ually "straight powder."
There is a good show of woodcock at certain seasons; but it sounds
strange to English ears when they speak of the season opening in June;
the bird is much smaller than ours, weighing, I believe, about seven or
eight ounces, and it is found much oftener in comparatively open ground
than in thick woodland.

But the royal sport of Maryland is the wildfowl shooting on the
Chesapeake Bay. The best of the season was passed long before my
arrival; but in two visits to Carroll's Island, I saw enough to feel
sure that my Baltimore friends vaunted not its capabilities in vain. I
cannot remember having seen elsewhere so promising a "ducking-point."
Imagine a low, marshy peninsula, verging landward into stunted woods,
full of irregular water-courses and stagnant pools--tapering off seaward
into a mere spit of sand, on which reeds and bent-grass scarcely deign
to grow, towards the extreme point, just where the neck is narrowest,
are the "blinds"--ten or twelve in number--a long gunshot apart, in
which the "fowlers" lurk, waiting for their prey. On either side stretch
the broad estuary of the Gunpowder River, and the broader waters of the
Chesapeake, along whose shallows lie the banks of the wild celery on
which the canvas-back loves to feed. Changing these feeding-grounds soon
after dawn and shortly before sunset, the fowls naturally cross the neck
of the little peninsula: they will never willingly pass over land,
unless they can see water close beyond. Occasionally you may have fair
shooting all through the day, but, as a rule, the above-mentioned hours
are those alone when good "flying" may be reckoned on. When it _is_
good, the sport must be superb: it is the very sublimation of
"rocketing." You must hold straight and forward to stop a cock-pheasant
whizzing over the leafless tree-tops--well up in the keen January wind;
but a swifter traveler yet is the canvas-back drake, as he swings over
the bar, at the fullest speed of his whistling pinions, disdaining to
turn a foot from his appointed course, albeit vaguely suspecting the
ambush below. The height of the "flying" varies, of course, greatly. I
saw nothing brought down, to the best of my calculation, within
forty-five or fifty yards, and most were much beyond that distance. At
first you let several chances slip, believing them to be out of shot;
but the mighty duck-guns, carrying five or six drams of strong coarse
powder, do their work gallantly; and not