A BOOK-LOVER'S
HOLIDAYS IN THE OPEN
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From a painting by Theodore B. Pitman in possession of Colonel Roosevelt.
On the brink of the Grand Canvon.
A BOOK-LOVER'S
HOLIDAYS IN THE OPEN
BY
THEODORE ROOSEVELT
NEW YORK
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
1916
COPYRIGHT, 1916, BY
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
Published March, 1916
So
ARCHIE AND QUENTIN
333773
FOREWORD
THE man should have youth and strength
who seeks adventure in the wide, waste spaces
of the earth, in the marshes, and among the vast
mountain masses, in the northern forests, amid
the steaming jungles of the tropics, or on the
deserts of sand or of snow. He must long
greatly for the lonely winds that blow across
the wilderness, and for sunrise and sunset over
the rim of the empty world. His heart must
thrill for the saddle and not for the hearthstone.
He must be helmsman and chief, the cragsman,
the rifleman, the boat steerer. He must be the
wielder of axe and of paddle, the rider of fiery
horses, the master of the craft that leaps through
white wrater. His eye must be true and quick,
his hand steady and strong. His heart must
never fail nor his head grow bewildered, whether
he face brute and human foes, or the frowning
strength of hostile nature, or the awful fear
that grips those who are lost in trackless lands.
Wearing toil and hardship shall be his; thirst
and famine he shall face, and burning fever.
Death shall come to greet him with poison-fang
Vll
viii FOREWORD
or poison-arrow, in shape of charging beast or
of scaly things that lurk in lake and river; it
shall lie in wait for him among untrodden for
ests, in the swirl of wild waters, and in the blast
of snow blizzard or thunder-shattered hurricane.
Not many men can with wisdom make such
a life their permanent and serious occupation.
Those whose tasks lie along other lines can lead
it for but a few years. For them it must nor
mally come in the hardy vigor of their youth, be
fore the beat of the blood has grown sluggish
in their veins.
Nevertheless, older men also can find joy in
such a life, although in their case it must be
led only on the outskirts of adventure, and al
though the part they play therein must be that
of the onlooker rather than that of the doer.
The feats of prowess are for others. It is for
other men to face the peril of unknown lands,
to master unbroken horses, and to hold their
own among their fellows with bodies of supple
strength. But much, very much, remains for
the man who has "warmed both hands before
the fire of life," and who, although he loves the
great cities, loves even more the fenceless grass
land, and the forest-clad hills.
The grandest scenery of the world is his to
look at if he chooses; and he can witness the
FOREWORD ix
strange ways of tribes who have survived into
an alien age from an immemorial past, tribes
whose priests dance in honor of the serpent and
worship the spirits of the wolf and the bear.
Far and wide, all the continents are open to
him as they never were to any of his fore
fathers; the Nile and the Paraguay are easy
of access, and the borderland between savagery
and civilization; and the veil of the past has
been lifted so that he can dimly see how, in time
immeasurably remote, his ancestors — no less
remote — led furtive lives among uncouth and
terrible beasts, whose kind has perished utterly
from the face of the earth. He will take books
with him as he journeys; for the keenest en
joyment of the wilderness is reserved for him
who enjoys also the garnered wisdom of the
present and the past. He will take pleasure in
the companionship of the men of the open; in
South America, the daring and reckless horse
men who guard the herds of the grazing country,
and the dark-skinned paddlers who guide their
clumsy dugouts down the dangerous equatorial
rivers; the white and red and half-breed hunt
ers of the Rockies, and of the Canadian wood
land; and in Africa the faithful black gun-
bearers who have stood steadily at his elbow
when the lion came on with coughing grunts, or
x FOREWORD
when the huge mass of the charging elephant
burst asunder the vine-tangled branches.
The beauty and charm of the wilderness are
his for the asking, for the edges of the wilderness
lie close beside the beaten roads of present
travel. He can see the red splendor of desert
sunsets, and the unearthly glory of the after
glow on the battlements of desolate mountains.
In sapphire gulfs of ocean he can visit islets,
above which the wings of myriads of sea-fowl
make a kind of shifting cuneiform script in the
air. He can ride along the brink of the stu
pendous cliff- walled canyon, where eagles soar
below him, and cougars make their lairs on the
ledges and harry the big-horned sheep. He can
journey through the northern forests, the home
of the giant moose, the forests of fragrant and
murmuring life in summer, the iron-bound and
melancholy forests of winter.
The joy of living is his who has the heart to
demand it.
THEODORE ROOSEVELT.
SAGAMORE HILL, January 1, 1916.
CONTENTS
CHAPTEB PAGE
I. A COUGAR HUNT ON THE RIM OF
THE GRAND CANYON .... 1
II. ACROSS THE NAVAJO DESERT . . 29
III. THE HOPI SNAKE-DANCE ... 63
IV. THE RANCHLAND OF ARGENTINA
AND SOUTHERN BRAZIL ... 98
V. A CHILEAN RONDEO 117
VI. ACROSS THE ANDES AND NORTHERN
PATAGONIA 130
VII. WILD HUNTING COMPANIONS . . 152
VIII. PRIMITIVE MAN; AND THE HORSE,
THE LlON, AND THE ELEPHANT 190
IX. BOOKS FOR HOLIDAYS IN THE OPEN 259
X. BIRD RESERVES AT THE MOUTH
OF THE MISSISSIPPI .... 274
XI. A CURIOUS EXPERIENCE . . . 318
APPENDICES:
A 359
B . 366
ILLUSTRATIONS
On the brink of the Grand Canyon . . Frontispiece
From a painting by Theodore B. Pitman, reproduced in
color.
Colonel Roosevelt and Arthur Lirette with antlers
of moose shot September 19, 1915 . Facing page 348
From a photograph by Alexander Lambert, M.D.
Antlers of moose shot September 19, 1915, with
Springfield rifle No. 6000, Model 1903 . . Page 356
A BOOK-LOVER'S
HOLIDAYS IN THE OPEN
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 seeks to send us back to the arms of those
that love us.
Come away ! come away ! — or the roving fiend will hold
us,
And make us all to dwell with him to the end of human
faring.
EDWIN ARLINGTON ROBINSON.
A BOOK-LOVER'S HOLIDAYS
IN THE OPEN
CHAPTER I
A COUGAR HUNT ON THE RIM OF THE
GRAND CANYON
ON July 14, 1913, our party gathered at
the comfortable El Tovar Hotel, on the
edge of the Grand Canyon of the Colo
rado, and therefore overlooking the most won
derful scenery in the world. The moon was
full. Dim, vast, mysterious, the canyon lay
in the shimmering radiance. To all else that
is strange and beautiful in nature the Canyon
stands as Karnak and Baalbec, seen by moon
light, stand to all other ruined temples and
palaces of the bygone ages.
With me were my two younger sons, Archie
and Quentin, aged nineteen and fifteen respec
tively, and a cousin of theirs, Nicholas, aged
twenty. The cousin had driven our horses, and
what outfit we did not ourselves carry, from
southern Arizona to the north side of the can-
i
2 A :BOQK-LOVER'S HOLIDAYS
yon, and had then crossed the canyon to meet
us. The youngest one of the three had not be
fore been on such a trip as that we intended to
take; but the two elder boys, for their good
fortune, had formerly been at the Evans School
in Mesa, Arizona, and among the by-products
of their education was a practical and working
familiarity with ranch life, with the round-up,
and with travelling through the desert and on
the mountains. Jesse Cummings, of Mesa, was
along to act as cook, packer, and horse-wrangler,
helped in all three branches by the two elder
boys; he was a Kentuckian by birth, and a
better man for our trip and a stancher friend
could not have been found.
On the 15th we went down to the bottom of
the canyon. There we were to have been met
by our outfit with two men whom we had en
gaged; but they never turned up, and we
should have been in a bad way had not Mr.
Stevenson, of the Bar Z Cattle Company, come
down the trail behind us, while the foreman of
the Bar Z, Mr. Mansfield, appeared to meet
him, on the opposite side of the rushing, muddy
torrent of the Colorado. Mansfield worked us
across on the trolley which spans the river; and
then we joined in and worked Stevenson, and
some friends he had with him, across. Among
A COUGAR HUNT 3
us all we had food enough for dinner and for
a light breakfast, and we had our bedding.
With characteristic cattleman's generosity, our
new friends turned over to us two pack-mules,
which could carry our bedding and the like,
and two spare saddle-horses — both the mules
and the spare saddle-horses having been brought
down by Mansfield because of a lucky mistake
as to the number of men he was to meet.
Mansfield was a representative of the best
type of old-style ranch foreman. It is a hard
climb out of the canyon on the north side, and
Mansfield was bound that we should have an
early start. He was up at half-past one in the
morning; we breakfasted on a few spoonfuls
of mush; packed the mules and saddled the
horses; and then in the sultry darkness, which
in spite of the moon filled the bottom of the
stupendous gorge, we started up the Bright
Angel trail. Cummings and the two elder boys
walked; the rest of us were on horseback. The
trail crossed and recrossed the rapid brook, and
for rods at a time went up its bowlder-filled
bed; groping and stumbling, we made our
blind way along it; and over an hour passed
before the first grayness of the dawn faintly
lighted our footsteps.
At last we left the stream bed, and the trail
4 A BOOK-LOVER'S HOLIDAYS
climbed the sheer slopes and zigzagged upward
through the breaks in the cliff walls. At one
place the Bar Z men showed us where one of
their pack-animals had lost his footing and
fallen down the mountainside a year previously.
It was eight hours before we topped the rim
and came out on the high, wooded, broken
plateau which at this part of its course forms
the northern barrier of the deep-sunk Colorado
River. Three or four miles farther on we found
the men who were to have met us; they were
two days behindhand, so we told them we
would not need them, and reclaimed what
horses, provisions, and other outfit were ours.
With Cummings and the two elder boys we
were quite competent to take care of ourselves
under all circumstances, and extra men, tents,
and provisions merely represented a slight, and
dispensable, increase in convenience and com
fort.
As it turned out, there was no loss even of
comfort. We went straight to the cabin of the
game warden, Uncle Jim Owens; and he in
stantly accepted us as his guests, treated us as
such, and accompanied us throughout our fort
night's stay north of the river. A kinder host
and better companion in a wild country could
not be found. Through him we hired a very
A COUGAR HUNT 5
good fellow, a mining prospector, who stayed
with us until we crossed the Colorado at Lee's
Ferry. He was originally a New York State
man, wrho had grown up in Montana, and had
prospected through the mountains from the
Athabaska River to the Mexican boundary.
Uncle Jim was a Texan, born at San Antonio,
and raised in the Panhandle, on the Goodnight
ranch. In his youth he had seen the thronging
myriads of bison, and taken part in the rough
life of the border, the life of the cow-men, the
buffalo-hunters, and the Indian-fighters. He
was by instinct a man of the right kind in all
relations; and he early hailed with delight the
growth of the movement among our people to
put a stop to the senseless and wanton destruc
tion of our wild life. Together with his — and
my — friend Buffalo Jones he had worked for the
preservation of the scattered bands of bison; he
was keenly interested not only in the preserva
tion of the forests but in the preservation of
the game. He had been two years buffalo war
den in the Yellowstone National Park. Then
he had come to the Colorado National Forest
Reserve and Game Reserve, where he had
been game warden for over six years at the
time of our trip. He has given zealous and
efficient service to the people as a whole; for
6 A BOOK-LOVER'S HOLIDAYS
which, by the way, his salary has been an in
adequate return. One important feature of his
work is to keep down the larger beasts and birds
of prey, the arch-enemies of the deer, mountain-
sheep, and grouse; and the most formidable
among these foes of the harmless wild life are
the cougars. At the time of our visit he owned
five hounds, which he had trained especially,
as far as his manifold duties gave him the time,
to the chase of cougars and bobcats. Coyotes
were plentiful, and he shot these wherever the
chance offered; but coyotes are best kept down
by poison, and poison cannot be used where
any man is keeping the hounds with which
alone it is possible effectively to handle the
cougars.
At this point the Colorado, in its deep gulf,
bends south, then west, then north, and in
closes on three sides the high plateau which is
the heart of the forest and game reserve. It
was on this plateau, locally known as Buckskin
Mountain, that we spent the next fortnight.
The altitude is from eight thousand to nearly
ten thousand feet, and the climate is that of
the far north. Spring does not come until
June; the snow lies deep for seven months.
We were there in midsummer, but the ther
mometer went down at night to 36, 34, and once
A COUGAR HUNT 7
to 33 degrees Fahrenheit; there was hoarfrost
in the mornings. Sound was our sleep under
our blankets, in the open, or under a shelf of
rock, or beneath a tent, or most often under a
thickly leaved tree. Throughout the day the
air was cool and bracing.
Although we reached the plateau in mid-
July, the spring was but just coming to an end.
Silver-voiced Rocky Mountain hermit-thrushes
chanted divinely from the deep woods. There
were multitudes of flowers, of which, alas ! I
know only a very few, and these by their ver
nacular names; for as yet there is no such hand
book for the flowers of the southern Rocky
Mountains as, thanks to Mrs. Frances Dana,
we have for those of the Eastern States, and,
thanks to Miss Mary Elizabeth Parsons, for
those of California. The sego lilies, looking like
very handsome Eastern trilliums, were as plen
tiful as they were beautiful; and there were the
striking Indian paint-brushes, fragrant purple
locust blooms, the blossoms of that strange
bush the plumed acacia, delicately beautiful
white columbines, bluebells, great sheets of blue
lupin, and the tall, crowded spikes of the bril
liant red bell — and innumerable others. The
rainfall is light and the ground porous; springs
are few, and brooks wanting; but the trees are
8 A BOOK-LOVER'S HOLIDAYS
handsome. In a few places the forest is dense;
in most places it is sufficiently open to allow a
mountain-horse to twist in and out among the
tree trunks at a smart canter. The tall yellow
pines are everywhere; the erect spires of the
mountain-spruce and of the blue-tipped West
ern balsam shoot up around their taller cousins,
and the quaking asps, the aspens with their
ever-quivering leaves and glimmering white boles,
are scattered among and beneath the conifers,
or stand in groves by themselves. Blue grouse
were plentiful - - having increased greatly, partly
because of the war waged by Uncle Jim against
their foes the great horned owls; and among
the numerous birds were long-crested, dark -blue
jays, pinyon-jays, doves, band-tailed pigeons,
golden-winged flickers, chickadees, juncos,
mountain-bluebirds, thistle-finches, and Loui
siana tanagers. A very handsome cock tanager,
the orange yellow of its plumage dashed with
red on the head and throat, flew familiarly
round Uncle Jim's cabin, and spent most of its
time foraging in the grass. Once three birds
flew by which I am convinced were the strange
and interesting evening grosbeaks. Chipmunks
and white-footed mice lived in the cabin, the
former very bold and friendly; in fact, the chip
munks, of several species, were everywhere;
A COUGAR HUNT 9
and there were gophers or rock-squirrels, and
small tree-squirrels, like the Eastern chickarees,
and big tree-squirrels — the handsomest squirrels
I have ever seen -- with black bodies and bushy
white tails. These last lived in the pines, were
diurnal in their habits, and often foraged among
the fallen cones on the ground; and they were
strikingly conspicuous.
We met, and were most favorably impressed
by, the foresi supervisor, and some of his rangers.
This forest and game reserve is thrown open to
grazing, as with all similar reserves. Among the
real settlers, the home-makers of sense and far
sightedness, there is a growing belief in the wis
dom of the policy of the preservation of the
national resources by the National Government.
On small, permanent farms, the owner, if reason
ably intelligent, will himself preserve his own
patrimony; but everywhere the uncontrolled use
in common of the public domain has meant reck
less, and usually wanton, destruction. All the
public domain that is used should be used under
strictly supervised governmental lease; that is,
the lease system should be applied everywhere
substantially as it is now applied in the forest.
In every case the small neighboring settlers, the
actual home-makers, should be given priority of
chance to lease the land in reasonable sized
10 A BOOK-LOVER'S HOLIDAYS
tracts. Continual efforts are made by dema
gogues and by unscrupulous agitators to excite
hostility to the forest policy of the government;
and needy men who are short-sighted and un
scrupulous join in the cry, and play into the
hands of the corrupt politicians who do the
bidding of the big and selfish exploiters of the
public domain. One device of these politicians
is through their representatives in Congress to
cut down the appropriation for the forest ser
vice; and in consequence the administrative
heads of the service, in the effort to be econom
ical, are sometimes driven to the expedient of
trying to replace the permanently employed
experts by short-term men, picked up at hap
hazard, and hired only for the summer season.
This is all wrong: first, because the men thus
hired give very inferior service; and, second,
because the government should be a model em
ployer, and should not set a vicious example in
hiring men under conditions that tend to create
a shifting class of laborers who suffer from all
the evils of unsteady employment, varied by
long seasons of idleness. At this time the best
and most thoughtful farmers are endeavoring
to devise means for doing away with the system
of employing farm-hands in mass for a few
months and then discharging them; and the
A COUGAR HUNT 11
government should not itself have recourse to
this thoroughly pernicious system.
The preservation of game and of wild life
generally -- aside from the noxious species -
on these reserves is of incalculable benefit to
the people as a whole. As the game increases
in these national refuges and nurseries it over
flows into the surrounding country. Very
wealthy men can have private game-preserves
of their own. But the average man of small or
moderate means can enjoy the vigorous pastime
of the chase, and indeed can enjoy wild nature,
only if there are good general laws, properly
enforced, for the preservation of the game and
wild life, and if, furthermore, there are big
parks or reserves provided for the use of all
our people, like those of the Yellowstone, the
Yosemite, and the Colorado.
A small herd of bison has been brought to
the reserve; it is slowly increasing. It is pri
vately owned, one-third of the ownership being
in Uncle Jim, who handles the herd. The
government should immediately buy this herd.
Everything should be done to increase the
number of bison on the public reservations.
The chief game animal of the Colorado Can
yon reserve is the Rocky Mountain blacktail,
or mule, deer. The deer have increased greatly
12 A BOOK-LOVER'S HOLIDAYS
in numbers since the reserve was created, partly
because of the stopping of hunting by men,
and even more because of the killing off of the
cougars. The high plateau is their summer
range; in the winter the bitter cold and driving
snow send them and the cattle, as well as the
bands of wild horses, to the lower desert coun
try. For some cause, perhaps the limestone
soil, their antlers are unusually stout and large.
We found the deer tame and plentiful, and as
we rode or walked through the forest we con
tinually came across them — now a doe with
her fawn, now a party of does and fawns, or a
single buck, or a party of bucks. The antlers
were still in the velvet. Does would stand and
watch us go by within fifty or a hundred yards,
their big ears thrown forward; while the fawns
stayed hid near by. Sometimes we roused the
pretty spotted fawns, and watched them dart
away, the embodiments of delicate grace. One
buck, when a hound chased it, refused to run
and promptly stood at bay; another buck
jumped and capered, and also refused to run,
as we passed at but a few yards' distance. One
of the most beautiful sights I ever saw was on
this trip. We were slowly riding through the
open pine forest when we came on a party of
seven bucks. Four were yearlings or two-year-
A COUGAR HUNT 13
olds; but three were mighty master bucks, and
their velvet-clad antlers made them look as if
they had rocking-chairs on their heads. Stately
of port and bearing, they walked a few steps at
a time, or stood at gaze on the carpet of brown
needles strewn with cones; on their red coats
the flecked and broken sun -rays played; and as
we watched them, down the aisles of tall tree
trunks the odorous breath of the pines blew in
our faces.
The deadly enemies of the deer are the cou
gars. They had been very plentiful all over the
table-land until Uncle Jim thinned them out,
killing between two and three hundred. Usually
their lairs are made in the well-nigh inacces
sible ruggedness of the canyon itself. Those
which dwelt in the open forest were soon killed
off. Along the part of the canyon where we
hunted there was usually an upper wall of
sheer white cliffs; then came a very steep slope
covered by a thick scrub of dwarf oak and
locust, with an occasional piny on or pine; and
then another and deeper wall of vermilion
cliffs. It was along this intermediate slope
that the cougars usually passed the day. At
night they came up through some gorge or
break in the cliff and rambled through the
forests and along the rim after the deer. They
14 A BOOK-LOVER'S HOLIDAYS
are the most successful of all still-hunters,
killing deer much more easily than a wolf can;
and those we killed were very fat.
Cougars are strange and interesting crea
tures. They are among the most successful
and to their prey the most formidable beasts
of rapine in the world. Yet when themselves
attacked they are the least dangerous of all
beasts of prey, except hyenas. Their every
movement is so lithe and stealthy, they move
with such sinuous and noiseless caution, and
are such past masters in the art of concealment,
that they are hardly ever seen unless roused
by dogs. In the wilds they occasionally kill
wapiti, and often bighorn sheep and white
goats; but their favorite prey is the deer.
Among domestic animals, while they at times
kill all, including, occasionally, horned cattle,
they are especially destructive to horses. Among
the first bands of horses brought to this plateau
there were some of which the cougars killed
every foal. The big males attacked full-grown
horses. Uncle Jim had killed one big male
wjiich had killed a large draft-horse, and
another which had killed two saddle-horses and
a pack-mule, although the mule had a bell on
its neck, which it was mistakenly supposed
would keep the cougar away. We saw the
A COUGAR HUNT 15
skeleton of one of the saddle-horses. It was
killed when snow was on the ground, and when
Uncle Jim first saw the carcass the marks of
the struggle were plain. The cougar sprang on
its neck, holding the face with the claws of one
paw, while his fangs tore at the back of the
neck, just at the base of the skull; the other
fore paw was on the other side of the neck, and
the hind claws tore the withers and one shoulder
and flank. The horse struggled thirty yards or
so before he fell, and never rose again. The
draft-horse was seized in similar fashion. It
went but twenty yards before falling; then in
the snow 'could be seen the marks where it had
struggled madly on its side, plunging in a
circle, and the marks of the hind feet of the
cougar in an outside circle, while the fangs and
fore talons of the great cat never ceased tearing
the prey. In this case the fore claws so ripped
and tore the neck and throat that it was doubt
ful whether they, and not the teeth, had not
given the fatal wounds.
We came across the bodies of a number of
deer that had been killed by cougars. Gen
erally the remains were in such condition that
we could not see how the killing had been done.
In one or two cases the carcasses were sufficiently
fresh for us to examine them carefully. One
16 A BOOK-LOVER'S HOLIDAYS
doe had claw marks on her face, but no fang
marks on the head or neck; apparently the
neck had been broken by her own plunging
fall; then the cougar had bitten a hole in the
flank and eaten part of one haunch; but it had
not disembowelled its prey, as an African lion
would have done. Another deer, a buck, was
seized in similar manner; but the death -wound
was inflicted with the teeth, in singular fashion,
a great hole being torn into the chest, where
the neck joins the shoulder. Evidently there
is no settled and invariable method of killing.
We saw no signs of any cougar being injured
in the struggle; the prey was always seized
suddenly and by surprise, and in such fashion
that it could make no counter-attack.
Few African leopards would attack such
quarry as the big male cougars do. Yet the
leopard sometimes preys on man, and it is the
boldest and most formidable of fighters when
brought to bay. The cougar, on the contrary,
is the least dangerous to man of all the big cats.
There are authentic instances of its attacking
man ; but they are not merely rare but so wholly
exceptional that in practise they can be en
tirely disregarded. There is no more need of
being frightened when sleeping in, or wander
ing after nightfall through, a forest infested by
A COUGAR HUNT 17
cougars than if they were so many tom-cats.
Moreover, when itself assailed by either dogs or
men the cougar makes no aggressive fight. It
will stay in a tree for hours, kept there by a
single dog which it could kill at once if it had
the heart — and this although if hungry it will
itself attack and kill any dog, and on occasions
even a big wolf. If the dogs — or men -
come within a few feet, it will inflict formidable
wounds with its claws and teeth, the former
being used to hold the assailant while the latter
inflict the fatal bite. But it fights purely on
the defensive, whereas the leopard readily as
sumes the offensive and often charges, at head
long, racing speed, from a distance of fifty or
sixty yards. It is absolutely safe to walk up to
within ten yards of a cougar at bay, whether
wounded or unwounded, and to shoot it at
leisure.
Cougars are solitary beasts. When full-grown
the females outnumber the males about three
to one; and the sexes stay together for only a
few days at mating-time. The female rears
her kittens alone, usually in some cave; the
male would be apt to kill them if he could get
at them. The young are playful. Uncle Jim
once brought back to his cabin a young cougar,
two or three months old. At the time he had a
18 A BOOK-LOVER'S HOLIDAYS
hound puppy named Pot — he was an old dog,
the most dependable in the pack, when we
made our hunt. Pot had lost his mother; Uncle
Jim was raising him on canned milk, and, as it
was winter, kept him at night in a German
sock. The young cougar speedily accepted
Pot as a playmate, to be enjoyed and tyran
nized over. The two would lap out of the same
dish; but when the milk was nearly lapped up,
the cougar would put one paw on Pot's face,
and hold him firmly while it finished the dish
itself. Then it would seize Pot in its fore paws
and toss him up, catching him again; while
Pot would occasionally howl dismally, for the
young cougar had sharp little claws. Finally
the cougar would tire of the play, and then it
would take Pot by the back of the neck, carry
him off, and put him down in his box by the
German sock.
When we started on our cougar hunt there
were seven of us, with six pack-animals. The
latter included one mule, three donkeys — two
of them, Ted and Possum, very wise donkeys —
and two horses. The saddle-animals included
two mules and five horses, one of which solemnly
carried a cow-bell. It was a characteristic old-
time Western outfit. We met with the cus
tomary misadventures of such a trip, chiefly
A COUGAR HUNT 19
in connection with our animals. At night they
were turned loose to feed, most of them with
hobbles, some of them with bells. Before dawn,
two or three of the party - - usually including
one, and sometimes both, of the elder boys —
were off on foot, through the chilly dew, to
bring them in. Usually this was a matter of
an hour or two; but once it took a day, and
twice it took a half-day. Both breaking camp
and making camp, with a pack-outfit, take
time; and in our case each of the packers, in
cluding the two elder boys, used his own hitch —
single-diamond, squaw hitch, cow-man's hitch,
miner's hitch, Navajo hitch, as the case might
be. As for cooking and washing dishes — why,
I wish that the average tourist-sportsman, the
city-hunter-with-a-guide, would once in a while
have to cook and wash dishes for himself; it
would enable him to grasp the reality of things.
We were sometimes nearly drowned out by
heavy rain-storms. We had good food; but
the only fresh meat we had was the cougar
meat. This was delicious; quite as good as
venison. Yet men rarely eat cougar flesh.
Cougars should be hunted when snow is on
the ground. It is difficult for hounds to trail
them in hot weather, when there is no water
and the ground is dry and hard. However, we
20 A BOOK-LOVER'S HOLIDAYS
had to do the best we could; and the frequent
rains helped us. On most of the hunting days
we rode along the rim of the canyon and through
the woods, hour after hour, until the dogs grew
tired, or their feet sore, so that we deemed it
best to turn toward camp ; having either struck
no trail or else a trail so old that the hounds
could not puzzle it out. I did not have a rifle,
wishing the boys to do the shooting. The two
elder boys had tossed up for the first shot,
Nick winning. In cougar hunting the shot
is usually much the least interesting and im
portant part of the performance. The credit
belongs to the hounds, and to the man who
hunts the hounds. Uncle Jim hunted his
hounds excellently. He had neither horn nor
whip; instead, he threw pebbles, with much
accuracy of aim, at any recalcitrant dog — •
and several showed a tendency to hunt deer or
coyote. "They think they know best and needn't
obey me unless I have a nose-bag full of rocks,"
observed Uncle Jim.
Twice we had lucky days. On the first oc
casion we all seven left camp by sunrise with
the hounds. We began with an hour's chase
after a bobcat, which dodged back and forth
over and under the rim rock, and finally es
caped along a ledge in the cliff wall. At about
A COUGAR HUNT 21
eleven we struck a cougar trail of the night be
fore. It was a fine sight to see the hounds run
ning it through the woods in full cry, while
we loped after them. After one or two checks,
they finally roused the cougar, a big male, from
a grove of aspens at the head of a great gorge
which broke through the cliffs into the canyon.
Down the gorge went the cougar, and then
along the slope between the white cliffs and the
red; and after some delay in taking the wrong
trail, the hounds followed him. The gorge was
impassable for horses, and we rode along the
rim, looking down into the depths, from which
rose the chiming of the hounds. At last a
change in the sound showed that they had him
treed; and after a while we saw them far below
under a pine, across the gorge, and on the upper
edge of the vermilion cliff wall. Down we went
to them, scrambling and sliding; down a break
in the cliffs, round the head of the gorge just
before it broke off into a side-canyon, through
the thorny scrub which tore our hands and
faces, along the slope where, if a man started
rolling, he never would stop until life had left
his body. Before we reached him the cougar
leaped from the tree and tore off, with his big
tail stretched straight as a bar behind him;
but a cougar is a short-winded beast, and a
22 A BOOK-LOVER'S HOLIDAYS
couple of hundred yards on, the hounds put
him up another tree. Thither we went.
It was a wild sight. The maddened hounds
bayed at the foot of the pine. Above them, in
the lower branches, stood the big horse-killing
cat, the destroyer of the deer, the lord of stealthy
murder, facing his doom with a heart both
craven and cruel. Almost beneath him the
vermilion cliffs fell sheer a thousand feet with
out a break. Behind him lay the Grand Can
yon in its awful and desolate majesty.
Nicholas shot true. With his neck broken,
the cougar fell from the tree, and the body was
clutched by Uncle Jim and Archie before it could
roll over the cliff - - while I experienced a mo
ment's lively doubt as to whether all three might
not waltz into the abyss together. Cautiously
we dragged him along the rim to another tree,
where we skinned him. Then, after a hard
pull out of the canyon, we rejoined the horses;
rain came on; and, while the storm pelted
against our slickers and down-drawn slouch-
hats, we rode back to our water-drenched
camp.
On our second day of success only three of
us went out --Uncle Jim, Archie, and I. Un
fortunately, Quentin's horse went lame that
morning, and he had to stay with the pack-train.
A COUGAR HUNT 23
For two or three hours we rode through the
woods and along the rim of the canyon. Then
the hounds struck a cold trail and began to
puzzle it out. They went slowly along to one
of the deep, precipice-hemmed gorges which
from time to time break the upper cliff wall of
the canyon; and after some busy nose-work
they plunged into its depths. We led our horses
to the bottom, slipping, sliding, and pitching,
and clambered, panting and gasping, up the
other side. Then we galloped along the rim.
Far below us we could at times hear the hounds.
One of them was a bitch, with a squealing voice.
The other dogs were under the first cliffs, work
ing out a trail, which was evidently growing
fresher. Much farther down we could hear the
squealing of the bitch, apparently on another
trail. However, the trails came together, and
the shrill yelps of the bitch were drowned in
the deeper-toned chorus of the other hounds,
as the fierce intensity of the cry told that the
game was at last roused. Soon they had the
cougar treed. Like the first, it was in a pine
at the foot of the steep slope, just above the ver
milion cliff wall. We scrambled down to the
beast, a big male, and Archie broke its neck;
in such a position it was advisable to kill it
outright, as, if it struggled at all, it was likely
24 A BOOK-LOVER'S HOLIDAYS
to slide over the edge of the cliff and fall a thou
sand feet sheer.
It was a long way down the slope, with its
jungle of dwarf oak and locust, and the climb
back, with the skin and flesh of the cougar,
would be heart-breaking. So, as there was a
break in the cliff line above, Uncle Jim suggested
to Archie to try to lead down our riding animals
while he, Uncle Jim, skinned the cougar. By the
time the skin was off, Archie turned up with our
two horses and Uncle Jim's mule — an animal
which galloped as freely as a horse. Then the
skin and flesh were packed behind his and
Uncle Jim's saddles, and we started to lead
the three animals up the steep, nearly sheer
mountainside. We had our hands full. The
horses and mule could barely make it. Fi
nally the saddles of both the laden animals
slipped, and Archie's horse in his fright nearly
went over the cliff — it was a favorite horse of
his, a black horse from the plains below, with
good blood in it, but less at home climbing
cliffs than were the mountain horses. On that
slope anything that started rolling never stopped
unless it went against one of the rare pine or
piny on trees. The horse plunged and reared;
Archie clung to its head for dear life, trying to
prevent it from turning down-hill, while Uncle
A COUGAR HUNT 25
Jim sought to undo the saddle and I clutched
the bridle of his mule and of my horse and kept
them quiet. Finally the frightened black horse
sank on his knees with his head on Archie's lap;
the saddle was taken off — and promptly rolled
down-hill fifty or sixty yards before it fetched
up against a piny on; we repacked, and finally
reached the top of the rim.
Meanwhile the hounds had again started,
and we concluded that the bitch must have
been on the trail of a different animal, after
all. By the time we were ready to proceed
they were out of hearing, and we completely
lost track of them. So Uncle Jim started in
the direction he deemed it probable they would
take, and after a while we were joined by Pot.
Evidently the dogs were tired and thirsty and
had scattered. In about an hour, as we rode
through the open pine forest across hills and
valleys, Archie and I caught, very faintly, a
far-off baying note. Uncle Jim could not hear
it, but we rode toward the spot, and after a
time caught the note again. Soon Pot heard
it and trotted toward the sound. Then we
came over a low hill crest, and when half-way
down we saw a cougar crouched in a pine on
the opposite slope, while one of the hounds,
named Ranger, uttered at short intervals a
26 A BOOK-LOVER'S HOLIDAYS
husky bay as he kept his solitary vigil at the
foot of the tree. Archie insisted that I should
shoot, and thrust the rifle into my hand as we
galloped down the incline. The cougar, a
'young and active female, leaped out of the
tree and rushed off at a gait that for a moment
left both dogs behind; and after her we tore
at full speed through the woods and over rocks
and logs. A few hundred yards farther on her
bolt was shot, and the dogs, and we also, were
at her heels. She went up a pine which had no
branches for the lower thirty or forty feet. It
was interesting to see her climb. Her two fore
paws were placed on each side of the stem, and
her hind paws against it, all the cla\vs digging
into the wood ; her body was held as clear of the
tree as if she had been walking on the ground,
the legs being straight, and she walked or ran
up the perpendicular stem w^ith as much day
light between her body and the trunk as there
was between her body and the earth when she
was on the ground. As she faced us among the
branches I could only get a clear shot into her
chest where the neck joins the shoulder; down
she came, but on the ground she jumped to her
feet, ran fifty yards with the dogs at her heels,
turned to bay in some fallen timber, and dropped
dead.
A COUGAR HUNT 27
The last days before we left this beautiful
holiday region we spent on the table-land called
Greenland, which projects into the canyon east
of Bright Angel. We were camped by the Drip
ping Springs, in singular and striking surround
ings. A long valley leads south through the
table-land; and just as it breaks into a sheer
walled chasm which opens into one of the side
loops of the great canyon, the trail turns into
a natural gallery along the face of the cliff. For
a couple of hundred yards a rock shelf a dozen
feet wide runs under a rock overhang which
often projects beyond it. The gallery is in
some places twenty feet high; in other places
a man on horseback must stoop his head as he
rides. Then, at a point where the shelf broadens,
the clear spring pools of living water, fed by
constant dripping from above, lie on the inner
side next to and under the rock wall. A little
beyond these pools, with the chasm at our feet,
and its opposite wall towering immediately in
front of us, we threw down our bedding and
made camp. Darkness fell; the stars were
brilliant overhead; the fire of pitchy pine
stumps flared; and in the light of the wavering
flames the cliff walls and jutting rocks mo
mentarily shone with ghastly clearness, and
as instantly vanished in utter gloom.
28 A BOOK-LOVER'S HOLIDAYS
From the southernmost point of this table
land the view of the canyon left the beholder
so^mn with the sense of awe. At high noon,
under the unveiled sun, every tremendous de
tail leaped in glory to the sight; yet in hue and
shape the change was unceasing from moment
to moment. When clouds swept the heavens,
vast shadows were cast; but so vast was the
canyon that these shadows seemed but patches
of gray and purple and umber. The dawn and
the evening twilight were brooding mysteries
over the dusk of the abyss; night shrouded its
immensity, but did not hide it; and to none of
the sons of men is it given to tell of the wonder
and splendor of sunrise and sunset in the Grand
Canyon of the Colorado.
CHAPTER II
ACROSS THE NAVAJO DESERT
WE dropped down from Buckskin Moun
tain, from the land of the pine and
spruce and of cold, clear springs, into
the grim desolation of the desert. We drove
the pack-animals and loose horses, usually one
of us taking the lead to keep the trail. The
foreman of the Bar Z had lent us two horses
for our trip, in true cattleman's spirit; another
Bar Z man, who with his wife lived at Lee's
Ferry, showed us every hospitality, and gave us
fruit from his garden, and chickens; and two of
the Bar Z riders helped Archie and Nick shoe
one of our horses. It was a land of wide spaces
and few people, but those few we met were so
friendly and helpful that we shall not soon for
get them.
At noon of the first day we had come down the
mountainside, from the tall northern forest trees
at the summit, through the scattered, sprawling
pinyons and cedars of the side slopes, to the
barren, treeless plain of sand and sage-brush
29
30 A BOOK-LOVER'S HOLIDAYS
and greasewood. At the foot of the mountain
we stopped for a few minutes at an outlying
cow-ranch. There was not a tree, not a bush
more than knee-high, on the whole plain round
about. The bare little ranch-house, of stone
and timber, lay in the full glare of the sun;
through the open door wre saw the cluttered
cooking-utensils and the rolls of untidy bedding.
The foreman, rough and kindly, greeted us
from the door; spare and lean, his eyes blood
shot and his face like roughened oak from the
pitiless sun, wind, and sand of the desert. After
we had dismounted, our shabby ponies moped
at the hitching-post as we stood talking. In
the big corral a mob of half-broken horses were
gathered, and two dust-grimed, hard-faced cow-
punchers, lithe as panthers, were engaged in
breaking a couple of wild ones. All around,
dotted with stunted sage-brush and greasewood,
the desert stretched, blinding white in the sun
light; across its surface the dust clouds moved
in pillars, and in the distance the heat-waves
danced and wavered.
During the afternoon we shogged steadily
across the plain. At one place, far off to one
side, we saw a band of buffalo, and between
them and us a herd of wild donkeys. Otherwise
the only living things were snakes and lizards.
ACROSS THE NAVAJO DESERT 31
On the other side of the plain, two or three miles
from a high wall of vermilion cliffs, we stopped
for the night at a little stone rest-house, built
as a station by a cow outfit. Here there were
big corrals, and a pool of water piped down by
the cow-men from a spring many miles distant.
On the sand grew the usual desert plants, and
on some of the ridges a sparse growth of grass,
sufficient for the night feed of the hardy horses.
The little stone house and the corrals stood
bare and desolate on the empty plain. Soon
after we reached them a sand-storm rose and
blew so violently that we took refuge inside the
house. Then the wind died down; and as the
sun sank toward the horizon we sauntered off
through the hot, still evening. There were
many sidewinder rattlesnakes. We killed several
of the gray, flat-headed, venomous things; as
we slept on the ground outside the house, un
der the open sky, we were glad to kill as many
as possible, for they sometimes crawl into a
sleeper's blankets. Except this baleful life, there
was little save the sand and the harsh, scanty
vegetation. Across the lonely wastes the sun
went down. The sharply channelled cliffs turned
crimson in the dying light; all the heavens
flamed ruby red, and faded to a hundred dim
hues of opal, beryl and amber, pale turquoise
32 A BOOK-LOVER'S HOLIDAYS
and delicate emerald; and then night fell and
darkness shrouded the desert.
Next morning the horse-wranglers, Nick and
Quentin, were off before dawn to bring in the
saddle and pack animals; the sun rose in burn
ing glory, and through the breathless heat we
drove the pack-train before us toward the
crossing of the Colorado. Hour after hour we
plodded ahead. The cliff line bent back at an
angle, and we followed into the valley of the
Colorado. The trail edged in toward the high
cliffs as they gradually drew toward the river.
At last it followed along the base of the frown
ing rock masses. Far off on our right lay the
Colorado; on its opposite side the broad river
valley was hemmed in by another line of cliffs,
at whose foot we were to travel for two days
after crossing the river.
The landscape had become one of incredible
wildness, of tremendous and desolate majesty.
No one could paint or describe it save one of
the great masters of imaginative art or litera
ture — a Turner or Browning or Poe. The
sullen rock walls towered hundreds of feet aloft,
with something about their grim savagery that
suggested both the terrible and the grotesque.
All life was absent, both from them and from
the fantastic barrenness of the bowlder-strewn
ACROSS THE NAVAJO DESERT 33
land at their bases. The ground was burned
out or washed bare. In one place a little stream
trickled forth at the bottom of a ravine, but
even here no grass grew - - only little clusters of
a coarse weed with flaring white flowers that
looked as if it throve on poisoned soil. In the
still heat "we saw the silences move by and
beckon." The cliffs were channelled into myriad
forms — battlements, spires, pillars, buttressed
towers, flying arches ; they looked like the ruined
castles and temples of the monstrous devil-
deities of some vanished race. All were ruins —
ruins vaster than those of any structures ever
reared by the hands of men — as if some magic
city, built by warlocks and sorcerers, had been
wrecked by the wrath of the elder gods. Evil
dwelt in the silent places; from battlement to
lonely battlement fiends' voices might have
raved; in the utter desolation of each empty
valley the squat blind tower might have stood,
and giants lolled at length to see the death of a
soul at bay.
As the afternoon wore on, storm boded in
the south. The day grew sombre; to the desola
tion of the blinding light succeeded the desola
tion of utter gloom. The echoes of the thunder
rolled among the crags, and lightning jagged
the darkness. The heavens burst, and the
34 A BOOK-LOVER'S HOLIDAYS
downpour drove in our faces; then through
cloud rifts the sun's beams shone again and we
looked on "the shining race of rain whose hair
a great wind scattereth."
At Lee's Ferry, once the home of the dark
leader of the Danites, the cliffs, a medley of
bold colors and striking forms, come close to
the river's brink on either side; but at this one
point there is a break in the canyon walls and
a ferry can be run. A stream flowrs into the
river from the north. By it there is a house,
and the miracle of water has done its work.
Under irrigation, there are fields of corn and
alfalfa, groves of fruit-trees, and gardens; a
splash of fresh, cool green in the harsh waste.
South of the ferry we found two mule-wagons,
sent for us by Mr. Hubbell, of Ganado, to whose
thoughtful kindness we owed much. One was
driven by a Mexican, Francisco Marquez; the
other, the smaller one, by a Navajo Indian,
Loko, who acted as cook; both were capital
men, and we lived in much comfort while with
them. A Navajo policeman accompanied us as
guide, for we were now in the great Navajo
reservation. A Navajo brought us a sheep for
sale, and we held a feast.
For two days we drove southward through the
desert country, along the foot of a range of red
ACROSS THE NAVAJO DESERT 35
cliffs. In places the sand was heavy; in others
the ground was hard, and the teams made good
progress. There were little water-holes, usually
more or less alkaline, ten or fifteen miles apart.
At these the Navajos were watering their big
flocks of sheep and goats, their horses and don
keys, and their few cattle. They are very inter
esting Indians. They live scattered out, each
family by itself, or two or three families together;
not in villages, like their neighbors the Hopis.
They are pastoral Indians, but they are agri
culturists also, as far as the desert permits.
Here and there, where there was a little seepage
of water, we saw their meagre fields of corn,
beans, squashes, and melons. All were mounted ;
the men usually on horses, the women and chil
dren often on donkeys. They were clad in white
man's garb; at least the men wore shirts and
trousers and the women bodices and skirts; but
the shirts were often green or red or saffron or
bright blue; their long hair was knotted at the
back of the head, and they usually wore moc
casins. The well-to-do carried much jewelry of
their own make. They wore earrings and neck
laces of turquoise; turquoises were set in their
many silver ornaments; and they wore buttons
and bangles of silver, for they are cunning
silversmiths, as well as weavers of the famous
36 A BOOK-LOVER'S HOLIDAYS
Navajo blankets. Although they practise polyg
amy, and divorce is easy, their women are
usually well treated; and we saw evidences of
courtesy and consideration not too common even
among civilized people. At one halt a woman
on a donkey, with a little boy behind her, rode
up to the wagon. We gave her and the boy food.
Later when a Navajo man came up, she quietly
handed him a couple of delicacies. So far there
was nothing of note; but the man equally
quietly and with a slight smile of evident grati
tude and appreciation stretched out his hand;
and for a moment they stood with clasped
hands, both pleased, one with the courtesy, and
the other with the way the courtesy had been
received. Both were tattered beings on don
keys; but it made a pleasant picture.
These are as a whole good Indians — al
though some are very bad, and should be han
dled rigorously. Most of them work hard, and
wring a reluctant living from the desert; often
their houses are miles from water, and they use
it sparingly. They live on a reservation in which
many acres are necessary to support life; I do
not believe that at present they ought to be
allotted land in severalty, and their whole res
ervation should be kept for them, if only they
can be brought forward fast enough in stock-
ACROSS THE NAVAJO DESERT 37
raising and agriculture to use it; for with In
dians and white men alike it is use which should
determine occupancy of the soil. The Navajos
have made progress of a real type, and stand
far above mere savagery ; and everything possi
ble should be done to help them help them
selves, to teach them English, and, above all,
to teach them how to be better stock-raisers
and food-growers — as well as smiths and
weavers — in their desert home. The whites
have treated these Indians well. They bene
fited by the coming of the Spaniards; they have
benefited more by the coming of our own people.
For the last quarter of a century the lawless
individuals among them have done much more
wrong (including murder) to the whites than has
been done to them by lawless whites. The law
less Indians are the worst menace to the others
among the Navajos and Utes; and very serious
harm has been done by well-meaning Eastern
philanthropists who have encouraged and pro
tected these criminals. I have known some
startling cases of this kind.
During the second day of our southward
journey the Painted Desert, in gaudy desola
tion, lay far to our right; and we crossed tongues
and patches of the queer formation, with its
hard, bright colors. Red and purple, green
38 A BOOK-LOVER'S HOLIDAYS
and bluish, orange and gray and umber brown,
the streaked and splashed clays and marls had
been carved by wind and weather into a thou
sand outlandish forms. Funnel-shaped sand
storms moved across the waste. We climbed
gradually upward to the top of the mesa. The
yellow sand grew heavier and deeper. There
were occasional short streams from springs;
but they ran in deep gullies, with nothing to
tell of their presence; never a tree near by and
hardly a bush or a tuft of grass, unless planted
and tended by man. We passed the stone walls
of an abandoned trading-post. The desert had
claimed its own. The ruins lay close to a low
range of cliffs; the white sand, dazzling under
the sun, had drifted everywhere; there was not
a plant, not a green thing in sight — nothing
but the parched and burning lifelessness of rock
and sand. This northern Arizona desert was
less attractive than the southern desert along
the road to the Roosevelt Dam and near Mesa,
for instance; for in the south the cactus growth
is infinitely varied in size and in fantastic
shape.
In the late afternoon we reached Tuba, with
its Indian school and its trader's store. Tuba
was once a Mormon settlement, the Mormons
having been invited thither by the people of a
ACROSS THE NAVAJO DESERT 39
near-by Hopi village — which we visited — be
cause the Hopis wished protection from hostile
Indian foes. As usual, the Mormon settlers had
planted and cared for many trees — cotton-
woods, poplars, almond-trees, and flowering
acacias — and the green shade was doubly at
tractive in that sandy desert. We were most
hospitably received, especially by the school
superintendent, and also by the trader. They
showed us every courtesy. Mentioning the
abandoned trading-post in the desert to the
wife of the trader, she told us that it was there
she had gone as a bride. The women who live
in the outposts of civilization have brave souls !
We rested the horses for a day, and then
started northward, toward the trading-station
of John Wetherill, near Navajo Mountain and
the Natural Bridge. The first day's travel was
through heavy sand and very tiring to the
teams. Late in the afternoon we came to an
outlying trader's store, on a sandy hillside. In
the plain below, where not a blade of grass
grew, were two or three permanent pools; and
toward these the flocks of the Navajos were
hurrying, from every quarter, with their herds
men. The sight was curiously suggestive of
the sights I so often saw in Africa, when the
Masai and Samburu herdsmen brought their
40 A BOOK-LOVER'S HOLIDAYS
flocks to water. On we went, not halting until
nine in the evening.
All next day we travelled through a parched,
monotonous landscape, now and then meeting
Navajos with their flocks and herds, and pass
ing by an occasional Navajo "hogan," or hovel-
like house, with its rough corral near by. To
ward evening we struck into Marsh Pass, and
camped at the summit. Here we were again
among the mountains; and the great gorge
was wonderfully picturesque — well worth a
visit from any landscape-lover, were there not
so many sights still more wonderful in the im
mediate neighborhood. The lower rock masses
were orange-hued, and above them rose red
battlements of cliff; where the former broke
into sheer sides there were old houses of the
cliff-dwellers, carved in the living rock. The
half -moon hung high overhead; the scene was
wild and lovely, when we strolled away from
the camp-fire among the scattered cedars and
pinyons through the cool, still night.
Next morning we journeyed on, and in the fore
noon we reached Kayentay, where John Weth-
erill, the guide and Indian trader, lives. We had
been travelling over a bare table-land, through
surroundings utterly desolate; and with star
tling suddenness, as we dropped over the edge,
ACROSS THE NAVAJO DESERT 41
we came on the group of houses --the store,
the attractive house of Mr. and Mrs. Wetherill,
and several other buildings. Our new friends
were the kindest and most hospitable of hosts,
and their house was a delight to every sense:
clean, comfortable, with its bath and running
water, its rugs and books, its desks, cupboards,
couches and chairs, and the excellent taste of
its Navajo ornamentation. Here we parted
with our two wagons, and again took to pack-
trains; we had already grown attached to
Francisco and Loko, and felt sorry to say good-
by to them.
On August 10, under WetherilPs guidance, we
started for the Natural Bridge, seven of us, all
told, with five pack-horses. We travelled light,
with no tentage, and when it rained at night we
curled up in our bedding under our slickers. I
was treated as "the Colonel," and did nothing
but look after my own horse and bedding, and
usually not even this much; but every one else
in the outfit worked ! On the two days spent in
actually getting into and out of the very difficult
country around the Bridge itself we cut down our
luggage still further, taking the necessary food
in the most portable form, and, as regards bed
ding, trusting, in cowboy fashion, to our slickers
and horse blankets. But we were comfortable,
42 A BOOK-LOVER'S HOLIDAYS
and the work was just hard enough to keep us
in fine trim.
We began by retracing our steps to the head
of Marsh Pass and turning westward up Laguna
Canyon. This was so named because it con
tained pools of water when, half a century ago,
Kit Carson, the type of all that was best among
the old-style mountain man and plainsman,
traversed it during one of his successful Indian
campaigns. The story of the American ad
vance through the Southwest is filled with
feats of heroism. Yet, taking into account
the means of doing the work, even greater
dangers were fronted, even more severe hard
ships endured, and even more striking triumphs
achieved by the soldiers and priests who three
centuries previously, during Spain's brief sun
burst of glory, first broke through the portals
of the thirst-guarded, Indian-haunted desert.
