stiff, I skimmed along at a rate most delightful. After a most pleasant journey of about an hour-and-a-half's duration, during which time the abrupt changes in the direction of the shore kept me continually trimming my sails, I discovered a narrow opening or gut which rightly enough I judged to be the pass into Corpus Christi bay. Putting my craft in stays, by means of a rapid motion of my paddle I entered this channel, or narrow as it might be very appropriately called, on the starboard tack, and speedily found myself amid a multitude of islands, shoals, flats, false channels, &c., which, I undertake to say, would have bothered a smugglers' pilot. On one of these islands, however, I landed just as the sun had dipped towards the west. had taken the precaution of going ashore near a bank higher than common, with the wind rather off the land, well aware how sharp were the customers I had to deal with; fastening my canoe in the smallest little harbour I ever saw (two canoes would have inconveniently crowded it), where I felt sure no tide could leave it dry, since no difference greater than about a foot is ever noticed off these shores, I crept with my double barrelled gun to the crest of the bank, and cautiously peeped over, beneath the shelter of a knot of prickly pears. Before me was a swamp half dry, half wet, so covered with ducks, geese, pelicans, snipes, and sand-hill cranes, as literally to confuse me. None but those who have sported in regions where the fowling-piece is not heard perhaps twice in a year can conceive the amount of wild-fowl to be found in these sequestered spots during cold weather. I heard, on my first arrival in Texas, stories of the number of ducks killed at one discharge of a double barrelled gun, which I treated as fabulous, and never was I fully convinced of the truth of their assertions until the present moment. The gun I had with me belonged to a man named Mackenzie, and was undoubtedly the heaviest fowling-piece I have ever handled; the owner had asserted continually the truth of his having killed forty-six ducks at one volley, by taking certain preliminary precautions which he had carefully explained to me, and which I was determined religiously to follow. The gun was now very heavily loaded with swan shot, and my distance from the birds about fifty yards or perhaps less. Taking care to make not the slightest noise to alarm the countless thousands which were swimming on all sides, my eye selected the pond most thickly peopled by the feathered tribe. Towards this I levelled my gun, and watched patiently the proper moment to fire; my object was to seize an opportunity when the greatest possible number were in line within range of my gun. Two minutes of the deepest anxiety followed, when a black column presented themselves exactly in the desired position, and treacherously ambuscading my victims, I pulled both triggers. Never before or since did I witness the confusion which ensued-thousands and tens of thousands of ducks, geese, swans, &c., were on the wing from every brook, pond, swamp, and morass in the neighbourhood, screeching, cackling, uttering a series of cries most inharmonious and unmusical, fulfilling the expression, for an instant, of" darkening the sky." Little heeding, however, their clamour, I left my gun, and rushed to the pond upon which I had poured death and destruction. The amount of dead, disabled, badly wounded, &c. would have made

a most respectable figure in the Gazette; i. e., general officers (swans), one; commissioned officers, captains (geese), eight; non-commissioned officers and privates (ducks and snipes), twenty-three; total, thirty-two! Securing the whole I conveyed them to the canoe in several journeys, and then sat down on the bank to ruminate on the awful amount of slaughter which I had committed. I could scarcely believe my eye, and yet it was as plain as a pike-staff. After ten minutes spent in thought, I determined to dine. This once decided on, I commenced operations; it being against all rule in Texas to speculate on the prudence or imprudence of any particular course of proceeding. Collecting drift-wood, of which there was ample store along the beach, I soon had a fine blazing fire; and while it was gaining strength, I prepared a couple of ducks for roasting: plucking, cleaning, and splitting them open was an operation, by one so used to rough it as I then was, of very short duration. Taking an old iron ramrod from the canoe, always carried for the purpose, I spitted them, stuck the iron in the ground with an inward slope towards the fire, brought up some biscuits from the boat, put my coffee-pot in requisition, and then lighting my venerable pipe, sat down to await the feast. What a situation for a philosopher! Some ten thousand miles from home, on the wildest and least known coast of Mexico, in a little inland archipelago, I was cooking my dinner as coolly as I might have done in a garret in St. Giles's, not thinking myself in the least out of place. I now look upon the situation as singularly romantic: then the greatest romance was the fact that I had no fork nor plate, and I remember well how ill-used the want of these articles made me feel myself to be. At length, however, after a due amount of patience, my ducks were roasted, my coffee made-and excellent I thought it without milk or sugar-and I dined; it is seriously a question if ever I shall enjoy a meal as I did that one again-it is to be hoped I may. Another pipe having aided the digestion of my two birds, biscuit, and coffee, though very much against the grain I rose to prepare for my return. Lo and behold it wanted an hour of sunset, and at the back of the island a heavy bank, indicative of a very bad night, was rising. My decision was come to instanter. To attempt to regain the schooner was useless; had I been rash enough to try it on, the probability is I should have been food for sharks and alligators long before the present moment. All this came of dining; and now that I had done so, and eat enough for three, I could not help wondering at the necessity I had felt of taking this species of bodily refection. But regrets are vain. The storm was approaching, and my only aim was to guard against it.

