SHRIMPING AT CHRISTCHURCH 207 



pany with the wild-fowl shooter and — reader, must I say it ? — 

 contrabandist, Hooper, as my man, now head keeper over the 

 game at Canford. Before I knew the harbour, its tides and 

 peculiarities, I was obliged to have at my command an ex- 

 perienced hand, and a better-mannered or more sensible wild- 

 fowl shooter or seaman than Hooper never stepped on board a 

 boat. The shooting given me by Sir George Gervis, and the 

 rabbit-warren it contained, on Hengistbury or Christchurch 

 Head (his land forming one side of the harbour), always made 

 it worth my while to be there or thereabouts, so that any 

 adjunct to the day's amusement was kept in sight. There are 

 little ditches intersecting the low land, up which the tide flows, 

 and then leaves almost dry ; these ai-e the resort of small but 

 innumerable shrimps, very nearly or about half as large as those 

 obtained in the Severn. These ditches are too small for the use 

 of the common shrimping net, and the nuid in them is too deep ; 

 but I invented a way of catching them wholesale. This I did 

 with a little drag-net made for the smallest minnows, with a 

 purse to it and a stop. In the narrowest part of the ditches 

 this net was set, and while I watched it Hooper drove the 

 shrimps. The little purse has been so full that it would hold 

 no more, and I have often left it in longer than necessary to 

 watch the crabs who feed on the shrimps come up at this, to 

 them, golden opportunity, and walk off with a shrimp or two 

 tucked up under an arm, their method of carrying them. A 

 great many cormorants at times frequent the harbour and sit 

 in rows on the little islands in the shallows left by the tide ; so 

 to amuse myself and catch them, I baited lines of about six 

 feet in length, and tying them to stones, with a small fish on a 

 single hook as for an eel, left them in the water. I never 

 seciu'ed a cormorant in this way, but when the tide flowed I 

 had plenty of eels. I think one or two baits were taken by 

 cormorants, and I know that one was. A man and a boy were 

 sitting in a boat (the man was Hooper), at the mouth of the 

 harbour, when the boy cried out suddenly, " Look out ! my eye, 

 take care ! whatever's this a-coming ! " Hooper looked up, and 