At noon we halted in a side-canyon, at the
foot of a mighty cliff, where there were ruins
of a big village of cliff-dwellers. The cliff was
of the form so common in this type of rock
formation. It was not merely sheer, but re
entrant, making a huge, arched, shallow cave,
several hundred feet high, and at least a hun
dred — perhaps a hundred and fifty - - feet deep,
the overhang being enormous. The stone houses
ACROSS THE NAVAJO DESERT 43
of the village, which in all essentials was like
a Hopi village of to-day, were plastered against
the wall in stories, each resting on a narrow
ledge. Long poles permitted one to climb from
ledge to ledge, and gave access, through the
roofs, to the more inaccessible houses. The im
mense size of the cave — or overhanging, re
entrant cliff, whichever one chooses to call it -
dwarfed the houses, so that they looked like
toy houses.
There were many similar, although smaller,
villages and little clusters of houses among the
cliffs of this tangle of canyons. Once the cliff-
dwellers had lived in numbers in this neighbor
hood, sleeping in their rock aeries, and ven
turing into the valleys only to cultivate their
small patches of irrigated land. Generations
had passed since these old cliff-dwellers had been
killed or expelled. Compared with the neigh
boring Indians, they had already made a long
stride in cultural advance when the Spaniards
arrived; but they were shrinking back before
the advance of the more savage tribes. Their
history should teach the lesson - - taught by
all history in thousands of cases, and now being
taught before our eyes by the experience of
China, but being taught to no purpose so far
as concerns those ultra peace advocates whose
44 A BOOK-LOVER'S HOLIDAYS
heads are even softer than their hearts --that
the industrious race of advanced culture and
peaceful ideals is lost unless it retains the power
not merely for defensive but for offensive ac
tion, when itself menaced by vigorous and ag
gressive foes.
That night, having ridden only some twenty-
five miles, we camped in Bubbling Spring Val
ley. It would be hard to imagine a wilder or
more beautiful spot; if in the Old World, the
valley would surely be celebrated in song and
story; here it is one among many others, all
equally unknown. We camped by the bubbling
spring of pure cold water from which it derives
its name. The long, winding valley was carpeted
with emerald green, varied by wide bands and rib
bons of lilac, where the tall ranks of bee-blos
soms, haunted by humming-birds, grew thickly,
often for a quarter of a mile at a stretch. The
valley was walled in by towering cliffs, a few of
them sloping, most of them sheer-sided or with
the tops overhanging; and there were isolated
rock domes and pinnacles. As everywhere round
about, the rocks were of many colors, and the
colors varied from hour to hour, so that the
hues of sunrise differed from those of noonday,
and yet again from the long lights of sunset.
The cliffs seemed orange and purple; and again
ACROSS THE NAVAJO DESERT 45
they seemed vermilion and umber; or in the white
glare they were white and yellow and light red.
Our routine was that usual when travelling
with a pack-train. By earliest dawn the men
whose duties were to wrangle the horses and
cook had scrambled out of their bedding; and
the others soon followed suit. There is always
much work with a pack-outfit, and there are
almost always some animals which cause trouble
when being packed. The sun was well up be
fore we started; then we travelled until sunset,
taking out a couple of hours to let the hobbled
horses and mules rest and feed at noon.
On the second day out we camped not far
from the foot of Navajo Mountain. We came
across several Indians, both Navajos and Utes,
guarding their flocks and herds; and we passed
by several of their flimsy branch-built summer
houses, and their mud, stone, and log winter
houses; and by their roughly fenced fields of
corn and melons watered by irrigation ditches.
Wetherill hired two Indians, a Ute and a Nav
ajo, to go with us, chiefly to relieve us of the
labor of looking after our horses at night. They
were pleasant-faced, silent men. They wore
broad hats, shirts and waistcoats, trousers, and
red handkerchiefs loosely knotted round their
necks; except for their moccasins, a feather in
46 A BOOK-LOVER'S HOLIDAYS
each hat, and two or three silver ornaments,
they were dressed like cowboys, and both
picturesquely and appropriately. Their orna
mented saddles were of Navajo make.
The second day's march \vas long. At one
point we dropped into and climbed out of a
sheer-sided canyon some twrelve hundred feet
deep. The trail, which zigzagged up and down
the rocky walls, had been made by the Navajos.
After we had led our horses down into the
canyon, and were lunching by a spring, we
were followed by several Indians driving large
flocks of goats and sheep. They came down
the trail at a good rate, many of them riding
instead of leading their horses. One rather
comely squaw attracted our attention. She
was riding a weedy, limber-legged brood-mare,
followed by a foal. The mare did not look as
if it would be particularly strong even on the
level; yet the well-dressed squaw, holding be
fore her both her baby and her long sticks for
blanket-weaving, and with behind her another
child and a small roll of things which included a
black umbrella, ambled down among the broken
rocks with entire unconcern, and joked cheerily
with us as she passed.
The night was lovely, and the moon, nearly
full, softened the dry harshness of the land,
ACROSS THE NAVAJO DESERT 47
while Navajo Mountain loomed up under it.
When we rose, we saw the pale dawn turn blood-
red; and shortly after sunrise we started for
our third and final day's journey to the Bridge.
For some ten miles the track was an ordinary
rough mountain trail. Then we left all our
pack-animals except two little mules, and be
gan the hard part of our trip. From this point
on the trail was that followed by Wetherill on
his various trips to the Bridge, and it can per
haps fairly be called dangerous in two or three
places, at least for horses. Wetherill has been
with every party that has visited the Bridge
from the time of its discovery by white men
four years ago. On that occasion he was with
two parties, their guide being the Ute who was
at this time with us. Mrs. Wetherill has made
an extraordinarily sympathetic study of the
Navajos and to a less extent of the Utes; she
knows, and feelingly understands, their tradi
tions and ways of thought, and speaks their
tongue fluently; and it was she who first got
from the Indians full knowledge of the Bridge.
The hard trail began with a twenty minutes'
crossing of a big mountain dome of bare sheet
rock. Over this we led our horses, up, down,
and along the sloping sides, which fell away
into cliffs that were scores and even hundreds
48 A BOOK-LOVER'S HOLIDAYS
of feet deep. One spot was rather ticklish.
We led the horses down the rounded slope to
where a crack or shelf six or eight inches broad
appeared and went off level to the right for some
fifty feet. For half a dozen feet before we
dropped down to this shelf the slope was steep
enough to make it difficult for both horses and
men to keep their footing on the smooth rock;
there was nothing whatever to hold on to, and
a precipice lay underneath.
On we went, under the pitiless sun, through
a contorted wilderness of scalped peaks and
ranges, barren passes, and twisted valleys of
sun-baked clay. We worked up and down
steep hill slopes, and along tilted masses of
sheet-rock ending in cliffs. At the foot of one
of these lay the bleached skeleton of a horse.
It was one which Wetherill had ridden on one
of his trips to the Bridge. The horse lost his
footing on the slippery slide rock, and went to
his death over the cliff; Wetherill threw himself
out of the saddle and just managed to escape.
The last four miles were the worst of all for the
horses. They led along the bottom of the
Bridge canyon. It was covered with a torrent-
strewn mass of smooth rocks, from pebbles to
bowlders of a ton's weight. It was a marvel
that the horses got down without breaking their
ACROSS THE NAVAJO DESERT 49
legs; and the poor beasts were nearly worn
out.
Huge and bare the immense cliffs towered,
on either hand, and in front and behind as the
canyon turned right and left. They lifted
straight above us for many hundreds of feet.
The sunlight lingered on their tops; far below,
we made our way like pygmies through the
gloom of the great gorge. As we neared the
Bridge the horse trail led up to one side, and
along it the Indians drove the horses ; we walked
at the bottom of the canyon so as to see the
Bridge first from below and realize its true size;
for from above it is dwarfed by the immense
mountain masses surrounding it.
At last we turned a corner, and the tremen
dous arch of the Bridge rose in front of us. It
is surely one of the wonders of the world. It
is a triumphal arch rather than a bridge, and
spans the torrent bed in a majesty never shared
by any arch ever reared by the mightiest con
querors among the nations of mankind. At
this point there were deep pools in the rock bed
of the canyon, with overhanging shelves under
which grew beautiful ferns and hanging plants.
Hot and tired, we greeted the chance for a bath,
and as I floated on my back in the water the
Bridge towered above me. Then we made
50 A BOOK-LOVER'S HOLIDAYS
camp. We built a blazing fire under one of
the giant buttresses of the arch, and the leaping
flame brought it momentarily into sudden re
lief. We white men talked and laughed by the
fire, and the two silent Indians sat by and lis
tened to us. The night was cloudless. The
round moon rose under the arch and flooded
the cliffs behind us with her radiance. After
she passed behind the mountains the heavens
were still brilliant with starlight, and whenever
I waked I turned and gazed at the loom of the
mighty arch against the clear night sky.
Next morning early we started on our toil
some return trip. The pony trail led under
the arch. Along this the Ute drove our pack-
mules, and as I followed him I noticed that
the Navajo rode around outside. His creed
bade him never pass under an arch, for the arch
is the sign of the rainbow, the sign of the sun's
course over the earth, and to the Navajo it is
sacred. This great natural bridge, so recently
"discovered" by white men, has for ages been
known to the Indians. Near it, against the
rock walls of the canyon, we saw the crum
bling remains of some cliff-dwellings, and almost
under it there is what appears to be the ruin of
a very ancient shrine.
We travelled steadily at a good gait, and we
ACROSS THE NAVAJO DESERT 51
feasted on a sheep we bought from a band of
Utes. Early on the afternoon of the sixth day
of our absence we again rode our weary horses
over the hill slope down to the store at Kayentay,
and glad we were to see the comfortable ranch
buildings.
Many Navajos were continually visiting the
store. It seems a queer thing to say, but I
really believe Kayentay would be an excellent
place for a summer school of archaeology and
ethnology. There are many old cliff-dwellings,
some of large size and peculiar interest, in the
neighborhood; and the Navajos of this region
themselves, not to mention the village-dwelling
Hopis, are Indians who will repay the most
careful study, whether of language, religion,
or ordinary customs and culture. As always
when I have seen Indians in their homes, in
mass, I was struck by the wide cultural and in
tellectual difference among the different tribes,
as well as among the different individuals of
each tribe, and both by the great possibilities
for their improvement and by the need of show
ing common sense even more than good inten
tions if this improvement is to be achieved.
Some Indians can hardly be moved forward
at all. Some can be moved forward both fast
and far. To let them entirely alone usually
52 A BOOK-LOVER'S HOLIDAYS
means their ruin. To interfere with them fool
ishly, with whatever good intentions, and to try
to move all of them forward in a mass, with
a jump, means their ruin. A few individuals
in every tribe, and most of the individuals
in some tribes, can move very far forward at
once; the non-reservation schools do excellently
for these. Most of them need to be advanced
by degrees; there must be a half-way house at
which they can halt, or they may never reach
their final destination and stand on a level with
the white man.
The Navajos have made long strides in ad
vance during the last fifty years, thanks to the
presence of the white men in their neighborhood.
Many decent men have helped them — soldiers,
agents, missionaries, traders; and the help has
quite as often been given unconsciously as con
sciously; and some of the most conscientious
efforts to help them have flatly failed. The
missionaries have made comparatively few con
verts; but many of the missionaries have added
much to the influences telling for the gradual
uplift of the tribe. Outside benevolent societies
have done some good work at times, but have
been mischievous influences when guided by
ignorance and sentimentality — a notable in
stance on this Navajo reservation is given by
ACROSS THE NAVAJO DESERT 53
Mr. Leupp in his book "The Indian and His
Problem." Agents and other government of
ficials, when of the best type, have done most
good, and when not of the right type have done
most evil; and they have never done any good
at all when they have been afraid of the Indians
or have hesitated relentlessly to punish Indian
wrong-doers, even if these wrong-doers were
supported by some unwise missionaries or ill-
advised Eastern benevolent societies. The trad
ers of the right type have rendered genuine,
and ill-appreciated, service, and their stores and
houses are centres of civilizing influence.
Good work can be done, and has been done, at
the schools. Wherever the effort is to jump the
ordinary Indian too far ahead and yet send
him back to the reservation, the result is usually
failure. To be useful the steps for the ordinary
boy or girl, in any save the most advanced
tribes, must normally be gradual. Enough
English should be taught to enable such a boy
or girl to read, write, and cipher so as not to
be cheated in ordinary commercial transactions.
Outside of this the training should be indus
trial, and, among the Navajos, it should be
the kind of industrial training which shall avail
in the home cabins and in tending flocks and herds
and irrigated fields. The Indian should be en-
54 A BOOK-LOVER'S HOLIDAYS
couraged to build a better house; but the
house must not be too different from his pres
ent dwelling, or he will, as a rule, neither build
it nor live in it. The boy should be taught
what will be of actual use to him among his
fellows, and not what might be of use to a
skilled mechanic in a big city, who can work
only with first-class appliances; and the agency
farmer should strive steadily to teach the young
men out in the field how to better their stock
and practically to increase the yield of their
rough agriculture. The girl should be taught
domestic science, not as it would be practised
in a first-class hotel or a wealthy private home,
but as she must practise it in a hut with no
conveniences, and with intervals of sheep-herd
ing. If the boy and girl are not so taught, their
after lives will normally be worthless both to
themselves and to others. If they are so taught,
they will normally themselves rise and will be
the most effective of home missionaries for
their tribe.
In Horace Greeley's " Overland Journey,"
published more than half a century ago, there
are words of sound wisdom on this subject.
Said Greeley (I condense): "In future efforts
to improve the condition of the Indians the
women should be specially regarded and ap-
ACROSS THE NAVAJO DESERT 55
pealed to. A conscientious, humane, capable
Christian trader, with a wife thoroughly skilled
in household manufactures and handicrafts,
each speaking the language of the tribe with
whom they take up their residence, can do
[incalculable] good. Let them keep and sell
whatever articles are adapted to the Indians'
needs . . . and maintain an industrial school
for Indian women and children, which, though
primarily industrial, should impart intellectual
and religious instruction also, wisely adapted
in character and season to the needs of the
pupils. . . . Such an enterprise would grad
ually" [the italics here are mine] "mould a gen
eration after its own spirit. . . . The Indian
likes bread as well as the white; he must be
taught to prefer the toil of producing it to the
privation of lacking it." Mrs. Wetherill is do
ing, and striving to do, much more than Horace
Greeley held up as an ideal. One of her hopes
is to establish a "model hogan," an Indian
home, both advanced and possible for the Nav-
ajos now to live up to — a half-way house on
the road to higher civilization, a house in which,
for instance, the Indian girl will be taught to
wash in a tub with a pail of water heated at
the fire; it is utterly useless to teach her to
wash in a laundry with steam and cement bath-
56 A BOOK-LOVER'S HOLIDAYS
tubs and expect her to apply this knowledge on
a reservation. I wish some admirer of Horace
Greeley and friend of the Indian would help
Mrs. Wetherill establish her half-way house.
Mrs. Wetherill was not only versed in
archaeological lore concerning ruins and the
like, she was also versed in the yet stranger
and more interesting archaeology of the In
dian's own mind and soul. There have of
recent years been some admirable books pub
lished on the phase of Indian life which is now,
after so many tens of thousands of years,
rapidly drawing to a close. There is the ex
traordinary, the monumental work of Mr. E.
S. Curtis, whose photographs are not merely
photographs, but pictures of the highest value;
the capital volume by Miss Natalie Curtis; and
others. If Mrs. Wetherill could be persuaded
to write on the mythology of the Navajos, and
also on their present-day psychology - - by which
somewhat magniloquent term I mean their pres
ent ways and habits of thought — she would
render an invaluable service. She not only
knows their language; she knows their minds;
she has the keenest sympathy not only with
their bodily needs, but with their mental and
spiritual processes; and she is not in the least
afraid of them or sentimental about them when
ACROSS THE NAVAJO DESERT 57
they do wrong. They trust her so fully that
they will speak to her without reserve about
those intimate things of the soul which they
will never even hint at if they suspect want of
sympathy or fear ridicule. She has collected
some absorbingly interesting reproductions of
the Navajo sand drawings, picture representa
tions of the old mythological tales; they would
be almost worthless unless she wrote out the
interpretation, told her by the medicine-man,
for the hieroglyphics themselves would be
meaningless without such translation. Accord
ing to their own creed, the Navajos are very
devout, and pray continually to the gods of
their belief. Some of these prayers are very
beautiful; others differ but little from forms of
mere devil-worship, of propitiation of the pow
ers of possible evil. Mrs. Wetherill was good
enough to write out for me, in the original and
in English translation, a prayer of each type -
a prayer to the God of the Dawn and the God
dess of Evening Light, and a prayer to the great
Spirit Bear. They run as follows:
PRAYER TO THE DAWN
"Hi-yol-cank sil-kin Natany,
Tee gee hozhone nas-shad,
Sit-sigie hozhone nas-shad
She-kayge hozhone nas-shad,
58 A BOOK-LOVER'S HOLIDAYS
She-yage hozhone nas-shad,
She-kigee hozhone nas-shad,
She-now also hozhone nas-shad.
" San-naga, Toddetenie Huskie be-kay,
hozhone nas-shad
Na-da-cleas, gekin, Natany,
Tes-gee hozhone nas-shad
She-kayge hozhone nas-shad,
She-kige hozhone nas-shad
She-yage hozhone nas-shad
She-now also hozhone nas-shad,
"Hozhone nas clee, hozhone nas clee,
Hozhone nas clee, hozhone nas clee."
PRAYER TO THE DAWN (TRANSLATION)
"Dawn, beautiful dawn, the Chief,
This day, let it be well with me as I go;
Let it be well before me as I go;
Let it be well behind me as I go;
Let it be well beneath me as I go;
Let it be well above me as I go;
Let all I see be well as I go.
"Everlasting, like unto the Pollen Boy;
Goddess of the Evening, the beautiful Chieftess,
This day, let it be well with me as I go;
Let it be well before me as I go;
Let it be well behind me as I go;
Let it be well beneath me as I go;
Let it be well above me as I go;
Let all I see be well as I go.
"Now all is well, now all is well,
Now all is well, now all is well."
ACROSS THE NAVAJO DESERT 59
(The Navajos believe in repeating a prayer,
both in anticipatory and in realized form, four
times, being firm in the faith that an adjura
tion four times repeated will bring the results
they desire; the Pollen Boy is the God of Fer
tilization of the Flowers.)
PRAYER TO THE BIG BLACK BEAR
" Shush-et-so-dilth-kilth
Pash dilth-kilth ne-kay ba-she-che-un-de-de-talth ;
Pash dilth-kilth ne-escla ba she chee un-de-de-talth;
Pash dilth-kilth ne-ea ba she chee un-de-de-talth;
Pash dilth-kilth ne-cha ba she chee un-de-de-talth;
Ba ne un-ne-ga ut-sen-el-clish; net saw now-o-tilth a
Sit saw now-o-tilth go-ud-dish-nilth;
Ba sit saw ne-egay go-ud-dish-nilth;
Ne change nis-salth dodo ne;
Ne change nis-salth do-ut-saw-daw;
Ne change nis-salth ta-de-tenie nus-cleango-ud-is-nilth;
es-ze, es-ze, es-ze, es-ze."
PRAYER TO THE BIG BLACK BEAR (TRANSLATION)
"Big Black Bear,
With your black moccasins, like unto a knife, stand be
tween me and danger;
With your black leggins, like unto a knife, stand be
tween me and danger ;
With your black shirt, like unto a knife, stand between
me and danger,
With your black hat, like unto a knife, stand between
me and danger;
With your charm send the lightning around you and
around me;
60 A BOOK-LOVER'S HOLIDAYS
By my charm tell the evil dream to leave me;
Let the evil dream not come true;
Give me medicine to dispel the evil dream;
The evil has missed me, the evil has missed me, the evil
has missed me, the evil has missed me."
(The fourfold repetition of "the evil has
missed me" is held to insure the accomplish
ment in the future of what the prayer asserts
of the past. Instead of "hat" we could say
"helmet," as the Navajos once wore a black
buckskin helmet; and the knife was of black
flint. Black was the war color. This prayer
was to ward off the effect of a bad dream.)
On August 17, we left Wetherill's with our
pack-train, for a three days' trip across the
Black Mesa to Walpi, where we were to wit
ness the snake-dance of the Hopis. The desert
valley where Kayentay stands is bounded on
the south by a high wall of cliffs, extending
for scores of miles. Our first day's march took
us up this; we led the saddle-horses and drove
the pack-animals up a very rough Navajo trail
which zigzagged to the top through a partial
break in the continuous rock wall. From the
summit we looked back over the desert, barren,
desolate, and yet with a curious fascination of
its own. In the middle distance rose a line of
ACROSS THE NAVAJO DESERT 61
low cliffs, deep red, well-nigh blood-red, in
color. In the far distance isolated buttes lifted
daringly against the horizon; prominent among
them was the abrupt pinnacle known as El
Capitan, a landmark for the whole region.
On the summit we were once more among
pines, and we saw again the beautiful wild
flowers and birds we had left on Buckskin
Mountain. There were redbells and bluebells
and the showy Indian paint-brushes; delicate
white flowers and beautiful purple ones; rabbit-
brush tipped with pale yellow, and the brighter
yellow of the Navajo gorse; and innumerable
others. I saw a Louisiana tanager; the piny on
jays were everywhere; ravens, true birds of
the wilderness, croaked hoarsely.
From the cliff crest we travelled south through
a wild and picturesque pass. The table-land
was rugged and mountainous; but it sloped
gradually to the south, and the mountains
changed to rounded hills. It was a dry region,
but with plenty of grama-grass, and much of
it covered with an open forest of pinyon and
cedar. After eight hours' steady jogging along
Indian trails, and across country where there
was no trail, we camped by some muddy pools
of rain-water which lay at the bottom of a deep
washout. Soon afterward a Navajo family
62 A BOOK-LOVER'S HOLIDAYS
passed camp; they were travelling in a wagon
drawn by a mule and a horse, and the boys of
the family were driving a big herd of sheep and
goats. The incident merely illustrated the real
progress the Indians are making, and how far
they already are from pure savagery.
Next morning the red dawn and the flushed
clouds that heralded the sunrise were very
lovely. Only those who live and sleep in the
open fully realize the beauty of dawn and moon
light and starlight. As we journeyed southward
the land grew more arid; and the water was
scarce and bad. In the afternoon we camped
on a dry mud-flat, not far from a Navajo sheep-
farmer, who soon visited us. Two Navajos
were travelling with us; merry, pleasant fellows.
One of them had a .22 Winchester rifle, with
which he shot a couple of prairie-dogs — which
he and his friend roasted whole for their supper,
having previously shared ours.
Next day at noon we climbed the steep,
narrow rock ridge on whose summit rise the
three Hopi towns at one of which, Walpi, the
snake-dance was to be held. The clustered
rock villages stood in bold outline, on the cliff
top, against the blue sky. In all America there
is no more strikingly picturesque sight.
CHAPTER III
THE HOPI SNAKE-DANCE
ON our trip we not only traversed the
domains of two totally different and
very interesting and advanced Indian
tribes, but we also met all sorts and conditions
of white men. One of the latter, by the way,
related an anecdote which delighted me be
cause of its unexpected racial implications.
The narrator was a Mormon, the son of an
English immigrant. He had visited Belgium
as a missionary. While there he went to a
theatre to hear an American Negro minstrel
troupe; and, happening to meet one of the
minstrels in the street, he hailed him with
"Halloo, Sam!" to which the pleased and aston
ished minstrel cordially responded: "Well, for
de Lawd's sake ! Who'd expect to see a white
man in this country?"
I did not happen to run across any Mormons
at the snake-dance; but it seemed to me that
almost every other class of Americans was rep
resented -- tourists, traders, cattlemen, farmers,
63
64 A BOOK-LOVER'S HOLIDAYS
government officials, politicians, cowboys, scien
tists, philanthropists, all kinds of men and
women. We were especially glad to meet the
assistant commissioner of Indian affairs, Mr.
Abbot, one of the most useful public servants
in Uncle Sam's employ. Mr. Hubbell, whose
courtesy toward us was unwearied, met us;
and we owed our comfortable quarters to the
kindness of the Indian agent and his assistant.
As I rode in I was accosted by Miss Natalie
Curtis, who has done so very much to give to In
dian culture its proper position. Miss Curtis's
purpose has been to preserve and perpetuate all
the cultural development to which the Indian
has already attained — in art, music, poetry,
or manufacture — and, moreover, to endeavor
to secure the further development and adapta
tion of this Indian culture so as to make it,
what it can undoubtedly be made, an im
portant constituent element in our national
cultural development.
Among the others at the snake-dance was
Geoffrey O'Hara, whom Secretary of the In
terior Lane has wisely appointed instructor
of native Indian music. Mr. O'Hara's pur
pose is to perpetuate and develop the wealth
of Indian music and poetry — and ultimately
the rhythmical dancing that goes with the music
THE HOPI SNAKE-DANCE 65
and poetry. The Indian children already know
most of the poetry, with its peculiarly baffling
rhythm. Mr. O'Hara wishes to appoint special
Indian instructors of this music, carefully cho
sen, in the schools; as he said: "If the Navajo
can bring with him into civilization the ability
to preserve his striking and bewildering rhythm,
he will have done in music what Thorpe, the
Olympic champion, did in athletics." Miss
Curtis and Mr. O'Hara represent the effort to
perpetuate Indian art in the life of the Indian
to-day, not only for his sake, but for our own.
This side of Indian life is entirely unrevealed
to most white men; and there is urgent need
from the standpoint of the white man himself
of a proper appreciation of native art. Such
appreciation may mean much toward helping
the development of an original American art
for our whole people.
No white visitor to Walpi was quite as in
teresting as an Indian visitor, a Navajo who
was the owner and chauffeur of the motor in
which Mr. Hubbell had driven to Walpi. He
was an excellent example of the Indian who
ought to be given the chance to go to a non-
reservation school — a class not perhaps as
yet relatively very large, but which will grow
steadily larger. He had gone to such a school;
66 A BOOK-LOVER'S HOLIDAYS
and at the close of his course had entered the
machine-shops of the Santa Fe and North
eastern Railway - - 1 think that was the name
of the road — staying there four years, joining
the local union, going out with the other men
when they struck, and having in all ways pre
cisely the experience of the average skilled me
chanic. Then he returned to the reservation,
where he is now a prosperous merchant, run
ning two stores; and he purchased his auto
mobile as a matter of convenience and of econ
omy in time, so as to get quickly from one store
to the other, as they are far apart. He is not a
Christian, nor is his wife; but his children have
been baptized in the Catholic Church. Of
course, such a prosperous career is exceptional
for an Indian, as it would be exceptional for a
white man; but there were Hopi Indians whom
we met at the dance, both storekeepers and
farmers, whose success had been almost as great.
Among both the Navajos and Hopis the prog
ress has been marked during the last thirty or
forty years, and is more rapid now than ever
before, and careers such as those just mentioned
will in their essence be repeated again and again
by members of both tribes in the near future.
The Hopis are so far advanced that most of
them can now fully profit by non-reservation
THE HOPI SNAKE-DANCE 67
schools. For large sections of the Navajos the
advance must be slower. For these the agency
school is the best school, and their industrial
training should primarily be such as will fit
them for work in their own homes, and for
making these homes cleaner and better.
Of course, the advance in any given case is
apt to be both fitful and one-sided - - the marvel
is that it is not more so. Moreover, the advance
is sometimes taking place when there seems dis-
hearteningly little evidence of it. I have never
respected any men or women more than some
of the missionaries and their wives — there
were examples on the Navajo reservation — who
bravely and uncomplainingly labor for right
eousness, although knowing that the visible
fruits of their labor will probably be gathered
by others in a later generation. These mis
sionaries may fail to make many converts at
the moment, and yet they may unconsciously
produce such an effect that the men and women
who themselves remain heathen are rather
pleased to have their children become Chris
tians. I have in mind, as illustrating just what
I mean, one missionary family on the Navajo
reservation whom it was an inspiration to meet;
and, by the way, the Christian Navajo inter
preter at their mission, with his pretty wife
68 A BOOK-LOVER'S HOLIDAYS
and children, gave fine proof of what the right
education can do for the Indian.
Among those at the snake-dance was a Fran
ciscan priest, who has done much good work on
the Navajo reservation. He has attained great
influence with the Navajos because of his work
for their practical betterment. He doesn't try
to convert the adults; but he has worked with
much success among the children. Like every
competent judge I met, he strongly protested
against opening or cutting down the Navajo
reservation. I heartily agree with him. Such
an act would be a cruel wrong, and would bene
fit only a few wealthy cattle and sheep men.
There has apparently been more missionary
success among the adult Hopis than among the
adult Navajos; at any rate, I came across a
Baptist congregation of some thirty members,
and from information given me I am con
vinced that these converts stood in all ways
ahead of their heathen brethren. Exceptional
qualities of courage, hard-headed common sense,
sympathy, and understanding are needed by
the missionary who is to do really first-class
work; even more exceptional than are the
qualities needed by the head of a white con
gregation under present conditions. The most
marked successes have been won by men,
THE HOPI SNAKE-DANCE 69
themselves of lofty and broad-minded spiritual
ity, who have respected the advances already
made by the Indian toward a higher spiritual
life, and instead of condemning these advances
have made use of them in bringing his soul to
a loftier level. One very important service ren
dered by the missionaries is their warfare on
what is evil among the white men on the reser
vations; they are most potent allies in warring
against drink and sexual immorality, two of the
greatest curses with which the Indian has to
contend. The missionary is always the foe of
the white man of loose life, and of the white man
who sells whiskey. Many of the missionaries,
including all who do most good, are active in
protecting the rights of each Indian to his land.
Like the rest of us, the missionary needs to keep
in mind the fact that the Indian criminal is on
the whole more dangerous to the well-meaning
Indian than any outsider can at present be;
for there are as wide differences of character
and conduct among Indians as among whites,
and there is the same need in the one case as in
the other of treating each individual according
to his conduct — and of persuading the people
of his own class and color thus to treat him.
Several times we walked up the precipitous
cliff trails to the mesa top, and visited the
70 A BOOK-LOVER'S HOLIDAYS
three villages thereon. We were received with
friendly courtesy - - perhaps partly because we
endeavored to show good manners ourselves,
which, I am sorry to say, is not invariably the
case with tourists. The houses were colored
red or white; and the houses individually, and
the villages as villages, compared favorably
with the average dwelling or village in many
of the southern portions of Mediterranean Eu
rope. Contrary to what we had seen in the
Hopi village near Tuba, most of the houses
were scrupulously clean; although the condi
tion of the streets -- while not worse than in
the Mediterranean villages above referred to —
showed urgent need of a crusade for sanitation
and elementary hygiene. The men and women
were well dressed, in clothes quite as picturesque
and quite as near our own garb as the dress
of many European peasants of a good type;
aside, of course, from the priests and young
men who were preparing for the ceremonial
dance, and who were clad, or unclad, accord
ing to the ancient ritual. There were several
rooms in each house; and the furniture included
stoves, sewing-machines, chairs, window-panes
of glass, and sometimes window-curtains. There
were wagons in one or two of the squares, for
a wagon road has been built to one end of the
THE HOPI SNAKE-DANCE 71
mesa; and we saw donkeys laden with fagots
or water — another south European analogy.
Altogether, the predominant impression made
by the sight of the ordinary life — not the
strange heathen ceremonies — was that of a
reasonably advanced, and still advancing, semi-
civilization; not savagery at all. There is big
room for improvement; but so there is among
whites; and while the improvement should be
along the lines of gradual assimilation to the
life of the best whites, it should unquestionably
be so shaped as to preserve and develop the
very real element of native culture possessed
by these Indians — which, as I have already
said, if thus preserved and developed, may in
the end become an important contribution to
American cultural life. Ultimately I hope the
Indian will be absorbed into the white popula
tion, on a full equality; as was true, for instance,
of the Indians who served in my own regiment,
the Rough Riders; as is true on the Navajo res
ervation itself of two of the best men thereon,
both in government employ, both partly of
northern Indian blood, and both indistinguish
able from the most upright and efficient of the
men of pure white blood.
A visiting clergyman from the Episcopal Ca
thedral at Fond du Lac took me into one of
72 A BOOK-LOVER'S HOLIDAYS
the houses to look at the pottery. The grand
mother of the house was the pottery-maker, and,
entirely unhelped from without and with no in
centive of material reward, but purely to gratify
her own innate artistic feeling, she had developed
the art of pottery-making to a very unusual de
gree; it was really beautiful pottery. On the
walls, as in most of the other houses, were pic
ture-cards and photographs, including those of
her children and grandchildren, singly and
grouped with their schoolmates. Two of her
daughters and half a dozen grandchildren were
present, and it was evident that the family life
was gentle and attractive. The grandfather
was not a Christian, but "he is one of the best
old men I ever knew, and I must say that I ad
mire and owe him much, if I am a parson," said
my companion. The Hopis are monogamous,
and the women are well treated; the man tills
the fields and weaves, and may often be seen
bringing in fire-wood; and the fondness of both
father and mother for their children is very
evident.
Many well-informed and well-meaning men
are apt to protest against the effort to keep
and develop what is best in the Indian's own
historic life as incompatible with making him
an American citizen, and speak of those of
THE HOPI SNAKE-DANCE 73
opposite views as wishing to preserve the In
dians only as national bric-a-brac. This is
not so. We believe in fitting him for citizen
ship as rapidly as possible. But where he
cannot be pushed ahead rapidly we believe in
making progress slowly, and in all cases where it
is possible we hope to keep for him and for us
what was best in his old culture. As eminently
practical men as Mr. Frissell, the head of Hamp
ton Institute (an educational model for white,
red, and black men alike), and Mr. Valentine,
the late commissioner of Indian affairs, have
agreed with Miss Curtis in drawing up a scheme
for the payment from private sources of a num
ber of high-grade, specially fitted educational
experts, whose duty it should be to correlate
all the agencies, public and private, that are
working for Indian education, and also to make
this education, not a mechanical impress from
without, but a drawing out of the qualities that
are within. The Indians themselves must be
used in such education; many of their old men
can speak as sincerely, as fervently, and as
eloquently of duty as any white teacher, and
these old men are the very teachers best fitted
to perpetuate the Indian poetry and music.
The effort should be to develop the existing art
— whether in silver-making, pottery-making,
74 A BOOK-LOVER'S HOLIDAYS
blanket and basket weaving, or lace-knitting —
and not to replace it by servile and mechanical
copying. This is only to apply to the Indian a
principle which ought to be recognized among
all our people. A great art must be living, must
spring from the soul of the people; if it rep
resents merely a copying, an imitation, and if
it is confined to a small caste, it cannot be
great.
Of course all Indians should not be forced
into the same mould. Some can be made farm
ers; others mechanics; yet others have the
soul of the artist. Let us try to give each his
chance to develop what is best in him. More
over, let us be wary of interfering overmuch
with either his work or his play. It is mere
tyranny, for instance, to stop all Indian dances.
Some which are obscene, or which are dangerous
on other grounds, must be prohibited. Others
should be permitted, and many of them en
couraged. Nothing that tells for the joy of life,
in any community, should be lightly touched.
A few Indians may be able to turn them
selves into ordinary citizens in a dozen years.
Give these exceptional Indians every chance;
but remember that the majority must change
gradually, and that it will take generations to
make the change complete. Help them to
THE HOPI SNAKE-DANCE 75
make it in such fashion that when the change
is accomplished we shall find that the original
and valuable elements in the Indian culture
have been retained, so that the new citizens
come with full hands into the great field of
American life, and contribute to that life some
thing of marked value to all of us, something
which it would be a misfortune to all of us to
have destroyed.
As an example, take the case of these Hopi
mesa towns, perched in such boldly picturesque
fashion on high, sheer-walled rock ridges. Many
good people wish to force the Hopis to desert
these towns, and live in isolated families in nice
tin-roofed houses on the plains below. I be
lieve that this would be a mistake from the
standpoint of the Indians — not to mention de
priving our country of something as notable and
as attractive as the castles that have helped
make the Rhine beautiful and famous. Let the
effort be to insist on cleanliness and sanitation
in the villages as they are, and especially to
train the Indians themselves to insist thereon;
and to make it easier for them to get water.
In insisting on cleanliness, remember that we
preach a realizable ideal; our own ancestors
lived in villages as filthy not three centuries
ago. The breezy coolness of the rocky mesa
76 A BOOK-LOVER'S HOLIDAYS
top and the magnificent outlook would make
it to me personally a far more attractive dwell
ing-place than the hot, dusty plains. More
over, the present Hop! house, with its thick roof,
is cooler and pleasanter than a tin-roofed house.
I believe it would be far wiser gradually to
develop the Hopi house itself, making it more
commodious and convenient, rather than to
abandon it and plant the Indian in a brand-
new government-built house, precisely like some
ten million other cheap houses. The Hopi
architecture is a product of its own environ
ment; it is as picturesque as anything of the kind
which our art students travel to Spain in order
to study. Therefore let us keep it. The Hopi
architecture can be kept, adapted, and de
veloped just as we have kept, adapted, and
developed the Mission architecture of the South
west — with the results seen in beautiful Le-
land Stanford University. The University of
New Mexico is, most wisely, modelled on these
pueblo buildings; and the architect^ has done
admirable work of the kind by adapting Indian
architectural ideas in some of his California
houses. The Hopi is himself already thus de
veloping his house; as I have said, he has put
in glass windows and larger doors; he is fur
nishing it; he is making it continually more
THE HOPI SNAKE-DANCE 77
livable. Give him a chance to utilize his own
inherent sense of beauty in making over his
own village for himself. Give him a chance to
lead his own life as he ought to; and realize
that he has something to teach us as well as
to learn from us. The Hopi of the younger gen
eration, at least in some of the towns, is chang
ing rapidly; and it is safe to leave it to him
to decide where he will build and keep his
house.
I cannot so much as touch on the absorb
ingly interesting questions of the Hopi spiritual
and religious life, and of the amount of def
erence that can properly be paid to one side of
this life. The snake-dance and antelope-dance,
which we had come to see, are not only in
teresting as relics of an almost inconceivably
remote and savage past — analogous to the
past wherein our own ancestors once dwelt -
but also represent a mystic symbolism which
has in it elements that are ennobling and not
debasing. These dances are prayers or invoca
tions for rain, the crowning blessing in this dry
land. The rain is adored and invoked both as
male and female; the gentle steady downpour
is the female, the storm with lightning the male.
The lightning-stick is "strong medicine," and
is used in all these religious ceremonies. The
78 A BOOK-LOVER'S HOLIDAYS
snakes, the brothers of men, as are all living
things in the Hopi creed, are besought to tell
the beings of the underworld man's need of
water.
As a former great chief at Washington I
was admitted to the sacred room, or one-
roomed house, the kiva, in which the chosen
snake priests had for a fortnight been getting
ready for the sacred dance. Very few white
men have been thus admitted, and never un
less it is known that they will treat with cour
tesy and respect what the Indians revere.
Entrance to the house, which was sunk in the
rock, was through a hole in the roof, down a
ladder across whose top hung a cord from which
fluttered three eagle plumes and dangled three
small animal skins. Below was a room perhaps
fifteen feet by twenty-five. One end of it, oc
cupying perhaps a third of its length, was
raised a foot above the rest, and the ladder
led down to this raised part. Against the rear
wall of this raised part or dais lay thirty odd
rattlesnakes, most of them in a twined heap in
one corner, but a dozen by themselves scattered
along the wall. There was also a pot containing
several striped ribbon-snakes, too lively to be
left at large. Eight or ten priests, some old,
some young, sat on the floor in the lower and
THE HOPI SNAKE-DANCE 79
larger two-thirds of the room, and greeted me
with grave courtesy; they spread a blanket on
the edge of the dais, and I sat down, with my
back to the snakes and about eight feet from
them; a little behind and to one side of me sat
a priest with a kind of fan or brush made of
two or three wing-plumes of an eagle, who kept
quiet guard over his serpent wards. At the
farther end of the room was the altar; the
rude picture of a coyote was painted on the
floor, and on the four sides of this coyote pic
ture were paintings of snakes; on three sides it
was hemmed in by lightning-sticks, or thunder-
sticks, standing upright in little clay cups, and
on the fourth side by eagle plumes held similarly
erect. Some of the priests were smoking —
for pleasure, not ceremonially — and they were
working at parts of the ceremonial dress. One
had a cast rattlesnake skin which he was chew
ing, to limber it up, just as Sioux squaws used
to chew buckskin. Another was fixing a leather
apron with pendent thongs; he stood up and
tried it on. All were scantily clad, in breech-
clouts or short kilts or loin flaps; their naked,
copper-red bodies, lithe and sinewy, shone, and
each had been splashed in two or three places
with a blotch or streak of white paint. One
spoke English and translated freely; I was care-
80 A BOOK-LOVER'S HOLIDAYS
ful not to betray too much curiosity or touch on
any matter which they might be reluctant to
discuss. The snakes behind me never rattled
or showed any signs of anger; the translator
volunteered the remark that they were peace
able because they had been given medicine —
whatever that might mean, supposing the state
ment to be true according to the sense in which
the words are accepted by plainsmen. But
several of them were active in the sluggish
rattlesnake fashion. One glided sinuously to
ward me; when he was a yard away, I pointed
him out to the watcher with the eagle feathers;
the watcher quietly extended the feathers and
stroked and pushed the snake's head back, until
it finally turned and crawled back to the wall.
Half a dozen times different snakes thus crawled
out toward me and were turned back, without
their ever displaying a symptom of irritation.
One snake got past the watcher and moved
slowly past me about six inches away, where
upon the priest on my left leaned across me and
checked its advance by throwing pinches of dust
in its face until the watcher turned round with
his feather sceptre. Every move was made
without hurry and with quiet unconcern; nei
ther snake nor man, at any time, showed a trace
of worry or anger; all, human beings and reptiles,
THE HOPI SNAKE-DANCE 81
were in an atmosphere of quiet peacefulness.
When I rose to say good-by, I thanked my hosts
for their courtesy; they were pleased, and two
or three shook hands with me.
On the afternoon of the following day, August
20, the antelope priests — the men of the an
telope clan - - held their dance. The snake
priests took part. It was held in the middle of
Walpi village, round a big, rugged column of
rock, a dozen feet high, which juts out of the
smooth surface. The antelope-dancers came in
first, clad in kilts, with fox skins behind; other
wise naked, painted with white splashes and
streaks, and their hair washed with the juice
of the yucca root. Their leader's kilt was white;
he wore a garland and anklets of cottonwood
leaves, and sprinkled water from a sacred vessel
to the four corners of heaven. Another leader
carried the sacred bow and a bull-roarer, and
they moved to its loud moaning sound. The
snake priests were similarly clad, but their
kirtles were of leather; eagle plumes were in
their long hair, and under their knees they car
ried rattles made of tortoise-shell. In two lines
they danced opposite each other, keeping time
to the rhythm of their monotonous chanting.
On the top of the column were half a dozen
Hopi young men, clad in ordinary white man's
82 A BOOK-LOVER'S HOLIDAYS
clothing. Archie joined these, and entered in
to conversation with them. They spoke Eng
lish; they had been at non-reservation schools;
they were doing well as farmers and citizens.
One and all they asserted that, in order to
prosper in after life, it was necessary for the
Indian to get away to a non-reservation school;
that merely to go to an agency school was
not enough in any community which was on
the highroad of progress; and that they in
tended to send their own children for a couple
of years to an agency school and then to a non-
reservation school. They looked at the cere
monial religious dances of their fathers pre
cisely as the whites did; they were in effect
Christians, although not connected with any
specific church. They represented substantial
success in the effort to raise the Indian to the
level of the white man. In their case it was
not necessary to push them toward forgetful-
ness of their past. They were travelling away
from it naturally, and of their own accord. As
their type becomes dominant the snake-dance
and antelope -dance will disappear, the Hopi
religious myths will become memories, and the
Hopis will live in villages on the mesa tops, or
scattered out on the plains, as their several in
clinations point, just as if they were so many
THE HOPI SNAKE-DANCE 83
white men. It is to be hoped that the art, the
music, the poetry of their elders will be pre
served during the change coming over the
younger generation.
On my return from this dance I met two of
the best Indian agents in the entire service.
The first was Mr. Parquette, a Wisconsin man,
himself part Indian by blood. The other was
Mr. Shelton, who has done more for the Nava-
jos than any other living man. He has sternly
put down the criminal element exactly as he
has toiled for and raised the decent Indians and
protected them against criminal whites; more
over, he has actually reformed these Indian
criminals, so that they are now themselves
decent people and his fast friends; while the
mass of the Indians recognize him as their
leader who has rendered them incalculable
services. He has got the Indians themselves
to put an absolute stop to gambling, whiskey-
drinking, and sexual immorality. His annual
agricultural fair is one of the features of Navajo
life, and is of far-reaching educational value.
Yet this exceptionally upright and efficient
public servant, who has done such great and
lasting good to the Indians, was for years the
object of attack by certain Eastern philan
thropic associations, simply because he warred
84 A BOOK-LOVER'S HOLIDAYS
against Indian criminals who were no more
entitled to sympathy than the members of the
Whyo gang in New York City. Messrs. Shelton
and Parquette explained to me the cruel wrong
that would be done to the Navajos if their res
ervation was thrown open or cut down. It is
desert country. It cannot be utilized in small
tracts, for in many parts the wrater is so scanty
that hundreds, and in places even thousands,
of acres must go to the support of any family.
The Indians need it all; they are steadily im
proving as agriculturists and stock-growers;
few small settlers could come in even if the
reservation were thrown open ; the movement to
open it, and to ruin the Indians, is merely in
the interest of a few needy adventurers and of
a few wealthy men who wish to increase their
already large fortunes, and who have much
political influence.
Mr. Robinson, the superintendent of irri
gation, in protesting against opening the reser
vation, dwelt upon the vital need of getting
from Congress sufficient money to enable the
engineers to develop water by digging wells,
preserving springs, and making flood reservoirs.
The lack of water is the curse of this desert
reservation. The welfare of the Indians depends
on the further development of the water-supply.
THE HOPI SNAKE-DANCE 85
That night fires flared from the villages on
the top of the mesa. Before there was a hint
of dawn we heard the voice of the crier sum
moning the runners to get ready for the snake-
dance; and we rose and made our way to the
mesa top. The "yellow line," as the Hopis
call it, was in the east, and dawn was beautiful,
as we stood on the summit and watched the
women and children in their ceremonial finery,
looking from the housetops and cliff edges for
the return of the racers. On this occasion they
dropped their civilized clothes. The children
were painted and naked save for kilts; and
they wore feathers and green corn leaves in
their hair. The women wore the old-style
clothing; many of them were in their white
bridal dresses, which in this queer tribe are
woven by the bridegroom and his male kins
folk for the bride's trousseau. The returning
racers ran at speed up the precipitous paths to
the mesa, although it was the close of a six-
mile run. Most of them, including the winner,
wore only a breech-clout and were decked with
feathers. I should like to have entered that
easy-breathing winner in a Marathon contest !
Many of the little boys ran the concluding mile
or so with them; and the little girls made a
pretty spectacle as they received the little boys
86 A BOOK-LOVER'S HOLIDAYS
much as the women and elder girls greeted the
men. Then came the corn-scramble, or mock-
fight over the corn; and then in each house a
feast was set, especially for the children.
At noon, thanks to Mr. Hubbell, and to the
fact that I was an ex-President, we were ad
mitted to the sacred kiva--the one-roomed
temple-house which I had already visited -
while the snake priests performed the cere
mony of washing the snakes. Very few white
men have ever seen this ceremony. The sight
was the most interesting of our entire trip.
There were twenty Indians in the kiva, all
stripped to their breech-clouts; only about ten
actually took part in handling the snakes, or
in any of the ceremonies except the rhythmic
chant, in which all joined. Eighty or a hun
dred snakes, half of them rattlers, the others
bull-snakes or ribbon-snakes, lay singly or in
tangled groups against the wall at the raised end
of the room. They were quiet and in no way
nervous or excited. Two men stood at this end
of the room. Two more stood at the other end,
where the altar was ; there w^as some sand about
the altar, and the eagle feathers we had pre
viously seen there had been removed, but the
upright thunder-sticks remained. The other
Indians were squatted in the middle of the room,
THE HOPI SNAKE-DANCE 87
and half a dozen of them were in the immediate
neighborhood of a very big, ornamented wooden
bowl of water, placed on certain white-painted
symbols on the floor. Two of these Indians held
sacred rattles, and there was a small bowl of
sacred meal beside them. There was some
seemingly ceremonial pipe-smoking.
After some minutes of silence, one of the
squatting priests, who seemed to be the leader,
and who had already puffed smoke toward the
bowl, began a low prayer, at the same time hold
ing and manipulating in his fingers a pinch of the
sacred "meal. The others once and again during
this prayer uttered in unison a single word or
exclamation — a kind of selah or amen. At
the end he threw the meal into the bowl of
water; he had already put some in at the out
set of the prayer. Then he began a rhythmic
chant, in which all the others joined, the rattles
being shaken and the hands moved in harmony
with the rhythm. The chant consisted seem
ingly of a few words repeated over and over
again. It was a strange scene, in the half-
light of the ancient temple-room. The copper-
red bodies of the priests swayed, and their
strongly marked faces, hitherto changeless,
gained a certain quiet intensity of emotion.
The chanting grew in fervor; yet it remained
88 A BOOK-LOVER'S HOLIDAYS
curiously calm throughout (except for a moment
at a time, about which I shall speak later).
Then the two men who stood near the snakes
stooped over, and each picked up a handful
of them, these first handfuls being all rattle
snakes. It was done in tranquil, matter-of-fact
fashion, and the snakes behaved with equally
tranquil unconcern. All was quiet save for
the chanting. The snakes were handed to two
of the men squatting round the bowl, who re
ceived them as if they had been harmless, hold
ing them by the middle of the body, or at least
well away from the head. This was repeated un
til half a dozen of the squatting priests held each
three or four poisonous serpents in his hands.
The chanting continued, in strongly accented
but monotonous rhythm, while the rattles were
shaken, and the snakes moved up and down
or shaken, in unison with it. Then suddenly
the chant quickened and rose to a scream, and
the snakes were all plunged into the great bowl
of water, a writhing tangle of snakes and hands.
Immediately afterward they were withdrawn,
as suddenly as they had been plunged in, and
were hurled half across the room, to the floor, on
and around the altar. They were hurled from
a distance of a dozen feet, with sufficient violence
to overturn the erect thunder-sticks. That the
THE HOPI SNAKE-DANCE 89
snakes should have been quiet and inoffensive
under the influence of the slow movements and
atmosphere of calm that had hitherto obtained
was understandable; but the unexpected vio
lence of the bathing, and then of the way in
which they were hurled to the floor, together
with the sudden screaming intensity of the
chant, ought to have upset the nerves of every
snake there. However, it did not. The snakes
woke to an interest in life, it is true, writhed
themselves free of one another and of the upset
lightning-sticks, and began to glide rapidly in
every direction. But only one showed symp
toms of anger, and these were not marked.
