DUCK-SHOOTING. 363 



man held in the centre, and dipping each end in, propelled his 

 boat along ; and when he got near his prey, used two small 

 paddles, only three feet in length, by which he guided his 

 skiff. His gun, which was fixed on a rest, consisted of two 

 immense barrels, about nine feet long, an inch and a quarter 

 in diameter, requiring three-quarters of a pound of powder and 

 two pounds of shot to load both barrels, which were fired to- 

 gether. 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 

 or Dunlins. He earned about ten pounds per week, and his 

 companion rather more, by a similar plan. 



But the exploits of our British fowlers are insignificant, 

 when compared with the grand scale on which this warfare is 

 carried on in Mexico, where a great Tiro de 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 

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

 apparatus, as well as the man who has charge of it, are con- 

 cealed 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 sufficiently near to the fatal 

 spot. The double tier of guns is immediately fired, and the 

 water remains strewed with the bodies of the killed and 

 wounded, whose escape is cut off by the circle of canoes be- 

 yond. Twelve hundred Ducks are often brought in as the 

 result of a single attack ; and during the whole season they form 

 the ordinary 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 

 * WARD'S Mexico. 



