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-The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Happy Hunting-Grounds, by Kermit Roosevelt
-
-This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most
-other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
-whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of
-the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at
-www.gutenberg.org.  If you are not located in the United States, you'll have
-to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook.
-
-Title: The Happy Hunting-Grounds
-
-Author: Kermit Roosevelt
-
-Release Date: December 19, 2020 [EBook #64079]
-
-Language: English
-
-Character set encoding: UTF-8
-
-*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE HAPPY HUNTING-GROUNDS ***
-
-
-
-
-Produced by Tim Lindell, Susan Carr and the Online
-Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This
-file was produced from images generously made available
-by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.)
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-  The Happy
-  Hunting-Grounds
-
-
-
-
-[Illustration: Arab sheikhs who had ridden in, camel-back, from the
-desert to pay their respects]
-
-
-
-
-                                 The
-                        Happy Hunting-Grounds
-
-                                 By
-
-                          Kermit Roosevelt
-
-                Author of “War in the Garden of Eden”
-
-             Illustrated from Photographs by the Author
-
-                               London
-                         Hodder & Stoughton
-                                1920
-
-
-
-
-     Copyright, 1912, 1920, by Charles Scribner’s Sons, for the
-                      United States of America
-
-                    Printed by the Scribner Press
-                         New York, U. S. A.
-
-
-
-
-                                 TO
-                      THE MISTRESS OF SAGAMORE
-
-
-
-
-                              Contents
-
-
-                                                                  PAGE
-    I.  THE HAPPY HUNTING-GROUNDS                                   3
-
-   II.  IN QUEST OF SABLE ANTELOPE                                 53
-
-  III.  THE SHEEP OF THE DESERT                                    71
-
-   IV.  AFTER MOOSE IN NEW BRUNSWICK                              103
-
-    V.  TWO BOOK-HUNTERS IN SOUTH AMERICA                         123
-
-   VI.  SETH BULLOCK--SHERIFF OF THE BLACK HILLS COUNTRY          151
-
-
-
-
-                            Illustrations
-
-
-  Arab sheikhs who had ridden in, camel-back, from the
-      desert to pay their respects                        _Frontispiece_
-
-                                                               FACING
-                                                                PAGE
-
-  Sir Alfred Pease’s sketch of our first giraffe hunt            24
-
-  Father and R. H. Munro Ferguson at the Elkhorn Ranch,
-      after the return from a successful hunting trip            34
-
-  Facsimile of a picture letter by father                        38
-
-  Putting the tape on a tusker                                   42
-
-  Launching a newly made dugout on the Dúvida                    44
-
-  A relic of the Portuguese occupation; an old well beside
-      the trail                                                  56
-
-  The Death Dance of the Wa Nyika children in memory
-      of the chieftain’s little son                              58
-
-  Across the bay from Mombasa; the porters ready to
-      shoulder loads and march                                   66
-
-  A desert camp in old Mexico                                    78
-
-  Casares on his white mule                                      88
-
-  Making fast the sheep’s head                                   96
-
-  A noonday halt on the way down river, returning from
-      the hunting country                                       106
-
-  Bringing out the trophies of the hunt                         118
-
-  The Captain makes advances to a little Indian girl            152
-
-  A morning’s bag of prairie chicken in South Dakota            170
-
-
-
-
-I
-
-The Happy
-Hunting-Grounds
-
-
-
-
-                                  I
-
-                      THE HAPPY HUNTING-GROUNDS
-
-
-There is a universal saying to the effect that it is when men are off
-in the wilds that they show themselves as they really are. As is the
-case with the majority of proverbs there is much truth in it, for
-without the minor comforts of life to smooth things down, and with
-even the elemental necessities more or less problematical, the inner
-man has an unusual opportunity of showing himself--and he is not
-always attractive. A man may be a pleasant companion when you always
-meet him clad in dry clothes, and certain of substantial meals at
-regulated intervals, but the same cheery individual may seem a very
-different person when you are both on half rations, eaten cold, and
-have been drenched for three days--sleeping from utter exhaustion,
-cramped and wet.
-
-My father had done much hunting with many and varied friends. I
-have often heard him say of some one whom I had thought an ideal
-hunting companion: “He’s a good fellow, but he was always fishing
-about in the pot for the best piece of meat, and if there was but
-one partridge shot, he would try to roast it for himself. If there
-was any delicacy he wanted more than his share.” Things assume such
-different proportions in the wilds; after two months living on
-palm-tree tops and monkeys, a ten-cent can of condensed milk bought
-for three dollars from a rubber explorer far exceeds in value the
-greatest delicacy of the season to the ordinary citizen who has a
-varied and sufficient menu at his command every day in the year.
-
-Even as small children father held us responsible to the law of the
-jungle. He would take us out on camping trips to a neck of land four
-or five miles across the bay from home. We would row there in the
-afternoon, the boats laden with blankets and food. Then we would
-make a driftwood fire on which to fry our supper--usually bacon and
-chicken. I do not know whether it was the, to us, wild romance of our
-position, or the keen appetite from the row, but never since then
-have I eaten such bacon. Not even the smallest child was allowed to
-show a disposition to grab, or select his pieces of chicken--we were
-taught that that was an unpardonable offense out camping, and might
-cause the culprit to be left behind next time. And woe to any one
-who in clumsily walking about kicked sand into the frying-pan. After
-supper we would heap more driftwood on the fire, and drape ourselves
-in our blankets. Then we would stretch ourselves out in the sand
-while father would tell us ghost stories. The smallest of us lay
-within reach of father where we could touch him if the story became
-too vivid for our nerves and we needed the reassuring feel of his
-clothes to bring us back to reality. There was, however, a delicious
-danger in being too near him. In stories in which the “haunt” seized
-his victim, father generally illustrated the action by making a grab
-at the nearest child. After the stories were finished we rolled up
-in our blankets and, thoroughly permeated with sand, we slept until
-the first faint light of dawn. Then there was the fire to be built
-up, and the breakfast cooked, and the long row home. As we rowed we
-chanted a ballad, usually of a seafaring nature; it might be “The
-Rhyme of the Three Sealers,” or “The Galley Slave,” or “Simon Danz.”
-Father taught us these and many more, _viva voce_, when he was
-dressing for dinner. A child was not taken along on these “campings
-out” until he was six or seven. They took place three or four times
-a summer, and continued until after the African expedition. By that
-time we were most of us away at work, scattered far and wide.
-
-Father always threw himself into our plays and romps when we were
-small as if he were no older than ourselves, and with all that he
-had seen and done and gone through, there was never any one with so
-fresh and enthusiastic an attitude. His wonderful versatility and
-his enormous power of concentration and absorption were unequalled.
-He could turn from the consideration of the most grave problems of
-state to romp with us children as if there were not a worry in the
-world. Equally could he bury himself in an exhaustive treatise on the
-_History of the Mongols_ or in the _Hound of the Baskervilles_.
-
-Until father sold his ranches in North Dakota he used to go out West
-each year for a month or so. Unfortunately, we were none of us old
-enough to be taken along, but we would wait eagerly for his letters,
-and the recipient of what we called a picture letter gloried in the
-envy of the rest until another mail placed a substitute upon the
-pedestal. In these picture letters father would sketch scenes and
-incidents about the ranch or on his short hunting trips. We read most
-of them to pieces, unluckily, but the other day I came across one of
-the non-picture letters that father wrote me:
-
-                                                    August 30, ’96.
-                                                  Out on the prairie.
-
-  I must send my little son a letter too, for his father loves
-  him very much. I have just ridden into camp on Muley,[1] with a
-  prongbuck strapped behind the saddle; I was out six hours before
-  shooting it. Then we all sat down on the ground in the shade of the
-  wagon and had dinner, and now I shall clean my gun, and then go and
-  take a bath in a big pool nearby, where there is a large flat stone
-  on the edge, so I don’t have to get my feet muddy. I sleep in the
-  buffalo hide bag and I never take my clothes off when I go to bed!
-
-By the time we were twelve or thirteen we were encouraged to plan
-hunting trips in the West. Father never had time to go with us,
-but we would be sent out to some friend of his, like Captain Seth
-Bullock, to spend two or three weeks in the Black Hills, or perhaps
-we would go after duck and prairie-chicken with Marvin Hewitt.
-Father would enter into all the plans and go down with us to the
-range to practise with rifle or shotgun, and when we came back we
-would go over every detail of the trip with him, revelling in his
-praise when he felt that we had acquitted ourselves well.
-
-Father was ever careful to correct statements to the effect that he
-was a crack shot. He would explain how little being one had to do
-with success and achievement as a hunter. Perseverance, skill in
-tracking, quick vision, endurance, stamina, and a cool head, coupled
-with average ability as a marksman, produced far greater results
-than mere skill with a rifle--unaccompanied to any marked extent by
-the other attributes. It was the sum of all these qualities, each
-above the average, but none emphasized to an extraordinary degree,
-that accounted for father’s great success in the hunting-field. He
-would point out many an excellent shot at a target who was of no use
-against game. Sometimes this would be due to lack of nerve. Father
-himself was equally cool and unconcerned whether his quarry was a
-charging lion or a jack-rabbit; with, when it came to the question of
-scoring a hit, the resultant advantage in the size of the former as
-a target. In other instances a good man at the range was not so good
-in the field because he was accustomed to shooting under conventional
-and regulated conditions, and fell down when it came to shooting
-under disadvantageous circumstances--if he had been running and were
-winded, if he were hungry or wet, or tired, or feeling the sun, if
-he were uncertain of the wind or the range. Sometimes, of course, a
-crack shot possesses all the other qualities; such is the case with
-Stewart Edward White, whom Cuninghame classified as the best shot
-with whom he had hunted in all his twenty-five years in the wilds.
-Father shot on a par with Cuninghame, and a good deal better than I,
-though not as well as Tarleton.
-
-I have often heard father regret the fact that he did not care for
-shooting with the shotgun. He pointed out that it was naturally
-the most accessible and least expensive form of hunting. His
-eyesight made it almost impossible for him to attain much skill
-with a shotgun, and although as a boy and young man he went off
-after duck for sport, in later years he never used a shotgun except
-for collecting specimens or shooting for the pot. He continually
-encouraged us to learn to shoot with the gun. In a letter he wrote me
-to Europe when I was off after chamois he said: “I have played tennis
-a little with both Archie and Quentin, and have shot with the rifle
-with Archie and seen that he has practised shotgun shooting with
-Seaman.”
-
-When my brother and myself were ten and eight, respectively, father
-took us and four of our cousins of approximately the same ages to the
-Great South Bay for a cruise, with some fishing and bird-shooting
-thrown in, as the guest of Regis Post. It was a genuine sacrifice
-on father’s part, for he loathed sailing, detested fishing, and
-was, to say the least, lukewarm about bird-shooting. Rowing was
-the only method of progression by water for which he cared. The
-trip was a great success, however, and father enjoyed it more than
-he anticipated, for with the help of our host he instructed us in
-caring for ourselves and our firearms. I had a venerable 12-bore
-pin-fire gun which was the first weapon my father ever owned. It was
-usually known in the family as the “rust bore” because in the course
-of its eventful career it had become so pitted and scarred with
-rust that you could put in as much time as you wished cleaning and
-oiling without the slightest effect. I stood in no little awe of the
-pin-fire because of its recoil when fired, and as I was in addition
-a miserably poor shot, my bag on the Great South Bay trip was not
-large. It consisted of one reedbird, which father with infinite pains
-and determination at length succeeded in enabling me to shoot. I am
-sure he never spent more time and effort on the most difficult stalk
-after some coveted trophy in the West or in Africa.
-
-Father’s hunting experiences had been confined to the United States,
-but he had taken especial interest in reading about Africa, the
-sportsman’s paradise. When we were small he would read us incidents
-from the hunting books of Roualeyn Gordon Cumming, or Samuel Baker,
-or Drummond, or Baldwin. These we always referred to as “I stories,”
-because they were told in the first person, and when we were sent to
-bed we would clamor for just one more, a petition that was seldom
-denied. Before we were old enough to appreciate the adventures we
-were shown the pictures, and through Cornwallis Harris’s beautiful
-colored prints in the _Portraits of Game and Wild Animals of Southern
-Africa_ we soon learned to distinguish the great beasts of Africa.
-The younger Gordon Cumming came to stay with us at Sagamore, and when
-father would get him to tell us hunting incidents from his own varied
-career, we listened enthralled to a really living “I story.” To us he
-was known as the “Elephant Man,” from his prowess in the pursuit of
-the giant pachyderm.
-
-Then there was also the “Shark Man.” He was an Australian who told us
-most thrilling tales of encounters with sharks witnessed when among
-the pearl-divers. I remember vividly his description of seeing a
-shark attack one of the natives working for him. The man was pulled
-aboard only after the shark had bitten a great chunk from his side
-and exposed his heart, which they could see still beating. He said,
-“Master, master, big fish,” before he died.
-
-The illustrations in Millais’s _Breath from the Veldt_ filled us with
-delight, and to this day I know of no etching that affects me as
-does the frontispiece by the author’s father. It is called the “Last
-Trek.” An old hunter is lying dead beside his ox-wagon; near him
-squat two of his Kafir boys, and in the distance graze herds of zebra
-and hartebeeste and giraffe.
-
-Of the mighty hunters that still survived at that time, father
-admired most Mr. F. C. Selous. His books he knew almost by heart.
-Whenever Selous came to the United States he would stay with us, and
-father would sit up till far into the night talking of wild life
-in the open. Selous, at sixty-five, enlisted in the late war as a
-private; he rose to be captain, and was decorated with the D. S. O.
-for gallantry, before he fell, fighting the Germans in East Africa.
-No one could have devised a more fitting end for the gallant old
-fellow than to die at the head of his men, in a victorious battle
-on those plains he had roamed so often and loved so well, fighting
-against the worst and most dangerous beast of his generation.
-
-In 1887 father founded a hunting club called the “Boone and Crockett”
-after two of the most mighty hunters of America. No one was entitled
-to membership who had not brought down in fair chase three species
-of American big game. The membership was limited to a hundred and
-I well remember my father’s pride when my brother and I qualified
-and were eventually elected members. The club interests itself
-particularly in the conservation of wild life, and the establishment
-of game refuges. Mr. Selous and other English hunters were among the
-associate members.
-
-In the summer of 1908 my father told me that when his term in the
-White House ended the following spring, he planned to make a trip to
-Africa, and that if I wished to do so I could accompany him. There
-was no need to ask whether I wanted to go. At school when we were
-writing compositions, mine almost invariably took the form of some
-imaginary journey across the “Dark Continent.” Still, father had ever
-made it a practice to talk to us as if we were contemporaries. He
-would never order or even tell us to follow a certain line; instead,
-he discussed it with us, and let us draw our own conclusions. In
-that way we felt that while we had his unreserved backing, we were
-yet acting on our own initiative, and were ourselves responsible
-for the results. If a boy is forced to do a thing he often makes
-but a half-hearted attempt to succeed, and lays his failure to the
-charge of the person who forced him, although he might well have come
-through with flying colors had he felt that he was acting on his own
-responsibility. In his discussions with us, father could of course
-shape our opinions in what he thought the proper mould.
-
-In like manner, when it came to taking me to Africa father wanted me
-to go, but he also wanted me to thoroughly understand the pro’s and
-con’s. He explained to me that it was a holiday that he was allowing
-himself at fifty, after a very busy life--that if I went I would
-have to make up my mind that my holiday was coming at the beginning
-of my life, and be prepared to work doubly hard to justify both him
-and myself for having taken it. He said that the great danger lay in
-my being unsettled, but he felt that taken rightly the experience
-could be made a valuable asset instead of a liability. After we had
-once finished the discussion and settled that I was to go, father
-never referred to it again. He then set about preparing for the
-expedition. Mr. Edward North Buxton was another African hunter whom
-he greatly admired, and it was to him and to Selous that he chiefly
-turned for aid in making his plans. It was often said of father that
-he was hasty and inclined to go off at half-cock. There was never any
-one who was less so. He would gather his information and make his
-preparations with painstaking care, and then when the moment came
-to act he was thoroughly equipped and prepared to do so with that
-lightning speed that his enemies characterized as rash hot-headedness.
-
-Father always claimed that it was by discounting and guarding against
-all possible causes of failure that he won his successes. His last
-great battle, that for preparedness for the part that “America the
-Unready” would have to play in the World War, was true to his life
-creed. For everything he laid his plans in advance, foreseeing as far
-as was humanly possible each contingency to be encountered.
-
-For the African expedition he made ready in every way. I was at the
-time at Harvard, and almost every letter brought some reference to
-preparations. One day it would be: “The Winchester rifles came out
-for trial and all of them were sighted wrong. I sent them back with
-rather an acid letter.” Then again: “You and I will be so rusty when
-we reach Sir Alfred Pease’s ranch that our first efforts at shooting
-are certain to be very bad. In March we will practise at Oyster Bay
-with the 30-30 until we get what I would call the ‘rifle sense’ back
-again, and this will make it easier for us when, after a month’s sea
-trip, we take up the business of hunting.”
-
-A group of thirty or forty of the most famous zoologists and
-sportsmen presented my father with a heavy, double-barrelled gun.
-“At last I have tried the double-barrelled Holland Elephant rifle.
-It is a perfect beauty and it shoots very accurately, but of course
-the recoil is tremendous, and I fired very few shots. I shall get
-you to fire it two or three times at a target after we reach Africa,
-just so that you shall be thoroughly familiar with it, if, or when,
-you use it after big game. There is no question that except under
-extraordinary circumstances it would be the best weapon for elephant,
-rhino, and buffalo. I think the 405 Winchester will be as good for
-everything else.”
-
-“About all my African things are ready now, or will be in a few
-days. I suppose yours are in good trim also [a surreptitious dig at
-a somewhat lackadaisical son.] I am pursuing my usual plan of taking
-all the precautions in advance.”
-
-A few days later came another reference to the Holland & Holland:
-“The double-barrelled four-fifty shot beautifully, but I was
-paralyzed at the directions which accompanied it to the effect that
-two shots must always be fired in the morning before starting, as
-otherwise from the freshly oiled barrels the first shot would go
-high. This is all nonsense and I shall simply have to see that the
-barrels are clean of the oil.” The recoil of the big gun was so
-severe that it became a standing joke as to whether we did not fear
-it more than a charging elephant!
-
-Father gave the closest attention to every detail of the equipment.
-The first provision lists prepared by his friends in England were
-drawn up on a presidential scale with champagne and pâté de foies
-gras and all sorts of luxuries. These were blue-pencilled and two
-American staples substituted--baked beans and canned tomatoes. Father
-always retained the appreciation of canned tomatoes gained in the
-early ranching days in the West. He would explain how delicious he
-had found it in the Bad Lands after eating the tomatoes to drink the
-juice from the can. In hunting in a temperate climate such as our
-West, a man can get along with but very little, and it is difficult
-to realize that a certain amount of luxury is necessary in the
-tropics to maintain oneself fit. Then, too, in Africa the question
-of transportation was fairly simple--and almost everywhere we were
-able to keep ourselves and the porters amply supplied with fresh
-meat. Four years later during the descent of the Dúvida--the “River
-of Doubt”--we learned to our bitter cost what it meant to travel
-in the tropics as lightly equipped as one could, with but little
-hardship, in the north. It was not, however, through our own lack of
-forethought, but due rather to the necessities and shifting chances
-of a difficult and dangerous exploring expedition.
-
-Even if it is true as Napoleon said, that an army marches on its
-belly, still, it won’t go far unless its feet are properly shod,
-and since my father had a skin as tender as a baby’s, he took
-every precaution that his boots should fit him properly and not
-rub. “The modified duffle-bags came all right. I suppose we will
-get the cotton-soled shoes, but I do not know. How do you like the
-rubber-soled shoes? Don’t you think before ordering other pairs it
-would be as well to wait until you see the army shoes here, which are
-light and somehow look as if they were more the kind you ordinarily
-use? How many pairs have you now for the African trip, and how many
-more do you think you want?”
-
-Father was fifty years old in the October before we left for Africa,
-and the varied experiences of his vigorous life had, as he used to
-say, battered and chipped him. One eye was to all intents useless
-from the effects of a boxing-match, and from birth he had been so
-astigmatic as to be absolutely unable to use a rifle and almost
-unable to find his way in the woods without his glasses. He never
-went off without eight or ten pairs so distributed throughout his kit
-as to minimize the possibility of being crippled through any ordinary
-accident. Even so, any one who has worn glasses in the tropics knows
-how easily they fog over, and how hopeless they are in the rains. It
-was a continual source of amazement to see how skilfully father had
-discounted this handicap in advance and appeared to be unhampered by
-it.
-
-Another serious threat lay in the leg that had been injured when the
-carriage in which he was driving was run down by a trolley-car, and
-the secret service man with him was killed. In September, 1908, he
-wrote me from Washington: “I have never gotten over the effects of
-the trolley-car accident six years ago, when, as you will remember,
-they had to cut down to the shin bone. The shock permanently damaged
-the bone, and if anything happens there is always a chance of trouble
-which would be serious. Before I left Oyster Bay, while riding, I
-got a rap on the shin bone from a branch. This was either the cause
-or the occasion of an inflammation, which had grown so serious when
-I got back here that Doctor Rixey had to hastily take it in hand.
-For a couple of days it was uncertain whether we would not have to
-have another operation and remove some of the bones of the leg, but
-fortunately the doctor got it in hand all right, and moreover it has
-enabled me to learn just what I ought to do if I am threatened with
-similar trouble in Africa.”
