Show B Davit Davi j I euh Wherein the Fabulous Past of Louisiana Lives Again III messing NAPOLEON around Germany with the thc Prussian Franco-Prussian war an experiment experiment ment in arrogance that cost him his crown annihilating the Second Sec Sec- Second Second ond Empire while making a rec- rec on German soil halted at nt tho the house of a farmer and put up for tor the night nigh t occupying the guest oest room Came the dawn clawn Out rolled his majesty crying aloud for coffee corree which the granger Herr Cook himself served courteously declining all offers of French gold In n payment Thereupon the visiting Emperor drew from his waistcoat a silver jeweled full watch made a sedate bow and handed it to his host Following Sedan Napoleon m IH abdi abdI- crated The German and his frau sailed for the United States settled in Wis WIs- Wisconsin WIsconsin Wisconsin and raised a family consisting of two sons SOilS and one daughter removing removIng ing fag to Morehouse parish Louisiana while the children were yet In shorts Albert the eldest son famous as one of the finest horsemen hors men and best pistol shots of his Ills time died In his twenty- twenty seventh year Hermann the second son after running the gantlet of frontier activities through his early youth finally went Into the lumber Jumber business penetrating regions where virgin forests of Cyprus until his com com- coming comIng coming ing swamp-guarded swamp against invasion finally fell feU to his hla ax and saw Brave Pioneer Days Dais Here nere in Houma in the tile midst of his family enjoying the well earned re re- repose repose re- re repose pose that Is his due I came upon the of the Cyprus swamps heard his stories of the brave old days when the pioneers trekked Into new v places and grappled with nature in the raw and marveled that so dramatic an era ern could be reviewed with such casual unconcern Indeed Hermann Cook for all the emotion he displayed lolling on an easy chair recording those heroic yesterdays s 's might Just as well have been chatting about a out a new way to boll boil eggs But to me It was like having an Interview with Marco Polo or Daniel Boone When my brother Albert and I were kids up in Morehouse parish he said it was a country set in a wilderness not yet explored a dominion crawling with wild game of every sort Indigenous IndIgenous indigenous to that zone The men were giants In stature and In spirit and the women fit mates to share with them the ordeals of life Ufe We shot deer on our front porches bear in the backyard yard squirrels quail fox tox coons possum and the like by the cartload Horsemanship Horse Horsep manship and the use of firearms was second nature My brother Albert mounted could run down a deer at full fun gallop seize the creature by the antlers ant ant- antlers antlers lers and out cot ot Its throat No better pis pis- pistol pistol pistol tol or rifle shot than he ever lived JIved Without apparent aiming he was dead dead- deadly dealy deadly ly from any position Gigantic Wild Boars t. t were literally alive with wild wIl hogs I have seen razor backs in countless numbers wallowing and swimming the bayous the surface of the water broken as far as the eye could reach Some of these animals especially the boars weighing close to pounds In my mybo boyhood bo hood I saw one that weighed at least 1500 It is a curious fact that t thata a swimming wild hog If suddenly stricken with panic will lash out Its front feet teet with such violence and rapidity as to cut Its own throat into ribbons and bleed to death Many times I have bave witnessed this swamp tragedy I know of nothing more terrific than titan a stampede of terrified snorting razor lazor backs through under under- brush It was sure death to be caught In their path even when mounted Not however until engaged engage In lum lum- lumbering limbering lumberIng bering Cyprus logs did di I come to ap ap- appreciate appreciate the mighty forces of ot nature or the vastness of the outdoors With Witha a crew of negroes numbering eight or nine hundred I felled and brought out of ot Morehouse and an Terrebonne parishes feet of logs per annum for fora a period of 11 years building hundreds of miles mites of canals and clearing end end- endless endless endless less bayous a continuous battle with the omnivorous swamps Cypress Kings King's Loss On one occasion while white hauling SO 80 foot GO-foot trees through the swamps on ona ona ona a foot cable running over a drum under steam power the logs stuck and started to sink Powerless to save either the logs or the cable there was no alternative but to let go all aU holds and give up Within the hour those 80 logs and feet of Inch 1 cable the latter weighing about six tons had ha completely dis dis- disappeared disappeared disappeared appeared the end vanishing Into the mud like a mighty angle worm return- return returnIng returnIng returning Ing to Its Us lair Total loss 2000 That was In Terrebonne parish where here I cleared a Cyprus stand stanl 17 miles long by three wide It was there that th we captured with the steam shovel el a pound loggerhead turtle from Crom which ten men over a n period perlo of five days das had three meals a day We didn't know the monster was concealed in the muddy depths until he came up In the Jaws of the scoop Some fishing Ill I'll say And those were days when one man could stow two pounds of meat at every meal which means menns pounds of mammoth terrapin out of one shell shen Copyright CoP a |