A R.ace With the £bb 
By JULIAN BURROUGHS 
A Day in a Duck Boat on the Upper Hudson 
Julian Burroughs, in response to our request for a brief biography, has given us the little sketch of his life 
which we print below: 
“A grape vineyard and tidewater are a rare combination—except on the Upper Hudson—and I am a child of 
fortune to have been reared in such surroundings. Our rows of graphs over¬ 
look the Esopus Island' reach and extend within a few feet of the clean slate 
beach, where I had my first lessons in swimming and began to learn the river 
lore. My ancestors had carved out a homestead in the virgin forest of the 
Catskills, where the only water was that of the limpid springs or joyous trout 
brooks, and all my family fear the big water that ebbs and flows. But I love 
and understand it. My earliest recollections are of cut, sore hands from 
whittling out boats, or of days when the dogwood bloomed along the shores, 
and shad fishermen called across the shining waters. I can hear the buoys 
rattle in the cuddy and hear the swish of water over the spruce blades. 
“Early I learned the river ways — to pick and throw shad nets; how and 
where to catch slack-water, how to row and build boats and scap and set 
eel-pots, and to call ‘h-a-a plucky’ in the serene May nights, when the fisher¬ 
men’s lights covered the river. 
“Even in my short thirty summers, I have seen many changes; much of the 
old order pass. I have seen shad sink the nets and used sturgeon roe—caviar — 
for bait in eel-pots. Tw'enty-five cents was a big price for the finest roe shad 
the pick of a hundred. There was no such thing as a license in those days. 
“Ducks! The sight of drifting ice stirs my blood yet and brings back 
memories of March days on the river when every ice floe had a flock of dusk- 
ies. When we finished eating roast duck and maple sugar we had baked shad 
and asparagus. Money was scarce in those days, and everything else plenty. 
My father was often my companion, and always my counselor. When he did 
not got with me half the fun of the day was in telling him of it by the open fireside that evening. He taught me 
the ways of the trout, the mountain streams, and the mountains. I could never make a riverman of him, for his 
heart was in the hemlock-shaded valley, sweet with the sound of the purling brook, the song of the hermit and 
the veerie. 
“And now? Well, after graduating from Harvard in ’01, I brought my ‘cum laude’ and cups won rowing, 
back to the vineyard, where I built a house, got married, and learned that even if ‘a day spent in the chase is 
not counted in the length of life,’ it is counted in one’s work. We have a good time here. We have our 
liberty, no house rent to worry about, while the magazines and our phonograph bring the world to us; and 
though in summer the river smells of gasolene, in late fall and early spring it is the same old Hudson—almost.” 
Julian Burroughs and his 
daughter Elizabeth. 
A SOFT, smooth mound of snow marked 
the spot where my boat lay; I pawed 
the snow away with my foot until the 
sharp stern of the boat showed and I could 
get my mittened fingers under her rail. A 
heave, a lisp of snow like an intaken breath and 
her sixteen feet of tapering ribbed body rose 
and whirled over on the snow, right side up, 
ready to do my instant bidding. As though 
glad to be free and ready for the fight with the 
ice, she slipped down on the frozen, ice-strewn 
beach. I threw my back-load of tools and 
hunting paraphernalia into the narrow cockpit, 
placed my muslin battery and ice-frayed, wire- 
bound oars and was ready. 
It was late in December, and the Hudson, 
steaming in the cold, was choked with tough, 
yellow ice that the flood tide was driving along 
our shore, crunching, jingling, rattling, pushing 
and crowding the great floes out in the channel 
showing no mercy to the smaller ones inshore, 
wheeling them along, splitting them on the 
rocks or grinding them into slush against the 
heavy edges of the ice in the coves. The air 
was still, heavy with the feeling of coming 
snow. 
“I ought to get a duck to-day, to say noth¬ 
ing of that oak log. Tide and air and ice are 
just perfect, ha! ha!” I said aloud, as I 
pushed the duck boat on to the ice in the home 
cove. A little patch of open water came along. 
Into this I darted and was off, having the whole 
deserted river to myself. To have gone down 
stream against the flood would have been im¬ 
possible, to go up with it was like riding the 
back of an angry river monster. My spruce 
blades bit together into the water, rushing the 
boat against the ice, pawing the cakes or push¬ 
ing them under, taking every advantage of all 
open water or weak spots, sometimes rowing, 
crackling and crunching through unbroken 
sheets of over-night ice, sometimes fairly caught 
between the floes and lifted into the air while 
all around me the ice roared and rung, grind¬ 
ing, turning over, darting up, falling and crack¬ 
ing, the little boat quivering and shaking, al¬ 
ways ready to dart ahead when the ice pack 
weakened. I liked the noise. I liked the ex¬ 
pression of unlimited power around me; I 
laughed at the ice. “This boat,” I said to the 
ice that split itself in its efforts to clutch me, 
“was built to defeat you fellows.” 
At Pratt’s Point the onshore set ended and 
I could send the boat flying over the glassy 
water that mirrored the white floes strewing its 
surface, watching the w'ater ahead for ducks. 
I fixed my battery and placed some cakes of 
ice and snow over the forward deck, making 
it look as natural as possible. 
The great stone beak on the southern point 
of Esopus Island was plowing its way through 
the up-coming ice, the ice groaning and pro¬ 
testing angrily, the rock silent and unmoved, 
though for aye it has ripped in two the fields 
of ice, piling up the blocks of crystal blue as 
a child pushes her dominoes against the wall. 
Along close under the rocks back from the 
point I saw' a ripple on the water, coming to¬ 
ward me, picking its way among the ice. It 
was only a muskrat, however, soon brought to 
boat. The big red and black spar buoy that 
marks the end of the rocks off the north end 
of the island was having troubles of its own; 
it had lost most of its paint along with a good 
part of the wood, the iron-like spruce knots 
alone accepting the challenge of the ice. The 
benches and other camp fixtures of” the island 
were buried in snow', the pines alone trying to 
hold off the utter desolation that brooded over 
the place. 
The heavy sky seemed to come lower and 
grow darker, the occasional sounds from the 
shore seemed near and hollow. Far away 
under the high w'estern banks my glasses found 
a black speck, alone on the edge of the cove 
ice. It had the look, somehow, of a black duck. 
As soqn as I saw it was a duck with quickening 
pulse I put away the glasses, pulled my gray- 
white hood over my head and shoulders, drew 
in my ice-coated oars and baring my hands, 
plunged them quickly into the icy water to ad¬ 
just the underwater paddles. At such a time 
your rising temperature urges you on, you 
want to get near the duck for fear something 
may frighten him away, your fingers long to 
drop the paddle to seize the gun, whereas only 
by going slowly, so slowly no motion or ripple 
shows, can you ever get within even long gun¬ 
shot of that eternally suspicious half-brother 
of the mallard, the black duck. Not only that, 
but the conditions must be just right. 
The conditions were perfect, the air was so 
thick with the feeling of the coming snow that 
I could almost smell it; it was so dark and the 
sky so gray-black that the high pine-clad point 
across the river and the white form of the 
Esopus lighthouse were only dimly visible. I 
paddled on. slowly threading my way among 
the lazily drifting floes, ever coming nearer the 
blown black speck on the edge of the shore 
