poor and few in numbers,
probably the last remnants of a large
tribe.

We camped thankfully under a wide
tree completely overgrown by a thick
dense vine so it was like an umbrella. At
supper came the hunter of the village.
After long parley we agreed with him;
one buffalo equals one blanket plus five
rupees. He was a very old and skinny
man, and we soon discovered that out-
side the fact that he knew where the buf-
falo were he was beyond his usefulness.
I could not help but be sorry for the
poor old thing, and speculate on his lat-
ter end, and was glad he made some-
thing of us.

Our rather scattered dispositions were
now as follows: Two men at water-hole
living in banda guarding supplies; eight
men on the road to the donkey boma to
bring up potio; one man sick and three
donkey-men at the village; the rest with
us. Consequently we were traveling
with only bare necessities.

Our old N'gouramani was promptly
on hand at dawn, so we were off by sun-

rise. He led us by a rocky trail down a
series of steps and over a 600-foot es-
carpment back to the river level. On the
way we flushed hundreds of grouse. The
cliffs were occupied by hordes of baboons
that came out and barked at us.

We are now so used to heat that our
morning temperature of 60° seems chilly!

We saw some fresh tracks of greater
kudu ; and in a tree a huge structure five
feet high by three broad, pear-shaped,
with a wide hole at the top. I thought
it some sort of a hunter's blind, but
Memba Sasa says it is the nest of the
crested ibis.

Our camp was among thin thorn trees,
but by the banks of a crystal clear stream
flowing over rocks. In the afternoon our
old guide led us an hour through the
thorn to the border of a long wet marsh.
He sneaked along the edge of this look-
ing for buffalo. Finally he had us lie
down in a thicket until near dusk. The
idea was to wait until the buffalo came
out to feed, but there would have to be
a thousand thousand of them or else
mighty good luck to bring them out at
exactly our spot. On his way across a
little wet arm he stooped over, without
bending his knees, and drank, which
shows he was a limber old gentleman
after all !

We lay in the thicket for an hour. A
rhino came and sniffed at us ten yards
away, but decided to depart. I had suf-
ficient amusement v/atching the various
birds. Of course nothing happened, but
on the way home, when out of earshot of
the buffalo swamp, I killed an impalla
buck for meat with the .465 — rather like
using a club on a humming bird.

One experience of native methods was
enough for us, so we resolved that next
day we would hunt buffalo our own way,
viz., look for fresh spoor and follow that
until something happened. Accordingly,
we returned to the swamp, waded it, and
began to cast about on the other side.
At 7:30 we found tracks of a bull, and
for two hours puzzled along it. The
ground was hard and confused with all
sorts of other tracks, new and old. The
men were often at fault, and by nine-
thirty we had followed the brute only
about a half mile. The spoor led across
a small opening, through a fringe of

IN BACK OF BEYOND

421

sparse brush, and apparently to a distant
thicket. Eleven giraffe ambled across in
front of us in single file. The spoor
finally led to a dark ant-heap under an
isolated small tree in high grass.

When thirty yards from it I saw it
heave slightly and suddenly recognized it
as the curve of the buffalo's back. I
promptly planted a .465 where the shoul-
der ought to be. The beast leaped to his
feet and rushed in our direction. My
second barrel in the chest turned him.
Cuninghame gave him both barrels in the
side, and he came down within fifty
yards. Another in the spine finished him.
He was a good big one, 5' 2" at shoulder
and 8' 11" in straight line, as he lay,
from nose to rump.

We left the old savage to sit by him,
sent Sanguiki to camp for men, and went
on. We hunted hard for eight hours
more, always on fresh spoor, stooping
double in hot thickets, crawling, scratched
by thorns, and generally working hard.
Had lunch under a shady bush, where
a whole lot of monkeys scouted us thor-
oughly. Then, as the day was well ad-
vanced, we returned home.

In camp we found everybody with
heads freshly shaved in the most marvel-
ous designs. Some of the most fantastic
I collected for a picture. M'ganga's tent
burned up. He is most heartily ashamed.

(To be

Bad enough for such an accident to hap-
pen to a porter, but horrible disgrace to
a head man! The potio men were back,
accompanied by nine more Wasonzi, after
meat. Our fame as providers was spread-
ing. At least, it gave us legitimate rea-
son for enjoying some of this splendid
shooting. Everyone departed for the
buffalo carcass, where they made fires
and stayed all night.

The next day we spoored buffalo all
day without result, except to trail them
into impossible places. By noon we had
reached out to the N'gouramani River,
here a big, wide, rushing stream with a
forest strip. It was very cool and pleasant
under the trees — cool as compared to a
stifling 140° in the sun outside! Thou-
sands of game birds were everywhere on
this grassy, thorn-brush flat. Jumped a
giraffe at close range, and was much
amused at the rear view. He held his
tail stiffly upright at an affected and rak-
ish angle to one side for about a dozen
steps, then swish! he flopped it over to
the other side for about the same length
of time. Saw two leopards together, but
did not get a shot. Sun very powerful.

In camp we found the third mediocre
batch of bread in four days. Had the
cook up on the carpet and cut his wages
in half. Had no more trouble the rest
of the trip.
continued)

Next month Mr. White tells of the first experiences
after he turned back west and began to thread
his way into the really Unknown Land. They
also have the first bout with the tse-tse fly.

DUB TENNIS FOR TENNIS DUBS

By C. H. CLAUDY

Illustrated with Diagrams

Sound Advice by a Man Who Establishes His Right to Speak to
Dubs by Calling Himself One

AGAZINE stories on
"How to Play Tennis,"
illustrated with pictures
of McLoughlin serving
an ace or Wright jump-
ing three feet in the air
and killing a lob2 are very interesting.
But they don't tell the average tennis
player anything about the game of ten-
nis as he knows it! They don't tell
him what to do to improve his own
game, because the things they advise are
the things which only champions can do !
There are three classes of players — the
champions and near-champions, the Dubs
and the beginners.

Beginners frequently become Dubs,
and Dubs once in a while become cham-
pions. But the vast majority of tennis
players either stay beginners all their
tennis life or graduate into the Dub
class, and happily knock the balls about,
without improving very much from year
to year, getting health, strength, wind,
and recreation from the well-loved game.
Why not, then, a magazine story for
the Dub? About the Dub? Written
by a very Dub of Dubs, who knows how
Dubs feel and play and. believe? For he
has peculiar ideas, has the true tennis
Dub, and they don't line up with the
champion's ideas a little bit. For in-
stance, there is that overworked bro-
mide in tennisdom, which every author
of magazine tennis yarns who speaks
with authority brings into play. "Play
for the sake of the game, not to win," he
writes.

Doubtless that is the way a champion
does and the way he ought to do. But
every real Dub knows that most of the
time he goes out on the court with the
settled intention of licking the other fel-

[422]

low off the court if he can, and if he has
to throw his racket at a lob or shift it to
his left hand; or take both hands to it,
he is going to do it. The main thing
is, get the ball back — never mind "form"
and "stance" and "follow through," and
all the rest of the things that a cham-
pion has and does because he is a cham-
pion— what the Dub wants to do is to
keep the ball going until the other fellow
nets it or outs it or loses it, and form
can just go hang!

Agreed that this is all wrong — but it
is the way the Dubs have. And, after
all, isn't it as much fun in the end to win,
even with an awkward stroke, as to lose
always in the hope that some day one
may play in perfect form? Dub tennis
is a game, not a striving to imitate a
heaven-born expert!

Nevertheless, there are certain things
a Dub believes about his tennis which
even a champion would not deny. Be-
ginning at the beginning — anyone will
admit that is the proper place — let us,
all Dubs together, consider our service.
If we are a regular, sure-enough Class
A Dub, we have, most probably, a pecul-
iar, difficult, abstruse, and altogether,
champion ly speaking, impossible pet serv-
ice of our own, in which we believe im-
plicitly. We use this to vary our attack,
serving part of the time a straight ball
as hard as we dare, and the rest of the
time our pet "teaser." Most of these
teaser services are of the back-hand va-
riety, or some modification of the screw
service.

Now, let it be said, with the experi-
ence of many years of Dubdom, and the
weight of authority of many champions,
that the screw service is a dangerous
thing to have around. It is like these

DUB TENNIS FOR TENNIS DUES

423

automatic guns with all sorts of safety
catches and things — perfectly safe as long
as it works, but extremely disastrous
when it doesn't! The screw service, in
its full flower of perfection, will worry
McLoughlin himself. Anything short of
that, and any Dub can murder it after
half a dozen tries. The "back-hand"
service, on the other hand, even if not
perfected, is no more unreliable than the
old "straight away." No real Dub need
be told that the uback-hand" service, so-
called, has the racket strike the ball while
the gut is moving across the face from
right to left. It gives a neat but not
gaudy curve to the ball, which makes it
effective in serving to the left-hand court,
because, if properly placed, it throws the
receiver away over to his left, makes him
take it on his back hand, and, if he isn't
looking for it, surprises him.

The Dub who has learned to place his
service is dangerously close to the near-
champion class. Oh, I know — we all
admit that a service should be placed, and
we all talk about doing it, and most of
us have a particular and pet spot where
the most of our services hit the dirt. But
comparatively few Dubs really can place
their service to right corner or left at
will. He who can is able to dispense
with all personal varieties of screws,
twists, and cuts — his armory is greater
than all of the tricks put together.

"Serve your second ball as hard as
your first." That's another one of the
championly written remarks which al-
ways arouse my Dubby ire. I won't say
no real, sure-enough champion does it,
because that would be a very inclusive
remark. But I will say that of all the
champions I have ever seen — which may
be, perhaps, a dozen or so of the first
twenty-five — none of them ever did serve
his second ball like his first, consistently
and continuously throughout a match!
It's fine to talk about, and it must be
wonderful to do or to watch, but it isn't
worth the Dub's time because he would
spend the rest of his life making double
faults — and he makes too many as it is!
Let us try for a decent, man-sized second
ball, indeed, we Dubs, but unless we
have championship aspirations, let us
make our second serve accurate and sure,
rather than wild and deadly once a set.

However, we are out on the court
now, you and I, both Dubs, both keen
on the game, and both mentally resolving
that the other fellow is going to get
beat unless he is stronger than we think
he is. I serve you a ball in my best
style, and feel a satisfied thrill as it cuts
the line. You do a kangaroo to the
right and swing at the ball as if you
meant it. I smile a smile, because I
have seen 'em missed before. However,
this isn't my time to smile. You catch
that low, bounding ball fair and your
stroke is made with a mighty lift. It
looks as if it was going to clear the
back-stop, but it doesn't — it drops about
a foot inside, and it is my return which
clears your back-stop.

\The Real Difference

The pity of it is you can't do it all
the time ! That's the difference between
us and the champion fellow on the next
court. He can go after his drive and
nine times out of ten it will sizzle in,
and make the other fellow do some hus-
tling. You and I and all good Dubs be-
lieve mightily in "going after our drive,"
but we don't get it in more than three
in five, and are rather cocky and chesty
about that, if you please.

Here we are dreadfully inconsistent.
We go out to beat the other fellow, and
beat him any way we can. Yet we will
go after that drive, even when we know
that the chances are against us. For we
know, you and I, and all the rest of the
Dubs, that with the possible exception of
the smash of a lob, there is no stroke on
the court which gives its maker quite so
much pleasure as the forehand Lawford
drive, made with a full, free sweep, every
muscle in the swing, and hope and fear
for its destiny hanging in the balance as
it clears the net!

But we overdo it. If we pay close and
analytical attention to a championship
match, in which either or both players
use the Lawford, we will see that they
don't play it with all their strength un-
less they have to. Here is half the secret
of many successful efforts. If the other
fellow is fifteen feet offside and you have
the whole court to place in, what's the
use of beating the cover off the ball?

424

OUTING

Takes strength, risks a net or an out, and
for what ? A spectacular play.

We do love these spectacular things,
we Dubs. There is that back-hand Law-
ford drive, for instance. Here is a
stroke you can't play easy — don't ask me
why, for I don't know — but you can't
do it. You make it with a sort of pivot-
blow effect, bringing the racket against,
then over the ball. And it is a regular
peach of a shot when it goes in. But —
when does it? About once in seventeen
Dub tries! Like the screw service, it is
a fine thing to have around if you own it.
If you are just on speaking acquaintance
with it, however, it's a fine stroke for the
Dub to let alone!

"Play your strokes all straight and
hard — let cuts alone."

So sayeth the tennis wise man, and the
obedient Dub can hardly find room to
cavil at the saying. But there must be
made a clean-cut distinction between
those "cut strokes" which are made of
malice aforethought, with the deliberate
intention of "fooling" the other fellow
by a crooked bounce, and those strokes,
forehand or backhand, which are "chops"
or "cut" because that is the, to you and
me, natural way to hit. Personally, I
can control a backhand stroke much bet-
ter when the racket doesn't strike the
ball fair and square, but does hit it
enough on the slant to make the ball
have a certain amount of "draw" or
"English" to it. A forehand "chop"
stroke is a deadly weapon against the
free driver, because the blame thing
doesn't bounce. But to the fellow who
can play a Lawford underhand as well as
side wheel, the low, bounding chop stroke
is meat and drink!

One of the biggest points of difference
between the real player and the Dub is
the number of "flub shots" the latter
makes. Why do we do it, you and I?
Why do we sometimes have a racket with
a wooden edge three inches thick and
with gut the size of a teaspoon? Why
does the throat of my racket sometimes
crawl up to the rim ? Why do you
sometimes swing with a terrible swing,
and so easily and so gracefully miss the
ball entirely?

I'll tell you. No, it isn't because we
are Dubs. We are Dubs because we

don't keep our eyes on the ball long
enough, and because we haven't that ac-
curacy of judgment necessary to hit the
place where the ball is going to be, when
the ball in the meantime has made up its
mind to go somewhere else!

That is a complicated sentence, but it
has meat in it if you will only dig. Every
Dub who stops to think knows that no
one hits a tennis ball while looking at it.
We watch the ball as it comes towards
us, we swing our racket back, and men-
tally plan where gut and ball are to
meet. Then we look to the place we
hope the ball is going to go. The cham-
pion reduces this interval of time to the
minimum and increases his judgment of
the place the ball is to be when hit, to
the maximum of accuracy. His "timing"
is so perfect that he almost invariably
hits the ball in the center of the gut.
You and I, lacking this accuracy, hit the
ball on the wood, on the throat, or miss
it altogether and talk disgustedly about
there being a "hole in my racket." The
only remedy is practice, plus a slowing up
of speed — for speed and accuracy are sel-
dom born together and have to be
wedded with long experience.

Dub vs. Beginner

The real sure-enough Dub doesn't use
"teasing" cuts or love taps. He is too
anxious to hit the ball. But your begin-
ner, before he graduates into a real Dub
— whether that process takes him six
months or six years is not material — fre-
quently invents the "cut" shot all over
again, and tries to "fool" his opponent
by imparting a strange twist to his re-
turn. It is useless, as all genuine Dubs
know, because one can't get a teasing
twist and any speed together, except in
an overhead shot, and generally those are
played for place or speed rather than
"fooling."

As for the "love tapper," he isn't real-
ly even in the beginners' class, and you
and I and all good Dubs abominate him
as we do the fellow who foot-faults every
other serve. Truly, if there is any sport
in tennis for the Dub, it is in trying to
do something he hasn't mastered — the
"love tapper" but tries to get the ball
back over the net, careless and unques-

DUB TENNIS FOR TENNIS DUBS

425

tioning as to what is going to happen to
it next! But why waste space? We are
Dubs, you and I, and while we may not
break a frame every day, we do hit them
up fairly hard, even if we do punch holes
in the back-stop occasionally!

Almost relegated to the same category
as the "love tapper" is the "lobster." The
"lobster" is he who lobs in season and
out. Of course, it's no use lobbing
against a real, sure-enough, honest-to-
goodness, dyed-in-the-wool player. Chaps
like the Californian, or Williams, or
Wright, or that lot, merely wander a
few steps backward, leap eleven feet in
the air, and sweep around in the atmos-
phere with a racket as big as a fish-net.
There is a white flash, which is the ball,
and a wild scramble, which is you or I,
and it's all over.

But when Dub meets Dub, the lob
has its uses. To be sure, even a Dub
gets his racket on most lobs. But a real
Dub can't smash from the base line, and
so, in the lob, the other fellow finds a
matter of gaining time to recover him-
self. Moreover, shame though it be to
confess it, if you are an honest Dub you
will agree with me that it is confoundedly
tiresome to run up to the net and have
the other chap put 'em over your head
so you have to run back all the time!
But, when so tired of running back, you
try the real play, what a satisfaction
when, you, too, make the aerial leap, the
wild swing in the air, and catch that
lofty ball on the end of the gut and just
naturally slam it at the other fellow so
he can't see it until it's all over! Even
a Dub does it sometimes, and your simon-
pure Dub never lets a chance go by for
trying it. For hope springs eternal in
the Dubbish, even as in the human,
breast, and if this lob is sent sailing across
the back-stop when you meant it to hit
the base line, why, there are always other
lobs a-coming!

The tennis beginner never volleys the
ball. If you volley the ball at him he
looks at you reproachfully, as if you were
taking an unfair advantage. The cham-
pion volleys it every chance he gets. The
Dub volleys when he has to — if he is a
net player he looks for chances. But a
Dub volley is all too often a thing to
weep about rather than applaud.

Let us theorize a minute about this
volley matter. What's the use of a vol-
ley, anyway? Why not stay back of the
base line and hit everything on the
bounce ?

The reason is the matter of time.
Time is a very important element in any
tennis rally. To procure and use as
much time for your own strokes as pos-
sible, to give your opponent the least pos-
sible amount of time to plan and execute
his — that is half of the game.

Hence the net player and the volley —
for the ball cut off in mid-air and shot
back again quickly gives the other player
less time to plan what he is going to do
next, and less time in which to do it.

Play the Shots

If, then, the volley be soft and easy,
gentle and a sort of dropping curve, it is,
as far as its effect is concerned, no better
than a ground stroke, if as good. If it is
sharp and clean-cut and at an angle, it
makes the other fellow tie himself into a
knot to get it, and his return is weak and
often ill-executed. It seems, therefore,
even to a Dub, that he who cannot volley
sharply had better not volley at all. The
Dub who runs to the net and lets the
ball meet his racket and bounce back
from it may have a perfectly splendid
time, and his actions may be fully justi-
fied by the fun he gets out of them, but
as far as effective play is concerned he
might as well save his strength and stay
back. On the other hand, the chap who
can hit a ball in the air, not merely let
the ball hit his racket, is doing something
for himself. If he can volley at an angle
2nd make his opponent stretch his legs
and run, so much the better. But even
if his sharp volley is not placed, and but
hits in mid-court sharply, it is far better
than the gentle return^ miscalled a vol-
ley, of the Dub whose idea is only "get
it back over the net."

And the same applies to the smash. If
we smash, let us, in the name of the game,
smash! To wave our rackets wildly
overhead and bring them gently under
the lob and bounce it back again is not
even good sport. Never mind if they do
go out or hit the net — the one is because
the ball was allowed to get too much

426

OUTING

back of one's head before striking, the
other that one struck the ball too far in
front. It is timing which can be learned,
this matter of smashing, and should be
learned by the Dubbiest of Dubs, for to
play the overhead ball any other way
than with intention and some speed is to
retrograde to the class of the beginner
whose whole ambition is to play "pat-
ball," under the impression that he is
playing tennis!

However, there is such a thing as over-
doing it. Not for the champion — when
the California gentleman of the mighty
serve grows a foot in the air and smashes
the ball, that's the end of the point.
There is no doubt about that. He, and
others cast in the same mold, can hit
'em hard just as surely as they can less
sharply — that's what makes them what
they are. For you and me, however,

terested in answering. Generally the an-
swer is generalship.

There is a lot of "bunk" written about
tennis generalship. The champion may
and doubtless does analyze his prospective
antagonist, look for his weak places, plan
a campaign, and carry it out. The Dub
doesn't bother. Beyond placing his
drives at the other fellow's left when he
can, and passing him if he comes to the
net, or lofting them if he is weak over-
head, his "generalship" is a minus quan-
tity. But there are Dubs who take
thought for the coming point, and some
of their conclusions are interesting, espe-
cially when reduced to the cold facts of
a diagram. For instance, there is that
generalship-gone-wrong of the chap with
the streak-lightning serve who stands as
in A, Figure 1. He figures that because
he has a hard serve he needs the greatest

FIGURE 1

there is a middle ground. We are not
playing against cracks, but against Dubs
like ourselves. Frequently a hard smash,
unplaced and directly at the other chap's
feet, will win the point. As frequently,
a straight cross-court smash, not at all
hard, will win it as successfully. Far
better to smash hard enough to win the
point against the man you are playing,
and win it, than beat the ball with all
your strength so even Norman Brookes
couldn't get it — and have it go out!

If A. beats B., and B. beats C, then
A. ought to eat C. alive. But often he
doesn't. "Why" is a question A. is in-

length for his s'hot, and also that if he
can force B. away over and off the court
he has a1 great advantage in handling the
return.

He hasn't, of course. For B. can drive
the ball back to C. and A. has to skedad-
dle over to D. to get hold of it, and
handle it backhand at that, and by that
time B. is up to the net and it is all over
with A. unless he lobs, and a backhand
lob made on a dead run is not apt to be
very accurate. Generations of singles
players have demonstrated that, in the
long run, as close to the center of the
court as possible is the place to stand

DUB TENNIS FOR TENNIS DUBS

427

FIGURE

when serving, and no possession of any
serve, no matter how peculiar, speedy or
full of "shoots," has ever altered the fact
to any noticeable extent.

What to do with the service is the first
question which the Dub General has to
determine. He who makes up his mind
in advance is going to get into trouble!
For no one except A. knows, and he isn't
always at all sure, where his serve is go-
ing to go, and how high and how long it
is going to bounce when it gets there!
Consider Figure 2. A. serves an aver-
age Dub serve. It hits the ground at X1.
C. is standing on the base line, waiting
for it. Suppose it bounces high and short
— let us agree that A. is a Dub with a
"measly" serve. C. runs in and gets his
racket upon it at B1. Surely E. is a

lovely place to put it! It can be put
there and put there hard, because it
bounced high.

But suppose A. serves a harder,
straighter ball, which strikes at X1 and
which C. gets at the base line. He can't
put it to E. now, because the bounce isn't
high enough and he is so much farther
from the net. He must slam it back to
A., or try to put it down the alley line
to F. or across court to G. Therefore,
for C. to make up his mind what he is
going to do before he sees that serve, is
poor generalship, and likely to lose him
the point. Probably that is why A.
beats C. — because C. does too much cut-
and-dried planning in advance!

However, if one knows one's opponent,
there are certain things which can be

figure 3

428

OUTING

planned. Consider Figure 3. Here A.
is our Dub friend and C. our Dub foe
— and C. is slow on his feet. Perhaps
he is overweight and plays tennis to re-
duce! Let us direct A. and help him
to it!

A. serves the ball which strikes at B.
C. returns it to D. A. lopes over and
shoots it down to E. C. runs his legs
off and manages to get it back again.
He is less sure of his shot after his run
and to make certain that it goes in he

C. returns to point B. (Figure 4) and
promptly runs to C1. at the net. A. has
to take the ball backhand. He is afraid
to send it straight back, because his sliced
backhand curves, and he knows he cannot
pass C. to A.'s right. He must lob — and
he can't lob — or drive somewhere in the
general direction of C. at the net. This
he does, and with all his might, hoping
C. will hit it and "flub" it. However,
C. has a very good Dubbish command of
his racket, if he is slow on his feet, and

FIGURE 4

puts it well into the court at F. A.,
who is having the time of his life,
promptly fires it down to G., and poor
C. has to reverse and sprint for it. This
time his main idea is "get it back" — never
mind where. So back it comes in the
middle of the court, and A. has hardly
to move from his tracks to get it and put
it back to E. again — and by this time C.
is panting and inaccurate and his return
hits the net or clears the base line.

All this couldn't happen if C. were not
slow on his feet, because he would get
across court in plenty of time to make
his shots as accurately as A., and A.
would have to do just as much running
as C.

After a while C. gets tired and tries
coming to the net on his return of serv-
ice. A. is not much of a "lobster."
Neither is he very accurate in his passing
shots. So he falls back on mere speed,
trusting to the force of his stroke "jam-
ming it through." A. serves to C. and

he caroms the volleyed ball oft to X1
and that's the end of that point. That,
too, is a form of generalship, only it, like
the other, can't be planned in advance,
because if C. does so A. will probably
serve to the center court line, and C,
running sidewise to get it, has no impetus
to carry him to the net, and by the time
he turns and starts for it A. has done
some other devilish thing!

It's a lot of fun to tease the fellow
who plays net — if he is Dubbish enough
to be teased. First a lob over his head.
Then a pass which he just reaches. Then
jam one right at him, hard. Then, if he
is still in the game,, make him run a bit
from side to side. But on the other
hand, what beautiful sport it is to play
at the net and worry the other chap!
He tries to pass me, and he can't. True,
I didn't kill it, but I made him run.
There, he has tried a lob — it's a weak
lob, and I go after it joyfully. Too bad
I didn't smash more to one side, for he

DUB TENNIS FOR TENNIS DUBS

429

got it back. But there — I will cross-
court him and he will have to run with
his tongue out. No, sir, you can't pass
me that side, either — I can "grow" on
my left as well as my right. Well,
about time to end this thing — watch me
kill it! Oh, well, of course, any one
can win points that way — it looked good
from here. However, probably it was
out. It was close, anyway. I'll get him
next time !

And "it's nice to play with this chap
because he plays the game according to
the rules. There is that Dub Jones, how-
ever— don't let's get him in the game.
Jones foot-faults all the time. No, of
course he doesn't mean to take an unfair
advantage — but he does. Gets peevish
if you tell him, too. And one can't get
Jones to call his score when he is serving.
He is always surprised when he calls
"Score?" in that inquiring tone, and you
tell him it's forty-love.

Jones is exaggeratedly fair in his play.
He is always wanting to "play it over."
You and I know, and all good Dubs
know, that "play it over" is sometimes a
doubtful remedy. If the point was im-
portant, and you lose it on the play over,
you may lose the match. True, if it was
important to him and he loses it, he may
lose the match. Personally we like the
fellow who wants to play over the points
which might benefit us more than him-
self, and never gives a doubtful decision
when it benefits him.

Jones, too, returns balls so carelessly.
He fires them over with all the speed he
can, making a practice shot out of every
chance he has to "shag" a ball. This
is nice for Jones, but rough on you and
me, who have to trot around collecting

them. I like to play with you for several
reasons, not the least of which is that
when you "hand" me the balls they al-
ways either roll to my feet or bounce to
my hand. It's a little courtesy, but I ap-
preciate it. You never make me wait
between serves, either. I've noticed that
when you dry your glasses or hitch up
your trousers or tie your shoelace, it's
never between serves. And then you
don't return faults. You just knock 'em
down or let 'em go. I know when you
return anything it's a ball in play. I
appreciate that, too.

If Jones knew how I dislike his metn-
ods of firing everything back, good or
bad, he'd stop it. What? Yes, Smith
fires everything back, too, but that's dif-
ferent. He shoots up an arm and yells
"out" like a fog horn, and his return
of the out ball is easy and for my conve-
nience, not hard and for practice, like
Jones'. Smith is a Dubby Dub. Jones
is a very inferior order of Dub. You and
I? Well, you are a good Dub and I
try to be one, and I think we both get
more fun out of the gentleman's game by
trying to make the other have an enjoy-
able time, than even Robinson, who is a
near-crack, does, with his infernal ability
to lick us all without trying!

Any way, it's a good game, this tennis
— a game worth while, whether we are
just beginning and are despised "love-
tappers," whether we are the crackiest of
the cracks and serve like rockets and re-
turn like cannon balls and are eleven feet
wide and nineteen high, like the big fel-
lows, or whether, as you and I, we are
just plain, homely, enthusiastic Dubs —
and proud that we Dub as well as we
Dubly do!

Mr. Claudy is a lover of the canoe as well
as of the racket. See his article in August
OUTING — "Canoe, Camp and Canal'*

THE MASSACRE ON CEDAR CREEK

By CULLEN A. CAIN

The True and Simple Narrative of What Befell Five Topeka

Pilgrims After Pleasure

" J WENT fishing last May down on
Cedar Creek, in Chase County,
along with four friends, and we
nearly died from exposure and
starvation. I have sworn off three
times on fishing trips, and every
time comes some man or set of men and
lures me away a day's journey into the
wilderness to risk »life and health and
peace of mind trying to get a fish to
stick my hook through the bridge of his
mouth. It's a funny thing, this obses-
sion in a man's head that makes him
want to go fishing in the spring of the
year.

It got hold of Roy Crawford and Bill
Wikidal and Ike Barnum and Jay
House. They came and sang me their
little siren song and I went with them.
We hovered for a day between life
and death and finally won our way back
to towrn by a fevered heartbeat. We
were sunstruck and starved and exhaust-
ed and bedraggled and lost and sleepless
and footsore and worn to the last rem-
nant of a frazzle. All in the course of
a 36-hour fishing trip. Five able-bodied
men cut down in a day. Five young
men turned into Egyptian mummies in a
night. Head, body, hands, and feet, all
in the emergency ward with the "walk-
softly" sign pinned on the door.

The story has features worth bringing
to the attention of other men — and fish-
ermen. And this is the true and simple
narrative of what befell the five Topeka
pilgrims after pleasure in the Cedar
Creek vale of tears.

The start was made to the music of
the military band. All starts are made
in this manner. It was about 4:30 on
a perfect May morning that Roy Craw-
ford tooted the siren horn of his 50-hp.
car in front of my rerted house. I went

[430]

outside and climbed into that big car
with the happy, hopeful heart of a little
child. I climbed out at that same curb-
stone on the morning of the second day
with a heart as old and worn as that of
Methusaleh.

But to get on with the story. We
rode out of town in the dawning and
the gas-engine purred like a big cat.
Speed ? We had speed to burn in the
fiery furnace. Nothing finer in this
wTorld below than a ride over the Kansas
roads in the early morning. The miles
slipped under the car like water under a
bridge.

We had passed Burlingame before I
thought of breakfast. I asked where wTe
were to eat, and Roy gave out the town
of Lebo as the first stopping-place. Now
Lebo is in Coffey County, and I felt the
pangs of hunger creep across my person.
House added hunger to hunger by tell-
ing me every few minutes how far it was
to Lebo and how long it was to break-
fast. He hinted about tire trouble and
engine failure. Cheerful and helpful
traveling companion, he was.

Arrived at Lebo at 7:15. A little
stage of fifty-five miles. Ham and eggs
and twenty minutes.

Landed in Emporia at 8:30. Looked
for Walt Mason. He was still in bed.
Walt is fat and prosperous and lazy in
his old age.

On the way again. The first trouble
of the trip began to show its face here
in the glory of the morning. Ike Bar-
num was wearing a broad-brim hat.
Brought it to protect his face from the
sunshine, he said. But the gods had
made him mad before they set about to
destroy him. The car traveled so fast
that Ike could not keep that sombrero on
his head. He put it in the bottom of

THE MASSACRE ON CEDAR CREEK

431

the car and placed his feet upon it. And
the Kansas sunshine proceeded to deco-
rate his face in scarlet and crimson. A
hat with a narrow brim would have
helped him a little, and a little is all
that any man ought to be protected. Ike
wanted too much protection.

The car passed over Lyon County like
a wild duck's shadow over a pond. And
soon we stopped at the northern end of
the L. M. Crawford ranch in Chase
County. A man met us there in a wagon
and we proceeded three miles across that
ranch with a bumping and a roughness
that passeth all understanding.

Came to the ranch-house at last, and
it was something to have come to. I
wish I had the tongue of men and angels
to tell people about L. M. Crawford's
ranch-house, set up in the middle of the
Chase County prairies.

It is an amateur theater, nothing more
nor less. The ruling passion was strong
in the old theater man, and he built a
playhouse far from plays and players.

There is nothing like it anywhere
within or without the borders of the
civilized world. A house on the plains,
appearing from the outside to be an ordi-
nary ranchhouse, built for comfort with-
out stint of money; a stone two-story
structure with a sleeping-porch in front
and a leanto kitchen behind. But enter
the door and you rub your eyes. The
center of the house greets you like the
mask and bells of an actor on his stage.
Only the orchestra is needed, and the
wave of the baton and the lilt of the
music, to make you hunt for your check
to seat 1, N, right.

Such a ranchhouse! It is not two-
story at all. The inside is sheer to the
roof. There is only one room. It is a
theater. The bay window forms a per-
fect little stage. On its platform sits a
graphophone and its horn faces the pit,
ready to play. There is a balcony eight
feet above, extending across half of the
lower room. The seats there are as
good as any in the house. It was a mati-
nee that day, and we all got in for a
dollar apiece.

The room is finished in theater blue,
the old-time sky tint that theater and
actor folk know so well and see so
much. And the finishing touches on the

inside of that blooming house! The El
Paso Theater was called upon for a sec-
tion of scenery for a wainscoting. Stage
stuff from the Wichita house provided a
door and a panel. The ceiling of the
sleeping-porch drew on a St. Louis play-
house for its body and latitude. Frieze
partitions that Dustin Farnum and Isa-
dora Duncan knew had been transplant-
ed from distant cities to this ranchhouse
to serve a new and strange purpose.
Every one of L. M. Crawford's theaters
had furnished a portion. And he did
own and yet owns many theaters.

Roy Crawford ushered in his guests
with an air, seated them in front of the
silent but ready horn of the phonograph
on the stage, walked up in the balcony,
waved his hand to the imaginary leader
of the orchestra, and then sat down and
laughed till he cried. And his guests
laughed, too.

Theaters and Sheep

It was funny. Yes, and it was fine,
too, this scene that showed how an old
man clung to his first love, a man suc-
cessful in every line of endeavor, grown
rich and weary with the passing of the
years that could now bring him nothing
he had not already seen and done and
known and gathered home. But a the-
ater, with its tints of blue, and its stage
and balcony, was his beginning and it
was his last work when he built a ranch-
house in the West. And Bill Wikidal
looked and gasped and said : "Why
didn't he build a box-office and finish the
job?"

There was a "Crawford posting serv-
ice" sign that formed one of the clap-
boards on the barn.

We drove over that ranch, 1,900 acres
that comprise its center and circumfer-
ence. Roy rode a black pony and we
rode a surrey.

As all men who read high-class farm
journals know, L. M. Crawford is rais-
ing a wonderful brand of sheep on that
ranch. It is the talk of the country; how
he is the lone pioneer in the U. S. A., in
crossing the Lincolnshire ewe sheep with
a full-blood ram from Persia, or maybe
it's Russia, and getting a lamb that has
a coat of close-curled black silk that is

432

OUTING

beautiful and indestructible. The pelt
of this sheep is called astrakhan. The
process beats a silkworm to death and
makes Gobelin tapestry and Turkish
rugs and sealskins look like the contents
of a calico warehouse on display.

Think of it! Two thousand acres of
land; a thousand Lincolnshire ewes;
nearly two score of rams from Russia at
$1,000 per ram; and a ranchhouse with
stage, pit and balcony and finished in
theater blue.

Oh, yes, they call these black silk
lambs "Karakules," but Ike Barnum
called each one of them a gold mine and
wondered how long it would be till he
could save enough money to buy an 18-
carat overcoat collar made from one of
their pelts.

We ate a sumptuous dinner at the
ranchhouse and drove away at 1 p. m.

Reached Cedar Point at 3:30. Just
110 miles from home.

House used to run a paper at Flor-
ence. He knew a man near Cedar Point
named Charlie Sare, who had a cabin on
Cedar Creek that he rented out to fisher-
men. House and Sare used to sing in
the village choir twenty years ago, and
for funerals and other social events.
House sang baritone and Sare lyric tenor.

We drove to Sare's place. He ap-
peared and piloted us to the creek and
also across an alfalfa field half a mile
wide. Stepping stones bridged the ford
in the creek at this point and we crossed
single file. Bill led, carrying the fishing
tackle and a big fishbox. House came
next with a sack of cornmeal. Roy had
some groceries and Ike had some more,
and I came last with a sack of potatoes.
The sack had a hole in its side and a
potato fell in the creek. I escaped by a
fraction in the art of balancing. And
this man Wikidal, standing on the bank,
squat, bulky, and blackbrowed, abused
me for wasting his potatoes. He looked
like a yeggman in his ruin of a hat and
corduroy pants.

We came to the cabin at last and laid
our burdens down. It was a noble spot
under the trees. There was a fine spring
near by. We rigged up a seine and our
fishing tackle and got down to business.
That is, after we had crossed that alfalfa
field to the creek.

We fished till sundown, and with
gentle truth in my right hand I state
that we didn't get a bite. We walked
back that half-mile across the alfalfa
field to the cabin. House cut the wood
and Ike made the fire and Roy cooked
supper and I walked a mile after some
milk and eggs and Bill Wikidal spit on
his hands and told a big lie about what
he did on a fishing trip ten years ago.
Bacon and eggs and coffee for supper.
Good coffee. Roy is a good cook.

House went to bed and Roy and Ike
and Bill Wikidal rigged up a trot line.
House mumbled in his approaching sleep
about the asinine act of setting a trot line
in the night-time.

The Beginning of Wisdom

The fishermen came back at 10 o'clock
from over the alfalfa field in glee. We
went to bed. A lot of big rats held forth
in the cabin — I was going to tell about
these rats, but a friend of mine who
heard the story first, a friend in whose
judgment and preference I have unswerv-
ing confidence, advised me to cut out the
details in order that the rest of my story
might be believed.

After 4 a. m. we all repaired to the
creek — except House. A channel cat
and a bullhead adorned the night lines.
Crossed the alfalfa field again. Getting
breakfast was a struggle, but we made it.
Roy served a scrambled-egg dish fit for
princes and potentates.

Then to the creek again with hook and
line. Crossed the alfalfa field again.

Up to this time we had fared fairly
well. Had a noble ride, an interesting
stay on the ranch, a good cabin, a good
supper, and a fair night's sleep, but our
troubles were drawing near.

The sun got hotter and seven times
hotter. Bait grew scarce and hard to
find. The rocks in the creek-bed were
many and hard. The flies were a multi-
tude. The sun increased in power.

Roy and I went back to the cabin.
That alfalfa field was five miles wide.
The sun kept growing hotter. Its heat
multiplied. The other three fishermen
straggled in. The cabin became a melt-
ing-pot.

We sought to discover the man who

THE MASSACRE ON CEDAR CREEK

433

had proposed that fishing trip and cast
about to consider how we might slay
him. Roy laid himself down to die.
House took off his shoes and socks. Bill
Wikidal sat down in the spring. Ike
and I collapsed, speechless and helpless,
on an alien soil.

No dinner and no man to get dinner.
House, who had cut the wood the night
before, showed me the ax and swore by
the head of his ancestors that it weighed
twelve pounds.

We blackguarded each other feebly in
an effort to scourge some man into cook-
ing something to eat, but it was in vain.

The ravages of one day of fishing and
crossing that alfalfa field in the hot sun
were something to behold. Roy's eyes
were swollen nearly shut, and the skin
was peeling off his forehead in layers.
House had started out in a natty gray
suit and white collar. He had stopped
at Cottonwood Falls to be shaved and
have his coat pressed. Now he was
wearing a gray shirt and musty-looking
black trousers that were wet to the knees
from wading. He was rubbing his bare
feet with McShane's horse liniment.

With the last remnant of possible mo-
tion we gathered up our traps and crossed
that Cursed alfalfa field (it was as wide
and as hot as the Desert of Sahara by
this time) and forded the creek and
climbed in the car and started for home.
Old man Sare tried to stop us, but all
the king's horses and all the king's men
could not have done that.

At Emporia we learned that the ther-
mometer had reached the 100 mark that
May day. No wonder we wilted on
Cedar Creek. We broke fast in Empo-
ria at 8 p. m., first food since 6 a. m.
That is fourteen hours by the clock.

Then we proceeded on the way. The
big car speeded along in the starlight.
It was cooler and our spirits rose like
the bubbles in the Gene Ware washer-
woman's clothes. House sang a little
song he and Charlie Sare used to sing in
the meeting-house at Florence twenty
years ago.

We passed through Lebo on a 30-mile-
an-hour schedule. Then we got lost in

the dark. We had traveled eighteen
miles out of our way when a boy in a
buggy told us the way to go.

Bill Wikidal looked at the peaceful
heavens and picked a certain star that he
swore was the North star. He used it
for proof that we were now traveling
north. We got lost again and Bill
picked out another North star, saying
that his first one was the East star.

We traveled on in the darkness, guess-
ing the way and passing many cross-
roads. Bill discovered a third North
star and prattled about the wonders of
the sky and the benefits of having an
astronomer in the party. He showed us
the big dipper and the juxtaposition of
his latest North star to its handle. He
read signs and portents from this event.
He pointed out the track of the milky
way and the wayward course of Saturn
and the kennel of the dog star.

We arrived home at 2 a. m. I had a
powerful good time — in spots — and
wouldn't have missed the trip for a 400-
acre farm and a baby grand piano fac-
tory. But! I'm not going fishing any
more! My constitution doesn't seem to
stand the strain. The fish are too far
and too deep. The sun is too hot. The
bait too hard to get. And yet a man
may live long and read much and meet
many people and it all profit him noth-
ing unless he has ridden fifty miles on
the way to Cedar Point before breakfast
on a May morning, and crossed an al-
falfa field forty times to look for little
fishes, and drunk the waters of old man
Sare's spring, and heard the rats in his
cabin fight in the night-time, and fasted
for fourteen hours, and broken out with
prickly heat and broken down with
fatigue.

He may have seen many things in
many lands and yet not met a perfect
night face to face unless he were present
when Bill Wikidal found three North
stars in one sky while traveling home in
the dark from the Cedar Point massacre
in a streamline-fifty auto with dandy
people whose jangled hearts had all been
reset to a Jilting tune in harmony with
a happy world by that two days' outing.

HOW TO BUILD A CANVAS HOUSE

By WILLIAM C. STEVENS

Illustrated with Diagrams

With Full Details of Plans, Materials, Cost, and Method of

Preparing and Erecting

B^HERE were four of us,
two Jims, one John, and a
Bill. We were the official
builders of the tent, but
when we ran foul of com-
plications inside our two
sewing machines we thanked the powers
that there was an interested feminine
contingent, of various relationships, to
act as an advisory committee. We origi-
nated the design, cut and sewed the can-
vas, and made and assembled the frame.
When the tent was finished we had a
structure forty feet long, by fifteen feet
wide, and eight feet high at the ridge-
pole of the tent proper. There were three
rooms. Not a guy rope was used, and the
house has withstood the storms of two
long seasons, although it was set up on
dry, shifting sand.

Our location was just off the shore
of one of Chicago's best beaches, but
within seventy-five feet of the water, and
we had access to every necessity such as
running water, base of provisions, and
sanitation. We lived there from April
to October of each year, were cool on the
hottest days, enjoyed most of the modern
conveniences, had ample room for com-
fortable living and entertaining, and ma-
terially cut our living expenses for the
summer months.

Anyone willing to undertake a little
enjoyable hard work may construct a
portable house such as we made, at a
reasonable cost, and it may be success-
fully used at any summer resort or wil-
derness outing where the necessary trans-
portation is available.

We used seven-ounce, non-water-
proofed, white canvas for the side walls,
drop curtains, and roof of the tent
proper. For the fly roof we used the

[434]

same quality in ten-ounce. The frame
rafters and braces were of 1 x 6-inch
selected pine. The upright posts were
of 2 x 4-inch ordinary pine. The floor-
ing was of 1 x 6-inch matched pine. If
we ever build another tent, we will use
tan-colored material to avoid sun glare
and soil stains. Our cloth has weathered
to a dull gray, but it took two seasons
to do so.

Room "A" — Figure 1 — was our living-
room, twenty feet long and fifteen feet
wide, the long side toward the lake.
Our lounging chairs were arranged in
a row along the lake side, and along the
other long wall were our cook stove,
kitchen cabinet, dish closet, and rack for
oars and fishing tackle. Our long din-
ing table was far enough at one side to
allow freedom of movement in the
lounging space.

Room "B" was our storeroom. It
might possibly have been dispensed with,
but we found it a great convenience at
practically no added cost. In it we
stored our trunks and extra clothing,
leaving our bedroom less crowded. We
removed wet bathing-suits there and
avoided dampness and mud in other
places, and thoughtless visitors could not
sit on our beds and chat while water ran
all over the blankets from their dripping
suits. Four collapsible cots were stored
there for the use of visitors, whom we
cheerfully charged for meals and forced
to assist in the housework. We cooked
the meals, but the guests had to help
wash the dishes, and sometimes we really
longed for guests.

Room "C" was our private bedroom.
It was our "sanctum sanctorum," and
no outsider entered it without an invita-
tion. The canvas wall at the rear end

HOW TO BUILD A CANVAS HOUSE

435

Sc«eeN

San i>

J\ Prout Living Room

8 Cewter G-uest •.

C pRivAie. I5e.3>

2> C o-r S

C Dressers

F"4 Trumps

H Benches Fov*. Bathers,

7 Ice ^ox

K FftovisriaM GtoSET

L Cots #j* storAge

n KiTCHEw Cabinet

N IbiwirvG TablC

P I^ish Closet

S S c r e e: w Iv/y »_ i_ s

T Lounging C H -A » R. S

V 5cReeN -I^OoR.

V 3CREEN J^ O O R ♦ F~R o M"f
X FtSHiMG Tackle cS- Oar s

C0R7/VJNS

Burner STp-trc

W||S/ X> ow S
Poor

was split clear to the ridge-pole and was
kept rolled up to the roof night and day,
except in case of severe storm. The
open space was entirely screened with
wire mosquito netting.

The canvas curtains between the bed-
room and the center room could like-
wise be rolled to the ceiling, and as the
walls of the front room were also of
screening, we never failed to have a con-
stant and generous circulation of air.
The construction of the tent may have
encouraged air movement, but we cer-
tainly had a breeze at times when the
other campers in wall tents and cottages
suffered and groaned with the heat.

Within a month after we put up our
tent,, most of the other colonists adopted

our construction, and the following sea-
son there wasn't a guy-roped, sealed tent
in the outfit, and many of the cottages
were empty. We enjoyed comfort dur
ing the day, and sleeping at night was a
pleasurable and refreshing experience.

Five wooden arches, equally distant
apart, supported the ridge-pole of the
tent proper, and when connected by base-
boards and eaves boards, formed the
framework over which the tent canvas
was stretched. See Figure 2. The up-
right of each arch was bolted to a post
of 2 x 4-inch pine, sunk about five feet
into the ground. These posts, or "dead
men," as they are technically known, are
a vital feature of this form of tent con-
struction, for they take the place of guy

436

OUTING

Brail or (jofiPLETE Arch- TfKT&fLY

HCAVT UINES
LIGHT

T.ENT FRAME

rL*T $- DOOR FRAME

A.fVY KlSSC PoiC

8. - SAfTEHS

C-Tcmt

D. - Ri»*c pole

E.Fct RiDce Pole P<J5T

F. ■• (?AFT£R SRACf

G.TeM-l UPRIGHT

H. Br^ce

J. D oo(t UPRIGHT
K- ■ CASE 0OARD

f^RAl-lE TOP

8ASE BflARtl
EAVES
O. P00NDAT1O ft/ Po&T

P-Cross Sticks
R- A«.r S r>s c &
S.Flt eaves board

T. Z>qoR W AY

AX Ground level

W- PoiT BoltED To tEMT
v - Cowe.c — > <^«i ontAoe.

3 IT.

(SURE

ropes fn anchoring the structure securely.
A cross-piece was screwed on the side of
each post near the lower end, and another
was fastened at right angles to the first,
but just below where the ground level
would come for that particular post.
When placed in position, and the sand
well packed around them, these "dead
men" afforded an anchorage as firm as a
concrete foundation.

The frame gives the canvas tautness,
and the sunken posts give the frame sta-
bility. Our structure withstood several
wind storms that uprooted and flattened
every guy-roped tent on the grounds.

Each arch was completely assembled
and fastened together firmly with brass

screws, before it was set up, and we
found it advisable to provide an arch for
about every ten feet of ridge-pole length.

The diagram shows a spliced ridge-
pole in Figure 3. We were obliged to
do this splicing because we could not get
a pole forty feet long, but it is worth re-
membering that selected pieces, spliced
in this manner, are stronger than a
natural piece of the required length,
which has weak spots. The top edges
of the pole should be planed to avoid fric-
tion on the canvas. The ridge rests in
notches sunk into the apex of the joint
of the arch rafters.

The uprights of the tent arches con-
tinue up in one piece, through the roof

HOW TO BUILD A CANVAS HOUSE

437

of the tent proper, and form the up-
rights for the support of the rafters of
the fly-frame arches.

These arch rafters were assembled in
the same manner as the arches of the tent
proper. They were complete, and ready
to be fastened to the uprights, before they
were set in place. Short posts, clamped
to the tent ridge-pole through holes in
the canvas, supported the fly ridge-pole,
and anchored the fly arches at the apex,
as shown in Figure 3. When the fly
arches were screwed to the uprights, and
connected by the eavesboards, they were
finished.

This framework for the fly was some-
what elaborate, but it made possible a
very important advantage. The fly can-
vas did not touch the tent roof, and thus
the air space between the two was un-
broken and moisture could not be trans-

mitted at the point of contact of arches.

The construction of the fly ridge-pole
and the method of setting it in place were
similar to the same features in the tent
ridge-pole.

The floor of 1 x 6-inch matched pine
rested on stringers of 2 x 4-inch pine, em-
bedded in the sand, which came up to the
floor level. There is room for some dif-
ference of opinion here. Some campers
like an air space underneath the floor,
and in some locations it is wise. It assurer
dryness, but it requires more permanently
fastened stringers and it makes the floor
noisy.

Wherever possible our stringers wer ;
fastened to the tent arch uprights. The
balance of them were placed wherever
needed, and snugly embedded in the sand.
Bad carpentry, perhaps, but plenty prac-
tical.

Fi&ukE £)

Top

o
P©

Rime Pole Splice ,To^eT^Le,NeT»

THe*/ 6^

— *-

• «

•
m
A

, • 4

-A

• .»,

- TT)

K*t BeTw«*i Temt 8r fVr Kx*n P<

CUES-

£- Co*

NCCTlMd &LOCK

438

OUTING

We made a careful diagram, and set
of measurements, to determine just what
the pattern of the walls and roof should
be, before we sewed a stitch. Then we
cut the strips of cloth, arranged them on
a level place, and pinned the strips to-
gether, to insure the detection of any
errors in measuring, before too late to
make corrections easily. Mating points
of contact were then marked on the over-
lapping edges of each strip, and the strips
were numbered and piled together in the
order in which they were to be sewn.

This preliminary care is worth while,
for it is easy to become confused in hand-
ling such a bulk of material, and when
the strips are incorrectly sewn, it is
tedious and damaging work to make cor-
rections.

Getting the Canvas Ready

When a strip was to be added to
those already sewn, it was first pinned
in position along its entire length. We
found this very essential. The action of
the sewing machine, at least the ordinary
kind, has a tendency to stretch the upper
strip of canvas more tightly than the
lower along the sewing edge, and re-
sults in a warped, poorly sewn job un-
less corrected before it has continued
very long. The pins warn you of this
condition every foot or so, and also help
to hold the edges in position. We worked
in pairs, one man sewing and the other
handling the bulky material. The can-
vas of the tent proper for the entire roof
and the walls of the two rear rooms is
shown completely assembled in Figure 5.

The two wings "E-E" are the two
side walls for the two rear rooms, which
fall from the eaves boards at "X-X."
Each wing had two window spaces,
giving a window on each side of each
rear room.

"R-R" are the holes through which
the uprights of the tent-frame arches
pass, to form the uprights for the fly-
frame. These holes should be a little
larger than the diameter of the uprights,
because the canvas will require space to
allow for movement as weather condi-
tions stretch and slack it. They may be
screened with cloth netting, or funnels of
canvas may be sewn over them and

tacked around the uprights, to afford
protection against the rain.

"F-F" are the holes through which
pass the posts which support the fly ridge-
pole, and should also be a little larger
than the diameter of the posts, but net-
ting is sufficient protection for them, as
the fly keeps out the rain.

Edge "J-H" overlapped the rafters of
the rear arch and was securely fastened
with lath held in place with small lath
nails snugly driven in — a form of fasten-
ing we used wherever possible.

Edges "J-S" and "H-S," which are
the bottom edges of the side walls of the
two rear rooms, were fastened to the
base boards.

Edges "K-K" were fastened to the
arch uprights at the division between the
center and front rooms.

Edges "L to K" are the eaves edges of
the front room, and were securely at-
tached to the eaves boards.

Edge "L-L" was fastened to the raft-
ers of the front arch.

The canvas was not fastened to the
eaves boards where the side walls passed
over the boards at "X-X."

The canvas walls of the rear room rear
wall and the side and front walls of the
front room were put on after the tent
was up and the roof on. These, with
the curtains between the center and rear
room, could be rolled up and tied to the
boards to which they were fastened, and
they were kept tied most of the time. A
careful pattern was outlined for each, and
it was then completely finished and fas-
tened in place. The side walls of the
front room were fastened with lath to the
inside of the eaves boards, on the outside
of which the roof canvas was fastened.
The drop curtains between the center and
rear rooms had a vertical cut up the
center from floor to ridge-pole, and were
fastened to the arch rafters, as were the
curtains at the rear-room end. These
two sections overlapped about six inches.
The front screen door had a curtain of
its own, as did the spaces on each side
and above the door.

All the curtains of the front room and
the two sections of the curtain on the rear
room rear wall had brass eyelets in the
edges which hooked over brass pegs
driven into the frame. When the canvas

HOW TO BUILD A CANVAS HOUSE

439

ENT

K 00 r 0

ANVAS

**»tm REAR Room WAUl-S

L-ifc A

A-A Center of Roof along r»csc polb

B- & f^oof oven PRony i^oom

C-C Roof over, two rea^ rooms

B*^ Wl^JDOWS IN WALLS OP REAR RoOMi

E* E. Two S»il>e walls of two rear. Rooms

F- F Hoi.es FoR.PAS5A«iroF fl* fSiJDGe poLe pes-rs
R-R .« ♦< «. .» •• Eaves 8oard «.

X«a Line where1 REAR Room W acl. S- Fall.

G-URE

was stretched tightly enough to snugly
hook over these pegs the curtains easily
withstood the onslaughts of the fiercest
wind we experienced. The eyelets and
the tools for fastening them in were pur-
chased from a tent supply house, at a
low figure. The turn buttons which are
used on automobile curtains are excellent
for this purpose and are easily put on.

The sides and front of the front room
and the entire rear end of the rear room
had walls of wire mosquito netting which
extended from base boards to eaves. This
netting was held in place with tacks until
the drop curtains of canvas were put up,
when both were fastened with lath. The

seams were vertical, overlapped aboul
two inches, and were sewn together with
waxed linen shoe thread. One sewing
lasted all summer.

A wire-netting partition was put be-
tween the front and center room, fas-
tened to the arch and floor, and had
a screen door in the center which locked.
This closed off the two rear rooms and
prevented uninvited visitors from roam-
ing into our private quarters, but did not
interfere with the air circulation.

The window openings were cut and
the edge reinforcing done, as shown in
Figure 4, before the canvas was put on
the frame. After the canvas was on

440

OUTING

wire netting was sewn over the space
with waxed thread. All edges were
taped, and the corners were reinforced
with diagonal straps "A- A." The straps
"B-B" prevented the opening from sag-
ging and weakening the wall and strain-
ing the corners. Outside drop awnings
were sewn on, which had sticks in the
bottom edges. These awnings protected
the window from the sun when open, and
when closed and the stick tied to the base
board, the rain and wind were kept out.

The seams all ran up the walls and
across the roof. They stand the strain
best that way. Edges overlapped about
an inch and were sewn with two seams
on ordinary sewing machines with ordi-
nary needles. Heavy needles may be se-
cured for this work for almost any ma-
chine, but we never had much trouble in
sewing four thicknesses of canvas with
the ordinary kind. We kept most of the
strain off the needles by having one man
arrange the work in the most advan-
tageous positions while the second man
did the pedaling and guided the seam.

The same care was used in designing
and sewing the fly as with the tent
proper, the seams running across the roof.
The length was about the same as the
tent, but the width considerably greater,
for it had to far overlap the tent eaves
to keep off the rain. All four edges, in-
cluding the selvage, were turned over
and sewn for strength. Where the seams
ended, at the edges, patches were sewn
connecting the two strips, as shown in
Figure 4.

The fly was not fastened to the fly
ridge-pole or at the ends to the arch
rafters. The side edges had loops sewn
on, into which light, strong ropes were
tied, and these ropes were tied to the
under side of the eaves boards after the
fly had been brought over the top of the
board. These edges must be tied and not
nailed on, because it is necessary to re-
lease the fly occasionally to stretch it as
weather conditions affect it. It must be
kept tightly stretched, for if it is loose
enough to "balloon" in a wind it may rip
or tear loose and go sailing away into
the "milky way," taking the fly frame-
work with it.

Our furniture was simple. Much of
it was home-made. We bought our

steamer chairs and cots for seventy-five
cents each. We had two modern dress-
ers, borrowed from home, as were our
bedclothes, and their condition at the
end of the season necessitated several
painful interviews with the feminine
powers aforementioned. Our dining-
table and sideboard were both home-
made and cost very little. Our dishes
were a mixture of enameled ware and
cheap china, partly purchased, partly do-
nated, and partly left by tender-hearted
feminines who brought us pies and baked
beans. Our dining-chairs were planks
placed on up-ended provision boxes,
which were piled under the table when
not in use.

No Cook Tent Necessary

Many campers prefer a separate cook-
ing tent. We never found it necessary.
When our main room was entirely open
the odors were quickly blown away.
When the tent was closed we dropped
canvas curtains about the cooking space
and rolled back a canvas curtain in the
roof over the stove, and the smoke or
odors escaped into the air space between
the tent roof and the fly. This opening
was screened and the fly prevented the
rain from coming through.

Our cook-stove burned kerosene oil,
which it converted into a blue gas flame.
These stoves do not give the intense heat
of gasolene, but are absolutely safe and
the flame is easily controlled. The sup-
ply of fuel is also safely handled and
stored. Their only real defect is that
they are apt to smoke if not kept per-
fectly clean. They come with one, two,
or three burners, stand on their own
framework, are easily cleaned, cost from
two to five dollars, and are very durable.
They are nicely finished and are practical
and satisfactory for use in the home when
no longer needed for more important
duties at camp.

Avoid tacks, nails, or screws that will
rust, especially in fastening the canvas.
Rust will eat the cloth and cause it to
tear away from the point of fastening.
This not only makes a weak fastening,
but destroys the edge of the fabric. Put
in every nail and screw carefully, so that
it is secure and does not split the wood.

HOW TO BUILD A CANVAS HOUSE

441

WftOW UONSTRU CTION

A- LlACOIS/AU, CORNER 3TRAM.

6- Vertical, Edce ccnnectors

SFAH PATCH INGs

ft- 3EAM5

EL- Strips o f- can \//\ s

^- BATCHES AT EI>GC

SHOWING HOW PATCHES RElNFORCe SC^n*
AT £?>££ OF AATERIAL OF PL*T

& U RE

442

OUTING

For heavy fastening we used large brass
screws and drilled holes before we in-
serted the screw. For timber joints
screws are best, although their insertion
requires more time than nails, but they
come out easily and quickly when taking
down the tent, and their withdrawal does
not damage the board. Common light
lath nails driven through lath give an
excellent fastening for canvas. This plan
holds securely and snugly and may be
removed easily.

The fly roof, or awning, or second
roof, breaks the force of the sun's rays,
prevents them from overheating the air
inside the tent, and lessens the glare of
light. Rain may be driven through the
fly. but will not go through the roof of
the tent proper, because its force is spent,
and it will never soak through the lower
roof unless the canvas is touched. That
is one important reason why we had a
separate ridge-pole for the fly.

A high ridge in a tent is a mistake.
H:^h tents are targets for the wind, and
it is far better to provide ample air circu-
lation than to have a reservoir for foul
air at the tent top.

The Order of Operation

After our plans were thoroughly
worked out and the work intelligently
distributed, it took four of us fifty work-
ing hours to sew the canvas and con-
struct the frame. It took us eight work-
ing hours to erect the tent at the beach,
and two working hours to lay the floor.
We proceeded about the erection as
follows :

A. Set and pack foundation posts.

B. Erect and bolt arches to posts.

C. Connect arches with eaves and
base boards.

D. Place and fasten tent ridge-pole.

E. Put on tent canvas and fasten.

F. Place fly ridge-pole posts on tent
ridge-pole.

G. Erect and fasten fly frame arches.
H. Place and fasten fly eaves boards.
I. Place and fasten Cy ridge-pole.

J. Put on fly and tie to eaves boards.

K. Lay flooring.

L. Put on screening.

M. Hang drop curtains.

In this connection we experienced no

danger or difficulty in climbing up on the
arches to work when necessary.

Bugs, flies, and mosquitoes will get in-
side the best-regulated tent. It is wise
to permit no unprotected openings. Do
not allow fair feminine visitors to stand
in the doorway with the screen door held
open while they converse. It is a labor
worthy of Hercules to prevent this, but
it is worth the effort. When these pests
do get in (the mosquitoes, not the fair
visitors), either shoo them out or suffo-
cate them with the fumes of a good fumi-
gator, such as formaldehyde or burning
sulphur.

A low ridge makes it easy to do the
shooing. Call in all the other campers
and arm them with towels. Get at one
end of the tent with the front door open
at the other. Then drive all the insects
along before you until they fly out the
open door. Avoid doing this work your-
self, but serve supper to the other camp-
ers when the task is finished.

If you fumigate, seal the tent tightly,
but provide some way of partly airing oft
the tent without entering while the fumes
are powerful.

The first year we put up our tent
many campers who were using army wall
tents abandoned guy ropes, set their can-
vas on frames, slit the front and rear
walls to the ridge-pole, slit the four cor-
ners to the eaves, put up screening, and
had a first-class affair which gave them
far more breeze, cool comfort, and out-
look than the old way. By sewing on
mating tapes to the edges of the slits, the
walls could be sealed in case of storm.

Y\ e priced several ready-made, porta-
ble, canvas houses, all of them about our
size and general design, but without any
real fly and with many useless features,
and found the cost to be about four hun-
dred dollars. Ours cost about ninety. I
believe the same proportions would hold
good in smaller houses. A good second-
hand wall tent may be bought at a low
figure and remodeled with very good
*action and at small cost if you do
the work yourself. Most jf the lumber
we used was second hand, purchased of
a house-wrecking firm. Wire mosquito
netting is inexpensive if bought bv the
roll.

The tent we built on the plans given

THE OPEN

443

here was very roomy, but the same con-
struction detail may be applied to a larger
or smaller scale with equal success. For
temporary camping, the guy-rope style is
best, of course, for the ropes are quickly
arranged and weigh little, but for a can-
vas home, to be used all summer, either
in your yard or at your summering place,
the frame construction is far better and
worth the expense and work.

This tent may be set up in a smaller
space than the other style, it is far better
able to resist the wind, you get substan-
tial anchorage in any kind of soil, the
canvas is stretched tighter, and so gives
the maximum space inside, and sheds
rain better. Even if you do not use
sunken foundation posts, the fact that the
floor is fastened to the frame uprights
will give far better anchorage than guy
ropes. There is nothing to slip or break
and cause the entire tent to collapse in a
storm. The frame arches provide useful
supports for clothes, partition drop cur-
tains and screens, and there are no ob-
structing center poles.

A good adaptation of this design has
permanently fastened canvas walls on all
sides, but the upper half is on frames,
which swing out and up like windows,
with the resulting open space screened.
The fly rests on the tent ridge-pole and
is tied to rails running parallel with the
side walls, which are set on frames
braced against the tent frame. This is
practical, but unsightly, requires more,
ground space, and there is not as much
air between the tent roof and the fly.

Matters of ground drainage, high loca-
tion, and the stern necessity for sanita-
tion in all things will not be dwelt on
here. A good wood floor helps to pro-
vide a dry footing and promotes cleanli-
ness and neatness. Whatever you do or
do not do, brother camper, get the walls
of your tent up and let the air through,
and enjoy the coolness and dryness of the
fly roof. The camper who uses the usual
style of tent deliberately sacrifices two of
the most beneficial features of his outing,
lots of fresh air while he sleeps and rest-
ful comfort while he is awake.

THE OPEN

'By CHARLES BADGER CLARK, Jr.

WEAVING of a saddle and a wind across my eyes,
Blowing from the wideness of a sun-brimmed plain,
Hush my hurts to slumber and sing my spirit wise,
Wafting woe behind me where the market clatter dies
Back along the skyline with its dim smoke stain.

Humming in the rhythm of the hoof-timed lays,

I can see the glory of the worldling rise
Where the dusty pillar of the whirlwind sways,
And my lips are laughing while the glad soul prays —

Weaving of a saddle and a wind across my eyes!

STEALING BASEBALL SIGNALS

By EDWARD LYELL FOX

Battles of Wits to Find Out What Other Players Intend Doing

Before They Do It

pay a
other

IGNAL-STEALING has worn
itself threadbare as plot mate-
rial for writers of college and
school spcrt fiction. Some
young rascal always steals,
sometimes sells (generally to
gambljng debt) the signals of the
team. Writers of football fiction

assure us it is not an uncommon practice
on the gridiron, and there have been ex-
amples of it in fact. It is something very
common to most forms of contest, this
signal-stealing. It is like learning the
mechanical idiosyncrasies of a certain
roulette wheel and taking advantage of
it. It is a case of stacked cards, loaded
dice, fixed jockies. So is there signal-
stealing in professional baseball, only to-
day there is nothing crooked about it.
Ball players have arbitrarily and para-
doxically divided signal-stealing into two
departments — dishonest stealing and hon-
est stealing. For example :

In what we now call the older days of
baseball, the Philadelphia team of the
National League was breaking the hearts
of pitchers. To most of the best boxmen
the Philadelphia batting order looked like
Murderers' Row. It was at the time
when Washington was still in the Na-
tional League and the Senators were
playing a series in Philadelphia.

One morning it rained, and in those
days the fields, not being equipped with
very good drainage systems, it was doubt-
ful when it cleared in the afternoon if a
game could be played. Washington in-
sisted on it, and was rather surprised at
Philadelphia's unwillingness to go on
with the contest. Philadelphia had such
heavy hitters that one would suppose they
would be willing to jump out and club a
pitcher to death in rain or snow. Latham,
until recently the New York Giants'

[441]

coach, wras playing third base for Wash-
ington. Now it wasn't long before La-
tham saw why Philadelphia did not want
to play wTith the coaching lines covered
with puddles and how they were steal-
ing signals.

Latham likes to tell the story, and he
generally does it in this way:

"When I was standing near third base
I saw that the coacher's box was half
filled with water. In a couple of innings
I noticed that Cupid Childs, one of the
Philadelphia players, came out to the
coaching lines and deliberately stood with
one foot in the puddle. The water came
up to his shoe-laces. There was plenty
of turf unsubmerged that Childs could
have stood on, but he persistently stood
with his foot in the puddle. Besides,
Childs was a man who generally spent
his time dancing around. His stolid,
statuesque pose made me think it a little
queer, and I yelled:

" 'Better go put your rubbers on, Cu-
pid, if you're going to stand like that
wTith your foot in the water! You'll
have a fine case of rheumatism if you
don't!'

"But Childs ignored me — he was gen-
erally quick with a 'comeback' — and kept
his feet in the puddle. Also, the next
few batters cracked out safe hits with
surprising ease. More to josh him than
anything else, I called:

" 'So that's where you're getting your
signals, is it?'

"As I say, the remark was just a shot
in the dark. But as soon as I made it,
Childs jumped away from the puddle
and began dancing up and down the
coaching line. That, also, struck me as
being rather strange, and when the next
Philadelphia batters were put out with
surprising ease, I began to suspect some-

STEALING BASEBALL SIGNALS

445

thing. It was significant that they were
retired when Childs's foot was not in the
puddle.

"When we came into the bench I ran
back to the coaching line and stuck my
foot in the puddle just as Childs had
done. Still in the dark, but feeling that
signal-stealing somehow revolved around
that puddle, I shouted:

11 'Now here's where we get a few of
their signals.'

"I turned to look at the Philadelphia
bench, and they all were sitting with
their caps pulled down over their faces,
avoiding my glance. So with the men in
the field, they all turned the other way.
The trail was getting warm.

"When our side was put out, and we
again took our positions in the field, I
told Corcoran, one of our infielders, that
Philadelphia was stealing our signals
from the third base coaching box and that
I did not know how they were doing it.
Corcoran at once ran over and began
feeling around in the puddle. In a mo-
ment he dug out of the soggy turf a
square block of wood with a buzzer on
the underside. He kept on pulling. Up
came a wire. He pulled some more and
found that the grass was beginning to
rip away in the thin line.

"The wire was buried about an inch
under the sod and, still pulling, Cor-
coran began galloping across the field,
tearing up yards and yards of wire as he
ran, the trail leading across the outfield.
Soon Corcoran had more than one hun-
dred yards of wire trailing after him and
he was still ripping it up. The wire led
to the clubhouse porch, where a man
named Morgan Murphy was seated with
a pair of field-glasses on his lap.

" 'What are you doing, Murph?' asked
Corcoran.

" 'Watching the game,' he said.

" 'Can't you see it better from the
bench?' asked Corcoran. 'And what did
they connect you up with this machine
for?'

"He shoved the piece of wood with the
buzzer under Murphy's nose.

" 'I guess you've got the goods,' smiled
Murphy, and, putting aside his field-
glasses, he went out and sat on the Phila-
delphia bench. That is one of the rea-
sons why the old Philadelphia Nationals

got such a name as 'sluggers' on their
home field. Day after day Murphy used
to sit out there, train his glasses on our
catcher, spot the signals he was giving
the pitcher, and then flash it through the
wire to the buzzer on the third base
coaching line. There the coacher would
hear it and tip off the batter what kind
of a ball was going to be pitched.

"It was like 'playing against loaded
dice,' " is the way Latham always ends
his account of this, the most ingenious
bit of signal-stealing known to baseball.
Now, that is what ball players call dis-
honest signal-stealing. The difference
between honest and dishonest theft of the
other team's signs is the use of mechan-
ical devices. If you get the signals as
did the old Phillies you are dishonest. If
you do it by natural means it is perfectly
legitimate. Queer ethics? Who shall
say they are wrong?

There is still active stealing — sign-
stealing, the players call it — done in all
the leagues, big and small. The Phila-
delphia Athletics are supposed to be the
most dangerous team for stealing signals.
Hans Wagner of Pittsburgh, Evers of
Boston, Bresnahan of Chicago, Tinker,
now with the Federal League; Leach,
Clarke, Collins of the Athletics, and
Griffith of Washington are the slickest
signal-stealers in the game.

George Wiltse, the Giants' hero of the
last World Series against Philadelphia, is
also quick to catch on to the tricks of the
other team. The following bit of signal-
stealing accomplished successfully by
Wiltse against Pittsburgh is what ball
players to-day call an honest theft.

With Byrne safe on first, Clarke, the
Pittsburgh manager, came to bat. Evi-
dently Pittsburgh signalled for the "hit
and run," for Byrne dashed for second
and Clarke smashed the first ball pitched
into right field, Byrne dashing all the
way to third base on the play.

At once the Giants on the bench were
alert, especially so the pitchers, for it is
their business to check the "hit and run."

"What did Clarke do?" asked Ames.

"I don't know," said Mathewson; he
turned to Wiltse, "Did you get it,
George?"

"I think I did," said Wiltse. "The
sign is tapping the bat on the home plate.

446

OUTING

Clarke did that as soon as he came up."

It happened that later in the game
Clarke again came up, with Byrne again
on first base. Wiltse was watching him
like a hawk. He saw the Pittsburgh
manager fix his cap, lift up his shoes, and
knock the dirt out of his spikes. Then at
the last minute Clarke tapped his bat on
the rubber plate.

At once Wiltse shouted to Meyers,
the catcher:

"Make him put them over, Chief!"
he yelled, which, translated in the Giants'
signal code, meant:

"Signal for a pitch-out, Chief. Clarke
just gave Byrne the 'hit-and-run' sign."

Meyers accordingly signalled the pitch-
er to throw the ball so wide of the plate
that Clarke would be unable to reach it.
Obeying his manager's signal, Byrne
dashed for second base and was thrown
out ten feet from the bag. It was really
Wiltse's signal-stealing, though, that had
put him out.

Of late years baseball in the big
leagues and in the higher class of minor
leagues, like the International and Amer-
ican Association, has developed into a
battle of wits. That is why so few dull-
witted baseball players make good these
days, no matter how perfect mechanically
they may be. It is easy for a clever ball
player to catch on to signals if he can
only see them given. Between big league
catchers there are only three real signs
flashed to the pitcher. One is for a fast
ball, the other for a curve, and the third
for the pitch-out, on which Byrne was
caught. After the coacher has detected
the signal he must be shrewd enough to
flash them to his teammates without the
other club catching on. To do this there
are many ways, all of which must appear
to be unconscious.

Watch a coacher on the third base-
line. Nine times out of ten if he
straightens up from a crouching position,
or if he bends over, or if he folds his
arms, it means that he thinks he has
caught on to the signals and is tipping
off a batter or a baserunner. But it is
dangerous business to try to use stolen
signals unless you have all of them. Half
the pie is worse than none at all. Many
a good ball player has been injured by in-
correct signal stealing, and injured stars

have often meant the loss of pennants.

There was a striking example of this
when Kelly was manager of Cincinnati.
"Eagle-Eye Jake" Beckley, the veteran
Cincinnati first baseman, was at bat, and
Kelly on the third base lines thought he
knew the signs that catcher Warner was
flashing Mathewson. Apparently Kelly
was sure of it, for he signalled some-
thing to Beckley, and on the next ball
Mathewson delivered the old first base-
man stepped almost across the plate, ex-
pecting a curve. Instead it was a high,
fast ball, and it brought a lump on Beck-
ley's head. He was unconscious for two
days and in the hospital several weeks.
When he got back into harness, Beckley
buttonholed Mathewson and said:

"Matty, why didn't you throw me that
curve that Kelly tipped me off to?"

"Were you tipped off?" asked Mathew-
son ; "then blame it on Kelly, not on me."

"Matty," declared Beckley, "if I ever
take another sign from a coacher I hope
the ball kills me."

"It will," replied Matty. "That one
nearly did."

Because of the Beckley accident Man-
ager McGraw ordered the Giants to stop
signal-stealing. It is a risky business at
best, but still the ball players keep after
it. There is something fascinating about
it if you only get it. It was one of the
reasons that resulted in the loss of Kling
to the Chicago Cubs. When the Cubs
were defeated in the World Series by the
Athletics they immediately set up a howl
that their signals had been stolen by the
American League champions, and that as
a result their pitchers had been unable
to hold the batters in check. It is sig-
nificant that the Cubs made no complaint
against the ethics of the Athletics. By
one of the queer kinks of baseball tradi-
tion, they immediately turned on one of
their own men, catcher Kling, and
blamed him for the loss of the series.

After one of the Chicago pitchers had
been beaten he complained:

"How can you expect a fellow to win
when his catcher is such a chump as to
give away the signals and let the other
team in on it, so they can tip off their
batters what I'm going to throw?"

Kling heard the remark and snapped
back:

STEALING BASEBALL SIGNALS

447

"You can't expect a catcher to win a
game for you if you haven't got anything
on the ball."

But the other Cubs had heard the
pitcher's remark, and the blame was put
on Kling. They charged he had been
careless "covering 'em up," and that
Philadelphia's coaches, especially Hart-
sell, had seen the signals from the third
base lines. After the games were over
many of the Cubs, especially the pitchers,
would hardly speak to Kling.

George Stallings, the managerial wiz-
ard who is now handling the Boston
National League Club, was accused of
dishonest signal-stealing by the Athletics,
themselves the greatest crowd of signal-
stealers in the business. When Stallings
was manager of the New York Yankees,
it was charged that he had a system
whereby a man stood behind a pair of
field-glasses in the left field fence, read
the catcher's signals, and then shifted a
movable board on the top of the fence one
way or another according to what signal
was given. Stallings laughed at this
charge and it was never proved.

The New York Giants, however, did
encounter a queer bit of signal-stealing
during the 1911 World Series in Phila-
delphia. The outfield fences around
Shibe Park are low and on either side be-
hind them is visible a row of little dwell-
ings. The Giants were told that the
Athletics had a way of lowering and
raising an awning on one of these houses
to tip off the batter what ball to expect.
Some of the Giants kept their eyes on
that awning all during the series, but
they could never get anything definite.
They maintained the same kind of a
watch one year in Pittsburgh, where a
painted letter on a big billboard was sup-
posed to move, giving signals.

Mathewson has made a specialty of
studying the question of signal-stealing,
and just before the World Series in 1911
he decided to try it out. The Giants
were playing the wind-up game of the
National League season against Brook-
lyn, and Mathewson was pitching.

"Dahlen," he said to the Brooklyn
manager, "see if you can get Meyers'
signs."

Dahlen went to the third base coach-
ing lines, and after the inning was over

he came across to the New York bench.

"Matty," he said, "the Chief shows
them a little bit."

Mathewson made it his business to
have a talk with Meyers that night.
After warning the Chief about being
careful to cover up his signs and telling
him that the Athletics were the slickest
signal-stealers in the business, he there-
upon devised a new code. Meyers was
to give fake signals that meant nothing;
Mathewson himself would give the real
signals. In this way he planned to double-
cross the Athletics. It was further
agreed that they were not to use this
trick unless Philadelphia gave signs of
being on to their signals.

Accordingly in the first game Meyers
gave the real signals until Davis delib-
erately stepped across the plate, reached
for a curve, and smashed it out, scoring
a run. That meant the Athletics knew
what balls were coming. At once
Mathewson switched the signals and
began giving them himself. The Phila-
delphia coachers, watching Meyers's
signs, which were phoney, flashed the
wrong information to their batters, thus
double-crossing them.

Signal-stealing was the innocent cause
of a comeback last summer that left
Frank Chance, the aggressive manager of
the New York Yankees, without a thing
to say.

Cree, who used to play baseball at
Pennsylvania State College, was on first
base. The New York coacher on the
third baseline gave Cree the signal to
steal. The Cleveland shortstop caught
the signal, flashed it to the catcher, who
signalled for a pitch-out and caught Cree
standing up as he tried to steal second.
Disconsolately Cree came into the New
York bench, his pride hurt, for he is a
very shifty baserunner. Now Frank
Chance, coming from his four years of
championships with the Chicago Cubs,
and leading a team that was now break-
ing a record for losing consecutive games,
was in a surly mood. As Cree took a seat
on the bench Chance growled :

"There are some ball players around
here who are living on their reputations."

"Not only ball players," remarked
Cree.

And he wasn't fined, at that.

WASHINGTON— A UNIVERSITY OF
THE NORTHWEST

By HENRY JAY CASE

Illustrated with Photographs

THE United States is big enough to maintain many different
kinds of colleges. The East is not the West and the Western
college is of very different stuff and history from most of the col-
leges of the East. This is especially true of the Northwest where
the pioneer days are not far distant — in fact, are still being lived.
Therefore it is fair to call the University of Washington a uni-
versity of pioneers — pioneers in spirit, in method, and in many of
the problems which they set themselves to solve. For this reason
Mr. Case has selected Washington as the University of the Coast
that is at once typical and different.

'HEN a university can
send its crew 3,000
miles East for a boat
race on the Hudson
and its ball nine 4,000
miles West for a se-
ries with Japan, it is safe to assume that
this university has begun to get a repu-
tation. And yet not a quarter of the
thousands who gather each year at
Poughkeepsie know what part of the
country the Washington eight comes
from. Of this quarter probably fifty per
cent don't know that the University of
Washington has a student body of nearly
4,000 and a campus of 350 acres, all in
the shadow of the mountains 'way up in
the great Northwest.

This student body may not be sur-
rounded by classic traditions nor ancient
vine-clad walls. The "college" atmos-
phere of the East may be lacking. The
students are, practically, pioneers. They
have push and energy and a great deal of
the common sense of pioneers. The) arc-
making their own athletic history and
traditions, the log cabin itself is not very
far removed, and virgin timber still
stands on the campus. It is a student
body which does things and does them in
new and original ways.

[448]

The presidency of the A.S.U.W. (As-
sociated Students of the University of
Washington) is the big university honor.
It means more than a senior election at
Yale, or a scholastic honor at Harvard.
There is no class or clique about it. The
student president is the strongest man in
the undergraduate body, and is the guid-
ing spirit and director of all the student
activities. A board of control is elected
to sit with him on which there is a dele-
gation from the faculty and the alumni,
but the students have the majority vote
and run the business. They manage all
athletics, the university daily newspaper,
the musical clubs, the bookstore and the
student welfare movements.

Naturally there is more or less politics
played in the annual elections. In fact,
politics in the University of Washington
is as much in evidence as football, base-
ball, or tennis. It figures in about every-
thing, even in athletics, but it is clean
politics and the battles are fought in the
open.

Not so many years ago a citizen of
Seattle purchased a costly set of chimes
for the campus. Engraved upon them
was a record of his achievements in the
cause of good government for the State
and the people. The University Presi-

^ o

^ c

CO ...

££

^50

OUTING

dent accepted the gift, and it was about
to be installed when a committee of some
fifty men and women students signed a
statement calling attention to notorious
incidents in the donor's life not men-
tioned in the eulogy on the bells. They
urged a mass-meeting to discuss whether,
in view of the facts, the university should
accept such a memorial.

The President of the University noti-
fied the student editor not to print the
communication. The editor replied that
the communication had been properly
signed and transmitted, and that as col-
lege editor he was in honor bound to
print it in its proper column. If the
President insisted upon his right of cen-
sorship, the editor declared he would sus-
pend publication of the paper. The
President insisted, and the publication of
the college daily was suspended. For
three days there was no paper, and when

ALLAN "BUD YOUNG, SOPHOMORE,
QUARTER-BACK, AGE 21

GILMOUR DOBIE, FOOTBALL COACH OF
THE UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON
AND A PUPIL OF DR. WILLIAMS OF
MINNESOTA. HIS TEAM FOR SIX
YEARS HAS HELD THE UNDISPUTED
CHAMPIONSHIP OF THE PACIFIC COAST

the students demanded an explanation
and received it there was open rebellion..

Handbills were issued in place of the
daily paper. The action of the President
was openly denounced, a mass-meeting
was called, and from the platform stu-
dents demanded not only the return of
their paper, but that the University re-
turn the chimes to the donor. Meetings
were held in the city of Seattle. Stu-
dents were asked to address them. Citi-
zens took up the cause of the students
and a strike movement was averted by the
State Board of Regents stepping in and
arbitrating the whole question. The
publication of the paper has never since
been interfered with.

If things aren't going right with this
team or that, if the University isn't win-
ning its share of victories, on track,
water, or field, the students call a mass-
meeting and want to know what is the
matter. The manager or other officers
responsible are called before the meeting
and made to explain.

Bevan Presley, Se- Wayne Sutton, Se- Cedric Miller, Herman Anderson,
nior, Center, Age, nior, Rt. End, Age, Soph., Left Half. Senior, Rt. Tackle,
24 22 Age, 21 Age, 23

STARS IN THE WASHINGTON FOOTBALL FIRMAMENT

Two weeks before one election opposi-
tion started against the leading candidate
for the presidency of the students' or-
ganization, and at the eleventh hour one
of the hitherto most popular students at
the University was defeated by an over-
whelming vote, because, it was discov-
ered, he enjoyed visits, sub rosa, to places
where lights blazed all night and gay
companions assembled.

"We are not here to discuss personal
liberties," declared a student orator at
the campus mass-meeting called in that
campaign, "or to legislate morals into the
student body. But we do insist that the
personal life of each candidate bear the
scrutiny that we care to give it. We
have put the search-light upon Candidate
No. 1 and he won't do!

"Such men may be good fellows and
popular. I don't doubt it. It is said
they are good sportsmen. We challenge
that! 'Sports' possibly, 'sporting men,
maybe, but not sportsmen. We don't
want frequenters of sporting places nor

patrons of sporting resorts at the head of
our organization. Their private life is
their own affair, but if they prefer to
play writh 'sporting' persons 'on the quiet'
they cannot expect to work with us in
public!"

Student government is a big, serious
thing with these young men and women
at the University of Washington, and
the campus is the forum. Each student
has a vote, and there isn't a man or a
girl registered who doesn't exercise and
enjoy the right of franchise. In no other
university is there such a standard set for
clean, out-of-door life.

The women are for it as keenly as the
men, and in the election above referred
to their vote was cast solidly for the
"anti-sporting" ticket. The fraternities
had their candidates, the sororities theirs,
and the "barbs" theirs. There had been
as many splits and trades and combina-
tions as in the days of the "grand old
party," but the speech quoted swung the
university to the support of a student

[451]

WASHINGTON— A UNIVERSITY OF THE NORTHWEST 453

heretofore little known, a quiet, simple-
spoken, big-hearted son of the Northwest,
who had worked for everything he ever
had, including his education.

Out of this forum there have been de-
veloped athletic teams that have with
monotonous regularity, for several years,
taken the scalps of competing clubs and
colleges up and down the Pacific Coast,
and on the lake close by was trained the
crew which came across the continent to
row on the Hudson, and with the valu-
able experience of a big regatta the Uni-
versity of Washington came back again
this year to once more match its prowess
with the oarsmen of Cornell, Columbia,
Syracuse, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.

Washington draws a cosmopolitan
class of students. The fact that it is a
State University does not mean that it
enrolls none but men and women from
the State of Washington. Students en-
ter from the South as far as Texas, from
California, Oregon, Idaho, and Utah.
There have been students from the Mid-
dle West, from the East as far as Boston,
and each year there is a representation
from British Columbia, from Alaska,
from India, and from China and Japan.
This year thirty-four States and Alaska
are represented. There have been at
times representatives from the now fast-
dwindling race of red men, but these
have been few.

Washington's athletic material comes
from the old-settler stock, from the for-
ests, the mines, the lumber camps, from
Alaska, and from the canneries, orchards,
and fruit farms. Most of them enter
from the high schools, as the educational
system in the State is built upon the pub-
lic schools. These high schools have but
few equals, East or West. They are the
last word in building construction and
equipped with most efficient staffs of
teachers.

Hand in hand with the development
of the public school system has been that
of the parks and playgrounds. Seattle
itself has spent nearly a million dollars
in additions and improvements to parks
and playgrounds during the last five
years. It now has thirty public parks,
including fresh and salt-water beaches;
twenty-five playgrounds, comprising 205
acres, with modern apparatus, and a sta-

dium under construction. Tacoma's pub-
lic stadium, in the shadow of its modern
high school, is most impressive. The
University of Washington needs no feed-
ers in the form of private preparatory
schools to furnish it with athletic ma-
terial, so long as it seems to be the aim
of the State to turn out such a highly fin-
ished product of young man and young
woman.

Another factor in building this athletic
material at the University of Washington
is the practice of a large percentage of
students to work a year or two between
their high school and matriculation. This
gives them a maturity and seasoning
highly advantageous in building any sort
of a machine. The youth in trade, in the
lumber mills, forests, mines, and fruit
fields, who dreams of the time when he
can pick up his books again and finish a
college course, is not, when he finally
realizes his ambition, apt to worry about
how he will spend his week-end, or
whether the color of his socks matches
the color of his tie. He is more apt to
be thinking of the length of time that
will pass before he can get back again to
his particular corner of the earth to get
a toe-hold in business, and to beat out
some competitor.

Such young people have come through
the first part of their life in competition.
They have earned what position they
have by hard toil and are ready to earn
the rest by the same means. They have
seen educated men and women over them
get quicker results than they with their
limited facilities; experts in this and that
master problems which they, through
ignorance and inexperience, have been
unable to handle, and they have sworn
that some day they will fit themselves for
the same jobs. So they have grubbed
along, saving when they could, and they
enter up in the University with a meager
capital as a stake, ready to peg along for
a few more years before going after the
big money.

Boys who come from classes like these,
inured to hardship, make the finest ath-
letic material in the world. They have
heart, head, and body. "Pirn" Rice, the
Columbia coach, when he first set eyes
on the crew from the Pacific Coast, said
it was the greatest boatload of brawn he

454

OUTING

had ever seen in a shell. The football
teams are the same rugged set of men,
and so are the baseball nines, fast on
their feet, sure of eye, and hard, aggres-
sive opponents. The women are the
same fine physical specimens. They have

member of the organization which con-
trols student activities outside the class-
rooms. It gives him or her a seat at
each of the games and entertainments, a
vote in the election of officers, and the
expression of student policy, and that

RALPH A. HORR AND H. B. CONIBEAR, GRADUATE MANAGER AND COACH OF THE

WASHINGTON CREW

their own athletics, go in for interclass
games, play basket-ball and hockey, and
have their eight-oared class crews.

For just such as they the University
was founded. No tuition is required.
Room and board may be had as low as
twenty dollars a month, and probably
half the students are working to pay for
this. Some make enough money in addi-
tion for their books and some even finish
the college year with a surplus. In the
summer, students get employment in the
stores, lumber camps, mines, on the
farms, and in the canneries. There are
plenty of things to which they can turn
their hands and earn money, and few for
which they are required to pay.

One of these, and quite the feature of
his cost account, is the five-dollar fee for
the fund for student activities. Each
student who enrolls is taxed this amount
at the beginning of each fall term. This
is the first step in the extension of the
university spirit in many of the minds of
these serious students of the Northwest.
This five-dollar fee makes him or her a

five-dollar interest is a big thing in such
students' lives. At once they begin to
take an interest in the crew, the football
and baseball teams, the track team, the
college newspaper, debating society, and
many other things they never knew.

The same spirit of "best" in these
boys and girls, the same ambition that
prompted them to try for a university
course and a higher education, in order
to get ahead the faster, now crops out in
social and athletic endeavor. These stu-
dents pull for the best candidate for of-
fice and for the player who will help
make the strongest team. They want to
see the strongest combination in the field.
They want to see a crew boated that will
"lick" anything on the Coast, and, if pos-
sible, a crew that can go East and clean
up the river with the crack shells from
the older and more conservative universi-
ties of the East.

Three hundred acres or more of forest
land, nearly 350 all told, is the play-
ground given by the State to these young
men and women. On two sides of the

WASHINGTON— A UNIVERSITY OF THE NORTHWEST 455

tract are fresh-water lakes. Tide-water
almost touches a third. Great fir trees,
red cedars, hemlocks, and spruce spread
their fragrance across the campus and
through their green branches appear vis-
tas of mountain peaks, snow-capped sum-
mer and winter. But snow and ice
rarely block either the lake or the campus,
and while cross-country running is popu-
lar the year round and the freshmen are
put on the water in mid-winter, there is,
for the body of students, a break in out-
of-door athletics from the end of the
football season in early winter to the
time when the first eight-oared shells ap-
pear on the lake, which is just as soon
as the early spring air takes the sting
from the lake water splashing from the
oar-tips.

Campus Day officially opens the spring
season. This comes in March. It is a
regular, old - fashioned, out - of - doors
house-cleaning in which the entire Uni-

each under a capable squad leader. This
is one of the ways in which the Univer-
sity of Washington is modeling its virgin
timber campus. These students build
the walks and drives — trails, they call
them up there — and it is an echo of fron-
tier days to hear them talk of "blazing"
trails to this piace, and "running" lines
to that. The noonday meal is spread in
the field by the women.

Junior Day, the next big out-of-doors
event, follows about a month later, and
this finds the entire University afloat.
The interclass races are run off on this
day. The women crews have their
trials. There are canoe races, singles
and doubles, with a big event for war ca-
noes. There are tilting matches, tub
races, and swimming races, and in the
evening a big dance in the gymnasium.

Then comes the day when the high
schools of the State have their inter-
scholastic track meet on the athletic field

THE UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON IS USUALLY ABLE TO MUSTER AT LEAST FOUR
FAIRLY STRONG CREWS FOR ELIMINATION WORK IN PICKING THE VARSITY

versity takes part. Men in flannel shirts
and overalls; women in short skirts,
middies," and sunbonnets, with picks,
axes, shovels, and rakes ; the women with
cooking things and baskets to carry food
and drink to the men, all take the field.
The work is laid out as a field-marshal
plans a campaign, the workers in squads,

and the University turns out to give the
youngsters a greeting, make them feel
welcome, and incidentally lay their lines
for getting every mother's son and daugh-
ter of them to enter as soon as they can
pass their examinations. The callow sub-
freshman here gets his first touch of uni-
versity politics.

456

OUTING

All this time, since February first, the
crews have been on the water, and along
in late March the coach begins to pick
his men for the 'varsity boat. With
Hiram Conibear, coach, no student, or
group of students, has a "cinch" on a
seat in the shell. The captain, even, is
net excepted. Conibear doesn't pretend
to be a racing coach or an oarsman for
that matter. He is just a long-headed,
shrewd Yankee, a conditioner of men and
a lover of everything that grows sturdy
and clean and sweet under the open sky.
He has knocked around pretty nearly all
over the world and has trained about
everj7, imaginable class of athletes, from
a six-day "bike" rider to a big league
baseball team.

One June day when he was living in
New England he went to New London
and watched two miserably conditioned
eights fight it out for four miles, and al-
most tumble from their shells at the fin-
ish. Conibear declared then and there
that he could put eight men in a boat
that could row away from either Yale
or Harvard. The more he thought about
it, the more he was determined to try;
and it was only a few weeks later that
he made arrangements to cross the conti-

nent to handle the crew of the Univer-
sity of Washington.

Conibear was as enthusiastic over his
new job as the small boy with a ticket to
the big show. He didn't know the first
A, B, C of rowing and he didn't much
care. The way it looked to him was
this: Here were 1,000 men, not imma-
ture boys just parted from their "school-
marm's" apron-strings, but husky types
in the prime of young manhood, the sons
of pioneers, most of them, with the quali-
ties the name implies, and a still-water
lake in their front yard to work upon.

What did he care about details of boat-
rigging and theories of stroke with such
a layout ? He knewT how to handle men
and how to condition them, and if he
could discover how to make a shell travel
between two given points in the least
possible time, he ought at least to hold
his job. And plain Hiram Conibear
from 'way down East did this very thing.
He learned by quiet, persistent applica-
tion how to make eight men row a shell
faster than the eight or sixteen or twenty-
four other fellows trying to beat them.

Hiram had been out on the Coast put-
ting his principles into execution for
about eight years, when the University

TRAINING QUARTERS FOR THE VARSITY CREW. THE PATH BEHIND THE BUILD-
ING LEADS THROUGH THE WOODS TO THE MEx's DORMITORY OX THE

CAMPUS AND IS LESS THAN 300 YARDS AWAY

UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON FOOTBALL TEAM IN ACTION

alumni, undergraduates, and the city of
Seattle got together and raised the price
to send him and his eight across the conti-
nent for the Poughkeepsie regatta. These
Pacific Coast oarsmen and their coach
didn't even know what shell they were
going to row in when they finally reached
the Hudson. They had no coaching
launch, they didn't have a boathouse, nor
even a house to sleep and eat in during
the eleven days left in which to train and
get the feel of the river.

But can you imagine the satisfaction in
the breast of Hiram when he at last
boated his crew and saw them swing
away up the Hudson for their first
stretch in Eastern water? Neither he
nor his crew worried over missing equip-
ment, or a place in which to eat or sleep.
What disappointed Washington was that
neither Harvard nor Yale were going to
give it a chance to lick them. That's the
Western confidence these fellows carried.
Hiram coached from the river bank.
Some days he was able to borrow a lame
motor boat, "putter" out on the water,
and shout instructions as the crew flashed
past.

Both Courtney and "Jim" Rice sym-
pathized with the students from the
Coast and came over to help with coun-
sel and advice, but the others on the
river showed only a passing interest.
From the showing Stanford had made

one year before there wasn't much fear
that the Washington crew would prove
a serious contender. However, the boat
hadn't been on the river four days before
scouts along the bank, with binoculars
pressed to their eyes, began to take no-
tice. There was power, barrels of it, in
that boat from the Coast, and there was
a grip and a heave in the long swing of
the oars that never lagged.

A trip to Conibear's camp, where the
men from Washington State were living
under canvas, found eight bronzed young
giants. The bow oar, himself a well-set-
up man of 150 pounds, was a midget
alongside of No. 5, who weighed 195
stripped, and stood an inch over six feet
in his woolen stockings. No. 6 stripped
at 190, and the boat averaged something
over 175. About a week before the race,
when the coaches were announcing their
time trials, Conibear modestly slipped a
piece of paper to the newspapermen one
day. It read :

First mile 4:50

Second mile 9:56

Third mile 14:51

Fourth mile 19:28

Four miles 19:28

This was within a fraction of a min-
ute of the record and the river was agog!
"I don't want you Easterners to think

[457]

TACOMA S HIGH SCHOOL STADIUM. BUILT BY POPULAR SUBSCRIPTION. IT IS

FROM SUCH INSTITUTIONS AS THIS THAT THE UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON

GETS ITS FINE ATHLETIC MATERIAL

we're a lot of wind-jammers," said Coni-
bear, "but as long as you're going to
print something you might as well get it
right."

After that the rowing sharps from the
East studied this shell as it swept im-
pressively by, much in the same attitude
of mind that men on that river, hundreds
of years before, watched the approach of
a war canoe full of mighty, bronzed men
knowing hardly what to expect, but sure
that if their own oarsmen beat off the
strangers, they would have to row as they
never rowed before. And the story of
that June afternoon in 1913 proved all
of that. Washington, fresh as a moun-
tain daisy, after shaking off Wisconsin
and Pennsylvania and passing Columbia,
came booming along toward the finish in
full pursuit of Syracuse and Cornell, and
looking like a winner. But it wasn't des-
tined to be. Washington had timed its
sprint too late. Besides, one of the crew
was in trouble with his foot-brace and
seven men were pulling the boat.

At that Cornell was barely able to get
the nose of its shell across the line ahead
of Washington, and third was the best
the Pacific Coast could do. But the oars-
men went home happy, and the happiest

[458J

man in the party was Conibear. He had
tested his methods against the best rowing
coaches in the country and had won a
place.
The following is the record of the
University of Washington on the water
up and down the Pacific Coast since
1907:

1907. Washington first, Stanford second.

1908. Washington first, California second.

1909. Stanford first, Washington second.

1910. Washington first, California second.

1911. Washington first, Stanford second.

1912. Stanford first, Washington second.

1913. Washington first, Stanford second.

1914. Washington first, Stanford second.

Rowing is popular at the University.
All water sports are. The spirit of the
University extends to the city of Seattle,
and the two fine fresh-water lakes keep
it alive. In the summer, during the col-
lege vacation, the University boathouse is
kept open and the public, under certain
restrictions, are allowed to use the single
and pair-oared shells. There isn't any
mystery about rowing up here in the
Northwest, any more than there is about
paddling a canoe. Boys and girls are
encouraged to try it, and to "make" the
University crew is an honor almost equal
to that of being elected president of the

ON CAMPUS DAY, WHEN THE WHOLE UNIVERSITY GOES AFIELD IN ROUGH

WORKING CLOTHES, THE CO-EDS SERVE THE NOON-DAY MEAL TO THE OTHER

STUDENTS ACTING AS WOODSMEN, GARDENERS AND ENGINEERS

A. S. U. W. The women students have
their crews. There are class crews and
scrub crews and the greatest rivalry ex-
ists between them, as also between the
scrub crews and boat clubs up and down
the coast from Vancouver to Oregon.

Yet Conibear complains that he doesn't
have enough competition for positions in
the 'varsity shell. In his eight years' ex-
perience on the Coast he has never had a
man report to him as a crew candidate
who has rowed before in a shell ; mo?t of
them have never been in a rowboat.
There are no big "prep" schools where
rowing is taught as a fine art. Not ore
of the men has ever seen an oar, shell, or
boat race unless it has been in Seattle.
Conibear has no rowing machines, be-
cause it is the opinion out there that the
lake is good enough for both instruction
and practice.

While for the greater part of the time
this spring there have been five crews on
the lake, Conibear had only four cox-
swains and eighteen upper-class men try-
ing for the 'varsity boat, and he elimi-
nated five of the eighteen early in the
season. That brought his squad down to
thirteen men outside of the coxswains.

Somebody has said that Hiram has so
much material that he is always
"cracked" on "weight." For an East-
erner to look at this superb material and
then hear Conibear rave over the scarcity
of good men takes one back to the train-
ing camps on the Hudson last summer,
when coaches like Courtney, Rice, and
Ten Eyck, after looking over the Wash-
ington group, would growl good-natured-
ly: "It's too bad about Hiram."

In the East, it seems to be the opinion
that the secret of Washington's strength
lies in its open water the year round.
Conibear doesn't deny having this extra
season in the shell, but it is so cold in
December and January, when he is work-
ing his freshmen, that ice forms on the
sweeps. It is laboring under difficulties
to teach a student how to row when his
fingers are so numb he can hardly hang
on to his oar. It requires more than the
usual patience for both coach and stu-
dents to stop under such conditions long
enough to correct faults.

"Give me," says Hiram, "a nice, warm
place where a man can sweat and not
freeze, and where I can get hold of him
and show him just what I want him to

[459]

BASIN AND MUSIC BUILDING — AT THE UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON

do, and I am quite sure that I can make
more good oarsmen than I can under
Arctic conditions and with no rowing
machine indoors."

At the University of Washington the
Varsity squads report about February 1st
each year. By that date the Freshmen
are ready for their racing shells, and
Conibear starts all the crews to work on
the water. He coaches from a launch
each day from about 4:30 to 5:30 p. m.,
and often up to 6 o'clock, trying to make
an average of one full hour except on
Saturdays, when all the crews are work-
ing from 3 to 5 p. m. This program is
strictly carried out through the months
of February, March, April, and May.

Last year the alumni and the people
of Seattle contributed $3,600 to send the
crew East after the dual race with Cali-
fornia on Lake Washington in May, in
which Golden Bear oarsmen lost by
seven lengths — the second defeat in the
season at the University of Washington's
hands. This spring Washington again
defeated California, and the alumni and
the city of Seattle raised $4,000 more to
send the crew East again. This sum
will provide the necessary funds to in-
clude a high-power launch for Conibear's
use in coaching on the Hudson. To raise
the money a State-wide campaign was
undertaken, with committees in every

town of any size, each working to outdo
the other in the amount it collected. The
University undergraduates have pur-
chased two new shells, one built for a
heavy crew, and the other for an eight
of an average weight. They are said to
be the finest shells ever seen on the Pa-
cific Coast.

Football, more than rowing, seems to
fit the power and energy of this big,
rangy type of man in the Northwest. In
popularity, too, it breaks a little more
than even. The public follows the for-
tunes of the 'varsity eleven as it does the
professional baseball scores, and supports
it by packing the stands at each of the
championship games in Seattle. Every
community in the State which can boast
of a boy on the University of Washington
football team is pretty nearly as proud
as though it had a Governor or a Presi-
dent. Not long ago the folks from the
township that produced an all-Pacific
back sent a delegation to one of the big
games, members of which, between
halves, passed through the stands handing
out enormous rosy-cheeked apples, say-
ing:

''Have one on Bill, who comes from
the home of the big, red apple!"

The coach who has given this Univer-
sity its brand of football is Gilmour Do-
bie, a man little known to the East, but

[460]

WASHINGTON— A UNIVERSITY OF THE NORTHWEST 461

wno, from Chicago west, is quickly rec-
ognized wherever the game is played.
Dobie came to Washington in the fall of
1908, having had nine years' experience
at playing and coaching. He played end
and quarterback on the Minnesota team
for three years, beginning in 1899; then
he assisted Dr. Williams as assistant
coach for four years. In 1906-7 he was
athletic director and coach at the North
Dakota Agricultural College. During
his stay at Minnesota he was in touch
with all of the big teams in and out of
the Conference, knew intimately the in-
dividual players, and had carefully stud-
ied several of the Eastern teams in action.
It is just as difficult to get a compara-
tive line on the strength of the teams of
the Pacific Coast as compared to those of
the Middle West as it is between the
latter and those of the East. Dobie
claims — and he ought to know — that the
teams of the Coast are on a par to-day
with those of Minnesota, Wisconsin,
Chicago, and Illinois; that the players
are just as fleet of foot, just as heavy and
strong, and with the same courage and
gameness.

Frank G. Kane, of the faculty of the
University of Washington, and for sev-
eral years a writer on college athletics at
Ann Arbor for Chicago and Detroit
newspapers, states unqualifiedly that the
University of Washington eleven takes
rank with any team, big or little, in the
Middle West. He has been a close stu-
dent of Middle- Western football since
1903.

"I have seen two of Dobie's champion-
ship teams in action," writes Mr. Kane.
"One was the team of 1909 and the
other last year's team, which won the
last game with Pullman, and thereby
added the sixth consecutive championship
to Washington's gridiron fame. Either
the 1909 or the 1913 team would furnish
a 7 to 0 game with the best of the Mid-
dle-Westerners— the Class A teams —
Michigan, Chicago, Wisconsin, or Min-
nesota, if the range and versatility of
Washington's play in the last six years
could be sustained, as there is every rea-
son to believe it could be. I believe
Washington ought to give a slashing,
stand-up battle with any team in any sec-
tion of the country — except, possibly, one

"CO-EDS" IN A MAYPOLE DANCE DURING THE UNIVERSITY S BIG OUT-OF-DOORS
FESTIVAL IN EARLY SPRING

462

OUTING

or two in New England. I add this
qualification for the reason that we in
the West have no means of gauging the
real strength of Yale or Harvard."

This is the record of the University's
football team since 1908:

Season of 1908

Washington Whitworth 24-4

Washington Whitman 6-0

Washington Pullman 6-6

Washington Oregon 15-0

Washington O. A. C 32-0

Season of 1909

Washington Idaho 52-0

Washington Whitman 19-0

Washington O. A. C 18-0

Washington Oregon 23-6

Season of 1910

Washington Whitman 12-8

Washington Idaho 29-0

Washington Pullman 16-0

Washington O. A. C 22-0

Season of 1911

Washington Idaho 18-0

Washington O. A. C 32-0

Washington Oregon 29-3

Washington Pullman 32-6

Season of 1912

Washington Idaho 22-0

Washington O. A. C 9-3

Washington Oregon 30-14

Washington Pullman 19-0

Season of 1913

Washington O. A. C 47-0

Washington Whitman 41-7

Washington Oregon 10-7

Washington Pullman 20-0

Dobie has been coaching the Univer-
sity of Washington since 1908, and in
that time his team has not lost a single
game, playing schedules each fall com-
posed of seven or eight games, four being
championship contests and the other prac-
tice games in which the scores are usually
very high.

Dobie lays the success of the Washing-
ton team very largely to the use of the
forward pass and says that all the big
games have been clinched by its execu-
tion at the psychological moment. He
does not depend upon it alone. He tries
to send his team into each game just as
well trained in the kicking and end run-
ning and line plays, and then resorts to
that style of play which proves to be the
most effective.

"Invariably," lie adds, "the forward

pass is the play that does the business."

The average weight of the University
of Washington's teams in the past eight
years has varied from 172 to 176 pounds,
and as a rule they meet teams that are
heavier and older. The squads usually
number about fifty men at the opening of
the fall term, and are then gradually
weeded down to about thirty. In addi-
tion, there are, each fall, the class teams
which have their own schedule of games.

If the East has not seen the Pacific
Coast team in action it has from time to
time seen some of the players on Eastern
gridirons. William Matson, right end
at Washington in 1908-09, subsequently
won his University letter at Pennsylva-
nia, playing a good end for that team
two years later. Matthews, a Washing-
ton half-back, afterwards made the Notre
Dame team, and Spidel, a quarter-back,
later played brilliantly on the Chicago
University team. "Dan" Pullen, the
giant tackle of the Army eleven and by
many picked as all-American, came from
the University of Washington, where he
played two years.

Several of the players on the Eastern
and Middle-Western college teams came
from the Northwest, through Eastern
preparatory schools, direct to their re-
spective colleges. Several have come from
other Northwestern colleges. Philbrook
and Dimmick, of Notre Dame, pre-
viously played at Whitman College ; Sam
Dolan, of Notre Dame, played at the
Oregon Agricultural College. Leslie En-
gelhorn, Captain of Dartmouth, and De-
Witt, of Princeton, both played football
at Washington State College. Stanley
Burlesky, of Michigan ; Fitzgerald, of
Notre Dame, and Gottstein, of Brown,
all came from preparatory schools in the
Northwest. Of all these players only
three — Pullen, Dimmick, and Philbrook
— were considered particularly good play-
ers out on the Coast.

Of the younger players rated as good
representatives of Northwestern football,
Shiel, fullback, is a husky type of the
Coast ; rugged and courageous, a fine
line-plunger, and a heavy defensive play-
er, in both close and open formations.
He tips the beam at 180 pounds. "Hap"
Miller, half-back, weighs five pounds
more, is fast on his feet, an expert at

WASHINGTON— A UNIVERSITY OF THE NORTHWEST 463

forward passing, can punt forty yards on
the average and is proficient at goal
kicking. Presley at center weighs 176
pounds, and is just as fast and as good
a ground-gainer as any of the backs.
Sutton at end, about the same weight as
Presley, is another fast man who shows
at his best in boxing the opposing tackle
and can be depended upon to be where he
is wanted at the receiving end of the for-
ward pass.

Dobie shows his Minnesota training
under Williams by using such a man as
Anderson, the captain of last year's team,
at tackle. This player tips the beam at
185, and is invaluable at diagnosing plays
and breaking up interference, require-
ments of the perfect defensive tackle.
Again in using a man of the type of
"Bud" Young for quarter-back Dobie
displays the generalship of the East.
This player is worked in about every
combination on the offense, whether run-
ning, kicking, or passing the ball. Young
punts an average of forty-five yards and
is a drop-kicker of unusual accuracy. He
has the reputation of being as fast around
the ends as he is effective in line-plunging,

and on the defensive he has the reputa-
tion of never having missed a punt down
the field to his position.

The following line-up of the 1913
team gives one a good idea of the even
weight of these Pacific Coast football
teams, and the speed and alertness of big
men :

Hunt, left end 178 lbs.

Leader, 1. t ■. 170 "

Griffiths, 1. g 180 "

Presley, center 178 "

Seagraves, r. g 182 "

Anderson, r. t 186 "

Sutton, r. end 170 "

Young, q. b 165 "

Miller, 1. h 185 "

Shiel, f. b 180 "

Jaquot, r. h 170 "

In baseball, the University nine last
year tied for first place in the intercol-
legiate honors of the Coast, and this was
the nine that made the trip to Japan at
the invitation of Keio University. Wash-
ington won the majority of games played
on the Islands. The basket-ball team
last winter won the championship of the
Northwest, as did the track and wres-
tling teams.

iil^-w_^piiim

^^-k

TEMPERAMENT IN TENNIS, in August
OUTING, will be an unusually timely article.
It is in the middle of August that the last match
in the struggle for the Davis Cup will be played.

OURS WAS THE DAYUREAK RAPTURE OE THE YACHTSMAN S JOY

THE FIRST YACHTSMAN

By WALTER PRICHARD EATON

Drawing by Walter King Stone and Phillipps Ward

'"THEY say no child is happy without a place to wet its feet in. Certainly
•■■ no boy is quite happy without water to play both in and on. Preferably
it should be a mill-pond. Nothing is more fascinating than an old-fashioned
mill-pond. Alas, with the disappearance of our forests, they are becoming
more and more rare! The lumber must now come from far afield. Our flour
is ground in Minneapolis. The old-fashioned mill, which cut the logs or
ground the corn of the neighborhood, wherever a six-foot fall could be secured
in some meandering stream, is either a memory now, or at best a picturesque
ruin, with the dam destroyed. And our present generation of boys is the
poorer for that loss.

We learned to swim in the old mill-pond, stripping unashamedly beneath
the arching willow near the dam. We gathered pond lilies from it, working
from the shore with a long pole slit at the end to catch hold of the stem, or else
"borrowing" the miller's flat-bottomed boat. We "ran logs" in the mill-pond
— an exciting sport, never popular with parents. When the winter cutting
came down the stream and lay jammed criss-cross in the pond, it seemed to
make a dry flooring from bank to bank, and no dare, not even one to run
tiddly-benders on thin ice, was so irresistible as the cry, "I dare yer to cross
on the logs!"

The logs rolled. More than half submerged in water, they might have
been hung on ball bearings, they responded so easily to the slightest touch;
and once started on a career of rolling, a twelve-inch pine log gathered mo-
mentum enough to counteract any mad efforts a mere boy might make to stop
it. It pitched him forward or backward, unless he could jump in time to
another log, and he had to land on the exact center of that!

When the logs were out of the pond, and the great pile of new sawdust
by the mill smelled sweet and resinous in the July heat, and the miller chanced
to be good-natured (or away from the mill!), we used to beg a couple of
planks, hunt out a log or two which had escaped attention, pick up a few old
boards, "sneak" a hammer and some nails from our homes, and emulate the
pioneers of river navigation. We would build a raft! Has the boy ever
lived who did not love to make a raft? No matter if it sank two inches under
water when two navigators stood on the same side, soaking their boots. No
matter if the improvised mast and sail were quite ineffective. It held us up
en the bosom of the waters, and we had made it with our own hands. No
knockabout nor motorboat of the after years has ever given half the thrill.
Ours was the daybreak rapture of the yachtsman's joy.

That old mill-pond is no more now. The mill has been destroyed, the
timber dam allowed to rot away. The great willow has vanished. A
shrunken and sluggish stream flows past little frame houses on the bank, and a
trolley goes past on the road. There are no more pine logs to come down the
current in spring. And the saddest part of it is, perhaps, that the logs and the
mill might both, be there to-day if we and our fathers had possessed six grains
of foresight!

