CANADA GOOSE. 257 



at the bow of his skiff, as propelled by the prac- 

 tised hand of the paddler, she goes gliding on 

 to the wary fowl, and has waited in breathless 

 suspense for the significant touch, which bids 

 him rise and deliver his tire in the midst of the 

 startled rank, and after boating the dead and 

 wounded, has re-loaded the big gun and again 

 stretched to his oars; or until he has floated 

 down in his whitened skiff among the drifting 

 ice, within raking distance of the flock, or, per- 

 haps, close to the snow-cake where the ducks 

 set huddled in the sun until he has done this, 

 he has by no means fathomed all the sweet mys- 

 teries of fowl shooting, although he may have 

 annually killed countless scores of nobler game, 

 from the floating batteries, or the famous point- 

 preserves of the Chesapeake. 



How often has the fowler on the Delaware 

 had occasion to remark, that the single circum- 

 stance of the drift of the disguised skiff, being 

 greater than that of the masses of ice among 

 which it floats, has alarmed the wary geese on 

 which he was stealing with the tide, assisted by 

 an almost imperceptible motion of the paddle, 

 and how often, after having unshipped his oars, 

 arid laid himself flat on his face in his floating 

 ambuscade, has he been disappointed of a glori- 



