OF SHOOTING AND FISHING 67 
a big bag of ducks every day as they flew up and 
down. 
After dinner, we strolled out for a smoke. The 
raucous note of the squawk or night heron, which 
feeds at this hour, and of which there were many, 
this being one of their breeding places, the honk- 
honk of geese, the noises made by muskrats and 
a hundred and one other creatures, gave a weird- 
ness to the place. There was the strange swampy 
smell, produced by all the decaying vegetation, not 
however, like the sickly sweet smell of the tropical 
swamps. As we were the only visitors, we had the 
loft to ourselves, and were up early next morning. 
_The general lie of the land was explained to me, 
and trips to the different overflows made. I was 
anxious to shoot a pelican, so we looked around 
and marked a large flock of them on a mud bank 
some distance away. Y. rowed while I sat in the 
stern and gave encouragement. He was a first 
class oarsman, having been trained— 
“Where Isis waters wind 
Along the sweetest shore 
That e’er felt fair culture’s hand”— 
—and in days gone by he had been a credit to his 
college. 
The heat was dreadful, and it gave me more 
pleasure watching Y. pull the boat for a mile or 
two through an inch of water and over sticky mud 
than if I had done it myself. He was a little out 
of training, perhaps, and looked around too often 
to see how he was getting along, but on the whole 
_ he did very well. When we reached the edge of 
