Right of Way
When two boats approach each other in opposite directions, close hauled, the boat on the starboard tack has the right of way and should continue her course. The responsibility of avoiding a collision rests with the boat sailing on the port tack. But a boat running before the wind must always give way to a boat close hauled.
When sailing through high waves, always try as far as possible to head into them directly at right angles. Always steer as steadily as possible. If you are careful to keep the boat on her course and do not let your mind wander, only a slight motion of the tiller from side to side will be necessary.
Flying the Flag
While the "fly" or "pennant" is carried at the top of the mast, the flag is carried at the peak or upper corner of the sail at the end of the gaff.
The salute consists of tipping or slightly lowering the flag and raising it again into position.
{185}
Notes
{186}
Notes
{187}
CHAPTER IV TRACKS, TRAILING AND SIGNALING By Ernest Thompson Seton, Chief Scout
"I wish I could go West and join the Indians so that I should have no lessons to learn," said an unhappy small boy who could discover no atom of sense or purpose in any one of the three R's.
"You never made a greater mistake," said the scribe. "For the young Indians have many hard lessons from their earliest day--hard lessons and hard punishments. With them the dread penalty of failure is 'go hungry till you win,' and no harder task have they than their reading lesson. Not twenty-six characters are to be learned in this exercise, but one thousand; not clear straight print are they, but dim, washed-out, crooked traces; not in-doors on comfortable chairs, with a patient teacher always near, but out in the forest, often alone and in every kind of weather, they slowly decipher their letters and read sentences of the oldest writing on earth--a style so old that the hieroglyphs of Egypt, the cylinders of Nippur, and the drawings of the cave men are as things of to-day in comparison--the one universal script--the tracks in the dust, mud, or snow.
"These are the inscriptions that every hunter must learn to read infallibly, and be they strong or faint, straight or crooked, simple or overwritten with many a puzzling, diverse phrase, he must decipher and follow them swiftly, unerringly if there is to be a successful ending to the hunt which provides his daily food.
"This is the reading lesson of the young Indians, and it is a style that will never become out of date. The naturalist also must acquire some measure of proficiency in the ancient art. Its usefulness is unending to the student of wild life; without it he would know little of the people of the wood."
There Are Still Many Wild Animals
It is a remarkable fact that there are always more wild animals about than any but the expert has an idea of. For {188} example, there are, within twenty miles of New York City, fully fifty different kinds--not counting birds, reptiles, or fishes--one quarter of which at least are abundant. Or more particularly within the limits of Greater New York there are at least a dozen species of wild beasts, half of which are quite common.
"Then how is it that we never see any?" is the first question of the incredulous. The answer is: Long ago the beasts learned the dire lesson--man is our worst enemy; shun him at any price. And the simplest way to do this is to come out only at night. Man is a daytime creature; he is blind in the soft half-light that most beasts prefer.
While many animals have always limited their activity to the hours of twilight and gloom, there are not a few that moved about in daytime, but have given up that portion of their working day in order to avoid the arch enemy.
Thus they can flourish under our noses and eat at our tables, without our knowledge or consent. They come and go at will, and the world knows nothing of them; their presence might long go unsuspected but for one thing, well known to the hunter, the trapper, and the naturalist: wherever the wild four-foot goes, it leaves behind a record of its visit, its name, the direction whence it came, the time, the thing it did or tried to do, with the time and direction of departure. These it puts down in the ancient script. Each of these dotted lines, called the trail, is a wonderful, unfinished record of the creature's life during the time it made the same, and it needs only the patient work of the naturalist to decipher that record and from it learn much about the animal that made it, without that animal ever having been seen.
Savages are more skilful at it than civilized folk, because tracking is their serious life-long pursuit and they do not injure their eyes with books. Intelligence is important here as elsewhere, yet it is a remarkable fact that the lowest race of mankind, the Australian blacks, are reputed to be by far the best trackers; not only are their eyes and attention developed and disciplined, but they have retained much of the scent power that civilized man has lost, and can follow a fresh track, partly at least by smell.
It is hard to over-value the powers of the clever tracker. To him the trail of each animal is not a mere series of similar footprints; it is an accurate account of the creature's life, habit, changing whims, and emotions during the portion of life whose record is in view. These are indeed autobiographical chapters, {190} and differ from other autobiographies in this--they cannot tell a lie. We may get wrong information from them, but it is our fault if we do; we misread the document that cannot falsify.
