Waterbury evening Democrat., 1905-03-13
THE PRESIDENTS HUNT.
Wild Country Where Texans Will Test His Sporting Spirit.
MAY HAVE A STRENUOUS TIME.

Chasaeteristics of ChapaFral Region
 of Nueces and Adjoinias Counties.
 A Hunter Must Be Indifferent to Fa-
 tigue and Pain-wild Animals and
 Game Birds Plentiful.
 After Theodore Roosevelt and his rough riders get through with their reunion at San Antonio, Tex, the president is to be taken hunting, says the Washington correspondent of the New York Post. The Texans intend testing his sporting spirit and making him prove anew the quality of his strenuosity. Present plans, if car ried out, will take the president into the chaparral country of Nueces and its adjoining counties.
 Some of the men who were in Wash ington know all about the Texas hunt ing country and told the president what he would have to be prepared for. One of them, who had helped the regulars chase the Mexican Texan bandit, Catarino E. Garza, told some of his friends about 1t while in Wash ing. This is his story:
 'The chaparral thickets of the lower Rio Grande are at once the best and the worst hunting grounds in this country. The country is one to try both the endurance and the temper None but the hardest hunter can get pleasure from the pursuit of game in the thorn beset region. Wild ami mals and wild birds, however, are plentiful. Bobcat, deer, turkey, jack rabbit, cottontail, peccaries and quail abound, and bears are not uncommon.
 "The reason for the abundance of the game is simple. It is protect ed by thickets which only the en- thusiast and the enduring can pierce The man who gets into the heart of things must be indifferent to fatigue and to pain.
 T spent two months in the chaparral country in the region where 1t is ex- pected that the colonel will do his hunting. Garza and some 300 of his followers were violating the neutrality laws by making southern and south western Texas the base of their raids across the Rio Grande into Mexico. Numerous as they were and working, as a rule, in large bands, 1t took the United States troops two years to round them up and jail them. AS 1t was, their leader, Garza, escaped and has never been heard of from that day to this. The bandits owed their long immunity from arrest to the impene- Inability of the chaparral thickets which they made their hiding place.
 with D troop of the Third cavalry, Captain George E. Chase commanding, I spent several weeks at the chapar. rars edge, making with the troopers occasional incursions into its depths. The mesquite and the prickly pear made as good barrier against prog ress as any abatis which the Russians planted at Port Arthur. The only thing to the advantage of the man who tries to overcome the chaparral is that 1t is armed only with bayonets. The leaves, if they may be called leaves, of the prickly pear bear each a thousand thorns, tiny, but tough and needle point. ed. They enter the flesh and break off to be burden to the victim until they work their way out at some other than the point of entrance, possibly a month later.
 ''The trails through the chaparral are miles apart. and the game has fled from near them. To get a shot at the peccaries and the bears one must leave the trails and blaze ones way until by chance one finds an open glade, small in extent, such as is not infrequent in some sections of the chaparral coun- try. In or near glade one almost in- variably finds pool of water, and to 1t the birds and animals resort. for this section of Texas is for months at time rainless country. The peccaries run in droves. They are piglike ami mals. and when numbers give them courage they are not pleasant to meet single handed. There are known cases of men having been trampled to death under the sharp hoofs of the infuriated creatures.
 If President Roosevelt goes to the chaparral country of the lower Rio Grande be must break his way through these thickets-they cannot be thread ed--if he wishes to find bears and pee carries.
 "The chaparral extends for miles from the Rio Grande: then it thins out for some distance into groves of mes- quite. with the prickly pear dwarfed and growing only in patches. There the cottontails and the quail abound. It is understood that the presidents Texas hosts will not allow him to hon. or the cottontails with a shot. They consider rabbits too small game for a president.
 Theodore Roosevelt. because he is in a way a student of bird life. will find something in these mesquite groves that will astonish him. He may hear Q song and in an instant be carried to the fields of the north. for he will recognize the notes of the meadow lark. though he hears them probably for the first time in his life In the woods. The meadow lark of Texas lives under the shades of the trees. while his brother of the north shuns the shade of any thing but the tall grasses.