The two standing Indians at this end of the
room herded the snakes with their eagle feathers,
gently brushing and stroking them back as they
squirmed toward us, or toward the singing,
sitting priests.
The process was repeated until all the snakes,
venomous and non-venomous alike, had been
suddenly bathed and then hurled on the floor,
filling the other end of the room with a wrig
gling, somewhat excited serpent population,
which was actively, but not in any way ner
vously, shepherded by the two Indians stationed
for that purpose. These men were, like the
others, clad only in a breech-clout, but they
90 A BOOK-LOVER'S HOLIDAYS
moved about among the snakes, barelegged
and barefooted, with no touch of concern.
One or two of the rattlers became vicious under
the strain, and coiled and struck. I thought
I saw one of the two shepherding watchers
struck in the hand by a recalcitrant sidewinder
which refused to be soothed by the feathers, and
which he finally picked up; but, if so, the man
gave no sign and his placidity remained un-
rufHed. Most of the snakes showed no anger at
all; it seemed to me extraordinary that they
were not all of them maddened.
When the snakes had all been washed, the
leading priest again prayed. Afterward he once
more scattered meal in the bowl, in lines east,
west, north, and south, and twice diagonally.
The chant was renewed; it grew slower; the
rattles were rattled more slowly; then the sing
ing stopped and all was over.
At the end of the ceremony I thanked my
hosts and asked if there was anything I could
do to show my appreciation of the courtesy
they had shown me. They asked if I could
send them some cowry shells, which they use
as decorations for the dance. I told them I
would send them a sackful. They shook hands
cordially with all of us, and we left. I have
never seen a wilder or, in its way, more impres-
THE HOPI SNAKE-DANCE 91
sive spectacle than that of these chanting,
swaying, red-skinned medicine-men, their lithe
bodies naked, unconcernedly handling the death
that glides and strikes, while they held their
mystic worship in the gray twilight of the kiva.
The ritual and the soul-needs it met, and the
symbolism and the dark savagery, were all
relics of an ages-vanished past, survivals of an
elder world.
The snake -dance itself took place in the
afternoon at five o'clock. There were many
hundreds of onlookers, almost as many whites
as Indians, and most of the Indian spectators
were in white man's dress, in strong contrast
to the dancers. The antelope priests entered
first and ranged themselves by a tree-like bundle
of cottonwood branches against the wall of
buildings to one side of the open place where
the dance takes place; the other side is the
cliff edge. The snakes, in a bag, were stowed
by the bundle of cottonwood branches. Young
girls stood near the big pillar of stone with
sacred meal to scatter at the foot of the pillar
after the snakes had been thrown down there
and taken away. Then the snake priests en
tered in their fringed leather kilts and eagle-
plume head-dresses ; fox skins hung at the backs
of their girdles, their bodies were splashed and
92 A BOOK-LOVER'S HOLIDAYS
streaked with white, and on each of them the
upper part of the face was painted black and
the lower part white. Chanting, and stepping
in rhythm to the chant, and on one particular
stone slab stamping hard as a signal to the
underworld, they circled the empty space and
for some minutes danced opposite the line of
antelope priests. Then, in couples, one of each
couple seizing and carrying in his mouth a
snake, they began to circle the space again.
The leading couple consisted of one man who
had his arm across the shoulder of another,
while this second man held in his teeth, by the
upper middle of its body, a rattlesnake four
feet long, the flat, ace-of-clubs-shaped head
and curving neck of the snake being almost
against the man's face. Rattlesnakes, bull-
snakes, ribbon-snakes, all were carried in the
same way. One man carried at the same time
two small sidewinder rattlesnakes in his mouth.
After a while each snake was thrown on the
rock and soon again picked up and held in the
hand, while a new snake was held in the mouth.
Finally, each man carried a bundle of snakes
in his hand, all so held as to leave the head free,
so that the snake could strike if it wished.
Most of the snakes showed no anger or resent
ment. But occasionally one, usually a small
THE HOPI SNAKE-DANCE 93
sidewinder, half coiled or rattled when thrown
down; and in picking these up much caution
was shown, the Indian stroking the snake with
his eagle feathers and trying to soothe it and
get it to straighten out; and if it refused to be
soothed, he did his best to grasp it just back of
the head; and when he had it in his hand, he
continued to stroke the body with the feathers,
obviously to quiet it. But whether it were
angry or not, he always in the end grasped and
lifted it — besides keeping it from crawling
among the spectators. Several times I saw the
snakes strike at the men who were carrying
them, and twice I was sure they struck home -
once a man's wrist, once his finger. Neither
man paid any attention or seemed to suffer in
any way. I saw no man struck in the face;
but several of my friends had at previous dances
seen men so struck. In one case the man soon
showed that he was in much pain, although he
continued to dance, and he was badly sick for
days; in the other cases no bad result what
ever followed.
At last all the snakes were in the hands of
the dancers. Then all were thrown at the foot
of the natural stone pillar, and immediately,
with a yell, the dancers leaped in, seized, each
of them, several snakes, and rushed away, east,
94 A BOOK-LOVER'S HOLIDAYS
west, north, and south, dashing over the edge
of the cliff and jumping like goats down the
precipitous trails. At the foot of the cliff, or
on the plain, they dropped the snakes, and then
returned to purify themselves by drinking and
washing from pails of dark sacred water -
medicine water — brought by the women. It
was a strange and most interesting ceremony
all through.
I do not think any adequate explanation of
the immunity of the dancers has been ad
vanced. Perhaps there are several explana
tions. These desert rattlesnakes are not nearly
as poisonous as the huge diamond-backs of
Florida and Texas; their poison is rarely fatal.
The dancers are sometimes bitten; usually
they show no effects, but, as above said, in one
instance the bitten man was very sick for
several days. It has been said that the fangs
are extracted; but even in this case the poison
would be loose in the snake's mouth and might
get in the skin through the wounds made by
the other teeth; and I noticed that when any
snake, usually a small sidewinder, showed anger
and either rattled or coiled, much caution was
shown in handling it, and every effort made to
avoid being bitten. It is also asserted that the
snakes show the quiet and placid indifference
THE HOPI SNAKE-DANCE 95
they do because they are drugged, and one
priest told me they are given "medicine";
but I have no idea whether this is true. Nor
do I know whether the priests themselves take
medicine. I believe that one element in the
matter is that the snake priests either naturally
possess or develop the same calm power over
these serpents that certain men have over bees;
the latter power, the existence of which is so
well known, has never received the attention
and study it deserves. An occasional white
man has such power with snakes. There was
near my ranch on the Little Missouri, twenty-
five years ago, a man who had this power.
He was a rather shiftless, ignorant man, of a
common frontier type, who failed at about
everything, and I think he was himself surprised
when he found that he could pick up and handle
rattlesnakes with impunity. There was no de
ception about it. I would take him off on horse
back, and when I found a rattler he would
quietly pick it up by the thick part of the body
and put it in a sack. He sometimes made move
ments with his hands before picking up a coiled
rattler; but when he had several in a bag he
would simply put his hand in, take hold of a
snake anywhere, and draw it out. I can under
stand the snakes being soothed and quieted by
96 A BOOK-LOVER'S HOLIDAYS
the matter-of-fact calm and fearlessness of the
priests for most of the time ; but why the rattlers
were not all maddened by the treatment they
received at the washing in the kiva, and again
when thrown on the dance rock, I cannot under
stand.
That night we motored across the desert
with Mr. Hubbell to his house and store at
Ganado, sixty miles away, and from Ganado
we motored to Gallup, and our holiday was at
an end. Mr. Hubbell is an Indian trader. His
Ganado house, right out in the bare desert, is
very comfortable and very attractive, and he
treats all comers with an open-handed hos
pitality inherited from pioneer days. He has
great influence among the Navajos, and his
services to them have been of much value.
Every ounce of his influence has been success
fully exerted to put a stop to gambling and
drinking; his business has been so managed
as to be an important factor in the material
and moral betterment of the Indians with whom
he has dealt. And he has been the able cham
pion of their rights wherever these rights have
been menaced from any outside source.
Arizona and New Mexico hold a wealth of
attraction for the archaeologist, the anthro
pologist, and the lover of what is strange and
THE HOPI SNAKE-DANCE 97
striking and beautiful in nature. More and
more they will attract visitors and students
and holiday-makers. That part of northern
Arizona which we traversed is of such extraor
dinary interest that it should be made more
accessible by means of a government-built
motor road from Gallup to the Grand Canyon;
a road from which branch roads, as good as
those of Switzerland, would gradually be built
to such points as the Hopi villages and the
neighborhood of the Natural Bridge.
CHAPTER IV
THE RANCHLAND OF ARGENTINA AND
SOUTHERN BRAZIL
IN the fall of 1913 I enjoyed a glimpse of
the ranch country of southern Brazil and
of Argentina. It was only a glimpse; for
I was bent on going northward into the vast
wilderness of tropical South America. I had no
time to halt in the grazing country of temperate
South America, which is no longer a wilderness,
but a land already feeling the sweep of the mod
ern movement. It is a civilized land, already
fairly well settled, which by leaps and bounds is
becoming thickly settled; a region which at the
present day is in essentials far more closely kin to
the plains country, which in temperate North
America stretches from Hudson Bay to the Gulf,
than either land is kin to what each was even
half a century ago. The main difference is that
the great cow country, the plains country, of
North America was peopled only by savages
when the white pioneers entered it in the nine
teenth century; whereas throughout temperate
98
RANCHLANDS 99
South America there were here and there oases
of thin settlement, including even small, stag
nant cities, already two or three centuries old.
In these oases people wholly or partly of Euro
pean blood had gradually developed a peculiar
and backward, but real, semicivilization of
their own. This quaint, distinctive social cul
ture has been, or is now being, engulfed by the
rising tide of intensely modern internationalized
material development.
Among the many pleasant memories of my
visit to Argentina, one of the most pleasant is
that of a dinner at the house of the governor
of the old provincial capital of Mendoza. Our
distinguished host came of an old country family
which for many centuries led the life of the
great cattle-breeding ranch-owners, although
his people were more and more turning their
attention to agriculture, he himself being a
successful farmer, as well as an invaluable
public servant of advanced views. His father
was at the dinner. He had retired as a general
after forty-nine years' service in the Argentine
army. The fine old fellow represented what
was best in the Argentine type before the days
of modern industrialism. A very vigorous and
manly best it was, too. He wore the old Ar
gentine uniform, which for his rank was the
100 A BOOK-LOVER'S HOLIDAYS
same as the uniform once worn by Napoleon's
officers. He had served in the bloody Para
guayan War, when Argentina, Brazil, and Uru
guay joined to overthrow the inconceivably
murderous dictatorship of Lopez, and when the
Paraguayans rallied with savage valor under
the banner of the dictator, who tyrannized over
them, but who nevertheless represented in their
eyes the nation. This old general had served
in many Indian wars, both in Patagonia and
in the Grand Chaco, and had seen desperate
fighting in the civil wars. He wore medals
commemorating his services in the Paraguayan
and Indian campaigns, but he would not wear
any medals commemorating his services in the
civil wars. Yet the only time he was wounded
was in one of the battles in one of these civil
wars. He was then shot twice and received a
bayonet thrust, and was also stabbed with a
h!nce. If he had not possessed a constitution of
iron he would never have survived. Our people
in the United States often speak of these South
American wars with the same ignorant lack of
appreciation that used to be shown by Euro
pean military men in speaking of our own Civil
War and other contests. This attitude is as
foolish on our part in the one case as it was
foolish on the part of the Europeans in question
RANCHLANDS 1D1
in the other case. The South American Indian
fighting was of the same hazardous character,
and the Indian campaigns were fraught with
the same wearing fatigue, and marked by the
same risk and wild adventure, as in the case of
our own Indian campaigns. In the Argentine
civil wars, and in the Paraguayan War, as in
the wars which the Chileans have waged, the
fighting was, on the whole, rather more des
perate than in any contest between the civilized
nations of Europe from the close of the Na
poleonic struggles to the opening of the present
gigantic contest. There is no more formidable
fighting material in the world than is afforded
by certain elements in the populations of some
of these Latin-American countries. The gen
eral of whom I am speaking was himself a most
interesting example of a vanishing type. Lovers
of good literature should read the sketches
of old-time Argentine life in Hudson's "El
Ombu." When they have done so, they will
understand the strength and the ruthlessness
which produced leaders of the stamp of the
scarred and war-hardened veteran who in full
general's uniform met us at dinner at the house
of his son, the governor of Mendoza.
The old-time conditions of gaucho civiliza
tion that produced these wild and formidable
102 A BOOK-LOVER'S HOLIDAYS
fighting men, who fought as they lived, on the
backs of their horses, have vanished as utterly
as our own Far West of the days of Kit Carson.
The Argentine country life has changed as com
pletely as the Argentine city life. They are
gone, those long years during which the gaucho
rode over unfenced plains after gaunt cattle,
and warred against the scarcely wilder Indians
writh whom he vied in horsemanship and plains-
craft and hardihood and from whom he bor
rowed that strange weapon, the bolas. Even
the southern Andes of what was once Patagonia
are unexplored only in the sense that the Rockies
of Alberta are not yet completely explored.
Much of the former ranch country is now wheat-
land, where the workmen of foreign, especially
Italian, origin far outnumber the men of old
Hispano-Indian stock. Great cattle-ranches re
main; but they are handled substantially like
great modern ranches in our own Southwest,
and the blooded horses and high-grade cattle are
kept in large, fenced pastures. In most places
the gaucho has changed as our own cowboy has
changed. He is as bold and good a horseman as
ever; but it is only in out-of-the-way places that
he retains all his old-time wild and individual
picturesqueness. Elsewhere he is now merely
an unusually capable ranch -hand. His em-
RANCHLANDS 103
ployer has changed even more. The big hand
some ranch-houses are fitted with every modern
comfort and luxury, and the owners belong in
all ways to the internationalized upper class
of the world of to-day. The interest attaching
to a visit to one of these civilized ranches is
that which attaches to a visit to a fine modern
stock-farm anywhere, whether in Hungary or
Kentucky or Victoria.
But there is one vital point — the vital point
- in which the men and women of these ranch-
houses, like those of the South America that I
visited generally, are striking examples to us of
the English-speaking countries both of North
America and Australia. The families are large.
The women, charming and attractive, are good
and fertile mothers in all classes of society.
There are no symptoms of that artificially self-
produced dwindling of population which is by
far the most threatening symptom in the social
life of the United States, Canada, and the Aus
tralian commonwealths. The nineteenth century
saw a prodigious growth of the English-speak
ing, relative to the Spanish-speaking, population
of the new worlds west of the Atlantic and in
the Southern Pacific. The end of the twentieth
century will see this completely reversed unless
the present ominous tendencies as regards the
104 A BOOK-LOVER'S HOLIDAYS
birth-rate are reversed. A race is worthless and
contemptible if its men cease to be willing and
able to work hard and, at need, to fight hard,
and if its women cease to breed freely. I am
not speaking of pauper families with excessive
numbers of ill-nourished and badly brought up
children; I am well aware that, like most wise
and good principles, this which I advocate can
be carried to a mischievous excess; but it
nevertheless remains true that voluntary steril
ity among married men and women of good
life is, even more than military or physical
cowardice in the ordinary man, the capital
sin of civilization, whether in France or Scan
dinavia, New England or New Zealand. If
the best classes do not reproduce themselves
the nation will of course go down; for the real
question is encouraging the fit, and discouraging
the unfit, to survive. When the ordinary decent
man does not understand that to marry the
woman he loves, as early as he can, is the most
desirable of all goals, the most successful of all
forms of life entitled to be called really success
ful; when the ordinary woman does not under
stand that all other forms of life are but make
shift and starveling substitutes for the life of
the happy wife, the mother of a fair-sized
family of healthy children; then the state is
RANCHLANDS 105
rotten at heart. The loss of a healthy, vigorous,^!
natural sexual instinct is fatal; and just as \
much so if the loss is by disuse and atrophy as 1
if it is by abuse and perversion. Whether the 1
man, in the exercise of one form of selfish-^""
ness, leads a life of easy self-indulgence and
celibate profligacy; or whether in the exercise
of a colder but no less repulsive selfishness, he
sacrifices what is highest to some form of mere
material achievement in accord with the base
proverb that "he travels farthest who travels
alone"; or whether the sacrifice is made in
the name of the warped and diseased conscience
of asceticism; the result is equally evil. So,
likewise, with the woman. In many modern
novels there is portrayed a type of cold, selfish,
sexless woman who plumes herself on being
"respectable," but who is really a rather less
desirable member of society than a prostitute.
Unfortunately the portrayal is true to life.
The woman who shrinks from motherhood is
as low a creature as a man of the professional
pacificist, or poltroon, type, who shirks his
duty as a soldier. The only full life for man or^
woman is led by those men and women who
together, with hearts both gentle and valiant,
face lives of love and duty, who see their chil
dren rise up to call them blessed and who leave
106 A BOOK-LOVER'S HOLIDAYS
behind them their seed to inherit the earth.
Dealing with averages, it is the bare truth to
say that no celibate life approaches such a life
in point of usefulness, no matter what the mo
tive for the celibacy - - religious, philanthropic,
political, or professional. The mother comes
ahead of the nun — and also of the settlement
or hospital worker; and if either man or woman
must treat a profession as a substitute for, in
stead of as an addition to or basis for, marriage,
then by all means the profession or other
"career" should be abandoned. It is of course
not possible to lay down universal rules. There
must be exceptions. But the rule must be as
above given. In a community which is at peace
there may be a few women or a few men who
for good reasons do not marry, and who do
excellent work nevertheless; just as in a com
munity which is at war, there may be a few
men who for good reasons do not go out as
soldiers. But if the average woman does not
marry and become the mother of enough
healthy children to permit the increase of the
race; and if the average man does not, above
all other things, wish to marry in time of peace,
and to do his full duty in war if the need arises,
then the race is decadent, and should be swept
aside to make room for one that is better. Only
RANCHLANDS 107
that nation has a future whose sons and daugh
ters recognize and obey the primary laws of
their racial being.
In these essentials Argentina, Chile, Uru
guay, and Brazil have far more to teach than
to learn from the English-speaking countries
which are so proud of their abounding material
prosperity and of their wide-spread, but super
ficial, popular education and intelligence. In
this same material prosperity, and in many
other matters, Argentina much resembles our
own country. Brazil is travelling a similar
path, although much more slowly; and al
though its climate is not so good, its natural
resources are vaster and will in the present
century undergo an extraordinary development.
Very much of the Brazilian country from Sao
Paulo to the Uruguayan frontier is essentially
like Argentina. The city life and the ranch
life are advancing in much the same fashion;
although of course there are sharp differences
in culture and habits of thought and life be
tween the great Spanish-speaking and great
Portuguese-speaking republics which are such
close, and not wholly friendly, neighbors.
One point of similarity is the number of im
migrants in each country. In our journey
southward from Sao Paulo we found both towns
108 A BOOK-LOVER'S HOLIDAYS
and stretches of ranchland in which Germans,
Italians, and Catholic, Orthodox, or Uniate
Slavs, were important, and sometimes pre
ponderant, elements of the population. There
were German Lutheran churches and also con
gregations of native Protestants started by
American missionaries; for Brazil, like Ar
gentina and the United States, enjoys genuine
religious liberty.
This rich and beautiful country of southern
Brazil is part of the last great stretch of coun
try — south -temperate America — which remains
in either temperate zone open to white settle
ment on a large scale; the last great stretch
of scantily peopled land with a good climate
and fertile soil to which white immigration can
go in mass.
Of part of tropical Brazil I have written
elsewhere, and I allude to it elsewhere in this
book. Here I am speaking not of the tropical
but of the temperate country.
Portions of temperate Brazil are open prairie,
portions are forest. The climate is never very
hot, nor is there ever severe cold. The colo
nists with whom I conversed had not found the
insects specially troublesome; not much more,
and in places rather less, troublesome than in
Louisiana and Texas. There was no more sick-
RANCHLANDS 109
ness than in the early days in the West. The
general effect in the forest country, while of
course the species of plants are entirely differ
ent, reminds the observer of the Louisiana and
Mississippi cane-brake lands and the country
along the Nueces. The activities of the set
tlers in the open country are substantially those
with which I was familiar thirty years ago in
the cattle country of the West. In the forests
one is reminded more of early days on the
Ohio, the Yazoo, and the Red River of the
South.
Certainly this is a country with a wonderful
future. It offers fine opportunities for settlers
who desire with the labor of their own hands
to make homes for themselves and their chil
dren. This does not mean that all people who
go there will prosper, or that success will come
save at the price of labor and effort, of risk and
hardship. If any Americans have forgotten
how our own West in the pioneer days appealed
to an observer who was friendly, but who had
not the faintest glimmering of the pioneer
spirit, let them read "Martin Chuzzlewit."
Dickens represented the numerous men who
foolishly hope to enjoy pioneer triumphs and
yet escape pioneer risks and hardships and the
unlovely and wearing toil which is the essential
110 A BOOK-LOVER'S HOLIDAYS
prerequisite to the triumph; and every one
should remember that in a new country, which
opens a chance of success to the settler, there
always goes with this the chance of heart-break
ing failure. Brazil offers remarkable openings
for settlers who have the toughness of the born
pioneer, and for certain business men and en
gineers who have the mixture of daring enter
prise and sound common sense needed by those
who push the industrial development of new
countries. Both classes have great opportuni
ties, and both need to be perpetually on their
guard against the swindlers and the crack-
brained enthusiasts who are always sure to turn
up in connection with any country of large
developmental possibilities. On the frontier,
more than anywhere else, a man needs to be
able to rely on himself and to remember that
on every frontier there are innumerable failures.
No man can be guaranteed success. Men
who are not prepared for labor and effort and
rough living, for persistence and self-denial, are
out of place in a new country; and foolish peo
ple who will probably fail anywhere are more
certain to fail badly in a new country than any
where else. During the whole period of the
marvellous growth of the United States there
has been a constant and uninterrupted stream
RANCHLANDS 111
of failure going side by side with the larger
stream of success. Unless there is revolution
ary disorder and anarchy, the future holds for
southern Brazil much what half a century ago
the future held for large portions of our country
lying west of the Mississippi.
In southern Brazil the forest landscape
through which we passed was very beautiful.
The most conspicuous tree in the forest was the
flat-topped pine, the shaft of which rose like
that of a royal palm. The branches spread
out at the top just where the palm-leaves
spread out on the palm, only instead of droop
ing they curved upward like the branches of a
candelabra. There were many other trees in
the forests which I could not recognize or place.
Some of them looked like our Southern live-
oaks. Then there were palms, and multitudes
of big tree-ferns. In places where these tree-
ferns grew thickly among the tall, strange can
delabra pines, with palms scattered here and
there, and other queer ancient tropical plants,
the landscape looked as if it had come out of
the carboniferous period — at least as the car
boniferous period was represented in the at
tractive popular geologies of my youth. There
were flowers in the woods, of brilliant and
varied hue, although we saw but few orchids;
112 A BOOK-LOVER'S HOLIDAYS
and in the glades or spots of open prairie there
were immense patches of lilac and blue blos
soms. The flowering trees were wonderful.
On some the blooms were blue, on others yel
low. The most beautiful of all flamed brilliant
scarlet. The trees that bore them, when scat
tered over hillsides that sloped steeply to the
brink of some rushing river, made splashes of
burning red against the wet and vivid green
of the subtropical foliage. As we got farther
south I was told that there were occasional
sharp frosts, but that the low temperature
never lasted for more than an hour or so. In
answer to a question as to how these rare,
short frosts affected such plants as palms and
tree-ferns, it was explained to me that the frosts
prevented coffee being grown, but that they
had no effect on the palms, and, rather curi
ously, no effect on the tree-ferns if they were
under big forest trees, but that if they were in
the open the fronds were killed, the trees
themselves not being injured, and new fronds
taking the place of the old ones.
In the open prairie country of the state of
Parana we stopped at Morungava to visit the
ranch of the Brazil Land, Cattle, and Packing
Company. Our host, the head of this com
pany, Murdo Mackenzie, for many years one of
RANCHLANDS 113
the best-known cattlemen in our own Western
cow country, was an old friend of mine. Dur
ing my term as President he was, on the whole,
the most influential of the Western cattle-
growers. He was a leader of the far-seeing
and enlightened element. He was a most
powerful supporter of the government in the
fight for the conservation of our natural re
sources, for the utilization without waste of our
forests and pastures, for honest treatment of
everybody, and for the shaping of governmental
policy primarily in the interest of the small set
tler, the home-maker.
We rode first to Mackenzie's home ranch,
about a mile from the railway, and then to an
outlying set of ranch buildings ten miles off.
At the home ranch were the American fore
man and his American wife and their children.
The buildings and the food and the whole life
were typical of all that was best in the old-
time "Far West," in the days when I knew it
as a cattle country. We were given a most
delicious and purely American lunch, including
all the fresh milk we could drink; and the fore
man himself piloted us over the immense
stretches of rolling country, and in every ac
tion showed himself the born cattleman, the
born and trained stockman. Half of the em-
114 A BOOK-LOVER'S HOLIDAYS
ployees were men from the Western ranches,
from Montana, Colorado, Texas, or elsewhere;
and they and the stock and the vast, pleasant,
open-air country were enough to make any
man feel at home who had ever lived in the
West. The children round the ranch-house
were already speaking fluent Portuguese!
There were Indians in the neighborhood; but
we saw none, for they are very shy and dwell
in the timber. Although nominally Christian,
and somewhat under the influence of the priests,
they are otherwise entirely outside of govern
mental control. At first Mackenzie's cattle
were sometimes killed by the wild, furtive crea
tures; but he stopped this by a mixture of firm
ness and fair treatment.
It was a beautiful country, well watered,
with good grass and much timber. I was as
sured by both the men on the ranch and their
wives that the climate was better than that of
our own Western cattle country, for the heat
is not as extreme as during summer in the
southern part of our country, and the winters
are mild, with only occasional touches of frost.
Much care has to be shown in dealing with the
ticks and certain other insect plagues, but not
materially more than in some of our own South
ern regions. While we were at the outlying
RANCHLANDS 115
ranch we saw the cattle being dipped in familiar
ranch fashion.
Cattle, horses, and hogs all thrive. All the
native stock offers material on which to im
prove. The company is carefully breeding up
ward, following precisely the same course which
in Texas, for instance, has effected a complete
substitution of graded beef and dairy cattle for
the old longhorns. The native cattle are very
distinctly better than the old Texan cattle -
the native Mexican cattle. The Durham and
Hereford bulls introduced from the States will
in a very few years completely change the
character of the herds. Good cows are kept
in sufficient numbers to insure a constant sup
ply of the breeding bulls. In the same way
Berkshire boars are being crossed with the na
tive pigs, and blooded stallions with the native
mares. In short, everything is being done ex
actly as on our advanced and successful ranches
at home. The country is still largely vacant,
and opportunities for development will be al
most limitless for at least another generation.
Aside from the extreme interest of seeing the
ranch itself, the twenty-mile ride was most en
joyable. The country was like our own plains
near the foothills of the Rockies, except that
there was more water and a greater variety of
116 A BOOK-LOVER'S HOLIDAYS
timber. The most striking trees were the occa
sional peculiar flat- top pines, and there were
also other and very beautiful pines through
which the wind sang mournfully; and there
were many flowers. In one place we saw a
small prairie deer, and in galloping we had to
keep a lookout for armadillo burrows, just as
we keep a lookout for prairie-dog holes in the
West. The birds were strange and interesting,
some of them with beautiful voices. Out on
the plains were screamers, noisy birds, as big
as African bustards. One sparrow sang loudly,
at midday, round the corrals where we dis
mounted for lunch. He was a confiding, pretty
little fellow, with head markings somewhat like
those of our white-crowned and white-throated
sparrows. He sang better than the former,
and not as well as the latter.
The horses were good, and we thoroughly
enjoyed our afternoon canter back to the home
ranch, when the shadows had begun to lengthen.
We loped across the rolling grass-land and by
the groves of strange trees, through the brilliant
weather. Under us the horses thrilled with life;
it was a country of vast horizons; we felt the
promise of the future of the land across which
we rode.
CHAPTER V
A CHILEAN RONDEO
ON November 21, 1913, we crossed the
Andes into Chile by rail. The railway
led up the pass which, used from time
immemorial by the Indians, afterward marked
the course of traffic for their Spanish successors,
and was traversed by the army of San Martin in
the hazardous march that enabled him to strike
the decisive blows in the war for South Ameri
can independence. The valleys were gray and
barren, the sides of the towering mountains
were bare, the landscape was one of desolate
grandeur. To the north the stupendous peak
of Aconquija rose in its snows.
On the Chilean side, as we descended, we
passed a lovely lake, and went through wonder
ful narrow gorges; and farther down were trees,
and huge cactus, and flowers of many colors.
Then we reached the lower valleys and the
plains; and the change was like magic. Sud
denly we were in a rich fairy -land of teeming
plenty and beauty, a land of fertile fields and
117
118 A BOOK-LOVER'S HOLIDAYS
shady groves, a land of grain and, above all,
of many kinds of luscious fruits.
As in the Argentine and Brazil, every courtesy
and hospitality was shown us in Chile. We
enjoyed every experience throughout our stay.
One of the pleasantest and most interesting
days we passed was at a great ranch, a great
cattle-farm and country place twenty-five or
thirty miles from Santiago. It was some fifteen
miles from the railway station. The road led
through a rich, fertile country largely under
tillage, but also largely consisting of great
fenced pastures.
The owners of the ranch, our kind and cour
teous hosts, had summoned all the riders of
the neighborhood to attend the rondeo (round
up and sports), and several hundred, perhaps
a thousand, came. With the growth of cul
tivation of the soil and the introduction of im
proved methods of stock-breeding in Chile, the
old rude life of the wild cow-herders is passing
rapidly away. But in many places it remains
in modified form, and the country folk whose
business is pastoral form a striking and dis
tinctive class. These countrymen live their
lives in the saddle. All these men, whose in
dustries are connected with cattle, are known
as huasos. They are kin to the Argentine
A CHILEAN RONDEO 119
gauchos9 and more remotely to our own cow
boys.
As we neared the ranch, slipping down broad,
dusty, tree-bordered roads beside which irri
gation streams ran, we began to come across
the huasos gathering for the sports. They rode
singly and by twos and threes, or in parties of
fifteen or twenty. They were on native Chilean
horses — stocky, well-built beasts, hardy and
enduring, and on the whole docile. Almost all
the men wore the light mania, less heavy than
the serapi, but like it in shape, the head of the
rider being thrust through a hole in the middle.
It would seem as though it might interfere with
the free use of their arms, but it does not, and
at the subsequent cattle sports many of the
participants never took off their manias. The
riders wore straw hats of various types, but
none of them with the sugar-loaf cones of the
Mexicans. Their long spurs bore huge rowels.
The manias were not only picturesque, but gave
the company a look of diversified and gaudy
brilliancy, for they were of all possible colors,
green, red, brown, and blue, solid and patterned.
The saddles were far forward, and the shoe-
shaped wooden stirrups were elaborately carved.
The men were fine-looking fellows, some with
smooth faces or mustaches, some with beards,
120 A BOOK-LOVER'S HOLIDAYS
some of them light, most of them dark. They
rode their horses with the utter ease found only
in those who are born to the saddle. Now and
then there were family parties, mother and
children, all, down to the smallest, riding their
own horses or perhaps all going in a wagon.
Once or twice we passed horsemen who were
coming out of the yards of their tumble-down
houses, women and children crowding round.
Generally the women had something in the
dress that reminded one more or less of our
Southwestern semicivilized Indians, and the
strain of Indian blood in both men and women
was evident. Some of the men were poorly
clad, others had paid much attention to their
get-up and looked like very efficient dandies;
but in its essentials the dress was always the
same.
When we reached the ranch we first drove
to a mass of buildings, which included the
barns, branding-pens, corrals, and the like.
It was here that the horsemen had gathered,
and one of the pens was filled with an uneasy
mass of cattle. Not far from this pen was a
big hitching rail or bar, very stout, consisting
of tree trunks at least a foot in diameter, the
total length of the rail being forty or fifty feet.
Beside it was a very large and stout corral.
A CHILEAN RONDEO 121
The inside of this corral was well padded with
poles, making a somewhat springy wall, a
feature I have never seen in any corrals in our
own ranch country, but essential where the
horses are trained to jam the cattle against the
corral side.
Most of the sports took place inside this
big corral. Gates led into it from opposite
ends. Some thirty or forty feet in front of
one of the gates, and just about that distance
from the middle of the corral, was a short,
crescent-shaped fence which served to keep the
stock that had yet to be worked separate
from those that had been worked. Proceed
ings were begun by some thirty riders and a
mob of cattle coming through one of the doors
of the corral. A glance at the cattle was enough
to show that the old days of the wild ranches
had passed. These were not longhorns, staring,
vicious creatures, shy and fleet as deer; they
were graded stock, domestic in their ways,
and rather reluctant to run. Among the riders,
however, there was not the slightest falling off
from the old dash and skill, and their very air,
as they rode quietly in, and the way they sat
every sudden, quick move of their horses
showed their complete ease and self-confidence.
In addition to the huasos, the peasants-on-
A BOOK-LOVER'S HOLIDAYS
horseback, the riders included several of the
gentry, the great landed proprietors. These
took part in the sports, precisely as in our own
land men of the corresponding class follow the
hounds or play polo. Two of the most skilful
and daring riders, who always worked together,
were a wealthy neighboring ranchman and his
son.
The first feat began by two of the horsemen,
acting together, cutting out an animal from
the bunch. This was done with skill and pre
cision, but differed in no way from the work I
used formerly to see and take part in on the
Little Missouri. What followed, however, was
totally different. The animal was raced by the
two men out from the herd and from behind
the little semicircular fence, and was taken
at full speed round the edge of the great corral
past the closed gate on the other side, and al
most back to the starting-point. One horse
man rode behind the animal, a little on its
inner side. The other rode outside it, the
horse's head abreast of the steer's flank. As
they galloped the riders uttered strange, long-
drawn cries, evidently of Indian origin. Round
the corral rushed the steer, and, after it passed
the door on the opposite side and began to
return toward its starting-point and saw the
A CHILEAN RONDEO 123
other cattle ahead, it put on speed. Then the
outside rider raced forward and at the same
moment wheeled inward, pinning the steer be
hind the horns and either by the neck or shoulder
against the rough, yielding boughs with which
the corral was lined. Instantly the other horse
man pressed the steer's hind quarters outward,
so that it found itself not only checked, but
turned in the opposite direction. Again it was
urged into a gallop, the calling horsemen fol
lowing and repeating their performance. The
steer was thus turned three times. After the
third turning the gate which it had passed was
opened and it trotted out.
A dozen times different pairs of riders per
formed the feat with different steers. It was a
fine exhibition of daring prowess and of good
training in both the horses and the riders. Of
course, if it had not been for the lining of the
inner fence with limber poles the steer would
have been killed or crippled - - we saw one of
them injured, as it was. The horse, which
entered heartily into the spirit of the chase,
had to crash straight into the fence, nailing the
steer and bringing it to a standstill in the midst
of its headlong gallop. Once or twice at the
critical moment the rider was not able to charge
quickly enough; and when the steer was caught
124 A BOOK-LOVER'S HOLIDAYS
too far back it usually made its escape and re
joined the huddle of cattle from which it had
been cut out. The men were riders of such
skill that shaking them in their seats was
impossible, no matter how quickly the horse
turned or how violent the shocks were; nor
was a single horse hurt in the rough play. It
was a wild scene, and an exhibition of prowess
well worth witnessing.
Other exhibitions of horsemanship followed,
including the old feat of riding a bull. The
bull, a vicious one, was left alone in the ring,
and his temper soon showed signs of extreme
shortness as he pawed the dirt, tossing it above
his shoulders. Watching the chance when the
bull's attention was fixed elsewhere, a man ran
in and got to the little fence before the bull
could charge him. Then, while the bull was
still angrily endeavoring to get at the man, the
corral gate opposite was thrown open and six
or eight horsemen entered, riding with quiet
unconcern. The bull was obviously not in the
least afraid of the footman, whereas he had a
certain feeling of respect for the horsemen.
Two of the latter approached him. One got
his rope over the bull's horns, and the other
then dexterously roped the hind legs. The
footman rushed in and seized the tail, and the
A CHILEAN RONDEO
bull was speedily on his side. Then a lean,
slab-sided, rather frowzy-looking man, out
wardly differing in no essential respect from the
professional bronco-buster of the Southwest,
slipped from the spectators' seats into the ring.
A saddle was girthed tight on the bull, and a
rope ring placed round his broad chest so as
to give the rider something by which to hang.
The lassos upon him were cast loose, and he
rose, snorting with rage and terror. If he had
thrown the man, the horsemen would have
had to work with instantaneous swiftness to
save his life. But all the bull's furious buck
ing and jumping could not unseat the rider.
The horsemen began to tease the animal, flap
ping red blankets in his face, and luring him to
charges which they easily evaded. Finally they
threw him again, took off his saddle and turned
him loose, and at the same time some steers
were driven into the corral to serve as company
for him. A couple of the horsemen took him
out of the bunch and raced him round the
corral, turning him when they wished by press
ing him against the pole corral lining, thus
repeating the game that had already been
played with so many of the steers. In his case
it was, of course, more dangerous. But they
showed complete mastery, and the horses had
126 A BOOK-LOVER'S PIOLIDAYS
not the slightest fear, nailing him flat against
the wall with their chests, and spinning him
round when they struck him on occasions when
he was trying to make up his mind to resist.
Meanwhile the bull- rider passed his hat among
the spectators, who tossed silver pieces into it —
thus marking the fundamental difference be
tween the life we were witnessing and our own
Western ranch life. In Chile, with its aristo
cratic social structure, there is a wide gulf be
tween the gentry and the ranch-hands ; whereas
in the democratic life of our own cow country
the ranch-owner has, more often than not, at
one time been himself a ranch-hand.
After the sports in the corral were finished eight
or ten of the huasos appeared on big horses at the
bar of which I have spoken, and took part in
a sport which was entirely new to me. Two
champions would appear side by side or half-
facing each other, at the bar. Each would turn
his horse's head until it hung over the bar as they
half -fronted each other, on the same side of the
bar. The object was for each man to try to
push his opponent away from the bar and
then shove past him, usually carrying his op
ponent with him. Sometimes it was a contest
of man against man. Sometimes each would
have two or three backers. No one could touch
A CHILEAN RONDEO 127
any other man's horse, and each drove his
animal right against his opponent. The two
men fronting each other at the bar kept their
horses head-on against the bar; the others
strove each to get his horse's head between the
body of one of his opponents and the head of
that opponent's horse. They then remained
in a knot for some minutes, the riders cheering
the horses with their strange, wild, Indian-like
cries, while the horses pushed and strained.
Usually there was almost no progress on either
side at first. It would look as though not an
inch was gained. Gradually, however, the
horses on one side or the other got an inch or
two or three inches advantage of position by
straining and shoving. Suddenly the right
vantage-point was attained. There was an
outburst of furious shouting from the riders.
The horses of one side with straining quar
ters thrust their way through the press, whirl
ing round or half upsetting their opponents,
and rushed down alongside the bar. Why the
men's legs were not broken I could not say.
On this occasion all the men were good-natured.
But it was a rough sport, and I could well
credit the statement that, if there were bad
blood to gratify, the chances were excellent for
a fight.
128 A BOOK-LOVER'S HOLIDAYS
After the sports we motored down to a great
pasture on one side of a lake, beyond which
rose lofty mountains. Then we returned to
the ranch-house itself — a huge, white, single-
storied house with a great courtyard in the
middle and wings extending toward the stable,
the saddle-rooms, and the like. It was a house
of charm and distinction; the low building -
or rather group of buildings, with galleries and
colonnades connecting them — being in the old
native style, an outgrowth of the life and the
land. After a siesta our hosts led us out across
a wide garden brilliant and fragrant with
flowers, to the deep, cool shade of a row of
lofty trees, where stood a long table spread with
white linen and laden with silver and glass;
and here, we were served with a delicious and
elaborate breakfast — the Chilean breakfast,
that of Latin Europe, for in most ways the life
of South America is a development of that of
Latin Europe, and much more closely kin to
it than it is to the life of the English-speaking
peoples north of the Rio Grande.
In the afternoon we drove back to the rail
road. At one point of our drive we were joined
by a rider who had taken part in the morning's
sports. He galloped at full speed beside the
rushing motor-car, waving his hat to us and
A CHILEAN RONDEO 129
shouting good-by. He was a tall, powerfully
built, middle-aged man, with fine, clean-cut
features; his brightly colored mantle streamed
in the wind, and he sat in the saddle with utter
ease while his horse tore over the ground along
side us. He was a noble figure, and his fare
well to us was our last glimpse of the wild, old-
time huaso life.
CHAPTER VI
ACROSS THE ANDES AND NORTHERN
PATAGONIA
A the great chain of the Andes stretches
southward its altitude grows less, and
the mountain wall is here and there
broken by passes. When the time came for
me to leave Chile I determined to cross the
Andes by the easiest and most accessible and
one of the most beautiful of these comparatively
low passes. At the other end of the pass, on
the Argentine or Patagonian side, we were to
be met by motor-cars, sent thither by my con
siderate hosts, the governmental authorities of
Argentina.
From Santiago we went south by rail to
Puerto Varas. The railway passed through the
wide, rolling agricultural country of central
Chile, a country of farms and prosperous towns.
As we went southward we found ourselves in a
land which was new in the sense that our own
West is new. Middle and southern Chile were
in the hands of the Indians but a short while
since. We were met by fine-looking represen-
130
ACROSS THE ANDES 131
tatives of these Araucanian Indians, all of them
now peaceable farmers and stock-growers, at
a town of twenty or thirty thousand people
where there was not a single white man to be
found a quarter of a century ago. Our party
included, among others, Major Shipton, U. S. A.,
the military aide to our legation at Buenos
Ayres, my son Kermit, and several kind Chilean
friends.
We reached our destination, Puerto Varas,
early in the morning. It stands on the shore
of a lovely lake. There has been a consider
able German settlement in middle and southern
Chile, and, as everywhere, the Germans have
made capital colonists. At Puerto Varas there
are two villages, mainly of Germans, one Prot
estant and the other Catholic. We were
made welcome and given breakfast in an inn
which, with its signs and pictures, might have
come from the Fatherland. Among the guests
at the breakfast, in addition to the native
Chilean Intendente, were three or four normal-
school teachers, all of them Germans — and evi
dently uncommonly good teachers, too. There
were school-children, there were citizens of
every kind. Many of the Germans born abroad
could speak nothing but German. The chil
dren, however, spoke Spanish, and in some cases
132 A BOOK-LOVER'S HOLIDAYS
nothing but Spanish. Here, as so often in the
addresses made to me, special stress was laid
upon the fact that my country represented the
cause of civil and religious liberty, of the abso
lute equality of treatment of all men without
regard to creed, and of social and industrial
justice; in short, the cause of orderly liberty
in body, soul, and mind, in things intellectual
and spiritual no less than in things industrial
and political; the liberty that guarantees to
each free, bold spirit the right to search for
truth without any check from political or ec
clesiastical tyranny, and that also guarantees
to the weak their bodily rights as against any
man who would exploit or oppress them.
We left Puerto Varas by steamer on the lake
to begin our four days' trip across the Andes
and through northern Patagonia, which was to
end when we struck the Argentine Railway at
Neuquen. This break in the Andes makes an
easy road, for the pass at its summit is but
three thousand feet high. The route followed
leads between high mountains and across lake
after lake, and the scenery is as beautiful as
any in the world.
The first lake was surrounded by a rugged,
forest-clad mountain wilderness, broken here
and there by settlers' clearings. Wonderful
ACROSS THE ANDES 133
mountains rose near by; one was a snow-clad
volcano with a broken cone which not many
years ago was in violent eruption. Another,
even more beautiful, was a lofty peak of vir
ginal snow. At the farther end of the lake
we lunched at a clean little hotel. Then we
took horses and rode for a dozen miles to an
other lake, called Esmeralda or Los Santos.
Surely there can be no more beautiful lake any
where than this! All around it are high moun
tains, many of them volcanoes. One of these
mountains to the north, Punti Agudo, rises in
sheer cliffs to its soaring summit, so steep that
snow will hardly lie on its sides. Another to
the southwest, called Tronador, the Thunderer,
is capped with vast fields of perpetual snow,
from which the glaciers creep down to the
valleys. It gains its name of thunderer from
the tremendous roaring of the shattered ice
masses when they fall. Out of a huge cave
in one of its glaciers a river rushes, full grown
at birth. At the eastern end of this lake stands
a thoroughly comfortable hotel, which we
reached at sunset. Behind us in the evening
lights, against the sunset, under the still air,
the lake was very beautiful. The peaks were
golden in the dying sunlight, and over them
hung the crescent moon.
134 A BOOK-LOVER'S HOLIDAYS
Next morning, before sunrise, we were riding
eastward through the valley. For two or three
miles the ride suggested that through the
Yosemite, because of the abruptness with which
the high mountain walls rose on either hand,
while the valley was flat, with glades and woods
alternating on its surface. Then we got into
thick forest. The trees were for the most part
giant beeches, but with some conifers, includ
ing a rather small species of sequoia. Here and
there, in the glades and open spaces, there were
masses of many-hued wild flowers; conspicuous
among them were the fuchsias.
A dozen miles on we stopped at another little
inn. Here we said good-by to the kind Chilean
friends who had accompanied us thus far,
and were greeted by no less kind Argentine
friends, including Colonel Reybaud of the Ar
gentine army, and Doctor Moreno, the noted
Argentine scientist, explorer, and educator.
Then we climbed through a wooded pass be
tween two mountains. Its summit, near which
lies the boundary-line between Chile and Argen
tina, is somewhere in the neighborhood of three
thousand feet high; and this is the extreme
height over which at this point it is necessary
to go in traversing what is elsewhere the mighty
mountain wall of the Andes. Here we met a
ACROSS THE ANDES 135
tame guanaco (a kind of llama) in the road;
it strolled up to us, smelled the noses of the
horses, which were rather afraid of it, and then
walked on by us. From the summit of the
pass the ground fell rapidly to a wonderfully
beautiful little lake of lovely green water. This
little gem is hemmed in by sheer-sided moun
tains, densely timbered save where the cliffs
rise too boldly for even the hardiest trees to
take root. As with all these lakes, there are
many beautiful waterfalls. The rapid moun
tain brooks fling themselves over precipices
which are sometimes so high that the water
reaches the foot in sheets of wavering mist.
Everywhere in the background rise the snow
peaks.
We crossed this little lake in a steam-launch,
and on the other side found the quaintest
wooden railway, with a couple of rough hand
cars, each dragged by an ox. In going down
hill the ox is put behind the car, which he holds
back with a rope tied to his horns. We piled
our baggage on one car, three or four members
of the party got on the other, and the rest of
us walked for the two miles or so before we
reached the last lake we were to traverse — -
Nahuel Huapi. Here there happened one of
those incidents which show how the world is
136 A BOOK-LOVER'S HOLIDAYS
shrinking. Three travellers, evidently English
men, were at the landing. One of them came
up to me and introduced himself, saying: "You
won't remember me; w^hen I last saw you, you
were romping with little Prince Sigurd, in
Buckingham Palace at the time of the King's
funeral; I was in attendance on (naming an
august lady); my name is Herschel, Lord Her-
schel." I recalled the incident at once. On
returning from my African trip I had passed
through western Europe, and had been most
courteously received. In one palace the son
and heir — whom I have called Sigurd, which
was not his name — was a dear little fellow, very
manly and also very friendly; and he reminded
me so of my own children when they were small
that I was unable to resist the temptation of
romping with him, just as I had romped with
them. A month later, when as special ambas
sador I was attending King Edward's funeral,
I called at Buckingham Palace to pay my re
spects, and was taken in to see the august lady
above alluded to. The visit lasted nearly an
hour, and toward the end I heard little squeaks
and sounds in the hall outside, for which I
could not account. Finally I was dismissed, and,
on opening the door, there was little Sigurd,
with his nurse, waiting for me. He had heard
ACROSS THE ANDES 137
that I was in the palace, and had refused to go
down to dinner until he had had a play with
me; and he was patiently and expectantly
waiting outside the door for me to appear. I
seized him, tossed him up, while he shouted
gleefully, caught him, and rolled him on the
floor, quite forgetting that any one was look
ing on; and then, in the midst of the romp,
happening to look up, I saw the lady on whom
I had been calling, watching the play with
much interest, with her equally interested two
brothers, both of them sovereigns, and her
lords-in-waiting; she had come out to see what
the little boy's laughter meant. I straightened
up, whereupon the little boy's face fell, and he
anxiously inquired: "But you're not going to
stop the play, are you?" Of all this my new
found friend reminded me. If was a far cry
in space and in surroundings, from where he
and I had first met to the Andes that border
Patagonia. He was a man of knowledge and
experience, and the half-hour I spent with him
was most pleasant.
At Nahuel Huapi we were met by a little
lake steamer, on which we spent the next four
hours. The lake js of bold and irregular out
line, with many deep bays, and with mountain
walls standing as promontories between the
138 A BOOK-LOVER'S HOLIDAYS
bays. For a couple of hours the scenery was
as beautiful as it had been during any part of
the two days, especially when we looked back
at the mass of snow-shrouded peaks. Then the
lake opened, the shores became clear of woods,
the mountains lower, and near the eastern end,
where there were only low rolling hills, we came
to the little village of Bariloche.
Bariloche is a real frontier village. Forty years
previously Doctor Moreno had been captured
by Indians at this very spot, had escaped from
them, and after days of extraordinary hardship
had reached safety. He showed us a strange,
giant pine-tree, of a kind different from any of
our northern cone-bearers, near which the In
dians had camped while he was prisoner with
them. He had persuaded the settlers to have
this tree preserved, and it is still protected,
though slowly dying of old age. The town is
nearly four hundred miles from a railway, and
the people are of the vigorous, enterprising
frontier type. It was like one of our frontier
towns in the old-time West as regards the diver
sity in ethnic type and nationality among the
citizens. The little houses stood well away
from one another on the broad, rough, faintly
marked streets. In one we might see a Span
ish family, in another blond Germans or Swiss,
ACROSS THE ANDES 139
in yet another a family of gaucho stock looking
more Indian than white. All worked and lived
on a footing of equality, and all showed the
effect of the wide-spread educational effort of
the Argentine Government; an effort as marked
as in our own country, although in the Argen
tine it is made by the nation instead of by the
several states. We visited the little public
school. The two women teachers were, one of
Argentine descent, the other the daughter of
an English father and an Argentine mother -
the girl herself spoke English only with diffi
culty. They told us that the Germans had a
school of their own, but that the Swiss and the
other immigrants sent their children to the gov
ernment school with the children of the native
Argentines. Afterward I visited the German
school, where I was welcomed by a dozen of
the German immigrants — men of the same
stamp as those whom I had so often seen, and
whom I so much admired and liked, in our own
Western country. I was rather amused to see
in this school, together with a picture of the
Kaiser, a very large picture of Martin Luther,
although about a third of the Germans were
Catholics; their feelings as Germans seemed
in this instance to have overcome any religious
differences, and Martin Luther was simply ac-
140 A BOOK-LOVER'S HOLIDAYS
cepted as one of the great Germans whose
memory they wished to impress on the minds
of their children. In this school there was a
good little library, all the books being, of course,
German; it was the only library in the town.
