Now, the next time the writer visits this region he will penetrate its fastnesses in a native boat or not at all. Boats, like all tools, are the products of their environment. The narrow canoe of the native, propelled by two persons, one erect in the stern with a long pole flattened at one end to form a narrow paddle, the other seated in the bow with a short, broad oar, is a machine capable of going at high speed, is easily managed, and glides in and out with snake-like ease through the little bayous and the narrow, winding channels of the reed-choked rivers. The boat which the writer hereof unluckily manned was the property of a city man who had imported it for his own use. It was built on the usual lines of the park pleasure boats, in which the bank clerk softly rows the typewriter girl of a Sunday afternoon, on the manufactured lagoons in a Jackson or a Lincoln park in Chicago. It is a good boat for the purpose for which it was made, and the conditions under which it works smooth open water, short distances, and general purposeless idling but for business purposes in the swamps of Arkansas that boat was as ludicrous and as helplessly out of place as a canary in a cornfield. It was maddening to watch the unstudied ease in the motion of the two rowers ahead. Erect as a gondolier, the elder sculled at the stern, sending his narrow craft scudding along by apparently careless and effortless movements. They were plainly paddling lightly for the benefit of the toiler in the tub behind. It was necessary for the latter to keep the canoe constantly in sight, for by dozens of openings the river channel divided among the giant reeds, and it was no difficult matter to lose sight altogether of the elusive current that alone marked the real course of the stream. To do this, it was imperative, of course, to face the boat's bow and row backward, which did not materially add to the comfort of the rower. But even beneath the shower of perspiration from under the eaves of his hat, he could not fail to recognize the beauty of the mysterious wilderness. A glowing sunset lighted up the water, tipped the reeds with gold, and against the luminous sky the weird bodies of the great cypresses stood black and forbidding. They would loom up suddenly upon the boat's bow, as a bend in the river was reached, seeming to block the very course of the stream. Coming closer one saw that every little hummock of half-emerged ground in the midst of the river bore its burden of cypress.

Not like our familiar land trees are these swamp cypresses, nor indeed does the tree reveal its weird possibilities when grown on ordinary drained soil, for in the water the boles, at the point where they emerge from the surface, swell out like gigantic pumpkins, while from the top of these great wooden globes the rest of the trunk rises with a much reduced diameter. One imagines the shivering trees drawing their lower extremities up out of the ever-present water into a compact and huddled ball for protection. Moreover, all through the swamp there projected from the half-submerged surface the queerest looking lot of irregular sticks, two to six inches in diameter at the base, narrowing in their foot or two of height to a blunted point. These meaningless-looking brown wooden objects covering the watery flats excite the curiosity of the most uninterested non-botanical observer, and even to the botanist who knows something about them in advance, to see them for the first time is an odd experience. These swellings of the trunk and the projecting cypress "knees," as they are called, are the outcome of the effort of the tree to increase its rootaerating surface, since the ground on which they grow, being constantly covered with sluggish water, is poorly supplied with air; so the roots have to come up to breathe. On the trunks of the cypress there was seen a most interesting fern, gray and dry at the time, easily crumbled to powder in the hand, apparently dead. But left for a few hours in water, the dry, gray leaves become moist and green, unroll, and reveal the form of the plant, which is scarcely recognizable in the curled and crumpled ball which it becomes during the dry weather.

Here and there the water surface was covered with a dense mat of the floating aquatic fern, Azolla, glowing with golden autumn coloration.

One of the most primitive of liverworts, likewise an acquatic representative of a land group, Riccia natans, formed another colony of floating plants. The American lotus or Chinquapin, Nelumbium luteum, was everywhere present. Among the plant oddities, the corkwood tree, Leitneria floridana, the timber of which has a specific gravity less than that of cork itself, and the sole species in its isolated family, deserves mention as a characteristic small tree of this region.

