408 DUCK-SHOOTING. 



of powder and two pounds of shot to load both barrels, 

 which were fired together. His success, in one week, 

 was a hundred and three Ducks, and eleven Geese, besides 

 smaller birds. At one shot, he had been known to kill 

 two hundred and one Sea-Purres. He earned about ten 

 pounds per week, and his companion rather more, by a 

 similar plan. 



But the exploits of our British fowlers are insignifi- 

 cant, when compared with the grand scale on which this 

 warfare is carried on in Mexico, where a great Tiro do 

 Patos, or Duck-shooting, is, we are assured*, one of the 

 most curious scenes that it is possible to witness. 

 The Indians, by whom it is principally conducted, prepare 

 a battery, composed, of seventy or eighty musket-barrels, 

 arranged in two rows, one of which sweeps the water, 

 while the other is a little elevated, so as to take the 

 Ducks as they rise upon the wing. The barrels are con- 

 nected with each other, and fired by a train; but the 

 whole apparatus as well as the man who has charge of it 

 are concealed in the rushes until the moment, when after 

 many hours of cautious labour, one of the dense columns 

 of Ducks, which blacken at times the surface of the lake, 

 is driven by the distant canoes of his associates suffi- 

 ciently near to the fatal spot. The double tier of guns is 

 immediately fired, arid the water remains strewed with 

 the bodies of the killed and wounded, whose escape is 

 cut off by the circle of canoes beyond. Twelve hundred 

 Ducks are often brought in as the result of a single 

 attack; and during the whole season they form the ordi- 

 nary food of the lower classes in the town of Mexico, 

 where they are sold for a trifling sum. 



We have alluded to decoys as the great source of profit 

 and supply with respect to wild fowl; and with an 

 account of them we shall conclude the history of Ducks. 

 A decoy is generally situated in a marsh, so as to be 

 surrounded with wood or reeds, and if possible with both, 

 to keep the water quiet, and that the repose of the wild- 



* WARD'S Mexico. 