That night we had a very pleasant dinner.
Our host was a German. Of the two ladies
who did the honors of the table, one was a Bel
gian, the wife of the only doctor in Bariloche,
and the other a Russian. In our own party,
aside from the four of us from the United States,
there were Colonel Reybaud, of the Argentine
army, my aide, and a first-class soldier; Doctor
Moreno, who was as devoted a friend as if he
had been my aide; and three other Argentine
gentlemen -- the head of the Interior Depart
ment, the governor of Neuquen, and the head
of the Indian Service. Among the other guests
was a man originally from County Meath, and
a tall, blond, red-bearded Venetian, a carpenter
by trade. After a while we got talking of books,
and it wras fairly startling to see the way that
polyglot assemblage brightened when the sub
ject was introduced, and the extraordinary vari
ety of its taste in good literature. The men
began eagerly to speak about and quote from
their favorite authors — Cervantes, Lope de
Vega, Camoens, Moliere, Shakespeare, Virgil,
ACROSS THE ANDES 141
and the Greek dramatists. Our host quoted
from the " Nibelungenlied " and from Homer,
and at least two-thirds of the men at the table
seemed to have dozens of authors at their
tongues' ends. But it was the Italian carpenter
who capped the climax, for when we touched on
Dante he became almost inspired and repeated
passage after passage, the majesty and sono
rous cadence of the lines thrilling him so that his
listeners were almost as much moved as he was.
We sat thus for an hour — an unexpected type
of Kajfee Klatsch for such an outpost of civili
zation.
Next morning at five we were off for our four-
hundred-mile drive across the Patagonian wastes
to the railway at Neuquen. We had been
through a stretch of scenery as lovely as can
be found anywhere in the world — a stretch
that in parts suggested the Swiss lakes and
mountains, and in other parts Yellowstone
Park or the Yosemite or the mountains near
Puget Sound. In a couple of years the Argen
tines will have pushed their railway system to
Bariloche, and then all tourists who come to
South America should make a point of visiting
this wonderfully beautiful region. Doubtless
in the end it will be developed for . travellers
much as other regions of great scenic attraction
142 A BOOK-LOVER'S HOLIDAYS
are developed. Thanks to Doctor Moreno, the
Argentine end of it is already a national park;
I trust the Chilean end soon will be.
We left Bariloche in three motor-cars, know
ing that we had a couple of hard days ahead of
us. After skirting the lake for a mile or two
we struck inland over flats and through valleys.
We had to cross a rapid river at a riffle where
the motor-cars were just able to make it. The
road consisted only of the ruts made by the
passage of the great bullock carts, and often we
had to go alongside it, or leave it entirely where
at some crossing of a small stream the ground
looked too boggy for us to venture in with the
motor-cars. Three times in making such a
crossing one of the cars bogged down, and we
had hard work in getting out. In one case it
caused us two hours' labor in building a stone
causeway under and in front of the wheels -
repeating what I had helped do not many
months before in Arizona, when we struck a
place where a cloudburst had taken away the
bridge across a stream and a good part of the
road that led up to it on either side.
In another place the leading car got into
heavy sand and was unable to move. A party
of gauchos came loping up, and two of them
tied their ropes to the car and pulled it back-
ACROSS THE ANDES 143
ward onto firm ground. These gauchos were
a most picturesque set. They were riding
good horses, strong and hardy and wild, and
the men were consummate horsemen, utterly
indifferent to the sudden leaps and twists of
the nervous beasts they rode. Each wore a
broad, silver-studded belt, with a long knife
thrust into it. Some had their trousers in
boots, others wore baggy breeches gathered in
at the ankle. The saddles, unlike our cow
saddles, had no horns, and the rope when in
use was attached to the girth ring. The stir
rups were the queerest of all. Often they were
heavy flat disks, the terminal part of the stirrup-
leather being represented by a narrow metal, or
stiff leather, bar a foot in length. A slit was
cut in the heavy flat disk big enough to admit
the toe of the foot, and with this type of stir
rup, which to me would have been almost as
unsatisfactory as no stirrup at all, they sat
their bucking or jumping horses with complete
indifference.
It was gaucho land through which we were
travelling. Every man in it was born to the
saddle. We saw tiny boys not only riding but
performing all the duties of full-grown men in
guiding loose herds or pack-animals. No less
characteristic than these daredevil horsemen
144 A BOOK-LOVER'S HOLIDAYS
were the lines of great two-wheeled carts, each
dragged by five mules, three in the lead, with
two wheelers, or else perhaps drawn by four
or six oxen. For the most part these carts
were carrying wool or hides. Occasionally we
came on great pastures surrounded by wire
fences. Elsewhere the stony, desolate land lay
as it had lain from time immemorial. We saw
many flocks of sheep, and many herds of horses,
among which piebald horses were unusually
plentiful. There were a good many cattle, too,
and on two or three occasions we saw flocks of
goats. It was a wild, rough country, and in
such a country life is hard for both man and
beast. Everywhere along the trail were the
skeletons and dried carcasses of cattle, and oc
casionally horses. Yet there were almost no
carrion birds, no ravens or crows, no small
vultures, although once very high up in the air
we saw a great condor. Indeed, wild life was
not plentiful, although we saw ostriches — the
South American rhea — and there was an oc
casional guanaco, or wild llama. Foxes were
certainly abundant, because at the squalid
little country stores there were hundreds of
their skins and also many skunk skins.
Now and then we passed ranch-houses.
There might be two or three fairly close to-
ACROSS THE ANDES 145
gether, then again we might travel for twenty
miles without a sign of a habitation or a human
being. In one place there was a cluster of build
ings and a little schoolhouse. We stopped to
shake hands with the teacher. Some of the
ranch-houses were cleanly built and neatly kept,
shade-trees being planted round about - - the
only trees we saw during the entire motor
journey. Other houses were slovenly huts of
mud and thatch, with a brush corral near by.
Around the houses of this type the bare dirt
surface was filthy and unkempt, and covered
with a litter of the skulls and bones of sheep
and oxen, fragments of skin and hide, and odds
and ends of all kinds, foul to every sense.
Every now and then along the road we came
to a solitary little store. If it was very poor
and squalid, it was called a pulperia; if it was
large, it was called an almacen. Inside there
was a rough floor of dirt or boards, and a
counter ran round it. At one end of the counter
was the bar, at which drinks were sold. Over
the rest of the counter the business of the
store proper was done. Hats, blankets, horse-
gear, rude articles of clothing, and the like were
on the shelves or hung from rings in the ceiling.
Sometimes we saw gauchos drinking at these
bars — rough, wild-looking men, some of them
146 A BOOK-LOVER'S HOLIDAYS
more than three parts Indian, others blond,
hairy creatures with the northern blood showing
obviously. Although they are dangerous men
when angered, they are generally polite, and
we, of course, had no trouble with them. Hides,
fox skins, and the like are brought by them for
sale or for barter.
Order is kept by the mounted territorial police,
an excellent body, much like the Canadian
mounted police and the Pennsylvania constabu
lary. These men are alert and soldierly, with
fine horses, well-kept arms, and smart uniforms.
Many of them were obviously mainly, and most
of them were partly, of Indian blood. I think
that Indian blood is on the whole a distinct
addition to the race stock when the ancestral
Indian tribe is of the right kind. The acting
president of the Argentine during my visit, the
vice-president, a very able and forceful man,
wealthy, well educated, a thorough statesman
and man of the world, and a delightful com
panion, had a strong strain of Indian blood in
him.
The ordinary people we met used "Indian"
and "Christian" as opposite terms, having cul
tural rather than theological or racial signifi
cance, this being customary in the border regions
of temperate South America. In one place
ACROSS THE ANDES 147
where we stopped four Indians came in to see
us. The chief or head man looked like a thor
ough Indian. He might have been a Sioux or
a Cornanche. One of his companions was ap
parently a half-breed, showing strong Indian
features, however. A third had a full beard,
and, though he certainly did not look quite like
a white man, no less certainly he did not look
like an Indian. The fourth was considerably
more white than Indian. He had a long beard,
being dressed, as were the others, in shabby
white man's garb. He looked much more like
one of the poorer class of Boers than like any
Indian I have ever seen. I noticed this man
talking to two of the mounted police. They
were smart, well-set-up men, thoroughly iden
tified with the rest of the population, and re
garding themselves and being regarded by
others as on the same level with their fellow
citizens. Yet they were obviously far more
Indian in blood than was the unkempt, bearded
white man to whom they were talking, and
whom they and their fellows spoke of as an
Indian, while they spoke of themselves, and
were spoken of by others, as "Christians."
"Indian" was the term reserved for the Indians
who were still pagans and who still kept up a
certain tribal relation. Whenever an Indian
148 A BOOK-LOVER'S HOLIDAYS
adopted Christianity in the excessively prim
itive form known to the gauchos, came out to
live with the whites, and followed the ordinary
occupations, he seemed to be promptly ac
cepted as a white man, no different from any
one else. The Indians, by the way, now have
property, and are well treated. Nevertheless,
the pure stock is dying out, and those that sur
vive are being absorbed in the rest of the popu
lation.
The various accidents we met with during
the forenoon delayed us, and we did not take
breakfast — or, as we at home would call it,
lunch — until about three o'clock in the after
noon. We had then halted at a big group of
buildings which included a store and a govern
ment telegraph office. The store was a long,
whitewashed, one-story house, the bedrooms in
the rear, and all kinds of outbuildings round
about. In some corrals near by a thousand
sheep were being sheared. Breakfast had been
long deferred, and we were hungry. But it
was a feast when it did come, for two young
sheep or big lambs were roasted whole before a
fire in the open, and were then set before us;
the open-air cook was evidently of almost pure
Indian blood.
On we went with the cars, with no further
ACROSS THE ANDES 149
accidents and no trouble except once in cross
ing a sand belt. The landscape was parched
and barren. Yet its look of almost inconceiv
able desolation was not entirely warranted, for
in the flats and valleys water could evidently
be obtained a few feet below the surface, and
where it was pumped up anything could be
grown on the soil.
But, unless thus artificially supplied, water
was too scarce to permit any luxuriance of
growth. Here and there were stretches of fairly
good grass, but on the whole the country was
covered with dry scrub a foot or two high,
rising in clumps out of the earth or gravel or
sand. The hills were stony and bare, some
times with flat, sheer-sided tops, and the herds
of half-wild horses and of cattle and sheep, and
the even wilder riders we met, and the squalid
little ranch-houses, all combined to give the
landscape a peculiar touch.
As evening drew on, the harsh, raw sun
light softened. The hills assumed a myriad
tints as the sun sank. The long gloaming fol
lowed. The young moon hung overhead, well
toward the west, and just on the edge of the
horizon the Southern Cross stood upside down.
Then clouds gathered, boding a storm. The
night grew black, and on we went through the
150 A BOOK-LOVER'S HOLIDAYS
darkness, the motormen clutching the steering-
wheels and peering anxiously forward as they
strove to make out the ruts and faint road-
marks in the shifting glare of the headlights.
The play of the lightning and the rolling of the
thunder came near and nearer. We were evi
dently in for a storm, which would probably
have brought us to a complete halt, and we
looked out for a house to stop at. At 10.15
we caught a glimpse of a long white building
on one side of the road. It was one of the
stores of which I have spoken. With some
effort we roused the people, and after arrang
ing the motor-cars we went inside. They were
good people. They got us eggs and coffee, and,
as we had a cold pig, we fared well. Then we
lay down on the floor of the store and on the
counters and slept for four hours.
At three I waked the sleepers with the cry-
that in bygone days on the Western cattle
plains had so often roused me from the heavy
slumber of the men of the round-up. It was
the short November night of high southern lati
tudes. Dawn came early. We started as soon
as the faint gray enabled us to see the road.
The stars paled and vanished. The sunrise
was glorious. We came out from among the
hills on to vast barren plains. Hour after hour,
ACROSS THE ANDES 151
all day long, we drove at speed over them.
The sun set in red and angry splendor amid
gathering clouds. When we reached the Rio
Negro the light was dying from the sky, and a
heavy storm was rolling toward us. The guard
ians of the rope ferry feared to try the river,
with the storm rising through the black night;
but we forced them to put off, and we reached
the other shore just before the wind smote us,
and the rushing rain drove in our faces.
CHAPTER VII
WILD HUNTING COMPANIONS
IN the days when I lived and worked on a
cattle-ranch, on the Little Missouri, I usu
ally hunted alone; and, if not, my com
panion was one of the cow-hands, unless I was
taking out a guest from the East. On some
of my regular hunting trips in the Rockies I
went with one or more of my ranch-hands —
who were valued friends and fellow workers.
On others of these trips I went wTith men who
were either temporarily, like John Willis, or per
manently, like Tazewell Woody and John Goff,
professional guides and hunters. In Africa I
sometimes hunted with some of the settlers, and
often alone or with my son Kermit; but even
more frequently with either Cunningham or
Tarlton, the former for many years a profes
sional elephant hunter, and the latter by choice
and preference a lion hunter. Both of them,
I think I may say, became permanently my
friends as the result of the trip.
Often, however, my companions were not
white men, but either half-breeds and people
152
WILD HUNTING COMPANIONS 153
of mixed blood or else wild natives of the wild
lands over which the great game roamed. To
some of these men I became really attached.
Not a few of them showed a courage and loyalty
and devotion to duty which would have put to
shame very many civilized men. Almost all of
them at times did or said things that were very
interesting because of the glimpses they gave
into souls that really belong to a totally different
age from that in which I and my friends of
civilized lands are living.
December, 1913, and January, 1914, I spent
in the remote interior of Brazil, on and near
various rivers which form the headwaters of
the mighty Paraguay. It is still a frontier
country; the province is known as the Matto
Grosso, the province of the great wooded wil
derness. Yet it has a civilized and Christian
history which runs back for over a century. It ^
is on the eve of striking material development,
and, nevertheless, it is still primitive with a
primitiveness half that of a belated Europe,
half that of a savagery struggling over the
border-line into an exceedingly simple civiliza
tion. Out of these diverse and conflicting ele
ments, and with a century of comparative isola
tion behind it, the land has produced a far more
distinctive and peculiar life than our own frontier
154 A BOOK-LOVER'S HOLIDAYS
communities ever had the chance to develop.
It would be difficult to find in any country more
charming and better-bred men than some of the
gentlemen, the great ranchmen and the political
and social leaders in city life, whose generous
hospitality made me their debtor. But the
ordinary folk, and especially the Caboclos, the
peasantry, although with many sterling quali
ties, were of a type wholly different from any
thing to be found either in Europe or in tem
perate North America.
The land is largely composed of the pantanals,
the flat, wide-stretching marshes through which
the Paraguay and its affluents wind. Where the
land is low it is covered with papyrus and
water-grass; if a few feet higher, with open
palm forest. It offers fine pasturage for the
herds of cattle. In addition there are moun
tains and belts of tropic jungle and forest, and
to the north rises the sandy central table-land
of Brazil. There are no railroads, and no high
roads of any length for wheeled vehicles. The
rivers are the highways. Native boats, with
palm-thatch houses and cooking-ovens of red
earth on the decks, drift down them and are
poled or towed up them. A few light-draft
steamers, running every week or fortnight,
connect the widely scattered little cities. They
WILD HUNTING COMPANIONS 155
are quaint, picturesque little cities, without a
wheeled vehicle except the water-carts. The
one-story houses enclose open courtyards. The
walls are thick, and the windows and doors
very high, so as to let whatever coolness the
night air carries fan the sleepers in their ham
mocks. In the bigger houses there are beds
in the guest-chambers; but the hammock is
really the bed; and in the inns the bedrooms
have rings in the walls from which the traveller
hangs the hammock he has brought with him.
After nightfall the men sit at little tables under
the trees in the public squares or outside the
taverns, and through the open doors and win
dows of the houses, in the mysterious darkness,
are the half-seen figures of girls and women;
and stringed instruments tinkle in the still
tropic night.
When Portugal still ruled Brazil, the first
of these cities was founded, toward the end of
the eighteenth century. At that time it could
only be reached by a long voyage of peril and
hardship up the Amazon and the Madeira,
and then by mule back. No place in the world
is now so remote from civilization as this little
capital of the "Great Wilderness" then was;
but its life was fervent under the torrid sky.
Governors, generals, priests were there, slave-
156 A BOOK-LOVER'S HOLIDAYS
owners and gold seekers; killers of men and
lovers of women. There was a palace and a
cathedral and a fort, adorned with paintings
and carvings. All are in ruins now; the rank
vegetation of the tropics, beautiful and lethal,
has covered them and twisted them asunder;
for the strange little one-time capital city is
dead, and those that dwelt therein have left
it.
The next comers followed a route that led
from the opposite direction, the south. These
were the Paolistas. At Sao Paulo, almost un
der the Tropic of Cancer, the Portuguese con
querors married with the women of the native
Indians, and made, first slaves, and then sol
diers, of men from many Indian tribes. They
all became welded together into one people,
speaking Portuguese, but largely, and probably
mainly, Indian by blood; and being of various
martial stocks, with the morals of the viking
age, they grew into a community of freebooters
whose raiding expeditions, carried on with the
utmost energy, daring, and ruthlessness, spread
terror far and wide. Early in the nineteenth
century these hardy horsemen and boatmen,
searching for gold, land, and slaves, penetrated
to the headwaters of the Paraguay, and with
their advent began the first rude change from
WILD HUNTING COMPANIONS 157
mere savagery to that which held within it the
germ of civilization.
Two or three of the ranches at which we
stopped were provided with elaborate and even
handsome ranch-houses and other buildings.
One of them was owned by a wealthy and cul
tivated native proprietor. It was fitted with
much stately luxury, and some comfort. Two
others were owned by foreign corporations.
Among the higher employees were men from
Europe and the United States, and also "ori
entals," as the men of Uruguay are always
called -- Uruguay being the "banda oriental,"
or eastern shore, of the Plate. These orientals
were as pure white as the Europeans and North
Americans, and were of a high grade. The
ordinary cow-hands on these two ranches were
mostly Paraguayans, men of almost pure In
dian blood, speaking the Guarani tongue, which
is the real home language of the peculiar a
interesting little republic which takes its
name from the great river. These particular
ranches were on the borders of the Bolivian
country, and along this frontier the condi
tions as regards order and international law are
much what they were on the border between
England and Scotland in the sixteenth century.
The man who cannot protect his own life by
158 A BOOK-LOVER'S HOLIDAYS
his own fierce and wary prowess cannot exist
under such conditions, and the cow -hands must
be men recklessly ready to fight for their cattle.
The Paraguayans of the class who sought em
ployment in the western interior of Brazil bore
a fighting, and somewhat murderous, reputation.
They were a daredevil set, and under men of
masterful type they did hard and dangerous
work for their employers.
The ordinary ranches where we stopped
were of a different type. The houses were of
one story, with thick, white walls. The few
rooms were furnished only with rough tables
and benches and rings for the hammocks. The
unglazed windows were fitted with solid wooden
shutters. Outbuildings stood near by; one per
haps for a kitchen; sheds for skinning or for the
few stores; cabins in which the ranch-hands
lived with their families. Palm-trees, or bananas
with huge, ragged leaves, or trees unlike any
familiar to our experience, might stand near by,
close to the big cow corrals. On the poorer
ranches the houses were nothing but log skeletons
thatched with palm-leaves.
On these ranches the "camaradas," the cow
hands, in whose company we hunted, were all
native Brazilians, of the same type as the men
whom subsequently we took with us on our
WILD HUNTING COMPANIONS 159
voyage of exploration down the Rio da Duvida
to the Amazon. It was a simple, primitive ex
istence. All the industry was connected with
the cattle or with cultivating the tropical vege
tables and fruits of the garden. Two-wheeled
ox-carts, each wheel taller than a man, carried
hides and smoked flesh to the river landing
where native boats, or now and then light-
draft steamers, were moored. After sunset the
life went on outdoors, unless it rained, until
bedtime. As it grew dusk the doorways and
the unglazed windows, standing open, showed
only empty darkness within. The cooking was
done in pots, at small fires outside. Now and
then some one played a guitar or banjo; or sang
strange songs, light-hearted songs of dances,
melancholy songs of love or of death, songs
about the feats of men and of bulls, and of
famous horses; but always with something
queer and barbaric as if they came from a time
and a life immeasurably remote. Always the
darkness shrouded from us the hot, furtive life
we knew it held.
These poor country folk were on the whole
a kindly, courteous race; it was pleasant to
have them known as "camaradas" by the men
of the upper class. They represented every
shade of mixture among the three strains of
160 A BOOK-LOVER'S HOLIDAYS
Portuguese, Indian, and negro, and no color-
line was drawn by the pure bloods of any of the
three races. Whatever their blood, they lived
alike and dressed alike. There were very curious
customs among many of them, customs which
were probably dying out, but which must
surely have been imported from utter savagery,
although they were all Christians and all spoke
Portuguese. As an instance, a number of them,
from out-of-the-way places, but including at
least one man who was of practically pure white
blood, had the edges of their front teeth filed so
as to make them semicircular.
When we hunted we would leave our camp,
or the ranch -house where we had slept, before
dawn. The hot sun flamed red above the
marshes or sent long shafts of crimson light be
tween the palm trunks. It might be evening
before we returned. The heat of the day would
be spent in the shade near a pond, and often our
dusky companions would then get into long con
versations with us. These camaradas usually
rode little stallions, but sometimes one would
be mounted on a trotting ox, which was guided
by a string through the nostrils. Half -starved
dogs followed behind. The men carried spears,
rarely firearms. Their hats and clothes, their
saddles and bridles seemed on the point of fall-
WILD HUNTING COMPANIONS 161
ing to pieces. On their bare feet they wore
rusty spurs, and the stirrups were iron rings, in
which they thrust the big toe, and the toe next
it. But no antic of the half-broken horse and
no difficulty in the jungle trail made the slight
est impression on them. They were only fairly
good hunters and trailers, and when in thick
forest Kermit with his compass could find his
way better than they could. A few of them
hunted the jaguar and also the cashada, the big
peccary which goes in herds and is aggressive
and truculent; but most of them let the danger
ous big cat and the dangerous little hogs severely
alone, and hunted only the tapir, deer, and
capybara. The rare jaguars that become man-
eaters, the occasional giant anacondas, the
deadly poisonous snakes, and the cashadas,
were all the subjects of superstitious tales.
They were shy about telling these stories to
persons who might laugh, but if assured of sym
pathy would occasionally unbend. Then they
would describe how man-eating jaguars were
warlocks, able to enslave the souls of those they
slew; so that each murdered man thenceforth
served the dreadful beast that had eaten him,
guarded him from danger, and guided him to
fresh victims; or they would tell a ghost-story
I never quite understood, about a seemingly
162 A BOOK-LOVER'S HOLIDAYS
harmless ghost, white and without any arms,
which in the night-time rode the biggest peccary
of the herd. In these tales the giant ant-eater
always appeared as a comic character, a figure
of fun, although with a somewhat grim ability
to take care of himself; it was he who would
meet drunken men and embrace them with his
unpleasant claws and then hurry them home.
The camaradas whom we took with us on our
exploring trip were mostly drawn from among
these country folk of the ranches, although two
or three came from the coast towns. The two
best hunters were Antonio the Paregis, a full-
blood Paregis Indian, and Antonio Correa, an
intelligent, daredevil mulatto, probably with
also a dash of Indian blood. The latter, like
several other of our men, had lived among the
wild Indians and had adopted some of their
traits, including one exceedingly odd matter of
dress. Antonio the Paregis, a kindly, faithful,
stupid soul, had abandoned his tribe, come into
the settlements, and married a dark mulattress
- the queer result being that according to the
custom of the country their children would be
regarded as civilized and therefore white. An
tonio Correa was one of the two best and most
trustworthy men on the trip; uncomplaining,
hardworking, and undaunted in time of peril.
WILD HUNTING COMPANIONS 163
When, during our descent of the unknown
river, we reached the first rubber man's house
he expressed with curious eloquence the feel
ing we all had at hearing around us again the
voices of men and women, and knowing that
the chance of utter disaster was over; instead
of camping at night in the midst of dangerous
rapids, while every hour of the day carried its
menace, and there always loomed ahead the
danger of death in any one of a dozen possible
ways, from famine to fever and dysentery, and
from drowning to battle with Indians. When
we reached the first rubber-gatherer's store the
delicacy which all our men most eagerly coveted
was condensed milk, and to my amused horror
they solemnly proceeded each to eat a canful
of the sweet and sticky luxury.
Of all my wilder hunting companions those
to whom I became most attached — although
some of them were the wildest of all — were those
Kermit and I had \vith us in Africa for eleven
months. Disregarding a very problematical
Christian, these were either Mohammedans or
heathens. However, after having been in our
employ a little while, and after having adopted
the fez, jersey, and short trousers — and, as a
matter of pure pride and symbolism, boots —
they all regarded themselves as of an elevated
164 A BOOK-LOVER'S HOLIDAYS
social status, and openly looked down on the
unregenerated "shenzis" or natives who were
still in the kirtle-of -banana-leaves cultural stage.
They represented many different tribes. Some
of them were file-toothed cannibals. Many of
them had come from long distances; for — as
philanthropists will do well to note — being even
a porter in a white man's service in British East
Africa or Uganda or the Soudan, meant an
amount of pay and a comfort of living and
(although this, I think, was subordinate in their
minds) a justness of treatment which they
could by no possibility achieve in their own
homes under native conditions. As for the per
sonal attendants, the gun-bearers, tent-boys, and
saises, as well as the head men and askaris, or
soldiers, they felt as far above the porters as
the latter did above the shenzis. The common
tongue was Swahili, a negro -Arab dialect,
originally spoken by the descendants, mainly
negro in blood, of the Arab conquerors, traders,
and slave-raiders of Zanzibar. This is a lingo
found over much of central Africa. But only a
few of our men were Swahilis by blood.
Of course, most of them were like children,
with a grasshopper inability for continuity of
thought and realization of the future. They
would often act with an inconsequence that
WILD HUNTING COMPANIONS 165
was really puzzling. Dog-like fidelity, persevered
in for months, would be ended by a fit of re
sentment at something unknown, or by a sheer
volatility which made them abandon their jobs
when it was even more to their detriment than
to ours. But they had certain fixed standards
of honor; the porter would not abandon his
load, the gun-bearer would not abandon his
master when in danger from a charging beast -
although, unless a first-class man, he might at
that critical moment need discipline to restrain
his nervous excitability. They appreciated jus
tice, but they were neither happy nor well be
haved unless they were under authority; weak
ness toward them was even more ruinous than
harshness and overseverity.
The personal attendants of Kermit and my
self established a kind of "chief petty officers'
mess" in the caravan. Not only his own boys,
but mine, really cared more for Kermit than
they did for me. This was partly because he
spoke Swahili; partly because he could see
game, follow its tracks, and walk as I could not;
and partly because he exercised more strict con
trol over his men and yet more thought and care
in giving them their pleasures and rewards. I
was apt to become amused and therefore too
lenient in dealing with grasshopper-like failings
166 A BOOK-LOVER'S HOLIDAYS
- which was bad for the grasshoppers them
selves; and, moreover, I was apt to announce
to a man who had deserved well that he should
receive so many rupees at the end of the trip,
which to him seemed a prophecy about the
somewhat remote future, whereas Kermit gave
less, but gave it in more immediate form, such
as sugar or tea, and rupees to be expended in
the first Indian or Swahili trader's store we
met; on which occasions I would see Kermit
head a solemn procession of both his followers
and mine to the store, where he would super
intend their purchases, not only helping them
to make up vacillating minds but seeing that
they were not cheated.
An exception was my head tent-boy, Ali. He
had a good deal of Arab blood in him, he
spoke a little English, he was really intelligent,
he was an innately loyal soul, and he was
keenly alive to the honor of being the fore
most attendant of the head of the expedition.
He was distinctly an autocrat to the second
tent-boy, whose tenure was apt to be short, and
he regarded Somalis with professional rivalry
and distrust. He always did his work excel
lently, and during the eleven months he was
with me I never had to correct or rebuke him,
and whenever I had a bout of fever he was de-
WILD HUNTING COMPANIONS 167
votion itself. Once, while at a friend's house,
his Somali stole some silver from me, after
which Ali always kept my silver himself with
scrupulous honesty. I still now and then get
a letter from him, but as the letters are sent
through some professional Hindoo scribe they
are of value chiefly as tokens of affection. The
last one, written in acknowledgment of a gift
sent him, contained a rather long letter in
Swahili, a translation into Arabic, and then a
would-be translation into English, which, how
ever, went no further than the cumulative
repetition of all the expressions of ceremonious
regard known to the scribe.
My head gun-bearer, named Hartebeest -
Kongoni - - also did his work so well that I
never had to reprove him; he was cool and
game, a good tracker and tireless walker. But
the second gun-bearer, Gouvimali, although a
cheerful and willing soul, tended to get rattled
when near dangerous animals. Unless his
master is really in the grip of an animal, the
worst sin a gun-bearer can commit, next to
running away, is to shoot the gun he is carry
ing; for, if the master is fit to hunt dangerous
game at all, it is he who must do the killing,
and, if in a tight place, he must be able to count
with absolute certainty on the gun-bearer's
168 A BOOK-LOVER'S HOLIDAYS
handing him a loaded rifle when his own has
been fired. On one occasion I was covering a
rhino which Kermit was trying to photograph.
The beast was very close and seemed about to
begin hostilities. Gouvimali became very much
excited and raised his rifle to shoot. I over
heard Kongoni chide him, and I spoke to him
sharply, but he still kept the rifle at his shoulder;
whereupon I slapped his face just before shoot
ing the rhino. This prevented his firing and
brought him to his senses, but was not a suf
ficient punishment. The really dreadful pun
ishment would have been to send him back to
the ranks of the porters. But I wished to give
him another chance; so next morning I in
structed Ali that he was to be my interpreter,
and that Gouvimali was to be brought up for
justice before my tent. To make it impressive,
Kongoni and the second tent-boy were sum
moned to attend, which they did with pleased
anticipation. But they were not alone. All
of Kermit's attendants rushed gleefully over,
including his two first-class gun-bearers, his
camera-bearer, the wild 'Nmwezi ex-cannibal
whom he had turned into a devoted and ex
cellent tent-boy, and the cheerful Kikuyu
savage who had taken naturally to being sais
for his and my little mules. The sympathies
WILD HUNTING COMPANIONS 169
of all of them were ostentatiously against the
culprit, and they were prepared for the virtuous
enjoyment characteristic of the orthodox sure-
of-their-salvation at a heresy trial.
Court opened with me in my camp-chair in
front of the tent. Ali stood beside me, erect
with gratified horror, and eager to show that
he was not merely an interpreter but a prose
cutor and assistant judge. Abject Gouvimali
stood in front, with head hanging. The others
ranged themselves in a semicircle, and filled
the function of a Greek chorus. The proceed
ings were as follows:
I (with frowning majesty): "Tell Gouvimali he knows
that I have treated him very, very well; besides his wages,
I have given him tea and sugar and tobacco and a red
blanket."
Ali translates with the thunderous eloquence of Cicero
against Verres; Verres writhes.
Chorus (with hands raised at the thought of such
magnificent generosity): "Oh, what a good Bwana!"
I (reproachfully): "Whenever I shot a lion or an ele
phant I gave him some silver rupees."
Ali translates this with a voice shaken by emotion over
the human baseness that could forget such gifts.
Chorus (in ecstatic contemplation of my virtue): "Oh,
what a generous Bwana!"
I (leaning forward toward the accused): "And yet he
started to shoot at a rhinoceros the Bwana Merodadi
[Dandy Master, the Master who was a dandy to shoot and
ride and get game] was photographing."
170 A BOOK-LOVER'S HOLIDAYS
All fairly hisses this statement; malefactor shudders.
Chorus (almost bereft of speech at the revelation of a
depravity of which they had never hitherto dreamed) :
"Hau! W-a-u!!"
I (severe, but melancholy): "You didn't stop until I
had to slap your face."
Chorus (with unctuous relish): "The Bwana ought to
have beaten you !"
I: "Do you wish to become a porter again? There's
a Kavirondo porter very anxious to get your job !" (De
ceitfully concealing a vagueness of recollection about this
aspirant, who had been pronounced worthless.)
Malefactor (overcome by suggestion of the semimythical
Kavirondo rival) : "Oh, Bwana, have me beaten, but keep
me as gun-bearer ! "
I (with regal beneficence): "Well, I'll fine you ten
rupees; and if you make another break, out you go;
and you're to do all Kongoni's gun-cleaning for a week."
(Kongoni, endeavoring to look both austere and disin
terested, pokes malefactor in back.)
Chorus (disappointed of a tragedy, but fundamentally
kind-hearted): "What a merciful Bwana! And now
Gouvimali will always be careful! Good Gouvimali!"
On another occasion, on the White Nile, I
one day took with me, to show me game, two
natives of a village near our camp. I shot a
roan antelope. It was mortally wounded; one
of the natives, the "shenzis," saw it fall but
said nothing and slipped away to get the horns
and meat for himself. Later, Kongoni became
suspicious, and very acutely — for he was not
only a master of hunting craft but also pos-
WILD HUNTING COMPANIONS 171
sessed a sympathetic insight into the shenzi
inind — led us to the spot and caught the of
fender, and a party of the villagers, red-handed.
Kongoni and Gouvimali pounced on the faithless
guide, while the others scattered; and the sais,
unable to resist having something to do with
the fray, handed the led mule to a small naked
boy, rushed forward, gave the captive a thump,
and then returned to his mule. The offender
was brought to camp and put under guard —
evidently horribly afraid we would eat him in
stead of the now far-gone roan. Next day
Kermit got home from his hunt before I did.
When I reached camp I found Kermit sitting
with a book and his pipe under a great tree, in
his camp-chair. The captive was tied with a
string to the huge tree trunk. He sat on the
ground and uttered hollow groans whenever he
thought they would be effective. At nightfall
we released him, keeping his knife, which we
required him to redeem with a chicken; and
when he returned with the chicken we bade
him give it to Kongoni, to whom we owed the
discovery of the roan.
In some of the wilder and more lonely camps
these body-servants were my only companions,
together with some shenzi porters; at others
Kermit was with me, also with his tail of de-
172 A BOOK-LOVER'S HOLIDAYS
voted personal attendants. Where the game
swarmed and no human beings existed for many
leagues round about we built circular fences of
thorns to keep out beasts of prey. The porters,
chanting a monotonous refrain, brought in
wood to keep the watch-fires going all night.
Supper was cooked and eaten. Then we sat
and listened to the fierce and eager life that
went on in the darkness outside. Hoofs thun
dered now and then, there were snortings and
grun tings, occasional bello wings or roarings, or
angry whinings, of fear or of cruel hunger or of
savage love-making; ever there was a skipping
and running of beasts unseen; for out there in
the darkness a game as old as the world was
being played, a game without any rules, where
the forfeit was death.
Generally the wild creatures were not so
close even at these lonely camps, and we did
not have to guard against attack, although
there were always sentries and watch-fires, and
we always slept with our loaded rifles beside
us. After dinner the tent-boys and gun-bearers
would talk and laugh, or tell stories, or listen
while one of their number, Kermit's first gun-
bearer, a huge, absolutely honest, coal-black
negro from south of the Victorian Lake,
strummed on an odd little native harp; and
WILD HUNTING COMPANIONS 173
one of them might improvise a song. It was
usually a very simple song; perhaps about some
thing Kermit or I had done during the day,
and of how we lived far away in an unknown
land across vast oceans but had come to Africa
with wonderful rifles to kill lions and elephants.
Once the song was merely an expression of
gratified approval of the quality of the meat
of an eland I had shot during the day. Once we
listened to a really humorous song describing
the disapproval of the women about something
their husbands had done, the shrill scolding of
the women being mimicked with much effect.
Some of the songs dealt with traditions and ex
periences which I did not understand, and which
were probably far more interesting than any
that I did understand.
My gun-bearers accompanied me whenever
I visited the native villages of the different
tribes. These tribes differed widely from one
another in almost every respect. In Uganda
my men stood behind me when some dignified
and formally polite chief or great noble came to
visit me; clothed in white, and perhaps dragged
in a rickshaw or riding a mule with silver trap
pings, while his drummer beat on the huge native
drum the distinctive clan tune which, when he
walked abroad, bade all take notice just who
174 A BOOK-LOVER'S HOLIDAYS
the noble was, distinguishing him from all the
other great lords, each of whom also had his
own especial tune. My men strode at my back
when I approached the rest-houses that were
made ready for me, as we walked from one to
the other of the two Nyanzas; palm-thatched
rest-houses before which the musicians of the
local chiefs received me with drum-beat, and
the hollow booming of bamboos, and rattling
of gourds, and the clashing of metal on metal,
and the twanging of instruments of many
strings. They accompanied me to the rings of
square huts, plastered with cow-dung, where the
Masai herdsmen dwelt, guarding their cattle,
goats, and wire-haired sheep; and to the no
mad camps of the camel-owning Samburu, on
thorn-covered flats from which we looked south
ward toward the mighty equatorial snow peak
of Kenia. They stood with me to gaze at the
midnight dances of the Kikuyu. They followed
me among the villages of beehive huts in the
lands of the naked savages along the upper
Nile.
Ali always, no matter how untoward the sur
roundings, had things ready and comfortable
for me at night when I came in. My gun-
bearers trudged behind me all day long over the
plains where the heat haze danced, or through
WILD HUNTING COMPANIONS 175
the marshes, or in the twilight of the tropic
forests. After dark they always guided me
back to camp if there were any landmarks; but,
curiously enough, if we had to steer by the
stars, I had to do the guiding. They were al
ways alert for game. They were fine trackers.
They never complained. They were always at
my elbows when we had to deal with some
dangerous beast. It is small wonder I became
attached to them. All of Kermit's and my
personal attendants went with us to Cairo,
whence we shipped them back to Zanzibar.
They earnestly besought us to take them to
America. Cairo, of course, both enchanted and
cowed them. What they most enjoyed while
there was when Kermit took them all out in
taxis to the zoo. They were children of the
wilderness; their brains were in a whirl because
of the big city; it made them feel at home to
see the wild things they knew, and it interested
them greatly to see the other wild things which
were so different from what they knew.
In the old days, on the great plains and in
the Rockies, I went out occasionally with In
dians or half-breeds; Kermit went after moun
tain-sheep in the desert with a couple of Mexican
packers; and Archie, Quentin, and I, while in
Arizona, travelled on one occasion with a Mex-
176 A BOOK-LOVER'S HOLIDAYS
ican wagon-driver and a Navajo cook (both
good men), and once or twice for a day or two
at a time with Navajos or Utes to act as guides
or horse-herders. On a hunting trip after white
goat and deer in the Canadian Rockies Archie
went with a guide who turned out to be from
Arizona, and who almost fell on Archie's neck
with joy at meeting a compatriot from the
Southwest. He was the son of a Texas ranger
and a Cherokee mother, was one of a family of
twenty -four children — all native American
families are not dying out, thank heaven ! -
and was a first-class rifle-shot and hunter.
The Indians with whom I hunted were hardy,
quick to see game, and good at approaching
it, but were not good shots, and as trackers
and readers of sign did not compare with the
'Ndorobo of the east African forests. I always
became good friends with them, and when they
became assured that I was sympathetic and
would not laugh at them they finally grew to
talk freely to me, and tell me stories and legends
of goblins and ghost-beasts and of the ancient
days when animals talked like men. Most of
what they said I could not understand, for I
did not speak their tongues; and they talked
without restraint only when I sat quiet and
did not interrupt them. Occasionally one who
WILD HUNTING COMPANIONS 177
spoke English, or a half-breed, and in one case
a French -Canadian who had lived long with
them, translated the stories to me. They were
fairy-tales and folk-tales - - 1 do not know the
proper terminology. Where they dealt with the
action of either men or gods they were as free
from moral implication as if they came out of
the Book of Judges; and throughout there was
a certain inconsequence, an apparent absence
of motive in what was done, and an equal
absence of any feeling for the need of explana
tion. They were people still in the hunting
stage, to whom hunting lore meant much, and
many of the tales were of supernatural beasts.
On the actions of these unearthly creatures
might depend the success of the chase of their
earthly relatives; or it might be necessary to
placate them to avoid evil; or their deeds
might be either beneficent or menacing without
reference to what men did, whether in praise or
prayer. Such beings of the other world were
the spirit-bear of the Navajos; and the ghost-
wolf of the Pawnees, to whom one of my troop
ers before Santiago, an educated, full-blood
Pawnee, once suddenly alluded; and the spirit-
buffaloes of whom the Sioux and the Mandans
told endless stories, who came up from some
where underground in the far north, who at
178 A BOOK-LOVER'S HOLIDAYS
night played games like those of human war
riors in the daytime, who were malicious and
might steal men and women, but who might
also bring to the Indians the vast herds whose
presence meant plenty and whose absence star
vation. Almost everywhere the coyote ap
peared as a sharp, tricky hero, in adventures
having to do with beasts and men and magic
things. He played the part of Br' Rabbit in
Uncle Remus.
Now and then a ghost-tale would have in it
an element of horror. The northern Indians
dwell in or on the borders of the vast and mel
ancholy boreal forests, where the winter-time al
ways brings with it the threat of famine, where
any accident to the solitary wanderer may mean
his death, and may mean also that his body
will never be found. In the awful loneliness of
that forest there are stretches as wide as many
a kingdom of Europe to which for decades at a
time no man ever goes. In the summer there
is sunlit life in the forest; flowers bloom, birds
sing, and the wind sighs through the budding
branches. In the winter there is iron desola
tion; the bitter blasts sweep from the north,
the driven ice dust sears the face, the snow lies
far above a tall man's height, in their icy beds
the rivers lie fixed like shining steel. It is
WILD HUNTING COMPANIONS 179
a sombre land, where death ever lurks behind
the traveller. To the Indian its recesses are
haunted by dread beings malevolent to man.
Around the camp-fires, when the frosts of fall
were heavy, I have heard the Indians talk of the
oncoming winter and of things seen at twilight
and sensed after nightfall by the trapper or be
lated wayfarer when the cold that gripped the
body began also to grip the heart. They told
of the windigoes which leaped and flew through
the frozen air, and left huge footprints on the
snow, and drove to madness and death men
by lonely camp-fires. They told of the snow-
walkers; how once a moose hunter, on webbed
snow-shoes, bound campward in the late after
noon saw a dim figure walking afar off on the
crust of the snow parallel to him among the
tree trunks; how as the afternoon waned the
figure came gradually nearer, until he saw that
it was shrouded in some garment which wrapped
even its head; how in the gray dusk that fol
lowed the sunset it came always closer, until he
could see that what should have been its face
was like the snout of a wolf, and that through a
crack left bare by the shroud its eyes burned
evil, baleful; how his heart was palsied with
the awful terror of the unknown, of the dead
that was not dead; and how suddenly he came
180 A BOOK-LOVER'S HOLIDAYS
on two other men, and the thing that had dogged
him turned and vanished, and they could find
no footprints on the snow.
More often the story would be nothing but a
story, perhaps about birds or beasts. Once I
heard a Kootenai tell such a story; but he said
he had heard it very far north, and that it was
not a Kootenai story. It explained why the
loon has small wings and why the partridges
in the north turn white in winter.
It happened very long ago. In those days
there was no winter and the loon had ordinary
wings and flew around like a raven. One mid
day the partridges were having tea on a sand-
point in a lake where there were small willows
and blueberry bushes. The loon wished to
take tea with them, but they crowed and
chuckled and they would not let him. So he
began to call in a very loud voice a long call,
almost like the baying of a wolf; you can hear
it now on the lakes. He called and he called,
longer and louder. He was calling the spirit who
dwells in the north, so far that no man has ever
known where it is. The spirit was asleep. But
the loon's medicine was very strong and he
called until the spirit woke up. The spirit sent
the North Wind down — he was the North
Wind — and the snow came, and summer passed
WILD HUNTING COMPANIONS 181
away. The partridges no longer crowed and
chuckled. Some of them flew away south.
The others turned white; you can see them now
very far north, but in the south only on the
mountains. Then the loon began to laugh, for
he was very glad and proud. He laughed louder
and louder; you can hear him now on the lakes.
But the spirit was very angry because the loon
had called him. He began to blow on the lake
and he began to blow on the loon. The lake be
gan to freeze and the loon began to dive, longer
and longer. But his wings began to grow smaller.
So with great difficulty, before his wings were
too small, he rose and his wings beat very rapidly
and he flew away south. That is why winter
came and why the loon dives so well and does
not fly if he can help it.
In the cane-brakes on both sides of the lower
Mississippi I have hunted bear in company
with the hard-riding, straight-shooting planters
of the country lying behind the levees — and a
gamer, more open-handedly hospitable set of
men can nowhere be found. What would,
abroad, be called the hunt servants were all
negroes from the Black Belt, in which we were
doing our hunting. These negroes of the Black
Belt have never had the opportunity to develop
beyond a low cultural stage. Most of those
182 A BOOK-LOVER'S HOLIDAYS
with us were kindly, hard-working men, expert
in their profession. One, who handled the
hounds of two Mississippi planters, was a man
in many respects of really high and fine char
acter; although in certain other respects his
moral standards were too nearly those of some
of the Old Testament patriarchs to be quite
suitable for the present century. These black
hunters possessed an extensive and on the
whole accurate knowledge of the habits of the
wild creatures, and yet mingled with this knowl
edge was a mass of firmly held nonsense about
hoop-snakes, snakes with poisonous stings in
their tails, and the like. Most, although not
all, of them were very superstitious and easily
frightened if alone at night. Their ghost-
stories were sometimes to me quite senseless;
I did not know enough of the workings of their
minds to understand what they meant. Those
stories that were understandable usually had in
them something of the grotesque and the inade
quate. By daylight the black hunters would
themselves laugh at their own fears; and even
at night, when fully believing what they were
telling, they would seriously insert details that
struck us as too comic for grave acceptance.
The story that most insistently lingers in my
mind will explain my meaning.
WILD HUNTING COMPANIONS 183
Back in the swamp among cypress ponds
was an abandoned plantation which had the
reputation of being haunted. The "big house,"
the planter's house, had been dismantled but
was still standing in fair condition. In the
neighborhood there was a powerful negro scape
grace much given to boasting that he feared no
ghost; and the local judge finally offered him
five dollars if he would go alone after nightfall
to the house in question and stay there until
sunrise. The negro accepted with the stipula
tion that he was to be allowed to light a lamp
that had been left in the house. The story
teller, who was as black as a shoe and a good
man in the swamp after bear, told the tale as
follows. I cannot pretend, however, to give his
exact expressions.
"Jake started after sunset. The moon was a
little more than half full, and it was a sure-
enough lonely walk through the cypress woods
along the abandoned, overgrown road. The
branches kept waving and the moonlight flick
ered on the ground, and Jake couldn't see any
thing clearly and yet could see a good deal, and
strange noises came from the swamp on both
sides. He was glad to get to the clearing, but
it was overgrown, too. The house shone white
in the moonlight, but the staring, open windows
184 A BOOK-LOVER'S HOLIDAYS
were black, and all inside was coal-black beyond
the moonlight, and he didn't know whether it
was empty or whether he most wished it was or
wasn't empty. But he went inside and lit the
lamp and put it on a table and sat down beside
it. Nothing happened for a long time except
that he kept hearing queer things in the swamp
and sometimes something went across the clear
ing. At last a clock struck twelve, but he knew
there wasn't any clock in the house. Just as soon
as it had finished striking, a monstrous big black
cat walked into the room and jumped on the
table and wropped his tail three times round
the lamp-chimney and said: 'Nigger, you and I
is the onliest things in this house!' And Jake
said: 'Mr. Black Cat, in one second you'll be
the onliest thing in this house,' and he went
through the window. He run hard down the
road, and pretty soon there was a crashing in
the underbrush and a big buck, with horns on
him like a rocking-chair, came up alongside and
said: 'Well, nigger, you must be losing your
wind/ and he answered mighty polite: 'Mr.
Buck, I ain't even begun to catch my wind,' and
he sure left that buck behind. And he ran and
he ran until he did lose his wind, and he sat
down on a log. And there was a patter of foot
steps behind and somebody came up the road
WILD HUNTING COMPANIONS 185
and sat down on the log too. It was a white
man, and he carried his head in his hand. The
head spoke: 'Well, nigger, you surely can run!'
and Jake he answered: 'Mr. White Man, you
ain't never seen me run/ and then he did run.
And he came to the judge's and he beat on the
door and called out: 'Judge, I'se come back;
and, Judge, I don't want that five dollars!'
The planter in connection with whose hounds
the negro worked told me that this was a ghost-
story that for a year had been told everywhere
among the colored folk, but about all kinds of
houses and people, and that the narrator didn't
really believe it; but that, nevertheless, he be
lieved enough of it to be afraid of empty houses
after dark, and moreover that he had been fright
ened into leaving a swamp planter's pigs en
tirely alone by the planter's playing ghost and
calling out to him at nightfall as he, the negro,
was travelling a lonely road with possible in
nocence of motive.
Strongly contrasted with such more than half
comic or grotesque ghost-stories was one told
me once, not by a hunting companion but by a
polished and cultivated Tahitian gentleman, a
guest of Henry Adams in Washington. His
creed was the creed of his present surroundings ;
but back of the beyond in his mind lurked old
186 A BOOK-LOVER'S HOLIDAYS
tales, and old faiths glowed with a moment's
flame at certain hours under certain conditions.
One evening some of those present were talking
of inexplicable things that had happened on
the shifting borders between life and death, be
tween the known and the unknown; and of
vampires and werewolves and the ghosts of
things long gone. Suddenly the Tahitian told
of an experience of his mother's when she was an
imperious queen in the far-off Polynesian island.
She had directed her people to build a bridge
across the mouth of a stream. After dark
something came out of the water and killed one
of the men, and the others returned to her,
saying that the spirit which dwelt in the stream
was evil and would kill all of them if they per
severed in their work. She answered that her
own family spirit, the familiar or ghost of the
family, was very strong and would protect her
people if she were present. Next day, accord
ingly, she went down in person to superintend
the building of the bridge. She took with her
two little tame pigs — pet pigs. All went well
until evening came. Then suddenly a chill
gust of wind blew from the river mouth, and in
a moment the workmen fled, screaming that the
spirit of the water was upon them. Almost
immediately afterward there was a hubbub of a
WILD HUNTING COMPANIONS 187
totally different kind; and after listening a
moment the queen spoke, telling that her spirit
had arrived, had overcome the other spirit, and
was chasing him. In another moment one of
her girls called out that the little pigs were
dead. The queen put out her hand and touched
them; they were quite cold. The defeated spirit
was hiding in them! But as she felt them they
began to grow warm and come to life. Her
familiar had followed the evil ghost into his
hiding-place in the pigs, had chased him out, and
slew him as he fled to the water. There was
no further interruption to the building of the
bridge.
