CHAPTER 1. 

 OUTLINE SKETCH OF THE SHOOTING IN THE YANGTZE VALLEV. 



' . . . . The plains of Sericana 

 Where the Chineses drive .... " — Milton 



f\F all the departments in the great domain of sport none has ever been more keenly or 

 ^^ consistently followed in North China than shooting, the first and oldest of them all. 

 Even before Shanghai was opened by treaty to foreign trade, officers from the well-manned 

 opium schooners which lay at Woosung used to organize shooting parties to work that 

 country to the South, starting from Pheasant Point, and the Paoshan neighbourhood to 

 the North, and from those early days to the present time the votaries of shooting have 

 never been found to be lacking either in energy or in numbers. Nor is the reason far to 

 seek, for, apart from the all-absorbing interest which game shooting demands of and 

 commands from the sportsman, its pleasures are of longer duration than those attaching 

 to the pursuit of any other sport, while it is a pastime that may be indulged in on almost 

 equal terms by the owner of the slender as of the well-filled purse. Again, so many 

 natural conditions combine to foster and maintain in North China a love for shooting and 

 the incidents connected with it. There are the bountiful supplies of game always more 

 or less close to hand ; there are the wonderful spring and autumn migrations of the snipes 

 and plovers and other birds of passage; the winter arrival of the wildfowl, swan, geese, 

 ducks and teal in countless numbers, all affording in their season sport enough to satisfy 

 the keenest shooter : the delight of being able to go free from let or hindrance wherever 

 sweet fancy leads, and the matchless weather so indissolubly associated with the fair 

 name of the Yangtze Valley. Surely the lines have fallen in pleasant places to the resident 

 in North China. 



Few places can boast of better snipe shooting than Shanghai, situate as it is at the 

 Eastern limit of the great spring and autumn bands of migrants which itself is known to 

 be at least lOOO miles in width. One gets absolutely lost in wonderment at the millions 

 of birds such a broad flight line signifies passing almost simultaneously as it does over 

 Chinkiang, Wuhu, Kiukiang, Hankow, Shasi and Ichang, all on the Yangtze river and 

 more or less on the same degree of North latitude. 



A noteworthy feature in connection with the snipe is its pertinacity. Year after 

 year it will revisit its favourite feeding grounds. Time was, and not so very long ago, 

 when the interior of the Shanghai racecourse was a favourite resort both of bird and 

 gunner. Even now the existence of that plaisance would not seem to be forgotten though 

 the encroachments of the jerry builder have improved it almost out of recognition, for only 

 last autumn (1909) disconsolate longbills, but in sadly reduced numbers, might be seen 

 bewailing both the food and the days that have now gone for ever. 



