While on a visit to Washington in January, 1878, I went on an
expedition down the Potomac with a couple of friends to shoot
ducks. We left on the morning boat that makes daily trips to and
from Mount Vernon. The weather was chilly and the sky threatening.
The clouds had a singular appearance; they were boat-shaped, with
well-defined keels. I have seldom known such clouds to bring rain;
they are simply the fleet of Æolus, and so it proved on this
occasion, for they gradually dispersed or faded out and before noon
the sun was shining.
We saw numerous flocks of ducks on the passage down, and saw a gun
(the man was concealed) shoot some from a "blind" near Fort
Washington. Opposite Mount Vernon, on the flats, there was a large
"bed" of ducks. I thought the word a good one to describe a long
strip of water thickly planted with them. One of my friends was a
member of the Washington and Mount Vernon Ducking Club, which has
its camp and fixtures just below the Mount Vernon landing; he was
an old ducker. For my part, I had never killed a duck,--except
with an axe,--nor have I yet.
We made our way along the beach from the landing, over piles of
driftwood, and soon reached the quarters, a substantial building,
fitted up with a stove, bunks, chairs, a table, culinary utensils,
crockery, etc., with one corner piled full of decoys. There were
boats to row in and boxes to shoot from, and I felt sure we should
have a pleasant time, whether we got any ducks or not. The weather
improved hourly, till in the afternoon a well-defined installment
of the Indian summer, that had been delayed somewhere, settled down
upon the scene; this lasted during our stay of two days. The river
was placid, even glassy, the air richly and deeply toned with haze,
and the sun that of the mellowest October. "The fairer the
weather, the fewer the ducks," said one of my companions. "But
this is better than ducks," I thought, and prayed that it might
last.
Then there was something pleasing to the fancy in being so near to
Mount Vernon. It formed a-sort of rich, historic background to our
flitting and trivial experiences. Just where the eye of the great
Captain would perhaps first strike the water as he came out in the
morning to take a turn up and down his long piazza, the Club had
formerly had a "blind," but the ice of a few weeks before our visit
had carried it away. A little lower down, and in full view from his
bedroom window, was the place where the shooting from the boxes was
usually done.
The duck is an early bird, and not much given to wandering about in
the afternoon; hence it was thought not worth while to put out the
decoys till the next morning. We would spend the afternoon roaming
inland in quest of quail, or rabbits, or turkeys (for a brood of
the last were known to lurk about the woods back there). It was a
delightful afternoon's tramp through oak woods, pine barrens, and
half-wild fields. We flushed several quail that the dog should
have pointed, and put a rabbit to rout by a well-directed
broadside, but brought no game to camp. We kicked about an old
bushy clearing, where my friends had shot a wild turkey
Thanksgiving Day, but the turkey could not be started again. One
shooting had sufficed for it. We crossed or penetrated extensive
pine woods that had once (perhaps in Washington's time) been
cultivated fields; the mark of the plow was still clearly visible.
The land had been thrown into ridges, after the manner of English
fields, eight or ten feet wide, with a deep dead furrow between
them for purposes of drainage. The pines were scrubby,--what are
known as the loblolly pines,--and from ten to twelve inches through
at the butt. In a low bottom, among some red cedars, I saw robins
and several hermit thrushes, besides the yellow-rumped warbler.
That night, as the sun went down on the one hand, the full moon
rose up on the other, like the opposite side of an enormous scale.
The river, too, was presently brimming with the flood tide. It
was so still one could have carried a lighted candle from shore to
shore. In a little skiff, we floated and paddled up under the
shadow of Mount Vernon and into the mouth of a large creek that
flanks it on the left. In the profound hush of things, every sound
on either shore was distinctly heard. A large bed of ducks were
feeding over on the Maryland side, a mile or more away, and the
multitudinous sputtering and shuffling of their bills in the water
sounded deceptively near. Silently we paddled in that direction.