[465]

NOTED AMERICAN GOLFERS AND

COURSES

By HARRY VARDON

The Famous English Professional's Opinions as a Result of His
American Tour Last Year

URING my recent brief
tour of your country, I
had hardly the oppor-
tunity I wanted to study
your golfers and your
courses. Ray and I
worked overtime. We took part in
matches on the Pacific Coast and in
Texas. We made some pretty quick
jumps, a series of them, ana in that time
we saw more or less of your prominent
golfers. We had opportunities of play-
ing on some of your best courses and it
is at the request of Outing that I shall
try to tell you briefly my impressions of
your noted players and courses.

I shall not discuss American golf,
its needs, and assets. Neither shall I go
into a comparison of the game in this
country and in Europe, nor record what
is the matter with the great mass of
your golfers and the reason for it. I
have just been asked to say something
about your best players and courses. If
you are expecting me to consider the
mass of American golfers, you will be
disappointed.

Of course, I did not have an oppor-
tunity of closely studying all your ama-
teurs. I saw practically all your good
ones, however, and I am ready to make
this statement:

Charles Evans, Jr., struck me as be-
ing your best amateur. I noticed these
points in his game: When he played
in England in 1911, it occurred to me
that his swing wasn't as good as it might
he; it was too cramped. Seeing him in
action last year, however, he seemed to
have eliminated that fault. He now
plays with a more upright stand. His
style is not unlike that of the leading
British golfers.

UMJ

The point I liked best in Evans' game
is the way he plays his iron shots. To
be sure his driving is good. But his
half iron shots up to the hole are the
feature of his game. Evans plays a
kind of push shot. He addresses the
ball with his hands slightly in front of
it, keeping it fairly low during the flight
and making it drop dead soon after
alighting. It is not quite the same push
shot as that which the leading profes-
sionals in my own country have prac-
tised so assiduously and brought to a
state bordering on perfection. Still it
is an exceedingly good one. Of all the
amateurs whom I saw in the States,
Evans alone played this valuable stroke
with the polish and incisiveness that it
needs.

A good many people told me that he
was a poor putter. I cannot understand
how he got this reputation. The day I
met him at Ravisloe he putted exceed-
ingly well, and in good style. He as-
sured me, however, that he did not
often meet with such success on the
greens. All in all, he is one cracking
good amateur.

Francis Ouimet comes next to mind.
He is a fine golfer. Ray and I are
keenly looking forward to opposing him
again in the English championships this
summer. Personally I like Ouimet's
wooden club play better than his iron
club. He seems surer of his driver and
his brassy. There is a certain swift pre-
cision to these strokes that I seemed to
find lacking in his work with the irons.
He drives splendidly. But about the
way in which he executes his iron shots
there is a certain element of "flabbiness,"
if I may so describe it.

Ouimet does not hit the ball with

NOTED AMERICAN GOLFERS AND COUR

467

the same iron as Evans. At this style of
play, Evans seemed utterly to surpass
him. I am sure that when Ouimet im-
proves his work with the irons, he will
be an even better golfer. It may be that
his swing is a shade too long for his iron
clubs. I cannot say this for certain, for
I am frank to confess that I was so close-
ly concerned about the scoring at Brook-
line that I did not watch Ouimet's swing
very closely. If he was hitting the ball
that way, taking too long a swing, it
would explain the "flabbiness." For
iron shots a compact swing is essential.
I fancy that one or two of Ouimet's
strokes in the play-off for the champion-
ship at Brookline were not shown in
quite the manner that he intended. It
would be unfair to judge anybody under
the conditions which prevailed on that
occasion. The ground was so soft that
the club-head simply skittered along on
meeting the soaked turf. That may ex-
plain why Ouimet's work seemed flabby.
Still it does seem to me that he would
be even harder to beat were he to put
more "devil'' into, his iron shots. His
drives are excellent. They mostly earn'.
His short approaches are particularly
good. Also, judging by what he did
in winning the championship, he is a
first-rate putter.

Dangers of the Hook

After seeing E. M. Byers play, I came
to the conclusion that he is essentially a
putter. True, on many occasions, he
gets very long distances on his drives.
He does this, however, by playing for
the hook, risky business as I shall show.
At other times Byers overdoes this style
of driving and finishes in trouble on the
left, the ball swooping into the rough.
There is a slight excess to his pull. I
have seen him come to grief several
times, solely for this reason. In each
case he obtained with it the length of
his drive but the shot was in the wrong
direction.

Such visitation of trouble is inevitable
in the case of a golfer who always plays
for the hook. It is a dangerous trick
to attempt. The very smallest excess
of the pulling element in the stroke
makes a hu^e difference in the result.

Personally I feel that the risk is not
worth taking. I would never under or-
dinary circumstances attempt to pull.
I did at the ninth hole at Brookline and
paid the penalty. The chances or :
ure were far too great.

By watching many of your amateurs
I came to the conclusion that too many
Mem are ruining their prospects by
attempting this kind of a game,
all right when it comes off. The long
run produces a long shot. It is sensa-
tional. But give me the more upright
swing. This produces a stroke that is
nearly all carry. There is little chance
of getting into trouble, and in the end it
is safer. A good player can always be
sure of controlling direction in this man-
ner. But to execute a stroke with a pull
is such an extraordinarily delicate action
that nobody can depend upon accom-
plishing it perfectly even- time. But to
return to Byers. red, he is

dally a putter. On the greens he
has what I once heard an old Scotch
golfer say:

"That mon has the heart o' an ox."

Byers has what golfers call "cold
nerve.'' Nothing seems to fluster him.
I believe that if a championship rested
on the result, nine times out of ten he
would run down a nine-foot putt. I
think it was in Cleveland that I saw
him make an approach that left him to
hole out a sixteen-footer and he needed
it to halve the hole. He addressed the
ball in perfect form, took his time, and
never blinking an eye, sent it spinning
true to the cup and he had to figure on a
slight grade at that. He is certainly a
splendid putter. I also noticed that he
was very good at short pitch shots. He
plays the right kind of an approach.
At least he did when I saw him. He
sends his ball high, dropping it on the
green with all the roll taken off it.

Before I came to this country I heard
a lot about Jerome Travers. I knew
him well by reputation. We have heard
much about his brilliant championship
work. I saw Travers play only about
eight shots, consequently I cannot pre-
tend to be able to criticize him at any
length. But from what I witnessed,
he did not impress me as being a true
championship golfer. I observed, to my

OUTING

tzement, that Trj

0 the hook game. During the

brief period in which 1 watched him,

ever, he Was obviously far below his

: term. He played his wooden club

ts but they were both erratic, mail

I think. .f the attempt to get

the hook. 1 - see him putt, but

1 w . ain. HJs work on

the greens 1 far

from being his res:. 1 concluded I must

have struck hi I off time,

ssured me he was a spier
ter. He has nor. however, the all-
round golfing for::: : 1 ans.
Unfortunately. 1 did not have a :
ag Walter J. Travis, Hei:
Fred Herreshoff, and other
prominent amateurs.

Promising Young Professionals

I was rather impressed

young The most prom-

.;::: I saw were Macdonald

I and J. ML Barnes. I think that

- a real top-sawyer. am-

pion. He is plainly a natural golfer. I

have never seen anybody, young or old.

tain or America, play ire:: -
up to the hole better than he plays them.
I: is clear that they are easy to him and
as hf y about nineteen

gjit to have
future as long as he takes care of him-
self.

He was in the couple behind me, in
the I S en Championship

•rookline. Thus I had many oppor-
tune -erving him. Even- time I
looked around to see him play an iron
shot, he put the ball close to the
I have never encountered a more prom-
g golfer. Keep your eye on him for
your next open champion.
Barnes reminds me of Jau

him, he is tall and sturdy. H
an uncommonly good player. He has
even- shot in He knows he

all his clubs perfectly, something not
all your best professionals understand.
Several other excellent young players im-
pressed r. -h I could recall their
names, but it is difficult at the end of a
three months' tour rushing from club to
club and playing over forty matches.

Let me draw this conclusion, however.
1 was impressed with so many of your
ssionals that it seems to me
that in only a tew years American cham-
pionship golf Is going to have a
boom. You have a lot of very prom-
ising young professionals, West as well
as East, as your next open tourney ought
to she

Your Smiths all seem to be note-
worthy golfers. O: the Smith brother-
hood, -Aleck is almost as good to watch
as Macdonald. He plays bis iron shots
a is a wonderfully deadly
putter. I like, too, the breezy, confident
manner in wh H>ut the game,

r.ething like the air which used
stinguis . Duncan. Aleck

Smith seems I a by an ever-

boyish spirit which says: "Here's a ball.
- bit ::." Apparently the seriousness
never bothers him which is
per:: s - so efficient.

I noticed that Willie Smith has
char._ - style. Now he is using the
flat s of the upright. Since

he is _ :or a pull to-day, I do not

think he sg ;d a golfer as when I

s in the States fourteen years
He was very hard to beat then. I was
at my best { I w like

that now] . and I had to be right at the
top of my form to defeat him by 2 and 1
ine. Fla., and by 4 and 3
at 1M in. If Willie Smith had

been s g rdine last summer

.< in 1 °00. he would have won
the championship comfortab

Your other noteworthy professional,
T. J, McDermort. has changed his meth-
ods since he took part in the British
championship a: M.irrield in 1911. He
failed then to survive the qualifying
round. Like Evans, McDermott has
chan_ s style of play. By so d

he has improved c immens

At Muirfield he used the r. and

continually getting into trouble.
We could not see any future for him.
When I saw him in action here, how-
ever. I was surprised at the change in
his game. He has adopted a more up-
righ:

to-day a splendid golfer, well rounded
out in all his shots and thoroughly sea-
soned. Of the way he uses his clubs I

NOTED AMERICAN GOLFERS AND COURSES

469

cannot make a criticism. Only one thing
impressed me. McDermott might play
a little more quickly. If he did so, I
think he would show even better golf.

From watching all your amateurs and
professionals, I concluded that slowness
is one of the defects of their style. Slow-
ness in golf is not generally calculated
to bring success. At least, I feel cer-
tain that the first impulses are generally
the best at golf. If it occurs to you, off
hand, for instance, to slice deliberately —
provided, of course, that the situation
offers a slice — it is wise to act on that
impulse. If you stop to consider you
will instantly conceive several ways of
playing the shot and you will find your-
self in a dilemma. I know years ago
it used to be that way with me. So
many methods of solving a situation
would come to me that when it came
time to perform the business I would
hardly know what I was trying to do.

I noticed that many amateurs in the
States make a practice of disregarding
their wooden clubs at the tee. On holes
that call for long drives, I saw many
players using the cleek, driving iron,
even mid-irons. There is nothing so dis-
turbing to a man who has studied golf
as to witness such tactics. From time
to time there appear in the British
newspapers and golfing journals re-
marks which suggest that American ama-
teurs are falling more and more every
year into the habit of using iron clubs
for all their tee shots. How far this is
true I cannot say, but during my tour
I saw enough to lead me to believe that
there is a basis for the statement.

I hope that it is an exaggeration, be-
cause I am certain that where distance is
wanted, a wooden club is the proper im-
plement to take, and that in the great
majority of cases the player who prac-
tises assiduously with the driver and the
brassy will be able to control those clubs
better than any cleek, driving iron, or
similar instrument. Besides it is proper
golf to drive with the driver.

That may seem a priggish, old-fash-
ioned idea, based largely on sentiment.
But I do not like to see a golfer using
irons from the tee at long holes, because
I always feel that he is injuring his
chances of progress. Some golfers se-

cure amazingly good results in this un-
orthodox way, as, for instance, Jerome
Travers. I cannot help thinking, how-
ever, that even Travers, excellent and
successful player though he is, would be
better off if he would give himself up
wholly for some time to the task of mas-
tering his wooden clubs. He is a born
golfer and I feel sure he could do it if
he would go about it in the right way.
The use of iron from tees is the only
criticism I have to make of Travers's
game.

At home we have a good many men
who are addicted to the regular use of
irons from the tee, although there is no
such player in the first-class ranks. It
is my opinion that iron drivers are her-
etics. From the view-point of a con-
scientious golfer they cannot appear to
be anything but that. They are not only
unorthodox, but they are blind to their
own interest and are moreover faint-
hearted. They think that they cannot
master wooden clubs and they have not
the courage to make a determined ef-
fort to do so. They seek to evade the
difficulties of the game, by accomplishing
their tee shots with a driving mashie or
kindred instrument. They will never
make good players and they will never
know the full joy of the links. Not one
person in 10,000 is likely to derive real
satisfaction from the game or obtain a
high standard of ability, unless he learns
to wield wooden clubs in the correct
manner. That is one of the weaknesses,
the biggest, in fact, of your mass of
amateur players.

The Best Courses

So much for your best players as I
observed them. I shall now consider
those of your courses that impressed me.
Of course, I did not have an opportunity
of playing on all your links. The ones I
did not have a chance to see, however,
were ably described to me. Also, they
were compared with courses that I
played on. In general I must say that
your golf grounds are not as good as
those in England. The reason is that
they are too easy. To be sure, you have
some very splendid courses and the ones
that impressed me most I shall dwell a

470

OUTING

bit on, discussing specific points that ap-
pealed to me.

The course I liked best was Detroit.
It has both cross hazards and wing haz-
ards and they are excellently placed. I
cannot think of any criticism that could
be leveled at Detroit. It is a splendid
test of golf. It demands the placing of
shots, which after all is the sure test of
an absolutely high-class course. There
are many very fine holes at Detroit.

It was the second hole, however, that
I liked best. This hole calls for two
wooden club shots by a first-class player.
On either side the bunkers hug the fair
green so closely that unless you drive to
the right spot you lose the advantage of
the open approach for the second shot
and have to try and carry the bunker.
This is protection that a hole of that
length should have. Were the Detroit
course not laid out so scientifically, it
would be possible to pull your ball and
still be able to get through to the green
unobstructed on the second. But pull,
and you have to run the risk of being
caught in a bunker. That is real golf.
Proficiency with the wooden clubs is re-
warded with the chance for a clear ap-
proach. Faulty use of your brassy and
the hazard rises in your path.

Another very excellent course is at
Mayfield (Cleveland, Ohio). At May-
field there is something to carry at nearly
every hole. This is a proper condition
of affairs. Under such circumstances,
the scuffling, half hit shot cannot very
well be rewarded unduly. The brows
of hills confront you from the teeing
grounds, and the only way of getting
over them is to carry them. You can-
not accomplish anything with slipshod
driving at Mayfield. You must make
your long carry or take the consequences,
which is as it should be.

I particularly remember one hole at
Mayfield. It was a dog-legged con-
trivance and I was very fond of it. It
called for a perfectly placed drive, then
a chip over the corner of a river. A
faulty drive and you were done for. It
is a test of exquisitely delicate work with
the wooden club. It makes a really beau-
tiful hole. Moreover, the whole course
at Mayfield looks natural. There is
none of the artificiality about it so com-

mon to many American golf grounds.
That in itself is a big asset.

I like the Toronto course, too. I
thought it was admirably arranged.
Here, too, I found plenty of cross and
wing hazards and bunkers hugging the
sides of the green. It is scientific with-
out being foolish. That is, there are
no holes so extremely difficult that they
are almost impossible. When I was at
Toronto they were changing two com-
paratively weak holes, and with these
improvements the course will afford
splendid golf.

Brookline Good, But

While not what I would call a cham-
pionship course, Brookline has several
splendid holes. In view of our being de-
feated there for the championship, I shall
go into this course more fully. I recall
first a very good second hole. If you
put your drive on the right spot, you
have the full length of the green on to
which to play the approach. But where
a drive of the wrong kind is your best
effort from the tee, you'll have to make
amends. Your approach is not clear.
You have to accomplish it by carrying a
huge bunker. Then there is the fifth
hole. It calls for a drive followed by a
brassy or an iron. There is a big hill
to carry from the tee and lying in wait
is a great array of bunkers waiting to
catch a faulty second shot.

It was at the fifth that Ouimet pulled
himself out of the only tight place he
really got into on the whole round. His
second shot was a long brassy and he
sliced it out of bounds. He dropped an-
other ball and this time, making the
edge of the green, he chipped his fourth
shot up near enough to get the putt for
a five. Fives were all Ray and I could
get, although with better putting we
should both have made fours.

The ninth, which I believed cost
$5,000 to make, might be converted into
a better hole. It is not good now be-
cause you can reach the green with three
indifferent shots, yet you cannot get on
with two perfect strokes. Let me ex-
plain this:

Owing to bunkers, you have to take
an iron for the second after a good drive

NOTED AMERICAN GOLFERS AND COURSES

471

and play short. If you went for a full
wooden club swipe with the second, you
would be in the bunkers. This leaves
you a third shot which is a pitch to a
raised green that you cannot see; by
either taking the tee back, or putting it
forward, the hole could be made into a
very fine three-shotter or a relatively
good two-shotter. At present it is
neither one nor the other.

I remember that ninth hole. It made
me force my drive with the result that
I had a pulled ball into the woods. I
got out far enough to let me make the
green on my third. Thus I was en-
abled to do the hole in five. As Ray
and Ouimet both needed three shots to
get to the green, due to the strange to-
pography of the hole, I was thus able
to halve it with them. This I would
not have been able to do were the hole
scientifically correct.

I think that the eleventh hole at
Brookline is the best on the course. From
the tee you have to carry about 150 yards
of long grass. This accomplished, you
take a cleek or an iron, according to cir-
cumstances, and get over a water haz-
ard. You have to clear the water to
reach a green which sloping toward you
seems to be looking you straight in the
face. There are bunkers on either side,
so you must make your shot straight.

The fifteenth and sixteenth at Brook-
line are also good holes. The former is
a drive and iron with a good carry from
the tee and bunkers to be considered
round the green. It is well trapped. It
was on this hole that Ray's drive hit a
spectator. Ouimet and I hit shorter
balls and kept straight. Ray's drive
left him with a difficult approach, and,
as I said, the green is well trapped. The
time for playing safe was past, however,
and Ray had to take chances. So he
played for the green and the ball ran
into a trap which cost Ray dearly.
Ouimet and I got fours.

There was nothing particularly im-
pressive until we came down to the six-
teenth. This is a beautiful short hole.
It is only a mashie shot, but the green
is an "island." That is, there are bunk-
ers on three sides and the road beyond is
out of bounds. You have to play your
mashie shot carefully, though, to get

your three. I remember that Ray jusl
made the edge of the green and it took
him three putts to get down.

I think the second half of the course
at Brookline is easier than the first half
if you are playing well, but I think it
is better. It gives you a greater sense
of satisfaction.

Of the far Western courses, Portland
and Seattle impressed me. Portland is
a very good course. It has beautiful
surroundings and holes that really test
your game. Seattle could be made into
a links possessing the best greens to be
found anywhere. The general character
of the ground reminds me very much of
Sunningdale, one of the most famous of
the English inland courses. Your My-
opia is a good length, but the scheme of
rendering it difficult impresses me as be-
ing fantastic. The holes are cut too
near to the bunkers.

Some of the holes are excellent, but
others introduce a big element of luck.
At the sixth, for instance, the green is
laid out on a kind of Brobdingnagian
principle. It is a toss up as to whether
you stay on the green even though you
play your shot well. Myopia has just
about the right number of bunkers, and
it is because it might so easily be a
splendid course that I mentioned what
appeared to me to be its faults. Bal-
tusrol is interesting. It is well bunkered
and where there are not bunkers there
are roads. The Ravisloe Club at Chi-
cago is another that impressed me par-
ticularly.

Of course America and golf have not
known each other long, in comparison to
England's acquaintance with the game.
In this connection I recall an incident of
our tour. We were in one of the coast
cities, I think it was Seattle. We had
beaten the local professionals five up and
three to play. After the match was over
and we were on our way to our hotel, a
man in our party called my attention to
one of the newspaper offices. On the
front of it was a big blackboard where
they keep the baseball scores. On this
day they had on the board a record of
our golf game. This is what I read:

"Two Englishmen beat the local pro-
fessionals, five up, and three to play — ■
whatever that means."

THE BIG FOUR IN TENNIS

By EDWARD B. DEWHURST

THIS is a great year in American tennis. Win or lose, we are
to have the pleasure of seeing the greatest tennis players of
the world in action on our courts. It is fairly certain that England,
Canada, Australasia, and perhaps Germany will play their cup
ties for the Davis Cup on American soil, and then will come the
challenge round in which America will withstand the winner of
the preliminary in the matches for the Cup. It is proper, therefore,
that we consider the men who stand highest among the players of
the world and cast up the points for and against them in their style
and method of play. So here are the four of them, Brookes,
Wilding, Parke, and McLoughlin.

^HE International matches
last year, held in England,
brought together all the
best lawn tennis players
in the world, with the ex-
ception of N. E. Brookes,
the greatest Australian player.

France, Germany, Canada, Belgium,
South Africa, America, and England
were all represented by their most noted
experts and, in the matches which fol-
lowed, the individual powers of the four
great players easily overshadowed the
skill of all the rest. These great players,
the "Big Four" of the tennis world to-
day, are undoubtedly: A. F. Wilding,
the great New Zealander;N. E. Brookes,
the Australian ; J. C. Parke, the hope of
the English team, and M. E. McLough-
lin, the undisputed American champion
of to-day.

Here are the four champions differing
from each other in skill by the merest
fraction. So close together are they that
each has practically beaten the other.
McLoughlin has beaten Parke and been
beaten by him; Wilding has beaten
Brookes and McLoughlin, and he has
been beaten by Parke ; Brookes has fallen
to the skill of Parke, and avenged his
defeat twice afterwards.

Yet close as these men are bunched
at the top of the tennis tree, each one
plays the game in his own way and

[472]

stamps on his exposition the trade-mark
of his own individuality and methods.
Certain characteristics, however, they
must all have in common. Lawn tennis
of to-day has long "outlived the birth-
stain" as a garden party recreation with
which it began. The champion of to-day
can only attain rank if he be a perfect
physical specimen, possessing strength,
activity, and unbounded lasting power,
so he may not fail at the end of a long-
drawn-out contest. To these he must
add the perfect muscle co-ordination of
the eye and hand; an indomitable deter-
mination and the mental characteristics
that will render possible the crafty plan-
ning of a scheme of attack and defense,
and the ready grasp of any opportunity
such as an unexpected weakness which
may become evident in some joint of his
opponent's armor. All these qualites
are notably present in all four men; ytt,
with all these things in common, no two
of these champions play the game alike.
In a large way they may be divided
into two pairs. Brookes and McLough-
lin are the servers and volleyers, and
Wilding and Parke are the base court
players. By this it is not meant that
Wilding and Parke do not volley or that
McLoughlin and Brookes do not drive.
It may be better expressed by saying that
Brookes and McLoughlin rely upon the
excellence of their service and volley

THE BIG FOUR IN TENNIS

473

combination for their attack, while Wild-
ing and Parke build their offensive tactics
upon the solid foundation of their won-
derful back court game.

That McLoughlin is a volleyer and
server is not surprising. His game as
he plays it shows the influence of the
cement or dirt court. Where the surface
of the court is absolutely true and hard,
delicacy of placement goes for naught,
as the ball will always rise high enough
to be hit hard and, if one is only fleet
enough of foot, it can always be returned.
The one way to win points on these hard
courts is by the ''tour de force," the
smashing lightning stroke that is past
and away out of reach of the player be he
never so fast on his feet. Hence the
service appealed to McLoughlin as the
commencement of the furious attack and
the snapping volley as its natural corol-
lary. So his game developed along those
lines till to-day he is the fastest server in
the world, and one of the finest and
most aggressive volleyers.

As is well known now, McLoughlin
is a server and volleyer only. There are
times when he can and does drive mag-
nificently, but in this latter department
does not lie his strength. His skill in the
base line game is so far behind his com-
mand of the volley that when one
watches him play a match where he is
all out to win, the strokes that remain
in the recollection of the onlooker are
almost invariably some of his magnificent
smashes, services and volleys.

Realizing this, McLoughlin makes his
attacks so fierce and so tremendous that
he is able to make it a shield for his one
palpable weakness — his backhand drive.

McLoughlin depends on his service
to win him his matches because he is
good enough from the striker's end to
win an occasional service game from his
opponent, and his own attack of serv-
ice, smash and volley is as nearly ir-
resistible as can be imagined.

Unlike some good volleyers McLough-
lin has the capacity to count. By this is
meant that he can average up the points
that he makes and loses by volleying, and
does not get scared away from his
chosen game if he is passed a few times.

Many players whose strength lies al-
most solely in the volley, and whose place

to win is at the net, lose count when
they are passed at the net a few times
and flee incontinently to the base line
to wage a battle from there, without
their own particular weapons, against an
enemy who has been trying to make them
do just that thing. McLoughlin does
not mind being passed. He knows with
good reason that he will not be passed
very frequently, and, if he is, he knows
that the odds are on the next stroke
being one on which he can swing his
racquet.

Consequently all through the match he
keeps on coming in, and if he fails to
finish the point with his first volley he
usually does with the second. If he
fails to win one of these two chances he
usually loses the point but this does
not disconcert him at all. Usually two
volleys are quite sufficient for him to
win or lose the point as, from his position
almost on the top of the net, his volley
is so hard and deep that, while recovery
from the first is quite difficult enough,
recovery from his second is almost im-
possible.

McLoughlin s Weak

ness

When he is forced to drive the ball he
hits it almost at the top of the bound
with a tremendous abandon, and forces it
over the net at immense pace and with
enormous risk, but a surprising number
go into the opposite court. His back-
hand drive is his one weak point, but
he has cultivated it to the extent of
making it a good defensive stroke — the
only one he plays, for he seldom lobs —
and, such is his extraordinary quick-
ness of foot, he will run around many
strokes that are meant for this weakness
and slash them furiously over on his
forehand.

Being essentially and almost solely a
volleyer, he plays the game as a volleyer
should. Having once served or returned
the ball, he is firmly entrenched in his
favorite position at the net, ready to
pounce on the return and kill it once
and for all.

His capacity for handling balls over-
head is phenomenal and it is almost im-
possible to lob against him with any
chance of success. Not only from close
into the net, but from deep back in

474

OUTING

the court, he will spring into the air
and smash a lob as if it were the sim-
plest thing imaginable, and when he hits
one of these he puts the ball away with a
finality which does not allow of it com-
ing back at all. No such smashing has
ever been seen as this player continually
makes from all parts of the court. It is
the most whole-souled ingredient in a
game that abounds in daring abandon;
the most risky and precarious weapon,
and yet the one of all others with which
he is most uniformly successful.

In temperament McLoughlin is all out
a fighter, and he fights his match through
much as the old crusaders did with the
crashing blows of the mace. He is calm
when not in action, but when he wTinds
up his muscles for a stroke he is a pic-
ture of dynamic energy which bodes ill
for the little white ball' when his racket
falls upon it.

Yet with all this he is not too over-
come with his task to lack the charm
of youthfulness. When he was playing
Brookes in the Davis Cup match in New
Zealand, an errant mongrel wandered
through the lines of spectators on the
court, and was met by the crowd with
the universal "shoo!" McLoughlin's
method was more effective. He turned
around, grinned delightfully, and fired a
ball off his racquet at the dog and went
so close to hitting it that it fled instant-
ly amid a roar of laughter from the gal-
lery. Then he settled back to business
and led Brookes for the first three sets.

Turning now to that other volleyer,
Norman Brookes, we find methods that
arc distinct and different.

Like McLoughlin in America Brookes
is also a result of environment. In Vic-
toria, where he learned his game, the
courts were mostly of asphalt and it is
only in the last fifteen years that turf
courts have come into universal favor
there.

As a consequence Victorian tennis
players from time immemorial have been
vol levers. It is part of their tennis tradi-
tions and they follow it in their devel-
opment tO-day, hence it is natural that
Brookes, following a long line of vol-
leyers, should elect to make that game
his own.

Brookes, too, is a great server, in fact

there are some who think that he is bet-
ter than McLeughlin, for while his de-
livery lacks the immense pace and force
of our own player he has a wonderful
variety of services and can use any de-
livery he wishes. He can serve the or-
dinary service or the reverse twist at
will and gets on the ball a most tre-
mendous spin that makes its return with
accuracy, a matter of great difficulty. But
with all the spin he can place his service
with extreme accuracy and so work the
weak point of his opponent's game.

At the net he is a past master of the
craft. Standing close in, he uses all the
command his five feet eleven inches give
him and he is quick as a flash to cover
any return, be it ever so wide. His vol-
leying is quite different from that of
McLoughlin, in that he relies mostly on
the sharp cross court volleys at difficult
angles and the delicate drop volleys that
fall dead close to the net. When he gets
the chance he will hit his volley hard
for the point, but the keynote of his
game is that singular accuracy and
finesse.

Brookes "Weak" Overhead

Overhead Brookes has not the crash-
ing smash of McLoughlin ; in fact he is
reckoned weak in this department of the
game; nevertheless he is able to smash
writh considerable speed arid he places
every ball he hits overhead so that the
man returning them becomes the long
end of a pendulum and must cover miles
of court to win out.

Beals Wright, the best lobber in
America, essayed to beat him this way in
New Zealand two years ago, but he cov-
ered so much court in two sets that even
this wonderful athlete was run out at
the end at that time.

Off the ground Brookes is the master
of his own kind of game. His drive is
not the screaming ace of McLoughlin,
but it is the particular kind of stroke
that he needs to enable him to get to
the net for his kill from there. Hence
he has perfected the most difficult stroke
in tennis, the accurate placing of a rising
hall no matter how fast, and so gains a
couple of yards on his opponent on his
way to the net.

Every stroke that Brookes plays is

THE BIG FOUR IN TENNIS

475

made wkh the one idea in his mind, to
get into the net, and he has manufac-
tured his game in every department to
suit his own conception of it. His quick-
ness of eye and hand is only matched by
his wonderful footwork and he will take
the ball anywhere it comes to him on his
way in, either as a low volley, a pick-
up, or a rising, lifted drive, and each
of these strokes is made with the absolute
confidence and skill of a master.

Mentally Brookes is a great court gen-
eral and his temperament is just the
right one for the game as he plays it. He
is confident and yet reserved ; determined
and a good fighter to the bitter end.

When he met Doherty on the center
court at Wimbledon for the first time
some one asked him if he were not a little
nervous at meeting such a champion on
the historic center court? Brookes smiled
and replied, "No, not particularly. You
see I am something of a little champion
where I come from myself."

Since Brookes won the All England
Championship in 1907 he was only
beaten once in a five set match and that
was when Parke beat him in the Davis
Cup matches in Melbourne two years
ago and he revenged his defeat on the
great Britisher by beating him twice in
succession afterwards. To give an idea
of what he can do when he is going at
his top speed it may be remembered that
he defeated C. P. Dixon — who ran Wil-
liams to five sets in England last year —
by the wonderful score six-love, six-love,
and in Dixon's own words "It was worth
getting beaten and going half around the
world to see such a marvelous exhibi-
tion."

Anthony F. Wilding, universally ac-
claimed the best player in the world to-
day, is a notable example of the older
and more conservative methods.

Coming originally from New Zealand
where the courts are mostly turf, Wild-
ing naturally fell into the base line game
as the foundation on which to build his
attack. In England he perfected this
style of game and afterwards tacked on
the volley as a point winner, but only
when the excellence of his base line at-
tack had made the opening for the net
position.

This game as played by both Wilding

and Parke is the transitional stage be-
tween the absolute volley game and the
now obsolete back court game. While
it lacks the dash and daring of the vol-
ley game, it nevertheless seems to gather
the good points of both games, and any
lessening of the power of attack from a
slightly less severe volley is amply com-
pensated for by the much greater ac-
curacy and force of the strokes played
from the back of the court.

Wilding wins his matches by his won-
derful command of the ball and his ca-
pacity to place his strokes on either hand
with sufficient speed to any part of his
opponent's court. He hits his drive with
the long follow through that is so notice-
able in all players of English training,
and his heavily topped drive on his fore-
hand has sufficient drop to it to make it
hard to volley successfully. He, too,
like Brookes, can take the ball on the
rise and so plays closer in than he could
if he were not a master of this stroke.

Wilding a Conservative Player

In his match with McLoughlin he
stood fairly close in within the baseline
to take those terrific services and dropped
them sharply at the feet of his opponent
as he came in to volley, and wThen he had
him hanging back a little he wrould drive
with great speed and precision to the
sidelines. He has a good service, but it is
not the consistent asset as a point winner
that the services of McLoughlin and
Brookes are; it is well placed and suffi-
ciently fast to allow him the chance to
go to the net when he wishes, though he
seldom comes in on his services.

Overhead Wilding has a smash that,
while it is good and accurate and with
sufficient pace, lacks the spectacular fea-
tures of that of our own champion. Like
the rest of his game it is conservative
and showrs more care and decision than
risk and daring.

Wilding's game on the tennis court is
that of a chess player. He is fairly sure
of making the ball go where he wishes
and so he makes a careful diagnosis of
his opponent's game as to where it is
strong and where it may be best assailed
and then sets out to play the "man" and
not the "stroke."

In the English Championship, Wild-

476

OUTING

ing early made up his mind that Mc-
Loughlin was the man who would be
the challenger and give him battle for his
title and so he watched him whenever he
played. On the side lines of every match
McLoughlin played was Wilding, keenly
watching every stroke and studying the
method of what was to be his adversary,
and from this he learned enough to start
right in on a definite plan of attack which
resulted in his defeat of our player in
the straight sets, though they were as
close as sets could be.

During this match there were times
when the ball was never hit by him out
of a spot in the opposite court that could
have been covered by a couple of pocket
handkerchiefs, and this spot was the deep
corner of McLoughlin's backhand court.
Here he pounded the ball always to the
one weakness of his opponent's game till
he saw the chance to come right in to the
net and then he would hit the return
hard on the volley to the open point
in the extreme corner of the forehand
court, but only when he was reasonably
sure that such a volley would not come
back.

In temperament he is imperturbable.
Nothing puts him out or detracts in any
way from the clear vision that he has
formed of what he wants to do and how
he must do it. He is calm, deliberate,
and forceful, but with all he is only
mortal. Even his iron grip on his mind
may fail, as was instanced in the final
game of his match for the All England
Championship. Last year, when he had
40 — 15 on the final game and his own
service. With the match hanging on one
of the two next points he served his first
ball which was a fault, and then calmly
stepped a full yard into the court for his
second service and was promptly foot-
faulted amid an audible murmur of
Laughter from the gallery.

This was his one lapse, however, and
he recovered himself and pulled out the
next point and the championship for the
fourth consecutive time.

The last and perhaps not the least of
this famous quartette is J. C. Parke, the
leading British player of 1913, who in
Less than a year has gathered in the scalps
of Brookes, Wilding and McLoughlin.
J. C. Parke concluded the season of 1913

in England with the unprecedented rec-
ord of having won every tournament in
which he entered, with the exception of
the championship, where he was beaten
by McLoughlin in the semi-final round.
Parke belongs to the modified base
line type of players as does Wilding and
the rest of the English experts. That is
to say, he built his game on the founda-
tion of his base line play and then added
on the volley as a point winner when he
had made the opening for the stroke.
When he strikes one of his great days
Parke is the most spectacular driver in all
the world. On the dead run, on either
hand, from any part of the court, he
will swing with all his force on the ball
and hit it with unerring accuracy past
his opponent at the net, be the opening
never so narrow.

Parke a Spectacular Driver

In all his great matches it is the same.
He sees the ball and he runs to it at full
speed and he strikes it with all his might.
There is perchance between the man at
the net and the thin white side line an
inch or so clear space. What is simpler
than to drive the ball to that unguarded
inch?

The thing is as simple to do as to
imagine and, being once done, what, is
simpler than to do it again and again?
And the wonderful thing is that Parke
does do it again and again, till volleyers
like Brookes and McLoughlin turn and
stare with amazement and chagrin at
the flying ball which, having passed them,
finds a striking place in the ultimate inch
of the boundaries of the court.

Like Wilding, Parke has no very def-
inite weakness, but unlike Brookes and
McLoughlin he has no wonderful service
or volle5r. Parke's service is a good,
straightforward delivery with a fair
amount of pace and placement, but is far
from untakable; and his volley, though
well placed, lacks the immense pace of
McLoughlin or the delicacy of Brookes.
Where Wilding plays the "man," Parke
plays the "stroke," and when he is hav-
ing one of his days he plays the stroke
so well that the man does not figure
much.

Yet Parke, too, is crafty, but his craft
is more allied to force than to finesse.

THE BIG FOUR IN TENNIS

477

One qualification seems to stand out
above all the others in the records of
this player. When the stakes are high-
est, when he has most to lose and most
to gain, then is the time when J. C.
Parke is the one factor to be reckoned
with.

In Australia he met Brookes, and there
was not one person in a hundred who
would have given him a chance to win,
yet the Davis Cup was the stake and,
playing like a man possessed, he defeat-
ed the unbeaten wonder of the world.

Again when he met McLoughlin in
the Davis Cup match in England he
played against the man who had beaten
him in the championship the week before
and there was no apparent reason why
he should not repeat the performance.
Yet Parke again uncovered a streak of
his "Super-Parke" form at the time when
it was most urgently needed by his coun-
try, outplayed McLoughlin, and won
his match, a victory which he repeated
the next round against Williams.

Physically Parke is a great athlete in
other things than tennis. As a footballer
he has been the mainstay of the Irish
Rugby team for years and it was com-
mented on that while he was in Aus-
tralia winning the Davis Cup for Eng-
land, Ireland suffered her first defeat for
years on the football field, lacking the
service of her great three-quarter back.
Such magnificent stamina makes it pos-
sible for Parke to fling himself at full
speed on the ball for the length of a
long-drawn-out match.

Before he played McLoughlin in the
Davis Cup match, just to warm up he
had two fast sets with Lowe on the
next court and came on the champion-
ship court for his struggle with the
American dripping with perspiration but
ready for the fray. Two hours after-
wards, in the fifth set, against our best
player, he had still enough in hand to
make his spurt and win out bv a narrow
margin.

This then would seem to be the differ-
ences in the game of each of these play-
ers who are the best in the world to-day:

McLoughlin must serve his crashing
ball, rush into the net position, and kill
the return. He has no need to think
much, nor has he need to plan. His

game is so sudden and his attack so fierce
that, though the method of it be well
known, it can hardly be resisted. Hence
it is that McLoughlin is seldom seen
maneuvering for position. It is quite
unnecessary for the game as he plays it.
All that he needs is supreme confidence
in his own methods to keep him playing
the game in his own way and to prevent
him being driven back to play the game
in any way other than his own.

In Brookes is seen a man who is al-
ways playing position ; finessing his stroke
to get his opponent off his balance ; trick-
ing him by the subtlety of his plays till
he gets the opening for his winning
stroke. For this there must never be a
moment when he is not thinking of the
stroke and of the opposite player and how
he may best get him out of his stride and
open up the court to his own attack.
Where McLoughlin hammers his way to
victory with a club, Brookes fights with
lightning flashes of the rapier, parrying,
feinting and thrusting always to the un-
guarded joint in his opponent's armor.

Wilding's superb game shows again
the earmarks of the calm, judicial think-
er; the man who will play away all day
if necessary, concentrating his attack ruth-
lessly on the wreak point of his opponent's
game; the man who uses no spectacular
plays when he knows that a series of
strokes placed to some exact spot will
later open up the way for the well-placed
volley that wrill win the point. He is
the determined fighter strong at all points
of the game yet with no wonderful
strokes in any one department, but with
the brain to plan and the ability to carry
out the determined attack on the one
point that his opponent has already
shown to be his vulnerable spot.

And finally there is Parke, the dashing
Irishman who spares neither himself nor
the ball, to whom risks are things to be
taken, not avoided, and an inch along the
side line is a wide-open opening that it
would be ridiculous to miss; the mighty
athlete who, when eve^thing is against
him, will throw discretion to the winds
and by his supreme nerve and daring
pull off shot after shot from positions
that are well-nigh impossible, and win
matches against odds so great that the
tennis world stands aghast !

WHAT BECAME OF ALL THE
PIGEONS?

By EDWARD T. MARTIN

Art Account of the Last Great Nestings of the Passenger Pigeons
by a Man Who Saw Them

=^HE pigeons — were they ex-
terminated ? Is there a
probability that any are
yet alive? Much has been
written concerning them,
some by persons who
knew; more by those who guessed. The
writer is one of the few men living who
spent months among the pigeons and the
pigeon men; who visited two great nest-
ings and one small one; who can tell at
first hand what he saw and how he saw
it, but can throw no light on the disap-
pearance of a billion feathered people of
the woods.

It was a bright, clear morning in June,
or perhaps at the end of May, 1878,
when the last great nesting broke, in the
Crooked River country of Michigan.
For three days the writer saw millions of
pigeons, mostly young, flying south. He
was told that an equally large number,
all old birds, left the other end of the
nesting, crossed the Straits, where, in the
wilds of the Upper Peninsula, many built
again and raised more young. The fol-
lowing year there was no beech mast in
Michigan. These small nuts ripened in
quantities only every second year. Con-
sequently little was done with the pigeons
during 1879, the birds scattering over
four States in search of food. There
was no large lot anywhere, the most in
Wisconsin, some in Illinois and Indiana,
then toward fall plenty in Michigan.

In 1880, there was again a heavy crop
of mast in Michigan. This brought the
netters — 500 of them — also the pigeons.
These hung around some heavy timber
south of the Indian town of Cross Vil-
lage, where a few built nests. Those not
building were restless, very restless, mov-

[4780

ing constantly and working a little north
all the time. The netters of most expe-
rience concluded the main nesting would
be near Mackinaw City and cut in ahead
of the birds to wait there.

The pigeons never came. A small
body joined the first nest-builders below
Cross Village, while much the largest lot
continued flying uneasily from place to
place, starting twice to build near the
others, then one morning, instead of fly-
ing southeast to the beech woods, pointed
north, crossed into the Upper Peninsula,
and did not return. There all trace of
them was lost.

A hundred netters kept keen lookout,
hoping they would rejoin those nesting;
others followed them across the Straits
and searched far and near without suc-
cess. No pigeons returned that spring
or any other spring. They remained
north of the Straits. Alive or dead is an
open question. The one assured fact is,
they remained and were hidden where no
man ever found them.

Those already nesting stayed south of
the Straits until their young were strong
of wing, when they, too, moved north
and disappeared instead of raising a sec-
ond and third brood, as some did two
years before.

The catch from so small a nesting was
very light, not equal to the number of
young birds hatched. It was made lighter
because the best netters were not content
to bother with such a small lot of birds,
although prices were very high, but kept
constantly on the go looking for the main
body which all were satisfied would be
found sooner or later. This left only
some small fry with the Indians, to catch
the few pigeons taken.

WHAT BECAME OF ALL THE PIGEONS?

479

Contracts were outstanding for birds
to be used in several large tournaments,
and it was with great difficulty that they
were obtained. The last shoot of im-
portance where wild pigeons were used
was that of the Illinois State Association,
and the supply reserved for that — ten
thousand — was not quite enough to finish
the last day's program, so tame birds
were substituted for the final event. This
was early in August, 1880.

In 1881 the pigeons again scattered
over Wisconsin, but so sparsely that the
catch was almost nothing; five or six
dozen one day; none for a week, then
four or five dozen more. There was no
regular nesting; no large body of birds
although acorns were plentiful. Yet
neither shooters nor netters talked ex-
termination or believed it possible, ana1
search for the missing birds was perse-
vered in.

Where the Blame Belongs

The man with his net now receives
universal blame for the lost army of
pigeons. Unquestionably he was bad
enough. The Indian, with his pole, did
his part, poking squabs from every nest
within reach. The beasts of the field
and birds of the air were not idle. All,
everything, from man down, considered
the pigeons legitimate prey. Each did a
share of killing, but the censure belongs
to the white man — he who shot in the
tournaments as well as he who caught,
in the nestings — for he alone knew bet-
ter; but all these foes combined, while
helping materially, did not exterminate
the pigeon.

Let us go back to Shelby in 1876.
There the slaughter was greater than at
Crooked River in 1878. The birds were
more "come-at-able," easier caught, easier
shipped. They came to Chicago by boat,
by rail, in such quantities as to swamp the
buyers. Many barrels of those shipped
dead were dumped into garbage wagons,
spoiled — not even salable at half a dollar
a barrel. Live birds arrived so fast pens
could not be fitted up to hold them.
Thousands were kept in small crates
where thorough feeding and watering
was impossible, until half had fretted
themselves to -death, or else perished for
want of food and drink.

Yet with millions destroyed, two years
after, when there was another bountiful
crop of mast, they came to the cedar
swamps of Crooked River and Lake in
greater force than ever, showing that the
record catch at Shelby had made no dimi-
nution in their numbers; that their nat-
ural increase had offset the loss at the
hands of man and beast. The nesting of
1878 was more than thirty miles long
and a mile or over in average width. Old
pigeon men, by figuring birds to a nest,
nests to a tree, trees to an acre, acres to a
mile, square miles in the nesting, esti-
mated there were a billion pigeons.

Southeast of the main nesting were two
small ones hardly touched by netter.
These were not included in the estimate,
which probably was not too large con-
sidering that one sensational writer — a
man of some prominence — placed the
catch and kill at "One Thousand Mil-
lion!" Of course he was romancing.
However, those who saw the pigeons
come and watched them when the nest-
ing broke expressed no doubt that more
birds went than came, the young birds
raised there, as at Shelby, more than
equaling the catch and kill made by all
the pigeons' enemies.

A fact in connection with the nesting
of 1878 which the writer has never seen
in print is that when the first body of
pigeons reached the Crooked River coun-
try, before their nests were completed, a
heavy snowstorm came which caused the
birds to drop millions of eggs on the fro-
zen ground. After the storm abated and
the snow melted, part of the swamp still
was white, the eggs being so thick for
several miles as to give the appearance
of a snow-covered ground. These birds
moved around for a week or two, roost-
ing at night near those nesting, then built
for themselves close by the others and
raised their young as if nothing had hap-
pened.

There are several puzzling questions
which the writer wishes could be an-
swered. What became of the vast body
of pigeons leaving the Crooked River
country after the nesting broke? Why
did they fail to come back when the mast
ripened in 1880, as they came in 1878
after Shelby? What happened to all the
birds. that crossed the Straits in 1880 and

480

OUTING

which no man troubled? Then, finally,
where did those pigeons go that were
scattered through the Wisconsin woods
in 1881, the catch from which could be
counted in hundreds only?

It is asking too much, this expecting a
person to believe man killed them to the
very last one; shot and trapped them
until out of hundreds of millions but a
few score were left; kept after this little
remnant until but a dozen lived ; pursued
these to the last pair, and, when one was
caught in the North Woods of Wiscon-
sin and the other shot in Upper Mich-
igan, shouted in unholy glee: "I've done
it! I've done it! I've exterminated the
pigeons!" Such an idea is absurd.

A few of the bison remained in far
corners of the West until protected by
law. The great auk disappeared so
gradually that a writer gives time and
place where the last one was killed. Long
after the dodo was believed to be extinct
it is said a single specimen was found.
Not so the pigeons. They went as a
cannon-ball is dropped into the ocean,
now in plain sight, then a splash, a circle
of ripples — and nothing. To-day, mil-
lions ; then with neither shooting nor net-
ting to decimate them, not even one. To
a person who knew the vast number re-
maining after their last nesting, the mil-
lions crossing the Straits unharmed by
man, it seems past belief — almost as if
the earth had swallowed them.

How does the writer explain it? He
does not try. Thirty years ago, when
he said they had gone visiting and would
return, he was wrong, and will guess no
more.

A dozen years after the pigeons were
supposed extinct the writer saw a flock of
ten flying over a piece of oak timber bor-
dering the Illinois River. There could
be no mistake. He had seen too many
in the old days for chance of error. Be-
yond question they were passenger pig-
eons. Could they have been the last of
their race? A few like the dodo seen
after all his kind were supposed dead?

Whence did they come? Where did
they, too, vanish? The writer wishes he
knew. It might throw light on the fate
of the vanished millions. There is little
doubt in his mind that something besides
man wiped them off the board. Some-

thing more than net and gun. Might it
not have been disease? Or is there yet
a possibility they are yet hidden in the
vast forests of the Amazon? Who can
say?

The slaughter at Shelby and at
Crooked River was unwarranted and
largely in defiance of law. Had no
catching been done within half a mile of
any nesting a greatly reduced number of
pigeons would have been taken, but with
prices so much higher the netters would
have made good money.

Many will be surprised to learn that
very few pigeoniers made even expenses.
It was only those on the ground early at
either of the last large nestings that had
a profitable season, and they, not only by
reason of their getting the best locations,
but because their catch met with ready
sales at fancy prices — a dollar a dozen
for dead or a dollar and a half for live —
at the net. Later, both at Shelby and
Crooked River, prices were as low as
five and ten cents a dozen for live birds
crated and delivered, and nothing,
"Come - and - get - them - we - don't -
Wiant-them" for dead.

No Money In It

The writer saw one lot of 1,528 sold
for $5, nice, clean, lively birds. These
were caught at a single throw of a large
double net, the most, so far as he knows,
taken at one time during the nesting.
Talk of 500 dozen in a day is romanc-
ing, as a net could not be handled, the
birds removed, and the feathers cleared
away with such rapidity, about half that
number, under favorable circumstances,
being high-water mark; nor would a
skilled netter throw his net if he thought
over a hundred dozen would be under it
when it fell; more might pull it loose
and turn it over. Then every bird
would escape.

Had law officers been energetic in
pursuit of offenders it would have been
better for themselves, the netters, and
the birds. Local officers winked at open
violation, and the few sent in by a game
protective association cared but little.

The writer spent most of his time
among the netters — buying — and al-
though there were three or four hundred
men catching in the nesting, contrary to

WHAT BECAME OF ALL THE PIGEONS?

481

law, which provided no netting should
be done within half a mile, or shooting
done within a mile of any nesting, but
one arrest was made, and nothing came
of that.

Understand, I have no excuse to offer
for those who decimated the two great
nestings. Their work was most repre-
hensible. It is the exaggeration, the mak-
ing of the slaughter so much greater
than it was, I wish to condemn. Con-
sider how absurd, how crazy, such claims
were! Stop and think! A hundred
million pigeons shipped alive would fill
1,390,000 crates; dead, 1,000,000 bar-
rels. Yet some believed it true because
the "newspapers said so."

With pigeons the most plentiful and
prices at bottom, there was no year in
which the demand for trap-shooting ex-
ceeded 500,000. Two Chicago dealers
handled practically all the Western and
Southern trade in live birds. The writer
is in a position to know that in 1878 it
reached top figures, about 250,000. The
demand for trap-shooting was not so
heavy in the East, say 150,000, which
would leave 100,000 for scattered ship-
ments direct from the nestings or by
commission men.

The birds shipped dead in barrels can-
not be figured so easily. The old pigeons
were never considered a delicacy. Taken
when nesting they were about as palat-
able as a setting hen. The young were
fairly good for table use and squabs, just
ready to leave home and make their own
way in the world, as nice and fat as their
tame cousins of the present, but hard to
get, which made shipments of them very
small.

In view of these facts how could a
catch of even half a dozen millions have
been marketed? Estimating shipments
at 10,000 barrels, a hundred pigeons in
each, which is sufficiently large, it would
make the white man's toll 1,500,000
alive and dead. Now the actual ship-
ments by rail from Petoskey and Boyne
Falls — the two main points — from fig-
ures furnished the writer by railroad
agents, were about 650,000 in crates and
barrels; add boat shipments and those by
rail from all other places, there is no
way the writer can figure over 1,500,000
as the total.

Allow the Indians two-thirds as many
— mostly smoked for winter use — call
those destroyed by birds and beasts as
equal to the number killed by man, and
we have five millions as a grand total.
Enough, more than enough, but for sake
of argument, double it. Then halve the
billion birds, for fear the estimate may
be out of line, deduct the number killed,
and there is a residue of 490,000,000
pigeons to be accounted for. Again for
sake of argument, not because the writer
thinks he is in error, quarter this, and
what became of the 122,500,000 leaving
Crooked River Swamp in 1878?

What Became of the Others?

The catch in Wisconsin during 1879
was much less than the natural increase
should have been and did not exceed
150,000, while in 1880 that man would
have to be some scholar who could figure
the entire kill at 100,000. Then what
became of the others?

Pigeons in captivity were very suscep-
tible to disease. An instance came to the
writer's knowledge where over 20,000 of
them were penned in rooms sixteen feet
square — a thousand to each room. They
had cleaned the mud off their feathers,
were eating well and appeared as strong,
healthy a lot of birds as one could wish
to buy. One morning they were fed as
usual at sunrise, and the birds in every
pen ate their half bushel of corn, then
looked for more. An hour later nearly
all the pigeons in number one room were
dead or dying of canker. Before a man
could return from downtown with sul-
phur and alum — a trip of an hour- — the
birds in the next pen were dying rapidly,
and some were dropping from the perches
in room number three.

Prompt action checked the disease
there. Had no remedies been within
reach nearly every one of the 20,000 pig-
eons would have died inside of a few
hours.

Could such an epidemic have broken
out among the birds in a nesting? But
if so, again, what became of the dead?
There seems no sure answer to the ques-
tion, "What became of the pigeons?"
and at best any reply would be guess-
work.

THE BREAST STROKE FOR ALL-
ROUND SWIMMING

By JOHN D. BROCK

The Possibilities of an Old-Fashioned Stroke with Some Modi
fications and Improvements

THESE are the days of fast
swimming. Within the past
few years all short-distance
records have been broken,
and man in his aquatic
stunts appears as a rival to
his prehistoric ancestor, the fish. This is
the era of the rapid evolution of the
trudgeon and crawl and modifications of
these strokes.

The old breast stroke has been rele-
gated to the background and is spoken
of as obsolete. Recent descriptions al-
lude to it as the most difficult stroke to
learn. Many up-to-date swimming in-
structors are not teaching it to the be-
ginner, but are first teaching the back
stroke, the double overhand, or crawl —
strokes the pupil easily and naturally
learns. But the breast stroke, with its
possibilities, is being overlooked in the

exponent of ze old school of fence. He
instructed me, 'You use ze new method,
but also learn ze old tricks, and you will
get your opponent.' ': So it is with
swimming. Some of the newer develop-
ments of the art of swimming when ap-
plied to the old breast stroke give us
most gratifying results.

Involved in the newer styles of strokes
are some excellent basic points not de-
veloped to any extent previously. The
breaking of all records is due to this fact,
along with the increased interest in
swimming as an athletic sport and a
means of healthful recreation.

In a recent article on swimming and
in other older descriptions the breast
stroke has been described as half stand-
ing, half lying in the water on the
stomach and breast. Application of new
principles evolved from the recently de-

A THE CRAWL

NOTICE SIMILARITY TO

striving after speed and easy methods of
acquiring the art of swimming. It is a
method of propulsion which has been
developed to its greatest possibilities as
to form by few swimmers.

A Frenchman, a master of the art of
the foil, in teaching me that ancient
game, declared: "My father he was an

[482]

veloped strokes will give better results.
For instance, there is a great deal of
wasted energy in pushing upward in-
stead of forward if the position usually
described is taken. And, again, too much
resistance for rapid or easy progress is
offered by the water, as shown in illus-
tration E.

B — READY TO SHOOT ARMS FORWARD AND LEGS BACK INTO THE

FINISH INHALING

GLIDE.

Prominent among the reasons for the
crawl's speediness is the fact that there is
less resistance offered by the water than
in other strokes. The body is not only
in line with the surface of the water, but
in many cases is only half submerged,
and thus the body of water that is resist-

tions should not occur together, but
rather the movements should be as fol-
lows: Arms are thrust forward at the
same time legs shoot back and out (Illus-
tration D). Arms stationary and ex-
tended at full length, with palms of
hands together, while legs are snapped

C AT THE FINISH OF THE

"GLIDE" AFTER TRAVELING MORE THAN SIX FEET.
FINISH EXHALING

ing progress is much lessened (Illustra-
tion A). This great advantage may be
secured in the breast stroke by swimming
with the whole body in line and near the
surface of the water. (Illustrations C,
D, F, and G.)

Many descriptions call for the arm
and leg motions to occur together. To
obtain the best form, arm and leg mo-

together. The bringing together of the
legs is done quickly and smoothly and
immediately after arm movement for-
ward and leg movement backward.
Then comes a glide of from six to seven
feet with arms and legs stretched out at
full length (Illustrations C and D).
(The Illustration E shows the finish of
the glide.)

D — START OF THE "GLTDE." THE SWIMMER GLIDES FROM SIX TO SEVEN FEET.
DURING THIS PERIOD NO MUSCULAR WORK IS BEING DONE. START EXHALING

[483]

THE USUAL WAY HALF STANDING

HALF LYING IN THE WATER. TOO MUCH
RESISTANCE OFFERED BY WATER

The arms are brought back quickly
sideways to a point about in line with
the shoulders (Illustration F) ; legs are
still together. When arms are circling
to starting position ready to shoot for-
ward the legs are brought up in position
ready to kick back (Illustration B). It
will be seen that there are two distinct
periods in the complete stroke when arm
and leg motions are not occurring to-
gether; namely, when the arms are being
brought back and when the legs are being
snapped together.

Next comes one of the most important
points of all. Usually the head is held
right out of the water. Here another
lesson may be learned from the crawl,
trudgeon, and side strokes. As the arms
shoot forward the head should be kept
down and between the outstretched
arms. By assuming this position there is
less waste of energy than by holding up
the head clear of the water all of the
time. The head is nearly submerged,
and this weight is taken care of without
adding to the resistance by the water.

When the head is not tilted back and in
a strained position it will also be found
easier to keep the entire body near and
in line with the surface of the water.

With the submerging of the head the
question of breathing arises. We can
apply here one of the new developments.
The most practical way of breathing
found by expert swimmers has been to
breathe in through the mouth and out
through the nose or mouth. Especially
is this method better when the waves
are choppy or bothersome in any way.
If after forcing the air out through the
nose under water the head is raised to
inhale through the nose, some water will
be drawn in and cause choking and
gasping.

This disagreeable feature is almost
negligible if the air is drawn in through
the mouth. Again, a larger quantity of
air can be taken in through the mouth
in a shorter period of time, and the abil-
ity to breathe quickly and deeply is an
essential point to master.

In applying these principles to the

rilE ARMS ARE BROUGHT HACK QUICKLY SIDEWAYS TO A POINT ABOUT IN LINK
WITH THE SHOULDERS — THE LEGS ARE STILL TOGETHER. START INHALING

[484]

THE BREAST STROKE FOR ALL-ROUND SWIMMING 485

breast stroke the following should be the
method and time. The intake of air
occurs at the second part of the arm-
stroke; that is, when the arms are com-
ing down sideways (Illustration F).
The head is raised just enough above the
water to allow breathing in through the
mouth. A quick, full breath is taken.
As the arms shoot forward the head is
lowered and the act of expiration occurs.
This is done through the nose or mouth.
A point in favor of the breast stroke is
that the period when the arms and legs

surf to better advantage than the back
stroke.

Positions assumed in the breast stroke
are corrective and tend to give an even
bilateral muscular development, and from
this standpoint alone is worthy of recom-
mendation and mastery. The chief
means of propulsion is from large muscle
groups, those of the legs. Where groups
of the large basic muscles are used the
result is less tiring and can be sustained
for a longer period of time.

It has well been said that the breast

JUST BEFORE BRINGING LEGS TOGETHER. THE BRINGING TOGETHER OF THE LEGS
IS DONE QUICKLY AND SMOOTHLY IMMEDIATELY AFTER ARM MOVEMENT FOR-
WARD AND LEGS BACKWARD

are not in motion is greatly in excess of
the period of motion. If the stroke is
mastered properly the body is gliding
from six to seven feet after each stroke
and no exertion is made at this time.
For long distances, for ease and comfort,
it can be made to have no rival except
possibly the back stroke. But it can be
used in a choppy or rough sea or in the

stroke is the hardest stroke to master and
should be put last in the list to learn, but
the stroke has many excellent points in
its favor, and should have a place in the
repertoire of the expert swimmer. Once
mastered it becomes a source of pleasure
and usefulness to the aquatic athlete who
has in mind the acquiring of all-round
ability in the art of swimming.

Use the arms as guides and balances, rather than a chief means of pro-
pulsion. The power of the stroke should come from the legs, especially at
the time of snapping together.

Palms of hands should be slightly turned in making the arm stroke and
not brought back flat against the water as an oar would be used in rowing.
This is for two reasons: (i) Less effort is needed for the arm stroke. (2)
The slightly turned palm helps to keep the body up and on the surface.

While legs are together in the "glide" position, feet should be extended and
pointed in order to lessen resistance.

The extension of the feet is done at the time of snapping the legs together.

The foot should be flexed and as broad a surface as possible presented when
extending the legs.

IN THE CRADLE OF POLO

By LEWIS R. FREEMAN

Illustrated with Photographs

Something of the Conditions Under Which the "Game of Kings"
Is Played in Its Native Land

no question makes of ayes and
and there as strikes the player

^^HE antiquity of polo is
much more definitely es-
tablished than is the re-
gion of its origin. As far
back as the sixth century
B. C. the praises of a
"mounted ball game" called "Chaugan"
were sung by the Persian poets, and
Omar Khayyam's

"The ball
noes,
But here
goes,"

indicates that something of the kind was
played in that ancient empire at the time
of the good old astronomer-poet of Nash-
ipur. Persia's claim to having been the
birthplace of polo, however, is disputed
by the Chinese, who point out that one
of their philosophers, writing a thousand
years before the time of Christ, compared
the ups and downs of life to the ebb and
flow of the tide of the "horse-and-ball
game."

An attempt to "back track" the path
of polo from the frontier of India — from
which country it reached the Western
World by way of England — gives no in-
dication as to which of the rival claim-
ants is the legitimate one. The Mo-
hammedans— probably the hordes oi
Ghengis Khan and Tamerlane — brought
the game from somewhere to Tartary,
and from there it found its way to India
by one or both of two routes— via
Afghanistan and the Khyber Pass, and
across the "Roof of the World" and
Kashmir. The marks on the former trail
have disappeared, but along the latter —
village by village and valley by valley —
the footsteps of polo may be traced across
the Vale of Kashmir to Gilgit and

Hunza-Nagar, over the Hindu Kush or
Karakoram and down to the plains of
Yarkand and Kashgar, where they are
lost in the desert. The secret of the
birthplace of the "Game of Kings" is
lost in the shifting sands that have piled
above the "Cradle of the Aryan Race."

The nearest thing to polo that one en-
counters in Central Asia to-day is a game
of the Khirgiz in which each of the
mounted sides endeavors to carry the
body of a calf to opposite ends of the
field. No ball or sticks are used, but the
contest resolves itself into an equine
rough-and-tumble which requires no end
of dare-devil horsemanship and is almost
as hard on the mounts as on the fiercely
striven-for anatomy of the calf. Across
the Pamirs to the south, however, the
game begins to take shape, and there is
no difficulty in recognizing in the fierce
mounted contests of the hillmen the pro-
genitor of modern polo. Wherever there
is room between the soaring slide-scarred
mountain walls and the foam-white gla-
cial torrents that tumble through the
narrow valleys, each little community of
stone huts has its maidan, or village
"green," upon which the "pulu" games
are played, usually rough, informal bouts
between the villagers themselves.

These mountain maid am are always
cut up by runways and often littered
with rocks and broken by jagged outcrops
of native granite, all mere trifles, how-
ever, to men and ponies who have been
teetering all their strenuous lives upon
the serried ridge-poles of the "Roof of
the World." Untrammeled by off-side
rules, unmenaced by the threat of penal-
ties for fouls, undismayed by the sticks
of the air, the rocks of the earth, or the

i486]

IN THE CRADLE OF POLO

487

waters under the earth, the Himalayan
polo player is free to concentrate heart
and head and body upon banging the
battered chunk of willow or bamboo root
between the two little cairns of razor-
edged slate slabs that serve as goal-posts.
The game is as free from restrictions
as the proverbial Love and War; liter-

to give ground in riding-off, but other-
wise he will not waste the effort. An
action that will enhance the chance of
making a goal is its own excuse. Him-
alayan polo furnishes the most striking
example of singleness of purpose of any
game in the roster of outdoor sport.
The keenness of the hillmen for their

AN OLD VETERAN OF PALANPUR LOOKING OVER THE MOUNTS OF HIS RULER,
THE NAWABZADAH, AT THE DURBAR TOURNAMENT

ally all is fair. To shoulder an oppo-
nent and send him raking along a jagged
wall of rock is considered creditable and
clever; but the acme of finesse in riding-
off is to force him over a cut-bank into
an icy stream. "Hooking across" for an
opponent's mallet is rated good polo, but
not nearly so much so as "hooking" the
man himself off the precarious pad of
sheepskin which serves him as a saddle
by catching him under the chin from be-
hind. Blows are often dealt with the
stout sticks, but not quite indiscrimi-
nately. One player will belabor another
to make him miss the ball or cause him

"pulu" is something amazing. Once, on
the upper Indus, I saw a half-dozen
players follow a ball into a roaring tor-
rent, at the imminent risk of being car-
ried down by the swirling current, for
the slight advantage incident to "pass-
ing" to their team-mates on the bank.
Just as the ball was bobbing out of
reach, the foremost rider, lunging desper-
ately, swept the crook of his stick under
the buoyant chunk of willow and sent it
flying back to the maidan. The long
reach and the floundering pony upset his
balance, however, and he toppled into the
roaring waters and was carried away in

488

OUTING

an instant. Not for a moment did the
game halt. Not a player gave the un-
lucky wight a look, and by the time the
pluckiest kind of swimming had just en-
abled him to grasp a jutting log in the
wreck of an old cantilever bridge on the
opposite bank the center of conflict was
raging in a cloud of flying pebbles in
front of his opponent's goal.

Did he give a thought to the fact that
the wind, drawing down from the ice-
caps of the Pamirs with the sting of a
whip-lash in every gust, was stiffening
the saturated folds of his felt jacket and
woolen breeches? Apparently not.
Floundering up to a little terrace of cul-
tivation, where a couple of fellow vil-
lagers toiled in a barley patch, he seized
one of their goat-skin swimming bags,
kicked his way across the stream upon it,
and was on a pony and back in the game
in time to make a hair-breadth "save" as
the shifting tide of the game put his own
goal in danger.

It was in another game on this same
maidan that a rather awkward player,
unhorsed in a whirlwind scrimmage,
was left lying among the rocks with a
twisted knee. The pack swept on un-
heeding, and even among the spectators
I seemed to be the only one who took
his eyes off the play long enough to note
the movements of the rumpled figure left
in the wake of the flying ruck. Twice
he tried to rise and mount the dancing
little pony, whose reins he had pluckily
retained in his fall, but both times the
injured knee bent sideways and let him
down. Releasing the pony in disgust, he
pulled himself together and began closely
to follow the progress of the play.

Twice or thrice, as the mob clattered
by, I saw him lean forward eagerly, but
it was not until one of his opponents, rid-
ing free on a clean run with the ball
down the field, came charging almost
across his prostrate form that he made
a decisive move. Lunging sharply for-
ward, he thrust his short, stubby mallet
between the forelegs of the galloping
pony, and an instant later two limp fig-
ures instead of one were lying in the
middle of the stone-paved maid an.

The fringe of spectators, who up to
this moment had confined their applause
to chesty grunts of approval, broke into

a wild yell of delight and approbation
as the second rider was overthrown, and
I noticed that the men in a group stand-
ing near me were roaring with merri-
ment at the comments of one of their
number.

"What is he saying, Ganga?" I asked
my Punjabi bearer, who betrayed in an
unwonted smile evidence of being amused
himself.

"He say, Sahib," was the reply, "that
Mulik play the better polo from the
earth than from the horse."

So keen is the hillman for his "pulu"
— the word is from the Tibetan, by the
way, and means a willow ball — that he
no more thinks of foregoing it for lack
of a field than does the street urchin his
baseball for lack of a sand-lot. If topo-
graphical exigencies forbid a maidan, he
plays in the village bazaar or up and
down the solitary street. These are the
wildest exhibitions of all.

"What in the name of common sense
did you bring those old polo balls along
for?" I asked the young British officer
of an Indian regiment who had accom-
panied me on shikar in Kashmir. We
had followed up the Sind from Srinagar,
crossed the lofty Zoji La, and were in
camp at Leh, the capital of Ladakh.
With the country for hundreds of miles
in every direction tipping one way or
the other at an angle of forty-five de-
grees, my question was a natural one.

"For your especial amusement, old
chap," was the reply. "Tossing a polo
ball into a Ladaka bazaar beats throw-
ing copper pice to famine sufferers for
excitement. Come on down and see
for yourself."

Tibetan, Ladaki, and Nepali shoul-
dered Pathan, Khirgiz, and Dogra, and
the gossip of half a continent buzzed in
Leh bazaar as, pushing between ponies

and yaks, goats and sheep, B and I

picked our way to breathing room in the
center of the little square. Shouting
something in his fluent Hindustani, my
companion held the battered ball aloft
for a moment, and then tossed it upon
the cobbles among the vendors of grains
and ack gears.

The effect was electric, explosive.
The vendors seized armfuls of their
stock and bolted for shelter, hillmen of

TIBETAN MOUNTAINEERS AND PONIES OF THE TYPE USED IN POLO

490

OUTING

a dozen races came running with stubby
mallets in their hands, and, mounting
the nearest pony, pressed upon the ball.
Yaks grunted, goats and sheep bleated,
ponies snorted, women chattered and
screamed, and men yelled. Now a dozen
ponies were stamping the tough lump of
bamboo root into the stones ; now a score.
The air was black with flailing sticks,
and their resounding thwacks, as they
fell on man and beast alike, mingled with
the bedlam of cries. Now the ball was
kicked from the press and a quick wrist
stroke sent it flying out of the bazaar
and down the narrow street. A fugitive
Tibetan girl with her arms full of

strings of turquoise hair ornaments blun-
dered in front of the leader, fell sprawl-
ing, and half the clattering pack passed
over her felt-padded anatomy without
doing apparent harm to anything but the
scattered stock of jewelry.

Every able-bodied pony in the bazaar
was seized, mounted, and sent in pur-
suit of the flying pack. There was no
endeavor to resolve into "sides." Each
man strove only to hit the ball as hard
and as often as possible — where it went
was a secondary consideration. Way-
farers and loiterers seemed to under-
stand what was coming, and the street
cleared as before the charge of a troop

THE CROWN PRINCE OF GERMANY IN A PRACTICE GAME AT
BOMBAY DURING HIS RECENT VISIT TO INDIA

CAPT. LESLIE ST. CLAIR CHEAPE OF THE KING S DRAGOON GUARDS
ON THE DURBAR FIELD AT DELHI

of cavalry. Most of the traffic bolted
to safety through windows and doors,
but a small flock of fat-tailed sheep,
which refused to be driven into some-
one's front parlor, was fed into the vor-
tex of hoofs like meat into a sausage ma-
chine, to emerge in about the same con-
dition.

A couple of unhorsed hillmen, scarcely
distinguishable in their sheepskin coats
from the bodies of the trampled wethers,
were left floundering in the shambles as
the press swept on. A blind side-swipe
sent the ball caroming through an open
window, and the iron-shod hoofs struck
sparks from the flinty cobbles in the

rush to be first upon it as it was tossed
out. Then a quick-eyed Tibetan, on a
shaggy rat of a Tibetan pony, got away
for a clean run, and hitting the ball
time after time as it shuttled back and
forth between sidewall and pavement,
carried it out of sight around a corner.

B and I, already late for tea at

the Commissioner's, had reluctantly to
forego following further in the wake of
the avalanche we had set in motion.
As an aftermath, however, we were
called upon that evening to give audi-
ence to a "damages deputation," and,
after an hour's parley, paid for five fat-
tailed sheep, a half-dozen sets of shat-

[491]

' ■•' ■•

Pjfe

.* J

%\ t ■ *"

TENT-PEGGING

CONTEST BETWEEN THE PLAYERS IN
ON THE MAIDAN IN CALCUTTA

POLO TOURNAMENT

To "tent-pegging" and "pig-sticking" are attributed much of the credit for the accu-
rate hitting and dare-devil horsemanship of the Anglo-Indian poloist.

tered hair ornaments, several bags of
grain and a number of minor losses. The
claims, strange to say, were entirely rea-
sonable, amounting to less than thirty
rupees — about ten dollars — in all, and
the fun, especially for one interested in
polo, was certainly cheap at the price.

The foregoing will give some idea of
what early Indian polo must have been,
the polo that was passed on from the
Himalayan hill states to the sport-loving
nobles of Rajputana and the Punjab. It
was the game as developed by these lat/
ter that came to be known as "The
Sport of Kings," for the manly Nawabs,
Rajahs, and Maharajahs of these war-
like states, ever used to taking personal
lead in battle and the chase, were not
content to remain passive while any con-
test of strength or skill was going on
before them.

Some of the best polo players the
game has ever produced have been rulers
of one or another of the native states of
India, nor, indeed, need I use the past
tense in making that assertion. The
Maharajah of Kishangarh is unques-
tionably one of the most useful forwards
in the world to-day. For sheer brilliancy,
an exhibition of polo this young ruler
gave in a game at the great Delhi Durbar
tournament of 1911 — a meet in which,
by the way, all but one or two of the
men who have represented England in
the last three International Cup matches
took part — stands out in my memory

U92I

above that of the individual work of any
player I have ever seen.

The game in question was a semi-final
of what proved one of the greatest tour-
naments in the history of polo. The In-
niskillen Dragoons, led by the peerless
Captain Ritson, having beaten a very
fast scratch four called the "Scouts,"
headed by the dashing Internationalist,
Captain Barrett — a combination which,
by the way, had already won from the
redoubtable 17th Lancers, captained by
another Internationalist, Vivian Lockett
— was pitted against Kishangarh.

Those who remember the savage, re-
lentless Ritson of the last Cup series will
understand something of what an ag-
gregation Inniskillen was when I say
that his team-mates, Captain Nixon and
Lieutenants Bowen and Colemore, were
do-or-die players of the same stamp as
their leader. They played clean, straight
polo without question, but — when once
their fighting Irish blood was up — quite
the roughest I have ever seen, barring
the Himalayas, of course. Kishangarh
was a splendidly mounted four, rarely
balanced and fast as lightning, and, in
spite of Inniskillen's brilliant wins in the
preliminary ties, was considered to have
an even break for the match.

Starting like whirlwind, the native
four gained a 2 to 1 lead and seemed in
a fair way to increase it when, in the
second or third period, their clever back
got in the way of an Inniskillen rush

IN THE CRADLE OE POLO

403

and was knocked from his pony, receiving
injuries from which, I believe he subse-
quently died.

For some reason, which I have never
learned, Kishangarh had no regular sub-
stitute on hand, and the man who
stripped of? his coat and went in to take
the place of the injured back was hardly
a good second-classer. Over-riding and
missing repeatedly, his blunders allowed
Inniskillen to score two goals by the
end of the fourth chukker, making the
count 3 to 2 in their favor at the half-
time interval.

Realizing that it was worse tnan hope-
less to depend on the new man as a cog
in his combination, the Maharajah threw
team-work to the winds at the opening
of the fifth chukker and started in to save
the day alone. The red silk turban
which distinguished him from his team-
mates flashed constantly in the thick of
the fight, whether he was carrying the
ball down into the enemy's territory,
smothering an opposing forward to give
his No. 1 a chance to score, or doubling

Dack to save a goal that his blundering
No. 4 had left exposed. Riding like a
spurt of flame and hitting with a sure-
ncss and force that seemed inspired, the
Maharajah, writh not any too effective
assistance on the part of his demoralized
team-mates, held even through four of
the hardest-fought periods I have ever
seen one of the greatest polo teams in the
British army.

Each side made one goal in this half
of the game, leaving the final score 4 to
3 in favor of Captain Ritson's fighting
team, which latter, I may add, wTon the
tournament a couple of days later by
decisively defeating the famous four of
the King's First Dragoon Guards, of
which the two-times Internationalist,
Captain Leslie Cheape, was a member.
It was the consensus of opinion that
Kishangarh, but for the loss of its No. 4,
would have wTon premier honors wTith
several goals to spare.

Native teams are, indeed, holding their
own with the British almost as wTell at
the present time as in the early days of

THE MAHARAJAH OF KISHANGARH ON ALI, THE GREATEST NATIVE PLAYER
AND ONE OF THE GREATEST PONIES IN INDIA

494

OUTING

the game, and there is no question but
what the standard of play of both is
steadily improving. No native four of
to-day, it is true, has attained the
supremacy of that led by the late Maha-
rajah of Patiala, which won the All-
Indian championship for so many years,
but this is due rather to the faster play
and better mounting of the regimental
teams than to any falling off of the na-
tive. Col. Chanda Singh, the fifty-year-
old veteran of Patiala, is one of the most
consistent backs in the world, and Cap-
tain Shah Mirza Beg of Hyderabad plays
a brilliant No. 2. The Nawabs of Sava-
nur and Jaora, H.H. The Rajah of Rut-
Ian, and the Nawabzadah of Palanpur
are young native rulers who give promise
of becoming fine players.

Now as to Anglo-Indian polo. What
of the school in which almost every man
who has played for England in all of the
International Cup series was trained?
What are the conditions under which the
game is played to develop men capable
of making the rally the Challengers did
after that paralyzing first chukker in
the opening game of last year's series?

The principal difference between polo
in India and polo in other parts of the
world is that there it is an institution
and elsewhere an incidental. This is,
perhaps, partly due to the fact that India
is the home of the modern game, and
partly because the Anglo-Indian exile
seems to find more time for outdoor sport
than almost any other man of serious
pursuits. And, be he army officer or civil
servant, polo is his principal amusement.

Indian cricket, tennis, and golf are in-
different, but Indian polo, taken by and
large, is the best in the world. Between
native and British players, in fact, it is
not improbable that a dozen polo teams
could be put in the field by that country
which would stand an excellent chance of
carrying off the honors in a round robin
with an equal number of fours picked
from England and America, if not all
the rest of the world.

The universality of polo in India is
due, more than to anything else, to the
fact that the foundations of the modern
game were laid there at a time when
almost anyone could afford to play. In
no part of the world was it — or is it still,

for that matter — so much of a poor
man's game. Ponies were cheap, fod-
der, and syces cheaper still ; so that it was
possible for the most modestly paid civil
servant or planter's assistant to get in
the game. The Anglo-Indian of those
days kept his ponies as a matter of course,
whether he wTent in seriously for the
game or not, and in spite of the increased
cost of playing polo at the present time
the Anglo-Indian of to-day has clung
to it as tenaciously as to a number of
other institutions of the past.

I mention this to account for tne large
number of men of moderate income who
follow the game in India. All of the
crack regimental teams, however, are
backed by some of the oldest and largest
fortunes in England, and as for the
teams of the native princes, the wealth
of the ancient Moguls is behind nearly
every one of them. One of the best of
the native fours, in fact, that of Hydera-
bad, plays under the name of Golconda,
a word that is the synonym of riches even
in the Occident.

The Anglo-Indian cavalry officer plays
polo as a matter of course, wThether he
can afford it or not. The fact of a man's
holding a commission in one of the fa-
mous regiments, such as the 10th Hus-
sars and the First King's Dragoon
Guards, usually means that he has a
comfortable income of his own. If it
chances, however, that family rather
than fortune has been responsible for
his commission, and if at the same time
he has marked ability as a polo player,
he will experience no difficulty in finding
mounts among those of his more opulent
brother officers.

At almost every one of even the re-
motest Indian frontier posts there is
some kind of a polo field, though in
many instances greater or less concession
has had to be made to topographical or
other exigencies. Some of the Hima-
layan grounds have been literally blasted
out of the mountainside, and even the
famous Annandale field, a thousand feet
below Simla, turns up sharply at two or
three of the corners, so restricted is the
space. Some of these mountain fields
slope at angles of ten or fifteen degrees,
and there is one where a nullah or ravine
has lopped off a considerable corner.

IN THE CRADLE OF POLO

495

One of the most striking instances of
polo enthusiasm I recall ever having en-
countered was that of a number of plan-
ters and army officers near Mergui, in
the southern "panhandle" of Burma.
That district, along with the lower end
of the Malay Peninsula, was experi-
encing a rubber boom, and incidental to
clearing a stretch of dense tropical jun-
gle, it was planned to make a polo field.

happened every now and then, was not
a serious handicap, and the stumps could
generally be avoided ; but the great pros-
trate trunks seemed to get mixed up in
every run. Of course, there were a
good many accidents at first, both to man
and beast, and the feelings of one planta-
tion manager — he was a Dutchman,
from Sumatra, and had scant sympathy
for sport of any kind — regarding the de-

rfSTjgS^

■■^h^jH^I J

mm > mm m\

Ir"X '»--

THE IQtH HUSSARS AND THE SCOUTS AT UMBALLA
The famous Internationalist, Capt. Barrett, is the player at the extreme right.

All that cutting and burning could do,
however, was to get rid of the lighter
brush and timber. Several giant stumps
still remained, together with a half dozen
forty or fifty-foot lengths of prostrate
trunk, while straight across the middle
of the field meandered a little perennial
streamlet for the diversion of which no
practical means was discovered.

Several years would have to elapse
before the timber and stumps would be
dry enough to burn, and the expense of
building an underground conduit for the
streamlet was prohibitive; so the plucky
enthusiasts, with true Oriental philoso-
phy, simply did the best they could with
the facilities offered. The stream, ex-
cept when it ran away with the ball, as

moralization of his staff of assistants inci-
dent to the game as played, was summed
up in the statement that "haf? of mine
men vas naff" kilt, und all of dem vas all
crazy."

At the end of a few weeks of this
steeplechase polo the casualty list had
increased to an extent that left neither
ponies nor players enough to make a
game, and before two full teams were
ready again both elephants and dynamite
became available. Between these two
irresistible forces stumps and logs were
soon blown up and dragged out of the
way. When I visited Mergui, in Sep-
tember of a year ago, this remarkable
field was two feet deep under water
from the monsoon rains, but I was as-

THE HILLMEN NEVER HESITATE TO PLAY POLO ON A CLEARING SUCH AS THAT
IN THE FOREGROUND IF NOTHING BETTER OFFERS

sured that in the dry season, ''though a
bit soggy, it was really a very sporting
bit of turf."

The story is told of a polo field at
one of the northwestern frontier posts
which was so near the Afghan border

[496]

that the festive Afridis used occasionally
to lie safely hidden among the rocks of
their own hillsides and indulge in long-
range target practice at the flying figures
on the plain below. This was back in
the 80's, and the making of any kind of

IN THE CRADLE OF POLO

497

punitive sortie across the border was ac-
companied by so much red tape that these
were generally limited to reprisals for
big and destructive raids only. Scant at-
tention was paid to pot-shooting, for the
Afridis, though excellent marksmen,
were rarely able to do much damage at
long range with their "ten rupee jezails."

Polo went on as usual until, one day,
some of the first fore-running Mausers
from the yet undeveloped Persian Gulf
smuggling trade fell into the hands of
the tribesmen at this point. It was a
Saturday afternoon, a game was on with
a visiting team from Peshawar, and the
players were just beginning to straggle
out for a preliminary warming up. One
of them — the visiting captain — was in
the act of carrying a ball down the field
at an easy canter, when there came the
shriek of a flight of bullets in the air, and
the rider went tumbling from his horse,
shot through the chest, before the ringing
cracks from the distant hillside told the
startled officers that there were modern
high-power rifles trained down from the
brown rocks which they had so often
before seen overhung with the drifting
smoke-wreaths of the harmless old jez-
ails. It was this incident which is said
to have inspired Kipling's poem, "Arith-
metic on the Frontier," in which occur
the lines :

"The Crammer's boast, the Squadron's pride,
Shot like a rabbit in his ride."

I could tell the story of a tiger that
was shot and killed one night almost be-
tween the goal posts of a polo field in
Upper Burma, where he had dragged and
was eating at leisure the body of the
post's crack pony ; or of how some rhinos
came down early one morning to a polo
ground in Upper Assam and, in en-
deavoring to reach the fodder that was
stored for the ponies, completely wrecked
the stables; but I will hardly need fur-
ther to multiply instances to show the
splendid sporting instinct which must
imbue the Anglo-Indian poloist to lead
him to play the game under such un-
toward conditions. Small wonder, is it,
that he plays for all that is in him when
he gets a chance in a normal contest.

The best Indian polo ponies are usu-
ally a cross between the desert Arab
from the west and north of the Persian

Gulf — Bombay is one of the greatest
Arab markets in the world — and the
mountain pony of the frontier. This
has produced a short-coupled animal of
great endurance, "heart," and handiness,
but rather undersized and somewhat less
speedy than the best English-bred ponies,
defects which are being remedied by
crossing again with the rangier Aus-
tralian.

There has never been a definite
formula worked out for determining the
relative value of man and pony in polo,
but it is so palpable that the excellence of
either one is so completely stultified by
the lack of excellence in the other that,
by and large, "half-and-half" is probably
as near as one can get to it. In India,
however, where the horse is, perhaps,
more highly regarded than in any other
country in the world with the possible
exception of Australia, the sentiment
seems. to incline in favor of the pony. I
recall an amusing but not any the less
illuminative instance in point in connec-
tion with the Delhi Durbar tournament
to which I have already referred.

This great meet brought out -the cream
of horse-lovers, not only of India, but
of all the British Empire as well, and
never was polo so fittingly attended.
Nineteen men in every twenty — both
European and native — were in riding
togs, and I would venture to say that not
far from that proportion of the women
had known the exhilaration of the tug of
bridle leather on their slender fingers and
the rapture which comes with the "feel"
of a hunter gathering himself for a jump.
One didn't need to eavesdrop on their
conversation to know that — he could
read it in the poise and balance that not
even the "geisha" pit-a-pat incident to
walking in a hobble skirt could conceal.
He could read it in the steadiness of eye
and the "thoroughbred" set of the head
seen only in the woman who can take a
hedge or a water jump without the flicker
of an eyelash.

The hysterical choruses of "Ohs" and
"Ahs," so characteristic of the great polo
gatherings at Hurlingham and Meadow-
brook when the action on the field cli-
maxes were rarely voiced by these sea-
soned enthusiasts at the Durbar. A tight-
ening of the lips, a narrowing of the eyes

498

OUTING

in a glance of fixed concentration, with a
muttered "Well hit!" or "Hard luck!"
as the tide of the game ebbed and flowed,
and an occasional brisk clapping of
hands at a timely "save" or a cleverly-
driven goal — these wTere all the outward
expressions one might note in the most
intelligent gathering of polo enthusiasts
I ever saw.

I did hear one exclamation during the
whirlwind first round match between the
K. D. G.'s and the 10th Hussars — two
of the best mounted teams in the British
army — and it was so illuminative of the
stuff of which the Anglo-Indian horse-
woman is made, as well as of the place
polo occupies in her mind and heart, that
it seems worth recording. This is the
instance I had in mind.

As two ponies and riders mixed in an
unavoidable "head-to-side" collision in
the opening chukker, and the pony whose
ribs had sustained the impact reeled
groggily for an instant on trembling legs,
a gasping "Oh, mon Dieu!" from a chair
behind me was audible above the mutter
of excitement that rippled through the
crowd. I turned slightly and used the
corner of my eye as unobtrusively as pos-
sible. French gown, French shoes,
French hat, French schooling in the click
of her words, but an English girl and
a horsewoman in every line of her high-
held head and willowy figure — appar-
ently, also, that enchanting creature of
whom Kipling rhapsodizes, "an Anglo-
Indian 'spin' in her first season." Tense
with excitement and apprehension, she
had risen and stood with her eyes fixed on
the stricken pony and rider, where the
latter was gamely endeavoring to rally
the senses of his dazed mount.

"Are you worrying about your friend,
Captain X ?" An even, unemo-
tional, and somewhat cynical masculine
came from the next chair.

"X ! Mon Dieu, non.t" (She

spoke without taking her eyes from the
distressed pony, but with the scorn she
felt for the stupidity of so absurd a sur-
mise showing in every line of her

Frenchily shrugged shoulders.) "X !

I hadn't given him a thought. But I
know that he counted on riding Flopper

again in the last chukker, and I'm afraid
poor old Flopper's finished for to-day."

But Flopper wasn't finished by a long
ways. Even as she spoke his rolling eye
caught the familiar streak of the flying
ball, and, game to the marrow of his
slender bones, he dashed after it and
kept in the thick of the fight till the end
of the period.

Miss "French" sank to her chair with
a gurgled cry of delight and relief as the
fleet-footed Flopper "took the field"
again, and no word escaped till the chuk-
ker was finished. Then she came to her
feet again with another gurgle of rap-
ture: "Oh, look!" she laughed, "he isn't
even limping."

I looked and saw the shifty and use-
ful Flopper walking evenly off toward
the paddocks, the center of a knot of
solicitous syces. Behind staggered a be-
draggled figure in white who (I knew
that his teeth were set and the lines of
his forehead gathered in the pain he
would not confess) gamely strove to hide
the hurt he had sustained where his
thigh had taken the main force of the im-
pact of the shoulder of the colliding
pony.

The masculine voice broke in again,
this time with a note of concern and pro-
test in it. "But he is limping, poor old
chap; I'm afraid he's badly knocked
up."

Again the scornful shrug of the
shoulders and the crushing reply. "But
I mean Flopper, won't you understand?
Flopper was going strong at the finish
and he'll be quite fit for the last chuk-
ker. Good old Flopper!"

Flopper merged into the crowd at the
distant corner of the field, disappearing
under a blanket, and the dancing eyes
that had followed him had time to turn
to the limping figure in white, now sur-
rounded by a group of anxious men
where he waited his next mount.

-Oh, is X hurt?" she cooed. "I

hadn't thought of that. I'm so sorry."

"It's really a shame that girl isn't a
man," said a friend who sat beside me.
"What a polo player she would have
made!"

THE FIRST AUTOMOBILE RACE
IN AMERICA

By CHARLES FREDERICK CARTER

Held in Chicago Only Nineteen Years Ago and Described by th

Official Photographer

F the American automobile lives
till November 28, 1916, and there
are grounds for thinking that it
may do so, it will be old enough
to vote. Accepting this statement
as correct, a simple mathematical
calculation develops the amazing fact
that at the hour of going to press the
American automobile was eighteen years
old.

Any one who will pause long enough
to remember that there are now 1,145,-
000 automobiles in the United States,
which is more than five times as many
as there are in the whole of Europe,
where automobiles originated, valued at
nearly two billion of dollars, will con-
cede that the use of the term "amazing"
in this connection is fully warranted.
As bearing on the same point it may be
well to mention that there are approxi-
mately seven hundred thousand licensed
automobile drivers whose wages, calcu-
lated at the low average of fifteen dol-
lars a week, would amount to more than
half a billion dollars a year, merely for
driving a machine that is still a minor
and hence, in the eyes of the law, re-
quiring a guardian, not to mention the
nurse some drivers seem to need.

If to this item be added the wages
of others employed in caring for cars,
the cost of replacing cars at the rate of
more than two hundred thousand a year,
the cost of renewal of tires and other
parts, supplies and repairs and indirect
outlays such as special clothing, hotel
and other traveling expenses, the bill of
the American automobilist mounts to a
figure too appalling even to be hinted at.
And all this has been brought about
within the brief space of eighteen years!

Why, the thing fairly staggers compre-
hension !

For me there is a special pride and
pleasure in gloating over these automo-
bile statistics, due to the fact that I was
present, in the capacity of official pho-
tographer, at the coming-out party of
the American automobile. I heard its
first feeble snort, and made pictures of
its first wabbly attempts at locomotion.
Given a sufficiently exuberant fancy one
might derive from the memory of such
participation in that historic event a sort
of sense of proprietary interest in all
automobiles in general, so to speak; a
fatherly feeling toward the whole rub-
ber-tired tribe, as it were.

This reminds me that the real Father
of the American Automobile has thus
far remained unknown, except to a few.
Of all the astounding facts connected
with its brief career the most extraordi-
nary is that the man who, above any
other one man, is to blame for the
American automobile has never been sus-
pected by the general public. Go through
all the oceans of stuff that has been
printed about the automobile with a
search warrant, and nowhere will you
find so much as a hint at the man who
originated the idea of the first automo-
bile show and the first automobile race
ever held on American soil. Yet he not
only originated the idea, but he hunted
up the angel for these epoch-marking
events, charmed upwards of fifteen thou-
sand dollars from his bank account to
defray the expenses thereof, made public
announcement of the plans, wrote anony-
mously scores of columns of matter fore-
casting the future of the automobile with
astonishing accuracy in discouraging at-

[199]

500

OUTING

tempts to work up public interest in the
new vehicle, toured the country in search
of inventors who thought they could
produce something worth exhibiting, bor-
rowed money for some who are now
eminent in the automobile world to
finance their first crude attempts at
motor-car building, gave advice in his
capacity as mechanical engineer, and
even made' drawings for the engines.

For sixteen months he devoted his
energies exclusively to the task of
coaxing the American automobile into
being without once seeking to exploit
himself. Such modesty in an age at-
tuned to Mark Twain's postscript to the
beatitudes, "Blessed is he that bloweth
his own horn, lest it be not blown," is
remarkable. Yet, dozens of living wit-
nesses can attest the truth of it all.
Under these circumstances it is a great
pleasure to be able to present for the first
time in print the name of the Father
of the American Automobile, Frederick
Upham Adams, engineer, inventor, au-
thor.

A Tip from Paris

When a few motor-driven freaks stag-
gered over the road from Paris to Rouen
and back, in June, 1894, a distance of
75 miles, at an average speed of nearly
fifteen miles an hour, the inventors of
Europe sat up and took notice. But
apparently no one in America, except
Frederick Upham Adams, grasped the
significance of the event. Adams was a
mechanical engineer, draughtsman, and
inventor who had taken up newspaper
work temporarily. He convinced H. H.
Kohlsaat, publisher of the Chicago
Times-Herald, that the automobile was
the coming vehicle, destined to revo-
lutionize transportation, and persuaded
him to supply the funds for prizes and
expenses of an automobile road race to
be held July 4, 1895.

Adams thought that as no such thing
as an American automobile then existed
it might be just as well to allow a1 year
for inventors to produce something of
the kind. Kohlsaat agreed to be the
angel on condition that Adams should
never come to him for suggestions or ad-
vice, but should assume full authority
for the management of the affair. Prizes

aggregating $5,000 were offered in a
competition open to the world.

Then Adams got busy. Pie ground
out copy by the yard for the Times-
Herald, telling what a good thing the
automobile would be some day, how it
would be the prime instigator of a good-
roads movement that would make the
farmer independent of the weather and
the railroads in getting his crops to mar-
ket, and many other benefits that have
since become history. He toured the
country hunting down the few scattering
inventors who had been making half-
hearted attempts to produce a power
wagon.

Among others he visited a great bicy-
cle manufacturer in Connecticut, to try
to stir up some interest in the building
of horseless carriages. But no, the man-
ufacturer didn't believe the great army
of bicycle riders wTould take kindly to
the idea of sitting idly in machines that
propelled themselves. Why, the chief
element of the bicycle's popularity was
the enjoyment the rider got from the
wholesome exercise of his muscles, the
manufacturer said. At that time there
were a million bicycles in use in Amer-
ica. Nearly everybody under the age
of ninety had, or affected to have, the
bicycle hump and frozen face, and dan-
gled on their breasts long bronze chains,
each bar of which represented a "century
run." Now, eighteen years later, there
are more automobiles than there were
bicycles in 1895, while the speeders brag
about their police-court records instead
of their bronze chains, and the Connecti-
cut manufacturer who could see nothing
in horseless carriages long since con-
verted his bicj'cle factory into an auto-
mobile plant many times bigger than his
place of eighteen years ago.

All Adams could do aroused scarcely
more than a languid flicker of interest.
The road race had to be postponed from
July 4 to November 2, because nobody
was ready. Then the Paris-Bordeaux
race of June, 1895, participated in by
sixty-six cars, established the wonderful
record of 750 miles in 48 hours and 53
minutes, or an average of about fifteen
and a half miles an hour, and thereby
focused the eyes of the world on the new
method of locomotion. Then American

THE FIRST AUTOMOBILE RACE IN AMERICA

501

inventors concluded that there might be
something in horseless carriages, after all.
By September, 1895, five hundred appli-
cations for patents on automobiles and
accessories had been filed at Washing-
ton. Between July 1 and November 1
the construction of no fewer than three
hundrexl different types of horseless car-
riages had been begun. Some proposed
to use gasoline as motive power, others
electricity, still others steam, yet others
carbonic acid, acetylene gas, compressed
air and liquid air, while at least six
geniuses undertook to demonstrate that
springs were the ideal motive power for
the horseless carriage. Most of this
army of inventors, however, soon found
that designing automobiles was like wri-
ting poetry ; it was easy enough to write

the first line, but

Still, enough of them persevered to
give Adams an imposing list of eighty-
eight entries'for the road race. It trans-
pired later that the majority merely
wished to direct attention to the claim
that they could build an automobile if
they wanted to ; but when it came to a
show-down barely a dozen could produce
anything in the shape of a machine, and
even some of these could not run their
own length under their own power.

Naming the New Baby

Adams overlooked nothing. In his ca-
pacity of Father of the American Auto-
mobile he devoted much care to the
selection of a name for the baby. He
published in the Times-Herald an offer
of a prize of $500 for the most suitable
name for the new style of vehicle. At
that time it was not supposed that the
American people would stand for the
absurd French term, "automobile." The
wise ones pointed out that it would be
just as idiotic to call a horseless carriage
an "automobile" as to call a railroad a
"chemin de fer." So some of the inven-
tors called their monstrosities "quadri-
cycles," while other names included such
things as "motor wagon," "horseless car-
riage," "autocycle," "motocycle," "auto-
motor," "petrocar," and so on, ad infini-
tum. One genius hit upon "electrobat"
as a suitable name for his vehicle. Think
of it! Electrobat!

After mature consideration, the jury

appointed to pass upon the names sent
in divided the prize among three per-
sons, each of whom had suggested "moto-
cycle." Not motorcycle, mind you, but
motocycle. So the horseless carriage was
formally christened Motocycle. As the
name has never been changed pursuant
to law in such cases made and provided,
it follows that the motor vehicle which
runs you down at crossings and spatters
mud on you when you are on the pave-
ment is not an automobile, but a moto-
cycle masquerading under an imported
alias.

Things began to look so promising in
the automobile line that along in Octo-
ber Adams rented a vacant storeroom at
Wabash Avenue and Fourteenth Street,
where he installed the dozen "motocy-
cles" he had been able to scrape up. He
had gone down to Purdue University,
where he interested the faculty in what
he was doing to such an extent that he
secured the loan of apparatus for testing
his exhibits. The apparatus was brought
to Chicago and installed in the show-
room, where tests were conducted by
L. L. Summers and John Lundie, two
mechanical engineers of high standing.
Their report, which was most elaborate
and complete, was the first scientific data
ever published in this country about au-
tomobiles and their motors. This report
was of great value in the later develop-
ment of the automobile. But this is
getting ahead of the story.

Following the strict letter of his in-
structions, Adams had said nothing to
Kohlsaat about what he was doing.
When all was ready he inveigled Kohl-
saat into a cab and drove down to the
Wabash Avenue building. Without a
word of preparation the publisher was
ushered into the first automobile show
ever held on American soil. His delight
was boundless.

When November 2, the date for the
postponed road race, arrived, only three
or four machines dared venture out of
doors. The outlook for a race was any-
thing but bright; but, on the other hand,
Adams dared not put it off any longer.
So he hit upon the inspired compromise
of holding a "consolation" race Novem-
ber 2 for a purse of $500, while the real
thing was put off till Thanksgiving Day,

502

OUTING

November 28, to give the inventors fur-
ther opportunity to come to the scratch.
The affair of November 2 was not to be
a real race, but only a warming-up can-
ter to keep up the interest.

Five vehicles turned up at Midway
Plaisance and Jackson Park, November
2. Two of these were from the same
concern, the leading member of which
soon afterward acquired such an unenvi-
able reputation as a mechanical fakir that
he found it convenient to take up his
residence in England. These two vehi-
cles in size and general appearance
seemed modeled after the wheeled chairs
so popular at the World's Fair, two
years previously. The wheels had a
dropsical appearance, being of small di-
ameter, with four-inch pneumatic tires.
A blind man could have seen that they
could get nowhere, except on a dray.
Nobody was surprised, therefore, when
the announcement was made that these
wonders would not attempt to cover the
course, but were merely on hand for
exhibition purposes.

A third vehicle, also on hand for ex-
hibition merely, was the "electrobat."
This contraption, which looked like a
surrey that had got out of bed wrong
end to, weighed 1,650 pounds. Its fore
wheels, which were the drivers, were 40
inches in diameter, while the rear, or
steering wheels, were 28 inches in diame-
ter. Like a crab, it progressed back-
ward— when it progressed. Its two elec-
tric motors of one and a half horsepower
each were capable of propelling it at a
speed of twenty miles an hour — the
makers said so themselves.

The other two machines meant busi-
ness. One, entered by C. E. Duryea, of
Springfield, Mass., was an ordinary top
buggy in appearance, without shafts, but
having instead a bustle in which the ma-
chinery was concealed. Practically all
the earlier types of automobiles, by the
way, wore their machinery in bustles for
several years. The Duryea machine
weighed 1,208 pounds, had wooden
wheels of regular buggy size, with pneu-
matic tires, a four-horsepower, two-
cylinder gasolene motor, and chain drive.

The other starter was an imported
Ben/, machine, owned by H. Mueller &
Son, of Decatur, Ills. It was a two-

seated affair. Having come from Eu-
rope, the seats, of course, were arranged
so that the occupants had to face each
other. The original carriage having
been built in the year one on this plan,
all vehicles, craft, and other devices used
in the transportation of human beings
have ever since been arranged so that the
passengers could breathe in each other's
faces, put their feet in each other's laps,
and be otherwise sociable. The machine
weighed 1,636 pounds, wore its motor —
a single-cylinder gasolene engine — in the
customary bustle, and had a belt drive.
Yes, a belt!

The imported car was first off, with
Oscar Mueller, son of the owner, driv-
ing, C. G. Reid, of Chicago, assistant,
and S. F. Gilmore, of Princeton, Ind.,
umpire. Some minutes later the Yankee
car, with the inventor and his brother,
J. F. Duryea, up, followed. It was the
old story of the hare and the tortoise.
Thanks to the patient industry of the
assistant, who alternately applied ice to
the motor and sand to the belt, the im-
ported car jogged steadily along, while
the Yankee, making a spectacular spurt,
was on the point of placing the stars and
stripes in the van. when the driving-chain
broke. Forty-eight minutes were lost in
repairing it, which gave the foreigner a
fairly good lead.

The Old Story

The Yankee was rapidly closing up
the gap when it overtook a farmer going
the same way. Then for the first time
on American soil the farmer performed
his celebrated feat of turning the wrong
way, an achievement which has since be-
come a classic familiar to all automobile
ists. This forced the Duryea into the
ditch, which was deep, smashing a front
wheel beyond hope of temporary repair.
There was nothing to do but resort to
language and a dray. Duryea did both.

The way that foreigner ate up dis-
tance was a caution. Squandering ice
and sand regardless of expense, the nine-
ty-two miles to Waukegan and return
were covered in nine and a half hours,
or almost ten miles an hour. It can
truthfully be said that this was the fastest
time for the distance ever made on Amer-
ican soil up to that date. To be sure,

THE FIRST AUTOMOBILE RACE IN AMERICA

503

Ralph Mulford covered the 291 miles of
the 1911 Vanderbilt race at an average
speed of 74.7 miles an hour. But, then,
Vanderbilt had not invented his justly
celebrated cup in 1895. It is only fair to
say that Oscar Mueller established his
record over roads that were level and in
perfect condition and in fine weather.
The judges, who examined the machine
immediately after the finish, reported
that it had stood the trip in a "magnifi-
cent manner."

But, all the same, Adams announced
next day that the course for the real offi-
cial race on Thanksgiving Day would be
cut almost in two, the course being from
the Midway Plaisance and Jackson Park
to Evanston and return, a distance of 54
miles.

The ensuing weeks were devoted by
the pioneer automobile racers to tinker-
ing and experimenting. Adams revised
the rules to make them easier and wrote
more prophetic articles for the Times-
Herald, telling what "motocycles" would
do some day. The jury chosen to judge
the first automobile road race consisted
of General Wesley Merritt, U. S. A. ;
Prof. John Barrett, city electrician of
Chicago, and Henry Timken, a St. Louis
carriage builder, president of the Na-
tional Carriage Builders' Association,
and an enthusiast on aviation who had
spent $25,000 in vain efforts to produce
a flying machine that would fly. All are
now dead.

Meanwhile, R. H. Macy & Co., of
New York, had imported a single-cylin-
der motor-car, built by M. Roger, of
Paris. At noon November 15, Frank A.
Macpherson, manager of the bicycle de-
partment, with J. O'Connor as "engi-
neer," started in this machine for Chi-
cago, thus achieving the distinction of
attempting the first long-distance auto-
mobile journey on American soil. They
got as far as Yonkers by midnight. They
reached Schenectady November 20. Then
a snowstorm discouraged them and they
shipped their car by rail to Chicago,
where it arrived in time for the race.

The week before Thanksgiving the
testing apparatus was taken down to
Washington Park race-track for further
tests, which only three of the entrants,
including the Duryea and Mueller's

Benz, had the courage to undergo. Sev-
eral others were taken down to the track
for exhibition purposes, on the theory
that it might be safe to venture on the
smooth, level race-track. In this the
fond inventors were only partly correct,
for few of the machines could make the
circuit of the track without stopping to
tinker. When under way their speed
was never too great for the camera to
catch, nor were the spectators numerous
enough to hamper the taking of pictures.
Three days before Thanksgiving a
blizzard swooped down on Chicago, tie-
ing up the railroads, blocking the street
cars, and covering the ground with snow
eight inches deep on the level, to say
nothing of the drifts. Kohlsaat was in
the state described by the "children as be-
ing "on pins and needles." He had faith
in the motocycle, but when he gazed out
at the swirling snow the prospects of
vindicating that faith seemed none too
bright. His position was not exactly
comfortable.

Lining Up for the Start

The Times-Herald's rival, the Tri-
bune, prompted by a new city editor,
devoted much valuable space to ridiculing
the notion that wagons could be made to
go without horses, and especially to jeer-
ing at the proposed race. Other papers
throughout the country, for the most
part, maintained a polite silence, as inti-
mating that while Kohlsaat's folly in
backing a horseless-carriage race was well
understood, good breeding forbade any
reference to the affair. Adams tried to
console the angel by assuring him that
there would be a race Thanksgiving Day
if he had to get a wheel-barrow and run
it himself. On Wednesday Adams made
the rounds of the prospective contestants,
trying to ginger them up. Eleven swore
with uplifted hands that they would be
at the starting point on the following
morning.

But when dawn on Thanksgiving
morn revealed the deplorable condition
of the streets, five forgot their vows.
Just six "motocycles" straggled down to
the Midway. Some were two hours late,
others arrived in drays. The Tribune's
star funny man drove down in a cab,
prepared to follow the race to the bitter

504

OUTING

end ; other reporters came in • hs and
on horseback for the same puri Not

even a Chicago reporter wou.:. :ry to
follow an automobile road race :n a cab
now, which reflection emphasize.; the
point that times have changed and that
Adams's prophecies were not so far off,
after all.

The owners of the electrobat an-
nounced that they had been unable to
arrange for supplies along the route, and
therefore would only make an exhibition
run to Lincoln Park and back. This cut
the field down to five starters, some of
whom had no more expectation of finish-
ing than the electrobat outfit, only they
kept their opinions to themselves.

The Duryea led off at 8:55 a. m.,
with J. F. Duryea, brother of the in-
ventor, at the steering lever — for the
wheel did not make its appearance, even
in France, for two years afterward — and
Arthur W. White as umpire. A Benz
machine, imported by the De la Vergne
Refrigerating Company, attempted to
follow, but the wheels slipped so that
the owners withdrew it from the race
after two miles of toilsome progress.

Macy's Roger started third, under the
guidance of J. O'Connor, with Lieut.
Samuel Rodman, Jr., U. S. A., as um-
pire. Two minutes later the Sturges
electric machine, a ponderous affair
weighing nearly two tons, followed,
driven by Harold Sturges, with T. T.
Bennett as umpire. At 10:06 the judges
gave Oscar Mueller, who was accom-
panied by Charles B. King as umpire, in
the imported Benz, the word to go.
Mueller had been late in arriving. He
claimed to have overslept, but it may
have been the snow.

With the sole exception of the Duryea,
every blessed machine stuck fast in the
snow before it had floundered half the
length of the thoroughfare that made the
World's Fair famous. The spectators,
who had been following on foot — now
remember, this was an automobile road
race and the spectators were following it
on foot — yelled as they came to each
stalled machine:

"It's a good thing. Push it along."

Then they would grab hold and boost
the discouraged motocycle through the
drift, while the driver protested that it

was against the rules to receive outside
help. In justice to their discretion it
should be said that the drivers did not
protest out loud, except when the judges
were within earshot.

In three hours and a half the ponder-
ous Sturges electric machine, making fre-
quent stops to prevent the motors from
burning out, staggered up to Lincoln
Park, where it gave up the ghost. The
electrobat worried along up to Lincoln
Park and half-way back before sending
for horses. Mueller, in his Benz that
had won the consolation prize of $500
November 2, stuck in most of the drifts,
but with dogged German perseverance
shoveled out and kept going.

Joy and Sorrow

C. E. Duryea had taken a train down-
town, intending to get a team there to
follow his machine over the rest of the
course. He had figured that his machine
would consume an hour and a quarter
making the run from the Midway down-
town. To his surprise it showed up in
less than an hour. But his joy was short-
lived, for in crossing the Rush Street
bridge, over the Chicago River, the
steering gear broke. Fifty-five minutes
were lost in cobbling it up. This gave
the Macy machine thirty-five minutes the
start, which it improved by plowing up
the Lake Shore Drive past Kohlsaat's
house, where the publisher was standing
at a window, first on one foot, then on
the other, watching for the racers with
an intentness that fairly bored holes in
the glass. Adams declares that his one
most vivid recollection of that historic
event was Kohlsaat's almost childish de-
light when the sight of that pioneer auto-
mobile racer, floundering through the
snow, demonstrated that the road race
was not to be altogether a fiasco.

O'Connor made a determined effort to
win first prize. He crowded his ma-
chine to the limit and stopped for noth-
ing. When a street car got in his way
he ran right over it — or tried to, break-
ing his steering gear and other little
things like that in the attempt. Then he
ran down a carriage soon after turning
back from Evanston, and that settled his
hash. Duryea's machine staggered and
wabbled as if it had just recovered from

THE FIRST AUTOMOBILE RACE IN AMERICA

505

a long illness, but it kept going, as did
Mueller in his Benz. That is to say,
they kept goin£ when they were not
stuck in the snow or making repairs or
something like that.

All along the route the populace
turned out to howl witticisms and hurl
snowballs at the racers, for the peepul
regarded the new vehicle as a joke. It
will be remembered that this was the
popular attitude toward automobiles for
some years afterward. At a viaduct over
some railroad tracks a large crowd had
assembled to see the machines stall on
the incline. They were disappointed, so
far as the Duryea was concerned, for the
American-built car rolled steadily up the
wet, icy surface without so much as hesi-
tating. This triumph was offset by nu-
merous breakdowns and derangements of
the machinery — enough to consume three
hours.

But the Duryea came to a stop in front
of the shivering judges at the starting
point at 7:18 p. m., ten and a half hours
after leaving, winner of the first Ameri-
can automobile road race and the first
prize of $2,000. Figuring on elapsed
time, this made an average of a small
fraction more than five miles an hour;
or, counting only the actual running
time, seven and a half miles an hour

through eight inches to two feet of snow
and slush, a large part of the way over
roads entirely unbroken. And an Amer-
ican car, built by a Down-East Yankee,
with engines of his own design, won in
competition with cars from France and
Germany, where the art of automobile
building originated and where the build-
ing of gasoline motors was far advanced,
or, at least, was supposed to be.

Mueller darted under the wire four
minutes after midnight, covering the
course in eleven hours and fifty-eight
minutes, which was practically four and
a half miles an hour, or less than half the
speed made in the consolation race, win-
ner of the second prize, $1,500.

Adams and Kohlsaat were fully war-
ranted in congratulating each other with
no little exuberance that night over the
outcome of the first American automobile
road race. For, taking all the circum-
stances into consideration, especially the
atrocious condition of the roads, the fact
that even two cars could cover fifty-two
miles in one day was sufficiently conclu-
sive evidence to any thinking man that
the horseless carriage had a great future.
The fact is worth noting that thinking
men did so accept the evidence, even
though the Chicago Tribune differed
with them.

There is some sound advice for campers and
trampers in Ladd Plumley's article on SHANKS'
MARE IN HARNESS-August OUTING.

THE

WORLD

SPORT

Why We There have been numerous
Lost at explanations for the defeat

Sandwlch Qf the American golfers at
Sandwich in May. One is that Travers
and Ouimet were overgolfed. Another
is that Evans had not had enough golf.
Travers had an attack of nerves. Ouimet
was afraid of his clubs and only twice in
the round hit crisply and with power.
Webber was good, but he lacked experi-
ence. And so they run. Now we beg
to offer our little explanation. The
American players were beaten because
they didn't play well enough. That's
the only reason that's worth thinking
about. Some of the American newspa-
pers have been patting our boys on the
back because they were such good losers.
What did those newspaper critics expect?
Did they think it was a professional
baseball game? Or did they expect to
hear charges of laudanum in Ouimet's
tea? Or a steel-cored ball with a mag-
net in the hole to account for MacFar-
lane's wonderful putting against Evans?
Why shouldn't they be good sportsmen?
They've had a bully time. Their Eng-
lish cousins have treated them like
princes. The English writers have her-
alded them as boy wonders. And they
have lost. It's all in the day's play.