It was through this interesting natureworld, empty of men, inhabited by wild birds and animals, that our boats progressed, until turning by a lateral waterway we passed out of the comparatively open river into the very heart of the gloomy cypress swamp. On a little island, somewhere in the midst of this, fit for the home of a water pirate, full of suggestions of wild and joyous possibilities in the way of endless adventure to the mind of any small American boy, lived the family of the canoeman—himself, a wife and two unusually interesting and attractive children. A one-roomed log cabin was kitchen, dining-room, reception room and bedroom in turn, as the household exigencies and the hour of the day demanded. Miles and miles from help in case of sickness or death, away from schools, newspapers and taxes, free from all the burdens of society, living on the results of the good marksmanship of the father, a professional market hunter, this kind-hearted, good-souled if unlettered family gathered its learning as it went along from nature at first hand. Many a zoologist from a pretentious laboratory could go to school to this humble guide in the Arkansas swamps, so far as knowledge of the habits and ways of wood folk is concerned. The Fenimore Cooper Indian's unerring recognition of the inevitable broken twig which revealed the path of the pursued was no more remarkable than this man's swift reading of the "signs" of the wild animals of his region. He was, withal, a man of character, too; one who by sheer force of example had broken up the drinking habits of a dozen other men, like him, inhabitants of the woods, and like him subject to the temptations which the Missouri side of the river offers at the settlements. One is surprised to find the Arkansas side, in that locality, at least, prohibiting the sale of intoxicating liquors.

Having noted many flocks of traveling mallards, we decided late in the afternoon to take a stand and see if we could not get a few shots, so we pulled into the flags and had just got settled when down the river came a Hock of "sawbills," not very much prized among the duck family, but mighty good practice when they are on their way to supper. They gave us a fair shot, and we folded two up nicely and a third set its wings and sailed off a quarter of a mile and fell—not a bad beginning for hunters sadly out of practice. At intervals large flocks of mallards passed over, practically out of gun shot. We saluted them and were surprised when we cut out several at remarkably long ranges. Burt said something about straining our guns, and I made him own up that he was using shells we had loaded for turkeys. After gathering up the birds we started back to the club house. On the way down I asked Burt if he had noticed any unusual blueness in the sky off to the south, and he said he had, and that Bob was laid out somewhere down there, which was a good and sufficient reason therefor. As we glided along, we speculated on the prospect for duck shooting, which was the "paramount issue" with us, and decided that only a spell of weather would insure a killing. Arrived at the club we again found no message from Bob, so decided to eat and increase our store of hope for his early arrival, which came with that satisfactory feeling produced by a good supper and after that a good smoke by the office fire. We had sounded the natives as to what to expect with the unfavorable weather prevailing, and finally decided to make a trip to Bagwell's Lake for wood ducks and bass (with minnows). After securing guides for the morrow's trip we turned in and slept like logs.

The guides were on hand next morning, and we soon had our tackle, guns, bait and lunch loaded on a hand-car, with which we pumped two miles up the track to the boat landing, where we reshipped for a cruise about Bagwell's Lake. After derailing the car and locking it, we started the boats. With the guide standing in the stern, he would, with a long paddle, make the boat fairly swish down the narrow channels among the cypress trees, missing them in a way that was remarkable. We wended our way down the lake perhaps three miles, flushing wood ducks and mallards from time to time, and bagged several, although we found this timber shooting was a game we were not fully up to, and we were much disappointed at the few birds and their wildness. My guide suggested that we fish awhile, and I agreed. Burt hated to give up the shooting, and decided he would go further down for awhile. I had my tackle ready just as he was leaving us, and dropped my minnow down beside a log. As the bobber followed the sinker out of sight, I pulled and landed a clean hook. Burt suggested that that was a bite, and I agreed with him. My guide asked Burt how long he would be gone, and upon receiving the reply, "Not over an hour," he made a statement that I did not believe he could substantiate, "We will have six or more bass when you return. Burt smiled and paddled away, and as they passed around the bend we tossed our lines over the log—but never a strike. "We have made too much commotion around here; we will leave this log until later and try a drift further up," said the guide. He paddled up to this drift without disturbing the brush, secured the boat, and we tossed in our bait again, the guide coaching me that as the shiners we were using were a large mouthful, the fish must be given time to get a good hold, and while he was talking away went his bobber, just as mine had. He let it go until the fish had taken up the slack, then he deliberately walked the bass right out from under the log and soon had him flopping in the boat. Well, that looks more like it, I thought. After he had strung the bass and dropped the same minnow back into the same hole, away went the bobber again, and I remarked that we must be in a nest of them, and out came another one. As he prepared his hook, he suggested that I was a trifle too deep, so I drew in and lowered my bobber. We both cast at the same place, and almost at the same instant down went both bobbers, and in a few seconds more the guide had landed one and I was fighting with a 4-pounder that was loath to be landed without an argument, and he ripped and tore, first under the log, then under the boat, and finally made a break for deep water, and the reel began to sing. I was getting anxious to see this plunger, so I tightened up on him, and finally got him up to the edge of the boat, when the guide had him over the side in a jiffy, the finest bass—of my own catching—I had ever seen. "How do you like it?" asked the guide. "Great!" said I, as he finished baiting up, and I wiped the perspiration from under my hat band.'