The touch about the defeated spirit hiding in
the pet pigs, which thereupon grew cold, and
being chased out by his antagonist was thor
oughly Polynesian. It was most interesting to
see the cultivated man of the world suddenly go
back to superstitions that marked the child
hood of the race; and then he told tales of the
shark god, and of many other gods, and of
devils and magicians.
However, there is no lack of similar beliefs
among our own people. Long ago I knew an old
market gunner of eastern Long Island who shot
ducks and bay-birds for a, living. There was a
deserted farmhouse on the edge of the marsh,
188 A BOOK-LOVER'S HOLIDAYS
handy to the shooting-grounds, which he would
not enter. He insisted that once he had gone
there on a gray, bitter November afternoon to
escape the rain which was driving in sheets.
He lit a fire in the kitchen and started to dry
his soaked clothes. Suddenly, out of the storm,
somebody fumbled at the latch of the door.
It opened and a little old woman in gray entered.
She did not look at him, and yet a chill seemed
to fall on him. Nevertheless he rose and fol
lowed her as she went out into the hall. She
went up the steep, narrow stairway. He went
after her. She went up the still steeper little
flight that went to the garret. But when he
followed there was no one there. He came down
stairs, put on his clothes, took up his heavy
fowling-gun, and just as evening fell he started
for the mainland along a road which at one
point became a causeway. When he reached
the causeway the light was dim; but a figure
walked alongside the road on the reeds, not
bending the tops; and it was a man with his
throat cut from ear to ear.
However, to tell of the crooked beliefs of the
men of our own race, who dwell beside the
great waters or journey across the world's waste
spaces, is aside from what I have to say of the
wild hunting companions whose world was peo-
WILD HUNTING COMPANIONS 189
pled by ghosts as real to their minds as the men
and beasts with whom they were brought in
touch during their daily lives.
CHAPTER VIII
PRIMEVAL MAN; AND THE HORSE, THE
LION, AND THE ELEPHANT
TO say that progress goes on and has
gone on at unequal speed in different
continents, so far as human society is
concerned, is so self-evident as to be trite. Yet,
after all, we hardly visualize even this fact to
ourselves; and we laymen, at least, often either
disregard or else frankly forget the further
fact that this statement is equally true as re
gards the prehistory of mankind and as re
gards the paleontological history of the great
beasts with which he has been associated on
the different continents during the last two or
three hundred thousand years. In history, a
given century may on one continent mean
what on another continent was meant by a
century that came a thousand years before or
a thousand years later. In prehistory and
paleontology there is the same geographical dif
ference as regards the rapidity of development
in time.
190
PRIMEVAL MAN 191
The Soudan under the Mahdi at the end of
the nineteenth century was in religious, indus
trial, and social life, in fact in everything except
mere time, part of the evil Mohammedan world
of the seventh century. It had no relation to
the contemporary body politic of humanity ex
cept that of being a plague-spot. The Tas-
manians, Bushmen, and Esquimaux of the
eighteenth century had nothing in common
with the Europeans of their day. Their kin
ship, physical and cultural, was with certain
races of Palaeolithic Europeans and Asiatics
fifty or a hundred thousand years back.
In just the same way the fierce wild life of parts
of Africa to-day has nothing in common with
what we now see in Europe and the Americas.
Yet in its general aspect, and in many of its
most striking details, it reproduces the life that
once was, in Europe and in both the Americas,
in what paleontologists call the Pleistocene age.
By Pleistocene is meant that period — of in
calculable length as we speak of historic time,
but a mere moment if we speak of geologic
time — which witnessed in Europe and Asia
the slow change of the brute-like and but
partly human predecessors of man into beings
who were culturally on a level with the lower
forms of the savages that still exist, and some
192 A BOOK-LOVER'S HOLIDAYS
of whom were physically, as far as we can see,
abreast of the more advanced races of to-day.
Surely, this phase in the vast epic of life
development on this planet offers a fascinating
study. The history of man himself is by far
the most absorbing of all histories, and it can
not be understood without some knowledge of
his prehistory. Moreover, the history of the
rest of the animal world also yields a drama of
intense and vivid interest to all scholars gifted
with imagination. The two histories — the pre
history of humanity and the history of the cul
minating phase of non-human mammalian life —
were interwoven during the dim ages when man
was slowly groping upward from the bestial to
the half-divine.
It was my good fortune throughout one year
of my life to roam, rifle in hand, over the empty,
sunlit African wastes, and at night to camp by
palm and thorn-tree on the banks of the African
rivers. Day after day I watched the thronging
herds of wild creatures and the sly, furtive
human life of the wilderness. Often and often,
as I so watched, my thoughts went back through
measureless time to the ages when the western
lands, where my people now dwell, and the
northern lands of the eastern world, where their
remote forefathers once dwelt, were filled with
PRIMEVAL MAN 193
just such a wild life. In those days these far-
back ancestors of ours led the same lives of
suspicion and vigilant cunning among the beasts
of the forest and plain that are now led by the
wildest African savages. In that immemorial
past the beasts conditioned the lives of men,
as they conditioned the lives of one another; for
the chief factors in man's existence were then
the living things upon which he preyed and
the fearsome creatures which sometimes made
prey of him. Ages were to pass before his mas
tery grew to such a point that the fanged things
he once had feared, and the hoofed things suc
cess in the chase of which had once meant to
him life or death, became negligible factors in
his existence.
Some of the naked or half skin-clad savages
whom I met and with whom I hunted were still
leading precisely the life of these ages-dead fore
bears of ours. More than once I spent days in
heavy forests at the foot of equatorial moun
tains in company with small parties of 'Ndorobo
hunters. They were men of the deep woods,
as stealthy and wary as any of the woodland
creatures. In each case they knew and trusted
my companion - - who was in one instance a
settler, a famous lion hunter, and in the other
a noted professional elephant hunter. Yet
194 A BOOK-LOVER'S HOLIDAYS
even so their trust did not extend to letting a
stranger like himself see their women and chil
dren, who had retreated into some forest fast
ness from which we were kept aloof. The men
wore each a small fur cape over the shoulders.
Otherwise they were absolutely naked. Each
carried a pouch, and a spear. The spear head
was of iron, obtained from some of the settled
tribes. Except this iron spear head, not one of
their few belongings differed from what it
doubtless was long prior to the age of metals.
They carried bows, strung with zebra gut, and
arrows of which the wooden tips were poisoned.
In one place Kermit found where a party of
them had dwelt in a cave, evidently for many
weeks; there were bones and scraps of skin
without and within; and inside were beds of
grass, and fire-sticks, and a walled-off enclosure
of branches in which their dogs had been penned.
Elsewhere we came on one or two camping-
places with rude brush shelters. Each little
party consisted of a family, or perhaps tem
porarily of two or three families. They did not
cultivate the earth; they owned a few dogs;
and they lived on honey and game. They
killed monkeys and hyraxes, occasionally forest
hog and bongo — a beautifully striped forest
antelope as big as a Jersey cow — and now and
PRIMEVAL MAN 195
then elephant, rhino, and buffalo, and, on the
open plains at the edge of the forest, zebra.
The zebra was a favorite food; but they could
only get at it when it left the open plains and
came among the bushes or to drink at the river.
Two of these wild hunters showed me the bones
of an elephant they had killed in a pit a long
time previously; and the head man of those we
had with us on another trip bore the scars of
frightful wounds inflicted by an angered buffalo.
Hyenas at times haunted the neighborhood,
and after nightfall might attempt to carry off
a child or even a sleeping man. Very rarely
the hunters killed a leopard, and sometimes a
leopard pounced on one of them. The lion
they feared greatly, but it did not enter the
woods, and they were in danger from it only
if they ventured on the plain. The head man
above mentioned told us that once, when des
perate with hunger, his little tribe, or family
group, had found a buffalo killed by a lion, and
had attacked and slain the lion, and then feasted
on both it and the buffalo. But on another oc
casion a lion had turned the tables and killed
two of their number. The father of one of my
guides had been killed by baboons; he had at
tacked a young one with a club, and the old
males tore him to pieces with their huge dog
196 A BOOK-LOVER'S HOLIDAYS
teeth. Death to the head of a family in en
counter with an elephant or rhino might mean
literal starvation to the weaker members. They
were able to exist at all only because they had
developed their senses and powers to a degree
that placed them level with the creatures they
dreaded or preyed upon. They climbed the
huge trees almost as well as the big black-and-
white monkey. I had with me gun-bearers
from the hunting tribes of the plains, men ac
customed to the chase, but brought up in vil
lages where there was tillage and where goats
and cattle were raised. These gun-bearers of
mine were good trackers and at home in the
ordinary wilderness. But compared to these
true wild men of the forest they might almost
as well have been town-bred. The 'Ndorobo
trackers would take me straight to some partic
ular tree or spot of ground, through miles of
dense, steaming woodland every rood of which
looked like every other, returning with unerring
precision to a goal which my gun-bearers would
have been as helpless to find again as I was
myself; and they interpreted trails and signs
and footprint-scrapes which we either hardly
saw or else misread.
Doubtless the ancestors, or some of the
ancestors, of these men had lived in the land,
PRIMEVAL MAN 197
just as they themselves now did, for untold
generations before the soil-tillers and cattle-
owners came into it. They had shrunk from
the advent of the latter, and as a rule were
found only in isolated tracts which were use
less for tillage or pasturage, the dense forest
forming their habitual dwelling-place and re
treat of safety. From the best hunting-grounds,
those where the great game teemed, they had
been driven; yet these hunting-grounds were
often untenanted by human beings for much
of the year, being visited only at certain seasons
by the cattle-owning nomads.
Often these hunting-grounds offered sights
of wonder and enchantment. Day after day I
rode across them without seeing, from dawn
to sundown, a human being save the faithful
black followers, hawk-eyed and steel-thewed,
who trudged behind me. Sometimes the plains
were seas of wind-rippled grass. Sometimes
they were dotted with clumps of low thorn-
trees or broken by barren, boldly outlined hills.
Our camp might be pitched by a muddy pool,
with only stunted thorns near by; or on the
edge of a shrunken river, under the dense shade
of some great, brilliantly green fig-tree; or in
a grove of huge, flat-topped acacias with yellow
trunks and foliage like the most delicate lace;
198 A BOOK-LOVER'S HOLIDAYS
or where the long fronds of palins moved with
a ceaseless, dry rustle in the evening breeze.
At the drinking-holes, in pond or river, as the
afternoon waned, or occasionally after night
fall when the moon was bright, I sometimes
lay to see the game filing down to drink.
On these rides, I continually passed through,
and while lying in ambush I often saw, a wealth
of wild life, in numbers and variety such as the
western world, and the cold-temperate regions
of the Old World, have not seen for many, many
thousands of years. How many kinds of beasts
there were! Giraffes stared at us over the tops
of the stunted thorn -trees. In the dawn we
saw hyenas shambling homeward after their
night's prowl. Wart-hogs as hideous as night
mares ploughed along with their fore knees on
the ground as they rooted it up. Sleek oryx
with horns like rapiers galloped off with even,
gliding gait. Shaggy wildebeests curvetted
and plunged with a ferocity both ludicrous
and sinister; elands as heavy as prize cattle
trotted away with shaking dewlaps. Ungainly
hartebeests, and topi whose skins had the
sheen of satin, ran with smooth speed. The
lyre-horned waterbucks had the stately port
of wapiti bulls. Rhinoceros, foolish, mighty,
and uncouth, stood half asleep in the bright
PRIMEVAL MAN 199
sunlight. Buffalo sought the shade of the
thorn-trees, their bodies black and their great
horn-bosses glinting white. Hippos snorted
and gambolled in the water. Dominant always,
wherever we saw them, were the lion and the
elephant; and the favorite prey of the lion
was the zebra, the striped wild horse of the
African wastes.
Of course, these many different creatures
were not all to be seen at any one time or in any
one place. But again and again there were so
many of them that we felt as if we were passing
through a gigantic zoological garden. Often
the line of our burden-bearing carriers had to
be shifted from its point of march, to avoid a
rhinoceros which stared at us with dull and
truculent curiosity; while the zebra herds filed
off with barking cries across the sunlit plain,
and delicate gazelles, dainty as wood-sprites,
fled like shadows, and hartebeests gazed to
ward us with long, homely faces; or we stopped
to watch a herd of elephants, cows and calves,
browsing among the thorns, their curling trunks
raised now and then to test the wind, or per
haps one big ear lifted and then slapped back
against the body.
One day at noon, in the Sotik country of
East Africa, we stopped to skin a hyena which
200 A BOOK-LOVER'S HOLIDAYS
I had shot for the Smithsonian. As we skinned
it the game of the neighborhood gathered to
look on. The spectators included wildebeest,
hartebeest, gazelle, topi, a zebra, and a rhinoc
eros — the hook-lipped kind. Late that after
noon I shot a lioness; the successive reports of
the rifle and the grunting roars of the lioness,
put to flight a mixed herd of zebra and harte
beest which had hitherto been unconcernedly
grazing not far off to one side of the scene of
action.
On another day as I journeyed along the
valley of the Guaso Nyero — first at the head
of the safari, as it travelled through the green
forest of the river-bed, and then with only my
gun-bearers, through the hot, waterless, sun-
scorched country back from the river - - I saw
rhino, giraffe, buffalo, eland, oryx, waterbuck,
impalla, big gazelle, and gerenuk or giraffe-
gazelle. After camping, toward evening, I
walked up-stream, away from the tents, until
I came to a spot where the river ran through a
wild, rugged ravine. On the hither side I
found the carcass - - little more than the skele
ton — of a zebra which had been killed by a
couple of lions as it came to drink the previous
night. It was evidently a favorite drinking-
place, for broad game trails led down to the
PRIMEVAL MAN 201
river at this point from both banks. As I sat
and watched, a herd of zebra approached
cautiously from the opposite side. There were
in it representatives of two species of these
gaudily marked wild horses or wild asses, the
common zebra and the much, bigger northern
zebra with longer ears and more numerous
and narrower stripes. The herd advanced,
avoiding cover as much as possible, continually
halting, once wheeling and galloping back, ever
seeking with eye and nostril some token of the
presence of their maned and tawny foe. At
last the leader walked down through a break
in the bank to the river. The others crowded
close behind, jostling one another as they sank
their muzzles in the water. For a moment
fear left them, and they satisfied their thirst,
and those that were through first then stood
while the rearmost drank greedily. But as
soon as one of them began to move back to
the shore the others became uneasy and fol
lowed, and the whole herd broke into a gallop
and tore off for a couple of hundred yards.
Looking at them it was easy enough to bring
before one's eyes the tragedy of the preceding
night; the herd nearing the water, wary, but not
wary enough, the panic flight as the lion dashed
among them, the struggling and the neighing
202 A BOOK-LOVER'S HOLIDAYS
screams of the victim before the great teeth found
the life they sought. The herd I watched was
not assailed; it cantered off; oryx and water-
buck came down to drink and also cantered off.
The carcass of the murdered zebra, little but
bones and shreds of red sinew and scraps of skin,
lay not far from me. Footprints showed where
the lions had drunk after eating. As the long
afternoon lights waned, a hyena, abroad earlier
than usual, began to call somewhere in the dis
tance. The lonely gorge was rather an eerie place
as darkness fell, and I strode toward camp, alone,
keeping a sharp lookout round about; and as I
walked and watched in a present that might be
dangerous, my thoughts went back through the
immeasurable ages to a past that was always
dangerous ; to the days when our hairy and low
browed forefathers, under northern skies, fingered
their stone-headed axes as they lay among the
rocks in just such a ravine as that I had quitted,
and gazed with mingled greed and terror as the
cave-lion struck down his prey and scattered the
herds of wild horses for whose flesh they them
selves hungered.
Once in East Africa I stalked a hook-lipped
rhino, a big bull with good horns. I wished its
skin and skeleton for the Smithsonian. When a
hundred and fifty yards off I stopped for a mo-
PRIMEVAL MAN 203
ment by an ant-hill and looked around over the
wide plain. There were in sight a couple of gi
raffes, some solitary old wildebeest bulls, show
ing black against the bleached yellow grass, and
herds of hartebeest, topi, big and little gazelle,
and zebra. On another occasion, when with Ker-
mit, we inspected three rhinos at close quarters,
came to the conclusion that none of them would
make good specimens, and backed off cautiously
a couple of hundred yards to a big ant-hill.
From this point, there were in sight all the
kinds of game mentioned above except the
giraffe and little gazelle, and in addition there
were ostrich and wart-hog.
One night when we were camped on the
western bank of the upper White Nile we heard
a mighty chorus. Lions roared and elephants
trumpeted, and in the papyrus beds, beneath
the low bluff on which our tents stood, hip
popotamus bellowed and blew like the exhaust-
pipes of huge steam-engines. Next day I
hunted the giant square-mouth rhinoceros, kill
ing a cow and a bull, and taking their skins
and the skeleton of one for the Smithsonian.
On the walk out, and but a mile or two from
camp, we had passed a small herd of elephants;
and on our return we found them in the same
place, still resting, with many white cow-herons
204 A BOOK-LOVER'S HOLIDAYS
perched on their backs. From where I stood
looking at them hartebeest, kob, waterbuck, and
oribi were also all in sight.
I could mention day after day such as these,
when we saw myriads of game, often of many
kinds. One afternoon of heat and sunlight on
the parched Kapiti plains, teeming with wild
life, I followed a lion, on horseback. During
the gallop he ran for several minutes almost in
the middle of a mixed herd of hartebeest and
zebra. When he came to bay, I walked in on
him. In the background the barren hills,
"like giants at a hunting lay." Bands of harte-
beests and of showy zebras, joined by grotesquely
capering wildebeests and by lovely, long-horned
gazelles, stood round in a wide, irregular ring,
to see their two foes fight to the death. Another
day, at burning noon, in a waste of sparsely
scattered, withered thorn-trees, west of Redjaf
on the upper Nile, I killed a magnificent giant
eland bull; and during the hunt I saw elephant,
giraffe, buffalo, straw-colored Nile hartebeest,
and roan antelope, as big as horses, with shining
coats which melted in ghostly fashion into the
shimmering heat haze of the dry landscape.
In short, for months my companions and I
travelled and hunted in the Pleistocene. Man
and beasts alike were of types our own world
PRIMEVAL MAN 205
knew only in an incalculably remote past. My
gun-bearers were really men such as those of
later Palaeolithic times. Now and then I spent
days with hunters whose lives were led under con
ditions that the people of my race had not faced
for ages; probably not since before, certainly
not since immediately after, the close of the
last glacial epoch. The number and variety
of the great game, the terror inspired by some
of the beasts of prey, the bulk and majesty of
some of the beasts of the chase, were such as
are unknown in the rest of the modern world;
and nothing like them has been seen in the
western and northern world since the Pleisto
cene.
Many of these great and beautiful beasts
were of kinds which either have developed in
Africa itself, and have never wandered to the
other continents, or else had disappeared from
these other continents before man appeared
upon the earth. But three of the most char
acteristic of these beasts, the lion, the ele
phant, and the horse, were spread over almost
the whole of this planet at the time when man
as man had fairly begun his hunting. These
three beasts then abounded in Europe and in
Asia, in North America, and in South America.
In each of these continents they were among
206 A BOOK-LOVER'S HOLIDAYS
the dominant types of a fauna as rich, varied,
and impressive as only that of Africa is to-day.
When I speak of "elephant," "lion," and
"horse" I am speaking of the beasts themselves,
not their names in our vernacular. As regards
two of these three animals, the horse and the
big horse-killing cat, we have no common names
to include the various species; whereas in the
remaining case we have such a common name
to include the two widely separate existing
species, although we use different names to des
ignate two well-known fossil species. We speak
of both the Indian and the African probos
cidians as elephants, although we style "mam
moth" the recently extinct hairy elephant of
the north, which was more closely related to the
Asiatic elephant than the latter is to its African
cousin, and although we use the word "masto
don" to denote a more primitive type of elephant
also recently extinct in America. We have no
such common term either for the various big
cats or for the various horses. Yet the African
and Asiatic elephants are far more widely sep
arated from one another than the lion is from
the tiger, or even from the jaguar. They are
far more widely separated than horses, asses,
and zebras are from one another. As regards
both the horses and the big cats which have
PRIMEVAL MAN 207
always preyed so largely on horses, the differ
ences are almost exclusively in color and in
features of purely external anatomy. From the
skull and skeleton it is not possible to deter
mine with certainty the lion from the tiger,
and both come very close to the big spotted
cats; while the skulls of the horse, the ass,
and the common zebra are with difficulty to be
discriminated except by size — although the
skull of the big northernmost African zebra is
totally distinct.
In consequence, when we speak of extinct
horses it is often impossible to guarantee that
they were not asses or zebras; and when we
speak of the great extinct cats of Europe and
North America as lions, we know that it is
possible that in life they may have looked more
like tigers. Therefore it must be understood
that I use the words horse and lion as terms of
convenience and in a broad sense so as to avoid
circumlocution. I use them in exactly the way
in which "elephant" is always used to include
the two totally distinct species now living in
India and Africa. By "lion" I mean any one
of the big extinct cats, true cats, which in their
cranial and skeletal characters are almost or
quite identical with living lions and tigers and
closely related to living jaguars. By "horse"
208 A BOOK-LOVER'S HOLIDAYS
I mean any existing species of horse, ass, or
zebra, and any one of the numerous similar ex
tinct species which may have belonged to any
one of these three types, or have been inter
mediate between any two of them, or perhaps
have been somewhat different from all of them.
As thus used, the words horse, lion, and elephant
are scientifically of nearly equivalent value.
The only region in which these three animals
were not found during Pleistocene times was
Australia, which was given over wholly to a
relatively insignificant and undeveloped fauna
of marsupials and into which it is probable
that man did not intrude until at a late period.
Everywhere else, from Patagonia to the Cape of
Good Hope, including regions now faunistically
as utterly unlike as Peru, California, Alaska,
Siberia, Asia Minor, France, and Algiers, they
abounded, many different and peculiar species
being found. The Pleistocene gradually be
came part of the Age of Man; but at first it
was emphatically the Age of the Horse, the
Lion, and the Elephant, and the two ages over
lapped for a very long period. The lion was
primitive man's most deadly foe, as to this
day is the case in parts of Africa. He feared
the lion, and avoided him, and warred upon
him, until gradually he got a little the upper
PRIMEVAL MAN 209
hand of him. The elephant greatly impressed
the imagination of this primitive man, and it
still greatly impresses it; as will be seen by any
one who studies the carvings and pictures of
our ancestors of the glacial and postglacial ep
ochs, or who at the present day listens to the
talk of his black gun-bearers round an African
camp-fire. The horse was and is a quarry as
eagerly followed by primitive man as by the
lion himself. Ages elapsed before the horse,
and finally even "my lord the elephant" were
tamed by man, as man developed something
that could properly be called a culture. The
savages who, when England was merely a pen
insula of continental Europe, dwelt by the banks
of the mighty rivers which have since shrunk
into the present Rhine and Seine, looked on the
mammoth and the coarse-headed wild horse of
their day as furnishing the flesh their stomachs
craved, precisely as the savages of the Nile and
the Zambesi now look on the African elephant
and the zebra.
This Age of Primitive Man, this Age of the
Horse, the Lion, and the Elephant, like all
other historical or geological "ages," lasted
longer in some places than in others, and, in
stead of having sharply defined limits, merged
gradually into the preceding and succeeding
210 A BOOK-LOVER'S HOLIDAYS
ages. Moreover — in exact analogy with other
divisions of time, all of which, however useful,
are essentially artificial — we must constantly
remember that the perspective changes utterly
with the point of view. All paleontological terms
of time are necessarily terms chiefly of con
venience, which have and express a real in
trinsic value, but which cannot be sharply
defined. Miocene, Pliocene, Pleistocene, and
Recent are such terms. They are arbitrarily
chosen bits of terminology to express successive
stages of the world's growth, and therefore
successive and varying faunas. They are not
equivalent in time to one another; the more
remote the age from our own the greater is the
length of time we include therein. "Recent"
denotes a short period of time compared to
"Pleistocene," and "Pleistocene" a short period
compared to "Pliocene." If there are on this
earth intelligent beings at a time in the future
as remote from our day as our day is from the
Pliocene, they will certainly consider "Recent"
and "Pleistocene" as one short period. All the
beast faunas and all the human cultures from
the eras of the chinless Heidelberg and Pilt-
down men to our own time will seem in that
remote perspective practically contemporane
ous. Similarly, when we try to grasp life as
PRIMEVAL MAN
lived even in such, geologically, near-by time as
any portion of the Pleistocene, we cannot be
sure of the exact time-parallelism of closely re
lated faunas in different parts of the world, nor
can we, in many cases, tell whether certain
species were really contemporaneous or whether
they were successive. Of the general paleon-
tological facts, of the general aspects of the
various faunas in various parts of the world,
during some roughly indicated period of geo
logic time, we may be reasonably sure. But
when we speak with more minuteness, we speak
doubtfully, and at any moment new discoveries
may unsettle theories by upsetting what we
have supposed to be facts.
In considering what is in this chapter set forth
these conditions must be kept in mind. When
I speak of what I have myself seen or of the
tools, carvings, and skeletons dug from the
ground by competent observers, I speak of facts ;
but as yet the explanations of these facts must
be accepted only as hypotheses, at least in part.
Just as the elephant, wild horse, and lion exist
in Africa to-day, and have disappeared from
Europe and the two Americas thousands or tens
of thousands of years ago, so it may well be
that they had died out in North America ages
before they had disappeared from the other end
A BOOK-LOVER'S HOLIDAYS
of the western hemisphere. Again, in North
America, it is as yet quite impossible to be sure
as to the exact succession, or contemporaneity
of all of the many extinct species of horse and
elephant. It is with our present knowledge
equally impossible to be sure of the exact time
relations between any given North American
fauna and the Eurasiatic fauna most closely re
sembling it. Moreover, as yet we have only the
vaguest idea of the duration of even modern
geologic time; good observers vary as to whether
a given period covers hundreds of thousands or
only tens of thousands of years.
This does not impair the value of the general
picture which we can make in our minds. It
is not essentially different from what is the
case in history. If we speak of the Grseco-
Roman world from the days of Aristides to
those of Marcus Aurelius, we outline a his
torical period which has a real unity, and of
which all the parts are bound together by real
ties and real resemblances. Nevertheless, there
were sharp differences in the successive cultures
of this period; even the two centuries which
intervened, say, between Miltiades and Deme
trius Poliorketes, or between Marius and Trajan,
showed such differences. Dealing roughly with
the period as a whole, it would not be necessary
PRIMEVAL MAN 213
to try to draw all the distinctions and make
all the qualifications that would be essential
to minutely accurate treatment; such treat
ment would merely mar the outlines of a gen
eral sketch. The same thing is, of course, true
of an outline sketch of what our present knowl
edge shows of man's most wide-spread beast
associates, when he had begun, in forms not
very different from those of the lower savages
to-day, to spread over the world's surface.
Therefore it is necessary to remember that
in dealing even with such a recent chapter of
paleontological discovery as that concerned
with early man and the great four-footed crea
tures that were his contemporaries, our general
picture can rarely pretend to more than general
accuracy. It is only in prehistoric and proto-
historic Europe that the early career of "homo
sapiens" and his immediate predecessors has
been worked out in sufficient detail to give
even the roughest idea of its successive stages,
and of the varying groups of great beasts with
which at the different stages man was associated.
This is because the record has been better pre
served, and more closely studied in Europe than
elsewhere; for it seems fairly certain that it is
in Eurasia, in the palsearctic realm, that there
took place the development of the more or less
214 A BOOK-LOVER'S HOLIDAYS
ape-like predecessors of man and then of man
himself. It is in Eurasia that all of the remains
of man's immediate predecessors have been
found — from the Javan pithecanthropus which
can only doubtfully be called human, to the
Piltdown and Heidelberg men, who were un
doubtedly human, but who were so much closer
than any existing savage to the beasts that
(unless our present imperfect knowledge proves
erroneous) they can hardly be deemed specif
ically identical with modern homo sapiens.
Even the more modern Neanderthal men are
probably not ancestral to our own stock. It is
in Europe, following on these predecessors of
existing man, that we find the skeletons, the
weapons and tools, and the carvings of existing
man in his earliest stages; and mingled with
his remains those of the strange and mighty
beasts which dwelt beside him in the land.
Probably these European forefathers of exist
ing man came from a stock which had previously
gone through its early human and prehuman
stages in Asia. But we only know what hap
pened in Europe. There was a slow, halting,
and interrupted but on the whole steady de
velopment in physical type — sometimes the
type itself gradually changing, while sometimes
it was displaced by a wholly different type
PRIMEVAL MAN 215
of wholly different blood. Roughly parallel
with this was a corresponding development in
cultural type. Probably from the earliest times,
and certainly in late times, development or
change in physical type was often wholly un
related to development or change in culture.
Sometimes the cultural change was an autoch
thonous development. Sometimes it was due
to a more or less complete change in blood,
owing to the immigration of a strong alien type
of humanity. Sometimes it was due to the
adoption of an alien culture.
Many good observers nowadays, judging
from the facts at present accessible, are in
clined to think that the American Indian stocks
were the first human stocks that peopled the
western hemisphere, that they are by blood
nearest of kin to certain race-elements still
existing in northeastern Asia — representing
the only inhabitants of northeastern Asia when
man first penetrated from there to north
western America — and that more remotely
they may be kin to certain late Palaeolithic men
of Europe. But much of the American Indian
culture was essentially a Neolithic culture,
seemingly from the beginning. In places -
Peru, Maya-land, the Mexican plateau --it at
times developed into a civilization equally
216 A BOOK-LOVER'S HOLIDAYS
extraordinary for its achievements and for its
shortcomings and evanescence; but it never
developed a metal epoch corresponding to, say,
the bronze age of the Mediterranean, and al
though the small camel, the llama, was tamed
in South America, in North America, the ox,
sheep, white goat, and reindeer were never made
servants of man, as befell so many correspond
ing beasts of Eurasia.
In this last respect the American Indians
stayed almost on the level of the African tribes,
whose native civilization was otherwise far less
advanced. The African buffalo is as readily
tamed as its Asiatic brother; the zebra was as
susceptible of taming as the early wild horse
and ass; the eland is probably of all big rumi
nants the one that most readily lends itself to
domestication. But none of them was tamed
until tribes owning animals which had been
tamed for ages appeared in Africa; and then
the already-tamed animals were accepted in
their stead. The asses, cattle, sheep, and goats
of Asia are now the domestic animals of the
negroes and of the whites in Africa, merely be
cause it is easier, more profitable, and more
convenient to deal with animals already ac
customed for ages to the yoke of domestic
servitude than to again go through the labor in
cident to changing a wild into a tame beast.
PRIMEVAL MAN 217
It is probable that during the immense
stretch of time which in Europe covered the
growth of the various successive Palseolithic,
and finally Neolithic, cultures — the "old-stone"
ages during which man used stone implements
which he merely chipped and flaked, and the
"new-stone" age in which he ground and
polished them - - there happened time and again
what has happened in the history and pre
history of man in Africa and North America.
One of the incidents in this parallelism is the
way in which the inhabitants accepted animals
already trained and brought from elsewhere
rather than attempt to train the similar beasts
of their own forests. Doubtless the reason
why the European bison is not a domestic
animal is exactly the same as the reason why
the American bison and African buffalo are
not domestic animals. The northern European
hunting savages were displaced or subjugated
by, or received a higher culture from, tribes
bringing from Asia or from the Mediterranean
lands the cattle they had already tamed. The
same things happened, in Africa south of the
Sahara while it was still shrouded from civilized
vision, and in America since the coming of the
European.
These hunting savages existed for ages, for
218 A BOOK-LOVER'S HOLIDAYS
hundreds of thousands of years, in Europe.
During this period of time — immense by his
toric standards, yet geologically a mere mo
ment — many different human types succeeded
one another. The climate swung to and from
glacial to subtropical; fauna succeeded fauna.
One group of species of big beasts succeeded
another as the climate and plant life changed;
and then itself gave place to a third; and per
haps once more resumed its ancient place
as the physical conditions again became what
they once had been. At certain periods the
musk-ox, the reindeer, the woolly rhinoceros,
and the hairy mammoth, together with huge
cave-bears, were found; at other periods south
ern forms of elephant and rhinoceros, and
such tropical creatures as the hippopotamus,
replaced the beasts of the snow land. Horses
of different species were sometimes present in
incredible numbers. There were species of
wild cattle, including the European bison, and
the urus or aurochs — spoken of by Caesar,
and kin to, and doubtless partly ancestral to,
the tame ox. The cave-lion, perhaps indis
tinguishable from the modern African lion, was
the most formidable beast of prey. I say "per
haps" indistinguishable, for we cannot be quite
certain. Some of the races of cave-dwelling
PRIMEVAL MAN 219
men were good artists, and carved spirited
figures of mammoth, rhinoceros, bison, horse,
reindeer, and bear on ivory, or on the walls of
caves. The big lion-like cats appear only
rarely in these pictures.
In most cases the arctic and warm-temperate
or near-tropical animals supplanted one another
only incompletely as the waves of life advanced
and receded when the climate changed. This
seems a rather puzzling conjunction. The ex
planation is twofold. When the climate changes,
when it becomes warmer, for instance, northern
creatures that once were at home in the low
lands draw off into the neighboring highlands,
leaving their old haunts to newcomers from the
south, while nevertheless the two faunas may
be only a few miles apart; just as in Montana
and Alberta moose and caribou in certain places
were found side by side with the prongbuck.
Moreover, some species possess an adaptability
which their close kin do not, and can thrive
under widely different temperature conditions.
A century ago the hippopotamus was found in
the temperate Cape Colony, close to mountain
ranges climatically fit for the typical beasts of
north-temperate Eurasia. In Arizona at the
present day mammals and birds of the Canadian
fauna live on the mountain tops around the
220 A BOOK-LOVER'S HOLIDAYS
bases of which flourish animals characteristic of
the tropical Mexican plateau ; the former having
been left stranded on high mountain islands
when, with the retreat of the glaciers, the cli
mate of the United States grew warmer and
the tide of southern life-forms swept northward
over the lowlands. Under such conditions the
same river deposits might show a combination
of utterly different faunas. Moreover, some
modern animals are found from the arctics to
the tropics. The American lynx extends, in
closely connected forms, from the torrid deserts
of Mexico to arctic Alaska; so does the moun
tain-sheep. The tiger flourishes in the steaming
Malay forests and in snowy Manchuria. I have
found the cougar breeding in the frozen, bitter
midwinter among the high Rockies, in a coun
try where snow covered the ground for six
months, and where the caribou would be en
tirely at home; and again in Brazil under the
equator, in the atmosphere of a hot-house.
There were periods, during the ages before his
tory dawned, but when man had long dwelt in
Europe, in which herds of reindeer may have
roamed the French and English uplands within
sight of rivers wherein the hippopotamus dwelt
as comfortably as he recently did at the Cape
of Good Hope.
PRIMEVAL MAN
Some of the more recent of these European
hunting savages -- those who were perhaps in
part our own forefathers, or who perhaps were
of substantially the same ethnic type as the
men of the older race strains in northeastern
Asia, and even possibly of the American In
dians — and many of their more remote prede
cessors were contemporaries of the lion, the
horse, and the elephant. Different species of
horse and elephant succeeded one another. The
earlier ones were contemporaries of the hippo
potamus and of not only the lion but the sabre-
tooth. When the hairy elephant, the mammoth,
was present, the fauna also often included
the cave-lion, cave-hyena, cave-bear, wolf, boar,
woolly rhinoceros, many species of deer (in
cluding the moose and that huge fallow deer,
the Irish elk), horses, and the bison and the
aurochs. The mammoth and woolly rhinoceros
died out so recently that their carcasses are dis
covered preserved in the Siberian ice, and the
undigested food in their stomachs shows that
they ate northern plants of the kinds now com
mon, and the twigs of the conifers and other
trees which still flourish in the boreal realm of
both hemispheres.
The lion was doubtless the most dreaded foe
of the ancient European, just as he is to this
222 A BOOK-LOVER'S HOLIDAYS
day of certain African tribes. The Palaeolithic
hunters slaughtered myriads of wild horses,
just as the ebony-hued hunters of Africa now
slaughter the zebra and feast on its oily flesh.
The spirited carvings and sketches of the hairy
mammoth by the later Palaeolithic cave-dwellers
show that the elephant of the cold northlands
had impressed their imaginations precisely as
the hairless elephant of the hot south now im
presses the imaginations of the tribes that dwell
under the vertical African sun. The rhinoceros
and wild cattle of the pine forests played in
their lives the part played in the lives of our
contemporaries, the hunting tribes of Africa, by
the rhinoceros and the buffalo — the African
wild ox — which dwell among open forests of
acacias and drink from palm-bordered rivers.
They saw no animal like that strange creature,
the African giraffe; and several kinds of deer
took the place of the varied species of bovine
ruminants which, in popular parlance, we group
together as antelopes.
Substantially the fauna of mighty beasts
which furnished the means of livelihood, and
also constantly offered the menace of death, to
our European forefathers — or to the predeces
sors of our forefathers — was like that magnifi
cent fauna which we who have travelled among
PRIMEVAL MAN
the savages of present-day Africa count it one
of our greatest pleasures to have seen. During
the ages when the successive races of hunter-
savages dwelt in Europe a similar magnificent
fauna of huge and strange beasts flourished on
all the continents of the globe except in Aus
tralia. In Europe it vanished in prehistoric
times, when man had long dwelt in the land.
In Africa south of the Sahara, and partially
in spots of Asia, it has persisted to this day.
In North America it died out before, or per
haps, as regards the last stragglers, immediately
after, the coming of man; in South America it
seems clear that it survived, at least in places,
until he was well established.
The three abundant and conspicuous beasts,
all three typical of the great mammalian fauna
which was contemporary with the prehistoric
human hunters, and all three common to all
the continents on which this great mammalian
fauna was found, were the lion - - using the
name to cover several species of huge horse-
killing and man -killing cats; the elephant, in
cluding several totally different species, among
them the mammoth and mastodon; and the
horse, including numerous widely different
species. Together with these three universally
distributed animals were many others belonging
224 A BOOK-LOVER'S HOLIDAYS
to types confined to certain of the continents.
Rhinoceros were found in Europe, Asia, and
Africa (they had once flourished in North
America but had died out long before man ap
peared on the globe). Camels were found in
Asia, in South America, and especially in North
America, which was their centre of abundance
and the place where they had developed. Wild
oxen were found in all the continents except
South America; deer everywhere except in true
Africa, zoogeographical Africa, Africa south of
the Sahara. The pigs of the Old World were re
placed by the entirely different peccaries of the
New World. Sheep, goats, and goat-antelopes
lived in Eurasia and North America. Most of
the groups of big ruminants commonly called
"antelopes" are now confined to Africa; but it
appears that formerly various representatives
of them reached America. The giraffe through
this period was purely African; the hippo
potamus has retreated to Africa, although in
the period we are considering its range extended
to Eurasia. In South America were many ex
traordinary creatures totally different from one
another, including ground-sloths as big as ele
phants. Two or three outlying representatives
of the ground-sloths had wandered into North
America; but elsewhere there were no animals
PRIMEVAL MAN
in any way resembling them. The horse, the
lion, and the elephant were the three striking
representatives of this vast and varied fauna
which were common to all five continents.
The North American fauna of this type
reached its height about the time — extending
over many scores of thousands of years -
when successive ice ages alternated with long
stretches of temperate or subtropical climate
throughout the northern hemisphere. During
the period when this great North American
fauna flourished hunter-savages of archaic type
lived amid, and partly on, the great game of
Europe. But, as far as we know, men did not
come to America until after, or at the very end
of, the time when these huge grass-eaters and
twig-eaters, and the huge flesh-eaters which
preyed on them, vanished from the earth, owing
to causes which in most cases we cannot as yet
even guess.
Much the most striking and interesting col
lection of the remains of this wonderful fauna
is to be found near one of our big cities. On
the outskirts of Los Angeles, in southern Cali
fornia, are asphalt deposits springing from
petroleum beds in the shales below. The oil
seeping up to the surface has formed shallow,
spread-out pools and, occasionally, deep pits
226 A BOOK-LOVER'S HOLIDAYS
covered with water. In part of the area these
pits and pools of tar have existed for scores of
thousands or hundreds of thousands of years,
since far back in the Pleistocene. They then
acted as very dangerous and efficient mammal
traps and bird traps — and now continue so
to act, for the small mammals and the birds
of the neighborhood still wander into them,
get caught in the sticky substance, and die, as
I have myself seen. Moreover the tar serves
as a preservative of the bones of the creatures
that thus perish. In consequence some of the
ancient pits and pools are filled with immense
masses of the well-preserved bones of the strange
creatures that were smothered in them ages
ago.
Nowhere else is there any such assemblage
of remains giving such a nearly complete pic
ture of the fauna of a given region at a given
time. A striking peculiarity is that the skeletons
of the flesh-eaters far surpass in number the
skeletons of the plant-eaters. This is something
almost unique, for of course predatory animals
are of necessity much less numerous than the
animals on which they prey. The reversal in
this case of the usual proportions between the
skeletal remains of herbivorous and carnivorous
beasts and birds is due to the character of the
PRIMEVAL MAN 227
deposits. The tar round the edges of the pools
or pits hardens, becomes covered with dust, and
looks like solid earth; and water often stands
in the tar pits after rain, while at night the
shallow pools of fresh tar look like water. Evi
dently the big grazing or browsing beasts now
and then wandered out on the hard asphalt next
the solid ground, and suddenly became mired
in the soft tar beyond. Probably the pits in
which water stood served as traps year after
year as the thirsty herds sought drink. Then
each dead or dying animal became itself a lure
for all kinds of flesh-eating beasts and birds,
which in their turn were entrapped in the sticky
mass. In similar manner, thirty years ago on
the Little Missouri, I have known a grizzly
bear, a couple of timber-wolves, and several
coyotes to be attracted to the carcass of a steer
which had bogged down in the springtime be
side an alkali pool.
Another result of the peculiar conditions un
der which the skeletons accumulated is that an
unusually large number of very old, very young,
and maimed or crippled creatures were en
trapped. Doubtless animals in full vigor were
more apt to work themselves free at the moment
when they found they were caught in the tar;
and, moreover, a wolf or sabretooth which was
228 A BOOK-LOVER'S HOLIDAYS
weakened by age or by wounds received in en
counter with its rivals, or with some formidable
quarry, and which therefore found its usual
prey difficult to catch, would be apt to hang
around places where carcasses, or living creatures
still feebly struggling, offered themselves to rav
enous appetites.
The plant remains in these deposits show
that the climate and vegetation were sub
stantially those of California to-day, although
in some respects indicating northern rather
than southern California. There were cypress-
trees of a kind still common farther north,
manzanita, juniper, and oaks. Evidently the
region was one of open, grassy plains varied
with timber belts and groves. It has been said
that to support such a fauna the vegetation
must have been much more luxuriant than in
this region at present. This is probably an
error. The great game regions of Africa are
those of scanty vegetation. Thick forest holds
far less big animal life. Crossing the sunny
Athi or Kapiti plains of East Africa, where the
few trees are thorny, stunted acacias and the
low grass is brown and brittle under the drought,
the herds of zebra, hartebeest, wildebeest, and
gazelle are a perpetual delight and wonder;
and elephant, rhinoceros, and buffalo abounded
PRIMEVAL MAN 229
on them in the days before the white man came.
On the Guaso Nyero of the north, and in the
Sotik, the country was even drier at the time
of my visit, and the character of the vegeta
tion showed how light the normal rainfall was.
The land was open, grassy plain, or was thinly
covered with thorn scrub, with here and there
acacia groves and narrow belts of thicker timber
growth along the watercourses, and in the Sotik
gnarled gray olives. Yet the game swarmed.
We watched the teeming masses come down
to drink at the shrunken rivers or at the dwin
dling ponds beside which our tents were pitched.
As the line of the safari walked forward under
the brazen sky, while we white men rode at
the head with our rifles, the herds of strange
and beautiful wild creatures watched us, with
ears pricked forward, or stood heedless in the
thin shade of the trees, their tails switching
ceaselessly at the biting flies. In wealth of
numbers, in rich variety and grandeur of spe
cies, the magnificent fauna we then saw was not
substantially inferior to that which an age be
fore dwelt on the California plains.
This Pleistocene California fauna included
many beasts which persisted in the land until
our own day. There were cougars, lynxes,
timber-wolves, gray foxes, coyotes, bears, prong-
230 A BOOK-LOVER'S HOLIDAYS
horn antelopes and black-tail or white-tail deer
nearly, or quite, identical with the modern
forms. They were the same animals which I
and my fellow ranchmen hunted when, in the
early eighties of the last century, our branded
cattle were first driven to the Little Missouri.
They swarmed on the upper Missouri and the
Yellowstone when Lewis and Clark found the
bison and wapiti so tame that they would hardly
move out of the way, while the grizzly bears
slept on the open plains and fearlessly attacked
the travellers. But in the Pleistocene, at the
time we are considering, the day of these modern
creatures had only begun. The contents of the
tar-pits show that the animals named above
were few in number, compared to the great
beasts with which they were associated.
The giant among these Pleistocene giants of
California, probably the largest mammal that
ever walked the earth, was the huge imperial
elephant. This mighty beast stood at least
two feet higher than the colossal African ele
phant of to-day, which itself is bigger than the
mammoth, and as big as any other extinct
elephant. The curved tusks of the imperial
elephant reached a length of sixteen feet. A
herd of such mighty beasts must have been an
awe-inspiring sight — had there been human
PRIMEVAL MAN 231
eyes to see it. Nor were they the only represen
tatives of their family. A much more archaic
type of elephant, the mastodon, flourished be
side its gigantic cousin. The mastodon was a
relatively squat creature, standing certainly
four feet shorter than the imperial elephant,
with comparatively small and slightly curved
tusks and a flatter head. Enormous numbers
of mastodons ranged over what is now the
United States, and the adjacent parts of Can
ada and Mexico. The mastodons represented a
stage farther back in the evolutionary line than
the true elephants, and in the Old World they
died out completely before the latter disap
peared even from Europe and Siberia. But in
North America, for unknown reasons, they
outlasted their more highly developed kinsfolk
and rivals, and there is some ground for be
lieving that they did not completely disap
pear until after the arrival of man on this con
tinent.
The elephant stock developed in the Old
World, and it is probable that the true ele
phants were geologically recent immigrants to
America, coming across the land bridge which
then connected Alaska and Siberia. In Cali
fornia they encountered the big descendants of
other big immigrants, which had reached North
232 A BOOK-LOVER'S HOLIDAYS
America by another temporary land bridge,
but from another continent, South America.
These were the ground-sloths, giant edentates,
which reached an extraordinary development
in the southern half of our hemisphere, where
distant and diminutive relatives - - tree-sloths,
ant-eaters, armadillos — still live. The most
plentiful of these California ground-sloths, the
mylodon, was about the size of a rhinoceros;
an unwieldy, slow-moving creature, feeding on
plants, and in appearance utterly unlike any
thing now living.
Together with these great beasts belonging
to stocks that in recent geologic time had im
migrated hither from the Old World and from
the southern half of the New World was an
other huge beast of remote native ancestry.
This was a giant camel, with a neck almost like
that of a giraffe. Camels — including llamas -
developed in North America. Their evolu
tionary history certainly stretched through a
period of two or three million - - perhaps four
or five million — years on this continent, reach
ing back to a little Eocene ancestor no bigger
than a jack-rabbit. Yet after living and develop
ing in the land through these untold ages, over
a period inconceivably long to our apprehension,
the camels completely died out on this continent
PRIMEVAL MAN 233
of their birth, although not until they had sent
branches to Asia and South America, where
their descendants still survive.
Two other grass-eating beasts, of large size — •
although smaller than the above — were also
plentiful. One, a bison, bigger, straighter-
horned and less specialized than our modern
bison, represented the cattle, which were among
the animals that passed to America over the
Alaskan land bridge in Pleistocene time.
The other was a big, coarse-headed horse,
much larger than any modern wild horse, and
kin to the then existing giant horse of Texas,
which was the size of a percheron. The horses,
like the camels, had gone through their develop
mental history on this continent, the earliest
ancestor, the little four-toed "dawn horse" of
the Eocene, being likewise the size of a jack-
rabbit. Through millions of years, while myr
iads of generations followed one another, the
two families developed side by side, increasing
in size and seemingly in adaptation to the envi
ronment. Each stock branched into many dif
ferent species and genera. They spread into the
Old World and into South America. Then, sud
denly, --that is, suddenly in zoologic sense —
both completely died out in their ancient home,
and the horses in South America also, whereas
234 A BOOK-LOVER'S HOLIDAYS
half a dozen very distinct species are still found
in Asia and Africa.
All these great creatures wandered in herds
to and fro across the grassy Californian plains
and among the reaches of open forest. Prey
ing upon them were certain carnivores grimmer
and more terrible than any now existing. The
most distinctive and seemingly the most plen
tiful was the sabretooth. This was a huge,
squat, short-tailed, heavily built cat with upper
canines which had developed to an almost
walrus-like length; only, instead of being round
and blunt like walrus tusks, they were sharp-,
with a thin, cutting edge, so that they really
were entitled to be called sabres or daggers.
Whether the creature was colored like a lion
or like a tiger or like neither, we do not know,
for it had no connection with either save its
remote kinship with all the cats. The sabre-
tooth cats, like the true cats, had gone through
an immensely long period of developmental his
tory in North America, although they did not
appear here as early as the little camels and
horses. Far back across the ages, at or just
after the close of the Eocene -- the "dawn age"
of mammalian life — certain moderate-sized or
small cat-like creatures existed on this continent,
doubtless ancestral to the sabretooth, but so
PRIMEVAL MAN 235
generalized in type that they display close
affinities with the true cats, and even on cer
tain points with the primitive dog creatures of
the time. Age followed age — Oligocene, Mio
cene, Pliocene. The continents rose and sank
and were connected and disconnected. Vast
lakes appeared and disappeared. Mountain
chains wore down and other mountain chains
were thrust upward. Periods of heat, during
which rich forests flourished north of the arctic
circle, were followed by periods of cold, when
the glacial ice-cap crept down half-way across
the present temperate zone. Slowly, slowly,
while the surface of the world thus changed,
and through innumerable reaches of time, the
sabretooth cats and true cats developed along
many different lines in both the Old World
and the New. One form of sabretooth was in
Europe with the bestial near-human things
who were the immediate predecessors of the
first low but entirely human savages. It was
in the two Americas, however, that the sabre
tooth line culminated, immediately before its
final extinction, in its largest and most formi
dable forms. This California sabretooth was
not taller than a big cougar or leopard, but
was probably as heavy as a fair-sized lion. Its
skeletal build is such that it cannot have been
236 A BOOK-LOVER'S HOLIDAYS
an agile creature, apt at the pursuit of light and
swift prey. By rugged strength and by the
development of its terrible stabbing and cutting
dagger teeth, that is, by sheer fighting ability,
it was fitted for attack upon and battle with
the massive herbivores then so plentiful. It
must indeed have been a fearsome beast in
close grapple. Doubtless with its sharp, re
tractile claws it hung onto the huge bodies of
elephant, camel, and ground-sloth, of horse and
bison, while the sabres were driven again and
again into the mortal parts of the prey and
slashed the flesh as they withdrew. It seems
possible that the mouth was opened wide and
stabbing blows delivered, almost as a rattle
snake strikes with raised fangs. Vast numbers
of sabretooth skeletons have been found in
the asphalt; evidently the strange, formidable
creature haunted any region which held at
traction for the various kinds of heavy game
on which it preyed.
