306 WILD FOWL SHOOTING. 
repasts. Your long boots will not do it. Your desires 
are strong. vour hearts are willing to go to this place, 
but at your feet there flows deep, gurgling water, 
frowning at you in murky sullenness: or seeming to 
pleasantly smile, as tiny eddies revolve on its surface, 
then silently disappear. Has the reader ever experi- 
enced this? When he has approached just such a 
stream as this unawares, having constantly in view cir- 
cling ducks, long-necked pin-tails, swishing blue-bills, 
darting red-heads and gently-alighting mallards, their 
quacking greeting your willing ears with sweetest ca- 
dence, you see them dropping in only about one hun- 
dred yards in advance of you, never thinking for a mo- 
ment there is anything to prevent your getting among 
them, until suddenly you step forth from beneath the 
scraggy trees or the tall rice, and find deep water an 
impassable barrier. Have you ever been there? If 
you have, I know perfectly well how you felt. ‘The 
experience is very fresh in my mind how I once came 
to a place of this kind, and was stopped by a flowing 
and apparently endless stream. At my side was my 
companion, one of the best retrievers that ever lived. 
We stood there watching the flight, unable to get near 
the birds. The dog took in the prospect and would 
cast his brown eyes sorrowfully on me, as if regretting 
the situation. [ stood at this place for hours, shooting 
clers, while all the time in this 
at high-flyers and stragg 
haven they had found, I could constantly see a deluge 
of feathers dropping down through the trees. How I 
wished for a boat, a raft—in fact anything to have got- 
ten across. As it was, I killed twelve mallards . as it 
should have been, with a boat, no doubt I would have 
bagged from seventy-five to one hundred. 