A Hard Now let's get down to cases
Tournament and consider the real situa-
toWm tion. The fact is that an
Englishman or Scotchman will take a lot
of beating at his favorite game. The
English courses are hard, sound tests of
a man's ability to play every kind of shot
in the whole category. The English field

1506]

is a dangerous one. The entry list is
large and the number of first-class play-
ers larger than in this country. It is
probable that ten Englishmen relatively
of the grade of the ten Americans who
appeared at Sandwich would have a much
easier time in the American champion-
ship than did our boys in the English.
Add to this the fact that in the large
English field there is an immensely great-
er chance of a moderately good golfer
"playing his head off" in one round, and
it is possible to have some idea of the
difficulties of winning on the other side.
It's a grand good game, and no one need
feel ashamed of our showing. Further-
more, it was a bad season for favorites,
as Harold Hilton and John Ball can
testify.

Case of While we are about it we
Too Much might as well express our
disapprobation of the way in
which this "invasion" has been conduct-
ed. It was only a golf game, but from
the tone of the newspaper talk on both
sides of the water one might have con-
cluded that it was a struggle to the death.
The American players were assured that
the hope of the nation was on them and
the Englishmen were told by their jour-
nalistic friends that they were fighting in
the last ditch for the honor of old Eng-
land. In the name of the Prophet, figs!
We should have been glad to see some
good American win. We should have
been almost as glad — not quite — to see
Mr. Hilton or Mr. Ball reappear in
their time-honored role of victor. Since
that was not to be, we salute Mr. Jen-

THE WORLD OF SPORT

507

kins, the unknown, the man with the
courage and skill to come through a
hard field and seize the coveted crown.
As for the brass-band methods that at-
tended the advance of the American con-
tingent (and contingency) we have noth-
ing but scorn. But this should be a les-
son— as the colored gentleman remarked
on the gallows when he was asked if he
had any last words. Hereafter when we
go to play golf let us play golf. Forget
that the fate of the nation depends on our
mashie shots or that the tail feathers of
the eagle droop in shame when we miss
a four-foot putt. Remember the case of
Heinrich Schmidt. Only Walter Travis
has lasted longer than did he in the Brit-
ish tournament. Yet when the news of
his play came over the cable last year
most of the golfers in this country asked,
"Who the dickens is Schmidt?" He
just slipped over to play — and played.

That Speaking of international
Pplo sport, the polo matches will
Mucup have been played by the time
this issue of Outing reaches the hands
of its readers. Therefore any comment
on the makeup of either team would be
footless and prophesy probably contra-
dicted by the fact before it saw the light
of day. Nevertheless, one may venture
on a few general statements of an innocu-
ous character. In the first place, our
English friends seem to be still suffering
from the effects of the old wrangle be-
tween the County Polo Association and
the army players. With the merits of
that controversy we have no concern, nor
is it a part of our duty to point the way
of truth and light to our erring cousins.
We can only hope that in future the mat-
ter can be handled entirely through Hur-
lingham as the governing body. We
take off our hats to such fine sportsmen
as Lord Wimborne and the Duke of
Westminster, but experience teaches that
undue prominence to any individual,
however capable and well-meaning, is
harmful in the long run.

No Longer The mention of polo reminds
a One-Sport us that we are rapidly free-
Nation jng ourseives from liability
to the charge, so often laid against us in
the past, of being a nation of one-sport

players. Of the men at present playing
high-class polo in this country, practically
all of them are enthusiasts in other forms
of sport. Lawrence Waterbury is an
excellent example. Joshua Crane is an-
other, although his skill in polo is hardly
equal to that which he shows in tennis
and racquets. Several of our best lawn
tennis players are by no means to be
scorned on the links, and a fair-sized
golf club could be made up from the
ranks of major league baseball players.
It is a fine ideal this of the all-round out-
door man — or woman.

Are In this issue we print sev-
THey eral communications from
Amateurs? rea(jers about amateurs and
amateur sport. The interest is gratify-
ing. More gratifying still is the high
standard evinced in the letters received.
This leads us to hope that the discussion
can be led into the field of concrete prob-
lems. For example, naming no names,
do you consider that a golf player who
Works in a sporting goods store is a bona
fide amateur? How about the golfer
wrho receives a receipted hotel bill in con-
sideration of gracing a midsummer or
midwinter tournament with his pres-
ence? Should a tennis player permit all
his tournament expenses to be paid by a
benevolent friend who wants to see his
protege "clean 'em up" ? Can a runner or
jumper honestly accept a job secured for
him by his clubmates on the strength of
his skill as an athlete? Should a golfer
use the fact that he wants to enter in a
foreign tournament as a lever by which
to make the business turnover that is nec-
essary to enable him to leave ? What do
you think of a college football player
who receives pay for writing reports of
the games in which he takes part? Is a
man justified in using his participation in
sport as a means to boost the goods which
he manufactures or sells? We do not
say that these are more than hypothetical
cases; but instances have been known in
the past that would fit these descriptions.
Furthermore, they are not trivial. They
are vital. They go to the root of the
matter. Probably they cannot be met
squarely by rules or regulations. Never-
theless, they are the conditions that must
be met in some way if we are to have

508

OUTING

amateur sport on the high plane where it
should be, here and elsewhere.

The Now is the time of the year

Price of for warnings. Every season

Carelessness sport takeg ^ toU of death

and injury and destruction of property.
In most cases the fault can be laid at the
door of ignorance or carelessness — or
both. Study the newspaper reports of
drownings, whether of swimmers or of
amateur sailors. The roll will be a long
one before the summer is over, and most
of them could have been prevented by
care or a little knowledge. The sailor
who makes fast the main sheet; the ca-
noeists who attempt to change seats in
the middle of the lake ; the swimmer who
ventures out too far or dives into surf
without knowing the power of a heavy
wave; these cases are almost as inexcus-
able as that of the fool who rocks the
boat to frighten the ladies of the party.
To be sure, men of skill and experience
sometimes err in these directions, but
very seldom. The man who knows will
often impress the novice as being almost
timid, so great is his care and fore-
thought. Try making the sheet fast
with an old bayman in the boat and
hear what he will say. Ask the life-
saver at the beach what he thinks of the
"daring" swimmers who underestimate
the power of a pounding surf and have
to be dragged ashore by the bronzed
Apollo who must protect them from the
consequences of their own foolishness.
The result will be like that of asking an
old hunter his opinion of the greenhorn
who points a gun at a companion just
in fun.

Put But there are other mistakes
Out Your not necessarily so fatal. You
are going camping this sum-
mer. Have you thought that an especial
obligation is laid on you to protect the
woods in which you find rest and pleas-
ure? Every year scores of forest fires
are started by campers who neglected to
drown out the cooking fire when the
meal was over. The cigarette butt, the
pipe ashes, the lighted match, thrown
down carelessly, may easily be the means
of destroying thousands of dollars' worth
of standing timber, and perhaps imperil-

ing human life. A pail of water doused
on the fire will prevent this, and it is not
a difficult thing to remember or to do.
Nothing is so unsightly as a litter of tin
cans and other rubbish on an old camp
site. Bury it before you leave. Usually
the woods will provide all the firewood
you need in the shape of dead timber
that is ideal for burning. Therefore
spare the green trees, except for the nec-
essary stakes and backlogs. A young
farmer once proclaimed the startling doc-
trine that the land which he had bought
was not his. He had merely bought the
use of it, and his obligation as a good
citizen required that he pass it on to the
next man as good as, or better than, he
found it. This has a wider application
than he dreamed. There are few of the
activities of life on which it has not a
bearing.

The Some men fish for fish, and

^ ^rt some fish for sport. Most of

of hishing , , .

us want both, in proper pro-
portions. Yet the ideal is a difficult one
to state clearly or convincingly. Take
the matter of fly-fishing. How many
times have you heard it stated that fly-
fishing is all very well if you are inter-
ested merely in the fine art of the game,
but that if you really want fish you
should use bait? All of us know men
who have fished for years and have the
deepest contempt for fly-fishermen. On
the other hand, there are sections of the
country in which a man would be ostra-
cized who would take a fish on anything
but a fly. The truth lies somewhere
between. A bait fisherman is not neces-
sarily a being to be scorned. Neither is
the man wTith the fly always an artist.
Furthermore, the honors of the creel go
not always to the humble angleworm.
We know fly-fishermen who can match
creels with anyone if conditions are pro-
pitious. To be sure the worm will often
be effective when the fly is not. Perhaps
conditions are reversed at times, though
not so frequently. It is really a question
of spirit and pleasure. The worm will
bring in the fish, but the art is necessarily
a crude one as compared with that of the
fly, and preeminently of the dry fly. The
difference is in a way comparable to that
between killing your duck on the water

THE WORLD OF SPORT

509

with a ten-gauge and pulling him down
at thirty yards with a twenty. You may
get more ducks with the former, but you
must shoot with the latter and shoot
well. So with the fly. Watch an ex-
pert casting with the dry fly as he lays
his lure gently on the water in every part
of the pool, and you will have a new
conception of the art of fishing. If you
can imitate him you will know that every
fish that comes to the creel is the fruit
of your own skill. You have outguessed
Mr. Fontinalis in his own element and
you can remember without regret the
ones that got away. They have earned
their freedom.

Luxuries This is an age of comfort
for the shading into luxury. We
ampcr seem to have heard state-
ments similar to this before — perhaps
even to have made them. Nevertheless,
it is so eminently true and safe that we
are encouraged to make it again. In
nothing does this show more distinctly
than in the arrangements that are made
for him — -or her — who would a-camping
go. The old slogan of bacon, corn-
meal and salt, with an ax and a gun to
provide whatever else may be necessary,
no longer moves us as it did in the old
days; nor is it longer our guide of con-
duct and acid-test of efficiency. Modern
methods of preservation of food products,
modern improvements in packing or can-
ning, and a not so very modern taste for
the good things of the kitchen and the
pantry, have broadened the camper's
menu until now the man who stints him-
self has only himself to blame. To be
sure, one must always consider the limits
of his own strength or the size of his
canoe or the patience of his guide over

the portages, but even within these fairly
narrow boundaries there are a multitude
of necessities, dainties, and luxuries that
may be taken into the woods or on the
cruise which were not possible or avail-
able a decade or two ago. The fact that
special pains are taken to fit these to the
needs of the camper and the cruiser shows
the extent to which the outdoor idea has
laid hold of our people.

Using Not the least significant fac-

tne tor in modern outdoor life
Automobile is the way in which the autQ_

mobile has come, in casual, almost com-
monplace fashion, to fit into our manner
of living and enjoying ourselves. In less
than twenty years it has become an ac-
cepted and necessary vehicle in all parts
of the country. Three or four years ago
even it was regarded as a delicate piece
of irony to remark that even the farmer
must now have his own car. Such irony
would be sheer waste to-day, for the rea-
son that the farmer, thousands of him,
does own his own car and use it. A re-
cent trip up into the Catskills showed an
amazing number of small, locally owned
automobiles abroad on the roads on a
Sunday morning. Thus do luxuries fit
into their proper place in our scheme of
living. The automobile tourist no lon-
ger feels it incumbent upon him to plan
his route with reference to the most ex-
pensive hotels which can be reached be-
tween morning and night. He carries
his own larder with him and camps
where night finds him, or where he finds
the delectable spot that tempts him to
break his journey. A light tent provides
him with shelter, or a little change con-
verts the tonneau of his car into comfort-
able sleeping-quarters.

WHAT READERS THINK

Carrying Your Maps, Black Bass a la Voyageur, and Some
Definitions of an Amateur

What Is an Amateur?

THERE has been an unexpected
response to our invitation to our
readers to submit definitions of
an amateur. Many of them have the
faults of vagueness or lack of general
applicability that attach to the defini-
tions now in use. All of them, however,
show a gratifying interest and evidence
of thought. The problem is a hard one
and a satisfactory solution can probably
be reached only by agitation and mis-
sionary work. In the final analysis the
matter is one of individual spirit and
attitude. Official definitions must neces-
sarily be negative in form; that is, they
must prescribe what a man may not do.
On the other hand, most of us think of
the subject in positive terms; that is,
what a man IS, rather than what he IS
NOT. We print some of the letters
and definitions received down to date.
Others will follow later, as well as our
decision as to the one that we think
deserves the highest rank.

Editor, Outing:

I am glad to see you take up the
question of "what is an amateur." In
common with a tremendous army of
sportsmen, I believe that the officially
used and commonly understood interpre-
tation of the term is unjust.

The term is too frequently used in a
spirit of derision. As a matter of fact
it would be difficult to find a sport in
which unpaid athletes have not equaled
the performances of the paid athletes,
and in a great number of cases sports-
men who indulge in sports for the en-
joyment only have invented and de-
veloped games, and have attained a
degree of excellence in them, which has
done vastly more for the world of sport

[510]

than the more selfish efforts of the pro-
fessionals.

The term "amateur" should certainly
be given a more dignified meaning and
a more liberal interpretation.

Almost without exception, the hun-
dred or more sportsmen whom I ques-
tioned before sending in this letter
shared my opinion that the disqualifica-
tion of the Indian Thorpe in track
events, because of his professionalism in
baseball, was most unjust.

I believe that the term "novice"
should be used instead of "amateur" in
denoting degree of excellence in any
performance. Many amateurs far ex-
ceed many professionals in the quality
of their work in any selected sport. The
fact that there are more professionals
holding high records in that sport is
simply due to the fact that they are com-
pelled to maintain a better and more
sustained condition of physical fitness in
order to be "in the money." The re-
ward of pleasure amply satisfies most
amateurs.

In my opinion, a man may be a recog-
nized professional in one branch of sport
and still be eligible for amateur compe-
tition in all others.

My definition of "amateur" would
be as follows: "An amateur is one who
engages in any sport or recreation solely
for the physical or mental enjoyment or
benefit, without competing for, or ac-
cepting, directly or by subterfuge, any
financial reward for the quality of his
performance**

Another point which should engage
your attention along this line is the
practice of many amateur sportsmen of
competing for small purses made up
among their small circle of friends,
under the guise of "competing for the
price of ice cream, etc." Here each

WHAT READERS THINK

511

contestant contributes a small sum to a
common "pot," the winner in the ensu-
ing competition taking the "pot" and
buying sodas or not as he is inclined.

This should rank a performer as a
professional in my opinion. It has a
bad effect on clean amateurism. I
have encountered it frequently in tennis,
and I find that it has a decided tendency
to encourage squabbling for points and
deceptive statements as to skill.

I am glad to see the question come up,
and sincerely hope that you will be able
to swing a big opinion in the matter and
effect a change in the accepted rulings
of the A. A. U.

I have a friend who is a paid foot
racer, and I cannot play him a tennis
match without risking my standing as an
amateur.

More power to you in this worthy
debate.

Chicago, 111. Wm. C. Stevens.

Mr. Stevens is in error in the con-
cluding paragraph of his letter. There
would be no objection to his playing
with his friend since the definition of
amateurism in tennis relates to the per-
formances and record of the player him-
self and not to those of men who may
have been his opponents. In golf this is
carried even farther, and a man who is
a recognized professional in other forms
of sport, as in baseball, may be a per-
fectly good amateur on the links.

A very clear letter, discussing differ-
ences in English and American attitudes
has been received from Mr. W. P.
Bowen, head of the Department of
Physical Education at the Michigan
State Normal College. In addition to
the clearness of its statements, Mr.
Bowen's letter is of interest as expressing
the opinion of a man who is himself a
professional.

Editor Outing:

An amateur is one who does a thing
simply because he likes to do it.

Love of the sport is the amateur mo-
tive in athletics. The natural desire to
excel is an important element in it. Any
motive that tends to make the athlete
look upon a sport as a more serious

occupation and makes him attach more
importance to winning than he naturally
would, is a professional motive and leads
to professionalism. Among various con-
flicting opinions as to how far profes-
sional motives in sport are advisable or
permissible, two views are rather clearly
defined, and may be called the English
and the American.

From the English viewpoint, any and
all professional motives are objectionable.
One English association goes so far as
to bar out all men who have ever
earned money, either in athletics or in
any other way. Specialization and a
high grade of performance are con-
demned.

Many Americans think that some
professional motives are advisable in the
education of youth. They admire the
college athlete who sacrifices his personal
pleasure and something of his scholar-
ship that he may win for his college in
some specialized athletic event, and they
approve of the system that gets him to
do it. They believe that pure amateur-
ism is too namby-pamby a method to
educate the best citizens. The trouble
is that they fog the issue and create mis-
understanding by calling all the profes-
sional motives that they approve "ama-
teur" and those that they disapprove
"professional."

Ypsilanti, Mich.

Wa P. Bowen.

A number of briefer communications
have been received, setting forth a defi-
nition or definitions in terms intended
to cover all forms of sport. For exam-
ple, there is one from Lars Jacobsen, of
the Illinois Athletic Club:

"An amateur athlete is an athlete
who, as long as he professes that his
motive for practising athletics is unmer-
cenary, refrains from deriving any
benefit, directly or indirectly, from such
practice."

The direct form of benefit is easily
prohibited. It is the indirect that is
hardest to locate and to prevent. Mr.
Irving Olmstead, of Stamford, Conn.,
evades this issue by offering the follow-
ing definition (one of several submitted
by him) :

"One who indulges in any art or sci-

512

OUTING

ence as a pastime, but not as a profes-
sion."

This would be an admirable defini-
tion of the amateur ideal, but unfor-
tunately it does not meet the test of
practical application. The broad line
between amateur and professional is
easily drawn. It is the faint shadings
along the border that are elusive.

Another Map Case

IT is always pleasing when readers
are induced by articles in the maga-
zine to turn to the book of their
own experiences and quote a few para-
graphs. For example, read the follow-
ing:

Editor, Outing:

I have just finished the May number
of Outing, much to my pleasure.

In Air. Kephart's article on Wood-
craft tips he mentions the liability of
spoiling your maps by dirt and rain if
you have them mounted. This leads me
to mention the method I use to preserve
my maps. The map is first cut up into
convenient size to fit in my pocket. The
pieces are mounted on cloth, leaving
space between the sections so the whole
will fold easily. Then — and here's the
new part — I saturate the whole thing
with paraffine by means of a warm iron
and a stub end of candle. By warming
the map the iron causes the paraffine to
penetrate. Excess is removed by placing
a cloth over the map and passing the
iron over it.

As a container, I have a case or pocket
made of stout cloth and this I paraffined
in the same way — inserting a bit of board
to keep the two sides from sticking to-
gether.

All this gives me a map and case,
waterproof, and nearly soilproof, and the

lines and legends stand out better than
before.

Madison, Wis.

L. C. Burke.

Black Bass a la Voyageur

THEN there is the offering that is
made purely for the pleasure of
passing a good thing along. If
you enjoy cooking your own fish read
this:

Editor, Outing:

Those of your readers who love to
travel by paddle and portage may be
interested in the following method of
preparing a fish for the noonday meal.
Its many advantages are so obvious that
one wonders why it is not more generally
used. As a matter of fact, the writer
has never heard of it being followed by
anyone but himself, although he enjoys
an unusually large acquaintance among
sportsmen, timber cruisers, and other
savages.

Open fish by splitting backbone from
head to tail — leaving belly intact — cut
off head, and gut. Then drive a nail or
peg through base of tail fin, and fasten
to a stake, log, board, or box in such
manner that the fish will hang nearly
perpendicular, flesh side toward fire.
When thoroughly cooked — and the fire
burned low — place the fish, scale side
down, flat upon the coals. In about two
minutes the skin will be hard and dry,
and your dinner ready; simply pull fish
a little to one side and eat. The stiff-
ened skin makes a perfect plate, and the
ground a solid table. A strip of bacon
impaled on the nail will drip delicious-
ness and — but we must leave something
to the imagination !

No scaling; no skinning; no smelly
dishes to wash — can you beat it?

Duluth, Minn.

Murdo Gibson.

THE DIVER AT DAWN

A moment poised against the flushing sky,
Supple, erect, horn of the wind and light;
Then like a lance thrust out and down he flies,
Driving in rout the sleepy hosts of night

GORGE OF ROCK, GREAT FALLS OF POTOMAC

Illustration for Canoe, Camp, and Canal, page 574

OUTING

TEMPERAMENT IN TENNIS

By MACK WHELAN

Illustrated with Photographs — Copyright by Sport and General

INDIVIDUALS and races differ among themselves in the spirit
and method in which they play their games. Seldom is it possible
to make accurate comparisons for the reason that there are few
games so widely played that enough cases can be cited. Tennis,
however, offers a common meeting ground. The court has become
an arena in which Englishmen, Frenchmen, Germans, Australians
may illustrate their personal and race differences. This fact will
become increasingly evident as the game continues to grow in favor,
but it is already of wide importance in view of the international
struggle for the Davis Cup, finding its climax in America during
the present month.

N one of the largest clinics in the
country there is an operating-room
noted for the adequate accommoda-
tions provided for spectators. Ris-
ing up on all four sides of the square
-* ^ space allotted to the operation there
are tiers of seats from which students
and physicians may study and observe.
It is not with any intention of casting
unpleasant aspersions on the game of
lawn tennis that this picture has been
called to mind. It merely illustrates a
characteristic of an important interna-
tional tennis meeting which is radically
different from anything else in the realm
of sport. The aroma of ether and of
antiseptics does not make itself evident
in the atmosphere of a Davis Cup com-
petition ; but there is a striking similarity

between the mental attitude of the audi-
ence in the operating-room and the thou-
sands who gather to watch the battle of
the nets.

Tennis is rapidly becoming the world
game. It is eminently well suited to the
conditions which have been ordained by
modern civilization. Capable of being
played in limited space, in limited time,
and with a minimum of two players, it
is enrolling active followers by the thou-
sands in every quarter of the globe. The
ten thousand persons who solidly enclose
the 36 by 78-foot arena where the final
operation in a Davis Cup campaign is
to be decided are, in overwhelming ma-
jority, an educated audience. Like the
students who watch the course of events
in the hospital operating-room, they are

1521]

J. c

PARKE, HERO OF MANY FOOTBALL BATTLES AND IRELAND S
BEST ACTIVE PLAYER

not mere spectators but picked observers.
To say that the international rivalry
developed by Davis Cup competition has
resulted in presenting science with a fine
new international psychological labora-
tory would probably be interpreted as a
doubtful compliment by the average ten-
nis enthusiast. Yet there is no branch
of contention wherein temperament plays
a more important part than in the court
game and, through the wide scope of its
competition, no more satisfactory oppor-
tunity to observe varying personal char-
acteristics. Psychologists will probably
never be able to lay down the rules
which will develop championship court

[522]

players, but the game of tennis provides
much of the necessary machinery for in-
ductive observation.

In contrast to the wide range of terri-
tory needed for the staging of football,
polo, or baseball, tennis titles are won
and lost on a small plot of ground.
There is none of the wide movement
which characterizes all the other leading
outdoor games. From his seat the spec-
tator, without having to shift the range
of his vision, can see every detail of play.
It is not necessary for him to eliminate
a half-dozen unessential features in or-
der to grasp the salient development as
in football or polo. He is free from the

TEMPERAMENT IN TENNIS

523

strain of having to follow the ball in its
flight to the outfield, and at the same
time of keeping track of what is happen-
ing in the infield as in baseball. Every-
thing takes place conveniently under his
nose. There is never any necessity for
waiting to hear details of official rulings
on disputed points. The boxlike arena
of a hundred square yards is before him.
He draws his own conclusions from di-
rect and close observation.

There is probably at least one man in
the world who would object to the
statement that tennis contains the ele-
ments necessary to weigh individuals in
the balance. An advocate of the old-
line sports almost started another civil
war in England about a month ago by
classifying certain modern tendencies as
a menace. His argument was mainly di-
rected against golf, which he charged
as not being a game at all, because it

lacked the elements of physical risk, the
discipline, and spirit of team games. As
to the forcefulness of the argument
against further encroachments of the an-
cient Scotch pastime, it is as well not to
enter in this article; but that the gentle-
man in question never saw a Davis Cup
doubles competition is a safe wager. His
argument against tennis was merely inci-
dental to his criticism of golf; but in
classifying the court game as lacking in
the qualities of physical endurance and
natural courage he stamped himself as
unacquainted with the modern develop-
ment of tennis.

Is there a more elemental fear than
the instinct to dodge a swiftly moving
object coming at your head? How
many people will fail to jump backward
if a friend feints a forward motion of
his hand ? The terrific speed at which
tennis is now played and the general

H. H. HACKETT, A STEADY AMERICAN PLAYER WHOSE POWER OF

SELF CONTROL HAS ENABLED HIM TO DEFEAT MANY PLAYERS

WITH MORE NATURAL ABILITY

524

OUTING

abandonm&nt of the base-line game
which has forced all players wishing to
stay in the front rank to become adept
at quick work at the net certainly would
have sufficed to put the element of phys-
ical risk in tennis if it had been lacking
before. A smash from a McLoughlin
or a Brookes or a Decugis, misjudged,
might easily spell the loss of sight in an
eye.

Under modern tactical conditions, the
net has become a real firing-line. Cour-
age of no mean order is needed to stand
the test. Not that this is the only re-
quirement for that same sort of spirit
which spells success in any branch of
athletic endeavor is necessary here. Ten-
nis of the modern variety is essentially a
game of the most strenuous sort. It is
a mistake to put it in the same category
as golf. Although rival players do not
actually charge into one another, the
court game in general caliber comes un-
der the broad grouping of those where

physical contact prevails and physical
courage is necessary.

Meeting a ball speeding at your head
a few yards from the source of its speed
calls for the same quick thinking ability,
co-operation between mind and muscle,
and nerve as running in on a choppy in-
field drive in baseball or intercepting a
forward pass on the football field. Fur-
thermore, the strategic development of
tennis has placed as high a premium on
team-work in doubles as is required in
any branch of sport. Considered from
any angle, the game offers a broad field
of endeavor. Its requirements are such
that no player can attain prominence
without affording spectators an interest-
ing index as to personality, both on the
court and off.

Although there is no place allotted to
it on the scoring-sheets, temperament
plays a major part in tennis. Far and
above the technique of the individual
is his ability to master a mental attitude

M. E. MC LOUGHLIN SHOWING A BIT OF Till-; CKT-THERE SPIRIT, WTTICI
COME TO PLAY SO LARGE A PART IN THE MODERN GAME

HAS

BARON VON BTSSTNG, GERMANY, AFTER A HARD ONE, BUT STILL MAINTAINING

A CALM FACIAL EXPRESSION

which puts the burden of worry upon
his opponent. Norman E. Brookes, the
great Australian crack, is an all-around
adept in many branches. He is one of
the best amateur automobile drivers in
Australia. On numerous occasions he
has given evidence of possessing abilities
of guidance over a speeding car sufficient
to command a handsome income if he
cared to make racing his profession. He
is one person who can successfully inject
pace into cricket, in which sport he is
rated high. Brookes plays a splendid
game of golf. If he devoted time to the
ancient game he would undoubtedly be
a formidable contender in any cham-
pionship. His abilities as a bridge play-
er are respected everywhere. Yet, if
there is one game of cards at which he
should excel above all others it is in the
American specialty — poker.

Great all-around tennis player that he
is, it is the universal testimony of critics

that the greatest asset which Brookes
possesses is his ability to outguess oppo-
nents and make them do the worrying.
The Australian in action has the most
inscrutable face imaginable. There are
few players who can successfully conceal
their stroke plan until the moment they
hit the ball; but put Brookes in a tight
place where a point means a game and
he can generally be depended upon, not
only to conceal the direction of his attack,
but to deceive his opponent into believ-
ing the ball is coming into a zone of the
court far removed from the place where
it actually lands. His remarkably suc-
cessful career on the courts is due al-
most as much to his ability to read hu-
man nature as to his remarkable tech-
nical proficiency.

In 1909, when under as trying heat
conditions as could have been pre-
scribed, Brookes encountered Maurice
McLoughlin, whose star had just begun

[525]

526

OUTING

to blaze upon the international tennis
horizon, it was head-work and a tem-
perament that left its possessor free from
worry which won for the Australasian.
Against speed such as had never been
exhibited in Davis Cup play before and
a brilliancy of tactics which seemed un-
approachable, Brookes at first seemed
outclassed. He won by placing his re-
turns in such a way that McLoughlin,
outguessed, began worrying at what
seemed to be his own inexcusable stupid-
ity. The Californian did not realize
until Brookes had broken through and

NORMAN E. BROOKES, THE INSCRU-
TABLE AUSTRALIAN, WHOSE ABILITY
TO MASK [NTENTIONS IS A GREAT
FACTOR IN HIS SUCCESS

taken the lead that it was Brookes's eyes,
not his own, which were misleading him.

Anthony F. Wilding, team mate and
close friend of Brookes, is a person of a
radically different temperament. Win-
ner of titles on clay, wood, and turf,
Wilding, on his all-around playing rec-
ord, would seem to have less reason for
worrying about the outcome of a match
than anyone else. Yet he is almost al-
ways under high nervous tension before
a match and confesses to a tendency to
exaggerate the chances of his being
beaten by an opponent. Brookes never
doubts his ability to win out. He is not
conceited as to his own capacity, but his
nature is such that he lets the other fel-
low do the worrying.

The first time that Brookes was com-
peting for an important title in Eng-
land his frank optimism as to the out-
come created a small sensation. He had
come through to the final and an ac-
quaintance asking the usual superfluous
question as to what Brookes thought of
the outcome was surprised to receive a
perfectly frank response. Instead of put-
ting into circulation the usual — and gen-
erally hypocritical — remarks complimen-
tary to his opponent, such as are recog-
nized as satisfying the demands of mod-
esty and good form in England and
other places, he was frank and to the
point.

"Win?" asked the big Australian.
"Oh, I shall be much surprised if I
don't."

His answer was not boastful — merely
truthful. And he did win the match,
the first of a long string of victories
achieved in England.

It is the French who were originally
responsible for giving the word "tem-
perament" a prominent place in the pop-
ular vocabulary. Quite appropriately
the same nation has switched on the
high lights of temperament in tennis.
Although their serious interest in the
court game dates back for less than a
decade, nothing in the history of the
pastime in other countries can be cited
to parallel the way in which moods have
swayed the tennis destinies of France.

( )ne of the finest players developed
under the tri-color is Max Decugis,
who, in a long series of matches with

TEMPERAMENT IN TENNIS

527

the picked representatives of other na-
tions, has revealed abilities of the first
order. Decugis is a smashing player
with a love for strokes of the dramatic
type. And when he is feeling right he
can exhibit a combination of speed and
a sustained brilliancy which on numer-
ous occasions have threatened to com-
pletely overwhelm such cracks as Hol-
combe Ward, W. J. Clothier, F. B.
Alexander, A. W. Gore, M. J. G.
Ritchie, J. C. Parke, and others. De-
cugis, however, is at the mercy of his
moods and once his game slips up he is
so upset and disgusted with himself that
he is helpless before a clever opponent.

In the last few years of his career, De-
cugis has managed to gain a greater de-
gree of self-control, but it was not very
many years ago that in one of the lead-
ing Continental championships Decugis,
who had played magificently through to
the final, became so overwrought in his
last match that he burst into tears and
threw his racquet into the crowd along
the side-lines. Stroke for stroke and on
the basis of balanced tactical abilities,
Decugis has every requisite for winning
a world's title, but on every occasion
when one of the major tennis honors has
been within his grasp, the tension has
keyed him so high that he has been un-
able to do himself justice.

It is the opinion of many unbiased
critics that three years ago Davis Cup
history was changed out from a course
which seemed ordained because a British
player was unable to accustom himself
to the Yankee habit of cheering. In the
preliminaries of 1911, Great Britain
sent a team across to the United States.
The meeting was staged in New York.
The first match wTas at singles with
W. A. Larned playing for America
against C. P. Dixon. The Englishman
started slowly, but as soon as he had had
time to test out Larned's type of play
took the aggressive. The American vet-
eran won the first set, six games to three.
In this set Dixon tried to meet Larned
with speed against speed. Larned was
far from the top of his form, but the
Britisher soon found he could not class
with his great American opponent on
this basis. In the second set Dixon
changed tactics and substituted a style of

C. P. DIXON, WHOSE UNFAM1LIARITY

WITPI AMERICAN CHEERING TACTICS

COST HIM A DAVIS CUP MATCH

return in which the ball seemed to travel
so slowly spectators marveled how it re-
mained in the air. Larned, however,
seemed utterly unable to cope* with the
puzzling ''floaters" which were marvel-
ously placed. The Britisher won with-
out difficulty, six games to two.

By taking the aggressive and driving
faultlessly, Larned managed to win the
third set and made a good start on the
fourth. Then Dixon came again to the
front and with a command of the pass-
ing game which made the American vet-
eran seem almost ridiculous won out,
six games to three.

As the fifth and last set began, Larned
seemed to be outclassed. Taking the
first two games and dividing the next
four, Dixon steadily improved and
quickly ran the score up to 5 — 3. It
seemed all over for the veteran, when a

528

OUTING

number of loyal enthusiasts began to
cheer him. The impulse quickly com-
municated itself around the stands and
in a few seconds thousands were calling
on Larned for a recovery. Few of the
enthusiasts so intended it, but the demon-
stration actually had the effect of dis-
concerting the British player. He had
probably read of Indian war-whoops,
but anything like the "rooting" of the
American spectators he had never heard
in his life.

The visitor tossed the eighth game
away with a double fault. The ninth

many games Larned 's ball striking the
net, just barely tumbled into the Eng-
lishman's territory. The combination of
this brand of luck with the pandemo-
nium which broke loose at the reprieve
which the net-cord stroke had granted
the American was too much for Dixon.
He went to pieces then and there.
Larned, playing an improved brand of
tennis, won the next two games and
the match.

It used to be said that tennis was the
last sport in the world to interest a spec-
tator. When the first Davis Cup

DECUGIS, A LEADING FRENCH PLAYER, WHO RIVALS SARAH
BERNHARDT IN ARTISTIC ABANDON

was a love win for Larned, with Dixon
hitting an easy get into the net for the
last point. In the tenth, the English-
man, by a master effort, managed to shut
out the noise from the stands and ac-
tually had the match in his grasp at
40 — 1 5, when for the third time in as

matches were staged in this country, it
was considered remarkable evidence of
tennis progress that thousands of people
turned out to see the competition. Yet
no admission was charged for witnessing
this play of a comparatively few years
ago. If it had been prophesied then

TEMPERAMENT IN TENNIS

529

that many more thousands would be will-
ing to pay a considerable price and that
the committee in charge of Davis Cup
arrangements would have to stay awake
nights guarding against speculators, the
seer would have been considered a fit
candidate for the asylum.

It can still be successfully maintained

discussing the environment of a cham-
pionship tennis meeting with the writer,
said that never in his experience had he
encountered such dynamic atmosphere as
surrounded the engagement between the
American and Australasian Davis Cup
contenders at Melbourne in 1908.
"It was electrical," says Alexander,

A. H. GOBERT, KNOWN TO HIS FRIENDS AS "FIFI," ON
LEADERS OF THE NEW FRENCH SCHOOL

that the court game is not entitled to
high rank as a spectacle. The fact that
the international matches of the present
season have attracted a record attend-
ance is largely a reflex from the increase
in the number of active players. Yet be-
cause a Davis Cup tennis crowd is, in
such an overwhelming majority, a crit-
ical audience, it has a potential capacity
for demonstrative enthusiasm which,
once unloosed, can reach formidable
proportions.

F. B. Alexander, proficient veteran in
many fields of sport, and, as he demon-
strated on at least one afternoon this
season, still able to cope with the best of
the younger generation on the courts, in

who, with other standards of compari-
son, has distinct recollections of doing
the pitching in Princeton-Yale and
Princeton-Harvard commencement base-
ball games to guide him. "I have never
encountered such an emotional crowd.
The cheering was continuous through-
out most of the matches."

Unlike Dixon, the British player who
found the American cheering so discon-
certing, both Alexander and Beals C.
Wright, who comprised America's dele-
gation sent to the Antipodes in 1908,
felt quite at home in, the midst of the
Australasian enthusiasm. They did not
win the cup that year, but they agreed
that they played better under the stimu-

530

OUTING

lation of Melbourne tennis fanaticism
than they could have ordinarily.

Americans and Australasians reflect
the similar environment of newer coun-
tries in that most of their tennis repre-
sentatives have the ability to become
quickly accustomed to unexpected devel-
opments on the courts. The English,
however, with their native instinct for
conducting matters along conventional
lines, do not take kindly to innovations.
One of the assets possessed by Count
Salm, a young Austrian crack, who is
helping to put his country on the tennis
map, is an ability for providing sensa-
tional innovations. The Viennese noble-
man has the sort of artistic disposition
which is disconcerting to his opponents
on the court. He has had notable suc-
cess against the best of the English and
German players, not only because of his
own playing abilities, which are high,
but because these opponents are constitu-
tionally unfitted for comprehending his
style.

ANTHONY F. WILDING, HALF OF
AUSTRALIA'S BIG TWO

In the French championships a few
months back, Count Salm defeated F. G.
Lowe, one of the leaders in British ten-
nis. At a crucial point in the match,
when after four close-fought sets, the
result hinged on the outcome of the fifth,
the Austrian provided a theatrical in-
terruption which was destined to win
the day for him. Salm is a brilliant
performer, but Lowe's steady and con-
servative tactics were gradually opening
up a winning lead, when, at the climax
of the game, Count Salm, talking alter-
nately to himself and the spectators, sud-
denly rushed off the court, took a siphon
of soda from the tray of an attendant
and then, in full view of the gallery,
squirted it down his noble Austrian
neck. Lowe, standing in shocked sur-
prise in the other court, was petrified
by the interruption. The "scene" an-
noyed him, and doubtless his British
sense of the proprieties was outraged by
a proceeding of which no mention was
made in the rule book. And the Aus-
trian, coming back much refreshed after
his unconventional bath, won the fifth
and the decisive set of the match by a
6 — 3 score.

Not merely personal but national
characteristics are reflected in tennis. In
citing instances to substantiate the state-
ment one is, of course, apt to tamper
with the evidence. It is always a temp-
tation with a large mass of material
available to cut the cloth to fit the sub-
ject. Yet, taking the average of the
leading players among the seven nations
enlisted in Davis Cup competition, broad
lines of character division do unmistaka-
bly reveal themselves. Contrasts in men-
tal attitude which history has erected
between French, British, German, and
American types are outlined in strong
relief in the modern annals of tennis.

The roll of leading French exponents,
almost without an exception, consists of
players who possess in abundance those
traits which are recognized the world
over as typically Gallic. At the start it
can be set down that tennis is a branch
of sport ideally suited to the French
standard of individual achievement. Not
emphasizing so uncompromisingly the
grinding, unappreciated service on which
success in football and other Anglo-

TEMPERAMENT IN TENNIS

531

W. R

Saxon pastimes is achieved,
it grips the French imagina-
tion.

Fighting their problems
out along their own lines,
the French are steadily for-
ging to the front as an in-
creasingly important factor
in international competition.
The love of the dramatic in-
herent in the French nature
gives their young players a
different mental attitude
from that possessed by other
nationalities first taking up
the game. Practically all the
young players you see at the
Stade Francois are striving
to achieve correct form first
and the honors of the mo-
ment second. In other words,
they are perfectly willing to
lose a game if by dint of
steady striving they achieve
a given stroke once properly.

Such a result would not
satisfy the average young
British or American player out to win
every game from the start. Yet ten-
nis authorities all over the world are
now agreed that from the standpoint
of efficiency the French idea is the
right idea. The most important thing
for the beginner is not to win a
few puny games at the start, but to
avoid getting into bad habits of play.
A. H. Gobert, W. H. Laurentz, and
Max Decugis have not yet succeeded in
winning the highest one or two honors
in the court game; but they have come
close to it and demonstrated that France
is on the right track.

One source of satisfaction to the
French is that they have very generally
succeeded in besting their old rivals, the
Germans, on the courts. Such repre-
sentatives of the Empire as Baron von
Bissing, Rahe and the Kleinschroths ex-
emplify in their tactics the thorough-
ness which the Fatherland brings to bear
in preparation; but so far they have
failed to show the dash and daring in
pinches which spells success when oppo-
nents of fairly equal technical resource
have, to be encountered. Decugis has
won the German championship, and in

\he, one of Germany's leading ex-
ponents OF THE COURT GAME

his fight to the top the temperamental
distinction between Gaul and Teuton has
been sharply outlined. Unwavering de-
termination and almost mathematical ac-
curacy of stroke have proved unavailing
against a stylist who, as a well-known
British stylist has observed, "reflects in
each movement of the racquet the verve
and artistic sense of the French charac-
ter."

If there is one feature which has dis-
tinguished the game of the average ca-
pable British player in contrast to the
American, Colonial, or Continental play-
er, it is the symmetry of his playing de-
velopment. Taking the list of English
who have made a name in tennis, it is
seldom you can note one who combined,
for instance, a remarkably strong fore-
hand with an extremely deficient back-
hand. Judged by the American stand-
ard of service, or from some other acute
angle, exceptions can be cited, but in
general the English have developed their
game along symmetrical lines where
other nationalities have shown a tend-
ency to specialize in a few departments.
Such men as A. W. Gore, A. E. Beamish,
F. G. Lowe, C. P. Dixon, and other

532

OUTING

Britishers exhibit a beautifully rounded
type of play. H. Roper-Barrett can be
named as an exception, perhaps. His
specialty is brains rather than strokes,
and he generally gives a scintillating ex-
hibition; but he does not represent the
average in England any more than H. H.
Hackett's tactics are typical of the aver-
age in America.

It will be noted that the Irish cracks
have so far been excluded from classifi-
cation. This is for the reason that in
the opinion of the writer there has been,
since the days of Dr. Joshua Pirn, of
County Dublin, who won the All-Eng-
land championship in 1893 and 1894, a
distinctive Irish school in tennis, the
tendencies of which have been different
from the prevailing English style. There
has never been a time when this school
has not been prominently represented in
international competition. J. S. Maho-
ney, J. C. Parke, and A. G. Watson, an
Irishman now playing for Belgium, are
a few of the players who reveal a tennis
temperament radically different from
that evolved across the channel.

That the British school is dead as far

as prospective tennis leadership is con-
cerned cannot be maintained with any
degree of security. The appearance of
young A. R. F. Kingscote on the hori-
zon may well mark the beginning of
a new chapter. Temperamentally the
young army crack seems ideally fitted for
the task of leading the way to new ac-
complishment. That he is a man of the
type likely to rise to emergencies and sub-
ordinate style and tradition to results in
pinches is indicated by the fact that early
in the course of the present season, when
Kingscote was not making a particularly
good showing in the scoring, English
veterans stepped aside and said they felt
that his game nevertheless held greater
promise for British success than any of
the standard time-tried players could of-
fer. In other words, England has at
last recognized that the tennis standard
which was good enough when only Eng-
land was playing tennis is not sufficiently
high in this day of world-wide com-
petition.

A significant feature of Kingscote's
appearance is that he, like R. Norris
Williams, is the product of skilled pro-

RITCHIE, ONE OF THE BEST ROUNDED OF THE ENGLISH CRACKS

H. ROPER-BARRETT, THE HEADIEST ENGLISH PLAYER, WHOSE BRILLIANT
GENERALSHIP HAS KEPT HIM TO THE FORE

fessional coaching. Both youngsters
went to school in Switzerland and were
properly started on their respective ten-
nis careers by experts. If Kingscote
should live up to the most optimistic
hopes of his countrymen this summer,
Great Britain may see the American ar-
gument in favor of what Britain has
termed professional coaching in a more
favorable light and develop the really
remarkable athletic material at her com-
mand to highest capacity. The present
season has proven that the British can
profit by experience, revise their gen-
eralship and key up their playing tem-
perament to a tension where it can

take the aggressive whenever necessary.
The trouble with English tennis dur-
ing the past few years is that, like lands
and other hereditaments, the shell has
been inherited. Temperament expresses
itself in generalship, but it has to have
the grooves made ready by preparation.
Competent professional coaching would
serve to lift the English standard out of
the ruck of commonplace play. And
once having learned the lesson, the
younger British players, like Kingscote
and Hope Crisp, the young Cambridge
crack, who is the latest youthful sensa-
tion, should prove capable of rising to
opportunity.

[533]

MAPS

By C. L. GILMAN

Photograph by the Author

WE never met them, do not know their names,
And yet we take their word for things, those chaps
Who sweat and shivered in these self-same woods
In some forgotten time to make us maps.

Our hunt is done, our grub is running out —
What's really bad, tobacco's getting low —
There's been no sugar in our tea to-day,
And anyone could smell the coming snow.

The swamp's too soft for walking and the bay
Too hard for boats. We haven't time to roam
Or ramble. What we want to know is just
The shortest, quickest, safest line to home.

And, being in an old, familiar fix,

We're doing what you've often done perhaps,

We're sitting down for counsel and advice

From those omniscient sports who made the maps.

We're awfully obliged to them for what
They've done. It's honestly romantic, quite.
But, with their works for models, we, like them,
Will simply state the facts in black and white.

[r>sn

2E-1 US 1

MS?**"*-"*?. *•••'

«• ,4'

JMtMWL * '"Wit,*

IN CAMP AT N DIZADIGU

IN BACK OF BEYOND

By STEWART EDWARD WHITE

Illustrated with Photographs by the Author

V
AMONG THE WASONZI

MR. WHITE has reached his first objective point at Lake
Natron and has described the life and the happenings there
and along the N'gouramani River. The mountain work is prac-
tically done, but some of the hardest problems lie before them.
It is an unmapped country that they are entering now and they
must find their way. An unpleasant surprise is awaiting them
in the shape of the tsetse fly — much to the hurt of their donkeys.
But the unknown that calls loudly to the explorer lies just before
them.

S it was now nearing the date
on which we had
agreed to meet the Ger-
man customs official
near the head of Lake
Natron, we next day
started back along the base of the es-
carpment, intending to camp about half
way to the water-hole and look over
the country. For some distance we had

really fine marching, which was quite
a novelty and relief, over low rolling
swells, with wide grass openings, and
long park-like swales in which fed con-
siderable game. We saw a great many
cow eland (no bulls), Robertsii, zebra,
kongoni, one wildebeeste, a serval cat,
and many dikdik.

After a time we came to a long, dry
soda arm, which we crossed, plunged

Begun in April OUTING

[535]

536

OUTING

into scrub, climbed over a hill and
dropped down into one of the loveliest
spots I have seen in Africa.

A crystal stream running over peb-
bles; a flat terrace; then a single row
of enormous wide-spreading trees, as
though planted, and from beneath their
low-flung branches sight of a verdant
hill and distant tiny blue glimpses of
a miniature landscape far away.

'"This is going to be the pleasantest
camp we have ever had," said we, and
sat down to eat lunch before the safari
should arrive.

But with the safari came two lovely
naked savages with a letter in a split
stick. Said letter proved to be from
the German governor. It absolved us
from meeting the customs officer Au-
gust 8th, and requested us to send a
list of dutiable articles. This was very
good of him — also it saved his officer a
hard march into an unknown country.

However, this altered the situation.
There was no longer any object in
spending more time here. We could
now begin our westward journey, so we
resolved to hike back as soon as we
could to the Wasonzi village, pick up
our donkeys and proceed westward into
our Unknown Land.

It was now noon, but by continuing
on to the water-hole, instead of camp-
ing here, the long march would save
us a day. Accordingly, after a rest, we
abandoned our beautiful camp and
went on.

A half hour out we ran across giraffe.
I had promised to collect one of these
beasts for a Pacific Coast institution,
but had heretofore neglected it. Now
it was desirable to do so in order to
send the heavy skin back with Van-
derweyer's donkeys. Therefore I opened
fire with the Springfield at one running
at two hundred yards. A single shoulder
hit was sufficient. It went thirty yards
and fell dead, which proves either the
tenderness of the giraffe or the effective-
ness of the Springfield. As a matter of
fact, these beasts are the least tenacious
of life of any of the larger animals. We
took the trophy and left a dozen or so
delighted Wasonzi, to whom the meat
and sinews were a godsend. At the
water-hole we found our boys had been

living high on guinea-fowl the}' had
snared.

Next morning we were up and oft
before daylight to get the 2,300 feet
of straight-up escarpment behind us be-
fore it should get too hot. Even so,
it was a hard climb, and we sure per-
spired some ! Every Wasonzi was
draped with spoils. I don't suppose
they ever before — or ever will again — ■
struck such luck ; meat, hides, sinew, fat
in abundance. They could hardly navi-
gate.

Made cur rhino camp in four and
cne-half hours. The afternoon Cuning-
hame and I spent in preparing our papers
and in constructing a surveyor's pro-
tractor. We made an excellent one,
which we have used successfully ever
since. In its construction we employed :
one mica from candle lantern, a pair
of scissors, a darning needle, an en-
velope, the thermometer slide, steel tape
and a pocket compass.

On the mica we drew a straight line
with the darning needle and the straight
edge of the thermometer slide. On this
we erected a perpendicular by means of
the scissors used as compasses. The
exact arc of a semi-circle we made by
tracing the full circle of a cup on a
spare envelope and then folding the en-
velope double, after which it was easy
to transfer the semi-circle to the mica.
We laid off the degrees by means of
the steel tape, and with the pocket com-
pass we placed the NWS divisions out-
side the semi-circle and the SEN di-
visions inside. I don't suppose it was
anywhere exact within a degree or so,
but that did not in the least matter for
field sketching. We felt quite a glow
of triumph when the thing was done.

But now our good luck was to get
its first modification. We started on a
cool day for a fine march. After the
intense and stifling heat of the lower
country, this mountain air was delight-
ful. We had lots of fun. At one place
we heard a movement in a small patch
of brush next the spring. Suspecting
a buffalo, I ran around the other side
just in time to meet a sleek black rhino
that came out about twenty yards away.

Then at the end of two hours we
met SuHmani in full regalia, musket,

w .,

3 §

r W

f2 g

, ,

538

OUTING

bandolier and all, accompanied by a
Wasonzi guide. He greeted us cheer-
fully and fell in with us. Not until
we had pressed him for a reason for this
excursion did he report that two of the
donkeys had died, "and all the rest are
sick."

This was a facer. Everything was
all right when we had heard two days
before. If it was really true that "all

then it ran perfectly straight and open
for three-quarters of a mile. No enemy
could have progressed an inch except on
this road, which was visible and open
for its whole length. Next we came
to a little round stockade of heavy tim-
bers built square across the road, per-
haps ten feet in diameter. It had doors
leading both ways, but timbers lay at
hand by which these openings could be

FORTIFIED GATE OF THE WASONZI VILLAGE

the donkeys were sick," then our very
existence as a mobile expedition was
threatened.

Arrived at camp, however, we found
it not as bad as that. One donkey was
dead, two on the point of expiring, and
five more of ours and six of Vander-
weyer's out of sorts. Both mules had
symptoms of fly.

It was serious enough, however, and
it behooved us to get them out of the
infected district. We called in all sur-
vivors, packed them and hastily des-
patched them oft" across the hills to
N'dizadigu, the next Wasonzi village.
Then I put bullets through the brains
of the two on the point of expiring.

In the afternoon Cuninghame and I
paid a visit to the village on the hill.

There was a long, well-made trail up
the hill between flowering aloes, euphor-
bia and dense briers and thorn. First
it climbed a steep, rocky escarpment,

closed. Then, after another interval,
we began to come to the houses, perched
all over the side hill.

Even near at hand their resemblance
to the big gray boulders was most de-
ceiving, and at one hundred and eighty
yards Cuninghame and I had to guess
which was which. They proved to be
circular, thatched with gray grass in
rounded roofs. Each entrance was for-
tified in miniature just like the gate.

We bent double and entered the first
one. It was very dark and warm, but
after our eyes had become accustomed
to the dimness we found we were call-
ing on a young lady, stark naked, except
for ornaments, squatted before a tiny
glow of coals, over which she was drying
tobacco. Beds of skins were suspended
at right and left. New skin garments
hung in the apex, together with bundles
of provisions, skins of beasts, gourds and
such treasures. She seemed not at all

IN BACK OF BEYOND

539

disturbed, and we nodded
cheerfully and said a-a-a in
friendly fashion. Then we
crawled out and continued
our tour.

Some of the wealthier
houses had little bomas about
them. All had pear-shaped,
jet-black masses drying;
these we ascertained to be
manufactured tobacco. On
our way we met and grinned
at many gaudily painted war-
riors and old men. Coveys
of naked children scram-
bled up the mountain like
goats ahead of us, and
perched on crags to gaze
down on us. Everybody
friendly.

Finally we inquired for the chief, and
were led down to a naked old fellow
sitting on a piece of skin. He was the
most ancient piece of humanity I ever
beheld; a mere skeleton; his joints twice
the size of his limbs ; his skin a wrin-
kled parchment; his eyes bleared. We
stood and stared at him, but he never
looked up.

"Nothing to do here," said Cuning-
hame at length.

However, we had Sanguiki address
him in Masai.

THE WASONZI PRIME MINISTER

was most

The skeleton rattled and a slow, de

THE WASONZI SULTAN

liberate, powerful voice issued from it.
"I am chief, and not only of this vil-
lage," Sanguiki translated, "but of an-
other village far away there, and an-
other great village nearer, there. I am
a great chief," with wThich pronounce-
ment of glory he fell silent.

By this time three younger old men,
evidently the prime ministers, came up,
accompanied by half a dozen warriors.
One had a delightfully quizzical, hu-
morous face, and all had a look of great
intelligence. With them we chatted for
some time. We motioned to Sanguiki
to give the old chief a paper of snuff
we had brought as a present. The eld
fellow mistook us, and helped
himself to an enormous
pinch.

"It is yours, all yours,"
we told him.

As soon as he had under-
stood this, he hastily returned
to the packet nine-tenths of
the large pinch, and con-
sumed only a little.

"He must be Scotch,"
laughed Cuninghame.

We left him, carrying
away the impression of a
very old man sitting in the
sun.

On our way down the trail
we met the water safari, a
long string of women and
children carrying innumer-
able gourds, by means of
which the whole village is

THE BIG TREE UNDER WHICH THE PARTY CAMPED AT N'DIZADIGU

supplied from the stream, a toilsome
mile away.

Also we met one of our guides re-
turning laden with spoils. He had with
him an old man with a spear, a young
warrior, and a toto (baby). We passed
the time of day, and asked him if the
toto was his. He laid his hand on the
warrior's shoulder.

"This is my toto'' said he, "the little
one is his."

We were about to move on when the
old man seized my hand and placed it
on the guide's arm, at the same time
pointing to his own breast. Thus four
generations were returning laden with
the white man's bounty. The Wasonzi
are a friendly, pleasant, human people.

A four hours' march across a high
and rugged range took us to N'dizadigu,
one of the other villages of the Wa-
sonzi. whither we had despatched our
remaining animals. N'dizadigu proved
to be a very large settlement, also high
on the hill. We did not climb up there,
but camped in the valley below, beneath
a fine, wide tree. It was one of the
finest trees I ever beheld, nearly circu-
lar in shape. We had plenty of room
beneath it for everybody, with some to
Spare, for its branches extended one
hundred and twenty yards.

We sent hack men to the last camp

to lie there that night and next day and
bring on some potio loads we had to
leave. About 8 :30, to our surprise,
they returned with the loads — thirty-
one miles in all, over mountains, and
twenty miles of it loaded, a wonderful
feat, but it shows what a porter will
do if he expects entertainment at the
end of his march.

We had swarms of visitors, with the
most important of whom we exchanged
courtesies. Two native soldiers, or as*
hans, were camped near. They came to
see us, very trim in their uniforms, and
reported formally. Found another don-
key dead.

This night the village held a grand
ngoma* — fortunately, at a distance — in
honor of the advent of the first white
men since the Germans established the
post in '96. The ask arts are changed
every two months, and apparently are
never inspected.

This is the time of the new moon,
when for a month all good Mohamme-
dans fast until sundown. I asked Ali
about Ramadan — whether men like
porters, working hard, had to keep it.
"Ramadan can be postponed by killing
a camel," In- said.

"Are all the men keeping it?" we
a^keil.

I '. imc and sin'.; song,

Uioj

IN BACK OF BEYOND

541

"Only me."

We haven't noted any defunct camels,
so don't know how they work it; we
have about twenty supposed Mohamme-
dans.

Porters are queer creatures. They
will work hard all day and talk all
night — if they are permitted. I hold
them down pretty rigorously, and punish
any noise after my light is out. Last
night a lot of talking burst out about
two o'clock. This morning I started
an inquiry.

"I am sorry," said M'ganga apolo-
getically. "A sick donkey fell through
my tent upon my head."

We forgave him !

The sick donkey died.
Packed off Dowdi on the
back trail with Vander-
weyer's donkeys, keeping
with us six that looked sick.
The men spent the day tra-
ding. Each brought out a lit-
tle store of beads and en-
tered into bargains for milk,
vegetables, fruit, etc. They
have also started the fashion
of unraveling the sleeves of
their jerseys, and with the
yarn weaving lanyards.
Gave Ali some beads and
snuff, and with them he
bought us enough yams,
green beans and a sort of
squash to last us a fortnight.
I amused myself wandering
around and listening to the
bargaining. Overheard this,
delivered in a voice of scorn:

"You might sell that to the
white men, but not to me!"

Then the speaker turned
and discovered me at his
shoulder!

Men drying fish on sticks.
Memba Sasa started a new
lacework cap. I explained
how the Memsahib had made
the others he had given her
in 1910 into sewing-bags,
and he was much interested.
Poked around and took pic-
tures. Slept. Wrote in
journals. A high, cold wind
came up in the afternoon.

That is about all there is to be said of
this day.

The morning of August 8th we began
our movement westward into the new
country. We had first to climb the
last steep step of the escarpment. Made
the move in three sections, each guarded
by a Wasonzi. First, myself, gunbear-
ers, guide, then porters, guide, then Cun-
inghame, donkeys, donkey-men and
guide. We made no attempt to keep
together.

For two miles we followed down the
valley close to the hills. Little naked
children perched on dizzy crags far
above us to watch us go. At every

WSkM

rar ^

' v 3f ■ 1

}

irl

\ . ■ %t r • ■ N* -■?

; -^

)

0:?

SNAKE-LIKE VINE TWISTED ABOUT A TREE

542

OUTING

crossroad squatted a group of women,
who arose at our approach and waved
and screamed us into the proper path.
We met many people going to their
fields, each carrying a gourd, a leaf-
packet of provisions and a smouldering
brand with which to start their fires.
They all shouted and screamed at us
in their own language.

Then we turned out of the wide bot-
tom-land into a rocky canon with a
stream, at the head of which we accom-
plished a terrific straight-up climb of

Camped near a spring under a lone
tree. The porters came in an hour
later, but Cuninghame and the donkeys
did not show up.

After a short rest I went out after
some of the game herds feeding in plain
sight. We had been shy of enough
meat for some time, and many of the
savages had come along with us for
a share. The wind was blowing very
hard, which, as always, made the game
wild. This is invariable. As will later
appear, we had opportunity to test the

EUPHORBIA NEAR n'dIZADIGU

1,100 feet. Very hot; bad footing;
steep. This brought us to rolling downs
and low hills a few miles away, to
which we rose slowly, and a wooded,
shady pass with a beautiful, high, still
forest and monkeys and trailing vines
and still, cool shadows and breathless,
leafy glimpses and bright birds; and so
out to grassy openings and tree clumps,
and over an edge to find the wide, yel-
low plains undulating away before us
as far as we could see, with single dim
blue hills sailing hull down.

Just here we began to see game, and
I dropped two kongoni for food. Also
saw a Bohur reedbuck running hard
through tall grass. As my only speci-
men had been burned up in Colburn's
fire, I tried him, but missed.

theory perfectly, having been within
fifty yards of the same game, on a still
day, that would not let us get within
four hundred yards in a wind. After
considerable stalking I managed to get
another kongoni, which was enough for
the present need.

Cuninghame did not get in until 5 :30.
He reported a fearful time getting to
the top with the donkeys, and left them
encamped at the head of the rise, all
in. He was pretty much all in himself.
Distant grass fires were wonderfully
beautiful after dark, throwing a glare
into the heavens and running forward
in a long, wavering line of flame. Some
of it had crept to the top of one of
the very distant hills, where first it
showed like a star, and then burst forth

STREAM ABOVE LAKE NATRON

into a beacon. The high wind con-
tinued all night.

Forgot in my notes of two days back
to state that with Dowdi's men we
sent out the syce and our saddles, and
are packing the mules. We have en-
joyed only about twenty-five miles' ri-
ding; all the rest we have done afoot.
Decided to stay over here some days,
so sent back men to help Dolo and carry

some of the donkey loads if necessary.
Then Cuninghame and I started off to-
gether to explore. For an hour and a
half we skirted the hill, then crossed
a small stream called the Dorodedi,
where in some rocks we saw hyrax. Here
Cuninghame kept on to scout for water
for the next camp, and I swung down
to the left to look over the game.

Stacks of it — Tommy, Robertsii, kon-

WASONZI HUTS AMONG BIG GRAY BOULDERS FROM WHICH THEY CAN HARDLY

BE DISTINGUISHED

[543]

IN BACK OF BEYOND

545

goni, zebra, ostrich, small antelope and
several black compact herds of wilde-
beeste like ink-spots in the distance. A
strong, fresh wind blew, and everything
was very wild and suspicious. Very
hard to shoot, as the wind was strong
enough to swing the gun, and most of
it had to be off hand. Managed to get
the required meat, however, and then
dipped back toward the river, where I
saw many guinea-fowl and a big herd
of mixed game going along single file,
among which I distinguished two topi.
In the smoke of a near-by grass fire I
made out dimly the darting forms of
savages, with firebrands, running along
and setting fire to the grass. They
disappeared when we came near them.
The air was full of smoke and the crack-
ling of flames. Got out of there and
returned to camp.

All afternoon the Wasonzi drifted
in until twenty had arrived. Each was
escorted to my tent by the one who
talked Swahili with the statement:

"I have arrived."

''Make it so," I replied, like the cap-
tain of a warship.

Then he joined his friends in a big
leafy bower. After tea I went over and
had quite a chat with them. The Wa-
sonzi tell me it is they who set fire
to the grass.

"Thus the rhino are driven away,
and if there are no rhino, the Wande-
robo stay away," they explained their
motive. The Wanderobo hunt rhinoc-
eros for the horns.

The askari, armed with a musket
built in 1876, tells me he is allowed
seven cartridges a month to get himself
game!

The men came back with donkey and
donkey loads. Four donkeys and one
mule died on the road. Cuninghame
in, after a thirty-mile tramp. Under
a little kopje he found a puddle of water
"as big as his hat," and by digging
proved it to be a spring. This will
assure us a first day's safe march into the
unknown.

This evening the fire has crept up
the other side of a- lone mountain peak,
ten miles away, and has appeared at
the top, so it is like a volcano.

We rested over here another day;

shot some more meat for ourselves and
our friends, and early on the evening
of August 11th said good-bye to the Wa-
sonzi and started out. The Wasonzi
refused to go a step farther; but as
they knew nothing of the country, we
did not miss them.

Another donkey had died. We left
behind us two sick men, with such of
the loads as we could not carry, to-
gether with two more sick donkeys.
They were to sit tight until we sent
back for them.

We marched for nine hours across a
rolling open grass plain to the end of
a hill that Cuninghame had noted for
a landmark. Not much game in the
middle of the plain, but we ran into it
again near the spring and thereabouts.
Still blowing hard, and game almost
impossible to approach. Near the hill
I branched off to the left after our
daily meat. Had some difficulty, as the
wind was high and the game wild. After-
ward I continued on to the top of the
swell and took compass bearings of the
hills, so as to know how to cut a river
called the Bololedi, reported to us by
the savages. At this hill we cut loose
from all native tracks and native knowl-
edge and enter absolutely virgin coun-
try. On the way to camp I picked up
a fresh ostrich egg. It made a huge
omelette.

The next day we struck directly
across country by the compass bearings
obtained yesterday, and after some hours'
march came to the edge of low moun-
tains, or high hills, with easy slopes,
sparsely, grown with small trees, and
valleys between. The grass had been
recently burned ; and, indeed, for the
next ten days or so we were never out
of fine charcoal footing, which arose in
clouds and which grimed up everything.
We were always very dirty, but it was
a good, clean, healthful, antiseptic sort
of dirt.

But here, in spite of the apparent
lack of feed, we ran into multitudes of
game; game beyond the farthest reach
of even the Wasonzi savages behind us;
game that had never heard the sound
of a rifle shot; that had probably never
seen a human being, save possibly some
stray Wanderobo traveling through. It

546

OUTING

stood about in groups and singly, and
stared at us in stupefied astonishment
while we went by, not taking the trouble
even to move, unless it happened to be
to leeward of us. In that case it kicked
up its heels and cavorted off a few steps,
to be sure, but immediately it had
passed beyond the strongest of the scent,
it stopped and stared again. We passed
herds of wildebeeste within a hundred
yards! Hundreds of topi, hartebeeste,
zebra, Tommy, Robertsii, steinbuck, or
dikdik, merely trotted a few steps and
stared, and trotted a few steps more and
stared again!

Passing beyond this valley, we crossed
a bold outcrop of rock. — whereon were
klipspringers and reedbuck bounding
about — and marched for a long distance
down a gentle slope that must lead to
the river.

We arrived at hot noon — to find it
a dry wash! Sand, rocks, and alkali,
and that was all ! An hour's march,
however, found us a pool. We made
camp on a little patch of clean grass
that had escaped burning. A donkey
died on the road.

In the afternoon Cuninghame and I
took a little stroll up the wash to see
if there was more water above. A short
distance out I downed a bohur reedbuck.
My only specimen from the previous
expedition had been burned, so I was
glad to get him.

A little farther on we heard a chorus
of zebra barkings, a regular kalele*
persistent, shrill, and numerous. We
thought at first a herd must be attacked
by wild dogs, so, of course, we went on
to investigate. We found the row to
be not fright but sheer exuberance!
From a big water-hole, up through the
scrub, came a mighty procession of all
sorts of animals, seemingly endless,
headed back for feed after their four
o'clock watering. They were biting and
racing and plodding soberly along and
kicking playfully, and all lifting up their
voices in sheer joy. We watched them
through our glasses with the keenest
pleasure until they had all passed on,
then forward to look at the water-hole.

This little piece of country is like

Uproar.

the Garden of the Gods — we wind our
way on firm, level earth between domes
and monoliths. The water lay deep and
cool in a hollow with reeds. And in
the reeds we saw a really fine bull eland,
a pretty picture as he stood amid the
greenery.

On our way back we saw a steinbuck
that thought itself hidden, flat to the
ground, with ears folded neatly forward,
like those of a spaniel dog! It was
exactly in the position it would adopt
in the long grass, only now all the grass
was burned off! But it went through
the motions just as faithfully.

At camp one of the porters reported
he had seen roan near by. With our
usual skepticism, we did not believe
easily, but his cross-examination held, so
we decided to stay over. Before leaving
home many of my friends had presented
me with "lucky cartridges." As this
beast ranks, after the greater kudu, and
with the sable, as the finest trophy of
African antelope, and the most difficult
to get, I thought this an appropriate oc-
casion to try one. Therefore, I loaded
with that given me by Harry Ross.

Then I sent M'ganga and Soli to
scout forward for water. About a half
hour out saw a wild dog, and a little
later three roan bounded across our front
and disappeared. While watching them
I heard Memba Sasa snap his fingers
and looked back to see a fourth, behind
us, stopped and staring. I could just
see a piece of his forequarters between
two trees, and the rising sun was square
behind him. However, Harry's bullet
was indeed lucky, and I landed in his
foreshoulder. This was probably enough,
but I took no chances, and put in an-
other quartering from behind as he stag-
gered forward.

I spent the rest of the morning quar-
tering the thin woods below the hill
looking for more. Saw quantities of
the very tame game, and several stein-
buck that thought themselves hidden,
which we passed within a few yards.
At camp found another donkey dead.
Two more died in the course of the
afternoon. This makes thirteen up to
date, and one mule. Big thunderstorm
far to the north, in the mountains.

(To be eon tinned)

THE SNOWSHOES THAT SWUNG

WIDE

By ROBERT E. AND KATHRENE GEDNEY PINKERTON

How Twilight Jack Picked Up the Trail
of the Survey Party's Mysterious Enemy

AD the man on the ridge
known the Morse code he
would have thought of it
as he looked down upon
the great white plain of
the lake beneath him. Like
a series of dots and dashes, it stretched
out for two hundred yards and in the
distance it appeared stationary — four dots
and then four dashes, each dash followed
by a dot, and with two additional dots at
the end.

"Four dog teams and ten men, Mike,"
he commented, and a big brown-and-
gray dog, with the characteristics of the
wolf predominating, tugged at the traces
of a small toboggan and stepped on his
master's snowshoes.

Together they watched the long, irreg-
ular line as it crawled down the lake.
Soon they could make out the figures of
the men, four ahead breaking trail, one
behind each dog team, and two at the
rear. Every hundred yards the leading
man dropped out and became the fourth,
while the second took his place in the
lead and broke down the loose, deep
snow.

In the clear, cold air the sounds of
the drivers came up to the ridge — "Mush
on, there!" "S-s-s-s'boy!" "Get into
that, Wallace!" — and the cracking of
the long dog-wrhips.

It was a bright, beautiful day, cold
enough for traveling; a light fall of
snow in the night covering lake and
forest with infinite crystals, which re-
turned dazzlingly the rays of the rising
sun. It was the sort of a day a man
in the bush felt glad to be out, thrust
quickly with his webbed feet, spurned
the miles behind him.

But there was no enthusiasm in the
long cavalcade crossing the lake. The
men ahead plodded silently, heads down.
There was no zest in the work of the
dogs. Each team of four labored mute-
ly, without the occasional yelp of the
early morning. At the rear the two
men dragged behind, stopped occasionally
to speak, and then turned to plod dis-
piritedly on.

"Don't appear to be a very happy out-
fit, those geodetic lads, do they, Mike?"
said the man as he started down the
ridge. "Wonder what's happened to
them."

Together they reached the lake and
Parted across on a trail, well beaten ex-
cept for the two inches of snow that
had fallen the night before. Their course
lay at right angles to that of the long
line of men, dogs, and toboggans, and
they reached the crossing of the trails
just as did the two men wTho brought
up the rear.

"Hello, Twilight!" exclaimed the last
of the two. "I've just been talking about
you and was going to turn back to your
cabin."

There was relief in his face and tone
as he spoke and pulled off a mitten to
shake hands with the man who had come
down from the ridge.

"Lucky I met you, then, Mr. Scovil,
for I won't get back to my headquarters
cabin until to-morrow night," said the
woodsman. "Still pulling west, I see."

"Herb, you go on with the outfit,"
exclaimed Scovil, turning to the young
man who had brought up the end of
the procession with him. "Get into a
good camp to-night and start work again
in the morning as if nothing had hap-

547

548

OUTING

pened. I'm going back with Twilight
Jack and may not catch up with you
for a day or two. Get as far as you
can by night."

The young man turned to catch up
with the last dog team. Scovil did not
speak, but stood thrusting the tip of a
snowshoe against the snow wall of the
new trail. The woodsman waited pa-
tiently for the other to begin, as a
woodsman always waits when a man
from the outside is about to ask for
something. But Scovil did not speak,
and Twilight, who had been attracted
by the young survey leader in their few
meetings of the winter, knew he was in
trouble.

"What's bothering you, lad?" he asked
gently.

"If I only knew I wouldn't be troub-
ling you," exclaimed the other irritably.
"If I knew, someone would land in jail
and we'd go on with our work. But I
don't know, Twilight, and we're losing
an entire winter's effort; being set back
a whole year.

"At first I thought it was luck.
Freeze-up came so late we didn't get
started from Sabawi until the day after
Christmas. Then traveling was so bad
it was January third before we got down
into this country and were ready to start
work — three weeks later than we should
have been.

"But the real trouble began the middle
of January, when two of our teams met
some Indians and there was a free-for-
all fight. We lost one dog. Got its
leg caught in the traces and broken. The
Indian curs didn't do so well, and four
of them were killed, or had to be, before
the men could stop the thing. The men
had some words with the Indians, but
we didn't think anything of it until the
last day of January, when two of our
dogs were poisoned. Someone scattered
poisoned meat along the trail over which
we were hauling in supplies. As soon
as the two dogs became sick, the men
kept watch and picked up some of the
meat.

"Of course, we knew it was the In-
dians, getting even for that fight, but
the next morning they more than got
even, for they bad crept into camp and
poisoned seven more of the sixteen dogs.

That left us crippled badly enough; but
two days later they broke open our cache
of February provisions and destroyed
everything in it.

"It took ten days to get men out to
Port Arthur and back with new dogs,
and then we had to haul more provisions
all the way from Sabawi. All that de-
layed, for we couldn't move on so fast.
We were a month behind with the work,
but I began to think we would catch up.
Yesterday was March second, and, with
nothing more happening, I figured last
night that we could win through."

"Well, nothing more's happened to
your dogs or grub, has it?" asked Twi-
light when Scovil paused.

"No, but something worse happened.
The plat-cases, with the results of all
our work so far, were stolen last night."

"You mean those black leather cases?"
exclaimed Twilight.

"Yes, the ones we carried our instru-
ments and notes and maps in. But only
the reports and maps were taken, prob-
ably because they were the only ones
in sight."

"That's sure hard luck, lad, and I'm
sorry. I'd be glad to give you a hand,
but I haven't been able to make head or
tail of what you're doing around here.
I can understand what those geologists
are aiming at, but you geodetics are be-
yond me."

"You can help, Twilight, if you will,
and that's why I wanted to see you. I
heard about you in Sabawi before I
came down here and got acquainted with
you at your cabin. I heard about your
getting that man wTho killed four men
and robbed them, by cutting a blind port-
age trail. You've got a big reputation
as a detective since then. The papers
were full of it. And I want you to help
stop this thing, Jack. It's got to be
stopped, or we lose a year's work, and
it's the end of me in the survey. This
is my first year in charge, and I've got
to make good."

"Now, lad, get it out of your head
that I'm a detective. If you want me to
help you, forget about that. I don't
know any more about being a detective
than a rabbit. The time I got old Mar-
vin, and when Billy McKecknie and I
got the Indian on Wild Potato Lake, I

THE SNOWSHOES THAT SWUNG WIDE

549

just kept my eyes open and used my head.
Detective! Huh! Why, I never even
saw a real detective."

"All right, my trapper friend," smiled
Scovil. "Will you keep your eyes open
and use your head on this case and help
me get back those cases, if the Indians
haven't destroyed them ?"

"Indians!" exclaimed Twilight. "You
know it's them? Then why don't you
have a provincial policeman down here
and arrest them? That would end it."

"I know it's the Indians, but I would
have' a hard time proving it, I guess.
They're too smooth to leave many traces.
At first they were quite open about it,
but I didn't think it was going to this
length. I just let it drop, thinking they
would call it square when they poisoned
the dogs."

"How far back's your last camp?"
asked Twilight.

"At the end of the lake. We had just
started this morning."

"Let's go back and get a fire going.
It's too cold to stand out on this lake,
with a wind coming up. We'll talk it
over."

Fifteen minutes later they arrived at
the last camping spot of the geodetic sur-
vey. Twilight quickly started a fire and
heaped on the stove-wood which had been
left. He laid several tent-poles before
the blaze, and the two men sat upon
them.

"Now, lad, you're sure it's Indians?"

"Of course. Who else could it be?"

"You haven't had any trouble with
anyone else, down here or up at Sa-
bawi?"

"Not a bit. Everyone has been very
kind to us."

"And you haven't got any enemies out-
side, in Toronto or Ottawa?"

"There may be a few people who
don't like me, but no one who would
come down here to do this."

"What are you doing down here?"

"We're mapping the country, but our
principal work is to get levels, height
above sea-level, you know, location of
watersheds and flow of water. The main
part of the work is done in summer, of
course, but in winter we have to estab-
lish the points from which to carry on
the summer's work."

"Why are you so sure it's Indians?"
"We tracked them the morning after
they poisoned the seven dogs."
"Down to their tepees?"
"No, but within a mile. There was
no use going farther. There was one
man, and he wore those short, narrow
snowshoes the Indians make. He walked
back on our hauling trail, which was
hard and smooth, for a mile, and then
walked off across country quite openly.
We followed him to an Indian trapping
trail within a mile of the tepees."

"Where were you camped that night?"
"On Poobah Lake, the east end."
"Then he walked back on your trail
to Moose Lake and crossed that to the
trail?"

"No, he turned ofr and went through
that draw in the ridge where Moose
River flows into Poobah Lake."

"Did you track him through there?"
"Yes, all the way through."
"Under that high cliff on the north
side?"

"Right along the foot of it."
"Did you see the poisoned meat?"
"The men brought in a piece. It
had strychnine in capsules, and there was
a small quantity of mercury in each."

"Mercury, eh? Then they waited a
while and broke open your cache and
spoiled all your grub?"

"Ruined everything. Scattered beans
and rice and flour about in the snow,
cut a hole in every tin-can and built a
fire and burned up all the bacon and
pork and tallow for the dogs. They
didn't leave a thing we could use."
"Did you track them from there?"
"No, we couldn't. They did it Sat-
urday night. Sunday we didn't work,
and it snowed nearly six inches that day.
The cache was ten miles from camp.
When the men started to haul Monday
morning they found the wreck."

"But you're sure that was the In-
dians?"

"No, I can't be sure of that. You see,
I let a man go on the Friday before. He
was shirking and always kicking. One
of the dog drivers. He was a surly sort
of a fellow, and I have suspected he
might have done it."
"Nothing to prove it?"
"No, except that the men went out

550

OUTING

to Sabawi immediately for more supplies,
and they found he did not get there until
a day after he should have."

"Then nothing happened until last
night?"

"Not a thing. I began to think they
were satisfied, and I believed we could
finish the winter's work with no more
hard luck."

"Couldn't you trace anyone this morn-
ing?"

4 'No. They left before the snow fell
in the night. No use trying."

"Didn't the dogs bark in the night?"

"Oh, they bark every night. We have
become accustomed to it. The last few
nights they barked quite a bit, but always
stopped suddenly and were quiet."

"How was the stuff stolen?"

"It was in my tent, near the foot of
my bed. Whoever did it cut a hole in
the tent, reached in and took the cases.
The instrument cases were at the head
of the bed, near the stove. They got
every note, map, and figure made so
far on the work. I've got to get that
back, Twilight. I'm ruined if I don't.
We've got to go over to the Indians and
make them give up the cases. You know
them all. We'll threaten them or do
anything to get the notes and maps."

Twilight emptied his pipe and rose.
He walked through the deserted camp-
ing-ground until he found the cover of
a packing-case and then went up the
back trail. Using the wide board as a
fan, he blew the light snow from the
hard-packed, smooth surface made by
many snowshoes and heavily loaded to-
boggans. He walked on and fanned
away the snow again, repeating the oper-
ation several times until he was out of
sight in the swamp.

"Where did you get this board?" he
demanded when he returned to Scovil at
the fire.

"It's one I've been using as a desk
for drawing maps. Why?"

"Where did you get it?"

"I don't remember. It's from a box
on some of the goods we have hauled in."

"What sort of axes do you use?"

"Those little hand-axes. You've seen
them."

"All the same?"

"Yes, all alike."

"You haven't got a Hudson Bay axe
in the outfit?"

"No."

"Didn't you get this board from one
of the cases smashed up at the cache?"

"I believe I did. I told the men what
I wanted, and one of them brought that
back from the wreck."

Twilight again left the fire; circling
about the camp. At last he disappeared
in the swamp on a trail made by the
dogs and men when they hauled fire-
wood. Fifteen minutes later he re-
turned, still carrying the board.

"Come on, lad," he said. "Mike,
get your legs inside those traces and
come along."

Twilight went down the wood-trail
until it ended in the confused tracks
made by men cutting and hauling wood.
He turned off into the thick spruce,
following the trail of a man who had
walked in the two feet of snow with-
out snowshoes. Scovil and the dog fol-
lowed.

"That's where he put on his snow-
shoes," said Twilight, pointing to the
larger impressions.

"How did you find it back here?"
exclaimed Scovil.

"Just thought of what I would have
done if I had been in his place. First
I made a circle of the camp and found
where your men had gone out into the
bush. They would make lots of tracks
getting wood, and this fellow knew it.
He followed in them. When he came
to the end, he walked right on, without
his snowshoes. It was snowing hard,
and he knew his tracks wouldn't look
fresher than the others, and that any-
one would think it was one of your
men after wood. He came in on your
main back trail, but I saw he didn't
leave that way.

"He must have been here when the
snow was about half over. There ain't
more than an inch on his trail."

"I told you it was an Indian," said
Scovil. "See! He used those narrow,
short shoes all the Indians use."

Twilight snorted and kept on in the
tracks made by the thief, nor did he
speak in the next five miles. Through
swamps, over ridges, across small lakes
and along muskeg creeks they went until

THE SNOWSHOES THAT SWUNG WIDE

551

at last they stepped into the deep groove
of a well-packed snowshoe trail.

"I told you," repeated Scovil. "This
is one of the Indians' trapping trails.
See, he turned toward their camp."

Twilight remained silent, as he had
through the long tramp, and turned
down the trail. The snowfall on top
of the tracks he was following was
growing lighter; the impressions deeper.
He watched the trail closely as he went
along.

For three miles he did not stop,
Scovil and the dog following. On a
small lake they met an Indian, making
the rounds of his traps. Twilight greet-
ed him with a good-natured "B'jou',"
and went on. Across the little lake
they found more tracks leading off to
the west, where another Indian had
taken up his own trail.

"They're too smooth for us, Twi-
light," exclaimed Scovil in dismay.
"Those tracks cover up the ones we've
been following, though they undoubtedly
go straight to the village. It's not more
than a mile from here."

"We can still see them," was the
woodsman's only answer as he hurried
on.

Soon, in a thick cedar swamp, they
came to many snowshoe and moccasin
tracks, new tracks in the fresh snow
that completely covered everything on
the trail.

"That ends it, Twilight," mourned
Scovil. "We can't prove anything now.
We've got to bull it through."

Twilight, still silent, was walking
more slowly. Finally he stopped and
slipped out of his snowshoes.

"This is where the squaws have got
their rabbit snares," he explained.
"They've been out this morning to get
the night's haul. That's what makes
so many tracks."

He stepped off the trail into the
brush, where the surface of the snow
was padded down by rabbits and the
feet of the women. He went straight
through and for fifteen minutes Scovil
waited. Then the woodsman appeared
on the side of the trail opposite to that
from which he had left.

"There's only one thing to do," cried
Scovil impatiently. "We're just wast-

ing time out here. We've got to go on
to the village and make them give up
those cases."

Twilight smiled as he looked at the
survey leader.

"You think they've got them, all
right?" he asked.

"Why, man, there can't be any doubt
of it now. That fellow went right
through here to the village. The other
tracks have just covered his up is all."

The woodsman pondered a moment
and then slipped into his snowshoes.

"Well, lad, I'm willing enough to
help you out," he said, "even if it gets
me into trouble with the Indians. I've
been trapping here several years and
we've always got along well together
because each keeps to his own business.
I might say that the three men who
live in these tepees are friends of mine.
They've always been square with me.

"But we can't do it alone. A squaw
with a butcher-knife is bad medicine,
and one of them can generally lick four
men. We ought to have help."

"Help nothing! My men are too far
away now. It's up to me to get those
cases, and I'll get them if I have to go
alone."

"But a little help wouldn't do any
harm. Now, there's a fellow came in
here last fall. Been trapping around
here this winter. His shack's only two
miles over east. Maybe you know him."

"Joe Minty. Sure. He'd be glad to,
I know. I loaned him some grub when
he ran out last month. He's been in
camp several times and was always will-
ing to give us a hand pointing out the
easiest routes and finding portages.

"But that's a waste of time, Twilight.
They might burn up everything before
we could get back. I'm going on alone."

"Now wait a minute, lad. I've got
a scheme that I'm sure will work, but I
need another man. You fellows from
the outside always have queer ideas
about Indians. No one can do anything
with them unless he knows them well.
Now we'll run over and ask Minty to
help us, eh?"

Scovil grudgingly assented and they
returned to the lake where they had met
the Indian and then struck east across a
ridge and through a swamp. After a

552

OUTING

half hour they came to a trail and fol-
lowed it through a draw to a little lake
beside which Minty had built his shack.

''He's home," said Twilight, pointing
to smoke rising from the stovepipe.

The woodsman knocked at the door,
but there was no answer. He heard a
quick movement inside. Then the door
opened and a tall, bearded man looked
out.

"Hello, Joe," cried Scovil. "You're
just the fellow we wanted to see. Need
your help."

Minty smiled good-naturedly and in-
vited his guests to enter.

"Little crowded," he apologized, but
you two can find a seat on the bunk
there. Just started to get lunch. You
lads probably like a bite."

"It would help, Joe," said Scovil.
"We'll need a little nourishment before
the afternoon's work. Feel like having
a fight?"

"Fight! Why should I fight anyone?"

"To help me out. Those pesky In-
dians broke into our camp last night and
stole all my maps, notes, and data. Twi-
light and I tracked them to the village,
and we've come to get you to help us
go down and get the stuff. I've got to
have it, Joe. My work for the winter is
all lost if I don't."

"Sure, I'll give you a hand," was the
hearty response. "I've got a thing or
two to settle with those red devils my-
self. They got into my traps several
times a'ready. I'll hurry up a bite to
eat and then we'll start."

He turned to his little sheet-iron stove
and began to prepare the meal. Twi-
light looked about the small log build-
ing while Scovil talked. When the sur-
vey leader paused, the woodsman made
his first remark.

"Getting any wolves?" he asked.

"Six so far. I've got a way of get-
ting everyone that touches the bait."

"Trapping in the east before this?"

"Yes, how'd you know?"

"Those wide snowshoes. Don't often
see the shanty kind around here."

"I've used them ever since I was a
kid. Then, I'm heavy, and I generally
have a good pack, and I need the wide
ones."

"Don't happen to have an extra axe,

do you. I lost mine somewhere in the
snow. I'd like to borrow one until I
get out to Sabawi next week."

"Sorry, Twilight, but I've got only
the one, the little hand axe in the corner
beside you there."

Twilight picked up the axe and tapped
the piece of packing case, which he still
carried, with it.

"It would be a handy thing to have
along this afternoon," he said. "Better
take your rifle, too, Joe. What kind you
got?"

"Thirty-thirty. It's in the corner
there."

Twilight picked up the weapon,
worked the lever, examined it, and then
laid it across his knees.

"They're a good gun," he offered.
"Joe, you ain't seen any other white man
in the country lately, have you?"

"Not a one except these survey lads
and you. Don't believe there's been
anyone south of Sabawi this winter."

"I haven't seen any either, but there
must be one around here."

"Why?" demanded Minty, turning
from the stove.

"Why?" supplemented Scovil.

"Because it wasn't any Indian that
stole those cases, or spoiled that cache or
poisoned those dogs."

"Rot!" exclaimed Scovil. "You
tracked the Indian who did it right to
the village this morning."

"I tracked the man who did it, but
not quite to the village. Then you told
me yourself the fellow you fired was
huffy about it, and the cache was de-
stroyed the day after he left."

"But he went on through to Sabawi,
and he didn't poison the dogs."

"He could have come back from
Sabawi, and you've got nothing to con-
nect the man who destroyed the cache
with the one who killed the dogs. Now
listen.

"At the camp this morning, when I
went out and looked at your back trail, I
fanned the snow off and saw where some-
one had walked in while it was snow-
ing, soon after it began. He stomped
what snow had fallen hard onto the
trail. When I fanned it off, that part
stuck. And that man was a white man.
No Indian has feet as big as he had.

THE SNOWSHOES THAT SWUNG WIDE

553

"Then, when I found where he had
left and put on his snowshoes, I saw
that, while they was Indian snowshoes,
an Indian wasn't wearing them. If you
ever watched an Indian walk with the
webs, you'd notice he don't waste any
time swinging one shoe past his other
ankle. He makes a narrow trail. This
fellow stepped mighty wide.

"When he hit the Indian trapping
trail, which was pretty narrow, he kept
digging into the side of the trail every
step. When we got to where the squaws
had been looking at the rabbit snares,
those cuts on the sides of the trail
stopped. Whoever it was just walked
off into the swamp without his snow-
shoes on, taking the old squaw tracks and
knowing they would come out in the
morning and hide his own.

"I know those Indians mighty well,
and I know there ain't a small-headed
axe in their camp. I've seen 'em all too
many times. Scovil, just take this rifle
and point it at Joe here."

Twilight had picked up the trapper's
weapon, cocked it, and aimed it at his
host. He handed it carefully to the sur-
vey leader.

"Don't let him make a move. Joe, sit
down against the wall there and don't
act funny.

"Now, no Indian poisoned those dogs.
Not an Indian in this country will walk
on the ice in winter or paddle in summer
beneath that cliff on Moose river be-
tween Poobah and Moose lakes. They
think an evil spirit will roll rocks on
them. That explains that portage on the
west side of the river where there ain't
any rapids.

"No Indian around here uses capsules,
and none of them ever heard of putting
mercury in with the strychnine. Few
Indians use poison, and when they do
they just put in the crystals with a knife
blade. Joe's got a bottle of mercury
standing beside his strychnine bottle in
the window there, and he just said he's
got a way of killing wolves as soon as
they touch the bait.

"This axe of Joe's just fits the dent
in this board that was made when the
cache was smashed. Joe wears wide
snowshoes, has all his life, and when he
put on those small ones to go to camp

to poison the dogs and to steal those cases
he still walked wide from habit.

"In the rabbit swamp I found where
Joe had walked through without snow-
shoes and then put them on again and
struck straight for here."

Twilight suddenly reached under the
low bunk on which he was sitting and
pulled forth a pair of Indian snowshoes.
He reached in again and pulled forth the
missing cases.

"Now, Joe," Twilight began, "who's
back of you? You never did this on
your own hook."

Minty remained silent, looking keenly
at Twilight.

"Oh, well," he finally said, "I don't
see why I should stick by them. They
wouldn't stick by me. It was a fellow
in Midland."

"In Midland!" cried Scovil, whose
astonishment had at last given way to
curiosity. "Who in Midland?"

"I don't understand it all," went on
Minty. "He didn't tell me much. But
it seems they didn't want this work to
go through. Hired me to come out
here and bust it up so there wouldn't
be any report made next fall. Said if I
stopped this winter's work there couldn't
be any summer work, and that a year's
delay was all they needed."

"They?" demanded Twilight.

"Yes, there was others wanted the
same thing, a gang of them in Midland.
That's all I know. I was to get $1,000
if I did the work. And I would if it
hadn't been for you."

"I see it!" Scovil burst in. "Our
report next fall will settle the question
of a water supply for Midland. The
gang in control there wants to get water
from the north. It will cost twice as
much as it would if they get it from the
east. But, as the gang will get its per-
centage from the contractors, they want
the costlier job, even if it does mean
fifteen or twenty millions more for the
taxpayers. The city has got to have
wrater at once, and they wouldn't wait
for a report later than next fall."

"That gets me," mused Twilight.
"They must be a mean lot, killing dogs
and spoiling men's grub way out here
in the bush. I wish they'd come tc try
it themselves."

THE MOSQUITO NET IN CAMP

By A. E. SWOYER

Diagrams by the Author

How You Can Make a Head Net, a Meat Safe, or a Min-
now Seine

T is an axiom of those who go upon
camping expeditions that nothing
unnecessary is to be taken and noth-
ing necessary left at home, but, like
New Year's resolutions, this rule
is almost invariably broken. Never-
theless, the more experienced the camper
the greater is the probability that he
has not left undone those things which
he ought to have done; therefore, if
you are a novice, leave the outfitting to
the experienced members of the party.
Then, if you want to appear ''camp-
wise," carefully insert about five yards
of mosquito netting in the exact center
of the stuff that you do take — and by so

doing you may justify your existence
after camp is made.

If the mosquitoes are troublesome,
you can drape part of 3'our netting over
the opening of the tent, fastening it with
large safety pins or with cord, and as a
result the whole party may sleep free
from the pests but without obstructing
ventilation — which is something. On
the other hand, if the experienced camp-
ers have been guying you unmercifully
about your general ignorance, just put
up two short poles at the head of your
bunk and drape the netting over it;
then, when you get in, tuck it under
your blanket on all sides and the foot,

THE HEAD NET

[554]

To td here and face to

other edge.

__._. . _ _».

- - -- — — --

1 1-

. . _ _ Vs.

. . -. -._ t«nii ~: .: o

-^ ft |j

tl >L- (J

_ ■ 1^ ^

5 ::::::::::::* :::::::::::E:::::

*S :::::::::::*:::::::::::3:::::

::::::::: :::::::: r::3:::: = :: *

* ■ ■

:: . . :: --J-i- ::

1 (j,

«* qjz :J

_n y

_4 J_.|:_|.|_]_|_|]J .].. \ 1 ^

^:::::::=::::|::::::::::jfJ=::

$. ± fc

::::::::::S::::::::::|. :::::::: >

5: ?^ \l

«* :::::::::::::::„!■■■ J::: :

— _ 1. — _.. j. ___-.__.. ^

fti ::_::_:i::::: : _: : _ ::

:::::::::::::::::::_:::z::::_:: t£

: :::. . ::±:: ::: ::._ . ^

_._ _. : ^

: — ;■ ■ — :: "::__::; :: i*

::::::::::::::::::: :::::±:::: ^

_ _ X. -_ _ _. ..

UPPER CUT SHOWS PLAN OF MEAT SAFE LOWER CUT COMPLETED SAFE

and there you are — if there
is any pleasanter lullaby than
the "Slap! Whack!" of your
companions swatting mosqui-
toes while you doze peace-
fully under your netting I
have never heard it.

Observe two things if you
adopt the couch method,
however — don't shut any
mosquitoes in with you, and*
DON'T rub it in too hard
on your friends, for there is
a case on record in which an
exasperated party arose at
dawn, lassoed a hornet's nest
with the aid of an old coat,
and dumped the whole busi-
ness under the netting where
the triumphant tenderfoot
was peacefully snoozing.

Even if the mosquitoes
cease from troubling, you'll
find enough other uses for
the netting. For example, it's
not always an easy matter to
keep meat fresh in camp, be-
cause if it is hung in the
open air blow-flies and other
vermin promptly spoil it.
To be safe and sure, cut

ten bottom & tie same as fob **

[555]

SEINE FOR MINNOWS

two long and slender twigs, trim the
bark off, bend them into circles and
lash the ends together — they are the
ribs of the meat safe shown in previous
page. Simply wind the netting about
them, lace its edges together with cord,
tie up each loose end and your safe is
ready to be suspended from the branch
of some tree adjacent to camp.

Meat so hung where air can circulate
about it will keep for some time, and
your impromptu safe may be the means
of keeping your party well fed and con-
tented. When your use for the safe is
over, untie the netting and throw away
the hoops — it will then fold into a
space but little bigger than a handker-
chief.

Or perhaps the midges and black flies
trouble you when on the water ; if so,
cut out a piece of the netting a yard long
and a foot wide, fold it over in the mid-
dle as shown, and lace it down the sides
with cord. Then, when you are on the
stream slip your head — hat and all — into
this bag, and tie the loose ends around
your neck with your necktie. It may
not look so well as the head nets that
you can buy, but in the woods you'll
be a good ways from the nearest tackle

[556]

store, and your impromptu rigging will
do the work as well as the more fancy
contrivance.

Also and furthermore, if bait fish are
hard to get by means of hook and line,
you can probably do the trick by means
of one of the two nets shown — the prin-
cipal part of each being the mosquito
netting. For the first, cut out a piece
of netting about one yard square and cut
two saplings each as long as the diagonal
of the piece ; these should be of the same
diameter, and are to be lashed together
firmly at the middle with their tips fast-
ened to the four corners of the net. By
means of a pole and cord you can lower
this net into the water of the pond, scat-
ter a few bread-crumbs over it — and
catch all the minnows that you need.

The other net is of the scoop pattern,
and is intended to be used in a brook;
its construction should. be plain from the
drawing. To use it, select a narrow
place in the brook and with a pole in
each hand hold the net so that its lower
edge is on the bottom ; your partner is
supposed to go upstream fifty feet or so,
and by sundry splashings and stampings
drive the minnows into your net, where-
upon your job is to scoop them out.

GOLF PROBLEMS FOR WOMEN

By ISABEL HARVEY HOSKINS

Some Things They Should Know in Order to Get the Most Out

of the Game

N America women have not been
playing golf for many years, but
with each season there are new re-
cruits to the ranks of women golfers
and it is apparent that not only is
■H> the number of players growing
steadily, but also that the standard of
play is becoming higher. It will not be
long before English women will have to
guard carefully their hitherto undisputed
laurels if American women keep at the
game with the enthusiasm and intelli-
gence that they are now showing.

There is no doubt but that the game
of golf presents certain problems to a
woman that are different from those pre-
sented to a man. In this situation, as
the game cannot be changed to suit a
woman's peculiarities, the only possible
course is for a woman to adapt herself
to the exigencies of the game. This
readjustment may be readily accom-
plished by a little careful thought, and
it is by women that the thinking must
be done. Even the best of writers and
teachers among men cannot get away
from their own masculinity, and. so fail
to grasp the necessity of regarding the
subject from a woman's point of view;
consequently their helpfulness to women
is decidedly limited.

The first problem that a woman has
to settle in beginning to play is that of
her stance. We have always been taught
to throw the weight forward on the
balls of the feet in order to obtain an
easy, graceful standing position and a
light, springy walk. This rule does not
obtain for the golf stance, however, be-
cause here the object is not to be dain-
tily poised, but rather to be solidly set-
tled on the ground. To accomplish this
the weight must be absolutely on the
flat of the foot. Having a firm base is

of the utmost importance, and in making
tee shots it is wise first to find a place on
the tec where the feet may find a smooth
resting place, free from loose pebbles or
little unevennesses of ground, and then
to place the ball in the proper position
relative to the player. It is a temptation
to pick out a smooth place for the ball
and to disregard the ground on which
the feet must rest, but this is a great
mistake.

Of course, through the fair-way,
where it is not possible to move the ball,
the player must make the best of the
ground as she finds it. It is possible,
however, and perfectly permissible to
wriggle the feet from side to side until
they are comfortably and firmly settled.
This may seem rather an unimportant
suggestion, but it is next to impossible
to keep the body from swaying either
sideways or forward unless a firm base
is established, and if the body sways the
accuracy of the stroke is gone.

Women are rather inclined to walk
up to the ball and hit it without taking
the time to arrange themselves properly.
After all only a fraction of a minute is
required to find the best possible posi-
tion, and the habit once acquired, it be-
comes practically automatic.

The stance having been taken, the
next question that arises is the grip on
the club. The object is, of course, to
have the hands so close together that
they act as nearly as possible as one. To
accomplish this, the great majority of
men plaj^ers use the overlapping grip.
This grip is not really advisable for
women because the fact that the little
finger of the right hand overlaps the
forefinger of the left causes the hold of
the right hand on the club to be loosened
and therefore weakened. A man with

[557]

558

OUTING

powerful hands may be able to afford
the loss of a little of his strength, but a
woman cannot.

Taking everything into consideration,
the best grip for a woman is either the
modified overlapping grip, by which I
mean the grip by which the fingers of
both hands are on the shaft of the club,
but the thumb of the left hand is covered
by the base of the palm of the right
hand, or the grip by which both thumbs
are around the shaft of the club and the
hands pressed as closely together as pos-
sible. In either case the V's formed by
the thumb and forefinger of each hand
should be nearly, but not quite, in a line
down the top of the shaft. A certain
amount of latitude is allowed in arrang-
ing the hands on the club on account of
the individual characteristics of the
hands, but the fundamental principle of
having the hands pressed tightly together
and the V's well up on the shaft of the
club must be observed by everyone.

There is in this connection just one
remark about the swing that I feel I
must make and that is a warning against
overswinging. Women players, especial-
ly beginners, are inclined to swing the'
club so far around that they are thrown
off their balance and the club swings the
woman instead of the woman the club.
This fault can be corrected by keeping
a tight grip on the club at all times
during the swing as it is the loosened
hold that allows the head of the club to
drop too near the ground. In the drive,
which requires the fullest swing of any
of the strokes except perhaps the brassy
shot, the shaft of the club at the top of
the swing should not go beyond the
horizontal.

Whenever there is any discussion of
a woman's fitness to play really good
golf, the question that arises first is
whether or not she has sufficient strength.
Lack of muscle is the most obvious diffi-
culty that a woman player has to over-
come, or to circumvent, but it is not by
any means the most important. If golf
were a game of brawn, the physical
giants among men would rank as the
finest players, but that is not by any
means the case.

James Sherlock, by his own confession
in "The New Hook of Golf," is a man

of rather under than over average mus-
cular development, and his wrists, he
states, seemed to have stopped growing
when he was about ten years old. Fran-
cis Ouimet, winner of the Open Cham-
pionship last year, is a mere stripling
compared with Vardon and Ray, whom
he defeated in the final rounds. Such
facts as these prove that even among
men brute force alone does not enable
a player to reach the top and should en-
courage women to feel that lack of this
masculine attribute is not necessarily
detrimental to their game.

Of course, for very long drives or for
chopping a ball out of heavy sand, or
for a bad lie, power of wrist and arm is
a very useful asset, but a very creditable
score may be made without exceptional
tee-shots, and the ball will seldom be
buried in a sand pit or fall into the
rough if the player has been able to
attain accuracy of direction and efficiency
in planning and executing her strokes.
Brute force alone never made either man
or woman successful at any game, and if
there is one game in which calm and
deliberate head-work is necessary, it is
golf. Good generalship has frequently
enabled a weaker army to put to rout a
stronger one; so also may a woman, by
marshalling her forces according to a
carefully devised plan of action, defeat
an opponent whose physical advantages
far outnumber her own.

Why Women Are Poor Putters

It is a curious fact that women fail
to realize the importance of cultivating
to the highest point of excellence the
powers of which she is possessed. A cer-
tain perversity makes her strive desper-
ately to accomplish the difficult and, at
the same time, to scorn to perfect herself
in that which appears simple and easy.
In this connection I have in mind the
indisputable fact that women are not
such good putters as men. This sta
ment may seem to imply that men are
good putters, whereas as a matter of
truth they are not nearly so proficient as
they should be. They are far too in-
clined to consider that the ability to putt
is a gift of the gods to be joyfully ac-
cepted by the favored ones <\n(\ hopelessly

GOLF PROBLEMS FOR WOMEN

559

envied by those on whom it is not be-
stowed. This is a silly attitude of mind
but one very common among men as
well as women.

A woman's mental process in regard to
putting is different but equally unpro-
ductive of satisfactory results. Every
woman believes thoroughly that she is
quite able to putt, but for some inex-
plicable reason does not give the time
and effort necessary to make herself
expert.

Putting requires careful observation
of the condition of the turf, the slope
of the green if there is any, and a careful
calculation of the distance of the ball
from the hole. The mistake that women
are apt to make is to putt too quickly
and too carelessly. I cannot here go
into an exhaustive discourse on the sub-
ject of putting, but there are a few of
the essential considerations that I would
like to mention.

Before the ball is addressed a careful
note should be made of whether the
grass is short or long, dry or damp, as
the run of the ball is greatly affected
by quality and condition of the turf over
which it has to roll. For a very long
putt the club should be gripped in the
ordinary way, but for a medium length
or short putt the hands should be placed
somewhat down the shaft of the club.
The stance should be the slightly open
one and the distance of the player from
the ball should be such that, as she
bends over, the eyes will be directly
above the ball. In making a straight
putt the eyes, the ball, and the hole
should be in the same imaginary plane
in order to insure accurate aim.

The length of the up-swing should
be regulated by the amount of force re-
quired for the stroke and the swing
itself should be made almost entirely
from the wrists.

The necessity for careful aim and
firmness and decision in executing this
stroke cannot be too strongly empha-
sized. It is the tendency of women to
putt loosely, to fall short of the hole,
and, on a sloping green, not to borrow
enough. These tendencies can easily be
overcome by careful thought and the
always necessary practice.

Anything written for women in the

field of sport would not be complete
without some reference to her clothes.
A woman's clothes are both her joy and
her despair and, at all times, a source of
much troublesome anxiety. How to
make the adjustment between comfort
and a good appearance is the question,
but, after all, it is not so difficult that
any sensible woman cannot solve it.
There is no doubt but that a woman
should be so dressed that she can abso-
lutely forget her clothes, and in order
to do that she should first of all have a
hat that fits tightly on the head with a
brim wide enough to shade the eyes, but
not so wide that it flaps.

The Right Clothes

Her shoes should be broad-soled and
square-heeled to insure comfort and a
firm stance. On the whole, I believe
high shoes are the better as they support
the feet and ankles well and are not so
apt to rub at the heel as low-cut ones,
but that is a question to be decided by
personal preference, with due regard to
the idiosyncrasies of one's own extremi-
ties.

The skirt should be of a material of
substantial weight and cut well above
the instep and wide enough to allow
freedom in walking, but no wider. The
blouse may be long or short sleeved, but
must be sufficiently loose to allow abso-
lute freedom of the arms and shoulders.
With the present styles there is no need
to issue a warning about the necessity of
having clothes loose at the waist to give
the muscles of the back and abdomen
free play. For the present, fashion and
common sense are walking hand in hand
in this respect. May they continue to
do so.

There is only one point where a wom-
an really needs to sacrifice appearance
to practicality, and that is the question
of the color of her clothes. There is
nothing fresher and prettier in midsum-
mer than an all white costume, but that
is just the time it should be avoided.
The reflection of bright sunlight on a
white skirt undoubtedly dazzles the eyes
while one is addressing the ball and is
apt to make the eyes waver. The pale
tan of natural linen or pongee is less

560

OUTING

obtrusive in a brilliant light and should
be substituted for white.

In order to consider the more subtle
reasons why golf presents special prob-
lems to women, as undoubtedly it does,
it is necessary to go into the psychological
differences between men and women.
Why these differences exist is a subject
open to much speculation. Perhaps the
many thousand years of development
along dissimilar lines have made a wo-
man's mental make-up unlike a man's,
but the reasons, whatever they are, do
not interest us at the moment. It is
sufficient if we realize the resultant fact
that these differences do exist.

Women as a whole lack mechanical
sense and golf is a game based absolutely
on mechanical principles. Furthermore,
a woman is generally distinctly and ob-
viously bored when anyone tries to ex-
plain to her why a sliced ball turns off
to the right or a pulled ball to the left.
The fact that it does is sufficient for her
and she is not in the least interested in
the whys and wherefores.

Study and Practice

This lack of intelligent comprehension
is practically fatal to mastery of the
game. Some of the finest professional
men players, it is true, are in an equal
state of ignorance. These men started
as caddies and learned to play by imita-
tion and years of practice. They can ex-
ecute the strokes perfectly, but when they
try to explain how they do it they fall
into lamentable and often ludicrous er-
rors.

If there is any short cut to learning
golf it is through careful study of the
reasons for everything. Once the prin-
ciples of the strokes are mastered, a few
months of regular and intelligent prac-
tice will make any able-bodied woman a
fair player, but years of practice with-
out scientific knowledge of the game will
bring very uncertain results. A woman
who seriously desires to become a really
good player must curb her desire to go
out and whack the ball along. Before
she ever makes a complete round of the
links, she should study the peculiarities
of each club, how to stand when using it,
how to address the ball with it, how to

swing it and what to expect of the ball
once the stroke is made. After she has
mastered these essentials and practised
with each club separately at suitable lo-
cations on the links, she may piece to-
gether all she has learned and play a
whole game, but not before.

Women are at once too daring and
lacking in self-confidence. This is a con-
tradictory statement, but it is neverthe-
less the truth, and it is only by recog-
nizing the truth about herself that a
woman can conquer her faults and de-
velop her good qualities. A woman will
walk bravely to the tee and believe she is
going to make a beautiful drive and, at
the moment of making the upswing, her
heart will suddenly fail and she will do
some unexpected thing that will entirely
spoil the stroke. It is for this reason that
it is absolutely necessary for her to mas-
ter every stroke separately, so that as they
come into use one after another she will
be so proficient that her self-confidence
will be unshakable.

In order to make a stroke correctly, a
player must have her mind immovably
fixed on what she is doing. It is a sad
admission to make, but women are in-
clined to be self-conscious. One of the
peculiarities of the game of golf is that
generally each player has to make her
shots, both from the tee and through the
fair-way, with several persons waiting
for her and watching her. There is not
the stimulus of rapid action that there
is in tennis. This consciousness has a
very disconcerting effect on a woman's
mind and, at the moment of raising her
club, her thoughts are apt to wander
to some consideration of the bystanders,
and the results of attention thus dis-
tracted are deplorable. Having made
one bad stroke in this way, the player's
mind is upset and several bad strokes
are apt to follow.

The only way to play well is to forget
everything and everybody and to rivet
the attention on what is to be done. If
a bad stroke is made, bv the time the
player has reached her ball the memory
of it should have passed from her mind
completely and her attention should be
entiiely occupied with the new problem
that confronts her.

Probably it is because women are what

GOLF PROBLEMS FOR WOMEN

561

is generally called ''temperamental" that
they are unduly elated by success and
equally depressed by failure. In match
play the woman who has a good lead is
apt to "let down" and, when she finds
her opponent creeping up to her and per-
haps becoming "even up," she suddenly
loses her feeling of security and goes to
pieces. If, perchance, she is behind, she
is inclined to give up the situation as
hopeless and consider herself beaten be-
fore the match is ended, and consequently
to play carelessly. Either of these ex-
tremes is very bad. In fact, to be in
any particular state of mind while play-
ing is detrimental to the player's game.
A placid, unruffled spirit must be main-
tained throughout and if a player has
sufficient self-control to do this half the
battle is won.

Keeping an accurate score is one of the
absolute essentials of the game, and yet
women players are inclined to be very
careless in this respect. With the best
intentions in the world, they often for-
get to count their strokes carefully as
they are playing, and after they have
holed out their memories are apt to be
rather uncertain when they try to go
back and count up the strokes they have
taken for the hole. This inaccuracy
often leads to entirely unnecessary un-
pleasantness and many a thoroughly hon-
est woman has been humiliated by hav-
ing her score questioned, when, if she
had been more careful, no question could
possibly have arisen.

There is another point that women
players, even experienced ones, are apt
to neglect, and that is the rules of the
game. There have been many matches
in which players have been disqualified
through the unconscious disregard or
breaking of some rule. A book of gen-
eral rules can be purchased at any place
where golf clubs are sold, and the local
or ground rules of each club are printed
on the score cards of that club so there

is no excuse for anyone being in a state
of ignorance.

We are living to-day in an epoch-
making era. We are so close to the sep-
arate incidents that take place day by day
that it is hard for us to realize their
great importance. It will not be until
the present takes its place in the realm
of history that we will get a true sense
of perspective concerning the world-wide
feminist movement in its larger scope.

Not by any means the least important
phase of this great development is the
way in which it is bringing women into
all the sports. Twenty-five years ago
women rode horseback and played
croquet and that was about all. Now
they are coming to the front in every
sport, even the newest and most danger-
ous, aviation. In fact, in England as
many as five women aviators made "the
loop" before it was accomplished by a
man. That there has been a tremendous
awakening among women, no one can
doubt, and it is equally certain that it
all tends toward her mental and physical
betterment.

There is practically nothing that a
woman cannot do that she would be
likely to wish to do, and she is likely to<
wish to do very nearly everything.

So it is that the field of sport is open
to all, and women in ever-increasing
numbers are availing themselves of their
opportunities. The advance guard are
helping their weaker sisters and the
world of women is on the upward and
outward move.

As yet English women take the lead
in militancy and golf. It is to be hoped
that American women will never have to
follow them along the paths of destruc-
tion, but in golf the players of this coun-
try are at present a close second to their
English sisters, and all signs point to-
ward their equalling and perhaps sur-
passing the golfers over the sea before
many years have passed.

"Men and Ducks and Things" is a woman's view of
duck shooting. It will appear in September OUTING

THE FINDING OF MOSE BATES

By CULLEN A. CAIN

He Was Only a Pitcher on a Cornfield Nine
But He Was the First Wonder of the Ozarks

=^|HE story of how Moses
Bates, pitcher for the
Cornhill team, came to
join the Warsaw Blues
is the real comedy-drama
of baseball, as played
twenty years ago on the stage ringed
about by the foothills of the Ozark
Mountains in a certain state of the
Middle West. Mose played second base
for the Blues, and he covered more
ground than all the cedars of Lebanon,
was a sure fielder, had a good arm, and
was a reliable batsman. He joined the
team in the first days of its glory, and
he kept his place there when most of
the old players faded and died before
the frost of the curve ball.

It is impossible to convey any real
idea of the members of the old Blues
without telling about the town they rep-
resented on the baseball diamond. They
were the natural products of a peculiar
soil. The Blues made Warsaw famous
over all their section of the state, but
Warsaw made the Blues. Anyway, the
village loafer's wife made their blue
suits, and she was a part and parcel of
Warsaw.

The peculiarity of the Blues lay in
the fact that no member of the old team
had played ball in his younger days.
Baseball came late to Warsaw. The
town demanded a ball team at once;
the boys were too young to play any
real game, and the result was that the
town blacksmith left his hammer on
the anvil, the merchant turned the store
over to his clerk, and the barber let
his customers' whiskers grow, and these
men bade their mirth and their employ-
ments good-by while they went to the
baseball lot to learn the national pastime.
Yes, and they drafted a! farmer, and

[662]

that individual left his plow in the fur-
row and came to town to pitch ball,
while his first-born son pitched the hay
at home.

Warsaw is a county-seat town, on
the north bank of the Osage River. It
had 900 population. It still has 900 in-
habitants, and it always will have about
900 souls wTithin its borders. Fore-
ordination is a word invented to describe
the fixity of the Warsaw census report.
The river flows through the center of
the county. South of the river lies a
land of hills, black oak timber, flint
rocks, hound dogs, and farmers, who use
the dogs both to chase the fox and drive
the wolf from the door. North of the
river the land gradually issues forth from
the hills, and rocks into a rolling prairie.
The farmers to the northward were rich.
They brought wheat and corn and fat
stock to town and took back groceries
and money. The south side farmers
brought coonskins and ties and cordwood
and razorback hogs to town and took
tobacco and snuff and calico and a little
real money away with them.

