TROUTING BAREFOOT.
’Twas a holiday joy when I was a boy,
To follow the brook a-trouting,
’Twas gold of pleasure without alloy,
To trudge away through the livelong day—
Not a bite to eat, or a word to say,
And never a failing or doubting.
Then home at night in a curious plight—
Heavy and tired and hungry quite—
With a string of the “speckles” hung out of sight,
And a chorus of boyish shouting.
Only a line of the commonest twine,
Only a pole of alder;
None of your beautiful things that shine—
Tackle so nice and so high in price
That a trout would laugh to be taken twice.
And sing like a Swedish scalder
For a jump at a sign of a thing so fine,
And scorn rough implements such as mine;
Only a line of the commonest twine—
Only a pole of alder!
Wet to the skin in our raiment thin—
Never a word of complaining,
Never too late in the day to begin;
Dropping a hook in the beautiful brook
Till day was taking his farewell look
No matter how hard it was raining!
Ah! few, indeed, would fail to succeed
In the angling of life—if they’d only heed
The trout-boy’s patience, whatever impede,
And his joy, both in seeking and gaining.
—Belle A. Hitchcock.
THE ALASKAN MOOSE.
(Alces gigas.)
The Alaska Moose is the largest of the deer family in America. Alces gigas is a comparatively new species, having been described in 1899. At present it is still quite numerous along the Yukon and its tributaries, though the influx of prospectors and the settling of the Klondike region has already resulted in a marked falling off in Moose and an increase of Moose meat. In the winter this is the staple diet of both Indians and whites, and on account of the high price paid—one dollar or two dollars per pound—many prospectors have found Moose hunting even more remunerative than mining.
Alces gigas was first collected by Mr. Dall De Weese, of Canon City, Colo., who spent three months, in 1898, on the Kenai Peninsula, Alaska, in quest of large mammals for the United States Museum. From the six specimens of the Alaskan Moose which he collected it is seen that this animal differs considerably from the Moose (Alces americanus) inhabiting the east United States and eastern and central Canada, being larger and more richly colored and having a much heavier mandible. Its general color is a grizzle of black and wood brown, darkening along the spine and changing abruptly to clear black on chest, buttocks and lower part of sides.
The horns of the Moose are very characteristic, being of immense size and palmated before and behind so that an average full-grown pair weighs seventy pounds and shows a spread of forty-six inches between the points of the posterior branch as against a length of thirty-eight inches. Our illustration is a photograph of one with horns of remarkable size, measuring about seventy-one inches from tip to tip in a line across the head. It is not until the third year that the horns are palmated, and they increase in size from year to year. In the winter the old horns are cast, but they sprout again in the spring, and by June have shed their velvet and appear a beautiful white. Although so large and characteristic, it is not known that they serve any more useful purpose than as weapons during the rutting season. In running through the woods the Moose throws his head back, and, despite the spread and weight of his horns, he is able to move about without breaking a twig.
The clumsy shape of the head is accentuated by the hump on the nose, which is due to the excessive development of the nasal septum and of the upper lip, which is long and supple, and adapted to browsing rather than to cropping grass. The short neck of the Moose would in any case interfere with the cropping of grass, even if it were found in the snowy inlands of Alaska. Its common food is the twigs and bark of willows and birches, which it rides down to reach the tops, lichens and mosses and the aquatic plants of summer.
In winter the Moose herd together in the snow, forming great tramped-down places called moose yards by hunters. In summer comes the rutting season, in which the great males shake their antlers and attack any animal that comes their way. With summer comes mosquitoes also, and these pester the Moose to such an extent that they are galled to a greater fury. So it is that the Moose is a most dangerous animal in the time when the ground is clear, the swamps full of mosquitoes and his horns new-stripped of velvet for the fray.
When the snow lies so deep that he cannot travel even with his long legs, the enemies of the Moose have him at a disadvantage, and often the yards are attacked by wolves or bears or, worse yet, by agile men on snowshoes. Killing in the snow is not recognized as legitimate sport, and is resorted to only by skin hunters or men lacking in the higher ideals of sportsmen. The ordinary method of hunting deer in the summer is by imitating the rutting cry of the male, the reply of the cow and the defiant challenge of the male again, followed by the thrashing and scraping of the trees and branches where the hunter lies concealed. These cries are produced by blowing through a birchbark horn, and on account of the blind fury of the rutting males they are often very successful in bringing them to their death.
