326 SPORT IN BENGAL. 



except by a scanty growth of a few bushes and tall castor-oil 

 plants. One single cotton-tree, white with the droppings of 

 fishing-hawks and eagles, marked the spot from a distance, 

 and stretched out its poor torn and twisted arms in perpetual 

 signals of distress. After conversing a little while with the 

 half -starved fishers, and acting upon their advice, we pushed 

 past the hummocks into a wide and weedy morass beyond, 

 leaving behind us as many whistling- teal, coots, and cranes as 

 would provide them all, small and great, with at least two 

 good meals of meat each that and the next day. 



Till past three o'clock we plied our guns till the barrels 

 became too hot to touch without being wetted, securing a 

 great number of birds, mostly gadwals and blue- winged teal ; 

 and then turning our faces homewards, we worked our way 

 through gigantic water-lilies in a line abreast of each other, 

 but half a mile apart, adding to our bag black and purple 

 coots, water-cock, large and small whistling-teal for our ser- 

 vants and others, besides pochards and gadwals, but we got 

 no more pintails that day. 



About sunset we met again at the fishermen's station at 

 the head of the creek flowing into the river, and here resting 

 awhile to light cheroots and count the spoil, we resumed our 

 paddles, and obtaining some pretty sport with blue-winged 

 teal, which rose singly and in small flocks from their feeding- 

 grounds in the wet rice- fields on both sides, we regained our 

 camp before dark, very well satisfied with our success, our 

 bag consisting of a hundred and fourteen couple of pintails, 

 gadwals, pochards (red-crested, red-headed, and white-eyed), 

 blue-winged teal, and a few others, besides half as many more 

 whistling and goose-teal, coots, water-cocks, herons, cranes, 

 storks, godwits, plover, and snipe, a heavy and mixed bag, but 

 not a bit more so than the demand, for reserving a score of 

 the choicest birds for our own use, the rest barely sufficed to 

 satisfy the wants of the many to whom a meal of meat was a 

 rarity, and who flocked round us on our return to camp in 

 crowds from the bazaar and village adjacent. 



The great fishing eagles had been a sore nuisance all day. 



