272 MANUAL FOR YOUNG SPORTSMEN. 
ward, to their breeding-places beyond Symsonia and Labra- 
dor, that a few brant linger yet about the Long Island 
bays and New Jersey beaches, and are then deemed by 
gastronomes to be in the very height of their culinary 
excellence, “a dainty to set before a king;’’ but their 
appearance is so rare, and any thing like a day’s sport so 
unattainable, that they are abandoned exclusively to the 
Raynors, the Smiths, and the Veritys of Long Island, and, 
as they are, whether justly or unjustly, called, it is not for 
me, who am in some sort 4 Jerseyman, to say, the pirates 
of Barnegat. 
Just at the moment, however, when all shooting ap- 
pears to be over, suddenly “from the tepid waters of 
Florida, the great bay of Mobile, the sea-lakes of Borgne 
and Ponchartrain, the lagoons, and muddy flats, and allu- 
vial shoals of the lower Mississippi, where they have con- 
gregated in countless myriads, while the ice was thick even 
in the sea-bays of the Chesapeake and Delaware, and while 
all the gushing streams and vocal rivulets of the Northern 
and Middle States were bound in voiceless silence,” arrive 
the numerous families of waders, who, their proper name 
being legion, are indiscriminately and improperly known 
as bay snipe. 
These, like the geese and ducks which have preceded 
them, farther to the northward than even the intrepid Kane 
has forced his adventurous keel, are bound Labrador-wise, 
to lay eggs and hatch countless young in due season, and 
every where along our shores they follow onward, host 
impelling host, and pause awhile to recreate themselves— 
the baymen, and such city or country sportsmen as care 
