Part 17 (1/2)
The year 1904 was a very busy one for Selous, and the following letter to me gives some idea of his energy in hunting for the eggs of birds of which he has not yet taken specimens.
”During the last few days I have been marking King-fishers'
nests on the Thames and Water Rails' nests in Thatcham Marsh, for Major Stirling (of Fairburn), who has been very kind to me in Scotland and helped me to get all sorts of good eggs. I have got him two Kingfishers' nests marked that I am sure have eggs in them, and also two Water Rails' nests. One of these had six eggs in it yesterday. We go to Wargrave for the Kingfishers to-morrow, and to Thatcham for the Water Rails on Thursday. On Friday I am off to North Wales, where I hope to get a Chough's nest. During the first half of May I shall be here, and will come over to see you during that time. On May 15th I start for Ross-s.h.i.+re, to get Crossbills, and then on to Orkney to get eggs of Hen Harrier, Short-eared Owl, Twite, etc. On May 26th I must be at Ravengla.s.s, in c.u.mberland, to get a couple of clutches of Sandwich Terns' eggs (by permission), and the next day on the Tyne for Pied Flycatchers, Gra.s.shopper Warblers, etc. Then back to Orkney early in June for Merlins, Black Guillemot, Eider Duck, etc. Then I think I shall try for a Scoter's nest near Melvick, in Sutherlands.h.i.+re, and I wind up the season with a trip to St. Kilda with Musters to get eggs of Fork-tailed Petrel and Fulmar. Are there any old orchards about you? If so, we might look them over for a Hawfinch's nest about May 10th. I am not going to lend any of my heads to the Crystal Palace people.
They wrote to me about it, but I have declined to send them any heads.”[55]
Later in the year he wrote one of his characteristic letters, speaking of his successes in egg-hunting and expressing his sorrow at the death of our mutual friend, Sir Philip Brocklehurst:--
”I am now home again from my egg-collecting trip to the north. I have had a fairly successful season. I got two Choughs' nests in North Wales in April, and several Water Rails' near here in a nice little swamp I know of. In Orkney I got Hen Harrier, Short-eared Owl, Merlin, Eider Duck, Dunlin, Golden Plover, Rock Pipit, and Twite. I have also taken this year in Northumberland and c.u.mberland nests of Wood Wren, Gra.s.shopper Warbler, Pied Flycatcher, Great Spotted Woodp.e.c.k.e.r, Sandwich Tern, and Sh.e.l.l Duck. Now I want a nest of Lesser Spotted Woodp.e.c.k.e.rs. There are a few about here, but I cannot find out where they nest. I am going to the Crystal Palace to-morrow, and shall see your Caribou heads there I hope. Now I want you to help me. I am President of our village cricket-club, and have got together a team to play them on July 9th (Sat.u.r.day). I am experiencing great difficulty in getting an eleven together. Will you help me and play for me on that day? If so, please come here in time for lunch. We do not play till 2.30 p.m. Now can you come? Do, if you can, and bring another man with you. Please let me know about this as soon as possible, as I must now begin to hustle to get my team together. Isn't it sad to think that poor old Sir Philip Brocklehurst has gone? If we ever go to Swythamley again, things can never be as they were in the old Squire's time. I feel his loss very much. If you are at home now I should like to come over and see you and have our usual 'crack,' my dear Johnny.”
Just before leaving for Canada on July 14th he writes:--
”What with people coming to see us here, garden-parties, cricket, political meetings, etc., there seems to be no time for anything. I hope you will have a good time Whale-hunting in August in the Shetland Isles. Write us a good account of it and make some good pictures.”
Leaving England on July 14th, 1904, Selous reached Dawson City, on the Yukon, on August 8th. He went via Vancouver, and much enjoyed the pleasant voyage up the North Pacific coast, which abounds in islands and forests, and in scenic effect is much superior to Norway, which it resembles. Here he joined a party of sportsmen who had chartered a flat-bottomed steamer to take them up the north fork of the MacMillan river, a branch of the Yukon. There was, however, a delay of ten days, and as Selous could not endure inactivity he spent the time, with the help of a half-breed Indian and a pack-horse, in the Ogilvy Mountains, where he found and killed a male caribou of the variety which I have recently described under the name of _Tarandus rangifer ogilvyensis_, one of the many sub-specific races of reindeer of the North American Continent as yet somewhat imperfectly known. Selous then returned to Dawson, and the hunting party being a.s.sembled on the little steamer, a start up-stream was made on August 21st. After proceeding some distance up the Yukon, the Pelly, and then the MacMillan for five days through shallow and tortuous channels, the steamer could go no further. At Slate Creek two Americans, Professor Osgood the Zoologist, and Carl Rungius the artist of mammals, left to establish a hunting-camp there, whilst Selous and his friend, Mr. Charles Sheldon, a well-known hunter and field naturalist, pa.s.sed up the north fork of the MacMillan, the rest of the party going up the south fork. Selous soon killed a moose cow for meat, and in a few days Sheldon, reconnoitring up in the mountains, found a good camping-place on the edge of timber-line, so Selous and his friend then left the canoes and carried their heavy packs up the mountain. Whilst doing so Louis Cardinal, the half-breed hunter, spied a bull moose lying in the scrub, and Selous soon worked down to it and killed it at short range. Sheldon's chief object of pursuit was the wild sheep of these ranges, _Ovis fannini_, whilst Selous' was to obtain good moose and caribou, and, if possible, grizzly bears and sheep.
