Читать книгу Newspaper Articles - Edward Sylvester Sorenson - Страница 8
ОглавлениеThe Town and Country Journal
Saturday 24 May 1902
The aboriginal methods of catching wild ducks are interesting. Some steal quietly into the water above where the ducks are feeding, and diving under, catch them by the legs. This requires more skill and endurance than any other means, necessitating a long stay under water, part of the time with the eyes open. It is also necessary to swim near the surface for light, and this must be done without producing bubbles or ripples. The ability to locate the birds with exactness while under water is a great factor to success. I have seen little black boys, when practising this feat, dive twenty yards above three floating cherries, and attempt to locate the three by thrusting a little pointed stick, about the size of an ordinary lead pencil, above water, before rising to the surface. They can frequently go within an inch or two of touching the berry, and when one is actually touched the distance of the dive is lengthened. Those children are taught to swim as soon as they are able to walk. The mother throws her child out into deep water, as one would threw a pup, then swims after, it, and brings it ashore. The first fears quickly wear off, and the little one goes whirling with a laugh into midstream, and is soon able to paddle out without assistance. It is taught to throw handsprings and somersaults into water, and to dive for pebbles and mussels. Then they are initiated into the art of diving after ducks.
Ducks have central depots, or headquarters, which is generally a lake, lagoon, or large swamp. Hundreds leave these waters at night, and travel many miles over the surrounding country, dropping into little pools and creeks, into tanks and dams, gilghi holes, and claypans, places where man is the disturbing element by day; returning to headquarters at dawn or sunrise. Thus it comes that the traveller often finds a duck on his line in the morning, and the settler secures a brace in his waterhole by taking the gun with him when going for his matutinal bucket of water. Other nocturnal visitors are the nankeen crane and the black swan. The former appears between sundown and dusk; the latter on starlight nights. Many a summer’s night I have lain out on the soft grass, listening to the shrill cries of the swans and the whistling ducks, the whistling whirr of wings, the flop-flop of the flying fox mingling with the low quick quack-quack of the black duck. And many a gun waits a flight time, with ominous muzzle pointing starwards, ready to discharge a hail of lead into the flying squad. Now and again you hear a thud and a clatter on the galvanised roof, as the deluded birds, mistaking the gleaming iron for water, swoop down upon it. A favorite sport with travellers when camping at a waterhole is catching black duck with fishing lines. The line is thrown across the selvage of weeds, watercress, or lily-leaves, so that the hook, baited with grasshopper, cricket, or shrimp, hangs just over the outer edge. The hook must be very small, so the bird can swallow it, and the line light and strong.
Water-fowl of all descriptions are very plentiful throughout the eastern portion of New South Wales. The swamps and lagoons of the Richmond River have always been exceptionally well favored. One could take any small chain of waterholes, or medium-sized swamp, and there spend the whole day, beating backwards and forwards, shooting till he wearied of the sport.
One particular swamp I visited every Sunday, with old Dash at my heels, and a double-barrelled breechloader on my arm. This swamp measured a mile to two miles in diameter, and was green with patches of water-grass and reeds, with many a little nook and corner and hidden gully, where ducks lay quietly, or slept in long lines or in dense masses along the shore. It was nothing to see ducks rise from the pools here in such clouds as to throw a deep shadow, covering ten acres, and with a sound like the rumbling of thunder, or the rushing of water over a precipice. One morning I crept within range of a bevy of beauties, all with heads under wings, nestling on a patch of floating grass. I fired into the midst of them, reserving a second barrel for the “rise.” ‘But it missed fire. Chagrined, I looked for the result of my shot, expecting half a dozen at least. Imagine my surprise when I saw nothing there but a dying snipe. It was a puzzle to me how I had killed this tiny bird, which I had not seen, and missed the ducks that nestled round it so closely as to obscure every vestige of grass. However, I was more than recompensed a couple of hours later by killing thirteen ducks and a cormorant in a single drive. This was a “pot-shot” as the birds rose from the water.
I could always rely on old Dash to bring the birds to land until one fatal Sunday. I had shot a brace in a clear pool, and Dash, as usual, sprang in after them. He brought one ashore, and returned for the other. It lay very still on the water, apparently dead; but just as he was about to lay hold of it, it fluttered, and dived. Startled, the dog lifted himself suddenly, swung round, and swam with all speed to land. After that, nothing could induce him to approach the deadest of dead ducks on the water, and hence forth I had to do my own swimming.
