Page:Mexico in 1827 Vol 2.djvu/693

Rh as if they had been cast in the same mould. In passing the marshes I killed nine ducks, and brought down two wild geese at a double shot, as they rose out of some rushes near the road. We found them most excellent eating, and regretted that it was not possible to add them more frequently to our bill of fare; but, except by a chance shot, it is extremely difficult to obtain so great a prize. In the lakes of the valley of Mexico they are seldom seen, though ducks, snipes, and bitterns, are found there in prodigious numbers. I have frequently shot twenty and thirty snipes in a morning; and a great tiro de patos near Mexico is one of the most curious scenes that it is possible to witness. The Indians, by whom it is principally conducted, prepare a battery composed of seventy or eighty musket barrels arranged in two rows, one of which sweeps the water, while the other is a little elevated, so as to take the ducks as they rise upon the wing. The barrels are connected with each other, and fired by a train; but the whole apparatus, as well as the man who has charge of it, are concealed in the rushes, until the moment when, after many hours of cautious labour, one of the dense columns of ducks, which blacken, at times, the surface of the lake, is driven by the distant canoes of his associates sufficiently near to the fatal spot. The double tier of guns is immediately fired, and the water remains strewed with the bodies of the killed, and the wounded, whose escape is cut off by the circle of canoes beyond.