The drift wood along the island was abundant, and with my handy little axe, without which I never travelled, some rope yarns, and the sheets of my sails, I soon succeeded in erecting the frame of a small hut, or, more properly speaking, screen, that, added to the shelter of the bank which lay between me and the coming storm, would keep the wind from too severely annoying me. Over the frame I laid an Egyptian cotton bed and my boat sails, taking the precaution of lashing them strongly, and farther securing them by placing stones and earth round the lower part of my tent. The fire

was in front, also sheltered from the wind; and, as I felt pretty certain rain would not accompany the gale, I had little apprehension for the night. My next care was to look to my canoe, which I lashed by its painter and stern ropes to a heavy log, taking care to cover over the game therein with the tarpaulin which had previously kept the wet from my traps. I then hurriedly collected as large a heap of wood as was possible, wherewith to feed my fire; then loading my gun, one barrel with ball, the other with buck-shot, and placing it and my ammunition within the tent, I spitted another duck, lit my pipe, and wrapping my Mexican poncho lightly round me, sat down to await the coming storm.

I certainly might have welcomed a companion to enliven the long watches of the coming night, could I have selected amid all my Texan friends one of the few whose society would have been pleasant; but as it was not to be so, I determined to make the best of my quarters alone, remembering that, since the days of Adam, many had been worse off-Alexander Selkirk, the sailors a whole year abandoned at Port San Estavan, and others too numerous to mention. Besides, I had food, water, tobacco, and whiskey; and with these adjuncts one could well pass a night in worse quarters than those in which it was my lot on the present occasion to bivouac. About an hour passed ere the wind rose, and then it came stronger and stronger, until at length its force was so great that I had reason to be thankful my tent was pitched under shelter of the above-mentioned bank. It blew a stiff close-reefed-topsail breeze, and any vessel which encountered its force that night must have done so under very snug canvas; for my part, much as I have been used to storms in the Mexican Gulf, I preferred my little island to the deck even of a frigate just at that moment. There was no shortening sail here, no reefing, no heaving to, nothing in fact but to lie down and take it quietly. A hearty supper and a long and deliberate smoke consumed several hours, when, just as I was about to resign myself to slumber, I heard the howl of wolves. I had been expecting the visit, and for this purpose it was that I had loaded my gun. Well aware that an attempt on my wellsecured wild fowl in the canoe would be made, I determined to punish the marauders-a small kind of wolf, called caiotoe in Texas. Creeping within my tent, and poising my gun on a log, I had just time to adjust myself when a party came tearing along the beach under cover of the bank, and immediately surrounded the canoe. They were some ten in number, more like large foxes than wolves, and quite careless of the blaze of my fire, so intent were they upon their supposed prey. Taking aim at one bold fellow who was thrusting his nose under the tarpaulin, I planted a ball through his head, while I scattered my buck shot among his fellows. A fearful howl followed, the ball laid one low, crippled another, and the whole party slunk off at a most unheroic rate. Having again loaded my gun, I dragged the dead wolf out of the water, and left him as a scarecrow to frighten away his fellows; in half-an-hour more I was sound asleep within my little hut.

* Beagle and Adventure's Voyages, vol. ii. p. 371.

