78 By Mountain, Lake, and Plain 



Our total bag for the trip was but forty-four 

 head, a poor total for the enormous number of 

 fowl seen ; but this is always the case in Seistan, 

 even in wildfowling weather, which this was not. 



Talking of bags, reminds me that there was a 

 time when wildfowl in this land of Seistan lay 

 under an odious suspicion, one that lay darkly at 

 the back of one's mind when sitting in a boat 

 in their damp company. Plague had suddenly 

 appeared in Seistan, and it was asked, " Whence ? " 

 The nearest point of infection was on the one 

 side India, on the other a remote province 

 in Eussia. Now the host of the plague bacillus 

 is a rat flea that can only transmit infection for 

 some three weeks after he has begun to harbour 

 the microbe, and he never leaves his beloved rat 

 till the latter's death. But rats do not travel 

 to Seistan from either Eussia or India. This, 

 I should remark in parenthesis, is not, as one 

 might perhaps think, due to their superior in- 

 telligence, but to the simple fact that though 

 rats are travellers by rail and ship, they do not 

 journey by mule or camel caravan. The problem 

 was therefore to find a means whereby a plaguey 

 flea could be transported some five hundred miles 

 to Seistan in the limited time it remains dangerous ; 

 and the solution, according to one authority at 

 least, was found in the wild-duck. " Imagine," he 



