It is also an interesting sight to see the natives creep after wild-fowl, and under cover of the reeds and bushes get so near that they can either spear them or catch them with a noose.  A reedy lagoon lies at your feet, almost surrounded by rocky cliffs and dusky woods; there are some small open spaces of water, but generally it is so thickly overgrown with high reeds that it looks rather like a swampy wood than a lake; in the distance you see curling up a thin cloud of blue smoke, which indicates that a native encampment is at hand.  The forms of many wild-fowl are seen swimming about among the reeds, for a moment caught sight of, and in the next lost in the dusky green of the vegetation.  Every now and then a small party of them rise up, and after winging their way two or three times round the lagoon, at the same time giving a series of their quack, quack, which are loudly responded to from the recesses of the reeds, they again settle down in another part of it.

This circumstance and a few other signs induce a sportsman to suspect that there is some mischief afloat, and his doubts are soon set at rest:  upon some bough of a tree, which stretches far out over the water and thus affords its occupant a view of all that is passing in the lake below, he sees extended the form of an aged native, his white locks fluttering in the breeze; he is too old to take a part in the sport that is going on, but watches every movement with the most intense interest, and by well-known signs directs the movements of the hunters, who may now be seen creeping noiselessly through the water, and at times they appear so black and still that even a practised huntsman doubts for a moment whether it is a man or the stump of a tree which he looks on.  The natives are sometimes very successful in this kind of hunting:  I have known a single man spear or noose ten wild-fowl, of different sorts, in an hour and a half or two hours’ time.

One very dexterous feat which the natives perform is to kill a bird as it flies from the nest.  This is executed by two men, one of whom, placing himself under the nest, throws a spear through its centre, so as to hit the bird in the breast, which, frightened and slightly wounded, flies out, and is then struck to the ground by the dow-uk, which the other native hurls at it as it quits the tree.  They are such good shots with these short, heavy sticks that pigeons, quails, and even the smallest birds, are usually knocked over with them; and I have often seen them kill a pigeon with a spear, at the distance of about thirty paces.

MODES OF COOKING BIRDS.

Birds are generally cooked by plucking them and throwing them on the fire, certain portions of the entrails being considered a great delicacy:  but when they wish to dress a bird very nicely they first of all draw it and cook the entrails separately; a triangle is then formed round the bird by three red-hot pieces of stick, against which ashes are placed.  Hot coals are also stuffed into the inside of the bird, and it is thus rapidly cooked and left full of gravy.  Wild-fowl dressed in this way on a clean piece of bark form as good a dish as I have ever eaten.