THE GUN AT HOME AND ABROAD 
These vast flooded plains, it should be stated, are tenanted by droves of 
shaggy half-wild horses, mares and their foals, which in semi-feral 
state — along with wild camels ! — splash about the wastes amidst multi- 
tudinous ducks, geese and flamingos. The fowl, in consequence, have 
long become habituated to equine companionship. By the use of these 
ponies, specially trained for the purpose, the fowler, or, better still, 
two or three in company, each crouching behind his sheltering cabresto 
— as the trained ponies are termed— can approach to closest possible 
quarters, and deliver a death-dealing broadside into acres of wholly un- 
suspicious fowl. Our own records frequently exhibit results of seventy 
to eighty, occasionally one hundred ducks secured thus at a single 
approach. On one occasion a broadside of five barrels (delivered from 
behind three ponies) realized 198 head, chiefly teal. 
The native system, however, did not appeal to our, perhaps insular, 
tastes. For it was too deadly certain in its operation. Against that 
statement it may, of course, be urged that the fowling-punt, with its 
huge stanchion-gun, may also, at times, lend itself to immense 
“ slaughter our critics revel in that word. But yet, as between the 
two systems, there lies, to a sportsman’s intuition, all the difference 
in the world, a subtle difference it may be, one scarce to be discriminated 
or even understood of the vulgar mind ; yet a difference wide asunder as 
the poles. 
For whereas the Spanish system is all but certain in result, while 
demanding but a modicum of fieldcraft; our British plan, deadly though 
it may prove once in a hundred efforts, is always, and essentially, the 
reverse of certain ; while whatever degree of success be occasionally 
achieved, is due in tenfold measure to a combination of cool, concerted 
skill, craftsmanship, quick decision and perseverance, and with perma- 
nent odds of 50 to 1 always standing against you. At any rate, in our own 
marismas, we have abandoned the cabresto-pony except merely as an 
interesting local exhibition- — and, incidentally, as a wholly unrivalled 
means of studying the wildest of wild creatures, still unsuspicious, though 
almost within arm’s length. 
It is a curious collateral fact, not entirely explicable, that in Southern 
Spain the gunning-punt, after repeated trials, proved altogether in- 
effective. This we attribute — though merely tentatively — to the marismas 
being unnavigable; hence wildfowl never see a moving craft on their 
waters, save only those few which they recognize as hostile. 
408 
