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 hunting experience worth mentioning. Nevertheless, toward
the end of my trip, there befell me one of the most curious and
interesting adventures 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 public preserves. These
by their very existence afford a certain measure of the extent to which
democratic government can justify itself. If in a given community
unchecked popular 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
generations as to the present generation, then it is sure proof that the
present generation 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 democratic ideal is not realized. The only way to
secure the chance for hunting, for the enjoyment of vigorous
field-sports, to the average man of small means, is to secure such
enforced game laws as will prevent anybody and everybody 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 opportunity of occasionally spending his
yearly holiday in that school of hardihood and self-reliance--the chase.
New Brunswick, Maine, 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 mountains 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
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 hillsides,
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.
In Eastern Canada, as in the Eastern United States, there has been far
less chance than in the West to create huge governmental game reserves.
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 enforcement
of wise game laws--although here also it must be admitted that in some
of the Provinces, as in some of the States, the alien sportsman is
judged with Rhadamanthine severity, while the home offenders, and even
the home Indians, are but little interfered with. It would be well if in
this matter other communities copied the excellent example of Maine and
New Brunswick. 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, worthless for agriculture; and in consequence of this
policing the wild creatures of the wilderness have thriven, and in some
cases have multiplied 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 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 government by the club, lies northwest of the attractive 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
interesting to a man accustomed to the absolute and unconscious
democracy of the Western cow camps and hunting trails. One vital fact
impressed me in connection with them as in connection with my
Spanish-speaking and Portuguese-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
evident 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
countries 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 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-speaking world and in
old France, been accompanied by a moral change which threatens complete
loss of race supremacy because of sheer dwindling 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
calculated self-indulgence, love of ease and comfort, 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 antithesis 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 womanhood. It is not enough that a race
shall be composed of good fighters, good workers, and good breeders;
but, unless the qualities thus indicated are present in the race
foundation, then 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
McKinney, 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.
McKinney joined us there. A club reserve such as this, with
weather-proof cabins scattered 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 northern
wilderness, and yet to enjoy also such substantial 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 observation of the life histories
of the more shy and rare wild creatures practically unaffected by man.
Many persons do not realize how completely 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 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 prohibited.
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 interesting 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 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 become 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 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 number
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 tree of average
size yields food only to beasts of exceptional type, of which the most
conspicuous in North America are the tree-porcupine 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 developed
habits more interesting and extraordinary than those of any other
rodent--indeed 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. Evidently the snow had melted faster than the beavers worked;
they were never able to make a complete ring, although they had gnawed
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 exterminated. 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 porcupines,
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 because they so much more quickly increase to the
point that seems to invite the disease. The porcupines are rather
unsocial, and are so lethargic 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 woodsmen. But they breed so slowly (for rodents) and
move about so little that when exterminated from a district many years
elapse before they again begin to spread throughout it. The rabbits, on
the contrary, move about so much that infectious diseases spread with
extraordinary 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 regards these northern
wood-rabbits, and doubtless 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 which at intervals sweep off their swarming
numbers. 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 temporary and local extermination of the
Labrador 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 disease-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 increase 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 extermination or reduction in numbers. More efficient 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 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 appearance. 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 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 followed them. The musk-ox is helpless in the presence of
human hunters, much more helpless than caribou, and can exist only in
the appalling solitudes where even arctic man cannot live; but against
wolves, its only other foes, its habits of gregarious and truculent
self-defense 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 doubtless resulted in other changes in
the smaller wild life.
Here we can explain the reason for the change 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 resulted 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 increase in the number of moose and deer; wolves cannot have
produced this change, for they kill the deer easier than the caribou.
Field naturalists have in such questions an ample opportunity for work
of the utmost interest. Doubtless they can in the future give us
complete or partial 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 innumerable 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 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
equilibrium, 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 direction.
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-berries. Behind the cabins was a small potato patch. Wild
raspberries were always encroaching 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 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 Drayton 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
responsible, 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 paddler 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 concealed, 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 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, directly 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
finding that the mud bothered even her long legs, she plunged her huge
homely head to the bottom, 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 above it. She continued to feed,
usually broadside 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, however, 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 galloped ashore, churning through the mud and water. In very
deep snow one will sometimes 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 gallop 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 character
of the coloration. The moose is one of the few animals of which the body
is inversely countershaded, being black save for the brownish 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
blackness, 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 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 swimming, 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, looking 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, speedily drenching
us, and the darkness and the 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 country, 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. Before 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 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
yearling 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 report, 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 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 probably 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 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 landscape 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.
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 antlered 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.
[Illustration: _From a photograph by Alexander Lambert, M.D._
Colonel Roosevelt and Arthur Lirette with antlers of moose shot
September 19, 1915.]
