SOBAPSQUA 99 



not, only as the recollection of some inexcusably 

 bad shot comes back to me. 



I am glad I do not know how a man feels after 

 shooting a hundred ducks that have flown past his 

 stand or stooped to his decoys in one day. It seems 

 to me that one should feel remorse rather than 

 exultation for such a feat. 



The beautiful island in the north bay which 

 was called Birch Island when I first knew it, clad 

 then with a thick growth of white birch and cedar, 

 was a beloved resort of ducks, and its secluded 

 shores were seldom disturbed by gunners. By 

 change of ownership its name became Yale's, then 

 Holmes's, and is now Putnam's after the present 

 owner, who has a handsome summer house there 

 and has so improved the place that the wild ducks 

 have forsaken it. 



I think this may be the place where the devoted 

 missionary, Isaac Jogues, ran the gantlet and 

 suffered other tortures from his savage captors 

 while he and his fellow-captives were being carried 

 to the Mohawk country, for though by no means 

 situated on the southern part of the lake, it is the 

 southernmost island which answers at all the de- 

 scription given of the halting-place of the war 

 party, by Parkman, in his "The Jesuits in North 

 America " : 



"On the eighth day they learned that a large 

 Iroquois war party, on their way to Canada, were 



