at
first opportunity. Doubtless there could have been no peace aboard a
craft that harbored so inquisitive and talkative a fowl. Anyway, the
wild raven has been superlatively shy of man ever since the flood.

Probably there is no place south of Labrador where our raven (_Corvus
corax principalis_) is seen so often as in the Smokies; and yet, even
here, a man may haunt the tops for weeks without sight or sound of the
ebon mystery--then, for a few days, they will be common. On the
southeast side of the Locust Ridge, opposite Huggins's Hell, between
Bone Valley and the main fork of Hazel Creek, there is a "Raven's Cliff"
where they winter and breed, using the same nests year after year.
Occasionally one is trapped, with bloody groundhog for bait; but I have
yet to meet a man who has succeeded in shooting one.

If the raven's body be elusive his tongue assuredly is not. No other
animal save man has anything like his vocal range. The raven croaks,
clucks, caws, chuckles, squalls, pleads, "pooh-poohs," grunts, barks,
mimics small birds, hectors, cajoles--yes, pulls a cork, whets a scythe,
files a saw--with his throat. As is well known, ravens can be taught
human speech, like parrots; and I am told they show the same preference
for bad words--which, I think, is quite in character with their
reputation as thieves and butchers. However, I may be prejudiced, seeing
that the raven's favorite dainties for his menu are the eyes of living
fawns and lambs.

A stranger in these mountains will be surprised at the apparent scarcity
of game animals. It is not unusual for one to hunt all day in an
absolute wilderness, where he sees never a fresh track of man, and not
get a shot at anything fit to eat. The cover is so dense that one
still-hunting (going without dogs) has poor chance of spying the game
that lurks about him; and there really is little of it by comparison
with such huntings fields as the Adirondacks, Maine, Canada, where game
has been conserved for many years. It used to be the same up there. The
late W. J. Stillman, writing in 1877 of the Maine woods, said:

"The most striking feature of the forest, after one has become
habituated to the gloom, the pathlessness, and the apparent
impenetrability of the screen it forms around him, is the absence
of animal life. You may wander for hours without seeing a living
creature.... One thinks of the woods and the wild beasts; yet in
all the years of my