246 KRIDER'S SPORTING ANECDOTES. 



is towed down to the scow. The contents of the 

 boats and the box are then passed on board, and 

 lastly the battery itself; after which sail is made 

 for home. 



On reaching Havre de Grace, we went into 

 Baird's hotel, where the duck shooters of the 

 place are in the habit of congregating to talk 

 over the exploits of the day.* 



These men are both fishers and fowlers, being 

 engaged during the spring and part of the sum- 

 mer, in the extensive fisheries of the Potomac 

 and Susquehanna, and returning to their more 

 congenial occupation in autumn. They are 

 generally well informed on all matters connected 

 with their business, sometimes even acute, 

 and some of them realize handsome profits in 

 their hardy and exciting pursuits. They are 

 almost universally expert shots ; indeed, it is 



* While harboring in a creek on the eastern shore, on one of our 

 excursions, the necks of a fine pair of canvass-backs were eaten off 

 by a mine, although they "were the only brace in the lot, and had 

 a number of inferior ducks hung on either side of them. In fact, 

 old shooters seriously declare that this little animal, which often 

 swims off at night to the scows in search of plunder, knows the 

 flavor of a canvass-back, and will never touch a commoner kind of 

 duck when the former is to be had. Some years ago we were 

 shown in the store of Mr. Lyons, at Havre de Grace, a large pet 

 cat which was said to show the same epicurean delicacy of taste 

 when occasion offered. 



