l as along the
rivers and smaller streams. If we could only keep down the trapping
fever and the desire to get that mink before the other fellow did, it
would help us out in a financial way. We saw many mink that were
offered for sale here that were over three feet from tip to tip, from
75 cents to $2.00, and the skins went a-begging at that price. Now,
comrades, just think of the difference in what those skins would have
brought when in a prime condition. The price then would have been
from $3.00 to $7.00, and this same rule applied to the coon and
muskrats and other fur bearers, and you are aware that the fur
bearers throughout the country are rapidly becoming scarcer each
year. While I found more mink, coon and muskrats here in Alabama than
I did in either Georgia or North Carolina, yet I did not see mink,
coon or rat signs in comparison to what they were a year ago, and I
do not believe that there was one-third as many mink, coon or
muskrats as there was last season. Opossum seem to hold their own
fairly well.

Well, comrades, the picture here shows the greater part of our
Alabama catch of furs. I trapped in Alabama about three weeks when I
went to Georgia, where I expected, from what I was told, to find far
better trapping than was to be had here in Alabama, but I was sadly
disappointed.

* * *

Leaving Tryanna, Alabama, by wagon, I went to Farley, eighteen miles.
There I took a train to Huntsville, then by the Southern R. R. by the
way of Chattanooga to Dikes Creek, Georgia, where I went into camp. I
camped at this place about two weeks, building two boats, one a good
large boat, sufficient to move my whole outfit from point to point,
as I moved down the Etowah River, then the Coosa River. The other
boat was much smaller, being suited to the trap and trot line. Boys,
you who have trapped on the rivers and large streams of the South,
know that the traps and the trot line go hand in hand and with only
two or three trot lines, to one who is onto the job, you will find
them quite profitable as well as a pleasure. In most places you will
find ready sale for the fish you catch at 10 to 12 cents a pound. If
one runs his trot lines two or three times a day and takes in from 20
to 100 pounds of fish, it is a little item along the financial trail.
But, boys, there is a knack in running a trot line in a successful
manner as well as a trap line. Where the trot line is run in
connection with the trap line, it makes quite