Gun gone to glory, vision of some one’s big brother with possible heavy fist and inevitable “good, round, mouth-filling oath,” hand, head, and, indeed, all my anatomy aching, there was a consolation that poured metaphorical oil on my wounds and alleviated the pangs of pain—I had shot the duck!
You won’t find wild duck at Ste. Anne’s to-day, except some stray ones of over-curious trait, who refuse to be advised by their experienced friends. You’ll be lucky if you hit upon a spot within thirty miles of Montreal where you do not find “pothunters” by the dozen—that New World species of the genus homo who should have lived in Arcadia, where they would certainly have utilized their propensity to good purpose by driving away the birds which haunted Lake Stymphalus, without the brazen clappers of Vulcan or the arrows of Hercules.
For short holidays, one of the most popular localities, and therefore one which has been well spoiled, was in the vicinity of Carillon Bay. You may enjoy a varied autumn vacation by taking the steamer Prince of Wales at Lachine, landing at Carillon, and staging about twenty minutes to the beautifully situated village of St. Andrews. There beg, buy or borrow a dug-out canoe, small enough to be concealed in cover, and paddle down the charming North River, with its picturesque rocks and pretty shadows, until you cast anchor at the portage of the Presqu’ Isle. Here you will find remnants of old camp-fires, plenty of free fuel, hay-stacks in the vicinity to make your bed, and elderberries ripe in September, luscious in October, waiting in thick and tempting clusters to be eaten on the spot, or taken home and made into wine. Pitch your tent at this point, and portage your canoe through the narrow strip of loose soil and water to some convenient slip in what is called “The Bay.” You fasten a stout stick through a rope or chain on the nose of the boat, and two getting abreast of it where the portage is heavy, or at each end with outstretched arms where the water is deep, you have quite an enjoyable tug, while the novelty of being up to your knees in mud and water, without getting wet if you wear “beef” moccasins, or a delicious indifference to wet feet if you do not, gives you a sensation of “roughing it,” that not even the pain you’ll get across your shoulders can make you impugn.
The Bay, which is two miles across, is picturesque, and, were it not getting too well known, a glorious place for duck. From it you see St. Placide, about seven miles away, its church spires gleaming in the sunshine; and nearer, Presqu’ Isle Point, Borwash Point, Point de Roche, Coon’s Point, Jones’ Island, and Green Island—between which and the end of the Presqu’ Isle you can see any vessels that pass up and down the Ottawa River. Mount Rigaud—mysterious hill, with its “Lake of Stones”—rises to the west, while the few farms and houses of the Bay settlement lie on the uplands to the north. Over the islands the smoke of steamers miles away may be seen, and the plash of the paddle-wheels heard like the distant “rat-tat” of kettledrums.
The most unique echo I know in Canada follows your shot in this Bay, and is one of the “lions”—a roaring lion at that—of the place. It travels in tremulous waves of sound across the water, lurks for a moment in the bush of the Presqu’ Isle, then shoots out abruptly on the other side and flies over the Ottawa to strike Mount Rigaud, where it reverberates from hill and dale, now to the right, now to the left, in a mysterious prolonged monotone, as if at hide-and-seek in the “Lake of Stones.” Then it returns with a scared suddenness, only to fly back in broken flutterings of sound, from crag to crag, from haunt to haunt, again to be repeated, like frightened deer, chased and cooped up on every side, with no escape, till, after several such re-echoes, it calms to a lullaby, and dies away on the distant hills. A marsh fringes the Presqu’ Isle, and on its borders are many good feeding spots for the duck. The grass of the marsh is mowed with scythes and heaped in large stacks, which you can mount to spy for duck that may be feeding among the lily stalks—though, if your experience is limited, or your vision none of the best, you will often be puzzled to know whether the moving objects are lily stalks or duck.
