THE SWAMPS OF TUK MISSISSIPPI. f^3 



men I have no doubt would afford many a strange incident, and probably a 

 few dark ones, as the swamps in that country furnish the desperate with a 

 great city of refuge; for in such a place they are beyond all law and juris- 

 diction ; swords, bowie knives, and pistols, are within the reach of all, and 

 many a midnight burial takes place amongst the lakes. Sunday is not even 

 known, and the chase is kept up with quite as much interest on that day as 

 any other day ; and, as the markets in the southern part of Louisiana are 

 open on the Sabbath, the supply of Ducks and lish are expected on that day 

 as well as on Saturday. 



The confusion of tongues prevailing in the French market of New Orleans, 

 which I afterwards visited, almost convinced me that the crowd which was 

 dispersed at Babel had come to a focus there. The morning after my arrival, 

 I got up out of the shells about two hours before day, and found that several 

 of my foreign a(;quaintances had already put out. A canoe (or peroque) 

 as they are always called, was provided for me, into which I got myself 

 squatted, and after paddling and shoving myself through a long, zigzag, 

 marshy, and muddy creek, quite ovei'grown with sword-grass, by which 

 I got my hands severely cut, I got into a small bay, which opened into lake 

 Catawatchaa, when I secreted myself amongst the reeds till about sun up. 

 The Ducks then began to fly, and the shooting commenced across the 

 lagoons, from the blinds which the men had constructed to shoot the Ducks 

 from. The quacking of these men, in imitation of the Ducks, was so very 

 remarkable that I never could distinguish between the one and the other ; 

 this is the great secret in Ducking, and had I not seen what they can accom- 

 plish I never would have believed it. A man concealed in a blind can call a 

 flock of Ducks from an altitude of 200 yards till within fifteen feet of him, 

 and you may then suppose how many he can kill by a well directed riyht and 

 left. In this accomplishment I was found wanting ; but independent of it, I 

 had as much sport as I could desire, and many a Duck did I kill, the 

 lustrous tints of which were little inferior to many of the Humming 

 Birds. The Prairie Hawks were very numerous, and followed closely 

 in the track of where so much destruction was going on. To see them 

 stoojiing and hunting the wounded Ducks across the lagoons was fre- 

 quently a very spirited affair, and it was nothing uncommon for one of 

 them to alight on the back of a Duck which had just been shot, and that, 

 too, within fifteen yards distance. The first Mallard {Anas Boschas) I killed, 

 was taken possession of by one of them, but whom I quickly stretched at full 

 length alongside the Duck, to teach him that I was quite as good a judge of 

 Ducks, without the green peas, as himself. 



In about two hours I had my peroque well loaded with both Ducks and 

 Pooldeans. I then paddled off amongst the marsh}- islands, in search of 

 Alligators, which I had no difficulty in finding. The first which I came upon 

 were laying quite exposed, with the exception of a small portion of the tail. 