Where game was in abundance, I could pick my birds where swimming would not be difficult, and avoiding it altogether if possible. One day I had quite a sensational experience. I had shot two ducks on what I took to be a narrow strip of land running out into the water like a jetty. One lay dead, but the other was flapping towards the clear water. A shortage of cartridges induced me to act economically, and, running down, I jumped out on to the level to grab it. I struck the grass close to it, and shot through, deep down into the water, over my head! Scared and breathless, I scrambled out, and sat on the bank staring at it for several minutes before I realised just what had happened. My “strip of land” was nothing more than a patch of floating grass; my gun was on the bottom under it; and the wounded duck had disappeared. I had to strip, of course, and dive for my shooting piece, and it was the hardest bit of diving I ever did. The long grass roots and weeds had an amorous way of clinging about my neck and arms, and groping under seven or eight feet of water in this fashion is anything but a matter of sport. But I recovered the gun. Another time, after swimming out to a duck, a brown hawk swooped down and lifted it from under my nose. That was hard luck; but worse happened when, one cold morning in June, I swam out with my bird and threw it down on the shore. I had carried it in my mouth, and it had not stirred; but the instant it touched the ground it gave a flutter, and flew away as blithely as though nothing had happened.
Shooting whistlers on trees is good sport. This is the only duck that habitually settles in trees, alighting on the limbs in flocks like parrots. It is the easiest of all ducks to kill; the musk-duck is the hardest, but the wood-duck runs it close. The latter may often be seen perched in trees, but mostly on low limbs over water. The black duck never alights on a limb till wounded; when its wings are injured it will leave the water to hide on land. The kite hawk is its deadliest enemy, and the presence of one in the air will keep every duck on the water. When the hawk dips towards them they bunch, and, with loud cries, thrash the water with their wings.
I have frequently gone out before daylight on Sunday morning (the bushman’s holiday), and spent nearly the whole day in the old Racecourse Swamp, Casino, wading up to my shoulders in water, half the time hidden among tall green rushes. Sometimes I went alone, other times with two or three companions, and many are the adventures we had with snakes and eels tangled among the rushes. Occasionally our grounds were shared by blackfellows and gins treading for turtles, and once or twice we had to lie low, up to our necks in water, as some disagreeable squatter came along on the lookout for trespassers. In this swamp was a great clump of mangroves, growing on a floating bed of decayed vegetable matter. Through this, walking on the buoyant, spongy bed, we had trampled a path to the edge of a clear pool, much frequented by ducks and geese. Many a good drive we made there (five geese was my record); but the most exciting part of it was stealing through the mangroves. Generally two or three of us went together, and it was amusing to see one or another break through a weak spot and drop out of sight. Scrambling back on to the spongy bed is something like trying to climb on to weak ice out of a deep hole. There’s only one way to get out—in a desperate hurry, with a cyclonic usage of arms and legs. It often happened that the right of way was disputed by a green or a black snake. As we could not kill it with out making a noise, we mostly lobbed our hats on to it to scare it away.
Down by Codrington, Richmond River, we used to enjoy a row in the early morning, shooting coots or redbills in the weeping willows. The banks are thickly lined with these trees, and it is a pretty sight to see hundreds of coots and nankeen cranes darting out and flying past the little steamers. Duck-shooters, who shot for a living in this neighborhood, use a small canvas dingey or canoe, which is carried on the shoulder, or tucked under the arm, from swamp to swamp. A screen of bushes is rigged in front, and a two-bladed oar, 4ft or 5ft long, is used to propel it. In some localities—Bungawalbyn Creek, Richmond River, for one—fancy prices are paid by these men for the right to shoot on particular swamps. Sydney is their main market, but hundreds are retailed locally at 2s and 3s per pair.
One morning in September, 1895, I was walking along the bank of the Dawson River, Queensland with a single-barrelled muzzle-loader on my arm, when I flushed two young emus. I gave chase, and while running along the bank, noticed two black ducks swim out abreast of me. Stopping short, I lifted the gun quickly and fired, killing both. Dropping the gun there, I continued after the emus. Though still in their infant stripes, they had a fair dash of foot, and I had a long run before I captured the first. Whilst I hobbled it with my handkerchief, the other stood about twenty yards off calling to its mate. The spell refreshed it, and I ran it half a mile, dodging in all directions, before I caught it. I presented them and the ducks to a young man in Taroom, from whom I had borrowed the gun. A fortnight afterwards, at Kinnoul Station, I heard a shearer telling the yarn about “the hare-footed bloke wot run the emus down.” Whenever I tell it people smile significantly; but if I am modest enough to relate it in the third person, I am not considered an Ananias at all; which is human nature all the world over.
