WITH BOAT AND GUN IN THE YANGTZE VALLEY. 



Then, again, pheasants may be found throughout the whole of the long valley of 

 the Yangtze, as tricky and cunning at the one end as at the other. If he disappear from 

 the place where he was wont to be found it would seem as if it were only to reappear at 

 another. For, despite the unfortunately frequent complaint that birds are scarce and the 

 general complaint of the ubiquity of the native gunner, the markets still rejoice in supplies 

 unabated at prices reasonable enough. And a curious fact in connection with the bamboo 

 partridge is that it is known to have been almost extinct in some of his favourite resorts for 

 a season or two, yet another season will find him as much in evidence as ever. There 

 should be some way of accounting for these well known often experienced disappearances 

 and re-appearances, still the satisfactory solution is a long time in the coming. As for 

 wildfowl, they are naturally affected by the nature of the season. Be the weather cold and 

 stormy all our great waterways are black with fowl, and according to its comparative 

 mildness will be their seemingly diminished numbers. 



As regards the early days of Shanghai shooting there are very few reliable records, 

 but happily there are still amongst us to-day men who were keen sports nearly fifty years 

 ago from whom some little knowledge may yet be gathered. The shooting in the early 

 "Sixties" lay chiefly round the City walls, and in the district, now quite built over, lying 

 between the present Ningpo Joss House and the Louza Police Station. Occasionally the 

 Whangpoo was crossed and Pootung established a reputation — a reputation in a way still 

 retained, for if you ask your game dealer to-day whence come his supplies, you will probably 

 get for all answer "Pootung." Sometimes a run up to the Loongwha Pagoda was made, 

 and when time afforded, which was frequent enough in the days of two mails a month, a 

 trip to the Hills was enjoyed, where capital shooting was to be had all round Fengwanshan 

 and the city of Tsingpu. Generally, however, shooting was quite local, for it was not wise 

 to go far afield in the first few years following the Taiping Rebellion, while an afternoon's 

 walk round about the Settlement invariably rewarded the enthusiast. More rarely 

 venturesome sportsmen would make up a small party and take a native boat to Chapu. 

 But at that time big bags were not the order of the day, and the shooter was quite content 

 with a daily total of three or four brace of pheasants, a hare or two, and a few extras. 

 Natives even then snared for the small foreign market, and bumboats supplied sailing 

 vessels at the rate of half a dozen pheasants for a dollar. Foreign sporting dogs were 

 occasionally imported via the Cape, but few dogs of quality were seen before the 

 " Seventies." 



During the Rebellion itself sportsmen's movements were naturally restricted, but a 

 year or two after its conclusion Woosung and local native houseboats came into requisition 

 — the Soochow Creek, then much wider than now, becoming the favourite waterway. 

 Yekitan, 6 miles above Jessfield, Naziang and Kading, in one direction, Wong Doo and 

 Powwokong in another, were points usually made for ; but the biggest bags were generally 

 notched at Lokopan, 40 miles from Shanghai up the Soochow Creek, until the ruined City 

 of Taitsan established itself for years as the sportsman's paradise. There one might always 

 rely on a bag of pheasants, hares, and the " inevitable " woodcook, while sure finds for 

 duck and teal were the moat round and the numerous ponds within the City. 



From 1866 to 1870 Kazay and Kashing maintained unrivalled their fame as sporting 

 centres, and though sportsmen occasionally visited Hangchow and Huchow little or nothing 



