“Another way,” the fowler went on, “is to choose a spot where the rushes form a thick screen twenty yards deep along the bank; then a light net two or three hundred feet long is pegged down on to the shore behind them, and thrown over the tops of the rushes, reaching to within a foot or two of the water. Here it is rolled up, so that when it is shaken out it will go down into the water. Then two men stand among the rushes at the ends of the net, while another goes out far on to the lake in a boat. When he sees a flock of ducks swimming near the shore he poles the boat toward them; not so rapidly as to frighten them into taking flight, but enough so to attract their attention and cause uneasiness. He goes backward and forward, gradually approaching the shore, and of course managing so as to drive them toward the point where the net is. When they are opposite this he closes in faster, and the ducks all swim in among the rushes. Directly they are in, the men at the ends of the net shake down the rolled-up part, and then the whole flock are prisoners. After that the fowlers have only to enter the rushes, and take them as they try to fly upward and are stopped by the net. With luck two or three catches can be made in a day, and a thousand ducks and sometimes double that number can be captured. Then they are put into flat baskets just high enough for them to stand in with their heads out through the openings at the top, and so put on board the boat and taken up the Nile.” “Yes, I have often seen the baskets taken out of the boats,” Chebron said, “and thought how cruel it was to pack them so closely. But how do they feed them for they must often be a fortnight on the way?” “The trader who has bought them of us and other fowlers waits until he has got enough together to freight a large craft--for it would not pay to work upon a small scale--accompanies them up the river, and feeds them regularly with little balls made of moistened flour, just in the same way that they do at the establishments in Upper Egypt, where they raise fowl and stuff them for the markets. If the boat is a large one, and is taking up forty or fifty thousand fowl, of course he takes two or three boys to help him, for it is no light matter to feed such a number, and each must have a little water as well as the meal. It seems strange to us here, where fowl are so abundant, that people should raise and feed them just as if they were bullocks. But I suppose it is true.”