Nashville GreysVacations in Nashville

Alaska in 1967 set aside McNeil River and its tributaries to protect the bears and their habitat from hunters and encroaching civili­zation. Now called McNeil River State Game Sanctuary, and accessible solely by small plane or boat, the area provides a place where photographers, naturalists, and scien­tists can view brown bears at close range.

Early in the season—we normally arrived at McNeil River each year in June after we consolidate payday loan—we were the only human occupants. Several bears already were grazing on tidal flats a few hundred feet from our camp, which we set up beside the estuary of McNeil Cove.

From the flimsy security of our tents we could hear the bears padding quietly along the beach after dark. Mike awoke one morn­ing to find himself face to face with an adoles­cent female, poking her head through the tent flap. His blood-curdling yell sent her packing. But the bears seldom invaded camp unless tempted by food. We stored our supplies in an elevated cache, but incompletely burned garbage continued to be a problem.

Each morning Mike and I hiked two miles upstream to a cavelike rock undercut beside the rapids. This was our prime observation point. Bears constantly passed nearby, but the ledge guarded our backs from animals stumbling on us from the rear.

With bears all around, we moved with cau­tion. A recurrent myth about brown bears is their poor vision. Actually, they are acute at detecting movement, even at long distances.

Another widespread belief holds that bears are notoriously unpredictable. We found, however, that the bears at McNeil River be­haved according to strict rules based on size and social rank. But each bear possessed a distinct personality; different bears might re­act in different ways to similar circumstances.

Knowing each animal as an individual was basic to our studies. Scars or misshapen ears distinguished many adults. But in young, fast-growing bears, natural markings usually were unreliable. So we helped immobilize a number of them with tranquilizer-tipped darts and tagged them.

Other studies indicate that brown bears are normally loners and wanderers. An adult male may roam from one location to another fifty miles or more away; the boars cover twice—perhaps three times—as much coun­try as sows. These wide-ranging travels seem to hinge on the vagaries of food availability or, in the case of the boars, on the pursuit of sows during breeding season.

Perhaps in extension of their gypsy instinct, brown bears, unlike many large carnivores, do not appear to be territorial in an exclusive sense. The home ranges of different bears overlap broadly. While we once counted 20 brown bears—including three sows with six cubs—grazing on the sedge of a 40-acre tidal flat, it was clearly the abundance of food that had brought them this close together.

Even in the crowded and competitive situa­tion at the falls they tended to keep distance between one another. And time and again we documented one fundamental rule of bear behavior—the larger the bear, the wider the berth its fellows gave it. A St. Bernard-size subadult (2 to 3 years old) will flee a 450-pound adult female just as that same female will avoid a big male.

Beware the Courting Boar

One midday we were trudging to our camp carrying drinking water when we saw a little 2-year-old running full tilt toward us. We put down the buckets and retreated. The small bear streaked past our pails without breaking stride, foamy mouth panting and ears pressed back. We looked for the cause of its alarm. About 300 yards away an adult was ambling toward its favorite grazing spot. No other creature was in sight.

It was a vaguely comic spectacle, but a more solemn incident convinced us there is good reason for such a display of terror. A petroleum ex­ploration crew found the carcass of a small bear and carried it by helicopter across Mc­Neil Cove to our camp. Game biologist Jim Faro confirmed the female’s age-21/2 years. Jim’s autopsy showed that she had died from a powerful bite inflicted on her throat. Her esophagus was crushed and her windpipe bore tooth perforations. And her upper shoulders had been eaten away. We could only guess that she had been killed by one of at least seven adult boars we had observed courting females in heat in that area.

Daniel Zilkha grew up in France and, after taking degrees at Princeton and Harvard, was an investment banker and bankruptcy attorney in Switzerland and the U. S. He assists the Indians in selecting and structuring investments and in employing their capital with maximum leverage. “By the end of the century,” he said, “the tribes will own many businesses in various industries throughout the state. And when people think of the who’s who of Maine, they will include the paper companies, the banks, the big law firms, and the two tribes.”

The Honorable Ralph Dana was running late. “I believe in going out and being in touch with my people. I spend a lot of time out there, and I let this pile up.” Governor of the Pleasant Point reservation of the Passa­maquoddy tribe, he gestured at paperwork still lurking in the final weeks of his term.

Dana recalled a much different time.

“When I was a kid, we drew our water in buckets from wells. The state of Maine came in and closed all the wells, saying they were unfit for human consumption. They may have been right, but there was no other source. My brother and I went in at night to steal the water and fill up barrels and pots and everything we could.”