-
-His activity, however, was little hampered by his leg, for a few
-weeks later he wrote: “I have done very little jumping myself,
-and that only of the small jumps up to four feet, because it is
-evident that I have got to be pretty careful of my leg, and that an
-accident of at all a serious character might throw me out of gear
-for the African trip. This afternoon by the way, Archie Butt and I
-took a scramble down Rock Creek. It was raining and the rocks were
-slippery, and at one point I slipped off into the creek, but merely
-bruised myself in entirely safe places, not hurting my leg at all.
-When we came to the final and stiffest cliff climb, it was so dark
-that Archie couldn’t get up.” From which it may be seen that neither
-endurance nor skill suffered as a result of the accident to the leg.
-Still, as Bret Harte says, “We always wink with the weaker eye,”
-and when anything went wrong, the leg was sure to be implicated.
-Father suffered fearfully with it during the descent of the River
-of Doubt. One of the most constant pictures of father that I retain
-is at Sagamore after dinner on the piazza. He would draw his chair
-out from the roofed-over part to where he could see the moon and the
-stars. When things were black he would often quote Jasper Petulengro
-in Borrow’s _Lavengro_: “Life is sweet, brother.... There’s day and
-night, brother, both sweet things; sun, moon, and stars, all sweet
-things; ... and likewise there’s a wind on the heath,” and would add:
-“Yes, there’s always the wind on the heath.” From where he sat he
-looked across the fields to the dark woods, and over the tree-tops
-to the bay with the changing twinkling lights of the small craft;
-across the bay to the string of lamps along the causeway leading
-to Centre Island, and beyond that again Long Island Sound with
-occasionally a “tall Fall Steamer light.” For a while father would
-drink his coffee in silence, and then his rocking-chair would start
-creaking and he would say: “Do you remember that night in the Sotik
-when the gun-bearers were skinning the big lion?” or “What a lovely
-camp that was under the big tree in the Lado when we were hunting the
-giant eland?”
-
-We get three sorts and periods of enjoyment out of a hunting trip.
-The first is when the plans are being discussed and the outfit
-assembled; this is the pleasure of anticipation. The second is the
-enjoyment of the actual trip itself; and the third is the pleasure
-of retrospection when we sit round a blazing wood-fire and talk over
-the incidents and adventures of the trip. There is no general rule
-to know which of the three gives the keenest joy. I can think of a
-different expedition in which each sort stands out in pre-eminence.
-Even if the trip has been exceptionally hard and the luck unusually
-bad, the pleasures of anticipation and preparation cannot be taken
-away, and frequently the retrospect is the more satisfactory because
-of the difficulties and discomforts surmounted.
-
-I think we enjoyed the African trip most in the actuality, and that
-is saying a great deal. It was a wonderful “adventure” and all the
-world seemed young. Father has quoted in the foreword to _African
-Game Trails_: “I speak of Africa and golden joys.” It was a line
-that I have heard him repeat to himself many times. In Africa
-everything was new. He revelled in the vast plains blackened with
-herds of grazing antelope. From his exhaustive reading and retentive
-memory he knew already the history and the habits of the different
-species of game. When we left camp in the early morning we never
-could foretell what we would run into by nightfall--we were prepared
-for anything from an elephant to a dik-dik--the graceful diminutive
-antelope no larger than a hare. In the evening, after we had eaten we
-would gather round the camp-fire--for in the highlands the evenings
-were chilly--and each would tell the adventures of his day, and
-discuss plans for the morrow. Then we would start paralleling and
-comparing. Father would illustrate with adventures of the old days in
-our West; Cuninghame from the lore gathered during his twenty years
-in Africa would relate some anecdote, and Mearns would talk of life
-among the wild tribes in the Philippines.
-
-[Illustration: Sir Alfred Pease’s sketch of our first giraffe hunt]
-
-Colonel Mearns belonged to the medical corps in the army. He had
-come with us as an ornithologist, for throughout his military career
-he had been actively interested in sending specimens from wherever
-he was serving to the Smithsonian National Museum in Washington.
-His mild manner belied his fearless and intrepid disposition. A
-member of the expedition once came into camp with an account of the
-doctor, whom he had just run across--looking too benevolent for this
-world, engaged in what our companion described as “slaughtering
-humming-birds, pursuing them from bush to bush.” One of his
-Philippine adventures filled us with a delighted interest for which
-I don’t believe he fully appreciated the reason. He told us how with
-a small force he had been hemmed in by a large number of Moros. The
-Americans took refuge in a stockade on a hilltop. The Moros advanced
-time and again with the greatest gallantry, and Mearns explained how
-sorry he felt for them as they fell--some under the very walls of the
-stockade. In a musing tone at the end he added: “I slipped out of
-the stockade that night and collected a most interesting series of
-skulls; they’re in the Smithsonian to-day.”
-
-Father was the rare combination of a born raconteur--with the gift of
-putting in all the little details that make a story--and an equally
-good listener. He was an adept at drawing people out. His interest
-was so whole-hearted and obvious that the shyest, most tongue-tied
-adventurer found himself speaking with entire freedom. Every one
-with whom we came in contact fell under the charm. Father invariably
-thought the best of a person, and for that very reason every one
-was at his best with him--and felt bound to justify his confidence
-and judgment. With him I always thought of the Scotch story of the
-MacGregor who, when a friend told him that it was an outrage that
-at a certain banquet he should have been given a seat half-way down
-the table, replied: “Where the MacGregor sits is the head of the
-table!” Where father sat was always the head of the table, and yet
-he treated every one with the same courtesy and simplicity, whether
-it was the governor of the Protectorate or the poorest Boer settler.
-I remember how amazed some were at the lack of formality in his
-relationship with the members of the expedition. Many people who have
-held high positions feel it incumbent on them to maintain a certain
-distance in their dealings with their less illustrious fellow men.
-If they let down the barrier they feel, they would lose dignity.
-They are generally right, for their superiority is not innate, but
-the result of chance. With father it was otherwise. The respect and
-consideration felt for him could not have been greater, and would
-certainly not have been so sincere, had he built a seven-foot barrier
-about himself.
-
-He was most essentially unselfish, and wanted no more than would
-have been his just due if the expedition, instead of being owing
-entirely to him, both financially and otherwise, had been planned and
-carried out by all of us. He was a natural champion of the cause of
-every man, and not only in his books would he carefully give credit
-where it was due, but he would endeavor to bring about recognition
-through outside channels. Thus he felt that Colonel Rondon deserved
-wide acknowledgment for the years of exploring in the Brazilian
-Hinterland; and he brought it to the attention of the American and
-British Geographical Societies. As a result, the former awarded the
-gold medal to Colonel Rondon. In the same way father championed the
-cause of the naturalists who went with him on his expeditions. He
-did his best to see that the museums to which they belonged should
-appreciate their services, and give them the opportunity to follow
-the results through. When an expedition brings back material that
-has not been described, the museum publishes pamphlets listing the
-new species, and explaining their habitats and characteristics. This
-is rarely done by the man who did the actual collecting. Father,
-whenever it was feasible, arranged for the naturalists who had
-accompanied or taken part in the collecting to have the credit of
-writing the pamphlets describing the results of their work. To a
-layman this would not seem much, but in reality it means a great
-deal. Father did all he could to encourage his companions to write
-their experiences, for most of them had led eventful lives filled
-with unusual incident. When, as is often the case, the actor did
-not have the power of written narrative, father would be the first
-to recognize it, and knew that if inadequately described, the most
-eventful careers may be of no more interest than the catalogue of
-ships in the _Odyssey_, or the “begat” chapters in the Bible. If,
-however, father felt that there existed a genuine ability to write,
-he would spare no efforts to place the articles; in some cases he
-would write introductions, and in others, reviews of the book, if the
-results attained to that proportion.
-
-One of the most careful preparations that father made for the African
-expedition was the choosing of the library. He selected as wide a
-range as possible, getting the smallest copy of each book that was
-obtainable with decent reading type. He wanted a certain number of
-volumes mainly for the contrast to the daily life. He told me that he
-had particularly enjoyed Swinburne and Shelley in ranching days in
-the Bad Lands, because they were so totally foreign to the life and
-the country--and supplied an excellent antidote to the daily round.
-Father read so rapidly that he had to plan very carefully in order
-to have enough books to last him through a trip. He liked to have
-a mixture of serious and light literature--chaff, as he called the
-latter. When he had been reading histories and scientific discussions
-and political treatises for a certain length of time, he would plunge
-into an orgy of detective stories and novels about people cast away
-on desert islands.
-
-The plans for the Brazilian expedition came into being so
-unexpectedly that he could not choose his library with the usual
-care. He brought Gibbon’s _Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire_ in
-the Everyman’s edition, and farmed out a volume to each of us, and
-most satisfactory it proved to all. He also brought _Marcus Aurelius_
-and _Epictetus_, but when he tried to read them during the descent
-of the Rio da Dúvida, they only served to fill him with indignation
-at their futility. Some translations of Greek plays, not those of
-Gilbert Murray, for which he had unstinted praise, met with but
-little better success, and we were nearly as badly off for reading
-matter as we were for provisions. I had brought along a selection
-of Portuguese classics and a number of French novels. The former
-were useless to father, but Henri Bordeaux and Maurice Leblanc were
-grist to the mill. It was father’s first introduction to Arsène,
-and he thoroughly enjoyed it--he liked the style, although for
-matter he preferred Conan Doyle. Father never cared very much about
-French novels--the French books that he read most were scientific
-volumes--histories of the Mongols--and an occasional hunting book,
-but he afterward became a great admirer of Henri Bordeaux.
-
-At last the time came when there was nothing left but the Oxford
-books of English and French verse. The one of English verse he had
-always disliked. He said that if there were to be any American poetry
-included, it should be at any rate a good selection. The choice
-from Longfellow’s poems appealed to him as particularly poor, and I
-think that it was for this reason that he disapproved of the whole
-collection. Be that as it may, I realized how hard up for something
-to read father must be when he asked me for my Oxford book of English
-verse. For French verse father had never cared. He said it didn’t
-sing sufficiently. “The Song of Roland” was the one exception he
-granted. It was, therefore, a still greater proof of distress when
-he borrowed the Oxford book of French verse. He always loved to
-tell afterward that when he first borrowed it he started criticising
-and I had threatened to take it away if he continued to assail my
-favorites. In spite of all this he found it infinitely preferable to
-_Epictetus_ and _Marcus Aurelius_, and, indeed, became very fond of
-some of the selections. Villon and Ronsard particularly interested
-him.
-
-When riding along through the wilderness father would often repeat
-poetry to himself. To learn a poem he had only to read it through
-a few times, and he seemed never to forget it. Sometimes we would
-repeat the poem together. It might be parts of the “Saga of King
-Olaf,” or Kipling’s “Rhyme of the Three Sealers,” or “Grave of a
-Hundred Head,” or, perhaps, “The Bell Buoy”--or again it might be
-something from Swinburne or Shelley or Keats--or the “Ballad of Judas
-Iscariot.” He was above all fond of the poetry of the open, and I
-think we children got much of our love for the outdoor life, not only
-from actual example, but from the poetry that father taught us.
-
-There was an indissoluble bond between him and any of his old hunting
-companions, and in no matter what part of the world he met them, all
-else was temporarily forgotten in the eager exchange of reminiscences
-of old days. On the return from Africa, Seth Bullock, of Deadwood,
-met us in London. How delighted father was to see him, and how he
-enjoyed the captain’s comments on England and things English! One
-of the captain’s first remarks on reaching London was to the effect
-that he was so glad to see father that he felt like hanging his hat
-on the dome of Saint Paul’s and shooting it off. We were reminded of
-Artemus Ward’s classic reply to the guard who found him tapping, with
-his cane, an inscription in Westminster Abbey: “Come, come, sir, you
-mustn’t do that. It isn’t permitted, you know!” Whereupon Artemus
-Ward turned upon him: “What, mustn’t do it? If I like it, I’ll buy
-it!” It was never difficult to trail the captain. When my sister and
-I were going through Edinburgh Castle, the local guide showed us an
-ancient gun, firing a cluster of five or six barrels. With great
-amusement he told us how an American to whom he was showing the piece
-a few days previously had remarked that to be shot at with that gun
-must be like taking a shower-bath. A few questions served to justify
-the conclusion we had immediately formed as to the identity of our
-predecessor. Father had him invited to the dinner given by the donors
-of the Holland & Holland elephant rifle.
-
-Of the hunting comrades of his early days, he told me that Mr. R.
-H. Munro Ferguson was the most satisfactory of all, for he met
-all requirements--always good-humored when things went wrong,
-possessing a keen sense of humor, understanding the value of silent
-companionship, and so well read and informed as to be able to discuss
-appreciatively any of the multitudinous questions of literature or
-world affairs that interested my father.
-
-In Washington when an old companion turned up he would be
-triumphantly borne off to lunch, to find himself surrounded by famous
-scientists, authors, senators, and foreign diplomats. Father would
-shift with lightning rapidity from one to the other--first he might
-be discussing some question of Indian policy and administration, next
-the attitude of a foreign power--then an author’s latest novel--and
-a few moments later, he would have led on Johnny Goff to telling an
-experience with the cougar hounds.
-
-[Illustration: Father and R. H. Munro Ferguson at the Elkhorn Ranch,
-after the return from a successful hunting trip]
-
-Any man who had hunted with father was ready to follow him to the
-ends of the earth, and no passage of time could diminish his loyalty.
-With father the personal equation counted for so much. He was so
-whole-heartedly interested in his companions--in their aspirations
-and achievements. In every detail he was keenly interested, and he
-would select from his library those volumes which he thought would
-most interest each companion, and, perhaps, develop in him the love
-of the wonderful avocation which he himself found in reading. His
-efforts were not always crowned with success. Father felt that our
-African companion, R. J. Cuninghame, the “Bearded Master,” as the
-natives called him, being Scotch should be interested in Scott’s
-novels, so he selected from the “Pigskin Library” a copy of one of
-them--_Waverley_, I think it was. For some weeks Cuninghame made
-progress, not rapid, it is true, for he confessed to finding the
-notes the most interesting part of the book, then one day when they
-were sitting under a tree together in a rest during the noonday
-heat, and father in accordance with his invariable custom took out a
-book from his saddle-pocket, R. J. produced _Waverley_ and started
-industriously to work on it. Father looked over his shoulder to see
-where he had got to, and to his amused delight found that Cuninghame
-had been losing ground--he was three chapters farther back than he
-had been two weeks before!
-
-We more than once had occasion to realize how largely the setting is
-responsible for much that we enjoy in the wilds. Father had told me
-of how he used to describe the bellowing of the bull elk as he would
-hear it ring out in the frozen stillness of the forests of Wyoming.
-He thought of it, and talked of it, as a weird, romantic call--until
-one day when he was walking through the zoological gardens
-accompanied by the very person to whom he had so often given the
-description. As they passed the wapitis’ enclosure, a bull bellowed,
-and father’s illusions and credit were simultaneously shattered, for
-the romantic call he had so often dwelt upon was, in a zoological
-park, nothing more than a loud and discordant sort of bray.
-
-In spite of this lesson we would see something among the natives that
-was interesting or unusual and get it to bring home, only to find
-that it was the exotic surroundings that had been responsible for
-a totally fictitious charm. A wild hill tribe in Africa use anklets
-made from the skin of the colobus, a graceful, long-haired monkey
-colored black and white. When father produced the anklets at home,
-the only thing really noticeable about them was the fact that they
-smelt!
-
-Another equally unfortunate case was the affair of the beehives. The
-same hill tribe was very partial to honey. An individual’s wealth was
-computed in the number of beehives that he possessed. They were made
-out of hollowed logs three or four feet long and eight or ten inches
-in diameter. A wife or a cow was bought for an agreed upon number of
-beehives, and when we were hunting, no matter how hot the trail might
-be, the native tracker would, if we came to a clearing and saw some
-bees hovering about the forest flowers, halt and offer up a prayer
-that the bees should deposit the honey in one of his hives. It seemed
-natural to bring a hive home, but viewed in the uncompromising light
-of the North Shore of Long Island it was merely a characterless,
-uninteresting log.
-
-Not the least of the many delights of being a hunting companion of
-father’s was his humor. No one could tell a better story, whether
-it was what he used to call one of his “old grouse in the gunroom”
-stories, or an account, with sidelights, of a contemporaneous
-adventure. The former had to do with incidents in his early career
-in the cow-camps of the Dakotas, or later on with the regiment in
-Cuba--and phrases and incidents of them soon became coin-current in
-the expedition. Father’s humor was never under any circumstances
-ill-natured, or of such a sort as might make its object feel
-uncomfortable. If anything amusing occurred to a member of the
-expedition, father would embroider the happening in inimitable
-fashion, but always in such a way that the victim himself was
-the person most amused. The accompanying drawing will serve as
-illustration. Father and I had gone out to get some buck to eke out
-the food-supply for the porters. We separated, but some time later
-I caught sight of father and thought I would join him and return to
-camp. I didn’t pay particular attention to what he was doing, and as
-he was some way off I failed to notice that he was walking stooped to
-keep concealed by a rise of ground from some buck he was stalking.
-The result was the picture.
-
-[Illustration: An Elderly Parent, in the temporary absence of his
-Affectionate son, begins a Cautious Stalk of a buck.]
-
-[Illustration: Joyful Emotions of the Aff. son, and the Aff. Son’s
-followers, on witnessing the Cautious Stalk and preparing to take an
-Active Part in it.]
-
-[Illustration: Arrival of Aff. Son; mixed emotions of Elderly Parent;
-buck in vanishing perspective.]
-
-Before we started on the serious exploring part of the Brazilian
-trip, we paid visits to several fazendas or ranches in the state
-of Matto Grosso, with the purpose of hunting jaguar, as well as
-the lesser game of the country. One of the fazendas at which we
-stayed belonged to the governor of the state. When we were wakened
-before daylight to start off on the hunt we were given, in Brazilian
-fashion, the small cup of black coffee and piece of bread which
-constitutes the native Brazilian breakfast. We would then sally
-forth to return to the ranch not before noon, and sometimes much
-later, as the hunting luck dictated. We would find an enormous
-lunch waiting for us at the house. Father, who was accustomed to an
-American breakfast, remarked regretfully that he wished the lunch
-were divided, or that at least part of it were used to supplement
-the black coffee of daybreak. The second morning, as I went down the
-hall, the dining-room door was ajar, and I caught sight of the table
-laden with the cold meats and salads that were to serve as part of
-our elaborate luncheon many dim hours hence. I hurried back to tell
-father, and we tiptoed cautiously into the dining-room, closing the
-door noiselessly behind us. While we were engaged in making rapid
-despatch of a cold chicken, we heard our hosts calling, and the next
-minute the head of the house popped in the door! As father said
-afterward, we felt and looked like two small boys caught stealing jam
-in the pantry.
-
-The Brazilian exploration was not so carefully planned as the African
-trip, because father had not intended to make much of an expedition.
-The first time he mentioned the idea was in April, 1913, in reply to
-a letter I wrote from São Paulo describing a short hunting expedition
-that I had made. “The forest must be lovely; some time I must get
-down to see you, and we’ll take a fortnight’s outing, and you shall
-hunt and I’ll act as what in the North Woods we used to call ‘Wangan
-man,’ and keep camp!”
-
-Four months later he wrote that he was planning to come down and see
-me; that he had been asked to make addresses in Brazil, Argentina,
-and Chile, and “I shall take a naturalist with me, if, as I hope, I
-return via Paraguay and the Amazon.” At the time it did not look as
-if it would be possible for me to go on the trip. In father’s next
-letter he said that after he left me, “instead of returning in the
-ordinary tourist Bryan-Bryce-way, I am going to see if it is possible
-to work across from the Plata into the valley of the Amazon, and come
-out through the Brazilian forest. This may not be possible. It won’t
-be anything like our African trip. There will be no hunting and no
-adventures, so that I shall not have the pang I otherwise would about
-not taking you along.” These plans were amplified and extended a
-certain amount, but in the last letter I received they didn’t include
-a very serious expedition.
-
-“I shall take the Springfield and the Fox on my trip, but I shall
-not expect to do any game-shooting. I think it would need the
-Bwana Merodadi, [My name among the natives in Africa] and not his
-stout and rheumatic elderly parent to do hunting in the Brazilian
-forest. I shall have a couple of naturalists with me of the Heller
-stamp, and I shall hope to get a fair collection for the New York
-Museum--Fairfield Osborn’s museum.”
-
-It was at Rio that father first heard of the River of Doubt. Colonel
-Rondon in an exploring expedition had crossed a large river and no
-one knew where it went to. Father felt that to build dugouts and
-descend the river offered a chance to accomplish some genuine and
-interesting exploration. It was more of a trip than he had planned
-for, but the Brazilian Government arranged for Colonel Rondon to make
-up an accompanying expedition.
-
-When father went off into the wilds he was apt to be worried until
-he had done something which would in his mind justify the expedition
-and relieve it from the danger of being a fiasco. In Africa he wished
-to get at least one specimen each of the four great prizes--the
-lion, the elephant, the buffalo, and the rhinoceros. It was the lion
-for which he was most keen--and which he also felt was the most
-problematical. Luck was with us, and we had not been hunting many
-days before father’s ambition was fulfilled. It was something that
-he had long desired--indeed it is the pinnacle of most hunters’
-ambitions--so it was a happy cavalcade that rode back to camp in the
-wake of the natives that were carrying the lioness slung on a long
-pole. The blacks were chanting a native song of triumph, and father
-was singing “Whack-fa-lal for Lannigan’s Ball,” as a sort of “chant
-pagan.”