{189}
Deer, Sheep, Mink, Cottontail, Hawk, Owl, Meadow Mouse
{190 continued}
When to Learn Tracking
The ideal time for tracking, and almost the only time for most folk, is when the ground is white. After the first snow the student walks forth and begins at once to realize the wonders of the trail. A score of creatures of whose existence, maybe, he did not know, are now revealed about him, and the reading of their autographs becomes easy.
It is when the snow is on the ground, indeed, that we take our four-foot census of the woods. How often we learn with surprise from the telltale white that a fox was around our hen house last night, a mink is living even now under the wood pile, and a deer--yes! there is no mistaking its sharp-pointed un-sheep-like footprint--has wandered into our woods from the farther wilds.
Never lose the chance of the first snow if you wish to become a trailer. Nevertheless, remember that the first morning after a night's snow fall is not so good as the second. Most creatures "lie up" during the storm; the snow hides the tracks of those that do go forth; and some actually go into a "cold sleep" for a day or two after a heavy downfall. But a calm, mild night following a storm is sure to offer abundant and ideal opportunity for beginning the study of the trail.
How to Learn
Here are some of the important facts to keep in view, when you set forth to master the rudiments:
First. --No two animals leave the same trail; not only each kind but each individual, and each individual at each stage of its life, leaves a trail as distinctive as the creature's appearance, and it is obvious that in that they differ among themselves just as we do, because the young know their mothers, the mothers know their young, and the old ones know their mates, when scent is clearly out of the question.
Another simple evidence of this is the well known fact that no two human beings have the same thumb mark; all living creatures have corresponding peculiarities, and all use these parts in making the trail Second. --The trail was begun at the birthplace of that creature and ends only at its death place; it may be recorded in visible track or perceptible odor. It may last but a few {191} hours, and may be too faint even for an expert with present equipment to follow, but evidently the trail is made, wherever the creature journeys afoot.
Third. --It varies with every important change of impulse, action, or emotion.
Fourth--When we find a trail we may rest assured that, if living, the creature that made it is at the other end. And if one can follow, it is only a question of time before coming up with that animal. And be sure of its direction before setting out; many a novice has lost much time by going backward on the trail.
Fifth.--In studying trails one must always keep probabilities in mind.
Sometimes one kind of track looks much like another; then the question is, "Which is the likeliest in this place."
If I saw a jaguar track in India, I should know it was made by a leopard. If I found a leopard in Colorado, I should be sure I had found the mark of a cougar or mountain lion. A wolf track on Broadway would doubtless be the doing of a very large dog, and a St. Bernard's footmark in the Rockies, twenty miles from anywhere, would most likely turn out to be the happen-so imprint of a gray wolf's foot. To be sure of the marks, then, one should know all the animals that belong to the neighborhood.
These facts are well known to every hunter. Most savages are hunters, and one of the early lessons of the Indian boy is to know the tracks of the different beasts about him. These are the letters of the old, old writing.
A First Try
Let us go forth into the woods in one of the North-eastern states when there is a good tracking snow, and learn a few of these letters of the wood alphabet.
Two at least are sure to be seen--the track of the blarina and of the deer mouse. They are shown on the same scale in Figs. 1 and 2, page 198.
In Fig. 3 is the track of the meadow mouse. This is not unlike that of the blarina, because it walks, being a ground animal, while the deer mouse more often bounds. The delicate lace traceries of the masked shrew, shown in Fig. 4, are almost invisible unless the sun be low; they are difficult to draw, and impossible to photograph or cast satisfactorily but the sketch gives enough to recognize them by.
The meadow mouse belongs to the rank grass in the lowland {192}
near the brook, and passing it toward the open, running, water we may see the curious track of the muskrat; its five-toed hind foot, its four-toed front foot, and its long keeled tail, are plainly on record.
When he goes slowly the tail mark is nearly straight; when he goes fast it is wavy in proportion to his pace. Page 193.
The muskrat is a valiant beast; he never dies without fighting to the last, but he is in dread of another brookland creature whose trail is here--the mink. Individual tracks of this animal are shown in No. 1, page 161. Here he was bounding; the forefeet are together, the hindfeet track ahead, and tail mark shows, and but four toes in each track, though the creature has five on each foot. He is a dreaded enemy of poor Molly Cottontail, and more than once I have seen the records of his relentless pursuit. One of these fits in admirably as an illustration of our present study.
A Story of the Trail
It was in the winter of 1900, I was standing with my brother, a business man, on Goat Island, Niagara, when he remarked, "How is it? You and I have been in the same parts of America for twenty years, yet I never see any of the curious sides of animal life that you are continually coming across."
