of the Old World. 3/3 



secluded and almost inaccessible spots to breed in, 

 migrating here for that purpose from all the other 

 countries of Europe. I have killed seventeen dif- 

 ferent species of duck and teal in one jheel, the water 

 in places where the weed abounded on which they 

 feed being black with them. They were evidently 

 unaccustomed to the sound of a gun, for, when the 

 echoes of the report died away in the distant hills, 

 they would settle down in the same place without 

 taking alarm, although each discharge brought down 

 about a dozen of their number. The bag that might 

 be made may be estimated from the fact that I killed 

 in one day in a jheel near the foot of the Abassadagh 

 Mountain, fourteen miles from Tshamshira, thirty- 

 four brace of woodcock, eleven couple of snipe, seven 

 geese, and sixty-one ducks ; and could have continued 

 the slaughter, were it not that the villagers, for whose 

 benefit it was intended, declared that they could not 

 carry more away. I think I must have flushed that 

 day at least a hundred brace of cock, besides snipe 

 innumerable. I hope my reader will not imagine 

 from this account that I at all countenance or am in 

 favour of such wholesale destruction as a general 

 thing ; but it must be remembered that at this time I 

 had many mouths to feed, that food of any kind was 

 at a premium, and I had nothing in store except 

 mouldy Turkish ration biscuit, full of weevils and 

 other such indescribable animalculae. 



