54 Waterfowl. 



prairie in a deep narrow bed with steep banks. Until 

 people have actually camped out themselves it is difficult 

 for them to realize how much work there is in making or 

 breaking camp. But it is very quickly done if every man 

 has his duties assigned to him and starts about doing them 

 at once. In choosing camp there are three essentials to 

 be looked to wood, water, and grass. The last is found 

 everywhere in the eastern prairie land, where we were on 

 our duck-shooting trip, but in many places on the great 

 dry plains farther west, it is either very scanty or altogether 

 lacking ; and I have at times been forced to travel half 

 a score miles farther than I wished to get feed for the 

 horses. Water, again, is a commodity not by any means 

 to be found everywhere on the plains. If the country is 

 known and the journeys timed aright, water can easily be 

 had, at least at the night camps, for on a pinch a wagon 

 can be pushed along thirty miles or so at a stretch, giving 

 the tough ponies merely a couple of hours' rest and feed 

 at mid-day ; but in going through an unknown country it 

 has been my misfortune on more than one occasion to 

 make a dry camp that is, one without any water either 

 for men or horses, and such camps are most uncomfort- 

 able. The thirst seems to be most annoying just after 

 sundown ; after one has gotten to sleep and the air has 

 become cool, he is not troubled much by it again until 

 within two or three hours of noon next day, when the 

 chances are that he will have reached water, for of course 

 by that time he will have made a desperate push to get to 

 it-. When found, it is more than likely to be bad, being 

 either from a bitter alkaline pool, or from a hole in a creek, 



