Colonel peter 1ba\vfeer 141 



by a relay of three dentists who failed in drawing a 

 tremendous tooth and finished with breaking my jaw- 

 bone and complimenting me for the sang-froid with 

 which I braved their infernal operations." Instances of 

 his hardihood I might quote by the score, from the 

 record of his experiences in wild-fowl shooting. On one 

 occasion he was out for eighteen hours in his punt in 

 weather so severe that his cap was frozen to his head 

 and his hands were so frost-bitten that he could hardly 

 load, yet he thought himself amply compensated for 

 his discomforts by bagging 53 wigeon, 2 mallards, and 

 a coot. He frequently buried himself in an old sugar- 

 cask in the mud on the great sea-lagoons, and waited 

 there for hours for the flight of the ducks. 



Here is a specimen of the sport he met with among 

 the wild fowl at Lymington : 



" 28//z. My swan that I shot yesterday, having died 

 and been picked up, there remained 7 of these magnifi- 

 cent birds, and they were seen off Keyhaven sitting 

 among what little ice was left, about nine o'clock in 

 the morning, and every corner of the creeks or on 

 shore contained a gunner anxiously hoping that they 

 might possibly swim or fly near enough for a random 

 shot. Having to contend with all this impediment, 

 and the wildest birds in existence to cope with, I had 

 recourse to a manoeuvre which struck me as the only 

 chance. I dressed myself and Reade in a clean white 

 shirt, white neck-cloth, and clean white night-cap, and 

 in my white punt went all the way round to windward 

 through a pretty heavy sea ; and after getting to where 

 the hill called ' Mount ' became a background to the 



