76 By Mountain, Lake, and Plain 



a boat, is not an easy thing to shoot out of. In 

 Kashmir, some of the best and most experienced 

 shots used to lie flat on their backs, and in spite 

 of certain obvious disadvantages, such as the 

 limited arc in which one can swing a gun, one 

 is concealed so much better, and consequently 

 gets so many more birds in easy range, that I 

 am not sure that this position is not the most 

 paying. 



The sun is going to bed behind a far bank of 

 reeds, and as he drops out of sight a chill comes 

 into the air. The duck are mostly gone, but as 

 we peacefully glide campwards, we see occasional 

 flights against the fading light. 



After dinner the bag is brought up for 

 inspection. To be fully representative of Seistan, 

 besides those kinds already mentioned, we should 

 have gadwals, shovellers, wigeon, spot-bills, stiff- 

 tailed duck, and many kinds of pochards (common, 

 red-crested, white-eyed, tufted), also marbled duck, 

 sheldrakes, and mergansers. These I have my- 

 self seen, and the list is certain to be incomplete. 

 Of course we never got all these in one day ; 

 generally one sort predominated. Sometimes it 

 was a pochard day, sometimes a marbled duck 

 day, often a teal day. Pintail rarely made up 

 a big proportion of the bag ; mallards and wigeon 

 never. 



