Sporting Sketches 



are costly, and punting through reeds laborious ; 

 so when he does face the marsh, his chief idea is 

 to get all the fowl he needs with the fewest shots 

 and the least possible labor. Ignorant of town and 

 town ways, he has mastered every mystery of the 

 marsh for miles around ; so when he silently 

 launches his canoe and as silently steals along a 

 channel to the reeds walling some pond, it is safe 

 to wager that the pond is of easy access and more 

 or less covered with drowsy ducks. In the art of 

 the paddle, the Breed is only rivalled by those few 

 white men who have devoted years to the study of 

 the silent craft, while none has learned to excel him 

 in that hazardous enterprise the slow, soundless 

 forcing of a canoe through dense cover within a 

 few yards of the sensitive ears of a host of water- 

 fowl. 



There is, perhaps, no more difficult task in all 

 gun-craft, yet the Breed can do it remarkably 

 well when punting a white man, perfectly when 

 alone in his canoe. He never is in a hurry, and he 

 drifts inch by inch like the shadow of a lazy cloud, 

 till through the thinning reeds his wild eyes can 

 distinguish the rafts of unconscious fowl. Those 

 wonderful aboriginal eyes are swift as a modern 

 camera. One flash of them takes in everything, 

 especially the closest packed mass of the biggest 

 and best ducks, for there frequently are several 

 species floating in close proximity. Noiselessly as 

 a lynx he discards the paddle and raises the cheap 

 breech-loader. The muzzle steadies upon a bristle 

 of unsuspecting heads, and the lead tears a long 

 furrow halfway through the raft, as the gun is 