Next morning, when Phoebus had lifted his head, and

"From her burnish'd gate the goodly glittering east

Gilds every lofty top, which late the humorous night

Bespangled had with pearl, to please the morning sight,"

I was up and active. The breeze was gradually lulling, the clouds to the nor-west were breaking, and I felt confident that, as the great part of my course was under the lee of the land off which the wind blew, a very short time would allow me to proceed. Having breakfasted once more on duck, biscuit, and whiskey punch, I leisurely loaded my canoe, and about ten a gentle breeze, a merry sun, and a blue sky, with a great diminution in the swell of the water, encouraged me to trim my light sails, hoist my long pennant, and once more skim the surface of the water. The wind, though more than I bargained for, carried me along at a most surprising rate, aided by my paddle, with which I steered and assisted my progress. About one I reached the Santa Anna, where my wild fowl were welcomed the more, that all hands expected the gale had sent me, canoe and all, as old Terry the gunner expressed it, "to Davy's locker."

SALMON FISHING IN IRELAND.

BY FORSAYTH.

I was born and bred on the banks of the Blackwater, in the county of Cork. I believe from the first day I took to the water quite natural, like the young ducks; for the longest thing off I can bring to my mind, is fishing for trout up to my knees in the river. I stuck to the rod from that day to this; but the salmon were my game, from the time I hooked the first of them; and all now I care for is to live long and to die with a firm hold of a twenty pound fish.

I was till lately poor enough, and often hard run for a meal, for I had too much spirit to work; and though the laws gave me but little trouble now or then, there are times when fish are not to be had by fair means or foul. However, I parted with poverty one morning through the means of a lucky bird I had; but I must not tell you all my story in a minute, as I must take a little time about it, like the best writers of the day, as they call themselves.

When I was about twenty years of age, I was a very fine young man, every one told me, and sorely in the want of a wife they said; but Shrovetide comes in the spring, when the new fish begin to run, and I thought more of them than of the girls; besides, being so much in the water keeps the thoughts of marriage out of a man's head-as any one can try themselves, if they will not take my word for it. But what the neighbours could not do, though they got great trouble match-making for me, I did for myself; and a droll way enough it was to get a wife, as I often thought afterwards.

I hooked a fine salmon, one morning, on a ford near Ballyhooly, where the river was so wide that the very first run he made, he did

not leave as much line in my wheel as would make a pair of garters; and though I ran to keep up with him through rocks and stumps that left marks on my poor shins to this very day, he would have broken all away from me, when what should I see, but a fine strong girl, washing praties a good piece down the river. I screeched out to her to catch the rod for me when the salmon would run it down to her; and with that, I let all go with the stream; and sure enough, it was she who caught it handy, and wheeled up on the fish that was pretty well tired by this time, so I had nothing to do when I got down to her but to gaff him. The least I could do then was to give the girl the fish to take home with the praties, and to go home to her in the evening to help to eat him; and one way or another, the end of it was we were married soon after, and I found it as lucky a way to get a wife as others did who lost a deal more time by courting.

There was a young gentleman came of age, and in for his property on the banks of the river, not far from where I lived. He was till lately in England for his education, they said: he brought over all kinds of horses and dogs and servants, and if you believed half what they said, there was not a poor man in Ireland who knew how to do a single hap'orth, But amongst them, to be sure, was a fisherman, or a keeper as he called himself; and if he could do what he said he could, he would not leave as much as one high fish in the river.

One fine morning in the month of March, just as I was tying up my rod at the river, who should I see drive down in an elegant gig but this gentleman and his fisherman; so, out of civility, I sat down and lit my pipe, till they had first fished before me, though it was "first come first served" in the same place. Out they pulled two elegant rods, with as much brass about them and as many joints as a pair of bagpipes; and they had big boxes of grand flies, that would make the handsomest swarm of bees in the world, if they were all shaken loose of a windy day. They fished the stream till they were well tired, and never stirred a single fish; when the gentleman said to myself, "There is rain over-head" says he, "for there's no better flies in all London than what I have brought over; and I have the best fisherman in the world," looking over at his keeper; "and so he ought," says he, "for I give him great wages, and the best of eating and drinking besides."

"May be, your honour," says I, "you would take one trial of a small little fly I have in the box," pulling out a little grey I had, and putting it up instead of his grand peacock; and sure enough, it was not long before he hooked a peal, and killed him; and soon after he rose another, but he missed him, as he was too eager for sport, and struck at the fish too soon.

"Well!" says the gentleman to his fisherman, "you are a deceiver" says he, "and no way understanding in fishing; and 'tis slender enough you would be, if you eat nothing but what fish you killed since you came to Ireland; but," says he, "I will give you one chance for your situation, and if you do not beat this man with all your flies against his one to morrow, you never will see any more of my money.

G G