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 beginning of the portage leading from the
southeastern corner of the lake toward the Lamberts' camp. Here we
landed the meat, putting cool moss 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 within 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 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 venture 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 become uneasy and go off. After waiting a few
minutes we paddled slowly toward the landing, but before reaching it we
caught his loom in the shadow, as he stood facing us some distance 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
continued 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 galloped 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.
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; Arthur telling me that if he now attacked
us I must shoot him at once or he would kill somebody.
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 beyond
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, without the slightest effect. At
a slashing trot he crossed the river, shaking his head, his ears 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 habitant's French, said that the
incident was "pas mal curieux." He used "pas mal" as a superlative. The
first time he used it I was completely bewildered. It was hot and
sultry, and Arthur remarked that the day was "pas mal mort." How the day
could be "not badly 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
secretary 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 challenged 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 determination and
perseverance in ferocious malice; it behaved, as I have said, like some
of the rare vicious rogues among African elephants, buffaloes, and
rhinoceroses. Bull moose during the rut are fierce animals, however,
and, although there 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 carrying 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 preparation for
their southward flight. The nights 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
banners flaunted in the eyes of the dying year.
[Illustration: 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
lechwe, 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 photograph 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. However, 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 Russian wolfhound. One day they came across
a white goat, and before the slow creature could reach the precipice 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 backward 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 deposition 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 nineteenth, 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
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 direction; but
following us and threatening us, the bull moose turned and walked
the same way we did, we renewed 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 towards
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 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 declare 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 conscientiously, 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. DUFAULT
_Deputy-Minister, Department Colonization,
Mines and Fisheries, Quebec._
CANADA,
PROVINCE DE QUEBEC,
DISTRICT DE QUEBEC.
Je, Arthur Lirette, du village de St-Raymond, gardien du Club de
Pêche et de Chasse Tourilli, et Je, Odilon, Genest, du même lieu,
en ma qualité de guide, déclare sollennellement que les faits
relatés ci-hauts par la déclaration de M. Théodore Roosevelt,
laquelle nous a été lue et traduite en francais par le Notaire E.
A. Panet, de St-Raymond, que cette déclaration contient la vérité
dans toute son étendue, et que si le dit Th. Roosevelt n'avait pas
tué l'orignal mentionné par lui, que nos vies étaient en danger.
Et je fais cette déclaration solennelle consciencieusement la
croyant vraie, et sachant qu'elle a la même force et l'effet, comme
si elle avait été faite sous serment, en vertu de "The CANADA
EVIDENCE ACT", 1893.
Déclaré devant moi, à St-Raymond, ce 24 ème jour de septembre,
1915.
_Signe_) "ARTHUR LIRETTE"
" "ODILON GENEST,"
" "E. A. PANET, _N. P. & J. Paix_.
VRAIE COPIE,
S. DUFAULT
_Sous-Ministre, Département de la Colonisation,
des Mines et des Pêcheries, Québec._
COPY
ST. RAYMOND, 7 OCTOBRE 1915
Cher Messieur
Rapport
Le 19 Septembre 1915 Mons. Col. Teodore Rosevelt partant pour faire
la chasse a l'orignal dans le club Tourilli 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
l'apres midi voulant sen revenir du camp du lac a l'ile avec la
tete et le panage dans le canot vers les 3 heures 1/2 nous
apercumes un autre original sur le bord du lac nous avons arreter
notre canot nous l'avons regarder et l'orignal nous regardait bien
ferocement nous etions a pen pres un arpent de distance l'on se mit
a ramer pour aller au portage du lac a l'ile et l'animal se mis a
suive sur la meme directions de nous nous avons retourner sur nos
pas une couple d'arpent et l'orignal fit la meme chose et l'on
pouvait voir qu'il etait bien enrager alors l'on se mit a crier et
frapper sur le canot avec les avirons afin de pouvoir l'effayer au
contraire il se mit a corné 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 l'on ne pu se rendre que l'animal revenait de nouveau sur nous
avons reculer de nouveau sur le lac et l'orignal est rendu dans
l'eau 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 eté gardé par cet animal pour une heure a
une heure 1/2 ensuite j'ai dis a Monsier et Odilion que l'on
faisait mieux de se suivre et mener autant de bruit possible afin
de l'effrayer mais l'orseque n'on eut fait deux arpents dans le
portage j'ai apercus l'animal 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
Monsier de tirer et Mons. a pris sa carabine et a tirer en l'air
afin de lui faire bien peur et de pouvoir le chasser mais au
contraire en entendant le coup du fusil il foncé sur nous j'ai dit
a Monsieur Col. tirer bien vite et il a tiré de nouveau l'animal
qui etait a 18 pieds de nous a peu pres et il la blessé 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 tiré afin de le mettre à
terre cela faisait une heure et demi que cet animal nous gardait.
