GAME AND FISH SESOSTS. 6 1 



LOUISIANA. 



This State embraces a great deal of flat country, much cut up 

 by rivers, bayous, lagoons, marshes, and intricate water courses. 

 The water surface of Louisiana, excluding the rivers and the bays, 

 which open out into the Gulf of Mexico, is 1700 square miles. Tiiis 

 includes Lake Pontchartrain and all the many fresh water lakes in 

 the interior of the State. The coast marshes are peculiar — mostly 

 affected by the tides of the lakes — are covered with a tall rank- 

 growth of reed and grass, ranging in height from three to six feet, 

 and almost impenetrable. Throughout this region are found shell- 

 banks, or islands, showing unmistakable indications that, at some 

 remote period, this whole expanse of marsh land must have been 

 covered by the waters of the sea. The people burn the grass in 

 early fall to afford " snipe burns " where the birds feed in great 

 numbers, and along the edges of the bayous and lagoons the grass 

 is permitted to grow, as it furnishes the best of blinds for conceal- 

 ment in ducking. In ducking, the prevailing custom is to hunt in 

 the pirogue ; very cranky specimens of the ship-builder's craft to 

 the inexperienced. To the experienced, the pirogue is safe and 

 comfortable as a Clyde steamer, and the writer remembers having 

 frequently seen men so expert as to stand upon the gunwale and 

 shoot or paddle without materially rocking the boat. The parishes 

 which have the greater part of their surface covered with this marsh 

 are Cameron, Vermillion, St. Mary's, Terrebonne, La Fourche, 

 Jefferson, Plaquemines, St. Bernard and Orleans. In all of them 

 there are other kinds of surface ; belts of very fertile alluvial land 

 along the bayous, some prairie in Cameron, a good deal in Ver- 

 million and a less amount in St. Mary's. 



Excepting the planters living on the bayous, the population of 

 the coast-marsh region is sparse, and consists mostly of hunters 

 and fishermen. West of Bayou Teche and south of Bayou Co- 

 codn6 are the prairie lands, broken up by numerous bayous, 

 creeks and forests. In the middle and northern tier of counties, the 

 State is very heavily timbered and thickly intersected by bayous, 

 many of them navigable and all affected in volume by the rise and 

 fall of the Mississippi, into which all their waters eventually empty. 

 The cutting of the levees by Grant at Lake Providence near 

 Vicksburg, overflows all the low lands of that section every spring, 

 the water usually rising in March and falling in April. These 

 annual overflows drive the deer from their swamp coverts to the 

 uplands which are not Subject to overflow, and at that time the 

 shooting is better than at any other, as, the deer being confined in a 

 limited area, there is no trouble in starting them, and once startedj 

 if one knows the land, and has a good horse, he need seldom feii 



