OHIO STATEWIDE FILES - The Ohio Hunter [Chapter 10] ************************************************************************ USGENWEB ARCHIVES(tm) NOTICE Copyright. All rights reserved. http://www.usgwarchives.net/copyright.htm http://www.usgenwebarchives.org ************************************************************************** File contributed for use in USGenWeb Archives by Sara Grimes McBeth saramcb@socket.net June 22, 2005 ************************************************************************** WORKING ON THE CANAL 109 CHAPTER X. GO TO DITCHING ON THE WABASH CANAL,, SOON EXCHANGE CANAL DIGGINO FOR DEER HUNTING -- CATCH A BILOUS FEVER -- A SHARP FIGHT WITH A DEER IN THE WATER -- TREATED TO A COLD BATH ,FEVER LEAVES THOUGHTS ON HY- DROPATHY AND VENTILATION. In the year 1838, finding it rather difficult to maintain my family on the products of the almost unbroken fbrest, I responded to a call from the Eric and Wabash Canal Company for assistance in their laborious enterprise. Myself and brother went to a place where they were working the canal, and hired out as day laborers. It was always rather more congenial to my feelings to have other people work, where I was expected to dictate, than for me to labor under another's dictation. Whenever I found myself in this situation I was usually not very slow in devising some plan of shifting the unwelcome yoke. I soon learned from some of the men that had been working on the canal considerably longer than myself, that the deer were in the habit of coming into the river at night to drink, I asked them why some of their number did not shoot them. The reply was, that no one was skillful enough with the gun to shoot by moonlight. I now deter- 110 THE OHIO HUNTER mined to prove my skill to my laboring comrades before many moonlight nights should expire. The following night my brother and myself got canoe, and waited along the edge of the river until long after dark, when we heard the deer coming into the water. I placed a light in the bow of the boat, and standing behind it, steered the craft. I could see the deer some two hundred yards distant, but we glided so smoothly and quietly up to the place where they were feeding on the green herbage that they did not notice our approach. When near enough I shot, killing sometimes one and sometimes two before they could leave the water. At one time we came upon two old bucks, near Gerty's ISland, that were feeding quietly on the green herbage in the water. My brother was steering, and I stood with my hand on my gun, ready to shoot as soon as the most favorable opportunity should present itself. They did not stir from their seemingly fixed position until we approached within a rod of them, then I shot one, and plied with double energy the oars until we reached the spot where the buck fell. Just as we as neared it he sprung to his feet and started fbr the shore. As he was passing the boat, I sprung upon his back and clinched him by the horns. The water was not quite so favorable a place for fighting with a sturdy buck as term firma and the brave little animal soon had the best GO TO HUNTING DEER 111 of the bargain, getting me underneath his feet and giving me such a drubbing as I never got from man or beast, before or since. However, I did not let go my hold about the horns, and in process of time found myself again in the ascendency, and then treated the little offender to an immersion in the waves in return for the civil compliment that he had paid me. I held his head under the water until he drowned. My brother now came up with the boat, and took us both in, after the engagement was ended, quite to my relief, having myself submitted to rather a longer immersion in cold water than is prescribed by the most approved system of hydropathy. By this time, as we continued our hunts from evening to evening, we discovered that our sport was becoming more profitable than our daily labor, and we rather eased off on the work and redoubled our energy in hunting. We could sell all the deer we could catch to the workmen for meat, aml carry the skins to Fort Defiance, where they found a ready market. We were very successful for a while, killing from one to five in a night; hut the evening exercise, or marsh miasma, or both combined, had not a, very salutary effect on my health, for I was very suddenly and violently attacked with bilous fever. The shanty in which we found our board and lodgings was not very commodious, even when well, but then we did not so seriously feel the inconvenience, but when tor- 112 THE OHIO HUNTER turcd with pain and burning with fever the close quarters became very uncomfortable. My brother paid me unceasing attention, until at length it terminated in ague, when I did notrequire so constant watching. As soon as my brother could leave me, he went out again for the purpose of killing deer, alone, and returned stating that he had shot the largest buck he ever saw! He said he was standing on the bank when he shot, and he did not know whether he had hit the buck or not. I had a dog that was well trained for deer, and my brother wanted, if I felt ab1e to ride, that I should take my dog and get into the canoe, and go to the place where the deer was shot and render him such assistance as I could in his capture. We proceeded together down the stream until we came to the designated spot, then sent the dog ashore. He soon assured us that the deer had been wounded. We remained in our boat, just where we sent the dog ashore, until we heard him returning with the monstrous deer, Who jumped into the river closely pursued by the dog. Our canoe which had been moored against the shore was now immediately launched upon the current, and we followed as swiftly as possible in the rear; but the water being very shallow, and bottom solid, the deer could wade while the dog was obliged to swim; and such low water was not at all favorable to rapid rowing. While following the deer at our utmost speed, PERILOUS SITUATION 113 the boat struck against a rock, rising abruptly fi'om the bottom, and threw me overboard into the river, precipitating me rather violently to the bottom. At this juncture the deer made for shore, the dog closely following it. I called to my brother to pursue the deer, and not abandon the chase to look for me. I made my way to the shore as best I could. Soon the dog and deer entered the river below me, and both commenced swimming down stream. My brother returned for our guns, which had been left on shore at, the time our canoes were moored. At last they came upon another shallow place in the river, when the deer could wade and the dog had to swim. The ingenious buck understood the advantage of his position, and stopped and waited until the dog came up and then gave him rather of an uncomfortable ducking in the waves beneath. I saw that the poor dog's life was in danger, and determined to venture for his relief, as what hunter would not for a faithful dog. I did not reach them before my services were needed, for ere I could effect his release