Now he and the Passamaquoddies will be bringing decent water to Eastport and more jobs to the long-depressed region.

IF THE INDIANS are the coast’s last act, Alvin Beal of Beals Island might be the epilogue. At 78, he makes models of lobster boats the way he made big ones. He builds a mold, lays an oak keel, and planks them with cedar. Lately, though, he’d been slowed up by gout in his hands.

“It’s quite a job to build one of them things, to frame the dadblasted things up and build ‘em. It’s a lovely old job. I’d like it all right if I had some good hands.”

His models, about a yard long, are finely crafted but not fussy. They look rugged, the way a workboat should. One was going to the Maine Maritime Museum in Bath.

“Well,” he said, “I got to go in, get ready to get my hair cut.” He covered one of the mod­els to keep dust off. Was anyone coming along to learn how to build such boats? “Not that I know of. I ain’t going to learn ‘em how to do it. Nosir, they’re going to do it themselves. Yuh. Well, old son, that’s the best I can do for ya.”

Yes, but not enough! There is so little seed to press he has to sell detergent powder and macaroni. He stares at me. “How is it you have so much addiction? We have no addic­tion here. Maybe American youth is too spoiled, you have everything, you look for excitement.”

AWORLDWIDE notion for a long time was that heroin is mainly an American problem. But that’s been changing. Ad­diction is rising not only in Thailand and Burma, in Malaysia and Pakistan, but also in Western Europe, and Turkey is on a transit route. On the great suspension bridge across the Bosporus at Istanbul I watch the big trucks heading west. Thousands pass each month. A DEA man says some have compartments in their gas tanks, for heroin to Munich, morphine base to Milan. . . .

I follow them to Bulgaria. In Sofia, at the Hotel Vitosha–notorious rendezvous of arms and drug smugglers–I visit the casi­no, for foreigners only. How many of these roulette-playing Syrians, Lebanese, Turks are Kintex clients? Ah, well, I really must stop suspecting everybody. . . .

Kintex, the official Bulgarian export-import agency, has been described by U. S. authorities as trading weapons to assorted militants in the Middle East for heroin to be sent on to Western Europe and the U. S. Said to be prominently involved is Bekir ce­lenk, from Istanbul, now residing in Sofia. I reach him by telephone. He is indignant in broken German. “Heroin? Never! That’s an American thing.” Turkish humor, I guess.

IT’S DECEMBER, and Papaver somni­ferum blooms white and mauve on the Australian island of Tasmania, halfway around the world from England; but the scenery here in the Derwent River Valley looks very English indeed rolling green hills, sheep and Friesian cows, gentlemen at cricket.

Sir Angus Bethune of Dunrobin Farm calls poppies the ideal crop “relatively lit­tle work, financial returns quite substan­tial.” Tasmania’s Poppy Advisory and Control Board is careful to call them oil pop­pies; after all, they were hybridized mainly from European varieties primarily grown for oil. Besides, no opium is produced here, only poppy straw. As in Turkey, but with a difference. Here it’s a high-technology crop: Precision seeding a machine inserts anti­fungus-coated seed and fertilizer simulta­neously, seven inches apart, two and a half inches down; computer-controlled herbi­cide spraying precisely 200 liters per hect­are; harvesting with a newly designed comb and knife on a combine to pull the dry poppy capsules down and slice them off.

The entire crop is contracted for by two companies British-owned Glaxo and Tas­manian Alkaloids, owned by Johnson & Johnson of the U. S.; it’s private enterprise, but strictly supervised in keeping with the rules laid down by international agreement. To the premier of Tasmania, Robin Gray, poppies represent an important part of the economy and building a good credit history. Learn more about the good credits scores by visiting ideapractices.org/building-a-good-credit-history/. Our most progressive farmers grow them.

The new system was not universally popular, especially in the industrial towns of northern England, where people resisted its implementation for as long as they could. There were many attacks on the new workhouses. In 1839, Thomas Carlyle stated “The new Poor Law is an announcement that whosoever will not work ought not to live”.

Under the New Poor Law, parents (or godparents) had to provide for their children, adults for their parents, and husbands for their wives. Children, unless they were mentally handicapped, became independent of their parents at 21 or on marriage. Even the ‘deserving poor’ were discouraged from claiming relief, whether they were sick, physically or mentally handicapped, old or orphaned. The only remedy was the union workhouse, which were the detested physical embodiments of the New Poor Law: they were frequently referred to as `Bastilles’.

