CAROLINA RAIL. 
117 
On the top of a stout pole, which is placed like a mast, 
in a light canoe, and filled with fire. The darker the 
night the more successful is the sport. The person 
who manages the canoe is provided with a light paddle 
ten or twelve feet in length, and, about an hour before 
high water, proceeds through among the reeds, which 
lie broken and floating on the surface. The whole 
space for a considerable way round the canoe is com- 
pletely enlightened ; the birds stare with astonishment, 
and, as they appear, are knocked on the head with the 
paddle, and thrown into the canoe. In this manner 
from twenty to eighty dozen have been killed by three 
negroes in the short space of three hours ! 
At the same season, or a little earlier, they are very 
numerous in the lagoons near Detroit on our northern 
frontiers, where another species of reed (of which they 
are equally fond) grows in shallows in great abundance. 
Gentlemen who have shot them there, and on whose 
judgment I can rely, assure me, that they differ in 
nothing from those they have usually killed on the 
shores of the Delaware and Schuylkill ; they are equally 
fat, and exquisite eating. On the sea coast of New 
Jersey, where these reeds are not to be found, this bird 
is altogether unknown ; though along the marshes of 
Maurice river, and other tributary streams of the Dela- 
ware, and, wherever the reeds abound, the rail are sure 
to be found also. Most of them leave Pennsylvania 
before the end of October, and the Southern States 
early in November, though numbers linger in the warm 
southern marshes the whole winter. A very worthy 
gentleman, Mr Harrison, who lives in Kittiwan, near 
a creek of that name, on the borders of James River, 
informed me, that in burning his meadows early in 
March, they generally raise and destroy several of these 
birds. That the great body of these rail winter in 
countries beyond the United States, is rendered highly 
probable from their being so frequently met with at sea, 
between our shores and the West India islands. A 
Captain Douglas informed me, that on his voyage from 
§t Domingo to Philadelphia, and more than a hundred 