-
-[Illustration: Putting the tape on a tusker
-Reading from left to right: unknown gun-bearer, Kasitura, Father,
-Juma Johari, Tarlton, Cuninghame]
-
-Father was more fluent than exact in expressing himself in foreign
-languages. As he himself said of his French, he spoke it “as if it
-were a non-Aryan tongue, having neither gender nor tense.” He would,
-however, always manage to make himself understood, and never seemed
-to experience any difficulty in understanding his interlocutor.
-In Africa he had a most complicated combination of sign-language
-and coined words, and though I could rarely make out what he and
-his gun-bearer were talking about, they never appeared to have any
-difficulty in understanding each other. Father could read Spanish,
-and he had not been in Brazil long before he could make out the trend
-of any conversation in Portuguese. With the Brazilians he always
-spoke French, or, on rare occasions, German.
-
-He was most conscientious about his writing. Almost every day when
-he came in from hunting he would settle down to work on the articles
-that were from time to time sent back to _Scribner’s_. This daily
-task was far more onerous than any one who has not tried it can
-imagine. When you come in from a long day’s tramping, you feel most
-uninclined to concentrate on writing a careful and interesting
-account of the day’s activities. Father was invariably good-humored
-about it, saying that he was paying for his fun. In Brazil when the
-mosquitoes and sand-flies were intolerable, he used to be forced to
-write swathed in a mosquito veil and with long gauntlets to protect
-hands and wrists.
-
-During the descent of the River of Doubt in Brazil there were many
-black moments. It was impossible to hazard a guess within a month or
-more as to when we would get through to the Amazon. We had dugout
-canoes, and when we came to serious rapids or waterfalls we were
-forced to cut a trail around to the quiet water below. Then we must
-make a corduroy road with the trunks of trees over which to haul the
-dugouts. All this took a long time, and in some places where the
-river ran through gorges it was almost impossible. We lost in all
-six of the ten canoes with which we started, and of course much of
-our food-supply and general equipment. It was necessary to delay and
-build two more canoes--a doubly laborious task because of the axes
-and adzes which had gone down in the shipwrecks. The Brazil nuts upon
-which we had been counting to help out our food-supply had had an
-off year. If this had not been so we would have fared by no means
-badly, for these nuts may be ground into flour or roasted or prepared
-in a number of different ways. Another source upon which we counted
-failed us when we found that there were scarcely any fish in the
-river. For some inexplicable reason many of the tributaries of the
-Amazon teem with fish, while others flowing through similar country
-and under parallel conditions contain practically none. We went first
-onto half rations, and then were forced to still further reduce the
-issue. We had only the clothes in which we stood and were wet all day
-and slept wet throughout the night. There would be a heavy downpour,
-then out would come the sun and we would be steamed dry, only to be
-drenched once more a half-hour later.
-
-[Illustration: Launching a newly made dugout on the Dúvida]
-
-Working waist-deep in the water in an attempt to dislodge a canoe
-that had been thrown upon some rocks out in the stream, father
-slipped, and, of course, it was his weak leg that suffered. Then he
-came down with fever, and in his weakened condition was attacked with
-a veritable plague of deep abscesses. It can be readily understood
-that the entourage and environment were about as unsuitable for
-a sick man as any that could be imagined. Nothing but father’s
-indomitable spirit brought him through. He was not to be downed by
-anything, although he knew well that the chances were against his
-coming out. He made up his mind that as long as he could, he would
-go along, but that once he could no longer travel, and held up the
-expedition, he would arrange for us to go on without him. Of course
-he did not at the time tell us this, but he reasoned that with our
-very limited supply of provisions, and the impossibility of living
-on the country, if the expedition halted it would not only be of no
-avail as far as he was concerned, but the chances would be strongly
-in favor of no one coming through. With it all he was invariably
-cheerful, and in the blackest times ever ready with a joke. Sick as
-he was, he gave no one any trouble. He would walk slowly over the
-portages, resting every little while, and when the fever was not too
-severe we would, when we reached the farther end with the canoes,
-find him sitting propped against a tree reading a volume of Gibbon,
-or perhaps the Oxford book of verse.
-
-There was one particularly black night; one of our best men had
-been shot and killed by a useless devil who escaped into the jungle,
-where he was undoubtedly killed by the Indians. We had been working
-through a series of rapids that seemed interminable. There would be
-a long carry, a mile or so clear going, and then more rapids. The
-fever was high and father was out of his head. Doctor Cajazeira, who
-was one of the three Brazilians with us, divided with me the watch
-during the night. The scene is vivid before me. The black rushing
-river with the great trees towering high above along the bank;
-the sodden earth under foot; for a few moments the stars would be
-shining, and then the sky would cloud over and the rain would fall in
-torrents, shutting out sky and trees and river. Father first began
-with poetry; over and over again he repeated “In Xanadu did Kubla
-Khan a stately pleasure dome decree,” then he started talking at
-random, but gradually he centred down to the question of supplies,
-which was, of course, occupying every one’s mind. Part of the time he
-knew that I was there, and he would then ask me if I thought Cherrie
-had had enough to eat to keep going. Then he would forget my presence
-and keep saying to himself: “I can’t work now, so I don’t need much
-food, but he and Cherrie have worked all day with the canoes, they
-must have part of mine.” Then he would again realize my presence and
-question me as to just how much Cherrie had had. How good faithful
-Cajazeira waked I do not know, but when his watch was due I felt him
-tap me on the shoulder, and crawled into my soggy hammock to sleep
-the sleep of the dead.
-
-Father’s courage was an inspiration never to be forgotten by any of
-us; without a murmur he would lie while Cajazeira lanced and drained
-the abscesses. When we got down beyond the rapids the river widened
-so that instead of seeing the sun through the canyon of the trees for
-but a few hours each day, it hung above us all the day like a molten
-ball and broiled us as if the river were a grid on which we were made
-fast. To a sick man it must have been intolerable.
-
-It is when one is sick that one really longs for home. Lying
-in a hammock all unwashed and unshaven, suffocating beneath a
-mosquito-net, or tortured by mosquitoes and sand-flies when one
-raises the net to let in a breath of air--it is then that one dreams
-of clean pajamas and cool sheets and iced water. I have often heard
-father say when he was having a bout of fever at home, that it was
-almost a pleasure to be ill, particularly when you thought of all the
-past discomforts of fever in the wilds.
-
-Father’s disappointment at not being able to take a physical part
-in the war--as he has said, “to pay with his body for his soul’s
-desire”--was bitter. Strongly as he felt about going, I doubt if
-his disappointment was much more keen than that of the British
-and French statesmen and generals, who so readily realized what
-his presence would mean to the Allied cause, and more than once
-requested in Washington that he be sent. Marshal Joffre made such
-a request in person, meeting with the usual evasive reply. Father
-took his disappointment as he had taken many another in his life,
-without letting it harm his usefulness, or discourage his aggressive
-energy. “In the fell clutch of circumstance he did not wince or cry
-aloud.” Indeed, the whole of Henley’s poem might well apply to father
-if it were possible to eliminate from it the unfortunate marring
-undercurrent of braggadocio with which father’s attitude was never
-for an instant tinged. With the indomitable courage that knew no
-deterrent he continued to fight his battle on this side to make
-America’s entry no empty action, as it threatened to be. He wrote me
-that he had hoped that I would be with him in this greatest adventure
-of all, but that since it was not to be, he could only be thankful
-that his four boys were permitted to do their part in the actual
-fighting.
-
-When in a little town in Germany my brother and I got news of my
-father’s death, there kept running through my head with monotonous
-insistency Kipling’s lines:
-
-     “He scarce had need to doff his pride,
-      Or slough the dress of earth,
-      E’en as he trod that day to God
-      So walked he from his birth,
-      In simpleness and gentleness and honor and clean mirth.”
-
-That was my father, to whose comradeship and guidance so many of us
-look forward in the Happy Hunting-Grounds.
-
-
-
-
-II
-
-In Quest of Sable Antelope
-
-
-
-
-                                 II
-
-                     IN QUEST OF SABLE ANTELOPE
-
-
-It was a bright, sunny day toward the end of October, and I was
-walking along the streets of the old Portuguese town of Mombasa on
-the east coast of Equatorial Africa. Behind me, in ragged formation,
-marched some twenty-five blacks, all but four of them with loads on
-their heads; the four were my personal “boys,” two gun-bearers, a
-cook, and a tent-boy. They were scattered among the crowd, hurrying
-up those that tried to lag behind for a last farewell to the wives
-and sweethearts who were following along on either side, clad in the
-dark-blue or more gaudily colored sheets that served them for clothes.
-
-At length our heterogeneous assembly reached the white sands of the
-harbor, and amid much confusion we stowed away into a couple of long,
-broad dugouts and were ferried out to a dhow that lay moored not far
-from the shore. We set sail amid the shrill cries of the women and a
-crowd of small children who, on our approach, had scurried out of the
-water like so many black monitor lizards.
-
-We steered out across the bay toward a headland some two miles
-distant. There was just enough breeze to ruffle the water, but the
-dhow sped along at a rate that belied appearances. Sprawling among
-their loads the men lit cigarettes and chatted and joked, talking
-of the prospects of the trip, or the recent gossip of Mombasa. The
-sailors, not knowing that I understood Swahili, began to discuss me
-in loud tones. An awkward silence fell upon the porters, who didn’t
-quite know how to tell them. Mali, my tent-boy, who was sitting near
-me, looked toward me and smiled. When the discussion became a little
-too personal, I turned to him and made a few pertinent remarks about
-the crew. The porters grinned delightedly, and rarely have I seen
-more shamefaced men than those sailors.
-
-In far too short a time for all of us the dhow grounded on the other
-side and we jumped out and started to unload. A giant baobab-tree
-stood near the beach; a cluster of huts beneath it were occupied by
-some Swahilis who fished, and ran a small store, where my porters
-laid in a final supply of delicacies--sugar and tobacco.
-
-It is customary to have a native head man, but on this short trip
-I had decided to do without one, for though the porters were new,
-my personal boys were old friends. Accordingly, when all the loads
-were ready and neatly arranged in line, I shouted “Bandika!” Great
-muscular black arms caught the packs and swung them up into place on
-the head, and off we started, along the old coast trail, worn deep
-with the traffic of centuries, and leading on for several hundred
-miles with native villages strung along its length. Behind me strode
-my two gun boys, then came the porters, all in single file, their
-present regular order a strong contrast with our disordered progress
-through the streets of Mombasa. Mali and Kombo, the cook, brought
-up the rear to look out for stragglers, and help unfortunates to
-rearrange their loads more comfortably.
-
-A little way from the shore we passed an old Arab well; some women
-were drawing water from it, but at our approach they deserted their
-earthen jars and hurried away with shrill ejaculations. Fresh from
-the more arid interior, I imagined that the men would fill their
-gourds, but they filed past without stopping, for this was a land of
-many streams.
-
-We continued on our way silently, now through stretches of sandy
-land covered with stunted bushes, now through native shambas, or
-cultivated fields, until we came upon a group of natives seated
-under a gigantic wide-spreading tree. It was a roadside shop, and
-the porters threw down their loads and shouldered their way to where
-the shopkeeper was squatting behind his wares--nuts, tobacco, tea,
-bits of brass wire, beads, and sweetmeats of a somewhat gruesome
-appearance. He was a striking-looking old fellow with a short gray
-beard. Pretty soon he came to where I was sitting with a measure of
-nuts for the white man; so in return I took out my tobacco-pouch and
-presented him with some of the white man’s tobacco.
-
-After a few minutes’ rest we set out again and marched along for some
-time until we came to a cocoanut-palm grove, where I decided to camp
-for the night. The natives we were among were called the WaNyika--the
-“children of the wilderness.”
-
-Leaving the men to arrange camp under the supervision of the
-gun-bearers, I strolled over to a nearby village where there
-was a dance in full swing. The men were regaling themselves
-with cocoanut-wine, an evil-tasting liquid, made from fermented
-cocoanut-milk, they told me. The moon, almost at full, was rising
-when I returned to camp, and after supper I sat and smoked and
-watched “the night and the palms in the moonlight,” until the local
-chief, or Sultani, as they called him, came up and presented me
-with some ripe cocoanuts, and sitting down on the ground beside me
-he puffed away at his long clay pipe, coughing and choking over
-the strong tobacco I had given him, but apparently enjoying it all
-immensely. When he left I remained alone, unable for some time to
-make up my mind to go to bed, such was the spell of the tropic
-moonlight and the distant half-heard songs of the dancing “children
-of the wilderness.”
-
-[Illustration: A relic of the Portuguese occupation; an old well
-beside the trail]
-
-Early next morning we were on our way, and that night were camped
-a few hundred yards from the village of a grizzled old Sultani,
-whose domains lay in the heart of the sable country, for it was in
-search of these handsome antelopes that I had come. In southern
-Africa the adult males of the species are almost black, with white
-bellies, but here they were not so dark in color, resembling more
-nearly the southern female sable, which is a dark reddish brown.
-Both sexes carry long horns that sweep back in a graceful curve over
-the shoulders, those of the male much heavier and longer, sometimes,
-in the south, attaining five feet in length. The sable antelope is
-a savage animal, and when provoked, will attack man or beast. The
-rapier-like horns prove an effective weapon as many a dog has learned
-to its cost.
-
-My tent was pitched beneath one of the large shade-trees in which the
-country abounds. This one was the village council-tree, and when I
-arrived the old men were seated beneath it on little wooden stools.
-These were each hacked out of a single log and were only five or six
-inches high. The owner carried his stool with him wherever he went,
-slinging it over his shoulder on a bit of rawhide or a chain.
-
-There was trouble in the village, for after the first formal
-greetings were over the old chief told me that one of his sons had
-just died. There was about to be held a dance in his memory, and
-he led me over to watch it. We arrived just as the ceremony was
-starting. Only small boys were taking part in it, and it was anything
-but a mournful affair, for each boy had strung round his ankles
-baskets filled with pebbles that rattled in time with the rhythm of
-the dance. In piping soprano they sang a lively air which, unlike any
-native music I had hitherto heard, sounded distinctly European, and
-would scarcely have been out of place in a comic opera.
-
-[Illustration: The Death Dance of the Wa Nyika children in memory of
-the chieftain’s little son]
-
-When the dance was finished the Sultani came back with me to my
-tent, and sitting down on his stool beside me, we gossiped until I
-was ready to go to bed. I had given him a gorgeous green umbrella
-and a most meritorious knife, promising him further presents should
-success attend me in the chase. He, in addition to the customary
-cocoanuts, had presented me with some chickens and a large supply of
-a carrot-shaped root called mihogo; by no means a bad substitute for
-potatoes, and eaten either raw or cooked; having in the former state
-a slight chestnut flavor.
-
-The first day’s hunting was a blank, for although we climbed hill
-after hill and searched the country with my spy-glasses, we saw
-nothing but some kongoni (hartebeeste), and I had no intention of
-risking disturbing the country by shooting at them, much as the men
-would have liked the meat. It was the rainy season, and we were
-continually getting drenched by showers, but between times the sun
-would appear and in an incredibly short time we would be dry again.
-The Sultani had given me two guides, sturdy, cheerful fellows with
-no idea of hunting, but knowing the country well, which was all we
-wanted. We loaded them down with cocoanuts, for in the middle of the
-day when one was feeling tired and hot it was most refreshing to cut
-a hole in a cocoanut and drink the milk, eating the meat afterward.
-
-The following day we made a very early start, leaving camp amid a
-veritable tropical downpour. For half an hour we threaded our way
-through the semi-cultivated native shambas; the rain soon stopped,
-the sun rose, and we followed an overgrown trail through a jungle
-of glistening leaves. Climbing a large hill, we sat down among some
-rocks to reconnoitre. Just as I was lighting my pipe I saw Juma
-Yohari, one of my gun-bearers, motioning excitedly. I crept over
-to him and he pointed out, three-quarters of a mile away, a small
-band of sable crossing a little open space between two thickets. The
-country was difficult to hunt, for it was so furrowed with valleys,
-down the most of which there ran streams, that there was very little
-level land, and that little was in the main bush country--the Bara,
-as the natives called it. There were, however, occasional open
-stretches, but during the rainy season, as at present, the grass
-was so high everywhere that it was difficult to find game. We held
-a hurried consultation, Juma, Kasitura--my other gun-bearer--and
-myself; after a short disagreement we decided upon the course, and
-set out as fast as we safely could toward the point agreed on. It
-was exhausting work: through ravines, up hills, all amid a tangle
-of vines and thorns; and once among the valleys it was hard to know
-just where we were. When we reached what we felt was the spot we had
-aimed at, we could find no trace of our quarry, though we searched
-stealthily in all directions. I led the way toward a cluster of tall
-palms that were surrounded by dense undergrowth. A slight wind rose,
-and as I entered the thicket with every nerve tense, I heard a loud
-and most disconcerting crackle that caused me to jump back on to
-Yohari, who was close behind me. He grinned and pointed to some great
-dead palm-leaves pendant along the trunk of one of the trees that the
-wind had set in motion. The next instant I caught sight of a pair of
-horns moving through the brush. On making out the general outline of
-the body, I fired. Another antelope that I had not seen made off, and
-taking it for a female I again fired, bringing it down with a most
-lucky shot. I had hoped to collect male, female, and young for the
-museum, so I was overjoyed, believing that I had on the second day’s
-hunting managed to get the two adults. Yohari and Kasitura thought
-the same, but when we reached our quarry we found them to be both
-males; the latter a young one, and the former, although full grown
-in body, by no means the tawny black color of an old bull. We set
-to work on the skins, and soon had them off. Juma took one of the
-Shenzies[2] and went back to camp with the skins, while Kasitura and
-I went on with the other. We returned to camp by moonlight that night
-without having seen any more game. The porters had gone out and
-brought in the meat and there was a grand feast in progress.
-
-After some antelope-steak and a couple of cups of tea I tumbled
-into bed and was soon sound asleep. The next thing I knew I was
-wide awake, feeling as if there were fourscore pincers at work on
-me. Bounding out of bed, I ran for the camp-fire, which was still
-flickering. I was covered with ants. They had apparently attacked the
-boys sleeping near me at about the same time, for the camp was in an
-uproar and there was a hurrying of black figures, and a torrent of
-angry Swahili imprecations. There was nothing for it but to beat an
-ignominious retreat, and we fled in confusion. Once out of reach of
-reinforcements we soon ridded ourselves of such of our adversaries as
-were still on us. Fortunately for us the assault had taken place not
-long before dawn, and we returned to camp safely by daylight.
-
-That day we moved camp to the top of a neighboring hill, about a mile
-from the village. I spent the morning working over the skins which
-I had only roughly salted the night before; but in the afternoon we
-sallied forth again to the hunt.
-
-We went through several unsuccessful days before I again came up with
-sable. Several times we had met with fresh tracks, and in each case
-Kasitura, who was a strapping Basoga from a tribe far inland and an
-excellent tracker, took up the trail and did admirable work. The
-country was invariably so dense and the game so wary that in spite of
-Kasitura’s remarkable tracking, only on two occasions did we sight
-the quarry, and each time it was only a fleeting glimpse as they
-crashed off. I could have had a shot, but I was anxious not to kill
-anything more save a full-grown female or an old master bull; and it
-was impossible to determine either sex or age.
-
-On what was to be our last day’s hunting we made a particularly
-early start and pushed on and on through the wild bushland, stopping
-occasionally to spy round from some vantage-point. We would swelter
-up a hill, down into the next valley among the lovely tall trees
-that lined the brook, cross the cool, rock-strewn stream, and on
-again. The sable fed in the open only in the very early morning
-till about nine o’clock, then they would retreat into the thickets
-and doze until four or five in the afternoon, when they would again
-come out to feed. During the intervening time our only chance was
-to run across them by luck, or find fresh tracks to follow. On that
-particular day we climbed a high hill about noon to take a look round
-and have a couple of hours’ siesta. I found a shady tree and sat
-down with my back against the trunk. Ten miles or so away sparkled
-and shimmered the Indian Ocean. On all sides stretched the wonderful
-bushland, here and there in the distance broken by little patches of
-half-cultivated land. There had been a rain-storm in the morning, but
-now the sun was shining undimmed. Taking from my hunting-coat pocket
-Borrow’s _Wild Wales_, I was soon climbing far-distant Snowdon with
-Lavengro, and was only brought back to realities by Juma, who came
-up to discuss the afternoon’s campaign. We had scarcely begun when
-one of the Shenzies, whom I had sent to watch from a neighboring
-hill, came up in great excitement to say that he had found a large
-sable bull. We hurried along after him, and presently he pointed to
-a thicket ahead of us. Leaving the rest behind, Juma and I proceeded
-cautiously toward the thicket. We found two sable cows, which Juma
-felt sure were all that there were in the thicket, whereas I could
-not help putting some faith in the Shenzi who had been very insistent
-about the “big bull.” I was convinced at length that Juma was right,
-so I took aim at the better of the cows. My shooting was poor, for
-I only crippled her, and when I moved up close for a final shot she
-attempted to charge, snorting savagely, but too badly hit to cause
-any trouble.