ALASKAN MOOSE.
(Alces gigas).
The Indians and half-breeds of the far North stalk the wary Moose where he beds himself down after a night of browsing, but so acute is his hearing and sense of smell and so great his cunning that only the trained woodsman can hope for success. Leaving his feed-trail abruptly, the Moose moves off to one side down the wind so that any one trailing him will be surely scented, and there beds himself down for the day. The Indian follows the well-defined trail of the Moose until it becomes fresh, and then by a series of circuits down the wind and leading back to the trail, like the semicircles of the letter B, he gradually approaches the hiding place until at last, coming up the wind, he sights his prey and, startling it by a slight sound, shoots it where it stands.
The young are brought forth in the early summer and stay with their mother until the third year. During this time she defends them with the greatest ferocity from man and wild animals alike, using her sharp hoofs in striking out at wolves and men, often trampling them into the snow in her fury. The new-born young are very helpless at first on their long, tottering legs, and, roaming as they do in a wild land of wolves and beasts of prey, they could scarcely survive at all without the protection of their mother’s knife-like hoofs. So long and awkward are the legs of Moose that in running through the woods the hind feet often interfere with the fore feet, throwing the clumsy animal in a heap. The falling of Moose while running was considered so unaccountable at first that it was assigned to attacks of epilepsy, but it has since been discovered that when galloping the Moose spreads his hind feet far apart in a more or less successful effort to avoid tripping up his fore feet. But when we consider his load of horns and the fallen trees and broken branches of his native haunts it is a marvel that he is able to outrun his foes at all, whereas the Moose is in fact the swiftest animal in the Northern woods.
Dane Coolidge.
There’s a wonderful weaver
High up in the air,
And he waves a white mantle,
For cold earth to wear.
With the wind for his shuttle
The cloud for his loom,
How he weaves! How he weaves!
In the light, in the gloom.
—Wayne Whistler, in the Record-Herald.
THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A DUCK.
FOUNDED UPON FACT.
“How queer, my child! what a long, broad mouth you have, and what peculiar feet!”
It was my mother, a big brown hen, who spoke. I had stepped from my egg, only a short while before, and as I was the only one hatched out of the whole thirteen, my poor mother was greatly disappointed.
Now, to add to her troubles, there seemed to be something very peculiar about my appearance.
“Yes,” she went on still watching me critically, “I have raised many families, but never a chick like you. Well! well! don’t cry about it. Your yellow dress is very pretty. It doesn’t pay to be too sensitive, as you will find, I am afraid, when you have lived with these chickens. Some of them are dreadfully trying. Dear! dear! how stiff I am! This setting is tiresome work.”
“I wonder what sort of home we are going to have.”
Our home, into which we moved a few hours later, proved to be an upturned soap box. Seven little chickens were there before us.
“The same old story,” said my mother with a knowing air. “People imagine we hens have no sense. I did not hatch those chickens, but I am expected to care for them, as though I did. Some mothers would peck them so they would be glad to stay away.”
She had too good a heart for this, however, and I was very glad to have these brothers and sisters.
They were different from me, though, in many ways, principally, in their dislike for water. They hated even to get their feet wet, while I dearly loved to get in the pond, and swim around on its surface, or even dive down to the bottom, where such nice fat worms lived.
My poor mother never could understand my tastes. The first time she saw me on the water, she came rushing towards me, screaming and beating her wings.
“Oh, my child! my child!” she cried, with tears in her eyes. “You will drown! You will drown!”
I loved her, and so could not bear to see her distress. It was hard to be different from all the others.
I had a little yellow sister who was a great comfort to me at these times. I could never persuade her to try the water,—but she always sat upon the edge of the pond while I had my swim. We shared everything with each other; even our troubles.
About this time, my voice began to change. It had been a soft little “peep,” but now it grew so harsh, that some of the old hens made unpleasant remarks about it, and my mother was worried.
“It isn’t talking. It’s quacking,” said an old, brown-headed hen who was always complaining of her nerves.
