68 



Bear-Hunting in the South. 



Hunters sometimes entrap him by placing in his path a vessel 

 containing whisky made very sweet with honey. Bruin is easily in- 

 toxicated, and very human in his drunken antics. I have seen him 

 killed by negroes while lying helpless upon his back catching at the 

 clouds; but such slaughter is unsportsmanlike, and no true hunter 

 would resort to it. 



But old Asa and the dogs are off down the lake-side, and we fol- 

 low in single file. 



Here, indeed, is the hunter's paradise. Flocks of mallard, teal, 

 and wild duck, covering acres of surface, are floating lazily upon the 

 limpid water ; on the other side, a dozen swans are gracefully glid- 

 ing along. A flock of ungainly pelicans, with their huge mandibles 

 scooping after minnows, waddle about the opposite shore. The wild 

 goose is heard overhead, while the sentinel of the flock on the water 

 replies. The white and blue crane, motionless as the sentinels of 

 Pompeii, line the shore. The tall cypresses in the lake, with their 

 fringed foliage, lift their weird knees out of the water and look 

 lonely and desolate ; while the oaks and gums upon the shore, draped 

 in clinging vines, festooned with moss, and reflected in the lake, add 

 to the somber picture of the wilderness. The sycamores and cotton- 

 woods are of immense size, some being ten feet in diameter. 