-
-We had spent some time searching for the bull, so that by the time
-we had the skin off, the brief African twilight was upon us. We had
-been hunting very hard for the last week, and were all of us somewhat
-fagged, but as we started toward camp I soon forgot my weariness in
-the magic of the night. Before the moon rose we trooped silently
-along, no one speaking, but all listening to the strange noises of
-the wilderness. We were following a rambling native trail, which
-wound along a deep valley beside a stream for some time before it
-struck out across the hills for camp. There was but little game in
-the country, still occasionally we would hear a buck that had winded
-us crashing off, or some animal splashing across the stream. In the
-more open country the noise of the cicadas, loud and incessant,
-took me back to the sound of the katydids in summer nights on Long
-Island. The moon rose large and round, outlining the tall ivory-nut
-palms. It was as if we were marching in fairyland, and with real
-regret I at length caught the gleam of the camp-fire through the
-trees.
-
-[Illustration: Across the bay from Mombasa; the porters ready to
-shoulder loads and march]
-
-It was after ten o’clock, when we had had something to eat, but Juma,
-Kasitura, and I gathered to work on the sable, and toiled until we
-began to nod off to sleep as we skinned.
-
-Next morning I paid my last visit to the old Sultani, rewarding him
-as I had promised and solemnly agreeing to come back and live with
-him in his country. The porters were joyful, as is always the case
-when they are headed for Mombasa. Each thought of the joyous time he
-would have spending his earnings, and they sang in unison as they
-swung along the trail--careless, happy children. I, too, was in the
-best of spirits, for my quest had been successful, and I was not
-returning empty-handed.
-
-
-
-
-III
-
-The Sheep of the Desert
-
-
-
-
-                                 III
-
-                       THE SHEEP OF THE DESERT
-
-
-I wished to hunt the mountain-sheep of the Mexican desert, hoping to
-be able to get a series needed by the National Museum.
-
-At Yuma, on the Colorado River, in the extreme southwestern corner of
-Arizona, I gathered my outfit. Doctor Carl Lumholtz, the explorer,
-had recently been travelling and hunting in that part of Mexico.
-In addition to much valuable help as to outfitting, he told me how
-to get hold of a Mexican who had been with him and whom he had
-found trustworthy. The postmaster, Mr. Chandler, and Mr. Verdugo, a
-prominent business man, had both been more than kind in helping in
-every possible way. Mr. Charles Utting, clerk of the District Court,
-sometime Rough Rider, and inveterate prospector, was to start off
-with me for a short holiday from judicial duties. To him the desert
-was an open book, and from long experience he understood all the
-methods and needs of desert travel. Mr. Win Proebstel, ranchman and
-prospector, was also to start with us. He had shot mountain-sheep
-all the way from Alaska to Mexico, and was a mine of first-hand
-information as to their habits and seasons. I had engaged two
-Mexicans, Cipriano Dominguez and Eustacio Casares.
-
-On the afternoon of the 10th of August we reached Wellton, a little
-station on the Southern Pacific, some forty miles east of Yuma. Win
-and his brother, Ike Proebstel, were ready with a wagon, which the
-latter was to drive to a water-hole some sixteen miles south, near
-some mining claims of Win’s. August is the hottest month in the year
-in that country, a time when on the desert plains of Sonora the
-thermometer marks 140 degrees; so we decided to take advantage of
-a glorious full moon and make our first march by night. We loaded
-as much as we could of our outfit into the wagon, so as to save our
-riding and pack animals. We started at nine in the evening. The moon
-rode high. At first the desert stretched in unbroken monotony on all
-sides, to the dim and far-off mountains. In a couple of hours we came
-to the country of the saguaro, the giant cactus. All around us, their
-shafts forty or fifty feet high, with occasional branches set at
-grotesque angles to the trunk, they rose from the level floor of the
-desert, ghostly in the moonlight. The air seemed cool in comparison
-with the heat of the day, though the ground was still warm to the
-touch.
-
-Shortly before one in the morning we reached Win’s water-hole--tank,
-in the parlance of the country--and were soon stretched out on our
-blankets, fast asleep.
-
-Next day we loaded our outfit on our two pack-mules and struck out
-across the desert for the Tinajas Altas (High Tanks), which lay
-on the slopes of a distant range of mountains, about four miles
-from the Mexican border. For generations these tanks have been a
-well-known stepping-stone in crossing the desert. There are a series
-of them, worn out in the solid rock and extending up a cleft in
-the mountainside, which, in time of rain, becomes the course of a
-torrent. The usual camping-place is a small plateau, a couple of
-hundred yards from the lowest tank. This plateau lies in a gulch and
-is sheltered on either hand by its steep and barren sides. A few
-hundred feet from the entrance, on the desert and scattered about
-among the cactus, lie some hundred and fifty graves--the graves
-of men who have died of thirst; for this is a grim land, and death
-dogs the footsteps of those who cross it. Most of the dead men were
-Mexicans who had struggled across the deserts only to find the tanks
-dry. Each lay where he fell, until, sooner or later, some other
-traveller found him and scooped out for him a shallow grave, and
-on it laid a pile of rocks in the shape of a rude cross. Forty-six
-unfortunates perished here at one time of thirst. They were making
-their way across the deserts to the United States, and were in the
-last stages of exhaustion for lack of water when they reached these
-tanks. But a Mexican outlaw named Blanco reached the tanks ahead of
-them and bailed out the water, after carefully laying in a store for
-himself not far away. By this cache he waited until he felt sure that
-his victims were dead; he then returned to the tanks, gathered the
-possessions of the dead, and safely made his escape.
-
-A couple of months previously a band of insurrectos had been camped
-by these tanks, and two newly made graves marked their contribution.
-The men had been killed in a brawl.
-
-Utting told us of an adventure that took place here, a few years ago,
-which very nearly had a tragic termination. It was in the winter
-season and there was an American camped at the tanks, when two
-Mexicans came there on their way to the Tule tanks, twenty-five miles
-away, near which they intended to do some prospecting. Forty-eight
-hours after they had left, one of them turned up riding their
-pack-mule and in a bad way for water. He said that they had found
-the Tule tanks dry, but had resolved to have one day’s prospecting
-anyway; they had separated, but agreed at what time they were to
-meet. Although he waited for a long while after the agreed time, his
-companion never appeared, and he was forced to start back alone.
-
-Twenty-four hours after the return of this Mexican, the American
-was awakened in the night by hearing strange sounds in the bed of
-the arroyo. When he went down to investigate them he found the lost
-Mexican; he was in a fearful condition, totally out of his head, and
-was vainly struggling to crawl up the bank of the arroyo, in order to
-make the last hundred yards across the plateau to the water-hole. He
-would never have reached it alone. By careful treatment the American
-brought him round and then listened to his story. He had lost himself
-when he went off prospecting, and when he finally got his bearings
-he was already in a very bad way for water. Those dwelling in cool,
-well-watered regions can hardly make themselves realize what thirst
-means in that burning desert. He knew that although there was no
-water in the Tule wells, there was some damp mud in the bottom, and
-he said that all he wished to do was to reach the wells and cool
-himself off in the mud before he died. A short distance from the
-tanks the trail he was following divided, one branch leading to the
-Tule wells and the other back to the Tinajas Altas, twenty-five miles
-away. The Mexican was so crazed that he took the wrong branch, and
-before he realized his mistake he had gone some way past Tule; he
-then decided that it was the hand of providence that had led him
-past, and that he must try to make Tinajas Altas; a feat which he
-would have just missed accomplishing but for the American encamped
-there.
-
-The morning after we reached the tanks, the Tinah’alta, as they
-are called colloquially, Win and I were up and off for the
-hunting-grounds by half past three; by sun-up we were across the
-border, and hunted along the foot of the mountains, climbing across
-the out-jutting ridges. At about nine we reached the top of a ridge
-and began looking around. Win called to me that he saw some sheep. We
-didn’t manage things very skilfully, and the sheep took fright, but
-as they stopped I shot at a fine ram, Win’s rifle echoing my shot. We
-neither of us scored a hit, and missed several running shots. This
-missing was mere bad luck on Win’s part, for he was a crack shot, and
-later on that day, when we were not together, he shot a ram, only
-part of which was visible, at a distance of three hundred and fifty
-yards. As the sun grew hotter we hunted farther up on the mountains,
-but we saw no more sheep, and returned to camp with Utting, who met
-us at a ravine near the border.
-
-[Illustration: A desert camp in old Mexico]
-
-After we got back to camp, Win and I filled some canteens, threw our
-blankets on one of the pack-mules, took Dominguez, and rode back
-over the border to camp in the dry bed of an arroyo near where we
-had been hunting in the morning. We sent back the animals, arranging
-with Dominguez to return with them the following day. Next morning
-at a little after three we rolled out of our blankets, built a little
-fire of mesquite wood, and after a steaming cup of coffee and some
-cold frying-pan bread we shouldered our rifles and set out. At the
-end of several hours’ steady walking I got a chance at a fair ram
-and missed. I sat down and took out my field-glasses to try to see
-where he went; and I soon picked up three sheep standing on a great
-boulder, near the foot of a mountain of the same range that we were
-on. They were watching us and were all ewes, but I wanted one for the
-museum. So I waited till they lost interest in us, got down from the
-rock, and disappeared from our sight. I then left Win and started
-toward the boulder; after some rather careful stalking I got one of
-them at about two hundred yards by some fairly creditable shooting.
-The side of the mountain range along which we were hunting was cut by
-numerous deep gullies from two to three hundred yards across. After I
-had dressed the ewe I thought I would go a little way farther, on the
-chance of coming upon the ram I had missed; for he had disappeared in
-that direction. When I had crossed three or four ridges I sat down to
-look around. It was about half past nine, the heat was burning,
-and I knew the sheep would soon be going up the mountains to seek the
-shelter of the caves in which they spend the noonday hours. Suddenly
-I realized that there were some sheep on the side of the next ridge
-standing quietly watching me. There were four bunches, scattered
-among the rocks; three were of ewes and young, and there was one
-bunch of rams; in all there were sixteen sheep. I picked out the best
-ram, and, estimating the distance at two hundred and fifty yards,
-I fired, hitting, but too low. I failed to score in the running
-shooting, but when he was out of sight I hurried over and picked up
-the trail; he was bleeding freely, and it was not difficult to follow
-him. He went half a mile or so and then lay down in a rock cave; but
-he was up and off before I could labor into sight, and made a most
-surprising descent down the side of a steep ravine. When I caught
-sight of him again he was half-way up the opposite wall of the ravine
-though only about a hundred yards distant; he was standing behind a
-large rock with only his quarters visible, but one more shot brought
-matters to a finish. The heat was very great, so I started right
-to work to get the skin off. A great swarm of bees gathered to the
-feast. They were villainous-looking, and at first they gave me many
-qualms, but we got used to each other and I soon paid no attention
-to them, merely brushing them off any part that I wanted to skin. I
-was only once stung, and that was when a bee got inside my clothing
-and I inadvertently squeezed it. Before I had finished the skinning
-I heard a shot from Win; I replied, and a little while afterward he
-came along. I shall not soon forget packing the skin, with the head
-and the leg-bones still in it, down that mountainside. In addition to
-being very heavy, it made an unwieldy bundle, as I had no rope with
-which to tie it up. I held the head balanced on one shoulder, with
-a horn hooked round my neck; the legs I bunched together as best I
-could, but they were continually coming loose and causing endless
-trouble. After I reached the bottom, I left Win with the sheep and
-struck off for our night’s camping-place. It was after eleven and the
-very hottest part of the day. I had to be careful not to touch any of
-the metal part of my gun; indeed, the wooden stock was unpleasantly
-hot, and I was exceedingly glad that there was to be water waiting
-for me at camp.
-
-I got Dominguez and the horses and brought in the sheep, which took
-several hours. That afternoon we were back at Tinah’alta, with a
-long evening’s work ahead of me skinning out the heads and feet by
-starlight. Utting, who was always ready to do anything at any time,
-and did everything well, turned to with a will and took the ewe off
-my hands.
-
-The next day I was hard at work on the skins. One of the tanks,
-about four hundred yards from camp, was a great favorite with the
-sheep, and more than once during our stay the men in camp saw sheep
-come down to drink at it. This had generally happened when I was off
-hunting; but on the morning when I was busy with the skins two rams
-came down to drink. It was an hour before noon; for at this place
-the sheep finished feeding before they drank. The wind was blowing
-directly up the gulch to them, but although they stopped several
-times to stare at the camp, they eventually came to the water-hole
-and drank. Of course we didn’t disturb these sheep, for not only were
-they in the United States, but they were drinking at a water-hole in
-a desert country; and a man who has travelled the deserts, and is
-any sort of a sportsman, would not shoot game at a water-hole unless
-he were in straits for food.
-
-I had been hunting on the extreme end of the Gila Range and near a
-range called El Viejo Hombre (The Old Man). After I shot my ram, in
-the confusion that followed, two of the young rams broke back, came
-down the mountain, passing quite close to Win, and crossed the plain
-to the Viejo Hombre Range, some mile and a half away. The bands of
-sheep out of which I shot my specimens had been feeding chiefly on
-the twigs of a small symmetrical bush, called by the Mexicans El
-Yervo del Baso, the same, I believe, that Professor Hornaday in
-his _Camp-Fires on Desert and Lava_ calls the white Brittle bush.
-They had also been eating such galleta-grass as they could find;
-it was on this grass that we depended for food for our horses and
-mules. Apparently the sheep of these bands had not been going to the
-water-hole; there were numerous places where they had been breaking
-down cactus and eating the pulp. In this country Win said that the
-rams and the ewes began to run together in October, and that in
-February the young were born. When the rams left the ewes, they took
-with them the yearling rams, and they didn’t join the ewes again
-until the next October.
-
-On the following day I left Utting and Proebstel and took the trail
-to the Tule tank. The two Mexicans were with me and we had two horses
-and three mules. We were travelling very light, for we were bound
-for a country where water-holes were not only few and far between
-but most uncertain. My personal baggage consisted of my washing kit,
-an extra pair of shoes, a change of socks, and a couple of books.
-Besides our bedding we had some coffee, tea, sugar, rice, flour (with
-a little bacon to take the place of lard in making bread), and a good
-supply of frijoles, or Mexican beans. It was on these last that we
-really lived. As soon as we got to a camp we always put some frijoles
-in a kettle and started a little fire to boil them. If we were to
-be there for a couple of days we put in enough beans to last us the
-whole time, and then all that was necessary in getting a meal ready
-was to warm up the beans.
-
-It was between four and five in the afternoon when we left
-Tinah’alta, and though the moon did not rise until late, the stars
-were bright and the trail was clear. The desert we were riding
-through was covered with mesquite and creosote and innumerable
-choya cactus; there were also two kinds of prickly-pear cactus, and
-ocatillas were plentiful. The last are curious plants; they are
-formed somewhat on the principle of an umbrella, with a very short
-central stem from which sometimes as many as twenty spokes radiate
-umbrella-wise. These spokes are generally about six feet long and are
-covered with thorns which are partially concealed by tiny leaves.
-The flower of the ocatilla is scarlet, and although most of them had
-stopped flowering by August, there were a few still in bloom. After
-about six hours’ silent riding we reached Tule. The word means a
-marsh, but, needless to say, all that we found was a rock-basin with
-a fair supply of water and a very generous supply of tadpoles and
-water-lice.
-
-Next morning when we came to get breakfast ready we found we had
-lost, through a hole in a pack-sack, all of our eating utensils
-except a knife and two spoons; but we were thankful at having got off
-so easily. By three in the afternoon we were ready for what was to
-be our hardest march. We wished to get into the Pinacate country;
-and our next water was to be the Papago tank, which Casares said was
-about forty-five miles south of us. He said that in this tank we were
-always sure to find water.
-
-For the first fifteen miles our route lay over the Camino del Diablo,
-a trail running through the Tule desert--and it has proved indeed
-a “road of the devil” for many an unfortunate. Then we left the
-trail, the sun sank, twilight passed, and in spite of the brilliancy
-of the stars, the going became difficult. In many places where
-the ground was free from boulders the kangaroo-rats had made a
-network of tunnels, and into these our animals fell, often sinking
-shoulder-deep. Casares was leading, riding a hardy little white mule.
-While he rode he rolled cigarette after cigarette, and as he bent
-forward in his saddle to light them, for a moment his face would be
-brought into relief by the burning match and a trail of sparks would
-light up the succeeding darkness. Once his mule shied violently, and
-we heard the angry rattling of a side-winder, a sound which once
-heard is never forgotten.
-
-At about eight o’clock, what with rocks and kangaroo-rat burrows, the
-going became so bad that we decided to offsaddle and wait till the
-moon should rise. We stretched out with our heads on our saddles and
-dozed until about midnight, when it was time to start on again. Soon
-the desert changed and we were free of the hills among which we had
-been travelling, and were riding over endless rolling dunes of white
-sand. As dawn broke, the twin peaks of Pinacate appeared ahead of us,
-and the sand gave place to a waste of red and black lava, broken by
-steep arroyos. We had been hearing coyotes during the night, and now
-a couple jumped up from some rocks, a hundred yards away, and made
-off amongst the lava.
-
-By eight o’clock the sun was fiercely hot, but we were in among the
-foot-hills of Pinacate. I asked Casares where the tanks were, and he
-seemed rather vague, but said they were beyond the next hills. They
-were not; but several times more he felt sure they were “just around
-the next hill.” I realized that we were lost and resolved to give
-him one more try, and then if I found that he was totally at sea as
-to the whereabouts of the tank, I intended to find some shelter for
-the heat of the day, and, when it got cooler, to throw the packs off
-our animals and strike back to Tule. It is difficult to realize how
-quickly that fierce sun dries up man and beast. I doubt if in that
-country a really good walker could have covered ten miles in the
-noonday heat without water and without stopping. We could have made
-Tule all right, but the return trip would have been a very unpleasant
-one, and we would probably have lost some of our animals.
-
-However, just before we reached Casares’s last location of the Papago
-tanks, we came upon an unknown water-hole, in the bed of an arroyo.
-The rains there are very local, and although the rest of the country
-was as dry as tinder, some fairly recent downpour had filled up this
-little rocky basin. There were two trees near it, a mesquite and a
-palo verde, and though neither would fit exactly into the category
-of shade-trees, we were most grateful to them for being there at
-all. The palo verde is very deceptive. When seen from a distance,
-its greenness gives it a false air of being a lovely, restful screen
-from the sun, but when one tries to avail oneself of its shade, the
-fallacy is soon evident. It is only when there is some parasitical
-mistletoe growing on it that the palo verde offers any real shade.
-The horses were very thirsty, and it was a revelation to see how
-they lowered the water in the pool.
-
-Dominguez was only about thirty years old, but he seemed jaded and
-tired, whereas Casares, who was white-haired, and must have been at
-least sixty, was as fresh as ever. Two days later, when I was off
-hunting on the mountains, Casares succeeded in finding the Papago
-tanks; they were about fifteen miles to our northwest, and were as
-dry as a bone! I later learned that a Mexican had come through this
-country some three weeks before we were in there. He had a number of
-pack-animals. When he found the Papago dry, he struck on for the next
-water, and succeeded in making it only after abandoning his packs and
-losing most of his horses.
-
-We sat under our two trees during the heat of the day; but shortly
-after four I took my rifle and my canteen and went off to look for
-sheep, leaving the two Mexicans in camp. Although I saw no rams, I
-found plenty of sign and got a good idea of the lay of the land.
-
-[Illustration: Casares on his white mule]
-
-The next four or five days I spent hunting from this camp. I was
-very anxious to get some antelope, and I spent three or four days
-in a fruitless search for them. It was, I believe, unusually
-dry, even for that country, and the antelope had migrated to better
-feeding-grounds. Aside from a herd of nine, which I saw from a long
-way off but failed to come up with, not only did I not see any
-antelope, but I did not even find any fresh tracks. There were many
-very old tracks, and I have no doubt that, at certain times of the
-year, there are great numbers of antelope in the country over which I
-was hunting.
-
-The long rides, however, were full of interest. I took the Mexicans
-on alternate days, and we always left camp before daylight. As the
-hours wore on, the sun would grow hotter and hotter. In the middle of
-the day there was generally a breeze blowing across the lava-beds,
-and that breeze was like the blast from a furnace. There are few
-whom the desert, at sunset and sunrise, fails to fascinate; but only
-those who have the love of the wastes born in them feel the magic
-of their appeal under the scorching noonday sun. Reptile life was
-abundant; lizards scuttled away in every direction; there were some
-rather large ones that held their tails up at an oblique angle above
-the ground as they ran, which gave them a ludicrous appearance. A
-species of toad whose back was speckled with red was rather common.
-Jack-rabbits and cottontails were fairly numerous, and among the
-birds Gambel’s quail and the whitewings, or sonora pigeons, were
-most in evidence. I came upon one of these later on her nest in a
-palo-verde-tree; the eggs were about the size of a robin’s and were
-white, and the nest was made chiefly of galleta-grass. The whitewings
-are very fond of the fruit of the saguaro; this fruit is of a
-reddish-orange color when ripe, and the birds peck a hole in it and
-eat the scarlet pulp within. It is delicious, and the Indians collect
-it and dry it; the season was over when I was in the country, but
-there was some late fruit on a few of the trees. When I was back in
-camp at sunset it was pleasant to hear the pigeons trilling as they
-flew down to the pool to drink.