from the firmly set hoof of the deer, thc poor little fellow was nearly drowned. He swam, however, safely to a rock that rose above the surface of the water, and was again resuscitated, while I took his place and for a while battled with the craggy bottom and the pelting hoofs of the infuriated deer. 8 114 THE OHIO HUNTER I soon felt my strength rapidly failing, and needed help, if ever in my life. I called on my faithful dog, and he that is so fortunate as to have a good dog, will never find himself wanting a friend in time of danger. He sprung at once upon the jaded buck, catching him by the nose. I renewed my grip at the horns, and at length between the persevering energy of the dog, and my own tact, for strength l[ had not at that time, we treated the feverish deer to a cold bath, and held its head under water until quite dead. My brother had returned by this this time, and seeing our perilous situation swam for our relief. I swam to shore alone, and my brother swam carrying the deer along with him. We fastened a line to the deer, and towed him along to the shanty where we were boarding. We then dressed the deer, and after he dressed, he weighed two hundred and fourteen pounds!--the largest one I ever knew caught in Ohio; their common weight being from eighty to a hundred and twenty pounds. The news of this capture ran along the canal line with almost the rapidity of tclegraphing, and we were applied to for meat by different contractors, with very much of the assurance that all deers would large, if we killed them. The times then were very hard for provisions especially meat, and such a thing as wheat was almost unheard of the principal diet being THE MAUMEE VALLEY 115 corn-mush fried in grease, and full of worms at that. This book will doubtless fall into the hands of some who are living witnesses to the truth of this statement. After this, I recovered my health very rapidly, and my brother and myself abandoned day labor, and applied ourselves, assiduously to the catching of deer, which were at the time quite numerous. I never since then have doubted the virtue of cold water, or its ability to cure ague or any bilious difficulty -- though in this particular, I am decidedly of' the opinion that "an ounce of preventive is worth a pound of cure." I believe, however that if water were judiciously used, or applied to the person in such a manner as to keep perfectly clean the pores of the skin, with a surelent amount of healthful outdoor exercise to keep the organs of the body in a healthful condition, bilious fever and ague wouht be unheard of. Another thing I will here speak of. Our section of the globe has been represented as a bilious country. -- and I can recollect when fever and ague, and the Maumee River, were so intimately associated in my imagination, that I could not think of one without involuntary thoughts of the other. But I wish to join issue with such of my readers as still retain the opinion last expressed, by giving, as my unequivocal opinion, that there is not, a more healthful climate on the globe ;--- 116 THE OHIO HUNTER that consumption is ahnost unheard of in our midst, and many families, suffering so frequently and so acutely from bilious attacks, have no need to go out of their own bedrooms to find the cause. And if you will allow me to express my sentiments in my own homely langnage, I should say, we are more troubled with bilious bedrooms than a bilious climate. To my certain knowledge, many families will occupy sleeping apartments from fall until spring, without ever allowing a single breath of fresh air to enter them. I will not, bowever, presume to doubt the intelligence of my readers, by entering upon a lengthy exposition of the subject of air, and showing the poisonous and deleterious effects of air that has been inhaled and exhaled several times, upon the human system, and how totally unfit it must then be for the purposes of respiration. Just think of living it a room where the thick, fetid, poisonous atmosphere of three months' confinement exists, and the many thousand exhalations are never exchanged for one breath of the pure, sweet air of heaven ! I have stood the ex- posure of many hunting campaigns, where the cold, bronzed earth was my bed, and the dews were distilled pure and healthful right from heaven upon my head, until my locks were dripping with moisture, and never in all the time did 1 feel the slightest sylnptom of fever or ague; but I could not endure the meek miasma of one close- VENTILATION. 117 ly confined cooking establishment, where unsavory odors commingled with many breaths, combined to render the atmosphere a "stench in the nostrils," for three weeks, before my system would become exceedingly bilious. Now in our own favored land of America, there are a great many crying sins. Among the foremost of these, may be reckoned American Slavery, which today we can only count among "the things that were ;" but the faint echo is still reverberating through tho land, of' the once loud, and piteous wail, that so long rent the heavens, coming from the distressed victims of the slave power. There is another scarcely less piteous moan today filling the heavens, from the fifty thousand who die annually the victims of intemperance and next to these two greatest of abominations, I do not believe there now exists a more heinous sin than this wholesale suicide and homicide that we are daily committing. Our churches, school-rooms, theatres, workshops, sitting-rooms, sleeping apartments, and every haunt of pleasure or usefulness, are too often made the secret agents of poisoning our systems, undermining our constitutions, and slowly, but surely destroying our lives, in the way of impure and unhealthy air. What plea shall we render the world, or our heavenly Father, for this destruction of the priceless jewel that he has to our keeping trusted? Will He accept ignorance as 118 THE OHIO HUNTER an excuse for such a crime, when the light of science is burning its way to every sentient creature, by means of books, papers pamphlets, lectures, and even common observation? Ah, "none so blind as they that wont see." Let us lay aside the tinselings of fashion, and adorn our minds with a little of useful knowledge. Let us spend a little of the money so foolishly squandered for the trappings of fashion furnish our homes with some instructive manual of health -- not a receipt book; to tell you how to prepare a thousand invaluable remedies for disease, but one that points out the path where disease dare not lurk. The may we confidetly expect our days to be "threescore and ten," and possibly by reason of strength, they will be fourscore. Then "there shall be no more thence an infant days, nor an old man that hath not filled days." And they shall build houses and inhabit them; and they shall plant vineyards and eat the fruit of them. They shall not build and another inhabit; they shall not plant and another eat; for as the days of a tree, so are the days my people, and mine elect shall long enjoy the work of their hands."