"Largely because you do not study tracks," was the reply. "Look at your feet now. There is a whole history to be read."
"I see some marks," he replied, "that might have been made by some animal." "That is the track of a cottontail," was the answer. "Now, let us read the chapter of his life. See, he went in a general straight course as though making some well-known haunt, his easy pace, with eight or ten inches between each set of tracks, shows unalarm.
But see here, joining on, is something else."
"So there is. Another cottontail."
"Not at all, this new track is smaller, the forefeet are more or less paired, showing that the creature can climb a tree; there is a suggestion of toe pads and there is a mark telling evidently of a long tail; these things combined with the size and the place identify it clearly. This is the trail of a mink. See! he has also found the rabbit track, and finding it fresh, he followed it. His bounds are lengthened now, but the rabbit's are not, showing that the latter was unconscious of the pursuit."
After one hundred yards the double trail led us to a great pile of wood, and into this both went. Having followed his {193} game into dense cover, the trailer's first business was to make sure that it did not go out the other side. We went carefully around the pile; there were no tracks leading out.
"Now," I said, "if you will take the trouble to move that wood pile you will find in it the remains of the rabbit half devoured and the mink himself. At this moment he is no doubt curled up asleep."
As the pile was large and the conclusion more or less self-evident, my brother was content to accept my reading of the episode.
What About Winter Sleepers
Although so much is to be read in the wintry white, we cannot now make a full account of all the woodland four-foots, for there are some kinds that do not come out on the snow; they sleep more or less all winter.
Dog tracks, front and back (1/2 life-size) Cat tracks, front and bad (1/2 life-size) Uppermost, well-developed human foot Middle, a foot always cramped by boots Bottom, a bare foot, never in boots Muskrat tracks, (1/3 life-size)
{194}
Thus, one rarely sees the track of a chipmunk or woodchuck in truly wintry weather; and never, so far as I know, have the trails of jumping mouse or mud turtle been seen in the snow. These we can track only in the mud or dust. Such trails cannot be followed as far as those in the snow, simply because the mud and dust do not cover the whole country, but they are usually as clear and in some respects more easy of record.
How to Make Pictures of Tracks
It is a most fascinating amusement to learn some creature's way of life by following its fresh track for hours in good snow. I never miss such a chance. If I cannot find a fresh track, I take a stale one, knowing that, theoretically, it is fresher at every step, and from practical experience that it always brings one to some track that is fresh.
How often I have wished for a perfect means of transferring these wild life tales to paper or otherwise making a permanent collection.
My earliest attempts were in free-hand drawing, which answers, but has this great disadvantage--it is a translation, a record discolored by an intervening personality, and the value of the result is likely to be limited by one's own knowledge at the time.
Casting in plaster was another means attempted; but not one track in ten thousand is fit to cast. Nearly all are blemished and imperfect in some way, and the most abundant--those in snow--cannot be cast at all.
Then I tried spreading plastic wax where the beasts would walk on it, in pathways or before dens. How they did scoff! The simplest ground squirrel knew too much to venture on my waxen snare; around 'it, or if hemmed in, over it, with a mighty bound they went; but never a track did I so secure.
Photography naturally suggested itself, but the difficulties proved as great as unexpected, almost as great as in casting. Not one track in one thousand is fit to photograph; the essential details are almost always left out. You must have open sunlight, and even when the weather is perfect there are practically but two times each day when it is possible--in mid-morning and mid-afternoon, when the sun is high enough for clear photographs and low enough to cast a shadow in the faint track.
The Coon that Showed Me How
Then a new method was suggested in an unexpected way. A friend of mine had a pet coon which he kept in a cage in his bachelor quarters up town. One day, during my friend's {195} absence the coon got loose and set about a series of long-deferred exploring expeditions, beginning with the bachelor's bedroom. The first promising object was a writing desk. Mounting by a chair the coon examined several uninteresting books and papers, and then noticed higher up a large stone bottle. He had several times found pleasurable stuff in bottles, so he went for it. The cork was lightly in and easily disposed of, but the smell was far from inviting, for it was merely a quart of ink.
Determined to leave no stone unturned, however, the coon upset the ink to taste and try. Alas! it tasted even worse than it smelt; it was an utter failure as a beverage.
