The heart will throb in sorrow If from its idol torn. Nor elsewhere joy will borrow, If love’s return be scorn. Then do not speak so coldly, Cold words my heart will chill; E’en if I’ve lov’d too boldly, Oh! let me worship still, &c.
BY HENRY WILLIAM HERBERT, AUTHOR OF FRANK FORESTER’S “FIELD SPORTS,” “FISH AND FISHING,” ETC.
[Illustration: THE GREEN-WINGED TEAL. (_Anas Carolinensis._)
In this present month, the sport of duck-shooting on the inland streams, rivers, and lakelets, may be held to commence in earnest, as contrasted to the pursuit of the same tribes on the outer bays, estuaries, and surf-banks. About the end of September, and thenceforth through this and the next ensuing month, according to the variations of the seasons, and the longer or shorter endurance of that delicious time, the most delicious and most gorgeous of the whole American year, known throughout this continent as Indian Summer, the Mallard, and the two beautiful species which we have placed at the head of this article, begin to make their appearance on the little lakes of the interior, and in the various streams and rivers which fall into them, and thence downward to the Atlantic seaboard.
In the vast northern solitudes of the great lakes of the northwest, in all the streams of Upper Canada, even to the feeders of Lake Superior, and throughout the western country so far south as Texas, and northward to the Columbia and the fur countries, the Blue-Winged Teal breeds, literally by myriads. Throughout the great lakes, it is abundant in the early autumn, becoming excessively fat on the seed of the wild rice, with which the shallows of all those waters are overgrown, and being deservedly esteemed as one of the best, if not the very best, of the duck tribe. But it is the first of its race to remove from the wild, limpid waters, and wood-embosomed rivers of the great west, to the seaboard tide-waters, taking the inland water-courses on their route, rarely visiting the actual sea-shores, and proceeding on the occurrence of the first frosts, for they are singularly susceptible of cold, to the Southern States, where they swarm, especially in the inundated rice-fields of Georgia and South Carolina, during the winter months.