She was very cross and spent most of her time standing on one leg in a corner and pecking any poor chicken that came in her reach.
“Don’t you know why it’s quacking?” asked a stately Buff Cochin who was a stranger in the yard; having arrived only that morning. “That child isn’t a chicken. She’s a duck.”
“What you giving us?” said a dandified Cock, who was busy pluming his feathers. “Whoever heard of a duck?”
“Not you, I daresay,” answered the Buff with a contemptuous sniff. “It’s easy to see you have never been away from this yard. I have traveled, I would have you understand, and I know a duck, too.”
“Well, I don’t care what you call her,” snapped the cross one. “I only hope she’ll keep her voice out of my hearing. The sound of it gives me nervous prostration.”
As for poor me,—I stole quietly away, and went up into a corner of the chicken house to cry. I was a duck, alas! and different from all about me. No wonder I was lonely.
My mother asked the cause of my trouble, and when I told her she looked sad and puzzled. “I don’t know what a duck is,” she sighed, “things have been strangely mixed. But cheer up. Whatever comes you are still my child.”
That was indeed a comfort to me. For never had chicken or duck a better mother.
There was consolation also, in what the kind old Buff Cochin told me.
I had nothing to be ashamed of, she said, for ducks were much esteemed by those who knew them.
From her this had more weight, for we all regarded the Buff Cochin as very superior. They were well born, and well bred, and had seen life in many places. Their husband, too, was a thorough gentleman.
However, he also was having his troubles now. He was losing his old feathers, and his new ones were long in coming. Consequently, his appearance was shabby, and he staid away from the hens.
Poor fellow, he looked quite forlorn, leaning up against a sunny corner of the barn, trying to keep warm. I believe he felt the loss of his tail feathers most for the young roosters who strutted by in their fine new coats, made sneering remarks about it.
I was very sorry for him, but my own troubles were getting to be as much as I could bear; for just when I needed a sympathetic mother she was taken from me and her place filled by a big, bare-headed hen as high tempered as she was homely.
“Raising a duck,” she said with a contemptuous sniff at me. “I never supposed I’d come to that. Well, I’ll keep you, but understand one thing, don’t go quacking around me, and don’t bring your wet and mud into the house. I’m not your other mother. My children don’t rule me. I won’t have that Mrs. Redbreast saying my house is dirty. There’s no standing that hen anyhow. I’ll give her my opinion if she puts on her airs around me. There’s too much mixture here. One can’t tell where breed begins or ends.”
It was not many days later, before my mother and Mrs. Redbreast came to words and then blows. The cause was only a worm, but it was enough. Mrs. Redbreast insisted that it was hers. My mother thought otherwise, and with a screech of defiance rushed upon her enemy. Dust and feathers flew. We children withdrew to a safe distance, and with necks stretched watched in fear and trembling.
The fight, though fierce, was short. Our mother was victorious, but she had lost the tail feathers of which she had been so proud, and I am sure she never forgave Mrs. Redbreast.
Like children, chickens and ducks grow older and bigger with the passing days.
In time we were taken from our mothers and put to roost with the older hens and cocks. I was not made to roost so I spent my nights alone in a corner of the chicken house.
It was quieter down there—for up above the chickens all fought for best place, and their cackling and fluttering was disturbing.
The old gentleman was very heavy. Not only was it hard for him to fly up to the roost, but equally hard for him to hold on when once there. Yet I could never persuade him to rest on the floor with me. Like his kind, he preferred the discomfort of sleeping on a pole—a taste I cannot understand.
I was four months old before I saw one of my own kind. Then, one day three ducks were brought into the yard. They did not seem to mind being stared at, but fell to eating corn and talking among themselves.
“Horribly greedy,” said Mrs. Redbreast. “I for one don’t care to associate with them.”
“Now you know what you look like, old quacker,” snapped the cross hen, with a peck at me. “My poor nerves will suffer sadly now.”
These unkind remarks scarcely disturbed me, however. There was a new feeling stirring in my heart. I am afraid you will have to be a duck, and live a long time without other ducks, to understand it. Here were companions, whose natures and tastes were like mine, and I was content.
Louise Jamison.