We cast again and again, and when we left that log we had nine fine specimens. The guide had landed six of them, but I had the biggest in the string, and was happy. At this rate we could double the estimate made Burt when he left. In drifting up to another log the guide told me to drop my line just over the further edge of it, and doing so. I immediately had another fight on hand. This time the water was deep and clear of snags, aside from the large, 
sunken log under which the bass had lain, so I started the tussle with more confidence than previously, but he did some running and darting, water-cutting, twisting and thrashing that fairly stopped my breath, I was so afraid he would break loose. The guide had shifted the boat so that the bass could not run back under the log, and was much interested in the landing of the prize of the day. He advised me if my rod could stand it to get his nose out of water. I finally succeeded in doing this, the rod bending nearly double, and then worked him over to the end of the boat, where the guide could get hold of the line, when he soon had him in the boat. This one was afterward found to weigh 4 pounds 7 ounces. I shed my coat and began doubling up a stringer, for one was already overloaded, and the prize of the day could not be trusted except on an extra strong stringer. We then decided to eat our lunch and wait for Burt. We had just got a good start when my line, which lay in the water, began running out rapidly, and I grabbed my rod just in time to keep it from being pulled overboard, and in a few minutes had another—a 2-pounder—up to the boat for the guide to land. Before he got it on the string his bobber disappeared and directly he had landed one of the largest crappies I had ever seen. We had baited up and were proceeding with the lunch, when Burt and his guide came up looking disgusted, not having had a shot.

Upon seeing our string, Burt ejaculated, "Holy smoke! give us some minnows and a bite of that lunch." As we divided the bait we explained that we had moved hardly a hundred yards in landing the bunch. Off they went, and in a very few minutes we could hear the familiar and unmistakable sounds that indicated that the string was growing. We worked other logs and caught more bass, and once I hooked what the guide called a pike, weighing about 2 pounds, which made up in fight what he lacked in weight, and I had some fun getting him in. We fished along with good success, until the minnows began to run small, and consequently the "goggle eyes" commenced to bother us. About 4:30 we quit and started back for the landing, overtaking Burt, who we found had a fine string and a hard luck story of a fish "twice the size of his largest" (31/2 pounds) he had failed to land. In proof of its size, he displayed a No. 18 snell hook bent out until it looked like a' darning needle, with a barb on it.

We paddled up to the landing, comparing notes, and as thoroughly contented as a party of returning fishermen ever are, but the big one always seems to get away, and leaves a "bad taste in the mouth," so to speak. We replaced the car on the track, pumped back to the club house and there found Bob had arrived during our absence, and had gone out after ducks on his own account and had just returned with quite a respectable bag. After greetings and Bob's tale of woe of how he had to be in Memphis twentyfour hours, having missed his connection by a few minutes, we counted our fish into the ice box and found we had eighty-six bass, one pike and one crappie.

