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gunner loading and firing, while the boatman is pushing and 
picking up. The sport continues till an hour or two after high- 
water, when the shallowness of the water, and the strength and 
weight of the floating reeds, as also the backwardness of the 
game to spring as the tide decreases, obliges them to return. 
Several boats are sometimes within a short distance of each 
other, and a perpetual cracking of musquetry prevails along the 
whole reedy shores of the river. In these excursions it is not 
uncommon for an active and expert marksman to kill ten or 
twelve dozens in a tide. They are usually shot singly, though 
I have known five killed at one discharge of a double-barrelled 
piece. These instances, however, are rare. 
The flight of these birds among the reeds is usually low; and, 
shelter being abundant, is rarely extended to more than fifty or 
one hundred yards. When winged, and uninjured in their legs, 
they swim and dive with great rapidity, and are seldom seen to 
rise again. I have several times, on such occasions, discovered 
them clinging with their feet to the reeds under the water, and 
at other times skulking under the floating reeds, with their bill 
just above the surface. Sometimes, when wounded, they dive, 
and rising under the gunwale of the boat, secrete themselves 
there, moving round as the boat moves, until they have an op- 
portunity of escaping unnoticed. They are feeble and delicate 
in every thing but the legs, which seem to possess great vigour 
and energy; and their bodies being so remarkably thin, or com- 
pressed, as to be less than an inch and a quarter through trans- 
versely, they are enabled to pass between the reeds like rats. 
When seen, they are almost constantly jetting up the tail. Yet, 
though their flight among the reeds seems feeble and fluttering, 
every sportsman, who is acquainted with them here, must have 
seen them occasionally rising to a considerable height, stretching 
out their legs behind them, and flying rapidly across the river, 
where it is more than a mile in width. 
Such is the mode of Rail-shooting in the neighbourhood of 
Philadelphia. In Virginia, particularly along the shores of James 
river, within the tide water, where the Rail, or Sora, are in 
