CANVASS-BACK. 281 



Carrol's Island has long been in possession of a club of 

 Sportsmen, who regnlarlj resort to this favorite spot daring 

 the Ducking season, and seldom return home without being 

 heavily laden with the rich spoils of their skilL Not only 

 Canvass-Backs, but the larger species of AVild Fowl are killed 

 at Carrol's Island. Numbers of Swans and Geese are seen fly- 

 ing about these points, and the ambitious Sportsman will often 

 have an opportunity to bring down with his steady hand the 

 most majestic as well as the most beautiful of all the feathered 

 race. If any of our readers should feel this laudable ambition — 

 and where is the Tyro who will not? — we trust that he may 

 prove more successful than we did at our dehut upon Swan 

 shooting; having, much to our mortification, fired both barrels 

 of a heavy duck-gun from behind an ambush into a noble 

 flock of sixteen Swans quietly feeding on the water within 

 eighty yards of us, without even as much as rumpling a single 

 feather of their plumage. But then there was a reason why, 

 as all Sportsmen have good excuses for their bad shooting; at 

 all events, they strive very hard to concoct plausible ones, by 

 which to gull their companions. But in this case, unfortu- 

 nately for our credit as a marksman, the gun was neither 

 strange, bad, nor overloaded; neither did it snap, hang fire, 

 overshoot nor undershoot its mark ; but the plain and simple 

 fact is — shall we have recourse to so hackneyed a plea? — but 

 to cut the matter short and solve the mystery, we had no num- 

 ber B B shot in the barrels, one of our companions having 

 drawn the charge, the night before, by way of affording himself 

 some amusement at our expense on the following day. 



Jokers, however,* often get hurt with the recoil of their own 

 weapons, and so it was in this case, as we were entirely alone 

 and separated from the projector of this trick when we fired at 

 the Swans; and, suspecting something wrong, we did not relate 

 the circumstance till after he had confessed drawing the load, 

 and expressed a desire to know the result of our first two 

 shots; and then, greatly to his chagrin, he learned that he 

 might have had added to his lot of Ducks two or three noble 

 Cygnets, if he had restrained his silly propensity to make us 

 a laughing-stock for the company. Such an opportunity to 

 distinguish ourself in the field of Wild Fowl Shootino; w^e never 