Twenty years ago the town was al-
most isolated from the rest of mankind.
A rusty little old narrow-gauge railroad
was the only tie that bound it to the
outside world. The town was like an
old page of history. A placid, unbroken
calm rested upon it like a benediction.
No one ever went anywhere and no one
came to town from Outside the county,
except a few traveling men. Occasionally
a citizen took his courage in his hand
and his money in his shoe and went to
the little city forty miles away, and there
were a few, a very few people in that
town who had gone to the big city two
hundred miles away. These were trav-
eled gentry and looked up to according-

THE FINDING OF MOSE BATES

563

ly. They had an unfailing supply of
anecdote and story about these trips.

But make no mistake about the peo-
ple of this town. They were the finest
people in the world. Settled in the be-
ginning by pioneers from Kentucky and
Tennessee and later occupied by the best
blood from the Northern and Eastern
states, the folks there were the salt of
the earth. But, living apart from the
bustle of trade and travel, they ate and
drank and worked and gossiped and
married and died and were lulled to
sleep vithin sound of the river as it
lapped the bank and then stole away
to join the immensity of the ocean. They
lived with one foot in the past and the
other suspended in hesitation before it
should be set down upon the edge of
the present.

For recreation its youth skated in the
winter and went swimming and played
"town" ball and two-cornered "cat" in
the summer. Then baseball came, with
the slow and faltering march of prog-
ress, from the main to the branch-line
towns. The triumphs of the old St.
Louis Browns and Anson's Chicago
team fired the sporting citizens of the
community with enthusiasm. And the
aforesaid blacksmith and merchant and
the barber and the farmer started in
to learn the game. The sawmill man
was tolled away from his turning wheels.
The lumberman and the druggist lis-
tened to the call, and Warsaw started
in to play the national game.

The pastime soon flourished. The
town became baseball mad. The games
the Blues won were festivals of triumph,
talked about by every soul in town for
days and weeks. The games the team
lost were followed by periods of mourn-
ing, and the obituary notices of the de-
ceased were gone over many times by
the mourners. The town was like a
heartbeat. The sins and virtues, the
triumph and dismay of any citizen or
set of citizens had the sympathy or cen-
sure of all.

The first season of baseball in War-
saw was a parody on the game. It
was a cartoon ; a nightmare. But the
next summer witnessed the glory of the
coming of the Blues into the temple of
Ozark fame. The material was there.

Active, husky men in the prime of life,
living clean lives, muscles hardened by
work but not stiffened by the toil of
the cities, clear eyes and skilful hands,
they soon began to win ball games from
larger towns.

Pitchers in that country at that time
depended upon either the underhand ball
or speed. The pitcher with smoke and
control was a man of mark in that coun-
try in the early nineties. We had heard
of curves and we talked about curves
when some pitcher got a little inshoot
from his speed or a slow, faint out-
curve from his labored efforts and his
blistered fingers and weary wrist. But
practice and persistence make all things
well, and the real outcurve, bending like
Robin Hood's bow, came with the turn-
ing of the leaf. Our farmer pitcher
was a man of class. Small and wiry
and red headed and capable, he went
deeply and craftily into this baseball mat-
ter as he went into the buying and sell-
ing of stock. Farmers in his section
walked behind the plow, but he rode a
sulky plow.

That farmer used to ride a brindle
pony to town early every summer even-
ing and lead me away from my printing
office (I was the catcher for the Blues)
and for an hour I would catch him
while he worked out the depth and the
angle and the longitude and the pro-
fundity of the principle that makes a ball
deviate from a straight line while travel-
ing through space.

He finally solved the problem and I
broke the news to an expectant town.
This farmer stood by with lips closed
modestly while I lied about the width
and virility of his curves.

Up at the corner grocery store that
night I held forth like Patrick Henry
before the Virginia Assembly and the
lawyer and the doctor and the merchant
listened. The man who has not felt the
pulse beat and looked into the limpid
eye of a small town has not lived in the
pastures green of this life; he has mere-
ly traveled in the dust with the toiling
throng of pilgrims down the big valley
of the years.

Yes, I told them about how Matt
Alexander had mastered the curve ball
and had it tied to his doorpost. I dilated

564

OUTING

upon his control and the sharp, swift,
wonderful break to the ball. If I had
been another Aaron present when Moses
stood before the miracle of the burning
bush I had not been more eloquent. It
was true that Matt had no control of
this ball, and that I jumped from side
to side like a boy after a chicken, and
dug the ball out of the dust and jumped
in the air for it, but I forgot these things
in the wonder of the actual curve on
that ball.

We challenged the city forty miles to
the north of us on the strength of that
curve ball, — a city fifteen times as big
as Warsaw, a city with a ball team that
we had read about and worshiped from
afar. But, then, remember that the
downtrodden, rustic Puritan countrymen
of England finally rose up and swatted
the cavaliers from the cities and the
palaces.

The game was played in Warsaw on
the Fourth of July and the town and
assembled countryside left all business
stockstill in its tracks and went to the
ball game. And we won that game in
nine desperate innings of stress and bat-
tle by a score of ten to eight. The city
men went home disgusted and we staid
to celebrate and set up a landmark on
the track of time.

The town talked about that baseball
game to the exclusion of all other topics
for the next two weeks. Every play was
played again in tongue and fancy. Why,
even the checker game between the post-
master and the groceryman, that had
raged nearly every afternoon that sum-
mer, languished while the fruits of that
victory over the city of Salada were
placed again in the basket by every male
and most of the female inhabitants of
the river town.

A ball team from a country town came
the next Saturday and we wiped up the
greensward with that nine by a score of
fifteen to six.

We were swollen with pride and
puffed up with victory. Of that there
can be no doubt. We felt that we were
just a little bit the best ball team in
the West outside of the professional
leagues, and even those clubs might be
overestimated — we had never seen them
play.

Our left fielder, who was a fisherman
when he was not playing ball, was, we
firmly believed, ripe for professional
baseball in a big city, and we had an-
other man or two who was worth a
trial on any magnate's team.

So, when, a few days later, we got a
challenge from Cornhill, we laughed
long and loud. It was the joke of the
year and every wit in the village coined
new jests and won fresh laurels to wear
with DeWolf Hopper. Cornhill was
not even a village. It was hardly a
hamlet. It was merely a flock of farm-
houses unusually close together, and a
little store and a blacksmith shop and a
post-office rested in the center and oc-
casionally arose to the activity of busi-
ness.

The challenge was a scrawl and with
difficulty we deciphered it to read as
follows :

"To the Warsaw Baseball teem:

"We hereby challunge you all to play
us a game of baseball next Saturday
afternoon for a ball and bat. The game
be played on your grounds. Ancer.
"A. B. Dowling,
"Capt. Cornhill B. B. Teem."

After we had enjoyed the joke for a
day we were inclined to get sore at the
presumption of these farmers. We were
in Class A above them and would not
dignify them by giving, them a game
with such a great team. They would
have to go get a "rep." But some one
happened along to say that he had heard
that they had a pretty good team up
there and had won some games with
teams farther west. Some one else said
that he had heard they had a crackajack
pitcher on that team. Well, the upshot
of it was that we accepted the challenge,
just for the fun of it. The game would
be a parody on the noble art of baseball
as played by the Warsaw Blues, but we
would pile up a half a hundred runs on
this Cornhill bunch for a little practice
name and to afford sport to the multi-
tude.

The Cornhill players came to town
on horseback about ten o'clock that Sat-
urday morning. They rode down Main
Street and around behind a store and
tied their horses to a fence that framed

THE FINDING OF MOSE BATES

565

a hog lot on the river bank. They were
tall, sunburned, active, husky fellows,
but we never took the least sign of
warning from that. We had our little
fun and poked each other in the ribs and
passed our little jests to and fro. We
forgot entirely how we felt when the
Salada players acted that same way with
our team as the butt a few days before.

Those Cornhill men paid but little
attention to us. They loafed around
town and smoked two-for-a-nickel cigars
as a form of wild dissipation of city life.
I noticed that one of these men was well
over six feet tall and of a lathy build.
He had a freckled face, tanned by the
sun until it was as brown as a nut.
His hair was of the same light color as
the strands of a rope. His eyes were
electric blue and he had high cheek-
bones and a pleasant-looking face. For
all his rough, ill-fitting clothes and corn-
field post-office address, he carried him-
self like a town man and an athlete and
not like a follower of the plow across
the torn surface of a cornfield. He was
a competent-looking duck, and he was as
wiry and seemed to be fit as a prize-
fighter.

I inquired his name and was told that
it was Moses Bates. He was pitcher
for the visiting team.

Those Cornhill players went to their
horses at noon and fed the beasts and
then took little sacks from their saddle-
bows and munched their own dry and
frugal repast down there by the feedlot.
We were ashamed for long afterward for
the lack of hospitality we showed that
day to our farmer visitors.

At two o'clock the major portion of
the village repaired to the ball field to
be amused for an afternoon with the de-
tails of a slaughter. I will never forget
the spectacle those Cornhill players pre-
sented when they stripped off their outer
clothing and stood revealed in their base-
ball uniforms. Never did mortal men
stand in such motley, before or since,
for the world to see, as stood the pride
of Cornhill that day. They were ar-
rayed in undershirts of many kinds,
weights, and patterns; their pants were
made of bed-ticking, and some were red
and some were white and some were
blue and some were in plaid that all

these colors were called upon to make
into a perfect whole. Some of these men
had socks and some had not, and others
wore stockings of as many different
colors as Joseph's coat.

There was only one cap among the
nine men, and the tall pitcher wore that.
The others were crowned with gray
slouch hats, all except the center fielder,
a stocky man, and he wore a black derby.
Imagine a short, thick-set man in a pair
of red and white bed-ticking pants,
brown socks, white undershirt, and
derby hat rampsing across a baseball
diamond in the glory of a fall day.
Why, it was enough to make an Egyp-
tian mummy get down off the shelf of
time and laugh until the dust of ages
crackled down his back.

But he laughs best who laughs last.
That Cornhill ball team had never
drunk from the glass of fashion, but its
members had speed and strength and
some skill at playing the game. The
Blues came to the field to scoff, but they
stayed to pray for victory.

And that man Bates — that pitcher!
He was a human watchspring, and he
had four thousand kilowatts of speed.
His arm was so long that he could almost
hand the ball to his catcher. He had
a little dinky curve and a great big con-
trol lever. But it wasn't his pitching —
it was his fielding that dazzled us. He
was an icepick and a net and a dipper
and a centipede and a stone wall all in
one, was this ubiquitous pitcher. He
covered that infield as the feathers of a
bird cover her nest.

The men from the fields of growing
corn went to bat first and their lead
hitter drew a base on balls. He trotted
down to first, and then up rose out of
the bunch of visiting players sitting on
the grass a large man who wore a hat'
with a snakeskin around it for a band.
They called him "Rattlesnake Bill,"
and I should think they would. He
went down by first base and called out
to that runner to take a lead. He had
a voice like a storm at sea, this coacher.
He "jiggered" me so I let the first ball
pitched get away and the runner beat it
for second. Then this man Bates came
to bat, his long arms hanging loose as
flails at his sides. He slashed a hit out

566

OUTING

to right field and the runner came home.

We quit laughing then and got down
to work and retired the side,

Our first batter hit a grounder to
short, and that bespangled plowboy
mussed it up and we started in to laugh
again. This pitcher did not smile, nei-
ther did he frown. He went to work
in the earnest fashion of a man who has
a task to perform that must not fail
though all else should fail. The next
Blue batter hit a sharp grounder through
the infield — or it would have gone
through if that pitcher had not reached
down like a gorilla after a cocoanut and
scooped it up and thrown the man out
at first. The next hitter knocked up a
high fly back of second base. The pitcher
evidently did not place implicit reliance
upon his fielders because he went back
there himself like a cat and caught that
fly ball.

We set the Cornhill visitors down in
rather easy fashion in the next half and
then went in to bat to furnish the amuse-
ment we had agreed to furnish for the
multitude. But there was nothing doing
to speak of. Our left fielder, it is true,
got a long hit to right field. But the
pitcher fanned the next batter and threw
the next man out at first on a ball that
would have gone to the third baseman
if the pitcher had not intercepted it. I
came to bat next and I hit what I
thought was a certain two-bagger to
centerfield. That lily of the valley out
there in the black derby hat ran back-
wards like a periwinkle and fastened his
big red hands on that ball like fate's hold
on a Congo slave. He lost his hat but
he held the ball.

Some way or other that center fielder
did not look so funny to me after that
as he had before.

The men with the bed-ticking pants
came up in the third and scored two runs.
It was a fright. First man to bat hit a
dinky grounder to second and the saw-
mill man who guarded that bag for the
Blues got his legs mixed with his hands
and never did get hold of the ball until
after the runner had reached first. This
runner had a pretty good opinion of his
own speed, for lie started to steal on the
first ball the pitcher threw to the next
batter. I prided myself on throwing to

second. I snapped the ball down there to
the right place and in plenty of time, but
the second-baseman muffed it with his
clapboard hands while I called on the
blue skies above to witness that I had
been badly treated.

Next batter hit the ball a mile or two.
Our field sloped down hill back of second
base and the center fielder went after
that ball until he looked like a Swiss
tourist at the foot of a mountain. He
made a good throw in to the field and
the batter was held at third. One run
was scored on the hit. The man with
the derby hat then came up to the plate.
He walked like a duck and he handled
his bat as a cow would handle a carbine.
He hit the ball, though, and fate carried
the sphere to that unfortunate second-
baseman. He stopped it in good shape,
and then threw home to catch the runner
from third. The ball went twelve feet
over my head and the man from third
scored and the batter went on to second.
Our farmer pitcher fanned his next far-
mer opponent and the next two hitters
were out on easy fly balls to the outfield.

We tried hard in the third but we
could not score. That Cornhill pitcher,
that man Bates, he did not have any
more speed than our batters had mur-
dered before. He did not have as good
curves as that Salada pitcher we had
beaten. He had no more support in the
field than a spirit, but he did have the
most peculiar, jerky, widgitty-fidgitty de-
livery I had ever seen. The weaker hit-
ters on the team could land on him, but
the heavy sluggers were helpless. That
long arm went away back behind him
and then it flashed forward as though it
was going to uncouple in front of the
plate and hit the batter on the shins.
He always let go of the ball at some
station along the line of that delivery
that we did not expect it would "leave
from. It came from some place at the
side that did not seem to fit into the
arrangement of things.

And worse than all was the way he
fielded his position. It was uncanny the
way that: long-legged, long-armed man
cavorted over that diamond after ground
balls. We made a lot of dinky infield
hits and he must have had ten assists that
day. His infield could not have stopped

THE FINDING OF MOSE BATES

567

a barrel with any certainty and their
throwing was as eccentric as any oppos-
ing club could desire.

We blanked Cornhill in the fourth
and we made two runs on one hit and
three errors.

In the fifth Bates, the pitcher, came
to bat first for the visitors, and he made
his third hit and stole second when that
sawmill misfit dropped the ball. He
went to third when the batter hit to
second and the fielder threw to first.
He came home on a fly to the outfield.

We went to bat amid the jeers and
sarcastic advice from the crowd. It is
hard lines to have the home crowd guy
you, but we couldn't blame the home
folks very much at that. Every time a
spectator looked at one of those bedtick-
ing pieces of landscape prancing around
the field he would laugh and roll over.
And the things our friends said about us
were good and plenty. The score was
four to two against us and the crowd
could not understand why it was not
twenty to two in our favor. They could
see the grotesqueness of our opponents in
the matter of pants and play, but they
could not know about that pitcher, his
baffling delivery, his nerve, his calm, his
determination. They were a silent force
against us, and they got our goats. We
were not playing anywhere near to form.

But in this inning we took all our
goods down from the shelves and dis-
played them to the people who had come
to see. Our Dutch third-baseman beat
out a hit with the aid of a bad throw.
He stole second and he stole third. The
Cornhill catcher could throw hard and
straight, but it took him too long to set
himself and get ready to get the ball
away. And the third-baseman muffed
his throw anyway. A single over first
scored our runner and two errors in a
row gave us another run and two men
on. The taunts of the crowd changed
to cheers. The bed-ticking goods were
going to pieces under the strain.

But Bates, the pitcher, was as calm
and unruffled as a village preacher in his
study working on a Sunday sermon. He
ran out across the first base line and
caught a dinky foul. He fielded a hot
grounder and threw to first like a rifle
bullet and his face never changed and

his voice of profane anger never arose
when the ball leaked through that first-
baseman like a piece of cheese through
wet tissue paper. We scored five runs
that inning before Bates fanned a batter
for the third out.

We took the field in the sixth and got
right up on our toes. The first man up
went out to first on a grounder to short.
Jerry Engle, our left-fielder, caught a
fly from the bat of the second Cornhill
batter. Then came that center-fielder to
bat. He pulled that little billycock
derby hat down over his eyes to keep the
sunbeams away and he swung his big
club in savage fashion. I started to kid
him and mixed a little personal abuse
and unkind reflections in for good meas-
ure. He got sore easily, just as I judged
he would, and in his anger he hit at our
pitcher's outcurve for two strikes.

Then I turned a trick I had seen smart
country catchers turn on green batters
before, but it was one that I had never
tried as I deemed it unsportsmanlike.
But anything was better than being
beaten by those men of the bed-ticking
garments. I flipped the back of my mit
. against his bat as he swung back to
strike at the ball. He struck out. He
would likely have struck out anyway for
he was hitting at a wild one, but that
man got sore as a boil. He had a face
like a tin bucket full of cement. He
turned it on me in savage, silent fury.

'Til get you after the game," he
snarled. 'Til beat you to death then.
I kin do it, kid, and don't you forget it.
I ain't going to be put out of this game
or I'd do it now. But just you wait."

"You'll come about as near hitting me
as you did that ball," I came back at him
jauntily. But it was jauntiness that my
heart did not feel. There was too much
savage resolution in his face to hope that
he would forget that fight. And as for
me beating that man ; it was impossible.
He was as hard as a petrified hippopota-
mus. I could not have hurt him much
with a ball bat. I would have to fight
after the game and get beaten up. I
could see that fact written on the wall.

Well, we blanked them in that half.
And they held us in the last half.

In the seventh they made a run. Bates
made a hit in that inning. We also

568

OUTING

scored in the seventh. And the game
turned in on the eighth inning with the
score, Warsaw, 8; Cornhill, 5.

We mowed them down in the eighth
for a goose egg, and although we got two
men on in our half we could not get
them across. That human slat of a
pitcher turned a double play on us. We
made three hits off him and were begin-
ning to get onto that jerky delivery when
he turned the trick for two outs on a
hard-hit ball. Then he caught a careless
runner napping off third and we went to
the field with wrath and self-condemna-
tion in our hearts. Bates had retired the
side and still not fanned a man. It was
wonderful fielding and the crowd cheered
him generously.

Still, we had a three-run margin, and
while it was not the twenty runs we had
boasted about before the game, it was a
whole lot more than we had looked for
or hoped for about the middle of the
game.

Cornhill's first batter was an easy out
from the pitcher to first base. Then my
friend with the derby hat came to the
plate. Be sure I did not talk to him or
attempt to "jiggle" his bat. He stood
there squat and sullen as a Hindoo idol.
He struck at an outcurve and missed it.
Then he stood patiently and let three
balls go by. The call was three and one
and I signalled for an incurve. The
pitcher wound himself up into a writh-
ing knot and let go with all the steam
he had. The ball was high and close in.
It broke a little and — bing! it hit that
batter in the head just over his left eye.
The poor old derby hat broke with a
smash and flew ofr to the side in a bat-
tered mass. The owner of the hat fell
in his tracks as though he had been
touched by the wrath of the heavens
above. The ball bounced back almost
to second base.

I thought for sure the man was dead,
and I bent down and raised his head
to my knee. I was horrified for a mo-
ment. The crowd pushed in, as crowds
always do, in country, town, and on
Broadway. Someone poured a dipper
of water on the stricken man's head and
lie opened his eyes. The man was made
of iron, and he had a head like a Cru-
sader's helmet. He got up on his un-

steady feet and rubbed his eyes. I do
not know how many stars he saw, but
I will bet that there were more than
old Galileo ever saw in all his long
and busy life of peering at the heavens.
He was game, this man who wore a
derby hat in which to play baseball. He
wobbled down to first. He took a little
lead off the bag, and occasionally he
raised his hand to his bewildered head
and tenderly rubbed a lump there as
big as a navel orange.

The man with the snakeskin around
his hat came to bat next and he hit the
first ball pitched right through our third
baseman. The fielder half stopped the
ball, but it was too red-hot to handle.
The man with the lump on his head
made it to second, and Snakeskin easily
went to first. It was clouding up with
two men on and only one out. But
the next batter fanned the air. Two
out, two on, three to tie, and four to
win. It looked to be easy, after all.
But the next man hit to first base and
the fielder messed it up and a run came
in.

Two to tie and still two men on. It
was not looking so well. Then our
pitcher faltered under the strain and the
errors and walked the next man. Three
on and two to tie and this batting fiend
of a Bates was the next up. It looked
bad. He was sure to hit. He was cool
as a frappe. The pitcher served him
a dinky outcurve and he let it go by.
He had an eye like an icicle.

It was at this time that fate came and
took away from Moses Bates the game
he had earned with his batting, his field-
ing, his skill, and his cool courage. The
little old narrow-gauge train that usual-
ly came to town about noon had met
with a washout up the road somewhere
and was chugging in a straggler by four
hours. As the engine turned the curve
at the foot of the track it gave two or
three loud and cheerful toots to let the
people of the town know that it was
here at last.

The man of the snakeskin hat-band
was standing about two feet off third
base. When he heard that toot he turned
around and gaped at the little jerkwater
train as though it was the Purple Em-
peror on a transcontinental trunk line.

JENKINS'S MULE

569

He even took a step toward it and
looked earnestly and with open mouth
at the unusual sight. I had the ball
in my hand and I threw it to third.
The little Dutchman caught it, and he
actually had to step out to the runner
and touch him with the sphere. Every
man on the Cornhill team, except Bates,
was watching that train as it puffed
along in full view of the playing field.
Bates yelled a warning, but the snake-
skin man never heard him.

The game was over. We had won,
but it was that narrow-gauge train that
saved us.

We signed Moses Bates then and
there to play second base for us. The
agreement was that every time we had

a game we were to hire a man to do
his farm work while he came in the
day before and practised with us and
played the game.

He played with the Blues for three
years and they never had a better man
except Boles, the star pitcher, with the
dewdrop and the fast inshoot.

And the man with the derby hat?
You ask of him? Did he whip me?
No. That belt on the head knocked it
all out of him. He went to the grass
after he came in with that run and they
had to help him to town. He had for-
gotten I was alive.

The train saved us the game, but that
pitcher and his inshoot saved my bacon
that day.

JENKINS'S MULE

By K. W. BAKER

E were camping —
half a dozen of us —
on a little river in
East Texas. We
had been short of
game for a day or
two ; and late one afternoon Jenkins
went up the river alone to get some
squirrels for supper. At dark he had
not returned. We were just beginning
to get uneasy about him when he walked
into camp. He had three or four fine
squirrels, but we thought he looked un-
usually sober, and he answered our ques-
tions testily. So we decided to let him
alone.

After supper, however, when the pipes
were brought out, Jenkins spoke. "I got
lost this evening," he said, "and, by
George, I had the doggonedest funny
experience ! I was beating around in the
Big Thicket, when I heard something
just over yonder from me — some good-
sized animal, for I could hear the sticks
breaking under it as it moved. It sort
of whickered, or whimpered, now and
then, and I decided it must be a mule.

"So I said to myself, 'Well, it will
graze toward the hills as night comes
on, and I'll just follow it and get out of
the thicket, and then I'll see where I'm
at. So I kept on following it, but I
never could catch sight of it. And, as
far as I could tell, we weren't getting
on any higher ground. At last, just at
dark, I found that the critter had led me
right to the river! That gave me my
bearings, of course, and I struck out
for camp."

Jenkins knocked the ash out of his
pipe with elaborate unconcern ; he had
seen the gleam of excited conjecture in
our eyes, and he did not propose to be
bantered — yet.

Next morning, however, we struck
out early up the river. We wanted to
see the tracks of Jenkins's mule. And
there they were, plain as print — the
tracks of a good-sized bear, with Jen-
kins's footprints alongside.

"I thought so," said Jenkins, with a
frank grin. "Now see who can laugh
loudest — I'll admit that I felt him hug-
ging me all night!"

FIRST AID IN CAMP

By WILLIAM H. BEST, M. D.

What to Do in the Various Emergencies When the Doctor and the
Drug Store Are Far Away

^^TT™8^ HE summertime is once
more upon us. With the
warm breezes comes that
lackadaisical feeling we
are so prone to call
"spring fever." At the
first symptom our thoughts turn country-
ward and mountainward ; we begin to
see visions and dream dreams. Perhaps
it is a vision of the old tent under the
pine trees, ourselves clad in flannel shirt
and khaki trousers stretched on the
ground beside it: a vision of the trout
stream, and ourselves in long rubber
boots stealthily treading our way up-
stream, tempting the wily trout with a
fly that never saw life; or a dream of
the millpond, and ourselves under a tree
on the shore, line in hand, patiently wait-
ing for the catfish to consume the juicy
worm we have so dextrously and cal-
lously slipped over the hook.

Perhaps it is a vision of a canoe, and
ourselves guiding it down the rapid
stream or paddling slowly along the lake-
side where the shadows fall long and cool
over the rippling water; or it may be a
dream of ourselves in a sleeping-bag, or
wrapped in a blanket, dropping off to
sleep, while the croak of the frog, the
buzz of the locust, and the chirp of the
cricket passes from reality into our
dreams, and we waken in the morning
with cold noses and, if we've pitched our
; nts aright, Old Sol peeping at us over
the hill.

At any rate, whatever be the nature of
these spring dreams and visions, we heave
a deep sigh at this point, and the follow-
ing Saturday afternoon finds us at the
sporting goods store, replacing the broken
fish-hooks and having the reel repaired.
New stakes are needed for the tent, the

sleeping-bag leaks, a thousand and one
things must be attended to at once. And
although the realization of our vision is
still a month or more away, we finally
leave the store with the satisfactory
thought, "Within a few days all will be
in readiness; and then, by Jove! Hur-
rah for vacation!"

Into the midst of our dreams and vi-
sions crawls a wretched creature with
an appalling series of "supposes." Sup-
pose while you are stretched out on the
ground a snake bites you? Suppose when
you are treading up-stream after that
trout you step on a rock in the water
and sprain your ankle? Suppose the
coffee-pot boils over and scalds your
hand ? Suppose you fall from a tree and
break your arm? Suppose an insect
blows into your eye, or you cut your
hand, or you have stomach-ache, or any
of the other ills that flesh is heir to?
What in the world will you do then?
Any one of these possible, nay, probable,
misfortunes may spoil your vacation for
you.

If we listened to the miserable fellow
we probably would be frightened out of
our camping trip entirely. And yet it is
well to give some heed to his doleful
lament, if only to avoid the misfortunes
he enumerates. A simple camp medicine-
chest, inexpensively equipped, is as neces-
sary as pots and food ; and a speaking
acquaintance with some of the more
common accidents and ills, with a knowl-
edge of their prevention, intervention,
and cure, will prove a valuable addition
to the camp paraphernalia. Just before
leaving, tuck away in a safe corner of
the outfit a box containing:

Aromatic spirits of ammonia 2 ounces

Tincture of iodine 2 "

[670]

FIRST AID IN CAMP

571

Saturated solution of boric acid... 2 ounces

Castor oil 3

Pure alcohol 4

Hydrogen peroxide 4

Bicarbonate of soda % pound

A small bottle of carbolated vaseline.

A box of sterile cotton (% pound).

One dozen A. B. & S. pills.

One roll of zinc oxide adhesive tape (2

inches wide, 5 yards long).
One-half dozen muslin bandages, 3 inches

wide.
Three sterile gauze bandages, 2 inches wide.

The first evil we have to guard against
is constipation. Change in the water and
the character of our food may, during
the first few days, cause a constipation
which, unless promptly relieved, may
have disastrous consequences. It is not
a bad rule, therefore, to take a mild lax-
ative pill before retiring, for the first
night or two (A. B. & S. pills are as
efficacious as any). In most camping
trips our selection of fresh fruits and
vegetables is not very great. If, how-
ever, fresh, ripe fruits and such vege-
tables as lettuce, water-cress, celery, field
salad, tomatoes, cabbage, and spinach are
obtainable, they will take the place of a
laxative with most individuals.

We may have got Into some one's or-
chard and eaten more green apples than
our systems require, or because of a poor
catch of fish we have found it necessary
to open some of the canned goods brought
along for such an emergency; with a re-
sulting siege of cramps and diarrhea.
Our first impulse, probably, will be a
dose of sun cholera mixture or some
equally noxious mixture to check it. But
remember that a diarrhea is nature's ef-
fort to rid the intestines of some irrita-
ting substance; therefore help the good
work along with two generous table-
spoonfuls of castor oil for adults and, as
the patent medicine labels say, "children
in proportion." Repeat the dose in
twenty-four hours if necessary. In addi-
tion to this -a restricted diet of boiled
milk and a little cereal for twenty-four
hours, or — if this is not obtainable —
nothing at all except a cup of hot water
containing one-half teaspoonful of bicar-
bonate of soda every three or four hours,
will put us on our feet again, better than
ever.

If, true to Mr. Pessimist's prophecy,

the coffee-pot slips from its moorings just
as you stretch out your hand to lift it off
the camp-fire, its contents may inflict a
painful burn. To relieve the immediate
pain and discomfort, plunge the injured
part in water containing a tablespoonful
of salt and a tablespoonful of bicarbo-
nate of soda to the quart, and keep it
there for a couple of hours, if necessary,
until the burning sensation ceases. Then
wipe dry, smear the part thickly with
carbolated vaseline to keep out the air,
and wrap in a clean handkerchief or
bandage. Any water blisters that form
may be punctured with a sterile needle
(sterilize the needle by burning the
point of it in the flame of a match).
Then express the liquid, and continue
using the carbolated vaseline as before.
Maybe the coffee-pot is not the of-
fender. Perhaps Old Sol himself has
penetrated our tender skin with his rays
and while the pain may not be acute, yet
even a mild sunburn can cause us un-
necessary discomfort. Here an ounce of
prevention is certainly worth a pound
and a half of cure. If we smear carbo-
lated vaseline (or a good cold cream)
on our skin before exposing ourselves to
the sun's rays the skin will get sufficient
protection to eliminate the possibility of
any severe sunburn.

For Snake Bites

Of all the calamities liable to befall us
on a camping trip that will test our
nerve, perhaps the worst is to be bitten
by a snake. If this unfortunate thing
should occur, prompt action is impera-
tive. Bind a handkerchief, or rope, or
piece of bandage above the bite, that is,
on the side nearer the heart. By insert-
ing a stick under this bandage and twist-
ing it, sufficient tightness can be produced
to prevent the return flow of blood from
the bite-wound. This is to keep the
snake poison from circulating through
the body. (If the snake is inconsiderate
enough to bite you in the neck, such a
bandage might prove more disastrous
than the poison itself. But fortunately
nearly all snake bites are received upon
the arms or legs.)

After soaking the wound in hot wa-
ter (if you can get some quickly), suck

572

OUTING

it to extract the poison. This is not a
dangerous procedure, unless you have a
cut or scratch around your mouth. After
this has been thoroughly done, paint the
area with tincture of iodine, cover with
sterile pieces of cotton and bandage. The
tourniquet can then be removed and the
patient watched carefully for signs of
poisoning, which is first manifested by a
feeling of faintness. If this occurs, the
tourniquet should be immediately reap-
plied, and the wound once more vigor-
ously sucked. A teaspoonful of aromatic
spirits of ammonia every half hour for
three or four doses if necessary will act
as a satisfactory stimulant to the heart.
In the case of insect bites, particularly
mosquitoes, bees, and wasps, applications
of wet salt or wet earth are usually effi-
cacious. Rarely is the discomfort of
more than a few hours' duration. If,
however, swelling or pain increases, seek
medical advice without delay.

Curing Ivy Poisoning

A burnt child dreads the fire, and a
person who has once suffered from ivy
poisoning will give that plant a wide
berth. But those of us who have never
been "poisoned" are not necessarily im-
mune, and through carelessness or botan-
ical ignorance may be initiated this very
summer. You will recognize the affec-
tion first by the appearance of a diffuse
redness of the skin, soon followed by
many very small water-blisters, accom-
panied by intense itching. Wash well
with soap and water and a rough cloth,
then cleanse with pure alcohol. Follow
this with the application of a paste made
of bicarbonate of soda or smear well with
carbolated vaseline.

There is probably no one thing that
can cause as much discomfort, for its size,
as a particle of dust or sand in the eye;
and unless it is promptly removed it may
lead to inflammation of the eyeball. The
first attempt at removal will be to pull
the upper lid over the lower, and hold it
so for a few seconds. Then rub gently
toward the nose. If this fails to dis-
lodge the irritating substance, examine
the under surface of both lids, as well as
the eyeball, to discover the offender.
When found, wipe it gently away with a

bit of sterile cotton wrapped around a
match stick. Flush the eye with boric
acid solution.

Perhaps the most common of all acci-
dents that may befall us are wounds of
various kinds. The danger is twofold,

( 1 ) severe bleeding in deep wounds, and

(2) the entrance of germs, causing
blood-poisoning and even death. Bleed-
ing can usually be checked by pressing
on the wound with a piece of sterile cot-
ton. In some cases pressure may be nec-
essary for half an hour or even more.
As soon as the bleeding stops, pour tinc-
ture of iodine into the wound to prevent
germ infection.

Never wash a wound with water, and
never attempt to clean out a wound by
swabbing down into it. You may break
up the blood clots, thus causing a return
of the bleeding, or push the dirt and
germs deeper into the wound. Always
cover it with a piece of sterile cotton,
and then bandage. Next day the dress-
ing should be removed, the area cleaned
with pure alcohol (always remembering
to wipe away from the wound), more
iodine poured over it, and a fresh dress-
ing applied. Peroxide of hydrogen is
most useful in removing dressings that
have become stuck to the raw surface of
the wound.

In a punctured wound (from a nail,
fish-hook, pin, etc.), it is difficult to get
at the bottom. A slight cut with a pen-
knife (the blade, of course, must first be
sterilized) across the wound will produce
a slight bleeding, thereby automatically
washing the wound and permitting the
iodine to drain to the bottom. If the
wound is a cut from a sharp instrument,
a small strip of zinc oxide adhesive tape
will hold the cut edges together and pro-
mote the rapidity of healing.

Suppose you are so intent on casting
for that trout that you do not notice an
abrupt drop in the bottom of the brook —
and you turn your ankle. Although the
immediate pain is not intense, it becomes
gradually worse, and finally you regret-
fully decide to get back to camp and see
what the trouble is. After your boot is
removed, the swelling immediately in-
creases so that you cannot get it on again
— and then an attempt to stand on it
causes intense suffering. Well, you have

FIRST AID IN CAMP

573

sprained your ankle, and the sooner and
the colder the wet cloths you apply, the
less will be the resulting inflammation
and swelling. Cold applications should
be continued for at least twelve hours,
and then forty-eight hours of absolute
rest must follow. After that, if the foot
is strapped with zinc oxide adhesive tape,
you will be able to walk with a fair
amount of ease.

Strapping is far superior to a leather
ankle-support. Zinc oxide adhesive straps,
sixteen inches long and one inch wide,
can be made from the adhesive roll. The
first strap should be applied under the
rearmost part of the heel, and extend up-
ward behind the ankle bone on each side.
The next strap is applied behind the
lowermost part of the heel and extends
forward along each side of the foot to
the base of the toes. Each succeeding
strip should be applied in this fashion,
alternating one upward and one forward,
and each one overlapping its predecessor
in the same plane by about one-third its
width. Continue this until the entire
foot is covered.

The general plan of treatment of
sprains of other joints is the same, and a
little ingenuity will devise a method of'
applying the adhesive strips to support
the particular joint affected.

When in doubt as to whether a bone is
broken, treat it as such. In removing
clothing from a part of the body sus-
pected of injury, always rip or cut the
clothes (preferably along a seam, for the
garment's sake), so that the part may
not be moved. With gentle pulling place
the injured limb in its normal position,
using the uninjured limb as a guide.
While it is held in this position, apply
splints made from boxes, oars, umbrellas,

or even the limb of a tree, on each side
of the injured member, and bind them
firmly to it, not tightly enough to cause
severe pain. Always remember to have
the splints long enough to extend beyond
the next joint above and the next joint
below, so as to prevent all movement at
the point of fracture.

Each summer adds its victims to the
appalling lists of the drowned, and of all
accidents this is undoubtedly the saddest
ending of a vacation party. Indefati-
gable persistence, however, has brought
more than one supposedly drowned per-
son back to life.

The whole plan of treatment is to get
the water out of the lungs as quickly
as possible, and to restore breathing. To
this end, place the drowned person on
the ground, resting on his abdomen, his
face turned slightly to one side, and his
arms extended above his head. Stand
astride the body, grasp under the abdo-
men, and lift from the ground. This
makes the water flow from the lungs.
Then grasp him firmly on both sides of
the chest, just above the lower margin
of the ribs. Throw the whole weight
of your body on your hands and squeeze
the chest with all your strength. Then
relax the pressure.

This should be done eighteen times to
the minute, and continued until the vic-
tim resumes breathing. At times, in a
presumably hopeless case, an hour or
more of continuous effort has been re-
warded by a gasp from the apparently
drowned person.

As soon as breathing is re-established,
the patient should be wrapped in blank-
ets, put to bed with a hot lemonade, and
given a teaspoonful of aromatic spirits of
ammonia in a little water.

A feature of OUTING this fall will be an authoritative discussion
of football by Herbert Reed and Herman Olcott; they describe
the standard game which should be the basis of all play.

CANOE, CAMP AND CANAL

By C. H. CLAUDY

Illustrated with Photographs by the Authi

THE combination of canoe and camp is usually associated with
the Big Woods, with Canada or Maine, the remote places
of the Continent. Mr. Claudy shows that one need not wander
so far to find the pleasure that comes from the coupling of these
two fascinating aids to a successful vacation, In his own case the
fun lay along the old Chesapeake and Ohio canal and the Potomac
River. Other parts of the country offer similar advantages. So
if you hunger for the woods and streams, look about you. Perhaps
they are nearer and more accessible than you think.

O you believe it?" Pard-
ner turned in the bow to
ask the question. We
had paddled for half an
hour of ecstatic silence.
There was dull red be-
ginning to show on the back of my neck
— I felt it. A badly packed fry pan
beneath me made an uncomfortable seat.
Pardner had been righting a river fly for
fifteen minutes and I could' feel the grate-
ful cuss words he swallowed. It was so
good to be out again, to feel the paddle
between hands made tender by disuse, to
catch the reek of water-washed air, to
bend with the sliding glide of the frail
canoe, yes, even to catch the ache across
shoulders and sense the torture to come
where unaccustomed muscles protested
once again at the most primitive, most
delightful form of water craft propul-
sion.

"Do you believe it, really?" Pardner
asked again.

"I do!" I answered solemnly, catch-
ing his thought. "It didn't seem pos-
sible, but I begin to believe."

He bent to his work again, satisfied.
It is one of the beauties of a comradeship
born of the trail and the open, canoe and
camp, friendship fire and stinging morn-
ing dip — you don't have to explain every-
thing! I knew what he meant — well
enough did I know, who had moaned

[674]'

and groaned with him through the win-
ter months that lack of time on the one
hand, and business obligations which
took most of the available cash on the
other, should prevent us from a summer
plunge into the North Woods.

Then, in the midst of our wailing at
our ill fortune, and our solemnly sworn
oaths that no seaside resort nor mountain
summer hotel should tempt us from our
'woods gods ideal, had come the ama-
zing proposition. At first we laughed.
Then we mused. Finally, we asked.
"Why not?" At last we agreed to
try it.

And here we were, loaded canoe be-
neath us, paddling up the nearest avail-
able river in a civilized country, from a
boat-house we had reached in an auto-
mobile, with the prospect of two weeks
in the open before us.

To be sure, it was not the open we
knew. The white water we would fight
would be, perhaps, but a quiet riffle or
two, the adventures we looked forward
to experiencing were of canal lock-tend-
ers and purchase of food rather than
fights with the elusive piscatorial dweller
in the water or struggles with the wil-
derness. We had not that spice which
comes from knowledge that if we failed
with rod or gun, we would go hungry,
that if unskilful with paddle or canoe,
only our own ingenuity would stand

CANOE, CAMP AND CANAL

575

between us and the prospect of a very
long walk!

On the other hand, we, in our canoe,
paddling up a civilized river, and look-
ing forward to rounding its falls and
impassable reaches in a canal and via the
locks, had determined to make the most
of what out-o'-doors we could manage
to secure. We would live, even if within
the sound of a locomotive, with the same
care for details and carelessness of com-
fort that the Big Woods demand.

It was easier than it sounds. Already,
with the well-known discomforts which
prophesied rest and ease when once the
friendly fire should stare into the tent
at night, had come the spell of all out-
doors. When we swung into the river
bank, below the first obstruction wTe must
skirt, and portaged a good quarter of a
mile to the canal, there was no whit of
difference between our hearty anathemas
on the weight of packs and the multi-
plicity of equipment and those we might
have uttered had the earth beneath our
feet been wildest Canada or most deso-
late Maine.

The Equipment

Not that we had such a great equip-
ment, either. It weighed, without the
canoe, about one hundred and thirty-five
pounds. It was bulkier than we wTould
have carried in the Great Woods, be-
cause we had less and shorter portages
to make from river to canal. Our tent
was larger and roomier than the one we
had used in Canada and our provisions
were less. Equipment included a light
axe, a camera, a rod and lines, but fire-
arms were conspicuous by their absence,
save for a pocket pistol carried against
the possible tramp. Two nesting buck-
ets for water, fry-pan, coffee-pot, mixing-
pan, a pair of light cups, the usual eating
tools and a spare equipment of condi-
ments, flour, salt, sugar, bacon, beans,
rice and coffee, chocolate, etc., weighed
little, and packed handily into a tin box,
metamorphosed from a bread-box, with
a wooden inner cover wThich could be
erected as eating-table or cooking-rest as
fancy dictated.

Hardly had we transferred the canoe
from river to an overgrown and ancient

canal, so hoary with years it looked a
natural waterway, before we met with
the first adventure. Laugh not, ye who
have negotiated white water in Far
Places, knowing that slip of paddle
meant a lost outfit. White water is
white water, and the fact that ours was
within the confines of a dank and smelly
canal lock and caused by the too frequent
potations of a lock-keeper more bibulous
than benign did not make the prospec-
tive upset any more pleasant !

You enter a lock through a grudg-
ingly opened single gate. When it closes,
you are imprisoned in a coffin of stone,
with the sound of leaking water in your
ears and the dank odor of moss-grown
wet masonry about you. The lock-
keeper — keeper of you and your outfit
for the time being — is supposed to open
the valves in the upper gates slowly,
carefully, quietly, that the inrush of all
the water there is may not catch you
a la Bay of Fundy and distribute a scum
of outfit across the lock. Not so this
happy gentleman. With a free gesture
of utter unconcern he opened all the
valves at once, a few hundred tons of
canal started forward with a rush, and
the fight wras on !

What is the essential in white water
running? A keen eye in the bow, a
responsive trigger of nerves in the stern,
steerage way always and two sets of arms
that rise and fall as if moved by the
same brain, however out of stroke rock
and rushing water may demand the pad-
dles work. Here was need of all that
and more, for here was no steerage way,
no current the slant of which might be
used. If there were no rocks beneath,
high Heaven knows there were rocky
walls fifteen feet apart between which
we tossed as a cockle shell upon a heav-
ing ocean. But Pardner was not caught
napping and I have paddled stern behind
him enough to read the signs of his
humping shoulders and, anyway, when
the whole canal jumps at you, about all
you can do is paddle and trust to luck!

So we rode it out, the wavering figure
above leaning interestedly over a railing
and watching us as we shot from side to
side, swayed from end to end and shipped
not more than twenty gallons. Then,
as suddenly as it began, the rising sur-

576

OUTING

face smothered the influx, and we floated
on a choppy sea, paddles across our
knees, and looked the things we dared
not say until the lock was as full as its
keeper and the gate ahead opened.

But we never said them. That lock-
keeper was inspired !

"Guess I let it — hie — in — hie — er
wee bit too fast — hie — for ye!" he stam-
mered. ''Thought ye — hie — might like
to run — hie — er rapid!"

Passing up the "way bill" for which
canal companies exact as much payment
as if we captained a canal boat instead
of a canoe, we averted murderous eyes
and passed on. Pardner grinned at me,
and 1 as cheerfully at him.

"Who said 'no adventures?' " he
asked, as we sidled out of the lock on a
long stretch of quiet water.

"I didn't!" I exclaimed. "But I think
there is another coming — at least, you
will find it so!"

It was coming, too. We had flipped
a coin to see who started camp routine
on fire and cooking and who on tent and
bed. And Pardner had drawn the first
fire — above us loomed a thunder head
which spoke in no uncertain tones of
wet woods later in the day. But if I
thought to disconcert him, I thought too
quickly. In less than half a mile he
swung into the bank, stepped out and
with his knife started and broke off a
couple of "fat wood" knots, those life
savers for fire makers in United States
latitudes even more effective than touch
wood and dry birch bark of the north !

"Let her rain!" he said. "With this
I could build a fire in the lock!"

Obediently I let it rain, and rain it
did — buckets full. There are those who
camp up and down the canal who not
only drape their load with rubber blan-
kets— as we did immediately, for there
is small use of letting the bedding roll
slosh about in water when you can keep
it dry — but who slit rubber blankets and
stick their heads through, fondly imagin-
ing that such a "poncho" effect protects
them from a wetting. We didn't.
Flannel underwear, flannel shirts, flan-
nel trousers — for here was no brush to
go through demanding mackinaw or
canvas — could get wet, for all of us. It
did get wet, but no wetter than the dis-

consolate pair we passed, sweating under
their "ponchos" which but directed the
rain down the wearers' necks and upon
their thighs as they dipped and swung.
The sun, which reappeared before it set,
dried us out in no time, and Pardner
wondered audibly whether he would
need his fat wood.

It was still early, perhaps four o'clock,
but we began to look for our camping
place. For we had decided that this was
to be no miles-per-day trip. We were
going nowhere, except up the river and
the canal, and we were in no hurry to
get there. My shoulders had been com-
plaining in no uncertain tones for an
hour, but I wouldn't say so. I could
see his were tired and there was no hid-
ing the sun burn on his neck. Also the
inner man was calling clamorously for
filling.

Pardner picked out a nice quiet spot
on the tow-path side of the canal. I
vetoed it immediately.

"Why can't you remember this isn't
Canada?" I wanted to know. "These
canal boats travel all night. They'd
just as soon come into the tent and take
what they want as not."

A Place to Camp

In the middle of the argument as to
where we would camp, we were hailed
from the bank, and one we know as
Mike called us to his "shack." We had
not known he had a "shack" — evidently
there were others with Amazing Propo-
sitions of their own. Landing, we found
a rough but comfortable cabin, built be-
tween canal and river. A fire burned
in front, and there was a litter of cook-
ing utensils around which gave forth
various and sundry odors of burning
beans, sizzling bacon and smoky coffee.
We needed no second invitation to stop
and have our evening meal in company.

But we declined the hospitality of the
shack, tempting as it appeared. Our
tent was good enough and though the
ridgepole I cut was somewhat curved
and our portable home of canvas perhaps
not as taut and shipshape as it ought to
have been — for we really were hungry!
— it gave us both a pleasant thrill once
again to see that single isolated white

1 k "^

' 'lltjiijS:'''^^^' "'"

THE FINAL RESULTS. "BULLY ! LOOK AT ME THERE !

patch of home amid a tangle of trees,
grass, and bush which in the gathering
twilight looked so nearly like the real
wild miles away that we both fell heavily
under its spell.

But we did not approve of Mike's
fire, and with that freedom of the woods
which makes for frankness, we told him
so! Mike was trying to cook over a
bon-fire and the burning smells were ex-
plained. Pardner gave me a quizzical
glance.

"It's up to you!' I retorted. "It's
your fire make."

Nor did it take him long. Two green

logs, six inches around, formed a V on
the ground — a handful of twigs, some
shavings of "fat wood," some dead hick-
ory, and in fifteen minutes he had a bed
of smokeless coals between his logs on
which we balanced fry-pan and coffee-pot
and cooked a meal as appetizing as it was
simple. Later, we built up this simple
and small fire to a great blaze, and
backed it with a little wall of green logs
confined between uprights, driven into
the ground. The log wall faced the tent
and reflected a grateful warmth straight
into it. I had spread out the rubber
blankets and those of wool, first carefully

[577]

578

OUTING

KEEPING HER STRAIGHT IN A LOCK

pounding down all hummocks, stones,
and ridges on the ground.

Abler pens and more vivid memories
than mine have attacked the problem of
description of the first night "out."
Here, in the hum of insect, burble of
river, singing of the green logs, and
crackle of dry ones, punctuated though
they were with the occasional call of a
canal boatman, or the musical jingle of
the bell upon some "jenny mule," was
nothing different from their magic in
the Big Woods, the Far Places, the
Real Wilderness. I was too sleepy to
moralize, but I glimpsed the lesson this
civilized camping trip had yet to teach
and fell asleep comforted that the Ama-
zing Proposition was working out.

About fifteen minutes la-
ter the sun streamed in and
woke us up. We dragged
each other — if you can' be-
lieve our stories — to the river
side and pushed each other
in. Pardner says he came
willingly and that I was lag-
gard— I know I had to throw
him in or he wouldn't have
had his bath ! But whatever
the truth of the matter, the
chill of the river wiped away
the last clinging finger of
sleep, and we faced the prob-
lem of breakfast, of packing up and
getting off. It was half past four, and
by five-thirty we were ready. I found it
strangely easy to fall back into habits
learned on many previous trips — I struck
tent and rolled up blankets as if it was
my usual way of beginning the day.
Pardner had a breakfast ready before I
was through, and sleepy Mike, protest-
ing at our early hours, bade us bon voy-
age (though he did not say "Bo-jo, bo-
jo") and asked us to stop on our way
back.

We passed a dozen or more shacks
that morning — a regular colony of
roughly-built little woods residences.
Later we bought one of our own and
found to our wonderment that dozens

CAMP BY THE CANAL

CANOE, CAMP AND CANAL

579

of fellows we knew owned them, and
found them, if far from the permanent
camps of Maine, a capital substitute and
a pleasant way of getting some "near
camping" between Saturday noon and
Monday morning.

We passed through a dozen locks this
day on our way "up," for the Big Falls
of the river lay to our left, falls too
big for the cleverest Ojibway poler who
ever lived, let alone our unpractised
hands. But we rounded them at last,
made a short portage to the river above
the falls, and knew that not for another
thirty miles need we desert the bigger
stream for its artificial neighbor.

I make no apologies for saying that in
the afternoon we were weary. Go you,
from desk or office, into the wilderness
with not one day of restful travel, sleep
on the ground and wake with the sun,
paddle twenty miles upstream, and if
you are not tired by three in the after-
noon don't speak to me — I won't know
you! So when we came to a little is-

-9 . ■:■ „^

l«

■4f*

■

>'$ v. .

•

THE CANOE MAKES A HANDY DRESS-
ING TABLE

PARDNER IS A COOK

land in the middle of the river, we de-
cided to camp. At the same moment the
weather gods decided to send us fresh
water. In a drenching downpour we
unpacked and erected the tent, pitched
the rubber blanketed bedding roll inside
to keep dry, and built a fire.

It is the ultimate test of woodcraft
to build a fire of sopping wet wood in a
driving rain on wet ground. I have seen
campers on this same river use a kero-
sene can and succeed finally in conquer-
ing the water. But no sane person car-
ries kerosene on a real camping trip, and
we were too old hands to allow our-
selves that deceptive comfort. It was
with "fat" wood and split branches that
we went to work, Pardner holding his
rubber blanket over the space in which
I labored. I would not boast, but I sus-
pect that when I finished and saw the
leaping flames defying the rain I had a
complacent smirk upon somewhat
smudgy features!

Alas! Sharpshin Island — not named
for its similarity to any one's anatomy

CAMP AT SHARP SHIN ISLAND IN THE UPPER POTOMAC

but — so say the natives — from an ancient
Indian name meaning Mosquito Home
— did not welcome us. To be sure, the
thunderstorm passed, and the grass
dried, and we lay in comfort and smoked
and grinned amiably at the success of
our amazing proposition. Here, in the
middle of the river, was no sight or
sound to mar our imaginative pretext
that we were deep in the wilderness.
But there were other sounds, buzzing,
suzzing sounds. Pardner slapped and
made curious, swallowing noises, which
I took to be strangled curses. I said my
say aloud, shamelessly, and slapped as
vigorously. Finally, realizing that we
were camped on the original mother lode
of all mosquitoes, we silently struck tent,
packed up, and paddled on, homeless, in
the pale moonlight, to find some less in-
fested spot.

"What? Old woodsmen and move
for mosquitoes?" I hear you say it.

But when one goes to the mosquito
country, the no-see-um country, the
country of the black fly and all his kith
and kin, one goes with netting and with
lotion, wearing gloves and taking care.
One of the points about the Amazing
Proposition had been this very thing.

"And there won't be any of those in-
fernal no-see-ums to set you wild any-
way," I had observed. "They don't fol-
low these civilized waters."

Now Pardner wished in his heart to
slay me. For we had no protection, and
I submit it is better to move and let the
mosquitoes have the last word, or buzz,
than to be eaten alive! The next time
we go, if there is a next time, and I
shrewdly suspect there will be, there
will be also mosquito netting for a drop
inside the tent, and we will camp on
Sharpshin and figuratively hold our fin-
gers to our noses and invite the mos-
quitoes to do their pointedest ! Never
again will we trust in civilization as a
mosquito exterminator.

They were golden days. We passed
from river to canal, from canal to river.
Instead of the long portages about rapids
which may not be poled, we but climbed
from river to canal, where there is al-
ways a lock to lift you to the higher
levels. We lived on the fat of the land ;
it is surprising, coming from the city
and its expensive markets, how inex-
pensively one can buy in the country.
Not infrequently we could get fresh
milk, and Pardner the buttermilk he

[580]

THE END OF THE PORTAGE

loves. Water to drink was the most
vital problem we had, for the rivers
which flow near large cities — you re-
member the schoolboy who couldn't un-
derstand why? — are not the best sort of
drinking water. But every lock with

its little lock house and tender has a
well, each keeper swears giving "the best
water on the ditch!" and we managed
without much trouble to carry a full
bucket with us for drinking purposes.
It is a hundred and fifty miles to the

THE PALISADES OF THE POTOMAC

[581]

LUNCH BESIDE THE CANAL

end of the canal and the latter third of
the journey must all be made upon its
quiet surface, for the river is too full of
rocks and riffles here to negotiate against
a current running swifter and more
swiftly every day. Innocently we
thought this swiftness due entirely to its
narrowing banks and shallower depths,
but we found later that it was the work
of a summer flood. The almost daily
rains had their effect, and when we
turned to go the other way, to take the
glorious trip down, where a paddle
doesn't pull across the shoulders with
quite such a distressing effect, we found
that all we needed was steerage way —
the current did the rest.

Here we had small adventures of vari-
ous kinds. I broke a paddle by trying
to pull the canoe around in one sweep,
landing us squarely against a rock. It
was a sharp rock. Consequently we had
to get out and walk the canoe to shore,
unpack, and mend a jagged slit.

Here came into play a mysterious tin
box which Pardner had packed religious-
ly in his duffle bag, without saying what
it was for. Opened, it disclosed some
strips of canvas, a small tube of white
lead and a bottle of varnish. With these
materials we effected a serviceable repair
in short order. No, I don't think white
lead comes in tubes. Hut white paste

does. Pardner had washed out the paste
and rammed home the white lead and I
blessed his ingenuity, as you may in like
circumstances !

But Pardner surpassed himself when
he produced a small tank development
device from his capacious bag and pro-
ceeded, one lazy day in camp, to develop
several rolls of film. It is extraordi-
nary to think of the compactness of a
complete photographic outfit in these
tabloid days. Developing and fixing
powders came forth in packages, the wa-
ter bucket became a fixing tank, the
whole river was a washing pan, and I
will not deny that in spite of many ribald
comments I was as interested as he in
seeing the results of our photographic
labors.

Mending a canoe, taking a picture, de-
veloping a roll of film — they do not
sound exciting as adventures, do they?
It is a part of the amazing proposition,
this interest we took in the trivial. For
the quiet days on the water, the rustling
stillness of the nights in camp, worked
their spell. We no longer played at real
camping — our expedition became as real,
as full of the joy of the open, as inter-
esting, as potent in its spell as any we
have enjoyed together. Here adventures
are not to the adventurous but to the
imaginative — it is as much a matter of

L582]

PARDNER PREPARES TO CO AND BUY SUPPLIES

interest where we camp and who gets the
meal as if the country depended upon
our decision. But we did have one real
adventure, one genuine thrill, sufficient
for the most exacting. It is more pleas-
ant in retrospect than it was in its hap-
pening.

We camped one night near the shore
for convenience. The river was still ris-
ing. But we did not realize how fast.
In the middle of the night the river
came into the tent and got in bed with
us, and there were a few lively minutes
before we retreated, tent .and all, farther
up the bank. The next morning the
water was three feet deep over our last
night's cooking fire.

This would have mattered little, ex-
cept that we were two miles above Great
Falls, and the canal, by which we had to
go around them, was across the river.

However, we felt no fear. We had
too much pride of paddle for that. And
it was not until we were half way across
the river that we ran into a fifteen-mile
current sweeping irresistibly toward the
falls. Then, I assure you, we woke up
and paddled in earnest! There would
be nothing left but splinters if we ever
went over, and neither of us fancied a
watery grave. Pardner commanded,
and his command was hard to obey —
for he insisted on running straight down
to destruction.

But the reason was obvious. Where
there should have been shore was noth-
ing but trees, deep in the water — the
shore was now river bottom. To> shoot
in among those trees at the speed we
were traveling — well, it might have
saved our lives, but it would have been
the end of our canoe and outfit — and it
was a long walk home! So Fardner
held on down, skirting the flying tree
trunks and every moment the roar of
those tumbling waters came louder and
more disagreeably to our ears. Finally
it became so loud that we could not
make ourselves understood. I had sav-
age thoughts of desertion and I yelled
my throat hoarse with imprecations and
futile announcements that I was going
to swing in under the trees, let the canoe
go, and save my skin.

Pardner swears he didn't hear a word
— that the noise of the falls drowned
everything I said. That I didn't take
matters into my own hands and sweep
the frail craft in toward the shore that
was not there is probably because of
some remnant of pride! However,
Pardner was as calm as I was excited,
and just when it seemed as if the very
next minute would see us over the falls
— they were actually within seventy-five
yards — he paddled hard. I followed his
lead, we swung in close, he reached up
and grabbed some wild grape vines

[583]

584

OUTING

hanging from the trees, we swung
around in a sweeping curve, stern down-
stream, brought up amid the tree trunks
safely, with barely a bump, and Pard-
ner spoke.

"Got a match?" he asked casually.
"My pipe's out."

They didn't believe us on the canal
when we said we had crossed the river
above the falls in that flood. Nor did
it do us any special good, for the river
and the canal were one, so high was the
water, and we had to camp and wait for
it to fall, so the locks could be found
before we could use them. It was that
or portage several miles, and we were
too lazy to do it. Besides, what were
a day or so more or less to us?

So I might go on for pages. The ex-
citing incidents were few — the every-day
adventures, of purchase of food, of search
for water, of selection of camp, of pick-
ing a bathing rock, of taking a picture,
of hauling in a finny dinner all floppy
and wriggling, of cooking, of the treas-
ure trove of berries and red apples, of
the bottle of cider from a dear old
gran'ma who thought "sech triflin'
young men" as would "spen' good mus-

cle and daylight jess paddlin' " needed
comfort — these were too numerous to
mention.

When at last the trip was over, when
we had pulled the canoe on the boat
house float, changed into civilized clothes,
combed our hair, tied unaccustomed
neckties about dark brown necks and
telephoned for the car, it suddenly be-
came very precious. It had not been
Canada, no, nor Maine, and the isola-
tion was not complete, nor the water as
beautiful, nor the climate as invigorating,
nor the days so full of change and in-
cident. But it had been good — good to
us and good for us. Suddenly we real-
ized that our lesson was learned. It is
not the exterior surroundings, the local-
ity, the genuineness of the atmosphere
which count. It is one's power of en-
joyment and one's willingness to believe.
It is the inner vision, not the outward
seeming, which makes any outing a thing
of joy, whether that inner vision be stim-
ulated for the first time by the real
wild places, or, as in our case, in retro-
spect, with onlv a civilized waterway on
which to hang the rags of last year's
camping joys.

"Out with the Wavies" is a Wild Goose Story by Hamilton
M. Laing in September Outing — the Fall Shooting Number.

FILIPINO CATCHER WAITING FOR A THROW TO THE PLATE IN THE FILIPINO-
JAPANESE SERIES

ATHLETICS HELPING THE
FILIPINO

By O. GARFIELD JONES

Illustrated with Photographs

Baseball, Basketball, Track and Field Doing Their Share in
Developing the Art of Self -Government

UlZl A rock shot
past the catcher's
head and bounded
across the diamond.
The crowd on the
sidelines stopped
their shrieking and prancing long enough
to look disapprovingly in the direction
from which the rock came, and then re-
sumed their frenzied rooting. Cries of
"Wasaiud sa pitcher! Carabao! Sal-
vage! Tulisane sa umpire! Yi! Yi!"
filled the air on all sides. Caceres had

won the championship three years in
succession, and now the umpire was giv-
ing it to them again, right on Albay's
home grounds.

To allay the excitement the Americans
scattered through the crowd and, with
the aid of the native police, stopped the
rock-throwing, so that the game could be
continued without endangering the life
of the Caceres catcher, who had to turn
his back on the excited rooters. But
when Caceres finally won the game on a
close play at the plate, neither the Amer-

[585]

586

OUTING

icans nor the native police could stop all
of the rock-throwing in the mob of en-
raged rooters, who jeered the visiting
players all the way to their dressing-
rooms. That night several policemen
wTere stationed around the house in
which the visiting team tried to sleep,
but in spite of their vigilance rocks came
shooting out of the darkness in a steady
stream, rattling on the roof like hail.

At Pagsanjan, near Manila, a game
between Pagsanjan and Santa Cruz
ended in a free-for-all fight, and the two
Americans in charge of the Santa Cruz
team were knocked about quite a bit be-
fore they succeeded in getting their boys
safely out of town. When the boys got
back to Santa Cruz and told of their
troubles, the two Americans had another
fight on their hands to keep the men of
Santa Cruz from going back to Pagsan-
jan in a body to clean out that town.

Last year a bad decision by an umpire
precipitated a fight between the towns of
Bacon and Sorsogon, in southern Luzon,
and for several days the constabulary
had to be stationed between the two
towns, to keep the men apart until the
excitement quieted down.

A Good Kind of War

This state of affairs is looked on by
some as cause for discouragement. But
to the student of sociology this is simply
the transition that must take place if the
Filipinos are to pass with seven-league
boots through the various stages of po-
litical development. President Wilson,
in his essay on "The Character of De-
mocracy in the United States," says: "It
is a strenuous thing, this of living the
life of a free people, and our success in
it depends upon training, not upon clever
invention." That is to say, applying this
idea to the Philippines, the future of
democracy in the Philippine Islands does
not depend upon the cleverness of the
aristocratic class of Filipinos so much as
upon the kind of every-day training in
individual self-control that the mass of
the people receive.

It was only the heads of the leading
families who had any political or social
responsibilities thrust upon them in
Spanish times. The ordinary Filipino,

commonly called a "tao," could hardly
have been called an individual at all ; he
was only one section of a group of rela-
tives, "parientes," who worked, ate,
slept, and amused himself much as a
child of twelve or fourteen years would
do, depending on a rich uncle or cousin
to look after his political affairs and loan
him rice in time of need.

The modern state is an organization
whose bond of union is common political
and economic interests. Aristotle said,
"The state is prior to the individual."
That is, society is originally made up of
clans, or families, and the self-conscious,
self-willing individual does not emerge
until political and economic interests
arise that split up these compact groups
and cause new alignments in the form
of political parties, craft guilds, and re-
ligious sects that cut across the original
blood relationships and emancipate the
individual. In this process of emanci-
pating the individual, old forms of con-
trol are necessarily broken down ; conse-
quently, unless new forms are developed
immediately to take the place of the old
ones, anarchy develops and may become
habitual. It is in the development of
these new forms of social control that
competitive athletic games have their
greatest usefulness.

Since it was only the heads of families
who had to bear the brunt of competition
and responsibility in the past, it is not
surprising that the common Filipinos
should become too excited over inter-
municipal baseball games. But it is only
by such contests that association based on
blood relationship can be made to give
way to association based on community
of interests. It is only thus that familism
can be made to yield quickly to individ-
ualism. And it is only thus that leaders
can be quickly taught to choose men be-
cause of their efficiency rather than be-
cause of their kinship.

An important element of Western
civilization is practical efficiency. This
is based on the principle of choosing men
for important positions on the basis of
their ability to fill such positions, but it
took us Anglo-Saxons centuries to learn
that our friends and relatives were not
necessarily able men. The merit system
has not yet been adopted in many gov-

CLEARING TEN FEET IN GOOD FORM AT BICOL MEET. NOTICE FILIPINO AT LEFT

HELPING HIM OVER THE BAR

ernment circles, and it is still disregarded
in business affairs to a large extent.

This habit of choosing men on the
basis of their efficiency is a hard one to
acquire. The natural feelings are all
against it. But in the realm of baseball
it does not take many games to show
most conclusively to the appointer, the
captain or manager, and also to the pub-
lic, the rooters, that poor, ignorant, low-

born Antonio, with his batting eye, is
more valuable than handsome, educated
Federico, the captain's own brother, who
has no batting eye. It is death to famil-
ism when Captain Marcos, assailed by
his domineering relatives in Federico's
behalf, replies: "Yes, but Federico can't
hit a flock of balloons nor catch anything,
either. You know I do not like that big,
sloppy Antonio, but he wins games,

[587]

'<■■■> 9J f\

• • •'

-:gt^y^WBii0^^

*
~" 2L'.

VOLLEY BALL ON THE LUNETA AT MANILA. THE BEST GAME FOR A LARGE

NUMBER OF PLAYERS

while Federico has lost every game he
has been in!"

There may still be favoritism in the
appointment of certain high government
officials, and we know that great cap-
tains of industry often give their sons
positions that they do not deserve, but
who can imagine a major-league manager
playing his brother in left field simply
because he is his brother! Who can
estimate the importance of having such
a splendid example of impartiality con-
stantly before the citizens of this Repub-
lic, even though it is in the realm of
sport!

The individual basis of self-govern-
ment is self-control, and self-control can-
not be learned from books. It is a habit,
not a theory. It can be learned only by
practising self-control under strain, and
athletic contests furnish the maximum
of strain with the minimum of danger.
We say the Anglo-Saxons are good
losers, but by that we mean the Anglo-
Saxon men. A Central American revo-
lutionist can take defeat with no less
grace than do some of the great-great-
granddaughters of Good King Alfred

himself. In short, good losers are those
who have learned the bitter lesson in
their boyhood games, and without such
training anyone is apt to be a spoiled
child. The older generation of Filipinos
will probably never learn to lose a ball
game or a political contest with good
grace; the younger generation not only
will, but in many cases have learned it.

Contrary to American precedent, the
girls in the Philippines are as enthusiastic
in athletics as the boys. One Philippine
town has twenty-five girls' basket-ball
teams, and indoor baseball is played by
schoolgirls all over the Islands. The
girls' interscholastic championship con-
tests in basket-ball and indoor baseball
are among the big events of the Manila
carnival every year.

These girls' contests not only develop
healthful, vigorous, self-reliant mothers
for the future, but they also develop
within these mothers of the future a
sense of fair play that is lacking among
all non-athletic peoples. This sense of
fair play will not only make better citi-
zens out of these girls, should they be
given the right to take part in the gov-

[588]

FILIPINO CONTINGENT THAT WON THE FIRST FAR EASTERN OLYMPICS

ernment, but also it will enable them to
hand down this sense of fair play to their
children more successfully than the less
athletic mothers of Europe and America
can do it.

Just how important the sense of fair
play is to good government is hard to
say, but certain it is that fair play and
favoritism are contradictory terms, and
favoritism is the fountain head of both
graft and inefficiency. Despots in Mex-
ico could not employ the "Ley de fuga"
to kill off their political enemies if the
citizens of that country had a vigorous
sense of fair play as a heritage from
their boyhood games. The present po-
litical heritage of the Filipinos came from
the corrupt system of Spanish colonial
politics; but the Philippine political tra-
ditions of the future are going to be
shaped by the habits and ideals of the
present generation of Filipino boys and
girls who are being molded in a system
of public-school athletics that is superior
to any state-wide system of public-school
athletics in America.

Speaking of the attempt of the Puri-
tans to establish republican government
during the Commonwealth of 1653, Pro-

fessor Macy says that the splendid "New
Model Army" "could vindicate the honor
of England against foreign foes, but it
could not rule the United Kingdom as
a democracy. It could not do this be-
cause there was no educated and trained
self-conscious body politic which was in
a position to give commands to the army
itself and to make it a subordinate agent
of the nation." All that could be done
at that time was "revert to monarchy."
It is not till "the Victorian age that there
appears a trained constituency to whom
all officers look for guidance."

Thus the great English people of the
seventeenth century tried to become a
democracy in a decade and failed. Some
people think the Filipinos can accom-
plish this feat in twenty years, but they
have absolutely nothing but their enthu-
siasm to support their argument. On
the other hand, it is not necessary that
the Filipinos should require as much time
for the development of an "educated and
trained self-conscious body politic" as
England has required, because England
was blazing the way. To-day we can
teach the Filipino children all that the
present-day English children are taught

[589]

590

OUTING

in their schools. In fact, we are teach-
ing the Filipinos more, because there has
been no English conservatism in the
Philippines to prevent the utilization of
the very best methods that modern peda-
gogy has devised. As regards the de-
velopment of a spirit of fair play and
democracy, the Filipino children have the
advantage of the English or American
children, because in democratic athletics
the Philippine schools lead the world.

Respect for authority is another pre-
requisite of good government. Dictator-
ship in a country is an open confession
that the people of that country respect
nothing but military force. The insur-
ance companies would cancel their poli-
cies on Umpire Sheridan if he were to
go into Mexico to umpire ball games
between Mexican teams. Even here in
the United States the essential qualifica-
tions of an umpire a decade ago were
bravery and fighting ability, rather than
experience in the game and judicial
ability. To-day, any capable umpire is
complete master of the situation. In
organized baseball he sends the popular
idol to the bench for a single word of
impudence, and even in the sand-lot
games he is a successful dictator so long

as he is apparently fair in his decisions.

The umpire and the athletic coach
give the over-individualistic American
boy a bit of the discipline that he so much
needs in this page of "laissez faire" and
declining parental authority. In an
Oriental country, where the influx of
Western ideas and newer social thought
are undermining all of the old methods
of control, the umpire and the athletic
coach are indispensable to keep the un-
shackled youths from becoming anti-
social, and to develop in them that
respect for duly constituted authority
which all government worthy of the
name requires.

President Wilson has aptly said, in an
essay on American democracy: "Long
and slowly widening experience in local
self-direction must have prepared them
for national self-direction." That is to
say, strong municipal self-consciousness
is the foundation of political progress
along democratic lines, and just in pro-
portion as these Philippine communities
are being torn apart by athletic rivalry,
just in that proportion are the races and
factions of each community — Spaniards
and Chinese, Malays and Negritos, aris-
tocrats and "taos" — being united as one

AN EXCITING MOMENT IX ONE OF THE BASKETBALL GAMES HELD IN CONNEC-
TION WITH THE PHILIPPINE INTERSCHOLASTIC MEET

ATHLETES OE BICOL MEET BEFORE GRANDSTAND AWAITING OPENING BY W.
GILBERT, VICE-GOVERNOR OF THE PHILIPPINES, APRIL, 1913

people in support of the baseball, basket-
ball, or track team in its competition
with the rival teams from the neighbor-
ing towns.

What is the one great common inter-
est of Swedes, Poles, Jews, Italians,
Slavs, and native-born Americans in
Chicago or New York? Baseball has
been a big factor in developing municipal
self-consciousness in the United States,
but how much more must this be the
case in the Philippine Islands, where
there are no traditions of local self-
government! In the past the rich old
uncle (cacique and political boss) has
been the center of social crystallization in
the Philippines. Political factions were
usually spoken of as the Altavas faction
or the Godoy faction ; that is, the Smiths
or the Browns. A few aristocratic fami-
lies dominated the affairs of the entire
province, and the big social events of the
year were the bailes (balls) given by the
rich old uncle for his relatives and de-
pendents.

To-day these provincial clans are being
split into scores of fragments by these
inter-village contests. The school and
the athletic field have displaced the rich
old uncle as the center of social life.
Blood relationship is giving way to con-

tiguity and common interest as the social
bond in the community. The recrystal-
lization of Philippine society on a mu-
nicipal basis is rapidly taking place.

Athletics have also been a factor in
developing national self - consciousness
among the Filipinos. Their baseball
teams have competed with the Japanese
teams for several years, and in February
of last year a picked team of Filipinos
won the first Oriental Olympics, defeat-
ing strong teams of baseball and track
athletes from both Japan and China.
The Pentathlon wTas won by a Filipino
high-school boy who is also one of the
star pitchers of the Islands.

The American teacher is now slowly
withdrawing from the outlying districts
in the Philippine Islands, but the school
system, and especially the athletic system,
have been so vitalized and adapted to
Philippine conditions that they are con-
tinuing to creep farther and farther into
the mountain communities and seashore
villages. Self-governing ability in ath-
letics has now been established, because
the reactionary influence of priest and
old-line politician has been nil on the
baseball field. Naturally, such progress
has not been achieved in those fields
where the elder generation has retained

[591]

CACERES TRACK TEAM AT BICOL MEET, ALBAY, 1913. NOTICE BANNER, 'NO

QUARTER," AT RIGHT. THIS IS A PART OF THE TEAM THAT WAS

STONED DURING FORMER VISIT TO ALBAY

control, but with the development of in-
dividual self-control, a vigorous sense of
fair play, and respect for duly-constituted
authority among the rising generation of
Filipinos, and with the recrystallization
of Philippine society upon a municipal as
opposed to the relationship basis, the
groundwork for real political progress is
being laid in the Philippine Islands as
nowhere else in the world.*

*The writer realizes that athletics are not

the most important influence for the devel-
opment of self-governing ability. General
education as furnished by the Philippine pub-
lic schools is the fundamental thing. Indi-
vidual economic efficiency is also necessary,
and this is being provided for by one of the
very best systems of industrial education in
the world. The athletic activities of the
Philippines have interested the writer be-
cause of their wonderful progress and because
they are contributing elements that are abso-
lutely essential for a self-governing people,
elements that neither book education nor in-
dustrial training provide.

"The Elusive Musk-Ox and the Delusive Dog-Rib"
is a tale of hunting in the Barren Grounds above
Great Slave Lake — September OUTING.

[592]

ON FISHING THE SALMON POOL

By A. B. BAYLIS

What the Angler Should Do to Make Sure He Is Not Missing

Any of the Big Ones

TYPICAL pool on a New-
foundland River differs
greatly from any pre-
conceived picturings. I
had always thought that
a pool was a deep, quiet
stretch of water in which great, lazy fish
floated, and on whose mirrored surface
the slightest splash of a bungled cast
spelled disaster. There are such pools,
but they rarely contain fish, and when
the fish are there they are usually wait-
ing for a rise of water, and unless taken
in the quick water at the head or tail
of the pool seldom pay any attention to
the fly.

The quick water is the real pool. This
real pool is, as a rule, from fifty to one
hundred and fifty yards in length, and is
of an average depth of three feet, with
a current of from three to five miles an
hour. It is usually full of large rocks,
either submerged or just showing above
the surface, and is formed by the sudden
narrowing of the river, or the ending of
a much deeper hole. The novice could*
imagine no more unlikely place to find
fish than this sort of pool, as it seems im-
possible that any fish could rest in such
water, but, as all fishermen know, the
fish rest in the eddies behind the rocks.
Balanced in these eddies, the salmon lie,
awaiting more water to continue their
upstream journey, or, if the water is deep
enough, until some unexplained instinct
impels them onward toward the spawn-
ing grounds.

Night seems to be the favorite time
for these journeys, and the pool that you
have seen full of fish when you turned in
at night may be empty of fish in the
morning. Many a time have I gone to
sleep, lulled by the splash of some finny
monster, only to wet my line in vain the

following morning. The fish, however,
do not confine themselves to traveling at
night, and I have seen many a big one in
broad daylight splashing over the shal-
lows on his way to the next pool. Such
a fish is almost surely yours if you fol-
low him up, as the newest fish in a pool
is almost always the one most ready to
take the fly.

There is another type of pool in which
there is scarcely a rock bigger than your
fist. Here the water flows swiftly and
smoothly over a pebbly bottom, with
nothing but the speed of the current to
ripple its surface. How the fish get any
rest in these pools is beyond me, but
they do hold fish, and good ones at that.
And such a piece of water at times pays
big dividends on an investment of a lit-
tle extra care in casting.

Let us now imagine our pool lying
before us ready to be fished, which is
after all the main object of this article.
Some writers advise fishing the lower
end of the pool first, but I could never
see it that way. How much of the pool
should be considered to be the lower
end? These writers claim that the fish
taken this way will not disturb those
lying higher up as much as if the fight
started at the upper end of the pool, but
they say nothing about the fish dis-
turbed by the fisherman while he is wad-
ing the middle waters. A fighting fish
as it tires will undoubtedly work down-
stream, but as a fish tires its rushes lose
much of their violence, the fish can be
held much nearer the rod, only a small
part of the pool is disturbed, and even
if the fish are stirred up they soon for-
get the cause.

A fish tearing around the pool, trying
to clear its mouth of a fly and part of a
broken leader, can spoil a pool for a

[593]

594

OUTING

whole day, as it will keep up its efforts
until every other fish in the pool is
greatly excited, but the landed fish, by
the time it has been weighed, admired
and put in a safe place, is soon forgotten
by its former companions, and quite
frequently by the time you have looked
over your fly and tackle and refilled your
pipe, you will find that another fish has
already taken over the choice location
formerly occupied by your late antag-
onist.

On one memorable occasion I took
four salmon out of the same eddy, land-
ing each one and then casting again from
the same position with almost exactly
the same line. I am sure of the posi-
tion and the line, because I was in
water up to my waist, where another
step would have taken me in over my
head, and I had to use every inch of
line I could get out to get my fly where
I wanted it.

Begin at the Head

To get back to my subject: My ad-
vice is to fish the head of the pool first,
and to be sure that you are at the head
of the pool. Start way above what looks
to be good water, as fish often lie in the
most unpromising places, and it never
pays to pass over a fish without showing
it your fly. The one overlooked might
be the only one in the pool in rising
humor, and your haste to get to the best
(looking) water might result in a blank
morning. Start well upstream of the
slightest possibility of fish, and with a
short line fish over all waters you will
have to wade into to be in position to
cover the full width of the pool.

When you have reached a point from
which you can cast almost to the oppo-
site shore, gradually lengthen your line,
stripping off a couple of feet from your
reel at each new cast, cast across the
current, and let the water bring your
fly around until it floats directly down-
stream from you. By now the fisherman
should have out enough line to fish prop-
erly, while if lie started far enough
above the good water he is about to
strike the most promising part of the
pool. The preliminaries are over and
the real game is about to begin.

We will assume that the fisherman
has out about fifty feet of line, and that
under ordinary conditions he can cast a
distance of seventy-five or eighty teer.
These figures are by no means arbitrary,
but are taken as an average, the first to
be well within the limit cast and one
that can be handled cleanly and placed
where the fisherman wants it. Let your
first real cast now be downstream to the
near side of the quick water. The ob-
ject of this is to present the fly in its
most attractive form to as many fish
as possible, which cannot be attained if a
loop of line and leader passes ahead of
the fly.

By fishing the water nearest you be-
fore fishing that farthest away, the
chances are that any fish within range
will get a fair view of the fly. Your
second cast, therefore, should be out into
the quick water, and your third, if the
stream be wide enough to require more
than two casts, still more directly across
the pool. Each cast should be allowed
to float the fly across the current until
it has come to rest directly downstream.

Here begins what I consider, by all
odds, the most important part of the cast.
An immediate recovery of the line at this
moment will often lose a fish. Many
times the fly passes in front of a fish
which follows it to the end of the cast,
and then makes up its mind to strike,
only to see the fly whisked bodily from
the water. Then the disgusted and star-
tled fish sulks and cannot be moved
again. Let your fly stay in the water
and move it gently back and forth sev-
eral times before starting another cast.

When one piece of water has been
fished, that is, when you are ready to. let
out more line after covering all the wa-
ter to the farther bank, draw off about
a yard of line from your reel, and repeat
the previous performance, fishing first the
near water and then that farther away.
By releasing the extra line, held by the
hand above the reel, just before the line
is fully extended, a much better cast can
be made than if the additional line is
let out on the back cast. Keep on fish-
ing from the first position until your cast
is approaching your limit.

There are now two ways of fishing
the balance of the pool. Both are good

ON FISHING THE SALMON POOL

595

and both have many adherents. The
one way is to shorten up your line, move
forward a few yards, and fish as before
until again you are using your longest
line. The other way, and this is the way
I prefer, is as follows: while you are
making your back cast, or, rather, at the
moment you are starting your forward
cast, move downstream a short step, and
on each succeeding cast take another
step. You will find that your best re-
sults are to make your steps of from a
foot to eighteen inches in length, so that
your fly may cover every possible lurk-
ing place.

I like this way of fishing for two rea-
sons: First, there is no guesswork on
your part as to where your last cast
went, and, therefore, no danger of over-
looking a fish; and, second, I like to
fish as far away from any disturbance I
may create as is possible.

No cast should be at an angle of
greater than 45 degrees from an imag-
inary line passing through the angler and
continuing straight downstream if it is
possible to avoid this. It is almost im-
possible to keep the line from bulging
downstream ahead of the fly if a greater
angle is used. It is far easier to say,
"Let your fly be the first intimation of
your approach," than it is to do. I
have tried many ways of casting in order
to overcome this bulging of the line. To
use a golfing term, I have tried to hook
and to slice, but I cannot truthfully
say that I have invented any new way
to cast. By checking my rod just be-
fore finishing the forward cast, and then
by snapping it to the right or left I can
sometimes drop my fly as I want to, but
I am not at all sure of doing this.
Probably two good casts out of five
tries wrould be a high average when I
was casting my best.

In casting against a head wind, the
line can be made to bore in to the wind
and a far better cast made by reversing
the hands, i.e., have the right hand in
front of the reel when casting over the
left shoulder and vice versa.

A hard wind downstream is to me a
positive curse, and when fishing before
one I will back myself to snap ofT more
flies and tie more knots in my leader
than any other fisherman. There is only

one way to combat this wind, and that is
to use a short line and draw your fly
in as close to you as you can while hold-
ing your rod straight up in the air. Then
drop your rod quickly behind you until
the tip is close to the water. If there
is water enough it does not hurt to
splash it with the tip. Then shoot
your line skywards by snapping forward
your rod to just past the perpendicular.
Then pray.

What About Flies?

By this time I am sure that our fisher-
man has fished down the entire pool, and
for a time longer I am going to keep him
Ashless. For some reason, although he
has not had a rise, he is morally certain
that there are fish in the pool so a care-
ful study of conditions will repay him.
Yesterday he took a fish out of the pool
on a No. 4 Silver Doctor, but this morn-
ing the same fly is not attracting any at-
tention. It is here that I think that a
smaller fly should be used, and for that
reason .1 recommend having both 4s and
6s tied short. The change from a No. 4
to a No. 4 tied short is not as abrupt
as to a No. 6, besides which it leaves
two smaller sizes in the book.

It is always well to use a larger fly
in the early morning than you would
use through the day. While the morn-
ing chill is on fish will rise to larger
flies than when the sun is hot. If the
weather has been dry, the water has un-
doubtedly fallen a bit, and on this ac-
count also a smaller fly should be tried.
If the smaller pattern does not take a
fish, another pattern can be tried. If
this takes a fish, that fly becomes one of
the fisherman's favorites, whereas the
original if tried again might have done
quite as well. As I have said in a
previous article, I hold much more by
the size as against the pattern, but a
change of fly often means renewed con-
fidence on the part of the angler, and
for that reason should be encouraged.

When a fish rises and misses, the
natural impulse is to jerk the fly off
the water and immediately cast at the
spot where the rise was. This impulse
must be carefully guarded against. Fish
out the cast as if nothing had happened.

596

OUTING

I have known fish to rise, miss, follow
the fly to the end, and then take hold
for fair. If the fish does not come again
this way, and not many of them will,
mark the spot carefully, reel in your line
without moving, and go ashore. Show
your guide where the fish rose, if he
did not see the rise himself, and let him
stay opposite the place to mark it for
you, and go upstream yourself. Go
far enough up so as to fish about twenty
yards of water above the place where
you think the fish is.

Put on a smaller fly; the fish is wide
awake now, and will see everything
that comes downstream. Take all the
time you can, five minutes seems to be
the recognized time advised by the au-
thorities, and then wade in again, and
fish down to your fish. Cover every
inch of water, and if you do not get an-
other rise by the time you have reached
the scene of the former rise work on
down a few yards. Salmon often move
w^hen they miss a strike, and it is best to
be sure that the fish has been covered.

If on the second trial the fish is not
interested, it is well to leave it alone
for some time. If you are at the head
of the pool, fish on through the pool to
the end, changing back to your original
fly. Then you can go back and have
another try at your first friend. There
may be other fish in the pool in rising
humor. If the fish rose at the tail of the
pool, go over the whole pool again.

Sometimes this will get the fish, some-
times not.

There is no fixed rule of conduct that
can be laid down for all conditions. If
there were, fishing would lose much of
its charm. On one occasion, I violated
this rule with very happy results, and
an added knowledge of idiosyncrasies of
my favorite fish. See my previous ar-
ticle. ["Outfitting for Newfoundland
Salmon," June Outing.]

So far I have spoken only of the easy
pools, but the fisherman will find that
many times he will have to fish pools
where rocks or eddies spoil the best of
casts. Some of these can be fished from
both sides, but others have to be covered
as best you can. No two pools are alike,
but I always thought more of the fish
taken under difficulties than of the one
that came up as though to eat out of
my hand.

One more word, and I am through.
From the time you first step into the wa-
ter until you put up your rod at night,
fish every cast as if at that moment you
knew that a fish was going to take hold.
Many a fish has been missed through
a careless cast or hasty recovery, and,
although a blank day or two is always
discouraging, I got my big one after
three blank days under circumstances
where the least carelessness might have
lost me the chance forever. Some day
I will tell that story ; I think it is worth
the telling.

"Journeying to Babylon" is OUTING'S
kind of a travel article. It is by a new
contributor, Mr. William Warfield, and
will appear in the September OUTING

OVER THE PORTAGE

By JOHN MATTER

How a Lifetime of Agony May Be Packed into a Scant Two-
Mile Carry

UR tent was pitched last
night on a smooth, exten-
sive rock that shelved
equably up from deep
water to a height of
twenty feet. On the flat
summit spread with a thin mattress of
soil and a comforter of pine needles we
did our housekeeping, stripped for our
plunges, and laid ourselves clown to rest.
Across the narrow channel, the shore,
swathed in thick timber, arose abrupt,
menacing to tumble forward upon us.
All night the wind blew past our home,
taking the willing waves along for com-
pany.

Before the sun was out of the pines
in the morning, we had broken camp
and worked a course up through the
basin. Boulders, large as a cottage, lay
in disorder as though dropped from the
pockets of a giant. The water broke
off at the foot of a solid ledge and here
began the first portage of the day.

Now a portage when the trail runs
new is always an adventure to me. You
cannot tell whether the traveling will
be rough with stones or smooth with
needles, whether the line will run across
hot, high rocks or descend through still
hollows where the air oppresses and only
the treetops find the breeze. I like the
mild excitement of unloading the canoes,
the tug of the tump line on the forehead,
the wrench and pull on the muscles of
placing one foot in advance of the other,
the breaking out of honest sweat, well
earned, and the sweet, occasional luxury
of a breathing spell.

Some portages are a delight, a relief
from the paddle swing. Some you
traverse with a laugh and a dash, the
load rests easily, the footing is secure
and dry. Other portages are trails of

the evil one, difficult as the path of vir-
tue. Your hobnails slip viciously or
sudden holes come in the soles of your
moccasins; you go astray and flounder in
the bush like a fish in a shallow pool;
a mosquito bites with tormenting per-
sistency on an inaccessible joint; per-
spiration rolls into your eyes and mouth ;
your hat is swept off; the pack shifts
and thoughts of easier times intrude.

The quarter-mile portage stretches to
a half mile, then to a mile, then to eter-
nity. You have never done aught but
shamble over this trail, you will never
do anything else.

We welcomed a pause for breath and
a smoke before we floated the canoes
and paddled across one corner of a Lilli-
putian lake, quiet and unmoved as a
reservoir. Rounding a spit of grassy
bank, we approached a fat porcupine bal-
anced on a log and occupied with affairs
of his own. He paid us scant attention
until I slapped the water with my pad-
dle. He looked us over then with no
great favor, turned with heavy dignity
and went offendedly ashore. "There
are five of you to one of me," his man-
ner gave forth, "so I shall not argue
the right of way. Gentlemen, however,
never intrude."

A few strokes carried us through the
navigable limits of a creek and to the
beginning of Steep Portage. We un-
loaded the canoes and distributed the
tump lines.

"A mile and three-quarters, some
says," quoth Henri.

We swung up our loads and went
forth. The track mounted easily for a
hundred yards; the going was smooth
as a path through an Indiana woods.
I strode jauntily, whistling, and letting
my thoughts stray where they willed.

[597]

598

OUTING

Then the rocks began, the grade stiff-
ened, and the brush drew close. Logs
lay across the way, branches hung low
and meshed, the trail evaded the four
points of the compass. A quarter of a
mile of steady climbing and I was gulp-
ing my breath. I paused for a moment
to ease my lungs.

Before me the path ran up over a
huge outcrop of rock; it mounted like
a stairs. I sighed and started the ascent
as one starts for bed. The face of the
rock lay bare in sunlight; I climbed a
pool of heat. Still the up-grade con-
tinued when I had won the summit, and
now the way writhed through larger
trees and heavier brush. At times I
stepped from stone to stone over the
ancient bed of some perished water. The
load was slipping, sharp corners were
developing, sweat was breaking through
all my clothes. The mosquitoes and
black flies worked assiduously. My mind
ceased to wander and settled on the task
at hand. Live or die, I determined to
make the grade.

The trail dipped down; I rejoiced that
the up-pull was over. My joy was
brief, for in a hundred steps the ascent
began again. A squirrel ran out on a
log and paused in wonder at what man-
ner of creature this might be that dis-
played two legs and a great hump on
his back and moved so slowly through
the woods. Master Squirrel shrieked
his derision abroad. I wished him and
his family damnation.

Ahead on the slope was Walton,
bowed low under two duffle-bags. I
hailed him, though the shout tore my
lungs. He stopped in his steps and did
not look around. In time I drew
abreast.

"I am afraid," said he, chewing his
words, "I am going to sleep on this trail.
It is so long."

"You mustn't," I said. "You mustn't
sleep here." There seemed something
improper about sleeping on the portage.

"I have been thinking about that,"
he replied.

"You mustn't sleep here," I advised
again.

"I am afraid — " he began, "but I've
told you that once, haven't I?"

"Yes, you've told me that."

He groaned and went forward. Ten
paces ahead he fell and lay out-sprawled
and unmoving. My numbed brain took
it as ridiculous that one should lie like
a fallen tree. I laughed aloud, and the
sound brought me to silence. It oc-
curred he might desire a covering from
mosquitoes, and I toiled on to put the
question. He was struggling to his
knees by the time I reached him.

"I stumbled," he said simply.

"Yes, you stumbled," I returned.

Suddenly we both burst out laughing.

"On a root," he continued.

"On a root," I replied, and we roared
again.

Henri strode past under the heavier
canoe. He smiled, but did not speak;
breath was precious to him as gold. Then
came Hercules, puffing and blowing
under the light canoe, but moving for-
ward. Like Henri, he had no breath
to waste. Then the Grave One, slow
and precise of footing under the grub-
bags.

"How much farther?" he demanded.

"A half mile," we ventured.

He stopped to argue the matter be-
tween gasps.

"But it cannot be, you know. ... A
mile and three-quarters altogether. . . .
I judge I have come a mile and a half.
. . . That leaves a quarter of a
mile. . . .

A shout from the front interrupted.
We filled our lungs and followed on.
The track dipped down ; it was mucky
and wet for a space, then the grade
straightened out through a narrow ra-
vine and I had sight of blue ahead.

In a minute we were beside still waters
and had thrown off our load's.

The next issue will contain " A Night
Paddle" — a tale of voyaging down
a wilderness stream in the starlight.

TROLLING FOR LAKE TROUT

By STILLMAN TAYLOR

The Equipment and Method Necessary To Get the Big Fellows

Tliat Tie Deep

"The generous rushings of the springs,
When the angler goes a-trolling,
The stir of song and summer wings,
The line which shines, and life which sings,
Make earth replete with happy things,
When the angler goes a-trolling."

— S TODD ART.

SHARP pull at the long
line, a lightning dash —
the metal line zip-zips
through the clear water
to the accompaniment
of the shrieking reel,
and as the split bamboo curves its grace-
ful length to form a resisting arc, the
angler feels pretty certain that some-
where below the wake of the boat a
sizeable lake trout has been well hooked.
Now begins the rodster's sport, and you
land him or you lose the game, accord-
ing to your skill and the excellence of
your tackle. For the lake trout is a
hard fighter and runs to a good weight
in our cold nor'eastern waters.

The great lake trout, namaycush or*
t o g u e — Christivomer namaycush — is
known by many and various names in
different fishing districts — in Maine
"togue" is the more common name, while
"lakers" is the familiar appellation in
Adirondack and Canadian waters. The
confusion of names is due, no doubt, to
the fact that lake trout differ consid-
erably in coloring, for in no two waters
are they quite the same in coloring and
markings. These variations are so
marked in Maine and Canadian waters
that one often hears fellow anglers talk-
ing about "lakers" and "togue" as if
they were two different fish, which, of
course, they are not. This peculiarity
has frequently been noted by the writer,
the variation in color being remarkably
wide — some are black, some are brown
with crimson spots, some are gray with

delicate chain-like markings seen in the
pickerel, while others are of a bluish
green, covered with large and irregular
spots of a pale yellow.

The lake trout is really a charr, and
not a true salmon trout; the character-
istic difference between the two may be
readily noted, since the true salmon trout
has teeth upon the vomer (a flat bone
in the front part of the roof of the
mouth) and behind these teeth will be
found an irregular single or double series
of teeth. In the true charr, the vomer
bone is convex or boat shaped with the
teeth on the head of the bone and none
back on its shaft. The speckled or
square-tail trout is likewise a charr, and
the distinguishing mark between the
square-tail and the togue is the tail — in
the former it is nearly square, while the
latter is of a decided "V" shape.

Unlike the muskellunge (Esox ?nas-
quinongy) of our Western lakes, the
togue is a deep-water fish, and since the
larger fish will always be found in the
deepest and coldest part of the waters
which they inhabit, they must be angled
for with a long line, and trolling is the
most successful mode to follow. In
point of fact, lake trout fishing is quite
different from any other phase of sweet-
water angling, and one may fish persist-
ently on the surface for bass and pick-
erel in the same water which frequently
shelters these varieties, without securing
a strike from the togue. To catch our
fish we should know something about
their habits, and go properly outfitted,
and, though the outfit is simple and in-
expensive enough, it differs from the
usual outfit sufficiently to warrant a
brief description of the essentials re-
quired.

Being a deep-water fish, the togue

[599]

600

OUTING

must be angled for with a rather longer
line than will suffice for the ouananiche,
'lunge, or other surface feeding fishes.
To sink the line well down a sinker
may be employed, but if the angler pre-
fers to troll with a rod, a metal line of
braided copper may be regarded essen-
tial for good sport — the weight of the
metal line sinking it sufficiently deep
without using a heavy sinker. In the
deeper waters, as in Maine and Canada,
two hundred and fifty feet of line is
not excessive, and a copper line of one
hundred yards length should be selected.
In purchasing a metal line, procure Size
F, and be sure to get the special braided
copper kind which is made by braiding
fine copper wire over a silk core. The
common solid copper wire line is infe-
rior in every way to the braided copper
line — it does not reel well, kinks upon
the least provocation and snips whenever
the kink is straightened out.

For a reel any one of the common
kinds may be used, providing it is large
enough to hold the required length of
line. The regulation all-metal reel com-
monly used in the cheaper salt-water
fishing kits will answer the purpose ad-
mirably, and as these reels are multiply-
ing in mechanism and provided with ad-
justable click and drag and fitted with
large well-balanced handles, a reel of
this sort is more satisfactory to fish with
than a single-action reel so frequently
recommended for this kind of fishing.

The rod for trolling should be some-
what stirrer than the usual bait rod, and
from seven to eight feet long. The five-
foot casting rod is much too short and
light to stand up under the heavy strain
of this variety of angling, though a short
and stiff tin fitting the first joint of the
regulation nine-foot bait rod will con-
vert it into a good trolling implement.
However, it is a good plan to purchase
a cheap and stiff steel rod rather than
strain a fine split bamboo, or if you hap-
pen to possess a light salt-water rod,
weighing nine or ten ounces, you may
dismiss the rod question entirely.

There is an advantage, however, in
having a double grip on the trolling rod
— one above and a somewhat shorter one
below the reel seat, and a large corru-
gated button at the extreme end. The

utility of this trolling butt will be ap-
parent after an hour or two of trolling,
for deep-water trolling is hard work and
the narrow end cap of the usual rod
makes it inconvenient to rest it against
the body. With the broad surface of
the button pressed against the hip, the
rod may be held firmly against the body
and cramping of the arms is done away
with. Again, the button enables the
angler to keep a steady butt strain on
the fish, and a much lighter tip may be
safely used when the rod is handled in
this manner. The flexible rubber butt
pad, which is merely slipped over the
butt cap, will do the trick of converting
any rod for trolling, or one may procure
a pneumatic cushion pad which is de-
signed for the same purpose.

Trolling Deep

Trolling is unquestionably the one
best way to catch big fish, and for deep-
water trolling live minnows are the dead-
liest togue bait. The regulation lake
trout trolling gang — consisting of 6-ply
gut leader with five treble and one 4/0
lip hook and swivel is often used. There
can, of course, be no advantage in using
a number of treble hooks, and when this
form of gang is desired it is a good plan
to alter the arrangement somewhat and
use but one treble and the lip hook.
Among the good artificial baits the writer
has found Sam's spoon and Wilson's
spoon the most successful, better, in fact,
than the ordinary spoon, since they spin
in zigzag fashion from side to side, and
the boat does not have to be propelled
at so fast a gait in order to make them
spin. A swivel should be tied in between
the line and leader, and the bait should
be of large size — six-inch minnows are
none too large for togue — and spoon
baits should be five or six inches long and
preferably of polished German silver or
finished in silver plate.

When trolling with spoons or other
artificial baits the angler should return
a strike immediately, but when live min-
nows are used a little slack line should
be given before striking; give him time,
on a slack line, to turn and swallow the
bait, since fish will invariably seize the
minnow across the body, and striking too

GOING ALONE

601

quickly merely pulls the hook from the
minnow. The old hand at lake trout
fishing often gauges the strike by throw-
ing the point of the rod over the stern
of the boat, then when you feel the
fish again, strike and strike hard.

A gaff must be reckoned a necessity
for togue fishing, though a heavy net,
fashioned like a fish scoop, with an iron
bow driven into a long wooden handle,
is a good substitute and is more easily
handled by the inexperienced. The gaff
is certain to land the fish when once the
knack of handling it has been acquired,
though the first attempt is often dis-
astrous for the fisherman.

"The place to take 'em is where they
are, and where they are no feller can
tell," which is only another way of
saying that the most successful way to
fish different waters is to work over suit-
able depths and bottom for the season of
the year. In the early spring togue
will be found in comparatively shoal
water, around the flats and at the mouth
of streams, and if fishing is done in deep
water it is nearer the surface than later
in the season. Actual surface fishing
after the customary manner of catching
bass and 'lunge is rarely if ever prac-

tised, surface fishing for togue really
means that during the spring months
trolling should be done with the bait
some six to ten feet below the surface.
As the season advances the fish will be
found in deep water, and they must be
trolled for in the deeper portions of the
lake, over rocky reefs and over the
"spring holes" which feed our best fish-
able waters.

The togue must be well played ere
he can be safely landed, and even when
the fish is pretty wTell exhausted he is
certain to fight gamely after you have
worked him up close to the boat on a
short line. At this close range he is
prone to make quick, short rushes, and
as he turns the angler reverses his rod —
keeping the tip opposite to the fish that
a steady strain may be kept on the line.
When you are ready to use the net or
gaff, do not make the mistake of lifting
his head out of water by lifting the tip
of the rod in order to shorten the line;
a quick, unexpected lunge and your tip
goes smash. Big fish require not a little
coaxing, and even a twelve-pound togue
is very likely to put a rod out of com-
mission if the angler is caught napping
at the tail end o' the fight.

GOING ALONE

By HORACE KEPHART

A Plea for the Man Who Wants To Go His Own Way and Do

His Own Thinking

O the multitude, wheth-
er city or country bred,
the bare idea of far-
ing alone in. the wilds
for days or weeks at a
time is eerie and fantastic,
or something worse. It makes their flesh
creep. He who does so is certainly an
eccentric, probably a misanthrope, pos-
sibly a fugitive from justice, or, likely
enough, some moonstruck fellow whom
the authorities would do well to follow
up and watch.

But manjr a seasoned woodsman can
avow that some of the most satisfying,

if not the happiest, periods of his life
have been spent far out of sight and sug-
gestion of his fellow men.

From a practical standpoint, there are
compensations in cruising the woods and
streams alone, and even in camping with-
out human fellowship. It simplifies the
whole business of outfitting and camp
routine. You get the most out of the
least kit. It would be piggish, for ex-
ample, if two men should eat out of
the same dish ; there must be three at
least, one to cook in and two for serving-
the food ; but for one man to sup from his
own frying pan is not only cleanly but

602

OUTING

a sensible thing to do. It keeps the food
hotter than if transferred to a cold plate,
and saves washing an extra dish, an econ-
omy of effort that is the most admirable
of all efficiencies!

The problem of cuisine is reduced to
its lowest terms. You cook what you
like, and nothing else ; you prepare what
you need, and not one dumpling more.
It is done precisely to your own taste
— there is a world of gustatory satisfac-
tion in that. You bake a corn pone, let
us say, leaving the frying pan clean of
grease. You cut your venison (the flesh
of all game is venison) into cubes and
broil these on a sharpened stick, one at
a time, just as you eat them, which is
the best and daintiest cooking process
in the world. Your coffee, settled by a
dash of cold water, is drunk from the
same cup you brewed it in.

Then comes the cleaning up. No
more bugaboo of dishwashing, which
all men so cordially despise. You give
pan and pannikin a rinse and a wipe, jab
your knife into the ground and draw it
through some fresh leaves, chuck the
broiling-stick into the fire, and — voila,
the thing is done, thoroughly and neatly
done, without rising from your seat!

So with other camp chores, from
pitching the miniature tent to packing
up for the march: everything is simpli-
fied, and time and effort are saved.

From a selfish standpoint, the solitary
camper revels in absolute freedom. Any
time, anywhere, he can do as he pleases.
There is no anxiety as to whether his
mates are having a good time, no obli-
gation of deference to their wishes. Sel-
fish? Yes; but, per contra, when one is
alone he is boring nobody, elbowing no-
body, treading on nobody's toes. He is
neither chiding nor giving unasked ad-
vice. Undeniably he is minding his own
business — a virtue to cover multitudes
of sins.

If I have spoken rudely it is because
a woodsman naturally goes straight to
the point and calls a spade a spade.
Sentimentalism is his bugbear. He re-
spects healthy sentiment, and has some

tender spots of his own; but the mes-
sages breathed to him in forest aisles are
heard only when he is alone. A com-
panion, however light-footed he may be,
adds fourfold to the risk of disturbing
the shy natives of the wild. By your-
self you can sit motionless and mutely
watchful, but where two are side by
side it is neither polite nor endurable to
pass an hour without saying a word.
Should a dash of poetic temperament be
wedded to one's habit of observing, then
it is more than ever urgent that he
should be undisturbed; for in another's
presence

"Imagination flutters feeble wings."

Solitude has its finer side. The saints
of old, when seeking to cleanse them-
selves from taint of worldliness and get
closer to the source of prophecy, went
singly into the desert and bided there
alone. So now our lone adventurer, un-
saintly as he may have been among men,
experiences an exaltation, finds healing
and encouragement in wilderness life.

When twilight falls, and shadows
merge in darkness, the single-handed
camper muses before the fire that com-
forts his bivouac and listens to the low.
sweet voices of the night, which never
are heard in full harmony save by those
who sit silent and alone.

Then comes the time of padded feet.
Stealthy now, and mute, are the crea-
tures that move in the forest. Our
woodsman, knowing the ways of the
beasts, regards them not, but dreams be-
fore the leaping flames like any Parsee
worshiping his fire.

Weird shapes appear in the glowing
coals. Elves dance in the halo where
night and radiance mingle.

Hark to Titania!

"Out of this wood do not desire to go:
Thou shalt remain here, whether thou wilt

or no.
I am a spirit of no common rate;
The summer still doth tend upon my state;

And I do love thee."

Ah, precious even the ass's nowl, if
by that masque one shall enter the fairv

realm !

SHANK'S MARE IN HARNESS

By LADD PLUMLEY

The Things To Select When Your Camping Outfit Must Be
Carried on Your Own Bark

"^ HE foundation of com-
fortable shank's mare
camping is a good sharp
ax. Of course, the
weight is burdensome on
the shoulder, but noth-
ing takes the place of an ax, and the
ordinary hatchet is almost useless. If
you care to sacrifice utility to conven-
ience, you can provide the ax with a
short helve; but it is more than a doubt-
ful sacrifice. The full length helve is
very little more weighty than a dwarf
helve and is far more satisfactory. Hence
it is recommended that the shank's mare
camper carry a full-grown ax. And the
blade should be keen. If you do not
know how to grind an ax, get some ex-
pert to grind it for you.

Remember that a sharp ax is a danger-
ous tool to carry along trails and through
brush, so you should have a stout leather
shield to cover the blade. The shield
can be made from the upper of an old
shoe. There should be holes punched
or cut in the shield to tie it securely over
the ax head ; and before you tie the
shield in place, you should wrap a strip
of muslin around the blade to protect
the edge.

The ax will cut wood for fuel to cook
your food and fell night wood to keep
you warm; but of a stormy night you
cannot be comfortable in the woods un-
less you have a shelter. If you so prefer,
you can buy a light shelter tent; but
if you wish you can make one out of
strong unbleached sheeting that will keep
you dry and that will cost very little.
For two persons, . the home-made tent
should be two yards wide and three
yards deep. The "fly" is simply another
length of sheeting of the same size as the
tent, and both should be waterproofed

with the following solution: To ten
quarts of water add ten ounces of lime
and four ounces of alum. Let the mix-
ture stand until it clears off. Fold the
lengths of sheeting and soak over night.
Rinse in rain-water and dry in the sun.

For setting up the tent you should
carry a small tack hammer and two boxes
of medium-sized tacks. When you have
decided on the camping place, which
should always be near wood and water,
the sides of the tent are to be tacked
on two stout saplings. The saplings
are leaned against a crosspiece, which,
in turn, has been placed in the crotches
of two small trees.

If there are no suitable trees at hand,
two forked stakes about seven feet long
can be driven into the ground and the
crosspiece placed in these supports. The
crosspiece, as well as the saplings that
stretch the tent, should be tied securely
in place; and, if necessary, the stakes
should be braced with stout cords from
nearby trees. The fly should have long
cords knotted into the corners and should
be strung from the stakes or trees and
at the rear from pegs driven into the
ground. Allow eight or ten inches be-
tween the tent and the fly.

When you have made a deep bed of
hemlock or balsam tips and have filled in
the sides of 3'our shelter with hemlock,
balsam, or spruce boughs, you can defy
almost any downpour short of a cloud-
burst.

The shelter tent that has been de-
scribed will keep off rain, but it will not
keep the camper warm of a cold night —
and nights in the woods are generally
cold. You should have a fireplace. And
the fireplace should be directly in front
of the tent and not more than eight feet
away.

[603]

604

OUTING

For the fireplace, drive into the
ground two stout sharpened stakes and
slope them at a slant away from the
tent. Against these stakes pile green
logs to the height of about three and
one-half feet. The night fire is to be
built against the fireplace, and as the
logs burn down they will tumble into
the fire and continue to throw out heat
for many hours. Even of a cold, rainy
night the tent will be delightfully
warm. You will lie on your fragrant
couch, snugly wrapped in your blanket,
and with all out-doors just beyond the
blazing camp-fire porch.

Never do any cooking on your camp-
fire. That is the way of the shiftless.
For your cooking, you will have your
camp range; and it is well to place the
cooking fire at a little distance from the
tent. For one thing, porcupines will be
frequent visitors to your cooking ar-
rangements, and porcupines are some-
what inconvenient as guests in a tent.

The camp range is nothing but two
eight-inch green logs placed side by side
and flattened at the top — your ax will
come in handy here. Frying-pan, coffee-
pot, and tin pail for boiling and stew-
ing rest on the logs; a slight fire of dry
wood between them will give an abund-
ance of heat. Many campers use much
too large a fire for cooking purposes; a
little heat in the right place is the great
advantage of the log range. Another ad-
vantage is that you do not have to sus-
pend your cooking utensils on wires or
chains or hold the handle of a frying-
pan in your hands. This does away
with cinders in the eyes and a blistered
face.

If you know a little about cookery,
you should be able to enjoy a delightful
outing with the simple appliances that
have been suggested, provided that you
are ready to make the best of the little
discomforts that are always found in
all camps. You will have to carry quite
a respectable quantity of provisions, if
you intend to spend more than a week
in the woods. Remember that potatoes
are as heavy per pound as bacon and
pork and not anything like as nutritious.
And that beans are a valuable food and
easy to carry. What with fried fish,
beans, rice, bacon or pork, and hard

biscuit, a fellow can get along very
comfortably. If to this is added a few
luxuries, like raisins, chocolate, and
dried peaches or apricots, you can live
in the woods like a gourmand.

The provisions should be wrapped in
stout paper, or, in the case of ground
coffee, rice, beans, etc., should be pro-
tected in muslin bags of proper size.
Get your mother, sister, or wife to sew
up a lot of these bags on a sewing ma-
chine ; they are quickly and easily made.
But the bags should be deep enough so
that the tops can be securely tied with
stout twine. Do not attempt to carry
canned goods other than canned milk.
A quart can of tomatoes weighs two
pounds and is mostly water. You will
probably find an abundance of water
without lugging it with you.

The Blanket Roll

As to all the things that you must
carry on your shoulders and back, there
is really only one simple method for the
adventurer of shank's mare. That
method is one that has nearly always
been used by the armies of the world
since tramping and fighting began.

On the eve of your proposed trip
you should lay out in formidable array
all the many things with which you
intend to burden yourself. You will
have a little extra underclothing; but
remember that you are your own wash-
woman, and, if you prefer, you can cut
this to the minimum — the clothing on
your body. You should have a hair
brush, tooth brush, and comb, with a
towel and a large cake of good soap.
And, then, there are always little things
that each fellow thinks that he must
carry to make himself comfortable.

You will have fishing tackle and,
probably, tobacco and, surely, plenty of
matches. The latter can be stored in
a tight tin box or in a wide-mouthed
bottle. All these, together with the
provisions, will look pretty discourag-
ing. And they would be if you had
no means at hand for making them
into a secure pack. But you have.
You have your blanket and the tent
and fly.

To make the pack, a blanket is spread

SHANK'S MARE IN HARNESS

605

on the floor or ground, and the tent or
fly folded and spread on the blanket.
All the many articles to be carried are
then arranged in a neat row at the
border of one side of the blanket. Two
persons are now to take the humble pos-
ture of kneeling, side by side. They
are to roll the blanket tightly, with its
contents, in such a manner as to make
a sort of great bologna sausage. The
ends of the blanket should be secured
with windings of heavy cord, and other
tight windings should be made around
the roll at intervals of a foot or so.
The ends of the roll are to be brought
together and securely tied, and in such
a manner as will make the pack fit the
back and shoulders of the carrier.

In carrying, the roll is to be thrown
over the head and should rest diagon-
ally across the body and back, its weight
being supported on either the right or
the left shoulder. Tin cups, coffee-pot,
and frying-pan are tied to the outside of
the pack and add much to the pictur-
esque appearance of the tramper.

If the initial portion of the journey
begins on a railroad and from a big city,
the pack or packs can be placed in a
trunk and the trunk left in storage
where the real shank's mare trip begins.
But frequently another railroad station
is the objective point of the expedition.
In that case the packs can be tied into the
temporary form of a stout bundle and
carried in the hand.

