wilderness living I can catalogue the wild
creatures other than squirrels, grouse, and small birds (never
plenty, generally very rare) which I have accidentally encountered
and seen while wandering for hunting or mere pastime in the wild
forest; one deer, one porcupine, one marten (commonly called
sable), and maybe half a dozen hares. You may walk hours and not
see a living creature larger than a fly, for days together and not
see a grouse, a squirrel, or a bird larger than the Canada jay....
Lands running with game are like those flowing with milk and honey;
and when the sporting books tell you that game is abundant, don't
imagine that you are assured from starvation thereby. I have been
reduced, in a country where deer were swarming, to live several
days together on corn meal."

It is much the same to-day in our Appalachian wilderness, where no
protection worthy the name has ever been afforded the game and fish
since Indian times. There is a class of woods-loafers, very common here,
that ranges the forest at all seasons with single-barrel shotguns or
"hog rifles," killing bearing females as well as legitimate game,
fishing at night, even using dynamite in the streams; and so, in spite
of the fact that there is no better game harborage granted by Nature on
our continent than the Carolina mountains, the deer are all but
exterminated in most districts, turkeys and even squirrels are rather
scarce, and good trout fishing is limited to stocked waters or streams
flowing through virgin forest. The only game animal that still holds his
own is the black bear, and he endures in few places other than the
roughest districts, such as that southwest of the Sugarland Mountains,
where laurel and cliffs daunt all but the hardiest of men.

The only venomous snakes in the mountains are rattlers and copperheads,
the former common, the latter rare. The chance of being bitten by one is
about as remote as that of being struck by lightning--either accident
_might_ happen, of course. The mountaineers have an absurd notion that
the little lizard so common in the hills is rank "pizen." Oddly enough,
they call it a "scorpion."

From those two pests of the North Woods, black-flies and mosquitoes, the
Smokies are mercifully exempt. At least there are no mosquitoes that
bite or sting, except down in the river valleys where they have been
introduced by railroad trains--and even there th