For many years, a few Canadians of French descent, the inheritors of the old voyageur-sportsman spirit of the ancien régime, who dread legitimate labor with all their hearts, but love harder work that smacks of adventure, have camped in the vicinity of the Bay, trapping musk-rats, catching fish or shooting duck and snipe. The veritable chief of the clan bears the martial name of “Victor,” and is a character in his way. I first saw him with his breeches rolled above his knees, loading his gun in the marsh. Nature evidently made him in haste, for there is an unfinished look about his face, and enough indentations around his head to give a phrenologist the blues. His nose is mostly nostril, and fiery enough to make the nose of Bardolph look pale, while his eyes are black as a sloe and piercing as a falcon’s. Though he can neither read nor rhyme, he has a taste in common with Byron—he hates pork and loves gin. When he swears—and then he best pronounces English—spiders feign death, and his dog turns his tail between his legs and moans. He is said, like sheep, to undress only once a year. When he changes his clothes the very pores of his skin open themselves in mute astonishment. If you can hire him by the day as your “Man Friday,” it will add very much to your sport, for he is a walking map of the haunts of duck, and has a perfect genius for waking them up. He will steal with his canoe through the marsh wherever they can go, quietly as a snake in the grass, until he is within gunshot of his game. To crown all, he is the presiding genius of bouillon; and I canonize him for this, if for nothing more.
Have you ever tasted bouillon made in camp? It is not “fricasseed nightmare,” mon ami. It is more savory than tongue of lark or peacocks’ brains, or other rarest dish that epicures of ancient Rome ever compounded. Yes, it even throws the wild boar of Apicius or the roast pig of Charles Lamb into the shades of unpalatableness. You take water, fish, musk-rat or squirrel (in lieu of beef), potatoes, onions, butter, pepper and salt, and boil them all together in a pot, in the open air, over a glowing wood fire. Pour off the soup, and you have the nectar of the gods; the balance is a dish I would not be ashamed to set before a hungry king. I would not give one sip of bouillon made by Victor for a bottle of the wine in which Cleopatra dissolved her precious pearl.
But where are the wild duck?—for this seems all digression. Ah! there they come, with the flutter of wings which starts something of the same sort in your heart, their long necks stretched out, following their leader in Indian file, or wedged together like the Macedonian phalanx, or spreading out when they come nearer in échelon or like skirmishers, as if knowing the risk of receiving your shot in close column. You lie low, concealed by the long stalks of the marsh grass—the point of your canoe hidden by the house of a musk-rat. What a quiet few moments as they come within range! You can almost hear your heart beat. Gun at full cock, nerves steady as a rock, ducks coming straight to their fate—look out! Forty yards off, up goes gun to shoulder in a twinkling, eye following the game, a gentle pressure of the trigger—deftly, as if all your care and coolness had been concentrated for that instant in your right forefinger—down drop the legs of a duck, denoting mortal wound, off goes your dog at a plunge, back in boisterous haste and trembling, with a frothy mouthful which he drops at your feet with an almost human sense of importance, and an expressive wag of his tail that quivers delicious delight from every hair! If a “fellow feeling” does not make you “wondrous kind” to that dog—if you do not realize the touch of nature that Darwin declares makes you kin—if, after his companionship, you are not sparing in your chastisement, generous with your pats, and loath to treat him like a dog, you must be a brute, beneath the stature of a trained retriever, and unworthy to have the meanest and most mongrel cur whine at your grave.
Education has ennobled your dog. His senses have gained a keenness you may envy, while more eloquence and gratitude is gestured from his tail than can be uttered by many a human tongue and eye. I will not question the propriety of Solomon’s instructions in training a child, but I protest against its applicability to a dog. A dog that has been bullied into obedience possesses the same sort of training as a boy who has been whipped into morality. They both become white-livered; the dog carries his tail between his legs, and so would the boy if he had one. You may have seen a hot-tempered drover beat an obstinate cow in unsuccessful attempts to make it move, while another simply twisted its tail, and at once stimulated its muscles of locomotion. If you have to chastise a dumb brute at all, you may as well do it mercifully, and on the Italian system of penmanship—the heavy strokes upward and the light ones down; specially so with a dog you wish to be your companion in hunting duck or partridge.
If you have done much duck-hunting you will have discovered that within rifle-range of civilization the instinct of duck is surpassingly keener than outside the pale. In spite of the “blue unclouded weather,” soft calm on the water, and stillness in the air, you cannot catch them asleep any more than a weasel. If you would get within range of them at their feeding-ground you must slip slyly and softly. They sniff gunpowder in the air, and know it from the smell of burning bush. Victor vows they know an empty cartridge-case or gun-wad a mile away. You cannot make them believe your canoe is a musk-rat house, however you try. You cannot put an empty calabash on your head as they do in China, and wade among them, so as to pull them under the water and secure them by a strap. You may fool a Chinese or a Hindoo duck in that way, but not a Canadian. They will play in the water twenty yards away when you have not a gun; but they know the difference between the barrels of one peeping from a marsh and the grass stalks or lilies, better than many people know the difference between a duck and a crow.