Remember that every article that you

carry should be an absolute necessity.
Do not burden yourself with a single
thing that you can do without. If you
limit all things as you can and should,
your pack will not weigh much over
thirty pounds. For the novice that is
about the uttermost that he should
attempt.

For those who desire adventure in
the open at so modest an expense that
any one can indulge, the camping outfit
here described will be found all that is
necessary. The cost is slight for an
outing as novel as it is delightful.
There is nothing that has quite the
witchery as to know that the open road
or trail lies before you, a glorious sum-
mer's day is all around, and a cheerful
companion is at your side to share the
many little adventures before you drop
into sleep in some secluded glen, a brook
somewhere near chanting its little slum-
ber song.

No spring bed nor hair mattress is
nearly so conducive to slumber as a
deep couch of the fragrant tips of the
balsam. There are no mornings quite
as magical as the woodsy ones when a
frisky squirrel awakens you with his
rattle and you slip from your blanket
and step down to the brookside for
your early wash-up. And there are no
fishing days altogether as enchanting as
those when you know that your catch
will be cooked by yourself and eaten at
dusk with a thrush far up the moun-
tainside ringing his soft evening bell.

n Going Light in England n is what Horace Kephart calls his
article in September OUTING on some facts he has discovered
recently about light weight camping equipment across the water.

THE ROAD TO BETATAKIN

By JOHN OSKISON

Illustrated with Photographs by Chas. A. MacLean

II
A DEAD AND FORGOTTEN WORLD

EXT morning I had a real
surprise. I could see,
while young Warren, the
trader, pointed out our
road beyond Red Lake,
that Joe didn't like to go
on. He w7as already in country strange
to him, notwithstanding the optimistic
assurance of "Pop," back in Flagstaff,
that Joe had ridden over every square
mile of it. Besides, what the boys at the
store had said about the recent dancing
of the Navahos (we saw the brush shel-
ters of the Indians, just deserted after
ten days of celebrating under the shadow
of the store) had made an impression on
Joe. We strangers to the country had
no feeling of fear or any hesitation about
going on ; but we might have been but-
tressing our courage with ignorance. I
realized this; yet I felt sure the traders
wrould have warned us if we were likely
to run into real danger.

Joe was glum as wTe pulled away from
the store. We had gone only half a mile
when one of the single-trees of the buck-
board snapped. Cursing the maker of
that single-tree, Joe borrowed my horse
and loped back to the store for something
to mend it with. He returned with a
half-rusted length of iron pipe and many
bale wires, and we three fitted and lashed
the thing for an hour, while the young
eagles screamed in the cliffs beside us.
It was a good job. Though the iron pipe
bent into a graceful arc on some of the
hills we struck next day, it did not break.
( )nce out of sight of the store at Red
Lake, Joe admitted frankly that he knew
as little about this part of Arizona as we
did. The road soon became a faint,
casual thing, no plainer than the occa-

[GOG] Began in July

sional wagon tracks that led away in
directions we knew we must not take.
In the middle of the morning, Joe made
what proved a wrong turn. At first both
Martin and I thought he was right, be-
cause of the plainness of the tracks; but
after a bit, as the tracks swung farther
and farther toward the west, while our
general course must be toward the north-
east, we began to doubt. Finally I rode
straight east, prospecting, and a mile
away came to the top of a ridge below
which ran the right road, now showing
clearly. So back across the sage-covered
sand-hills I piloted the buckboard. Again
I got out Dr. Fewkes's book.

"Just after leaving Red Lake," I read,
"there may be noticed to the left two
great pinnacles of rock called Elephant
Legs . . . and far to the north the
cliffs are fantastically eroded. . . . The
road continues from Red Lake to Beki-
shibito (Cow Spring), where the water
issues from under a low cliff, spreading
in the wet season over the adjacent plain
and forming a shallow lake several miles
long."

"Sure, we passed them Elephant Legs
all right!" said Joe. For the first time
he seemed to lean with confidence upon
that book. But what about the state-
ment that from Red Lake to Bekishibito
it is twenty miles? We came upon the
lake spreading out toward the plain from
the mouth of a wide canon about eleven
o'clock, and I felt sure that we had not
traveled more than twelve miles.

But here was Bekishibito, undoubtedly
— a shallow, green-bordered lake, narrow-
as a river, clear as crystal, strung for
three miles or more along the bottom of
the canon. On its surface rested great
OUTING

THE ROAD TO BETATAKIN

607

flocks of ducks, and in the rank rushes
and canes at the water's edge shore-birds
swayed and hopped.

Beyond the springs wThich are the
source of the lake the canon bottom
spreads to a broad, close-cropped carpet
of brilliant green grass. Into the midst
of this we turned our horses while we
made a leisurely nooning. We ate and
lolled and smoked, all unaware that al-
ready we had chosen a wrong road and
had put ourselves in the way of infinite
trouble on the morrow.

You see, we were leaning on the
printed word — a word become all too
vague. I can't find it in my heart now
to repeat the things we said about Dr.
Fewkes next day; but if he had only told
us that just beyond the lake you turn
to the right and climb out of the canon,
we should probably have gone clear
through believing in him as a safe guide.
But what could one make out of this
for direction:

"After leaving Bekishibito, the road
to Marsh Pass, although on the whole
not bad, becomes more and more ob-
scure." Here is a cool assumption that
you know the road, and are interested
only in hearing whether or not it is in
good shape. Then the doctor suggests
camping at night at the butte called by
the Navahos Saunee "thirty to forty
miles distant from Cow Spring," and
he adds: "The distance from Red Lake
to this camp is a good day's journey with
a heavily laden buckboard, noon camp
being made at Bekishibito."

I wonder if the doctor ever stopped to
check the distances he put down? Re-
member he said it is twenty miles from
Red Lake to Bekishibito, and thirty to
forty miles from Bekishibito to Saunee.
Doesn't that make a total of from fifty
to sixty miles? And he called it one
day's journey with a heavily loaded buck-
board! Every horseman knows that
over any kind of road forty miles is a
long and hard day's travel for beasts
not already fagged.

This to try to shift the blame for
continuing up that canon all afternoon,
dodging around curious Navaho fences
which ran from one wall of the canon
almost to the other, studying its tower-
ing yellow sides with the close interest

of explorers (as I'm convinced we
were!) and surprising the children who
tended the flocks of sheep and goats that
came over the canon rim at intervals.

We had vague feelings of uneasiness
about that road up the yellow canon, but
it is to Martin's credit that he discovered
we were persistently bearing west along
the canon's course. That discovery was
borne in upon us late in the afternoon,
when we had covered more than twenty
miles and got between walls which crept
closer together and towered above us like
huge yellow battlements. Then it
seemed better to go on, looking for a
pass to the mesa above. Presently it
was time to make camp.

That night camp is something to re-
member with pleasure. We found good
grazing for the horses w7here two side
canons came into the main canon, and
we stopped there. Half a mile beyond,
where the main canon was lost among
the rocks of a shelving slide which led up
at last to the cedars, Martin and I came
upon a pool of water cupped in the solid
rock. Close by lay a spotted cow; and I
have not ceased to wonder where that
cow got her next drink. For our four
horses emptied that pool, and when we
drove past it next morning it was still
unreplenished.

Watering the horses and hobbling
them carefully (for we remembered
what "Pop" had said about the habit of
some of the enterprising Navahos) occu-
pied us until dark; we ate supper by fire
light which was reflected from a frown-
ing cliff at our back, and then explored
the canon for a time on foot. It was a
fairy-like place in the transforming
moonlight; as its wonderful color was
lost in the obscuring night, it took on
still more wonderful shapes and shad-
ows. It loomed above us massive and
portentous; it lured and frightened us.
We were ants scurrying up this crevice
which has seen the scurrying of countless
generations of wild human ants.

The cliff-dwellers, living far back in
a past which has been lost in the mists,
knew this canon ; down through the cen-
turies the trail beaters who passed from
its green floor to the cedar and sage
covered uplands, back and forth as the
seasons and the flocks called, had passed

608

OUTING

this way. Here and there, on the rocks
of the canon wall, they had left picto-
graph records; sheltered from the assaults
of weather, the records have remained.
The oldest are drawn at the height of a
man's shoulder as he stands on the
ground ; but the later ones were evident-
ly scratched into the rock by mounted
artists.

We went to sleep in a broad apron of
shadow flung out from the cliff at our
back; about midnight I was awakened
by singing up toward the water hole;
presently there came the sound of drum-
ming hoofs on the trail, and as Martin
and I sat up a small party of Navahos
(two or three men, and about as many
women and children) rode up to the all
but c1 .d camp-fire. We crawled out of
ou: oeds to welcome them sleepily, Joe
wringing his meager stock of Navaho
words to attempt a conversation. A box
of crackers and a can of peaches we found
to be an excellent addition to this ex-
tremely limited talk. Our questions as
to locality, unluckily, were beyond them.
They rode away at last with friendly
good-byes and expressive waves of their
hands. Our sleeping place was now in
full moonlight.

"This country has no habits!" com-
plained Martin as he went yawningly
back to his blankets; and I remembered
what a friend of Jim Bridger, the famous
pioneer hunter and scout, once said of
old Jim's irregular way of living. Often,
said this man, old Jim would go to bed
in the middle of the afternoon, sleep till
nine or ten o'clock, then get up and go
about any business he had in hand. If
he had nothing else to do, Jim would
eat and then turn a tin dishpan upside
down to drum on it after the Indian
fashion for hours on end. He learned
this way of living from the Indians,
who had no regular times for eating
and sleeping.

We should have slept at Marsh Pass
next night — the bulletin was clear on
that point. When we broke camp and
plodded out of that canon, past the
spotted cow who lay with one foreleg
extended and a sort of resigned look on
her face as she confronted the dry water
hole in the rock, we were still happily
unconscious of the fact that we had

swung more than a dozen miles out of
our course toward the west. We
thought three or four miles ride would
surely put us right. The Navaho wagon
tracks still showed plain, and as we
came upon the high, cedar-dotted mesa,
we began to explore the nearby hill-
tops, for the bulletin said:

"The traveler now enters the region
of ruins, and passes several mounds in-
dicating former habitations, some of
which still have standing walls." Look-
ing about the wide plain, we tried to
guess which of the picturesquely bold
buttes rising out of the mesa was Saunee.

But all this while the tracks still
trended westward — until finally we
faced the fact that we were lost! It
isn't a pleasant thing to realize, let me
tell you! When a grown man sets out
to follow what he supposes is a well-
marked, ancient road to a definite point,
and suddenly finds himself miles off his
course, following vague wagon tracks
across an absolutely uninhabited sage-
covered mesa, he is apt to grow very
humble and a bit panicky.

"We can always follow our own
tracks back anyway," I ventured, but
Martin only looked pityingly at me. So
we rode on, Joe relying implicitly upon
the directions I might be able to dig out
of the book.

Probably we ought to have been
scared stiff. But on that glorious day,
with high-flying clouds and a breeze
across the sand hills that was like a
caress, we couldn't keep on being
gloomy just because we were lost! On
we rode, and in the middle of the morn-
ing two mounted Indians came racing
toward us from the cedars at the right;
but they could not understand anything
of our questioning. They comprehend-
ed not our desperate attempts to diagram
our plight, shook their heads sympathet-
ically as we named Marsh Pass Ka-en-ta,
and "Pelican John" (Joe having as-
sured us that "Pelican" is the Navaho
Word for white man, and knowing from
a footnote in Dr. Fewkes's book that
John Wetherill is a trader at the place
called Ka-en-ta, which is on the Marsh
l\'iss road).

Then, on foot, came the most splendid
Navaho that ever lived ! He had evi-

TAKEN FROM THE BACK WALL OF THE GREAT OVERHANGING CLIFF AGAINST
WHICH THE ANCIENT PEOPLE BUILT THEIR DWELLINGS

610

OUTING

dently gone out on the mesa to turn his
horse into good pasturage, for he car-
ried a bridle, a rope, and a blanket.
The blanket he had wrapped about him-
self in a fine effect of drapery, but as
we began to bombard him with questions
and gestures, he spread the blanket over
a thick clump of sage-brush and sank
back upon it, as into his private easy
chair. It made a springy, thoroughly
comfortable seat. He shoved back the
wide sombrero from his forehead to
look at us out of splendid liquid eyes.

About fifty, he was six feet or more,
with wide shoulders, the legs of an ath-
lete, the grace of a cat. His hands were
long and tapering; wide silver bracelets
adorned his slender wrists, beaten silver
rings were on his fingers, and about his
neck was a heavy silver chain of hol-
lowed balls, at the end of which hung
one of those beautiful triple crescents,
set with turquoise, like the one we had
seen suspended from the neck of the
Navaho freighter on the way from
Flagstaff.

Abandoning any hope of getting from
this king of the mesa the help we need-
ed, Joe began to bargain with him for
the bracelets, the rings, and the neck-
lace. An offer of five dollars for the
necklace (the offer being made by fin-
gering the necklace and then throwing
five outspread fingers near the Indian's

eyes, at the same time hissing "pesos")
brought only a vague, pitying smile to
the owner's face. Joe turned to us and
said:

"If either of you fellows want that
necklace, I think I can get it for fifteen
dollars."

"Go to it!" said Martin. "I'll stay
in the bidding up to twenty-five dol-
lars." So Joe squatted in front of the
resting king of the mesa to bargain in
earnest. In half an hour, negotiations
stopped — at twenty dollars. Joe was
offering seventeen and a half (flinging
up his two hands with fingers outspread,
then one hand, then two fingers, then
crossing one forefinger with the other
to show that the last dollar was to be
cut in half). Persistently the Navaho
flung back both hands twice opened —
twenty dollars.

"Oh, give him the twenty!" cried
Martin at last; then all of us had to
take a hand in explaining that two ten-
dollar bills are actually worth as much
as twenty silver dollars. I think it
showed a wonderful faith on the part
of the Navaho that he consented to be-
lieve at last that he had really got the
amount named, for he was evidently ig-
norant of paper money. Most of the
Navahos are. After that, Joe bought on
his own account the widest bracelet
(which was not really a bracelet, but a

A SUNSHINE-AND-SHADOW EFFECT ON THE CUFF-RUINS OF BETATAKIN

THE ROAD TO BETATAKIN

611

curved, beaten, and sweep-
ingly engraved plaque fas-
tened to a broad leather band
laced about the wrist). At
the end of an hour, we shook
hands with the Navaho and
plodded on in the wagon
track we had been following.

Farther and farther west
that wagon track was taking
us ; at eleven o'clock we came
to another track crossing it at
right angles, and decided to
follow this toward the north-
east. It was noon when we
came at last to the end of the
road. Under a brush shel-
ter, close beside the hogan of
a Navaho family, stood the
broad - tired wagon whose
track we had followed since
turning to the right ! Beyond
stretched a limitless expanse
of trackless sage -grown
desert.

"I never really understood
before/' said Martin gloom-
ily, "that roads must end
somewhere !"

It was a cheerful-looking
Indian home we had come
upon, set on a slope among
cedars and pifion trees, with
a sheep corral built of logs,
a summer hogan ( if you don't
know what a hogan is, I may
say here that it is the Nava-
ho's house, a tepee -shaped
structure which may be of
poles piled round with leafy
boughs in summer, or a solid,
earth-covered or stone-built
winter habitation) before which a blan-
ket weaving frame had been set up. Some
demonstrative dogs, three women, and
two small girls came out to stare at us.
They would make no reply to our ques-
tions until we asked, by means of an ex-
tempore sign language, where we could
find water. Then they pointed to the
top of a nearby sand hill.

"Maybe so," said Martin. "I'm will-
ing to believe anything now!" He rode
away in the direction the woman had
pointed. In five minutes he was back.

"That's right," he said. "The water

THE POLES RISE FROM THE RUIN OF A "KIVA," THE
CEREMONIAL CHAMBER OF THE ANCIENT PEOPLE

grows on the hilltops out here." We
pulled up a long slope and camped close
to a deep pool of muddy water cupped in
what looked like a tiny crater in the very
top of a big sand hill.

To us, as we ate, came the Navaho
poet. So we learned to call him later.
He was a thin-flanked, long-haired man
of sixty, riding a satin-smooth black
pony; and he looked at the sky as he
rode. He squatted beside us, eating
what we urged upon him, all the time
answering our queries in his own tongue
with the slow, careful pronunciation of

612

OUTING

a school teacher. He seemed to feel
sure that we must understand him in
time; in fact, we did.

He talked with eyes, fingers, arms,
body. Certain words he repeated over
and over, until we thought we knew
what they meant. Then he traced in
the sand a rude map. He showed us
the way we had come, and pointed out
to us the way we should have to go to
reach the Marsh Pass road. Every turn
he described in the sand, and when it
came to the ups and downs his extended
hand made swoops and dips, like the
flight of the cars on a roller coaster.

We made him understand that we
wanted him to guide us across to the
road. He was willing — for a considera-
tion. We proposed one dollar, and he
stuck us for two — paid in advance!

"Didn't I say these people were Ori-
entals!" queried Martin, as I dug up
the two silver dollars and gave them to
the poet.

But we really didn't begrudge the two
dollars — the job might turn out to be
worth even more, though the old man
told us that if we started right away
we might get across country in time to
sleep beside the Marsh Pass road. So
we hitched the team and started.

Martin and I rode beside the old man
— until we looked back to discover that
Joe was making very slow progress
across the sand and sage-brush plain.
Had our buckboard been fitted with
wings, Joe might have kept up, but cer-
tainly no horses bred among the whites
could drag that load faster than a walk
— and the old Navaho was riding his
black pony at a fox-trot. We had to
curb his enthusiasm for swift movement,
though we could see he feared delay
meant camping somewhere short of the
Marsh Pass road.

That afternoon sticks in my mem-
ory as a dizzy nightmare. Blithely, with
gaze straight ahead, singing sometimes,
the old man led us up to the rims of
canons which fell away to dizzying
depths, pointing out corkscrew trails
down which we were expected to pilot
Joe and the buckboard. And the hills
we were forced to climb! T had the wit,
at the second, to hitch a lariat to the
end of the buckboard tongue, and, wind-

ing the other end about my saddle horn,
help Joe's willing but weary team. After
that, I kept the rope attached to the
tongue, helping out on all upgrades.
Martin stayed with the Navaho, trying
to bring that old poet's mind out of the
clouds to a realization that patience was
a needed virtue.

At one hill we balked. We didn't
doubt that the Navaho teamsters could
get across that slope of tilted bare rock,
at the lower edge of which yawned the
depths of a canon, but we would have
retraced our whole journey rather than
risk it. Very well, shrugged the old
Navaho, and he led us the roundabout
way down over a tongue of drifted sand
into a yellow-walled canon much grander
than the one we had followed for twen-
ty miles the afternoon before.

Truly this canon deserves a place
among the scenic delights of the West.
When we came down into it, its broad,
level floor offered an unbroken carpet
of grass, like the delicious verdure of a
well-kept putting green. A clear stream
of sweet water wandered irresponsibly
over the grass. To the west rose sheer
a 500-foot wall of soft yellow rock;
the eastern wall rose to as great a
height, but its surface was more broken
and tree-studded.

It was up a boulder-strewn goat trail
hacked out of the face of the eastern wall
that the old Navaho wanted us to climb.
He showed us that wagons had passed
up and down, but how they ever did it
is more than I can understand. Still, I
recall stories told by the California emi-
grants of tying ropes to their wagons
and letting them down certain trails of
the Sierras by shifting the ropes from tree
to tree. But we were expected to climb
up that darn trail! I rode part way up
with the Indian, came to a twelve-foot
slide of bare rock, pitched at an angle
of about 50 degrees, and when I realized
that Joe's team was expected to climb
that I shook my head. We wanted to
get to Marsh Pass and see the cliff ruins
Dr. Fewkes describes in his book. We
didn't want to end our lives taking such
risks as Lloyds would charge 85 per cent
premium for taking.

"That trail would be a total loss!" I
reported to Martin. Again the old

WHERE THE CLIFF-FACE CURVES GIGANTIC ABOVE THE RUI

THE HOPI VILLAGE OF MOENKAPI, NEAR TUBA CITY

Navaho shrugged and led us along the
bottom of the canon toward a road which
he made us comprehend would be easier.

But the afternoon had gone. When
we came to a slight mound out of which
a clear spring of water was issuing, the
old man halted us and, laying his head
in his hand and closing his eyes, indi-
cated that we were to camp there. Dis-
mounting, he then began to trace in the
sand our course from that point on to
the Marsh Pass road. We watched his
graphic pantomime; suddenly it dawned
upon us that he meant to quit us. Long
we protested, steadfastly he repeated in
Navaho incomprehensible reasons and
explanations.

In the midst of his talk occurred, over
and over, a vigorous pantomime — hands
going like the hands of a busy snare-
drum player, himself calling out "boom!
boom! boom!" It wasn't until next
day, when we met various parties of
Navahos riding to a dance somewhere in
the hills we had come across that we got
it through our heads that the old man
had wanted to go back home and pre-
pare for that dance himself.

Before lie rode away, through a nar-
row crack in the sheer canon wall, I
made him take me some way forward on
the road and show me where we must
climb out of the canon over another long

rci4]

tongue of drifted sand. We slept be-
side the spring, and next morning found
a thin coating of ice on the shallow pool
where we had stood shivering in the
moonlight after bathing our tired bodies;
not all the worry and strain promised for
the morrow had abated our appetites nor
troubled our sleep. By now, we were fit
for any amount of riding — up to the
limit of our horses' strength.

From sunrise to noon next day we
needed every bit of courage and resource-
fulness we had in stock. After we came
out of the canon and passed through a
fence built of huge logs, there w7as no
more trail ! Eastward rolled a long slope
covered with cedars and pinons, gashed
horribly with canons, not so great as the
one we had come out of, but formidable
enough. All we could remember of the
poet's directions were certain fluttering^
of his hand as he traced the turns or
charted the ups and downs. By this
time, Joe had subsided into a grim mute.
I felt as though I ought to apologize to
him for leading him into this wilderness.
I felt as though it was up to me to justify
my faith in Dr. Fewkes's book.

When you cet into the mountains of
the Western Navaho country, it is well
to raist your mental sights. Think of
the horse pasture and the wood-lot of
the home farm multiplied about a hun-

THE FILE OF TALE FOFEARS WHICH MARK THE SEN'. OF TUBA CITY

dred times, but still retaining the famil-
iar trails and contours. Once you get
used to the change of scale, you can get
across the mountains and canons — only
remember that for every one-minute de-
tour you have to make in driving through
the wood-lot and around the head of the
little ravine which is dammed into a pond
down in the horse pasture, you will have
to spend half a day heading around a
canon out there. The ditch across the
horse pasture seemed big to your childish
fancy when it dropped suddenly at one
spot to a depth of five feet ; well, our yel-
low canon was that ditch enlarged a
hundred times.

In the middle of the morning, as I
rode back to the buckboard from a four-
mile scramble of exploration, I sighted
eight Navahos — five men and three wom-
en— climbing up the slope. I went to
talk with them ; very graciously, when
they understood me (and by now I felt
that I could in some degree make a
carved Buddha get my meaning!) two
of the men rode back to the buckboard
with me, pointing out as they rode the
exact course our team must follow to
get through.

I was tempted to bribe them to con-
duct us clear out to the road, but I'm
glad that I didn't! For there came to
me a bit later a feeling of exhilaration —

1 was doing for that day some of the
same sort of pioneering my father had
done when he fronted the West, along
the California emigrant trail, in '51 ! To
me was permitted the thrill which came
with the feeling that I could rely upon
myself. As a guide, Joe had turned out
a hopeless failure ; he had even counseled
turning back the day before. At half
past twelve, when I saw the Marsh Pass
road ahead of us with no more canons
and gaping arroyos to cross before get-
ting to it, I felt that I had passed a test
with credit. Each of us, to celebrate,
munched the biggest and reddest apple
we could dig out of the bag, and at a
quarter after one we camped for lunch
beside the road at a spot where there was
coarse grass for our horses.

We reached Marsh Pass before sunset
— one day behind our schedule.

"But, by George, I wouldn't have
missed that scramble across the canons
for anything!" said Martin, rather un-
expectedly.

"I was afraid," I said, "that I was get-
ing in bad with both you and Joe ; I was
only glad that you didn't stand me up
somewhere and tell me what you thought
of me."

'Til confess," Martin went on, "that
at times Chicago seemed mighty remote
to me — and mighty desirable! But not

T6151

616

OUTING

THIS IS CALLED BY DR. FEWKRS RUIN A \ IT IS

THE FIRST THE VISITOR TO THE CLIFF-DWELLINGS

SEES. IT IS NOT A CLIFF-DWELLING

for long. A fellow needs this sort of
thing once in a while."

That evening, as we sat beside our
great blaze made from huge chunks of
dead cedar trees, Joe expanded. A load
had been lifted from his shoulders, too,
when we struck the road, for, of course,
his responsibility for the horses and the
buckboard was real, however saggingly
he leaned on me and the bulletin of Dr.
Fewkes. Until nearly ten o'clock, Joe
told us stories about his home country
down on the Gila River; about his brief
and unsatisfying experience in Kansas

City learning the butcher's
trade; about the long round-
ups when a hundred cowboys
covered a range as big as
half New England branding
calves, cutting beef stock out
and driving them for a week
on end to a shipping point;
about the cactus forests, the
palo verdes, the hot sands of
Southern Arizona in sum-
mer, the Gila monster that
is not feared at all on the
Gila; and, best of all, about
the men he had worked with.
Two of these, I now recall,
were ancients of a type that
has all but passed out of
American life — "Windy
Bob" and "Rickety Bob,"
one past seventy and still a
good cow hand, and the other
"eighty if he's a day" and
still following the round-ups
as a sort of assistant camp
hustler.

"I remember," said Joe,
baring his white teeth in a
reminiscent grin which
seemed to threaten the wind-
and-sun burned skin of his
face with a permanent break-
up, "a joke that ol' 'Windy'
got off once when we was
out on a round-up an' we'd
camped near Florence. Some
friends of the boss come out
in two wagons to see what a
round-up outfit looked like
an' hear how the boys talked.
"Well, ol' 'Windy,' he
had the time of his life
them folks along. He told
had a stampede about every

stringin

'em we

other night, but they mustn't get scared,

'cause the boys knowed how to handle

wild cattle all right. That was about

the last thing 'Windy' told 'em before

they went to bed.

"I reckon 'Windy' was so old he didn't
need much sleep — that's what he used to
say anyway when he'd want to go on
talkin' all night to the boys on the
round-up. We'd generally have to
threaten to lick the stufrin' out o'
'Windy' before he'd keep quiet.

THE ROAD TO BETATAKIN

617

"So that night 'Windy' stayed awake
until 'long about midnight, an' then he
got up and went to the wagon where
some chain harness was hung over the
wheels. He got a couple of sets of that
harness on his back an' come a-runnin'
down the slope an' through the camp;
an' as he run, he kept yellin' at the top
of his lungs.

"Lord, you ought to seen them stran-
gers flockin' out o' their beds! They
climbed into them wagons in all sorts
of nightshirts, and the women screeched
till you'd a thought a hundred mice was
let loose at each one ! As fer o' 'Windy,'
he sneaked the harness back
to the wagon wheels, and
them visitors never did know
what struck camp."

All this, and many more
primitive and satisfying tales,
Joe told in a gentle drawl.
At each memory, he laughed
as heartily as we; and when
we piled into our blankets
Martin and I shouted a good-
night across the fire to Joe —
something we had not cared
to risk before.

In our camps, Martin and
I used to study the map of
the region in which the cliff
ruins lie — the map which is
pasted into Dr. Fewkes's
bulletin. We had read Dr.
Fewkes's descriptions of
"The Swallow's Nest," of
"Betatakin," of "Kitsiel," of
"Cradle House," of "Ladder
House," of "Pine-tree
House," and of "Trickling
Spring House" — all places
where the cliff-dwellers had
once made their homes in the
main canon and the side
canons through which La-
guna creek and its feeders
flow. Our camp at Marsh
Pass was the proper place to
start on our explorations of
these wonderful ruins; the
same rock profile faced us as
that in the picture in the
book, and, though Dr.
Fewkes evidently never
thought of visitors trying to

find them without a guide, we saw no
reason why we should wait until one of
us could get on to the store of John
Wetherill at Ka-en-ta and bring back a
man to lead us in.

We thought Dr. Fewkes's map and
his record of distances from the camping
place at Marsh Pass ought to be suffi-
cient to guide us at least to Betatakin —
the nearest of the big ruins, and the most
interesting. We conned the doctor's
words once more at breakfast:

"The doctor camped right here," I
explained to Martin as I opened the book
at page 12, "and he says: 'Descending

ONE OF THE SIDE CANONS OF THE LAGUNA CREEK
CANON

THE ROAD TO BETATAKIN

619

to Laguna creek and following the bot-
tom of the canon, crossing and recross-
ing the stream several times, the first
cliff-dwelling is seen built in a niche in
the cliffs high up on the right. . . .
Following the canon about five miles
from Marsh Pass, the writer's party
came to a fork in the canon, where a
guide was found who led the way across
the stream into a small side canon, in the
end of which lies Betatakin.'

"Then, here's a footnote," I explained
carefully, "which says: 'Laguna creek
is entered at this point on the right by a
stream bifurcating into the Cataract and
East tributaries, which flow through
canons of the same names.' Now, that
point where this bifurcating stream en-
ters Laguna creek ought to be opposite
where the small side canon leading down
from Betatakin comes in. Do you fol-
low the doctor?"

"No," Martin confessed, "but if you
think you've got it all figured out, lead
on."

Since it was but five miles (according
to Dr. Fewkes) to the point on Laguna
creek where the small side canon
branched out, and only an unnamed short
distance from that point up to the ruin,
Martin and I decided to give our saddle
horses a day of rest, making the explora-
tion on foot. Surely, the horses needed
the rest, for we should have only one
day there instead of the expected two.
We waded Laguna creek at a point just
below our camp at half past nine next
morning.

At the most, wre thought, the walk
would not be more than fourteen miles,
along a beaten trail, so wTe took nothing
to eat with us. Our only luggage was
Dr. Fewkes's bulletin, with that simple
map at the end and that passage of direc-
tions for getting to Betatakin.

Oh, trustful man! And oh, deceiving
scientist!

Joe wasn't interested in cliff-dweller
ruins — he'd "growed up on the Gila; an'
down there a feller can go out anywhere
in the hills an' kick pieces of ancient
pottery out o' the sand." He said he'd
spend the day driving on to John Weth-
erill's store; as we plunged down the
steep hill to Laguna creek, we saw him
going up among the cedars toward the

sound of the bell which Maude, the gray
driving horse, wore.

"If we stick close to the creek, we
shan't get lost," I suggested. For a
short time, we tried walking along the
bottom of the arroyo through which the
shallow, discolored stream hurried; but
the second stretch of quicksand we struck
sent us scrambling to the top, and we
were soon lost in a net of cattle trails
through the greasewood that led in and
out among arroyos in a dizzying dance.
We emerged in time from the wide flat
and the greasewood forest ; during that
walk we had passed a number of short
canons which led into the main canon
on the left. None of them is marked on
the map; and I began to feel just the
slightest uneasiness.

Two hours had passed when I led
Martin over to the base of the right-hand
wall of Laguna creek canon, where we
at last struck a good trail. We searched
the towering heights with our eyes to
make out "Swallow's Nest," the first
ruin on the way up. Granting that Dr.
Fewkes was right in his estimate of the
distance to the mouth of the canon at
the end of wrhich lies Betatakin, "Swal-
low's Nest" could be not more than
three miles from camp, so when wTe
came opposite it after nearly three hours
of tramping we decided that our detour
among the twistings of the creek bed and
across the greasewood flat had taken us
farther out of our wray than wTe had
supposed.

We stopped for five minutes where
the view of "Swallow's Nest" was good
from below. About us stretched a field
of yellow flowers like great, long-
stemmed daisies, while a faint breath of
fragrant air swept over us. At the top
of the cliffs, the soft rock was eroded to
form the most wonderfully fantastic
shapes — prehistoric beasts and beasts of
the menagerie were set up there. We
traced out twin elephants crowded close
together, a plunging alligator, the giant
profile of a hippopotamus, its head turned
as if to avoid a blowT from a hideous
brobdignagian monkey.

"Get the right slant of moonlight on
that bunch," said Martin, "and you'd
have a nightmare made to order!"

Almost under those grotesques, half

620

OUTING

BATHING HOUR FOR SOME YOUNG HOPI CHILDREN

way down the cliff, is the "Swallow's
Nest." We could make out the half-
ruined wTalls springing straight from a
slope of talus a little way toward the
arch of stone framing the shallow cave
which some ancient people had chosen as
a desirable home. Pick the crumbling
ruins of a stone farmhouse out of the
briars of a New England pasture and set
them five hundred feet up the side of an
almost sheer cliff, in which some fabled
monster swallow (say one fifty times big-
ger than the roc) had pecked out a shel-
ter, and you will get an illuminating
idea of this "minor ruin."

We gazed up at the ruin in a new si-
lence. Certainly it was impressive; and
neither Martin nor I had command of
words which seemed worth uttering.
They who chose to live up in the face of
the cliffs long ago passed into an ob-
livion from which history cannot rescue
them, but here, in the wonderful silence
and sweep of the great canons, they have
their monuments. You stand gazing,
sweat on your whiskered face and yel-
low pollen from the daisy-like flowers

powdered over your gray
woolen shirt, dried mud on
your tramping boots, a slen-
der lizard draped across the
edge of a rock close by, won-
dering what your next move
will be — and your soul lifts
in a sudden, tormenting de-
sire to understand the mean-
ing of the procession of life.
I'd always believed that na-
ture obliterates the traces of
man's intrusions soon after
he has ceased to struggle to
set his mark on her. It is a
favorite saying of those philo-
sophical fictionists who design
to stop a moment in their
tale-weaving and tell us how
puny a thing we are. But
they mustn't come to Laguna
creek canon if they want to
hold to that view!

Here nature seems to have
cried hands off! to all the
elements for an indefinite
space. Storms pass by and
do not sweep into those cun-
ningly chosen rock-shelters ;
no rain falls upon the crude masonry of
the 'dobe-and-willow walls; only now
and then, I suppose, some prowling wild
animal topples over a fragment of slowly
disintegrating wall. Nothing grows up
there to conceal and rot what the cliff-
dwellers left.

As we tramped on, the sun came down
upon us with a fiercer heat. Between
the precipitous, Quaker-gray earth sides
of the arroyo and the splendidly towering
cliff at our right was only a difficult,
narrow trail, except that now and then
the trail fell away into a narrow valley
marking the entrance to the main canon
of another side canon. In these valleys,
and in the broad expanse of the Laguna
creek valley across the way, sprang the
patches of yellow flowers and rarer
patches of sturdy purple-topped weeds
and the spiky prickly pear. Tiny clumps
of live oaks dotted the valleys, too, and
back in the dark recesses of the short,
plunging side canons we saw7 the straight
stems of tall pines.

It seems to me, as I turn my mind
back upon the scene, that side canons

THE ROAD TO BETATAKIN

621

come into the Laguna creek canon from
either side every quarter mile — they are
like the radiating cracks you see in a
pane of glass which has been struck,
but not quite broken through, by a stone ;
and not one of them is indicated on the
map in the book except the bifurcating
canon on the right and the canon which
leads to Betatakin on the left!

So we walked on and on, wondering
which of the many little canons at the
left held the object of our search. Dr.
Fewkes says in his book that a stream of
clear water issues from directly under
the ruined walls of Betatakin. There-
fore, we searched the south
bank of Laguna creek for
signs of clear water coming
down from a side canon.

We missed it, and went
on steadily climbing upward.
It was after two o'clock be-
fore we made up our minds
to turn back. By this time
we were hot, intolerably
thirsty, and hungry. Laguna
creek water was too heavily
laden with silt to drink,
though we scrambled desper-
ately down to the stream
two or three times deter-
mined to swallow some of it.
That was the second time in
our journey when we framed
words uncomplimentary to
Dr. Fewkes (I am putting
it mildly).

In three-quarters of an
hour of fast downhill walk-
ing, we came to a point on
Laguna creek just below
where the bifurcating stream
entered, and we studied the
windrows of canons opposite
with minute care. Finally
we picked out one which ap-
peared to join Laguna creek
at the spot marked on the
map, then crossed the stream
gingerly, fearing more quick-
sands, to examine the sand
of the branch canon bottom
for traces of the clear water
which should flow from
under the walls of Betata-
kin.

Sure enough, we found it — the faintest
possible trickle of clear, warm water.
Warm or not, we drank deeply, then
went plunging along the sunny side of
the arroyo through which it flowed across
the Laguna creek valley until we were
literally forced to walk in the bed of the
tiny stream.

Down there, after the narrow canon
began to mount out of the Laguna creek
valley, it was cool and fragrant with
vegetation. Pools which grew larger in
size and cooler to the taste as we went
on tempted us to drink again and again.
We felt we could never more pass by

SHE IS CALLED QUEEN MAWA BY THE PEOPLE OF
THE HOPI VILLAGE OF MOENKAPI

A VIEW OF "KITSIEL," ONE OF THE GREATEST RUINS AT MARSH PASS

fresh water untasted. Sudden water-
falls, over which now only the tiniest
pencilpoint cataracts fell, offered them-
selves at intervals, and we had to scram-
ble around them through tangles of
bushes and grasses and vines almost
tropical in luxuriance. As we mounted
higher, the trees grew to respectable
heights.

At one point, this short canon itself
bifurcated — and here the map was ac-
tually helpful, for it plainly told us to
keep to the right. I triumphantly point-
ed this fact out to Martin, and he said:

"Let's forgive the doctor everything —
isn't this enchanting!" He waved his
hand about to indicate the hidden moun-
tain garden we had come into, walled by
stupendous cliffs, higher than any we had
passed as we traversed Laguna creek
canon.

For fifteen minutes, I suppose, we
were keyed to the highest point of ex-
pectancy. Up and up, the tiny stream
was leading us, over rougher and rough-
er heaps of huge boulders, between green-
er and greener tangles of cottonwoods,
willows, birches, tall rushes, and waving
vines; and still the towering cliff-face
was unbroken.

Then Martin, walking two steps
ahead, stopped suddenly and put his hand
out toward me. I came up to feel his

[622]

fingers grip my shoulder. There, wholly
revealed, lay Betatakin, a long line of
ruins arched over by a span of rock
which leaps to such a height that it lit-
erally takes your breath away. Clear
above the treetops it all rose, a dead city
set in a perpendicular cliff-face and now
untouched by any ray of sunlight.

"I have waited here forever," it said
to us. "Untroubled through the years,
above that tangle of reaching green,
I have sat here serene, watching the
suns come and go, welcoming my peo-
ple in the days when they came drag-
ging tired feet up the canon, echoing the
laughter and the wailings and the weak
crying of the men and women and babies
who came to me, indifferent to their de-
parture, bearing with the few explorers
who have come to dig among my ruins,
waiting for the slow disintegration of
time — rand now you have come!"

Dead silence, and a sort of terror —
what is called awe, I suppose — for the
first minute! Then, quietly, we scram-
bled up the last few hundred feet o^
vague trail to the lovely dripping spring
which issues from under the foot of the
ruins.

We climbed up the narrow trail, step-
ping across piled shards, testing the
strength of dirt-covered roofs that had
lasted no one knows how manv cen-

THE ROAD TO BETATAKIN

623

turies, peeping through to cubicle inte-
riors where the cliff-dwellers had con-
ducted the business of living. Our eyes
searched eagerly the face of the rock-
shelter against which these rooms had
been built; and we climbed ever higher
as the ruins led up the pitched plane of
the shelf on which they rested.

Then, at about the middle of the long,
flat arc of ruined dwellings, as we stood
with our backs to the wall of rock, we
turned our eyes outwards and upwards.
What a sensation we had ! Leaning far
over us and framing the opposite red
wall of the canon a quarter of a mile
away as well as a section of pale sky
about it, the arch of rock, like some
giant's cathedral arch, curved 800 feet
above us.

"Say!" gasped Martin, "I never sus-
pected anything so stupefying! Why
these people — think of living here, in a
frame like this!"

Martin's voice woke a splendid echo;
and we shouted. Up the curving vault
to the top of the great arch rolled the
reverberations and dropped again, until
it seemed to me that the sound must
carry half across Arizona. Think of
having this wonderfully perfect sound-
ing board (600 feet from edge to edge
and 800 feet from base to top) behind a
chorus of strong-lunged singers! I tried
to imagine wiiat the toilers up the canon
or the climbers on the opposite cliff in
ancient times must have heard in seasons
of ceremonial — chants which rose slow
and slow, then a little more rapidly,
louder and higher, faster and more shrill
as the fever waked in primitive blood,
and culminating in such a maddening
roll and sweep of ecstacy that the moun-
tains were filled with sound. Or the
minor, sweet songs of the women who
crushed the corn and baked the meat
while they sat close to their skin-swathed
babes. Or the hail of some deep-chested
sentinel from the topmost roof.

Then we looked at our watches — five
o'clock. Time to go, if we expected to
get back to supper and bed before dark.

We had recovered from the sharp hun-
ger that had beset us; it was cool; we
had slaked fully the thirst which had

tormented us; the hour spent at Betata-
kin had given us the rest we craved;
and when we were able at last to step
around the rock which shut the wonder-
ful cliff ruins from our sight we started
pell-mell down the side canon. Though
we made the fastest time possible, it was
three-quarters of an hour before we came
to Laguna creek; and a fresh wild-cat's
track had been impressed on the damp
sand since we had come up ! Then, at
a quarter to six, we set out to cover what
Dr. Fewkes calls five miles from the
mouth of that side canon back to where
we had camped.

At half past seven the last daylight
faded from the high cliffs. We were
then about half way back to camp! We
had come at least six miles. Then on
through the increasing darkness, hoping
that we could stick to the trail, we
plunged. Multitudes of stars came out,
and all about us rose the black walls of
the myriad canons. Our trail dipped
and rose, crossed arroyos which yawned
terrible in the blackness; then it crossed
the river, and began to branch out this
way and that till we found ourselves re-
peatedly following some track which
pinched out, leaving us in an unmarked
wilderness of greasewood.

Slowly we went on. About half past
eight the moon came above the rim of
the mountains; we dropped into the
bottom of an arroyo and followed it
toward Laguna creek until we crossed
the right trail. After that, we had no
more trouble in finding our way; and at
a quarter to ten we climbed the steep
slope to camp. We had been more than
twelve hours without food, and no one
knows how many miles we had covered.

Joe was sound asleep. We waked
him to ask if he had become worried on
our account. No, he hadn't worried,
though just after dark he had fired his
revolver twice in the hope that we might
hear the sound of the shots and answer.

"Joe, you ought to have come with
us — we've seen a wonderful thing!" said
Martin.

"Uh-huh," grunted Joe, and he added
sleepily: "I cooked a batch o' bread fer
you fellers — it's in the skillet."

THE END

FOOTBALL, LIKE EVERY OTHER SPORT, IS AN EVOLUTION FROM PHYSICAL INSTINCTS

ODOTBALL in America is a modern sport. Men are still alive and
hearty who played on the first college teams; and it was not till
many years after the colleges adopted it that the rank and file of Boy-
ville knew anything about the game, especially in rural regions. I can
myself recall the first leather-covered football which came to our town,
brought home at Thanksgiving time by a never-too-much-to-be-admired
youth who had gone to Phillips Academy. The shape especially excited
our wonder. Spheres of black rubber were all we had hitherto seen.
But football, like every other sport, is an evolution from physical in-
stincts, shaped from other minor games preceding it; and one of these
games, perhaps, is Pom-pom-pullaway. At any rate, that game, like
most games of childhood probably dating back into remote history, has
an obvious kinship with American football.

It was played in the school yard, of course, that part of the yard
behind the building. There was a high board fence around this section.
Can you fancy an oldtime district school without that fence? One boy
was "It," while the others lined up along the fence on one side of the
yard; and when he cried "Pom-pom-pullaway!" they had to run across
to the fence on the other side. The one who was "It" had to catch
anybody he could in transit— to catch him, and slap him three times on
the back. If he succeeded in doing this, the one slapped was "It" with
him, till all the school was caught, or the recess bell rang. The most
successful way of avoiding those three slaps, if you couldn't get out of
your captor's clutches, was to fall to the ground, on your back, and
resist all efforts to turn you over. This was a variant on wrestling,
without doubt, but its purpose was different. The object of the tackle
was to prevent the other fellow from reaching a desired goal. Its real
connection was with football.

I even seem vaguely to remember efforts to eliminate the brutality
from Pom-pom-pullaway, because the girls used to play it, too. The
girls were supposed as a rule to tackle girls, and the boys to tackle
boys; but in that feminist period before acute self -consciousness comes
to the sex, the girls often mixed hopelessly into the masculine fray, and
many a torn or grass-stained frock resulted, causing pedagogical rebuke
and parental anger. In the carefully supervised school playgrounds of
to-day such unmaidenly conduct no doubt never occurs. It has van-
ished with the high board fence behind the District school. I wonder
if Pom-pom-pullaway has vanished, too? The children in the town
where I live now have never heard of it. Poor things !

[625]

MUSKRATS AND MUSKRAT
FARMING

By EDWARD T. MARTIN

Profits That Accrue from Acquaintance with the Habits of
Kipling's <( Broken-He arte d Little Beast"

IPLING says "Chucundra
the muskrat is a broken-
hearted little beast. He
whimpers and cheeps all
night." Kipling should
know, but Chucundra is
other things besides a little animal who
"never comes into the middle of the
room but always creeps round by the
wall." According to a report made by
the chief of the Government Biological
Survey, "Its fur, while not of the high-
est quality, is adapted to a great variety
of uses and its flesh, unlike that of most
fur bearers, has considerable food value."
From a commercial standpoint the
muskrat is one of the best fur bearers,
ranking ahead of seal, sea otter, and
beaver, which, from the insignificance
of the animal, one would hardly suspect.
Its skin was first used more than a
hundred years ago to make "beaver"
hats. Now it is manufactured into seal-
skin garments for the ladies and also
into imitations of all high grade fur,
so there is no fur dark of color and
short of hair that, when properly dyed
and doctored, it is not sold for.

As the sale of all game becomes less
through prohibitive laws, the flesh of
the "broken-hearted little beast" grows
more in demand the country over. It
is red in color, fine grained, and tender,
as good for table use as rabbit, perhaps
better than squirrel because not so
tough. Some say it tastes like terrapin,
others see a resemblance to duck.
Whichever is true, it is very palatable.
In many markets it is disguised and
sells as swamp or marsh rabbit. In one
place as water squirrel, but growing in
favor all the time it is offered more and

[620}

more under its rightful name — dressed
muskrat.

Years ago, when to the writer the
world was young, he put up over night
at the shack of an old trapper and at
supper ate with much relish of the piece
de resistance, a dish of strange looking
and queerly tasting game. He could
not figure it out. Not rabbit, nor duck,
although there was rather a ducky
flavor to it, nor squirrel — there were no
squirrels in the neighborhood. Finally
curiosity got the better of good manners
and the trapper was asked, "What is it?"

"Them?" he replied. "Putty good,
ain't they?"

Receiving an affirmative nod, he con-
tinued, "Them's young muskrats."

"No!" the writer answered. "You
can't fool me. There's no musky taste
to them."

"That's all in knowing how to cook
them," the old fellow chuckled. "You
see in skinning them you don't want to
let the fur touch the meat an' be sure
ter pull the musk bags off with the hide,
then if you soak the meat in salt water
fer an hour or so, they's jest as good as
chickens or bull frogs."

They were, not a bit of doubt about
it. Afterwards, in telling of this new
dish and how good it was, not one of a
party of listening sportsmen believed
the story.

"Rats!" one said. "Eat rats! Bah!
I'm no Chinaman, thank the Lord."

"These were muskrats," he was told.
To which he replied, "What's the dif-
ference? Rats are rats."

"Yes," another chipped in, "this story
of a muskrat supper is fishy like the one
you tell about eating fried rattlesnakes

MUSKRATS AND MUSKRAT FARMING

627

and stewed alligator. You may have
done it, but "

And there was no convincing them.
The word rat queered the whole affair.

Why should not muskrats be fit for
food ? They are cleaner in habits than
ducks or domestic fowl. They eat lily
root, celery bulbs, flag, all the good
things aquatic birds feed on and few of
the bad. Occasionally they may eat fish.
A duck always will. Some authorities
claim they are semi-carnivorous. This
the writer does not believe. He has
found many ducks dead and untouched
on rat houses, cripples which crawled
out of the water and died. Some had
been there for days. Once a friend with
whom he often argued on the subject
proved it on him. This friend paddled
more than a mile to clinch his argu-
ment.

"Come," he said. "Come. I'll soon
show you if muskrats eat dead ducks or
not. There, see!" he said, as we neared
a rat heap on which lay the half-eaten
remains of a bluebill duck. "Rats won't
eat ducks, eh? what do you think now?"

It was an old rat house with an un-
usual opening in the top. By way of
reply, two or three vigorous jabs were
made at it with a push paddle, when
out jumped a mink closely followed by
his mate. They had killed or driven
away the builders of the house and were
having their own misdeeds charged
against the original owners. Which
teaches, "Beware of circumstantial evi-
dence," and also shows how sometimes
erroneous statements are made concern-
ing game by superficial observers.

As the public learns that muskrats are
as good as any of the common ducks,
better than many, the demand in most
of the Eastern cities and a few of the
Western, continually grows. For in-
stance, in Baltimore, a year ago last
winter, over ten thousand dozen were
sold, frequently bringing more than a
dollar a dozen. In Philadelphia the
demand was much heavier, the sales of
a single dealer as far back as 1907
amounting to two hundred and fifty
dozen a week during the entire season.

Over twelve years ago a Sportsman's
Club in Michigan asked for a law pro-
tecting muskrats. Their request was

treated as a joke until in a body they
went to the State Capitol, and after
some lobbying invited the members of
the legislature to a banquet prepared by
the club's own chef. No hint was given
that the principal dishes were of musk-
rats, cooked in many ways, until after
the dinner was over, then the toast-
master announced the fact and asked for
a law protecting "such excellent game."
The club got what they wanted and
for many years thereafter gave annual
"muskrat feeds" invitations to which
were at a premium.

There was formerly a hotel keeper in
Chicago who could make "canvasback
duck" out of a fishy old shelldrake and
"broiled young prairie chickens on toast"
from a plebeian mud-hen. No one but
himself and the cook knew how it was
done. The writer can bear testimony
that the imitations were almost as good
as the originals. With muskrats no
such jugglery of the kitchen is neces-
sary. They stand on their own merits
and this demand for their flesh, coupled
with constant discoveries of the new
kinds of fur manufacturers can make
from their pelts, is what in the long run
will make muskrat farming very profit-
able.

A Long Market History

For a hundred and fifty years musk-
rat pelts have been sold in ever-increas-
ing quantities on the London fur ex-
change. Careful records have been
kept of all transactions. From 1763,
the earliest available date, to 1800 sales
averaged 75,000 skins yearly and prices
were low. For the next fifty years there
were larger offerings and increased de-
mand. The skins began to be freely
used for imitations, some of which the
London Chamber of Commerce classed
as "permissible substitutes." This
brought the average for each year up
to 411,000.

The following forty years showed
much heavier sales. Skins which pre-
viously had come largely from Canada
through the Hudson's Bay Company
began to arrive in quantities from the
United States. The average was a trifle
under 2,500,000, "permissible substitu-

628

OUTING

tion" evidently being a winning game.
The sales for each of the next ten years
were over 4,000,000, and since then the
sky has been the limit.

The totals for the present season,
winter of 1913-14, London sales only,
covering shipments from all America,
Canada as well as the United States,
will exceed 10,000,000 skins. From
1763 until 1900 recorded sales show
that 165,000,000 rat skins were sold.
Include in this the total business of the
next thirteen years up to the present
time and the figures reach nearly 240,-
000,000. To these English sales add
pelts used in America and the rest of
the world, then consider.

Is it any wonder muskrats are getting
scarce? Isn't the volume of business
sufficient to class them as game and to
extend Nation-wide protection of the
law during the breeding season and early
fall when their fur is almost worthless?
Either way, protection or extermination,
the fur farmer gets the benefit, this term
to include every man and boy who has,
or can make, a pond, or buy or hire a
marsh.

Muskrat farming is in its infancy.
Records show that little or no attempts
have been made to improve the breed,
to raise only black or very dark stock.
Nor have many farmers fed their rats,
preferring to let each animal hustle for
himself.

The writer, talking not long ago with
the owner of a rat ranch, was told:

"Sure, we raise them and make money,
too. Good money."

"How?"

"Well, you see," he replied, "we just
let them grow. We own a lake of about
650 acres. For a year we kept trappers
away; then let four men take it on
shares. Each staked off his part, same
as a mining claim and trapped, giving
us half he made. When prices were
highest we realized about $4,000 a sea-
son for our share."

"Did you feed the rats?"

"Feed them ? Why, no ! There was
plenty of natural food, besides it is not
good to have a fur-bearer very fat.
Makes too much trouble in cleaning his
hide."

"Did you protect the rats from their

natural enemies? Coyotes, foxes, mink,
hawks, and owls?"

"No. What an idea!"

Really it was no farm. The four
men paid half their catch for "trappers'
rights," making good money by doing
so. Had the farm been "cultivated,"
that is, efforts made at bettering the
stock, feeding and protecting it, beyond
question the profits could have been in-
creased more than thirty per cent.

There are many similar farms along
the Eastern shore of Maryland, although
it seems flattery to call a simple herding
of the wild by so pretentious a name.
These are all on lands subject to tidal
overflow which, before the muskrat in-
dustry began to boom, were unsalable
at half a dollar an acre and now net the
owners more than the cultivated lands
adjacent.

Profit With No Care

As an example: A man bought a
tract of useless marsh land, paying what
was then considered the large price of
$2,700. He made no attempt at farm-
ing or feeding, but leased it for one-
half the fur. In 1909 his share of the
profits was $890. Another instance was
a young fellow who bought a little over-
flowed tract for $150 and in a single
year cleared $100 for his half of the rats
caught. In both instances, care and in-
telligent treatment would have largely
increased the money made.

When, two or three years ago, musk-
rat skins soared to over eighty cents
apiece, some of these trappers made more
money than they ever knew there was
in the world before, and even now, with
prices cut in two, earn tidy sums for
their few months' work. Remember
what I write. The time is not distant
when a dollar will be considered cheap
for the skin of one of the "broken-heart-
ed little beasts." How times change!
Hack in the 60's when the writer sold
his spring catch at a shilling (12^c)
each he thought he was traveling rap-
idly along the highway that leads to
riches.

This kind of fur farming appeals to
farmers and farmers' sons, in that it is
winter work which can be attended to

MUSKRATS AMD MUSKRAT FARMING

629

when other business is slack. The one
great trouble is suitable location. Not
every would-be farmer has marsh or lake
handy to his home. Sometimes a creek
can be dammed and a pond formed ; but
the work must be done thoroughly and
the dam made of stone or concrete, else
the rats will burrow through, let the
water escape, and destroy their home.
They are great on the dig — these small
fur bearers — and in soft, moist earth
have been known to burrow fifty feet
straight in from the water.

The farm should be enclosed by a var-
mint-proof fence of strong wire netting,
not only to keep the rats in but to keep
their enemies out, one as necessary as the
other. The rats like to roam around of
a moonlight night, often rinding their
way a mile or more from water to some
garden or fruit farm where they destroy
more than they eat, not only vegetables
but young trees. This, if permitted,
would make a muskrat farm disliked in
a well-ordered community.

Rats Need Protection

Their enemies are legion, all the car-
nivora, birds and beasts. Many of the
four-footed ones can be kept out by the
fence. Birds of prey must be met with
trap or gun. Nothing is easier to trap
than a hawk unless it be an owl. Set a
steel trap on top of a stout pole or high
post placed near the chicken yard or fur
farm against which the birds may have
designs and it is almost certain, particu-
larly if no dead tree is near, that the
first winged raider coming in search of a
meal will light on the pole and put his
foot in the trap.

Second only in importance to choice
of a fit location is selection of the right
kind of breeding stock. Black or very
dark brown muskrats are in much great-
er demand than the lighter colored va-
riety and at least twenty per cent higher
in price. There is little doubt of their
breeding true to color as do other fur
bearers, which would make a pond
stocked with them as good as a small
gold mine; better than some the writer
has known of. They increase very rap-
idly; have three, occasionally four, litters
a year with six to fifteen in a litter. Be-

sides this, the young of the early spring
themselves breed late in the fall.

Let me see. A family of five females
and one male would produce:

Litter in April of, say 50 young

" " June " " 50

" August " " 30 "

Deduct 20 per cent for mortality
Young of April litter, say 20 fe-
males, 6 each 120

Total 250

Deduct 20% for mortality 50

Net increase in a season 200

There might be a fourth litter and the
average might be larger, but ail in all,
give and take, there should be an in-
crease of 200.

Wild, or semi-wild and unprotected,
of these various litters, the mink would
get a few, as would wild cats, wolves,
and other animals, the hawks and owls
their share, but in large lakes or rivers
the toll taken by pickerel would be largest
of all. A ten- or twelve-pound pickerel
would snap up a half-grown rat, then,
hardly knowing he had eaten it, go
looking for more, so it would be safe
to say, instead of 200 reaching maturity,
it would be barely fifty, with these still
fighting for their lives against their many
enemies now reinforced by man.

Quoted authorities differ as to the
number of young in a litter, some put-
ting it as low as from three to six.
Roderick McFarlane, who for many
years was a chief factor for the Hudson's
Bay Company, says eight to twenty.
According to the writer's experience,
limited to Illinois and Northern Indi-
ana, McFarlane is right. There may be
exceptional instances of only three, but
then again as many as twenty would
be equally rare.

One thing in favor of the muskrat
farmer is that the rats are good doers,
not nervous and excitable like the fox;
not subject to disease as are some of the
small fur bearers. The writer in more
than forty years of marsh experience
never remembers having seen a dead
muskrat unless one that had met a vio-
lent end. Professional trappers say the
same.

A much disputed question is "How
many to an acre?" Maryland authori-

630

OUTING

ties put it at fifty. One should remem-
ber that there they make no attempt at
feeding. The writer has seen ponds of
only an acre or two containing twelve
or fifteen houses with a probable average
of eighteen rats to each house. On this
line of figuring, an acre would support a
hundred in the wild and fifty more with
liberal feeding.

Will it pay to buy food? Why not?
It pays with poultry, although the re-
turns are less and higher grade land is
required 'for coops and runways. Wheat,
corn, oats, and bran for chickens cost
more than twenty dollars a ton. Cab-
bages, parsnips, onions, potatoes — all
second-grade goods — for muskrats not
over six dollars, and one day with an-
other chickens will eat more food.

Now for the money part. After the
muskrat farm gets going, from each fam-
ily of six at least two hundred pelts can
be sold yearly, bringing in, say, thirty-
five cents each; add five cents more for
dressed rats and the total receipts are
eighty dollars. Six thousand pounds of
food in addition to what they pick up
should be sufficient. Three tons, eight-
een dollars. Call hauling, attendance,
and repairs twenty dollars; the total ex-
pense would be thirty-eight dollars, leav-
ing forty-two dollars as the net. This a
boy's experiment on an acre and a half.
The possibilities of a man-size farm of
a hundred acres or more can readily be
seen. On paper, raising muskrats looks
more profitable than growing wheat or
corn.

SPORTSMANSHIP IN THE "AMER-
ICA'S" CUP RACES

By HERBERT L. STONE

Editor of Yachting

How Standards Have Changed from the Days of the Famous
Old Schooner to this Year of 1914

—^ HOUGH the interna-
tional races for the Amer-
ica s Cup have lately be-
come to the public mind
more a matter of yacht
designing and building
than one of sport in the accepted sense
of the term, it was not always so, and
some of the races for the famous bit of
silver in the past have been as true tests
of sportsmanship as any international
athletic contest of the present day.
While it may be that, primarily, yacht
racing is a test of the developments of
yacht design, yet it is one of boat han-
dling as well, and it certainly requires as
high a degree of skill, nerve and re-
sourcefulness to sail a large racing yacht
as to compete successfully in any other
form of sport.

It was surely the very highest type
of sportsmanship that prompted men to
sail their own yachts across three thou-

sand-odd miles of turbulent ocean in or-
der to invade a foreign country and race
against the pick of that country's fleet
for a piece of silver that, at first, did
not have much tradition behind it, espe-
cially when they knew that the condi-
tions under which they would be forced
to race would all be to their disadvan-
tage. Yet this is what most of the earlier
seekers after the cup did, not forgetting,
of course, that it is also what the orig-
inal winners of the cup did; and the
history, of the thirteen races that have
already been sailed for the cup put up
by the Royal Yacht Squadron sixty-three
years ago, worth a paltry one hundred
guineas, is chiefly interesting as it reflects
the sporting ethics of the intervening pe-
riod and shows the great changes that
have been made in our standards of fair
play and a "square deal." The old days
of wanting to win at any price are hap-
pily past and conditions governing most

SPORTSMANSHIP IN THE "AMERICA'S" CUP RACES 63i

international contests at present are
framed more to bring about a fair race
for the game's sake than with the sole
idea of winning.

In 1851 when Commodore Stevens
and his five associates built the schooner
America to go across to Cowes it was
considerable of an undertaking, for not
only was she the first American yacht
to cross the ocean to race abroad, but
yachting was a comparatively new sport
in this country, whereas in England
yacht designing and racing had reached
a high state of development and English
yachts had a prestige calculated to throw
fear into the heart of novices at the
game. After a speedy trip across the
Western ocean the America, before
reaching Cowes, was forced to anchor
some seven miles from the English yacht-
ing center on account of fog, and when
the morning dawned and the fog was
blown out to sea by a land breeze, the
English cutter Laverock, one of their
crack craft, was discovered under sail
and on the lookout for the stranger, evi-
dently with the idea of taking her meas-
ure then and there.

Commodore Stevens, who was on
board, was not particularly desirous oi
a trial of speed just then, yet, as he
could not gracefully decline, he gave or-
ders to let her go, and in the beat back
to Cowes he did not hold anything up his
sleeve, but put the American boat
through her paces so smartly that she
dropped the English cutter in the seven-
mile beat surprisingly fast. Not many
hours afterwards it was known through-
out the yachting community that no Eng-
lish yacht was the America's equal in
going to windward.

This little brush proved detrimental
to the America's future chances, for,
though the American party had been as-
sured of plenty of match racing, no Eng-
lish yachtsman would come forward to
race his boat against Commodore Ste-
vens' schooner, even though the Commo-
dore, with his usual promptness and re-
gardless of the pockets of his associates,
posted a challenge to sail the America a
match against any British vessel what-
ever for any sum, from one to ten thou-
sand guineas.

This lack of sportsmanship on the part

of the English yachtsmen was severely
commented upon by the London Times,
which likened their action to the agita-
tion which the appearance of a sparrow-
hawk creates among a flock of skylarks.
It looked for a while as if the hardy
commodore would have to bring his
schooner back without a match, but the
Royal Yacht Squadron finally notified
the America's owner that he could race
his schooner in an open regatta of the
club on August 22d ; sailing without
time allowance and against a large fleet
from the Yacht Squadron. There was
nothing in the race but the cup which
was put up, yet the commodore entered
it and raced against a fleet of fourteen
yachts of all sizes and rigs. The course
was some sixty miles in length and the
wind was fluky, so, while the America
was undoubtedly the best boat, the race
was as a whole unsatisfactory.

Nineteen years elapsed before there
was to be another race for the cup which
the America had wron, and which was
presented to the New York Yacht Club
by Commodore Stevens in 1857. In this
race the attitude of American yachtsmen
seemed to be to make the conditions as
nearly as possible like those which pre-
vailed when the America had won the
cup, though Commodore Stevens had
protested at the time against the unfair-
ness of the conditions of the race around
the Isle of Wight. So when Mr. Ash-
bury came over in 1870 wTith his
schooner Cambria, full of confidence be-
cause he had beaten the American
schooner Sappho two years before, the
club interpreted the deed of trust un-
der which it held the cup in such a way
as to make the Cambria race against the
entire New York Yacht Club fleet.
Twenty-three schooners were lined up
against the challenger, each striving to
keep the cup in this country by prevent-
ing the challenger from winning. It is
only fair to say, however, that, though
there was some crowding in the earlier
stages of the race, it is not on record
that the owners of the other boats at-
tempted to interfere unfairly with the
Cambria to prevent her winning.

It may be said in passing, also, that,
not content with racing for the America's
Cup, Mr. Ashbury raced his schooner

632

OUTING

across the Atlantic from Ireland to Sandy
Hook against the American schooner
Dauntless, winning a race of twenty-
two days, by 1 hour and 17 minutes —
a sporting event of the first magnitude.

Not satisfied that he had had a square
deal, Mr. Ashbury, on his return to
England, opened negotiations the follow-
ing year, and after a long pen and ink
contest finally got the New York Yacht
Club to recede from its former position
and agree to race one boat only in each
race for the cup. The series that year
(1871) was to consist of four races out
of seven, and the New York Yacht Club
reserved the right not to name its de-
fender until the day of each race. Hence
it picked four boats, two noted for light
weather qualities and two for their heavy
weather ability, and waited until the
morning of each race to say which of the
four would race that day.

In 1876 and 1881 matches were sailed
with Canadian yachts, and there was some
controversy before the New York Yacht
Club finally decided to name only one
boat to sail against the challenger. This
controversy led to a good deal of hard
talk in the newspapers, in which the
Canadians referred to the American
yachtsmen as "police court pettifoggers,"
while American writers, when they heard
that the Yacht Club had agreed to name
only one boat to meet the challenger,
took the ground that "It is an axiom of
sport that a good match is won when
made.31

Another point on which the Ameri-
can yachtsmen stood out for a long time
in these cup contests that would not
hold in the light of present-day stand-
ards was that of insisting on racing over
the inside course, starting in the Upper
Hay, going down through the Narrows
out by Sandy Hook to the Lightship and
return — a course in which a knowledge
of tides and local conditions played a
most important part, and which was
manifestly unfair to a stranger. Every
challenger protested against this course.,
yet it was not until the Fij^ilant-Falkyrie
match of 1893 that the old course was
abandoned and the New York Yacht
Club agreed to meet the contending boat
outside of headlands, as free as possible
from local influences.

A fine example of sportsmanship in
connection with these races that came
from our opponents was in the Puritan-
Genesta race of 1885. Young Sir Rich-
ard Sutton, of the Genesta, after his
boat had been fouled by the Puritan and
her bowsprit carried away, was told by
the Committee that the Puritan had been
disqualified, and that he could claim the
race if he sailed over the course alone.
He promptly replied that he was much
obliged but he didn't want it that way,
adding that he came over for a race and
not a sail over. It was a fine spirit, but
the Puritan was clearly at fault and the
English boat was entitled to the race.

Of the Dunraven incident it is not
necessary to stir up old memories. Dun-
raven, who was given a fair race, except
for the crowding of excursion steamers
on the course, over which the New York
Yacht Club had no control, made charges
which he could not prove, which appar-
ently had not the slightest foundation
of fact, and which he probably would
not have made had he not been piqued at
the deciding of a protest against him. The
justice of this decision has been upheld
by yachtsmen the world over, and Dun-
raven's charge as to tampering with the
ballast of the Defender was absolutely
without foundation.

In making the third deed of gift after
the Volunteer-Thistle race the New
York Yacht Club was charged with un-
fairness and poor sportsmanship by Eng-
lish yachtsmen, principally because the
deed imposed too much upon the chal-
lenger, and required certain dimensions
as to the challenging yacht ten months
in advance that would be of inestimable
value in building a defender to beat her.
As it stands, the deed is a complicated
affair, and, if lived up to in all its terms,
would place an undue hardship on any
vessel challenging for the cup, but un-
der a "mutual consent" clause contained
in the deed the New York Yacht Club
has been able to waive certain of the
objectional clauses and has in every case
in the last three contests (and, in fact,
for the present contest also) given con-
ditions which are absolutely fair to the
challenging boat, barring the fact that
the challenger has to cross three thou-
sand miles of Atlantic Ocean.

GOOD GRUB FOR SHORT CRUISES

By GEORGE FORTISS

How One Man Has Solved the Problem of Comfortable Living

on a Small Boat

HE trail to a successful
camping trip or the com-
pass course to a pleasant
cruise lies via the gastro-
nomic route. Most of us
have found this out
through experience and do not need to
be told, but we generally ignore the
knowledge next time the red gods call
us into the open. You know how it is.
With a long trail and a short sleep be-
hind you, you arise for breakfast to find
your partner, whose turn it is to cook,
confronting you with dish-water coffee,
lumpy flapjacks, and a chunk (not a
slice) of under-done bacon. And then
your good nature joins your stomach in
rebellion, and all bets are off.

There is no alibi for the man who
goes into the woods. If he has the
grub he should be able to cook it well.
There are plenty of guides who can ac-
complish epicurean wonders over a camp
fire. But the fellow who goes cruising
in a small boat with only a two-burner
oil or alcohol stove on which to perform
his culinary accomplishments, cannot be
expected to conjure into being a ten-
course dinner.

As a matter of fact, some of us were
inclined to think that cooking (that is,
real cooking) could not be performed on
a two-burner denatured-alcohol outfit.
But that was before we met Powell.

You see Powell lived down on Long
Island and spent a good deal of time
knocking around Great South Bay. One
day he invited three of us to come down
for a few days of cruising in his boat.
Of course we knew he had a boat, and
when he invited us for a "few days'
cruising" we naturally figured she was,
say, a forty-foot raised-deck cruiser, with
a man aboard her, a stateroom or two,

saloon, galley, and other luxurious con-
veniences. When we got down there to
the Bay we found that in reality she was
a twenty-two-foot, flat-bottomed, low-
sided little craft, six feet wide, and with
a high, varnished cabin enclosing her
entire cockpit. There was no deck room
to speak of — a few feet forward, half as
much aft. And this box of a cabin on
a twenty-two-foot converted catboat was
where four of us were to spend a "few
days cruising."

Some of us had had experience with
catering on cruising and camping trips,
and as we stared at the little alcohol
stove standing on supports screwed to
the walls of the cabin, we saw visions of
four men in a boat that was made for
but one. It was too late then to back
out, even had we been impolite enough
to have suggested such a thing, and we
started across the Bay into the tuck of
an onshore sea picked up by a strong
southwester.

The objective point was a spot in a lit-
tle cove bordered by salt marshes under
the shadow of Fire Island Beach. We
were going snipe shooting, Powell told
us, and we would make Gilgo Heading,
as he called it, in time for the afternoon
flight of shore birds, if there were any.

When we had swung off to our
anchor cable, in the Heading, we all
went ashore in a sharpie we towed
astern, and two of the boys were de-
posited in blinds with settings of decoys
and the warning from our Host to kill
their supper. Personally, the writer
cares little for shore-bird shooting, and
accompanied Powell on what seemed to
be an aimless ramble down a long sand
bar jutting into the bay and left half dry
by the falling tide.

Out near where a clump of green salt

1633]

634

OUTING

grass rose from the edge of the ebb, the
Host paused.

"Now," said he, gravely, "let us dig."
Without delay he produced from a bag
he carried over his shoulder a hoe with
the handle sawed off a foot above the
iron. With this he attacked the yellow
sand of the bar. Presently the blue-
gray hinge of a clam showed beneath the
hoe. "Number one," said the Host, and
dug again. Little by little he worked
along the edge of the bar until the bag
was half full of clams. Then, while I
shouldered the burden, he turned toward
a long line of green sedge that bordered
the eastern shore of the little bay or la-
goon in which the power boat lay at
anchor.

It was not long before it was apparent
that he had an object in view. And in-
deed it was an object — a great round,
scow-nosed, super-dreadnought looking
thing, shaped something like a horse's
hoof, with many legs underneath its tur-
ret-like top, and protruding out behind
a long, needle-pointed bony spike of a
tail ten inches in length. But our Host
showed only a grin at my misgivings.

"Horse shoe crab," he announced with
satisfaction and, seizing the nightmare
as it started to scuttle into deeper water,
he jammed the ten-inch tail firmly into
the sand.

"There," he said, "he'll be anchored
now till we need him in the morning."

"Need him— what for?"

"To eat, of course." And there came
the knowledge, unknown to many a bay-
man, that horse shoe crabs are a real
delicacy.

Hack at the boat our Host unlimbered
that fragile looking two-burner stove,
opened the clams, cut them into small
bits in a chopping bowl that hung on the
wall, produced a bunch of carrots, a
couple of onions, some potatoes, and a
bit of parsley from a locker under a
berth, chopped them into the clams,
salted, and set aside. Then a can of
tomatoes suddenly appeared.

"For chowder, I like the canned Lroods

better than the fresh," he exclaimed.

".And they're easier to carry and last
longer." The tomatoes joined the other

ingredients : the burners of the little stove
leaped into life, a jug poured fresh

water, and the chowder went on to boil.

"Now," said the Host, "if you'll just
watch that it doesn't boil over, I'll be
back in a moment. You might fill that
saucepan with water and put it on the
other burner."

Ten minutes later he reappeared in
the after hatch. In a basket were a
dozen or more hard shell crabs. Into
the pot I had set on the extra burner
they went. A few minutes later while
the chowder was still stewing away, the
crabs came out red as a November sun-
rise. Off came the back shells, and.
Powell set me to work shredding out the
white meat, while he juggled with a
little flour and water, a few drops of
olive oil, and some chopped green pep-
pers. The result was a paste which was
swiftly mixed with the crabmeat, a dash
of cayenne added, and the whole stuffed
back into the shells. Then the Host
produced from another corner of the
mystery storehouse of that little boat a
box of prepared cracker crumbs which
he sprinkled over the paste in the shells.

"Deviled crabs — like 'em?" he re-
marked, and added: "And now if you'll
look in that locker forward under the
wheel, you'll find the oven."

The what? Oven? I groped in the
locker and pulled out a square sheet iron
box with a hinge door, and a grating held
by battens on the inside. Powell lifted
the chowder kettle from the stove and
put the oven on instead, opened the door,
and pushed in the crabs. Meantime I
fished in still another locker at his bid-
ding and got out a can of prepared cof-
fee of the teaspoonful to the cup variety.

Off on the long sand finger where the
snipe blinds were we had been hearing
an occasional popping of smokeless that
as evening drew on was rapidly increas-
ing. Then, almost before we had time
to think of them again, what with get-
ting the crabs out of the oven and the
peas warmed, the snipe shooters hailed
us, and we went over in the sharpie
for them. They had a nice bag of yel-
lowlegs and a few plover. Powell pre-
pared the birds on the way back to the
boat. He merely pressed a thumb on
each side of their breasts, and with a
swift push broke the skin back, carrying
feathers and entrails with it and leaving

GOOD GRUB FOR SHORT CRUISES

635

only the breasts of the birds. While we
laid the four places on a table that ap-
peared to be a panel in the wall of the
cabin unless you knew where the button
was which released it, our host hustled
the snipe into a big iron spider, each
with a bit of salt pork pinned to the
breast with a toothpick. The fire was
turned high to sear the meat and keep in
the juice, and then lowered for a few
moments, but not for long, as dried snipe
are not fit to eat, though fried snipe are
a delicacy.

The chowder kettle went on again to
heat, the teakettle boiled a few moments
for the prepared coffee, and then, while
we were engaged in an attack on the
chowder, the oven was again switched
over to the burners to keep the crabs,
the peas and the snipe warm until we
were ready for them.

That was a revelation in what can be
done with little effort with a simple two
burner stove. Chowder, deviled crabs,
grilled snipe, French peas, and a grape-
fruit salad, which I almost forgot, make
a fair meal for anyone! The success-
ful preparation of a good meal with such
a stove requires first an oven and next
the knowledge of what to cook first, and
how to keep your plan of service work-
ing so that one course does not get cold
while you are cooking or eating the oth-
er. The oven pretty nearly solves this,
as it will keep anything piping hot until
you are ready for it.

Then, too, it has other advantages, as
we found out in the morning when
Powell conjured a pan of biscuits for us
almost before we knew what he was
about. And at lunch time, just to show
us that he could do it, he roasted a
chicken as nicely as mother could have
done in the oven at home. But it was in
the evening that we had a treat. The
host went around and unanchored those
two big horseshoe crabs he had staked
out night before. Then he took off the
shells, cleaned them out much as you
would a common crab, and put the meaty
parts to boil in a kettle. That night we
had horseshoe boil, with white sauce, and
— well it is something like lobster New-
burg and pretty nearly as good.

"What should a couple of men take
for a cruise of a week or two?" echoed

the genius of the two-burner alcohol in
answer to our question. "Well, it de-
pends on whether he intends going
ashore. If he does not expect to leave
his boat during his trip, he should take
some of the concentrated foods. They
can be stowed in smaller space, are as
good and as nourishing as fresh products,
and he can carry more of them with less
trouble. I am a strong believer in soups.
Canned soups should be one of the staples
of the cruiser — chicken, ox tail and beef
broth, I prefer, while mutton broth is
also excellent. Potatoes should have a
place, but they are about the only fresh
vegetable that one should consider.
Others should be confined to canned
goods — peas, lentils, tomatoes and corn
are all good, as are those big kidney
beans. I always keep these as well as
regular baked beans on board.

"Bread does not keep a great while.
If you take it and it gets stale, you can
moisten it and place it in the oven, which
will rejuvenate it for the occasion. Bet-
ter than bread is pilot biscuit in cans, or
else flour of the prepared sort from which
biscuits can readily be made.

"Coffee is a nuisance. It takes too
long to boil, and monopolizes one-half
the cooking capacity of your two-burner
stove which could be devoted to better
advantage in making something else. Al-
ways use prepared coffee. Tea is all
right in its usual form, though tabloid
tea is not a bad stunt.

"Most men who go out for a cruise
on a small boat think of the staples to
the practical exclusion of the luxuries,
which, in their way, are quite as impor-
tant. It is all well enough when going
on long expeditions ashore to take the
corn meal, bacon and tea grub kit, but
this sometimes useful larder can be sup-
plemented to great advantage when the
base of supplies is near and accessible
and economy in bulk is less vital, with a
bottle of olive oil for dressings, a few
varieties of pickles, a prepared sauce such
as chili or chutney or ketchup, vinegar,
marmalade, jam or apple butter, and I
always keep a supply of canned peaches
and pears under there forward so that
I have always ready at hand, requiring
no cooking or preparation, a practical
dessert."

THE

WORLD

SPORT

Here's It's a long worm that has
r- l? , no turning — and the polo

Lngland , , , A

worm has turned at last.
The English team won by splendid play.
There isn't much use in discussing ifs
and ands. America's prospects looked
bright two minutes before the close of
the second match, but England had still
another punch in her good right arm,
and that punch, delivered by Major Bar-
rett, sent the ball across the American
goal for the winning score. There are
those who think that if America could
have held the quarter goal lead to the end
we would have won the second game. It is
a pleasing thought, but an idle one. The
team that took the cup back to England
had a lot of polo left in them when they
quit, and the combination that would
beat them in the third game would have
known that there were four other men
on the field. Patriotic considerations
aside, we are glad the English won.
There could have been no better out-
come for the good of the game. Had
America kept the cup it would likely
have been a long time before another
English team could have been brought
over with a fair chance of success, and
interest would have flagged accordingly.
Now we have a mark to shoot at — how-
ever long it may be before we hit it.

Visitors' Criticism of the play of
pr,eat either team would be an un-
gracious task. Where such
gallant courage and skill were shown on
both sides, particularly in the second
match, there is no place for the micro-
scopic critic. As a matter of fact, the

[636]

English team played probably the best
polo that has ever been seen in this coun-
try. Perhaps they had to do it in order
to win, but they did it. It was standard
polo played with the pace and accuracy
that characterized the work of the
Meadow Brook four in their palmiest
days. England had apparently taken
the old Hurlingham method and grafted
on it all that was good in the American
innovations. The result was a revela-
tion in polo possibilities. There was the
game, correct in all the fundamentals of
position and combination, pace and accu-
racy of passing, with the elasticity neces-
sary to meet any emergency that might
arise. The emergency past, they could
fall back on their standard formations,
played at high speed and with marvelous
horsemanship.

Barrett To be sure, this result could
p. not have been attained with-

out four better than good
players to carry the campaign through.
And it was Major Barrett to whom,
more than to any other one man, was
due the credit for holding the attack and
defense in proper and efficient balance.
He is not a showy player, and the casual
onlooker is apt to lose sight of him ; but
he was always there, steadying, rally-
ing, covering, the steadfast pivot around
which the English play always swung.
Captain Cheapc showed great improve-
ment over his play of previous years, par-
ticularly in the length and accuracy of
his strokes. Always a great horseman,
he was not so flurried and hurried by
the American defense as in the two pre-

THE WORLD OF SPORT

637

vious matches at Meadow Brook. Cap-
tain Lockett, too, was a different player
from the form of last year. Apparently
he had taken a small leaf from Mr.
Milburn's book and was not afraid to
leave the shadow of his own goal posts.
He had learned that one of the best
ways of making sure that the ball gets
up to your forwards is to take it there
yourself. This is on the assumption that
there is a number three to cover the play,
and such a reserve was present in the
person of Major Barrett.

No Shame jror tne American team we
Dm have nothing but praise.

Extemporaneous experts in
the stands criticized their riding, their
hitting, and their strategy — presumably
on the assumption that the team that
loses must of necessity be playing badly.
To be sure, in the first game the play-
ing of Mr. Milburn at No. 3 and
Lawrence Waterbury at back gave the
appearance of strangeness in the work of
both men. Neither seemed at home, and
the team failed to get going. No such
criticism could be made of the second
match, however, when Mr. Milburn and
Mr. Waterbury changed places. Oddly
enough, in this match Mr. Waterbury
was a highly efficient back on the nu-
merous occasions when he was com-
pelled to fall back to cover Mr. Mil-
burn's headlong dashes down the field.
To characterize the play of the latter
it is necessary only to call attention to
the fact that playing in a position which
is not supposed to call for any scoring
whatever, he made three of the five goals
that went to the credit of his team.
Should he never appear again in Inter-
national polo, he can rest content in
the knowledge that in his last game,
although a member of a defeated team,
he gave an exhibition of super-polo that
will long stand as the high-water mark
of individual play.

Yale Wins Yale is imitating England
, at in the gentle art of "coming

back." Much to the surprise
of many — even Yale men — Harvard
succumbed at New London in a hair-
raising finish to a rather badly rowed
race. This is Yale's first victory on

the Thames in six years, and there are
many enthusiastic Elis who hail the re-
turn of the old days, when everything
was blue — including the crimson oppo-
nents. Further color is added to this
belief by the baseball victory over Har-
vard, although Princeton's win at New
York with a team that was declared to
be only fair, as Princeton teams go,
takes off a little of the luster. The New
London affair is declared by many — in-
cluding Mr. Guy Nickalls — to be a
victory for the English stroke and Eng-
lish rigging. With all due respect we
submit that it is nothing of the sort.
That Yale crew with any good stroke
adapted to their needs and abilities and
any proper sort of rigging would have
won against the Harvard crew this
year. Furthermore, three feet lead at
the finish line is not a very convincing
demonstration of anything except the
pluck and staying power of the men in
the Yale boat.

What Much of the talk about the

\a »l j-t ma^ic of strokes in rowing

Method ? . = . , , , . . °

is akin to the talk of method

in other sports. There are right and
wrong methods, to be sure, but there are
very few sports — if any — in which there
is one absolutely and invariably correct
way of accomplishing the desired result.
Methods must vary with men. The
golf professional who attemptes to teach
all men the same stance and swing, with-
out regard to age or physical habit, soon
loses his pupils. The same thing is true
of tennis. Many men who stand high
in the ranking have reached it through
the medium of a method that would be
impossible to another. And yet the
same fundamental idea runs through all.
In golf and tennis and in all other games
in which a ball is struck with any kind
of a bat, the underlying purpose is to
hit the ball hard ■ and accurately with
control at all times. Any method which
permits any particular man to do this
to the height of his power is the right
method for that man. The same gen-
eral principle applies to rowing. The
object is for eight men to move a shell
through the water for two or four miles
faster than any other eight men who
may be on the river at the same time.

638

OUTING

These eight men will differ in large or
small degree from any other eight men
who might be brought together. There-
fore the problem of the coach becomes
the simple but difficult one of fitting
a stroke and method to the eight men
that he has, and not of fitting the men
to the stroke. You can call it an Eng-
lish stroke or a Courtney stroke or a
Hottentot stroke or any other stroke
you please. If the coach is a wise man
his details will vary from year to year,
with his eyes fixed unwaveringly on the
main objective all the time.

An It was a long time coming,

{^ but Columbia's win at
Poughkeepsie is appreciated
by many beside Columbia men. It will
be a good thing for the intercollegiate
and for the sport generally, not merely
because Cornell was beaten, either. We
are not of those who hold that it is neces-
sary to defeat the Ithacans every few
years in order to keep rowing alive. It
can be done any time there is another
crew on the river equal in oarsmanship
and with sufficient drive at the finish to
send the challenge home. That was the
beautiful thing about this year's race.
There were three crews rowing practi-
cally stroke for stroke all the way down,
beautiful in form, correct in judgment
of pace and distance. At the beginning
of the last half mile any one of the three
was in position and condition to go out
for the lead. This brought it down to
a question of the final punch. Columbia
was the crew with the necessary lift to
send the boat across. This is as it should
be. None of the three leading crews was
in distress at any time. So here were all
the conditions of an ideal race — correct
oarsmanship and good condition, with
victory hanging in the balance of the
final drive. Again the magic of "stroke"
and method receives a damaging blow.
The finish of a close race is up to the
eight men in the boat, and Columbia
had the eight.

Some For purposes of the Olympic
More Games the following defini-

Amatcunsm r p

tion ot an amateur has been

made by the International Amateur

Athletic Federation :

"1. An amateur is one wTho competes
only for the love of sport.

"2. Competing for money or any other
pecuniary reward in any sport consid-
ered as athletic sports makes the competi-
tor a professional in all sports consid-
ered as athletic sports.

"3. In the event of an amateur com-
peting with or against a professional in
any sport, not for money or other pe-
cuniary reward, then the member of
the federation to which the athlete be-
longs shall be the judge of such com-
petitor's status according to its own
rules, and its certificate as to the com-
petitor's status shall be accepted by all
other members of the federation.

"4. In track and field athletic sports
anyone who knowingly competes with or
against a professional thereby ceases to
be an amateur.

"5. One who teaches, trains, or
coaches in any sport for money or other
pecuniary consideration is a professional,
except, however, that so far as competi-
tion in his own country, and there only,
is concerned, an employee or representa-
tive of the state or a school or other
educational institution, who teaches,
trains, or coaches as an incident to his
main vocation or employment, may or
may not be a professional, as the member
of the federation of the country of such
a person shall decide."

Why the We have quoted this defini-
Ban on t;Qn &t 1eno-tn for tne pur-
rroressionalsP , ,,. .

pose of calling attention to
the clauses relative to competing with
or against professionals, particularly in
track and field sports. There seems to
be some mysterious fear at the bottom
of these declarations of hostility to the
professional as a competitor with ama-
teurs on track and field. We confess
that the reason is beyond our feeble
understanding. It is possible to play
with or against a professional in golf
or tennis, to shoot against him at the
traps, to play against him at billiards,
or on the diamond, but you must not,
as you value your amateur status, run
or jump against him. The case seems
to be the more inexplicable in view of
the fact that out and out professional
competition on track and field is prac-

WHAT READERS THINK

639

tically unknown, at least in this country,
at the present time, save in long-distance
and so-called marathon running. What
harm would result if an amateur did
compete against a professional? There
must be some dire danger in it, if we
could only see it. Strange that disaster
has not attended the practice in the
other sports that we have mentioned.
Yet Jay Gould can compete against
Covey, the English court tennis pro-
fessional, and apparently not only win
but come out untainted. The same thing
is true of racquets and of squash, both
good, lively games. Perhaps building a
Chinese wall to shut out the avowed
professional conceals the inability of
committees and associations to deal with
the hidden — and really dangerous — pro-
fessionalism that is a constantly threaten-
ing canker of amateur sport.

State Rights It will be a pity if the Su-
B.in, preme Court follows the lead
of Judge Trieber, of Arkan-
sas, in its final decision on the constitu-
tionality of the Weeks-McLean migra-
tory-bird law. Inferior court decisions
are now balanced, Judge J. D. Elliott,
of the Federal District Court of South
Dakota, having held that the law is con-
stitutional. The Supreme Court will,
of course, read the statute in the light
of enlightened constitutional interpreta-
tion and their decision will -be law, and
sound law. With that side of the matter
we have no concern, nor have we knowl-
edge enough of constitutional law to
hazard even a remote guess as to the
outcome. But this much is reasonably

clear to the layman. If the states are
permitted to regard migratory birds as
their exclusive property with full power
to kill or save, then we will find ourselves
soon in the contradictory position of
owning to-day a thing that to-morrow
may be the full property of someone else.
Furthermore, it will be in the power of
one state by lax laws or lax enforce-
ment to prevent the adjoining state from
ever entering into the use or control
of that which should in due course be-
come its property. If it be decided that
migratory birds are the exclusive prop-
erty of the state within whose borders
they are found, what right has any state
to prevent any other state from having
its full share of such property in the
proper time. In the language of Hashi-
mura Togo, we ask to know.

Sport "The final set provided
t wv enough thrills to satisfy the

IS w r llicn. 1 1 r i

gallery lor many weeks.
Murray was like an untamed tiger on
the courts. As he went into each rally
at the net he gained mid-court at a
single bound, and from there brought
off his shots with a power and a vicious-
ness that were unbeatable. Once the
struggle was over, however, he became
again the smiling, carefree boy, and shook
Alexander's hand warmly." Thus the
esteemed Tribune on the finish of the
Murray-Alexander match in the finals
of the Metropolitan tennis championship.
We advise Mr. Murray's opponents to
be careful, however. He may bite the
next man or dash his brains out with a
triumphant racket.

WHAT READERS THINK

An Argument for Rugby

IT'S difference of opinion that
makes hoss races." It also adds
zest to living and a beautiful un-
certainty to many of the cherished beliefs
of life. All by way of introducing an-
other letter on the rugby situation in
California, this time in favor of the im-
ported game.

Editor, Outing:

As an old Rugby Union official, with
many years' experience in England and
South Africa, I strongly object to East-
ern Stanfordite's letter in your June
number. Permit me at the beginning to
say that I think the old game is more
suited to the American boy than English
rugby.

640

OUTING

Your correspondent's peroration clear-
ly indicates his prejudice, and his letter
generally shows such a one-sided opinion
that for the sake of those in California
who still prefer English rugby, I wish
to indicate how such a letter is mis-
leading.

The reason, in my opinion, why rugby
has not been such a success in America
is due to the lack of initiative in the
average American boy. During his high
school and college life he is under the
guidance of someone in everything he
does connected with sport. On the track,
in baseball, intercollegiate football, and
even in expressing his sentiments on the
bleachers he is controlled in practically
every movement. All at once a new
game is thrust upon him from a country
where these conditions do not exist — a
game in which every movement is so un-
certain and unexpected that he must have
his wits and intelligence at his finger-
ends.

In the old game a player is told exact-
ly what to do; the other players on his
side know, too; possibly the opponents
know to a certain extent what is going
to happen. There is little intelligence
needed by the player with the ball ex-
cept to take advantage of some slip by
the other side. To say that the giver of
the signals does not need intelligence is,
of course, untrue. To say that there is
no quick action of thought in English
rugby, but only in the American game,'
is absurd ; in my opinion it is quite the
reverse, as I have just explained above.
Eastern Stanfordite uses such remarks as
"pure luck," "no headwork formation,"
"no team work." How many games are
won by fumbling the ball? Is not this
luck? Team work, etc., is more intelli-
gently carried out in the English game,
as it has to be done instantaneously; the
players do not have time to await orders
and then have the ball passed back among
them.

The run through of MacGregor in
the New Zealand game was admired by
your correspondent, but used for pur-
poses of adverse criticism quite wrong-
ly. It is new to me to know that in
English rugby one has to pass the ball,
even if there is a clear opening through.
My experience of the game is that play-

ers do not pass enough, and allow them-
selves to be tackled when a pass would
have ended in a score. To remark that
there were no tacklers on the field when
MacGregor made this run through
would mean that when a player makes a
run through in the American game there
are also no tacklers on the field. What
happened was that this New Zealander
out-tricked the opposition and so bewil-
dered them (they never having been
taught how it could be done) that it
looked child's play to have stopped the
run (to those on the bleachers).

That the game is not spreading in ad-
jacent states is due to the fact that other
colleges are so far away and have sched-
uled games with neighboring colleges
that it would be foolish to make a
change. The reason why the University
of Southern California seceded was on
account of financial losses to themselves
and the other colleges in Southern Cali-
fornia by reason of the former staying
out of the conference games.

Whatever game was or will be played
here, the "big game" between Stanford
and California will draw its crowds to
the detriment of the other games. I do
not suppose the preliminary games with
the big universities in the East and the
small colleges draw any crowd ; results
so diverging as 70-0, such as I read
about, cannot be cause of rejoicing or
attraction to students and alumni. So
why cast this in the teeth of the Califor-
nia universities?

The American game has always re-
mained a college institution. One does
not find outside clubs such as are found
in England and the colonies in the Eng-
lish game, which are the mainstay of the
game. This is sure evidence that a foot-
ball match under American rules is
simply a trial of strength between rival
universities, and it is this spirit of rivalry
carried into the classrooms that causes
the excitement and intense feeling.

I hope my remarks will tend to bring
about a better understanding between
the rival factions, and also show your
correspondent that a more liberal view
of sports, especially, is desirable these
days.

W. F. Sutiierst, Ph.D.

Berkeley, Cal.

THE QUAIL-SHOOTERS
PARADISE

A dog and a gun and the wide- flung fields,
Youth in the heart and a whistling call;
A booming of wings like a bursting shell,
Crack °f a 8un <*nd <* hurtling fall.

' flBHH

■H^M

*iH

i«H

/.*<]>i i

^^B

ik 1

i ^#

*
1*

ilB

K '"

*&.*rt

t* ^

« V

t J

\):

-.-'HI

<k A / 1

' 1

* .1

C/3 8

[648]

OUTING

THE ELUSIVE MUSK-OX

AND
THE DELUSIVE DOG-RIB

By DAVID E. WHEELER

Illustrated with Photographs a#d Maps

THERE are still wide open spaces in the Far North of the
American Continent. The Barren Grounds still repel — and
attract by their very repelling. The article which follows is an
account of a long trip in that country and of the adventures and
misadventures that befell the hunter. He fought storm and cold
and the ignorance and laziness of the Indians — but he won his
prize. Incidentally it is a vivid picture of conditions under which
hunting must be carried on in that region.

HAVE found the game of hunting
musk-ox to consist not so much in
pitting one's wits against the musk-
ox as against those of the wily In-
dian who fears the Barrens, yet
whose help and knowledge of the
country are essential for success. This
story tells of endeavors to secure the
services of these people and of attempts
to hunt the Barren Grounds without
them. The winter before starting for
the fur countries I sent a letter by dog
packet to the wintering factor of the
Northern Trading Company. Through
his good offices I secured from Germain,
a chief among the Dog-rib Indians, his
promise to meet me on the first day of
September at Fort Rae, on Great Slave
Lake.

In order to keep this engagement I

left Athabasca Landing and the railroad
track early in August. The trail to Rae
descends the Athabasca and Slave rivers
and crosses Great Slave Lake. It is
easily followed, so I took no guides, but
traveled alone in a small canvas canoe.
The weather was almost perfect, and
there were no flies.

As a rule I turned in at night without
fire, boughs, or shelter of any kind.
Now, a man rolled in a smoke-stained
blanket on the beach is an inconspicu-
ous object, nor is his presence likely to
disturb the denizens of the wilderness
on their nocturnal rounds. The famil-
iarity of game and fur is the chief charm
of these fireless bivouacs. Such famil-
iarity may even be carried too far. One
night a wolf, on velvet paws, crept up
and stole a bag of pemmican which

[649]

650

OUTING

Fbom the Authors Sketches
Rom Ftianklin's SwrLvev

DETAIL MAP OF THE TRIP IN THE
MUSK-OX COUNTRY

Unexplored lakes drawn in solid
black ; lakes explored by Sir John Franklin
shaded; outlets of Loche Lake and Ghost
Lake drawn from Indian report in broken
lines.

A. Fort Rae; X. Turning point of first
canoe trip, south of unnamed lake, north
of Sweet Place Lake (Dachi Ti) ; C. Bear
Lake chief's headquarters; F. Turning
point of last canoe trip ; 1. North arm
Great Slave Lake; 2. Lake Marian; 3. Big
Spruce Lake (Tsi Cho Ti) ; 4. Big Lake
(Tou a Tou, literally "water water") ; 5.
Kwe Jinne Ti ; 6. Ghost Lake ,(Ejean Ti) ;
7. Bearberry Lake (Indin Ti) ; 8. Part of
Loche Lake. Snare Lake on Sir John
Franklin's map; 9. Part of Loche Lake.
Lake of the Round Rock on Sir John
Franklin's map; 10. Ruins of Fort Enter-
prise abandoned by Sir John Franklin in
1821; 11. Winter Lake (Ma A Ti) ; 12.
Little Marten Lake (Tsan Ti) ; 13. Outlet
Lac de Gras; 14. Coppermine River; 15. Eda Ti ; 16. Jjaba Ti, said to extend in the
direction of the arrow as far as a dog-sled travels in three days ; 17. River la Mar-
tre; 18. Chago Ti ; 19. Kwecha Ti ; 20. Lac Ste. Croix (?); Author's net lake (Si Mi
Ti) ; 21. Dog Lake (Tli Ti), said to drain into Great Bear Lake.

SCALE orMILES
10 10 30

formed a part of my pillow. So softly
he did it I never wakened nor knew,
until I examined his tracks in the morn-
ing, who had robbed me of my break-
fast.

It was near the end of August when
I reached Fort Rae. I was feeling in
fine feather and much encouraged to
expect a quick and successful hunt for
the first thousand miles of the journey,
more than two-thirds of the distance to
the musk-ox country, had been made in

twenty-five days. I little knew the de-
lays and disappointments in store for me,
nor that, for nearly a year, Indian cow-
ardice should alternate with my own in-
experience of Barren Ground travel to
cause the failure of one trip after an-
other.

First came the word that Germain
was not expected for several weeks.
However, his brother-in-law, Adan,
promised to guide me to the edge of the
woods and agreed to start "Sa tchon, Sa

THE ELUSIVE MUSK-OX AND THE DELUSIVE DOG-RIB 651

tchon; Sa tame* (To-morrow, to-mor-
row; when the sun divides"). Noon of
the day after to-morrow arrived, but
Adan did not. This was a fair sample
of the way the autumn passed. It was
Dog-ribs yesterday and Dog-ribs to-mor-
row, but never Dog-ribs to-day.

From time to time the cry, "Mana
Klan" (Many arrivals) rang through
the post as a brigade of canoes came in

from the mysterious hinterland. Then
I would hasten from my island camp to
powwow with the Indians. The result
was always the same. They wanted the
luxuries I promised, but could live with-
out them. Without meat they could not
live, and so were obliged to follow the
caribou instead of pushing out into the
Barren Grounds for musk-ox.

When the ice was strong enough for

ARCTIC /\

OCEAN

GENERAL TERRITORY OF TRIP

C. P. R., Canadian Pacific Railroad; 1. Athabasca Landing, railroad terminus on
the Athabasca River ; 2. Fort Chipewyan on Lake Athabasca at the head of Slave
River; 3. Fort Resolution on the Slave River delta where it discharges into Great
Slave Lake; 4. Dease River Mission between the Coppermine River and Great Bear
Lake ; 5. Great Bear Lake, turning point of first canoe trip ; A. Fort Rae on the shore
of Lake Marian ; B. Turning point of first trip with dog-sled. Barrens between Winter
Lake and Lake Providence; C. Headquarters of Bear Lake chief near Lac Ste. Croix
(?); D. Hay River post on the shore of Great Slave Lake; E. Clinton Colden Lake;
F. Headwaters of Coppermine River. This letter lies south of Bathurst Inlet, east of
Jjaba Ti, and northeast of Lac de Gras. The cross marks the spot where the musk-ox
was killed, the turning point of the last trip north from Fort Rae.

(Scale of original map 100 miles to one inch; on account of reduction present scale
is 384 4/19 miles to one inch.)

ARMI LOADING THE FAMILY CANOE

travel with dog-sleds I left Fort Rae for
the country to the northward. None
of the Indians was willing to go beyond
timber line so late in the season, but
Bruno Jimmy went with me as far as
Loche Lake, from which point I knew
I could find the way without help. At
the edge of the woods my road led
through the narrows of a long lake
where a current kept the ice thin. Here,
where the caribou cross at the time of
their migration and the waters teem with
trout, stands Susa le Moelle's house.

Now, before leaving the fur post I
had been earnestly warned against Susa.
He had, I was told, outfaced the fac-
tor of the Hudson's Bay Company and
lost his fear of the traders; to pay a
grudge he had shot Germain's dogs and
esteemed himself a bad man ; he had
gone crazy and believed himself a
prophet; his medicine was strong and
bad against the white people, and,
finally, in native eyes the climax of his
crimes, he had called his father an old
fool. Although I took all this with a
grain of salt, yet I carried my rifle handy
with a cartridge in the barrel when
passing close under his house.

Absorbed in watching for signs of an

L652J

ambuscade, it was only natural to neg-
lect testing for weak ice. The ice broke
and one leg went through, getting wet
to the knee, and after all Susa was from
home, his house vacant, and the snow
before it unbroken. As a matter of fact,
he lives nearly all the year in his lodge
and only visits his log mansion occasion-
ally. That same evening I met two
Dog-ribs. They told me that the night
would be very cold and that I would
do well to camp with Le Moelle, whose
tepee they said was near by. This I was
unwilling to do, and followed the shore
in search of a suitable grove of trees in
which to spend the night.

A fine camping ground lay about the
mouth of a small brook which emptied
into the lake. On entering the trees
suddenly a wigwam loomed into view.
Now the fat was in the fire. It was
too late to turn, for when first seen the
lodge was so close that to pass it would
give gross offense. Yet it did not seem
to be the right thing to go gunning for
a man in the morning and ask his hospi-
tality at night.

While pausing on the threshold to de-
bate this question, out of the tepee came,
not Susa, but his father, the medicine-

rfr^

«^4±

^^^ Jf^/^^

j^^r-r^j^ ^p^^

'Mb *MfeJHMb«M^|H|

NNMMM

Lm *

5B^

'-.... ^m

^»

^J>~»»

\ifSwP

.^a

CONVENTIONAL DOG-RIB TABLE MANNERS

man, whose face was wreathed in smiles
and whose heavy, prognathous jaws were
parted by a grin which proved to be the
pledge of a cordial welcome. He was
living alone with his squaw, for their
son would not hunt for them, a thing
very unusual among the Northern sav-
ages. This old couple feasted me roy-
ally on fat caribou guts, pounded dry
meat, and marrow grease. They even
offered fresh meat for my dogs. Medi-
cine-men usually live in plenty, for they
levy tribute on the other Indians.

After dinner the squaw gave me a
sack full of native dainties, all carefully
dried, and my host medicined with rab-
bit fur a snowshoe blister on my foot.
His incantations sounded weird, for he
stuttered badly. The normal native
speech is as harsh as a raven's croak, but
when the gutturals play leap-frog with
each other they are raucous enough to
choke a wolf.

In spite of his defect, perhaps because
of it, he was easier to understand than
any of his fellow-tribesmen. His dis-
ability had developed a wonderful pa-
tience and ingenuity. When words
failed he added gestures, signs, and rude
pictures drawn with charcoal from the

fire. He told me quaint hunting tales,
all hard luck stories, for the native suc-
cess in the chase is so constant that only
failure makes sufficient impression to be
worth the telling. So old Le Moelle
told me how twenty years ago he had
missed a duck and also how he once lost
some musk-oxen because his dogs howled
too soon and scared them away. He re-
counted an experience with a blizzard
when lost on the Barrens. He had spent
the night buried in a snowdrift, his face
covered with deerskin leggings to keep it
from freezing.

He prophesied a hard trip for me, and
said that on my return his house should
be my house; there he would cache meat
for me. This promise was faithfully
kept. My visit to the medicine-man
well illustrates the attractive side of In-
dian character. He is unexcelled as a
host and his squaw is unequaled as a
cook. It is only in business dealings
that he is more exasperating than his
own sled dog.

When I reached the Barren Grounds
things began to go wrong. There was
so little snow that everywhere boulders
projected above the surface. If I went
ahead the toboggan upset every few

[663]

654

OUTING

SUSA BO

yards. If I went behind to steady the
sled the dogs could not pick a good way.
In the end it was necessary to double
trip. That is to say, I would leave the
train, run ahead for two or three miles,
and then return and drive the dogs
along my track. This, of course, meant
traveling three miles for every mile of
advance, and certainly emphasized the
justice of the local saying that "Dogs
need a man to run ahead of them and a
man to run behind them, and even then
they only haul their own grub."

It was cold enough for the dogs to
feel the weather, which means about 40
below zero. As long as I was either
traveling or sleeping in my robes I was
comfortable enough, but was unable to
make an efficient shelter where snow for
drinking-water could be melted. One
cup of ice-water night and morning was
my ration. It did not take many days
of this kind of travel to convince me
that under the circumstances the musk-
ox hunt was impracticable and must be
deferred until spring.

While I was packing my sled for the
return trip the sun, though still below
the horizon, flushed pink the southern
sky. In the north the moon hung like
a silver shield. A gentle breeze carried
the powder-dry snow, like rapid water
running ankle-deep, up the hill. Lake

and cliff, hill and valley, all robed in
spotless white, lay at my feet. It was
hard, indeed, to leave so attractive a
prospect, especially bearing the stigma of
failure.

The journey back to Rae proved un-
eventful. At the post the Indians wTere
commencing to gather for the Christmas
trade. Among the Bear Lake Chief's
people there was some talk of going out
to the Dease River Mission, where the
"Blonde Huskies" come to get religious
instruction — and iron. Such a trip
would suit me well. Even if I could
not persuade the Eskimo to hunt musk-
ox with me, at least I could learn enough
of their technique to be able to travel the
Barren Grounds alone.

I spoke to Cochia (Little Brother),
the Chief's eldest son, about it. He was
anxious to have me visit his camp and
medicine an axe cut on his father's foot,
but was non-committal as to the Dease
River expedition. Although he would
give no definite promise, the trip with
him to his father's camp seemed to offer
the best possibilities of sport during the
month of January. We started the day
after Christmas. Little Brother asked
me not to use any of my "white's grub"

COCHIA

THE ELUSIVE MUSK-OX AND THE DELUSIVE DOG-RIB 655

while traveling, because there were thir-
teen sleds in the brigade, and if once
we started on the good food it would
be all eaten before wTe reached the lodges.
Apparently the other Dog-ribs were ac-
tuated by the same motive, for with real
provisions on every toboggan we all
shared with our dogs the rotten "hung
fish" put up for their use the previous
autumn.

We found the Chief in high feather
over the success of a great medicine war
with his rival, Old Jeremy. First Old
Jeremy made medicine, but it missed the
Bear Lake Chief and killed his son's
wife's cousin. This made the Bear Lake
Chief very angry and he made medicine
which, however, missed Jeremy and
killed his squaw's brother's illegitimate
daughter. After several misses Jeremy's
medicine came very close and the Chief
cut his foot with an axe and was laid up
all winter. This gave him plenty of
time to make very strong medicine and
Old Jeremy caught pneumonia when he
visited the houses at the post and died.
Thus only one chief was left among the
Bear Lake Indians.

One of these people was a man with-
out any face. His countenance was just
a raw, red, suppurating hole reaching
into the base of the skull with half an

GERMAIN AND HIS GRANDSON

GERMAIN S YOUNGER SON, SUZA,
DRUMMING TO AMUSE HIS NEPHEW

eye on top and half a mouth below. He
besought me to cure him. I asked how
long he had been that way. He said, "It
is long, long; so many years I can't count
them. I was young fellow like that boy
there. I was smoke a pipe and pour pow-
der in the powder horn. Bang! It burn
me. So I got no face. Just like a louse. I
used to be a man and hunt musk-ox, now
I am a squaw and sew wrappers for the
toboggans." Of course, I could do
nothing for him nor do I think the In-
dians blamed my medicine for being
over-matched by such a case.

The Chief entertained me most cor-
dially. Both he and his crony, Susa Bo,
gave feasts in honor of my visit, but
they would not consent to any of their
young men going to Dease River at that
time of the year. So I bade them all
farewell and returned to Rae.

As soon as the dogs were rested I de-
cided to go to Hay River, 240 miles
distant. Resolution lies on the way, so
there is a chance to break the journey.
Hay River is a great fish post, and I
hoped there to get dry fish for my spring
musk-ox hunt. I found it easy to travel
alone on a good trail, or on the wind-
swept ice of Great Slave Lake. It is
only where the surface is bad that a fore-
goer is necessary. It took me, however,
two days to make the long traverse. A

THE MEDICINE MAN S SOUAW AT THE LEFT. BOAS SOU AW AT THE RIGHT

blizzard was raging at the time and all
landmarks were blotted out in the whirl-
ing drifts.

Early in the evening of the first day I
ran across a wooded island which pro-
vided shelter for the night. All the
second day the travel was over ice
formed on the open lake with no land
or sign of land visible. I carried no
watch so that dead reckoning, which
alone gave me any idea of my position,
was somewhat uncertain. As darkness
was closing in the dogs became unhandy
and at every pressure ridge crouched
down for shelter from the wind. As
there was danger of losing them in the
gathering gloom, I decided to camp
among some hummocks under the lee of
an up-ended cake of ice. My sleeping
bag I left in the sled wrapper and after
unhooking the dogs crawled into it.

Before sleep came many stories of men
lost on the big lakes in snowstorms
passed through my mind. One in par-
ticular of a Chipewyan dog puncher
who had always said that under such
circumstances he would turn his cariole
upside down and sleep under it as in a
tent. The time came when he had to
test this device on Lake Athabasca.
When the weather cleared he was found
frozen to death within sight of the fort.

Soothed by these reflections, I fell asleep.

In the morning the storm raged as
fiercely as ever. Failing in my efforts to
free the toboggan from wind-packed
drifts which wedged it between great
cakes of ice, and rather than abandon
my outfit, I returned to the sleeping bag
for the day. The second night it was
impossible to turn over, for the snow
kept sifting between wrapper and
blanket and compressed my person as in
a plaster cast. Only in front of my face
could I keep an air chamber in which to
breathe and smoke. Here the atmos-
phere became so foul that only one match
in six would light.

As the hours wore on toward morning,
silence, as sudden as a blow, woke me.
The wind had fallen. By the light of
the brilliant stars and flaming Aurora
land was visible three miles distant.
Twelve hours later I pulled in to Reso-
lution after having gone two days with-
out water, two and a half without food.

At Hay River they were all out of dry
fish, but were willing to sell me fifty
pounds of bacon. At Resolution I was
able to get flour, sugar, and dry fruit,
but none of the half breeds would hear
of going to the Barren Grounds.

At this crisis one of the best of these
dog-punchers came over from Rae to

[65G]

THE ELUSIVE MUSK-OX AND THE DELUSIVE DOG-RIB 657

trade his fur at Resolution. For his
services I offered $500.00, to be paid
when we returned to Athabasca Land-
ing, where such wages would enable him
to purchase a small outfit and set up as
a free trader. It meant for him an inde-
pendent start in life. The temptation
was too great to be refused. He put his
fears in his pocket and accepted my
terms. But when it was time to start
on the long trip he "had a sore arm"
and refused to go. So in the latter part
of March I set out without him.

The route chosen ran eastward on
Great Slave Lake, and then over Pike's
Portage to Artillery and Clinton Colden
Lakes. It was impracticable to carry
rations for more than a very small frac-
tion of the time, but on the tenth day,
before I had reached the end of Great
Slave Lake, when my stock of provisions
was nearly exhausted, I caught up with
the migrating herds of female caribou.
They were traveling in countless thou-
sands toward the rich pastures beyond
timber line. Like ir^self, they chose the

great lakes as their best road to the land,
not of milk and honey, but of moss and
musk-ox. From this time on there was
no need to worry about supplies, for the
deer furnished abundant food of the very
best quality for both man and dogs.

On Clinton Colden Lake, far beyond
the last stick of stunted wood, I was
again caught by a blizzard and obliged
to lie up for two days in my sleeping bag
buried in snow which the half breeds call
"le convert du bon Dieu." The gale
swept over the barrens and the wide
traverses of the lake. Lacking the resist-
ance of trees or rough inequalities of sur-
face, it raced in uncanny quiet. There
was no howling in the branches, only the
white darkness below, the blue sky and
the sun dogs above, and the faint hiss
of innumerable impalpable particles of
finest snow dust driven by the storm at
lightning speed over the ice and the hard
surfaces of wind-packed snow. The
drift sifted into every crack and cranny
of my outfit. So forcibly was it driven
that for days after the storm even the

FIREPLACE IN A DOG-RIB HOUSE. IT IS BUILT TO HOLD THE LOGS VERTICAL, NOT
' "HORIZONTAL, FOR THE FIRE IS LAID LIKE A LODGE FIRE

658

OUTING

lip-

™

ADI, ARMIS SQUAW, CASTING BULLETS

dogs were unable to free their coats
from it.

When finally the wind dropped it took
all my wood, except enough for one fire,
to get the dunnage clear enough from
snow and ice to pack it on the sled.
Failure of the fuel supply made it nec-
essary to turn homeward again. Fur-
ther progress was out of the question.
Even as it was, I got thirsty before
reaching the timber line, and at night
dry lips and cracked tongue dripped
blood on the blankets.

