Travel writer Ernest Bilbrough went waterbird shooting at Lake Chapala in the 1880s

Though E. Ernest Bilbrough (1861-1891) died tragically young, he certainly had some adventures before departing this world.

One of the three children born to Thomas Priestley Bilbrough and his wife, Gertrude Elizabeth Bates, Edward Ernest Bilbrough was born in Liverpool, UK, on 6 March 1861. Details of his education are unknown, but he became a writer and photographer. He published his first book, Twixt France and Spain; Or, A Spring in the Pyrenees, in 1884, and the following year the UK-based periodical The Field printed Bilbrough’s account of sport and travel in Mexico. This article includes a description of his experiences at Lake Chapala. Also relating to Mexico, though as a photographer, Bilbrough was credited for some of the photos illustrating an article in The Graphic in 1886 about the Mexican National Railroad.

By 1887, Bilbrough had moved to New Zealand and been awarded a “certificate of excellence” in an Auckland Society of Arts competition for a set of six landscape photographs. At about this time, he was elected Secretary of the Athenaeum, a newly formed Auckland literary and debating society.

On 13 June 1889, Bilbrough married Mary Jane MacKellar (1865–1922), the Shanghai-born daughter of “Mrs MacKeller of The Pines, Epsom, and the late John MacKellar Esq. of London and Calcutta.”

Bilbrough’s second book, Brett’s Handy Guide to New Zealand., was published in 1890, only months before his untimely death in Auckland on 27 March 1891, shortly after his 30th birthday. Bilbrough was buried in the city’s Purewa Cemetery. His obituary in the New Zealand Herald explained how the well-known manager of Cook’s Tourists’ Agency in Auckland had been in failing health for several weeks, despite completing a trip to England the previous year.

Unusually, it was only after the death of his mother—Gertrude Bates Bilbrough—almost thirty years later, that his estate in the UK was settled, with probate (for effects valued at £1151) then granted to Bilbrough’s widow, Mary Jane.

Gertrude Bates Bilbrough, who died in Hong Kong, had close ties to “Wonsan Korea and Victoria Island Lower Burma.” Probate for her estate, valued at £1249, 2s, 5d, was granted to Bilbrough’s brother, Charles Francis Stanhope Bilbrough. Robert Neff has written several interesting articles about the family’s links to Korea:

• The mysterious Bilbroughs (part 1)
• The mysterious Bilbroughs (part 2)
• Grumpy Gertrude: The mysterious Bilbroughs (part 3)
• A life of hate and conflict: The mysterious Bilbroughs (part 4)

What did E Ernest Bilbrough write about Mexico and Lake Chapala?

Bilbrough opens his article, published in England, by claiming that, “Of all the civilized countries, Mexico is undoubtedly the least known, especially to dwellers on this side of the Atlantic.” He then points out that Mexico has four railways already built, and several more under construction. The four existing lines were the Mexican Railway (Mexico City to Veracruz), the Mexican Central (Mexico City to the northern border and New York), the Mexican National (Mexico City north, but not yet reaching the US border), and Inter-oceanic (“so called because it approaches neither ocean.”)

The author considered Mexican roads “frightful,” and recommended overland travel by horseback, “preferably on a steed of your own, though others can be hired from place to place if desired.” Horses could be hired for one dollar a day, but it was necessary to add another dollar for the horse’s attendant. Travel by stage coach brought its own perils, and Bilbrough advised, in the event of a hold-up, not to flee, and “never carry arms unless you intend to use them.”

He also recommended that travelers forget about regular hotels—”in the interior, hotel charges may be reckoned generally at from two dollars per diem to four, in the capital and chief towns from three dollars to six dollars, according to your room, your restaurant, and your liquor”—and consider staying in haciendas:

Accommodation can almost invariably be procured at the haciendas for the night—that is to say, as a guest—even without a letter of introduction of any kind; and right good-hearted men some of the “hacendados “ are too, giving you of their best, and giving freely.”

The main purpose of his article was to describe the opportunities Mexico offered for hunting. Bilbrough thought the methods for shooting wildfowl at Lake Texcoco were unsportsmanlike because:

the sport consists in erecting batteries of guns on three different levels close to all the favourite feeding grounds. The first discharge is directed at the birds on the water, the next just as they rise, and the last sweeps about two yards from the surface, so that it is a lucky bird that gets away. These ‘sportsmen’ have a lofty contempt for the individual who allows the bird to rise before firing.