-
-One day we returned to the camp at about two. I was rather hot and
-tired, so I made a cup of tea and sat under the trees and smoked my
-pipe until almost four. Then I picked up my rifle and went out by
-myself to look for sheep. I climbed to the top of a great crater hill
-and sat down to look around with my field-glasses. Hearing a stone
-move behind, I turned very slowly around. About a hundred and fifty
-yards off, on the rim of the crater, stood six sheep, two of them
-fine rams. Very slowly I put down the field-glasses and raised my
-rifle, and I killed the finer of the rams. It was getting dark, so,
-without bestowing more than a passing look upon him, I struck off
-for camp at a round pace. Now the Mexicans, although good enough in
-the saddle, were no walkers, and so Dominguez saddled a horse, put a
-pack-saddle on a mule, and followed me back to where the sheep lay.
-We left the animals at the foot of the hill, and although it was not
-a particularly hard climb up to the sheep, the Mexican was blown and
-weary by the time we reached it. The ram was a good one. His horns
-measured sixteen and three-fourths inches around the base and were
-thirty-five inches long, so they were larger in circumference though
-shorter than my first specimen. He was very thin, however, and his
-hair was falling out, so that one could pull it out in handfuls. All
-the sheep that I saw in this country seemed thin and in poor shape,
-while those near Tinah’alta were in very fair condition. The extreme
-dryness and scarcity of grass doubtless in part accounted for this,
-although the country in which I got my first two sheep was in no
-sense green. Making our way back to camp through the lava-fields and
-across the numerous gullies was a difficult task. The horses got
-along much better than I should have supposed; indeed, they didn’t
-seem to find as much difficulty as I did. Dominguez muttered that if
-the road past Tule was the Camino del Diablo, this certainly was the
-Camino del Infierno! When we reached camp my clothes were as wet as
-if I had been in swimming. I set right to work on the headskin, but
-it was eleven o’clock before I had finished it; that meant but four
-hours’ sleep for me, and I felt somewhat melancholy about it. Indeed,
-on this trip, the thing that I chiefly felt was the need of sleep,
-for it was always necessary to make a very early start, and it was
-generally after sunset before I got back to camp.
-
-The Mexicans spoke about as much English as I spoke Spanish, which
-was very little, and as they showed no signs of learning, I set
-to work to learn some Spanish. At first our conversation was very
-limited, but I soon got so that I could understand them pretty
-well. We occasionally tried to tell each other stories but became
-so confused that we would have to call it off. Dominguez had one
-English expression which he would pronounce with great pride and
-emphasis on all appropriate or inappropriate occasions; it was “You
-betcher!” Once he and I had some discussion as to what day it was and
-I appealed to Casares. “Ah, quien sabe, quien sabe?” (who knows, who
-knows?) was his reply; he said that he never knew what day it was and
-got on very comfortably without knowing--a point of view which gave
-one quite a restful feeling. They christened our water-hole Tinaja
-del Bévora, which means the tank of the rattlesnake. They so named it
-because of the advent in camp one night of a rattler. It escaped and
-got in a small lava-cave, from out of which the men tried long and
-unsuccessfully to smoke it.
-
-At the place where we were camped our arroyo had tunnelled its way
-along the side of a hill; so that, from its bed, one bank was about
-ten feet high and the other nearer fifty. In the rocky wall of this
-latter side there were many caves. One, in particular, would have
-furnished good sleeping quarters for wet weather. It was about
-twenty-five feet long and fifteen feet deep, and it varied in height
-from four to six feet. The signs showed that for generations it had
-been a favorite abode of sheep; coyotes had also lived in it, and
-in the back there was a big pack-rat’s nest. Pieces of the bisnaga
-cactus, with long, cruel spikes, formed a prominent part of the nest.
-
-After I had hunted for antelope in every direction from camp, and
-within as large a radius as I could manage, I was forced to admit
-the hopelessness of the task. The water-supply was getting low, but
-I determined to put in another good long day with the sheep before
-turning back. Accordingly, early one morning, I left the two Mexicans
-in camp to rest and set off for the mountains on foot. I headed for
-the main peak of Pinacate. It was not long before I got in among the
-foot-hills. I kept down along the ravines, for it was very early,
-and as a rule the sheep didn’t begin to go up the hills from their
-night’s feeding until nine or ten o’clock; at this place, also, they
-almost always spent the noon hours in caves. There were many little
-chipmunks running along with their tails arched forward over their
-backs, which gave them rather a comical look. At length I saw a
-sheep; he was well up the side of a large hill, an old crater, as
-were many of these mountains. I made off after him and found there
-were steep ravines to be reckoned with before I even reached the
-base of the hill. The sides of the crater were covered with choyas,
-and the footing on the loose lava was so uncertain that I said to
-myself, “I wonder how long it will be before you fall into one of
-these choyas,” and only a few minutes later I was gingerly picking
-choya burrs off my arms, which had come off worst in the fall. The
-points of the spikes are barbed and are by no means easy to pull out.
-I stopped many times to wait for my courage to rise sufficiently to
-start to work again, and by the time I had got myself free I was so
-angry that I felt like devoting the rest of my day to waging a war of
-retaliation upon the cactus. The pain from the places from which I
-had pulled out the spikes lasted for about half an hour after I was
-free of them, and later, at Yuma, I had to have some of the spines
-that I had broken off in my flesh cut out.
-
-An hour or so later I came across a very fine bisnaga, or
-“niggerhead,” cactus. I was feeling very thirsty, and, wishing to
-save my canteen as long as possible, I decided to cut the bisnaga
-open and eat some of its pulp, for this cactus always contains a
-good supply of sweetish water. As I was busy trying to remove the
-long spikes, I heard a rock fall, and looking round saw a sheep
-walking along the opposite side of the gully, and not more than four
-hundred yards away. He was travelling slowly and had not seen me,
-so I hastily made for a little ridge toward which he was heading. I
-reached some rocks near the top of the ridge in safety and crouched
-behind them. I soon saw that he was only a two-year-old, and when
-he was two hundred yards off I stood up to have a good look at him.
-When he saw me, instead of immediately making off, he stood and
-gazed at me. I slowly sat down and his curiosity quite overcame him.
-He proceeded to stalk me in a most scientific manner, taking due
-advantage of choyas and rocks; and cautiously poking his head out
-from behind them to stare at me. He finally got to within fifty feet
-of me, but suddenly, and for no apparent reason, he took fright and
-made off. He did not go far, and, from a distance of perhaps five
-hundred yards, watched me as I resumed operations on the cactus.
-
-Not long after this, as I was standing on the top of a hill,
-I made out two sheep, half hidden in a draw. There was a great
-difference in the size of their horns, and, in the hasty glance I
-got of them, one seemed to me to be big enough to warrant shooting.
-I did not discover my mistake until I had brought down my game. He
-was but a two-year-old, and, although I should have been glad of a
-good specimen for the museum, his hide was in such poor condition
-that it was quite useless. However, I took his head and some meat and
-headed back for camp. My camera, water-bottle, and field-glasses were
-already slung over my shoulder, and the three hours’ tramp back to
-camp, in the very hottest part of the day, was tiring; and I didn’t
-feel safe in finishing my canteen until I could see camp.
-
-[Illustration: Making fast the sheep’s head]
-
-The next day we collected as much galleta-grass as we could for the
-horses, and, having watered them well, an operation which practically
-finished our pool, we set out for Tule at a little after three. As
-soon as the Mexicans got a little saddle-stiff they would stand up in
-one stirrup, crooking the other knee over the saddle, and keeping the
-free heel busy at the horses’ ribs. The result was twofold: the first
-and most obvious being a sore back for the horses, and the second
-being that the horses became so accustomed to a continual tattoo to
-encourage them to improve their pace, that, with a rider unaccustomed
-to that method, they lagged most annoyingly. The ride back to Tule
-was as uneventful as it was lovely.
-
-On the next day’s march, from Tule toward Win’s tank, I saw the only
-Gila monster--the sluggish, poisonous lizard of the southwestern
-deserts--that I came across throughout the trip. He was crossing the
-trail in leisurely fashion and darted his tongue out angrily as I
-stopped to admire him. Utting told me of an interesting encounter he
-once saw between a Gila monster and a rattlesnake. He put the two in
-a large box; they were in opposite corners, but presently the Gila
-monster started slowly and sedately toward the rattler’s side of the
-box. He paid absolutely no attention to the snake, who coiled himself
-up and rattled angrily. When the lizard got near enough, the rattler
-struck out two or three times, each time burying his fangs in the
-Gila monster’s body; the latter showed not the slightest concern,
-and, though Utting waited expectantly for him to die, he apparently
-suffered no ill effects whatever from the encounter. He showed
-neither anger nor pain; he simply did not worry himself about the
-rattler at all.
-
-We reached Wellton at about nine in the evening of the second day
-from Pinacate. We had eaten all our food, and our pack-animals were
-practically without loads; so we had made ninety miles in about
-fifty-five hours. Dominguez had suffered from the heat on the way
-back, and at Win’s tank, which was inaccessible to the horses, I
-had been obliged myself to pack all the water out to the animals.
-At Wellton I parted company with the Mexicans, with the regret one
-always feels at leaving the comrades of a hunting trip that has
-proved both interesting and successful.
-
-
-
-
-IV
-
-After Moose in New Brunswick
-
-
-
-
-                                 IV
-
-                    AFTER MOOSE IN NEW BRUNSWICK
-
-
-It was early in September when the four of us--Clarke, Jamieson,
-Thompson, and myself--landed at Bathurst, on Chaleur Bay, and took
-the little railroad which runs twenty miles up the Nepisiquit River
-to some iron-mines. From that point we expected to pole up the river
-about forty miles farther and then begin our hunting.
-
-For the four hunters--“sports” was what the guides called us--there
-were six guides. Three of them bore the name Venneau; there were
-Bill Grey and his son Willie, and the sixth was Wirre (pronounced
-Warry) Chamberlain. Among themselves the guides spoke French--or a
-corruption of French--which was hard to understand and which has come
-down from generation to generation without ever getting into written
-form. A fine-looking six they were,--straight,--with the Indian
-showing in their faces.
-
-At the end of the third day of poling--a lazy time for the “sports,”
-but three days of marvellously skilful work for the guides--our
-heavily laden canoes were brought up to the main camp. From here
-we expected to start our hunting expeditions, each taking a guide,
-blankets, and food, and striking off for the more isolated cabins
-in the woods. My purpose was to collect specimens for the National
-Museum at Washington. I wanted moose, caribou, and beaver--a male and
-female of each species. Whole skins and leg-bones were to be brought
-out.
-
-A hard rain woke us, and the prospects were far from cheerful as we
-packed and prepared to separate. Bill Grey was to be my guide, and
-the “Popple Cabin,” three miles away, was to be our shelter. Our
-tramp through the wet woods--pine, hemlock, birch, and poplar--ended
-at the little double lean-to shelter. After we had started a fire and
-spread our blankets to dry we set off in search of game.
-
-We climbed out of the valley in which we were camped and up to the
-top of a hill from which we could get a good view of some small
-barren stretches that lay around us. It was the blueberry season,
-and these barrens were covered with bushes, all heavily laden. We
-moved around from hill to hill in search of game, but saw only three
-deer. We’d have shot one of them for meat, but didn’t care to run the
-chance of frightening away any moose or caribou. The last hill we
-climbed overlooked a small pond which lay beside a pine forest on the
-edge of a barren strip. Bill intended to spend a good part of each
-day watching this pond, and it was to a small hill overlooking it
-that we made our way early next morning.
-
-Before we had been watching many minutes, a cow moose with a calf
-appeared at the edge of the woods. She hesitated for several minutes,
-listening intently and watching sharply, and then stepped out across
-the barren on her way to the pond. Before she had gone far, the path
-she was following cut the trail we had made on our way to the lookout
-hill. She stopped immediately and began to sniff at our tracks, the
-calf following her example; a few seconds were enough to convince
-her, but for some reason, perhaps to make doubly sure, she turned
-and for some minutes followed along our trail with her nose close to
-the ground. Then she swung round and struck off into the woods at a
-great slashing moose trot.
-
-Not long after she had disappeared, we got a fleeting glimpse of two
-caribou cows; they lacked the impressive ungainliness of the moose,
-and in the distance might easily have been mistaken for deer.
-
-It was a very cold morning, and throughout the day it snowed and
-sleeted at intervals. We spent the time wandering from hill to hill.
-
-For the next week we hunted industriously in every direction from the
-Popple Cabin. In the morning and the evening we shifted from hill
-to hill; the middle of the day we hunted along the numerous brooks
-that furrowed the country. With the exception of one or two days, the
-weather was uniformly cold and rainy; but after our first warm sunny
-day we welcomed rain and cold, for then, at least, we had no black
-flies to fight. On the two sunny days they surrounded us in swarms
-and made life almost unbearable; they got into our blankets and kept
-us from sleeping during the nights; they covered us with lumps and
-sores--Bill said that he had never seen them as bad.
-
-[Illustration: A noonday halt on the way down river, returning from
-the hunting country]
-
-It was lovely in the early morning to stand on some high hill and
-watch the mist rising lazily from the valley; it was even more lovely
-to watch the approach of a rain-storm. The sunlight on some distant
-hillside or valley would suddenly be blotted out by a sheet of rain;
-a few minutes later the next valley would be darkened as the storm
-swept toward us, and perhaps before it reached us we could see the
-farther valleys over which it had passed lightening again.
-
-We managed to cover a great deal of ground during that week, and were
-rewarded by seeing a fair amount of game--four caribou, of which one
-was a bull, a bull and three cow moose, and six does and one buck
-deer. I had but one shot, and that was at a buck deer. We wanted meat
-very much, and Bill said that he didn’t think one shot would disturb
-the moose and caribou. He was a very large buck, in prime condition;
-I never tasted better venison. Had our luck been a little better, I
-would have had a shot at a moose and a caribou; we saw the latter
-from some distance, and made a long and successful stalk until Wirre,
-on his way from the main camp with some fresh supplies, frightened
-our quarry away.
-
-On these trips between camps, Wirre several times saw moose and
-caribou within range.
-
-After a week we all foregathered at the main camp. Clarke had shot
-a fine bear and Jamieson brought in a good moose head. They started
-down-river with their trophies, and Thompson and I set out for new
-hunting-grounds. As Bill had gone with Jamieson, I took his son
-Willie, a sturdy, pony-built fellow of just my age. We crossed the
-river and camped some two miles beyond it and about a mile from the
-lake we intended to hunt. We put up a lean-to, and in front of it
-built a great fire of old pine logs, for the nights were cold.
-
-My blankets were warm, and it was only after a great deal of wavering
-hesitation that I could pluck up courage to roll out of them in the
-penetrating cold of early morning. On the second morning, as we made
-our way through dew-soaked underbrush to the lake, we came out upon a
-little glade, at the farther end of which stood a caribou. He sprang
-away as he saw us, but halted behind a bush to reconnoitre--the
-victim of a fatal curiosity, for it gave me my opportunity and I
-brought him down. Although he was large in body, he had a very poor
-head. I spent a busy morning preparing the skin, but in the afternoon
-we were again at the lake watching for moose. We spent several
-fruitless days there.
-
-One afternoon a yearling bull moose appeared: he had apparently lost
-his mother, for he wandered aimlessly around for several hours,
-bewailing his fate. This watching would have been pleasant enough
-as a rest-cure, but since I was hunting and very anxious to get my
-game, it became a rather irksome affair. However, I could only follow
-Saint Augustine’s advice, “when in Rome, fast on Saturdays,” and I
-resigned myself to adopting Willie’s plan of waiting for the game
-to come to us instead of pursuing my own inclination and setting
-out to find the game. Luckily, I had some books with me, and passed
-the days pleasantly enough reading Voltaire and Boileau. There was
-a beaver-house at one end of the lake, and between four and five
-the beaver would come out and swim around. I missed a shot at one.
-Red squirrels were very plentiful and would chatter excitedly at us
-from a distance of a few feet. There was one particularly persistent
-little chap who did everything in his power to attract attention. He
-would sit in the conventional squirrel attitude upon a branch, and
-chirp loudly, bouncing stiffly forward at each chirp, precisely as if
-he were an automaton.
-
-When we decided that it was useless to hunt this lake any longer, we
-went back to the river to put in a few days hunting up and down it. I
-got back to the camp in the evening and found Thompson there. He had
-had no luck and intended to leave for the settlement in the morning.
-Accordingly, the next day he started downstream and we went up. We
-hadn’t been gone long before we heard what we took to be two shots,
-though, for all we knew, they might have been a beaver striking the
-water with his tail. That night, when we got back to camp, we found
-that, on going round a bend in the river about a mile below camp,
-Thompson had come upon a bull and a cow moose, and had bagged the
-bull.
-
-The next morning it was raining as if it were the first storm after
-a long drought, and as we felt sure that no sensible moose would
-wander around much amid such a frozen downpour, we determined to put
-in a day after beaver. In one of my long tramps with Bill we had
-come across a large beaver-pond, and at the time Bill had remarked
-how easy it would be to break the dam and shoot the beaver. I had
-carefully noted the location of this pond, so managed successfully
-to pilot Willie to it, and we set to work to let the water out. This
-breaking the dam was not the easy matter I had imagined. It was a big
-pond, and the dam that was stretched across its lower end was from
-eight to ten feet high. To look at its solid structure and the size
-of the logs that formed it, it seemed inconceivable that an animal
-the size of a beaver could have built it. The water was above our
-heads, and there was a crust of ice around the edges. We had to get
-in and work waist-deep in the water to enlarge our break in the dam,
-and the very remembrance of that cold morning’s work, trying to pry
-out logs with frozen fingers, makes me shiver. It was even worse when
-we had to stop work and wait and watch for the beavers to come out.
-They finally did, and I shot two. They were fine large specimens;
-the male was just two inches less than four feet and the female only
-one inch shorter. Shivering and frozen, we headed back for camp. My
-hunting costume had caused a good deal of comment among the guides;
-it consisted of a sleeveless cotton undershirt, a many-pocketed coat,
-a pair of short khaki trousers reaching to just above my knees, and
-then a pair of sneakers or of high boots--I used the former when I
-wished to walk quietly. My knees were always bare and were quite as
-impervious to cold as my hands, but the guides could never understand
-why I didn’t freeze. I used to hear them solemnly discussing it in
-their broken French.
-
-I had at first hoped to get my moose by fair stalking, without the
-help of calling, but I had long since abandoned that hope; and
-Willie, who was an excellent caller, had been doing his best, but
-with no result. We saw several cow moose, and once Willie called out
-a young bull, but his horns could not have had a spread of more than
-thirty-five inches, and he would have been quite useless as a museum
-specimen. Another time, when we were crawling up to a lake not far
-from the river, we found ourselves face to face with a two-year-old
-bull. He was very close to us, but as he hadn’t got our wind, he was
-merely curious to find out what we were, for Willie kept grunting
-through his birch-bark horn. Once he came up to within twenty feet of
-us and stood gazing. Finally he got our wind and crashed off through
-the lakeside alders.
-
-As a rule, moose answer a call better at night, and almost every
-night we could hear them calling around our camp; generally they were
-cows that we heard, and once Willie had a duel with a cow as to which
-should have a young bull that we could hear in an alder thicket,
-smashing the bushes with his horns. Willie finally triumphed, and the
-bull headed toward us with a most disconcerting rush; next morning
-we found his tracks at the edge of the clearing not more than twenty
-yards from where we had been standing; at that point the camp smoke
-and smells had proved more convincing than Willie’s calling-horn.
-
-Late one afternoon I had a good opportunity to watch some beaver at
-work. We had crawled cautiously up to a small lake in the vain hope
-of finding a moose, when we came upon some beaver close to the shore.
-Their house was twenty or thirty yards away, and they were bringing
-out a supply of wood, chiefly poplar, for winter food. To and fro
-they swam, pushing the wood in front of them. Occasionally one would
-feel hungry, and then he would stop and start eating the bark from
-the log he was pushing. It made me shiver to watch them lying lazily
-in that icy water.
-
-I had already stayed longer than I intended, and the day was rapidly
-approaching when I should have to start down-river. Even the cheerful
-Willie was getting discouraged, and instead of accounts of the
-miraculous bags hunters made at the end of their trips, I began to
-be told of people who were unfortunate enough to go out without
-anything. I made up my mind to put in the last few days hunting from
-the Popple Cabin, so one rainy noon, after a morning’s hunt along the
-river, we shouldered our packs and tramped off to the little cabin
-from which Bill and I had hunted. Wirre was with us, and we left him
-to dry out the cabin while we went off to try a late afternoon’s
-hunt. As we were climbing the hill from which Bill and I used to
-watch the little pond, Willie caught sight of a moose on the side of
-a hill a mile away. One look through our field-glasses convinced us
-it was a good bull. A deep wooded valley intervened, and down into it
-we started at headlong speed, and up the other side we panted. As we
-neared where we believed the moose to be, I slowed down in order to
-get my wind in case I had to do some quick shooting. I soon picked up
-the moose and managed to signal Willie to stop. The moose was walking
-along at the edge of the woods somewhat over two hundred yards to
-our left. The wind was favorable, so I decided to try to get nearer
-before shooting. It was a mistake, for which I came close to paying
-dearly; suddenly, and without any warning, the great animal swung
-into the woods and disappeared before I could get ready to shoot.