On the return journey I wounded
three caribou out of a! small herd. Dur-
ing the stalk the sled was tied to a rock
to prevent the dogs from joining inop-
portunely in the chase. They, however,
tore it loose and followed, not the crip-
ples, but the unwounded deer. I ran
after them, guided by their tracks for
they were soon lost to view in the rolling
prairies. A stiff breeze was blowing and
the trail often crossed bare, wind-swept
ridges where it was difficult to see foot-
prints. For two hours I followed the
runaways and had ample time to medi-
tate on my predicament in case they
could not be found. I would be left
far from the edge of the woods without
fuel, blanket, axe, or even a knife. My

total assets would be a score of matches
and a dozen cartridges with four hun-
dred miles to travel before reaching Fort
Rae. Finally the dogs were caught and
I blush to think how cruelly they were
whipped for I was both frightened and
angry, an evil combination.

With the advancing season it was
necessary to travel at night and sleep in
the day time, in order to avoid noon
thaws and take advantage of night
frosts. Among the Yellow-knife Islands
I got on the toboggan about midnight
for a cat nap. A change in the step of
my beasts of burden wakened me. Sit-
ting up heavy with sleep, it took some
time to realize what was the matter.
There were five dogs, one too many. I
counted them over twice to make sure
before shooting and then came broad
awake with a snap. The fifth dog was
a wolf following close on the blood slot
of my poor, sore-footed animals. He ran
off when the sled stopped and since it
was too dark to see the front sight plainly
I missed him.

On the ninth of May the battered,
trail-worn toboggan reached the Fort.
It was necessary to swim the dogs across

REPAIRING A CANOE. A FIREBRAND
\.\!) WHITE SPRUCE GUM KRE USED

THE ELUSIVE MUSK-OX AND THE DELUSIVE DOG-RIB 659

a narrow channel which separates the
post from the mainland. The spring
thaw was well under way and the robins
were singing their love songs. The
grouse would soon be courting and even
Dry Geese, the little, wizened old
hunter, serenaded a fat and enormous
widow in words which translated run as
follows: "Mosquito Head! You good
girl. You are as sweet as marrow
grease. You taste like the unborn cari-
bou. My heart is strong for you. My
heart beats like this Medicine drum."

The summer was far advanced before
any of the Dog-ribs could be induced to

FEASTING AND GAMBLING AT RAE

leave the post for a musk-ox hunt. The
party which finally started was composed
of Germain, Armi, and Little Paul
(Boa), besides squaws, children, and
dogs. Paul's squaw stayed at the fort
and asked rations for the time during
which he should be away and unable to
provide for her. Although we expected
to be gone several months, all she de-
manded was a fish net and 12 J^ pounds
of flour. She got them.

At first my men traveled very slowly
with eyes turned backward to the feast-
ing and gambling at Rae. They com-
plained bitterly of the loneliness of the
trail, for it takes a very large company
to satisfy the social instinct of a Dog-rib,
and deliberately delayed in the hope that
other parties would catch up to them.

BOYS AND MEN MAKING MEDICINE, TO

BRING LUCK, WHILE PLAYING THE

HAND GAME

As our provisions ran short they became
more cheerful and paddled faster in an-
ticipation of the land of plenty we should
find beyond timber line.

When we killed a black bear we had
a great feast, all except Paul, whose
medicine forbade him bear meat. Over
the longest, steepest portage of the trail
the natives fairly ran although their
loads were heavy. They told me that
this place was very dangerous because it
was infested by Nagani, a kind of wood
spirit or man-sized fairy, much feared by
both Indians and half-breeds.

At Little Marten Lake, fifteen miles
north of timber line, we first found cari-
bou. They were abundant and we
camped on the shore of the lake for
nine days and killed seventy of them.

BOA WITH THE MUSK-OX HEAD

660

OUTING

I'nit

t EYl

Slona/tu

res

1PC"U'3* The B<a.r Lake Ct,

d'3b

Coclaia.
JKryni

Adi

Boa.

The women, children, and dogs were
then left in charge of the lodge on an
island while we four men, in two small
canoes, pushed on across the Coppermine
River to Jjaba Ti, a great, uncharted
inland sea which Germain said extended
in the direction of its clear horizon as
far as dogs can travel in three days.

As we crossed one end of this lake a
light breeze made a nasty cross sea. We
tossed presents into the water to bring
fair weather, and Paul, who was badly
scared, asked me to add a prayer, written
in the Dog-rib alphabet, to my gift.
This prayer, translated, meant, "Oh,
Jjaba Ti, no wind is good. Big thanks."
I signed it with my Indian name Kwela
(Little Rock) and as the wind soon died
away to a flat calm my medicine was
thought to be exceedingly strong.

Among the high hills the spirits of my
companions fell very low indeed. They
no longer joked, sang, or laughed, but
spoke in whispers, awed by the austere
majesty of the solitudes about them,
Germain urged me to return. He said,
"We have left the Little Barrens.
Beyond are the Big Barrens where there
is no dwarf birch or willow and meat
must be eaten raw. In the country

ahead of us grizzly bears are
plenty and giant wolverines,
as big as the bears, lurk in
ambush to devour the un-
wary. Soon there will be
heavy snowstorms. Let us
go back while we can."

I refused to turn and taxed
him bitterly with cowardice
and faithlessness. This en-
raged him and he spoke so
rapidly and volubly that it
was impossible to understand
one word he said. Then I,
too, lost my temper and
cursed Germain emphatical-
ly, at length — and in Eng-
lish. It was some time be-
fore I was sufficiently calm to realize
what an absurd figure we cut jabbering
at each other mutually unintelligible
abuse. However, I stuck to my point,
"No musk-ox, no gifts," and this car-
ried the day.

On the big Barrens, when we had
reached the end of canoe navigation,
Germain, Armi, and Paul drew off to
hold a council together. I overheard
them plotting to go back to Jjaba Ti.
There seemed a chance that they might
sneak off in the night, taking both canoes
and leaving me north of the Coppermine
with no means of crossing that river.
Dog-ribs, it should be remembered, are
natural born deserters. Among them a
chief's position is neither elective nor
hereditary. A man of dominant char-
acter is followed instinctively, much as
the caribou herds follow an old doe. A
chief's young men, as his people are
called, obey him implicitly from natural
docility as long as they remain in his
band, but neither law nor custom forbid
any or all of them to leave it if they
wish to do so. As a matter of fact, in
times of scarcity the tribesmen always
scatter and when food is once more plen-
tiful come together again without hard

THE ELUSIVE MUSK-OX AND THE DELUSIVE DOG-RIB 661

feeling. Gregarious animals act in just
this way, but such customs make it im-
possible for the hunter to rely on native
guides.

Bearing these facts in mind, I turned
in with my mosquito bar carefully tied
to one of the canoes, and lay under the
bar with a loaded rifle by my side. As
soon as I had feigned sleep Paul crept up
and peered through the netting. His
report must have shown the others that
they were temporarily checkmated for
Indians are good* tacticians. At all
events, there was no demonstration that
night.

Next day we cached the canoes and
all our dunnage, except blankets, cart-
ridges, and tobacco, for we were start-
ing on foot for the high hills. We ex-
pected to be gone several weeks. The
morning was bright and fresh and the
fears of the preceding night vanished
away. After traveling about three
hours Paul saw a musk-ox, one lone old
bull. I killed him quite easilv. Nature
loves an anti-climax. The actual stalk
which formed the culmination of a year's
hunt was tame enough. The head, how-

ever, was a beauty with as large a spread
as that of any ever brought out.

Rather to my surprise, the natives
were most enthusiastic over this fine
trophy and gave cheery and willing help
in its preparation and transport. The
skull was too heavy for me to lift, but
at the commencement of every portage
they placed it on top of my pack and at
its close lifted it down, taking great pains
not to scratch the horns on rocks.

We were now all of one mind. My
companions were in haste to reach Fort
Rae and get their presents. I wished
to make speed in order to reach Atha-
basca Landing and rail head before the
freeze-up, which could only be done by
traveling southward rapidly and without
interruption. Already the small ponds
were freezing over and there was a smell
of snow in the air.

At the fur post I parted with Germain
and his young men. I saw him last as
I was sailing from the fort in a canoe.
He ran to the bank, waved his fillet
about his head, and shouted:

" Gwi ke ni whe tsi Hurrah hi Casey."
"Fair wind! Hurrah for Casey."

Another article by Mr. Wheeler — the product of his exper-
iences in the North — is on the Sled-Dogs of the Sub-Arctic.
It will appear in one of the early Winter Numbers.

THE COUNTRY ROLLS AWAY IN GENTLE, LOW-SLOPING HILLS,

EMERALDS

AS GREEN AS

IN BACK OF BEYOND

By STEWART EDWARD WHITE

Photographs by the Author

VI
A LION SURPRISE PARTY

' I NHE westward march has begun none too soon as the donkeys
•*- are dying one by one from the tse-tse bite and there is still a
long way to go. The previous instalment landed Mr. White
among the villages of the Wasonzi, "a pleasant, human people."
Game is increasing daily and the problem of meat supply no longer
bothers them, but transportation is rapidly simmering down to
back-packing. A native messenger has arrived with the necessary
customs vise from the German governor so that the last official
formality has been complied with.

UGUST fourteenth
jf\, brought us a fine Jap-

// ^\ anese effect of flat

" »\ acacias against the glow

of the morning sky.
Unfavorable reports
came from M'ganga as to lack of water
ahead, so we cut back in the hills to the
north, between a big round mountain
and a high rock outcrop. Here the

[062] Begun in April OUTING

passes were low and the traveling open
and very easy, while chances of water
would be much better in the hills than
on the flat.

Loads of game.

This route led us finally between two
ranges to a wild valley sweeping upward,
across which we angled toward the upper
end where our glasses had disclosed a
green spot. The green spot might mean

GIRAFFE MARCHING ALONG THE SKY-LINE

a spring. About noon we found it in-
deed to be a trickling little clear, cold
stream, with big trees. The trickle soon
ran underground, but the trees made us
a shady, pleasant camp in which we re-
solved to stop for some days.

While waiting for the safari, Memba
Sasa and I went on to see the source and
got a very fine sight of a magnificent
black-maned lion. The wind was
wrong, and he bounded into the thicket,
but he was a beautiful creature.

Our camp was made in the shady
grove. The donkeys came in very late
and tired. In the afternoon Cuning-
hame and I went on up into the pass
whence we saw down the length of an-
other narrow valley, widening between
the hills. Then we made a high climb
up the mountain to our left, and found
a round, grassy summit at last on which
were many Chanler's reedbuck. These
graceful, and generally shy, creatures
bounded all about us, stopping within a
few yards and uttering their high, shrill
whistles. East, north, and south fine,
big, tumbled hills and mountains through
the smoke ; west a boundless plain, un-
dulating and black with brush and fire.
The sun struck in bars through the
smoke, and the distance was lost in haze.

Got back to camp at dark to find it
well stung by bees! An enterprising
porter found a bee tree too near and got

everybody in trouble. After dark they
went at it again and got a quantity of
black, grubby honey.

While camped here we sent men back
to the camp where we had seen the last
of the Wasonzi to bring up the potio
loads we had left there in charge of the
sick men. Then we went out for a
walk, meat, information, and anything
else that might show up. From the
mountain we had, the day before, seen a
patch of green grass far back among the
hills. We went toward this.

A very high wind blew. While we
were going over a grassy shoulder, single
file among some thickets, Cuninghame
ahead, suddenly a bushbuck doe sprang
out and stood sidewise forty yards away.
Cuninghame dropped flat, his hands
over his ears, and I put a .405 into her
shoulder. Very hard animal to get, as
it is mostly invisible in cover. I have a
buck, and want a doe.

The green country we found inhabited
by great herds of game, but extraordi-
narily wild. Through the thin growth
of small trees with which all this coun-
try is sparsely covered we could see them
disappearing at the mere first small
glimpse of us. Even the top of a helmet
cautiously raised above the grass sent
them off. This puzzled us, for certainly
this game had never been hunted or
driven about. Indeed even game in a

[663]

664

OUTING

A ZEBRA CATCHES MY WIND

much-hunted country will generally
stand staring an instant or so before
making oft"; but this lot bolted instantly.
The probability is that ordinarily wild
game depends for alarm on hearing and
smell rather than sight. It will stare
at a strange object; but will run away
instantly from a strange smell or a
strange sound. But in a high wind
neither hearing nor smell are of any use.
Then and then only the game falls back
on the sense of sight. In fact they this
day bolted off in just the headlong man-
ner of game that has winded man.

We were much interested in this, and
we spent some time trying out the same
herds of game under different conditions.
On windy days they were very wild ; on
calm days very tame; in sheltered places
very tame.

We saw zebra, impalla, topi, kongoni,
waterbuck, and many Bohur reedbuck.
Tommy and Robertsi were there in num-
bers, but we saw little of them. By very
careful stalking I wounded a topi at 180
yards badly enough to cause him to turn
off. While following him I had an ex-
traordinarily interesting experience. In
a shady little grove without underbush
stood a reedbuck, a graceful, pretty
creature about the size of our California

deer. His head was up and
he was staring at me. My
course led directly toward
him. He did not move.
Nearer and nearer I walked,
bold, upright and in plain
sight, expecting every min-
ute he would bound away,
until I was within five or six
yards of him. Then, as he
did not move, I quietly
turned aside and walked
around him about ten feet
away, and left him in his
cool, green shadow, still star-
ing.

And then, just a few yards
farther on, I came on a fam-
ily of sing-sing, some lying
down, some standing. They,
too, stared at me, in noble
attitudes like a lot of Land-
seer's stags, until I was with-
in thirty yards. Then I
caught sight of my topi and
fired at him across them and they van-
ished. All this was under shelter of
woods where there was no wind.

We then started back to camp. When
two miles from there we ran across a
few topi stragglers, almost invisible in
the bush even at short range and to the
gunbearers. Note this is protective col-
oration argument, as the topi is as con-
spicuous as the zebra out on the plains.
Where never molested, as in this coun-
try, both topi and zebra are found
mostly in light brush. Food for reflec-
tion.

One of these also I killed for future
reference. This made us meat in hand,
so we set everyone to making "jerky."
New one on them, but it came out excel-
lently, and everybody has kept a piece
or so to chew ever since. Makes fine
lunches.

In the evening millions upon millions
of driver ants started through camp. Of
course, if they get fairly going you have
to get out, for they will eat through any-
thing but tin, but we headed them and
laid a thick barrier of hot ashes across
and around them. Dolo got down on
his hands and knees and was led back
and forth by another man all round the
donkeys. He carried grass on his head,

IN BACK OF BEYOND

665

and claimed that by this magic his beasts
were rendered safe from the "chop." A
donkey died that night, and we had leop-
ards about.

We stayed in this camp several days,
resting, shooting necessary meat, and
waiting for our other men to come up.
Finally we set off over the low pass into
the other valley. Left Dolo, donkeys,
and sick men. Instructed Dolo to go
back to "Windy Camp" — where, be it
remembered, some time ago we left two
sick men — to help the men with the re-
laying of the extra loads.

Down the slope of the valley beyond
the pass the grass was very high and
wearisome, and, in spite of soot, we were
glad the country behind us had been
burned. Many reedbuck leaped from
their beds and bounded away, showing
only heads and horns.

Then Cuninghame caught sight of a
big roan standing in the shadow. He
was over two hundred yards away, but
by luck I managed to center his shoulder
off hand. Ran into thicket. Found him
there and brought him down at close
range as he dodged through the bushes.
Fine prize, and a big one. The curious
part of it was that he had been wounded
by a Wanderobo arrow in the neck.
The poison with which these arrows are
always smeared had not been effective,
but had left a big pus cavity.

Farther down in the burned country
we struck a fresh buffalo spoor, and

THE OSTRICH NEST

REEDBUCK FEEDING. IT IS RARE TO
SEE THESE BEASTS IN THE OPEN

tracked it some miles and into a thicket
only to have a fitful wind whip round on
us at the last moment and send him off
when we were within a few yards of
him. Returned to find the safari, pre-
viously instructed, camped at a pretty
green spring high up the slope of a hill,
with clear water, green trees, and a far
outlook. Rained a little. Heard lions.

All the scrub and small trees here-
abouts are full of small, green parrots
that chatter and scream and fly about;
and monkeys; and brilliant plaintain eat-
ers, the most gorgeous of created birds.

We started next morning at 6:15 and
marched across a sort of mouth out
across open country to a hill correspond-
ing with the one we had left at our
last night's camp. Crossed a dry stream-
bed with tall trees and ferns, and ad-
vanced over a burning. Here, all by
themselves, two animals stood side by
side on the black soil among the bushes.
Glasses discovered them to be roan. We
had already two fine heads, but for our
purposes needed two more buck and a
doe of this species. I sneaked as near
as I could and dropped the first in his
tracks as though he had been struck by
lightning. The other ran but stopped
an instant to look back, and him, too, I
knocked down in the same manner. The
distances were 252 and 347 yards, which
speaks well for the shocking power of the
Springfield at long range.

Cuninghame and two men remained

666

OUTING

to attend to these, and I skirted the hill,
about half way up; for though these
finished the buck, I wanted a doe. A
half mile farther on I saw far below me
a herd and counted nineteen. This is
assuredly the greatest roan country in
Africa. I managed my doe with one
shot.

We camped near where I had shot
the first two, in a grove of great, green
trees with a spring of clear water, and
the hills behind us and the plains before.
Late in the afternoon when the sun was
low I strolled among the lovely green,
high trees and enjoyed the ibises, the
many reedbuck — and the rhino.

Here we spent two days waiting for
men to come up with the extra loads.
When they did show up they brought
with them the cheering news that several
more of the donkeys had died.

Cuninghame and I now realized that
we must do a little figuring as to ways

up our minds to abandon the valuable
equipments of the dead beasts; so that
we now had, in addition to our regular
loads and what few trophies we could
not resist taking, a number of saddles
and bags to carry. It was evident that
we must now either throw away many
of our goods and some of our food, and
force a march to the westward! or we
must get more transport.

We did not want to do the former.
This new game country, into the bor-
ders of which we had penetrated so short
a distance, fairly cried for exploration.
Even in ideal conditions we would not
have time enough to do it scant justice.
The low hills at our back, for example,
must be full of pockets and valleys, coves
and little ranges, like the "green spot"
we had examined. All this we must —
regretfully — leave for the next comer;
we had neither the food nor the time to
turn aside from a fairly direct westward

EVERYWHERE WERE THESE TREES, SINGLY, IN LITTLE OPEN GROVES

and means. Seventy per cent, of our
donkeys were now dead of tse-tse, and a
strong probability existed that more had
been infected. We had been for some
time able to move forward only by short
stages, and were forced continually to
send men back for relays of goods. The
burden was made still heavier by the
fact that we had not been able to make

track. But on that westward track we
felt that we must allow ourselves the
leisure to cast about a little bit.

The Wasonzi had told us that at the
old slave post of Ikoma — to the south —
native donkeys were to be had. They
even knew the prices. After canvassing
the situation thoroughly we finally de-
cided that I was to keep on straight

IN BACK OF BEYOND

667

ahead, blazing out slowly the westward
route; while Cuninghame, with a few
men, was to make a "dash" to Ikoma for
more animals. Dolo and the remaining
donkeys, with a few men, were to camp
right here until Cuninghame's return.
Cuninghame would pick them up and
follow after on my trail.

This seemed best all round. Cun-
inghame therefore took with him six

in the broad hollows were open parks.
And on every hill, standing in the
openings, strolling in and out of the
groves, feeding on the bottom lands, sin-
gly, in little groups, in herds, was game.
It did not matter in what direction one
looked, there it was; as abundant one
place as another. Nor did it matter how
far you went, over how many hills you
walked, how many wide prospects you

IN ONE DAY MR. WHITE COUNTED 4,628 HEAD OF GAME

porters, Soli, Kongoni, and M'ganga.
Eight porters and three donkey men
stayed here in "Dolo's Camp." I went
on with the rest. Cuninghame's adven-
tures will follow in time.

I set out by compass, bearing for a
river called the Bologonja, described by
savages as running; marched for miles
over rolling, burned-out desert on which
roamed a few kongoni and eland. Then
saw the green trees of my river, walked
two miles more — and found myself in a
paradise.

It is hard to do that country justice.
From the river it rolls away in gentle,
low-sloping hills as green as emeralds
beneath trees spaced as in a park. One
could see as far as the limits of the hori-
zon, and yet everywhere were these trees,
singly, in little open groves; and the
grass was the greenest green, and short
and thick as though cut and rolled; and

examined, it was always the same. Dur-
ing my stay at the next two camps I
looked over fifty square miles. One day
I counted 4,628 head! I mean counted
— one by one — as one does sheep; not
estimated.

And in this beautiful, wide, populous
country no rifle has ever been fired, no
human being been except a few wander-
ing savages. It is a virgin game country,
and we have been the last men who will
ever discover one for the sportsmen of
the world, for Cuninghame says there
is no other possibility in Africa unex-
plored. This game field is as big as all
that of British East Africa, is as well
stocked, has a good climate, and can be
made accessible by our experiences.

The river proved to be a cold, spark-
ling stream running over pebbles, about
ten yards wide and half-leg deep. And
crystal water! Great trees overhung it;

668

OUTING

and palms; and cool shade; and no mos-
quitoes. Pitched camp quite in the
jungle where the stream sang, and the
shade was so dense that no sun came
through. Saw three lions, but they had
the wind of the safari and decamped,
though I chased them half a mile, to the
detriment of my ankle,* which does not
like running. Left a kill for them.

In the afternoon I strolled over the
fine green hills and reveled in the sight

Heard wild dogs that night. OfT
early to look at lion kill (nothing), and
then up the small, bushy ravines on the
chance of seeing his lordship. Found
where he had killed an eland with twen-
ty-four-inch horns. Saw sign of greater
kudu. Near the top of the roll of a hill
had a fine sight of one of the immense
mixed herds returning from water,, single
file, nose to tail, plodding slowly along
one of the deep-worn game trails, hun-

IT DID NOT MATTER IN WHAT DIRECTION ONE LOOKED, THERE WAS GAME

of the game — black herds of wildebeeste,
like bison in the park openings; topi
everywhere, zebra, hartebeeste, Tommy,
oribi, steinbuck, impalla, reedbuck, and
others. The animals are all a little cu-
rious and a little shy. The topi are the
most curious. Sometimes I was very
close to animals right in the open ; again
a whole side hill would take a panic and
run, and then the roar of the hoofs was
actually like thunder. The sound of the
rifle does not alarm them at all. Some-
times they hardly look up from grazing
when they are not too near.

* Unfortunately I had to walk the whole
of this 1,700 miles on an ankle recently
broken and not entirely strong. Tim was a
considerable handicap to enjoyment, though I
never came to the point of abbreviating the
day's march on account of the confounded
thing. For this reason the loss of my riding
mule so early was annoying.

dreds of them, zebra, topi, hartebeeste,
wildebeeste, and eland. Other herds had.
already returned from water and scat-
tered out over the green, parklike swells.

In a little open flat I found a Tommy
(very few here) with a fine head, so I
dropped him at 157 yards. His horns
proved to be 15j^ inches (good ones 13
inches).* At the sound of the shot a
lot of game across the valley actually de-
cided to come over and see us, which
they did, single file and at a dignified
pace. They filed by four or five hun-
dred yards away. There were fifty-two
eland (how's that for a sight?), accom-
panied by about a hundred zebra, a few
topi and kongoni, and eighteen wilde-
beeste.

Then returned to camp and rested un-

* Later shot one with 16^-inch horns!

IN BACK OF BEYOND

669

til two o'clock, when I took a different
direction over the hills, and, to my won-
der, found the game as continuously
abundant there. From the tops of the
swells it was particularly pretty to look
over the tops of the trees to the green
flats, resembling courts, and the wilde-
beeste grazing on them like bison in a
park.

Memba Sasa and I sent the men back
with meat and circled to cut the stream

gray monkeys. A Baganda-man named
Maliabwana* brought in a long string of
fish.

In the evening Memba Sasa reported
with slight fever. I gave him the usual
quinine, and told him to lie by the next
day. Instructed Ali to pick me out a
porter to visit lion kills with me, and
added "one that will not run away."
Overheard the following:

Ali — "You will carry the Bwana's

BLACK HERDS OF WILDEBEESTE LIKE BISON IN THE PARK OPENINGS

some distance below camp. Near the
river the trees are thicker than on the
hills. Here we caught a glimpse of
sing-sing, a beast I was particularly de-
sirous to get, both male and female. Did
some very careful slow stalking and got
within 150 yards all right. The diffi-
culty was to make them out, and to get
a shot through the thick stuff even after
I had seen them. I had to wait nearly
half an hour before I made out the
buck's shoulder clear enough to shoot.
Dropped him in his tracks. The herd
crashed away, of course, but one doe
paused to look back, and I got her, too.
This made my pair. Hiked back along
the river and sent out men.

Saw little game and no game trails
going to the river! So there must be
water out on the plains. Many grouse,
however, and some green parrots and

other gun. If you run away you will
get kiboko [a thrashing] ; if you do not
run away you will get three rupees. If
the lion makes kalele, do not run away:
the Bwana will kill him. If the lion
runs at you, do not run away : the Bwana
will kill him. The Bwana has killed
many lions. Bass/JJf

Sent back all the men but two to
bring up a relay of goods from Dolo's
camp, as I had made up my mind to stay
in this most attractive locality for some
time.

* Mali-a-bwana — the money master. These
men are self-named, and in their choice of
cognomens modesty is not their strongest
point. Example — Fundi=The Expert; Cazi
Moto=The Hot Worker, etc.

~\ Bass /—"Finished,
dismissal.

the usual method of

THOMPSON S GAZELLE

Started at the first dim light and had
gone half a mile without looking back.
Then I turned to say something to the
porter, who had been dogging my heels
— the porter who would not run away —
and found it was Memba Sasa! He
swore he was all over his fever, felt
strong, "and perhaps that man would
run away," he added. He is a faithful
soul.

However, nothing doing at the kill,
so his devotion had no practical result.
I crossed the river and toiled to the top
of a high cone hill for the sake of com-
pass bearings and the "lay of the land."
Across the open, formidable veldt I made
out a single rock outcropping from the
bush ten miles away. As it was the only
landmark, I took bearings on it, and re-
solved to use it if I came to the point of
exploring the dry plains. Found Chan-
ler's reedbuck on the hill, and more roan
at the base. In this country that par-
ticular sportsman's prize would be a
certainty.

Returned to camp on that side of the
stream, but saw comparatively little
game there owing to the state of the
grass. There were, however, a number
of topi, Bohur reedbuck, and impalla.
Got my needed Bohur doe with the .405.

Near camp I saw a queer-looking
black hump sticking out of the tall grass.

[070]

When I approached it suddenly unfold-
ed into a cock ostrich and departed. We
found twenty-eight eggs. Only a dozen
or so were covered by the bird : the rest
were scattered out a few feet. This is
the slovenly habit of the ostrich. The
hen apparently keeps on laying for gen-
eral results. Took one egg, but it was
bad, so no omelette!

In the afternoon I took one porter and
went out with the intention of taking
game pictures. The sky was overcast,
however, and the game had one of its
unaccountable fits of being wild. Be-
side the understandable influence of the
high winds, untouched game seems to be
extraordinarily capricious. Some days
you can fairly stumble over it; on others
it thunders away without reason, a good
deal like high-spirited colts in a pasture.
Animals have more sheer fun than we
think.

Speaking of pictures, some time back
I heard Ali explaining the camera to
;:oine shenzis as follows:

"The bwana looks in the box; and
when he sees what he wants in the box
he makes it go click, click; and when he
is at home and wants to see that thing
again, he looks in the box and makes it
go click, click, and there he sees that
thing even though it is far away." It
was so good an explanation for the sav-

IN BACK OF BEYOND

671

age that I adopted it for my own use.

Found six good water holes some miles
"inland." On our way home we jumped
a buffalo cow with a calf a week or so
old. She trotted away across the open
hills, buffalo fashion, nose straight out.
Just about as she began to calm down
she ran into Memba Sasa, and got a
fresh start. And then, to finish, she
tried to cross the stream at our camp
ford ! The whole camp boiled out to
receive her. Poor old lady!

Off at first gray of next day's dawn
before I could see about me. There is
a great charm here in this time of day.
The beasts are near, and you hear them
snort, and dimly see them moving; and
all the birds are waking; and the eastern
skies are kindling.

A very high wind came up soon after
sunrise. In the hollows I found the
game fairly tame, and spent much time
sneaking close. Took a half hour to go
a hundred yards, an inch at a time, but
was rewarded by some excellent oppor-
tunities of examining the beasts.

The true Neuman's hartebeeste is
found here. Thought we had him from
British East Africa, but that must be a
hybrid race. This is a smaller animal,
so light in color that he looks like a

ghost, long legged, and with quite a
different head. No one familiar with
the other hartebeestes could have a mo-
ment's doubt that this is a distinct spe-
cies. And, believe me, he is shy! Where
everything else is tame he is most diffi-
cult to approach. Being particularly
anxious for specimens, I dropped one,
after a heartbreaking lot of maneuver-
ing to get close enough. There was al-
ways too much other stuff between me
and them.

Off went everybody, of course. I
held absolutely motionless, and, as often
happens, many beasts did not locate me
and came circling back. Among them
were two Neumanii. I sat perfectly
still for a long time, and at last they
fed within range. Missed first shot, but
got into the shoulder before they went.
I was delighted at thus getting my two
heads at once.

Sent to camp for porters and set about
taking trophies. A herd of zebra ran
over the hill ahead of the porters and
stopped within fifty yards of me. Got a
picture of one whirling as he ran ab-
ruptly into my wind.

Spent the afternoon labeling speci-
mens, writing, etc., as for some days my
ankle has been so bad that I often have

GAME HERDS IN TYPICAL GAME COUNTRY

, ^x3JP* -|*-^ ..- .&+**

g g^V rMr

BMJTii "

^£-*\">i- - Sf

I .*, '- 'i- -> *» "" i-^k' ,_^ . Jji

1 ffi * * /-F

'^^M

THE ANIMALS VARIED MUCH IN WILDNESS ACCORDING TO THE FORCE OF

THE WIND

to stop and "writhe a bit." In fact, for
purposes of rest, I next day breakfasted
by daylight for the first time on this trip.
Did various small jobs until my relay
safari came in about eleven. Had them
put down their loads and rest; with in-
structions to pack up in an hour's time
and follow my blazed trees down river.
Intended merely to move to fresh camp.
The men reported that four more don-
keys and the other mule had died.

Marched three miles to the foot of
the hill that Memba Sasa and I climbed
the other day, and there camped in the
river jungle, clearing ourselves a shady
place for the purpose. While we were
arranging camp, to me came one of the
porters in great excitement ; he had seen
a leopard asleep. Grabbed the .405 and
followed. Sneaked quietly through the
green undergrowth and the thick green
shadows. Finally, through the leaves,
we saw below us, about forty yards dis-
tant, a gliding, silent, spotted creature.
I caught the tips of ears, and blazed
away. Made a good shot through the
brain and killed — a hyena! However,
it was a fine one, and nobody could tell
who the spots belonged to in that thick
stuff, so we did not laugh much at the
porter.

Then Memba Sasa and I went scout-

ing. Saw quantities of game, as usual,
in the same sort of country; including
both Neumanii and kongoni, separate and
distinct, the former wild as ever, the
latter big, red, and curious as usual.
Killed one of each, took both heads, hung
the meat in trees, and returned.

About midnight a pack of baboons,
traveling along the course of the stream,
blundered into camp, and there was a
fine row. Evenings rather dull and lone-
some ; no light to read and no white man
to talk to. My Swahili is now about as
good as anyone's, so I sit at the gun-
bearer's fire a good deal, and we all
swap yarns. They are much interested
in the game of our country and require
of me close descriptions. It is rather
difficult to visualize a bear for them!

The following morning I visited the
lion kill; then on with men to lug in the
meat killed yesterday. After that scout-
ed over the rolling green hills, rise after
rise, valley after valley, with always the
multitudes of game.

In one of the valleys we found fresh
spoor of a single buffalo, and followed
it down a narrow donga that gradually
grew bushier and deeper until it was
quite a ravine — twenty feet or so across,
six to ten feet deep. Sent Sanguiki and
the two other men I had with me to the

[672]

IN BACK OF BEYOND

673

Windward side, and Memba Sasa and I
kept to leeward in hopes the buff might
break toward us. Thus for two miles.

Suddenly I heard a tearing scramble
in the bush. Forty yards down I could
see a game trail coming up, and about
the same distance back another. The
bank in front was precipitous. I hur-
ried for that strategic point. If the
buff held the donga bottom I could shoot
him from above; if he came out either
trail I'd get a good chance.

Instead of that a big-maned lion
scrambled up the wall of the ravine right
at my face, and stopped for an instant
four paces away. Just step off four
paces !

He looked like a lion angry about
something. It was somewhat startling,
for I was not expecting him, but I had
to get busy before he did. The first shot
from the .405 did not knock him off his
feet, but at that close range it literally
blew him sidewise as though the gust of
a tornado should catch a man off balance.
Working the lever as fast as I could
throw it, I put in another (they proved
to be three inches apart). This blew
him backwards again, literally over the
edge of the barranca. He roared and
growled and leaped. The third shot
broke his foreleg. Another raked him
from stem to stern. He rolled on his
side, and died roaring. Fine little scrap
with lots of excitement.

Found Memba Sasa next me with five
more Winchester cartridges spread out
fanwise in one hand, and the Springfield
cocked and ready in the other. That
fellow is all right.

The lion lay in the full sun, which
is here strong, and the five of us could
not lift him. So we cut brush and built
a shelter so the skin would not be in-
jured. He was a magnificent creature
with a thick, long, black and tawny

mane, better than any other wild lion I
ever saw, and almost equal to a menag-
erie beast. Never expected to get any-
thing as good. Stood three feet seven
inches at shoulder ; nine feet three inches
straight line measurement in length.
Very heavy beast, must have gone well
up between 600 and 800 pounds.
Skinned him, and loaded the trophy on
a porter, and started home.

Just across the ravine we found blood
marks and a dragging spoor. Followed
it into thicket and found a dead zebra.
It had been dragged bodily, resting on
its belly, its legs stretched out behind,
until finally it had been left in a nice
shady little bower. We caught a
glimpse of a lioness. Probably the rea-
son the lion was so anxious for trouble
was that he did not like having his little
supper-party disturbed.

We left the carcass, as bait for the
lioness.

Just before we dipped to cross the
stream to camp Memba Sasa let out a
peculiar sort of howl. Before we had
gone two hundred feet every man in
camp was there, most of them with their
faces wThitened, wildly dancing the lion
dance. It was quick work.

Spent the afternoon caring for the
trophy, paring it down, doping with
alum-water, and finally stretching it in a
huge frame, which we hoisted in a tree.
Made a very mild joke, which lasted the
camp some days. One of the Swahili
porters was bragging that he liked any
kind of meat, lion included. I knew
him to be a Mohammedan/'Very well,"
said I, "I will take you with me here-
after, and you can hallala the next
The crowd caught many fish.

ion.

* The Mohammedan is forbidden to eat
any meat that has not been knifed alive by
a believer.

(To be continued)

In the October instalment Mr. White de-
scribes some rhino camera stalking and gives
Cuninghame's report of his Southern trip.

* • >4

MEN AND DUCKS AND THINGS

By A. Y. McCORQUDALE

How It Looks to the One Who Stays at Home to Do the Cooking

and Apply the Balm

RE you a member of a
sport-ridden family ? Is
3-our husband spoken of at
town banquets as "an en-
thusiastic sportsman"?
Then for you August 23
— open season for ducks* — is indeed a
dreadful day, draped about with melan-
choly forebodings of a disorganized,
husbandless, chaotic autumn.

Some evening, on or about the middle
of August, John, your docile husband,
fidgets, fusses, abandons his veranda
chair, and joins a group of gossiping
neighbors (men, of course). It is there
the germ is sowed. You sense it — those
men are talking shooting, the smell of
powder and the dull, dead sound of fall-
ing birds is in the air.

John returns to you a stranger. An
awful germ is sprouting in his sleek,
well-combed head. A primitive, va-
grant, blood-lusting fever is let loose in
him. He is a Changed Man.

True, the average man does not en-
tirely desert his wife and family and go
forth to live with, and shoot at, Nature.
But ever his spirit is winging. His
bosom is no longer consciously your
bosom, your card parties are no longer
his card parties. You are not the apple
of his eye. He does not even know that
he loves you. He lives in his own world
of sloughs and reeds and guns and plop-
ping ducks and fine shots and high ad-
venturings. Indeed, if he be a Big
Game Artist and have the Larger Vi-
sion, he goes farther and lives on moun-
tain side and forest side and lake sides
and all other such sides. At any rate,

•This is Alberta. Wives in other states and
provincei will please consult the game laws
and corred accordingly.
U»74j

he is not living with his wife and fam-
ily. He sheds alike his veranda, his do-
mesticity, and his back garden. His
pruning hook he beats into a spear.

He first dickers over a new shotgun.
He talks of BB shot and the respective
merits of four, five, and six; of ten-bore
and twelve-bore. He is very deep. He
hunts out his old shotgun and peers
grimly along the barrel, getting a bead,
or something equally deadly, on the pass-
ing magpie. He turns a calculating eye
upon the domestic fowl that he has hith-
erto mothered and fathered. His con-
versation— at other times mild, humor-
ous, intellectual — has now as its entire
burden "ducks and chickens (in a per-
fectly respectable sense) I have met."
He pays tribute to his personal prowess
in the field of sport.

All this is merely preliminary, the
getting in tune for the next few months.

The Night preceding the Day ar-
rives and the scramblings of the Hunter
may be heard in the land. There is a
gleam in the eye of the sanest, the while
he ferrets through attics and rummages
through wardrobes for the elusive clean-
ing-rod, the disused hunting-jacket, the
rubber boots of uncanny length, those
old boxes of shells that he knows he had
from last year. A muffled, blasphe-
mous roaring indicates that your hus-
band is pursuing his search through your
chiffony party-dresses. You rush to the
rescue. Temporary peace. This is the
first awful night of preparation. You
wonder vaguely why the wily hunter of
the wilderness fails in locating the most
obvious things in a house. But you
don't say so. And into the night man
rages.

At last you sleep, and a fitful silence
reigns.

MEN AND DUCKS AND THINGS

675

The alarm clock at three A. M. meets
with instant, cheerful response. No man
ever failed to answer this Higher Call.

You rise, too. The virtuous woman
of Holy Writ has nothing on you. She
had the incentive, at any rate, of being
priced considerably above rubies. You
are one of hundreds of women all over
Alberta who have risen while it is yet
night to feed strange, unresponsive men
who don't know they are being fed.

You see that John has on his sweater
coat and a change of lingerie for the
great emergencies. The house is strewn
with boxes of shells, gun-cases, new shot-
gun, old shotgun, shooting-jacket — all
the usual implements of murder are
there.

The gleam which has shone in his
eye is now the steady glare of insanity.
John is out to kill.

The car rolls up promptly. Three
other maniacs, ordinarily respected neigh-
bors, are accompanying husband into the
darkness. They are winter-coated and
armed to the teeth.

Now, if John has not been able to
get a day's holiday on the twenty-third
— for some there be who must guard
the town treasury and barter in business
with those feckless creatures, women —
if John has been able only to get out
for the morning's shoot, then about nine
o'clock four armed-to-the-teeth citizens
return to town. John descends from
the car.

If his laughter is loud and free, if
his step is buoyant, if his jacket swells
alarmingly around him, all is well. John
has got a bag. Proudly he marches. He
hopes the neighbors see him. He en-
ters and unbuttons his jacket. One by
one he sheds them on the hall rug, mal-
lard, spoonbill, redhead. Gloatingly he
picks them up and lays them down again,
weighing and balancing. You exude ra-
diance and wifely joy, the while you in-
wardly curse each individual bit of down
on each and every duck. And then the
family gathers round while John rests
and tells the history of the passing of
each duck.

If, on the sad other hand, John grunts
his farewells, if his coat hangs normally
and he stumps moodily up the walk,
then all is not well. John has not got

a bag. Then, ah, then, is the time to
rise to the occasion. Some fool women,
in spite of their intuition, rush out effu-
sively and say, "What luck?" Not so,
you. You very gently take John's new
shotgun, his old shotgun, his rifle. You
comment on the chill of the morning air,
the utter exhaustion that must assail even
so strong a man as John. You pour him
a cup of coffee. You unerringly gauge
the degree of sympathy he will permit.
And at last John tells his sad tale.

He was on the wrong side of the
lake, he should have stayed with the
other fellows. Besides, he did shoot
several — monsters — and they drifted out
too far. A fellow should have a canoe,
a fellow should have a retriever, a fel-
low should stay out all night, the even-
ing flight is best, the ducks fly too high
anyway. Wild? A fellow couldn't
reach them with an air-ship. Fast?
Yes, fast, fast! Fast and wild and high
is the burden of John's lament.

Al-

ways

a Next Tirm

And as he argues his case the invin-
cible light of the optimistic sportsman
smoulders again in his eye. "Just wait
till next Saturday. By Jove, I will
bring you some ducks, Mother." And
with shoulders braced and mind forti-
fied with fifty-seven varieties of reasons
for his duckless state, John fares forth
to the workaday world.

And so it goes through the dreary
months. He attends vaguely at his of-
fice ; he spends many an evening under
his own vine and fig tree. But ever his
mind is turned to the next holiday. His
autumn soul never sits back and rests
itself. It is out and away.

Woman walks her ways alone. She
intrudes into man's scheme of happiness
only in her capacity to prepare mammoth
hot meals to be served at strange, wild
hours. She can also find lost equipment
with singular ease. Her other occupa-
tion consists in excusing herself from
parties because her once obedient, lamb-
like spouse now refuses to be bound by
one social shackle that might interfere
with a possible chance to go for an even-
ing's shoot.

But though woman's position is in-

676

OUTING

deed negligible, she may at least lift her-
self into comparative favor by observing
strictly a certain Western code govern-
ing the shooting months.

Never ask a man how big a bag he
has brought home. He will tell you if
you should know. Never ask one of
the party how many he, individually,
got. It is poor sport to tell. If he
made a killing he will let you know in
some way.

Always appear astonished if he tells
you at what distance he shot his birds.
Any distance he says is a fabulous dis-
tance. No bird was ever shot at close
range.

Always comment on the "heft" of a
bird. All ducks shot are extremely fine
birds.

Always simulate great distress when
mention is made of ducks shot and lost.
Untold millions of ducks have been lost
in the reeds and an equal number are
floating dead, far out on the lakes and
sloughs.

Always marvel at the impervious
downy covering of the victim. Think
how strong a man must be to fire a
shot, to kill a bird, that was so high,
that flew so fast, that was all covered
with down.

Appear interested and sympathetic to
the seventh (yea, to the seventy times
seventh) recital of valorous deeds and
horrid defections of fellow-sportsmen.
For example, John relates to a pink-tea
group the harrowing experience he .has
had while out shooting. In John's own
words, "The duck flew by us. It was
my duck, but I let Bill have him. And
the damn fool hadn't his gun loaded!!"

The ladies all expressed sympathy for
John and moderate disdain of Bill. But
John, still smarting from Bill's awful
inefficiency, broke the resumed conver-
sation again with an even more highly
flavored account. The pink tea's sym-
pathy was casual this time; one tactless
woman even ventured a suggestion that
Hill might have been thinking of some-
thing else. Thinking!! John controlled
himself with visible effort and retired
for a time to sullen brooding. When,
however, a third recital of Bill's gross,
crass, immoral stupidity seemed pending,

all ladies (but one) smiled broadly. It
wasn't serious to them. The lady who
didn't smile is the only one tolerably
popular with John now — some women
have little sense.

Now, John's story of Bill has an ab-
solutely different effect on men. They
listen spellbound. They smoke in por-
tentous silence for long minutes after.
They say unanimously, "Bill is a damn
fool — always thinking." Someone else
has had a similar experience with Bill.
Bill is about as popular as a year without
Septembers and Octobers. To the scrap
heap with Bill!

You see the difference.

Remember, the gun may miss fire, the
gun may need cleaning, a man may use
the wrong size of shot, the birds may be
too far away and going too fast — they
may be the other fellow's birds anyway.
Fifty-seven reasons may serve why a
man might be duckless. But never,
never is it because he did not aim
straight and fire quickly. Remember.
Be flippant if you will about his religion,
his wife, his mother — even his politics.
But never about his shooting.

Verily you shall have your reward.

Some evening, when the chicken sea-
son is past, when practically the last
goose and the last moose have been gath-
ered into town — you notice that always
there is a moose head in every town that
measures fifty-eight or fifty-nine inches,
just grazing that coveted sixty-inch
C.P.R. prize — well, some evening, when
the last word has been said on the sea-
son's shooting your husband comes home
tired. He says so himself. He says,
"By Jove, I am tired," so often that you
are fain to believe it. He wants to stay
home at nights. He wants to sleep late
in the morning. He wants to play with
the children. He feels that he would
like a game of cribbage. He thinks that
you are the best wife a man ever had.

The autumn of your discontent is
over. For nine more months this man
is your own. He is so glad to be home
that he figuratively curls up on the
hearth-rug and purrs. He also eats out
of your hand. You accept the next
dance invitation, wheedle him into a
dress suit, and enter into your kingdom.

THE LAST DAYS OF JERRY

By CULLEN A. CAIN

The Star Left Fielder of the Warsaw Blues Leaves His Fishing
for One Final Burst of Glory

F Jerry Engle had not swum out
into the current of the Osage River
one day during the big June rise
and caught an old skiff that had
been swept from its moorings some
« miles above, he might have gone up
to the big league and drawn down
$4,000 per year as a star left-fielder and
heavy hitter. But Jerry captured that
boat and called the day his lucky day,
not knowing that the act would mar his
destiny. Nature, when she cast the
mold for Jerry's form and habits, was
undecided whether to make him a ball
player or fisherman, so she left it at a
standoff. Then along came this vagrant
boat and took away from him a fat sal-
ary and the plaudits of the multitudes,
giving in place thereof a home with
leaky sides and muddy bottom and a sti-
pend of twenty dollars a month from the
sale of fish.

Jerry, be it known, lived in Warsaw
on the classic banks of the Osage. He
was born there. He is there still, and
there he is like to die and be buried.
Warsaw is cut off from the last stand of
the Ozark foothills by the flow of this
river. It is a little county-seat town,
and its people are typical of the section,
which is in the middle of one of the mid-
dle states, neither north nor south nor
east nor west.

Warsaw's bid for fame in the days
that Jerry first came to manhood was the
batting average of Tige Morgan, center-
fielder of the Warsaw Blues. Tige's
feats and his downfall have been record-
ed in baseball history and story. Jerry's
baseball history might have been greater
still had it not been for this ill-fated
boat.

Away back in 1890 Warsaw's sole

connection with the outside world was a
narrow-gauge railway. It was the quaint-
est, quietest, best old town in the world.
The word old-fashioned was invented
especially to describe this town. Its chief
manufacturing industry was a sawmill,
its only forum of interest was the court-
house, its recreation was the river, and
its pride was the baseball team.

Baseball was long in coming to the
Ozarks, but when it did come it was an
epidemic. It called the farmer from his
plow, and the business man from his
counter. It seduced the clerk, the saw-
mill man, and the blacksmith. When
a game was played business stood still in
its tracks while the town went to the
ball lot.

Those first practise games that the
Blues played were fearful and wonder-
ful sessions. A 38 to 20 score was not
referred to particularly as a slugging
match. Not a man on the team had the
least protection for his hands except the
catcher and that individual wore a glove
with reinforced caps of heavy leather on
the fingers. The mitt, however, made
its appearance a short time afterwards.
I remember that the infielders thought it
no disgrace to step to one side when a
hot liner came their way, or a sizzling
grounder on a particularly bad bound.

Breast protectors for the catcher were
unknown. Now I did the catching for
that team, and I got many a bad bruise
in the course of a game, and I let many
a ball get by.

If we could keep our opponents from
scoring over three runs in an inning that
was good work. The infielder who
made a clean assist on a ground ball won
cheers. Two errors on his part did not
subject him to censure, nor even three,

[G77]

678

OUTING

if he redeemed himself later. A long
fly caught in the outfield made that field-
er over into a hero.

The crowd came to the ball grounds
and camped on the grass. We had no
stand or seats. But no crowd at the
Polo Grounds or in the highlands or
lowlands of any city under the sun ever
enjoyed a game so much or took it to
heart, body, and soul like the crowds
that used to come to our old grounds
and see the Blues play. Those games
were meat and drink for the inhabitants
for two days before and six days after a
game.

The fame of a new pitcher traveled
far and fast in those days, and grew like
magic on the way. I remember word
came from Vista about a pitcher named
Foote who was a wizard. He had curves
that bent like the track of a snake. He
came to town with his country team and
was lambasted for twenty-five runs in
seven innings. There was not time or
daylight left to finish tht game.

Another team came to Warsaw carry-
ing a pitcher who, it was said, could
shiver a plank with his speed. He could.
He did. We set up a plank against the
livery stable that morning and this
pitcher hurled a ball against it like a
cannon shot from the French guns
against the walls of Zurich. The board
was split and splintered from end to end.
We discussed this feat until time for the
game and out of the discussion was born
gloom. That pitcher fanned the first
six men to face him that day. But after
the second inning we fathomed his speed
and his fielders were worn out when the
game drew to a close.

And the practise games that were
played out at the old ball field ! They
were played in the golden days. The
town had five ball teams, ranging all the
way from the "Seedticks" to the Blues.
The "Seedticks" were twelve years old
on the average. The Blues had players
of twenty years and the short-stop was
thirty-two. Every man in town who did
not have the rheumatism or was not in
the grip of old age used to go to the ball
field in the summer days of the early

nineties.

( )ne day Hill Mason came down to
look on and some wag got him to play.

Bill was the town wood-cutter. He
could chop more wood in a day than any
three men I ever saw. He had a bullet
head, frame like a gorilla, and a big
black mustache. He went behind the
bat. Some one gave him a mask and
he tried to put it on. It did not seem
to work to suit him. He could not see
through it, he said, and he threw it
away.

A man came up to bat. The pitcher
prepared to deliver the ball. Bill came
up close behind the plate, spit on his
hands, and made ready to shine in the
limelight. The ball came through the
air like a streak. The batter struck at it
and just touched it, raising its course a
trifle from the foul tip. Bing! that ball
landed in Bill Mason's right eye. He
yelled like a wounded bull and clapped
both hands to his injured optic. It
swelled shut in about a minute. We
called Bill by the name of "Butter-
paddle" after that, but I'll swear I do
not know why we did it. Bill went
back to the ax and the spade and was
never seen again at the ball lot.

Jerry played right field for the War-
saw Blues. When the town picked its
baseball team Jerry was a matter-of-
course choice for a place on the team.
He was a natural athlete. And he was
more than that. He was cool, clever
with his hands, had a clear vision, and
was tireless in those accomplishments
that required strength and endurance.

When the Blues were organized in
old Warsaw town the people in the cen-
tral part of the state became aware for
the first time that Warsaw was on the
map. The little towns around about
sent their teams to the county seat in
hope and received them back again in
despair. Tige Morgan, center fielder
for the Blues, made triples and home
runs with his big bat. Jerry, batting
left-handed, slashed line drives around,
through, and over opposing players.

Baseball clubs came from other coun-
ties to play the Warsaw Blues and their
pitchers were broken at the well. The
Blues made a trip on a circuit that em-
braced five towns and were gone a week.
Six members of the team rode in the old
town hack and three others and the man-
ager rode in a surrey. Five miles an

THE LAST DAYS OF JERRY

679

hour was our average speed over those
awful roads in that hill country. I was
the kid of the party, and the memory of
that trip remains with me still.

Pullman cars and six-cylinder auto-
mobiles make a baseball trip nowadays
a mere form and ceremony, all in the
day's events, and only removed one de-
gree from the routine. The ball players
of to-day are blase. They can never
know the excitement and tense interest
and heart-beat and overwhelming place
that a ball trip of the old days inspired
in the soul of the boy from the country
town. Why, the night before that trip
I did not sleep at all, and the old hack
came by for me at two o'clock in the
morning. I dressed on the jump and
ran down the front steps and out through
the yard to the hack waiting in the star-
light by the gate. I was so young then
and full of hope and vigor that life
seemed as eternal as those shining stars.
I could see dimly the outline of the big
hack and hear the impatient stamping of
the horses. Every nerve and thought
were set at concert pitch.

We were to play the first game at
Clayton, and the town had imported a
pitcher. It was said that he had speed
like an electric spark. The town went
down to the ball field when we played
that day. It was a larger town than
Warsaw and was located on the main
line of a railroad. The populace hooted
us for "jays" from beyond the bounda-
ries of civilization. But that day the
barbarians sacked Rome.

There was a deep ditch about twenty
feet wide that cut across the far edge of
the field just behind where the right-
fielder stood if he played away back.
This ditch had never taken any part in
any game on those grounds before, but
it came into its own that day.

The first time Tige Morgan came to
bat he walloped the ball to the clouds. It
sailed over the right-fielder's head like
a meadow lark over a hedge. This
fielder ran backwards as fast as he could
to try to get under the ball. (The out-
fielders of the Ozark circuit of the year
1890 did not run forwards with the
ball) And just as Tige turned first
base — bing! that right-fielder disappeared
in the ditch. The crowd gasped in

astonishment, and then its voice was
raised in imprecation and revelings.

The unfortunate fielder crawled out
of the ditch on the other side and got
the ball and threw it in to the first of
the relay men. Then he descended
again into that ditch and emerged on
the ball field side to take his place in
dejected fashion in the right garden.
Tige had beaten the ball home by a hun-
dred feet and was sitting placidly on
the grass when the fielder resumed his
position. The crowd continued to heap
abuse on the fielder's devoted head.

In the next inning Jerry came to bat
and drove a liner far past the right
fielder. The ball rolled into the ditch
and the fielder went in after it like a
retriever pup. The crowd cursed him
by the gods of five different nations.

The game became a farce. The heavy
left-handed hitters of the Blues team
murdered that pitcher's speed, and every
little while the Clayton right fielder
would have to descend in haste into that
ditch. The crowd's anger changed to
mocking. It jeered and howled. Cer-
tain individuals volunteered advice.
They told him to build a bridge, to in-
stall steps, to get a rope and a bucket, to
play on the far side, to stay down there
and follow the ditch to its mouth. It
was the funniest thing I ever saw or ex-
pect to see.

Finally the fielder stood at the edge
of the ditch. His heels seemed to hang
over it. Out sailed a high fly and the
fielder saw that it would pass over his
head. He forgot the ditch entirely and
stepped backwards. He went into that
ditch like the blind man who was led
by the blind. His heels were the last I
saw of him. The crowd roared with
laughter and rolled on the ground.

We won the game 14 to 4. And
men said that right-fielder never smiled
again.

Well, we made that circuit, and the
last town we played in was Leesville.
This was a small town, smaller than
Warsaw. The ball grounds were in a
meadow a mile out of town. The field
sloped downhill to an alarming extent
back of first and second base. The home
plate was a slab that had been taken
from an old tombstone. The bases were

680

OUTING

of stone, too, but they had never rested
on a grave.

The Leesville team of strapping coun-
try boys played a good game and gave
us the hardest battle of the trip.

It was during this game that Jerry
did the quickest and most remarkable
piece of fielding I have ever seen or
heard of to this day. Some Leesville
slugger knocked the ball to right field
far over Jerry's head. There was a
cornfield back of right field and the
corn there was three feet high. Jerry
saw in a second that the ball was going
to light in that field, so he turned around
and sprinted for the fence. Without
stopping his speed when he came to the
fence, he placed his hand on the top
rail and vaulted over into the corn. He
was only a fraction behind the ball.
He dived in among the stalks of grow-
ing corn and was lost to view for a
moment. But instantly that ball arose
out of that cornfield as though propelled
by a catapult, and it traveled swiftly on
a line for second base. The runner had
leisurely turned first and started on the
next stage of what he supposed was an
easy home run. But he put on brakes
when he saw that ball and marked its
speed and line of flight.

Jerry's quickness and his wonderful
throw held a man who had hit a legiti-
mate home run to first base.

The manager of the Blues was the
town lumberman, and his name was
Willis White. He was one of the big-
gest men I ever saw, over six feet tall,
and he weighed over 250 pounds. He
was the real sport of that burg. He
had an income considered large in that
quiet, simple community and he spent all
of it on various forms of sport and
pleasure. He had a big black mus-
tache, and his laugh was like the waves
on the shore. He rocked back on his
heels when he laughed, and he shook all
over. Our main street was three blocks
long. Willis White's lumber yard was
at one end of the street and the print-
shop where I worked was at the other.
When Willis laughed, standing on his
own doorstep, I could hear him as I set
type at the open window.

Willis was the angel for the Blues.
Without him our glory would have been

dim. We were just as poor as poor
could be. He bought our catcher's mitt
and our mask and paid for the entertain-
ment of visiting teams and satisfied the
liveryman for the use of the big hack
and the sorrel horses that hauled it.

Our manager sometimes bet money on
the games. Our real baseball feud was
with Coleville, a town nearly as large
as Warsaw and located in the north end
of the county. The Blues would go to
Coleville and win and Willis White
would carry home fifty extra dollars
and a hack-load of joy, or the Blues
would lose and the hack would groan
under its load of gloom. But I noticed
that a bet or two during the season
hurt the sport in the country just as it
does in the city. Our Coleville sched-
ule was broken off for the rest of a sea-
son two or three times, as the result of
bad blood from betting on the games.

In the early days of the Blues our
feud with Coleville was at its Kentucky
height. The teams were evenly matched
then. Later the Blues outclassed Cole-
ville and the feud faded to a dim rivalry.
But one June day the town of Warsaw
was stirred to its depths by a challenge
from Coleville. Two days before the
game, or rather two nights before, a
muley cow with a crumpled horn crafti-
ly lifted the latch of the gate to my
mother's yard and entered to destroy.
My mother feared for her flowers and
up I had to get in the night-time to
chase that cow. My anger overcame my
judgment and I followed that mean red
cow out the gate and down the street,
pelting her with rocks. I hurt my bare
foot on a stone and faced the calamity
of being kept out of the game with
Coleville. The town cursed that red
cow next day while it passed judgment
on my bunged-up foot.

The upshot of it all was that Willis
White telephoned to the city for an im-
ported battery for the coming game.
This was the first and last time Warsaw-
tried that innovation for many a long
year. Other towns had imported pitch-
ers and catchers, but Warsaw depended
upon its own and won double glory and
satisfaction from its baseball campaigns.
This battery came down on the train
next day and was admired by the popu-

THE LAST DAYS OF JERRY

681

lace. But a tory Warsawite telephoned
to his brother, a Coleville merchant,
about this importation, and the result
was that when the Blues went to Cole-
ville on the noon train they found an
imported battery there waiting for them.

The teams and the managers and the
citizens of the two towns wrangled all
the afternoon and the sun set in discon-
tent because it had not seen a game that
day. Warsaw besieged the telephone
office for news and followed the quarrel
in excitement and the expenditure of
many words and gestures. It is all com-
edy now, but any man who has taken
part in baseball in a country town knows
that the matter was of tragic impor-
tance at the time. The announcement
of war with Spain that came a year or
two later did not create so much inter-
est and tense feeling in Warsaw town.

After two or three seasons of victory
ever all the clubs in that region, the
Blues began to slow down and the other
clubs to take on speed. The story of
how Emmet Boles introduced the curve
ball to the Ozarks and fanned Tige
Morgan has already been told.

A new team was organized to repre-
sent Warsaw on the diamond. Of all
the old Blues only Jerry and the little
Dutch third baseman and myself were
retained. I had learned to catch Boles.
The imported catcher, brought along as
his battery mate, had suffered a split
hand in his first game and I was pressed
in as the only available substitute. Boles
had perfect control with his speed and I
soon learned to work with him pretty
well. But I was the weak sister of the
team.

The old sluggers of that Ozark region
all faded away before real curve pitch-
ing. The lighter youngsters who poked
out base hits had succeeded the home-
run hitters. But Jerry remained the
surest batter on the new team. He
could hit any pitching that circuit had
to offer. He practised every day, and
it really seemed that he had been weaned
by the work and sweat and pleasure of
the ball field away from his nomadic
joys of river and field.

Then, on that June day, the old skiff
came down the river and Jerry brought
it to shore and patched its sides and

calked its bottom and painted it and
loaded it with fishing tackle and bait.
And good-bye to the ball lot. We
coaxed and pleaded and threatened, but
all in vain. Jerry was wedded to hi?
idols and baseball was not among them.
We went to the ball lot to practise and
he went to his boat and cast off its
moorings to go fishing.

The dog days of August drove even
Jerry from the river and the woods.
The ball team had a trip ahead that
promised the hardest game of the season
for the Blues. Calhoun was on that
schedule, and Calhoun had a left-handed
pitcher with as great a strikeout record
as our pitcher, Boles, had to his credit.
If we could beat Calhoun the champion-
ship of our section of the state was as
sure for Warsaw as death and taxes.

We persuaded Jerry to go along on
that trip. We climbed into the town
hack and a borrowed surrey at four
o'clock of a hot summer morning in the
full strength of the town's baseball pow-
ers. The first game, with Vista, was a
pudding. And the second at Winton
was not a hard game to win. Then we
drove to Calhoun. This was a town
twice as large as Warsaw. It had a
real ball club, and this left-handed
pitcher was the brindle fringe on the
Christmas card.

The game that day succeeded the
battle of Gettysburg as an event from
which to date history. Boles was in
great form. His dewdrop was working
like an 18-carat diamond ring in the
hands of the successful suitor of the vil-
lage belle, and his inshoot broke like
the flick of a whiplash. Those Calhoun'
aristocrats went down in blocks of three
and the scorn of the multitude for the
visitors from the hills was changed to
mourning.

And this left-handed pitcher, who was
the pride of the prairie country, you ask
of him? He was everything that the
placards nailed on his door by fame said
about him. He was a lou-lou of a
pitcher and an Annie Laurie from the
heather in the dell thrown in. He
mowed us down with that side-arm de-
livery as Father Time, with his sickle,
mows the sons of men.

Jerry, batting left-handed, struck out

682

OUTING

the first time up like a little child. We
did not get a man on a base until the
third inning. With one out in that in-
ning, I got a base on balls and stole sec-
ond on a poor throw by the catcher.
I came home when the second baseman
let a grounder get by him on a bad
bound.

That one run looked like a dozen.
Calhoun had had men on first, but they
had known nothing of the glory of sec-
ond base since that game began. But
in the fifth inning our infield went to
pieces under the strain and messed up
two easy chances and then the right-
fielder misjudged a high fly-ball and two
runs came across the plate like a Saul's
death march to our hopes of victory.

Two of our men fanned in the sixth
inning and a pop fly to the infield was
the best the third batter could do.

Boles fanned the side in the last half,
pitching with every ounce of steam he
had and with his game, loyal heart be-
hind every ball.

In the eighth we were still easy for
that southpaw cross between a hickory
bow and a watchspring. And Boles
made the flower of the Calhoun batting
list eat from his good right hand.

When we started the ninth inning the
town of Calhoun held its breath and
prayed for air. It was the time when
gameness counts more than skill, talent,
and all other things put together. Our
little Dutch third baseman was game
to the core. He poled out a dinky hit
in front of the plate and beat it to first
when the third baseman fumbled it.
The second baseman struck out. The
center-fielder went to bat with his jaw
set like cement. He hit out a long fly
to the outfield and we groaned in de-
spair. But the fielder muffed it in his
anxious haste and we yelled like ma-
rooned sailors when they see a sail. Our
runner scuttled to second base.

The next batter lifted a foul fly and
the catcher put him and our hopes on
ice together.

But wait! Here comes Jerry to bat.
He was as calm and imperturbable as
he ever was in his life. He had not
made a hit that game, although the Cal-
houn center-fielder had robbed him of a
certain double by a great catch in an

earlier inning. As near as emotion ever"
came to stirring his heart, Jerry was
sore about his day's batting average.

A cool man in a pinch is worth a mil-
lion. The indolence that marred Jerry
was gone now. He was set tensely to
do his best. He smiled with his eyes at
that pitcher, but his mouth was drawn
to the notch of highest endeavor.

Two out, two on, and one run needed
to tie and two to win. It was one of
those moments of a lifetime when noth-
ing else counts but that victory or de-
feat.

The umpire called the first one a ball,
while Jerry gently waved his bat in a
two-foot orbit near his left shoulder.
Jerry waited the next one out, but the
umpire called it a strike. The pitcher
coiled up like a spring and flashed the
sphere toward the plate. Crack! and
the ball sailed to right field on a line.
The right-fielder made a desperate ef-
fort to get it, but shoe-lace catches were
not a familiar practise of those times
and he fell heels over head from the
effort.

Two runs came in and Jerry stopped
at third.

He died there when the next batter
hit to the pitcher.

We went to the field and Calhoun
came in to bid hope good-bye. Boles
was as good as he needed to be in that
last half inning of the game. He struck
out the first battel*. The next one hit
to second base and was thrown out at
first. The last batter popped up a little
foul fly and I waited with glaring eyes,
muscles that threatened to collapse, and
brain in a trance for what seemed like
two endless, terrible hours for that ball
to come down again. It came. And I
held it as a man back from the edge of
the pit holds the hand of a friend. I
sat down, I was so weak from the strain
of that two hours of hard work waiting
for that ball to fall.

When we got home to Warsaw that
old hack and that surrey were the char-
iots that were hauled through the streets
of Rome. Caesar never saw the sun
shine on such a triumph.

Those old baseball days are gone, and
all the king's horses and all the king's
men cannot bring them back again.

A NIGHT PADDLE

By JOHN MATTER

Groping for the Channel to Lovely Lake with the Stars for Range

Lights

we sedulously

huckleberries.

E were very familiar
with the island's
trees and rocks, for
the wind held us
prisoners during two
days and nights and
explored and picked
Behind a shelter of ca-
noes and blankets we cooked and ate our
meals, told our tales, and watched the
trees come marching over the hills.

At five the weary wind lay down to
rest and we sprang to our feet. Shortly
our paddles dipped in the lake and again
we were light-hearted travelers. The
channels between the islands poured fire;
to the north the surface reflected the
clouds and we mounted a trail of pink.
A sawbill duckling was sporting alone
on the rim of color. We gave chase and
there followed a lively game that ended
in a capture among the rocks of his
home island. The duckling's blue eyes
filled with fear and his heart thumped
with panic as we passed him from hand
to hand and then set him on the lake.
Instantly the little creature up-ended and
dove head first. We had provided him
an adventure that would bear recital
through old age.

With his disappearance, a flock of
wild geese flushed to the right and flew
like white ghosts in a wide circle. Be-
neath them, the brood of goslings, gray
and small, winged close to the water.
The parents carefully remained above the
youngsters until a point of land hid them
all from view. The lake by now was
smooth as one drop ; the low, black shores
were crouched as though to spring. A
young moon grew brighter and brighter
until it spilled a trickle of silver down
.our course. The sky had cleared and the
stars were burning high.

We stroked rapidly to make the Nar-
rows before absolute darkness came.
Our haste was waste, but luck found us
the entrance and we felt our way in be-
tween the high cliffs. It was cold and
quiet as in a cave. We went whispering
and at the lower end we heard a cow
moose in the shallows of a cove and then
the complaints of the calf beside her.

"A late supper," said Henri.

With a lighted candle waxed tight
with drippings to the floor boards, a
compass, and the map, I figured our way.
'J lie right shore was to be our railing,
we must hug it close save where it broke
to the south from the east and west line
and curved around an expanded bay.
With the moon at our backs and the
shore a shadow on our right, we held
steadily down the unapprehended lake.
If there is greater joy than this, I do not
know it.

Hercules took up a song: the theme
dealt with a girl, and I think the
thoughts of each of us leaped south clear
of the pine woods.

"One hundred and twenty miles to a
railroad," sighed Walton.

Soon we were singing and whistling,
and the shore threw back a hash of
sounds. We offered to paddle all night,
we agreed to make a surprising distance,
we related how strong and capable we
felt, we boasted of former remarkable
deeds. In time the mood passed and we
moved in a silence broken only by the
dip and drip of the paddles and the rasp-
ing of a match on the gunwales. The
canoe trembled and spurted under
Henri's strokes; we drew forward on the
moonlighted path through the unknown
water. Mystery was abroad and we
bowed our heads. When at last I
glanced over my shoulder, he still knelt

[G83]

684

OUTING

in the stern; swaying to his long, urging
strokes, he seemed intent on the swirl
from his paddle.

"Mon Dieu!" he cried. "Your eyes
with the moon in them. ... In
Ontario she said, 'Henri, will you come
back?' . . . That was one, two,
three year gone. . . . What do you
say?"

"Go back, you fool," I answered.

Our pilot light had dropped low into
the west. The north shore had been
straying around a succession of bays; it
drew near now, and the map said we
approached the channel into Lovely
Lake. It was eleven-thirty by the watch ;
we waited for the other canoe, found bis-
cuits in the provision bag and fortified
our shoulders and arms. The Northern
Lights began their performance. Sha-
king spears of cold, clear flame shot into
the sky.

"Watch 'em dance," whispered Henri.
He whistled some bars of quick music.
"Cripes, see 'em now!" He whistled
again. "Now watch 'em close. No,
they won't do it. You should see them
in the fall. They will come close and
dance till your heart jumps. B-r-r! I
do not like it. Paddle."

We were in a tangle of reeds. We
went forward and backed, we veered to
the right and left. The channel had
slipped away from us and we groped in
the dark. It was midnight and chill;
the air off the water struck persistently
through our clothing. The moon was

down and only the remote stars made
light for our search. Bay followed bay
to the confusion of the map.

It was now necessary, I held, to par-
allel the south shore, and if a passage
existed, we would of a certainty find it.
In the midst of my theorizing, our canoe
struck. It scraped and mounted under
its own headway. There was a long
moment while we waited for the over-
turn or the cracking bottom, then the
craft listed gently and slid free of the
rock. We took a deep breath apiece and
Henri swore softly.

"What's wrong?" called the second
canoe.

"The water looks cold," I replied, and
was answered with mockery.

Two minutes later we saw the gleam
of the channel and made much over it.
Ten strokes and we were unmistakably
in the passage to Lovely Lake. It lay
straight with the compass, a dark road
between the pines. We paddled joy-
ously for an hour, then our eyes began to
close and we sought a landing place. Be-
tween two high pines we spread out the
tent, then laid down the tarpaulins and
wormed into the blankets, lying side by
side, close as packed fish. I took a mo-
ment to look up through the branches at
the stars. I heard the waves on the
rocks and two mosquitoes at my nose;
then came sleep. It must have been
nearer unconsciousness, for I knew not
a thing until morning when I found my-
self in the same position of a packed fish.

In his next story Mr. Matter tells of the
run Down the Welcome and of the town of
Bacon Rapids — sixty men and five women.

SMALL BORING WITH THE
SMALLEST BORE

By EDWARD C. CROSSMAN

The Showing for a .410 "Caliber" Shotgun That Our English
Cousins Have Introduced

"^HIS essay is written in the
endeavor to discourage
the unsportsmanlike use
of big bore shotguns on
our fast diminishing
feathered game. 'But the
other day I heard a man actually admit
in public that he used a 20 bore, an arm
throwing the huge amount of J4, or Y\
oz. of shot, merely to get a few ducks.
I reproved him for his game hog dis-
position and quit his company.

Again I came upon a misguided one
who was babbling foolishly of using a
"small bore?" 28 gauge that shot a full
Y§ oz. of shot. All he sought was quail,
yet this person actually carried this huge
cannon to fire at the few birds he saw.
I endeavored to reason with him, but he
was of the old big-bore school and beyond
the bounds of my patience. Therefore
I smote him once and fled ere he recov-
ered. Verily, such persons carry one
back to the dark ages, when the 12 and
even the 10 bore were carried by the
heathen then knowing no better.

This story is to inform you truthfully
of the possibilities of the truly sports-
manlike shotgun, the .410 bore. In the
experiments, merely to demonstrate what
could be done, I did use the large load of
4/10 oz. of shot, but the true sportsman
need not do this.

You'll note, first, that this is a .410
caliber not gauge, which is a different
system of measurement. For the gauges,
used to indicate shotgun sizes, refer to
the number of round balls to the pound
that would fit the barrels of these guns.
The 12-gauge round ball would run 12
to the pound, the 16, 16 round balls to

the pound. This little shotgun, possibly
the first ever brought over here from the
wilds of England, where they hunt the
ferocious rat and sparrow in their lairs,
is a .41 caliber, which means that it is
.41 inch across. The 20 bore in inches
is .615, the non-existent 50 bore in inches
would be .453, so this little .410 bore
would be around a 55 gauge shotgun.

I had come across violent ravings about
the .410 bore shotgun in English gun
crank magazines. The said ravings had
gone into long and grave discussions of
the best load for this .410 bore gun, its
patterns at various ranges, its deadly ef-
fect on rats, which they hunt in organized
style in Merrie England, its penetration
in sparrows, and its effect on trouser seats
of poachers.

To this I paid little heed, fancying the
gun one to shoot some made-over brass
cartridge like those fired in our ex-Civil
War muskets. Then I came across a
reference to the 2 and 2^ -inch casings
for the little gun, and I became suddenly
aware of the fact that it was a real shot-
gun, paper case, wads, standard loads,
and all. I knew I had the small bore
bug in a mild form, but suddenly it
broke out in full course.

I sent over to England for a cheap gun
to shoot this little cartridge and for 200
of the cartridges to shoot in said gun.

The arm itself, in this instance, is a
little, cheaply-gotten-up, bolt-action shot-
gun, with stock along the lines of some of
our cheap .22 repeaters. It has a Lee-
Enfield bolt, a very well bored barrel,
and weighs all told 4^ lbs. It is, of
course, not the gun for the shotgun lover
expecting to do serious work, but it is

[685]

686

OUTING

some gun, at its price of around $10 laid
down in America, for the pot-around
man. I've got my eyes on a double ham-
merless made for the same cartridge, and
what's more I'm going to have one.

The little bolt-action shotgun — was
there ever such a cross-breed arm —
strange to say balanced and pointed like
a real shotgun. The weight is well dis-
tributed, it is very light, and, in spite of

THE SMALLEST BORE SHOT-
GUN SHELL BESIDE A REGU-
LAR 12 GAUGE

the bad pull, I did manage to hit things
pretty consistently with it.

The cartridge is the cutest little thing
you ever saw. Mine is the 2^ case,
although the 2-inch is made. In every
respect, from steel lining to crimp, it is
a well-made, regular shotgun shell, as
carefully loaded and as carefully made as
the finest of our regular 12-gauge stuff.
They came packed in square boxes, 25
to the box, and each box of 25 weighed
just a pound. Also each box was only
2*/2 inches square.

On each top wad was printed, like a
full-grown shell, the size of the shot, etc.
In each cartridge of one of the two hun-
dred rounds was 120 No. 6 English shot,
counting 270 to the ounce, the charge
therefore weighing about .44 oz. In the
other hundred was 142 No. 7 English

shot, counting 340 to the full ounce, this
charge being therefore about .41 oz.

Under the shot was a card wad, then
a thick felt wad, and another card wad.
The powder proved to be much like
Schultze, and just a shade over one dram
in amount.

For comparison, the 12-bore trap load
is 1/4 oz. of shot, or about 420 of nearly
the same size as this English No. 7 of
which 142 constituted the .410-bore load.
The powder load for the 12 bore ranges
from 3 to 3% drams.

My respect for the little flee went up
as I noted the fine paper of the case, the
even loading, the good wads, and the
business-like appearance of the whole
cartridge.

Then we toted it out to the range.

You know how it is, you can't wait
until things are in order and everything
is ready for you to begin. You have to
get off just one shot from that new gun,
if it brings the police after you. The
first trial was at an ordinary, humble tin
can of commerce, one that formerly was
wrapped around condensed milk. I
threw it hard into the air, then pitched
the little gun to my shoulder.

It was one of my lucky da)^s, I hit it.

From the gun there came a feeble pop,
the precise sound of a shotgun primer
under a couple of wads, when the pow-
der has been left out. I could not tell
from the feel that the shot had gone.

The can suddenly whirled madly and
started back skyward again. In it we
found a dozen clean-cut holes.

I looked at the gun with some amaze-
ment. I suspected that something had
gone wrong with that cartridge, even
though the shotholes in the can testified
otherwise.

Then, in a very inopportune moment
for a ground squirrel, one of them stuck
his head out of his hole under the live
oaks and commenced to whistle squirrel
profanity at me for trespassing on his
private rifle range. He came clear out to
watch me leave in my shame — and the
little gun popped feebly once more.

We gathered in the erstwhile abusive
squirrel at 35 yards, and California
ground squirrels are very hard to stop.
True, he did revive enough to kick^ a
couple of times, but we gathered him in,

SMALL BORING WITH THE SMALLEST BORE

687

that's the main thing, and the thing that
few guns do when the bullet is not care-
fully placed.

I've shot all my 200 shots. I don't
know now whether I'm more surprised
at the feeble noise of the vicious little
runt, at its absolute failure to kick, or
at its really wonderful shooting.

The barrel, being a single barrel, is
heavier than the tubes of the ordinary
double gun, and this tends slightly to
reduce noise. But the noise is absent,
and it would be nearly as much missing
with the lightest of double gun tubes. It
cannot be heard as far as the sound of the
.22 Long Rifle black powder. It is
merely as I have described it, a feeble
pop that makes you laugh every time you
hear it, if you've heard it a hundred
times before. It hasn't a single bit of the
hearty roar of the shotgun, of even the
28 bore. It is some gun for the law-
breaker, this is its only drawback. The
"sooner," shooting out of season, could
clean out a whole covey of quail with-
out Farmer Jones, 500 yards away, being
aware that anything was going on in the
shooting line.

The recoil is nil. It would be per-
fectly comfortable as a .410 pistol. If a
gun under \y2 pounds does not kick
enough to make one sure the shot has
gone, it may fairly be said to have no
recoil.

I began to see why the interest that the
gun had aroused in England.

Then we had a little seance with the
clays. Firing such a tiny gun at a clay
bird seems truly the lowest depths of
piffle but we were willing to try any-
thing once.

Once more we got a surprise party.
At overhead birds, those thrown off a
sixty-foot hill and coming down toward
the shooter like a duck to a decoy set,
the little gun broke every one when the
shooter felt he had it pointed correctly,
and the total score was 17 out of 20.
But, at this game the birds were coming
toward the shooter and some of them got
in very close.

Therefore we tried the crossing over-
head game, a far harder style of fire,
wherein the birds hiss swiftly from the
hill trap, athwart the course of the
shooter, some 20 to 25 yards away, and

sixty feet high. Here the bird flies far-
ther away at a gentle angle as it pro-
gresses on its course. If it is caught early
in the game before it gets very far, it is
traveling at high speed.

The spring of the trap was not set up
as it has been on some memorable days,
but at that the birds were traveling fairly
speedily, and were keeping their regular
distance from the gun.

That little runt, literally a "pop-gun,"
broke 18 out of the 25 on which it was
tried, and only once did the shooter feel
that he should have had the bird, when
he lost it. In the rest of the misses the
shooter knew he was wrong when the
trigger went. Also this particular gun
had a pull of 7 pounds and creepy be-
sides, interfering greatly with the swing.

The thing became uncanny, a charge of
less than a half ounce of shot doing such
work. However, a 28 bore with but Y&
oz. had been accounting steadily for birds
under the same conditions so it was evi-
dent that there were enough pellets in the
loads to do the work when the shooter
did his.

Standing just back of the regulation
traphouse, firing at birds that flew a full
55 yards, the regulation fast flier of the
regular game, the little gun broke them
regularly. Here, of course, the bird did
not get out more than 20 yards or per-
haps 25, before the shot caught up
with it.

What the Pattern Showed

Remembering quail experiences and
admitting to myself, if to nobody else,
that most of my birds fell under 25
yards, which is 75 feet, and the width of
three lots in the crowded cities, I began
to have dreams of a little 4^2-pound
double hammerless to shoot this shell,
in the times when the birds flushed
close by.

We adjourned to the patterning board
to see what the white paper record of the
shooting would tell us. I know that
40 yards is the standard distance, but we
chose 25, as being fair to the little gun,
and also as quite typical of the distances
at which quail are often killed.

Four loads we threw at the white
paper, two of 6's and two of 7's. If the
paper is to be believed, the little gun is

688

OUTING

as deadly as any gun made up to 30
yards, but the pointing must be perfect.

At 25 yards, with the 6's, the tiny
gun put 77 per cent, of its pattern in
the 18-inch circle, or 93 pellets, and it
put 96 per cent, of its load into the 30-
inch circle, or some 116 pellets. Pointed
right, the little gun would have torn a
quail badly; pointed nearly right it
would have grassed him in nice style.

Another shot with the 6's gave us 75
per cent, of the load, or 89 pellets, in
the 18-inch circle, and every pellet into
the 30-inch, not one outside anywhere
on the white paper.

The 7's put 64 per cent, of the load
into the 18-inch, or 90 pellets, for the
first shot, with 91 per cent, of the load
into the 30-inch. The next shot gave
70 per cent, of the load, or 98 pellets,
into the 18-inch circle, and 96 per cent.,
135 pellets, into the 30-inch.

Now if you'll take a pencil and stick
around 90 dots in a circle of a foot and
a half, you'll discover that you've got
some full house, and that said circle full
of pellets would pepper a bird if trans-
formed into a shotload. My levity as to
that little shell became tinctured with a
sneaking desire to own a gun that would
shoot said little shell and its family. I
regretted the shells I had wasted pot-
ting around the range.

I hate to come out flat-footed and
shoot holes in the shotgun distance super-
stition, the 70-yard, and the 60-yard,
and the 50 and 40-yard shots. I've
stepped a few of them off, and while a
duck over water may look 50 yards when
at 100, yet upland birds look the other
way. The quail falling at 35 yards
looks to be 50, and sometimes passes
therefor.

I kept count of some quail that fell
to our luck over on Catalina. The birds
flushed out of cactus where they lay
after the preliminary scare had been
thrown into their systems, necessary to
keep them from "beating it" afoot for

miles and miles and miles. Five of the
birds, flushing from my very feet as is
the case of the California quail when
frightened, fell within 20 feet. Sounds
improbable, but step off 20 feet and then
reflect honestly as to some of your own
shots. The average was under 20 yards,
and but two birds fell at 40 or over.

In this day's work, the little .410 bore
would have got practically everything
the 20 did, and would have mangled
fewer birds. Also it would have
weighed less, and its shells likewise.
Also on that day the lady and I walked
from Avalon to the Middle Ranch and
back, which is some 20-mile hike.

Of course it is folly to talk of shoot-
ing such a small gun on birds flushing
at all wild, or for ordinary work, but
I desire to show that even such a tiny
affair might serve perfectly well under
certain conditions. For small game,
"varmints," such as sparrows, rats and
shrikes; for squirrels and rabbits, and
upland birds at close range, this little
.410 bore would be the most wonderful
little shotgun in the world. Its freedom
from noise, its lack of recoil, the small
bulk of its cartridges, the light weight
of the entire outfit, all conspire to make
the shotgun lover fairly hanker for one
of the little fellows.

In England the cartridges, first-class
make, cost $1.20 a hundred. The cost
would be little more in America were
they shipped over by freight. The guns,
made by various makers cost from $8.00
up in England. The cartridges and the
gun are, of course, common property to
all gun and ammunition makers, and
many of the gunmakers turn out these
little weapons.

I firmly believe that we will see this
little but wonderful cartridge introduced
into the United States, and then there
are going to be some very surprised
shotgun users, even though now they
belong to the ranks of the scoffers as I
belonged.

Next month Mr. Crossman will have something to
say about Shotgun Ballistics; among other things
he will tell what "hard shooting" really means.

A LATE-SEASON USE FOR THE

FLY ROD

By ROBERT S. LEMMON

Proving That the Enthusiast Need Not Put Away His Pet Bamboo
Just Because the Trout Have Ceased Rising

T has always been a cause of regret
to me that the march of the seasons
should preclude thirteen months of
fly-fishing out of every twelve.
Possibly this is an unreasonable
attitude, but I fancy there are
others who, if the truth were known,
incline toward similar sentiments.
There is something about the game
which does not quite exist in any other
branch of sport.

With most of us, the fly-rod goes into
action some time in April and retires to
winter quarters in August. There ensues,
perhaps, a period of surf fishing, or
casting for bass, or even still-fishing in
some pad-dotted lake where pickerel are
the sine qua non, but by the end of Sep-
tember or early in October the dyed-in-
the-wool fly rod man is prone to yearn
for just one more day wherein he can
legitimately and successfully put his four
or five ounce split bamboo in service
again. It is with the means of gratify-
ing this desire that the following sug-
gestions have to deal.

There is a certain New Jersey stream,
a river in name but a deep and grass-
fringed brook in fact, which by its calm
complacency, its perfect contentment
with the restful tenor of its way, is a
true encourager of indolence. It is such
a stream as one imagines Walton must
have loved, contemplatively angling for
bream in the crook of its elbows, or
passing a dreamy noontide under its
trees waiting until the lengthening
shadows set the trout to feeding. Ideal
for fly-casting though it is, with no
brush to hinder and never a low grow-
ing tree to serve as framework for a
drapery of flies and leader, the stream

is Ashless save for minnows and a most
appalling citizenry of lantern-jawed and
ever-hungry pickerel. Never a trout,
never a bass — just minnows and pick-
erel and a clear back cast.

Personally, this miniature river wor-
ried me for years. I used to imagine it
stocked with speckled trout instead of
the farmer lads' "pike"; pondering, I
had visions of a long line and a light
cast and a dry fly floating over the deep
pools. Then one autumn day the fly-rod
fever touched 110 degrees, and I went
for those pickerel with serious purpose,
a nine-foot trout rod, and two tiny
casting spoons no larger than a dime.

In an hour were two results achieved:
the casting attractions of the river were
realized and a post-season use for the
light rod became a demonstrated fact,
for those shovel-nosed rascals took the
minute feathered spoon with awe-inspir-
ing swirls, and on the delicate tackle
they furnished really satisfying fights.
In an afternoon's fishing I landed eight,
the largest a little over twenty inches
in length, and trudged home in the
evening convinced that, given half a
chance, the pickerel is worth while.

Subsequent experience has justified
that opinion of six years ago. I have
tried out the idea on many pickerel
waters, and invariably it has been at-
tended by much pleasure and as full a
creel as could be secured by almost any
of the recognized pickerel methods. It
entails no watchful waiting in an an-
chored boat, no swatting with a half
pound frog or a wholly dead minnow.
Instead, there is the constant activity
of fly-casting, the spoon is close enough
to the surface to keep it always visible

r«89]

690

OUTING

and make every strike virtually a rise,
and the ensuing fights are spectacular
enough to make them pleasantly remi-
niscent of the earlier season.

Except for the elimination of leader
and flies, regular trout tackle is em-
ployed for this variety of pickerel fishing.
A rod of eight or nine feet, weighing
from four to five and a half ounces, rills
the bill admirably; twenty-five or thirty
yards of enameled line will be ample,
and, unless the fish run unusually large
so that a short gimp leader is advisable,
the spoon may be attached directly to
the line. The spoons themselves weigh
but little more than a good sized bass
fly, and casting and retrieving them
place no undue strain on a well-made
rod.

They are of the type in which a single
hook fly, tied on a No. 2 or No. 4 ringed
hook, is removably attached to a shank
of piano wire which carries the nickel
or copper blade on a revolving lug.
Some of the shanks are fitted with tan-
dem blades about a quarter of an inch
in diameter, but a single blade of slightly
larger size is, I think, just as effective.
Various color combinations, in blades as
well as flies, can of course be arranged
to meet different conditions of weather
and water, but for a general working
basis a nickel blade and flies in which
red and white predominate, such as
Soldier, Parmacheene Belle, and Scarlet
Ibis, are perhaps the best.

With such an outfit delicate as well
as decidedly long casts are easily made.
Accuracy, too, is more readily attained
than with regular flies, and it is possible
to "spot" the lure into those small open-
ings among lily pads or weeds which are
so beloved by pickerel for whom the
perils of more accessible water have
slight attractions. If the rod is equipped
with snake guides and the line is a good
one, you can "shoot" the spoon a con-
siderable distance at the end of the cast.
Then hold the rod ready for a strike

while you strip in the line, drawing the
spoon — which is amazingly easy-spinning
— slowly toward you.

If there are pads in its path, or weeds
a few inches below the surface, they are
easily avoided by "jumping" the spoon
in the former case, or slightly increasing
its speed in the latter; and in water like
that a pickerel is pretty apt to grab it
before it has a chance to get snagged
anyway. Do not try to twitch the
spoon into the back cast directly from
deep water ; draw it to the surface before
starting the back cast proper, else the
strain on the slender rod will be rather
severe.

It sometimes happens that the fly,
attached to the spoon shank merely by
an eye as it is, doubles back in casting
and fouls the lug of the blade or the
shank itself, necessitating a clearance by
hand. With anything like skilful han-
dling of the rod this fouling occurs so
seldom as to be almost negligible as a
drawback, but it may be entirely elimi-
nated by slipping a short section of
rubber tubing like that used on camera
shutters over the head of the fly and
the ring on the shank end. This allows
sufficient flexibility and yet serves to
keep the fly in proper position.

There is another side of this fly-rod-
and-pickerel game, a side which has to
do with many a regular trouting expe-
dition. How often has it happened that,
when in May or June we succeeded in
squeezing a few days out of the year's
routine to spend on some favorite trout
water, an east wind has blown, or a
freshet has come down the stream, or
any one of a dozen things has happened
to put successful trout fishing on the
wrong side of the balance sheet! But
was there not a good pickerel pond up
on the mountain, where the disappoint-
ment of losing a day's stream fishing
could be somewhat abated via the little
fly-spoon method? I think so; at least,
there is up at the place where I go.

Mr. Lemmon is a taxidermist as well as fisherman
and in an early issue we will publish an article by
him on Field Taxidermy for the Sportsman.

THE TRAIL OF THE PAINTED

WOODS

By NEVIL G. HENSHAW

Jean le Bossu Finds Old Friends at Camp
Bon and Sees the Beginning of Stirring Events

CHAPTER I
Jean Fagot

JEAN LE BOSSU, first knew
the Fagots amid that great
stretch of forest which, in my
own corner of Southwestern Lou-
isiana, is called the Grand
Woods. Jean Fagot, the father,
was a wood-chopper by trade, and his
family consisted of a son and a daughter.
His wife, a woman of Spanish extrac-
tion, had died upon the occasion of the
daughter's birth.

During the time of his residence in
the woods, Fagot and I became fast
friends. Our huts were not far apart,
and often we would beguile the long
winter evenings by visiting one another.
Thus I came to see much of Fagot that
one less intimate would have missed.
He was a small, mild man, with a great
shock of stiff, bristly hair, and one of
those deep, rumbling voices that are
often so strangely bestowed upon just
such quiet little men. At his work he
was both clever and industrious, and of
ambitions he had but one. This con-
cerned the success and happiness of his
children.

Of these children, Jean Pierre, the
son, was fast approaching manhood. He
was a dark, handsome youth, very quick
of eye and hand, and from his mother
he had inherited his full share of Spanish
pride and temper. On account of his
brown skin they called him "Dago" when
first he came to the woods, but the name
did not stick. Or rather I should say
that, due to Jean Pierre's ability with
his fists, the wood-folk did not stick to
the name.

The daughter, Jeanne, was only a lit-
tle thing at that time. Like Jean Pierre,
she was dark-skinned and handsome,
and in her great black eyes there was
already abundant promise of pride and
passion to come. It was strange that
these children possessed so much of their
mother, so little of their father. Gentle,
simple old Fagot was like some thrush
that has fledged a brace of hawks.

But Fagot, father-like, could never be
brought to realize this dissimilarity.
The children were dark, perhaps, he ad-
mitted, but this was their only heritage
from their mother. In all other respects
they were exactly like himself. Had he
not, foreseeing this, baptized them Jean
and Jeanne? They would continue like
him, if only to show the reason for their
names.

Thus, when at the age of twenty
Jean Pierre became involved in a serious
affair, Fagot's surprise was only equaled
by his dismay. For the affair itself a
few words will suffice.

It occurred one Mardi Gras in a cof-
fee-house at Landry, where some half-
drunken idler applied the old term of
"Dago" to Jean Pierre. In the quarrel
that followed the wood-folk took sides
against the townspeople, precipitating a
general fight. Knives were drawn and,
before peace could be restored, the orig-
inator of the difficulty had been seriously
wounded.

Later when, chiefly through neglect,
the injured man died, all involved in the
affair were put on trial. Of the lot
Jean Pierre alone was convicted. There
was no evidence to show that he had ac-
tually caused the wound. It was merely
proved that he had been opposed to the

[691]

692

OUTING

dead man at the beginning of the melee.
Jean Pierre swore that he had used
nothing but his fists and that he had not
even carried so much as a penknife.
Nevertheless they sent him to prison for
ten years.

It was hard, but Fagot, despite his
mildness, behaved with admirable cour-
age.

"Jean Pierre will show them when he
comes out," he said to me, his big voice
trembling pitifully with the wTords. "He
is innocent, and the truth cannot remain
hidden forever. I can only count the
time until he is out again. First it will
be the years, then the months, and then
the days. They say that if one behaves
one need not serve out a full term, and
my son is a good bow I shall be here
waiting for him, and he wTill find his ax
in its accustomed corner. Also it will be
as bright as it was when he went
away."

So Fagot kept on for two years, pol-
ishing the ax and counting off time.
Then there came bad news from Baton
Rouge. Jean Pierre, accustomed to the
clean, open life of the woods, had been
unable to stand his confinement. It had
broken his heart, and he had died.

It was the last blow, and Fagot's sup-
ply of courage had been taxed to the ut-
most. For two weeks he shut himself
up in his hut, and in that time his dark,
bristly hair became streaked with white,
like the ash tips of a burned-off marsh.
Then, one afternoon wThen I was con-
sidering how best I might comfort him,
he called to me from outside my door.
He seemed utterly crushed and broken,
and the small bundle of household pos-
sessions that he carried announced his
intention even before he spoke.

"I am going, Bossu," said he. "Also,
before I leave, I wish to thank you.
You stood by me bravely in my trouble,
and I will not forget."

"Where are you bound, P'agot?" I
asked him.

He shrugged, sweeping his arm in a
circle.

"Anywhere, everywhere," he replied.
"I seek only to escape from memory.
As long as the trees grow we shall not
starve -the little Jeanne and I."

Thus he departed, his ax upon his

shoulder, his small, dark-faced daughter
trotting along at his side.

CHAPTER II

Au Large

IT was perhaps some ten years later
that I determined, one summer, to
make a visit to the swamps. Hav-
ing spent my youth in that land of cy-
press and water, the longing to see it
once more often takes possession of me.
At such time, if my work allows, I
bundle my few effects into a pirogue and
set forth au large.

Thus, when I pushed away from
shore upon this particular occasion, I
had no definite goal. I only drifted
along the smooth, brown bayous, flanked
by their fields and meadows and pa-
trolled eternally by scattered fleets of
drifting hyacinths. At night I would
moor alongside the stranded banks of
the lilies and when, at dawn, the first
sunbeams flashed upon their purple ex-
panse of dew-drenched blossoms, it was
like some glimpse of Paradise. So I
drifted lazily, until fields and meadows
gave way to long stretches of forest, and
these in turn — the solid ground swept
away from them by the ever-encroaching
bayou — yielded their place to the water-
loving cypress.

It was a somber country that I en-
tered then — a country of still, black
water, of tall, fluted trunks, and of vast,
silent aisles, arched raggedly with a
hanging tatter of moss. For hours I
would paddle along, hearing no sound
save the cry of the birds, or the dull,
thumping splash of some diving turtle.
And then, all of a sudden, there would
come the call of a voice, the ring of an
ax, the sullen crack of a tree as the steel
bit into its heart.

"Hola you, little man," the swampers
would greet me. "What is the news
outside?" And that night I would sit
out late at the camp, while the big,
brown men listened to my tale of what
was afoot in that fresher, brighter world
which lay beyond.

So I went on, plunging ever deeper
into the heart of the swamp, until I ar-
rived at what I thought to be the most
remote of the inner camps. In this,

THE TRAIL OF THE PAINTED WOODS

693

however, I was mistaken. There was
still another camp one day's journey be-
yond, the swampers told me. It was
called Camp Bon and, being built upon
high ground, it was the most comfortable
spot in the swamp. The cabins were
permanent ones, and there were even
some women about. In addition, if one
made a detour to a certain bayou, one
could approach the place by way of open
water.

After this nothing would do for me
but that I must visit Camp Bon. Also,
scorning the advantages of the bayou, I
decided to continue my journey through
the swamp. I set forth at sunrise the
following morning, and, although the
day promised to be one of blazing heat,
I foresaw no difficulty in my underta-
king. The water was up, there was a
current, and this current was in my fa-
vor. Had it not been for the length of
time necessary to such a proceeding, I
could have drifted the entire way.

But in the wild nothing is certain.
It is ever when one is most confident
that trouble peeps over one's shoulder.
Thus, when at noon I found my way
barred by an almost impassable tangle of
grape-vines and creepers, I made the
mistake of forcing my way through them
before stopping to rest and eat my mid-
day meal. I was weary and hungry,
and in my impatience I set about my
task with a carelessness which, later on,
was to cost me dear.

Yet I had all but won through, and
the bow of my pirogue lay clear of the
tangle, when I was overtaken by disaster.

It was a vine that caused the trouble
— a heavy coil of muscadine that caught
me amidships as in some great noose.
Seizing it angrily, I flung it aside with-
out one single glance overhead. As I
did so a blunt, rusty shape came wri-
thing down from above to twist itself
for an instant about my bare right arm.
I felt the harsh, sickening rasp of the
scales, the sharp prick of the fangs, be-
fore I tore the moccasin away. It was
a cottonmouth and, almost before it had
struck the water, I was fighting the
poison.

With the aid of my handkerchief and
a hastily broken stick, I formed a tour-
niquet which I twisted above my elbow,

knotting it tightly so that it would re-
main in place. Then, with my hunting-
knife, I attacked the bite, which was
upon my forearm. Marking the spot
carefully, with the blade pressed against
the skin, I cut cleanly and deeply from
one tiny puncture to another.

Now, it is never pleasant to cut one's
self purposely. Also, when this task is
performed by the left arm upon the
right, one is rendered clumsy. Thus, as
the steel bit into my flesh, I made a sud-
den movement and the knife, jerking up-
ward, slipped from my grasp into the
water. At the moment, save for a flash
of annoyance at the loss of a useful tool,
I thought little of this mishap. Apply-
ing my lips to the wound, I began at
once to suck out the poison.

Afterward, when I sought to remove
the tourniquet, the knots defied every ef-
fort to undo them. They had been
drawn cruelly tight, they were soaked
with perspiration and water, and the
movements of my left hand were both
awkward and uncertain.

"So," said I to myself after some mo-
ments of useless struggling. "You will
never accomplish anything in your pres-
ent condition, my friend. You are weak
and shaken and very much in need of
something to eat. First fortify yourself
with food, and the matter will prove
more simple."

Thus, having made one mistake, I
capped it with a second, fatal blunder.

As I ate I was not conscious of the
swelling of my arm. It was very grad-
ual, and it was accompanied only by a
dull throbbing. I had been bitten be-
fore, and my treatment had always
proved successful. Perhaps it was the
heat, the swamp, or an especially active
venom. At all events when, after a
hasty meal, I again considered the tour-
niquet, I found it already sunk between
two rapidly rising walls of angry flesh.

It was then that the loss of my knife
began to assume the proportions of a
tragedy. True, I always traveled with
a small ax, but only the day before I
had presented it to an obliging swamper.
Utterly destitute of any edged tool, I at-
tacked the knots with hands and teeth
in a frenzy of desperation. I bit. I
tore. I bruised my swollen flesh until

694

OUTING

it fairly leaped out at me in protest, but
all to no avail. In the end, faint and
dizzy, I was forced to acknowledge to
myself that, without aid, my case was
hopeless.

Clear-headed now, when the time for
clear-headedness was past, I considered
my position. The camp that I had left
that morning was probably the nearest
civilization, but if I turned back in that
direction the current would be against
me. Already the throbbing in my arm
had changed to a sharp ache which would
soon render paddling impossible, Camp
Bon seemed my one hope, and, gripping
my courage hard, I resumed my inter-
rupted journey.

CHAPTER III

A Song and a Girl

OF my struggles through the
swamp I do not like to think
even now. For the first hour,
despite my ever-increasing agony, I man-
aged to paddle. After that I made shift
to help the current with my left arm.
It was one of those dreadful, breathless
days of early summer, and the swamp,
beneath its dense roof of moss and
branch, was like some vast oven.

As for my arm, it sickened me to look
at it. From wrist to shoulder the flesh
was puffed to the bursting point, and
the tourniquet was pressed in until I
marveled that the bones did not crack.
Upon the forearm the two minute punc-
tures that had caused the trouble were
all but lost amid the general discolora-
tion. They fascinated me, those punc-
tures. They were such a paltry entrance
for so great a king as Death.

Toward the end of the third hour I
lost my paddle. It slipped from my
hand, and I gave it not so much as a
glance as it drifted off. By then my
torture was unbearable, and my wits
were fast leaving me. My arm had
swelled until I wondered that, balloon-
like, it did not float me away. It was
numb now, save at the tourniquet, but
the agony of that ever-tightening band
was the greatest that I have ever known.

It was dreadful to be so helpless in
my misery. I could not even divert my-
self by struggling uselessly with the

knots. They had long since disappeared
from view.

Throughout the late afternoon I was,
for the most part, happily insensible. I
can recall brief flashes of consciousness
in which I stared up from the bottom of
my pirogue at the ever-changing roof of
the swamp. It was a thick, close-woven
roof, speaking of a growth almost pri-
meval, and, from the way it slid past, it
was evident that, if the water had stolen
my paddle, it was repairing the loss
through the swiftness of its currents.
But I was in no condition then to ap-
preciate this tardy repentance of Nature.
Half mad with pain and fever, I prayed
only for a speedy end to my torment.
Had the thought not been denied my
darkened mind, I would most certainly
have rolled from the pirogue and ended
the matter at once.

Near sunset there came a swift change
in my condition. My brain cleared
suddenly, and the agony in my arm sub-
sided into a dull, grinding ache, as from
the worrying of some savage animal.
Weakly raising myself to a sitting pos-
ture, I found that I was drifting be-
tween huge, ancient ranks of cypress
trees whose trunks were all splashed
and mottled with a growth of pinkish
lichen. The water was thick and dark,
but the current bumped me along
through the maze of scattered knees with
a skill that was more than human.
Clear though it was, my brain swam
dizzily, while before my eye there pulsed
a vague reddish glow that was shot with
an ever-increasing blackness.

"Bien, Bossu," I said to myself. "This
is the end. At least you wTill have a
vault of no mean proportions."

How long I waited for the blackness
to close in upon me I do not know.
The lichen vanished, the water cleared,
yet still I trembled upright, seeking the
end that would not come. And then,
even as the last red gleam was flickering
out into darkness, I Caught, as from an
infinite distance, a faint thread of song.

At first I thought it some bird who
unknowingly chanted my requiem. An
instant later, as it swelled upon a high,
clear note, I knew it for what it was.
Too often had I heard the women croon
that old lullaby as they rocked their

THE TRAIL OF THE PAINTED WOODS

695

little ones in the brief twilight of the
Grand Woods.

It is strange how we poor humans
will cling to the last shred of hope. A
moment before I had awaited death with
only a feeling of weary impatience. Now
I began to fight for my life as fiercely
as though the struggle had only begun.
I sought with my very soul to scream,
but my parched lips could produce scarce
a whisper. I beat with my heels upon
the bottom of the pirogue, only to bring
forth a faint, thudding sound. Wild
with despair, I finally remembered my
gun. It lay in the bow, and, if only I
could find it and shoot it, the report
might bring an answer.

Blindly, desperately, fighting ofr the
blackness that beat down upon me in
great choking waves, I groped about un-
til my hand finally encountered the
stock of my old weapon. With the last
ounce of my strength I drew back the
hammer. Then, as I dropped a limp
finger toward the trigger, the blackness
triumphed in a roar of sound.

Later I was flashed back to life for
an instant by a flood of such agony as
only death itself could have withstood.
I had but a glimpse, as my eyes fluttered
open and shut, but in the glimpse I saw
that I was saved. I lay upon a great,
loose heap of green moss that had been
piled into a broad, flat-bottomed boat,
and over me there bent a young girl.
She was dark and beautiful, and in her
hand was an enormous knife. If her
eyes held pity, there was also in them
determination, and the blade of her
knife was red with blood.

As she stooped to her task again the
blackness mercifully whirled me away.

CHAPTER IV
Camp Bon

WHEN next I opened my eyes I
found myself in the bunk of a
swamper's cabin. It was a
strong, well-built cabin, and its furnish-
ings, if rude, were of the sort that speak
of woman and home. Gay pictures and
calendars had been tacked about. Upon
the shelf above the open fire straggled
a row of little china ornaments. There
was even a curtain of some gauzy

stuff before the small window in front.

This much I saw in a roving glance
before my attention became centered
upon one who sat at the side of the bunk.
It was the same young girl who had
rescued me, and, now that I could see
her more clearly, I found that her beauty
was of a rare and wonderful sort. She
was tall and lithe, yet for all her slen-
derness and grace, there was that about
her which gave one the impression of
endurance and strength.

For the rest, she was of a type frankly
Spanish. Her eyes were large and dark,
her lips red and full, while her cheeks,
faintly touched by wind and sun, were
of a marvelous, shadowy olive. Her
dress, of dull crimson, served well to set
off her dark beauty while, as though to
heighten the effect, she had thrust
through the black, heavy masses of her
hair a spray of scarlet blossoms.

Seeing that I was looking at her, she
nodded pleasantly.

"So you are awake at last, are you,
Bossu?" said she. "I was beginning
to think that you would sleep forever."

"I thank you, Mademoiselle," said I.
"You have most certainly saved my life.
How was I when you found me?"

"You were all but drowned, Bossu,"
she replied. "Your gun had kicked you
half into the water, and your head was
almost under. Five minutes more and
I would have been too late. You were
lucky, Bossu, not only in that I reached
you in time, but because I was there
to reach you at all. It is very seldom
that I go so deep into the swamp."

"And my arm?" I went on.

The girl winced.

"That was a terrible business, Bossu,"
she returned. "Also, with the only in-
strument at my command, it proved no
easy one. But I will show you. If I
have cut you often and deep, the fault
is not my own."

Rising, she took, from a nail driven
into the wall, a belt. This belt was
fitted with a leather scabbard, and from
the scabbard she drew a knife such as
I had never seen before. I say a knife,
since that is what she afterward termed
it, but in appearance it was more like
some short and heavy sword. The han-
dle, of bone wrapped about with brass

696

OUTING

wire, ended in a plain, but massive,
guard. The blade, long, flat, and of an
extraordinary breadth, rounded off with
a bluntness that could scarce be spoken
of as a point. Evidently, despite the
apparent fineness of its steel, the weapon
was intended for hacking rather than for
cut and thrust.

"Dieii, Mademoiselle," said I, as I
gazed at it. "You need not apologize
for any cuts that you may have inflicted
upon me. I only wonder that, with
such a cleaver, you did not take my
arm off entirely. Wherever did you
get it?"

The girl smiled as she returned the
knife to its sheath.

"It was giv,en me by a sailor at Mor-
gan City," she replied. "He said that,
in the far off Southern country, from
which he brought it, they use such knives
in the cutting of cane. At all events,
it is most useful to me in clearing my
way through the swamp, and I always
wear it in my journeys about the camp
at night. But enough of my cleaver, as
you call it. Tell me now how you,
Bossu, came to let the swelling of your
arm get beyond you."

Briefly I told her of my carelessness,
of my disastrous meal followed by the
loss of my knife. Afterward she in-
formed me that I had slept from one
sunset to another. When I asked her
name and how it was that she knew
my own so well, she only smiled and
told me that I had talked enough, and
must now go to sleep again. As the
dusk was falling and I still felt very
weak and tired, I lost little time in
obeying her command.

I awoke the following morning to a
great burst of sunshine, and the sound
of a loud, deep voice that was strangely
familiar. The voice came from just
outside the open window, and, as it rum-
bled on in greeting to some passerby,
I found little difficulty in placing it.
My weariness was gone and the thought
that I had fallen into the hands of a
well-remembered comrade, brought me
a feeling of pleasure and comfort. As I
raised myself I found that my arm,
although weak and tender, was already
much improved.

"Hok, you, Jean Fagot," I called,

and a moment later my old friend was
inside the cabin.

He came forward in a series of short,
irregular steps, but save for his limp,
and the now uniform whiteness of" his
bristly hair, he had changed little since
that day, ten years before, when he had
turned his back upon the Grand Woods.

"Bossu, Bossu," he cried. "It does
my heart good to see you. I was busy
when you awoke at sunset, and after-
ward Jeanne would not let me disturb
5^ou. And the arm? Is it better?"

"The arm will soon be all right
again," I assured him. "And so it was
the little Jeanne who saved me? I
would never have known her, Fagot.
This is indeed like old times. In one
way, at least, my friend the moccasin
has served me well."

We talked throughout the morning,
and I learned of Fagot's life since his
departure from the woods. He had just
drifted about — following the trees. At
first he had avoided the swamps, fear-
ing their effect upon his child. Later,
as the timber thinned, he had been
forced into them. Starting at the outer
edge, he had worked his way inward,
chopping along from one camp to an-
other, until he had been overtaken by
the inevitable disaster. As usual it had
come from a jammed pirogue and a fall-
ing tree, and he had been lamed beyond
the hope of ever swinging his ax again.

After that he had come to his present
home. It was a nice place — just the
quiet, comfortable spot for such a wreck
as himself — and Voltaire Bon, the
founder and leader of the camp, was
very kind. For the rest, he and Jeanne
made their living by rotting moss, which
they sent outside by the tow boats that
came up every now and then from the
cypress mills.

In return I began to tell Fagot of
all that had occurred in the woods since
his absence, but, to my surprise, several
of the incidents were already known to
him.

"Why, Bossu," he teased, when I
questioned him, "do you not know that
you are becoming famous? Even here,
in the depths of the swamp, we have
heard of your success in matters of in-
vestigation. You are becoming quite a

THE TRAIL OF THE PAINTED WOODS

697

detective, Bossu. I must be careful
while you are here, else you may reveal
some dark secret of my life to Jeanne."

He paused, while the light of humor
faded slowly from his eyes, leaving them
dull and brooding.

"Ah, Bossu," he went on in a differ-
ent tone, "I have often thought of what
might have occurred had you known of
your talents when first we wrere friends.
Then, perhaps, it might have been dif-
ferent."

His voice broke. He bowed his head.
In the matter of Jean Pierre's memory
those ten years might have been but a
day.

"Come, Fagot," I encouraged him.
"You must forget the past. That is
over and done with. You still have
Jeanne, and such talents as I am pos-
sessed of are at her command. Suppose
now that I employ them in finding her
a good husband?"

It was hard to win him back to his
former mood, but I persevered until, at
midday, he was talking as brightly as
before. Then, as Jeanne was away in
the swamp, we two ate together. After-
ward, feeling strong enough, I left the
bunk for a seat outside.

Here I had my first view of Camp
Bon, to which, despite their praises, the
swampers of the inner camp had done
scant justice. In front a broad, open
sheet of water stretched away to the
distant cypress, lapping its tiny waves
against the series of rough landings to
which the inhabitants moored their
craft. Back of these landings the. cabins
were built along a sloping crescent of
high ground, each with its floor raised
upon blocks against the spring floods,
each with its ladder-like stairway lead-
ing up to a little front porch. Vines
grew before the porches. Coarse gar-
ments snapped as they dried in the
breeze. Here and there, even, a rank
green patch of garden stuff told of an
industry beyond that of the ax and
saw.

It was very strange and very beauti-
ful, this little permanent settlement in
the heart of the swamp. Sunwashed and
clean, it flashed like some jewel amid its
dark setting of moss and branch and
rusty foliage. r

I will not soon forget that revival of
an old friendship. Fagot was still the
same gentle creature that he had always
been, and when, that afternoon, Jeanne
arrived with her boatload of moss, our
little reunion was made complete.
Again I sought to thank the girl, but
she only replied by adding to her kind-
ness.

"It was nothing, Bossu," she pro-
tested. "If we swamp folk did not help
one another, we would not long sur-
vive. But since you feel that you owe
me a debt of gratitude, you can repay
it by staying with us throughout the
summer. We hear little of the outside
world, and, unless you have changed
since my childhood, you will prove no
bad companion. So come, Bossu.
Promise that you will remain."

"There is no need for him to prom-
ise," boomed Fagot. "We will hide his
pirogue until we are ready to let him
go."

Thus adjured, I promised to remain
a while, especially as, through the con-
dition of my arm, a lengthy journey
would be denied me for many da)'s.

CHAPTER V

Jeanne

THOSE first few weeks at Camp
Bon passed pleasantly enough.
Under Jeanne's care my arm
healed rapidly, and it was not long De-
fore I was able to take my part in the
work of my benefactors. Often I went
with Jeanne into the swamp where wTe
gathered the moss for the rotting. The
girl knew each nook and cranny of the
great reach of cypress, and no spot, how-
ever tangled, seemed inaccessible to her
skill. Drawing her great knife, she
would hack her way unerringly inside
where, with the aid of a long, spiked
pole, she would twist down her spoils
into the bottom of her boat. At such
times she ever wore a pair of heavy
leather gauntlets* and often she teased
me about them.

"See," she would say, holding out her
slender, shapely arms. "You must get
yourself a pair of these, Bossu. Then
you can jerk as many vines as you please
without disaster. Believe me, I have

698

OUTING

had my full share of unwelcome visitors.
If, as they say, the penance for one's
sins is lessened by the killing of a snake,
I shall spend but a short time in Pur-
gatory."