Eastern end of Lake Chapala. (For complete map, see “Lake Chapala Through the Ages”)

He contrasted this with the situation at Lake Chapala, where “some splendid sport is to be had, not exactly on the lake itself, but on the land which receives its overflow, and is known as ‘cienega,’ a marsh.”

These ciénegas were at the eastern end of the lake, and are marked on the map as “former wetlands.” Some of these ciénegas were drained and converted to farmland twenty years after Bilbrough’s visit.

Bilbrough was sufficiently astute to recognize that the ciénegas played an important role in the local ecosystem:

These ‘cienegas’ form the most valuable pasturage for cattle and horses when drained, partially levelled, and well ditched; but are excessively dangerous to man and beast in their natural state, being nothing less than bogs with a thin crust of treacherous, safe-looking soil. Their value, however, is really derived from the very same cause which makes them dangerous: this being the porous or penetrable state of the lower strata, which receives the overflow from the lake at a period of the year when there is no rain, and promotes the growth of the grass when nothing but surface irrigation, at immense expense, would otherwise produce such an early crop.”

Bilbrough then described in detail his visit “last winter” to an area of ciénega belonging to an hacienda some twenty miles from Lake Chapala, where he enjoyed some varied and excellent shooting:

The best—that is, the most abundant sport, was duck and geese shooting. Of the former, mallards, green teal, blue teal, redhead, wood-ducks, tree-ducks, and pintails were the most numerous varieties; while grey and white geese were in tens of thousands on some fields where the grass was sprouting. Snipe were fairly plentiful (one morning I shot eight, and three the same afternoon), hares and quail likewise. Curlews, sandsnipe, glossy ibis and white ditto, green shanks, pelicans, grey cranes (Grullas pardas), spoonbills, avocets, and stilts were numerous; water hens (which are never eaten there) and thrashers (yellow-throated and red winged) very abundant.”

Ground squirrels were plentiful in the hedges, and I believe rabbits flourish during the rains (May to October), when hares are also more prolific. There were several coyotes, but I never managed to get near enough, unfortunately, to kill one; though common owls, which hooted over my room at night, I used to shoot by moonlight, and some fine horned specimens were bagged also.”

But of all the varieties of sport, none had the same interest as the pursuit of white cranes, called also soldier cranes (Grullas blancas), which are the shyest birds and the wariest it has yet been my lot to stalk. Deer are much less difficult to approach, for a sharp cry or whistle will generally make them halt long enough to give you a chance to get your rifle to bear. Not so white cranes; the least sound, the least movement, and they are off.”

The rifles at the hacienda were not true enough for such sport, and I was obliged to use ball in my gun. Even thus handicapped, pelicans, grey cranes, greater ibis, geese, etc., were added to the bag, but not till the last days of my stay did a white crane crown the whole. It was feeding with four others (they never go alone, but seldom more than a pair of old birds and their young will be seen together, while grey crane always are in flocks) among the maize stalks about one hundred and fifty yards from the nearest hedge, and these stalks, being so numerous and thick, make shooting very difficult. This time, however, I had a fair shot, and saw the bird fall, shot through the wing and body. He was a fine specimen—5ft. 3½in from tip of beak to toe, 7ft. 1½in. across the wings, and weighed 14½lb.”

Other travelers and explorers profiled on this site who have written about hunting at Lake Chapala include:

• William English Carson
• Charles Bernard Nordhoff
• Alessandro Giuseppe Valerio Antona

Illustrated by reproductions of vintage postcards, chapters 6 and 8 of Lake Chapala: A Postcard History look at history of the eastern end of the lake, and the area’s environmental change.

Sources

• E Ernest Bilbrough. 1884. Twixt France and Spain; Or, A Spring in the Pyrenees. Sampson Low and Co.
• E Ernest Bilbrough. 1885. “Sport and travel in Mexico.” The Field, 24 October 1885, 585-6.
• E Ernest Bilbrough (editor). 1890. Brett’s Handy Guide to New Zealand. Auckland: H. Brett.
• The Graphic: An Illustrated Weekly Newspaper: 24 Apr 1886, 8.
• The New Zealand Herald: 25 Feb 1887, 11; 8 Apr 1887, 6; 24 April 1891, 9.

Tony Burton

Tony Burton’s books include “Lake Chapala: A Postcard History” (2022), “Foreign Footprints in Ajijic” (2022), “If Walls Could Talk: Chapala’s historic buildings and their former occupants” (2020), (available in translation as “Si Las Paredes Hablaran”), “Mexican Kaleidoscope” (2016), and “Lake Chapala Through the Ages” (2008).

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