ABUNDANCE OF SNIPE. 187 



miles of forest on each side of the river. The number of snipe 

 here was astonishing, and I heard of one man who killed more 

 than a hundred couple to his own gun in one day. We never 

 cared to give up so much time to snipe-shooting, so did not get 

 such large bags, but forty or fifty couple in a morning was 

 common. 



One day, just as we were going to dinner, a man rode up 

 and stopped to speak to us, so we asked him to join us. We 

 happened that day to have a specially good bill of: fare, and he 

 enjoyed his dinner thoroughly, and remained with us for some 

 hours discussing Texas and the game to be found there. He 

 told us that he lived about twelve miles away, and that there 

 were thousands of snipe all round his house, and that if we 

 cared to shoot such small game, he would be very glad to 

 put us up. We at once accepted his invitation; and taking 

 Billy Breeze with us, to look after the horses, we rode over to 

 his house a few days afterwards. It proved to be a very 

 dilapidated place, many of the doors being gone and most of 

 the glass broken in the windows. This he explained by saying 

 that he had been ruined by the war, and had never had the 

 heart to put things right since. After a meal consisting of 

 very bad salt pork, most of which was melted, and which he 

 and his wife dipped up with corn bread, coffee without milk 

 and sweetened with syrup, we went off to a large field 

 near the house, which was very undulating and contained a 

 number of small marshes ; and here we found the snipe as 

 plentiful as he said, every hollow containing twenty or thirty, 

 and they were so tame that they would fly from one hollow to 

 the next and then back again, so that we soon had a large bag, 

 and sent Billy back to get a lot of them ready for supper, not 