We became good friends — Jeanne
and I — and, as the days wore on, I
came to see that, to her beauty of face
and form, there was added ,'another,
greater beauty of heart and soul. In
nature she was still little more than a
child, and, if through her heritage of
Spanish blood, her gusts of temper were
swift and fierce, they were always
quickly followed by the pity and gentle-
ness of her father. Often I have heard
those who saw her in anger say — "There
is a little vixen for you." But after-
ward, when in her humbled pride she
asked their forgiveness, they would only
esteem her the more through the beauty
of her repentance.

And I will add in justice to her that,
of her many virtues, the least was not
charity. If in the care of my arm she
had shown much skill, I soon found that
it was a skill born of long practise.
Whenever illness or disaster showed
their dark faces at Camp Bon, there was
Jeanne ready to fight them to the bitter
end.

Now, living as she did in such a small
and remote community, it was only nat-
ural that Jeanne, being admired by all,
should be held in especial regard by a
few. To Voltaire Bon, the leader, and
his wife she was as a daughter, and
this was not strange since, through the
love for her of Blaise Duron, their
nephew, it was understood that she
would some day become their niece.

Duron lived with his kinsfolk in the
largest and most comfortable of the
cabins, and, by his air of ever-increasing
authority, it was evident that he only
awaited his uncle's death before appro-
priating the leadership to himself. He
was a young man, of great size and
strength, and he was also very hand-
some in a bold, insolent manner. In
all the sports and labors of the wild he
was an acknowledged expert, and, thus
far, his courage remained unquestioned
by any man.

Yet, at first glance, I knew him for a
braggart and a bully, for one of those

men who, in the dancing halls of my
own country, are wont to halt the music
so that they may proclaim themselves
master of the ball. Indeed I had often
heard of Blaise Duron in the towns and
villages outside. He often came in upon
the tow boats, and the coffee-house keep-
ers told great tales of fights and broken
furniture. But always, when I took
the trouble to inquire, I found that
Duron had fought a smaller man.

As for his courtship of Jeanne — if
courtship it could be called — it was an
affair of long standing. At first Vol-
taire Bon had been very kind to Fagot,
and when the boy Blaise had developed
an affection for the child Jeanne, the
leader had crowned his benevolence by
approving the match. Later, as Jeanne's
beauty increased with her age, the camp
had been given to understand that the
girl was for Duron alone. There had
been no betrothal, no public announce-
ment. The affair had been merely
understood.

Nevertheless, several of the men,
abandoning such hopes as they might
have cherished, had married girls from
elsewhere. The remaining ones — whose
names were Ledet, Mamus, and Trap-
pey — had thus far religiously respected
the understanding. Jeanne might be
desirable, but Voltaire Bon was a leader
whose slightest wish was law.

In addition to these original members
of the camp, however, there had ar-
rived a while before myself, a young
swamper of the name of Marcel Var.
He was very quiet and reserved in man-
ner, while in appearance he was one of
those small, compact men whose size
belie their strength and determination.
Living in the cabin that was occupied
by the other unmarried men, he had,
from the first, displayed a decided in-
terest in Jeanne. True his companions
had informed him of the leader's wish,
but he had only replied by saying that,
in the matter of his affections, he con-
sidered himself his own master. As can
be fmagined his words had not been long
in reaching the ear of Duron.

Most men, at this prospect of rivalry,
would have made some definite move,
but Duron, secure in his self-conceit
and long-recognized proprietorship, had

THE TRAIL OF THE PAINTED WOODS

699

merely allowed the affair to drift along
as before. Confident to the point of
contempt, his attitude toward Jeanne
was, to my eyes at least, not so much one
of love, as of lazy patronage. He de-
sired the girl, and that should be enough
for her. He would claim her when it
suited his own convenience.

As for Jeanne herself, if she was dis-
satisfied with tli is calm arrangement of
her future by others, she made no sign.
Duron she treated with the intimacy of
their long companionship. To Var she
showed only kindness and consideration,
as she did to all. So far the situation
was satisfactory, but it wTas one that
could not last.

Thus, when I arrived at Camp Bon,
its little woodland stage was set as for
a play. Perhaps, through their acquaint-
ance with the actors, the inhabitants did
not realize this. Before the end of the
first week it was all too plain to my
fresher sight.

Duron, confident in his possession, was
acting with a contemptuous assurance
that would have destroyed him in the
eyes of a far less high-strung girl. Var,
having recognized this fact, was pa-
tiently biding his time. Jeanne, young
and care-free, was undecided. The play
might be either a tragedy or a comedy.
It all depended upon her mood.

So the set stage waited until, upon
the fourteenth of July, the play began.

CHAPTER VI

A Swamp Fete

IT was the custom of Voltaire Bon
to hold at his camp a fete upon the
fourteenth of each July. His youth
had been spent among the towns out-
side, and to the swamp he had brought
with him an undying memory of those
celebrations wherewith our folk are
wont to commemorate the fall of the
Bastile. Beginning in a small way with
a ball, or perhaps only a feast of gumbo,
he had added each year to the fun with
sports and competitions, until now the
affair was known throughout the length
and breadth of the swamp.

As Mardi Gras is to the dweller in
the city, as Christmas is to the town-
folk, so was the fourteenth of July to the

swampers. They spoke of the fete
throughout the year, they measured their
feats of strength or of skill according to
its standards. Did a pirogue fly swifter,
an ax bite deeper, or a tree fall truer
than usual, he who was responsible
would exclaim — "Ah, but I should have
saved that for the Fourteenth." And
when the day came around, there was
no hope of holding even the most distant
swampers to their work. They would
as soon have labored upon Good Friday.

They began to arrive as early as the
morning of the thirteenth, and from
then on a scattered stream of visitors
poured into the camp. They came in
pirogues, in flat boats, in borrowed gaso-
line launches. Once even a tow boat
swung out of her course to leave behind
a fiddler and a chattering flock of girls
who had come up from outside. The
broad, open reach of water in front was
half hidden by a multitude of small
craft. The short curve of high land was
dotted with the innumerable small
camps of the visitors. The swampers,
driven out of their cabins to make room
for the women folk, took refuge with
their friends, and hoped that the weather
would remain clear. The air was thick
with smoke of many campfires. The
silence of the swamp was made as
naught by the shouts of the men, the
laughter of the girls. The very birds
skimmed madly about, as though imbued
with the spirit of the hour.

It was a time of joy, of revelry, and
over it all Voltaire Bon presided with
a dignity, a courtesy, that could have
been equaled by few. He was a huge,
rugged old man, with great, rough-hewn
features, and a white, patriarchal flow of
beard. Enthroned in state upon his
landing, he received each visitor as he
arrived, placing him unerringly in his
well-ordered memory, even recalling at
times some special feat of the year before.

"Welcome, Vital," he would say.
"And have you brought your ax with
you again? Our own Ledet has made
some records lately, so, if you would win
this time, you must stir yourself."

But if Voltaire Bon was the king of
it all, Jeanne was queen. Many girls
came to the fete that year, most of them
pretty, some of them really beautiful,

700

OUTING

yet there were none who could match
the dark Spanish loveliness of old
Fagot's daughter. Clad in a new crim-
son dress that she had saved for this
occasion, she darted about amid the ever-
shifting groups like some bright flash
of laughter and joy. They were mad
about her, those visiting swampers.
They claimed her for the ball that night.
They promised her their prizes if they
were fortunate enough to win. For the
most part they were free rovers of no
permanent camp, and, in the matter of
a pretty face, they hearkened to no man's
command.

Yet Duron did not appear jealous.
Rather he seemed to take pride in the
popularity of his future wife. He
agreed heartily to the praises of the oth-
ers. He even added aloud, boisterous
commendations of his own. He was
like one who, having gained possession
of a prize, lauds it openly for the pur-
pose of self-glorification.

Var, upon the other hand, seemed ill
at ease. Everywhere that Jeanne went
he followed her with his eyes. They
were gray eyes, clear and shrewd, and in
them was a look of fixed purpose such
as I had seldom seen before.

"So, Bossu," I said to myself, "it will
not be long now before something hap-
pens. Also, if he is true to those eyes,
the something will be worth while."

The morning of the fourteenth broke
bright and clear, and, with the rising
of the sun, the sports began. There was
running, jumping, wrestling, boxing, a
shooting match — even some fights with
game cocks. Afterward all crossed to
the nearby cypress where were held the
more important contests of the swamp-
er's art. Trees were thrown in the
shortest possible space of time. Logs
were trimmed as if by magic. Rafts

were made, so it seemed, in the twin-
kling of an eye. They were gay, but
earnest, these men of the swamp, going
about their tasks with a swiftness and
precision that were wonderful to see. It
was play perhaps, but it was also the real
business of the day; for he who could
establish his supremacy over tree, or log,
or raft, would be, for the coming year,
a king among his kind.

So the fete continued with its vic-
tories and disappointments. The judges
were fair and the prizes, if simple, were
hard won. The contests were open to
all, and I had been asked to take part in
the shooting. But I had declined, feel-
ing myself an outsider, and the prize had
gone to Duron.

To his skill with his gun Duron had
added other victories, and when all re-
paired to the feast that had been laid
by the women, the big man could scarce
contain his importance. Blustering,
bragging, he swaggered about, followed
by a train of admirers. For weeks he
had been laying in a supply of liquor,
and, upon each visit to his cache, the
throng about him increased.

Var became even more quiet and re-
served than usual. He was a skilful
swamper, but he had been matched
against the very flower of his calling.
He had done well, but no more, and to
his credit there was no positive victory.
Yet it was whispered by those who knew
him that, in the final event, he would
redeem himself.

At the feast he ate moderately, refu-
sing each offer of the wine that flowed
on every hand. His comrades joked him
about his temperance, but the elders
nodded wise heads.

"Fie is smart, that one," they said
among themselves. "He is saving him-
self for the end."

(To be continued)

Next month comes the pirogue race and a
fore-shadowing of the woe that followed it.

ON THE TRAIL OF THE WAVIES

By HAMILTON M. LAING

I'lIoTOCRAPHS BY THE AUTHOR

A Game of Wits with "the Wild and Wary One of a Clan Long
Known for Its Wildness"

Y all the rules of the goose-
trail the goose season ought
to have been past. It was
late in October, and, as the
birds had come down at the
first of the month, their
time was more than up ; in fact, if
precedent was any guide, they should
have been in the Southland. For this
reason our firm had disbanded and at
least one of these four who annually
find life at its fullest while in the pur-
suit of wawa, was gone; gone; and,
disgusted, beaten — the last hunt a sad
anti-climax, the worst of the season
— the case the more pitiable that he ad-
mits candidly that he endures the forty-
nine weeks of existence, "stale, flat and
unprofitable, " that he may live to the
full the other three.

But the geese were not gone into the
Southland. All day, as I hustled about
camp getting odds and ends in shape
for an early leave-taking, there came
across the five-mile expanse of lake a
jabber of goose talk that assured me of
that fact. It had been a seething clamor
at day-dawn, and I needed no ocular
proof to be certain that five thousand or
more wavies were yelling there in their
morning chorus. There was little of
the mellow trumpeting of the gray geese
in the din, and I knew that their squad-
rons had departed; but this was little in
my mind, for we had already settled the
season's accounts with those simple-
minded chaps. It was the white legions
that worried me and kindled anew my
half-hearted desires — longings that had
been driven out and frozen out of me in
our last futile expedition. So I sent
off the message; and in the evening the

democrat rumbled into camp, and now,
though but three strong, we set out
again on the trail of the wavies.

There is no goose like him — this
white wanderer of a mighty continent.
He is the wild and wary one of a clan
long known for its wildness. The man
who coined "a wild goose chase" I feel
assured must have chased him. Nest-
ing on the far Arctic coast, wintering
along the California tide-waters, twice
yearly his snowy legions swing back and
forth across the interior of the con-
tinent and no one has an opportunity to
call him neighbor. Individually he
may be stupid sometimes, but collec-
tively his organization is crafty and fits
his race to survive. His flocks are the
largest — he outnumbers the grays twen-
ty to one — he flies the highest while mi-
grating— often indeed it takes a good
eye to find his company in the blue void
of autumn — he moves on his feeding-
grounds in great masses that cannot be
decoyed by shooters; and his roosting-
places are out on the wind-swept lakes.

His voice is a yell, a very slice of the
ice-fanged north wind ; his temper, when
you get him down wTounded, has the
edge of a saw, and he bites like a pair
of pliers. He is big-headed and pig-
headed and erratic. You may prophesy
the behavior of a gray goose a day
ahead, sometimes a week, but not that
of a wavey; he doesn't know his next
move himself. Living, he mocks you;
dead, he avenges himself on the cook —
for his feathers are clinched and riveted
into his dusky skin. Though like all
the inland geese he is delicious when he
comes out of the oven, it takes a vast
deal of connivance and persuasion to

[701]

702

OUTING

get him into it. Take him, all in all,
he is the worthiest game-bird foe-friend
of the man who hunts; he is truly, all
of him, a wild goose.

It was impossible for us to do more
at night than take up a position where
we could watch the course of the morn-
ing flight; so some time after dark we
turned off the trail, drove over to a
little stack, and made camp. To one
accustomed to bivouacking in the woods
and to whom the term camp is synono-
mous with timber, lean-to shelter, or
tent, with a fire and all its associations,
ours would indeed seem a joke. While
Robert, the junior member, unhitched,
unharnessed, and blanketed the team,
the Old Boy and I climbed upon the
six-foot stack. We split the top — it
was old, abandoned hay and we had
no qualms over it — turned it back to
right and left and ahead till we had
a flat roof or floor; then we spread the
blankets and the camp was complete.
Here we had a wind-break and food for
the horses, and a balcony sleeping-porch,
warm, comfortable, airy, for ourselves.
What woods bivouac could provide so
much comfort?

The Nights Under the Stars

Often upon these shooting-grounds I
see hunters who at approach of darkness
hasten away by team or automobile to
the nearest farm-house or go home to
secure night shelter. But in the stren-
uous game of following the goose-trail,
such hunters miss much that to me is
vital. These nights out on the prairie
make an appeal of their own. When
the time comes — I hope it may be very
far in the future — wherein I shall have
to quit the trail, when the past with a
hundred expeditions grows obscure, and
I have forgotten whether in the morn-
ing flight I wiped Doc's eye or he mine
— the latter probably — when all these
things are fading, I know that the mem-
ories of every one of our night camps
out under the stars will remain.

Perhaps it is because I am the poorest
sleeper of our hunting quartette. Rob
succumbs to Morpheus as soon as he
gets half adjusted in the blankets — but
he can fall asleep in the crisis of a tale

of his own telling and dream like a babe
when his feet are out in the frost.
By and by brother Doc ambles off after
him, and the Old Boy and I have a spell
of remember-the-time stories of other
years till a certain kind of breathing
warns me that I am alone.

So I lie and listen and feel the things
of the night world. The horses
munch and crunch their hay; the night-
winds whisper in the frost-rimed grass;
a mouse squeaks and scurries in the hay
and I hope meanly that he may find his
way under Doc's or the Old Boy's col-
lar; overhead some little night-migrant
speaks timidly; a string of whiffling mal-
lards pass by; a migrating goose flock,
seeking the lake, calls inquiringly far
out of the night; a coyote, miles dis-
tant, sings in his shrill key and is an-
swered by two more voices still more
distant — then oblivion till the Old Boy
shouts that daylight is near.

At dawn the wavies began to move at
the lake. Across the open country, level
as a floor, we could see them rise in
misty, trailing clouds, that seemed to
hover a moment, then flow along the
horizon toward the southwest. We
were far out of their course and but
the faintest sound of their clamor on
the water reached us. Yet it was a
goodly picture — these silent battalions
in the dim distance, and our imagina-
tions, backed by the experiences of days
gone by, by no means subtracted from
the view.

''Southwest, eh!" said the Old Boy.
"Same old spot; but we may fool them
this time! Rough weather coming,
lads."

We made breakfast in the willows
fringing the creek in the same spot
where four days previously, homeward
bound, we had halted to build our lit-
tle tea fire. The place now was full of
recent memories. Here that evening we
watched the great flight of the white
squadrons come into the country — we
had been futilely chasing a few of the
advance guard for three days — and we
saw them storm about the plains, their
gossamer-dotted lines in all points of
the north and west and south, as like
an army of invasion, which, in truth,
they were, they fell upon the fields.

ON THE TRAIL OF THE WAVIES

703

Fifty yelling companies had passed
over our heads barely out of reach of
our eager guns; and one squad, reck-
lessly officered, attempted to get by low,
and three of their number swirled earth-
ward to our shots — there was more than
one piece of toast burned hopelessly
that evening at our fire! And in the
dusk we watched them swing back lake-
ward in two or three hosts, thousands
strong, that ranked in V's and 7's and
parallelograms, formed an irregular net-
work across the heavens — oh, it was a
goodly flight, the like of it not seen in
years; and even the Old Boy joined
the pow-wow on the bridge, and we
shook hands all around and hugged one
another in ecstasy.

It was almost eleven o'clock when we
found the feeding-ground. The birds
had remained late on the stubble; but
when we came within a mile of them
the glistening area in the field rose in a
miniature snow flurry, and then, holding
stationary on the horizon, told us that
they were coming directly at us. So
we scattered and wasted no time in
doing it. Leaving the horses to their
own devices — and they had no objec-
tions— we dashed off to right and left
of them and threw ourselves in the grass.
And that long, on-coming army, in
orderly arrangement covering three or
four hundred yards, now glinting white
against the dull sky, now fading into
it, worked up low toward us. Now it
appeared that Rob, on the left, was to
get the shooting, now the Old Boy —
sprinting is not in his line and he did
not get very far from the team — yet
ever they sheered and sheered north-
ward till they headed for me, and I
fingered the safe on my gun in eager
anticipation. Yet still they crept side-
wise, as it were, and, when the leading
files crossed our line they were far out
of range. As the end birds in the string
on the outermost flank passed me, I rose
and slammed away vengefully, and in-
stantly a white veteran collapsed and
twirled down to bump in the grass.

One! and the other four or five odd
thousand, harrying the air with their
mocking yells, swung on lakeward.
Had they been grays they would have
dribbled by in fifties for an hour, and

goodness knows how many of them
would have fallen along the way.

"Cute devils, aren't they?" said the
Old Boy as he climbed in over the
wheel. "Going to snow soon! I wish
that wind was the other way."

We drove over to the feeding-ground
— a quarter-section of wheat-land — and
prepared for business. Guns, ammuni-
tion, decoys, cameras were bundled out,
and while Rob took the horses to the
shelter of a straw-stack, the Old Boy
and I set to work with the decoys. We
had perhaps fifty counterfeit wavies up
in the wind when of a sudden there
came a loud squawk, almost it seemed
in our ears, and to our horror right
over our heads was a goose! He was
holding on his wings and peering down
while he waggled his head in a "Well-
I-never!" sort of way — and my com-
rade muttering something fitting — ex-
cellent English and to the point, but
unprintable — leaped out of his tracks
and pounced upon the nearest gun. He
tried to shoot with it empty; he loaded
and aimed and pulled with the safe
on; then he put it down and with the
sick look of a man in mental anguish
gazed upon that vanishing wavey. The
latter was a youngster unskilled in the
diplomacy of the goose-grounds; but the
star of his young life was in the ascend-
ant; luck was with him.

Hard Work in the Pits

When we attempted to dig our pits
we found that luck was still adverse.
The soil was gumbo clay; it was dry
and caked in huge lumps that defied the
best efforts of the Old Boy's two hun-
dred and some odd pounds on the spade
handle. Nothing less than a pick or a
steam shovel would have been of much
use there, but the spade wielder tore
away persistently.

"I believe" — puff, grunt — "those
danged white devils!" — grunt, puff —
"knew what they were feeding on" —
grunt, grunt — "when they picked this
field!'' Puff, puff, puff— "If that- wind
was t'other way — but, oh, damn !"

So he gave it up and struck out across
the field, apparently at the mercy of a
new idea, while I took the spade and

704

OUTING

attacked the gumbo. Profiting by his
trouble I made no attempt at a pit, but
contented myself with a six-foot furrow
or trench a foot in depth. When Rob
arrived he said: ''What's the Old Boy
building — a fort? Guess I'll shoot with
you!" Whereupon he also started to
dig a trench, while I ran over to inspect
the "fort." The builder had found a
number of sheaves and set them around
the mouth of the shallow hole — chiefly,
I noted though, on the windward side —
a landmark to catch a wavey's eye at a
mile; and it was plain that he had little
faith in the birds coming back again.

The wind was now blowing a strong
gale from the northeast; it was bitterly
cold and growing colder every hour.
Soon it began to snow, cold, dry, fine
snow, the blizzard kind of the north
that bites and stings savagely when it
reaches the skin. The Old Boy had
retired; he was humped up with his
broad back to the wind like a jack-
rabbit, his coat around him cloakwise so
that it might be dropped quickly in case
of trouble. So we cuddled down also
in the trenches — coffins, Rob designated
them — and tried to feel comfortable.
For a short while this was easy enough.
We had a layer of straw in the bottom;
the earth, not yet being frozen, had
some latent heat in it; and the strong
wind could not reach us. Also the exer-
tion of digging had charged our bodies
with a fund of warmth.

"How long till the first of them are
back?" said Rob. "I'll give them an
hour to wet their bills. In this cold
they will feed nearly all day — listen!
There they come!"

There was a faint shrieking coming
out of the teeth of the storm, and we
squirmed around and peered half-
blinded into the wind. Stronger,
louder, rose the yells; then they swept
into our vision, a hundred strong, high
in air; and, on seeing the decoys, they
held on their wings and sidled in the
gale — then swirled onward and disap-
peared in the stormy heavens.

"Gosh! If that wind was in the op-
posite direction!" — this longingly, de-
jectedly, from my comrade's coffin.

But it was not; and for three hours
we lay and shivered and shook and

rolled and squirmed as the whole flight,
in companies averaging perhaps a hun-
dred, streamed yelling over our heads.
Always we hoped, for often they ap-
peared likely to turn; but not once did
we realize. They were all down-wind
birds and high, and from their vantage
they quickly discerned our duplicity and
passed on. It seemed impossible that
so many geese could be in the neighbor-
hood without paying toll to us; but
every freezing minute drove home the
fact that the wavies had scored another
triumph over us.

"Mark! South!"

Then I saw something that instantly
thawed some of the icicles in my mar-
row and sent a little warm blood quick
coursing. A score of white chaps, with
one dusky form in their midst, were
beating back to us scarce twenty feet
above the stubble. Slowly, quietly, they
worked up. It seemed that it took
them many minutes to cover a hundred
yards; but they were coming directly
into the wind, and our suspense was
unbearable. Soon they began to veer a
little from their first course between the
pits, and pointed directly toward the
Old Boy in his fort.

"Watch that blue fellow get it!" said
Rob. He has a standing order for a
blue goose.

Now they were almost over the fort.
There was a move within it, a flurry
upwards by the birds; then crack —
down came the blue goose, and crack —
down followed a white comrade.
Good! But then we look for such
things from the Old Boy.

Half an hour later we decided unani-
mously that we must eat or die. But
we decided also that it would not do
to leave the decoys unwarded ; so after
a parley the Old Boy, with the stiff
hobble of a man partly congealed, set
out on the first raid on the grub-box.
I think we stood it some fifteen minutes
longer while we discussed the timely
topic of the pleasantness or unpleasant-
ness of death by freezing; then we got
out of the trenches and started rough
tactics. We shoulder-butted for a
while; we wrestled — no holds barred —
till a deal of stubble had been rolled on;
then we boxed — anything fair except a

ON THE TRAIL OF THE WAVIES

705

closed mit in the other fellow's shooting
eye; that was ruled out. This was one
continuous round; there were no bells
intermissions. About the end of

nor

what must have been the fifth round,
as I sidestepped to get my back to the
wind, the better to further a vindictive

they ambled slowly up almost over the
Old Boy's fort, where the muzzle of
a loaded double-barrel with no one to
man it peeped up at them. They
crawled over the end of the decoy lay-
out; then with a volley of excited jab-
bering they swung around on the other

A FEW OF THEM ROSE FIRST

retaliation, my eye lighted upon some-
thing and I called a halt.

The Old Boy was out on the windy
side of the stack. He was jumping up
and down, swinging his arms, cap in
hand, bending double and capering like
a clever German toy. Then he saw
that he had stopped us ; he pointed with
his left arm almost it seemed at us, then
flopped in the stubble. Too late!

"Wooly-head! Wooly-head ! Ha-ha-

side of us far out of range, turned down
wind and went straight over the stack
that sheltered the horses and the Old
Boy. He was out of our sight now ; but
the cold had not in any respect clogged
the works of our imaginations.

It was nearly four o'clock; all the
geese were on the fields, so when the
Old Boy returned we laid new plans.
There were ten thousand geese some
where southwest of us; they must beat

THEY BEGAN TO MOVE EARLY

ha! Yelp! Yelp!" sang a crowd of
wavies scarce a hundred yards distant
as we dived into our coffins. Too late,
alas! Those crafty scions of the cruel
north wind had been spectators of our
methodically-mad caperings, and appar
ently they liked little our sudden exit,
for they immediately began to veer off
their former course. Yet still, with
that occasional stupidity of their kind,

back low in the storm; we were near
their path; they would pass either north
or south of the buildings south of us:
therefore we should command a portion
of both leads. I volunteered myself — a
most willing martyr — to attempt to
hold the south lead. Who else?
Whereupon Rob volunteered the en-
tirely useless information that if he had
to remain in the coffin another ten min-

THE PICK-UP

utes he would die; so we set out south-
ward.

We called at the stack to pay our
compliments to the grub-box. The very
bread was frozen. Our fingers were
too numb in our mits to carve the roast
goose; but we fell upon him like wolves
and tore our portions. And how one
can eat at such times! Health that
mocks the doctor's rules — we downed
clammy mouthfuls that at any other
time would have made our stomachs
turn over and yell.

"Guess it — will thaw — after it gets
down," said friend Robert. " 'Nough?"

"Mn-hmn."

"Then come on! Carry it in your
fist" — and he slammed the lid.

We had still more than half a mile
to go and we set off on the run. When
we reached the desired road allowance
we separated a hundred yards and
dropped into the grass. It was colder
here than in the coffins, and in spite of
recent exertion, I soon shivered so that
my joints rattled ; but -we had more now
in our eye to aid us in forgetting. The
fine snow had almost ceased falling, and
now a mile to the west we could see
our geese. Rising intermittently, great
clouds of them would circle a few mo-
ments and then settle again. This is the
usual order of procedure on a wavey

feeding-ground, where the rear ranks in
such an army find scanty gleaning and
at short intervals are forced to move to
fresh pasturage ahead of their comrades.

At last! A great mass rose, and, as
a large part of them swung about and
deployed across the wind, the head of
the column started to beat back toward
us. So slowly did they move that they
seemed almost to be stationary. Was
it north or south? Now was the test.
First they tacked to the right of our
line, then to the left. They were broken
now in battalions and their course ap-
peared to be half a mile wide. Shim-
mering white or gray, or fading mo-
mentarily, they worked forward, and
when they reached a wide expanse of
plowing they dropped low and skimmed
the ground, knee-high, beating, beating
into the teeth of the wind. It was a
wondrous sight; it was worth the price
we had paid !

But we had more business in hand
than sight-seeing. The long, sinuous
strings in the lead turned to the north-
ward : we were out-maneuvered. I
glanced up the trail to where Bob was
peering like a fox from the golden-rod
cover; and he rose and pointed and
shouted a volley at me. Though I
could not catch a single word, I knew
its purport, so I waved my arm, and

L70G]

ON THE TRAIL OF THE WAVIES

707

immediately he raced off across the
plowing. He was going to head them
off.

I watched him sprint several hundred
yards, and flatten out of sight, then run
again and efface himself. Yet though
the lines of geese seemed to be passing
over and around him, there came no
sound from his gun, and I knew that
the cunning rascals were spotting him
afar off and steering safely by, out of
range. Then four shots rang out at
intervals, and though no birds fell, I
saw that indirectly he was going to suc-
ceed, and I blessed him for it. For
the rearmost flocks, scared by the shots,
were swerving southward and heading
directly toward me. The end of the
first string of this yelling bedlam that
crossed the trail almost tempted my fire,
and I reserved it only because the next
rank appeared likelier. Never, I think,
did hungry Cave-man shoot with more
fierce precision, and two white wan-
derers quit the goose-grounds.

When we returned to the Old Boy
early dusk was falling and the snow
again coming heavier. He had two
more wavies — young ones both — one of

which he admitted that he had killed by
accident. He imparted the not unwel-
come news that the farmer nearest at
hand had sent down his boy to invite
us to come under cover for the night.

"And we're going!" decided the Old
Boy. "We would be all right in that
stack; but it is too cold for those horses
to stand out in it. Coldest day I ever
chased geese! Get up the rest of those
decoys."

Three or four hours later, as we
courted the coal-stove in the farmhouse
while the windows grew frosted and
the northeaster outside swept across the
prairie and hummed shivery tunes
around the corners, we discussed goose
prospects for the morrow.

"That lake will freeze solid to-night.
They will move south before morning,
is my guess," I prophesied.

"Not till they take another feed," de-
clared the Old Boy.

"I saw them leave last year; and they
left at noon, not at night," said Rob.
Then he recounted how he and Doc
had set up on their feeding-ground after
the flight had left it in the morning,
only to see the whole concourse of geese,

THE MEMORY OF OUR NIGHT CAMPS WILL REMAIN

708

OUTING

after spending a
short while in the
lake, rise in huge
detachments and
bear away high
into the south.

The next morn-
ing when we went
out at daylight the
ground was iron-
hard, and the
wind, now in the
northeast and light,
had a sting of win-
ter in it, but the
sky was clear. All
eyes were trained
on the eastern hori-
zon : would they
come? We had
decided that the
game was scarce
worth the candle,
that our chances
were too slim to
warrant setting out
the decoys and dig-
ging in frozen
gumbo; so we
waited.

Just at sun-up some one shouted
"Coming!" and there in the yellow sky
was a long dotted line, then another
and another — lines straight as though
ruled there ; and we knew that the white
legions had not yet left us. And with
the perverseness or wondrous cunning of
their kind, soon the foremost flocks were
circling and dropping upon a big field
where the farmer assured us not a goose
had fed during the season. Each flock
arrived high and spiraled down to the
others. There was no way we knew
to circumvent them, and we had to stand
by and gaze. For an hour the east gave
them up, and the field behind the knoll
swallowed them.

"I can't stand this much longer!"
said the Old Boy. Then he went into
the barn.

"Hey! Films or feathers?" — he was
in the door with two guns and a camera
in his arms.

"Films! No, bring both!"

"Good. I'll carry the gun for you.
I haven't crawled on my belly for a

NO HOLDS BARRED

generation, but I
am going to get a
little closer to that
mob. Get your
blunderbuss too,
Jack" — this to the
farmer, Rob hav-
ing already disap-
peared.

So we set oft.
The nearest geese
were but five hun-
dred yards from
the buildings; so
we wTalked the first
hundred and then
got down on fours.
Between the birds
and us was a dere-
lict field covered
with a scanty weed
growth, and we
toiled away
through this. The
first hundred yards
was tedious, the
second was pen-
ance, the third was
purgatory, the
fourth was a worse
place with all the trimmings.

The rough, frozen ground was cruel,
and I had to look at my knees occa-
sionally to be assured that I was not
stumping on the bones. I was full of
spines and briars — nearly all our cover
was rose bushes; the stubby, prickly,
prairie kind — I had a cramp in my neck
and my jaw ached — for I carried the
5 by 7 camera, pirate fashion, in my
teeth. My mainstay and chief consola-
tion was that I could see the labors of
the Old Boy. I knew that he had sev-
enty-five more pounds of himself to drag
through the briars, and that he was a
much bigger pin-cushion for them to
stick into. His cap was off; his face
was dark with agony; and when he
paused for breath he steamed in the sun-
light like a ham set out to cool.

"This gosh-danged field — must be
stretching!" he panted, as we paused
for perhaps the seventeenth breathing-
spell.

At length we came into a slight de-
pression where, by contorting horribly,

ON THE TRAIL OF THE WAVIES

709

we were able to utilize shoe-leather for
fifty or sixty yards; then came the last
crucial lap up the gentle slope to the
brow of the knoll. Here we had to get
down and crawl flat — lunge forward a
bit on our elbows, then rest and lunge
again.

Getting Within Range

All this time a rare and wonderful
goose picture was before us; though
when I look back now, I feel that we
did not then appreciate it. Still a few
new-comers were arriving out of the
east, and in cherubic pose dropping
slowly to the others on the ground ;
and closer at hand the feeding birds
were constantly flying up toward us.
We could not see them on the field ; but
flock after flock bore straight up at us
till, when it seemed that they surely
were coming out over the weed cover,
they would suddenly drop in a scintilla-
ting mass out of our sight. Several
small knots did come out over the weeds,
and circled our heads and fluttered and
cried an alarm, yet in the ceaseless jab-
bering clamor of the throng on the
ground, their puny voices went un-
heeded. Again a dozen, low-circling,
seemed bent on brushing our heads, and
the Old Boy's gun came up longingly,
then jerked down again. Nothing less
than a river of goose blood could wash
out the memory of that crawl and those
briars; I could see that carved in his
agonized visage.

Finally our friend on the left stage-
whispered that he was close enough; but
I shook my head and implored him to
keep traveling. I wanted big fat geese
and plenty of them on that film.
Twenty painful yards farther the Old
Boy declared in a "Shoot-now-or-I-die"
whisper that he also could reach them,
so I nodded assent.

"Ready? Go!" — and we rose on our
knees. There was a rush and roar and
ten-fold clamor punctuated by four
staccato raps from the guns as a thou-
sand geese rose in front of us, and I
snapped my shutter. Then the whole
field gave up its white burden — a quar-
ter of a mile of them. And now that
I had time to think, I gasped to realize

how far from us the nearest birds had
been. They had been lighting behind
the knoll and had risen fully fifty yards
from us. A minute earlier we would
have sworn, jointly and severally, that
they were not half that distance. De-
ceit, thy name is lesser snow goose!

Then as the view to the southeast-
ward was somewhat clearing of geese,
and their din growing fainter, two sick
and sorry gunners rose stiffly and went
out to gather the slain. Five wing-
tipped birds; not a dead goose among
them. As for my shot I had no means
of knowing at the time what I had
potted; which perhaps was just as well
for me.

It was early in the afternoon as we
were bound homeward that these white
goose wanderers showed more of the
stuff they are made of. We saw them
from afar, for now the air was clear
and the sun bright ; and glittering specks
shone here and there in the low sky to
the eastward ; the flight had changed !
They were coming from the lake and
now working toward the northwest.
They were miles distant, and though we
urged the horses, it seemed an hour be-
fore we could get close enough to solve
their new workings. They were
streaming out over the scrubby sand-
hills and falling upon the first field they
reached; and many of the flocks were
low. It seemed to be a gift from the
gods.

"Get in behind them!" said the Old
Boy. "Use that whip! Straight across
— never mind the hummocks" — bump-
bumpity-humpity — "We'll get there on
the axles! Gome on, Dick! — there's
more at home to fit your collar —
Gi-dap!"

We dashed into the corner of the
scrub, a few hundred yards back of the
field where plain in our sight a great
glittering mass of whiteness was hiding
the stubble, and the sky above it thick
with more of these living snowflakes.
Then we sprang out and scattered.

For an hour the living tide continued
to flow out of the eastward and the
clangor at our backs grew louder. To
ask why these birds so suddenly altered
their course, why they dribbled out in
small detachments, why so many came

710

OUTING

low, why of all places they should fol-
low a course over the willow scrub
where a gunner might stand upright
and shoot, would be to answer merely:
they were wavies. But they did all
these things; and here and there a
double report rang out at times, and a
snowy form or sometimes two hurtled
down into the shrubbery. Yet but a
pittance of that army could fall ; and
just when I figured that we had a dozen
down, there came the rumble of a

wagon in the field and our decoys rose
with a crash and struck westward. Our
game was up.

"I wish that gump had left us alone
for another hour!" said Bob, as he dis-
entangled Dick from a clump of wil-
lows, while we packed the victims. "I
wonder if we will ever get right wise
to the combination of those white
devils?"

"Not if you live to be a hundred!"
grunted the Old Boy.

SWIMMING THE IDEAL
EXERCISE

By L. de B. HANDLEY

Illustrated with Photographs

Cases Which Prove That "W ater-Dogs" Increase Their Chances
for Long and Healthy Lives

WIMMING has made leaping
strides throughout the United
States in recent years. Most
of our schools and colleges
have made it a compulsory
part of their curriculum, the
public is taking more and more interest
in it, and by degrees those sections of the
country not favored with open water
facilities are building indoor and outdoor
pools, so that it is now possible for al-
most anyone to enjoy frequent bathing.
Nevertheless, the great majority seem
not to realize what splendid opportuni-
ties this branch of athletic sport offers
for taking exercise and recreation at the
same time.

This, in view of all that has been said
and written concerning the advantages
to be derived from natation, is rather
strange. No form of exercise affords a
better means of developing the body in
a thorough, symmetrical manner. The
equal distribution of the effort calls into
play every part of the muscular system,
giving it its apportioned share of the
work, the functional organs are bene-
fited, and the natural result is improved

[710]

health, greater strength and efficiency,
and general physical upbuilding.

The only explanation to be found of
the attitude toward swimming of those
not engaged in competition is their ap-
parent belief that it is too strenuous an
exercise for every-day use. This belief,
fostered by supposedly competent but
really ignorant would-be authorities, is
absurd. Granted without argument that
there is nothing more tiring than at-
tempting to exploit an awkward, unscien-
tific, faulty stroke. On the other hand,
a correct, well-executed stroke is no more
trying to wind and muscle than com-
fortable walking. There is absolutely
no reason, indeed, why everyone, irre-
spective of age or sex, should not adopt
swimming as the favorite pastime.

The well-known longevity of com-
peting watermen is one of the best proofs
which can be adduced in support of this
statement. If a man who trains steadily
for swimming, year in, year out, is able
to undergo the constant gruel of speed-
work and still carry success well beyond
the age estimated to limit an athlete's
period of utility in other sports, it cer-

SWIMMING THE IDEAL EXERCISE

711

tainly seems illogical
to claim that swim-
ming in moderation
will harm even the
adolescent or the per-
son in middle life.

But let us glance
over the careers of
some of the world's
leading watermen and
find out what swim-
ming has done for
them.

During the indoor
season of 1913-14 the
soccer water polo
team of the New
York Athletic Club
easily took honors in
the metropolitan dis-
trict, defeating all ri-
vals. Now, among the
players who helped
the team win were
four former members of the late Knicker-
bocker Athletic Club sextet, which won
the national championship at the Ameri-
can type of game in 1898. This quartet,
then, is still able to hold its own after
twenty years of activity, for it may be
taken for granted that it served its no-
vitiate before breaking into the cham-
pionship ranks.

Edwards Adams, a former district
champion, did not take up racing until

E. H. ADAMS, N. Y. A. C.

Won his first championship at the
age of 36. Plunge champion and
record holder (70 ft.).

in the thirties, and he
was thirty-eight years
old when he landed
his first title, which
shows that even an
early start is not
necessary to attain
marked proficiency.

Bud Goodwin, who
last summer cut a nice
slice out of the Amer-
ican one-mile swim-
ming record, swam his
initial race in 1896
and won his first na-
tional championship in
1901, so that he has
been a competitor for
eighteen years. Yet
all his recent per-
formances proclaim
beyond question that
he is to-day a better
and faster swimmer
than ever before in all his career.

Joseph A. Ruddy, pronounced this sea-
son the leading American player at the
international type of water polo, gradu-
ated from the novice class in 1893 and
has followed aquatic sports so successfully
that he now boasts a collection of nearly
seven hundred trophies. No indication
here of his continuous swimming having
had ill effects.

J. Scott Leary, one of the San Fran-

N. Y. A. C. WATER POLO CHAMPIONS ] 902, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7

712

OUTING

coveted goal of the world's greatest
swimmers, and he went abroad this sum-
mer to try the memorable feat.

At the Olympic games of Athens, in
1906, there swam on England's victori-
ous relay team a veteran nearing his
fiftieth year, J. Henry, and the more
recent Olympiad at Stockholm saw an-
other veteran, Cecil Healy, help to garner
laurels for Australia. Healy was figur-
ing already in important events in the
early nineties.

Other cases aplenty might be quoted,
but the world-wide prominence of the
foregoing makes them especially valuable
as illustrations, for the mentioned men,
notwithstanding unceasing swimming of
the most violent form — training and rac-
ing— have found it possible for two
decades or so to hold the van, not in
ordinary competition, but in national and
international contests. Can any other

J. SCOTT LEARY, OLYMPIC CLUB,
SAN FRANCISCO

Former holder outdoor straightaway 100
yds. world's record of 60 seconds.

cisco men picked last February to repre-
sent California at the Mid-Pacific water
carnival in Honolulu, was the national
100-yard recordist before Charles M.
Daniels had been heard of, but he
demonstrated against the great Duke
Kahanamoku that, far from having lost
his speed, he has kept moving abreast of
the times. He covered the century
straightaway in 58 4/5 seconds, a mark
not previously touched by him under
similar conditions.

Alfred Brown, our professional long-
distance swimming champion and the
man who last August placed to his credit
the Battery to Sandy Hook trip in New
York Bay, formerly attempted in vain by
the hardiest of foreign and home nata-
tors, won his spurs a little over twenty-
three years ago. Hale and hearty, he
laughs at the idea of retiring from the
field he has so long honored. Indeed,
having added the Panama Canal — which
he spanned last winter from ocean to
ocean — to the list of his sensational
achievements, he now proposes to tackle
the crossing of the English Channel, the

ALFRED UROWN, NEW YORK

Professional long - distance
champion who won his spurs
twenty-three years ago.

SWIMMING THE IDEAL EXERCISE

713

athletic sport claim such a
heneficial influence on its
devotees?

That a correct modern
stroke entails very little ex-
ertion on the part of the
swimmer is also proved by
the remarkable perform-
ances of mere boys and girls.
The list of our district and
national champions contains
the names of several young-
sters ranging in age between
fourteen and seventeen, as,
for instance, Gilbert Tom-
linson, Robert Dippy, Jo-
seph Wheatley, Leo Handy,
Fred Cherry, and Edward
McCarron. We have also
seen a twelve-year-old lad,
Eddie Snyder, cover fifteen
miles in 6 hours 45 minutes,
and among the little girls
of amazing ability wTe find
three under ten years of age
— Florence MacLaughlin, Josephine
Hose, and Mary Hannaford — who have
figured in races for women at distances
measuring from two to five and one-half
miles.

Obviously, if swimming required un-
due effort, immature youths could never
have triumphed over
seasoned rivals, nor
could tiny girls have
stood the two- and
three-hour strain
needed to negotiate the
courses they did last
season. It may be
stated without hesita-
tion, therefore, that the
modern strokes are
practically effortless,
and that either the
trudgeon or the crawl
will allow one to cover
any distance within
reason comfortably and
easily.

The trouble with a
good many swimmers is
that they do not know
how to swim. Most of
the energy which would
carry them along

JOSEPH A. RUDDY,
N. Y. A. C.

Leading American
player at association
water polo. S w a m
his first race nineteen
years ago, and has
helped to win many
water polo and relay
swimming champion-
ships since.

• %

-- .

EDDIE SNYDER, BROOKLYN

Twelve-year-old lad who swam
the 15 miles from Coney Island
to Brooklyn Bridge in 6 hours 45
minutes in 1913.

smoothly and rapidly, if
properly applied, is wasted
in faulty movements. Time
and again have I seen men
thrash away madly for a
short space, misusing arms
and legs, then stop sudden-
ly, puffing hard and in dis-
tress. To such tyros swim-
ming means a stubborn fight
to keep going, and there is
no doubt that if they tried
to swim for exercise, fre-
quently serious harm might
come from it. But can this
parody of watermanship be
considered swimming?
Hardly, according to pres-
ent-day standards.

Watch a skilled trudgeon
or crawl exponent and note
the difference. He will take
a graceful dive, strike out
unhurried, move along
without fuss or flurry, roll-
ing gently from side to side and emerge
from the water fresh and invigorated,
barely breathing hard. Rest assured it is
not he that will suffer, even from daily
practise.

In the final analysis, the problem is
simply one of method. Let anyone who
enjoys bathing attend
first of all to mastering
a good stroke and he
need never fear over-
exertion. It is no more
difficult to learn the
trudgeon or the crawl
than one of the old-
fashioned strokes. A
competent instructor
should be able to im-
part the fundamental
principles, the basic
movements, in a few
weeks. After that only
practise is required to
make perfect, and it is
safe, meanwhile, to exer-
cise constantly, though,
of course, common sense
should be used in deter-
mining the amount of
work to be done in the
early stages.

714

OUTING

Where an expert swim-
mer may undertake to cover
his quarter-mile daily, at
moderate pace, and profit
thereby, the beginner, or
the man who has not at-
tained good form, should be
satisfied at the outset with
about one hundred yards.
Then, gradually, he can in-
crease the distance as his
stroke improves and his
muscles become accustomed
to the new action.

One who starts by ac-
quiring a correct stroke, and
afterward swims often, will
soon begin to mark the
beneficial effect of the work,
both in his looks and in his
feelings. A brisk stretch in
the water activates the cir-
culation, opens and cleanses
the pores which eliminate
impurities from the blood,
and stimulates the functions
of all the vital organs. One
finishes clean and rejuve-
nated, the ruddy color of
good health on the cheeks,
a pleasant sense within of
buoyant and vigorous well-
being.

And in the long run
swimming tends toward
physical perfection. In the
over-stout it acts as a re-
ducer, eliminating by de-
grees the excess of fatty

tissue; in the unduly thin it adds bulk Young Men
and muscle, thanks to increased appetite, athletic club

,^'

LEO HANDY, BROOK-
LINE (MASS.) HIGH
SCHOOL

Age sixteen. 220-
y a r d interscholastic
record holder and
all - round champion
of the New England
district.

improved digestion and bet-
ter assimilation of food. It
is, in fact, a great normal-
izer, leading insensibly to
the ideal standard of man-
hood and womanhood.

One has but to attend a
water carnival for either
sex and glance over the
competitors to realize what
enviable results are obtained
by indulgence in swimming.
The graceful, symmetrical
bodies, with long clean,
well-rounded muscles, speak
loudly in every line of
health, strength, and effi-
ciency.

Similar development is
within reach of all, and the
summer bathing can be
made by anyone a period of
reconstruction by following
the prescribed course. It
will work wonders. The
end of the season will find
the faithful swimmer in
splendid condition and far
better able both to enjoy
life and to attend to his
duties.

Fortunately, in most
towns and cities of any size
swimming is now practi-
cally an all-the-year-round
sport. Swimming pools are
increasing yearly and com-
petent instructors may be
found in practically every
's Christian Association or
gymnasium.

For the first time in any magazine the "standard" game of
football will be explained in OUTING, beginning in Octo-
ber. The authors are Herman Olcott and Herbert Reed.

FEATHERWEIGHT CAMPING IN

ENGLAND

By HORACE KEPHART

Illustrated with Photographs and Diagrams

Things That Our English Cousins Can Teach Us in the Art of

Going Light

READY-MADE camping
outfit that weighs just
7 pounds! Tent, joint-
ed poles, pegs, ground-
sheet, sleeping-bag, air-
pillow, toilet articles,

canvas bucket and
wash-basin, spirit
stove, cooking uten-
sils— seven pounds
to the very ounce;
and the whole kit
is so compact that
it stows in a light
rucksack, or a cycle
pannier, with room
left for spare cloth-
ing and such ra-
tions as are not
bought along the
route of travel.
Total burden about
ten pounds, with
which the lone
pedestrian or cycle
tourist is independ-
ent of hotels and
boarding-houses!

I first heard of
this campestral
marvel in 1910,
when a young
Londoner wrote
me for a dimen-
sional sketch of an
Indian tomahawk I
had recommended.
A chatty corre-
spondence followed
that introduced me
to a new Old

World scheme of tent life very different
from what I was used to, but one de-
veloped to the last line of refinement and
full of canny tricks of the outers' guild.
For me it was an eye-opener to find
the lightest camp equipments of the
world in England,
a nation I had al-
ways associated
with one-ton "car-
avans" at home
and five-ton "safa-
ris" abroad. And
my British cousin's
letterhead was a
surprise in itself.
It announced him
as a professional
adviser in light-
weight camping, a
designer of tents
and kits, a member
of two camping
clubs that hold reg-
ular meetings and
publish their pro-
ceedings, a contrib-
utor to a periodical
that specializes on
camping and noth-
ing else. It stated
that he gave illus-
trated lectures and
demonstrations of
camp life, rented
out lantern slides
of camping sub-
jects, planned and
equipped camping
trips for anybody
anywhere in the

WILLIAMS TENTS

(1) The "Featherweight" Model, 1% lbs.

(2) "Improved Gipsy," 2]/2 lbs.

(3) The "Motor," 6 ft. high, 4 lbs.

[715]

716

OUTING

4. EIDERDOWN SLEEPING BAG, 1 LB. 4 OZ.

British Isles. Verily, here was the art of
open-air life evolved to a type undreamed
of in our own country. And all this re-
lated not to wilderness travel but to sim-
ple gipsying by the highways and hedges
of the densely populated country of
Great Britain.

Back of this development, I learned,
were years of patient, thoroughgoing ex-
periment by scores of men and women
whose one fad (if it be a fad) was to
perfect a camping kit that should be
light, lighter, lightest, and yet right,
righter, rightest. Then it came to me
from faraway years that the father of
modern lightweight camping was not the
Yankee "Nessmuk," but the Scotchman
Macgregor, who, in 1865, built the first
modern canoe, Rob Roy, and cruised her
a thousand miles with no baggage but a
black bag one foot square and six inches
deep. It was said of Macgregor that he
would not willingly give even a fly deck
passage.

Featherweight camping in "civilized'*
fashion began with the Rob Roy, pro-
gressed with the flotillas of British and
American canoeists who followed its skip-
per's example, was refined by the squad-
rons of cycle tourists and the pedestrian
campers who now scour the highways
and byways of all Christendom in their
yearly holidays.

To one whose camps have always been
pitched in the wilderness the seven-pound
English kit seems amusingly frail and in-
adequate. Such a one might exclaim in
mock reverence, as my partner used to
when he caught me modeling some new-
fangled dingbat: "Great and marvel-
ous art thy works, Lord Geeminy Crim-
iny!" But such an outfit is not meant
for the wilderness. It is for the inde-
pendent vacationist who wants to ramble
off the beaten track, to see what con-
ventional travelers always miss : the most
interesting and picturesque places and
peoples in their own or foreign country.

6. INDIVIDUAL COOKING KIT, 14 OZ.

5. JAPANESE AIR PILLOW, %]/2 OZ.

Of such outers the legion outnumbers alL
our big-game hunters numerous as these
seem to have become in recent years.

European outfitters have been catering
for years to this class of trade ; but what
have we done for it? Precious little.
Whoever goes in for that sort of vacation
must either pack around with him twice
as much weight and bulk as there is any
sense in, if he buys his kit :eady-made>
or he must build an equipment for him-
self, which few tourists have either the
time or the skill to do.

Perhaps, then, this foreign cult may
be worth looking into. Maybe here we
shall find some "kinks" that we can
adapt or improve to our own needs, some
ideas that will breed others in our own
pates.

First, the featherweight kit mentioned
at the opening of this article. It was
designed by Owen G. Williams, of Liv-
erpool, and is marketed by an outfitting
firm in that city. The constituent parts,
with their weights and prices, are given
below. If ordered together the price of
complete outfit is £4 4s, or about $21.00.

FEATHERWEIGHT CAMPING IN ENGLAND

717

SINGLE OUTFIT FOR PEDESTRIAN OR CYCLING
TOURS

Price Weight

£ s. d. lbs. ozs.

"Featherweight" tent complete.. 110 0 2 8

Ground sheet and pegs for same 0 43 15

"Comfy" sleeping bag (eider-
down) 2 20 1 4

Compact brush and comb and

mirror 0 19 2

Japanese rubbered air cushion. 0 16 2

'"Compleat" cooking outfit and

stove 0 3 6 15

Aluminum knife, fork and spoon 0 14 2

J4 pint aluminum flask and egg

cup 0 28 3

Enamelled cup, plate, and mop

per set 0 0 9 5

Canvas bucket and wash basin 0 2 3 6

Pole clips and candle holder... 0 06 2

£4 10 6 7 lbs.

The tent is barely large enough for
one man to sleep in : 3 feet high, 6 feet
long, 3 feet wide on the floor, with front

'WIGWAM " WITH RIDGE POLE AND
SIDE PARRELS

and rear extensions of 32 inches and 36
inches respectively. It is a modification
of the common "A" or wedge pattern.
The doorways are cut so as to peg out
straight in front, affording an outside
windshield for cooking. The back end
is rounded for storage accommodation
and to provide in the worst of weather
for cooking without risk of spilling food-
stuff on the ground-sheet.

The top, which shields the sleeper, is
made of "swallow-wing," unprocessed
but practically waterproof. The bottom
portion of the tent (shaded in the illus-
tration) is of a lighter material that
helps ventilate, but still is spray-proof.
The tent alone weighs 22 ounces, poles
and case 10 ounces, pegs and lines 8
ounces. The tent rolls into a package

7. mr. holding and his silk
"wigwam"

8^ inches long by 4 inches thick. The
poles unjoint to a length of 23 inches.

I am assured that this midget shelter
will stand up in a hurricane that over-
throws wall tents, marquees, and the
army Bell tent. Enthusiastic campers
use it even in winter, sleeping out with-
out a fire when the tent sags heavily
with snow. They find it satisfactory
protection in torrents of gusty rain so
fierce as to wet through a common tent
in spite of the fly, by driving through the
material of back or front. It has stood
nine months' continuous service in Can-
ada.

The ground-sheet is of a special fawn
waterproof sheeting, 5 feet by 3 feet, eye-
letted at each corner, and with pegs to
hold it down.

The sleeping-bag is shaped as shown in
the cut, narrow at the foot to save weight
and bulk, and of the old-fashioned pat-
tern closed with a draw-string. It is
stuffed thinly with genuine eiderdown,
the warmest of all known materials for
its weight and (rolled up) bulk. It has
a thin rubbered cover bag, waterproof
and windproof. For those who dislike

SIDE PARRELS

718

OUTING

10. TENT POLES OF JOINTED BAMBOO

ab. In cover.

cd. Walking-stick form.

the stuffiness of so small a "sleeping-
pocket" the same outfitters provide down
quilts (common down) of two sizes.
The 6 by 4 feet quilt, with valance,
weighs 3% pounds.

The air-pillow, which serves also as a
cushion, is incredibly light and compact.
The reeded form here illustrated (more
comfortable than the plain oblong pil-
low listed with the set) is 12 inches by
10 inches, weighs only 2l/2 ounces, and
three of them can be carried in a coat
pocket when deflated.

Since the English camper can seldom
use wood for fuel, he is obliged to carry
a miniature stove and some alcohol or
kerosene. In this instance it is an alco-
hol burner of common pad form, which
is less likely to get out of order than an
alcohol vapor stove. The one-man cook-
ing set shown in accompanying cut com-
prises an outer pan holding V/2 pints,
an inner pan holding 1 pint, a 4^-inch
fry-pan, a fine gauze toaster, a tea infu-
ser, and pan-handles. The utensils are
made of light sheet tin. The kit, with
stove, nests in a set 4^s by V/> inches,
and weighs 14 ounces. A larger set,
7 by 4 inches, weighs 28 ounces.

Another very light outfit is the "Phan-
tom" kit, designed and made by the vet-

eran camper and outdoor writer, T. H.
Holding, of London. It includes the
following articles:

Tent 13 ounces

Poles (3) 15

Pegs •. 10 "

Ground Sheet 10 "

Ground "Blanket" 8 "

Down Quilt 20 "

Cooking Kit 16 "

6 lbs.

The "Wigwam," as Mr. Holding
calls his tiny tent, is of ordinary "A"
shape and is made of Japanese silk. It is
larger than the Williams pattern, 5 feet
1 1 inches long, \y2 feet wide and 4 feet
high, giving sufficient headroom to lounge
in comfortably. When rolled up it can
be carried in an ordinary pocket. It
will be noticed that the poles and pegs
weigh practically twice as much as the
tent itself. This is due partly to the
use of shear poles in front, instead of a
single vertical pole, giving freer entrance
and egress, besides supporting the tent
better. A ridge-pole, weighing ten
ounces, is supplied extra, and is recom-
mended for the sake of trim setting.
The poles are of jointed bamboo, 21^
inches long and J4> inch diameter. Pegs
are of aluminum, shaped as here shown,
and sharpened flat to give a good grip
in the ground.

11. TENT PEGS
Aluminum or galvanized iron, 4 to 7^2 in.

FEATHERWEIGHT CAMPING IN ENGLAND

719

HB?

) JPSJB

flliiifli i ■

l2r-^— ^93

I 1 11

sP1 l-S!li i'.iiliiHjg5

=%mKJ

__ iilllgl

Motor
Primus

Baby
Primus

Pocket
Primus

12.

KEROSENE VAPOR STOVES

Tents of very thin material, even
when mere midgets, sag badly both at
top and sides, when pitched in the com-
mon way. To overcome this, Mr. Hold-
ing uses parrels or guys in the middle of
each side, as shown in the diagram.
(An American invented this expedient
independently, some years ago.) The
parrels pull outward, turning the wedge
tent into a semi-wall tent. They increase
the roominess and make the tent staunch-
er in a gale. Referring to the diagram,
C shows the theoretically straight side
of an "A" tent. E shows the actual in-
ward sag from wet and wind pressure.
F is the opposite side of tent without
parrels. G is the same wall held out
and made taut by the parrels BG.

The ground-sheet is of light mackin-
tosh. Over it goes a little "ground-
blanket" of thin cashmere, with eyelets
at the corners, so that it can be pegged
down. This is not only for the sake of
warmth, but also to save wear on the
mackintosh, which has to be very thin.

Mr. Holding's eiderdown quilt is only
to cover with, not to roll up in. The
Wigwam size is 5 feet 10 inches by 4
feet, to which is added a foot of cloth
valance all around, which is pegged or
weighted down so that the sleeper will
not kick off his covering. These quilts
are thinner than the domestic ones of
down, and roll up into remarkably small
compass.

The cooking kit is made of thin cop-

14. CANVAS WIND SHIELD FOR PRIMUS

13. SO-SOON COOKING KIT, 1 LB. 5 OZ.

per. It includes a pad spirit stove with
damper and windshield, a boiler 6 inches
across, a porridge pan that fits inside,
and a fry-pan that forms a cover for the
boiler; also a separate handle for the va-
rious pans. The vessels are seamless.
The kit weighs one pound and costs
twelve shillings.

Of course, this six-pound outfit does
not include everything that a hiker re-
quires in camp and on the march. Mr.
Holding gives a list of articles recom-
mended for two pedestrians traveling to-
gether :

lbs. oz.
"A" Tent, 6 ft. by 5 ft. 9 in. by 5 ft.

9 in 2 0

Set of 2 Tent Poles 1 0

Set of Pegs (ordinary skewers) 3

Oil Stove— "Baby Primus" 1 3

Aluminum Pans — ''So Soon" pattern. 1 1

Piece of Waterproof, for tent 2

Two Aluminum Cups and Saucers

(plates) 4

Two Aluminum Knife, Fork and Spoon

sets 4

Candlestick and Candle 2

Aluminum Box of Soap 1

6 4

720

OUTING

1 5. CYCLING KIT FOR TWO

Weight 20 lbs. Bag standing in rear holds

entire outfit.

The piece of waterproof is two feet
square. It is to roll up the tent in when
wet, and serves otherwise as wash-basin,
seat, etc.

Each man carries half of this com-
pany kit, making his share 3 pounds 2
ounces. Adding his personal equipment,
his burden becomes:

lbs. oz.

Share of Baggage 3 2

Mackintosh Coat 1 6

Air Pillow 3

Down Pillow (a luxury) 1

Sweater 1 0

Sleeping Stockings (long ones) 6

Extra Walking Socks 4

Down Quilt 1 10

Thin Extra Vest (undershirt) 5

Scarf 2

Tooth Brush, etc 3

Hold-all with Straps (under) 8

9 2

For hiking instead of cycling, a ruck-
sack should be substituted for the hold-
all. Adding a towel, the total weight,
without food, is close to ten pounds, with
part food 12 pounds.

Of the silk tent Mr. Holding says:
"Such is its toughness that I have seen a
pair of the strongest fingers try to tear
the material, and fail. For its weight
and thickness it is the most powerful
stuff in the world in the shape of textile
goods. I have put several tents I pos-
sess to protracted and severe tests, and
I have never had one to tear. One has
stood some of the heaviest rains, in fact,
records for thirty hours at a stretch,
without letting in wet, and I say this of
an 11 -ounce silk one. . . .

"What, however, silk does not stand
well is friction. As an instance, open

your silk umbrella and look down the
folds, half way between each rib. The
parts of a tent, therefore, which show
the wear are at the pegging and head
places, where the fingers touch it in
erecting. To this end I recommend they
should not be rolled up, as cotton fabrics,
but rucked, like a pocket handkerchief."

The "Wigwam" is also furnished
ready-made in various other materials,
cheaper but heavier than silk, of which
the next lightest is lawn, weighing 1
pound 8 ounces.

The "Baby" kerosene vapor stove here
listed is like a regular Primus except
that its valve is in different position, the
pump is set in snugly at the side, it
has rounded cone feet set inward, and
it is of reduced size, weighing only 1
pound 3 ounces instead oi 4 pounds. A
still smaller stove of the same pattern,
called the "Pocket Primus," measures
2^4 inches deep by 4 inches across, when
packed, and weighs only 1 pound 1
ounce.

Another specialty worth introducing
over here is the "So-Soon" cooking kit.
We have nothing equal to it as a light
and compact set of utensils for vapor
stoves. In the accompanying illustra-
tion, the lower vessel is a boiler 3% by
5^2 inches the second is another boiler
that fits inside the first, next is a stew
or porridge pan which, inverted, makes
a cover for the kit; on top is the frying-
pan, 1 inch deep. All of these vessels
are of stamped aluminum. A separate
handle fits all of them. A "Baby

I'EDO" CAR, 18 LBS.

FEATHERWEIGHT CAMPING IN ENGLAND

721

Primus" stove fits inside the nested pans.
The main boiler tapers narrower at the
bottom, so as to keep the set from rat-
tling when carried about. No part has
excrescence or projection to obstruct the
packing. The whole set, omitting stove,
weighs 1 pound 5 ounces.

There is a smaller "So-Soon" set made
for the "Pocket Primus," which is 3^/2
by 5/4 inches, and its three vessels weigh
only 8 ounces.

A complete cycling kit, 'weighing less
than twenty pounds, including food and
sufficient for two men, is shown in ac-
companying illustration. The rectangu-
lar bag standing in the rear is empty,
and carries the whole outfit. It is 15 by
7 by 7 inches.

A novel aid to pedestrian travel, for
carrying luggage, is the "Pedo" car,
which can be taken anywhere — on foot-
paths, mountain pat'hs, or roads. There
are two sizes, weighing 15 pounds and
18 pounds, respectively, of which the
larger is here shown. The shafts are
simply the tent poles, and the cross trace
at the end is a section of the ridge pole.
A rather elaborate outfit for two people
can be carried in one of these little per-
ambulators without scarcely feeling the
drag. The idea originated with a mem-
ber of the National Camping Club, who,
not caring to pack a heavy bundle on his
back, rigged a pair of baby-carriage
wheels to a frame and axle, attached his
tent poles for shafts, and made a trip,
w7ith his brother, without hardly feeling
the weight at all. I suppose it would
take grit for a New Yorker to be seen
with such a rig in the "provinces."

Returning to the subject of tents: the
English outfitters supply them of many
shapes and sizes and various lightweight
materials, besides common tents, of
course. It will strike American campers
as peculiar that none of the extra thin
materials used in tents up to 7x7 size
are subjected to any water-proofing proc-
ess whatever. For rain-shedding qual-
ity they depend solely, like an umbrella,
upon the closeness with which the textile
is woven. On examining these cloths
one is surprised at their exceeding fine-
ness of texture. Some of the cotton
goods are woven almost twice as fine as
our so-called "balloon silk" or the

4-ounce special Lowell cloth used for
extra-light racing sails on small craft.
The best lawns, etc., are made from
Egyptian cotton, which has a stronger
and finer fiber than American cotton, and
is said to be 15 per cent stronger. In
spite of this, I doubt if any thin, un-
processed tent is really rainproof unless
it is stretched very taut and the occu-
pant takes great pains to avoid touching
it from the inside. In a shelter only
three or four feet high, and wedge-
shaped, one can hardly help rubbing
against the interior, and then will come
the drip-drip that we know too well.
Even the rear wall, though vertical, will
be rubbed by one's pillow in a very
short tent, and then, if rain is driven by
the wind, this wall will leak. The only
remedy wTould be to waterproof the cloth
or use a fly.

Dangers of Thin Tenting Material

There is another objection to ex-
tremely thin tenting material : it requires
tighter stretching, and hence more pegs,
than stouter material would, or it will
belly and sag. Moreover, it stretches
excessively, and then the poles will no
longer fit. Mr. Holding himself reports
that a small tent stretches from three to
nine inches, in service, and we infer that
it will never stop "growing." Water-
proofing would prevent nearly all of this,
for it is the alternate tightening and
loosening of the cloth from wetting and
drying that makes the fiber of the ma-
terial loosen up.

On all accounts, lightness of material
may be carried to an extreme. I have
samples of rubberized balloon cloth (the
real articles) that are lighter per square
foot than a silk handkerchief, and they
are genuinely waterproof, but no one in
his senses would use such stuff in tent-
making.

A feature of some of the English tents
that deserves copying is the angular ex-
tension of lower edge of door flaps, so
that the doors can be pegged out straight
in line with sides of tent, forming wind-
shields and protection against driving
rain when one wants the door open.

Another is that the ground-sheet, in-
stead of being made square or rectangu-

722

OUTING

lar, has the sides and rear end cut in
segments of a circle, so as to fit against
the walls when they are drawn out-
ward by sagging of ridge and stretching
of sides.

The bedding described in this article
would not suit us at all. The down
sleeping-bag would be too stuffy. The
down quilts are so narrow that they can
only be used to cover with, and so the
under side of the body is left unprotected
by anything but cold mackintosh and a
very thin sheet of woolen goods. In

England, I suppose, it is taken for grant-
ed that the camper will procure, for
each night, a bedding of straw or hay;
but in our country there are many places,
even in "civilization," where one would
have to chance it on the bare ground.
The bone-searching chill that comes up
from that ground at night is never en-
dured twice if one can help it. In our
climate (or climates), as a rule, we need
twice as much bedding under us as over
us, if we have nothing to serve as
mattress.

The next article by Mr. Kephart describes Adventures
in a Cavern — in the Ozark hills below St. Louis

AN EFFECTIVE NAIL

By F. E. O.

FOUR of us were camping, some
years ago, on Big Moose Lake in
the Adirondacks. One morning,
finding that I had exhausted all the am-
munition which would fit my rifle, I was
forced to use an old muzzle loading
twenty-bore shotgun which one of the
boys had brought along for bird shooting.

On proceeding to load the gun, I dis-
covered that there was no small shot in
camp, and had about decided that I
would have to forego any hunting for the
day, when I happened to put my hand
in my pocket and pulled out a nail. It
was of good size, but decidedly rusty.
The sight of the nail gave me an idea.
Why would it not do for a bullet or pro-
jectile in the gun?

After pondering the idea for a mo-
ment, I dropped the nail down the muz-
zle, head first, pushed home a wad, and
started for a likely thicket for partridge.

I had been traveling perhaps fifteen
minutes, when a fine buck jumped up
ahead of me and bounded gracefully
away through the trees. He did not run
directly from me, but sharply off to the
right, his tail (commonly called the
"flag," by hunters) switching violently
from side to side at every leap.

Instinctively I brought the gun to my

shoulder, and then paused, recollecting
the nail, and considering it unlikely that
it would do more than wound the animal
and that to wound and not kill would
give me little satisfaction. Then the
sight of the switching flag gave me an
idea.

Drawing my eye pretty well down into
the sights, I waited for the right mo-
ment. Just as the buck fairly grazed a
big tree in his flight, his tail slapped the
bark. I fired on the instant — at the tail,
sending the nail through the solid part of
the flag, and into the tree.

To my delight, the tail did not tear
through the nail and release the deer.
There I had him nailed to the tree.

But the animal was as much alive as
ever, and struck out viciously at me with
his sharp forward hoofs when I ap-
proached. I had no more ammunition
and debated what to do. Finally I de-
cided to return to camp and borrow a
rifle from one of the other boys, if any of
them had yet returned.

I was back with a rifle in half an hour,
but did not have occasion to shoot again.
The deer was still there, nailed to the
tree, but he was dead. While I was gone
for the rifle, he had died of galloping
lock-jaw, from the rust on the nail.

"OLD SHARPNOSE" OF BONE

VALLEY

By JOSEPH T. BOWLES

How Beginner s Luck Was the Downfall of the Prize Bear of the

Big Smokies

YING just eleven miles
above Elkmont, Tennessee,
to the south, is a section of
the Smoky Mountain region
known as "Bone Valley."
» The section came by its ap-

pellation by reason of the fact that many
years ago a herd of some two or three
hundred head of cattle perished in a ter-
rific snowstorm. Even yet, bones of
cattle can be found: on the ridges which
bisect the valleys at intermittent inter-
vals; in the beds of streams; alongside
the creeks; in the gaps, and at the bases
of the knobs which rise irregularly to
assist in completely walling in that sec-
tion from the outlying boundaries spring-
ing tributary from the main lead of the
Smokies, lying only a short distance
away.

It is, therefore, small wonder that no
living thing could survive the deep
snows nor that starvation followed as a
matter of course. One lone herder,
housed in an ill-provided log cabin lo-
cated at the summit of one of the ridges,
tended the cattle. Some say he was able
to extricate himself and flee. Others tell
that he, too, perished with his cattle.
In either event "Bone Valley" is appro-
priately named.

On one side of the main lead of the
Smokies at this point lies North Caro-
lina. On that side is to be found a
plentiful supply of chestnut timber,
which furnishes, in good seasons, an
abundant "mast."1 Here is one of the
numerous "feeding grounds" of the
Smoky Mountain Black Bear.

On the opposite side of the same lead

1Chestnuts.

lie the "slicks"2 and "roughs"2 in the
Tennessee territory. It is customary
with the bears to lay up in their "beds"
on the Tennessee side during the day
and, at night, to cross intervening ridges
over into North Carolina to feed. Sur-
prised in their feeding grounds on the
North Carolina side, the bears flee for
safety over into Tennessee.

Right on the boundary line sits Hall's
Cabin, where many hunting parties ren-
dezvous every spring and fail. The
cabin is so constructed that one-half rests
on North Carolina soil, while the other
half is in Tennessee. The chimney — a
two-sided affair — rests right on the line,
throwing the kitchen end of the cabin
in Tennessee and the sleeping quarters
in North Carolina. Snug and comfort-
able, with bunks arranged alongside the
walls in the sleeping-room, Hall's Cabin
is truly an ideal hunter's camp. Many
a bear has been skinned at the cabin,
and if the walls could speak they would
doubtless recount many tales of the old
bear hunters who have been frequenters
of the cabin for years.

On an eminence free from all trees
and undergrowth for several hundred
yards on either side, with gentle slopes
from all directions, the cabin commands
a magnificent view of the surrounding
country. Far to the southwest can be
seen the outlines of Hang-Over Moun-
tain, limned faintly against the horizon.
To the northwest, the lights of Knox-
ville, Tennessee, some forty-odd miles
distant as the crow flies, can be seen on
clear nights; while against the setting

2Very thick growths of laurel, ivy and
green brier, practically impenetrable.

[723]

724

OUTING

sun the smoke from the lumber mill at
Ritter, North Carolina, some twelve
miles away, slowly winds its way up-
ward, making grotesque figures against
the countless intervening ridges over in
the direction of the Tennessee River.

Wonderful is the view from this van-
tage-point, five thousand feet above the
sea-level ! Ranges and knobs and val-
leys, one after another in rapid succes-
sion, show in plain sight to the naked
eye, resembling in effect the undulations
of the ocean's waves, except that here
and there is a vivid patch of color, green,
where laurel and ivy flourish in violent
confusion; dark brown and red, where
the stiff winds of early winter have
tanned the leaves — not yet all fallen —
of the chestnuts, the beaches, the hem-
locks, and the buckeyes, while dark gray
against the knobs appear the ominous
cliffs which seemingly frown down upon
the whole countryside.

The Ho?ne of the Bears

In all this beauty and grandeur,
marked by a rugged picturesqueness,
does the Mighty Bruin live and move
and have his being! Small wonder is
it that he contests every foot of ground
when his ancestral homestead is invaded
by hunters and their dogs; nor that,
when at bay, he fights with all the won-
derful strength with which Nature has
endowed him, that he might prevent
interlopers wresting away from him his
domain, the title to which was vested
in and handed down to him by his illus-
trious ancestors! Here, 'midst all this
picturesque grandeur, is staged the story
which follows.

When Joe Cole, his son Amos, and
myself joined the party at Hall's Cabin
at their invitation there were eight men
in the crowd. We had eight dogs to
begin with, but one of them — just a
pup he was — never showed up after the
first chase. It was assumed — and the
assumption was well grounded — that
"Old Sharpnose," a she-bear with a won-
derful record for fighting and maiming
the dogs, had been jumped in that race
and that the pup, new at the game, had
unceremoniously closed in on the bear,
with the result that he was either

squeezed or bitten to death. The dogs
are what are known as "Plott's,"3 and
soon learn that they are not expected
to get too close to the quarry, but that
on the contrary they are to "dog" the
game and "worry" it, jumping in and
taking a bite when opportunity offers,
then as quickly jumping out of the dan-
ger zone before the bear has time to
nab it.

Bears instinctively know that the
thick, inflexible laurel furnishes their
best retreat, and they invariably make
for a patch of it when jumped. Dogs
do not have much of a chance when
fighting a bear in the thickest laurel
meshes. The dog's only salvation is the
fact that a bear will invariably turn
loose a dog that has been nabbed and
reach for the dog that has hold of it.
Otherwise all the dogs in the mountains
would be killed off in short order.

The dogs know the bear's manner of
fighting equally as well as the bears ap-
preciate that the laurel affords them the
most likely arena in which to be put at
bay. Apropos of this, I recall hearing
old "Doc" Jones, a member of our party,
tell about a fight of which he was a close
eye-witness. The laurel was so thick
and the dogs in such close proximity that
he was afraid to risk a shot for fear of
killing a dog. One of the dogs standing
close to the bear was taken off his
guard, when the old bear reached out
and nabbed him. With one foreleg
around the dog's body she was pulling
him toward her, while with the other
she was drawing his head toward her
cavernous jaws.

The pup whined a little which was a
signal for one of the other dogs to jump
in and take hold. Immediately one of
the dogs came to the rescue of the one
held in the bear's arms and took a bite
at the bear, when the latter instantly
turned loose the dog in her arms and
made a lunge at the latest offender. He
as quickly released his hold and sprang
to one side out of reach. This gave

3Plott hounds were originally bred by the
Plotts of Haywood or Jackson County, North
Carolina. Plott "curs" are the same except
that they are interbred with some foreign
dog, probably a mastiff. These make splen-
did bear dogs. (Authority: Horace Kep-
hart.)

"OLD SHARFNOSE" OF BONE VALLEY

725

"Doc" the chance he was looking for and
he shot the bear through the head.

Before our little party of three, con-
sisting of Cole, his son, and myself,
reached the cabin, several unsuccessful
drives, had been conducted. Then for
two days we drove with the same result.
Late in the afternoon of the second day
after our arrival, after having followed
the dogs all day, we were a discouraged
lot — tired, disheartened, disgusted. Our
rations were about gone and we had de-
cided to break camp the next morning.

Old Joe Cole, a grizzled old bear
fighter of many years' experience, here
vouchsafed the statement that he had
had a dream the night before and felt
that something was going to happen in
spite of the fact that all the dogs, as well
as the drivers and standers, were in
camp. The dogs had been gone all night
and were lolling around camp. They
had been hunting steadily for two weeks
and every one bore the marks of "Old
Sharpnose's" claws or teeth. Cole's
sixteen-year-old son Amos had borrowed
his father's shotgun and had gone across
on Chestnut Ridge, about a mile and a
half away, to kill a "mess" of boomers4
for supper. Suddenly, about three o'clock,
the report of a shotgun from the direc-
tion Amos had taken reached our ears.

"Thar's one boomer!" sang out old
"Doc" Jones.

Then, BANG! again.

"Thar's another!" said "Doc."

"Mebbe he's missed the fust shot,"
drily remarked Allen Crisp.

Nothing more was thought about the
shots. In about half an hour or more
the boy came running into camp, his red
cheeks and eyes aglow with excitement.
Something had evidently happened.

"Whar's yer game, Boy?" queried
"Doc" Jones.

The boy's father saw instantly that
something had happened to the boy and
he asked kindly:

"What's the matter, Amos?"

"I shot at four bears, Pap," replied
Amos. "Shot the old she fust and one
of the cubs nex'. I hit 'em both, I
know, 'cause I seed the fur jest bile whar
I hit 'em. I would er taken a shoot at
all of 'em ef a shell hadn't hung in my

4 Small squirrels.

gun." Then, after a moment, "Thar
was bears all around me!"

The soporific atmosphere which had
been hanging over our camp was imme-
diately dissipated. Each man grabbed
his gun and, despite the fact that the
dogs were tired and worn out, they were
forthwith pressed into active service, and
all made a bee-line for the latest ren-
dezvous of Bruin. Riley Cable, Allen
Crisp, his son, Ira Crisp, and young
Cole went with the dogs to put them on
the trail, while the standers hurried out
to the stands for the Chestnut Ridge
drive, which luckily were located less
than a quarter of a mile from camp.

Young Cole explained hurriedly that
he was looking for squirrels and that, a
few minutes before the four bears
walked up on him, he had shot a squir-
rel. Shortly after he heard a rustle in
the leaves and looked around. He
thought at first it was some of the hogs
that belonged to the logging camp a
mile or so below. But directly an old
she-bear, of tremendous proportions,
came into sight not more than thirty
paces from him; then a yearling bear and
a couple of cubs. Not far away some
loggers were felling trees. The crash
of an extraordinarily large tree that had
been felled a few minutes before doubt-
less caused the bears to come along at
that time of day. They evidently did
not hear the report of the shotgun, as
they approached from the other side
of the ridge.

Bred in the Bone

True to his mountain instinct and
training, the boy's nerve never quavered
for a moment. Hurriedly throwing in
a couple of shells loaded with buckshot,
he took careful aim at the old she, sight-
ing at the point on the bear's body where
his "pap" had many times told him to
shoot a bear — low down below the
shoulders, "for a bear's heart is right
agin' the breastbone," explained the fa-
ther. The boy fired a load into the
bear's side and, as he expressed it, "the
fur jest biled from her whar the buck-
shot hit." He then shot one of the
cubs, which he said fell off the log on
which it had momentarily hopped and

726

OUTING

went rolling down the hill. A cartridge
hanging in his gun prevented further
shots. The old she had run off down
toward the creek and, shortly after, the
boy says he heard her let out a "squall."

When the dogs were put on the trail
at the point where he fired at the old she
they ran on down toward the creek and,
for a moment, stopped barking, then
took on up the creek. Evidently they
had come upon the old she's dead body
and then, sensing the trail of the two
other bears leading off from that point,
went on up the creek in the wake of the
yearling and cub. When the boy Amos
ran back to the camp to get the dogs,
the two bears evidently tracked the old
she and then, when they heard the dogs
coming, started out in the direction de-
scribed.

It was not long after striking the trail
leading from the point where the old
she was lying that the dogs were in full
fettle and furnishing as pretty a race as
falls to the lot of man to witness. The
creek flowed right at the base of the
Chestnut Ridge, leading on past the
stands, while the woods on the right
were open and furnished a splendid
vista. While the participants in the
race could not be seen, the sound of the
chase, the dogs' barks, and the general
hue and cry, supplemented by shouts
from the drivers, could be heard dis-
tinctly all the way and furnished music
to our ears.

It was growing late and we were
very much afraid that we were not in
time to intercept any of the bears which
had not been fired upon by the boy.
On came the yelping pack of dogs.
Nearer grew the sounds from their
muffled throats. Suddenly to the right
of one of the standers there was a noise
as of something heavy running. Directly
the brush in that direction began to move
hurriedly as though a large body was
passing through. Something was com-
ing fast and sure and making for the
crossing. John Cable moved down that
he might get a better shot if it really
was a bear. A few minutes more and
it would be too dark for an accurate
shot. The nerves of all were tense.
Everyone was on the qui vive. Tired
and worn out as we all were, with

many days of unsuccessful driving to
our credit, small wonder was it that
our pulses beat quicker and that our
breath came faster.

When Cable moved down nearer the
point where the noise in the brush indi-
cated that the invisible object would
cross, the other two standers, located
only a few hundred yards on either side,
looked with strained eyes filled with de-
sire to be in Cable's shoes. The excite-
ment of the chase itself, the yelp of the
dogs, the shouts of the drivers, all paled
into insignificance as compared to the in-
terest which centered around the heavy
body approaching the stands out of the
brush. Everything else was forgotten.
Each man had his hands firmly pressed
upon his gun.

Suddenly out of the brush a black
object appeared, stopped for an instant
as if uncertain whether or not to pro-
ceed; then, sighting a log in Cable's ter-
ritory which would make its passage
across the ridge simpler, this dark object
resumed its mad flight at the head of the
"flying squadron" in its wake. Cable
was prepared. Experience in many
drives had taught him coolness. He took
deliberate aim at a point on the log
which the dark object would have to pass
before the distance of the log was suc-
cessfully negotiated. Rapidly the dark
body approached that point. Just as its
nose obstructed the "bead" wThich the
marksman had drawn, the trigger was
pulled and the dark object crumpled up
into a helpless ball. The bullet had en-
tered just back of the ear and broken
the neck of the yearling.

What he was doing with the old she
and two cubs could not be figured out.
Perhaps he intended crossing over into
Tennessee territory with them. Shortly
after, the drivers and dogs arrived, the
latter in the lead. It was then about
dark. It was accordingly decided to
wait until next morning to look for the
old she and the cub Amos had fired uponu

That night talk around the fire was
centered about the chase just ended.
Conjecture was rife as to whether or not
Amos had killed the old she. It was be-
lieved that it was "Old Sharpnose," ac-
cording to Amos's report of her size,
and then, too, this famous old bear had

"OLD SHARFNOSE" OF BONE VALLEY

727

been what is termed a "bor'en5 shee" the
previous year. The general consensus
of opinion as expressed around the fire
was that we would find the bear dead in
the spot where she must have been lying
when she gave vent to her "death
squall."0

Early next morning we repaired to
the scene of the conflict. The ridge
where the bears were fired upon is quite
steep on one side, and, when the cub
was shot, it half fell, half jumped off
the log it was momentarily standing upon
and went rolling down the more or less
precipitous hillside. We put the dogs
on its trail (we were slow-tracking the
dogs) and it was not long until we
came upon the dead body of the cub.
It had rolled nearly to the bottom of the
incline, when its progress was arrested
by a large chestnut.

We retraced our steps to the top of
the ridge and then put the dogs on the
trail of the old she. She had taken the
opposite side of the ridge to that of the
cub and was looking back to see if her
cubs were following, when Amos fired
upon her. The boy said that she had
her fore feet up on a log preparatory to
jumping over, with her head turned to-
ward him, giving a splendid side shot,
when he fired. She immediately jumped
down off the log and ran off in the di-
rection of the stream. About a hun-
dred yards from this log the dogs led us
to a rock ledge protruding on the side
of the ridge. With some difficulty we

5Buiren she. Bears breed every two years.
The years they do not breed they are termed
"bor'en shees" by the mountaineers.

fiOld bear hunters to a man declare that
never in the history of their experience have
they known of a case where a bear "squalls"
after being shot that it was not dying.

scrambled across this ledge and saw
where the old she had slid down or fell
off at the end. She was making for the
laurel, but could not quite make it, as
another hundred yards revealed her dead
body in a sort of sink hole — the kind of
hole that would be made by a small tree
being torn up by its roots. It looked
as though she had just fallen in the hole,
her fast-ebbing strength preventing her
from going farther. It must have been
"Old Sharpnose," for she had many
marks of conflicts with dogs on her an-
atomy. She weighed more than four
hundred pounds. It required five men
to pack her back to camp.

The evening before the dogs, having
preceded the men who went with them,
stopped when they reached the dead body
of the bear and took on up the creek in
the wake of the two bears whose trail
led from the dead body of "Old Sharp-
nose." The men, of course, followed
the hue and cry of the chase. Other-
wise the bear would have been found
then. But Amos should have found
both the cub and the old she had he not
lost his head. Old bear hunters say,
though, that it is a bit disconcerting, to
say the least, to hear a dying bear holler
"Oh-h-h-h Lor," resembling "Oh,
Lord," as closely as possible without
really using those words.

No more drives were made and the
party broke up that afternoon and the
next day. The boy Amos had an expe-
rience that he will probably never again
have, even though he lives to be a hun-
dred years old — an experience, further-
more, that the author and many others
who love to engage in bear drives would
cheerfully pay fifty dollars for any day.
It was "beginner's luck" over again.

One of the features of the October OUTING will
be The North Woods Guide by Edward Breck. It
is a story of personal experiences and observations.

SAVING ALL PARTS OF THE
PICTURE

By WARWICK STEVENS CARPENTER

Diagrams by the Author

I
THE WORK OF THE LENS

HE simple, uncorrected
eye of the camera has de-
fective vision. It cannot
see clearly. This is not a
matter of focusing by the
operator, but of genuine
faulty "eyesight," quite comparable in
many respects to the imperfect vision of
the human eye. ' Like the latter, it must
be fitted with glasses to overcome its
defects. Thus, while the first cameras
had but a single glass in their lenses,
nearly all of those manufactured to-day,
including even the cheapest, have objec-
tives built up of from two to six or
eight, each one of these elements in the
lens having its share in the production
of a clearer image on the ground glass
than was at first obtainable. The num-
ber of glasses entering into its construc-
tion, however, is not in itself the meas-
ure of the efficiency of the lens, one of
the best having but three, while another
in the same class has eight. The formu-
la according to which the glasses are
ground and adjusted determines the
number of elements used and the final
efficiency of the whole.

Accordingly one who purchases a pho-
tographic lens selects it for the attributes
that it is stated to possess. Fortunately
for the great number of amateur pho-
tographers who cannot have expert
knowledge, this business is on a most
satisfactory basis for the consumer, and
he may rely with a considerable degree
of assurance upon catalogue statements.
As a further safeguard, every reputable
lens manufacturer will supply lenses on
trial and refund the purchase price if

[728]

they are not satisfactory. The chief re-
quirement upon the purchaser, therefore,
is to know the features which a lens
must embody to meet his needs. These
attributes are several and not entirely
simple, but I shall endeavor to make
them clear in the limited space here
available.

The most serious defect of the simple
spectacle lens, composed of but a single
glass, is chromatic aberration. This is
quite analogous to the dispersion of
white light into its constituent colors
upon passing it through a prism. The
lens disperses the light which passes
through it, instead of holding it together,
and brings the rays of different colors
to a focus in different planes, the violet
and blue light being focused nearest to
the lens, green and yellow focusing at a
point sometimes as much as an eighth ol
an inch farther back, and the red focus-
ing still farther away. Green and yel-
low are the rays of strongest visual in-
tensity, while blue and violet are the
most powerfully active upon the plate.
Thus when one has a clear image on the
ground glass the resulting negative will
be perceptibly blurred on account of the
lack of focus of the blue and violet rays.

Chromatic aberration may be lessened
by stopping the lens down. It is largely
corrected, however, by fitting the single
spectacle lens with a glass which brings
the violet and blue rays to a focus in the
same plane with the yellow and green.
For all ordinary work this is quite
enough chromatic correction, as the red
rays, though out of focus, have so little
effect upon most photographic plates.

SAVING ALL PARTS OF THE PICTURE

729

CHROMATIC ABERRATION

The rays of light near the margin of the lens are broken up into their constituent
colors, and the different colors are focused at different points. Thus wherever the plate
is placed it will receive some rays which are out of focus, and blurring will result. The
defect disappears at the center, and becomes less and less as the lens is stopped down.
The proportions of this diagram are exaggerated for clearness.

Lenses thus corrected are termed achro-
matic. Those corrected for the red
rays as well, which is advisable when
one takes pictures on the new Auto-
chrome plates to show subjects in their
natural colors, are called apo chromatic.
Chromatic aberration was the first de-
fect of photographic lenses to be cor-
rected, a step which is indicated to-day
in the description of lenses for the cheap-
est cameras as achromatic meniscus
lenses. They are the simplest now used,
and though achromatic, are vitally defec-
tive in other respects.

Spherical aberration is quite similar
in its ultimate effect upon the picture to
chromatic aberration. It is caused by
the rays which pass through the outer
portion of the lens, at right angles to
its plane, coming to ai focus in a differ-
ent plane from those which pass through
the center. Thus it blurs the entire
plate. Like chromatic aberration, it is
lessened by stopping down and elimi-
nated entirely by a suitable combination
of glasses. It exists in all the cheaper
lenses, though it is seldom prominent in
the negative because of the fact that
these lenses are made with a compara-
tively small aperture. Thus they are
always stopped down to a point which
has largely eliminated spherical aberra-
tion, though at the expense of speed.

Rays which strike the lens obliquely,
rather than at right angles, produce the
same result, but this is called coma.
Lenses in which spherical aberration has
been corrected are termed aplanatic.

Spherical and chromatic aberration are
frequently intentionally employed to ob-
tain the soft-focus, impressionistic pic-
tures of the artistic photographer, and
there are specially constructed lenses in
which the amount of this diffusion may
be readily controlled.

Of quite different character is the de-
fect known as curvature of field, in
which the margins of the plate will be
out of focus when the center is in sharp
definition, and the center will be blurred
when the margins are sharp. Lenses not
corrected for this defect focus their im-
ages upon a curved surface, so that a
ground glass which would show all parts
distinctly would have the shape of a
saucer or dish. This defect is also
known as dishing of the image. It
yields, like the others, to stopping down
and to the grinding and adjustment of
the glasses.

Distortion is the failure of the lens
to render straight lines in the subject
as straight lines in the picture, and is
especially noticeable at the margins, the
center of the picture being compara-
tively free from it. It is present in all

730

OUTING

single lenses. When the stop is placed
in front of the lens the lines bulge out-
ward, causing barrel distortion. With
the stop behind the lens the curvature is
reversed, causing pin-cushion distortion,
and as this latter is far more objection-
able, all cameras with single lenses have
the stop in front.

It is completely corrected in the lens
known as the rapid rectilinear, or ortho-
scopic lens, which is a double lens with
the stop between. In it the pin-cushion
distortion which would be caused by the
front combination alone, with its stop
behind, is neutralized by the rear combi-

lenses. They are incapable of focusing
vertical and horizontal lines at the same
time, the blurring increasing toward the
margins of the plate and vanishing at
the center.

It was not until a new kind of glass
was discovered, about twenty-five years
ago, that astigmatism could be corrected
in photographic lenses. This glass is
popularly known as Jena glass, and its
discovery has made possible the produc-
tion of photographic objectives in which
every defect of the lens is overcome.
They are perfectly corrected for astigma-
tism, are apochromatic, so that rays of

SPHERICAL ABERRATION

Rays of light near the margin of the lens are brought to a focus nearer the lens than
rays from the same point which strike the lens toward its center. Thus there is no posi-
tion for the plate at which all of the rays from the same point are in focus at one time.
As the marginal rays are cut out by stopping down the defect lessens, until it disappears
at the center of the lens. The proportions of this diagram are exaggerated for clearness.

nation of the lens with the stop in
front, the same stop, of course, serving
for both combinations. The construc-
tion of the rapid rectilinear lens, with its
number of glasses, makes possible not
only the correction of distortion, but
also to a considerable extent the reduc-
tion of curvature of field and the elimi-
nation of spherical aberration. Rapid
rectilinears are also achromatic, and
next to that type of lenses known as
anastigmats they are the most efficient
in use to-day.

Those who wear glasses for astigma-
tism are familiar with the way in which
certain lines on the optician's chart were
blurred while their eyes were being test-
ed, while other lines on the same chart
were clear and distinct. This identical
defect is found in many photographic

every color may be .brought to a focus
upon the same plate, and are free from
distortion, spherical aberration, coma,
and curvature of field. All of these re-
sults are brought about without the use
of a small stop, and thus no quality of
the lens is impaired to gain another.

Another characteristic of the anastig-
mat lens, which is of the utmost impor-
tance in saving all the snap and bril-
liancy of the subject in the finished pic-
ture, is its freedom from the defect
known as flare or ghost. This is caused
by internal reflections in cheaper lenses,
part of the light reflecting from glass to
glass, until it finally reaches the plate in
diffused form, instead of passing directly
through, particularly when it comes
from a very strong source. It some-
times appears in the negative as a dark

SAVING ALL PARTS OF THE PICTURE

731

spot, usually at the center, which is, of
course, light in the print. At other
times the flare or internal reflection is
so thoroughly diffused over the entire
plate that it causes an even grayness in
the print without localization in any one
spot.

it does exist, it will appear frequently as
an even grayness or lack of brilliancy.
Thus it is often not suspected.

The focal length of a lens is the dis-
tance between the optical center of the
lens and the ground glass, when the lens
is focused upon infinity. In most lenses

EFFECT OF FOCAL LENGTH ON DEPTH OF FOCUS

The two lenses here represented are of the same relative opening, F 6.8, but of dif-
ferent focal lengths. With a lens of short focal length, as lens No. 1, the image planes
lie close together, so that the plate need be moved only a very short distance to sharply
focus all objects from very near to far distant. When the focal length is as short as
three inches the image plane for 10 feet, and that for infinity are but 0.077 of an inch
apart, so that with the plate midway between them the diffusion of all points from 10
feet to infinity will not exceed 1/100 of an inch, and from 13 feet to infinity, as in the
drawing, it will not exceed 1/250 of an inch. With longer focus lenses, as lens No. 2,
the image planes are far apart, and the allowable circles of diffusion, d and d\ fall far
inside the points of focus for 10 feet and infinity. Thus the depth of a long focus lens
is very limited. A three-inch lens has universal focus, and depth decreases as focus in-
creases, until with lenses of more than seven inches focus it is extremely difficult to
estimate distance with sufficient accuracy for hand camera work. The proportions of
these drawings are exaggerated for clearness.

One has but to compare the brilliancy
of a collection of many pictures made in
cheap hand cameras with those made
with instruments fitted with anastigmat
lenses to see at once the much higher
percentage of crispness and snap in the
latter. Flare will not occur in every
picture taken with lenses of poorer con-
struction, its presence depending largely
upon light conditions. Moreover, when

the optical center is at or near the posi-
tion of the diaphragm or stop. Accord-
ingly, for all practical purposes in this
article, the focal length is the distance
between the diaphragm and the ground
glass when the lens is focused upon the
sun or moon, or even upon a far-distant
object such as a range of mountains.

The selection of a lens of suitable fo-
cal length is of considerable importance.

732

OUTING

Focal length determines the size of the
image upon the ground glass, the image
being directly proportional to the focal
length, so that a lens of fourteen inches
will give an image just twice the size of
a lens of seven inches, when both photo-
graphs are taken from the same distance.

The Best Focal Length

Focal length also determines the angle
of view in the picture, the angle de-
creasing as the focal length increases,
while the size of the plate remains con-
stant. Thus a seven-inch lens subtends
an angle of sixty to seventy degrees on a
five-by-seven plate, while a lens of
twelve-inch focus on the same plate in-
cludes slightly less than forty degrees.
Focal length also affects the perspective
with which objects are seen in the pic-
ture. The most satisfactory focal length
for outdoor photography is that which
approximates the long side of the plate
with which the lens i: used.

Compound lenses, such as the anastig-
mats, are frequently composed of two
single lenses in one mount, the single
lenses having a longer focal length when
used alone than in combination. Com-
pound lenses in which both single ele-
ments have the same focal length are
called symmetrical. They supply two
lenses in one — the shorter focus, fully
corrected doublet, and the longer focus
single lens, in which some defects are un-
corrected.

Convertible lenses are those in which
the individual single lenses have unequal
focal length. In some of them many dif-
ferent elements may be obtained, which,
properly combined, give a great variety
of focal lengths at little additional ex-
pense. Thus large images of objects at
a distance may be obtained with the lon-
ger focus elements, though at the sacri-
fice of speed.

Focal length has an extremely impor-
tant bearing upon the speed of the lens,
speed being dependent upon the focal
length of the lens and its working aper-
ture. Speed will be more clearly under-
stood if it is remembered that it refers
not at all to the rapidity with which
light passes through the lens, the retard-
ing and absorption of light by the glass

being practically negligible, but rather to
the volume of light which falls upon
each unit of area of the plate. Thus
speed is in reality intensity, and this
latter term is frequently employed, par-
ticularly in England. The greater the
intensity the more readily may full ex-
posure be made under poor light condi-
tions or when rapidly moving objects
make a high shutter speed imperative.

Working aperture in most lenses is
the opening in the diaphragm, though
it may vary slightly from this. With
lenses of the same focal length the one
of the larger opening will pass the great-
er quantity of light, just as a larger pipe
will transmit more water than a smaller.
But speed decreases when focal length
increases, since with lenses of the same
working aperture the farther the plate
is from the lens the smaller will be the
proportion of the total volume of light
which falls upon each unit of area. Thus
the speed depends upon the relation be-
tween these two factors, and is said to
be the quotient obtained by dividing the
focal length of the lens by the working
aperture.

A lens, therefore, of seven inches fo-
cal length, with a working aperture of
1.029 inches, has a speed of 6.8. This
is usually expressed photographically as
F 6.8, or frequently as the fraction
F/6.8. In this last form it is clearly
evident that the focal length, F, which
in this particular case is seven inches,
divided by 6.8, will give the working
aperture, or 1.029.

Every lens having the same ratio be-
tween its focal length and working aper-
ture works at the same speed, and the
larger the working aperture is in pro-
portion to the focal length, the greater
will be the speed. As the lens is stopped
down, however, its speed does not de-
crease at the same rate that the num-
bers increase, but rather decreases in
proportion to the squares of these num-
bers. Thus a lens at F 16 is four times
as slow as if It were at F 8, this being in
the proportion of 256 to 64.

Many lenses, however, are marked so
that each higher number indicates a
speed just one-half as great. Other
lenses, particularly those of foreign make,
have their stops numbered In proportion

SAVING ALL PARTS OF THE PICTURE

733

to their speed without reference to the
ratio between focal length and aper-
ture, and thus one has only to compare
the stop numbers themselves to deter-
mine the proportionately longer expo-
sure with the smaller stops. This sys-

8 times, and that at stop 64 requires
sixteen times the exposure at stop 4. It
is by far the most sensible system to use,
because of the ease of determining ex-
posures, and can always be obtained on
a lens if it is specified in advance. Other

EFFECT OF APERTURE ON DEPTH OF FOCUS

The plate is represented at the position of sharp focus of a point 25 feet distant.
It may be moved either forward or back and still appear sharp to the naked eye, until
it reaches the circles of diffusion d or d1. All points whose images fall between d and
d1 will be in sufficiently sharp focus when the plate is at the focus shown. The opening
in the diaphragm determines the angle of the cone of rays emerging from the lens, and
when this angle is decreased by a smaller stop, the two circles of diffusion are farther
apart, thus giving greater depth. The depths of focus here given are calculated for
circles of diffusion of 1/250 of an inch, giving sufficient sharpness for enlarging. With
circles of diffusion of 1/100 of an inch they would be still farther apart. When using
a hand camera, one has all of this leeway in judging distance. The proportions of these
drawings are exaggerated for clearness.

tern is called the Uniform System. The
corresponding numbers of these two sys-
tems are as follows:

F— 8 11.3 16 22.6 32 45 64 etc.
U.S.— 4 8 16-32 64 128 264 etc.

Under the Uniform System an expo-
sure at stop 8 requires twice the expo-
sure at stop 4, that at stop 32 requires

systems have been devised, but they are
little used in this country.

Stopping down, as stated above, will
lessen many of the defects of a lens,
but when 'using an anastigmat, in which
all of these shortcomings have been cor-
rected by other means, the sole reason
for stopping down is to increase the

734

OUTING

depth of the focus, or depth of field.
Depth of focus depends not at all upon
the quality of the lens, but entiiely upon
the relation between the diaphragm
opening and the focal length of the lens.
The smaller the opening and the shorter
the focal length, the greater will be the
depth.

Theoretically a lens is capable of fo-
cusing sharply at one time only those ob-
jects which lie in one plane before the
camera. The number of planes, how-
ever, is infinite. Thus, if the camera is
focused upon an object at twenty-five
feet distance, an object a few feet nearer
the camera will require the ground glass
to be drawn farther back from the lens,
while an object a few feet farther will
necessitate bringing the focusing screen
nearer to the lens. A diffusion of
1/100 of an inch, however, is not per-
ceptible to the eye. Thus if a point
twenty-five feet distant is in absolutely
sharp focus, and other points on either
side of it are diffused on the ground
glass so that their area of focus is not
greater than one one-hundredth of an
inch, the fact that these objects are not
in absolutely sharp focus will not be
perceptible.

The depth of focus of a lens is the
limit within which the circle of diffusion
will not exceed one one-hundredth of an
inch. Lenses of great speed have but
little depth at full aperture, and the
depth increases as the speed decreases. A
high-speed lens, however, has precisely
the same depth as one of lesser speed,
but of the same focal length, when it is
stopped down to the same relative open-
ing. In other words, a lens whose lar-

gest relative opening is F 4.5 has the
same depth as one whose largest aper-
ture is F 8, when their focal lengths are
equal and the first lens is stopped down
to F8.

A diffusion of 1/100 of an inch is al-
lowable only for contact prints. If
negatives are to be enlarged or used for
making lantern slides, a circle of diffu-
sion of 1/250 of an inch is about the
maximum for sharp results in the en-
largement or projected slide. Knowl-
edge of the amount of depth that his
lens possesses is of the utmost importance
to every user of a hand camera, and
this data may be found in the catalogues
of some of the lens makers. The figures
there given are applicable to any lens,
when the focal length is known.

It is evident from the foregoing out-
line that the only lenses which may be
depended upon to record faithfully all
parts of the picture are the fully cor-
rected and speedy anastigmats. The
rapid rectilinears and single lenses, how-
ever, will, of course, give good pictures
under suitable conditions of subject,
lighting, and exposure. It is in not un-
derstanding the limitations of these
lenses that so many amateur photogra-
phers meet with disappointment and lose
so much of the snap, brilliancy, and cor-
rectness of outline of their subjects in
the finished picture. If one wishes to
work with certainty he should use a lens
in which all of the defects here men-
tioned are corrected, except when artistic
rendering makes diffusion desirable. The
impressionist will make concession only
to chromatic and spherical aberration
for soft-focus effects.

(To be continued)

In his next Article Mr. Carpenter takes
up the problems connected with plates.

BALLISTICS OF CARTRIDGES

By CHARLES NEWTON

VII

SOME OF THE REMODELED HEAVY-WEIGHTS

EYOND question the finest
big game hunting of the
present day is found in Af-
rica, where the frontier is
making its last stand against
the encroachments of civili-
zation. Here, in primal savagery, and
in India, where civilization was aging
to decay when Hengist and Horsa led
their hard-fighting, hard-living bands of
adventurers across the North Sea to
found the race which should become the
dominant world power of the present
generation, alone can be found those
fauna which can readily add the thrill
of danger to the hunter from the quarry,
despite the most modern equipment.
Here only is the pursued likely to turn
pursuer and impart to the chase that
zest ever welcome to the true sportsman,
which it possessed when primitive man
faced wolf or bear, armed only with
sling and spear.

While there are a few sportsmen who
attempt, and with some success, to cope
with the heavy African game with the
.256 Mannlicher, .303 British, and. other
cartridges of that class, we fear they
omit, either through lack of information
or other reasons, to give us a list of
those wounded animals which escaped to
die a lingering death from wounds
caused by those little full-jacketed mis-
siles. Yet the great majority of both
visiting sportsmen and residents of those
localities usually have handy, when meet-
ing the heaviest game, a heavy double
rifle of the .450 cordite class, being
either of that caliber or of the .465,
.476, or some other modification, made
because under the Indian law rifles of
exactly .450 bore are, as one English
manufacturer so felicitously expresses it,
"not allowed into India."

These double rifles are all of about the
same weight, about 12 pounds, and of
about the same power, using a bullet
weighing from 480 to 500 grains, at a
muzzle velocity of about 2,100 to 2,200
feet per second, and developing about
5,000 foot-pounds muzzle energy.

These long, heavy, blunt bullets are
splendidly designed for plowing through
the thick skin of the elephant or rhino,
or the heavy muscles and bones of the
buffalo, and are considered almost the
last word in stopping power. Some few,
however, will stand the punishment of
similar rifles in calibers of .500, .577,
and .600, but the recoil of even the .450
cordite is so terrific that twenty to thirty
cartridges are usually sufficient for a six
months' hunt. All users of even the
.450 speak with great respect of its butt
plate as well as its muzzle energy.

Some time ago the writer became cu-
rious to try one of these rifles, thinking
he could stand as much recoil as anyone.
He made up a single shot rifle, weighing
9^2 pounds, and adapted it to a prac-
tical duplicate of the .450 cartridge,
driving a 500 grain, .45-caliber bullet
(our old .45-70 in a metal jacket) 2,050
feet per second. The recoil did not hurt
the shoulder, but the backward thrust
gave the neck such a disagreeable jerk,
as the head was snapped forward and
downward by the receding shoulder,
that even after the lapse of five years
the rifle has never been thoroughly
sighted in. He still thinks he can stand
as much recoil as any man, but considers
the above-mentioned allowance of twen-
ty to thirty cartridges amply sufficient
for a six months' hunt.

The above-mentioned cordite cart-
ridges are infinitely more pleasant to
shoot than the older type of elephant

[735]

736

OUTING

gun, from Sir Samuel Baker's "Baby,"
weighing 21 pounds and firing a four-
ounce explosive shell, down through the
eight and ten gauges, once considered the
proper thing for this work, but it does
not follow that they cannot be still
further improved.

A bullet of a given weight and at a
given velocity will strike a blow of the
same energy, whether it be of large cali-
ber and short, or of a smaller caliber
and greater length. Nevertheless the
smaller caliber bullet will give the less
recoil, owing to the less area of cross
section of the bore from which the gases
impinge upon the atmosphere.

Therefore, since we may reduce re-
coil without affecting striking energy,
either by using a lighter bullet at higher
velocity or by using a bullet of smaller
diameter and of the same weight, by
the use of both modifications we should
obtain a double reduction. And, inas-
much as the bullet which formed the
basis of operations had a blunt point, we
could preserve the ballistic coefficient in
a lighter bullet in a great measure by
sharpening the point, thus enabling it to
retain its velocity nearly as well as the
original.

The first step beyond the .30 Adolph
Express with its 3,000 f. s. velocity with
172-grain bullet was to the .33 caliber.
The regular 200-grain bullet, made for
the model 1886 Winchester, had about
the requisite weight in proportion to its
cross section. The Adolph Express shell
was adapted to this caliber and furnished
the requisite boiler room. The result
was a muzzle velocity of 3,000 f. s. and
a muzzle energy of 4,000 foot-pounds.
The .33 Adolph Express was born.

A private gunmaker, desiring a series
of cartridges of decided power for use
in Mauser rifles, we next adapted the
small shell to a .35 caliber rifle, equiva-
lent to the 9 mm. in bore, and used the
regular bullet for the .35 W. C. F. cart-
ridge, weighing 250 grains. This
weight was somewhat over the standard
of 2,300 grains per square inch (the
proper weight being 225 grains), hence
our velocity suffered somewhat, but not
badly since the .35 Adolph Express gives
a muzzle velocity of 2,975 f. s. and a
striking energy of 4,925 foot-pounds.

The muzzle energy of the .450 cordite,
the regulation English elephant gun, is
4,944 foot-pounds, or but 19 foot-pounds
more. Here we have a magazine rifle,
weighing less than eight pounds, which
can be fired without discomfort from
recoil, practically equaling in efficiency
the 12-pound terror.

But we must have the best, hence we
made from the same shell a .405 Adolph
Express. The regular bullet for the .405
Winchester, weighing 300 grains, was
used. The proportion of shell room was
too small in proportion to the area of
cross section of the bore to permit of the
best results from the No. 10 Military
powder, so we had recourse to the
quicker-burning Hivel powder, made by
the Hercules Powder Company. By its
assistance we obtain a muzzle velocity of
2,867 f. s. and a striking energy of 5,490
foot-pounds, or 546 foot-pounds more
than the .450 cordite shell. This also
is fired from a Mauser repeater and
without approaching the punch of the
.450.

This caliber looked good, provided we
had sufficient chamber room for our old
friend, No. 10 Military powder, so we
provided it a new shell, using the .40-1 10
Express for that purpose. For a bullet
we used a .40- caliber, 300-grain, metal-
cased. This bullet was of the proper
length for the caliber and the shell gave
a goodly amount of chamber room in
which we placed 99 grains of powder.
The result was a muzzle velocity of
3,042 feet per second and an energy of
6,180 foot-pounds. This was a some-
what heavy single-shot Winchester,
weighing 10j/2 pounds, but the recoil
was not sufficient to prevent using it for
an afternoon at target shooting at 200
yards, offhand, and making good scores.
Comparisons are usually odious, but we
will venture one.

The .600-caliber cordite rifle has an
energy from its 900-grain bullet of 7,592
foot-pounds. The .577 cordite, with
750-grain bullet, has 6,994 foot-pounds.
The .500-caliber cordite, with 570-grain
bullet, has 5,844 foot-pounds. The .476
cordite, with 520-grain bullet, has 5,086
foot-pounds. The .450 cordite, with
480-grain bullet, has 4,944 foot-pounds.
The .40-110 rifle lias 1,236 foot-pounds

BALLISTICS OF CARTRIDGES

737

more energy than the .450; 1,094 foot-
pounds more than the .476; 336 foot-
pounds more than the .500, and is beaten
only by the .577 by 814 foot-pounds, and
the .600 cordite by 1,412 foot-pounds.

The conclusion of the foregoing para-
graph will probably bring a smile to the
face of the veteran who has been there,
or who has read the opinions of those
who have been there. "But this excess
of energy does not signify a propor-
tionate excess of efficiency. The bullet
needed for use against the heavy game
mentioned is the heavy slower cordite
bullet. Everyone who has killed this
kind of game agrees upon that," says he.
We admit they do, but we have never
been privileged to read of a test of a
similar rifle against this class of game,
and until it has been tested who can
state with certainty the result?

We have here the same principle
which makes the .22 h. p. so deadly —
the extreme velocity and accompanying
shock, "only more so." The .22 h. p.
has over 300 foot-pounds less striking
energy than has the .30-30, yet the pages
of our magazines constantly bear wit-
ness to its vastly greater killing power.
The little 70-grain soft-point bullet has
repeatedly bored through both shoulders
of a deer, the base being found under
the skin on the farther side, yet it goes
to pieces promptly and drops the game
when a paunch shot is made. This ex-
treme velocity has, in fact, made the
paunch shot the most deadly of all,
where once it was the most unsatis-
factory.

It is hazardous to attempt to reason
from point to point concerning the action
of smokeless powders or of high-velocity
bullets. The natural laws governing
such action are just as immutable and
just as universal in their application as
in other branches of physics, but we are
constantly encountering what we may
term "new legislation," or, more prop-
erly speaking, newly-discovered laws.
We say that if a given bullet will not
shoot through the body of a woodchuck,
crosswise, or expands completely on a
paunch shot, it certainly will not shoot
through the shoulder of a deer. Yet we
find in actual practise that the .22 high-
power, soft-point bullet, at 3,000 f. s.,

will not shoot through the woodchuck,
nor, at 2,700 f. s., will it penetrate
through the paunch of a deer, yet it will,
at the latter velocity at least, penetrate
both shoulders of a large buck, and the
writer has one which passed completely
through a two-year-old grizzly, immedi-
ately back of the shoulders.

As to the amount of penetration of
the bullets for the above described cart-
ridges, if made in full, jacketed form,
they should penetrate decidedly better
than those of the cordite type. The
penetration, in wood, of the 150-grain
Springfield at 2,700 f. s. exceeds that
of the 220-grain bullet at 2,200 f. s.
The 220-grain, .30-caliber bullet has al-
most identical density and form with the
cordite bullets and at the same velocity.
The 150-grain, .30-caliber has decidedly
less density than has the .40-110-300 and
342 f. s. less velocity; hence the latter
should show a far greater superiority in
penetration over the heavier, blunt type.

In the expanding point type of bullets
it is possible, and easily so, to regulate
the amount of expansion by varying the
temper of the core and by varying the
amount and manner of exposure of the
core, thus permitting the sportsman
equipped with bullets having different
expanding qualities to select for a given
case those having the proper expanding
properties to deal suitably with the case
in hand.

The marked reduction of recoil in
proportion to energy developed by the
.40-110 h. p., rendering possible a reduc-
tion of the weight of the arm to a point
where the sportsman himself may carry
it with ease instead of entrusting it to a
gunbearer, suggests the consideration of
what it might do on more vulnerable
game, particularly in view of the near
approach to its ballistics of the .405
Adolph Express in the form of a maga-
zine rifle.

