SPORTING IMAGININGS. 243 



slough or stream, or rich-loamed dip between swelling 

 slopes, and that the game is flushing right and left, as we 

 cautiously pursue our course down wind, while our trusty 

 and well-tried gun rapidly responds to our aim. Again 

 and again we fill and empty our blood-stained pockets, till 

 the body, from fatigue, calls " Hold, enough ! '' or we 

 return, with waning day, to our little bald-faced pony, ever 

 ready with a neigh to welcome his master's reappearance. 

 Though to revisit these secluded haunts, to re-enact these 

 scenes, may not be my lot, why should they not be the 

 reader's ? If you are a proficient in the art, you will make 

 such a bag of snipe as an English sportsman scarcely ever 

 dreamt of. Go, by all means do not stop to hesitate 

 and I will guarantee you an amount of sport that will 

 induce many a future return. 



Those gentlemen who live in the cities that surround 

 these sporting localities are well aware of the excellence of 

 the shooting at this season upon the prairies, and make up 

 large parties to have a week or so at the Wilson snipe. In 

 the course of a day's shooting on the Grand Prairie, I have 

 met visitors from Louisville, Cincinnatti, and St. Louis, 

 marching like companies in skirmishing order, and keeping 

 up a regular fusilade. But so great is the extent of 

 hunting-ground, and so numerous the game, that in each 

 day, over the same beat, no visible diminution can be 

 observed. We do not mean to say that no English sports- 

 man ever made a trial of these western haunts, but we are 

 thoroughly impressed that the excellence of these grounds 

 is far from as widely known as it deserves, and that many 

 persons possessed both with means and inclination are 



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