In the first two days Selous killed a fine caribou bull of the sub-specific race _Tarandus rangifer osborni_, a fine form of reindeer that exists from the Itcha Mountains in British Columbia to the east of the Kenai Peninsula. This variety, which is only found west of the Rocky Mountains, intergrades to the south with _Tarandus rangifer monta.n.u.s_ of southern British Columbia, and to the north-west with _Tarandus rangifer stonei_ of the Kenai peninsula. It is by far the finest of the American caribou, with the exception of the nearly extinct race, a branch of _Tarandus rangifer labradorensis_, which belongs to the north-east corner of Labrador, and carries fine ma.s.sive horns from 50 to 61 inches long, but not furnished as a rule with many points.[56] Selous was much cheered in getting so easily two fine specimens of this great deer at once. One night in the middle of September a fine display of the Aurora Borealis with its magnificent tongues of flame was observed, and Selous rightly says, ”I count these splendours of the Arctic sky as amongst the most marvellous of all the wonders of the world,” an opinion all who have seen them will endorse.
In the next few days Selous killed another bull moose, but not a large one, carrying a head with a span of 50 inches, and then an old bull with horns evidently going back. At last dawned a day of great good fortune, for the hunter met and killed a great bull whose horns have seldom been equalled by any taken out of the Yukon Territory. The horns, measuring 67 inches across, a width not often surpa.s.sed even in the Kenai peninsula, were very ma.s.sive, and carried 41 points; the skull and horns weighed over 75 lbs. ”Altogether,” he says, ”it seemed to me I had at last obtained a trophy worth a king's ransom,” for to a hunter such as he no bag of gold or diamonds would have seemed more precious.
Meanwhile his friend, Charles Sheldon, had not been so fortunate as he usually was in finding the big sheep rams, and had only shot a few immatures and females and young for the extensive collection he afterwards formed for American museums, and, as the season was now late and the prospect of the ”freeze up” imminent, the two hunters abandoned their hunting-camp and started down-stream on the return home. After some disappointments, one in which Sheldon lost a fine bull moose owing to a misfire, Selous and his companion reached Plateau Mountain, where Osgood and Rungius, who had enjoyed some good sport with moose and caribou, were again met. The whole party then went down-stream, and had some difficulty in getting through the ice which was now forming, but reached Selkirk safely on October 7th. On the whole this had been a very successful trip for Selous, but he was a little disappointed in not getting sheep, grizzly, and black bears.
His own account of the whole trip is as follows:--
”My dear Johnny,--Just a line to tell you that I got home again from the Yukon country yesterday (November 7th). I shall have a lot to tell you about it when we meet. The original trip that I was invited to join fell through, as neither the governor of the Yukon Territory was able to go nor my friend Tyrrel who invited me to join the party. There was a lot of delay, and eventually three Canadians, three Americans, and myself hired a small flat-bottomed steamer to take us up the Pelly and MacMillan rivers. This took much longer than was expected, and it was not till August 30th that we got to the furthest point to which the steamer could take us. Then we all split up, and an American (Charles Sheldon, an awfully good fellow, whom I hope I shall be able to bring over to see you one of these days) and myself (we had chummed up on the steamer) tackled the north fork of the MacMillan river. We had each a twenty-foot canoe and one man. My man was a French half-breed, and Sheldon's a white man, both first-rate fellows. We had a very 'tough' time getting the canoes up the river, as the stream was fearfully strong and the water very cold. We were in the water most of every day for six days, often up to our waists, hauling the canoes up with ropes.
Then we reached the foot of a big range of mountains. The day we left the steamer bad weather set in and we had 18 days of filthy weather, sleet and snow, and the whole country covered with snow. On September the 6th or 7th we packed up into the mountains, carrying everything on our backs to close up to timber-line (about 5000 feet in this northern country, the point where we left the timber being about 2500 feet above sea-level).
