The Marismas of Guadalquivir 97 
amazed even accustomed eyes. At intervals as we advanced 
across mud-flats clad in low growth of rush and samphire, rose 
for a mile across our front such crowds of wigeon and teal that 
the landscape ahead appeared a quivering horizon of wings that 
shimmered like a heat-haze. 
Crouching behind a low breastwork, before me lay a five-acre 
pool which no amount of firing ever kept quite clear of swimming 
forms, so fast did thirsty duck, teal, and geese keep dropping in, 
since behind for twenty leagues stretched waterless plain. 
Merely to make a bag under such conditions means taking 
every chance, firing away till barrels grow too hot to hold. Here, 
however, that nature-love that overrides even a fowler’s keenness 
stepped in. With half the wildfowl of Europe flashing, wheeling, 
and alighting within view—many, one fondly imagined, likely to 
be of supreme interest—the writer cannot personally go on taking 
single mallards, teal, or wigeon, one after another in superb but 
almost monotonous rapidity. For the moment, in fact, the 
naturalist supplants the gunner. True, this may be sacrificing 
the mutton to the shadow, and this afternoon no special prize 
rewarded self-denial in letting pass many a tempting chance. 
For gratifying indeed to fowler’s pride it is to pull down in 
falling heap the smart pintails and brilliant shovelers, to bring 
off a right-and-left at geese, though, it may be, one had first 
to let a cloud of wigeon pass the silent muzzle. Such is 
individual taste, nor will the memory of that afternoon ever fade, 
although my score, when at 3.30 p.m. I was recalled, only totalled 
up to seventy-four ducks and four greylag geese. 
The recall was imperative, and I obeyed, though not without 
hesitation and doubt. Could earth provide a better place ? 
H 
