1 84 hi the United States vi 



Pembina don't go there ; the shooting's too much 

 the other way.^ 



' Why, indeed, should I go to America to shoot 

 birds when I can get infinitely better " birding " at 

 home ? Aha ! with one exception, that sweetest of 

 all singing birds, the snipe ! What are all the 

 bubblings and the gugglings of any number of 

 nightingales in the almond blossomed thickets of 

 Arbana to his melodious " Skape ! scape ! scape ! " ? 

 Talk of your larks indeed ! If I wanted bird 

 music worth the hearing I would go to some 

 blissful bayou down in Louisiana, and listen to the 

 song of the snipe — that is, if I were asked, not un- 

 less, for let me tell you that to shoot over a " snipe- 

 dum " or " snipery " in those parts without being 

 asked would be about as decent as to go banging 

 about his Grace's home coverts without leave, no 

 one but a carpet-bagging rogue of a Yankee would 



1 ' Pembina,' says the Doctor in one of his letters, 'is a miserable, 

 muddy collection of disreputable shanties, in the worst of which, kept 

 by one Judge Potter, we slept in pairs on the most shameless apologies 

 for beds that I have seen. Packing up with a lot of drunken Irish- 

 American ruffians is no joke, I can assure you. Moreover, before we 

 arrived, society had been diverting itself with horrible whisky, and was 

 intoxicated and uproarious to an unpleasant degree ; and the angry 

 threats of shooting which reached me through the thin partitions were 

 by no means comforting, more particularly as their distinctness showed 

 that the said partitions would do mighty little to arrest the flight of a 

 random ball in case any of the gentlemen citizens did proceed to 

 extremities. 



' The best of it was that the worthy Judge wanted to charge us 

 half a dollar extra a-piece in the morning "for keeping open house 

 all night."' 



