150 THE WILD-FOWLEll. 



A Fall on the Ooze. 



Allusion has already been made (page 99) to the occasional neces- 

 sity of making use of splashers or mud pattens, for the purpose 

 of walking upon the ooze to collect dead and wounded birds after 

 firing the punt- gun ; but I have yet to speak of the dangerous con- 

 sequences attending a fall on the ooze, and of the difficulty of 

 again recovering one's footing on a substance so soft and rotten ;* 

 and in explaining the perils of " ooze ranging," probably I cannot 

 do better than lay before my readers particulars of an adventure 

 which occurred some few years ago, when I saved a man from a 

 horrible death. 



On returning home up a river on the eastern coast, in a shooting- 

 punt, my attention was arrested by distant cries for help, when I 

 immediately pulled in the direction whence the sound proceeded; 

 which, as I drew nearer, appealed louder and more imploring. On 

 approaching the spot by a creek, the first thing I saw was a punt 

 without its occupant ; there were gun, pea-jacket, oars, paddles, &c., 

 but no splashers, and I therefore concluded the owner was somewhere 

 upon the ooze ; so, putting on my own splashers, I walked on the ooze 

 in the direction of the cries, to which I had already cheerily responded 

 at the very top of my voice; when I soon discovered a man flounder- 

 ing in the mud, who told me in most touching tones of despair that 

 he had fallen into a bog, and could not get out, the mud being too 

 rotten to permit him to get upon his feet. On approaching the spot 

 nearer, I saw at once his perilous predicament, and assured him help 

 was at hand ; but such a scene presented itself to my gaze as I never 

 before beheld, and from which I could not refrain to laugh. There 

 lay, in a soft, bumby-like bed of mud, something very like a pig- 

 depth ; the skiff is then dressed with sedge or coarse grass in an artful manner as 

 low as the water's edge, and under cover of this, which appears like a party of ducks 

 swimming by a small island, the gunner floats down sometimes to the very skirts of 

 a whole congregated multitude, and pours in a destructive and repeated fire of shot 

 among them. In winter, when detached pieces of ice are occasionally floating in the 

 river, some of the gunners on the Delaware paint their whole skiff or canoe white, 

 and laying themselves flat at the bottom, with their hand over the side, silently 

 managing a small paddle, direct it imperceptibly into or near a flock, before 

 the ducks have distinguished it from a floating mass of ice, and generally 

 do great execution among them." Wilson's American Ornithology, vol. iii., p. 142. 



* These perilous gulphs are very common in some parts of France, in which 

 country they are termed mortes. 



