seen them hide their heads in the interstices of
a dry wall, and taken out by my dog by the
tail feathers. A good sportsman will bring
down even a hundred a day, and very many
their forty or fifty. "The times are changing,
however," said an old netter to me the
other day, "for our sins. God does not send
so many birds as he did once upon a time,
and we shall never have them on this road
again until we do as they do on the opposite
coast, blind and cage some quails, and
hang them up as lures. Mama, mia! how
sweetly they sing, and how the birds flock
at the call!"

I cannot help admiring the consistency
of the observation of my pious friend; yet
certain allowances must be made for a poor
disappointed man, who comes home after a
long night's watching without a quail in his
bag, and who can remember the time when
forty thousand were netted in a morning. I
have met with several netters, indeed, who
speak of their twenty thousand in a morning;
that is to say, in the whole compass of the
island, and can myself testify to many
thousands being taken.

"What is to be done with such an infinitude
of birds? The disposal of them leads to
several branches of occupation; for to live
upon quails would appear to these people to
be as outrageous a proposition as to live upon
tarts. As soon, then, as any quantity is taken,
porters (boys and girls) are put in requisition;
who take them to one of the receivers-general
of the island—perhaps some thrifty fisherman
—who pays each individual at the end of
the season a certain price, regulated by what
he receives in the capital. When the birds
are plentiful, the netter will receive from two
to three grains a quail (a penny or three-
halfpence), or at the beginning of the season
even as much as five grains. The island
speculator then sends them to a receiver-
general at Naples, taking, as his profit, half
a grain for every bird. In Naples they are
retailed at double the price to the dealer,
eating-house-keeper, or the Gran Signore. On
a favourable morning quails are the principal
article of export to Naples, and hundreds of
shoeless contadini are engaged in taking them
down to Marina upon their heads. Packed
in large, square, low baskets, called spaselli,
and covered over with net-work, they are
piled up, one upon another, in the bark, a
little mountain of quails, of which many die
before they can reach the capital.

Thus ends all the bustle, and shouting.
and popping, and anxiety of the morning.
The great nets are lowered; for few birds
enter after daybreak; yet the sportsman with
his gun, and the netter with his hand-net,
continue through the long day to beat up
and sweep over the country, and unnestle
any unfortunate bird that may have escaped
the slaughter of the morning. As evening
approaches, the bereaved residue of the
thousands who entered in the morning on what
they hoped to find a hospitable resting-place
prepare to take their flight. I have seen
them rising like a lark, up, up through the
dusky air, when away they shot into the vast
aerial ocean, guided by that wisdom, which
controls alike the smallest and the greatest
events—the flight of a quail, or the revolutions
of worlds.

THE RIVER OF YESTERDAY.

ONE of the least distinguished of rivers,
speaking heraldically, has by some unaccountable
folly of man received the name of the
Father of Waters. The Mississippi is quite
a river of yesterday; absolutely unheard of
by any civilised people at the time of William
the Conqueror. In the mere spirit of wealth
worship, for the sake of the great deposits
with which it enriches its banks, and the
huge tide of dirty silver it is always paying
down, in an enormous roll, into the sea,
the world reckons it among the aristocracy
of rivers, and holds it to be as respectable as
even the Cephissus, or the Tiber, or the Oxus
or Borysthenes. Yet, I do not doubt that
there are some right-thinking people in this
country, who will be glad to hear a little of the
Mississippi's antecedents before they concede
to him their respect, and I shall proceed to
show what a mere upstart the Father of
Waters is.

There was an old map published when
printing was a new invention, and Ptolemy's
Geography had not been superseded by
Goldsmith's, Arrowsrnith's, or any other
modern Smith, in which there was a delta
laid down in the Gulf of Mexico corresponding
to the delta of the Mississippi. That was
the utmost recognition of the Father of
Waters made at the beginning of the sixteenth
century; that is to say, in the year one
thousand five hundred and thirteen. After
that the Spaniards, in their own free, lively
way, made expeditions into Florida; Leon,
Cordova, and Ayllon having died there one
after another. A Spaniard, quite a mediaeval or
half-way character—who had a name of
which one half seems to have been borrowed
from the ancient Roman stage, and the
rest from yesterday's newspaper—Pamphilus
de Narvaez, took upon himself to conquer
and colonise the whole of the gulf of
Mexico. That was in fifteen twenty-eight.
Storm, disease, and famine swept his men
away; and, if they colonised the new shore
with anything, it was with their bones. A
few however, upon whose bones a little
flesh was left, being thrown by themselves
upon an island on the coast of Mississippi,
escaped and struck inland. They were five
miserable men, of which the leader was
Cabeza de Vaca. They juggled their way
through a thousand perils—passing from tribe
to tribe as medicine men—and crossed the
continent from sea to sea, among wild natives
speaking unknown tongues, over the great