CAROLINA RAIL. 117 



on the top of a stout pole, which is placed like a mast, 

 in a light canoe, and filled with fire. The darker the 

 night the more successful is the sport. The person 

 who manages the canoe is provided with a light paddle 

 ten or twelve feet in length, and, about an hour before 

 high water, proceeds through among the reeds, which 

 lie broken and floating on the surface. The whole 

 space for a considerable way round the canoe is com- 

 pletely enlightened ; the birds stare with astonishment, 

 and, as they appear, are knocked on the head with the 

 paddle, and thrown into the canoe. In this manner 

 from twenty to eighty dozen have been killed by three 

 negroes in the short space of three hours ! 



At the same season, or a little earlier, they are very 

 numerous in the lagoons near Detroit on our northern 

 frontiers, where another species of reed (of which they 

 are equally fond) grows in shallows in great abundance. 

 Gentlemen who have shot them there, and on whose 

 judgment I can rely, assure me, that they differ in 

 nothing from those they have usually killed on the 

 shores of the Delaware and Schuylkill ; they are equally 

 fat, and exquisite eating. On the sea coast of New 

 Jersey, where these reeds are not to be found, this bird 

 is altogether unknown ; though along the marshes of 

 Maurice river, and other tributary streams of the Dela- 

 ware, and, wherever the reeds abound, the rail are sure 

 to be found also. Most of them leave Pennsylvania 

 before the end of October, and the Southern States 

 early in November, though numbers linger in the warm 

 southern marshes the whole winter. A very worthy 

 gentleman, Mr Harrison, who lives in Kittiwan, near 

 a creek of that name, on the borders of James River, 

 informed me, that in burning his meadows early in 

 March, they generally raise and destroy several of these 

 birds. That the great body of these rail winter in 

 countries beyond the United States, is rendered highly 

 probable from their being so frequently met with at sea, 

 between our shores and the West India islands. A 

 Captain Douglas informed me, that on his voyage from 

 St Domingo to Philadelphia, and more than a hundred 