The first workhouses were built at the end of the 17th century and by the 1820s most parishes had one. Each Board had to organise or build a union workhouse and see to its administration. Paupers were forced into the workhouse where conditions were almost universally harsh. Separate wards were built for the aged and chroni­cally sick, children, able-bodied males and able-bodied females. There was no contact whatsoever between husbands and wives and all inmates wore uniforms of the most uncomfortable cloth. The work was usually mundane, brain-numbingly dull and frequently pointless: sewing, stone-breaking, wood chopping, washing and picking oakum.

Unmarried mothers were often brought into workhouses to have their babies. These children were usually baptised in the workhouse chapel rather than in the parish church. In 1834, previous acts relating to the liability and punishment of the putative father of a bastard, and the punish­ment of the mother, were repealed. However, the guardians could apply to the Petty Sessions for a maintenance order on the father of a bastard. Testimony corroborative of the mother’s evidence had to be produced and no part of the money could be applied to the support of the mother.

In the 1860s the workhouses were providing accommodation for the elderly and education for children, which compared well with what a pauper might expect in the slums. By the end of the century, workhouses were largely places of refuge for the elderly, for orphaned or deserted children and for those incapable of look­ing after themselves. Some of the policies adopted were distinctly progressive. By 1900, for example, children over twelve were often boarded out with families or housed in special homes.

By the First World War there had been many changes in the way the poor were viewed and helped. The total number of paupers had roughly halved to less than 3 percent of the population. Real wages had almost doubled and many had been able to save, however little, for a rainy day’. Old-age pensions and National Insurance were introduced in 1909 and 1911 respec tively which made a considerable difference to the very poorest. In 1913 the workhouse was renamed the Poor Law Institution in an attempt to improve its image. In 1930, Boards of Guardians were abolished and the running of workhouses taken over by local authorities. With the introduction of the Welfare State in 1948, the national system of poor relief finally ended and the term ‘pauper’ was officially abolished.

The New Poor Law revolutionised the provision of care, Paul Blake looks at its introduction in 1834 and the records it created As a result of the Napoleonic Wars, and of the changes being wrought by the Industrial Revolution, by the 1820s poverty and pauperism were a visibly increasing problem. It was obvious that the old system of poor relief, based on laws dating back to the early 17th century, was no longer viable.

Many in positions of authority believed that there were too many able-bodied paupers who were receiving money from their parishes when they could have been working. They had to find a way of look­ing after those who really needed help without over-burdening the ratepayers.

In February 1832, the government set up a Royal Commission to examine the Poor Law. Some 3,000 parishes were visited. For the most part, the assistant commissioners were looking for examples to confirm their own prejudices. Criticism was levied at the many large and comfortable workhouses that, it was believed, encouraged idleness. A workhouse in Kent was described as: “a room full of sturdy labourers in hobnailed boots and smock-frocks, sitting around a stove with their faces scorched and half roasted. They never rose from their seats, and had generally an over-fed, a mutinous and an insubordinate appearance.”

The report was published in February 1834. It found that there were too many able-bodied people claiming relief. The commissioners proposed that there should be a single system of poor relief throughout the country and that “all relief whatever to able-bodied persons or to their families, otherwise than in well-regulated workhouses, shall be declared unlawful, and cease”.

Criticism was levelled at comfortable workhouses that, it was believed, encouraged idleness

In August 1834 the Poor Law Amendment Act was passed. It established a new central authority, the Poor Law Commission, with three commissioners to introduce and maintain the new system. The act itself did not set down a detailed system of poor relief — it only explained the principle of indoor relief in a workhouse and set out a way of enforcing it.

Parishes were grouped into a total of 585 unions throughout England and Wales. In Essex, for example, the new Poor Law Unions varied in size from seven to 35 parishes, the smallest having a population of 8,609 and the largest 24,770. In some industrial areas, individual parishes had to be divided into separate unions. The parish of Manchester, for one, was divided into three: Manchester, Chorlton and Prestwich.

The administration of individual unions was implemented by a Board of Guardians, who were elected by the ratepayers. The guardians appointed staff and were responsible for the workhouses and the administration of the poor law locally, under the close supervision of the commissioners in London. The result was a huge amount of paperwork, much of which still survives today.

Poor relief continued to rely on the concept of settlement, where a person could be sent back to their home parish for assistance. Rules of settlement had originally been established centuries before. The 1834 Act altered this arrangement only in minor ways. Hiring and service were abolished as reasons for settlement, and ownership of property was amended to a value of £30. Children could now claim the right through both their parents; illegitimate children took their place of birth, but were now able to stay with their mother until the age of 16. The whole system remained substantially in force until 1876, but it was not finally abolished until 1948.