The Republican., 1900-09-13
A MIGHTY HUNTER
Meshach Browning, The Patriach
OF The GIades.
THE ORIGIN OF DEER PARK
The Great Pastures or The AlIeghanies
Sixty Years Ago-The Story of Brave
And Modest Pioneer.

ed folk who loaf luxuriously and cul-
tivate the delights of an elegant ease
and idleness on the porches of the
hotel at Deer Park today may be re-
gardeo as in some sort the natural
and inevitable outcome of notion
that plain man had fondly cherish
ed in the glades and woods and by
the mountain springs of Allegany
county "a years ago-a man who fore
gathered familiarly with the bear
and the panther, the prowling wolf
and the antlered buck; to whom the
rattlesnake was but a diverting in
cident and the wild turkey or noun
tain trout bright, brief joy in the
| intervals of business.
1t was in the winter of 1886 that
Meshach Browning, famous hunter
and ranger, first entertained the hap
py thought of taking unto himself a
| deer park, thus shrewdly conjoining
business with pleasure; and forth
with he proceeded to the prosecution
of his project in the primitive fashion
which was handiest to him. He be-
gan by wrestling nip and tuck"
with one royal buck on the snow and
persuading another to lend himself
to an artless scheme OF benevolent
assimilation" by arguments that
must haye appeared to any deer sus-
ceptible of civilization at once incon-
trovertible and alluring.
Il drew his leg around tree" he
wrote, land held him there until he
| tired himself and lay still. Then l
tied his hind legs to one end of long
pole and his forelegs to the other end
and passed another cord around his
kidneys and to the pole to keep him
from straining his back. Then | took
the end of the big pole and drew him
to the road, where loosed him & = :
and | drove him before me like a
sheep until we came in sight of the
house. But, as he refused to proceed
any farther, had to throw him and
tie him again and haul him home,
where | kept my deer five or six
years. Behold the beginning of
Deer Park and a political parable,
More than 40 years ago it was the
privilege of the present writer to read
| the manuscript of very American
book, which the good sense of the
authors friends had saved from the
stupid revisions of the literary fellow
and the meretricious tinsel of the
thinkers in style" This was Forty
four Years OF the Life of a MARYLAND
Hunter" related with all the good
sense, sincerity, modesty, uncon-
scious force and rustic humor of an
unlettered man, who struggled with
his grammar as he had struggled with
bears, and steered his pen with as
many and as honest misgivings as he
would have handled the latest pat
tern of Winchester fowlingpiece in
all its elaborate p-to-dateness; for
this was the sort of hunter who afore-
time confronted the catamount or
the bear with a crippled fiintlock,
bandaged with a shoestring.
By the older denizens of all this re-
gion the memory of this man is kept
reverently green, for he was the
patriach of the Glades, and the peo-
pie of Allegany and Garrett counties
trace their annals down from Meshach
Browning, as the Americans of Cali
fornia date all their doings from
forty nine" and the pioneers.
Browning was in his eightieth year
in 1859, when his book was published,
and was the nestor of the community
of woodmen, hunters and anglers,
which had been growing up around
him for half a century, conspicuous
personality among the stalwart noun
taineers and the honored forbear of o
progeny of brave men and handsome
women, who revered him for his in
tegrity, his strong crude intellect, his
dauntless courage, his generosity, his
tenderness, his ingenious modesty.
His book is no compilation of fish
stories and hunters yarns; almost
every page is marked by his shrink
ing sensitiveness, lest his reader may
regard him as a braggart or liar.
1t is the conscience, the honor the
fine chivalry of Jules Gerard (the lion
hunter) that we find there, not the
truculent tall talk of Gordon Cum
ming.
Browning was the son of subal-
tern English soldier who escaped
from Braddock's defeat and sought
peace and seclusion in the wilderness
of the Alleghanies. The lad Meshach
grew to be the hero of every other
mans talk in his little mountain re-
public, to be saluted for a pre-
eminence of which he was uncon-
scious. have said that in his story
he reminds me of the fine chivalry,
the generous pride of Jules Gerard
that romantic and intrepid chevalier