And the coon, pushing it contemptuously away, turned to a pile of fine hand-made, deckle-edge, heraldry note-paper--the pride of my friend's heart--and when he raised his inky little paws there were left on the paper some beautiful black prints. This was a new idea: the coon tried it again and again. But the ink held out longer than the paper, so that the fur-clad painter worked over sundry books, and the adjoining walls, while the ink, dribbling over everything, formed a great pool below the desk. Something attracted the artist's attention, causing him to jump down. He landed in the pool of ink, making it splash in all directions; some of the black splotches reached the white counterpane of the bachelor's bed. Another happy idea: the coon now leaped on the bed, racing around as long as the ink on his feet gave results. As he paused to rest, or perhaps to see if any places had been neglected, the door opened, and in came the landlady. The scene which followed was too painful for description; no one present enjoyed it. My friend was sent for to come and take his coon out of there forever. He came and took him away, I suppose "forever." He had only one other place for him--his office and there it was I made the animal's acquaintance and heard of his exploit--an ink and paper, if not a literary affair.
This gave me the hint at the Zoo I needed, a plan to make an authentic record of animal tracks. Armed with printer's ink and paper rolls I set about gathering a dictionary collection of imprints.
After many failures and much experiment, better methods were devised. A number of improvements were made by my wife; one was the substitution of black paint for printer's ink, as the latter dries too quickly; another was the padding of the paper, which should be light and soft for very light animals, and stronger and harder for the heavy.
Printing from a mouse, for example, is much like printing a delicate
{196} etching; ink, paper, dampness, etc., must be exactly right, and furthermore, you have this handicap--you cannot regulate the pressure. This is, of course, strictly a Zoo method. All attempts to secure black prints from wild animals have been total failures. The paper, the smell of paint, etc., are enough to keep the wild things away.
In the Zoo we spread the black pad and the white paper in a narrow, temporary lane, and one by one drove, or tried to drive, the captives over them, securing a series of tracks that are life-size, properly spaced, absolutely authentic, and capable of yielding more facts as the observer learns more about the subject.
As related here, all this sounds quite easy. But no one has any idea how cross, crooked, and contrary a creature can be, until he wishes it to repeat for him some ordinary things that it has hitherto done hourly.
Some of them balked at the paint, some at the paper, some made a leap to clear all, and thereby wrecked the entire apparatus. Some would begin very well, but rush back when half-way over, so as to destroy the print already made, and in most cases the calmest, steadiest, tamest of beasts became utterly wild, erratic, and unmanageable when approached with tracklogical intent.
Trying It on the Cat
Even domestic animals are difficult. A tame cat that was highly trained to do anything a cat could do, was selected as promising for a black track study, and her owner's two boys volunteered to get all the cat tracks I needed. They put down a long roll of paper in a hall, painted pussy's feet black, and proceeded to chase her up and down.
Her docility banished under the strain. She raced madly about, leaving long, useless splashes of black; then, leaping to a fanlight, she escaped up stairs to take refuge among the snowy draperies.
After which the boys' troubles began.
Drawing is Mostly Used
These, however, are mere by-accidents and illustrate the many practical difficulties. After these had been conquered with patience and ingenuity, there could be no doubt of the value of the prints. They are the best of records for size, spacing, and detail, but fail in giving incidents of wild life, or the landscape surroundings. The drawings, as already seen, are best for a long series and for faint features; in fact, the {197} drawings alone can give everything you can perceive; but they fail in authentic size and detail.
Photography has this great advantage--it gives the surroundings, the essential landscape and setting, and, therefore, the local reason for any changes of action on the part of the animal; also the aesthetic beauties of its records are unique, and will help to keep the method in a high place.
Thus each of the three means may be successful in a different way, and the best, most nearly perfect alphabet of the woods, would include all three, and consist of a drawing, a pedoscript and a photograph of each track, and a trail; i.e., a single footprint, and the long series of each animal.
My practice has been to use all whenever I could, but still I find free-hand drawing is the one of the most practical application. When I get a photograph I treasure it as an adjunct to the sketch.
A Story of the Trail
To illustrate the relative value as records, of sketch and photograph, I give a track that I drew from nature, but which could not at any place have been photographed. This was made in February 15, 1885, near Toronto. It is really a condensation of the facts, as the trail is shortened where uninteresting. Page 189, No. 2.