The only other carnivore as abundant as the
sabretooth was a giant wolf. This was heavier
than any existing wolf, with head and teeth
still larger in proportion. The legs were com
paratively light. Evidently, like the sabre
tooth, this giant wolf had become specialized as
a beast of battle, fitted to attack and master
PRIMEVAL MAN 237
the bulky browsers and grazers, but not to over
take those that were smaller and swifter. The
massive jaws and teeth could smash heavy
bones and tear the toughest hide; and a hungry
pack of these monsters, able to assail in open1
fight any quarry no matter how fierce or power
ful, must have spread dire havoc and dismay
among all things that could not escape by flight.
There were two still larger predatory species,
which were much less plentiful than either the
wolf or the sabretooth. One was a short-faced
cave-bear, far larger than even the huge Alaskan
bear of to-day. Doubtless it took toll of the
herds; but bears are omnivorous beasts, and
not purely predatory in the sense that is true of
those finished killers, the wolves and big cats.
Unlike the wolves and cats, bears were geolog
ically recent immigrants to America.
The other was a true cat, a mighty beast;
bigger than the African lion of to-day; indeed,
perhaps the biggest and most powerful lion-like
or tiger-like cat that ever existed. Seemingly
it was much rarer than the sabretooth; but it
is possible that this seeming rarity was due to
its not lurking in the neighborhood of pools and
licks but travelling more freely over the wastes,
being of a build fit not only for combat but for
an active and wandering life. It is usually
238 A BOOK-LOVER'S HOLIDAYS
spoken of as kin to the African lion, a decidedly
smaller beast. It is possible that its real kin
ship lies with the tiger. The Manchurian form
of the tiger is an enormous beast, and a careful
comparison of the skulls and skeletons may show
that it equals in size the huge western American
cat of Pleistocene times. I have already spoken
of the fact that in many cases it is almost im
possible to distinguish the lion and tiger apart
by the bones alone; and it may be that the
exact affinities of these recently extinct species
with living forms cannot be definitely deter
mined. But during historic and prehistoric
times the lion has been a beast of western Eurasia
and of Africa. The tiger, on the contrary, is and
has been a beast of eastern Asia, and apparently
has been spreading westward and perhaps south
ward - - that it was not as ancient an inhabi
tant of jungle-covered southern India as the
elephant and leopard seems probable from the
fact that it is not found in Ceylon, which island
in all likelihood preserves most of the southern
Indian fauna that existed prior to its separation
from the mainland. Moreover, the finest form
of tiger exists in cold northeastern Asia. In
Pleistocene times this portion of Asia was con
nected by a broad land bridge with western
America, where the mighty American cat then
PRIMEVAL MAN 239
roved and preyed on the herds of huge plant-
eating beasts. We know that many Asiatic
beasts crossed over this land bridge -- the bears,
bison, mountain-sheep, moose, caribou, and
wapiti, which still live both in Asia and North
America, and the mammoth and cave-bears,
which have died out on both continents. It is
at least possible -- further investigation may or
may not show it to be more than possible - - that
the huge Pleistocene cat of western America
was the collateral ancestor of the Manchurian
tiger. Whether it was another immigrant from
Asia, or a developed form of some big American
Pliocene cat, cannot with our present knowledge
be determined.
Surely the thought of this vast and teeming,
and utterly vanished wild life, must strongly
appeal to every man of knowledge and love of
nature, who is gifted with the imaginative power
to visualize the past and to feel the keen delight
known only to those who care intensely both for
thought and for action, both for the rich ex
perience acquired by toil and adventure, and
for the rich experience obtained through books
recording the studies of others.
Doubtless such capacity of imaginative ap
preciation is of no practical help to the hunter
of big game to-day, any more than the power to
240 A BOOK-LOVER'S HOLIDAYS
visualize the long-vanished past in history helps
a practical politican to do his ordinary work in
the present workaday world. The governor of
Gibraltar or of Aden, who cares merely to do
his own intensely practical work, need know
nothing whatever about any history more an
cient than that of the last generation. But this
is not true of the traveller. It is not even true
of the politician who wishes to get full enjoy
ment out of life without shirking its duties. He
certainly must not become a mere dreamer, or
believe that his dreams will help him in prac
tical action. But joy, just for joy's sake, has
its place too, and need in no way interfere with
work; and, of course, this is as true of the joy
of the mind as of the joy of the body. As a
man steams into the Mediterranean between the
African coast and the "purple, painted head
lands" of Spain, it is well for him if he can
bring before his vision the galleys of the Greek
and Carthaginian mercantile adventurers, and
of the conquering Romans; the boats of the
wolf -hearted Arabs; the long "snakes" of the
Norse pirates, Odin's darlings; the stately and
gorgeous war craft of Don John, the square-
sailed ships of the fighting D4itch admirals, and
the lofty three-deckers of Nelson, the greatest
of all the masters of the sea. Aden is like a
PRIMEVAL MAN 241
furnace between the hot sea and the hot sand;
but at the sight of the old rock cisterns, carved
by forgotten hands, one realizes why on that
coast of barren desolation every maritime peo
ple in turn, from the mists that shroud an im
memorial antiquity to our own day of fevered
materialistic civilization, has seized Aden Bay
- Egyptian, Sabean, Byzantine, Turk, Persian,
Portuguese, Englishman; and always, a few
miles distant, in the thirsty sands, the changeless
desert folk have waited until pride spent itself
and failed, and the new power passed, as each
old power had passed, and then the merciless
men of the waste once more claimed their own.
Gibraltar and Aden cannot mean to the un
imaginative what they mean to the men of
vision, to the men stirred by the hero tales of
the past, by the dim records of half -forgotten
peoples. These men may or may not do their
work as well as others, but their gifts count in
the joy of living. Enjoyment the same in kind
comes to the man who can clothe with flesh the
dry bones of bygone ages, and can see before
his eyes the great beasts, hunters and hunted,
the beasts so long dead, which thronged the
Californian land at a time when in all its phys
ical features it had already become essentially
what it still continues to be.
242 A BOOK-LOVER'S HOLIDAYS
The beast life of this prehistoric California
must be called ancient by a standard which
would adjudge the Egyptian pyramids and the
Mesopotamian palace mounds and the Maya
forest temples to be modern. Yet wrhen ex
pressed in geologic terms it was but of yester
day. When it flourished the Eurasian hunting
savages were in substantially the same stage
of progress as the African hunting savages who
now live surrounded by a similar fauna. On
the whole, taking into account the number,
variety, and size of the great beasts, the fauna
which surrounded Palaeolithic man in Europe
was inferior to that amid which dwell the black-
skinned savages of equatorial Africa. Even
Africa, however, although unmatched in its
wealth of antelopes, cannot quite parallel, with
its lion, elephant, and zebras, the lordlier ele
phant, the great horse, and the huge cat of the
earlier Calif ornian fauna; and the giraffe, the
hyena, the rhinoceros, and the hippopotamus
do not quite offset the sabretooth, the giant
wolf, the mastodon, the various species of enor
mous ground-sloths, and the huge camel; the
bison and buffalo about balance each other.
There were no human eyes to see nor human
ears to hear what went on in southern Cali
fornia when it held an animal life as fierce and
PRIMEVAL MAN 243
strange and formidable as mid-Africa to-day.
The towering imperial elephants and the burly
mastodons trumpeted their approach one to
the other. The great camels, striding noise
lessly on their padded feet, passed the clumsy
ground-sloths on their way to water. The
herds of huge horses and bison drank together
in pools where the edges were trodden into
mire- by innumerable hoofs. All these creatures
grew alertly on guard when the shadows length
ened and the long-drawn baying of the wolf
pack heralded the night of slaughter and of
fear; and the dusk thrilled with the ominous
questing yawns of sabretooth and giant tiger,
as the beasts of havoc prowled abroad from
their day lairs among the manzanitas, or under
cypress and live-oak.
The tar-pools caught birds as well as beasts.
Most of these birds were modern - - vultures,
eagles, geese, herons. But there were condor-
like birds twice the size of any living condor,
the biggest birds, so far as we know, that ever
flew. There were also, instead of wild turkeys,
great quantities of wild peacocks — at least
they have been identified as peacocks or similar
big, pheasant-like birds. If the identification is
correct, this is an unexpected discovery and a
fresh proof of how this extinct American fauna at
244 A BOOK-LOVER'S HOLIDAYS
so many points resembled that of Asia. It was
natural that a collateral ancestor of the present
Asiatic pheasant-like birds should dwell beside
a collateral ancestor of the present Asiatic
tiger.1
Moreover, the tar-pools hold human bones.
These, however, are probably of much later
date than the magnificent fauna above de
scribed, perhaps only a few thousand years old.
They belong to a rather advanced type of man.
It is probable that before man came to Amer
ica at all, the earlier types had died out in
Eurasia, or had been absorbed and developed,
or else had been thrust southward into Africa,
Tasmania, Australia, and remote forest tracts
of Indo-Malaysia, where, being such back
ward savages, they never developed anything
remotely resembling a civilization. It was
probably people kin to some of the later cave-
1 Professor J. C. Merriam, of the University of California, first studied
this fauna. The excavations are now being carried on by Director
Frank S. Daggett, of the capital Museum of Los Angeles County. I
have spoken above of the vast herds of game encountered over a cen
tury ago by Lewis and Clark on the upper Missouri. The journals of
these two explorers form an American classic, and they have found a
worthy editor in Reuben Gold Thwaites; there could not be an edition
more satisfactory from every standpoint — including that of good taste.
In anthropology I follow the views of Fairfield Osborne and Ales
Hfdlicka; I am not competent to decide as to the points where they
differ; and they would be the first to say that some of the hypotheses
they advance must be accepted as provisional until our knowledge is
greater.
PRIMEVAL MAN 245
dwellers who furnished the first (and perhaps
until the advent of the white man the only im
portant) immigration to America. These im
migrants, the ancestors of all the tribes of In
dians, spread from Alaska to Terra del Fuego.
Over most of the territory in both Americas
they remained at the hunting stage of savage
life, although they generally supplemented their
hunting by a certain amount of cultivation of
the soil, and although in places they developed
into advanced and very peculiar culture com
munities.
When these savages reached North America
it is likely, from our present knowledge, that
the terrible and magnificent Pleistocene fauna
had vanished, although in places the last sur
vivors of the mastodon, and perhaps of one or
two other forms, may still have lingered. What
were the causes of this wide-spread, and com
plete, and — geologically speaking — sudden ex
termination of so many and so varied types of
great herbivorous creatures, we cannot say. It
may be we can never do more than guess at
them. It is certainly an extraordinary thing
that complete destruction should have suddenly
fallen on all, literally all, of the species. Camels
and horses, after they had dwelt on this conti
nent for millions of years, since almost the dawn
246 A BOOK-LOVER'S HOLIDAYS
of mammalian life, developing from little beasts
the size of woodchucks into the largest and
most stately creatures of their kind that ever
trod the earth's surface, all at once disappeared
to the very last individual. Ground-sloths and
elephants vanished likewise. The bigger forms
of bison also died out, although one species
remained. Many causes of extinction have
been suggested. Perhaps all of them were more
or less operative. Perhaps others of which we
know nothing were operative. We cannot say.
But as regards certain of the formidable,
but heavy rather than active, beasts of prey
it is possible to hazard a guess. Compared to
agile destroyers like the cougar and the timber-
wolf, the sabretooth and the big-headed, small-
legged giant wolf were strong, heavy, rather
clumsy creatures. Predatory animals of their
kind were beasts of battle rather than beasts
of the chase. They were fitted to overcome
by downright fighting strength a big, slow,
self-confident quarry, rather than to run down
a swift and timid quarry by speed or creep up
to a wary and timid quarry by sinuous stealth.
So long as the heavy herbivores were the most
numerous these fighting carnivores were dom
inant over their sly, swift, slinking brethren.
But when the great mass of plant-eaters grew
PRIMEVAL MAN 247
to trust to speed and vigilance for their safety
there was no longer room for preying beasts
of mere prowess.
In South America it is probable that the
heavy fauna died out much later than in North
America and northern Eurasia; that is, it died
out much later than in what zoogeographers call
the holarctic realm. During most of the Ter
tiary period or age of mammals, the period in
tervening between the close of the age of great
reptiles and the time when man in human form
appeared on the planet, South America was an
island, and its faunal history was as distinct
and peculiar as that of Australia. Aside from
marsupials and New World monkeys, its most
characteristic animals were edentates and very
queer ungulates with no resemblance to those
of any other continent. Toward the close of
the Tertiary land bridges connected the two
Americas, and an interchange of faunas followed.
The South American fauna was immensely en
riched by the incoming of elephants, horses,
sabretooth cats, true cats, camels, bears, tapirs,
peccaries, deer, and dogs, all of which developed
along new and individual lines. A few of these
species, llamas and tapirs for instance, still
persist in South America although they have
died out in the land from which they came.
248 A BOOK-LOVER'S HOLIDAYS
But in the end, and also for unknown causes,
this great fauna died out in South America
likewise, leaving a continent faunistically even
more impoverished than North America. The
great autochthonous forms shared the extinction
of the big creatures of the immigrant fauna;
for under stress of competition with the new
comers, the ancient ungulates and edentates
had developed giants of their own.
Recent discoveries have shown that the ex
tinction was not complete when the ancestors
of the Indians of to-day reached the southern
Andes and the Argentine plains. An age pre
viously the forefathers of these newcomers had
lived in a land with the wild horse, the wild
elephant, and the lion; and now, at the opposite
end of the world, they had themselves reached
such a land. The elephants were mastodons of
peculiar type; the horses were of several kinds,
some resembling modern horses, others differ
ing from them in leg and skull formation more
than any of the existing species of ass, horse,
or zebra differ from one another; the huge
cats probably resembled some other big mod
ern feline more than they did the lion. As
sociated with them were many great beasts,
whose like does not now exist on earth. The
sabretooth was there, as formidable as his
PRIMEVAL MAN 249
brother of the north, and, like this brother, big
ger and more specialized than any of his Old
World kin, which were probably already extinct.
Among the ungulates of native origin was
the long-necked, high-standing macrauchenia,
shaped something like a huge, humpless camel
or giraffe, and with a short proboscis. This
animal doubtless browsed among the trees.
Another native ungulate, the toxodon, as big
and heavily made as a rhinoceros, was probably
amphibious, and had teeth superficially resem
bling those of a rodent. The edentates not only
included various ground-sloths, among them the
megatherium, which was the size of an elephant,
and the somewhat smaller mylodon, but also
creatures as fantastic as those of a nightmare.
These were the glyptodons, which were bulkier
than oxen and were clad in defensive plate-
armor more complete than that of an armadillo;
in one species the long, armored tail terminated
in a huge spiked knob, like that of some forms
of mediseval mace.
The glyptodons doubtless trusted for pro
tection to their mailed coats. The ground-
sloths had no armor. Like the terrestrial ant-
bear of Brazil they walked slowly on the outer
edges of their fore feet, which were armed with
long and powerful digging claws. They could
250 A BOOK-LOVER'S HOLIDAYS
neither flee nor hide; and it seems a marvel
that they could have held their own in the
land against the big cats and sabretooth. Yet
they persisted for ages, and spread northward
from South America. It is hard to account for
this. But it is just as hard to account for cer
tain phenomena that are occurring before our
very eyes. While journeying through the in
terior of Brazil I not infrequently came across
the big tamandua, the ant-bear or ant-eater.
We found it not only in the forests but out on
the marshes and prairies. It is almost as big
as a small black bear. In its native haunts it
is very conspicuous, both because of its size
and its coloration, and as it never attempts to
hide it is always easily seen. It is so slow that
a man can run it down on foot. It has no teeth,
and its long, curved snout gives its small head
an almost bird-like look. Its fore paws, armed
with long, digging claws, are turned in, and it
walks on their sides. It is long-haired and
thick-hided, colored black and white, and with
a long, bushy tail held aloft; and as it retreats
at a wabbly canter, its brush shaking above
its back, it looks anything but formidable.
Yet it is a gallant fighter, and can inflict severe
wounds with its claws, as well as hugging with
its powerful fore legs; and if menaced it will
PRIMEVAL MAN 251
itself fearlessly assail man or dog. When
chased by hounds, in the open, I have seen one
instantly throw itself on its back, in which
position it was much more dangerous to the
hounds than they were to it. Doubtless if at
tacked by a jaguar — and we killed jaguars in
the immediate neighborhood - - it would, if
given a moment's warning, have defended it
self in the same fashion. I suppose that this
defense would be successful; for otherwise it
seems incredible that such a conspicuous, slow-
moving beast can exist at all in exactly the
places where jaguars, able to kill a cow or
horse, are plentiful. But, even so, it is difficult
to understand how it has been able to persist
for ages in company with the great spotted
cat, the tyrant of the Brazilian wilderness.
At any rate, with this example before us, we
need not wonder overmuch at the ability of
megatherium and mylodon to hold their own
in the presence of the sab re tooth.
In the late fall of 1913, as previously de-
cribed, I motored north from the beautiful
Andean lake, Nahuel Huapi, through the stony
Patagonian plains to the Rio Negro. The only
wild things of any size that we saw were the
rheas, or South American ostriches, and a
couple of guanacos, or wild llamas, small, swift,
A BOOK-LOVER'S HOLIDAYS
humpless camels, of which the ancestral forms
were abundant in the North American Miocene.
But one of my companions, the distinguished
Argentine explorer, educator, and man of
science, Francisco Moreno, had some years pre
viously made a discovery which showed that
not many thousand years back, when the In
dians had already come into the land, the huge
and varied fauna of the Pleistocene still lingered
at the foot of the Andes. He had found a cave
in which savage men had dwelt ; and in the cave
were the remains of the animals which they
had killed, or which had entered the cave at
times when its human tenants were absent. Be
sides the weapons and utensils of the savages,
he had found the grass which they had used for
beds, and enclosures walled with stones for pur
poses of which he could not be sure. It will
be remembered that in the cave-home of the
'Ndorobo which Kermit found there were beds
of grass, and enclosures walled with brush, in
which their dogs were kept. Whether these
early Patagonian Indians had dogs I do not
know; but many African tribes build low stone
walls as foundations for sheds used for different
purposes; and sometimes, among savages, it is
absolutely impossible to guess the use to which
a given structure is put unless it is actually seen
PRIMEVAL MAN 253
in use — exactly as sometimes it is wholly im
possible to divine what a particular specimen of
savage pictorial art indicates unless the savage
is there to explain it to his civilized brother.
Among the signs of human occupation Doc
tor Moreno found, well preserved in the cold
cave, not only the almost fresh bones, but even
pieces of the skin, of certain extinct animals.
Among the species whose bones were found
were the macrauchenia, tiger, horse, and my-
lodon. When Doctor Moreno said tiger, I
asked if he did not mean jaguar; but he said
no, that he meant a huge cat like an Old World
lion or tiger; I do not know with what modern
feline its affinities were closest. The discovery
of the comparatively fresh remains of the horse
gave rise in some quarters to the belief that it
was possible this species of horse survived to
the day the Spaniards came to the Argentine
and was partly ancestral to the modern Argen
tine horse; but the supposition is untenable, for
the horse in question represents a very archaic
and peculiar type, with specialized legs and an
extraordinary skull, and could not possibly
have had anything to do with the production
of the wild, or rather feral, horses of the pam
pas and the Patagonian plains. Of the my-
lodon Doctor Moreno found not only com-
254 A BOOK-LOVER'S HOLIDAYS
paratively fresh bones, with bits of sinew, but
dried dung — almost as large as that of an
elephant -- and some big pieces of skin. The
skin was clothed with long, coarse hair, and
small ossicles were set into it, making minute
bony plates. Doctor Moreno gave me a frag
ment of the skin, and also bones and dung;
they are now in the American Museum of Nat
ural History. The discovery gave rise to much
fanciful conjecture; it was even said that the
mylodon had been domesticated and kept tame
in the caves; but Doctor Moreno laughed at
the supposition and said that it lacked any
foundation in fact. He also said that, con
trary to what has sometimes been asserted,
the age of the remains must be estimated in
thousands, possibly ten thousands, and cer
tainly not hundreds, of years.
There is no need of fanciful guesswork in
order to enhance the startling character of the
discovery. It seems to show beyond question
that the early hunting savages of southernmost
South America lived among the representatives
of a huge fauna, now wholly extinct, just as
was true of the earlier, and far more primitive,
hunting savages of Europe.
Save in tropical Africa and in portions of
hither and farther India this giant fauna has
PRIMEVAL MAN 255
now everywhere died out. In most regions,
and in the earlier stages, man had little or
nothing to do with its destruction. But during
the last few thousand years he has been the
chief factor in the extermination of the great
creatures wherever he has established an in
dustrial or agricultural civilization or semi-
civilization. The big cat he has warred against
in self-defense. The elephant in India has been
kept tame or half tame. The Old World horse
has been tamed and transplanted to every por
tion of the temperate zones, and to the dry or
treeless portions of the torrid zone.
Around the Mediterranean, the cradle of the
ancient culture of our race, we have historic
record of the process. Over three thousand
years ago the Egyptian and Mesopotamian
kings hunted the elephant in Syria. A thou
sand years later the elephant was a beast of
war in the armies of the Greeks, the Carthagin
ians, and the Romans. Twenty-five hundred
years ago the lion was a dreaded beast of ravin
in the Balkan Peninsula and Palestine, as he
was a hundred years ago in North Africa; now
he is to be found south of the Atlas, or, nearing
extinction, east of the Euphrates. Seemingly
the horse was tamed long after the more homely
beasts, the cattle, swine, goats, and sheep. He
256 A BOOK-LOVER'S HOLIDAYS
was not a beast for peaceful uses; he was the
war-horse, whose neck was clothed with thun
der, who pawed the earth when he heard the
shouting of the captains. At first he was used
not for riding, but to draw the war chariots.
Rameses and the Hittites decided their great
battles by chariot charges; the mighty and
cruel Assyrian kings rode to war and hunting
in chariots; the Homeric Greeks fought in
chariots ; Sisera ruled the land with his chariots
of iron ; and long after they had been abandoned
elsewhere war chariots were used by the cham
pions of Erin. Cavalry did not begin to super
sede them until less than a thousand years before
our era; and from that time until gunpowder
marked the beginning of the modern era the
horse decided half the great battles of history.
But with this process primitive man had
nothing to do. He was and, in the few remote
spots where he still exists unchanged, he is
wholly unable even to conceive of systematic
war against the lion, or of trying to tame the
horse or elephant. These three, alone among
the big beasts of the giant fauna in which the
age of mammals had culminated, once throve
in vast numbers from the Cape of Good Hope
and the valley of the Nile northward to the
Rhone and the Danube, eastward across India
PRIMEVAL MAN 257
and Siberia, and from Hudson Bay to the
Straits of Magellan. They were dominant
figures in the life of all the five continents when
primitive man had struggled upward from the
plane of his ape-like ancestors and had become
clearly human. For ages he was too feeble to
be as much of a factor in their lives as they were
in the lives of one another; and in North Amer
ica he never became such a factor. The great
man-killing cat was his dreaded enemy, to be
fought only under the strain of direst need.
The horse became a favorite prey when he
grew cunning enough to devise snares and
weapons. The elephant he feared and respected
for its power and occasional truculence, and
endeavored to destroy on the infrequent oc
casions when chance gave an opening to his
own crafty ferocity.
All this is true, at the present day, in por
tions of mid-Africa. I have been with tribes
whom only fear or imminent starvation could
drive to attack the lion; and I have seen the
naked warriors of the Nandi kill the great,
maned manslayer with their spears. Again
and again, as an offering of peace and good
will, I have shot zebras for natives who greed
ily longed for its flesh. My son and I killed a
rogue elephant bull at the earnest petition of a
258 A BOOK-LOVER'S HOLIDAYS
small Uganda tribe whose crops he had de
stroyed, whose field watchers he had killed,
and whose village he menaced with destruction.
Of all the wonderful great beasts with which
primitive man in his most primitive forms has
been associated, the three with which on the
whole this association was most wide-spread in
time and space, were the horse, the lion, and the
elephant.
CHAPTER IX
BOOKS FOR HOLIDAYS IN THE OPEN
I AM sometimes asked what books I advise
men or women to take on holidays in the
open. With the reservation of long trips,
where bulk is of prime consequence, I can only
answer: The same books one would read at
home. Such an answer generally invites the
further question as to what books I read when
at home. To this question I am afraid my
answer cannot be so instructive as it ought to
be, for I have never followed any plan in read
ing which would apply to all persons under all
circumstances; and indeed it seems to me that
no plan can be laid down that will be generally
applicable. If a man is not fond of books, to
him reading of any kind will be drudgery. I
most sincerely commiserate such a person, but
I do not know how to help him. If a man or a
woman is fond of books he or she will naturally
seek the books that the mind and soul demand.
Suggestions of a possibly helpful character can
be made by outsiders, but only suggestions;
259
260 A BOOK-LOVER'S HOLIDAYS
and they will probably be helpful about in pro
portion to the outsider's knowledge of the mind
and soul of the person to be helped.
Of course, if any one finds that he never reads
serious literature, if all his reading is frothy and
trashy, he would do well to try to train him
self to like books that the general agreement
of cultivated and sound-thinking persons has
placed among the classics. It is as discreditable
to the mind to be unfit for sustained mental
effort as it is to the body of a young man to be
unfit for sustained physical effort. Let man or
woman, young man or girl, read some good
author, say Gibbon or Macaulay, until sus
tained mental effort brings power to enjoy the
books worth enjoying. When this has been
achieved the man can soon trust himself to
pick out for himself the particular good books
which appeal to him.
The equation of personal taste is as powerful
in reading as in eating; and within certain
broad limits the matter is merely one of individ
ual preference, having nothing to do with the
quality either of the book or of the reader's
mind. I like apples, pears, oranges, pineapples,
and peaches. I dislike bananas, alligator-pears,
and prunes. The first fact is certainly not to
my credit, although it is to my advantage;
BOOKS FOR HOLIDAYS
and the second at least does not show moral
turpitude. At times in the tropics I have been
exceedingly sorry I could not learn to like
bananas, and on round-ups, in the cow country
in the old days, it was even more unfortunate
not to like prunes; but I simply could not make
myself like either, and that was all there was
to it.
In the same way I read over and over again
"Guy Mannering," "The Antiquary," "Pen-
dennis," "Vanity Fair," "Our Mutual Friend,"
and the "Pickwick Papers"; whereas I make
heavy weather of most parts of the "Fortunes
of Nigel," "Esmond," and the "Old Curiosity
Shop" - to mention only books I have tried to
read during the last month. I have no question
that the latter three books are as good as the
first six; doubtless for some people they are
better; but I do not like them, any more than
I like prunes or bananas.
In the same way I read and reread "Mac
beth" and "Othello"; but not "King Lear"
nor "Hamlet." I know perfectly well that the
latter are as wonderful as the former — I
wouldn't venture to admit my shortcomings
regarding them if I couldn't proudly express
my appreciation of the other two! But at my
age I might as well own up, at least to myself,
A BOOK-LOVER'S HOLIDAYS
to my limitations, and read the books I thor
oughly enjoy.
But this does not mean permitting oneself to
like what is vicious or even simply worthless.
If any man finds that he cares to read "Bel
Ami," he will do well to keep a watch on the
reflex centres of his moral nature, and to brace
himself with a course of Eugene Brieux or
Henry Bordeaux. If he does not care for
"Anna Karenina," "War and Peace," "Sebas-
topol," and "The Cossacks" he misses much;
but if he cares for the "Kreutzer Sonata" he
had better make up his mind that for patho
logical reasons he will be wise thereafter to
avoid Tolstoy entirely. Tolstoy is an interest
ing and stimulating writer, but an exceedingly
unsafe moral adviser.
It is clear that the reading of vicious books
for pleasure should be eliminated. It is no less
clear that trivial and vulgar books do more
damage than can possibly be offset by any
entertainment they yield. There remain enor
mous masses of books, of which no one man
can read more than a limited number, and
among which each reader should choose those
which meet his own particular needs. There
is no such thing as a list of "the hundred best
books," or the "best five-foot library."
BOOKS FOR HOLIDAYS 263
Dozens of series of excellent books, one hun
dred to each series, can be named, all of reason
ably equal merit and each better for many
readers than any of the others; and probably
not more than half a dozen books would appear
in all these lists. As for a "five-foot library,"
scores can readily be devised, each of which at
some given time, for some given man, under
certain conditions, will be best. But to at
tempt to create such a library that shall be of
universal value is foreordained to futility.
Within broad limits, therefore, the reader's
personal and individual taste must be the guid
ing factor. I like hunting books and books of
exploration and adventure. I do not ask any
one else to like them. I distinctly do not hold
my own preferences as anything whatever but
individual preferences; and this chapter is to be
accepted as confessional rather than didactic.
With this understanding I admit a liking for
novels where something happens; and even
among these novels I can neither explain nor
justify why I like some and do not like others;
why, among the novels of Sienkiewicz, I can
not stand "Quo Vadis," and never tire of "With
Fire and Sword," "Pan Michael," the "Del
uge" and the "Knights of the Cross."
Of course, I know that the best critics scorn
264 A BOOK-LOVER'S HOLIDAYS
the demand among novel readers for "the
happy ending." Now, in really great books — in
an epic like Milton's, in dramas like those of
^Eschylus and Sophocles — I am entirely willing
to accept and even demand tragedy, and also
in some poetry that cannot be called great, but
not in good, readable novels, of sufficient length
to enable me to get interested in the hero and
heroine !
There is enough of horror and grimness and
sordid squalor in real life with which an active
man has to grapple; and when I turn to the
world of literature — of books considered as
books, and not as instruments of my profession
- 1 do not care to study suffering unless for
some sufficient purpose. It is only a very ex
ceptional novel which I will read if He does not
marry Her; and even in exceptional novels I
much prefer this consummation. I am not de
fending my attitude. I am merely stating it.
Therefore it would be quite useless for me to
try to explain why I read certain books. As to
how and when, my answers must be only less
vague. I almost always read a good deal in the
evening; and if the rest of the evening is oc
cupied I can at least get half an hour before
going to bed. But all kinds of odd moments
turn up during even a busy day, in which it is
BOOKS FOR HOLIDAYS 265
possible to enjoy a book; and then there are
rainy afternoons in the country in autumn, and
stormy days in winter, when one's work out
doors is finished and after wet clothes have
been changed for dry, the rocking-chair in front
of the open wood-fire simply demands an ac
companying book.
Railway and steamboat journeys were, of
course, predestined through the ages as aids to
the enjoyment of reading. I have always taken
books with me when on hunting and exploring
trips. In such cases the literature should be
reasonably heavy, in order that it may last.
You can under these conditions read Herbert
Spencer, for example, or the writings of Turgot,
or a German study of the Mongols, or even a
German edition of Aristophanes, with erudite
explanations of the jokes, as you never would
if surrounded by less formidable authors in
your own library; and when you do reach the
journey's end you grasp with eager appetite at
old magazines, or at the lightest of literature.
Then, if one is worried by all kinds of men
and events — during critical periods in adminis
trative office, or at national conventions, or
during congressional investigations, or in hard-
fought political campaigns -- it is the greatest
relief and unalloyed delight to take up some
266 A BOOK-LOVER'S HOLIDAYS
really good, some really enthralling book —
Tacitus, Thucydides, Herodotus, Polybius, or
Goethe, Keats, Gray, or Lowell — and lose all
memory of everything grimy, and of the base
ness that must be parried or conquered.
Like every one else, I am apt to read in
streaks. If I get interested in any subject I
read different books connected with it, and
probably also read books on subjects suggested
by it. Having read Carlyle's "Frederick the
Great" - with its splendid description of the bat
tles, and of the unyielding courage and thrifty
resourcefulness of the iron-tempered King; and
with its screaming deification of able brutality
in the name of morality, and its practise of the
suppression and falsification of the truth under
the pretense of preaching veracity — I turned
to Macaulay's essay on this subject, and found
that the historian whom it has been the fashion
of the intellectuals to patronize or deride
showed a much sounder philosophy , and an in
finitely greater appreciation of and devotion
to truth than was shown by the loquacious
apostle of the doctrine of reticence.
Then I took up Waddington's "Guerre de
Sept Ans"; then I read all I could about Gus-
tavus Adolphus; and, gradually dropping every
thing but the military side, I got hold of quaint
BOOKS FOR HOLIDAYS 267
little old histories of Eugene of Savoy and
Turenne. In similar fashion my study of and
delight in Mahan sent me further afield, to read
queer old volumes about De Ruyter and the dar
ing warrior-merchants of the Hansa, and to
study, as well as I could, the feats of Suffren
and Tegethoff. I did not need to study Farra-
gut.
Mahaffy's books started me to reread — in
translation, alas! --the post-Athenian Greek
authors. After Ferrero I did the same thing as
regards the Latin authors, and then industri
ously read all kinds of modern writers on the
same period, finishing with Oman's capital es
say on "Seven Roman Statesmen." Gilbert
Murray brought me back from Greek history to
Greek literature, and thence by a natural sug
gestion to parts of the Old Testament, to the
Nibelungenlied, to the Roland lay and the
chansons de gestes, to Beowulf, and finally to
the great Japanese hero-tale, the story of the
Forty-Nine Ronins.
I read Burroughs too often to have him sug
gest anything save himself; but I am exceed
ingly glad that Charles Sheldon has arisen to
show what a hunter-naturalist, who adds the
ability of the writer to the ability of the trained
observer and outdoor adventurer, can do for
268 A BOOK-LOVER'S HOLIDAYS
our last great wilderness, Alaska. From Shel
don I turned to Stewart Edward White, and
then began to wander afar, with Herbert Ward's
" Voice from the Congo," and Mary Kingsley's
writings, and Hudson's "El Ornbu," and Cun
ningham Grahame's sketches of South America.
A re-reading of The Federalist led me to Burke,
to Trevelyan's history of Fox and of our own
Revolution, to Lecky; and finally by way of
Malthus and Adam Smith and Lord Acton and
Bagehot to my own contemporaries, to Ross
and George Alger.
Even in pure literature, having nothing to do
with history, philosophy, sociology, or economy,
one book will often suggest another, so that one
finds one has unconsciously followed a regular
course of reading. Once I travelled steadily
from Montaigne through Addison, Swift, Steele,
Lamb, Irving, and Lowell to Crothers and
Kenneth Grahame — and if it be objected that
some of these could not have suggested the others
I can only answer that they did suggest them.
I suppose that every one passes through
periods during which he reads no poetry; and
some people, of whom I am one, also pass
through periods during which they voraciously
devour poets of widely different kinds. Now
it will be Horace and Pope; now Schiller, Scott,
BOOKS FOR HOLIDAYS 269
Longfellow, Korner; now Bret Harte or Kip
ling; now Shelley or Herrick or Tennyson;
now Poe and Coleridge; and again Emerson or
Browning or Whitman. Sometimes one wishes
to read for the sake of contrast. To me Owen
Wister is the writer I wish when I am hungry
with the memories of lonely mountains, of vast
sunny plains with seas of wind-rippled grass, of
springing wild creatures, and lithe, sun-tanned
men who ride with utter ease on ungroomed,
half-broken horses. But when I lived much
in cow camps I often carried a volume of Swin
burne, as a kind of antiseptic to alkali dust,
tepid, muddy water, frying-pan bread, sow-belly
bacon, and the too-infrequent washing of sweat-
drenched clothing.
Fathers and mothers who are wise can train
their children first to practise, and soon to like,
the sustained mental application necessary to
enjoy good books. They will do well also to
give each boy or girl the mastery of at least
some one foreign language, so that at least one
other great literature, in addition to our own
noble English literature, shall be open to him
or her. Modern languages are taught so easily
and readily that whoever really desires to learn
one of them can soon achieve sufficient com
mand of it to read ordinary books with reason-
270 A BOOK-LOVER'S HOLIDAYS
able ease; and then it is a mere matter of prac
tise for any one to become able thoroughly to
enjoy the beauty and wisdom which knowledge
of the new tongue brings.
Now and then one's soul thirsts for laughter.
I cannot imagine any one's taking a course in
humorous writers, but just as little can I sym
pathize with the man who does not enjoy them
at times — from Sydney Smith to John Phoenix
and Artemus Ward, and from these to Stephen
Leacock. Mark Twain at his best stands a
little apart, almost as much so as Joel Chandler
Harris. Oliver Wendell Holmes, of course, is
the laughing philosopher, the humorist at his
very highest, even if we use the word "humor"
only in its most modern and narrow sense.
A man with a real fondness for books of
various kinds will find that his varying moods
determine which of these books he at the mo
ment needs. On the afternoon when Stevenson
represents the luxury of enjoyment it may
safely be assumed that Gibbon will not. The
mood that is met by Napier's " Peninsular
War," or Marbot's memoirs, will certainly not
be met by Hawthorne or Jane Austen. Park-
man's "Montcalm and Wolfe," Motley's his
tories of the Dutch Republic, will hardly fill
the soul on a day when one turns naturally to
BOOKS FOR HOLIDAYS 271
the " Heimskringla " ; and there is a sense of
disconnection if after the "Heimskringla" one
takes up the "Oxford Book of French Verse."
Another matter which within certain rather
wide limits each reader must settle for himself
is the dividing line between (1) not knowing
anything about current books, and (2) swamp
ing one's soul in the sea of vapidity which over
whelms him who reads only "the last new
books." To me the heading employed by some
reviewers when they speak of "books of the
week" comprehensively damns both the books
themselves and the reviewer who is willing to
notice them. I would much rather see the
heading "books of the year before last." A
book of the year before last which is still worth
noticing would probably be worth reading;
but one only entitled to be called a book of the
week had better be tossed into the waste-
basket at once. Still, there are plenty of new
books which are not of permanent value but
which nevertheless are worth more or less care
ful reading; partly because it is well to know
something of what especially interests the mass
of our fellows, and partly because these books,
although of ephemeral worth, may really set
forth something genuine in a fashion which for
the moment stirs the hearts of all of us.
A BOOK-LOVER'S HOLIDAYS
Books of more permanent value may, be
cause of the very fact that they possess literary
interest, also yield consolation of a non-literary
kind. If any executive grows exasperated over
the shortcomings of the legislative body with
which he deals, let him study Macaulay's ac
count of the way William was treated by his
parliaments as soon as the latter found that,
thanks to his efforts, they were no longer in
immediate danger from foreign foes; it is il
luminating. If any man feels too gloomy about
the degeneracy of our people from the stand
ards of their forefathers, let him read "Martin
Chuzzlewit"; it will be consoling.
If the attitude of this nation toward foreign
affairs and military preparedness at the present
day seems disheartening, a study of the first
fifteen years of the nineteenth century will at
any rate give us whatever comfort we can ex
tract from the fact that our great-grandfathers
were no less foolish than we are.
Nor need any one confine himself solely to
the affairs of the United States. If he becomes
tempted to idealize the past, if sentimentalists
seek to persuade him that the "ages of faith,"
the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, for in
stance, were better than our own, let him read
any trustworthy book on the subject — Lea's
BOOKS FOR HOLIDAYS 273
"History of the Inquisition," for instance, or
Coulton's abridgment of Salimbene's mem
oirs. He will be undeceived and will be de
voutly thankful that his lot has been cast in
the present age, in spite of all its faults.
It would be hopeless to try to enumerate all
the books I read, or even all the kinds. The
foregoing is a very imperfect answer to a ques
tion which admits of only such an answer.
CHAPTER X
BIRD RESERVES AT THE MOUTH OF THE
MISSISSIPPI
ON June 7, 1915, I was the guest of my
friend John M. Parker, of New Orleans,
at his house at Pass Christian, Missis
sippi. For many miles west, and especially
east, of Pass Christian, there are small towns
where the low, comfortable, singularly pic
turesque and attractive houses are owned,
some by Mississippi planters, some by city
folk who come hither from the great Southern
cities, and more and more in winter-time from
the great Northern cities also, to pass a few
months. The houses, those that are isolated
and those in the little towns, stand in what
is really one long row; a row broken by va
cant reaches, but as a whole stretching for
sixty miles, with the bright waters of the Gulf
lapping the beach in front of them, and behind
them leagues of pine forest. Between the Gulf
and the waters lies a low ridge or beach of white
sand. It is hard to make anything grow in this
274
THE MISSISSIPPI RESERVES 275
sand; but the owners of the houses have suc
ceeded, using dead leaves and what manure is
available; and in this leaf -mould the trees and
grasses and flowers grow in profusion. Long,
flimsy wooden docks stretch out into the waters
of the Gulf; there is not much bad weather, as
a rule, but every few years there comes a terrible
storm which wrecks buildings and bridges, de
stroys human lives by the thousand, washes
the small Gulf sailing craft ashore, and sweeps
away all the docks.
Our host's house was cool and airy, with
broad, covered verandas, and mosquito screens
on the doors and the big windows. The trees
in front were live-oaks, and others of his own
planting — magnolias, pecans, palms, and a
beautiful mimosa. The blooming oleanders
and hydrangeas were a delight to the eye. Be
hind, the place stretched like a long ribbon to
the edge of the fragrant pine forest, where the
long-leaved and loblolly pines rose like tall
columns out of the needle-covered sand. Five
pairs of mocking-birds and one pair of thrashers
had just finished nesting; at dawn, when the
crescent of the dying moon had risen above the
growing light in the east, the mockers sang
wonderfully, and after a while the thrasher
chimed in. Only the singing of nightingales
276 A BOOK-LOVER'S HOLIDAYS
where they are plentiful, as in some Italian
woods, can compare in strength and ecstasy
and passion, in volume and intricate change
and continuity, with the challenging love-songs
of many mockers, rivalling one another, as they
perch and balance and spring upward and float
downward through the branches of live-oak or
magnolia, after sunset and before sunrise, and
in the warm, still, brilliant moonlight of spring
and early summer.
There were other birds. The soldierly look
ing red-headed woodpeckers, in their strik
ing black, red, and white uniform, were much
in evidence. Gaudy painted finches, or "non
pareils," were less conspicuous only because of
their small size. Blue jays had raised their
young in front of the house, and, as I was in
formed, had been successfully beaten off by the
mockers and thrashers when they attempted
assaults on the eggs and nestlings of the latter.
Purple martins darted through the air. King
birds chased the big grackles and the numerous
small fish-crows — not so very much bigger than
the grackles — which uttered queer, hoarse
croakings. A pair of crested flycatchers had
their nest in a hollow in a tree; the five boldly
marked eggs rested, as usual, partly on a shed
snake skin. How, I wonder, through the im-
THE MISSISSIPPI RESERVES 277
memorial ages, and why, did this particular
bird develop its strange determination always,
where possible, to use a snake's cast-off skin in
building its nest? Every season, I was told,
this flycatcher nested in the same hollow; and
every season the hollow was previously nested
in by a tufted titmouse. Loggerhead shrikes
were plentiful. Insects were their usual food,
but they also pounced on small birds, mice,
and lizards, and once on a little chicken. They
empale their prey on locust thorns and on the
spines of other trees and bushes; and I have
known a barbed-wire fence to be decorated
with the remains of their victims. There were
red cardinal-birds ; and we saw another red bird
also, a summer tanager.
But the most interesting birds on the place
were not wild, being nothing more nor less than
ordinary fowls engaged in what to me were most
unordinary occupations. Parker had several
hundred fowls, and had by trial discovered the
truth of the statement that capons make far
better mothers than do hens, especially for very
young chicks. We saw dozens of broods of
chickens, and one or two of young guinea-
fowl, being taken care of by caponized ban
tams, game-cocks, and cochin-chinas. These
improvised mothers looked almost precisely as
278 A BOOK-LOVER'S HOLIDAYS
they did before being caponized, the differences,
chiefly in the color of the comb, being insignif
icant, for they were full-grown birds when
operated on. But their natures had suffered
the most extraordinary change, for they had
developed not only the habits but the voices
of unusually exemplary mother hens. They
never crowed; they clucked precisely like hens;
and they protected, covered, fed, and led about
their broods just like hens. They were timid,
except in defense of the chicks; but on their
behalf they were really formidable fighters.
The change in habits takes place with extraor
dinary rapidity. In a few hours the cock has
completely changed and can be placed with a
brood which he promptly adopts. In perhaps
one case in ten he does not take readily to his
duties as an ex-qfficio hen; and in such case the
further measure adopted seems as incredible as
the rest of the performance, for he is made
drunk with whiskey, acts as if he were in
toxicated, and then promptly develops maternal
feelings, and zealously enters on his new career.
We saw game-cocks clucking and calling to
their broods of little chicks, to get them to the
crumbs we tossed to them, and then sitting
with the chicks not only under their wings but
on their backs. They kept the broods with
THE MISSISSIPPI RESERVES 279
them until the young were nearly as large as
they were; in one case the brood consisted of
guinea-fowl. Moreover, they welcomed any
brood, no matter how large. One big rooster
was leading around so many chickens — all,
by what seemed a sardonic jest, his own prog
eny, the progeny of the days when he was a
mere unregenerate father --that when they
took shelter under him he had to spread his
wings; "like a buzzard," said my host, to whom
soaring buzzards were familiar sights. Of course,
the extraordinary part of all this was not the
loss of the male qualities but the immediate
and complete acquirement of those of the
female. It was as if steers invariably took to
mothering calves, or geldings to adopting foals.
These capon-mothers, with their weight and
long spurs, fought formidably for their chicks.
In one case a Cooper's hawk swooped on a
half-grown chick, whereupon the game-cock
who was officiating as hen flew at the aggressor,
striking it so hard as to injure the top of the
wing. The hawk was unable to fly, and the
cock pressed it too close to let it escape. Al
though the rooster could not kill the hawk, for
the latter threw itself on its back with ex
tended talons, he had rendered it unable to
escape, and one of the men about the place
280 A BOOK-LOVER'S HOLIDAYS
came up and killed it, having been attracted
by the noise of the fight. Another cock killed
a big blacksnake which tried to carry off one
of the chicks. The cock darted to and fro over
the snake, striking it continually until it suc
cumbed.
Pass Christian is an ideal place for a man to
go who wishes to get away from the Northern
cold for a few weeks, and be where climate,
people, and surroundings are all delightful, and
the fishing and shooting excellent. There is a
good chance, too, that the fish and game will
be preserved for use, instead of recklessly ex
terminated; for during the last dozen years
Louisiana and Mississippi, like the rest of the
Union, have waked to the criminality of mar
ring and ruining a beautiful heritage which
should be left, and through wise use (not non-
use) can be left, undiminished, to the genera
tions that are to come after us. As yet the
Gulf in front of the houses swarms with fish of
many kinds up to the great tarpon, the mailed
and leaping giant of the warm seas; and with
the rapid growth of wisdom in dealing with
nature we may hope that there will soon be
action looking toward the regulation of seining
and to protection of the fish at certain seasons.
On land the quail have increased in the neigh-
THE MISSISSIPPI RESERVES 281
borhood of Pass Christian during the last few
years. This is largely due to the activity of
my host and his two sons as hunters. They
have a pack of beagles, trained to night work,
and this pack has to its credit nearly four hun
dred coons and possums — together with an oc
casional skunk! -- and, moreover, has chivied
the gray foxes almost out of the country; and
all these animals are the inveterate enemies of
all small game, and especially of ground-nest
ing birds. To save interesting creatures, it is
often necessary not merely to refrain from
killing them but also to war on their enemies.
One of the sons runs the Parker stock-farm
in upper Louisiana, beside the Mississippi.
There are about four thousand acres, half of
it highland, the other half subject to flood if
the levees break. Five years ago such a break
absolutely destroyed the Parker plantations,
then exclusively on low land. Now, in event of
flood, the stock can be driven, and the human
beings escape, to the higher ground. Young
Parker, now twenty-two years old, has run the
plantation since he was sixteen. The horses,
cattle, and sheep are all of the highest grade;
the improvement in the stock of Louisiana and
Mississippi during the last two decades has
been really noteworthy. Game, and wild things
282 A BOOK-LOVER'S HOLIDAYS
generally, have increased in numbers on this
big stock-farm. There is no wanton molesta
tion of any animal permitted, no plundering
of nests, no shooting save within strictly defined
limits, and so far as possible all rare things are
given every chance to increase. As an example,
when, in clearing a tract of swamp land, a
heron's nest was discovered, the bushes round
about were left undisturbed, and the heron
family was reared in safety. Wild turkeys
have somewhat, and quail very markedly, in
creased. The great horned owls, which de
stroyed the ducks, have to be warred against,
and the beasts of prey likewise. Surely it will
ultimately again be recognized in our country
that life on a plantation, on a great stock-farm
or ranch, is one of the most interesting, and,
from the standpoint of both body and soul,
one of the most healthy, of all ways of earning
a living.
At four on the morning of the 8th our party
started from the wharf in front of Pass Christian.
We were in two boats. One, good-sized and
comfortable, under the command of Captain
Lewis Young, was the property of the State
Conservation Commission of Louisiana, the
commission having most courteously placed
it at our disposal. On this boat were my host,
THE MISSISSIPPI RESERVES 283
his two sons, John, Jr., and Toin, myself, and
a photographer, Mr. Coquille, of New Orleans.
The other boat, named the Royal Tern, was the
property of the Audubon Society, being allotted
to the work of cruising among and protecting
the bird colonies on those islands set apart as
bird refuges by the National and State Govern
ments. On this boat — which had a wretched
engine, almost worthless -- went Mr. Herbert
K. Job and Mr. Frank M. Miller. Mr. Miller
was at one time president of the Louisiana Con
servation Commission, and the founder of the
Louisiana State Audubon Society, and is one
of the group of men to whom she owes it that
she, the home state of Audubon, of our first
great naturalist, is now thoroughly awake to
the danger of reckless waste and destruction
of all the natural resources of the State, includ
ing the birds. Mr. Herbert K. Job is known
to all who care for bird study and bird preserva
tion. He is a naturalist who has made of bird-
photography a sport, a science, and an art.
His pictures, and his books in which these pic
tures appear, are fascinating both to the scien
tific ornithologist and to all lovers of the wild
creatures of the open. Like the other field
naturalists I have known, like the men who
were with me in Africa and South America,
284 A BOOK-LOVER'S HOLIDAYS
Mr. Job is an exceptionally hardy, resolute,
and resourceful man, following his wilderness
work with single-minded devotion, and con
tinually, and in matter-of-fact manner, facing
and overcoming hardship, wearing toil, and risk
which worthy stay-at-home people have no
means whatever of even gauging. I owed the
pleasure of Mr. Job's company to Mr. Frank
M. Chapman, at whose suggestion he was sent
with me by the National Audubon Society.
