WILD SWANS. 231 
for then he may note with pleasure their graceful 
movements and stately mien as, with oary feet, they 
proudly row themselves over the mirror-like water or the 
soughing wavelets of bluish hue. Their attitudes are 
always majestic on the water, for their high, arched necks 
give them an air of mingled grace and stateliness; yet their 
beauty is wasted on the pot hunter, as he looks upon 
them merely from a monetary point of view, and docs 
not hesitate to kill the female while she is hatching, for 
the sake of the dollar she may bring in the market. A 
swan in full plumage sometimes sells as high as a dollar 
and a half, but this price is paid only when there is a 
good demand for the down, or the bird 1s plump and 
tender. Swans are so common along the Columbia River 
that I doubt if one would there bring more that fifty 
or seventy-five cents, and only limited numbers can real- 
ize that sum. 
If a man wants swan shooting to his heart’s content, 
he has only to visit any of the States and Territories from 
Alaska to California, and from Montana to Arizona, and 
if he does not succeed in that region he cannot in any 
part of the world. I have shot a swan from the deck of 
a steamer on the Snake River, and many from canoes on 
the Upper Columbia and Missouri Rivers, and found that 
it required no great exertion to bag them, provided I 
fired at the head and neck with a shot gun, and at the 
body with a rifle. 
The best bag I ever made was on a sand bar, or island, 
in the Upper Columbia. This was occupied -largely by 
swans, although geese and ducks were also quite common, 
and so numerous in the surrounding waters that the 
‘stream was literally covered with them. I went to this 
place with a rancher, who was a keen sportsman, and a 
man whose ideal of life was a lod ein the wilderness where 
he could commune with nature and hunt and fish whenever 
the spirit seized him. We took up our position on the island 
