Hunting Duck Eggs in the Marshes of Lake Manitoba. 353


ing period of most of the ducks. In addition to the subsequent

hiring of local help, I engaged as assistant of the expedition my son,

George C. Job, of the present Junior Class of Yale University.


Proceeding via Montreal to Winnipeg, we outfitted, selected

under the best advice the ideal locality for operation and I secured

the necessary permit upon presentation of proper credentials as a

representative of our State and Government. The laws of the

Province of Manitoba relating to game birds are very strict. Accord¬

ing' to the reading of the law, such permits are issued only to “other

States or Governments.” I found the local officials most courteous,

however, and fully alive to the need of the preservation of the game.


The field selected for operation was the immense marshes at

the southern end of Lake Manitoba. Here there is an inlet from

the great lake which broadens out into a vast area of shallow water,

dozens of miles long and several miles across. It is a forest of tall

canes, reeds and rushes, intersected by all sorts of hays, ponds,

creeks and canals, a maze and labyrinth in which it is hard not to

get dangerously lost. In spring and summer it is a wild duck para¬

dise, one of the greatest of duck breeding-grounds. On the first day

of September it becomes a duck inferno, when hundreds of guns

from far and near are turned loose on the unfortunate wildfowl. By

October additional hosts have descended from farther north, and the

number of the ducks is said to he amazing.


On June twentieth we took train to a station farther west,

where we were met by a guide with a big double rig. We needed it,

too, for with incubators, brooders, etc., there was much more stuff

than one wagon load. Leaving some of it for another trip, we

started on the long jog north over the trail. The region was one of

flat prairie, with belts and patches of low poplar and willow timber

and brush, known in that country as “ bluffs.”


It seemed refreshing to meet the prairie birds again—upland

plovers, Western meadowlarks, prairie horned larks, the coursing'

Franklin’s gulls and black terns, the grebes and coots paddling in

the small sloughs and various others too numerous to mention.


The country is almost entirely unfenced and unimproved, just

about as it was when the buffalo herds roamed over it. We passed

a few log cabins, and in the afternoon came in sight of a little group