At supper Steve took us into his confidence and advised us to take a trip to Gum Island, where he affirmed that a bunch of deer and a flock of wild turkeys had lately been seen. We concluded to act on his suggestion, and notified the guides to be on hand for an early start the next morning, and then after a most agreeable evening with our pipes and listening to tales of great fishing, turkey shooting, and of ducks having been so thick as to "hide the sun"—a condition that was not on at present—we went to bed to dream of black bass, deer and wild turkeys disporting themselves in ways most remarkable. Next morning we were up with the sun, and away up the river, and although skeptical about killing anything larger than a squirrel on the island, went supplied with shot, from buckshot down to sixes. The weather was anything but favorable for ducks, it being warm and bright, but we thought there might be a chance to pick up a few mallards, so when about a half mile up the river, the procession of canoes scattered, one boat taking the river channel, one Seneca Slough, and the other through Gin Chute and up by Eagle's Nest, all meeting at the appointed hour at Gum Island Landing. In this way we covered nearly all the duck grounds between the club house and the island, about five miles distant, and bagged several mallards. We arrived in good order and on time at the landing and were soon ready for the start.

Dividing the party, we started across the island, so as to cover it as thoroughly as possible, it being but about a half-mile wide by two and a half long. Personally, I considered the chances slim for a shot at a deer or a turkey, as up to that time I had never seen a wild, live specimen of either, and rather considered myself a hoodoo when it came to big game. In fact, I had no idea what deer or turkey signs were, which the guides had much to say about, but did not care to display too much ignorance by asking many questions. After we had gone several hundred yards, I found some tracks which I concluded were those of a deer, and called the guide, but after a glance at them he pronounced them hog signs. I had seen no hogs and asked him how he accounted for hogs on an uninhabited island, and he explained that some years ago hogs had been kept there and some that were as wild as deer still remained, and with that he showed me where they had rooted around a large oak tree for atoms. A little further on he stopped suddenly and showed me tracks that there was no mistaking for anything but deer, and fresh ones at that, which caused us to be somewhat more alert. We went on, winding our way through the woods and underbrush, but jumped no deer; finally the guide called my attention to the fallen leaves which had been lately disturbed about a tree, and said that turkeys had been scratching there, and to keep a sharp lookout, which I most certainly did. We presently came to a very inviting log, and as I had been stumbling through the brush and blackberry bushes until I was sure that all the game must have left that locality, I suggested that we sit down and rest awhile. While we rested there, watching the gray and fox squirrels, which were about as thick as sparrows on a city street, we heard the boom of a gun to our left and rear, at a long distance, and in a moment another, then five more in rapid succession, which was doubtless the guide with Burt, as he was using a pump gun with black powder, the report of which could not be mistaken. We began to speculate as to what the shooting was about, and I suggested that Burt and guide had treed a coon and were making a sieve of him. We held our guns in readiness, however, for anything that
might possibly come our" way, watching and listening intently and starting at every rustle in the dry leaves, which always turned out to be a squirrel scampering about. We refrained from shooting, them, however, as there might be larger game in some near-by, undisturbed thicket.

After our rest we started by a circuitous route back to the landing, where we arrived in due time, not having seen anything larger than a squirrel, which was not altogether disappointing to me, for I had come to the conclusion years before that my luck at even seeing a deer was "on the bum." At the landing a large owl flew off into the timber and lit somewhere near a hundred yards away, and to make sure our turkey loads were all right, I took a shot at him, and was satisfied when he dropped off the limb like a stone. As I started over to where the bird lay, I heard some of the others of the party coming through the brush, but did not sec them until I returned with the bird.

When I reached the boats I found Burt and his guide, who had just come in and seemed very warm and weary, but with broad smiles. They said nothing about the beautiful owl I was holding up, and I began to wonder what was up, and casting my eye about, soon discovered it—a fine, yearling buck, with its legs tied together and the sapling which they had brought him in on. What a beauty he was, and how I turned him over and admired him! They were too much interested in bringing in their prize unmarred to draw him before they started, so the guides went to work to put him into shape to keep. Bob and his guide soon came up, and we went at the lunch basket with the usual vim. and listened to Burt's tale of how he got the buck. "Three deer," he said, "jumped from behind a fallen tree, where they evidently had been lying down; two of them disappeared in the thicket to the right with one jump, but the third made for the thicket a little more to the left, where it was not quite so near, and so gave me time to get my gun to my shoulder and a quick pull at the disappearing white flag with a load of No. 4 bucks brought him down." He was shot through the back of the loins, and his right hind leg shattered, but was able to rear up on his front feet when we came up, and the guide, who was an excitable boy with a new Marlin pump gun, seemed to think it his duty to fill his hide with small shot, in spite of Burt's vehement protests. Our lunch having run out—not the story of how the deer was killed, for that isn't finished yet—we lifted the deer into a canoe, covered it with grass and shifted the boat to a sandy nook, took up our guns and were once more lost in the depths of this wonderful little island, where we knew that three deer, at least, still remained, one'of the guides having seen a single buck below and further to the east at about the time Burt jumped his bunch, but out of gunshot. Another trip to the extreme end of the island and nothing seen but squirrels, that seemed more numerous even than in the morning, and I became more than ever convinced that my hunting, for anything larger than ducks, was very coarse. 

