The best of the season was passed long before my
arrival; but in two visits to Carroll's Island, I saw enough to feel
sure that my Baltimore friends vaunted not its capabilities in vain. I
cannot remember having seen elsewhere so promising a "ducking-point."
Imagine a low, marshy peninsula, verging landward into stunted woods,
full of irregular water-courses and stagnant pools--tapering off seaward
into a mere spit of sand, on which reeds and bent-grass scarcely deign
to grow, towards the extreme point, just where the neck is narrowest,
are the "blinds"--ten or twelve in number--a long gunshot apart, in
which the "fowlers" lurk, waiting for their prey. On either side stretch
the broad estuary of the Gunpowder River, and the broader waters of the
Chesapeake, along whose shallows lie the banks of the wild celery on
which the canvas-back loves to feed. Changing these feeding-grounds soon
after dawn and shortly before sunset, the fowls naturally cross the neck
of the little peninsula: they will never willingly pass over land,
unless they can see water close beyond. Occasionally you may have fair
shooting all through the day, but, as a rule, the above-mentioned hours
are those alone when good "flying" may be reckoned on. When it _is_
good, the sport must be superb: it is the very sublimation of
"rocketing.
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