New Hunting Camp (Location Key)

After Sam Fathers' death, Major de Spain sells the "Big Bottom" - the camp and the hunting ground around it in northwest Yoknapatawpha that he purchased from Thomas Sutpen - to a lumber company. The next time the men from Jefferson put together a hunting party, they camp in a new place where they "live in tents"; it is "two days" by wagon "and almost forty miles" further than the old camp - this is according to Go Down, Moses (301), which makes it clear that De Spain never goes with them to the new camp. On the other hand, in The Reivers the "new camp" is built by Major de Spain, and twenty miles further from Jefferson than his original one (19). Ironically, in this novel the camp is reached by the "narrow-gauge railroad" built by "the northern lumber company" that is cutting down the wilderness. By 1925, Lucius tells his grandson, "we could already see the doom" of this hunting ground (19). They can hear it, too, in the "sound of axes and saws" around the camp, "where a year ago there had only been the voices of running hounds" (19). "By 1940" this camp is gone, along with the woods around it (19).