No Indians to pack, no guides, no nothing, and d.a.m.ned little game either, though we were in an absolutely new country, where there are no Indians at all, and only four trappers in the whole district, and these men never go up into the high mountains.
There were any quant.i.ty of beavers up the north fork of the MacMillan. The trappers have not yet touched them and they are wonderfully tame. We could find no sheep rams in the mountains, only small flocks of ewes and kids. Moose after September 18th were fairly numerous, but by no means plentiful. I only saw three caribou, one a very good bull, whose head will, I think, interest you. I believe it is the kind that Merriam calls...o...b..rn's caribou, a very large heavy animal, with horns rather of the Barren Ground type, but finely palmated at the top. I shot four bull moose and spared two more. One of my moose has a right royal head, and pays me well for all my trouble. The spread across the palms, with no straggly points, is 67 inches, and it has 41 points (23+18). My second best head measures 58 inches across the palms, with 22 points (11+11). I boxed my heads in Vancouver, and hope to get them some time next month, and you must come and see them as soon as they are set up.”
In the autumn of 1905 he went on his third trip to Newfoundland, in order to see something more of the interior of the island and to shoot a few caribou. The country he now selected was that in the neighbourhood of King George IV Lake, a district that had only previously been visited by two white men, Cormack, its discoverer, in 1822, and Howley in 1875.
This is not a difficult country to reach, as canoes can be taken the whole way, and there are no bad ”runs” or long portages. The autumn of 1905 was, however, perhaps the wettest on record, and it poured with rain every day, whilst, as to the caribou stags, they carried the poorest horns in any season, owing to the severity of the previous winter. In this trip, in which he was accompanied by two excellent Newfoundlanders, Joseph Geange and Samuel Smart, Selous saw large numbers of caribou, but did not obtain a single good head, and though he enjoyed the journey, the trophies killed were somewhat disappointing, and especially so as he had broken into quite new country.[57]
Selous' own account, in a letter to me, November 22nd, is as follows:--
”By the time you get this letter I shall be at home again, or at any rate in London. I have to commence my lecturing on December 4th, but if I can get a spare day before then I will come over and see you. My experience in Newfoundland was much the same as yours. I saw a lot of caribou, but no very large heads. I had, too, terribly bad weather, almost continuous rain and sleet storms on the high ground near George IV Lake. By-the-bye, Mr.
Howley tells me that to the best of his belief I am the third white man who has visited that lake. The first was Cormack, who named it a long time ago, and the second Mr. Howley, who was there in 1875. The caribou in the country between King George's Lake and the head of the Victoria river live there. I saw non-travelling deer there, all the herds were stationary, feeding or lying down in one spot all day long. Lots of trees too along the river, where the stags had cleaned their horns.
Packing in from Lloyd's river to the north-west, I struck some splendid caribou-ground. Here the deer were all on migration southwards. As a matter of fact, I did very little systematic hunting, but a lot of tramping, always carrying a 40 lb. pack myself. I have got one very pretty head of 36 points, very regular and symmetrical, but not large. In a storm of driving sleet it looked magnificent on the living stag. I have another head I like, and some others of lesser merit, one of them for the Natural History Museum. I have preserved a complete animal for them.”
[Ill.u.s.tration: OSBORN'S CARIBOU.]
FOOTNOTES:
[52] As an instance of this I may mention that the greater number of the ”hunting” Boers I lived with and knew well were captured in the Middelburg district in 1900 by a party of Steinacker's horse, who surprised the commando at dawn. All were captured except Commandant Roelef Van Staden, my former hunter, one of the finest men it has ever been my good fortune to meet in any land. He fought his way out single-handed and escaped. When brought into camp these Boers were well treated by Colonel Greenhill-Gardyne (Gordon Highlanders), who asked them if they knew me, to which they replied that I was the only Englishman they had ever known and that they would consider it a favour if he would kindly send a message of friends.h.i.+p to me, detailing their capture and certain misfortunes that had befallen some of their families in the war. They were also particularly anxious that I should know that Van Staden had escaped. This letter I treasure, for it shows that the Boers have no personal animosity to those who have once been their friends.
[53] This is very unusual, for in four seasons' hunting there, I never found the deer move at so early a date as September 15th.
[54] On the hills of Genna Gentu, the princ.i.p.al home of the Mouflon in Sardinia, the native shepherds allow their cattle and herds of sheep and goats to graze amongst the wild sheep and this constant disturbance keeps all creatures constantly on the move.