The daily morning journal and courier. [volume] (New Haven, Conn.) 1894-1907, 1897-03-20
IN THE SUNK LANDS.


There is no stretch of country more
gloomy or desolate than that vast ter
ritory in southeast Missouri and Ark
ansas known as the Sunk Lands. The
bottom seemed to have dropped out
when the ''big snake as the natives
call the earthquake of 1911, occurred.
To novice in wodcraft or swamp
navigation it is most hazardous un-
dertaking to penetrate far beyond the
borders of this wilderness of cypress,
elbow brush and other specimens of the
lowland trees and tangled vine thick
cts. 1t is comparatively easy to move
about when the cypress monopolize the
swamp; and when the season has been
very dry, along in the fall, one can
travel dryshod over parts of the great
waste. There are numerous lakes, large
and small, some of great depth. Most
of these areas of open water are dotted
with islands, and in many places fallen
cypress trees and great black stumps
! make resting places for enormous tur-
ties, snakes and other reptiles in sum-
mink, and muskrat perch upon them to
sun themselves in the daytime, and at
night they use the logs when in pursuit
of prey.
| All throughout the Sunk Land dis
| tricts are island from a half to twenty
acres in dimensions The larger ones
contain oak, hickory, and smaller
growths of underbrush; but most Of
them are covered with small cane, on
which deer that find their way into the
solitudes feed and fatten.
One of the most remarkable of these
islands is known as Bone Island" and
covers an area Of about six acres. This
island is a rendezvous for professional
! hunters, and it is rarely that the buzz
yards are not seen soaring above. 1t
is desolate, forbidding place, and gets
it's name from the fact that 1t is liter
ally covered with bones of animals and
birds, from the horse down through
natural history to the bones of ducks
and geese. OF the latter great heaps OF
them can be seen at different places
These bleaching bones tell of merciless
slaughter of wild game for their pelts
and feathers.
1t seems strange that men should de-
stroy thousands of ducks and geese
Just for their plumage and quilts. Every
year when the weather is toe warm tc
ship game three men, who make Bone
Island" their place of abode, kill ducks
and geese strip them of their feathers
and throw the carcasses in heaps fol
the buZzards to feed upon.
The beautiful wood duck, which rears
its young in the great swamp district
is the first bird to be slaughtered The
r-hunters begin in August to de
stroy these birds, and never stop unit
they mate in the spring Later in the
season, when the big flight of wild fow
moves southwark, the slaughter !!
something unprecedented.
The birds are ''potted" in the night
when big guns are used that do deadly
work among the flocks as they rest il
the patches Of open water Not IA
from Bone Island there is a ridge OF
which many oaks grow that are pro
life in acorns. There the mallards g,
to feed in countless numbers. Thu
writer has seen a moving mass, full!
100 feet wide and 300 yards long, o
ducks in the gray of the morning, alont
this ridge, struggling to secure some o
the acorns that fell from the oaks. On
of the hunters on the island was laying
for a shot, and when his big gun sound
ed the pandemonium that followed wa
indescribable. The roar of 10000 wing
and the cries of frightened, squeaking
fleeing game was absolutely startling
The hunters double gun left thirty-fi
, killed and wounded mallards in the wa
ter when the rest had flown. Inside o
an hour the ducks had massed again
when forty-seven were added to TIL
thirty-five. Four double shots durin
the morning resulted in 105 ducks bein
killed. AT night seventy-five more fel
before the murderous weapon of the pc
hunter.-St. Louis Globe-D Democrat.