The State Conservation Commission owes
its existence to the wise public spirit and far
sightedness of the Louisiana Legislature. The
Audubon Society, which has done far more
than any other single agency in creating and
fostering an enlightened public sentiment for
the preservation of our useful and attractive
birds, is a purely voluntary organization, con
sisting of men and women who in these matters
look further ahead than their fellows, and who
have the precious gift of sympathetic imagina
tion, so that they are able to see, and to wish
to preserve for their children's children, the
beauty and wonder of nature. (During the year
preceding this trip, by the way, the society en
rolled one hundred and fifty-one thousand boys
and girls in its junior bird clubs, all of which
give systematic instruction in the value of bird
THE MISSISSIPPI RESERVES 285
life.) It was the Audubon Society which
started the movement for the establishment of
bird refuges. The society now protects and
polices about one hundred of these refuges,
which, of course, are worthless unless thus
protected.
The Royal Tern is commanded by Captain
William Sprinkle, born and bred on this Gulf
coast, who knows the sea-fowl, and the islands
where they breed and dwell, as he knows the
winds and the lovely, smiling, treacherous Gulf
waters. He is game warden, and he and the
Royal Tern are the police force for over five
hundred square miles of sand-bars, shallow
waters, and intricate channels. The man and
the boat are two of the chief obstacles in the
way of the poachers, the plume-hunters, and
eggers, who always threaten these bird sanc
tuaries.
Many of these poachers are at heart good
men, who follow their fathers' business, just as
respectable men on the seacoast once followed
the business of wrecking. But when times
change and a once acknowledged trade conies
under the ban of the law the character of those
following it also changes for the worse. Wreck
ers are no longer respectable, and plume-hunters
and eggers are sinking to the same level. The
286 A BOOK-LOVER'S HOLIDAYS
illegal business of killing breeding birds, of
leaving nestlings to starve wholesale, and of
general ruthless extermination, more and more
tends to attract men of the same moral cate
gory as those who sell whiskey to Indians and
combine the running of "blind pigs" with high
way robbery and murder for hire.
In Florida one of the best game wardens of
the Audubon Society was killed by these sordid
bird-butchers. A fearless man and a good boat
are needed to keep such gentry in awe. Captain
Sprinkle meets the first requirement, the hull
of the Royal Tern the second. But the engines
of the Tern are worthless ; she can catch no free
booter; she is safe only in the mildest weather.
Is there not some bird-lover of means and imagi
nation who will put a good engine in her? Such
a service would be very real. As for Captain
Sprinkle, his services are, of course, underpaid,
his salary bearing no relation to their value.
The Biological Survey does its best with its
limited means; the Audubon Society adds
something extra; but this very efficient and dis
interested laborer is worth a good deal more
than the hire he receives. The government
pays many of its servants, usually those with
rather easy jobs, too much; but the best men,
who do the hardest work, the men in the life-sav-
THE MISSISSIPPI RESERVES 287
ing and lighthouse service, the forest-rangers,
and those who patrol and protect the reserves
of wild life, are almost always underpaid.
Yet, in spite of all the disadvantages, much
has been accomplished. This particular reser
vation was set apart by presidential proclama
tion in 1905. Captain Sprinkle was at once put
in charge. Of the five chief birds, the royal
terns, Caspian terns, Cabot's terns, laughing
gulls, and skimmers, there were that season
about one thousand nests. This season, ten
years later, there are about thirty-five thousand
nests. The brown pelicans and Louisiana
herons also show a marked increase. The least
tern, which had been completely exterminated
or driven away, has returned and is breeding
in fair numbers.
As we steamed away from the Pass Chris
tian dock dawn was turning to daylight under
the still brilliant crescent moon. Soon we saw
the red disk of the sun rising behind the pine
forest. We left Mississippi Sound, and then
were on the Gulf itself. The Gulf was calm,
and the still water teemed with life. Each
school of mullets or sardines could be told by
the queer effect on the water, as of a cloud
shadow. Continually we caught glimpses of
other fish; and always they were fleeing from
288 A BOOK-LOVER'S HOLIDAYS
death or ravenously seeking to inflict death on
the weak. Nature is ruthless, and where her
sway is uncontested there is no peace save the
peace of death; and the fecund stream of life,
especially of life on the lower levels, flows like
an immense torrent out of non-existence for but
the briefest moment before the enormous ma
jority of the beings composing it are engulfed in
the jaws of death, and again go out into the
shadow.
Huge rays sprang out of the water and fell
back with a resounding splash. Devil-fish,
which made the rays look like dwarfs, swam
slowly near the surface; some had their mouths
wide open as they followed their prey. Globular
jellyfish, as big as pumpkins, with translucent
bodies, pulsed through the waters; little fishes
and crabs swam among their short, thick ten
tacles and in between the waving walls into
which the body was divided. Once we saw the
head of a turtle above water; it was a logger
head turtle, and the head was as large as
the head of a man; when I first saw it, above
the still water, I had no idea what it was.
By noon we were among the islands of the
reservation. We had already passed other and
larger islands, for the most part well wooded.
On these there were great numbers of coons
THE MISSISSIPPI RESERVES 289
and minks, and therefore none of the sea-birds
which rest on the ground or in low bushes.
The coons are more common than the minks
and muskrats. In the inundations they are
continually being carried out to sea on logs;
a planter informed me that on one occasion in
a flood he met a log sailing down the swollen
Mississippi with no less than eleven coons
aboard. Sooner or later castaway coons land
on every considerable island off the coast, and
if there is fresh water, and even sometimes if
there is none, they thrive; and where there are
many coons, the gulls, terns, skimmers, and
other such birds have very little chance to
bring up their young. Coons are fond of ram
bling along beaches; at low tide they devour
shell-fish; and they explore the grass tufts and
bushes, and eat nestlings, eggs, and even the
sitting birds. If on any island we found numer
ous coon tracks there were usually few nesting
sea-fowl, save possibly on some isolated point.
The birds breed most plentifully in the number
less smaller islands — some of considerable size
— where there is no water, and usually not a
tree. Some of these islands are nothing but
sand, with banks and ramparts of shells, while
others are fringed with marsh -grass and covered
with scrub mangrove. But the occasional fierce
290 A BOOK-LOVER'S HOLIDAYS
tropical storms not only change the channels
and alter the shape of many of the islands, but
may even break up some very big island. In
such case an island with trees and water may
for years be entirely uninhabited by coons, and
the birds may form huge rookeries thereon.
The government should exterminate the coons
and minks on all the large islands, so as to en
able the birds to breed on them; for on the
small islands the storms and tides work huge
havoc with the nests.
Captain Young proved himself not only a
first-class captain but a first-class pilot through
the shifting and tangled maze of channels and
islands. The Royal Tern, her engines breaking
down intermittently, fell so far in the rear that
in the early afternoon we anchored, to wait
for her, off an island to which a band of pelicans
resorted - - they had nested, earlier in the year,
on another island some leagues distant. The
big birds, forty or thereabouts in number, were
sitting on a sand-spit which projected into the
water, enjoying a noontide rest. As we ap
proached they rose and flapped lazily out to
sea for a few hundred yards before again light
ing. Later in the afternoon they began to fly
to the fishing-grounds, and back and forth,
singly and in small groups. In flying they
THE MISSISSIPPI RESERVES 291
usually gave a dozen rapid wing-beats, and
then sailed for a few seconds. If several were
together the leader gave the "time" to the
others; they all flapped together, and then all
glided together. The neck was carried in a
curve, like a heron's; it was only stretched out
straight like a stork's or bustard's when the
bird was diving. Some of the fishing was done,
singly or in parties, in the water, the pelicans
surrounding shoals of sardines and shrimps,
and scooping them up in their capacious bags.
But, although such a large, heavy bird, the
brown pelican is an expert wing-fisherman also.
A pair would soar round in circles, the bill per
haps pointing downward, instead of, as usual,
being held horizontally. Then, when the fish
was spied the bird plunged down, almost per
pendicularly, the neck stretched straight and
rigid, and disappeared below the surface of the
water with a thump and splash, and in a couple
of seconds emerged, rose with some labor, and
flew off with its prey. At this point the pelicans
had finished breeding before my arrival — al
though a fortnight later Mr. Job found thou
sands of fresh eggs in their great rookeries west
of the mouth of the Mississippi. The herons
had well-grown nestlings, whereas the terns
and gulls were in the midst of the breeding,
A BOOK-LOVER'S HOLIDAYS
and the skimmers had only just begun. The
pelicans often flew only a few yards, or even
feet, above the water, but also at times soared
or wheeled twenty or thirty rods in the air, or
higher. They are handsome, interesting birds,
and add immensely, by their presence, to the
pleasure of being out on these waters; they
should be completely protected everywhere —
as, indeed, should most of these sea-birds.
The two Parker boys — the elder of whom had
for years been doing a man's work in the best
fashion, and the younger of whom had just
received an appointment to Annapolis — kept
us supplied with fish, caught with the hook
and rod, except the flounders, which were har
pooned. The two boys were untiring; nothing
impaired their energy, and no chance of fatigue
and exertion, at any time of the day or night,
appealed to them save as an exhilarating piece
of good fortune. At a time when so large a
section of our people, including especially those
who claim in a special sense to be the guardians
of cultivation, philanthropy, and religion, de
liberately make a cult of pacifism, poltroonery,
sentimentality, and neurotic emotionalism, it
was refreshing to see the fine, healthy, manly
young fellows who were emphatically neither
"too proud to fight" nor too proud to work,
THE MISSISSIPPI RESERVES 293
and with whom hard work, and gentle regard
for the rights of others, and the joy of life, all
went hand in hand.
Toward evening of our first day the weather
changed for the worse; the fishers among the
party were recalled, and just before nightfall
we ran off, and after much groping in the dark
we made a reasonably safe anchorage. By
midnight the wind fell, dense swarms of mos
quitoes came aboard, and, as our mosquito-
nets were not well up (thanks partly to our
own improvidence, and partly to the violence
of the wind, for we were sleeping on deck be
cause of the great heat), we lived in torment
until morning. On the subsequent nights we
fixed our mosquito-bars so carefully that there
was no trouble. Mosquitoes and huge, green-
headed horse-flies swarm on most of the islands.
I witnessed one curious incident in connection
with one of these big, biting horse-flies. A kind
of wasp preys on them, and is locally known as
the " horse-guard," or "sheriff-fly," accordingly.
These horse-guards are formidable-looking things
and at first rather alarm strangers, hovering
round them and their horses; but they never
assail beast or man unless themselves molested,
when they are ready enough to use their power
ful sting. The horses and cattle speedily recog-
294 A BOOK-LOVER'S HOLIDAYS
nize these big, humming, hornet-like horse-
guards as the foes of their tormentors. As we
walked over the islands, and the green-headed
flies followed us, horse-guards also joined us;
and many greenheads and some horse-guards
came on board. Usually when the horse-guard
secured the greenhead it was pounced on from
behind, and there was practically no struggle -
the absence of struggle being usual in the world
of invertebrates, where the automaton-like ac
tions of both preyer and prey tend to make
each case resemble all others in its details. But
on one occasion the greenhead managed to
turn, so that he fronted his assailant and
promptly grappled with him, sinking his evil
lancet into the wasp's body and holding the
wasp so tight that the latter could not thrust
with its sting. They grappled thus for several
minutes. The horse-guard at last succeeded in
stabbing its antagonist, and promptly dropped
the dead body. Evidently it had suffered much,
for it vigorously rubbed the wounded spot with
its third pair of legs, walked hunched up, and
was altogether a very sick creature.
On the following day we visited two or three
islands which the man-of-war birds were using
as roosts. These birds are the most wonderful
fliers in the world. No other bird has such an
THE MISSISSIPPI RESERVES 295
expanse of wing in proportion to the body
weight. No other bird of its size seems so abso
lutely at home in the air. Frigate-birds — as
they are also called — hardly ever light on the
water, yet they are sometimes seen in mid-
ocean. But they like to live in companies,
near some coast. They have very long tails,
usually carried closed, looking like a marlin-
spike, but at times open, like a great pair of
scissors, in the course of their indescribably
graceful aerial evolutions. We saw them soar
ing for hours at a time, sometimes to all seeming
absolutely motionless as they faced the wind.
They sometimes caught fish for themselves,
just rippling the water to seize surface swimmers,
or pouncing with startling speed on any fish
which for a moment leaped into the air to avoid
another shape of ravenous death below. If
the frigate-bird caught the fish transversely, it
rose, dropped its prey, and seized it again by
the head before it struck the water. But it
also obtained its food in less honorable fashion
— by robbing other birds. The pelicans were
plundered by all their fish-eating neighbors,
even the big terns; but the man-of-war bird
robbed the robbers. We saw three chase a
royal tern, a very strong flier; the tern towered,
ascending so high we could hardly see it, but
£96 A BOOK-LOVER'S HOLIDAYS
in great spirals its pursuers rose still faster,
until one was above it; and then the tern
dropped the fish, which was snatched in mid
air by one of the bandits. Captain Sprinkle
had found these frigate-birds breeding on one
of the islands the previous year, each nest being
placed in a bush and containing two eggs. We
visited the island; the big birds — the old
males jet black, the females with white breasts,
the young males with white heads — were there
in numbers, perched on the bushes, and rising
at our approach. But there were no nests, and,
although we found one fresh egg, it was evi
dently a case of sporadic laying, having nothing
to do with home-building.
On another island, where we also found a
big colony of frigate-birds roosting on the man
grove and Gulf tamarisk scrub, there was a
small heronry of the Louisiana heron. The
characteristic flimsy heron nests were placed in
the thick brush, which was rather taller than a
man's head. The young ones had left the
nests, but were still too young for anything in
the nature of sustained flight. They were, like
all young herons, the pictures of forlorn and
unlovely inefficiency, as they flapped a few feet
away and strove with ungainly awkwardness
to balance themselves on the yielding bush
THE MISSISSIPPI RESERVES 297
tops. The small birds we found on the islands
were red-winged blackbirds, Louisiana seaside
sparrows, and long-billed marsh-wrens — which
last had built their domed houses among the
bushes, in default of tall reeds. On one island
Job discovered a night-hawk on her nest. She
fluttered off, doing the wounded-bird trick,
leaving behind her an egg and a newly hatched
chick. He went off to get his umbrella-house,
and when he returned the other egg was hatch
ing, and another little chick, much distressed
by the heat, appeared. He stood up a clam
shell to give it shade, and then, after patient
waiting, the mother returned, and he secured
motion-pictures of her and her little family.
These birds offer very striking examples of real
protective coloration.
The warm shallows, of course, teem with mol-
lusks as well as with fish — not to mention the
shrimps, which go in immense silver schools,
and which we found delicious eating. The oc
casional violent storms, when they do not de
stroy islands, throw up on them huge dikes or
ramparts of shells, which makes the walking
hard on the feet.
There are more formidable things than shells
in the warm shallows. The fishermen as they
waded near shore had to be careful lest they
298 A BOOK-LOVER'S HOLIDAYS
should step on a sting-ray. When a swim was
proposed as our boat swung at anchor in mid-
channel, under the burning midday sun, Captain
Sprinkle warned us against it because he had
just seen a large shark. He said that sharks
rarely attacked men, but that he had known of
two instances of their doing so in Mississippi
Sound, one ending fatally. In this case the man
was loading a sand schooner. He was standing
on a scaffolding, the water half-way up his
thighs, and the shark seized him and carried
him into deep water. Boats went to his as
sistance at once, scaring off the shark; but the
man's leg had been bitten nearly in two; he
sank, and was dead when he was finally found.
The following two days we continued our
cruise. We steamed across vast reaches of
open Gulf, the water changing from blue to
yellow as it shoaled. Now and then we sighted
or passed low islands of bare sand and scrub.
The sky was sapphire, the sun splendid and
pitiless, the heat sweltering. W7e came across
only too plain evidence of the disasters always
hanging over the wilderness folk. A fortnight
previously a high tide and a heavy blow had
occurred coinciden tally. On the islands where
the royal terns especially loved to nest the high
water spelled destruction. The terns nest close
THE MISSISSIPPI RESERVES 299
together, in bird cities, so to speak, and gen
erally rather low on the beaches. On island
after island the waves had washed over the
nests and destroyed them by the ten thousand.
The beautiful royal terns were the chief sufferers.
On one island there was a space perhaps nearly
an acre in extent where the ground was covered
with their eggs, which had been washed thither
by the tide; most of them had then been eaten
by those smart-looking highwaymen, the trim,
slate-headed laughing gulls. The terns had
completely deserted the island and had gone
in their thousands to another; but some skim
mers remained and were nesting. The western
most island, we visited was outside the national
reservation, and that very morning it had been
visited and plundered by a party of eggers.
The eggs had been completely cleared from
most of the island, gulls and terns had been
shot, and the survivors were in a frantic state
of excitement. It was a good object-lesson in
the need of having reserves, and laws protecting
wild life, and a sufficient number of efficient
officers to enforce the laws and protect the re
serves. Defenders of the short-sighted men
who in their greed and selfishness will, if per
mitted, rob our country of half its charm by
their reckless extermination of all useful and
300 A BOOK-LOVER'S HOLIDAYS
beautiful wild things sometimes seek to cham
pion them by saying that "the game belongs
to the people." So it does; and not merely
to the people now alive, but to the unborn
people. The "greatest good of the greatest
number" applies to the number within the
womb of time, compared to which those now
alive form but an insignificant fraction. Our
duty to the whole, including the unborn gen
erations, bids us restrain an unprincipled pres
ent-day minority from wasting the heritage of
these unborn generations. The movement for
the conservation of wild life, and the larger
movement for the conservation of all our natural
resources, are essentially democratic in spirit,
purpose, and method.
On some of the islands we found where green
turtles had crawled up the beaches to bury
their eggs in the sand. We came across two
such nests. One of them I dug up myself.
The eggs we took to the boat, where they were
used in making delicious pancakes, which went
well with fresh shrimp, flounder, weakfish,
mackerel, and mullet.
The laughing gulls and the black skimmers
were often found with their nests intermingled,
and they hovered over our heads with the same
noisy protest against our presence. Although
THE MISSISSIPPI RESERVES 301
they of ten --not always — nested so close to
gether, the nests were in no way alike. The
gulls' dark-green eggs, heavily blotched with
brown, two or three in number, lay on a rude
platform of marsh-grass, which was usually
partially sheltered by some bush or tuft of reeds,
or, if on wet ground, was on a low pile of drift
wood. The skimmers' eggs, light whitish green
and less heavily marked with brown, were,
when the clutch was full, four to six in number.
There was no nest at all, nothing but a slight
hollow in the sand, or gravel or shell debris.
In the gravel or among the shell debris it was
at first hard to pick out the eggs; but as our
eyes grew accustomed to them we found them
without difficulty. Sometimes we found the
nests of gull and skimmer within a couple of
feet of one another, one often under or in a
bush, the other always out on the absolutely
bare open. Considering the fact that the gull
stood ready, with cannibal cheerfulness, to eat
the skimmer's eggs if opportunity offered, I
should have thought that to the latter bird
such association would have seemed rather
grewsome; but, as a matter of fact, there seemed
to be no feeling of constraint whatever on either
side, and the only fighting I saw, and this of a
very mild type, was among the gulls themselves.
302 A BOOK-LOVER'S HOLIDAYS
As we approached their nesting-places all these
birds rose, and clamored loudly as they hovered
over us, lighting not far off, and returning to
their nests as we moved away.
The skimmers are odd, interesting birds, and
on the whole were, if anything, rather tamer
even than the royal terns and laughing gulls,
their constant associates. They came close be
hind these two in point of abundance. They
flew round and round us, and to and fro, con
tinually uttering their loud single note, the bill
being held half open as they did so. The lower
mandible, so much longer than the upper, gives
them a curious look. Ordinarily the bill is
held horizontally and closed; but when after
the small fish on which they feed the lower
mandible is dropped to an angle of forty-five
degrees, ploughing lightly the surface of the
water and scooping up the prey. They fly
easily, with at ordinary times rather deliberate
strokes of their long wings, wheeling and cir
cling, and continually crying if roused from their
nests. When flying the white of their plumage
is very conspicuous, and as they flapped around
every detail of form and coloration, of bill and
plumage, could be observed.
When sitting they appear almost black, and,
in consequence, when on their nests, on the
THE MISSISSIPPI RESERVES 303
beaches or on the white-shell dikes, they are
visible half a mile off, and stand out as distinctly
as a crow on a snow-bank.1 They are perfectly
aware of this, and make no attempt to elude
observation, any more than the gulls and terns
do. The fledglings are concealingly colored,
and crouch motionless, so as to escape notice
from possible enemies; and the eggs, while
they do not in color harmonize with the sur
roundings to the extent that they might arti
ficially be made to do, yet easily escape the
eye when laid on a beach composed of broken
sea-shells. But the coloration of the adults is
of a strikingly advertising character, under all
circumstances, and especially when they are
sitting on their nests. Among all the vagaries
of the fetichistic school of concealing-colora-
tionists none is more amusing than the belief
that the coloration of the adult skimmer is
ever, under any conditions, of a concealing
quality. Sometimes the brooding skimmer at
tempted to draw us away from the nest by
fluttering off across the sand like a wounded
bird. Like the gulls, the skimmers moved about
much more freely on the ground than did the
terns.
1 An expression borrowed from Stewart Edward White's capital "Re
discovered Country."
304 A BOOK-LOVER'S HOLIDAYS
The handsome little laughing gull was found
everywhere, and often in numerous colonies,
although these colonies were not larger than
those of the skimmer, and in no way approached
the great breeding assemblages of the royal
terns on the two or three islands where the
latter especially congregated. They were noisy
birds, continually uttering a single loud note,
but only occasionally the queer laughter which
gives them their name. They looked very trim
and handsome, both on the wing and when
swimming or walking; and their white breasts
and dark heads made them very conspicuous
on their nests, no matter whether these were
on open ground or partially concealed in a bush
or reed cluster. Like the skimmers, although
perhaps not quite so markedly, their coloration
was strongly advertising at all times, including
when on their nests. Their relations with their
two constant associates and victims, the skim
mer and the royal tern — the three being about
the same size — seemed to me very curious.
The gull never molested the eggs of either of
the other birds if the parents were sitting on
them or were close by. But gulls continually
broke and devoured eggs, especially terns'
eggs, which had been temporarily abandoned.
Nor was this all. When a colony of nesting
THE MISSISSIPPI RESERVES 305
royal terns flew off at our approach, the hesitat
ing advent of the returning parents was always
accompanied by the presence of a few gulls.
Commonly the birds lit a few yards away from
the eggs, on the opposite side from the observer,
and then by degrees moved forward among the
temporarily forsaken eggs. The gulls were
usually among the foremost ranks, and each,
as it walked or ran to and fro, would now and
then break or carry off an egg; yet I never
saw a tern interfere or seem either alarmed or
angered. These big terns are swifter and better
fliers than the gulls, and the depredations take
place all the time before their eyes. Yet they
pay no attention that I could discern to the
depredation. Compare this with the conduct
of king-birds to those other egg-robbers, the
crows. Imagine a king-bird, or, for that matter,
a mocking-bird or thrasher, submitting with
weak good humor to such treatment! If these
big terns had even a fraction of the intelligence
and spirit of king-birds, no gull would venture
within a half-mile of their nesting-grounds.
It is one of the innumerable puzzles of biol
ogy that the number of eggs a bird lays seems
to have such small influence on the abundance
of the species. A royal tern lays one egg, rarely
two; a gull three; a skimmer four to six. The
306 A BOOK-LOVER'S HOLIDAYS
gull eats the eggs of the other two, especially
of the tern; as far as we know, all have the
same foes; yet the abundance of the birds is
in inverse ratio to the number of their eggs.
Of course, there is an explanation; but we
cannot even guess at it as yet. With this, as
with so many other scientific questions, all we
can say is, with Huxley, that we are not afraid
to announce that we do not know.
The beautiful royal terns were common
enough, flying in the air and diving boldly
after little fish. We listened with interest to
their cry, which was a kind of creaking bleat.
We admired the silver of their plumage as they
flew overhead. But we did not come across
vast numbers of them assembled for breeding
until the fourth day. Then we found them on
an island on which Captain Sprinkle told us
he had never before found them, although both
skimmers and gulls had always nested on it.
The previous fall he had waged war with traps
against the coons, which, although there was
no fresh water, had begun to be plentiful on
the island. He had caught a number, two escap
ing, one with the loss of a hind foot, and one
with the loss of a fore foot. The island was
seven miles long, curved, with occasional
stretches of salt marsh, and with reaches of
THE MISSISSIPPI RESERVES 307
scrub, but no trees. Most of it was bare sand.
We saw three coon tracks, two being those of
the three-footed animals; evidently the damaged
leg was now completely healed and was used
like the others, punching a round hole in the
sand. We saw one coon, at dusk, hunting for
oysters at the water's edge.
The gulls and skimmers were nesting on this
island in great numbers, but the terns were many
times more plentiful. There were thousands
upon thousands of them. Their breeding-places
were strung in a nearly straight line for a couple
of miles along the sand flats. A mile off, from our
boat, we were attracted by their myriad forms,
glittering in the brilliant sunlight as they rose
and fell and crossed and circled over the nest
ing-places. The day was bright and hot, and
the sight was one of real fascination. As we
approached a breeding colony the birds would
fly up, hover about, and resettle when we drew
back a sufficient distance. The eggs, singly, or
rarely in pairs, were placed on the bare sand,
with no attempt at a nest, the brooding bird
being sometimes but a few inches, sometimes
two or three feet, from the nearest of its sur
rounding neighbors. The colonies of breeders
were scattered along the shore for a couple of
miles, each one being one or two hundred yards,
308 A BOOK-LOVER'S HOLIDAYS
or over, from the next. In one such breeding
colony I counted a little over a thousand eggs;
there were several of smaller size, and a few
that were larger, one having perhaps three
times as many. A number of the eggs, perhaps
ten per cent, had been destroyed by the gulls;
the coons had ravaged some of the gulls' nests,
which were in or beside the scrub. The eggs of
the terns, being so close together and on the
bare sand, were very conspicuous; they were
visible to a casual inspection at a distance of
two or three hundred yards, and it was quite
impossible for any bird or beast to overlook
them near by. These gregarious nesters, whose
eggs are gathered in a big nursery, cannot profit
by any concealing coloration of the eggs. The
eggs of the royal and Cabot's terns were per
haps a shade less conspicuous than the darker
eggs of the Caspian tern, all of them lying to
gether; but on that sand, and crowded into such
a regular nursery, none of them could have
escaped the vision of any foe with eyes. As I
have said, the eggs of the skimmer, as the
clutches were more scattered, were much more
difficult to make out, on the shell beaches.
Concealing coloration has been a survival fac
tor only as regards a minority, and is respon
sible for the precise coloration of only a small
THE MISSISSIPPI RESERVES 309
minority, of adult birds and mammals; how
much and what part it plays, and in what
percentage of cases, in producing the colora
tion of eggs, is a subject which is well worth
serious study. As regards most of these sea-
birds which nest gregariously, their one instinct
for safety at nesting time seems to be to choose
a lonely island. This is their only, and suf
ficient, method of outwitting their foes at the
crucial period of their lives.
We found only eggs in the nurseries, not
young birds. In each nursery there were al
ways a number of terns brooding their eggs,
and the air above was filled with a ceaseless
flutter and flashing of birds leaving their nests
and returning to them — or eggs, rather, for,
speaking accurately, there were no nests. The
sky above was alive with the graceful, long-
winged things. As we approached the nurseries
the birds would begin to leave. If we halted
before the alarm became universal, those that
stayed always served as lures to bring back
those that had left. If we came too near, the
whole party rose in a tumult of flapping wings;
and when all had thus left it was some time be
fore any returned. With patience it was quite
possible to get close to the sitting birds; I
noticed that in the heat many had their bills
310 A BOOK-LOVER'S HOLIDAYS
open. Those that were on the wing flew round
and round us, creaking and bleating, and often
so near that every detail of form and color was
vivid in our eyes. The immense majority were
royal terns, big birds with orange beaks. With
them were a very few Caspian terns, still bigger,
and with bright-red beaks, and quite a number
of Cabot's terns, smaller birds with yellow-
tipped black beaks. These were all nesting
together, in the same nurseries.
It has been said on excellent authority that
terns can always be told from gulls because,
whereas the latter carry their beaks horizontally,
the terns carry their bills pointing downward,
"like a mosquito." My own observations do
not agree with this statement. When hovering
over water where there are fish, and while
watching for their prey, terns point the bill
downward, just as pelicans do in similar cir
cumstances; just as gulls often do when they
are seeking to spy food below them. But
normally, on the great majority of the occasions
when I saw them, the terns, like the gulls,
carried the bill in the same plane as the body.
On another island we found a small colony
of Forster's tern; and we saw sooty terns, and
a few of the diminutive least terns. But I
was much more surprised to find on, or rather
THE MISSISSIPPI RESERVES 311
over, one island a party of black terns. As
these are inland birds, most of which at this
season are breeding around the lakes of our
Northwestern country, I was puzzled by their
presence. Still more puzzling was it to come
across a party of turnstones, with males in full,
brightly varied nuptial dress, for turnstones
during the breeding season live north of the
arctic circle, in the perpetual sunlight of the
long polar day. On the other hand, a couple
of big oyster-catchers seemed, and were, en
tirely in place; they are striking birds and
attract attention at a great distance. We saw
dainty Wilson's plover with their chicks, and
also semipalmated sandpipers.
On the morning of the 12th we returned to
Pass Christian. I was very glad to have seen
this bird refuge. With care and protection the
birds will increase and grow tamer and tamer,
until it will be possible for any one to make
trips among these reserves and refuges, and to
see as much as we saw, at even closer quarters.
No sight more beautiful and more interesting
could be imagined.
I am far from disparaging the work of the
collector who is also a field naturalist. On the
contrary, I fully agree with Mr. Joseph Grin-
nell's recent plea for him. His work is indis-
312 A BOOK-LOVER'S HOLIDAYS
pensable. It is far more important to protect
his rights than to protect those of the sports
man; for the serious work of the collector is
necessary in order to prevent the scientific
study of ornithology from lapsing into mere
dilettanteism indulged in as a hobby by men
and women with opera-glasses. Moreover,
sportsmen also have their rights, and it is folly
to sacrifice these rights to mere sentimentality
— for, of course, sentimentality is as much the
antithesis and bane of healthy sentiment as
bathos is of pathos. If thoroughly protected,
any bird or mammal would speedily increase
in numbers to such a degree as to drive man
from the planet; and of recent years this has
been signally proved by actual experience as
regards certain creatures, notably as regards
the wapiti in the Yellowstone (where the prime
need now is to provide for the annual killing
of at least five thousand), and to a less extent
as regards deer in Vermont.
But as yet these cases are rare exceptions.
As yet with the great majority of our most in
teresting and important wild birds and beasts
the prime need is to protect them, not only by
laws limiting the open season and the size of
the individual bag, but especially by the crea
tion of sanctuaries and refuges. And, while
THE MISSISSIPPI RESERVES 313
the work of the collector is still necessary, the
work of the trained faunal naturalist, who is
primarily an observer of the life histories of
the wild things, is even more necessary. The
progress made in the United States, of recent
years, in creating and policing bird refuges,1
has been of capital importance.
At nightfall of the third day of our trip,
when we were within sight of Fort Jackson
and of the brush and low trees which here grow
alongside the Mississippi, we were joined by
Mr. M. L. Alexander, the president of the Con
servation Commission, on the commission's boat
Louisiana. He was more than kind and cour
teous, as were all my Louisiana friends. He
and Mr. Miller told me much of the work of
the commission; work not only of the utmost
use to Louisiana, but of almost equal conse
quence to the rest of the country, if only for
the example set.
The commission was not founded until 1912,
yet it has already accomplished a remarkable
amount along many different lines. The work
of reforestation of great stretches of denuded,
and at present worthless, pine land has begun;
work which will turn lumbering into a perma
nent Louisiana industry by making lumber a
1 See Appendix B.
314 A BOOK-LOVER'S HOLIDAYS
permanent crop asset, like corn or wheat, only
taking longer to mature — an asset which it
is equally important not to destroy. In taking
care of the mineral resources a stop has been
put to waste as foolish as it was criminal; for
example, a gas-well which had flowed to waste
until six million dollars' worth of gas had been
lost was stopped and stored at the cost of five
thousand one hundred dollars. The oysters are
now farmed and husbanded, the beds being
leased in such fashion that there is a steady im
provement of the product. Louisiana is pecu
liarly rich in fish, and a policy has been inau
gurated which, if persevered in, wTill make the
paddle-fish industry as important as the stur
geon fishery is in Russia. Not only do the
waters of Louisiana now belong to the State,
but also the land under the water, this last
proving in practise an admirable provision.
Some three hundred thousand acres of game
reserves and wild-life refuges (mostly unin
habitable by man) have now been established.
These have largely been gifts to the State by
wise and generous private individuals and cor
porations, the chief donors being Messrs. Ed
ward A. Mcllhenny and Charles Willis Ward,
Mrs. Russell Sage, and the Rockefeller Founda
tion. The Conservation Commission has ac-
THE MISSISSIPPI RESERVES 315
cepted the gifts, and is taking care of the re
serves and refuges through its State wardens,
with the result that wild birds of many kinds,
including even the wary geese, which come
down as winter visitants by the hundred thou
sand, have become very tame, and many beauti
ful birds which were on the verge of extinction
are now re-established and increasing in num
bers. These reserves, which lie for the most
part in the low country along the coast, are
west of the Mississippi.
Job had just come from a visit to the private
reserve of Edward A. Mcllhenny on Avery
Island. It is the most noteworthy reserve in
the country. It includes four thousand acres,
and is near the Ward-Mcllhenny reserve, which
they have given to the State — a king's gift!
Avery 's Island is very beautiful. A great,
shallow, artificial lake, surrounded by dwellings,
fields, lawns, a railroad, and ox-wagon road, does
not seem an ideal home for herons; but it has
proved such under the care of Mr. Mcllhenny.
He started the reserve twenty years ago with
eight snowy herons. Now it contains about
forty thousand herons of several species. Com
plete freedom from molestation has rendered
the birds extraordinarily tame. The beautiful
snow-white lesser egret, which had been almost
316 A BOOK-LOVER'S HOLIDAYS
exterminated by the plume-hunters, nourishes
by the thousand; the greater egret has been
bothered so by the smaller one that it has retired
before it; its heronries are now to be found
mainly in other parts of the protected region.
Many other kinds of heron, and many water
fowl, literally throng the place. Ducks winter
by the thousand, and, most unexpectedly, some
even of the northern kinds, like the gadwall,
now stay to breed. Most of these birds are so
tame that there is little difficulty in taking
photographs of them.
The Audubon societies, and all similar or
ganizations, are doing a great work for the
future of our country. Birds should be saved
because of utilitarian reasons; and, moreover,
they should be saved because of reasons uncon
nected with any return in dollars and cents.
A grove of giant redwoods or sequoias should
be kept just as we keep a great and beautiful
cathedral. The extermination of the passenger-
pigeon meant that mankind was just so much
poorer; exactly as in the case of the destruction
of the cathedral at Rheims. And to lose the
chance to see frigate-birds soaring in circles
above the storm, or a file of pelicans winging
their way homeward across the crimson after
glow of the sunset, or a myriad terns flashing
THE MISSISSIPPI RESERVES 317
in the bright light of midday as they hover in
a shifting maze above the beach --why, the
loss is like the loss of a gallery of the master
pieces of the artists of old time.
CHAPTER XI
A CURIOUS EXPERIENCE
IN 1915 I spent a little over a fortnight on
a private game reserve in the province of
Quebec. I had expected to enjoy the great
northern woods, and the sight of beaver, moose,
and caribou; but I had not expected any hunt
ing experience worth mentioning. Neverthe
less, toward the end of my trip, there befell
me one of the most curious and interesting ad
ventures with big game that have ever befallen
me during the forty years since I first began to
know the life of the wilderness.
In both Canada and the United States the
theory and indeed the practise of preserving
wild life on protected areas of land have made
astonishing headway since the closing years of
the nineteenth century. These protected areas,
some of very large size, come in two classes.
First, there are those which are public property,
where the protection is given by the State.
Secondly, there are those where the ownership
and the protection are private.
By far the most important, of course, are the
318
A CURIOUS EXPERIENCE 319
public preserves. These by their very exist
ence afford a certain measure of the extent to
which democratic government can justify it
self. If in a given community unchecked pop
ular rule means unlimited waste and destruction
of the natural resources — soil, fertility, water-
power, forests, game, wild-life generally — which
by right belong as much to subsequent genera
tions as to the present generation, then it is
sure proof that the present generatiqn is not
yet really fit for self-control, that it is not yet
really fit to exercise the high and responsible
privilege of a rule which shall be both by the
people and for the people. The term "for the
people" must always include the people unborn
as well as the people now alive, or the demo
cratic ideal is not realized. The only way to
secure the chance for hunting, for the enjoy
ment of vigorous field-sports, to the average
man of small means, is to secure such enforced
game laws as will prevent anybody and every
body from killing game to a point which means
its diminution and therefore ultimate extinction.
Only in this way will the average man be able
to secure for himself and his children the op
portunity of occasionally spending his yearly
holiday in that school of hardihood and self-
reliance — the chase. New Brunswick, Maine,
320 A BOOK-LOVER'S HOLIDAYS
and Vermont during the last generation have
waked up to this fact. Moose and deer in New
Brunswick and Maine, deer in Vermont, are so
much more plentiful than they were a generation
ago that young men of sufficient address and
skill can at small cost spend a holiday in the
woods, or on the edge of the rough backwoods
farm land, and be reasonably sure of a moose
or a deer. To all three commonwealths the
game is now a real asset because each moose
or deer alive in the woods brings in, from the
outside, men who spend among the inhabitants
much more than the money value of the dead
animal; and to the lover of nature the presence
of these embodiments of the wild vigor of life
adds immensely to the vast majesty of the
forests.
In Canada there are many great national
reserves; and much --by no means all — of
the wilderness wherein shooting is allowed, is
intelligently and faithfully protected, so that
the game does not diminish. In the summer of
1915 we caught a glimpse of one of these great
reserves, that including the wonderful moun
tains on the line of the Canadian Pacific, from
Banff to Lake Louise, and for many leagues
around them. The naked or snow-clad peaks,
the lakes, the glaciers, the evergreen forest
A CURIOUS EXPERIENCE 321
shrouding the mountainsides and valleys, the
clear brooks, the wealth of wild flowers, make up
a landscape as lovely as it is varied. Here the
game — bighorn and white goat-antelope, moose,
wapiti, and black- tail deer and white-tail deer -
flourish unmolested. The flora and fauna are
boreal, but boreal in the sense that the Rocky
Mountains are boreal as far south as Arizona;
the crimson paint-brush that colors the hill
sides, the water-ousel in the rapid torrents -
these and most of the trees and flowers and birds
suggest those of the mountains which are riven
asunder by the profound gorges of the Colorado
rather than those which dwell among the lower
and more rounded Eastern hill-masses from
which the springs find their way into the rivers
that flow down to the North Atlantic. Around
these and similar great nurseries of game, the
hunting is still good in places; although there
has been a mistaken lenity shown in permitting
the Indians to butcher mountain-sheep and
deer to the point of local extermination, and
although, as is probably inevitable in all new
communities, the game laws are enforced chiefly
at the expense of visiting sportsmen, rather
than at the expense of the real enemies of the
game, the professional meat and hide hunters
who slaughter for the profit.
A BOOK-LOVER'S HOLIDAYS
In Eastern Canada, as in the Eastern United
States, there has been far less chance than in
the West to create huge governmental game re
serves. But there has been a positive increase of
the big game during the last two or three decades.
This is partly due to the creation and enforce
ment of wise game laws — although here also
it must be admitted that in some of the Prov
inces, as in some of the States, the alien sports
man is judged with Rhadamanthine severity,
while the home offenders, and even the home In
dians, are but little interfered with. It would be
well if in this matter other communities copied
the excellent example of Maine and New Bruns
wick. In addition to the game laws, a large
part is played in Canadian game preservation
by the hunting and fishing clubs. These clubs
have policed, and now police many thousands
of square miles of wooded wilderness, worth
less for agriculture; and in consequence of this
policing the wild creatures of the wilderness
have thriven, and in some cases have multi
plied to an extraordinary degree, on these club
lands.
In September, 1915, I visited the Tourilli
Club, as the guest of an old friend, Doctor
Alexander Lambert, a companion of previous
hunting trips in the Louisiana cane-brakes, in
A CURIOUS EXPERIENCE 323
the Rockies, on the plains bordering the Red
River of the south, and among the Bad Lands
through which the Little Missouri flows. The
Tourilli Club is an association of Canadian
and American sportsmen and lovers of the
wilderness. The land, leased from the govern
ment by the club, lies northwest of the at
tractive Old World city of Quebec --the most
distinctive city north of the Mexican border,
now that the Creole element in New Orleans
has been almost swamped. The club holds
about two hundred and fifty square miles along
the main branches and the small tributaries of
the Saint Anne River, just north of the line that
separates the last bleak farming land from the
forest. It is a hilly, almost mountainous region,
studded with numerous lakes, threaded by rapid,
brawling brooks, and covered with an unbroken
forest growth of spruce, balsam, birch and
maple.
On the evening of the day I left Quebec I
camped in a neat log cabin by the edge of a
little lake. I had come in on foot over a rough
forest trail with my two guides or porters.
They were strapping, good-humored French
Canadians, self-respecting and courteous, whose
attitude toward their employer was so much
like that of Old World guides as to be rather in-
324 A BOOK-LOVER'S HOLIDAYS
teresting to a man accustomed to the absolute
and unconscious democracy of the Western cow
camps and hunting trails. One vital fact im
pressed me in connection with them as in con
nection with my Spanish-speaking and Portu
guese-speaking friends in South America. They
were always fathers of big families as well as
sons of parents with big families; the big family
was normal to their kind, just as it was normal
among the men and women I met in Brazil,
Argentina, Chile, Uruguay, and Paraguay, to a
degree far surpassing what is true of native
Americans, Australians, and English-speaking
Canadians. If the tendencies thus made evi
dent continue to work unchanged, the end of
the twentieth century will witness a reversal
in the present positions of relative dominance,
in the new and newest worlds, held respectively
by the people who speak English, and the
people who speak the three Latin tongues.
Darwin, in the account of his famous voyage,
in speaking of the backwardness of the coun
tries bordering the Plate River, dwells on the
way they lag behind, in population and material
development, compared to the English settlers
in Australia and North America. Were he
alive now, the development of the countries
around Buenos Ayres and Montevideo would
A CURIOUS EXPERIENCE 325
make him revise his judgment. And, whatever
may be the case in the future, so far this material
development has not, as in the English-speak
ing world and in old France, been accompanied
by a moral change which threatens complete
loss of race supremacy because of sheer dwin
dling in the birth-rate. The men and women of
Quebec, Brazil, and Argentina are still primarily
fathers and mothers; and unless this is true of
a race it neither can nor ought to permanently
prosper. The atrophy of the healthy sexual
instinct is in its effects equally destructive
whether it be due to licentiousness, asceticism,
coldness, or timidity; whether it be due to cal
culated self-indulgence, love of ease and com
fort, or absorption in worldly success on the
part of the man, or, on the part of the woman,
to that kind of shrieking "feminism," the an
tithesis of all worth calling womanly, which
gives fine names to shirking of duty, and to
the fear of danger and discomfort, and actually
exalts as praiseworthy the abandonment or
subordination by women of the most sacred
and vitally important of the functions of woman
hood. It is not enough that a race shall be com
posed of good fighters, good workers, and good
breeders; but, unless the qualities thus in
dicated are present in the race foundation, then
326 A BOOK-LOVER'S HOLIDAYS
the superstructure, however seemingly imposing,
will topple. As I watched my French guides
prepare supper I felt that they offered fine stuff
out of which to make a nation.
Beside the lake an eagle-owl was hooting from
the depths of the spruce forest; hoohoo-
h-o-o-o — hoohoo. From the lake itself a loon,
floating high on the water, greeted me with
eerie laughter. A sweetheart-sparrow sang a
few plaintive bars among the alders. I felt
as if again among old friends.
Next day we tramped to the comfortable camp
of the president of the club, Mr. Glen Ford
McKinney. Half-way there Lambert met me;
and for most of the distance he, or one of the
guides, carried a canoe, as the route consisted
of lakes connected by portages, sometimes a
couple of miles long. When we reached the
roomy comfortable log houses on Lake McKin
ney, at nightfall, we were quite ready for our
supper of delicious moose venison. Lambert,
while fishing in his canoe, a couple of days
previously, had killed a young bull as it stood
feeding in a lake, and for some days moose
meat was our staple food. After that it was
replaced by messes of freshly caught trout,
and once or twice by a birch-partridge. Mrs.
Lambert was at the camp, and Mr. and Mrs.
A CURIOUS EXPERIENCE 327
McKinney joined us there. A club reserve
such as this, with weather-proof cabins scat
tered here and there beside the lakes, offers
the chance for women of the outdoors type,
no less than for men no longer in their first
youth, to enjoy the life of the wonderful north
ern wilderness, and yet to enjoy also such sub
stantial comforts as warmth, dry clothes, and
good food at night, after a hard day in the
open.
Such a reserve offers a fine field for observa
tion of the life histories of the more shy and
rare wild creatures practically unaffected by
man. Many persons do not realize how com
pletely on these reserves the wild life is led under
natural conditions, wholly unlike those on small
artificial reserves. Most wild beasts in the true
wilderness lead lives that are artificial in so
far as they are primarily conditioned by fear
of man. In wilderness reserves like this, on
the contrary, there is so much less dread of
human persecution that the lives led by such
beasts as the moose, caribou, and beaver more
closely resemble life in the woods before the
appearance of man. As an example, on the
Tourilli game reserve wolves, which did not
appear until within a decade, have been much
more destructive since then than men, and have
328 A BOOK-LOVER'S HOLIDAYS
more profoundly influenced for evil the lives
of the other wild creatures.
The beavers are among the most interesting
of all woodland beasts. They had been so
trapped out that fifteen years ago there were
probably not a dozen individuals left on the
reserve. Then they were rigidly protected.
After ten years they had increased literally a
hundredfold. At the end of that time trapping
was permitted for a year; hundreds of skins
were taken, and then trapping was again pro
hibited.
The beaver on the reserve at present number
between one and two thousand. We saw their
houses and dams everywhere. One dam was
six feet high; another dam was built to the
height of about a foot and a half, near one of
our camping places, in a week's time. The
architects were a family of beavers; some of
the branches bore the big marks of the teeth
of the parent beavers, some the marks of the
small teeth of the young ones. It was interest
ing to see the dams grow, stones being heaped
on the up-current side to keep the branches in
place. Frequently we came across the animals
themselves, swimming a stream or lake, and
not much bothered by our presence. When
left unmolested they are quite as much diurnal
A CURIOUS EXPERIENCE 329
as nocturnal. Again and again, as I sat hidden
on the lake banks, beaver swam to and fro close
beside me, even at high noon. One, which was
swimming across a lake at sunset, would not
dive until we paddled the canoe straight for
it as hard as we could; whereupon it finally
disappeared with a slap of its tail. Once at
evening Lambert pulled his canoe across the
approach to a house, barring the way to the
owner — a very big beaver. It did not like to
dive under the canoe, and swam close up on
the surface, literally gritting its teeth, and now
and then it would slap the water with its tail,
whereupon the heads of other beaver would
pop up above the waters of the lake.
By damming the outlets of some of the lakes
and killing the trees and young stuff around the
edges, the beaver on this reserve had destroyed
some of the favorite haunts of the moose. We
saw the old and new houses on the shores of the
lakes and beside the streams; some of them
were very large, taller than a man, and twice
as much across. Some of the old dams, at the
pond outlets and across the streams, had be
come firm causeways, grown-up with trees.
The beaver is a fecund animal, its habits are
such that few of the beasts of ravin can kill
it more than occasionally, and when not too
330 A BOOK-LOVER'S HOLIDAYS
murderously persecuted by man it increases
with extraordinary rapidity.
This is primarily due to the character of its
food. The forest trees themselves furnish
what it eats. This means that its food supply
is practically limitless. It has very few food
rivals. The trunks of full-grown trees offer
what is edible to a most narrowly limited num
ber of vertebrates, and therefore — a fact
often lost sight of — until man appears on the
scene forests do not support anything like the
same number and variety of large beasts as
open, grassy plains. There are tree-browsing
creatures, but these can only get at the young
growth; the great majority of beasts prefer
prairies or open scrub to thick forest. The
open plains of central North America were
thronged with big game to a degree that was
never true of the vast American forests, whether
subarctic, temperate, or tropical. The great
game regions of Africa were the endless dry
plains of South and East Africa, and not the
steaming West African forests. There are, of
course, some big mammals that live exclusively
on low plants and bushes that only grow in
the forest, and some trees at certain seasons
yield fruits and nuts which fall to the ground;
but, speaking generally, an ordinary full-grown
A CURIOUS EXPERIENCE 331
tree of average size yields food only to beasts
of exceptional type, of which the most con
spicuous in North America are the tree-porcu
pine and the beaver. Even these eat only the
bark; no vertebrate, so far as I know, eats the
actual wood of the trunk.
These bark-eaters, therefore, have almost no
food rivals, and the forest furnishes them food
in limitless quantities. The beaver has de
veloped habits more interesting and extraor
dinary than those of any other rodent — in
deed as interesting as those of any other beast
- and its ways of life are such as to enable it
to protect itself from its enemies, and to insure
itself against failure of food, to a degree very
unusual among animals. It is no wonder that,
when protected against man, it literally swarms
in its native forests. Its dams, houses, and
canals are all wonderful, and on the Tourilli
they were easily studied. The height at which
many of the tree trunks had been severed showed
that the cutting must have been done in winter
when the snow was deep and crusted. One
tree which had not fallen showed a deep spiral
groove going twice round the trunk. Evi
dently the snow had melted faster than the
beavers worked; they were never able to make
a complete ring, although they had gnawed
332 A BOOK-LOVER'S HOLIDAYS
twice around the tree, and finally the rising
temperature beat the teeth, and the task was
perforce abandoned.
I was surprised at the complete absence from
the Tourilli of the other northern tree-eater -
bark-eater -- the porcupine. Inquiry developed
the fact that porcupines had been exceedingly
numerous until within a score of years or less.