When about half a mile from them, all sound of feeding suddenly
ceased; then, after a time, as we kept on, there was a great clamor
of wings, and the whole bed appeared to take flight. We paused and
listened, and presently heard them take to the water again, far
below and beyond us. We loaded a boat with the decoys that night,
and in the morning, on the first sign of day, towed a box out in
position, and anchored it, and disposed the decoys about it. Two
hundred painted wooden ducks, each anchored by a small weight that
was attached by a cord to the breast, bowed and sidled and rode the
water, and did everything but feed, in a bed many yards long. The
shooting-box is a kind of coffin, in which the gunner is interred
amid the decoys,--buried below the surface of the water, and
invisible, except from a point above him. The box has broad canvas
wings, that unfold and spread out upon the surface of the water,
four or five feet each way. These steady it, and keep the ripples
from running in when there is a breeze. Iron decoys sit upon these
wings and upon the edge of the box, and sink it to the required
level, so that, when everything is completed and the gunner is in
position, from a distance or from the shore one sees only a large
bed of ducks, with the line a little more pronounced in the centre,
where the sportsman lies entombed, to be quickly resurrected when
the game appears. He lies there stark and stiff upon his back,
like a marble effigy upon a tomb, his gun by his side, with barely
room to straighten himself in, and nothing to look at but the sky
above him. His companions on shore keep a lookout, and, when ducks
are seen on the wing, cry out, "Mark, coming up," or "Mark, coming
down," or, "Mark, coming in," as the case may be. If they decoy,
the gunner presently hears the whistle of their wings, or maybe he
catches a glimpse of them over the rim of the box as they circle
about. Just as they let down their feet to alight, he is expected
to spring up and pour his broadside into them. A boat from shore
comes and picks up the game, if there is any to pick up.
The club-man, by common consent, was the first in the box that
morning; but only a few ducks were moving, and he had lain there
an hour before we marked a solitary bird approaching, and, after
circling over the decoys, alighting a little beyond them. The
sportsman sprang up as from the bed of the river, and the duck
sprang up at the same time, and got away under fire. After a while
my other companion went out; but the ducks passed by on the other
side, and he had no shots. In the afternoon, remembering the
robins, and that robins are game when one's larder is low, I set
out alone for the pine bottoms, a mile or more distant. When one
is loaded for robins, he may expect to see turkeys, and VICE VERSA.
As I was walking carelessly on the borders of an old brambly field
that stretched a long distance beside the pine woods, I heard a
noise in front of me, and, on looking in that direction, saw a
veritable turkey, with a spread tail, leaping along at a rapid
rate. She was so completely the image of the barnyard fowl that I
was slow to realize that here was the most notable game of that
part of Virginia, for the sight of which sportsmen's eyes do water.
As she was fairly on the wing, I sent my robin-shot after her; but
they made no impression, and I stood and watched with great
interest her long, level flight. As she neared the end of the
clearing, she set her wings and sailed straight into the corner of
the woods. I found no robins, but went back satisfied with having
seen the turkey, and having had an experience that I knew would
stir up the envy and the disgust of my companions. They listened
with ill-concealed impatience, stamped the ground a few times,
uttered a vehement protest against the caprice of fortune that
always puts the game in the wrong place or the gun in the wrong
hands, and rushed off in quest of that turkey. She was not where
they looked, of course; and, on their return about sundown, when
they had ceased to think about their game, she flew out of the top
of a pine-tree not thirty rods from camp, and in full view of them,
but too far off for a shot.
In my wanderings that afternoon, I came upon two negro shanties in
a small triangular clearing in the woods; no road but only a
footpath led to them. Three or four children, the eldest a girl of
twelve, were about the door of one of them. I approached and asked
for a drink of water. The girl got a glass and showed me to the
spring near by.
"We's grandmover's daughter's chilern," she said, in reply to
my inquiry. Their mother worked in Washington for "eighteen cents
a month," and their grandmother took care of them.
Then I thought I would pump her about the natural history of the
place.
"What was there in these woods,--what kind of animals,--any? "
"Oh, yes, sah, when we first come here to live in dese bottoms de
possums and foxes and things were so thick you could hardly go out-
o'-doors." A fox had come along one day right where her mother was
washing, and they used to catch the chickens "dreadful."
"Were there any snakes?"
"Yes, sah; black snakes, moccasins, and doctors."
The doctor, she said, was a powerful ugly customer; it would get
right hold of your leg as you were passing along, and whip and
sting you to death. I hoped I should not meet any "doctors."