We had been standing still, listening, when the guide said he thought he heard something walking in the dry leaves ahead of us, but as we heard nothing further, he decided he was mistaken. We struck out again, but had gone scarcely fifty yards when the guide exclaimed, excitedly, "Look there! Look there I I glanced at him to note the direction, and was straining my eyes for a glimpse, as I supposed, of a deer in the distance, that I had so far failed to locate, when something dark darted from behind a bush not twenty yards from us, and bang went the guide's gun. At the same time there was a roar of heavy wings, and I began to realize that my first chance at a wild turkey would not last long, and hurriedly covered the bird and fired a load of bucks at him which I had hoped would kill a deer. What beastly managing! for I had a load of BB's in the left barrel, which, if I had used first, would surely have stopped the turkey, whereas, the buckshot with black powder nearly tore a leg off the gobbler, and smoked me out of a chance for a second shot until the bird was fully forty yards away in the timber. I gave him the other barrel, as soon as I could make him out through the smoke, but only made ragged feathers in his wings and others fly from his back, which I could see as he sailed away with his leg swinging like a trolley off the wire. As he disappeared through the top of a large oak, the air in my locality was blue from mire causes than black powder smoke. The guide was considerably disappointed, for he had tried his best to show me the birds before they were startled, but was taken so by surprise himself that he was practically speechless. 

This guide of mine was certainly a fine one. He was thoroughly unselfish, and was always anxious to give the "clubman"—as he dubbed any greenhorn he might be piloting about—the best of it. Upon opening my gun. I found a shell stuck so that I could not get it out with an ordinary extractor, and had to cut a stick and pound it out, after which we tried to locate the wounded birds. We found plenty of feathers where the guide had shot his bird while it was running, but the turkey was not to be found. We then went to the tree, where I had last seen mine, but with the same result. I felt badly, not only at losing my bird, but at its having gotten away wounded. The guide stated that he had seen turkeys, literally shot through and through, fly nearly a mile and then fall dead, and that he knew nothing harder to kill, and his remarks were very forcibly brought to my mind a few days later.

The afternoon was nearly gone, so we headed for the boats, finding the others already there, having bagged a fine specimen of a 'possum, several woodcock and enough squirrels to supply the club. Our boats loaded, the guides pushed out and we were off for the club house, five miles down the river. The luxury of the trip down this picturesque stream can only be compared to a gondola ride. The guide, standing in the stern, sends the canoe gliding through the water with long, steady strokes, and the passenger, comfortably placed a little back of the bow in a backed seat with his gun across his knees in readiness for a shot at ducks as they rise from the smartweed and flags along the channel, is in a position to enjoy it. On the trip down, however, the ducks were few, and our party soon gave itself up to the charm of the surroundings, and the broad marshes with their tall cypress and their inhabitants were treated to a serenade of the latest popular airs and ragtime coon songs, with now a few old-time melodies, my guide giving a series of wild goose calls, as his part of the. programme, which were certainly remarkable for a human voice. Just at dusk we glided up to the landing, -which was immediately covered with guests and guides to see the fine buck and congratulate the successful hunter. At supper there was nearly a rough house, for Burt, who took the honor of bagging the first deer, modestly determined not to take the head of the table, which Bob and I agreed was the proper place for him, and we proceeded to seat him with formalities which promised to upset the table. . Bill,