n gun, and with a party of three we
bagged sixty-six in three days.

Snipe shooting is also very good. An idea of the bags that may be made
will be seen when I say that at Besika Bay, close to the Dardanelles, I
killed in three days three hundred and three snipe, an average of one
hundred and one a day. When there is snow lying on the hills there are
plenty of cock; myself and two friends having killed in three days two
hundred and ninety-eight long bills.

My best bag in cock has been sixty-three in one day's shooting alone. I
have lately taken to punting after ducks, and have been very successful.
One gets twenty to thirty a day, and occasionally a swan. I once killed
four of the latter with one shot from my punt gun (one of Holland &
Holland's). Hares are not very numerous; to get three or four in a day
is counted good luck; but one generally picks up one or two during a
day's shooting. Thus the sum of what you have in this country is red
deer, fallow deer, roe deer, pigs, wolves, and bears (as to the latter,
rare), hares, pheasants, cocks, snipe, quails, and ducks; so that a man
who lays himself out for sport and has a yacht can have plenty of
amusement between September and March.

The coast of Karamania, taking in all the coast from some distance below
Smyrna, passing Rhodes and so on to the Gulf of Ayas, affords all the
way along capital sport to yachting men. For example, in the large gulfs
of Boudroum and Marmorice, capital anchorage will be found, and a
country almost virgin as far as sport is concerned.

Some years since, while commanding an English ship-of-war, I had the
good fortune to be sent on a roving commission against pirates that were
supposed to infest that coast. Somehow I always _imagined_ that pirates
were more or less sportsmen, so I hunted for them in places that looked
gamey, and thus made the acquaintance of many almost unknown, or at all
events unfrequented, harbours and creeks, in which I had famous sport.
On the coast of Karamania the ibex is to be found in considerable
quantities; the red-legged partridge and the francolin are also very
abundant, and give capital sport.

There are also at the head of the gulf I have alluded to large marshes
for duck and snipe. The most celebrated, because the best known place in
the part I am alluding to, is the Gulf of Ayas, into which runs the
well-known (to all naval sportsmen) river called the Jihoon. A yacht
must anchor at some distance off the