IN THE WILD RICE FIELDS. 359 



water, dead, while the one I had intended to hit 

 skimmed away unharmed. I had fallen into the com- 

 mon error of tyros at duck shooting, viz., underesti- 

 mating both the distance and speed of the game. 



Some of my friends, who had never been west of 

 the Alleghanies, had often said that there was no sport 

 in duck shooting ; that it took no skill to stop a clumsy 

 duck in clear, open space, and that the duck was not a 

 game bird, anyhow, etc. How I wished for the pres- 

 ence of some of those friends that evening as old Phoe- 

 bus entered upon the home stretch and his glowing 

 chariot neared the gate of gilded clouds. The number 

 of ducks increased by the minute. They came with 

 swifter and steadier wing and with more of an air of 

 business than they had shown before. Those hitherto 

 flying were nearly all ducks that had been spending the 

 day in and around Senachwine and its adjacent ponds 

 and sloughs. But now the host that during the day had 

 been feeding in the great corn fields of the prairie be- 

 gan to move in to roost, and the vast army of traveling 

 wildfowl that the late sharp frosts in the North had 

 started on their southern tour began to get under way. 

 Long lines now came streaming down the northern sky, 

 widening out and descending in long inclines or long, 

 sweeping curves. Dense bunches came rising out of 

 the horizon, hanging for a moment on the glowing 

 sky, then massing and bearing directly down upon us. 

 No longer as single spies, but in battalions, they poured 

 over the bluffs on the west, where the land sweeps away 

 into the vast expanse of high prairie, and on wings 