ARTHUR 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 following 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. Unsurveyed islands
of the Siskiwit group on the south side of Isle Royal in Lake
Superior, Michigan.
October 10, 1905. Huron Islands Reservation. Unsurveyed islands of
the Huron Islands group, Lake Superior, Michigan.
October 10, 1905. Passage Key Reservation. An island near the mouth
of Tampa Bay, Florida.
February 10, 1906. Indian Key Reservation. An island 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. Unsurveyed 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.
October 23, 1907. Flattery Rocks Reservation. Islands 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 Reservation. Small, marshy
islands commonly known as East Timbalier Island in the Gulf of
Mexico, south of Louisiana.
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.
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. Unsurveyed 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. Enlarged 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. Embracing parts of
townships two and three, Boise Meridian, Idaho.
February 25, 1909. Willow Creek Reservation. Embracing part of
township twenty-one, Montana Meridian, Montana.
February 25, 1909. Carlsbad Reservation. Embracing two reservoir
sites along Pecos River in townships eighteen, nineteen, twenty,
and twenty-one south, New Mexico.
February 25, 1909. Rio Grande Reservation. Embracing parts of
townships seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve, and thirteen
south, Principal Meridian, New Mexico.
February 25, 1909. Cold Springs Reservation. Embracing parts of
townships four and five north, Willamette Meridian, Oregon.
February 25, 1909. Belle Fourche Reservation. Embracing 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. Embracing Kachess Lakes
reservoir site, Washington.
February 25, 1909. Clealum Reservation. Embracing parts of
townships twenty, twenty-one, and twenty-two north, Willamette
Meridian, Washington.
February 25, 1909. Bumping Lake Reservation. Embracing the Bumping
Lake reservoir site, Washington.
February 25, 1909. Conconully Reservation. Embracing part of
township thirty-five north, Willamette Meridian, Washington.
February 25, 1909. Pathfinder Reservation. Embracing parts of
townships twenty-six, twenty-seven, twenty-eight, twenty-nine, and
thirty north, Wyoming.
February 25, 1909. Shoshone Reservation. Embracing part of township
fifty-two north, Wyoming.
February 25, 1909. Minidoka Reservation. Embracing parts of
townships eight and nine south, Boise Meridian, Idaho.
February 27, 1909. Tuxedni Reservation. Embracing Chisik Island and
Egg Island entrance to Tuxedni Harbor in Cook Inlet, Alaska.
February 27, 1909. Saint Lazaria Reservation. Embracing the Island
of Saint Lazaria, entrance to Sitka Sound, Alaska.
February 27, 1909. Yukon Delta Reservation. Embracing all the
treeless tundra of the delta of the Yukon River west of longitude
one hundred and sixty-two degrees and twenty minutes west from
Greenwich and south of the Yukon River, Alaska.
February 27, 1909. Culebra Reservation. Embracing the islands of
the Culebra group, Porto Rico, excepting Culebra Island, which is a
naval and lighthouse reservation.
February 27, 1909. Farallon Reservation. Embracing 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. Embracing Saint Matthew
Island, Hall Island, and Pinnacle 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
Greenwich, 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.
January 11, 1912. Hazy Islands Reservation. Embracing Hazy Island
group, approximately in latitude fifty-five degrees and fifty-four
minutes north, longitude one hundred and thirty-four degrees and
thirty-six minutes west from Greenwich, Alaska.
January 11, 1912. Forrester Island Reservation. Embracing Forrester
Island and Wolf Rock, approximately 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 abandoned Fort Niobrara Military Reservation.
This reservation 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. Embraces 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 hundred and sixty-one degrees and fifty-two
minutes west from Greenwich, at the eastern end of Kotzebue Sound,
Alaska.
December 17, 1912. Pishkin Reservation. Embraces Pishkin reservoir
site in townships twenty-two and twenty-three north, range seven
west, Montana Principal Meridian, Montana.
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. Embraces 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. Embraces 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 breeding-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. Embraces 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. Embraces 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.
January 20, 1915. Dungeness Spit Reservation. Embraces 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 established, 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 penalties 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" represents 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 Manitoba. 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 professional scientist, to the
scientific layman, and to the intelligent 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 letters, 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 continent
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 equatorial 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 account 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 laboratory, 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
* * * * *
Transcriber's note
Minor punctuation errors have been changed without notice. Printer
errors have been changed and are listed below. All other
inconsistencies are as in the original.
Page 58: "She-kige hozhone" changed to "She-kigee hozhone".
Page 137: "If was a far cry" canged to "It was a far cry".
Page 190: "PRIMEVAL MAN" changed to "PRIMITIVE MAN".
Page 240: "practical politican" changed to "practical politician".
Page 245: "Terra del Fuego" changed to "Tierra del Fuego".
Page 251: "previously decribed" changed to "previously described".