SPORT ON MARSH AND FORESHORE 



Numbers of foreign fowl, including a good herd of 

 pink-footed geese, had arrived in the estuary, and the 

 owner of an extensive marsh abutting on the northern 

 shore of the same had written inviting me to make one 

 of a party of five guns to take toll of the duck inhabiting 

 the fleets and dykes of the enclosed marshes, and to wait 

 up for the geese as they flighted from the uplands to 

 their nocturnal habitat on the shore. Having enjoyed 

 but a few very indifferent days' partridge-shooting in 



early September, I was only too glad to accept E 's 



invitation. Throwing a few necessary articles of cloth- 

 ing into a kit-bag and overhauling my somewhat 

 battered — but nevertheless trusty — old long-chambered 

 i2-bore gun, I was soon spinning through the con- 

 gested London streets towards Liverpool-street Station 

 in one of those most convenient and rapid of all public 

 conveyances — a taxi-cab. 



Within a couple of hours a fast train carried me 

 through some of the flattest and most unpicturesque- 

 looking country in Europe to the one-horse little railway 

 station which formed my destination. Here I found 

 my host awaiting my advent in a dog-cart, and a five-mile 

 drive through twisting lanes, bordered by leafless hedge- 

 rows, brought us to the headland of M Marshes, 



under the sea-wall of which nestled a quaint old reed- 

 259 



