404 DUCK-SHOOTING. 



exposed to great hazard; the sport, if so it may be called, 

 being carried on usually in Winter, late in the evening, 

 or early in the morning, and most frequently in wet and 

 marshy places, or on the shores of wild and solitary 

 estuaries, opening through the lowlands near the sea. 

 On these occasions some of them prefer going without 

 even a dog, the cold being often so severe that no animal 

 could bear it. 



Many of the favourite feeding-places consist of those 

 vast muddy flats, covered with green sea-weed, over 

 which the fowler may slip and slide in the best way he 

 can, or (were it not for his mud-pattens, flat square pieces 

 of board tied to the feet,) through which he might sink 

 up to the middle waist. 



On one of these expeditions, a Duck-shooter, in Hamp- 

 shire, met with a perilous adventure. Mounted on his 

 mud-patterns, he was traversing one of these oozy plains, 

 and being intent only on his game, suddenly found the 

 water rising with the tide. Aware of his danger, he 

 looked round, but his retreat was already cut off; he was 

 already surrounded with the flowing sea, and death 

 stared him in the face. But in this desperate situation 

 his presence of mind remained, and an idea struck him, 

 which might yet be the means of his preservation. He 

 gazed round to see if any part of this mud desert was 

 higher than the rest; and observing a small portion still 

 a foot or two above the water, he hastened towards it; 

 and when there, striking the barrel of his long gun deep 

 into the ooze, he resolved to hold fast by it, as a prop to 

 secure himself against the buffetings of the waves, which 

 were breaking angrily around him, and had now reached 

 his feet ; and at the same time as an anchor, to which he 

 might cling, and not be carried away by the current of 

 the flowing or ebbing tide; or, at all events, that if it 

 was to be his sad fate to perish, his body might be found 

 by those friends who might venture out to search for 

 him. Well acquainted with the usual rise of the tide, 

 he had every reason to suppose that it would not reach 