-
-Willie had his birch-bark horn with him and he tried calling, but
-instead of coming toward us, we could hear the moose moving off in
-the other direction. The woods were dense, and all chance seemed
-to have gone. With a really good tracker, such as are to be found
-among some of the African tribes, the task would have been quite
-simple, but neither Willie nor I was good enough. We had given up
-hope when we heard the moose grunt on the hillside above us. Hurrying
-toward the sound, we soon came into more open country. I saw him in
-a little glade to our right; he looked most impressive as he stood
-there, nearly nineteen hands at the withers, shaking his antlers
-and staring at us; I dropped to my knee and shot, and that was the
-first that Willie knew of our quarry’s presence. He didn’t go far
-after my first shot, but several more were necessary before he fell.
-We hurried up to examine him; he was not yet dead, and when we were
-half a dozen yards away, he staggered to his feet and started for us,
-but he fell before he could reach us. Had I shot him the first day I
-might have had some compunction at having put an end to such a huge,
-handsome animal, but as it was I had no such feelings. We had hunted
-long and hard, and luck had been consistently against us.
-
-Our chase had led us back in a quartering direction toward camp,
-which was now not more than a mile away; so Willie went to get
-Wirre, while I set to work to take the measurements and start on the
-skinning. Taking off a whole moose hide is no light task, and it was
-well after dark before we got it off. We estimated the weight of the
-green hide as well over a hundred and fifty pounds, but probably
-less than two hundred. We bundled it up as well as we could in some
-pack-straps, and as I seemed best suited to the task, I fastened it
-on my back.
-
-The sun had gone down, and that mile back to camp, crawling over dead
-falls and tripping on stones, was one of the longest I have ever
-walked. The final descent down the almost perpendicular hillside
-was the worst. When I fell, the skin was so heavy and such a clumsy
-affair that I couldn’t get up alone unless I could find a tree to
-help me; but generally Willie would start me off again. When I
-reached the cabin, in spite of the cold night-air, my clothes were as
-wet as if I had been in swimming. After they had taken the skin off
-my shoulders, I felt as if I had nothing to hold me down to earth,
-and might at any moment go soaring into the air.
-
-Next morning I packed the skin down to the main camp, about three
-miles, but I found it a much easier task in the daylight. After
-working for a while on the skin, I set off to look for a cow moose,
-but, as is always the case, where they had abounded before, there was
-none to be found now that we wanted one.
-
-The next day we spent tramping over the barren hillsides after
-caribou. Willie caught a glimpse of one, but it disappeared into a
-pine forest before we could come up with it. On the way back to camp
-I shot a deer for meat on our way down the river.
-
-I had determined to have one more try for a cow moose, and next
-morning was just going off to hunt some lakes when we caught sight
-of an old cow standing on the opposite bank of the river about half
-a mile above us. We crossed and hurried up along the bank, but when
-we reached the bog where she had been standing she had disappeared.
-There was a lake not far from the river-bank, and we thought that she
-might have gone to it, for we felt sure we had not frightened her.
-As we reached the lake we saw her standing at the edge of the woods
-on the other side, half hidden in the trees. I fired and missed, but
-as she turned to make off I broke her hind quarter. After going a
-little distance she circled back to the lake and went out to stand in
-the water. We portaged a canoe from the river and took some pictures
-before finishing the cow. At the point where she fell the banks of
-the lake were so steep that we had to give up the attempt to haul
-the carcass out. I therefore set to work to get the skin off where
-the cow lay in the water. It was a slow, cold task, but finally I
-finished and we set off downstream, Wirre in one canoe and Willie
-and myself in the other. According to custom, the moose head was laid
-in the bow of our canoe, with the horns curving out on either side.
-
-[Illustration: Bringing out the trophies of the hunt]
-
-We had been in the woods for almost a month, and in that time we
-had seen the glorious changes from summer to fall and fall to early
-winter, for the trees were leafless and bare. Robinson’s lines kept
-running through my head as we sped downstream through the frosty
-autumn day:
-
-      “Come away! come away! there’s a frost along the marshes,
-      And a frozen wind that skims the shoal where it shakes the dead
-          black water;
-      There’s a moan across the lowland, and a wailing through the
-          woodland
-      Of a dirge that sings to send us back to the arms of those that
-          love us.
-      There is nothing left but ashes now where the crimson chills of
-          autumn
-      Put off the summer’s languor, with a touch that made us glad
-      For the glory that is gone from us, with a flight we cannot
-          follow,
-      To the slopes of other valleys, and the sounds of other shores.”
-
-
-
-
-V
-
-Two Book-Hunters in South America
-
-
-
-
-                                  V
-
-                  TWO BOOK-HUNTERS IN SOUTH AMERICA
-
-            _In Collaboration with Mrs. Kermit Roosevelt_
-
-
-The true bibliophile will always find time to exercise his calling,
-no matter where he happens to be, or in what manner he is engaged
-in making his daily bread. In some South American cities, more
-particularly in Buenos Ayres, there is so little to do outside of
-one’s office that were there more old bookstores it would be what
-Eugene Field would have called a bibliomaniac’s paradise. To us
-wanderers on the face of the earth serendipity in its more direct
-application to book-collecting is a most satisfactory pursuit;
-for it requires but little capital, and in our annual flittings
-to “somewhere else” our purchases necessitate but the minimum of
-travelling space. There are two classes of bibliophiles--those to
-whom the financial side is of little or no consequence, and those
-who, like the clerk of the East India House, must count their
-pennies, and save, and go without other things to counterbalance an
-extravagance in the purchase of a coveted edition. To the former
-class these notes may seem overworldly in their frequent allusion
-to prices; but to its authors the financial side must assume its
-relative importance.
-
-Among the South American republics, Brazil undeniably takes
-precedence from a literary standpoint. Most Brazilians, from Lauro
-Muller, the minister of foreign affairs, to the postmaster of the
-little frontier town, have at some period in their lives published,
-or at all events written, a volume of prose or verse. It comes to
-them from their natural surroundings, and by inheritance, for once
-you except Cervantes, the Portuguese have a greater literature
-than the Spaniards. There is therefore in Brazil an excellent and
-widely read native literature, and in almost every home there are
-to be found the works of such poets as Gonçalves Diaz and Castro
-Alves, and historians, novelists, and essayists like Taunay, Couto
-de Magalhãens, Alencar, and Coelho Netto. Taunay’s most famous
-novel, _Innocencia_, a tale of life in the frontier state of Matto
-Grosso--“the great wilderness”--has been translated into seven
-languages, including the Japanese and Polish. The literature of
-the mother country is also generally known; Camões is read in the
-schools, and a quotation from the Lusiads is readily capped by a
-casual acquaintance in the remotest wilderness town. Portuguese
-poets and playwrights like Almeda Garret, Bocage, Quental and Guerra
-Junquera; and historians and novelists such as Herculano, Eça de
-Queiroz, or Castello Branco are widely read.
-
-In Brazil, as throughout South America, French is almost universally
-read; cheap editions of the classics are found in most homes,
-and bookstores are filled with modern French writers of prose or
-verse--sometimes in translation, and as frequently in the original.
-Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo abound in old bookstores, which are
-to be found in fewer numbers in others of the larger towns, such
-as Manaos, Para, Pernambuco, Bahia, Curytiba, or Porto Alegre. In
-the smaller towns of the interior one runs across only new books,
-although occasionally those who possess the “flaire” may chance upon
-some battered treasure.
-
-The line which is of most interest, and in South America presents
-the greatest latitude, is undoubtedly that of early voyages and
-discoveries. Probably it was because they were in a greater or less
-degree voyagers or explorers themselves that the Americans and
-English who came to South America seventy or eighty years ago brought
-with them books of exploration and travel, both contemporary and
-ancient. Many of these volumes, now rare in the mother country, are
-to be picked up for a song in the old bookstores of the New World.
-
-The accounts of the Conquistadores and early explorers, now in the
-main inaccessible except in great private collections or museums,
-have frequently been reprinted, and if written in a foreign tongue,
-translated, in the country which they describe. Thus the account of
-Père Yveux was translated and printed in Maranhão in 1878, and this
-translation is now itself rare. We picked up a copy for fifty cents
-in a junk-store in Bahia, but in São Paulo had to pay the market
-price for the less rare translation of Hans Stade’s captivity. Ulrich
-Schmidel’s entertaining account of the twenty years of his life spent
-in the first half of the sixteenth century in what is now Argentina,
-Paraguay, and Brazil, has been excellently translated into Spanish
-by an Argentine of French descent, Lafoyne Quevedo, the head of
-the La Plata museum. We had never seen the book until one day at
-the judicial auction held by the heirs of a prominent Argentine
-lawyer. Books published in Buenos Ayres are as a whole abominably
-printed, but this was really beautiful, so we determined to get it.
-The books were being sold in ill-assorted lots, and this one was
-with three other volumes; one was an odd volume of Italian poetry,
-one a religious treatise, and the third a medical book. Bidding
-had been low, and save for standard legal books, the lots had been
-going at two or three dollars apiece. Our lot quickly went to five
-dollars. There was soon only one man bidding against us. We could
-not understand what he wanted, but thought that perhaps the Schmidel
-was worth more than we had imagined. Our blood was up and we began
-trying to frighten our opponent by substantial raises; at fourteen
-he dropped out. The dealers in common with every one else were much
-intrigued at the high bidding, and clearly felt that something had
-escaped them. The mystery was solved when our opponent hurried
-over to ask what we wanted for the odd volume of Italian verse--it
-belonged to him and he had loaned it to the defunct lawyer shortly
-before his death. We halved the expenses and the lot, and, as a
-curious sequel, later found that the medical book which had quite
-accidentally fallen to our share was worth between fifteen and twenty
-dollars.
-
-Prices in Brazil seemed very high in comparison with those of
-Portugal and Spain, but low when compared with Argentina. On the
-west coast we found books slightly less expensive than in Brazil,
-where, however, the prices have remained the same as before the war,
-though the drop in exchange has given the foreigner the benefit
-of a twenty-five per cent reduction. There are a fair number of
-auctions, and old books are also sold through priced lists, published
-in the daily papers. We obtained our best results by search in the
-bookshops. It was in this way that we got for three dollars the
-first edition of Castelleux’s _Voyage dans la Partie Septentrionale
-de l’Amerique_, in perfect condition, and for one dollar Jordan’s
-_Guerra do Paraguay_, for which a bookseller in Buenos Ayres had
-asked, as a tremendous bargain, twelve dollars.
-
-In São Paulo after much searching we found Santos Saraiva’s
-paraphrase of the Psalms, a famous translation, quite as beautiful
-as our own English version. The translator was born in Lisbon. His
-father was a Jewish rabbi, but he entered the Catholic Church, became
-a priest, and went to an inland parish in southern Brazil. After some
-years he left the Church and settled down with a Brazilian woman in
-a small, out-of-the-way fazenda, where he translated the Psalms, and
-also composed a Greek lexicon that is regarded as a masterpiece. He
-later became instructor in Greek in Mackenzie College in São Paulo,
-confining his versatile powers to that institution until he died.
-
-The dearth of native literature in Buenos Ayres is not surprising,
-for nature has done little to stimulate it, and in its fertility
-much to create the commercialism that reigns supreme. The country
-is in large part rolling prairie-land, and although there is an
-attraction about it in its wild state, which has called forth a
-gaucho literature that chiefly takes form in long and crude ballads,
-the magic of the prairie-land is soon destroyed by houses, factories,
-dump-heaps, and tin cans. At first sight it would appear hopeless
-ground for a bibliophile, but with time and patience we found a fair
-number of old bookstores; and there rarely passes a week without a
-book auction, or at any rate an auction where some books are put up.
-
-Among the pleasantest memories of our life in Buenos Ayres are those
-of motoring in to a sale from our house in Belgrano, along the famous
-Avenida Alvear, on starlit nights, with the Southern Cross high and
-brilliant. Occasionally when the books we were interested in were
-far between, we would slip out of the smoke-laden room for a cup of
-unrivalled coffee at the Café Paulista, or to watch Charlie Chaplin
-as “Carlitos” amuse the Argentine public.
-
-The great percentage of the books one sees at auctions or in
-bookstores are strictly utilitarian; generally either on law or
-medicine. In the old bookstores there are, as in Boston, rows of
-religious books, on which the dust lies undisturbed. In Argentine
-literature there are two or three famous novels; most famous of these
-is probably Marmol’s _Amalia_, a bloodthirsty and badly written
-story of the reign of Rosas--the gaucho Nero. Bunge’s _Novela de la
-Sangre_ is an excellently given but equally lurid account of the
-same period. _La Gloria de Don Ramiro_, by Rodriguez Larreta, is a
-well-written tale of the days of Philip the Second. The author, the
-present Argentine minister in Paris, spent some two years in Spain
-studying the local setting of his romance. Most Argentines, if they
-have not read these novels, at least know the general plots and the
-more important characters. The literature of the mother country is
-little read and as a rule looked down upon by the Argentines, who are
-more apt to read French or even English. _La Nacion_, which is one
-of the two great morning papers, and owned by a son of Bartholomé
-Mitre, publishes a cheap uniform edition, which is formed of some
-Argentine reprints and originals, but chiefly of French and English
-translations. The latest publication is advertised on the front page
-of the newspaper, and one often runs across “old friends” whose “new
-faces” cause a momentary check to the memory; such as _La Feria de
-Vanidades_, the identity of which is clear when one reads that the
-author is Thackeray. This “Biblioteca de la Nacion” is poorly got
-up and printed on wretched paper, but seems fairly widely read, and
-will doubtless stimulate the scarcely existent literary side of the
-Argentine, and in due time bear fruit. Translations of Nick Carter
-and the “penny dreadfuls” are rife, but a native writer, Gutierrez,
-who wrote in the seventies and eighties, created a national hero,
-Juan Moreira, who was a benevolent Billy the Kid. Gutierrez wrote
-many “dramas policiales,” which are well worth reading for the light
-they throw in their side touches on “gaucho” life of those days.
-
-Argentines are justifiably proud of Bartholomé Mitre, their historian
-soldier, who was twice president; and of Sarmiento, essayist and
-orator, who was also president, and who introduced the educational
-reforms whose application he had studied in the United States. At
-an auction in New York we secured a presentation copy of his _Vida
-de Lincoln_, written and published in this country in 1866. Mitre
-first published his history of General Belgrano, of revolutionary
-fame, in two volumes in 1859. It has run through many editions; the
-much-enlarged one in four volumes is probably more universally seen
-in private houses than any other Argentine book. The first edition
-is now very rare and worth between forty and fifty dollars; but in a
-cheap Italian stationery-store we found a copy in excellent condition
-and paid for it only four dollars and fifty cents. The edition of
-1887 brings anywhere from twenty to thirty dollars. Many copies
-were offered at sales, but we delayed in hopes of a better bargain,
-and one night our patience was rewarded. It was at the fag end of a
-private auction of endless rooms of cheap and tawdry furniture that
-the voluble auctioneer at length reached the contents of the solitary
-bookcase. Our coveted copy was knocked down to us at eight dollars.
-
-In native houses one very rarely finds what we would even dignify by
-the name of library. Generally a fair-sized bookcase of ill-assorted
-volumes is regarded as such. There are, however, excellent legal
-and medical collections to be seen, and Doctor Moreno’s colonial
-quinta, with its well-filled shelves, chiefly volumes of South
-American exploration and development from the earliest times, forms
-a marked exception--an oasis in the desert. We once went to stay in
-the country with some Argentines, who seeing us arrive with books
-in our hands, proudly offered the use of their library, to which we
-had often heard their friends make reference. For some time we were
-greatly puzzled as to the location of this much-talked-of collection,
-and were fairly staggered on having a medium-sized bookcase, half
-of which was taken up by a set of excerpts from the “world’s great
-thinkers and speakers,” in French, pointed out as “the library.”
-
-As a rule the first thing a family will part with is its books.
-There are two sorts of auctions--judicial and booksellers’. The
-latter class are held by dealers who are having bad times and hope to
-liquidate some of their stock, but there are always cappers in the
-crowd who keep bidding until a book is as high and often higher than
-its market price. The majority of the books are generally legal or
-medical; and there is always a good number of young students who hope
-to get reference books cheaply. Most of the books are in Spanish,
-but there is a sprinkling of French, and often a number of English,
-German, and Portuguese, though these last are no more common in
-Argentina than are Spanish books in Brazil. At one auction there were
-a number of Portuguese lots which went for far more than they would
-have brought in Rio or São Paulo. Translations from the Portuguese
-are infrequent; the only ones we can recall were of Camões and Eça de
-Queiroz. In Brazil the only translation from Spanish we met with was
-of _Don Quixote_.
-
-English books generally go reasonably at auctions. We got a copy
-of Page’s _Paraguay and the River Plate_ for twenty-five cents,
-but on another occasion had some very sharp bidding for Wilcox’s
-_History of Our Colony in the River Plate_, London, 1807, written
-during the brief period when Buenos Ayres was an English possession.
-It was finally knocked down to us at twelve dollars; and after the
-auction our opponent offered us twice what he had let us have it
-for; we don’t yet know what it is worth. The question of values
-is a difficult one, for there is little or no data to go upon; in
-consequence, the element of chance is very considerable. From several
-sources in the book world, we heard a wild and most improbable tale
-of how Quaritch and several other London houses had many years ago
-sent a consignment of books to be auctioned in the Argentine; and
-that the night of the auction was so cold and disagreeable that the
-exceedingly problematical buyers were still further reduced. The
-auction was held in spite of conditions, and rare incunabula are
-reported to have gone at a dollar apiece.
-
-There was one judicial auction that lasted for the best part of a
-week--the entire stock of a large bookstore that had failed. They
-were mostly new books, and such old ones as were of any interest were
-interspersed in lots of ten or more of no value. The attendance was
-large and bidding was high. To get the few books we wanted we had
-also to buy a lot of waste material; but when we took this to a small
-and heretofore barren bookstore to exchange, we found a first edition
-of the three first volumes of _Kosmos_, for which, with a number of
-Portuguese and Spanish books thrown in, we made the exchange. We
-searched long and without success for the fourth volume, but as the
-volumes were published at long intervals, it is probable that the
-former owner had only possessed the three.
-
-Our best finds were made not at auctions but in bookstores--often in
-little combination book, cigar, and stationery shops. We happened
-upon one of these latter one Saturday noon on our way to lunch at a
-little Italian restaurant, where you watched your chicken being most
-deliciously roasted on a spit before you. Chickens were forgotten,
-and during two hours’ breathless hunting we found many good things,
-among them a battered old copy of Byron’s poems, which had long
-since lost its binding. Pasted in it was the following original
-letter of Byron’s, which as far as we know has never before been
-published:[3]
-
-  A MONSIEUR,
-    MONSIEUR GALIGNANI,
-      18 Rue Vivienne,
-          Paris.
-
-  SIR: In various numbers of your journal I have seen mentioned
-  a work entitled _The Vampire_, with the addition of my name as
-  that of the author. I am not the author, and never heard of the
-  work in question until now. In a more recent paper I perceive a
-  formal annunciation of _The Vampire_, with the addition of an
-  account of my “residence in the Island of Mitylane,” an island
-  which I have occasionally sailed by in the course of travelling
-  some years ago through the Levant--and where I should have no
-  objection to reside--but where I have never yet resided. Neither
-  of these performances are mine--and I presume that it is neither
-  unjust nor ungracious to request that you will favour me by
-  contradicting the advertisement to which I allude. If the book is
-  clever, it would be base to deprive the real writer--whoever he
-  may be--of his honours--and if stupid I desire the responsibility
-  of nobody’s dulness but my own. You will excuse the trouble I give
-  you--the imputation is of no great importance--and as long as it
-  was confined to surmises and reports--I should have received it
-  as I have received many others--in silence. But the formality of
-  a public advertisement of a book I never wrote, and a residence
-  where I never resided--is a little too much--particularly as I
-  have no notion of the contents of the one--nor the incidents of
-  the other. I have besides a personal dislike to “vampires,” and
-  the little acquaintance I have with them would by no means induce
-  me to divulge their secrets. You did me a much less injury by your
-  paragraphs about “my devotion” and “abandonment of society for the
-  sake of religion”--which appeared in your _Messenger_ during last
-  Lent--all of which are not founded on fact--but you see I do not
-  contradict them, because they are merely personal, whereas the
-  others in some degree concern the reader....
-
-  You will oblige me by complying with my request for contradiction.
-  I assure you that I know nothing of the work or works in
-  question--and have the honour to be (as the correspondents to
-  magazines say) “your constant reader” and very
-
-                                obedt
-                                      humble Servt,
-                                                      BYRON.
-
-  To the editor of _Galignani’s Messenger_. Etc., etc., etc. Venice,
-  April 27, 1819.
-
-Curiously enough, the book itself had been published by Galignani in
-1828. The cost of our total purchases, a goodly heap, amounted to but
-five dollars.
-
-The balance in quantity if not in quality in old books is held in
-Buenos Ayres by three brothers named Palumbo--Italians. The eldest
-is a surly old man who must be treated with severity from the very
-beginning. How he manages to support himself we do not know, for
-whenever we were in his store we were sure to hear him assail some
-customer most abusively. In a small subsidiary store of his, among a
-heap of old pamphlets, we came upon the original folios of Humboldt’s
-account of the fauna and flora of South America. Upon asking the
-price, the man said thirty-five apiece--we thought he meant pesos,
-and our surprise was genuine when we found he meant centavos--about
-fifteen cents. From him we got the first edition of Kendall’s _Santa
-Fé Expedition_. One of his brothers was very pleasant and probably,
-in consequence, the most prosperous of the three. The third was
-reputed crazy, and certainly acted so, but after an initial encounter
-we became friends and got on famously. All three had a very fair idea
-of the value of Argentine books, but knew little or nothing about
-English.
