FINCHES. 45 



proceeds more vigorously than ever. The voyagers near us, 

 they appear now to waver in their flight, and hover together 

 in the air; this indecision is, however, overcome by a few- 

 persuasive notes from the call, and they descend into the trees 

 with an undulating sweep. Theirs, alas ! is no happy welcome 

 to a foreign shore. Bang ! bang ! go the guns almost simul- 

 taneously, and five or six lay on the velvet turf ; the rest take 

 to flight, but are followed and nearly all shot in detail, for 

 while the fatal whistle sounds they may be approached, with 

 a moderate degree of caution, and will sit with their heads 

 on one side and their bright eyes peering into the under- 

 wood, until the shooter gets almost as close as he likes to 

 them." 



To return to our personal adventures. When we had shot 

 enough small birds for a good store of pies, we got monsieur 

 to come on to the borders of an overgrown wilderness of tall 

 bamboo- like reeds, forming a dense jungle of many acres in 

 extent at the estuary of a small river flowing into the gulf. 

 Here we turned in the wild Corsican dogs, and got ourselves 



ready for whatever sport the fates might send us, W going 



round to the far side, while the other two guns stayed on this. 



The first thing to rise was a duck, which E. promptly 



" potted " at fifteen yards' distance, and retrieved in person 

 with a very fair imitation of an Indian war-whoop. Two 

 other ducks were put up from the thicket of waving stems, 



and we heard W get off both barrels, as the birds went over 



to his side. Then came a pause, owing to the dogs having 

 struck work and disappeared, to be found after a quarter-of- 

 an-hour's whistling a couple of hundred yards back, busy 

 lunching on the remains of a dead horse. Of course they 

 were " reproved," and then we started again, but the walking 

 was very poor, at one time all bog or mud reeking, as we leapt 

 from one spongy tussock to another, with foul malarial taints, 

 again sand like that of the sea-shore, or worse still, a vast 

 desert of rounded pebbles such as continental rivers are fond 

 of depositing when they get a chance. However, we trudged 