Nearly every sportsman with African
experience has reported the results of try-
ing to stop a charging lion with a .450
cordite rifle, and the reports are practi-
cally uniform that unless struck in a
vital spot, where almost any rifle will
stop him, it will not stop the charge. So
far as we are aware, none have reported
the results of a bullet from any of the

738

OUTING

ultra-high velocity rifles in this emerg-
ency. Unless natural laws are suspend-
ed in the case of Leo Rex it would seem
that a single shot from a rifle of such
power as either the .35 Adolph, .405
Adolph, or .40-110 h. p., if placed well
within the body at any point, should end
the circus then and there. Find the lion,
and the writer will furnish the rifle.

With a rifle of this type the sportsman
is well equipped for the larger antelope,
lion, rhino, buffalo, or elephant without
changing guns, thus permitting him to
carry his own weapon at all times and to
acquire that degree of speed, certainty,
and proficiency in its use usually attrib-
uted to the "man with only one gun."

In conclusion, it would seem strange
if the utilization of velocities of 3000
f. s., or thereabout, which have so vastly
increased the efficiency of our medium-
power rifles for medium-sized game,

should not similarly increase the efficiency
of our heaviest rifles for our heaviest
game, and this with the same reduction
in weight of weapon and recoil as have
been realized with our smaller weapons.
The following table shows the ballis-
tics of the leading foreign big-game rifles,
as well as those under discussion. In
computing the remaining velocities, ener-
gies, and trajectories we have assumed a
coefficient of form of .70, representing a
medium sharp point rather than the ex-
treme sharpness of the service bullet,
which is valued at about .59. This is
because it is impossible to obtain as fine
lines with a bullet of large diameter as
with a smaller one without lengthening
the bullet beyond the prescribed weight
of 2300 grains per square inch of area of
cross-section, and to this proportionate
weight we must cling in case we desire
the 3000 f. s. velocity.

tfl tn w

en rr> <u C

V <L> u o

a o. £ £ 2 % u u
_AA*£^£oSoo

<^M <oM ^NM H -t- VOOM "?oo "? r> Vco ? o

^ eo _ -* <-, wc<3_ ih/LiCO oco^, o <x> o oo t- eo o -*

^ug °?u£ tug Sffiu ^.U^ ^.U "?U *°.u <°.u

RANGE BULLET

Muzzle Velocity, ft. sec 3000 2975 2867 3042 2150 2100 2150 2050 1950

Energy, ft. lbs 4000 4925 5490 6180 4944 5086 5844 6994 7592

100 Yd. Velocity, ft. sec 2720 2737 2619 2784 1944 1898 1940 1850 1766

Energy, ft. lbs 3300 4175 4590 5220 4032 4158 4579 5695 6227

Trajectory, ft 044 .044 .048 .042 .086 .090 .086 .095 .102

Time, Fit., sec 105 .105 .109 .103 .147 .150 .147 .154 .160

200 Yd. Velocity, ft. sec 2457 2512 2383 2541 1752 1711 1745 1667 1595

Energy, ft. lbs 2700 3500 3780 4320 3264 3390 3876 4665 5103

Trajectory, ft 195 .192 .211 .186 .38 .402 .387 .422 .462

Time, Fit., sec 221 .219 .230 .216 .31 .317 .311 .325 .340

300 Yd. Velocity, ft. sec 2208 2297 2160 2310 1576 1540 1567 1476 1438

Energy, ft. lbs 2180 2950 3120 3570 2640 2756 3135 3638 4140

Trajectory, ft 490 .473 .521 .462 .96 1.00 .968 1.17 1.16

Time, Fit., sec 350 .344 .361 .340 .49 .501 .492 .542 .538

500 Yd. Velocity, ft. sec 1754 1896 1750 1882 1280 1255 1269 1210 1193

Energy, ft. lbs 1360 2000 2040 2370 1728 1820 2052 2445 2844

Trajectory, ft 1.72 1.59 1.80 1.56 3.31 3.49 3.39 3.94 3.96

Time, Fit., sec 655 .632 .670 .628 .91 .936 .921 .994 .997

1000 Yd. Velocity, ft. sec 1053 1165 1080 1130 942 935 935 918 919

Enercry ft. lbs 480 750 780 840 960 1013 1112 1410 1701

Trajectory, ft 13.0 11.0 13.0 11.3 21.53 22.3 21.9 24.0 24.2

Time, Fit., sec 1.80 1.66 1.80 1.68 2.32 2.36 2.34 2.45 2.46

1500 Yd. Velocity, ft. sec 823 910 855 881 768 764 760 749 756

Energy, ft lbs 300 450 480 510 624 676 735 937 1143

Trajectory, ft 47.1 38.9 45.4 41.0 66.58 69.2 67.9 72.9 72.9

Time, Fit., sec 3.43 3.12 3.37 3.20 4.08 4.13 4.12 4.27 4.27

THE POOREST OF THE POOR, DWELLERS IN REED HUTS FROM THE GREAT SWAMP,
JOURNEYING ON THE PILGRIM ROAD TO THE SHRINES OF KERBELA

JOURNEYING TO BABYLON

By WILLIAM WARFIELD

Photographs ry the Author

From Bagdad, the Soul of Iran and Arabia, to a City That Was
Old Before History Began

1 7* T was not that we had had enough
of Bagdad. The fascination of
that romantic city never palled.
The least spoiled city in Turkey,
the soul, not only of Irak, but of
Iran and Arabia, we found it ever
alive with romance, kaleidoscopic with
strange sights, teeming with men of all
descriptions, desert dwellers and city
dwrellers, mountaineers and plainsmen.
But we wished to exchange these medi-
eval scenes for a glimpse into the shim-
mering dawn of history, bright with the
hopes of surging peoples, resonant with
strange tongues, and fresh with the dew
of unquestioned tradition. It was for
this that we decided to leave the noisy
bazaars to cross the desert silences and
sit down by the waters of Babylon.

It seemed prosaic to make this journey
in a post-carriage. We sent our servant
with the requisite number of Turkish
liras to procure a ticket and such oranges
and dates and other things as we should
require for sustenance on the road. The
ticket began to dispel our illusions about

the prosaic character of the ride. It was
a slip of paper, four inches square, bear-
ing at the top a rough wood-cut repre-
senting an old-fashioned stage-coach ;
below it was filled in with flowing
Arabic characters, setting fqrth our
names, our destination, and the date.
Our last illusion was dispelled when we
were confronted at the consulate with a
trim, blue-uniformed zaptieh, his rifle
slung over his shoulder, his hand raised
to salute, who was to accompany us to
guard us from the perils of the road.

The carriages leave bright and early
so as not to reach their destination after
dark when robbers are abroad. It was
not yet four o'clock when we arose and
jumped into the warmest clothes we had.
In the courtyard a flickering lantern cast
fantastic shadows on the yellow brick
walls. Above we caught a glimpse of
sharply glittering stars. A Kurdish
coolie was produced from somewhere
and loaded with kit-bag and tiffin basket,
with the odds and ends of wayfarers.
Mustafa, the cook's boy, seized the lan-

[739]

AN ARAB REFRESHMENT SHOP IN A DESERT VILLAGE NEAR BAGDAD ON THE

PILGRIM ROAD TO KERBELA

tern and let us through the outer court-
yard toward the street. Yusef, the por-
ter, had to be aroused to unlock the heavy
door and let us out. Not contented with
this service, he snatched up his lantern
and set out to accompany us. But
Mustafa had no intention of dividing
his backshish with a porter. A shrill
discussion ensued in which our servant
joined, and, worsted, Yusef returned to
his blankets in the niche within the door.

That was a weird walk through the
deserted streets. At first the starlight
revealed the scene beyond the uncertain
flashes from the swinging lantern. Soon
projecting upper stories shut out all but
a narrow strip of sky. The lantern light
splashed on massive doors and barred
windows. We entered the bazaar. The
vaulted roof shut out the sky; the dark-
ness was oppressive. Our voices re-
echoed down the empty passage as in a
tomb. A dog, roused by our footsteps,
leapt up with a shrill bark and faced
us, his hair bristling, his teeth showing
white against the backward curled lips.
The light flashed from the eyes of a
group of his fellows; some rose barking
fiercely; others slunk away from the
light.

The alarm spread and in a moment
the whole street was filled with a tur-

[740]

moil of barking. All the dogs in the
neighborhood, wakened by the noise,
joined in, half in anger, half in fear.
Rays of light were reflected far ahead
from pairs of eyes. Stark forms with
bristling backs and gleaming teeth backed
against the wall as we passed. If any
stood in our way he was quickly put to
rout by Mustafa's cane and fled, howl-
ing, his tail between his legs. As we
passed they quieted down, we turned
into other streets, and all was silent
again. Only occasionally a sinewy brute
leaped to his feet or a pair of wide eyes
glowed at us from the edge of the way.

As we made our last turn before
reaching the bridge a gleam of light
flashed as from metal, we heard the click
of spurs, and two officers of the watch
passed with a solemn greeting. A little
group of coolies, slouching, deep-chested,
trotted by without turning their heads.
We stepped on the rickety bridge of
boats, following the lantern carefully so
as not to step through some hole in the
planking. The Tigris swirled and gur-
gled beneath us; the starlight flashed on
the water down stream ; before us
yawned blackly the entrance to the ba-
zaars of West Bagdad.

Into this black hole we plunged and
were greeted almost instantly by a furi-

WE RESUMED OUR JOURNEY, CARRIED BY THE IMMEMORIAL BURDEN-BEARER,

THE HUMBLE ASS

ous crowd of white-fanged curs through
which we made our way only after vig-
orous use had been made of Mustafa's
cane. A couple of donkeys laden with
brushwood, followed by a cursing hag,
brushed by. The lantern light revealed
a huddled coolie asleep on a pile of rub-
bish. The rickety roof of poles lay like
a gridiron against the sky. Then we
left the bazaars behind and found our-
selves among the khans whither the
caravans come. The air was full of the
smell of stables and the musty odor of
camels. A group of laden mules were
standing before an arched doorway.

In the darkness we heard the creak
and thud followed by stamping which
means a load has been lifted upon the
saddle. We cringed against a wall in
a litter of straw to let pass a caravan
of shouldering, jostling camels. A curi-
ous brute thrust his ugly, scowling coun-
tenance into the lantern light, blinking
stupidly into our faces. "Daughter of
wickedness! Mother of asses!" shrilled
a voice through the night. The camels
passed on. The air was sharp with the
chill that comes before the dawn. The
stars were growing dull. So we came
at last to the khan from which the ara-
banas, the post-carriages, start.

The bustle of departure over, we

banged away in our narrow rattle-trap
of a stage-coach, collars turned up, hands
stuffed in pockets, shivering in the still
cold of the winter morning. We reared
over the high banks of irrigating ditches,
bumped against deserted graves, and en-
tered upon the flat, brown, clay desert.
Behind us the sun rose over the minarets
and domes of the city. The brilliant sky
was reflected in a marsh left by last
year's floods. The chains jingled mer-
rily as we rattled on. A telegraph line
lay on our right, now near, now far, as
the track we followed wandered capri-
ciously. Around us stretched the desert.

At first we found it rather lonely, this
vast, flat stretch of sun-baked clay. We
overtook a few little groups of laden
donkeys and the caravan of camels that
had passed us in the streets, but we met
only a knot of black-clad women, each
staggering beneath an enormous load of
brushwood, the bitter, prickly camel
thorn, sole product of the unirrigated
wastes.

But as the sun rose higher and the dry
soil gave back its heat and the mirage
began to appear, first on the horizon,
then nearer like a flood of crystal water,
as the day went on we began to encoun-
ter those who went toward Bagdad from
beyond the Euphrates. We passed at

[741]

742

OUTING

ruined castle and climbed clumsily over
the mound that marks an old canal.
There before us .was a throng of other
wayfarers, Persian pilgrims returning
from a visit to the shrines of Kerbela.
Strong, bearded men strode sturdily
along beside heavily laden mules or rode
sideways on tiny donkeys. Women and
children swayed back and forth in a
sort of cradle on the backs of animals
or were hidden away in curtained boxes
slung on each side of a pack saddle.
The men showed the effects of weari-

And here they are setting out again
to brave the perils of a road beset with
hostile tribes, barred by lofty mountain
passes. Such is the fanatical power of
the religion which they profess. Not
a few must perish by the road, some will
lose their animals and have to leave their
simple loads behind and trudge on desti-
tute. "All is in the hands of Allah!
Allamdulillah! Praise be to God!"

Behind the pigrims strode groups of
camels, marching in irregular groups,
plodding along in awkward indifference.

PERSIAN PILGRIMS, TOWN-DWELLERS FROM NORTHERN IRAN, MAKING THEIR
JOURNEY IN TOIL AND SUFFERING

ness for theirs had been a long journey.
But they were dogged, and the leaders
among them greeted us cheerfully
enough. They formed a large body
straggling for several furlongs along the
desert track, simple folk who made their
pilgrimage in toil and suffering, sacri-
ficing wonted comforts and using the
savings of years for the expenses of the
road. They were town dwellers from
the shores of the Caspian or north-cen-
tral Persia, unaccustomed to hardship.
At home they had lived by cultivating a
little garden or vineyard or by doing a
little quiet trading in the bazaars of
their native town. The women had
lived always in the jealously guarded
secrecy of their apartments, rarely ap-
pearing on the street.

Somewhere in each group was a man or
boy striding along with his staff across
his shoulders or perched high up on the
hump of one of the beasts. But the lead-
ers of the caravan rode in stately dig-
nity, each upon a tiny ass before a group
of forty or fifty towering, heavily laden
camels. The donkeys pattered along on
dainty feet with drooping heads and
swishing tails. The camels, swaying
from side to side, swung their huge
padded feet in ungainly fashion, delib-
erately, as though pausing after each
step. They made a picture of patient
submission, for they seemed to have got
it into their undulating heads that the
donkey was to be followed, so follow
him they did, albeit protestingly.

When we had passed the last group

JOURNEYING TO BABYLON

743

of these burden-bearers, spread out right
and left on each side, grumbling at hav-
ing to make way for us, when the last
stragglers from the pilgrim caravan had
given up their quest of alms and followed
their brethren, this is the tale that was
told us by Thomas ibn Shamu, our
servant :

"Sahib! This matter happened to a
sheik of the desert, a Bedouin, not like
the people of the city, but a dweller in
tents, filthy, and a Moslem." Thomas
was a Chaldean of Bagdad and feared
as much as he despised the dwellers in
the desert.

"This man was about to die and called
his animals about him, asking them to
forgive what wrongs he had done them.
His mare looked tearfully upon her mas-
ter and said she had nought to forgive;

AS WE EXPLORED THE PALACES WE
PASSED GROUPS OF WORKMEN WHO
BROKE INTO A NOISY CHANT CALL-
ING UPON GOD TO BLESS OUR EXALTED
GENEROSITY

THE IMPOSING TRIPLE GATE THAT

GIVES ACCESS TO NEBUCHADNEZZAR'S

PALACE

she had had milk from the camels and
water provided for her on long marches
in the desert ; why should the master ask
her forgiveness?

"The greyhound said he had always
had sufficient water to drink and a warm
place to sleep, so he would gladly for-
give his master if he had had to go hun-
gry at times and been tied up when he
wished to roam abroad.

"The ass said, with pity in his voice,
that he had been beaten and ill fed and
driven by women, but, as his master
was dying, he would forgive all.

"Then came the camel, growling and
groaning and gurgling in his throat.
Glaring bitterly at his master, he said:
'You have made me go hungry and
thirsty; you have sent children to strike
me in the face when I was restless and
wished to walk about; you have bur-
dened me with an ill-made saddle that
galled my back; you have made me carry

PERSIAN PILGRIMS ENTERING A KHAN. THE WOMEN ARE HIDDEN AWAY IN
KEJAVEHS, CAREFULLY CURTAINED, CARRIED TWO AND TWO ON THE

BACKS OF MULES

for all that are in your tent. All these
things I forgive, since you are dying.
One thing I will not forgive ; that is
that you have made me walk behind a
donkey."

Caravan after caravan we passed,
more pilgrims and more camels ; some we
overtook and some we met. Strange ef-
fects were often caused by the mirage.
A caravan went by. A lake appeared
before them. They seemed to enter it
and were reflected in it. The camels
grew taller and thinner in the shimmer-
ing heat until, tremendously lengthened
and utterly unstable, they disappeared in
the distant haze. In another quarter the
lake reflected a forest of palms, set with
white buildings, giving an impression of
comfortable shade. We drove on, the
lake receded, dwindled; a band of pil-
grims seemed to be walking in a marsh ;
then the mirage vanished away and we
saw clearly. We were driving into a
squalid village set by a dried-up irriga-
ting canal. Upon a mound stood three
drooping, draggled, dusty palms, all that
was left of our lovely grove.

Here we stopped to change our mules.
In the roadway before the khan sat a
group of Arabs. A servant supplied
them with little cups of tea from a rude
samovar. "Salaam aleikum." We sa-
luted them, and taking our places in the
circle we were served in turn, we and
our following. Someone in the dark

[744]

doorway was thumping away on a drum.
A boy came out of the khan beating a
poor, lame donkey, covered with fly-
invested sores. I turned to one of my
neighbors :

"Is it not cruel for that boy to beat a
lame ass in that way?"

"Effendim, it is the will of God!"

"But you do not allow horses or cam-
els to be beaten thus."

"Effendim, the donkey is not like the
horse, nor yet is he like the camel. The
reason is this: Upon a certain day the
donkeys went before Allah and com-
plained that they were grievously beaten
by men, so that life was a greater burden
than they could bear. Then said Allah:
'I cannot make men cease from beating
you. It is no sin; neither does it cause
them any great loss. But I will help
you. I will give you so thick a hide that
however much you are beaten you shall
not suffer.'

"So," said my informant, "it is of no
consequence if men beat an ass. So thick
a skin did Allah give him that after he
dies men use it in the making of drums
and the donkey continues to be beaten
after death."

Thump, thump, thump-thump! came
the sound from the shadowed doorway.

Soon after leaving the village we over-
took a throng of pilgrims trudging along
on foot. They were the poorest of the
poor, dwellers in reed huts from the

JOURNEYING TO BABYLON

745

great swamp. Yet they seemed the most
cheerful of all the pilgrims. They
whiled away the time with merry talk,
flaunting their green and red banners
overhead. The women were unveiled
and walked with bare feet beside their
lords, carrying the few necessities of their
culinary art. Old men greeted us pleas-
antly. A mere slip of a girl with a baby
in her arms cracked a joke at our ex-
pense, much to the amusement of her
companions. Four or five hundred peo-
ple they were on this tramp of a thou-
sand miles, which they had undertaken
to insure their future happiness.

Journeying for the same purpose was
another caravan, that of a rich Persian
family. The father, riding a handsome
gray stallion, was in the lead, clad in
somber black, his beard stained red with
henna. His sons came behind with a
group of armed servants, all superbly
mounted. Not a woman was in sight.
They were hidden away in kejavehs,
carefully curtained, carried two and two
on the backs of mules. I wonder if ever
these pale, cramped women in their
stuffy boxes wished to exchange their lot
for that of their slender, sad-eyed sis-
ters who had tramped, barefooted, from
the swamp.

That night we spent in the hospitable
dwelling of an English engineer, repre-
sentative of a well-known London firm.
He was engaged in placing a huge bar-
rage across the channel of the great river
Euphrates. Long ago, in the dim past,
this land-between-the-rivers was inter-
sected by a network of canals which
made it the home for the dense popula-
tion of Babylonian and Persian times.
These waterways are marked to-day by
long clay ridges, for so laden with silt
are the rivers that canals are rapidly
silted up and have to be dug out afresh
each year.

For some reason, or more likely for
many reasons, these canals were aban-
doned one by one until now even Ker-
bela and Babylon have no running water
except in flood time. The barrage is a
long series of arches, each of which may-
be closed by a steel door. Its purpose
is to hold back the river in the season of
low water, so it will run freely into the
canals to the threatened cities. In flood
time the gates wTill be opened so the great
mass of water, which wTould carry a dam
away, may sweep by as though running
under a bridge.

Four thousand years ago a civilization
existed in this land which I doubt not

KEJAVEHS, THE CURTAINED BOXES IN WHICH THE PERSIAN WOMEN ARE
CARRIED ON THE DREARY PILGRIMAGES

746

OUTING

THE OLDEST ARCH IN THE WORLD,

RECENTLY UNEARTHED IN NABOPA-

LASSAR'S PALACE AT BABYLON. THIS

BUILDING DATES FROM 524 B. C.

was old in the days of Noah. Some-
where in the buried past of the earth a
prosperous race increased their prosperity
by conducting the life-giving waters far
and wide over the face of the land.
They developed a tremendous culture,
fostered literature, art, and science; their
armies spread terror among their neigh-
bors; the justice of their courts was un-
equaled ; their wise men solved the prob-
lem of creation in a way that has come
down to us to-day.

But city after city has fallen as the
waters ceased to flow and their places
have become sun-scorched mounds. Only
the greatest of them remains whose peo-
ple have cried in despair, "Give us water!
Without water we perish!" The cry
has been heard by an alien government
and they in turn have called for help
from a still more alien people. So this

barrage was undertaken, and even as I
write the waters are beginning to flow
again from the Euphrates toward Baby-
lon the Great.

We resumed our journey, carried like
the pilgrims by the immemorial burden-
bearer, the humble ass. Ridge after ridge
of sun-baked clay we crossed, traversing
the flat desert. Only one of the many
large canals still contained any water,
and that only in stagnant pools. Once
was passed a group of mounds covered
with sherds marking the spot where once
a village stood. Only one miserable
group of huts was still inhabited. There
was no one to greet us but dogs and a
ragged child, for men, women, and chil-
dren were out caring for the sheep or
toiling to raise water from the deep wells
to irrigate the palm gardens and the slen-
der crops of grass.

As the day wore on the horizon be-
came fringed with palms. There was
no mirage, for the desert no longer gave
back the slanting rays. My companion's
donkey trotted ahead, neighing pleading-
ly to his master, who had been striding
in advance all afternoon. Ceasing his
weird desert melody, he took from his
bosom a handful of dates, which the pet
took gratefully from his hand, immedi-
ately falling back with his companions.
We found the palms separated into
groves by half-ruined mud-walls. A
glossy long-tailed magpie leapt from
palm-stump to toppling wall and exam-
ined us critically. A pair of crested
hoopoes made note of our coming, then
disappeared among the branches of a
blossoming pomegranate. The lower
limb of the sun touched the horizon.
The pious leader of our caravan, having
instructed his underlings, stepped from
the path, and, his face toward the set-
ting sun, his hands upon his breast, began
to repeat the evening prayer.

We rode on to a village strongly sur-
rounded by a mud-wall capped with
thorns. We followed a flock of sheep
through the gate and out again through
the opposite wall. A winding path led
down to the dry bed of the ancient canal
where once ran a large pari of the
mighty Euphrates. The sheep were
driven down, bleating, to a little hole
where a slight moisture still remained.

JOURNEYING TO BABYLON

747

Behind them the last glow of the setting
sun clad the palms in splendor. A col-
lapsed goufa* lay in the sand of the
water-course, beside it a belle ///f with
seams gaping from dryness. The hand
of Drought lay upon all.

We found the dwelling of the German
excavators among the palm trees on the
other bank. Our journey ended^ we
dismounted in the dusk, while Ibrabim,
the zaptieh, dinned against the door. A
blue-clad guard flung open the portal
and we were admitted into the court-
yard. A flock of geese waddled impor-
tantly to meet us; a ruffled turkey-cock
complained truculently over an empty
feed-pan ; a flock of pigeons rose, flap-
ping, to the roof. It seemed as though
we had entered a Rhenish farmyard, hav-
ing left the sights and sounds of the des-
ert far behind.

Sitting around the dinner-table that
evening, we made the acquaintance of
our new friends. They told us of their
work and its results, of the discoveries
they had made and the difficulties they
had encountered. The conversation
turned upon personal safety and the
value of human life in this land of quick-
ly roused passions.

"With us," said Herr W , who

sat at my right, "if you kill a man you
do not go to prison ; you will not be
killed. No, you must pay fifty liras to
the family of the man, that is all.

"The son of one of our laborers killed
a man. But, of course, a poor laborer
had not fifty liras, so they had to settle
it by special arrangement.

"The boy was a shepherd and had a
field of grass to feed his flock. Another
shepherd who was too lazy to irrigate
came into his field one day and stole
grass. But it happened that the other
found it out and went and called his
fellow a thieving sneak, an unprincipled
wastrel, and other names of an undigni-
fied nature. This made the thief very
angry, so he went into the field again and
stole more grass. Once more the owner
caught him. 'Again, son of Satan, child
of Beelzebub ! Surely I will send thee

*A bowl-shaped boat, made of reeds and
pitch, used in the Tigris and Euphrates val-
leys.

f A long, narrow canoe.

THE BULLS AND GRIFFINS STAND OUT
IN BOLD RELIEF ON NEBUCHAD-
NEZZAR'S GATE

to join thy father!' and he shot him
dead on the spot.

"Now, his father was by the canal
watering his donkey, when some one of
his neighbors came and said, 'Thy son
hath slain his fellow.' Immediately the
old man packed all his goods, his pots and
his pans, upon his donkey and fled to the
next village.

"But when the murdered man's family
heard of the crime they rushed to the
murderer's house and tore from it every
last remaining article of value ; then they
returned to their own place. After this
exhibition of rage their anger cooled
somewhat and the murderer's father re-
turned to his house, but without his
donkey. He knew that now they would
harm neither himself nor his son because
of the fifty liras which was their due.
Truly the Arab is too shrewd to kill the
goose that lays the golden egg.

748

OUTING

"After a seemly interval the family of
the murdered man came to demand their
money. Over their narghilehs and cups
of coffee the parties discussed this ques-
tion.

" 'Surely our brave young man who
feared neither wolves nor robbers and
carried a great silver knife in his belt
was worth four hundred liras!'

" 'Nay! Thy son was a rascal and not
worth twenty liras. Moreover, he stole
my donkev!'

" 'But I am a poor man and have
nothing. Wherewithal shall I pay?'

" 'Truly, we know thou didst receive
six jnejids for certain dates, last No-
vember.'

" 'But all this money is spent save
two metaliks and a bad piastre, without
which I cannot purchase salt for my
son's sheep.'

"So it was arranged that payment
should be made in kind. More bargain-
ing ensued over this. Finally the rela-

TIIE NAME UPON THESE BRICKS IS THAT OF NEBUCHADNEZZAR. SOMEWHERE

AMONG THESE WALLS WAS DANIEL'S WINDOW ; SOMEWHERE AMONG THESE

CRYPTIC RUINS WAS THE BURNING FIERY FURNACE

"Now the relatives did not know
that the old schemer had but carried off
the donkey to the next village; so they
said :

' 'But thy donkey, we know, was an
ugly brute and old and not worth two
liras!'

' 'Nay, rather was he an animal of
great beauty, pure white without a
blemish and scarcely five years of age.
Surely he was of great value. But now
that he has been stolen and knows me
not, I will make a concession to you and
value him at one hundred liras/

"So they bargained over the donkey
and then over the man and fixed upon
his value, less that of the donkev, at last.
The father must pay thirty liras to the
murdered man's family.

tives agreed to accept two sheep, a young
ass and ten abbas * to be made by rela-
tives of the murderer who dealt in such
goods.

"When the time for payment came
these goods were brought together and
turned over to the relatives. The ani-
mals were passable and duly accepted.
But as for the abbas — they were scarcely
big enough for a three-year-old child.

" 'This is not according to the bar-
gain. We cannot wear such abbas/

" 'Nay! but there was no word in the
bargain requiring me to make abbas for
big men.'

"So the relatives were outwitted and
the neighbors said, 'What a clever man !'

"We have a neighbor who is a rich

*An Arab cloak.

JOURNEYING TO BABYLON

749

man and keeps fifty liras always at hand.
So the villagers know his gardeners will
shoot and do not trespass in his gardens
in the date season, for no one likes to get
killed."

As we were preparing to leave the
table there was a rustling in the veran-
da without, then a sound of scuffling and
a voice resembling that of the common
or back-fence variety of cat. But as
we left the room we saw that these were
no common cats. Solemnly the aged,

will show you others in the morning."
Beyond the palms and the deserted
river-bed is the city, a group of huge
mounds from which the curious of an-
other world have removed the dust and
revealed the foundations. Here are
endless mazes of walls, floors and vault-
ed chambers, all built of bricks laid in
asphalt. This is the land to which the
people came when they said, ''Let us go
down into the plain and use bricks for
stone and pitch for mortar."

A GIGANTIC LION DEFIANT OVER THE PROSTRATE BODY OF A MAN. THIS GREAT

BLOCK OF STONE MUST HAVE BEEN A CURIOSITY INDEED, IN THIS LAND OF

CLAY WHERE EVEN A PEBBLE IS UNHEARD OF

dignified, and very learned Herr Profes-
sor assured us that they were Babylo-
nian cats. Not one or two, but a score
at least, black and tawny, striped and
marbled, like ordinary cats, but each
showing his royal race by his tail, which
was laughably misshapen, crooked and
kinked like the tail of a bulldog. This
motley crew swarmed over the Profes-
sor, who fed them with pieces broken
from one of the coarse, unleavened
loaves of native bread which he had
brought from the table for the purpose.
They climbed to his shoulders, clung to
his coat, scuffled and cuffed each other in
the struggle for his favor.

"You have now seen one of the sights
of Babylon," said the Professor. "We

Every brick in these enormous struc-
tures is stamped with the name and line-
age of a king, the master-builder. Down
at the base of the mound, where the
trenches of the excavators are filled with
water like the wells of the village, are
bricks bearing the name of Hammurabi
and a date 2,200 years before our era.
Above them are many bricks bearing a
more familiar name. A sloping road-
way leads up to an imposing triple gate
upon which the figures of bulls and grif-
fins stand out in bold relief. Beyond the
gate are the walls and floors of a palace ;
but the road slopes on upward to a
higher level, and there also are the ruins
of a palace, a palace built upon a palace.
The name upon these bricks is that of

750

OUTING

Nebuchadnezzar. Somewhere among
these walls was Daniel's window open
toward Jerusalem ; somewhere among
these cryptic ruins was the burning fiery
furnace.

Overlooking one part of the palace,
stands a gigantic sculptured lion, defiant
over the prostrate body of a man. This
great block of stone must have been a
curiosity indeed in this land of clay
where even a pebble is unheard of. Why
it was brought here and how, would cer-
tainly make an interesting story. It may
have been a trophy brought to grace a
Babylonian triumph ; it may have been
an offering from an Assyrian king to ap-
pease the god of Babylon for the re-
moval of the capital to Nineveh. Be
that as it may, the long journey down
the Tigris valley and across the plains
of Irak must surely have been an event-
ful one.

Down among the ruins of Nabopalas-
sar's palace is a striking detail, an arch,
so far as we can tell, the oldest in the
world. Did the Chaldean mathemati-
cians invent the arch or did they learn its
principle from an older civilization?
Did they in turn hand their knowledge
down through their neighbors to the Ro-
man architects or was the value of the
arch discovered independently at differ-
ent times? Upon this page of architec-
tural history the writing is so dim that
I tear it will never be read.

Entering Nebuchadnezzar's palace, we
find the guard-rooms, the halls of audi-
ence, the chambers of the king; but be-
yond them all, innermost, is the most
dramatic of all, the banquet hall. This
place has witnessed the pride and fall
of many an empire, Assyrian, Babylo-
nian, Persian, Macedonian. Here have
been many triumph feasts, many dis-
plays ot captive splendor; here lias re-
SOlinded down the centuries to conqueror
after conqueror that dread sentence,
written, seared upon these very walls,
"Mint , mene, tekel upharsin."

The Splendor <>\ wealth, the pride of
empire, have vanished, the palaces and

temple, have fallen to shapeless mounds,
but >til] the names remain stamped in

i haracters in many languages

upon innumerable brick-. "I am ll.immu-
rabi, I reared this temple"; "I am Nebu-

chadnezzar, I built this palace"; "I am
Alexander, mine is the conquest."

As we explored the palaces and
temples we passed groups of workmen
who broke into a noisy chant as we ap-
proached, calling upon God to bless our
exalted generosity. Indeed, I fear they
shouted this sentiment more from the de-
sire to make a noise than for the sake of
any blessing that might accrue to us
therefrom. They are constantly sing-
ing at their work, which seemed to us
rather commendable than otherwise, un-
til we w7ere told that they expended far
more energy upon their choruses than
upon their wTork.

That evening, toward sunset, we
strolled across the dry channel to the
groves of palms beside the village. Here
was a scene of peaceful beauty in strange
contrast writh the dead city. Overhead
the feathery palm leaves lay black against
the reddening sky. Underfoot grew
rich green grass, fresh with moisture
from the irrigating ditches which had
been kept flowing all day long. In the
midst of the grove was the well, a shaft
fifty feet deep. The sloping palm trunks
over which the waterskins are drawn to
the surface stood gaunt, uncanny in the
falling light. All was silent, but there
was an odor of growing things, a sense
of life, and the air was full of moisture.

We turned again toward the palaces
wThere once had been the hanging gar-
dens of Babylon. A great change has
been wrought since those ancient times.
The city is an abode of death. Only
one living thing remains in this tomb of
perished empires, only a single voice is
lifted over it. A prophecy remains to
be fulfilled. The sun sinks out of sight
beyond the palm trees; the sheep are
driven to the shelter of their fold. The
gates are closed in the village beyond
the gardens and the cooking smoke of
evening hovers above the roofs. A dim
gray form slinks behind a pile of an-
cient bricks. ( )ff among the ruins a
quavering, high-pitched cry breaks the
stillness. Anguish is there and despair;
then the cry is broken by screams of
mocking laughter. The prophecy is ful-
fil led, "The jackals shall howl in their
palaces and the wolves in their pleasant
places."

THE RUCKSACKE— A TRAVELER'S
BEST FRIEND

By HARRY KNOWLES

Illustrated with Photographs

Handier than the Knapsack, More Spacious, and Easier to
Carry While Making Tours a-Foot

WE rucksacke is so con-
venient as well as adapt-
able to the needs of
tourists that it meets
every demand of the way-
farer as a receptacle for
clothing, toilet articles, and other things
needed on a jour-
ney. It is used
quite generally by
Europeans when
making walking
trips on the Conti-
nent. On whatever
highway or byway,
through whichever
town or country
the "personally
conducted" tourist
goes, he is sure to
see pedestrians with
rucksackes sus-
pended from their
backs. At the
Rhone glacier, over
the Grimsel pass,
ascending the
Jungfrau, and else-
where the ruck-
sacke is a common
carrier of personal
belongings. That
the rucksacke has
not been adopted
in this country un-
doubtedly is be-
cause of the general
antipathy Ameri-
cans have to trav-
eling afoot in these

ON WARM DAYS THE COAT MAY BE

ROLLED UP AND CARRIED BENEATH

THE FLAP OF THE RUCKSACKE

days of 40-horsepower touring cars.
Briefly, the rucksacke is a bag made
of denim, or heavy cloth. It has one or
two pockets on the back in which books
or articles frequently required by the
tourist are readily accessible. The top
is fastened by a cord, so the rucksacke,
filled with a couple
of suits of under-
wear, toilet arti-
cles, and the like,
resembles a meal
sack, except in
color. Most of
those sold in Eu-
rope are green, har-
monizing with the
landscape. But
khaki is suitable in
color and material.
The rucksacke
has a number of
advantages over its
cousin, the knap-
sack. It is easier
to get at, for one
thing. It is not
necessary to un-
fasten any straps
to open the ruck-
sacke. Untying the
string around the
top by pulling one
free end of a bow-
knot enables the
tourist to select
anything contained
therein in a jiffy.
Perhaps the great-
est advantage to

[751]

752

OUTING

THE CORRECT POSITION OF THE RUCK-

SACKE IS JUST ABOVE THE SMALL OF

THE BACK

the pedestrian who would make several
miles a day is the comfort with which
the rucksacke may be worn. There are
no tight straps going around the shoul-
ders, seemingly binding tighter with
every stride. The rucksacke is hung
from the shoulders lightly, suspended by
two straps that are never taut.

The correct position for the rucksacke
is just above the middle of the small of
the back, where it rests easily as one
walks over plains and through forests.
However heavy the articles contained,
their weight never becomes burdensome
in this position. The rucksacke is read-
ily adjusted.

Two straps extend from the top of.
the bag, one over each shoulder. They
are fastened, after passing under the

arms, to the corners of the rucksacke.
One strap buckles in the usual way.
The left arm is thrust through the loop
and the rucksacke swung upon the back.
Then a small loop on the other strap is
slipped over the hook on the right lower
corner of the rucksacke. There you are
— ready for a tramp of miles with all
the essential clothing and paraphernalia.
Rucksackes are of various sizes. The
average measures about eighteen by twen-
ty-two inches. This affords ample space
for all the things that any tourist by foot
can possibly need. It is true that all the
articles are put into one space but this is
no disadvantage in these days, when one

SUSPENDED FROM TPIE SHOULDERS BY
STRAPS THAT DO NOT BIND, THE
WEIGHT OF CLOTHING AND TOILET
ARTICLES IX THE RUCKSACKE NEVER
BECOM ES BURDENSOME

THE WORLD OF SPORT

753

has his sponge bag, his toilet case, his
soap box, etc. The only precaution
necessary is to pack the things rarely
needed at the bottom of the bag. A
guide-book, or book to read, tobacco,
pipe, or handkerchiefs, can be put into
the outside pocket, whose flap buttons.

On hot days one's coat may be rolled
up and carried beneath this flap securely.
Some rucksackes are waterproof — "was-
serdict" the German salesmen term them
when you are making a purchase. But
the ordinary kind will rarely wet through
in a shower. It is only when one con-
templates walking in all kinds of weather
that the waterproof rucksacke is actually
required.

Only tourists who cherish baggage
"stickers" need hesitate to wear a ruck-
sacke. It looks every bit as respectable
as a suitcase. Young Germans enjoying
their reise jahr throughout the Father-
land invariably travel with no other bag-
gage than a rucksacke. I have seen
dozens of them thus equipped enter city
and country hotels, respectfully remove
their hats before accosting the proprietor
or clerk, and ask for lodging. On the
morrow they would leave for the next
stopping place, utterly regardless of per-
plexing time-tables and not having to
worry about the uncertainties of baggage
transportation. It is the ideal condition
in which to travel.

THE

WORLD

SPORT

State and We publish this month an
National abstract of the game laws of
Game Laws the varjous states, together
with the Federal law as amended. It is
assumed as a matter of course that no
good shooter will violate knowingly the
provisions of his state laws or of the
Federal statute. There is some confu-
sion of mind, however, as to the relations
of state and national legislation on this
subject. Although the issue is fairly
clear, we shall repeat here what we have
said in the past on this subject. In the
first place, the Weeks-McLean bill is
still the law of the land despite the de-
cision of a Federal judge in Arkansas
last spring. Only the Supreme Court of
the United States can settle the question
finally. Neither can the law be ignored
on the ground that it is a "bad law."
There is no such thing as a bad law in
that sense. It is either law or it is not.
As it stands to-day it must be obeyed.
In the matter of apparent conflict be-
tween state and Federal regulations, par-

ticularly in respect to seasons, the shorter
season prevails, whatever be the author-
ity that prescribes it. The National
Government cannot grant the privilege
of shooting when the state denies it, nor
can the state infringe on the period
closed by Federal statute. In the past,
state legislation on game protection has
suffered from confusion and carelessness
on the part of the legislators. Amend-
ments have been adopted altering the
shooting dates or changing the classifica-
tion of game without definitely repealing
other clauses that conferred conflicting
privileges. As a result, in certain states
hunters have been allowed the privilege
in one part of the law to shoot certain
birds between certain dates and in an-
other paragraph have been forbidden to
shoot those same birds at any time. The
natural consequence has been a growth
of distrust and contempt for game laws
and a great confusion in the minds of
even competent and industrious wardens.
Most of these tangles have been cleared

754

OUTING

away, and there is little opportunity now
to plead ignorance or misunderstanding.
This is especially true in regard to the
relations of state and Federal legislation
as cited above.

As They Do There is some protest in the
It on the Middle West against the
Missouri Federal prohibition of shoot-
ing on such navigable rivers as the Mis-
souri and the Mississippi. Undoubtedly
this does work certain hardships, but we
cannot feel great sympathy, since it is
along these rivers that the most shame-
less and unblushing pot-hunting has taken
place. Recently a shooting friend from
Kansas described the motorboat shooting
that he had seen on the Missouri. The
boat was run out into midstream below
a raft of ducks, headed upstream, and
throttled down to current speed. Then
the gunners would wait quietly until the
ducks drifted down. The first shot was
usually put in while the ducks were on
the water and bunched. In one case that
our informant cited -as a fact of personal
knowledge, four men with pump-guns
accounted for forty-four birds out of one
flock. That is, forty-four were recov-
ered. Some wounded birds escaped and
some dead ones drifted away in the ex-
citement. The kill was then cached
ashore and the feat repeated on the next
flock that was sighted. The guns hap-
pened to be pump-guns. The case would
hardly have been different with any other
kind, since it is the man and not the gun
that is the murderer.

National A plan has been proposed
Trap-Shooting that will extend the benefits
Competition of competition [n trap-shoot-
ing far beyond the present limits. The
idea briefly is to provide for a "club
championship" of North America. To
this end five leagues are to be formed,
as follows: Eastern, Southern, Central,
Western, and Canadian. Clubs may
join the respective leagues and enter the
competition on payment of an entry fee
of $3. The months of competition will
be June, July, and August. Each club
will shoot on its own grounds, amateurs
only being allowed to participate, and no
person may shoot with more than one
club. Matches will be at fifty targets

per man, and scores must be reported
within one week after the match. The
clubs winning the league championships
will then compete for the North Ameri-
can championship, each club shooting
three matches on its own grounds under
the same conditions as above.

Harvard The victory of Harvard in
at the Grand Challenge at

Henley Henley is gratifying in more
ways than one. It is the first time that
an American crew has ever won this
classic event, and it is pleasant that it
should have been won by a crew from a
university that has done more than any
other in this country in recent years for
the development and encouragement of
general rowing by all members of the
university. It would, of course, be a
mistake to regard this as, strictly speak-
ing, an international affair. Henley is
not a hippodrome, nor is it an arena in
which Great Britain takes her stand to
challenge all comers. It is preeminently
an English affair, the crown and climax
of English rowing. The participation of
foreign crews is purely a privilege and
courtesy accorded by the English rowing
association, and the cup goes back next
year to be rowed for again as though it
had never visited this country. England
would be quite within her rights if she
excluded foreign crews entirely from all
Henley racing.

What It What has been said is quite
Means for without intention of detract-
Amenca jng jn any way from fac

splendid work of the Harvard and Union
Boat Club crews. That two American
crews should be competing in the finals
of this race is honor enough without at-
tempting to make of the event something
that it is not and, it is to be hoped, never
will be. Furthermore, these crews went
over in the right spirit and attitude. It
was as though they said to themselves:
"Here is a boat race to which we are
eligible. Therefore, we will row. We'll
have a mighty good time, and perhaps
we'll win." They did. The lesson that
lies back of this is not one of strokes or
methods, but rather of possibilities for
American rowing in general. Harvard
is the center of a big revival in general

THE WORLD OF SPORT

755

sweep rowing. The members of the
Union Boat Club crew were, we believe,
all old Harvard oarsmen, and there are
many other crews in and around Boston
that are working steadily. This is only
a beginning. What Vivian Nickalls did
at Detroit can be done elsewhere. New
York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, St. Louis
— to mention only a few examples — are
centers favored by nature for the devel-
opment of crews. Each city contains a
number of men with varsity experience
and a love for the game. The crux of
the problem is beginning. Once make
the start and the support will follow.

Broaden A long step in the right di-

tne rection could be taken with

Intercollegiate the Henley izing of the

Poughkeepsie regatta. Instead of a half-
dozen college crews rowing for a single
afternoon, there should be fifteen or
twenty amateur crews, of various classes,
rowing for three or four days. The In-
tercollegiate can be retained as at pres-
ent, although it is our firm belief that
the distance for the Varsity event should
be shortened. Four miles is too long for
men of the average age now competing
at Poughkeepsie. There are probably
few oarsmen of any experience who do
not regard the four-mile stretch with
dread when the boats line up at the start,
and the third mile finds many a man
praying for an accident that will give
him relief with honor. There are few
races in which the same crews could not
have won at three miles, or at two, with
the same success as at the longer distance,
and the futile and heart-breaking sprint-
ing in the earlier stretches would be
eliminated. In other words, the shorter
race would be a race from start to finish,
with less danger from fatigue too long
sustained.

Chance Henleyize Poughkeepsie and
for Smaller there will be a chance of
Colleges bringing in some of the
smaller colleges in their special classes.
Princeton is rowing already, and rowing
with distinguished success, but there is
hardly a chance of a Tiger crew appear-
ing at Poughkeepsie under present con-
ditions. There was a day when Brown
and Wesleyan rowed, and doubtless am-

ple material for at least fou«r-oared crews
could be found in those institutions to-
day if the opportunity for good races
presented itself. Other colleges that
might be induced to come in are New
York University, Dartmouth, North-
western University, the University of
Chicago, Washington University in St.
Louis, Lake Forest, and Georgetown.
These are only a few possibilities that
occur offhand. The Navy rows already,
and the Army should, if the authorities
are not opposed. With such material in
the background there should be no diffi-
culty in making of Poughkeepsie a real
American Henley that would be a three
or four-day rowing festival of national
importance.

Real Sport If you have the opportunity

m — an(l have never taken it —

Surf-Fishing tQ practise the noble art of

surf-fishing, now is a good time to begin.
Almost anywhere along the Atlantic
Coast is the place, and the fall is the
season. The equipment varies ; it can be
almost as expensive as you please, espe-
cially in the matter of reels, but it need
not be. The game is striped bass, chan-
nel bass, drum, and kingfish principally,
particularly in the northern waters.
Then there is the flounder that occasion-
ally intrudes — not much sport, but
mighty good eating. Surf-fishing has the
quality of action that so much fishing
lacks. Even when the fish are not strik-
ing, the pounding of the surf and the
general surroundings of beach and ocean
give a thrill that is not to be found on
most lakes and rivers. The casting is an
art in itself, and the beginner will find
himself divided between the desire to get
his four-ounce sinker well out beyond the
breakers and fear of the annoying over-
run and the resulting tangle of line on
the reel. When they strike — well, the
fisherman has his hands full. A lively
fish, fighting with all his strength and
helped as often as not by the undertow
and the backwash of the waves, can give
even the skilled caster the time of his life.

Forest Co-operation between state

Fire. and national governments

Prevention for tne prevention of forest

fires is being developed rapidly. Michi-

756

OUTING

gan is the latest state to take advantage
of this opportunity, making the eigh-
teenth state to take such action. Under
the terms of the law passed in 1911 the
National Government, acting through
the Forest Service, stands ready to con-
tribute an amount not to exceed the
amount appropriated by the state and not
to exceed $10,000 yearly in any one state.
The initiative must be taken by the state
and plans and maps filed with the Forest
Service showing plans in detail and indi-
cating the location of watchmen or pa-
trols. The Federal appropriation must
be used exclusively for the hiring of such
patrols, who are selected by the state,
subject to the approval of the Forest
Service. The areas protected must be on
the watersheds of navigable rivers, and
the arrangement may be terminated by
the Secretary of Agriculture at any time
that he finds it not working out satisfac-
torily. The total amount expended down
to date is $275,000, and the appropria-
tion for the present fiscal year provides
$100,000 for carrying on the work.

For the At this time of the year we
Man with suggest a re-reading of the
the Gun article> -Safety First," by
Mr. Edward C. Grossman, published in
the April, 1914, Outing. It offers a
few thoughts that are as necessary prepa-
rations for the shooting season as buying
a new gun or overhauling the old one.
If you have an idea that your gun is
"safe," read the article. If you don't
know the different and impossible ways
in which accidents may happen in the
hunting field, read the article. If you
think that you, at least, will never be the
fool who didn't know it was loaded, read
the article. It will show you that no gun
is "safe" or fool-proof, despite the money
that manufacturers have spent toward
that end. It will prove to you that no
man can be too sure. It will lead you to
consider the vast number of near-acci-
dents that shave fatality or seriousness
by inches or seconds. The lesson of it
all is: Be just as careful as you can, and
then — be twice as careful. So may you
bring nothing but game to bag.

WHAT READERS THINK

How Slow Ducks "Speed Up'1— Are Wild Pigeons Still Alive?-
How to Cook a Steak in the Open

Making Ducks Fiy Faster

WHY does an ordinary, slow duck
like the mallard fly faster when
he gets in fast company — with
the teal, for example? Mr. R. F. Hol-
land raised the question in Outing last
September. Now comes an answer from
Chicago, a year after. It may not be
right, but it is interesting. If anyone
has a better answer, now is his time to
speak.

Editor, Outing:

In Outing of last September I noted
an article on the flying speeds of the
various species of wild ducks. Said arti-
cle seems to have been written by a very
intelligent and conscientious observer
who would not be. likely to allow his
imagination to get the better of his high

regard for the strictest truth and accu-
racy.

Among other things, he mentioned the
fact that when a "mixed" company of
wild ducks was frightened into full-
speed flight, a certain variety, whose
maximum speed when flying alone or in
company with only members of his own
species was less than 60 m.p.h., would,
when in company with ducks that had
speeds of more than 120 m.p.h., have no
difficulty in keeping pace with his fleeter
companions. Your contributor of last
September could give no explanation of
this phenomenon, and seemed to invite
the theories of others as to this. Since
no one else has advanced any opinions
on this matter, I would like to venture
my theory for the consideration of your-
self and of your readers.

WHAT READERS THINK

757

If one will stand first about twenty
feet in front of a whirling aeroplane pro-
peller, then stand the same distance to
the rear, and note the difference in the
movement of the air, it may easily be
understood what a large proportion of
the air that is thrust backward by the
propeller is drawn into it centripetally
rather than from in front of it. I believe
that the same is true, and in much
greater degree, with the wings of birds,
especially with the wings of such a vio-
lently wing-flapping bird as the wild
duck. My theory is that the currents
of air set in motion by the wings of the
wild duck take the form of sort of oval
or elliptical eddies, which accompany the
duck in its flight.

Of course, the bird, to be assisted by
its more powerful companions, would fly,
not directly abreast with them, but ob-
liquely so, for thus these oval eddies
would not oppose one another on the
short end turns: and it is a fact that
wildfowl do fly generally in more or less
regular double oblique or "wedge-
shaped" formation. The fact that birds'
wings and propeller blades do draw the
air into them centripetally seems to give
color to my theory that these oval eddies
really do exist. So my theory is not so
entirely fanciful as it may seem at first
glance. At any rate, the theory may be
easily and inexpensively proven or dis-
proven by simple tests, and I trust that
Outing will use its influence to have
these experiments performed, in the in-
terests of both sport and science, for not
only would sportsmen and other nature
students better understand the why and
wherefore of this phenomenon as applied
to the mysteries of the wildfowl's flight,
but also would aeroplane designers better
understand the reasons for certain cases
of wing failure and be enabled to provide
against them, which might result in the
saving of many valuable lives. Thus
would both the safety and efficiency of
aviation increase tremendously.

I believe that two powerful aeroplanes,
one flying obliquely forward to the left
and the other obliquely on the rear to
the right, could assist a much less power-
ful one to attain a speed much in excess
of its maximum speed when flying alone.
But here, as in the case of the mixed

company of wild ducks, the faster ones
would be slowed up just as much as the
slower ones would be accelerated. It
would also be better — for reasons I will
give later — that the direction of pro-
pellers' rotation be the same for all the
aeroplanes engaged in the experiment.

Or a suitable arrangement of pilot
tubes or similar instruments would show
that these oval eddies really do exist with
the aeroplanes in full flight. Also, a
somewhat similar arrangement of pilot
tubes would show that the down strokes
of the propeller blades are more efficient
than the up strokes, and that the bottom
strokes are more efficient than the top
strokes. Although, of course, these latter
facts can have no bearing on the flight
of wildfowl, still they are not entirely
outside the province of Outing, since
the sport of aviation even now is rapidly
becoming an important feature of such
sportsman's magazines as Outing. So I
trust you will not be impatient or incon-
siderate with my theories, unproven
though they may be. All this might
seem to be an argument in favor of a
flapping-wing aeroplane as opposed to
the present propeller-driven type ; but
this is not necessarily the case, for a
proper knowledge of these facts — for
they are facts — may be utilized to great
advantage even with the present type of
aeroplane.

Although I have long since thoroughly
convinced myself as to the truth of my
theories, I am having a rather difficult
task in convincing others. It may inter-
est you to know that for more than two
years I have been endeavoring to press
forward these and similar theories, and
find it absolutely useless to try further to
gain the co-operation of any aviation
magazine. One would very naturally
suppose that with such a modern move-
ment as aviation, those connected with it
would be extremely open-minded and
progressive; but, strange to say, I have
rarely met such bigotry and discourtesy
anywhere. So I am offering this for the
consideration of Outing and its broad-
minded readers, in the hope that it may
be found both interesting and convincing.

Chicago, 111. J. B. McQueeny.

P. S. — I would suggest that the won-

758

OUTING

derful success of the small-span "tabloid"
biplane is very largely due to the fact
that the span is not enough to be un-
favorably affected by the return side of
oval eddy. When a tractor aeroplane of
great span is used, it would be well for
the wing spars to be absolutely bare of
ribs or fabric at the point where the re-
turn side of eddy flows, and that
the spars themselves be "stream-lined"
against that current, or that extremely
low "aspect ratio" be used to keep the
span small and the wing area la^ge.

one hundred miles north of Fort Wil-
liam, last May.

J. B. Dobie.
Thessalon, Ont., Can.

Wild Pigeons Still Alive

FROM time to time reports, usually
vague and unverified, have come in
from various parts of the country
that passenger pigeons have been seen
again singly or in small flocks. The
prize offered by Clark University for
proof of the existence of any of these
birds and for a nest and eggs has never
been won, although it has been standing
for some years. Last July Outing
published an article on the disappearance
of the pigeons and described the passing
of the last large flocks in their northward
flight. Now comes a letter, which we
print below, claiming that some have
been seen in the Canadian woods toward
which Mr. Martin saw them disappear-
ing a generation ago.

Editor, Outing:

My brother, Mr. Jos, B. Dobie, of
Chatsworth P. O., Ontario, writes me
that he saw, this week, a flock of more
than one hundred wild pigeons on his
farm in Sullivan township, Grey Co.,
Ont., nine miles from Owen Sound, on
Georgian Bay. As he has lived for about
sixty years on the same farm and saw
millions of these wild pigeons in the 60's,
he could not be deceived and says there
is no doubt about it and believes the wild
pigeons are not only not extinct, but
must be rapidly increasing. I thought
this information would be interesting,
and as I am sure it is true, I hope the
most strict measures will be advocated
for the protection of these birds. When
I came to Algonia district, in 1869, there
were millions of them here, but I have
not seen one in twenty years. A son of
mine saw one at the St. Anthony mine,

A CORRESPONDENT in Louisi-
ana has evidence to add later
than that adduced by Mr. Mar-
tin, in his article in the July Outing,
but not so late as that presented by Mr.
Dobie in the letter above. It is also of
interest to our friends who read dream-
books.

Editor, Outing:

In my Outing for July, I find an in-
teresting article from Mr. Edwin T.
Martin, entitled "What Became of All
the Pigeons?" I have seen two theories
advanced as to their disappearance. One
was that they had emigrated to the unex-
plored regions of the South American
Andes, and another that in their emigra-
tion thither they had been caught in a
storm at sea and completely destroyed.
I very much doubt any such cause.

Mr. Martin carries his data of large
masses of pigeons in the far Northwest
up to 1880, and then says that about a
dozen years after the pigeons were sup-
posed to be extinct he saw a flock of
them flying over the Illinois River.

Kow, I have some data about the pas-
senger pigeon which perhaps would be
interesting to Mr. Martin, and which
may reach him either by publication in
Outing, or which you may forward to
him.

My home is on the Yazoo & Missis-
sippi Valley Railroad, at Ethel, East
Feliciana Parish, State of Louisiana,
twelve miles east of Port Hudson, on
the Mississippi River. In 1889 I was
living just a little out of the village and
the woods came down to the north side
of my yard fence. On Sunday night I
dreamed that on a bright, beautiful Sun-
day morning, with my gun upon my
shoulder, I was walking along a splendid
public road in a country strange to me.
Ahead of me, on the left of the road, was
an occupied house resembling very much
the house in which I was living. Be-
tween myself and the house stood a
water oak tree full of wild pigeons. I
selected a position to fire from, but saw

WHAT READERS THINK

759

that every shot which failed to strike
something would fall on the house. I
changed to another position. From this
position I concluded to shoot both barrels
of my gun at once, but on second thought
deemed it best to fire one barrel at the
pigeons and keep the other to argue the
question with the proprietor, should he
come out to raise a dispute. I fired one
barrel and killed one pigeon.

The next morning, which was Mon-
day, at the breakfast table I related my
dream to my wife and two daughters.
My daughters had never seen a wild
pigeon. After finishing my breakfast I
went out into the yard and passed
through a gate into the woods. In a
large beech tree near the fence I saw
quite a number of birds, which I thought
were our common doves. After going
a short distance it occurred to me that
they were rather large for doves, and,
upon looking again, saw that they were
wild pigeons. I called to my wife to
bring me my gun, which she did. I fired
one barrel and killed one pigeon. This
was the first wild pigeon they had ever
seen, nor have they or I seen another
since.

I have a large and excellent portrait
of one, taken from a package of soda,
which I prize very highly and keep hung
up in my room to remind me of the days
in my boyhood when the pigeons used to
come by the millions.

Ethel, La. Henry L. Pond.

An Amateur Defined

TWO more definitions of an ama-
teur that have come in response to
our invitation published last May
are worth printing because of their suc-
cinctness, although they sacrifice compre-
hensiveness to brevity. According to Mr.
C. C. Vinton, Portland, Ore., an ama-
teur is "An unpaid participant in any

branch of sport, in contrast to those who
follow it for pay."

Mr. Kennedy, Glasgow, Scotland, is
of the opinion that "An amateur is one
who plays for pleasure, not for pay."

These are both excellent as expressing
the spirit of amateurism, but it is to be
feared that the Amateur Athletic Union
would not find them greatly helpful in
deciding disputed questions of standing.
The right definition should not only
cover the general field, but should also
be capable of application as an acid test
of standing in particular cases.

Cooking a Steak in the Open

NOT the least important feature of
a successful camping trip is the
food. Therefore, anyone who can
add to our knowledge in this respect is a
public benefactor. That is why we print
the following letter:

Editor, Outing:

To cook a steak out of doors permit me
to suggest the following, which I have
tried and not found wanting:

Take an old tin or zinc pail with the
bottom knocked out, or if the bottom is
intact punch a couple of holes in the side,
put it on two old paving blocks and start
your fire in it. Wait until fire has
burned, so there is no smoke, then hold
the steak over it in a broiler — you can
get a broiler at the ten-cent store — and
cook until done enough to suit you. Then
remove and eat in the usual way. The
wood fire and the little smoke that will
be mixed in certainly give it a flavor that
is hard to beat. I often do this on Sun-
day, and find that I do not have to go
into the country for an outing, as you can
build a fire in a pail anywhere,

I don't know how to make gravy, as
the fat falls into the fire.

New York. J. G. Bethell.

OUTING invites letters from readers on outdoor sub-
jects, whether suggested by articles in the magazine or
arising from the writer's own observation or experience.

GAME LAWS FOR 1914

The State and Provincial Laws of the United States and Canada;
Together with Federal Regulations for Migratory Game Birds

ALABAMA

Wild turkey gobbler, Dec. 1 to March 31 ;
quail, Nov. 1 to Feb. 28 ; geese, brant, ducks,
rails, coots, mudhens, woodcocks, sandpiper,
curlew and other shore birds, Sept. 1 to
March 14; snipe, plover, Nov. 1 to April 30;
pheasants, Nov. 15 to Dec. 14; deer, Nov. 1
to Dec. 31; squirrels, Oct. 1 to Feb. 28. Bag
limits: 1 deer per season; 2 turkey gobblers,
25 game birds of any species per day. Li-
censes: County, resident, $1 ; State, resident,
$3; State, non-resident, $15.

ARIZONA
Deer, turkey, Oct. 1 to Dec. 15; quail,
snipe, rail, Oct. 15 to Feb. 1; ducks, geese,
brant, Sept. 1 to April 1 ; trout, June 1 to
Sept. 1 ; doves, whitewings, June 1 to Feb.
1 ; elk, mountain goat or sheep, antelope,
bobwhite quail, grouse, pheasants, protected.
Bag limits: 2 deer per season; 25 quail per
day; 25 ducks per day; 35 doves- or white-
wings per day; 3 turkeys per season. License:
Resident, $0.50; non-resident, big game, $25;
non-resident, bird, $10; alien, big game,
$100; alien, bird, $25.

ARKANSAS
Quail, Nov. 1 to Feb. 28 (Dec. 10 to Jan.
31 in Columbia, Carroll, Lafayette and Grant
counties) ; partridge, Nov. 1 to Feb. 28; deer,
Sept. 1 to Jan. 31 (Oct. 1 to Jan. 31 in Chicot
County; Oct. 1 to Dec. 31 in Desha County) ;
wild turkey, Sept. 1 to April 30 (Feb. 1 to
May 15 in Chicot County) ; grouse (prairie
chicken), Nov. 1 to Nov. 30 (protected in
Prairie County) ; pheasant, protected ; squirrel,
county laws. License: Resident varies with
county; unlawful for non-residents to hunt or
fish, except may fish in Spring River in the
northern district of Sharp and Fulton coun-
ties.

CALIFORNIA

Divided into hunting districts as follows:
No. 1, Siskiyou, Modoc, Lassen, Shasta,
Trinity, Tehama; No. 2, Del Norte, Hum-
boldt, Mendocino, Glenn, Colusa, Lake, So-
noma, Napa, Yolo, Solano, Marin; No. 3,
Plumas, Butte, Sierra, Yuba, Sutter, Nevada,
Placer, El Dorado. Sacramento, San Joaquin,
Amador, Calaveras, Tuolumne, Mariposa;
No. 4, Madera, Tulare, and eastern parts of
Stanislaus, Merced, Frer.no, Kings and Kern;
No. 5, Contra Costa, Alameda, San Fran-
cisco, San Mateo, Santa Clara, Santa Cruz,
Santa Barbara, San Benito, Monterey, San

[7C0]

Luis Obispo and western parts of Stanislaus,
Merced, Fresno, Kings, Kern ; No. 6, Ven-
tura, Los Angeles, Orange, San Diego, Im-
perial, Riverside, San Bernardino; No. 7,
Inyo, Mono, Alpine.

Deer, 1, 3, 7, August 15 to Oct. 31; 2, 4,
5, July 1 to Aug. 31; 6, Aug. 15 to Sept. 15;
ducks, brant, geese, mudhens, blackbreasted
and golden plover, yellowlegs, jacksnipe, Oct.
15 to Jan. 31; all other shore birds, rail, wood
duck, wild pigeon, protected; valley or desert
quail, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, Oct. 15 to Feb. 15; 6,
Oct. 15 to Nov. 15; mountain quail, grouse,
sagehen, Sept. 1 to Nov. 30; rabbits, Aug. 1
to Jan. 31; tree squirrels, Sept. 1 to Dec.
31 (no closed season in Mendocino). Bag
limits: Deer, 2 per year; ducks, brant, 25
per day, 50 per week; rabbits, 15 per day;
tree squirrels, 12 per season; plover, yellow-
legs, jacksnipe, 20 per day; valley and desert
quail, 20 per day; mountain quail, 10 per
day; grouse, sagehens, 4 per day. Licenses:
Hunters, resident, $1; non-resident, $10;
aliens, $25.

COLORADO
Elk, deer, mountain sheep, antelope, wild
turkey, quail, pheasant, protected ; prairie
chicken, mountain and willow grouse, August
15 to Oct. 10; ducks, geese, brant, swan,
cranes, plover and other wading, marsh and
shore birds and water fowls, Sept. 1 to April
20 : sage chickens, August 1 to Sept. 1 ; curlew
and yellowlegged snips, August 1 to April
20; doves, August 15 to Aug. 31. Bag limits:
20 birds in aggregate of all kinds per day.
License: Non-resident and non-citizen hunt-
ing, $10; resident hunting and fishing, $1.

CONNECTICUT

Deer, protected ; squirrels, Oct. 8 to Nov.
23; hares, rabbits, Oct. 8 to Dec. 31; wood
duck, protected; wild ducks, geese, brant,
swans, Sept. 1 to Dec 31; quail, ruffed grouse,
woodcock, pheasants, Oct. 8 to Nov. 23 ; shore
birds, sandpiper, plover, snipe, Sept. 1 to
Dec. 31 ; rail, Sept. 12 to Dec. 31. Bag limits;
Quail, woodcock, grouse, pheasants, partridge,
5 per day or 36 per year; shore birds, snipe,
50 per day; rail, 35 per day. License: Resi-
dent, $1.25;. non-resident, $10.25; alien,
$15.25.

DI'.LAWARE

Quail, partridge, hare, rabbits, Nov. 15 to

Dec. 31 ; reedbirds and rails, Sept. 1 to Nov.

1 ; wild geese, brant, wild ducks, Oct. 1 to

March 15; summer duck, Sept. 1 to Oct. 31;

GAME LAWS FOR 1914

761

squirrels, woodcock, Nov. 15 to Dec. 31. Bag
limits : 50 rails per day; 20 ducks per day;
12 birds of any other species; 6 hares, rab-
bits, squirrels per day. License: Resident
hunters, $1.10; non-resident hunters, $10.50.

FLORIDA
Deer, squirrels, wild turkey gobblers, bob-
white quail, doves, swans, geese, brant, ducks,
rails, coots, mudhens, sandpipers, curlews,
snipe, plover, Nov. 20 to Feb. 20; grouse,
pheasants, protected until 1915. Bag limits:

I deer, 2 turkeys, 20 quail, 25 birds of any
other species per day; 3 deer, 5 turkeys, 500
other game birds per season. License: Resi-
dent (county), $1; (State), $3; non-resi-
dent, $15, for each county.

GEORGIA

Quail, partridge, doves, turkey gobblers,
plovers, Nov. 20 to March 1 ; snipe, Dec. 1
to May 1 ; woodcock, wood duck, Dec. 1 to
Jan. 1 ; deer, Oct. 1 to Dec. 1 ; squirrels,
August 1 to Jan. 1 ; pheasants, grouse, pro-
tected; opossum, Oct. 1 to March 1. Bag
limits: 3 deer per year; 3 turkey gobblers
per year; 25 game birds per day; 40 snipe
or doves per day. License: resident (coun-
ty), $1; (State), $3; non-resident, $15.

IDAHO
Deer, elk, mountain sheep, mountain goat,
Sept. 1 to Nov. 30 (elk in Fremont and Bing-
ham counties, Sept. 1 to Dec. 31; elk in Bon-
ner, Kootenai, Shoshone, La^ah, Nez Perce,
Clearwater, Idaho counties, protected until
1916; deer in same counties, Sept. 20 to Dec.
20) ; moose, buffalo, antelope, caribou, im-
ported pheasants, prairie chickens, pinnated
grouse, protected ; sagebirds, turtle doves,
July 15 to Nov. 30 (Fremont County, Au-
gust 15 to Nov. 30) ; quail, Nov. 1 to Nov.
30; partridge, pheasants, grouse (north of
Salmon River, Sept. 1 to Nov. 30; south of
Salmon River), August 15 to Nov. 30; ducks,
geese, snipe, plover, Sept. 1 to Jan. 31. Bag
limits: Elk, mountain sheep, mountain goat,
1; deer, 2; sagehens, partridge, pheasants,
grouse, 12 per day; doves, ducks, snipe,
plover, 24 per day; quail, 18 per day; geese,
4 per day. License: Resident, $1; non-
resident (big game), $25; (birds), $5.

ILLINOIS
Deer, wild turkey, pheasant, partridge,
protected until 1923 ; bobwhite quail, Nov.

II to Dec. 9; prairie chicken, Nov. 11 to
Nov. 24; ruffed grouse, quail, Hungarian
partridge, capercailzie, black (or heath)
grouse, woodcock, protected until July 1,
1920; squirrels, July 2 to Nov. 14; shore
birds, snipe, plover, Sept. 2 to April 30; wild
geese, ducks, brant, coot, rail, other water
fowl, Sept. 2 to April 14. Bag limits:
Quail, 12 per day; prairie chicken, 3 per
day; squirrels, shore birds, snipe, plover,
ducks, 15 per day; wild geese, brant, 10 per
day; coot, rail, other water fowl, 20 per
day. License: Resident, $1; non-resident,
$25.50.

INDIANA

Deer, wild turkey, pheasant, prairie chick-
en, Hungarian partridge, protected; quail,
ruffed grouse, Nov. 10 to Dec. 20; geese,
ducks, brant, Sept. 1 to April 15; squirrels,
July 1 to Nov. 1 ; woodcock, July 1 to Jan. 1.
Bag limits: Quail, grouse, geese, ducks,
brant, 15 per day, 45 per season. License:
Resident, $1; non-resident, $15.50.

IOWA

Prairie chicken, Sept. 1 to Nov. 30 ; wood-
cock, July 10 to Dec. 31; ruffed grouse, quail,
wild turkey, Nov. 1 to Dec. 14; ducks, geese,
brant, rail, plover, Sept. 1 to April 15;
squirrels, Sept. 1 to Dec. 31 ; deer, elk, pro-
tected; pheasant, protected until 1915. Bag
limits: Birds, 25 of a kind per day; squirrels,
25 per day. License: Resident, $1; non-
resident, $10.

KANSAS

Fox squirrels, Sept. 1 to Jan. 1 (other
squirrels protected) ; antelope, deer, quail,
prairie chicken, Hungarian partridge, im-
ported pheasants, protected ; geese, brant,
ducks. Sept. 1 to April 15; plover, August 1
to April 30; snipe, Sept. 1 to April 30. Bag
limits: Snipe, 12; plover, 20; ducks, 20;
geese, 6; brant, 6. License: Resident, $1;
non-resident, $15.

KENTUCKY

Squirrels, June 15 to Sept. 15, and Nov.
15 to Feb. 1; rabbits, Nov. 15 to Sept. 15;
wild turkey, Sept. 1 to Feb. 1 ; quail, par-
tridge, pheasant, Nov. 15 to Jan. 1; pheasant
(imported), protected; woodcock, Nov. 1 to
Jan. 1 ; geese, wood duck and other ducks,
Oct. 1 to Jan. 16; doves, August 1 to Feb. 1.
License: Resident, $1; non-resident, $15.

LOUISIANA

(1913 laws)

Doves, wood ducks, Sept. 1 to March 1 ;
ducks, geese, brant, rails, curlew, plover,
Oct. 1 to March 1; wild turkey (gobblers),
Nov. 15 to April 1; teal ducks, snipe, sand-
pipers, Sept. 15 to April 1; Florida ducks
or black mallards, Aug. 1 to March 1;
woodcock, Nov. 15 to Feb. 1; quail, Nov.
15 to March 1; prairie chickens, kildeer,
pheasants, protected until 1915; squirrels,
July 1 to March 1; deer (territory above
lower line of Vernon, Rapids, Avoyelles and
Concordia parishes), Sept. 16 to Jan. 15;
balance, Sept. 1 to Dec. 31; fish, no closed
season for rod and line. Bag limits, 25
ducks, doves, 50 snipe, 15 other game birds
per day; 10 squirrels per day; 5 deer per
season; 25 bass and crappie, 100 perch and
sunfish per day.

MAINE

Caribou, cow and calf moose, protected;
deer (counties of Hancock, Isle au Haut,
Knox and certain islands), protected; Hun-
garian partridge, pheasant, wood duck, cur-
lew and smaller shore birds, protected ; bull
moose, deer (eight counties), month of No-
vember; deer (eight counties), Oct. 1 to Dec.

762

OUTING

15; rabbits, Sept. 1 to March 31; gray
squirrels, Sept. 1 to Oct. 31; partridge, Sept.
15 to Nov. 30; woodcock, Oct. 1 to Nov. 30;
ducks (exceptions), geese, brant, Sept. 1 to
Dec. 15; rails, coots, gallinules, Sept. 1 to
Nov. 30; plover, snipe, sandpipers, August
15 to Nov. 30. Bag limits: Bull moose, 1
per season; deer, 2 per season (exceptions);
ducks, woodcock, snipe, 10 per day; par-
tridge, plover, 5 per day; sandpiper, 50 per
day. License: Non-resident (to hunt until
deer season), $5; during deer and moose
season, $25; alien residents of Maine, $15;
non-residents must be in charge of registered
guide May to November inclusive.

MARYLAND

Partridges, pheasants, woodcock, rabbits,
squirrels, Nov. 10 to Dec. 24. (The other
laws of Maryland vary so much with the
different counties that they cannot be given
in full here. However, we shall be pleased
to give any detailed information which may
be desired upon receipt of request.)

MASSACHUSETTS

Deer, protected (licensed hunters may kill
from third Monday of November to sunset
of following Saturday) ; gray squirrel, Oct.
12 to Nov. 12; rabbit, Oct. 12 to Feb. 28;
quail (protected in Essex county) ; ruffed
grouse, woodcock, Oct. 12 to Nov. 12 ; pheas-
ants (exceptions), gray partridges, wood
duck, protected; ducks, geese, brant, Sept. 15
to Dec. 31; plover, snipe, rail, marsh birds,
August 1 to Nov. 30. Bag limits: Ruffed
grouse, 3 per day, 15 per year; quail, wood-
cock, 4 per day, 20 per year; black ducks, 15
per day; squirrel, 5 per day, 15 per year.
License: Residents, $1; non-residents, $10;
aliens, $15.

MICHIGAN

Moose, elk, caribou, protected ; deer, Nov.
10 to Nov. 30 (protected in some counties) ;
rabbits, Sept. 1 to March 1 ; squirrels, pro-
tected until 1915; quail, pheasants, black
fowl, capercailzie, hazel grouse, wild tur-
key, protected until 1917; prairie chickens,
I rotected ; partridge, woodcock, spruce hen,
Oct. 1 to Nov. 30; ducks, ?nipe, plover, shore
birds, Sept. 1 to Dec. 15; rails, coots, Sept. 1
to Dec. 1; geese, brant, Sept. 1 to Dec. 16.
Bag limits: Deer, 2 per season; partridge,
woodcock, spruce hen, 6 per day, 50 per year;
ducks, geese, brant, 25 per day; snipe, shore
birds, 10 per day; plover, 6 per day; not law-
ful to have more than 15 partridge, spruce
hens, or 25 of other kinds of birds in pos-
session at any one time. Deer license: Resi-
dent, $1.50; non-residents, $25; other hunt-
ing, resident, $1; non-resident, $10; alien
resident, $10.

MINNESOTA
Moose, deer, Nov. 10 to Nov. 30; snipe,
prairie chicken, woodcock, plover, Sept. 7 to
Nov. 7; quail, partridge, ruffed grouse, pheas-
ant, Oct. 1 to Nov. 30 (imported pheasants,
protected); elk, caribou, protected; wild
ducks, geese, water-fowl, Sept. 7 to Nov. 30.

Bag limits: Moose, deer, 1 per season; 15
birds per day. License: Resident (small
game) $1, (large game) $1; non-resident
(small game) $10, (big game) $25.

MISSISSIPPI
Deer, bear, Nov. 15 to March 1; wild tur-
key, Jan. 1 to May 1 ; quail, partridge, geese,
swan, brant, ducks, wood duck, rail, coot,
plover, Nov. 1 to March 1. Bag limits:
Vary with county. License: Non-resident,
$20.

MISSOURI

Deer, turkey, Nov. 1 to Dec. 31; duck,
geese, brant, snipe, Sept. 15 to April 30; quail,
Dec. 1 to Dec. 31; plover, Sept. 1 to Dec.
31; squirrels, July 1 to Nov. 30; wood-
cock, prairie chicken, pheasant, protected.
Bag limits, 1 deer, 2 turkeys, 10 birds per
day; 2 deer, 4 turkeys per season; 10 birds
at any one time. License: Non-resident, $25;
resident, $5, State; $1, county.

MONTANA
Deer, elk, mountain sheep, mountain goat,
Oct. 1 to Nov. 30 ; moose, bison, buffalo,
caribou, antelope, quail, imported pheasants,
protected; grouse, prairie chicken, sagehen,
pheasants, partridge, Oct. 1 to Oct. 31; geese,
ducks, brant, swans, Sept. 1 to Dec. 31. Bag
limits: Deer, 3 per season; elk, mountain
sheep or goat, 1 per year; pheasant, grouse,
prairie chicken, sagehen, partridge, 5 per
day; ducks, 20 per day; geese, brant, swans,
no limit. License: Pesident hunting and
fishing, $1; non-resident small game, $10;
non-resident large game and fishing $25 ;
alien hunting and fishing, $30.

NEBRASKA

Ducks, geese, water fowl, Sept. 1 to April
5 ; prairie chickens, grouse, sagehens, Sept. 1
to Nov. 30; snipe, Sept. 1 to April 30;
plover, doves, July 15 to August 31; swans,
white cranes, protected; squirrels, Oct. 1 to
Nov. 30; deer, antelope, protected; quail,
Nov. 1 to Nov. 15. Bag limits: 25 birds, 10
squirrels, 10 geese, prairie chicken, grouse,
quail and 25 other game birds or 50 game
fish in possession at any one time. License:
Resident, $1; non-resident (hunting and fish-
ing), $10.

NEVADA

Deer, antelope, Oct. 15 to Nov. 15; moun-
tain sheep, mountain goat, pheasants, bob-
white quail, partridge, protected; sage-birds,
July 15 to Oct. 1; grouse, Oct. 1 to Dec. 15;
mountain quail, Oct. 1 to Jan. 1 ; ducks,
cranes, plover, curlew, snipe, woodcock, swan,
geese, Sept. 15 to March 15; valley quail,
Oct. 15 to Jan. 15. Bag limits: Antelope,
deer, 2 per season; ducks, 20 per day; moun-
tain quail, valley quail, 15 per day; sage-
birds, 10 per day; grouse, 6 per day; plover,
5 per day; geese, 10 per day; swans, 3 per
day; snipe, 15 per day. License: Non-resi-
dent, $10; resident, $1; aliens, $25.

NEW HAMPSHIRE
Moose, caribou, elk, protected; deer, Coos

GAME LAWS FOR 1914

763

county, Oct. 15 to Dec. 15, Grafton and Car-
roll counties, Nov. 1 to Dec. 15, elsewhere,
Dec. 1 to Dec. 15; squirrels, Oct. 1 to Oct.
31; rabbits, hares, Oct. 1 to April 1; wood
duck, pheasant, plover, sheldrake, blue heron,
protected; woodcock, partridge, quail, snipe,
Oct. 1 to Dec. 1 (Coos and Grafton counties,
woodcock, Sept. 15 to Dec. 1) ; ducks, Oct.

1 to Jan. 31 (beach birds, teal, coot, July 15
to Jan. 31 in Rockland county) ; black or
dusky duck (tidewaters and salt marshes
only), Sept. 1 to Jan 31. Bag limits: Deer,

2 per season in Carroll, Grafton, Coos coun-
ties, elsewhere 1 per season. License: Resi-
dent, $1 ; non-resident, $10.

NEW JERSEY

Quail, rabbit, squirrel, male English and
ringcock pheasants, ruffed grouse, prairie
chicken, wild turkey, Hungarian partridge,
Nov. 10 to Dec. 15; female English and
ring-neck pheasants, upland plover, wood
ducks, protected; black-breasted plover,
golden plover, jacksnipe, yellowlegs, Wilson
snipe, Sept. 1 to Nov. 30; rail, marsh hen
or mudhen and reed bird, Sept. 1 to Dec. 31;
woodcock, Oct. 10 to Dec. 15; black and
mallard ducks, Oct. 10 to Nov. 30; water-
fowl, except wood duck and swan, Nov. 1
to Jan. 31; deer, Nov. 1 to Nov. 5. Bag
limits: 10 quail, 3 pheasants, 3 partridges,
10 woodcock, 3 ruffed grouse, 20 ducks, 10
geese, 10 brant, 10 rabbits, 30 marsh hens
or mudhens. License: Resident, $1.15; non-
resident, $10.50.

NEW MEXICO
Deer (with horns), Oct. 1 to Nov. 15;
wild turkey, Nov. 1 to Jan. 15; grouse, Sept.
1 to Nov. 15; native or crested, Messina, Cali-
fornia or helmet quail, Nov. 1 to Jan. 31;
ducks, snipe, curlew, plover, Sept. 1 to March
31; elk, mountain sheep, mountain goat,
ptarmigan (or white grouse), protected; an-
telope, pheasant, bobwhite quail, wild pig-
eon, prairie chicken, protected until 1917.
Bag limits: Deer, 1 per season; turkey, 4
per day; grouse, 6 per day; quail, ducks,
snipe, curlew, plover, 30 per day. License:
Resident (big game) $1, (small game) $1,
combined big game and birds, $1.50; non-
resident and alien resident, combined bird and
big game, $10; bird, $10.

NEW YORK
Deer, Oct. 1 to Nov. 15, in Clinton, Essex,
Franklin, Fulton, Hamilton, Herkimer, Jeffer-
son, Lewis, Oneida, Oswego, Saratoga, St.
Lawrence, Warren, Washington counties (ex-
ceptions) ; Nov. 1 to Nov. 15 in Ulster County
and in towns of Neversink, Coshocton, Tus-
ten, Highland, Lumberland, Forestburg and
Bethel and parts of Orange and Sullivan
counties; protected elsewhere; moose, cari-
bou, elk, antelope, protected ; rabbits, hares,
Oct. 1 to Jan. 31 (exceptions, Long Island,
Nov. 1 to Dec. 31 ; other exceptions) ; squirrels,
Oct 1 to Nov. 15 (Long Island, Nov. 1 to
Dec. 31); ducks, geese, brant, Sept. 16 to
Jan. 10 (Long Island, Oct. 1 to Jan. 10) ;

wood duck, protected ; grouse, Oct. 1 to Nov
30 (Long Island, Nov. 1 to Dec. 31; other
exceptions); Hungarian partridge, protected;
pheasants, last two Thursdays in October and
firsl two Thursdays in November (Long Is-
land, Nov. 1 to Dec. 31; protected in some
counties) ; quail, protected until 1918 except
in Long Island where open Nov. 1 to Dec.
31; snipe, plover, sandpipers, curlews, other
shore birds, Sept. 16 to Nov. 30 (Long Island,
Aug. 1 to Nov. 30) ; woodcock, Oct. 1 to Nov.
15 (Long Island, Oct. 15 to Nov. 30). Bag
limits: Deer, 2 per year, 1 of which may be
transported; rabbits and hares, 6 per day;
squirrels, 5 per day; ducks, geese, brant, 25
per day; grouse, 4 per day, 20 per year;
pheasants, 3 male per year, except Long Is-
land where 6 male per day or 36 male per
year; quail on Long Island, 10 per day, 50
per year; shore birds, 15 per day; wood-
cock, 4 per day, 20 per year. Licenses: Non-
resident, $20.50; resident, $1.10.

NORTH CAROLINA

(1913 laws)
Local laws. Quail and wild turkey, Nov.
1 to March 1.

NORTH DAKOTA

Prairie chicken, grouse, woodcock, snipe,
upland or golden plover, Sept. 7 to Nov. 1 ;
wild ducks and cranes, Sept. 7 to Dec. 15;
wild geese, brant, Sept. 7 to Dec. 15 (one-
half mile from permanent waters) ; deer,
protected until 1916; antelope, protected un-
til 1920; quail, partridge, pheasants, doves,
protected. Bag limits: Prairie chicken,
grouse, cranes, 10 per day; geese, brant,
ducks, woodcock, snipe, plover, 25 per day.
License: Resident, $1; non-resident, $25.

OHIO
Virginia partridge, quail, pheasants, ruffed
grouse, protected until 1915, then Nov. 15 to
Dec. 4; woodcock, Oct. 1 to Nov. 30; rail,
coots, mudhens, Sept. 1 to Nov. 30; duck,
geese, brant, or other water-fowl, plover,
Wilson or jack snipe, greater or less yellow-
legs, Sept. 1 to Dec. 15; Carolina dove, Sept.
1 to Oct. 20; rabbits, Nov. 15 to Dec. 4;
raccoon, Nov. 1 to March 1 ; squirrels, Sept.
15 to Oct. 20; fox, Oct. 2 to Jan. 9. Bag
limits: Woodcocks, rails, plovers, snipe,
geese, shore birds, 12 per day; ducks, 25 per
day; squirrels, 5 per day. License: Resident,
$1.25; non-resident, $15.25.

OKLAHOMA
Buck deer, Nov. 15 to Dec. 15 (protected in
Comanche, Caddo, Kiowa, Swanson coun-
ties) ; antelope, pheasant, protected; geese,
brant, duck, snipe, plover, shore birds, Aug.
15 to May 1; quail, Nov. 15 to Feb. 1; wild
turkey, Nov. 15 to Jan. 1; prairie chicken,
Sept. 1 to Nov. 1. Bag limits: Deer, 1 per
season; geese, brant, 10 per day; ducks,
shore birds, 25 per day, 150 per season; quail,
25 per day, 150 per season; turkeys, 3 per
season; prairie chicken, 6 per day, 100 per
season. License: Resident, $1.25; non-resi-
dent, $15; alien, $25.

764

OUTING

OREGON

Divided into two districts, District 1 com-
prising all counties west of the Cascade
Mountains, and District 2 comprising all
counties east.

District 1 — Buck deer, August 1 to Oct. 31;
gray-squirrel, Oct. 1 to Oct. 31; ducks, geese,
rails, Oct. 1 to Jan. 15; shore birds, Oct. 1
to Dec. 15; male Chinese pheasants, quail,
grouse, Oct. 1 to Oct. 31 (Chinese pheasants
protected in Jackson, Josephine, Coos and
Curry counties) ; doves, Sept. 1 to Oct. 31.

District 2 — Buck deer, August 1 to Oct.
31; ducks, geese, rails, Oct. 1 to Jan. 15;
shore birds, Oct. 1 to Dec. 15; sagehens,
August 1 to August 31; grouse, doves, Sept. 1
to Oct. 31; quail, Oct. 1 to Oct. 31; Chinese
pheasants protected ; gray squirrel, Oct. 1
to Oct. 31.

Both districts — Mountain sheep, antelope,
elk, bobwhite quail, golden pheasants, Eng-
lish and Hungarian partridge, fool hen,
prairie chicken, swan, wild turkey, sand-
pipers, plovers, protected; trout (over 6
inches), April 1 to Oct. 31. Bag limits: Deer',
3 per season; squirrels, 5 per week; quail,
10 per week; pheasants, grouse, 5 per day;
10 per week; doves, 10 per day, 20 per week;
ducks, geese, rails, coots, shore birds, 30 per
week. License: Resident, $1; non-resident^
$10.

PENNSYLVANIA

Deer (male), Nov. 10 to Nov. 25; elk,
protected ; English, Mongolian, Chinese, ring-
neck pheasants, Oct. 15 to Nov. 30; hares,
rabbits, Nov. 1 to Dec. 31; Hungarian quail,
Oct. 15 to Nov. 30; plover, July 15 to Dec. 1;
quail, Nov. 1 to Dec. 14; ruffed grouse, Oct.
15 to Nov. 30; snipe, Sept. 1 to April 30;
shore birds, Sept. 1 to Jan. 1 ; squirrels, Oct.
15 to Nov. 30; water-fowl, Sept. 1 to April
10; wild turkey, protected; woodcock, Oct.
15 to Nov. 30; wood duck, protected until
1918. Bag limits: Deer, 1 per season; im-
ported pheasants, 10 per day, 20 per week,
50 per season; rabbits, 10 per day; Hungarian
quail, 5 per day, 20 per week, 30 per season;
plover, snipe, shore birds, unlimited; quail,
10 per day, 40 per week, 75 per season;
ruffed grouse, 5 per day, 20 per week, 50
per season; squirrels, 6 per day; water-fowl,
unlimited; woodcock, 10 per day, 20 per
week, 50 per season. License: Non-resi-
dent, $10; resident, $1.

RHODE ISLAND
Partridge, quail, Nov. 1 to Dec. 31; wood-
cock, Nov. 1 to Nov. 30; plover, snipe, great-
er and lesser yellowlegs, Aug. 15 to Nov. 30;
geese, brant, ducks, Oct. 1 to Dec. 31; other
shore birds, Hungarian partridge, wood duck,
pheasants, deer, protected; squirrels, ral>-
bits, hares, Nov. 1 to Dec. 31. License: Resi-
dent, $1; non-resident, $10; alien, $15.

SOUTH CAROLINA
Deer, Sept. 1 to Jan. 1 ; fox, Sept. 1 to Feb.
15 (exceptions) ; wild turkey, partridge, Nov.
15 to March 15 (exceptions); quail, pheas-

ant, Nov. 1 to March 15; woodcock, Sept. 1
to Jan. 15 (county regulations) ; willett, Nov.
1 to March 1 ; wood ducks, Sept. 1 to March
1. Bag limits: Partridge, doves, 25 per day;
woodcock, 12 per day; turkey, 2 per day;
deer, 5 in season. License: Non-resident,
hunting, $25 ; hunting duck^ $10.

SOUTH DAKOTA

Ducks, geese, water-fowl, Sept. 10 to April
10; quail, pheasant, protected; prairie chick-
en, grouse, snipe, plover, woodcock, partridge,
Sept. 10 to Oct. 10; deer, Nov. 1 to Nov.
30. Bag limits: Prairie chicken, grouse,
partridge, snipe, woodcock, plover, 10 per
day; water-fowl, 20 per day; deer, 1 per
season. License: Non-resident, $25 ; resident,
$1.

TENNESSEE
Deer, protected; squirrel, June 1 to March
1 (exceptions); rabbits, no closed season;
quail, Nov. 15 to March 1 (exceptions) ;
grouse, pheasant, wild turkey, Nov. 1 to
March 1 (exceptions) ; plover, snipe, wood-
cock, geese, duck, Oct. 1 to April 15 (excep-
tions) ; teal, wood duck, August 1 to April
15. Bag limits: 50 duck, 30 quail, License:
Non-residents, $10; resident, $3.

TEXAS

Deer, Nov. 1 to Jan. 1 ; antelope, mountain
sheep, prairie chickens, pheasants, protected ;
wild turkey, Dec. 1 to April 1 ; quail, doves,
partridge, Nov. 1 to Feb. 1 ; ducks, geese,
snipe, curlews, no closed season. Bag limits:
3 deer per season; 25 birds per day (3 tur-
keys, December to February). License:
Resident, $1.75; non-resident, $15.

UTAH

Elk, antelope, mountain sheep, protected;
deer, Oct. 1 to Oct. 15 (protected in Too\e
County) ; partridge, prairie chicken, pheas-
ant, morning dove, protected; quail (Wash-
ington, Garfield, Kane counties, Sept. 1 to
Feb. 1; Salt Lake, Davis, Weber, Utah, San
Pete, Sevier, Uintah, Carbon counties, Oct.
1 to Oct. 31; Iron County, Oct. 1 to Nov.
30) ; sagehens, August 15 to Oct. 31; grouse,
Oct. 6 to Oct. 15; ducks, geese, snipe, Oct. 1
to Dec. 31. Bag limits: Deer, 1 per sea-
son; quail, 15 per day; sagehens, 8 per day;
grouse, 6 per day, 25 per season; geese, 12
per day; snipe, ducks, 25 per day. License:
Resident, $1.25; non-resident, $5; alien, $15.

VERMONT

Moose, caribou, elk, protected; deer, Nov.
10 to Dec. 1 ; rabbits, hares, Sept. 15 to March
1; gray squirrels, Sept. 15 to Dec. 1; ruffed
grouse, quail, woodcock, Sept. 15 to Dec. 1;
snipe, plover (except upland plover), shore
birds, Sept. 1 to Dec. 1; ducks, geese, Sept.
1 to Jan. 1 ; pheasants, upland plover, wood
duck, protected. Bag limits: Deer, 1 per
season; rabbits, 5 per day; squirrels, 5 per
day; ruffed grouse, quail, woodcock, 4 per
day, 25 per season; snipe, plover (except up-
land), shore birds, 10 per day; ducks, geese,

GAME LAWS FOR 1914

765

20 per day. License: Resident, 75 cents;
non-resident, $10.50.

VIRGINIA

Wild turkey, pheasants, grouse, quail, par-
tridge, woodcock (east of Blue Ridge Moun-
tains), Nov. 1 to Jan. 31; elsewhere, Nov. 1
to Dec. 31; deer, Sept. 1 to Nov. 31; water-
fowl, Oct. 15 to April 30; wood duck, August
1 to Dec. 31; rails, mudhens, plover, snipe
(except Wilson snipe), sandpipers, curlews,
surf birds, July 20 to Dec. 31; Wilson snipe,
no closed season; rabbits, Nov. 1 to Jan. 31.
Bag limits: 30 water-fowl, 50 quail or par-
tridges, 10 pheasants or grouse, 3 turkeys, 1
deer, 25 of each or 100 in aggregate of
plovers, snipe, sandpipers or curlews may be
transported from State by non-residents. Li-
cense: Non-resident, $10.

WASHINGTON

Moose, elk, caribou, protected ; deer, moun-
tain sheep or goat, Oct. 1 to Dec. 1 (deer in
Okanogan County, Sept. 1 to Nov. 1) ; ruffed
grouse, Oct. 1 to Nov- 30 (protected until
1915 in Kittitas, Yakima, Okanogan, What-
com, Skagit, Snohomish, King, Pierce, San
Juan, Island counties) ; Hungarian partridge,
protected until 1920; prairie chicken, Oct. 1
to Nov. 30 (all counties east of the western
borders of Okanogan, Chelan, Kittitas, Ya-
kima and Klickitat counties, Sept. 15 to Oct.
31 ; protected until 1915 in Kittitas and Yakima
counties) ; wood duck, sagehen, protected;
pheasants, Oct. 1 to Nov. 30 (all counties east
of the western border of Okanogan, Chelan,
Kittitas, Yakima and Klickitat counties, Sept.
15 to Oct. 31; native pheasants protected until
1915 in Kittitas and Yakima counties; Chinese
pheasants protected until 1915 in Asotin Coun-
ty; all imported birds protected until 1915 in
Okanogan County) ; quail, Oct. 1 to Oct. 31
(protected in all counties east of the West-
ern borders of Okanogan, Chelan, Kittitas,
Yakima and Klickitat counties except Spo-
kane until 1915; California mountain quail
may be hunted in Kittitas and Yakima coun-
ties from Sept. 1 to Sept. 30) ; blue grouse,
Sept. 1 to Nov. 30 (all counties east of the
western borders of Okanogan, Chelan, Kitti-
tas, Yakima and Klickitat counties, Sept. 15
to Oct. 31; counties west of summit of Cas-
cade Mountains, Sept. 16 to Sept. 30) ; geese,
brant, ducks, snipe, curlews, plovers, rails,
surf or shore birds, Oct. 1 to Jan. 31 (in
Okanogan, Ferry, Stevens, Douglas, Grant,
Lincoln, Spokane, Adams, Whitman, Sept. 15
to Jan. 31) ; swan, protected. Bag limits: 2
deer (1 deer in Okanogan County) ; 1 moun-
tain sheep or goat; 5 each, but not to ex-
ceed aggregate of 5, of prairie chickens,
grouse, partridge, pheasants, per day; 10
quail per day; 10 birds of all kinds per day,
not more than 5 (of a kind or total of all
kinds) of which may be prairie chickens,
grouse, partridge, pheasants, 25 birds per
week ; aggregate of 20 geese, ducks, etc., per
week. License: Resident, county, $1 ; (State),
$5; non-resident (hunting and fishing) $10.

WEST VIRGINIA

Elk, protected; deer, Oct. 15 to Dec. 1;
squirrel, Sept. 1 to Dec. 1; rabbit, no closed
season; quail, Nov. 1 to Dec. 1; ruffed grouse,
pheasant, wild turkey, Oct. 15 to Dec. 1 ; plov-
er, woodcock, rail, reedbird, July 15 to Dec.
20; snipe, Oct. 15 to March 1; duck (except
wood duck), geese, brant, Sept. 1 to April
20; wood duck protected. Bag limits: 12
quail, 6 ruffed grouse, 2 wild turkeys per
day; or 96 quail, 25 ruffed grouse, 6 wild
turkevs per season. License: Non-resident,
$15.50.

WISCONSIN

Deer, Nov. 11 to Nov. 30 (protected in
some counties) ; moose, quail, pheasant, swan,
protected; rabbit, squirrel, Sept. 10 to Feb. 1
(exceptions) ; grouse, prairie chicken, Sept.
7 to Oct. 1 (protected in some counties) ;
wood-duck, plover, woodcock, Sept. 7 to Nov.
30; partridge, Oct. 1 to Nov. 30; brant, geese,
Sept. 7 to Nov. 30 (protected on Lake Gen-
eva) ; water-fowl, Sept. 7 to Nov. 30. Bag
limits: Deer, 1 per season; grouse, prairie
chicken, woodcock, 5 per day; geese, brant,
partridge, 10 per day; ducks, water-fowl, 15
per day; mixed birds, 20 per day. License:
Non-resident, small game, $10; non-resident,
big game, $25.

WYOMING

Elk, mountain sheep, Sept. 1 to Nov. 15
(only in Park, Lincoln and Fremont coun-
ties; exceptions); deer, Oct. 1 to Oct. 31
(in Fremont, Lincoln and Park counties from
Sept. 1 to Nov. 15) ; sage grouse, August 1
to August 31 (protected in Sheridan County
until 1915) ; all other grouse, Sept. 15 to
Nov. 15 (in Albany, Carbon, Laramie, Sweet-
water counties all grouse from July 15 to
August 31) ; Mongolian pheasants, quail, pro-
tected until 1915; ducks, geese, Sept. 1 to
March 1 ; snipe, sandpiper, Sept. 1 to April
30; curlew, August 1 to Sept. 30. Bag limits:
2 elk, 1 deer with horns, 1 male mountain
sheep per season; 18 game birds per day,
not more than 6 of which may be grouse.
License: Resident (big game) $2.50, (game
bird) $1; non-resident (biqgame) $50, (game
bird) $5; (bear license) $10. Non-residents
must be accompanied by guides.

ALBERTA

Buffalo, elk, wapiti, antelope, protected ;
mountain sheep and goat, Sept. 1 to Oct. 14;
caribou, moose, deer, Nov. 1 to Dec. 14; ducks,
swans, Sept. 1 to Dec. 31; cranes, rails, coots,
snipe, sandpiper, plover, curlew, other shore
birds, Sept. 1 to Dec. 31; grouse, partridge,
pheasant, ptarmigan, prairie chicken, Oct. 1
to Nov. 31; imported pheasants, protected.
Bag limits: 2 mountain sheep or goat, 1 cari-
bou, moose, deer; 10 per day, 100 per year of
grouse, partridge, pheasant, ptarmigan,
prairie chicken. License: Non-resident, gen-
eral game, $25 ; bird, $5 ; resident, big game,
$2.50; bird, $2.25.

766

OUTING

BRITISH COLUMBIA
Buffalo, protected ; Columbia or coast deer,
game birds, opened by Order in Council;
caribou, elk, moose, Sept. 1 to Dec. 31; deer
(except Columbian or coast deer), mountain
goat, Sept. 1 to Dec. 14; mountain sheep,
Sept. 1 to Nov. 14; plover, Sept. 1 to Feb.
28. Bag limits: Deer, 3 per season; ducks,
250 per season; elk, 1 per season; moose, 2
per season (1 per season in Kootenay Coun-
ty); mountain goat, 3 per season; mountain
sheep, 3 per season (not more than 2 of
any one species; 1 per season in Kootenay
County).

MANITOBA
Moose, deer, caribou, antelope, elk, Dec. 1
to Dec. 15; buffalo, protected; prairie chick-
en, grouse, partridge, Oct. 1 to Oct. 20; pheas-
ant, quail, protected until 1920; upland
plover, July 1 to Dec. 31; other plover, wood-
cock, snipe, sandpiper, Sept. 15 to Nov.
30; wild duck, Sept. 15 to Nov. 30.
Bag limits: Deer, caribou, moose, antelope,
elk, 1 per season; partridge, prairie chicken,
grouse, 20 per day, 100 per year; ducks, 20
per day during last 15 days of September,
50 per day during remainder of open season.
License: British subject domiciled in British
territory, $15; others, $50.

NEW BRUNSWICK

Moose, caribou, deer, partridge, snipe,
woodcock, Sept. 15 to Nov. 30; wild geese,
brant, teal, wood duck, black duck, Sept. 1
to Dec. 1 ; shore, marsh or beach birds,
August 15 to Dec. 31; sea gull, pheasants,
protected. Bag limits: Ducks, geese, 20 per
day; partridge, woodcock, 10 per day; 1
caribou, 1 moose, 2 deer per season. Li-
cense: Resident, big game, $3; non-resident
(big game) $50, (game birds) $25. Non-
residents must be accompanied by licensed
guides.

NEWFOUNDLAND

(1913 laws)
Moose, elk, protected ; caribou, Aug. 1 to
Sept. 30 and Oct. 21 to Jan. 31; fox, Oct. 15
to March 15; ptarmigan, willow grouse, cur-
lew, plover, snipe, Sept. 21 to Dec. 31 ; caper-
cailzie, protected until 1917; trout, salmon,
Jan. 16 to Sept. 15. Bag limits, 3 caribou
per season.

NOVA SCOTIA
Bull moose, Sept. 16 to Nov. 15 (protect-
ed on Cape Breton Island) ; caribou, Sept. 16
to Oct. 15 in Victoria and Inverness counties
(protected elsewhere) ; deer, protected until
1915; rabbits, hares, Oct. 1 to March 1;
woodcock, Wilson snipe, wood duck, blue
wing duck, Sept. 1 to March 1 ; teal, plover,
curlew, sandpipers, yellowlegs, beach birds,
August 15 to March 1; ruffed grouse, Oct. 1
to Nov. 1 ; pheasants, spruce partridge, pro-
tected. Bag limits: Moose, 1 per season;
caribou, 1 per season; woodcock, 10 per day;
ruffed grouse, 5 per day. License: Non-
resident (general) $30. (small game) $15,

(fish) $5; resident (to hunt caribou outside
of own county), $5. Non-residents must be
accompanied by guides.

ONTARIO

Deer, Nov. 1 to Nov. 15; moose, caribou
(south of main line C. P. R. from Mattawa
to Port Arthur), Nov. 1 to Nov. 15; else-
where, Oct. 16 to Nov. 15; grouse, quail, pro-
tected; fowl, partridge, Oct. 15 to Nov. 15;
woodcock, Oct. 1 to Nov. 15; wild turkey,
squirrel, Nov. 15 to Dec. 1; swan, geese, Sept.
15 to April 15; duck, water-fowl, snipe,
plover, shore birds (north and west of main
line C. P. R. between Montreal and To-
ronto, Toronto to Guelph and Guelph to
Goderich), Sept. 1 to Dec. 15; elsewhere,
Sept. 15 to Dec. 15; capercailzie, protected
until 1915; hare, Oct. 1 to Dec. 15. Bag lim-
its: Deer, moose, caribou, 1 per year; par-
tridge, 10 per day; duck, 200 per season.
License: Resident (deer), $2; (all big game),
$5; non-resident, $25 for small game, $50
for big game.

PRINCE EDWARD ISLAND

(1913 laws)

Partridge, Oct. 15 to Nov. 15 (closed sea-
son every second year) ; teal, duck, shore and
beach birds, Aug. 20 to Dec. 31; woodcock,
snipe, Sept. 1 to Dec. 31; wild geese, Sept.
15 to May 9; brant, April 20 to Dec. 31;
hare, rabbit, Nov. 1 to Jan. 31; curlew,
plover, Aug. 1 to Dec. 31; trout, April 1 to
Sept. 30. Bag limits, 12 birds of a kind per
day; 2 salmon per day; 12 bass per day; 20
trout per day.

QUEBEC

Divided into two zones: Zone 1 includes
the entire province except that part of the
counties of Chicoutimi and Saguenay to the
east and north of Saguenay River; Zone 2
includes the area not covered by Zone 1.

Zone 1 — Moose, deer, Sept. 1 to Dec. 31
(except in Ottawa, Labelle, Temiscaming
and Pontiac counties, Oct. 1 to Nov. 31);
caribou, Sept. 1 to Jan. 31; hares, Oct. 15
to Jan. 31; woodcock, snipe, plover, curlews,
sandpiper, Sept. 1 to Jan. 31; birch or swamp
partridges, Sept. 1 to Dec. 15; white par-
tridge, Nov. 1 to Jan. 31 ; widgeon, teal, wild
ducks (except sheldrakes, loons, gulls), Sept.
1 to Feb. 28.

Zone 2 — Moose, deer, Sept. 1 to Dec. 31 ;
caribou, Sept. 1 to Feb. 28; hares, Oct. 15
to Feb. 28; birch or swamp partridge, Sept.
15 to Jan. 31; white partridge, Nov. 15 to
Feb. 28; woodcock, snipe, plover, curlews,
sandpiper, Sept. 1 to Jan. 31 ; widgeon, teal,
wild ducks (except sheldrakes, loons, gulls),
Sept. 1 to Feb. 28.

Bag limits — Zone 1, 1 moose, 2 deer, 2 cari-
bou; Zone 2, 1 moose, 2 deer, 4 caribou.

License — Hunting: Resident (for 1 moose)
$1, (2 caribou) $1, (2 deer) $1 ; non-resident,
$25; non-resident (but members of incor-
porated game clubs), $10.

GAME LAWS FOR 1914

767

SASKATCHEWAN

Buffalo, antelope, protected; deer, caribou,
moose, elk (north of Township 34), Nov.
15 to Nov. 30, protected elsewhere; ducks,
geese, swans, rails, coots, snipe, plover, cur-

lew, cranes, Sept. 15 to Dec. 31; partridge,
grouse, chicken, Sept. 15 to Nov. 15. Bag
limits: Deer, caribou, moose, elk, 2 per year;
partridge, grouse, chicken, 10 per day, total
of 100; ducks, geese, swans, 50 per day,
total of 250.

FEDERAL REGULATIONS FOR MIGRATORY

GAME BIRDS

For the purposes of these regulations the
following shall be considered migratory game
birds:

(a) Anatidae or water-fowl, including
brant, wild ducks, geese and swans.

(b) Gruidae or cranes, including little
brown sand-hill and whooping cranes.

(d) Limicolae or shore birds, including
avocets, curlew, dowitchers, godwits, knots,
oyster catchers, phalaropes, plover, sandpipers,
snipe, stilts, surf birds, turnstones, wilier,
woodcock and yellowlegs.

(e) Columbidae or pigeons, including doves
and wild pigeons.

CLOSED SEASONS AT NIGHT

A daily closed season on all migratory,
game and insectivorous birds shall extend
from sunset to sunrise.

CLOSED SEASONS ON CERTAIN GAME BIRDS

A closed season shall continue until Sept.
1, 1918, on the following migratory game
birds: Bandtailed pigeons, little brown sand-
hill and whooping cranes, swans, curlew and
all shore birds except the black-breasted and
golden plover, Wilson or jacksnipe, woodcock
and the greater and lesser yellowlegs.

A closed season shall also continue until
Sept. 1, 1918, on wood ducks in Maine, New
Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode
Island, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey,
Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, West
Virginia and Wisconsin; on rails in Califor-
nia and Vermont; and on woodcock in Illi-
nois and Missouri.

CLOSED SEASON ON CERTAIN NAVIGABLE RIVERS

A closed season shall continue between
Jan. 1 and Oct. 31, both dates inclusive, of
each year, on all migratory birds passing over
or at rest on any of the waters of the main
streams of the following navigable rivers,
to wit: The Mississippi River, between New
Orleans, La., and Minneapolis. Minn.; the
Ohio River, between its mouth and Pitts-
burgh, Pa.; and the Missouri River, between
its mouth and Bismarck, N. D. ; and on the
killing or capture of any of such birds on or
over the shores of any of said rivers, or at
any point within the limits aforesaid, from
anv boat, raft, or other device, floating or
otherwise, in or on any such waters.

AMENDMENT TO REGULATION ON CERTAIN NAVI-
GABLE RIVERS

On and after January 1, 1915, a closed
season shall continue between Jan. 1 and Dec.
31, both dates inclusive of each year, on all
migratory birds passing over or at rest on
any of the waters of the main streams of the
following navigable rivers, to wit: the Mis-
sissippi River, between Minneapolis, Minne-
sota, and Memphis, Tennessee; the Missouri
River, between Bismarck, North Dakota, and
Nebraska City, Nebraska; and on the kill-
ing or capture of any such birds on or over
the shores of any of said rivers, or at any
point within the limits aforesaid, from any
boat, raft, or other device, floating or other-
wise, in or on any of such waters.

AMENDMENT TO REGULATION ON CERTAIN NAVI-
GABLE RIVERS SUSPENDED

_ Regulation relative to shooting on the Mis-
sissippi and Missouri rivers is suspended for
the season of 1914, thus affecting hunting in
certain sections of twelve States. The Ad-
visory Board recommends that hunting on
these rivers be permitted whenever the States
prohibit the use of motorboats in hunting
water-fowl. As this will require legislation
by Illinois, Missouri, Nebraska, and one or
two other States, the regulation is suspended
this year, in order that the States may take
action, if they so desire, at the next session
of their respective legislatures, which meet
in January, 1915:

The effect of one of these changes is to per-
mit, on the Missouri and the upper waters of
the Mississippi, the shooting of all migratory
game birds for which there is an open season
from October 1, 1914, to January 1, 1915.
After the latter date the prohibition will
be in force again.

ZONES

The following zones for the protection of
migratory game and insectivorous birds are
hereby established:

Zone No. 1, the breeding zone, comprising
States lying wholly or in Dart north of lati-
tude 40 degrees and the Ohio River, and in-
cluding Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont,
Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut,
New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Ohio,
Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin, Min-
nesota, Iowa, North Dakota, South Dakota,
Nebraska, Colorado, Wyoming, Montana,

768

OUTING

Idaho, Oregon and Washington — 25 States.
Zone No. 2, the wintering zone, compris-
ing States lying wholly or in part south of
latitude 40 degrees and the Ohio River, and
including Delaware, Maryland, the District
of Columbia, West Virginia, Virginia, North
Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Florida,
Alabama, Mississippi, Tennessee, Kentucky,
Missouri, Arkansas, Louisiana, Texas, Okla-
homa, Kansas, New Mexico, Arizona, Cali-
fornia, Nevada and Utah — 23 States and the
District of Columbia.

OPEN SEASONS IN ZONE NO. 1

Water-fowl, Sept. 1 to Dec. 15. Excep-
tions: Massachusetts and Rhode Island, Oct.
1 to Dec. 31; Connecticut, New York (in-
cluding Long Island), Pennsylvania, Idaho,
Oregon, Washington, Oct. 1 to Jan. 15; New
Jersey, Nov. 1 to Jan. 31; Minnesota, North
Dakota, South Dakota, Wisconsin, Sept. 8
to Nov. 30.

Rails, coots, gallinules — Sept. 1 to Nov. 30.
Exceptions: Massachusetts and Rhode Is-
land, August 1 to Nov. 30; New York (in-
cluding Long Island), Sept. 16 to Nov. 30;
Vermont and California, rails protected until
Sept. 1, 1918.

Woodcock — Oct. 1 to Nov. 30. Exceptions:
Maine and Vermont, Sept. 15 to Nov. 30;
Massachusetts, Connecticut and New Jersey,
Oct. 10 to Nov. 30; Rhode Island, Pennsyl-
vania and Long Island, Oct. 15 to Nov. 30;
Illinois and Missouri, protected until Sept.
1, 1918.

Shore Birds (including black-breasted and
golden plover, jacksnipe or Wilson snipe,
greater and lesser yellowlegs) — Sept. 1 to
15. Exceptions: Maine, Massachusetts and
Long Island, August 1 to Dec. 15; Minnesota
and North Dakota, Sept. 17 to Dec. 15; South
Dakota, Sept. 10 to Dec. 15; New York (ex-
cept Long Island) and Oregon, Sept. 16 to
Dec. 15; New Hampshire and Wisconsin,
Oct. 1 to Dec. 15.

OPEN SEASONS IN ZONE NO. 2

Water-Fowl — Oct. 1 to Jan. 15. Excep-
tions: Delaware, Maryland, District of Co-
lumbia, Virginia, North Carolina, Alabama,
Mississippi, Louisiana, Nov. 1 to Jan. 31;
Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, Nov. 21
to Feb. 15; Kansas, Missouri, Oklahoma,
Sept. 16 to Jan. 31; Texas, Arizona, Cali-
fornia, Oct. 16 to Jan. 31.

Rails, coots and gallinules — Sept. 1 to Nov.
30. Exceptions: Tennessee and Louisiana,
Oct. 1 to Nov. 30; Arizona, Oct. 15 to Nov.
30.

Woodcock — Nov. 1 to Dec. 31. Exceptions:
Louisiana, Nov. 15 to Dec. 31; Georgia, Dec.
1 to Dec. 31.

Shore Birds (including black-breasted and
golden plover, jacksnipe, or Wilson snipe,
and greater and lesser yellowlegs) — Sept. 1
to Dec. 15. Exceptions: Alabama, Nov. 1
to Dec. 15; Louisiana and Tennessee, Oct. 1
to Dec. 15; Arizona, Oct. 15 to Dec. 15;
Utah, Oct. 1 to Dec. 15 on snipe, and plover
and yellowlegs protected until Sept. 1, 1918.

'//t?7'//7/rtZiZ^

m^>

"IIIIHlUI III Hill I

3 9090 007 565 100

Internet Archive Audio

Featured

Top

Images

Featured

Top

Software

Featured

Top

Books

Featured

Top

Video

Featured

Top

Mobile Apps

Browser Extensions

Archive-It Subscription

Save Page Now

Full text of "Outing"

See other formats