-
-Another dealer who has probably a better stock than any of the
-Palumbos is a man named Real y Taylor. His grandmother was English,
-and his father spent his life dealing in books. At his death the
-store was closed and the son started speculating in land with the
-money his father had left him. Prices soared and he bought, but when
-the crash came he was caught with many others. Bethinking himself of
-his father’s books, he took them out of storage and opened a small
-booth. The stock was large and a good part of it has not yet been
-unpacked. Taylor has only a superficial knowledge of what he deals
-in. He shears folios, strips off original boards and old leathers
-to bind in new pasteboard, and raises the price five or ten dollars
-after the process. In this he is no different from the rest, for
-after a fairly comprehensive experience in Buenos Ayres we may give
-it as our opinion that there is not a single dealer who knows the
-“rules” as they are observed by scores of dealers in America and
-England. Taylor had only one idea, and that was that if any one were
-interested in a book, that book must be of great value; he would
-name a ridiculous price, and it was a question of weeks and months
-before he would reduce it to anything within the bounds of reason. We
-never really got very much from him, the best things being several
-old French books of early voyages to South America and a first
-edition of Anson’s _Voyage Around the World_. Just before we left
-he decided to auction off his stock, putting up five hundred lots
-a month. The first auction lasted three nights. The catalogue was
-amusing, giving a description of each book in bombastic fashion--all
-were “unique in interest,” and about every third was the “only copy
-extant outside the museums.” He had put base prices on most, and for
-the rest had arranged with cappers. The attendance was very small
-and nearly everything was bid in. It was curious to see how to the
-last he held that any book that any one was interested in must be
-of unusual worth. There was put up a French translation of Azara’s
-_Quadrupeds of Paraguay_. The introduction was by Cuvier, but it was
-not of great interest to us, for a friend had given us the valuable
-original Spanish edition. Taylor had asked fifteen dollars, which we
-had regarded as out of the question; he then took off the original
-binding, cut and colored the pages, and rebound it, asking twenty
-dollars. At the auction we thought we would get it, if it went for
-very little; but when we bid, Taylor got up and told the auctioneer
-to say that as it was a work of unique value he had put as base price
-fifteen dollars each for the two volumes. The auction was a failure,
-and as it had been widely and expensively advertised, the loss must
-have been considerable.
-
-As a whole, we found the booksellers of a disagreeable temperament.
-In one case we almost came to blows; luckily not until we had looked
-over the store thoroughly and bought all we really wanted, among
-them a first edition of Howells’s _Italian Journeys_, in perfect
-condition, for twenty-five cents. There were, of course, agreeable
-exceptions, such as the old French-Italian from whom, after many
-months’ intermittent bargaining, we bought Le Vaillant’s _Voyage en
-Afrique_, the first edition, with most delightful steel-engravings.
-He at first told us he was selling it at a set price on commission,
-which is what we found they often said when they thought you wanted
-a book and wished to preclude bargaining. This old man had Amsterdam
-catalogues that he consulted in regard to prices when, as could not
-have been often the case, he found in them references to books he
-had in stock. We know of no Argentine old bookstore that prints a
-catalogue.
-
-In the larger provincial cities of Argentina we met with singularly
-little success. In Cordoba the only reward of an eager search was a
-battered paper-covered copy of _All on the Irish Shore_, with which
-we were glad to renew an acquaintance that had lapsed for several
-years. We had had such high hopes of Cordoba, as being the old
-university town and early centre of learning! There was indeed one
-trail that seemed to promise well, and we diligently pursued vague
-stories of a “viejo” who had trunks of old books in every language,
-but when we eventually found his rooms, opening off a dirty little
-patio, they were empty and bereft; and we learned from a grimy brood
-of children that he had gone to the hospital in Buenos Ayres and died
-there, and that his boxes had been taken away by they knew not whom.
-
-As in Argentina, the best-known Chilian writers are historians or
-lawyers; and in our book-hunts in Santiago we encountered more or
-less the same conditions that held in Buenos Ayres--shelf upon shelf
-of legal or medical reference books and technical treatises. The
-works of certain well-known historians, such as Vicuña Mackenna and
-Amonategui, consistently command relatively high prices; but, as a
-whole, books are far cheaper on the west side of the Andes. One long
-afternoon in the Calle San Diego stands out. It was a rich find, but
-we feel that the possibilities of that store are still unexhausted.
-That afternoon’s trove included the first edition of Mungo Park’s
-_Travels_, with the delightful original etchings; a _History of
-Guatemala_, written by the Dominican missionaries, published in 1619,
-an old leather-bound folio, in excellent shape; a first edition of
-Holmes’s _Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table_ and three of the eight
-volumes of _State Papers and Publick Documents of the United States_.
-In these last there was James Monroe’s book-plate, and it was curious
-to imagine how these volumes from his library had found their way to
-a country where his “doctrine” has been the subject of such bitter
-discussion and so much misinterpretation. The value of the original
-covers was no more understood in Chile than in Argentina, and we
-got a complete set of Vicuña Mackenna’s _Campaña de Tacna_ in the
-original pamphlets, as published, for but half what was currently
-asked for bound and mutilated copies.
-
-Valparaiso proved a barren field, and although one of the chief
-delights in book-hunting lies in the fact that you can never feel
-that you have completely exhausted the possibilities of a place, we
-came nearer to feeling that way about Valparaiso than we ever had
-about a town before. We found but one store that gave any promise,
-and from it all we got were the first seven volumes of Dickens’s
-_Household Words_ in perfect condition, and the _Campaign of the
-Rapidan_.
-
-The little coast towns of Chile and Peru are almost as barren as the
-desert rocks and sand-hills that surround them; but even here we
-had occasional surprises, as when we picked up for fifty cents, at
-Antofogasta, a desolate, thriving little mining-port in the north of
-Chile, Vicuña Mackenna’s _Life of O’Higgins_, for which the current
-price is from ten to fifteen dollars. Another time, in Coquimbo, we
-saw a man passing along the street with a hammered-copper bowl that
-we coveted, and following, we found him the owner of a junk-shop
-filled with a heterogeneous collection of old clothes, broken and
-battered furniture, horse-trappings, and a hundred and one odds and
-ends, among which were scattered some fifty or sixty books. One of
-these was a first edition of Hawthorne’s _Twice-Told Tales_ in the
-familiar old brown boards of Ticknor & Company.
-
-Our South American book-hunting ended in Lima, the entrancing old
-city of the kings, once the capital of the New World, and not yet
-robbed by this commercial age of all its glamour and backwardness.
-We expected much, knowing that when the Chilians occupied the city
-in 1880 they sacked the national library of fifty thousand volumes
-that their own liberator, San Martin, had founded in 1822, and
-although many of the books were carried off to Chile, the greater
-part was scattered around Lima or sold by weight on the streets.
-We shall always feel that with more time, much patience, and good
-luck we could have unearthed many treasures; although at first
-sight the field is not a promising one, and, as elsewhere, one’s
-acquaintances assure one that there is nothing to be found. In spite
-of this, however, we came upon a store that appeared teeming with
-possibilities. Without the “flaire” or much luck it might be passed
-by many times without exciting interest. Over the dingy grated window
-of a dilapidated colonial house is the legend “Encuadernacion y
-Imprenta” (“Binding and Printing.”) Through the grimy window-panes
-may be seen a row of dull law-books; but if you open the big gate
-and cross the patio, with its ancient hand-well in the centre, on
-the opposite side are four or five rooms with shelves of books
-along the walls and tottering and fallen piles of books scattered
-over the floor. Here we picked up among others an amusing little
-old vellum-covered edition of Horace, printed in England in 1606,
-which must have early found its way to South America, to judge from
-the Spanish scrawls on the title-page. We also got many of the
-works of Ricardo Palma, Peru’s most famous writer, who built up the
-ruined national library, which now possesses some sixty thousand
-volumes, of which a twelfth part were donated by our own Smithsonian
-Institution. One of the volumes we bought had been given by Palma to
-a friend, and had an autograph dedication which in other countries
-would have greatly enhanced its value, but which, curiously enough,
-seems to make no difference in South America. In Buenos Ayres we
-got a copy of the _Letters from Europe_ of Campos Salles, Brazil’s
-greatest president, which had been inscribed by him to the Argentine
-translator. Once in São Paulo we picked up an autographed copy of
-Gomes de Amorim, and in neither case did the autograph enter into
-the question of determining the price.
-
-We had heard rumors of possibilities in store for us in Ecuador,
-Colombia, and Venezuela, but Lima was our “farthest north,” for there
-our ramblings in South America were reluctantly brought to a close.
-We feel, however, that such as they were, and in spite of the fact
-that the names of many of the authors and places will be strange to
-our brethren who have confined their explorations to the northern
-hemisphere, these notes may awaken interest in a little-known field,
-which, if small in comparison with America or the Old World, offers
-at times unsuspected prizes and rewards.
-
-
-
-
-VI
-
-Seth Bullock--
-
-Sheriff of the Black Hills Country
-
-
-
-
-                                 VI
-
-          SETH BULLOCK--SHERIFF OF THE BLACK HILLS COUNTRY
-
-
-With the death of Captain Seth Bullock, of Deadwood, South Dakota,
-there came to us who were his friends not only a deep sense of
-personal loss, but also the realization that one of the very last of
-the old school of frontiersmen had gone, one of those whom Lowell
-characterized as “stern men with empires in their brains.” The hard
-hand of circumstance called forth and developed the type, and for
-a number of generations the battle with the wilderness continued
-in bitter force, and a race was brought forth trained to push on
-far beyond the “edge of cultivation,” and contend in his remote
-fastnesses with the Red Indian, and eke out a hard-earned existence
-from the grim and resentful wilds. In the wake of the vanguard came
-the settler and after him the merchant, and busy towns sprang up
-where the lonely camp-fire of the pioneer had flared to the silent
-forest. The restless blood of the frontiers pressed ever onward; the
-Indian melted away like “snow upon the desert’s dusty face”; the
-great herds of game that formerly blackened the plains left the mute
-testimony of their passing in the scattered piles of whitened skulls
-and bleached bones. At last the time came when there was no further
-frontier to conquer. The restless race of empire-makers had staring
-them in the face the same fate as the Indian. Their rough-and-ready
-justice administered out of hand had to give way before the judge
-with his court-house and his jury. The majority of the old Indian
-fighters were shouldered aside and left to end their days as best
-they could, forgotten by those for whom they had won the country.
-They could not adapt themselves to the new existence; their day had
-passed and they went to join the Indian and the buffalo.
-
-[Illustration: The Captain makes advances to a little Indian girl]
-
-Captain Seth Bullock, however, belonged to the minority, for no turn
-of the wheel could destroy his usefulness to the community, and his
-large philosophy of the plains enabled him to fit into and hold his
-place through every shift of surroundings. The Captain’s family came
-from Virginia, but he was born in Windsor, Ontario, in 1849.
-Before he was twenty he had found his way to Montana, and built
-for himself a reputation for justice which at that day and in that
-community could only be established by cold and dauntless courage.
-
-One of the feats of his early days of which he was justly proud was
-when he had himself hung the first man to be hung by law in Montana.
-The crowd of prospectors and cow-punchers did not approve of such an
-unusual, unorthodox method of procedure as the hanging of a man by
-a public hangman after he had been duly tried and sentenced. They
-wished to take the prisoner and string him up to the nearest tree or
-telegraph-pole, with the readiness and despatch to which they were
-accustomed. To evidence their disapproval they started to shoot at
-the hangman; he fled, but before the crowd could secure their victim,
-the Captain had the mastery of the situation, and, quieting his
-turbulent fellow citizens with a cold eye and relentless six-shooter,
-he himself performed the task that the hangman had left unfinished.
-The incident inspired the mob with a salutary respect for the law and
-its ability to carry out its sentences. I do not remember whether the
-Captain was mayor or sheriff at the time. He was trusted and admired
-as well as feared, and when he was barely twenty-two he was elected
-State senator from Helena, the largest town in the then territory of
-Montana.
-
-It was in 1876 that the Captain first went to the Black Hills, that
-lovely group of mountains in the southwestern corner of South Dakota.
-He came with the first rush of prospectors when the famous Hidden
-Treasure Mine was discovered. On the site of what is at present the
-town of Deadwood he set up a store for miners’ supplies, and soon
-had established himself as the arm of the law in that very lawless
-community. That was the Captain’s rôle all through his life. In the
-early years he would spend day and night in the saddle in pursuit of
-rustlers and road-agents. When he once started on the trail nothing
-could make him relinquish it; and when he reached the end, his quarry
-would better surrender without drawing. He had a long arm and his
-district was known throughout the West as an unhealthy place for bad
-men. Starting as federal peace officer of the Black Hills, he later
-became marshal and sheriff of the district, and eventually marshal of
-South Dakota, which position he held until 1914. As years passed and
-civilization advanced, his bag of malefactors became less simple in
-character, although maintaining some of the old elements. In 1908 he
-wrote me:
-
-  I have been very busy lately; pulled two horse thieves from Montana
-  last week for stealing horses from the Pine Ridge Indians. I leave
-  to-day for Leavenworth with a bank cashier for mulling a bank. He
-  may turn up on Wall Street when his term expires, to take a post
-  graduate course.
-
-In 1907 he told me that he was going off among the Ute Indians, and
-I asked him to get me some of their pipes. He answered: “The Utes
-are not pipe-makers; they spend all their time rustling and eating
-government grub. We had six horse-thieves for the pen after the
-past term of court, and should get four more at the June term in
-Pierre. This will keep them quiet for a while. I am now giving my
-attention to higher finance, and have one of the Napoleons--a bank
-president--in jail here. He only got away with $106,000--he did not
-have time to become eligible for the Wall Street class.”
-
-It was when the Captain was sheriff of the Black Hills that father
-first met him. A horse-thief that was “wanted” in the Deadwood
-district managed to slip out of the Captain’s clutches and was
-captured by father, who was deputy sheriff in a country three or
-four hundred miles north. A little while later father had to go to
-Deadwood on business. Fording a river some miles out of town he
-ran into the Captain. Father had often heard of Seth Bullock, for
-his record and character were known far and wide, and he had no
-difficulty in identifying the tall, slim, hawk-featured Westerner
-sitting his horse like a centaur. Seth Bullock, however, did not
-know so much about father, and was very suspicious of the rough,
-unkempt group just in from two weeks’ sleeping out in the gumbo and
-sage-brush. He made up his mind that it was a tin-horn gambling
-outfit and would bear close watching. He was not sure but what it
-would be best to turn them right back, and let them walk around his
-district “like it was a swamp.” After settling father’s identity
-the Captain’s suspicions vanished. That was the beginning of their
-lifelong friendship.
-
-After father had returned to the East to live, Seth Bullock would
-come on to see him every so often, and whenever my father’s
-campaigning took him West the Captain would join the train and stay
-with him until the trip was finished. These tours were rarely without
-incident, and in his autobiography father has told of the part Seth
-Bullock played on one of them.
-
-  When, in 1900, I was nominated for Vice-President, I was sent by
-  the National Committee on a trip into the States of the high plains
-  and the Rocky Mountains. These had all gone overwhelmingly for Mr.
-  Bryan on the free-silver issue four years previously, and it was
-  thought that I, because of my knowledge of and acquaintanceship
-  with the people, might accomplish something toward bringing them
-  back into line. It was an interesting trip, and the monotony
-  usually attendant upon such a campaign of political speaking was
-  diversified in vivid fashion by occasional hostile audiences. One
-  or two of the meetings ended in riots. One meeting was finally
-  broken up by a mob; everybody fought so that the speaking had
-  to stop. Soon after this we reached another town where we were
-  told there might be trouble. Here the local committee included an
-  old and valued friend, a “two-gun” man of repute, who was not in
-  the least quarrelsome, but who always kept his word. We marched
-  round to the local opera-house, which was packed with a mass of
-  men, many of them rather rough-looking. My friend the two-gun man
-  sat immediately behind me, a gun on each hip, his arms folded,
-  looking at the audience; fixing his gaze with instant intentness
-  on any section of the house from which there came so much as a
-  whisper. The audience listened to me with rapt attention. At the
-  end, with a pride in my rhetorical powers which proceeded from a
-  misunderstanding of the situation, I remarked to the chairman: “I
-  held that audience well; there wasn’t an interruption.” To which
-  the chairman replied: “Interruption? Well, I guess not! Seth had
-  sent round word that if any son of a gun peeped he’d kill him.”
-  (_Autobiography_, p. 141.)
-
-Father had the greatest admiration and affection for the Captain. It
-was to him that he was referring in his autobiography when he wrote:
-
-  I have sometimes been asked if Wister’s _Virginian_ is not
-  overdrawn; why, one of the men I have mentioned in this chapter was
-  in all essentials the “Virginian” in real life, not only in his
-  force but in his charm.
-
-When we were hunting in Africa father decided that he would try to
-get Seth Bullock to meet us in Europe at the end of the trip. I
-remember father describing him to some of our English friends in
-Khartoum, and saying: “Seth Bullock is a true Westerner, the finest
-type of frontiersman. He could handle himself in any situation, and
-if I felt that I did not wish him to meet any particular person, the
-reflection would be entirely on the latter.”
-
-The Captain wrote me that he was afraid he could not meet us in
-London because of the illness of one of his daughters, but matters
-eventually worked out in such a way that he was able to go over to
-England, and when he met father there he said he felt like hanging
-his Stetson on the dome of Saint Paul’s and shooting it off, to show
-his exhilaration at the reunion. He thoroughly enjoyed himself in
-England, and while at bottom he was genuinely appreciative of the
-Britisher, he could not help poking sly fun at him. I remember riding
-on a bus with him and hearing him ask the conductor where this famous
-Picalilly Street was. The conductor said: “You must mean Piccadilly,
-sir.” The Captain entered into a lengthy conversation with him, and
-with an unmoved stolidity of facial expression that no Red Indian
-could have bettered, referred each time to “Picalilly,” and each time
-the little bus conductor would interpose a “You mean Piccadilly,
-sir,” with the dogged persistency of his race.
-
-The major-domos and lackeys at the Guildhall and other receptions and
-the “beefeaters” at the Tower were a never-failing source of delight;
-he would try to picture them on a bad pony in the cow country, and
-explain that their costume would “make them the envy of every Sioux
-brave at an Indian dog-dance.”
-
-When my sister and I were in Edinburgh, the local guide who took us
-through the Castle showed us an ancient gun, which instead of being
-merely double-barrelled, possessed a cluster of five or six barrels.
-With great amusement he told us how an American to whom he had been
-showing the piece a few days previously had remarked that to be shot
-at with that gun must be like taking a shower-bath. A few questions
-served to justify the conclusion we had immediately formed as to
-identity of our predecessor.
-
-The summer that I was fourteen father shipped me off to the Black
-Hills for a camping trip with Seth Bullock. I had often seen him
-in the East, so the tall, spare figure and the black Stetson were
-familiar to me when the Captain boarded the train a few stations
-before reaching Deadwood. Never shall I forget the romance of that
-first trip in the West. It was all new to me. Unfortunately I had to
-leave for the East for the start of school before the opening of the
-deer season; but we caught a lot of trout, and had some unsuccessful
-bear-hunts--hunts which were doomed to unsuccess before they started,
-but which supplied the requisite thrill notwithstanding. All we
-ever found of the bear was their tracks, but we had a fleeting
-glimpse of a bobcat, and that was felt amply to repay any amount of
-tramping. Our bag consisted of one jack-rabbit. The Captain told us
-that we were qualified to join a French trapper whom he had known.
-The Frenchman was caught by an unusually early winter and snowed in
-away off in the hills. In the spring, a good deal to every one’s
-surprise, he turned up, looking somewhat thin, but apparently totally
-unconcerned over his forced hibernation. When asked what he had lived
-on, he replied: “Some day I keel two jack-rabeet, one day one, one
-day none!”
-
-The Captain and I took turns at writing my diary. I find his entry
-for August 26:
-
-  Broke camp at Jack Boyden’s on Sand Creek at 6.30 A. M., and rode
-  via Redwater Valley and Hay Creek to Belle Fourche, arriving at the
-  S. B. ranch at two o’clock; had lunch of cold cabbage; visited the
-  town; returned to camp at five P. M.; had supper at the wagon and
-  fought mosquitoes until ten o’clock.
-
-  Broke camp and rode via Owl Creek divide and Indian Creek through
-  several very large towns inhabited chiefly by prairie dogs, to
-  our camp on Porcupine Creek. Fought mosquitoes from 3 A. M. to
-  breakfast time.
-
-I had long been an admirer of Bret Harte, and many of the people I
-met might have stepped from the pages of his stories. There was the
-old miner with twenty-two children, who couldn’t remember all their
-names. His first wife had presented him with ten of them, but when
-he married again he had told his second wife that it was his initial
-venture in matrimony. He gave a vivid description of the scene when
-some of the progeny of his first marriage unexpectedly put in an
-appearance. Time had smoothed things over, and the knowledge of her
-predecessor had evidently only acted as a spur to greater deeds, as
-exemplified in the twelve additions to the family.
