It seems strange to me that the two best books of settlement in America's frontiers, came not from English writers, but from Gentlemen who were Irish.
One was a dashing account of what Florida was like before major settlement and the other is an amusing story of an Irish Soldier out of the King's army, came to America, and being looked upon with suspicion in the 13 colonies, made for the Illinois country.
Once settled there, he returned to Ireland for his promised bride and her two brothers came along, but came to Irish temper parting.
It was this Uncle Denis who was a most interesting man in both Gentleman in nature, and slave owner, had a profound knack for catching wild animals. Below is a description of one of his Turkey Pens he kept in operation, which were simple devices, and preyed upon the nature of wild birds of the upland type in putting their heads down to enter a trap and not being intelligent enough to look down again to escape, but instead would move round and round the pen looking out through the holes.
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The pens Uncle Denis was speaking of were simple structures formed like a huge cage by poles stuck in the ground sufficiently close together to prevent a bird from getting out. They were roofed over by boughs and leaves, and were without doors or windows. It will then be asked, how can a bird get in? The trap is entered in this way.
A passage or trench is cut in the ground twelve or fourteen feet in length, passing under the wall of the hut and rising again in its centre. Inside the wall and over the trench, a bridge is thrown. To induce the bird to enter, grain is strewn along the trench and scattered about its neighbourhood, while a larger quantity is placed on the floor inside the hut.
The unwary turkey, on seeing the grains of corn, picks them up, and not suspecting treachery follows the train until it finds itself inside the pen; instead however of endeavouring to escape by the way it entered, it, like other wild birds, runs round and round the walls of the hut, peeping through the interstices and endeavouring to force its way out, each time crossing over the bridge without attempting to escape by the only practicable outlet.
In this way Uncle Denis said that he had caught numbers of birds, one and all having acted in the same foolish manner.
William Henry Giles Kingston. With Axe and Rifle
It is that reality in how does one eat when no rifle abounds or no hound is around to catch the feather afoot?
They are all good lessons to keep in mind as in a Great Tribulation, who really does know what will be available when the wonders of high strength fish hooks is gone as much as the wonder of little shells which go boom.
Do you ever realize that for one shotgun shell, it requires plastics, chemicals, wood and steel just to make something go "bang"? That means forests, kilns, smelters, oil wells, refineries and laboratories. It is a complex thing when one desires a Thanksgiving meal and the yond coyote and bobcat has eaten all your tame turkeys in your pen as the horned owl ate the brains out the gobbler and the mink ate the head off the hens.
Your daily bread takes on new sweat when you have to plough that acre by spade, and your sowing is eaten by birds and mice, and the harvest comes by cutting it by knife, and then beating the grain heads with a flail, to where you gain your 18 bushels of wheat, to be winnowed in the wind in a blanket...and hopefully kept safe from mice eating it and festooning it with their rancid little feces.
I wonder as life becomes real, just how the primitives like myself looked down upon, will be the ones not eating their pets in the first PETA month of starvation.
"Build ye thy pen, keep safe the flint and rust not thy pot."
Lame Cherry
agtG