At A, I found a round place about 5 x 8 inches, where a cottontail had crouched during the light snowfall. At B he had leaped out and sat looking around; the small prints in front were made by his forefeet, the two long ones by his hind feet, and farther back is a little dimple made by the tail, showing that he was sitting on it. Something alarmed him, causing him to dart out at full speed toward C and D, and now a remarkable change is to be seen: the marks made by the front feet are behind the large marks made by the hind feet, because the rabbit overreaches each time; the hind feet track ahead of the front feet; the faster he goes, the farther ahead those hind feet get; and what would happen if he multiplied his speed by ten I really cannot imagine. This overreach of the hind feet takes place in most bounding animals.
Now the cottontail began a series of the most extraordinary leaps and dodgings (D,E,F.) as though trying to escape from some enemy. But what enemy? There were no other tracks. I began to think the rabbit was crazy--was flying from an imaginary foe--that possibly I was on the trail of a March hare. But at G I found for the first time some spots of blood. {198} This told me that the rabbit was in real danger but gave no due to its source. I wondered if a weasel were clinging to its neck. A few yards farther, at H, I found more blood. Twenty yards more, at I, for the first time on each side of the rabbit trail, were the obvious marks of a pair of broad, strong wings. Oho! now I knew the mystery of the cottontail running from a foe that left no track. He was pursued by an eagle, a hawk, or an owl. A few yards farther and I found the remains (J) of the cottontail partly devoured. This put the eagle out of the question; an eagle would have carried the rabbit off boldly. A hawk or an owl then was the assassin. I looked for something to decide which, and close by the remains found the peculiar two-paired track of an owl. A hawk's track would have been as K, while the owl nearly always sets its feet in the ground {199} with two toes forward and two toes back. But which owl? There were at least three in the valley that might be blamed. I looked for more proof and got it on the near-by sapling--one small feather, downy, as are all owl feathers, and bearing three broad bars, telling me plainly that a barred owl had been there lately, and that, therefore, he was almost certainly the slayer of the cottontail. As I busied myself making notes, what should come flying up the valley but the owl himself--back to the very place of the crime, intent on completing his meal no doubt. He alighted on a branch ten feet above my head and just over the rabbit remains, and sat there muttering in his throat.
The proof in this case was purely circumstantial, but I think that we can come to only one conclusion; that the evidence of the track in the snow was complete and convincing.
{198}
TRACKS 1. Blarina in snow 2. Deermouse 3. Meadow mouse 4. Masked shrew
{199 continued}
Meadow Mouse
The meadow mouse autograph (page 189) illustrates the black-track method. At first these dots look inconsequent and fortuitous, but a careful examination shows that the creature had four toes with claws on the forefeet, and five on the hind, which is evidence, though not conclusive, that it was a rodent; the absence of tail marks shows that the tail was short or wanting; the tubercules on each palm show to what group of mice the creature belongs. The alternation of the track shows that it was a ground-animal, not a tree-climber; the spacing shows the shortness of the legs; their size determines the size of the creature. Thus we come near to reconstructing the animal from its tracks, and see how by the help of these studies, we can get much light on the by-gone animals whose only monuments are tracks in the sedimentary rocks about us--rocks that, when they received these imprints, were the muddy margin of these long-gone creatures'
haunts.
What the Trail Gives--The Secrets of the Woods There is yet another feature of trail study that gives it exceptional value--it is an account of the creature pursuing its ordinary life. If you succeeded in getting a glimpse of a fox or a hare in the woods, the chances are a hundred to one that it was aware of your presence first. They are much cleverer than we are at this sort of thing, and if they do not actually sight or sense you, they observe, and are warned by the action of some other creature that did sense us, and so cease their occupations to steal away or hide. But the snow story will {201}
tell of the life that the animal ordinarily leads--its method of searching for food, its kind of food, the help it gets from its friends, or sometimes from its rivals--and thus offers an insight into its home ways that is scarcely to be attained in any other way. The trailer has the key to a new storehouse of Nature's secrets, another of the Sybilline books is opened to his view; his fairy godmother has, indeed, conferred on him a wonderful {202} gift in opening his eyes to the foot-writing of the trail. It is like giving sight to the blind man, like the rolling away of fogs from a mountain view, and the trailer comes closer than others to the heart of the woods.
Dowered with a precious power is he,
He drinks where others sipped,
And wild things write their lives for him
In endless manuscript.
{200}
Wild Turkey
Toad
Crow
1. Jackrabbit
2. Cottontail
3. Gray squirrel
4. Coon
5. Ground bird, such as quail
6. Tree-bird
7. A bird living partly in tree, partly on ground
{201}
Horses' Track N.B.--The large tracks represent the hind feet.
Walking, Trotting, Canter, Galloping
Lame Horse Walking: Which leg is he lame in?
These are