Then a mysterious disease smote the slow,
clumsy, sluggish creatures, and in the course
of two or three years they were absolutely ex
terminated. In similar fashion from some
mysterious disease (or aggregation of diseases,
which sometimes all work with virulence when
animals become too crowded) almost all the
rabbits in the reserve died off some six years
ago. In each case it was a universally, or well-
nigh universally, fatal epidemic, following a
period during which the smitten animals had
possessed good health and had flourished and
increased greatly in spite of the flesh-eaters
that preyed on them. In some vital details
the cases differed. Hares, compared to por
cupines, are far more prolific, far more active,
and with far more numerous foes; and they
also seem to be much more liable to these
epidemics, although this may be merely be
cause they so much more quickly increase to
A CURIOUS EXPERIENCE 333
the point that seems to invite the disease. The
porcupines are rather unsocial, and are so le
thargic in their movements that the infection
took longer to do its full work. But this work
was done so thoroughly that evidently the entire
race of porcupines over a large tract of country
was exterminated. Porcupines have few foes
that habitually prey on them, although it is
said that there is an exception in the shape of the
pekan - - the big, savage sable, inappropriately
called fisher by the English-speaking woods
men. But they breed so slowly (for rodents)
and move about so little that when exter
minated from a district many years elapse be
fore they again begin to spread throughout it.
The rabbits, on the contrary, move about so
much that infectious diseases spread with ex
traordinary rapidity and they are the habitual
food of every fair-sized bird and beast of
prey, but their extraordinary fecundity enables
them rapidly to recover lost ground. As re
gards these northern wood-rabbits, and doubt
less other species of hares, it is evident that their
beast and bird foes, who prey so freely on their
helplessness, nevertheless are incompetent to
restrain the overdevelopment of the species.
Their real foes, their only real foes, are the
minute organisms that produce the diseases
334 A BOOK-LOVER'S HOLIDAYS
which at intervals sweep off their swarming num
bers. The devastation of these diseases, whether
the agents spreading them are insects or still
smaller, microscopic creatures, is clearly proved
in the case of these North American rabbits
and porcupines; probably it explains the tem
porary and local extermination of the Labra
dor meadow-mice after they have risen to the
culminating crest of one of those "waves of
life" described by Doctor Cabot. It has
ravaged among big African ruminants on an
even more extensive scale than among these
North American rodents. Doubtless such dis
ease-devastation has been responsible for the
extinction of many, many species in the past;
and where for any cause species and individuals
became crowded together, or there was an in
crease in moisture and change in temperature,
so that the insect carriers of disease became
more numerous, the extinction might easily
befall more than one species.
Of course, such epidemic disease is only one
of many causes that may produce such exter
mination or reduction in numbers. More effi
cient food rivals may be a factor; just as sheep
drive out cattle from the same pasturage, and
as, in Australia, rabbits drive out sheep. Or
animal foes may be a cause. Fifteen years
A CURIOUS EXPERIENCE 335
ago, in the Tourilli, caribou were far more
plentiful than moose. Moose have steadily
increased in numbers. But some seven years
ago wolves, of which none had been seen in
these woods for half a century, made their ap
pearance. They did not seriously molest the
full-grown moose (nor the black bears), although
they occasionally killed moose calves, and very
rarely, when in a pack, an adult, but they warred
on all the other animals, including the lucivees
when they could catch them on the ice in winter.
They followed the caribou unceasingly, killing
many, and in consequence the caribou are now
far less common. Barthelmy Lirette, the most
experienced hunter and best observer among
the guides — even better than his brother
Arthur — told me that the wolves usually made
no effort to assail the moose, and that never
but once had he heard of their killing a grown
moose. But they followed any caribou they
came across, big or little. Once on snow-shoes
he had tracked such a chase all day long. A
single wolf had followed a caribou for twenty-
five miles before killing it. Evidently the
wolf deliberately set about tiring his victim
so that it could not resist. In the snow the
caribou sank deep. The wolf ran lightly. His
tracks showed that he had galloped whenever
336 A BOOK-LOVER'S HOLIDAYS
the caribou had galloped, and walked behind
it when it became too tired to run, and then
galloped again when under the terror of his
approach the hunted thing once more flailed
its fading strength into flight. Its strength
was utterly gone when its grim follower at last
sprang on it and tore out its life.
An arctic explorer once told me that on a part
of the eastern coast of Greenland he found on
one visit plenty of caribou and arctic foxes.
A few years later he returned. Musk-oxen
had just come into the district, and wolves fol
lowed them. The musk-ox is helpless in the
presence of human hunters, much more help
less than caribou, and can exist only in the ap
palling solitudes where even arctic man can
not live; but against wolves, its only other foes,
its habits of gregarious and truculent self-de
fense enable it to hold its own as the caribou
cannot. The wolves which were hangers-on
of the musk-ox herds speedily killed or drove
out both the foxes and the caribou on this
stretch of Greenland coast, and as a result two
once plentiful species were completely replaced
by two other species, which change also doubt
less resulted in other changes in the smaller
wild life.
Here we can explain the reason for the change
A CURIOUS EXPERIENCE 337
as regards three of the animals, inasmuch as
this change was ultimately conditioned by the
movements of the fourth, the musk-ox. But
we know nothing of the cause which produced
the musk-ox migration, which migration re
sulted in such unsettling of life conditions for
the wolves, caribous, and foxes of this one
locality. Neither can we with our present
knowledge explain the causes which in Maine
and New Brunswick during the last thirty or
forty years have brought about a diminution
of the caribou, although there has been an in
crease in the number of moose and deer; wolves
cannot have produced this change, for they kill
the deer easier than the caribou. Field natural
ists have in such questions an ample opportunity
for work of the utmost interest. Doubtless
they can in the future give us complete or par
tial explanations of many of these problems
which are at present insoluble. In any event
these continuous shiftings of faunas at the
present day enable us to form some idea of the
changes which must have occurred on in
numerable occasions during man's history on
this planet. Beyond question many of the
faunas which seem to us contemporary when
their remains are found associated with those
of prehistoric man were really successive and
338 A BOOK-LOVER'S HOLIDAYS
may have alternated again and again before
one or both finally disappeared. Life is rarely
static, rarely in a state of stable equilibrium.
Often it is in a condition of unstable equilib
rium, with continual oscillations one way and
the other. More often still, while there are
many shifts to and fro, the general tendency
of change is with slow steadiness in one di
rection.
After a few days the Lamberts and I shifted
to Lambert's home camp; an easy two days'
journey, tramping along the portage trails and
paddling across the many lakes. It was a very
comfortable camp, by a beautiful lake. There
were four log cabins, each water-tight and with
a stove; and the largest was in effect a sitting-
room, with comfortable chairs and shelves of
books. They stood in a sunny clearing. The
wet, dense forest was all around, the deep mossy
ground spangled with bright-red partridge-ber
ries. Behind the cabins was a small potato
patch. Wild raspberries were always encroach
ing on this patch, and attracted the birds of the
neighborhood, including hermit and olive-back
thrushes, both now silent. Chickadees were in
the woods, and woodpeckers — the arctic, the
hairy, and the big log-cock — drummed on the
dead trees. One mid-afternoon a great gray
A CURIOUS EXPERIENCE 339
owl called repeatedly, uttering a short loud
sound like that of some big wild beast. In
front of the main cabin were four graceful
mountain ashes, brilliant with scarlet berry
clusters. On a neighboring lake Coleman Dray-
ton had a camp; the view from it across the
lake was very beautiful. He killed a moose
on the lake next to his and came over to dinner
with us the same evening.
On the way to Lambert's camp I went off
by myself for twenty-four hours, with my two
guides, Arthur Lirette, one of the game wardens
of the club, and Odilon Genest. Arthur was
an experienced woodsman, intelligent and re
sponsible, and with the really charming manners
that are so much more common among men of
French or Spanish blood than among ourselves.
Odilon was a strong young fellow, a good pad-
dler and willing worker. I wished to visit a
lake which moose were said to frequent. We
carried our canoe thither.
After circling the lake in the canoe without
seeing anything, we drew it ashore among some
bushes and sat down under a clump of big
spruces to watch. Although only partially con
cealed, we were quiet; and it is movement that
attracts the eyes of wild things. A beaver
house was near by and the inmates swam about
340 A BOOK-LOVER'S HOLIDAYS
not thirty feet from us; and scaup-ducks and
once a grown brood of dusky mallard drifted
and swam by only a little farther off. The
beaver kept slapping the water with their
broad trowel-tails, evidently in play; where
they are wary they often dive without slapping
the water. No bull appeared, but a cow moose
with two calves came down to the lake, di
rectly opposite us, at one in the afternoon and
spent two hours in the water. Near where the
three of them entered the lake was a bed of
tall, coarse reed-grass standing well above the
water. Earlier in the season this had been
grazed by moose, but these three did not touch
it. The cow, having entered the water, did not
leave. She fed exclusively with her head under
water. Wading out until only the ridge of her
back was above the surface, and at times find
ing that the mud bothered even her long legs,
she plunged her huge homely head to the bot
tom, coming up with between her jaws big
tufts of dripping bottom-grass - - the moose
grass — or the roots and stems of other plants.
After a time she decided to change her station,
and, striking off into deep water, she swam half
a mile farther down the lake. She swam well
and powerfully, but sunk rather deep in the
water, only her head and the ridge of her withers
A CURIOUS EXPERIENCE 341
above it. She continued to feed, usually broad
side to me, some three hundred and fifty yards
off; her big ears flopped forward and back, and
her long snout, with the protuberant nostrils,
was thrust out as she turned from time to time
to look or smell for her calves. The latter had
separated at once from the mother, and spent
only a little time in the water, appearing and
disappearing among the alders, and among the
berry-bushes on a yielding bog of pink and
gray moss. Once they played together for a
moment, and then one of them cantered off
for a few rods.
When moose calves go at speed they usually
canter. By the time they are yearlings, how
ever, they have adopted the trot as their usual
gait. When grown they walk, trot when at
speed, and sometimes pace; but they gallop so
rarely that many good observers say that they
never gallop or canter. This is too sweeping,
however. I have myself, as will be related,
seen a heavy old bull gallop for fifty yards
when excited, and I have seen the tracks where
a full-grown cow or young bull galloped for a
longer distance. Lambert came on one close
up in a shallow lake, and in its fright it gal
loped ashore, churning through the mud and
water. In very deep snow one will sometimes
342 A BOOK-LOVER'S HOLIDAYS
gallop or bound for a dozen leaps, and under
sudden fright from an enemy near by even the
biggest moose will sometimes break into a gal
lop which may last for several rods. More
often, even under such circumstances, the
animal trots off; and the trot is its habitual,
and, save in exceptional circumstances, its only,
rapid gait, even when charging.
As the cow and her young ones stood in the
water or on the bank it was impossible not to
be struck by the conspicuously advertising char
acter of the coloration. The moose is one of
the few animals of which the body is inversely
countershaded, being black save for the brown
ish or grayish of the back. The huge black
mass at once attracts the eye, and the whitish
or grayish legs are also strikingly visible. The
bright-red summer coat of the white-tail deer
is, if anything, of even more advertising quality;
but the huge bulk of a moose, added to its black
ness, makes it the most conspicuous of all our
beasts.
Moose are naturally just as much diurnal as
nocturnal. We found them visiting the lakes
at every hour of the day. They are so fond of
water as to be almost amphibious. In the
winter they feed on the buds and twig tips of
young spruce and birch and swamp-maple; and
A CURIOUS EXPERIENCE 343
when there is no snow they feed freely on
various ground plants in the forest; but for
over half the year they prefer to eat the grasses
and other plants which grow either above or
under the water in the lakes. They easily wade
through mud not more than four feet deep,
and take delight in swimming. But until this
trip I did not know that moose, while swim
ming, dived to get grass from the bottom. Mr.
McKinney told me of having seen this feat
himself. The moose was swimming to and
fro in a small lake. He plunged his head
beneath water, and then at once raised it, look
ing around, evidently to see if any enemy were
taking advantage of his head being concealed
to approach him. Then he plunged his head
down again, threw his rump above water, and
dived completely below the surface, coming up
with tufts of bottom-grass in his mouth. He
repeated this several times, once staying down
and out of sight for nearly half a minute.
After the cow moose left the water she spent
an hour close to the bank, near the inlet. We
came quite near to her in the canoe before she
fled; her calves were farther in the woods. It
was late when we started to make our last
portage; a heavy rain-storm beat on us, speed
ily drenching us, and the darkness and the
344 A BOOK-LOVER'S HOLIDAYS
driving downpour made our walk over the
rough forest trail one of no small difficulty.
Next day we went to Lambert's camp.
Some ten miles northeast of Lambert's camp
lies a stretch of wild and mountainous coun
try, containing many lakes, which has been
but seldom visited. A good cabin has been
built on one of the lakes. A couple of years
ago Lambert went thither, but saw nothing,
and Coleman Drayton was there the same
summer; Arthur, my guide, visited the cabin
last spring to see if it was in repair; otherwise
the country had been wholly undisturbed. I
determined to make a three days' trip to it,
with Arthur and Odilon. We were out of meat
and I desired to shoot something for the table.
My license permitted me to kill one bull moose.
It also permitted me to kill two caribou, of
either sex; but Lambert felt, and I heartily
agreed with him, that no cow ought to be shot.
We left after breakfast one morning. Be
fore we had been gone twenty-five minutes I
was able to obtain the wished-for fresh meat.
Our course, as usual, lay along a succession of
lakes connected by carries, or portages. We
were almost at the end of the first portage
when we caught a glimpse of a caribou feeding
in the thick woods some fifty yards to the
A CURIOUS EXPERIENCE 345
right of our trail. It was eating the streamers
of gray-green moss which hung from the dead
lower branches of the spruces. It was a year
ling bull. At first I could merely make out a
small patch of its flank between two tree trunks,
and I missed it — fortunately, for, if wounded,
it would probably have escaped. At the re
port, instead of running, the foolish young bull
shifted his position to look at us; and with the
next shot I killed him. While Arthur dressed
him Odilon returned to camp and brought out
a couple of men. We took a shoulder with us
for our provision and sent the rest back to
camp. Hour after hour we went forward. We
paddled across the lakes. Between them the
trails sometimes led up to and down from high
divides; at other times they followed the
courses of rapid brooks which brawled over
smooth stones under the swaying, bending
branches of the alders. Off the trail fallen
logs and bowlders covered the ground, and the
moss covered everything ankle-deep or knee-
deep.
Early in the afternoon we reached the cabin.
The lake, like most of the lakes thereabouts,
was surrounded by low, steep mountains,
shrouded in unbroken forest. The light-green
domes of the birches rose among the sombre
346 A BOOK-LOVER'S HOLIDAYS
spruce spires; on the mountain crests the
pointed spruces made a serrated line against
the sky. Arthur and I paddled off across the
lake in the light canoe we had been carrying.
We had hardly shoved off from shore before
we saw a caribou swimming in the middle of
the lake. It was a young cow, and doubtless
had never before seen a man. The canoe much
excited its curiosity. A caribou, thanks prob
ably to its peculiar pelage, is a very buoyant
swimmer. Unlike the moose, this caribou had
its whole back, and especially its rump, well
out of water; the short tail was held erect,
and the white under-surface glinted whenever
the swimmer turned away from us. At first,
however, it did not swim away, being too much
absorbed in the spectacle of the canoe. It kept
gazing toward us with its ears thrown forward,
wheeling to look at us as lightly and readily
as a duck. We passed it at a distance of some
seventy-five yards, whereupon it took fright
and made off, leaving a wake like a paddle-
wheel steamer and, when it landed, bouncing
up the bank with a great splashing of water
and cracking of bushes. A caribou swims even
better than a moose, but whereas a moose not
only feeds by preference in the water, but half
the time has its head under water, the caribou
A CURIOUS EXPERIENCE 347
feeds on land, although occasionally cropping
water-grass that stands above the surface.
We portaged beside a swampy little stream
to the next lake and circled it in the canoe.
Silently we went round every point, alert to
find what the bay beyond might hold. But we
saw nothing; it was night when we returned.
As we paddled across the lake the stars were
glorious overhead and the mysterious land
scape shimmered in the white radiance of the
moonlight. Loons called to one another, not
only uttering their goblin laughter, but also
those long-drawn, wailing cries, which seem to
hold all the fierce and mournful loneliness of
the northern wastes. Then we reached camp,
and feasted on caribou venison, and slept
soundly on our beds of fragrant balsam boughs.
Next morning, on September 19, we started
eastward, across a short portage, perhaps a
quarter of a mile long, beside which ran a
stream, a little shallow river. At the farther
end of the portage we launched the canoe in a
large lake hemmed in by mountains. The
lake twisted and turned, and was indented by
many bays. A strong breeze was blowing.
Arthur was steersman, Odilon bowsman, while
I sat in the middle with my Springfield rifle.
We skirted the shores, examining each bay.
348 A BOOK-LOVER'S HOLIDAYS
Half an hour after starting, as we rounded a
point, we saw the huge black body and white
shovel antlers of a bull moose. He was close
to the alders, wading in the shallow water and
deep mud and grazing on a patch of fairly tall
water-grass. So absorbed was he that he did
not notice us until Arthur had skilfully brought
the canoe to within eighty yards of him. Then
he saw us, tossed his great an tiered head aloft,
and for a moment stared at us, a picture of
burly majesty. He stood broadside on, and a
splendid creature he was, of towering stature,
the lord of all the deer tribe, as stately a beast
of the chase as walks the round world.
The waves were high, and the canoe danced
so on the ripple that my first bullet went
wild, but with the second I slew the mighty
bull.
We had our work cut out to get the bull out
of the mud and on the edge of the dry land.
The antlers spread fifty-two inches. Some
hours were spent in fixing the head, taking off
the hide, and cutting up the carcass. Our
canoe was loaded to its full capacity with
moose meat when we started toward the be
ginning of the portage leading from the south
eastern corner of the lake toward the Lamberts'
camp. Here we landed the meat, putting cool
•
From a photograph by Alexander Lambert, M.D.
Colonel Roosevelt and 'Arthur Lirette with antlers of
moose shot September 19, 1915.
A CURIOUS EXPERIENCE 349
inoss over it, and left it to be called for on our
way back, on the morrow.
It was shortly after three when we again
pushed off in the canoe, and headed for the
western end of the lake, for the landing from
which the portage led to our cabin. It had
been a red-letter day, of the ordinary hunting
red-letter type. I had no conception that the
real adventure still lay in front of us.
When half a mile from the landing we saw
another big bull moose on the edge of the shore
ahead of us. It looked and was — if anything —
even bigger-bodied than the one I had shot in
the morning, with antlers almost as large and
rather more palmated. We paddled up to with
in a hundred yards of it, laughing and talking,
and remarking how eager we would have been
if we had not already got our moose. At first
it did not seem to notice us. Then it looked at
us but paid us no further heed. We were
rather surprised at this but paddled on past
it, and it then walked along the shore after us.
We still supposed that it did not realize what
we were. But another hundred yards put us
to windward of it. Instead of turning into the
forest when it got our wind, it merely bristled
up the hair on its withers, shook its head, and
continued to walk after the canoe, along the
350 A BOOK-LOVER'S HOLIDAYS
shore. I had heard of bull moose, during the
rut, attacking men unprovoked, if the men
were close up, but never of anything as wanton
and deliberate as this action, and I could hardly
believe the moose meant mischief, but Arthur
said it did; and obviously we could not land
with the big, evil-looking beast coming for us
— and, of course, I was most anxious not to
have to shoot it. So we turned the canoe
round and paddled on our back track. But the
moose promptly turned and followed us along
the shore. We yelled at him, and Odilon struck
the canoe with his paddle, but with no effect.
After going a few hundred yards we again
turned and resumed our former course; and as
promptly the moose turned and followed us,
shaking his head and threatening us. He
seemed to be getting more angry, and evidently
meant mischief. We now continued our course
until we were opposite the portage landing,
and about a hundred yards away from it; the
water was shallow and we did not wish to ven
ture closer, lest the moose might catch us if
he charged. When he came to the portage
trail he turned up it, sniffing at our footsteps
of the morning, and walked along it into the
woods; and we hoped that now he would be
come uneasy and go off. After waiting a few
A CURIOUS EXPERIENCE 351
minutes we paddled slowly toward the land
ing, but before reaching it we caught his loom
in the shadow, as he stood facing us some dis
tance down the trail. As soon as we stopped
he rushed down the trail toward us, coming
in to the lake; and we backed hastily into deep
water. He vented his rage on a small tree,
which he wrecked with his antlers. We con
tinued to paddle round the head of the bay,
and he followed us; we still hoped we might
get him away from the portage, and that he
would go into the woods. But when we turned
he followed us back, and thus went to and fro
with us. Where the water was deep near shore
we pushed the canoe close in to him, and he
promptly rushed down to the water's edge,
shaking his head, and striking the earth with
his fore hoofs. We shouted at him, but with
no effect. As he paraded along the shore he
opened his mouth, lolling out his tongue; and
now and then when he faced us he ran out his
tongue and licked the end of his muzzle with
it. Once, with head down, he bounded or gal
loped round in a half circle; and from time to
time he grunted or uttered a low, menacing
roar. Altogether the huge black beast looked
like a formidable customer, and was evidently
in a most evil rage and bent on man-killing.
352 A BOOK-LOVER'S HOLIDAYS
For over an hour he thus kept us from the
shore, running to meet us wherever we tried
to go. The afternoon was waning, a cold
wind began to blow, shifting as it blew. He
was not a pleasant-looking beast to meet in
the woods in the dusk. We were at our wits'
ends what to do. At last he turned, shook his
head, and with a flourish of his heels galloped
- not trotted — for fifty yards up beside the
little river which paralleled the portage trail.
I called Arthur's attention to this, as he had
been telling me that a big bull never galloped.
Then the moose disappeared at a trot round
the bend. We waited a few minutes, cautiously
landed, and started along the trail, watching
to see if the bull was lying in wait for us; Ar
thur telling me that if he now attacked us I
must shoot him at once or he would kill some
body.
A couple of hundred yards on the trail led
within a few yards of the little river. As we
reached this point a smashing in the brush be
yond the opposite bank caused us to wheel;
and the great bull came headlong for us, while
Arthur called to me to shoot. With a last hope
of frightening him I fired over his head, with
out the slightest effect. At a slashing trot he
crossed the river, shaking his head, his ears
A CURIOUS EXPERIENCE 353
back, the hair on his withers bristling. "Tirez,
m'sieu, tirez; vite, vite!" called Arthur, and
when the bull was not thirty feet off I put a
bullet into his chest, in the sticking point. It
was a mortal wound, and stopped him short;
I fired into his chest again, and this wound, too,
would by itself have been fatal. He turned
and recrossed the stream, falling to a third
shot, but as we approached he struggled to
his feet, grunting savagely, and I killed him as
he came toward us.
I was sorry to have to kill him, but there
was no alternative. As it was, I only stopped
him in the nick of time, and had I not shot
straight at least one of us would have paid
forfeit with his life in another second. Even
in Africa I have never known anything but a
rogue elephant or buffalo, or an occasional
rhinoceros, to attack so viciously or with such
premeditation when itself neither wounded nor
threatened.
Gentle-voiced Arthur, in his delightful habi
tant's French, said that the incident was "pas
mal curieux." He used "pas mal" as a super
lative. The first time he used it I was com
pletely bewildered. It was hot and sultry, and
Arthur remarked that the day was "pas mal
mort." How the day could be "not badly
354 A BOOK-LOVER'S HOLIDAYS
dead" I could not imagine, but the proper
translation turned out to be "a very lifeless
day," which was true.
On reaching Lambert's camp, Arthur and
Odilon made affidavit to the facts as above set
forth, and this affidavit I submitted to the sec
retary of mines and fisheries of Quebec, who
approved what I had done.
On the day following that on which we killed
the two bulls we went back to Lambert's home
camp. While crossing one lake, about the
middle of the forenoon, a bull moose chal
lenged twice from the forest-clad mountain on
our right. We found a pawing-place, a pit
where one — possibly more than one — bull
had pawed up the earth and thrashed the
saplings roundabout with its antlers. The place
smelled strongly of urine. The whole of the
next day was spent in getting in the meat,
skins, and antlers.
I do not believe that this vicious bull moose
had ever seen a man. I have never heard of
another moose acting with the same determina
tion and perseverance in ferocious malice; it
behaved, as I have said, like some of the rare vi
cious rogues among African elephants, buffaloes,
and rhinoceroses. Bull moose during the rut
are fierce animals, however, and, although there
A CURIOUS EXPERIENCE 355
is ordinarily no danger whatever in shooting
them, several of my friends have been resolutely
charged by wounded moose, and I know of,
and have elsewhere described, one authentic
case where the hunter was killed. A boy carry
ing mail through the woods to the camp of a
friend of mine was forced to climb a tree by a
bull which threatened him. My friend Pride,
of Island Falls, Maine, was charged while in a
canoe at night, by a bull moose which he had
incautiously approached too near, and the
canoe was upset. If followed on snow-shoes in
the deep snow, or too closely approached in its
winter yard, it is not uncommon for a moose
to charge when its pursuer is within a few yards.
Once Arthur was charged by a bull which was
in company with a cow. He was in a canoe,
at dusk, in a stream, and the bull rushed into
the water after him, while he paddled hard
to get away; but the cow left, and the bull
promptly followed her. In none of these cases,
however, did the bull act with the malice and
cold-blooded purposefulness shown by the bull
I was forced to kill.
Two or three days later I left the woods.
The weather had grown colder. The loons had
begun to gather on the larger lakes in prepara
tion for their southward flight. The nights
356 A BOOK-LOVER'S HOLIDAYS
were frosty. Fall was in the air. Once there
was a flurry of snow. Birch and maple were
donning the bravery with which they greet the
oncoming north; crimson and gold their ban
ners flaunted in the eyes of the dying year.
Antlers of moose shot September 19, 1915, with Springfield
rifle No. 6000, Model 1903.
This rifle, now a retired veteran, is not heavy enough for steady use on heavy game;
but it is so handy and accurate, has such penetration, and keeps in such good order
that it has been my chief hunting-rifle for the last dozen years on three continents, and
has repeatedly killed heavy game. With it I have shot some three hundred head of all
kinds, including the following:
Lion, hyena, elephant, rhinoceros (square-mouthed and hook-nosed), hippopotamus,
zebras of two kinds, wart-hog, giraffe, giant eland, common eland, roan antelope, oryx,
wildebeest, topi, white-withered lech we, waterbucks, hartebeests, kobs, impalla, gerenuk,
gazelles, reedbucks, bushbucks, klipspringer, oribis, duikers, steinbok, dikdik, monkeys.
Jaguar, tapir, big peccary, giant ant-eater, capybara, wood-deer, monkey.
Cougar, black bear, moose, caribou, white-tail deer.
Crocodile, cayman, python.
Ostrich, bustard, wild turkey, crane, pelican, maribou, ibis, whale-head stork, jabiru
stork, guinea-fowl, francolin.
APPENDICES
APPENDIX A
The frontispiece I owe to the courtesy of Mr. Theodore
Pitman, a fellow Harvard student of Archie's, whom we
met on Buckskin Mountain; being both a hunter and a
lover of the picturesque, he was as much impressed as
we were by the scene when a cougar stood in a pine,
with the Grand Canyon as a background. The photo
graph at the end of the book is by Doctor Alexander
Lambert, and the tail-piece is from a photograph by him.
I had been told by old hunters that black bears would
sometimes attack moose calves, and in one instance, in
the Rockies, my informant described to me how a big
grizzly, but a few weeks out of its den in spring, attacked
and slew full-grown moose. I was not surprised at the
latter statement, having myself come across cattle-
killing grizzlies; but I wondered at a black bear, which
is not much of a beast of prey, venturing to meddle with
the young of so formidable a fighter as a moose. How
ever, it is true. Recently my nephew Hall Roosevelt,
who was working at Dawson City, went on a moose hunt
in the valley of the Yukon. One night a moose cow
passed by the camp, having first swum a stream in front
of the camp. She was followed at some little distance
by a calf. The latter halted near the camp. Suddenly
a black bear, with a tremendous crashing of branches,
came with a rush through the bushes, and seized the
calf; although it was driven off, it had with its teeth so
injured the spine of the calf that they were obliged to
shoot the latter.
On a hunt in the Northern Rockies, Archie met a man
who had two dogs, an ordinary track-hound and a Rus-
359
360 APPENDIX A
sian wolfhound. One day they came across a white
goat, and before the slow creature could reach the prec
ipice the dogs overtook and bayed it. The track-hound
merely jumped to and fro, baying; but the wolfhound
rushed straight in and caught the goat by the neck on
one side; whereupon the track-hound seized the other
side of the neck. Immediately, with two wicked back
ward thrusts of its horns, first to one side, then to the
other, the goat killed both its assailants; the stiletto-like
horns were driven to the hilt with a single jab.
The attack by the moose upon us, mentioned in the
final chapter, was so unusual that I give the deposi
tion of the two guides who were with me, and also the
report of the senior of the two, the game warden, in
reference to the occurrence. They are as follows:
CANADA
PROVINCE OF QUEBEC,
DISTRICT OF QUEBEC,
I, Theodore Roosevelt, residing at Oyster-Bay in the
United States of America, do solemnly declare as follows :
That I have just returned from a trip in the Tourilli
Club limits as a Guest of Dr. Alexander Lambert, I had
the ordinary game license No. 25 issued to me on the
6th day of September instant. On September the nine
teenth, on Lake Croche, having with me as guides, Arthur
Lirette and Odilon Genest, I killed an old bull moose as
authorized by the license, which only permitted to me
to kill one moose. That afternoon, shortly after three
o'clock, we were returning in our canoe to the West end
of the Lake, where a portage trail led to our camp; a
small stream runs besides the portage trail; when half
a mile from our proposed landing place, we saw an old
bull moose on the shore. We paddled up to within a
APPENDIX A 361
hundred yards of it. We supposed that when it saw us,
it would take to the woods. It however walked along
the edge of the water parallel to our canoe, looking at
us. We passed it, and gave it our wind, thinking this
would surely cause it to run. But it merely raised its
hair on its withers and shook its horns and followed after
the canoe. We shouted, but it paid no heed to us; we
then reversed our canoe and paddled in the opposite di
rection; but following us and threatening us, the bull
moose turned and walked the same way we did, we re
newed our former course, and thereupon so did the moose,
where the water was shallow, we did not venture near it,
but where the water was deep, we went within fifty yards;
and it then thrashed the branches of a young tree with
its antlers, and pawed the earth and advanced a little
way into the water towards us, walking parallel to our
canoe, it reached the portage trail, it turned and walked
up this trail and sniffed at our morning's tracks, and we
supposed it had fled; but on nearing the landing place,
we saw it standing in the trail, and it rushed down to
wards us and we had to back quickly into deep water;
we paddled on round the shore, hoping it would get tired
and go; we shouted and tried to frighten it, but it merely
shook its head and stamped on the ground and bounded
in a circle; then it swaggered along grunting, it kept
its mouth open, and lolled out its tongue and when it
turned towards us, it ran its tongue over its muzzle,
thus it accompanied us to and for an hour, cutting us off
whenever we tried to land; then it turned, and went up
the little stream, shaking its head, and galloping or
bounding not trotting, for fifty yards, it disappeared
around a bend of a stream, we waited a few minutes,
and landed, and started along the portage trail for camp,
after about ten minutes, the trail approached the little
stream; then the moose suddenly appeared rushing
362 APPENDIX A
towards us at a slashing trot, its hair ruffled and tossing
his head.
Arthur Lirette, who is one of the game wardens of the
Tourilli Club, called out to me to shoot, or the moose
would do us mischief, in a last effort to frighten it, I fired
over its head, but it paid no heed to this and rushed over
the stream at us; Arthur again called: "Tirez, monsieur,
tirez, vite, vite, vite," and I fired into the moose's chest,
when he was less than twenty feet away, coming full
tilt at us, grunting, shaking his head, his ears back and
his hair brindled; the shot stopped him; I fired into him
again; both shots were fatal; he recrossed the little
stream and fell to a third shot; but when we approached,
he rose, grunting and started towards us. I killed him.
If I had not stopped him, he would have certainly killed
one or more of our party; and at twenty feet I had to
shoot as straight as I knew how, or he would have reached
us. I had done everything possible in my power to scare
him away for an hour and a quarter, and I solemnly de
clare that I killed him only when it was imperatively
necessary, in order to prevent the loss of one or more of
our own lives, and I make this solemn declaration con
scientiously, believing it to be true, and knowing that
it is of the same force and effect as if made under oath,
and by virtue of the Canada EVIDENCE ACT, 1893.
(Signed) THEODORE ROOSEVELT,
Declared before me, this 24th day of September 1915.
(Signed) E. A. PANET, N. P. & J. P.
TRUE COPY,
S. DlJFAULT
Deputy-Minister, Department Colonization,
Mines and Fisheries, Quebec.
APPENDIX A 363
CANADA,
PROVINCE DE QUEBEC,
DISTRICT DE QUEBEC.
Je, Arthur Lirette, du village de St-Raymond, gardien
du Club de Peche et de Chasse Tourilli, et Je, Odilon,
Genest, du meme lieu, en ma qualite de guide, declare
sollennellement que les faits relates ci-hauts par la de
claration de M. Theodore Roosevelt, laquelle nous a etc
lue et traduite en francais par le Notaire E. A. Panet,
de St-Raymond, que cette declaration contient la verite
dans toute son etendue, et que si le dit Th. Roosevelt
n'avait pas tue 1'orignal mentionne par lui, que nos vies
etaient en danger.
Et je fais cette declaration solennelle consciencieuse-
ment la croyant vraie, et sachant qu'elle a la meme force
et 1'effet, comme si elle avait ete faite sous serment, en
vertu de "The CANADA EVIDENCE ACT, 1893.
Declare devant moi, a St-Raymond, ce 24 erne jour
de septembre, 1915.
(Signe) "ARTHUR LIRETTE"
"ODILON GENEST,"
"E. A. PANET, N. P. & J. Paix.
VRAIE COPIE,
S. DUFAULT
Sous-Ministre, Departement de la Colonisation,
des Mines et des Pecheries, Quebec.
COPY
ST. RAYMOND, 7 Octobre 1915
Cher Messieur
Rapport
Le 19 Septembre 1915 Mons. Col. Teodore Rosevelt
partant pour faire la chasse a Torignal dans le club Tourilli
364 APPENDIX A
accompagne d'Arthur Lirette et Odilion Genest comme
guides vers 9 heures du matin au lac Croche du Bras du
Nord le Col Rosevelt tua un original dans 1'apres midi
voulant sen revenir du camp du lac a Tile avec la tete
et le panage dans le canot vers les 3 heures ^ nous aper-
cumes un autre original sur le bord du lac nous avons
arreter notre canot nous 1'avons regarder et 1'orignal nous
regardait bien ferocement nous etions a peu pres un
arpent de distance Ton se mit a ramer pour aller au por
tage du lac a Tile et 1'animal se mis a suive sur la meme
directions de nous nous avons retourner sur nos pas une
couple d'arpent et 1'orignal fit la meme chose et Ton
pouvait voir qu'il etait bien enrager alors Ton se mit a crier
et frapper sur le canot avec les avirons afin de pouvoir
1'effayer au contraire il se mit a corne les arbres du bord
du lac avec le poil bien droit sur le dos et il grattait avec
ses pattes dans la terre ensuite il a pris le portage nous
avons rester pour 10 minute ensuit nous avon ramer pour
se rendre au portage le pensant disparu mais Ton ne pu
se rendre que 1'animal revenait de nouveau sur nous avons
reculer de nouveau sur le lac et 1'orignal est rendu dans
Peau jusquau genoux ensuite se mit de galopper et sauter
et a traverser la petite Riviere et se mit a piocher et
Beugler et se battre avec les arbres il a rester 5 minutes
a peu pres et nous avons essayer a rapprocher encore sur
terre mais imposible car l'animal est revenus de nouveau
sur le bord du lac faire la meme chose ensuite il pris la
petite Riviere en trottant a peu pres 200 pieds et il disparu
nous avons laisser faire pour quelques instant ensuite
nous avons approcher sur terre au petit portage cela
faisait que n'on avait ete garde par cet animal pour une
heure a une heure 2/£ ensuite j'ai dis a Monsier et Odilion
que Ton faisait mieux de se suivre et mener autant de
bruit possible afin de 1'effrayer mais 1'orseque n'on eut
fait deux arpents dans le portage j'ai apercus 1'animal
APPENDIX A 365
qui semblait nous attendre dans le petit ruisseau et la
voyant qu'il y avait bien du danger pour nous tous nous
etions a une distance le 30 verges de lui j'ai avertit Mon-
sier de tirer et Mons. a pris sa carabine et a tirer en 1'air
afin de lui faire bien peur et de pouvoir le chasser mais
au contraire en entendant le coup du fusil il fonce sur
nous j'ai dit a Monsieur Col. tirer bien vite et il a tire
de nouveau I'aninial qui etait a 18 pieds de nous a peu pres
et il la blesse a mort il a fait deux sault en s'eloignant de
nous mais il s'est retourner encore sur nous et j'ai dis au
Colonel de tire afin de le mettre a terre cela faisait une
heure et demi que cet animal nous gardait.
ABTHUB LIRETTE,
Gardien.
APPENDIX B
On the initiative of the Audubon Society the National
Government, when I was President, began the work of
creating and policing bird refuges by establishing the fol
lowing refuges:
March 14, 1903. Pelican Island Reservation. Pelican
Island in Indian River, Florida.
October 4, 1904. Breton Island Reservation. Breton,
Old Harbor, and Free Mason Islands, Louisiana.
March 9, 1905. Stump Lake Reservation. Stump
Lake in North Dakota.
October 10, 1905. Siskiwit Islands Reservation. Un-
surveyed islands of the Siskiwit group on the south side
of Isle Royal in Lake Superior, Michigan.
October 10, 1905. Huron Islands Reservation. Un-
surveyed islands of the Huron Islands group, Lake Su
perior, Michigan.
October 10, 1905. Passage Key Reservation. An is
land near the mouth of Tampa Bay, Florida.
February 10, 1906. Indian Key Reservation. An is
land in Tampa Bay, Florida.
August 8, 1907. Tern Islands Reservation. All the
small islets commonly called mud lumps in or near the
mouths of the Mississippi River, Louisiana.
August 17, 1907. Shell Keys Reservation. Unsur-
veyed islets in the Gulf of Mexico about three and one-
half miles south of Marsh Island, Louisiana.
October 14, 1907. Three Arch Rocks Reservation.
Unsurveyed islands known as Three Arch Rocks in the
Pacific Ocean off the coast of Oregon.
APPENDIX B 367
October 23, 1907. Flattery Rocks Reservation. Is
lands lying off the coast of Washington.
October 23, 1907. Copalis Rock Reservation. Islands
lying off the coast of the State of Washington in the
Pacific Ocean.
October 23, 1907. Quillayute Needles Reservation.
Islands lying off the coast of Washington in the Pacific
Ocean.
December 7, 1907. East Timbalier Island Reserva
tion. Small, marshy islands commonly known as East
Timbalier Island in the Gulf of Mexico, south of Louisi
ana.
February 24, 1908. Mosquito Inlet Reservation.
Small mangrove and salt-grass islets, shoals, sand-bars,
and sand-spits in and near the mouths of the Halifax
and Hillsboro Rivers, Florida.
April 6, 1908. Tortugas Keys Reservation. Group
known as Dry Tortugas in the Gulf of Mexico, south
of Florida.
August 8, 1908. Key West Reservation. Keys and
islands of the Florida Keys group near Key West, Florida.
August 8, 1908. Klamath Lake Reservation. Islands
situated in Lower Klamath Lake and the marsh and
swamp lands unsuitable for agricultural purposes in
townships thirty-nine, forty, and forty-one south, Oregon,
and in townships forty-seven and forty-eight north,
California.
August 18, 1908. Lake Malheur Reservation. Shore
lines of Lakes Malheur and Harney and the streams and
waters connecting these lakes, Oregon.
August 28, 1908. Chase Lake Reservation. Public
lands about Chase Lake, North Dakota.
September 15, 1908. Pine Island Reservation. Bird
Island and Middle Island in Pine Island Sound on the
west coast of Florida.
368 APPENDIX B
September 26, 1908. Matlacha Pass Reservation.
Three small islands located in Matlacha Pass, west coast
of Florida.
September 26, 1908. Palma Sola Reservation. Small,
unsurveyed island in Palma Bay, Florida.
October 23, 1908. Island Bay Reservation. Unsur
veyed mangrove and other islands in township forty-
two south, west coast of Florida.
October 26, 1908. Loch-Katrine Reservation. Lands
about reservoir site in Oregon Basin, Wyoming.
January 26, 1909. Pelican Island Reservation. En
larged to include several other adjacent islands.
February 3, 1909. Hawaiian Islands Reservation.
Islets and reefs situated in the Pacific Ocean, near the
western extension of the Hawaiian archipelago.
February 25, 1909. Salt River Reservation. Parts
of townships four and five north, Gila and Salt River
Meridian, Arizona.
February 25, 1909. East Park Reservation. Parts of
townships seventeen and eighteen north in California.
February 25, 1909. Deer Flat Reservation. Em
bracing parts of townships two and three, Boise Meridian,
Idaho.
February 25, 1909. Willow Creek Reservation. Em
bracing part of township twenty-one, Montana Me
ridian, Montana.
February 25, 1909. Carlsbad Reservation. Em
bracing two reservoir sites along Pecos River in town
ships eighteen, nineteen, twenty, and twenty-one south,
New Mexico.
February 25, 1909. Rio Grande Reservation. Em
bracing parts of townships seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven,
twelve, and thirteen south, Principal Meridian, New
Mexico.
February 25, 1909. Cold Springs Reservation. Em-
APPENDIX B 369
bracing parts of townships four and five north, Wil
lamette Meridian, Oregon.
February 25, 1909. Belle Fourche Reservation. Em
bracing parts of townships eight, nine, and ten north,
Black Hills Meridian, South Dakota.
February 25, 1909. Strawberry Valley Reservation.
Embracing parts of townships three and four south,
Uinta Meridian, Utah.
February 25, 1909. Keechelus Reservation. Embracing
parts of townships twenty-one and twenty-two north,
Willamette Meridian, Washington.
February 25, 1909. Kachess Reservation. Embrac
ing Kachess Lakes reservoir site, Washington.
February 25, 1909. Clealum Reservation. Embrac
ing parts of townships twenty, twenty-one, and twenty-
two north, Willamette Meridian, Washington.
February 25, 1909. Bumping Lake Reservation. Em
bracing the Bumping Lake reservoir site, Washington.
February 25, 1909. Conconully Reservation. Embrac
ing part of township thirty-five north, Willamette Me
ridian, Washington.
February 25, 1909. Pathfinder Reservation. Em
bracing parts of townships twenty-six, twenty-seven,
twenty-eight, twenty-nine, and thirty north, Wyoming.
February 25, 1909. Shoshone Reservation. Embrac
ing part of township fifty-two north, Wyoming.
February 25, 1909. Minidoka Reservation. Em
bracing parts of townships eight and nine south, Boise
Meridian, Idaho.
February 27, 1909. Tuxedni Reservation. Embrac
ing Chisik Island and Egg Island entrance to Tuxedni
Harbor in Cook Inlet, Alaska.
February 27, 1909. Saint Lazaria Reservation. Em
bracing the Island of Saint Lazaria, entrance to Sitka
Sound, Alaska.
370 APPENDIX B
February 27, 1909. Yukon Delta Reservation. Em
bracing all the treeless tundra of the delta of the Yukon
River west of longitude one hundred and sixty-two de
grees and twenty minutes west from Greenwich and
south of the Yukon River, Alaska.
February 27, 1909. Culebra Reservation. Embrac
ing the islands of the Culebra group, Porto Rico, except
ing Culebra Island, which is a naval and lighthouse reser
vation.
February 27, 1909. Farallon Reservation. Em
bracing the middle and north Farallon Islands and other
rocks northwest of the same, located on the coast of
California near San Francisco.
February 27, 1909. Behring Sea Reservation. Em
bracing Saint Matthew Island, Hall Island, and Pin
nacle Islet, approximately in latitude sixty degrees and
thirty minutes north, longitude one hundred and seventy-
two degrees and thirty minutes west, in Behring Sea,
Alaska.
February 27, 1909. Pribilof Reservation. Embracing
Walrus Island and Otter Island of the Pribilof group, in
Behring Sea, Alaska.
March 2, 1909. Bogoslof Reservation. Embracing
volcanic islands commonly known as the Bogoslof group,
approximately in latitude fifty-three degrees and fifty-
eight minutes north, longitude one hundred and sixty-
seven degrees and fifty-three minutes west from Green
wich, Behring Sea, Alaska.
Since then these have been added:
April 11, 1911. Clear Lake Reservation. Embracing
the Clear Lake reservoir site, California. Modified by
executive order of January 13, 1912, by eliminating, for
administrative purposes, three hundred and twenty acres
surrounding the Reclamation dam.
APPENDIX B 371
January 11, 1912. Hazy Islands Reservation. Em
bracing Hazy Island group, approximately in latitude
fifty-five degrees and fifty-four minutes north, longitude
one hundred and thirty-four degrees and thirty-six min
utes west from Greenwich, Alaska.
January 11, 1912. Forrester Island Reservation.
Embracing Forrester Island and Wolf Rock, approxi
mately in latitude fifty-four degrees and forty-eight
minutes north, longitude one hundred and thirty-three
degrees and thirty-two minutes west from Greenwich,
Alaska.
January 11, 1912. Niobrara Reservation. Embracing
parts of townships thirty-three and thirty-four north,
ranges twenty-six and twenty -seven west, Sixth Principal
Meridian, Nebraska, the same being a part of the aban
doned Fort Niobrara Military Reservation. This reser
vation was enlarged by executive order of November 14,
1912, adding approximately nine hundred acres, which
included the building and old parade-grounds of the
military reservation.
February 21, 1912. Green Bay Reservation. Em
braces Hog Island at the entrance to Green Bay, within
township thirty-three north, range thirty east, of the
Fourth Principal Meridian, Wisconsin.
December 7, 1912. Chamisso Island Reservation.
Embraces Chamisso Island and Puffin and other rocky
islets in its vicinity, approximately in latitude sixty-six
degrees and thirteen minutes north, longitude one hun
dred and sixty-one degrees and fifty-two minutes west
from Greenwich, at the eastern end of Kotzebue Sound,
Alaska.
December 17, 1912. Pishkin Reservation. Em
braces Pishkin reservoir site in townships twenty-two
and twenty-three north, range seven west, Montana
Principal Meridian, Montana.
372 APPENDIX B
December 19, 1912. Desecheo Island Reservation.
Embraces Desecheo Island in Mona Passage, Porto Rico,
but is subject to naval and lighthouse purposes.
January 9, 1913. Gravel Island Reservation. Em
braces Gravel Island and Spider Island, approximately
in latitude forty-five degrees and fifteen minutes north,
longitude eighty-six degrees and fifty-eight minutes
west from Greenwich, in Lake Michigan, Wisconsin.
March 3, 1913. Aleutian Islands Reservation. Em
braces all of the islands of the Aleutian chain, Alaska,
including Unimak and Sannak Islands on the east and
Otter Island on the west, reserved for preserve and breed
ing-ground for native birds, and in addition thereto for
the propagation of reindeer and fur-bearing animals and
encouragement and development of the fisheries.
April 21, 1913. Walker Lake Reservation. Embraces
9.68 acres of land in section one, township fifteen north,
range twelve east, and five acres in township sixteen
north, range twelve east, of the Fifth Principal Meridian,
Arkansas.
May 6, 1913. Petit Bois Island Reservation. Em
braces all of the public land upon Petit Bois Island located
in the Gulf of Mexico about ten miles off the coast of
Alabama and Mississippi, in townships nine and ten south,
ranges three and four west of Saint Stephens Meridian.
September 4, 1913. Anaho Island Reservation. Em
braces Anaho Island in Pyramid Lake, Nevada.
June 6, 1914. Smith Island Reservation. Embraces
Smith and Minor Islands, situated in the Straits of Juan
de Fuca, about fourteen miles north by west from Port
Townsend, Washington.
January 20, 1915. Ediz Hook Reservation. Embraces
an arm of land extending into the Straits of Juan de Fuca,
in township thirty -one north, range six west of Willamette
Meridian, Washington.
APPENDIX B 373
January 20, 1915. Dungeness Spit Reservation. Em
braces an arm of land extending into the Straits of Juan
de Fuca, in township thirty-one north, ranges three and
four west of Willamette Meridian, Washington.
By executive order of March 19, 1913, the protection
of native birds within the Panama Canal Zone was estab
lished, the jurisdiction over same to lie with the Isthmian
Canal Commission and its successor, the governor of the
Canal Zone, and on January 27, 1914, an amendatory
executive order was issued prohibiting night hunting, the
use of spring-guns and traps, etc., with additional penal
ties therefor.
LIFE-HISTORIES OF
AFRICAN GAME ANIMALS
By
THEODORE ROOSEVELT
AND
EDMUND HELLER
With over 125 illustrations from drawings by
Philip R. Goodwin and from photographs,
and with 40 faunal maps. Two volumes.
Royal 8vo, 798 pp. Price $10.00 net.
The " Life-Histories of African Game Animals " repre
sents the first attempt to deal with the giant animals of
Africa substantially along the lines of Dr. Hart Merriam's
volume on the mammals of the Adirondacks and of Mr.
Thompson Seton's two volumes on the mammals of Mani
toba. It is the first attempt that has ever been made in
the field of productive scientific scholarship as regards the
big animals of any continent; and Africa is the continent
which in variety, numbers, and interest of the great game
on the whole surpasses even Asia and vastly surpasses any
other continent. The book is of interest to the profes
sional scientist, to the scientific layman, and to the intelli
gent sportsman.
No book of this kind could be written unless by a man
who is not only a trained scientist but an accomplished
field-naturalist and observer and a successful big-game
hunter and wanderer in the wilderness. In addition to
all these qualifications the writer should be a man of let
ters, able to write with interest of that which he has seen.
No single man combining these qualities and with the
necessary experience to deal with the big game of a conti-
nent has yet appeared, and no book like the present one
has ever been written. There are plenty of compilations
by closet naturalists about the large animals of different
regions, and a multitude of books on hunting and travel;
but in the present case two men have joined to do what
neither could have done separately, and the result is a
book which is a model of what should be done for all
other continents and also for the great West African forest
and the North African desert, neither of which is covered
by the present work.
The volume contains photographs of almost every
species described; maps showing the distribution of each
species; photographs of the distinctive vegetation; and
also maps of the faunal areas and life-zones of east equa
torial Africa. There are also drawings to illustrate the
wild life as it could not be illustrated by photographs.
The life-histories of game animals offer an almost
virgin field for investigation and study. The present
treatise is a faithful account of what Messrs. Roosevelt
and Heller have themselves observed. It is a fuller ac
count than has ever before been submitted on the subject.
But the authors themselves emphatically state that its
greatest value must lie in its being treated primarily as a
suggestion of what is still open for discovery in the vast
field that treats not only of the physical traits but of the
queer psychology of mammals and of the way in which
their life-habits are modified by their surroundings. Big-
game hunters who are more than illiterate game-butchers,
and faunal naturalists who realise that outdoor work is
at least as important to the scientist as work in the labora
tory, and all intelligent men who, without being scientists,
are interested in scientific matters as well as in the most
interesting, the hugest, and the most terrible of the beasts
of the chase will find in this book what cannot anywhere
else be found.
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS - New York
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