-
-Then there was the old lady with the vinegar jug. She was the
-postmistress of Buckhorn. We had some difficulty in finding the
-post-office, but at length we learned that the postmistress had moved
-it fifteen miles away, to cross the State border, in order that she
-might live in Wyoming and have a vote. We reached the shack to find
-it deserted, but we had not long to wait before she rode in, purple
-in the face and nearly rolling off her pony from laughter. She told
-us that she had got some vinegar from a friend, and while she was
-riding along the motion exploded the jug, and the cork hit her in the
-head; what with the noise and the blow she made sure the Indians
-were after her, and rode for her life a couple of miles before she
-realized what had happened.
-
-What could have surpassed the names of the trails along which we rode
-and the canyons in which we camped? There was Hidden Treasure Gulch
-and Calamity Hollow, and a score more equally satisfying. That first
-trip was an immense success, and all during the winter that followed
-whenever school life became particularly irksome I would turn to
-plans for the expedition that we had scheduled for the next summer.
-
-When the time to leave for the West arrived I felt like an old
-stager, and indulged for the first time in the delight of getting
-out my hunting outfit, deciding what I needed, and supplementing my
-last summer’s rig with other things that I had found would be useful.
-Like all beginners I imagined that I required a lot for which I had
-in reality no possible use. Some men always set off festooned like
-Christmas-trees, and lose half the pleasure of the trip through
-trying to keep track of their belongings. They have special candles,
-patented lanterns, enormous jack-knives with a blade to fulfil every
-conceivable purpose, rifles and revolvers and shotguns galore;
-almost anything that comes under the classification of “it might come
-in handy.” The more affluent hunter varies only in the quality and
-not the quantity of his “gadjets.” He usually has each one neatly
-tucked away in a pigskin case. The wise man, however, soon learns
-that although anything may “come in handy” once on a trip, you
-could even on that occasion either get along without it or find a
-substitute that would do almost as well. It is surprising with what a
-very little one can make out perfectly comfortably. This was a lesson
-which I very quickly learned from the Captain.
-
-The second trip that we took was from Deadwood, South Dakota, to
-Medora, North Dakota. I had never seen the country in which father
-ranched, and Seth Bullock decided to take me up along the trail that
-father had been travelling when they met for the first time.
-
-We set off on Friday the 13th, and naturally everything that happened
-was charged up to that inauspicious day. We lost all our horses
-the first night, and only succeeded in retrieving a part of them.
-Thereafter it started in raining, and the gumbo mud became all but
-impassable for the “chuck-wagon.” The mosquitoes added to our misery,
-and I find in my diary in the Captain’s handwriting a note to the
-effect that “Paul shot three mosquitoes with a six-shooter. Stanley
-missed with a shotgun.”
-
-The Captain was as stolid and unconcerned as a Red Indian through
-every change of weather. He had nicknamed me “Kim” from Kipling’s
-tale, and after me he had named a large black horse which he always
-rode. It was an excellent animal with a very rapid walk which proved
-the bane of my existence. My pony, “Pickpocket,” had no pace that
-corresponded, and to adapt himself was forced to travel at a most
-infernal jiggle that was not only exceedingly wearing but shook me
-round so that the rain permeated in all sorts of crevices which might
-reasonably have been expected to prove water-tight. With the pride
-of a boy on his second trip, I could not bring myself to own up to
-my discomfort. If I had, the Captain would have instantly changed
-his pace; but it seemed a soft and un-Western admission to make, so
-I suffered in external silence, while inwardly heaping every insult
-I could think of upon the Captain’s mount. We were travelling long
-distances, so the gait was rarely changed unless I made some excuse
-to loiter behind, and then walked my pony in slow and solitary
-comfort until the Captain was almost out of sight, and it was time to
-press into a lope which comfortably and far too rapidly once more put
-me even with him.
-
-The Captain was a silent companion; he would ride along hour after
-hour, chewing a long black cigar, in a silence broken only by verses
-he would hum to himself. There was one that went on interminably,
-beginning:
-
-     “I wonder if ever a cowboy
-      Will be seen in those days long to come;
-      I wonder if ever an Indian
-      Will be seen in that far bye-and-bye.”
-
-Every now and then some butte would suggest a reminiscence of the
-early days, and a few skilfully directed questions would lure him
-into a chain of anecdotes of the already vanished border-life. He was
-continually coming out with a quotation from some author with whose
-writings I had never thought him acquainted. Fishing in a Black Hills
-stream, I heard him mutter:
-
-     “So you heard the left fork of the Yuba
-      As you stood on the banks of the Po.”
-
-He had read much of Kipling’s prose and poetry, but what he most
-often quoted were the lines to Fighting Bob Evans.
-
-In his house in Deadwood he had a good library, the sort of one which
-made you feel that the books had been selected to read and enjoy, and
-not bought by the yard like window-curtains, or any other furnishings
-thought necessary for a house. Mrs. Bullock was president of the
-“Women’s Literary Club,” and I remember father being much impressed
-with the work that she was doing.
-
-As I have said before, the Captain was a man whom changing conditions
-could not throw to one side. He would anticipate the changes,
-and himself take the lead in them, adapting himself to the new
-conditions; you could count upon finding him on top. He was very
-proud of the fact that he had brought the first alfalfa to the State,
-and showed me his land near Belle Fourche, where he had planted the
-original crop. Its success was immediate. He said that he could not
-claim the credit of having introduced potatoes, but an old friend
-of his was entitled to the honor, and he delighted in telling the
-circumstances. The Captain’s friend, whom we can call Judge Jones,
-for I’ve forgotten his name, had opened a trading-post in what
-was at that time the wild territory of Dakota. The Indians were
-distinctly hostile, and at any good opportunity were ready to raid
-the posts, murdering the factors and looting the trading goods. In
-the judge’s territory there was one particularly ugly customer, half
-Indian and half negro, known as Nigger Bill. The judge was much
-interested in the success of his adventure in potatoes, and the
-following was one of the letters he received from his factor, as Seth
-Bullock used to quote it to me:
-
-  DEAR JUDGE,
-
-  This is to tell you all is well here and I hope is same with you.
-  Nigger Bill came to the door of the stockade to-day and said “I am
-  going to get in.” I said “Nigger Bill you will not get in.” Nigger
-  Bill said “I will get in.” I shot Nigger Bill. He is dead. The
-  potatoes is doing fine.
-
-Although realizing to the full that the change was inevitable and, of
-course, to the best interests of the country, and naturally taking
-much pride in the progress his State was making, the Captain could
-not help at times feeling a little melancholy over the departed days
-when there was no wire in the country, and one could ride where one
-listed. He wrote me in 1911: “The part of South Dakota which you knew
-has all been covered with the shacks of homesteaders, from Belle
-Fourche to Medora, and from the Cheyenne agency to the Creek Where
-the Old Woman Died.” The old times had gone, never to return, and
-although the change was an advance, it closed an existence that could
-never be forgotten or relived by those who had taken part in it.
-
-The Captain gave me very sound advice when I was trying to make up
-my mind whether or not to go to college. I was at the time going
-through the period of impatience that comes to so many boys when they
-feel that they are losing valuable time, during which they should be
-starting in to make their way in the world. I had talked it over with
-the Captain during one of the summer trips, and soon afterward he
-wrote me:
-
-  Ride the old studies with spurs. I don’t like the idea of your
-  going out to engage in business until you have gone through
-  Harvard. You will have plenty of time after you have accomplished
-  this to tackle the world. Take my advice, my boy, and don’t
-  think of it. A man without a college education nowadays is badly
-  handicapped. If he has had the opportunity to go through college
-  and does not take advantage of it, he goes through life with a
-  regret that becomes more intensified as he gets older. Life is a
-  very serious proposition if we would live it well.
-
-I went through college and I have often realized since how excellent
-this advice was, and marvelled not a little at the many-sidedness of
-a frontiersman who could see that particular situation so clearly.
-
-[Illustration: A morning’s bag of prairie chicken in South Dakota
-Seth Bullock is second from the left, and R. H. Munro Ferguson third]
-
-The year before I went with my father to Africa, R. H. Munro Ferguson
-and myself joined the Captain in South Dakota for a prairie-chicken
-hunt. We were to shoot in the vicinity of the Cheyenne Indian
-reservation, and the Captain took us through the reservation to
-show us how the Indian question was being handled. The court was
-excellently run, but what impressed us most was the judge’s name, for
-he was called Judge No Heart. Some of our hunting companions rejoiced
-in equally unusual names. There were Spotted Rabbit, No Flesh, Yellow
-Owl, and High Hawk, not to forget Spotted Horses, whose prolific
-wife was known as Mrs. Drops-Two-at-a-Time. We had with us another
-man named Dave Snowball, who looked and talked just like a Southern
-darky. As a matter of fact, he was half negro and half Indian. In
-the old days negro slaves not infrequently escaped and joined the
-Indians. I went to see Dave’s father. There was no mistaking him for
-what he was, but when I spoke to him he would answer me in Sioux
-and the only English words I could extract from him were “No speak
-English.” He may have had some hazy idea that if he talked English
-some one would arrest him and send him back to his old masters,
-although they had probably been dead for thirty or forty years.
-Possibly living so long among the Sioux, he had genuinely forgotten
-the language of his childhood.
-
-High Hawk and Oliver Black Hawk were old “hostiles.” So was Red Bear.
-We came upon him moving house. The tepee had just been dismantled,
-and the support poles were being secured to a violently objecting
-pony. A few weeks later when we were on the train going East,
-Frederic Remington joined us. He was returning from Montana, and upon
-hearing that we had been on the Cheyenne reservation he asked if we
-had run into old Red Bear, who had once saved his life. He told us
-that many years before he had been picked up by a party of hostiles,
-and they had determined to give him short shrift, when Red Bear,
-with whom he had previously struck a friendship, turned up, and
-successfully interceded with his captors. One reminiscence led to
-another, and we were soon almost as grateful to Red Bear for having
-opened such a store as Remington had been for having his life spared.
-Frederic Remington was a born raconteur, and pointed his stories with
-a bluff, homely philosophy, redolent of the plains and the sage-brush.
-
-The night before we left the Indians the Captain called a council.
-All the old “hostiles” and many of the younger generation gathered.
-The peace-pipes circulated. We had brought with us from New York a
-quantity of German porcelain pipes to trade with the Indians. Among
-them was one monster with a bowl that must have held from an eighth
-to a quarter of a pound of tobacco. The Indians ordinarily smoke
-“kinnikinick,” which is chopped-up willow bark. It is mild and gives
-a pleasant, aromatic smoke. The tobacco which we had was a coarse,
-strong shag. We filled the huge pipe with it, and, lighting it,
-passed it round among the silent, solemn figures grouped about the
-fire. The change was as instantaneous as it was unpremeditated.
-The first “brave” drew deeply and inhaled a few strong puffs; with
-a choking splutter he handed the pipe to his nearest companion. The
-scene was repeated, and as each Indian, heedless of the fate of his
-comrades, inhaled the smoke of the strong shag, he would break out
-coughing, until the pipe had completed the circuit and the entire
-group was coughing in unison. Order was restored and willow bark
-substituted for tobacco, with satisfactory results. Then we each
-tried our hand at speaking. One by one the Indians took up the
-thread, grunting out their words between puffs. The firelight rose
-and fell, lighting up the shrouded shapes. When my turn came I spoke
-through an interpreter. Coached by the Captain as to what were their
-most lamentable failings--those that most frequently were the means
-of his making their acquaintance--I gave a learned discourse upon the
-evils of rustling ponies, and the pleasant life that lay before those
-who abstained from doing so. Grunts of approval, how sincere I know
-not, were the gratifying reply to my efforts. The powwow broke up
-with a substantial feast of barbecued sheep, and next morning we left
-our nomadic hosts to continue their losing fight to maintain their
-hereditary form of existence, hemmed in by an ever-encroaching white
-man’s civilization.
-
-Near the reservation we came upon two old outlaw buffaloes, last
-survivors of the great herds that not so many years previously had
-roamed these plains, providing food and clothing for the Indians
-until wiped out by the ruthless white man. These two bulls, living
-on because they were too old and tough for any one to bother about,
-were the last survivors left in freedom. A few days later we were
-shown by Scottie Phillips over his herd. He had many pure breeds but
-more hybrids, and the latter looked the healthier. Scottie had done
-a valuable work in preserving these buffalo. He was a squaw-man, and
-his pleasant Indian wife gave us excellent buffalo-berry preserves
-that she had put up.
-
-Scottie’s ranch typified the end of both buffalo and Indian. Before
-a generation is past the buffalo will survive only in the traces of
-it left by crossing with cattle; and the same fate eventually awaits
-the Indian. No matter how wise be the course followed in governing
-the remnants of the Indian race, it can only be a question of time
-before their individuality sinks and they are absorbed.
-
-The spring following this expedition I set off with father for
-Africa. The Captain took a great deal of interest in the plans for
-the trip. A week before we sailed he wrote:
-
-  I send you to-day by American Express the best gun I know of for
-  you to carry when in Africa. It is a single action Colts 38 on a
-  heavy frame. It is a business weapon, always reliable, and will
-  shoot where you hold it. When loaded, carry it on the safety, or
-  first cock of the hammer.
-
-Seth Bullock was a hero-worshipper and father was his great hero. It
-would have made no difference what father did or said, the Captain
-would have been unshakably convinced without going into the matter at
-all that father was justified. There is an old adage that runs: “Any
-one can have friends that stand by him when he’s right; what you want
-is friends that stand by you when you’re wrong.” Seth Bullock, had
-occasion ever demanded it, would have been one of the latter.
-
-In the Cuban War he was unable to get into the Rough Riders, and so
-joined a cowboy regiment which was never fortunate enough to get
-over to Cuba, but suffered all its casualties--and there were plenty
-of them--from typhoid fever, in a camp somewhere in the South. He was
-made a sort of honorary member of the Rough Riders, and when there
-were informal reunions held in Washington he was counted upon to take
-part in them. He was a favorite with every one, from the White House
-ushers to the French Ambassador. As an honorary member of the Tennis
-Cabinet he was present at the farewell dinner held in the White House
-three days before father left the presidency. A bronze cougar by
-Proctor had been selected as a parting gift, and it was concealed
-under a mass of flowers in the centre of the table. The Captain had
-been chosen to make the presentation speech, and when he got up and
-started fumbling with flowers to disclose the cougar father could not
-make out what had happened.
-
-The Captain, as he said himself, was a poor hand at saying good-by.
-He was in New York shortly before we sailed for Africa, but wrote: “I
-must leave here to-day for Sioux Falls; then again I am a mollycoddle
-when it comes to bidding good-by; can always easier write good-by
-than speak it.”
-
-His gloomy forebodings about the Brazilian trip were well justified.
-He was writing me to South America:
-
-  I was glad to hear you will be with your father. I have been uneasy
-  about this trip of his, but now that I know you are along I will
-  be better satisfied. I don’t think much of that country you are to
-  explore as a health resort, and there are no folks like home folks
-  when one is sick.
-
-The Captain made up his mind that if his regiment had failed to get
-into the Cuban War the same thing would not happen in the case of
-another war. In July, 1916, when the Mexican situation seemed even
-more acute than usual, I heard from the Captain:
-
-  If we have war with Mexico you and I will have to go. I am daily
-  in receipt of application from the best riders in the country.
-  Tell the Colonel I have carried out his plan for the forming of a
-  regiment, and within fifteen days from getting word from him, will
-  have a regiment for his division that will meet with his approval.
-  You are to have a captaincy to start with. I don’t think Wilson
-  will fight without he is convinced it will aid in his election. He
-  is like Artemus Ward--willing to sacrifice his wife’s relations on
-  the altar of his country.
-
-The Mexican situation continued to drag along, but we at length
-entered the European war, and for a while it looked as if my father
-would be allowed to raise a division and take it over to the other
-side. The Captain had already the nucleus of his regiment, and the
-telegrams passed fast and furiously. However, for reasons best known
-to the authorities in Washington, it all turned out to be to no
-purpose. The Captain was enraged. He wrote me out to Mesopotamia,
-where I was serving in the British forces:
-
-  I was very much disgusted with Wilson when he turned us down. I
-  had a splendid organization twelve hundred strong, comprising
-  four hundred miners from the Black Hills Mines, four hundred
-  railroad boys from the lines of the Chicago and Northwestern, and
-  the C. B. and Q. in South Dakota, Western Nebraska, and Wyoming,
-  and four hundred boys from the ranges of Western South Dakota,
-  Montana, and Wyoming. It was the pick of the country. Your troop
-  was especially good; while locally known as the Deadwood troop,
-  most of the members were from the country northwest of Belle
-  Fourche; twenty of your troop were Sioux who had served on the
-  Indian police. Sixty-five per cent of the regiment had military
-  training. Damn the dirty politics that kept us from going. I am
-  busy now locally with the Red Cross and the Exemption Board of this
-  county, being chairman of each. We will show the Democrats that we
-  are thoroughbreds and will do our bit even if we are compelled to
-  remain at home with the Democrats.
-
-After expatiating at some length and with great wealth of detail as
-to just what he thought of the attitude of the administration, the
-Captain continued with some characteristic advice:
-
-  I am going to caution you now on being careful when you are on
-  the firing line. Don’t try for any Victoria Cross, or lead any
-  forlorn hopes; modern war does not require these sacrifices, nor
-  are battles won that way nowadays. I wouldn’t have you fail in any
-  particular of a brave American soldier, and I know you won’t, but
-  there is a vast difference between bravery and foolhardiness, and
-  a man with folks at home is extremely selfish if unnecessarily
-  foolhardy in the face of danger.
-
-All of it very good, sound advice, and just such as the Captain might
-have been expected to give, but the last in the world that any one
-would have looked for him to personally follow.
-
-The letter ended with “I think the war will be over this year. I did
-want to ride a spotted cayuse into Berlin, but it don’t look now as
-if I would.”
-
-The next time that I heard from the Captain was some time after I had
-joined the American Expeditionary Forces in France. In characteristic
-fashion he addressed the letter merely “Care of General Pershing,
-France,” and naturally the letter took three or four months before
-it finally reached me. The Captain had been very ill, but treated the
-whole matter as a joke.
-
-  I have just returned from California, where I was on the sick list
-  since last December, six months in a hospital and sanitarium while
-  the doctors were busy with knives, and nearly took me over the
-  divide. I am recovering slowly, and hope to last till the Crown
-  Prince and his murdering progenitor are hung. I was chairman of the
-  Exemption Board in 1917 and stuck to it until I was taken ill with
-  grippe, which ended in an intestinal trouble which required the
-  services of two surgeons and their willing knives to combat. The
-  folks came to California after the remains, but when they arrived
-  they found the remains sitting up and cussing the Huns.
-
-  Now, Kim, take care of yourself; don’t get reckless. Kill all the
-  Huns you can, but don’t let them have the satisfaction of getting
-  you.
-
-My father’s death was a fearful blow to the old Captain. Only those
-who knew him well realized how hard he was hit. He immediately set to
-work to arrange some monument to my father’s memory. With the native
-good taste that ever characterized him, instead of thinking in terms
-of statues, he decided that the dedication of a mountain would be
-most fitting, and determined to make the shaft to be placed upon
-its summit simple in both form and inscription. Father was the one
-honorary member of the Society of Black Hills Pioneers, and it was in
-conjunction with this society that the Captain arranged that Sheep
-Mountain, a few miles away from Deadwood, should be renamed Mount
-Roosevelt.
-
-General Wood made the address. A number of my friends who were there
-gave me the latest news of the Captain. He wrote me that he expected
-to come East in September; that he was not feeling very fit, and
-that he was glad to have been able to go through with the dedication
-of the mountain. He was never a person to talk about himself, so I
-have no way of knowing, other than intuition, but I am certain that
-he felt all along that his days were numbered, and held on mainly in
-order to accomplish his purpose of raising the memorial.
-
-I waited until the middle of September and then wrote to Deadwood to
-ask the Captain when he would be coming. I found the reply in the
-newspapers a few days later. The Captain was dead. The gallant old
-fellow had crossed the divide that he wrote about, leaving behind him
-not merely the sorrow of his friends but their pride in his memory.
-Well may we feel proud of having been numbered among the friends of
-such a thoroughgoing, upstanding American as Seth Bullock. As long as
-our country produces men of such caliber, we may face the future with
-a consciousness of our ability to win through such dark days as may
-confront us. The changes and shiftings that have ever accompanied our
-growth never found Seth Bullock at a loss; he was always ready to
-
-     “Turn a keen, untroubled face
-      Home to the instant need of things.”
-
-Throughout his well-rounded and picturesque career he coped with
-the varied problems that confronted him in that unostentatious and
-unruffled way so peculiarly his own, with which he faced the final
-and elemental fact of his recall from service.
-
-
-
-
-                             FOOTNOTES:
-
-[1] Fifteen years later when I was in Medora with Captain Seth
-Bullock, Muley was still alive and enjoying a life of ease in Joe
-Ferris’s pastures.
-
-[2] Shenzi really means bushman, but it is applied, generally in
-a derogatory sense, by the Swahilis to all the wild natives, or
-“blanket Indians.”
-
-[3] Since writing this we have heard from a friend who is learned in
-books. He tells us that he believes the letter to be an excellent
-facsimile pasted in the edition concerned.
-
-
-
-
-
-End of Project Gutenberg's The Happy Hunting-Grounds, by Kermit Roosevelt
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