378 Notes on Sport and Travel iv 



out to pick up any game, which seemed to take a 

 perverse pleasure in falling into the stififest and 

 wettest bits it could select. Our wild boy, with his 

 light carcase and broad feet, got on better at this 

 than we did. Once I had really hard work to get 

 out, going in nearly up to my middle. I was 

 obliged to throw myself on my hands and knees, 

 and then put my gun before me and rest upon it, 

 for my arms went in as high as my elbows in a 

 mighty disagreeable fashion. I can easily under- 

 stand a man being lost here if he pumps himself out 

 and falls on his face. I am certain that my legs 

 gained at least three inches in length, from the 

 tremendous drag I had to put on in order to pull 

 them out. 



After we left the village we only came across one 

 house, a large farm with immense out -buildings, 

 situated on a bluff overlooking the swamp. It was 

 utterly without the frank openness of an English 

 farmhouse, with blank, high, white walls, with a few 

 jealous windows pierced high up, as if to command 

 an enemy. 



We shot several snipe in a garden of mighty 

 pumpkins just under it, and as we did so the 

 labourers issued forth for their afternoon's work. 

 The men were dressed in white shirts and wide 

 white drawers, red sashes, and enormously broad- 

 brimmed hats ; the women swathed in strange white 

 garments, and their heads and part of their faces 

 bound up in white wrapper. Along the road, which 



