Notwithstanding The Small Size Of Our Bark And The Boasted Skill Of Our Pilot, We Often Ran Aground.

The bottom being soft, there was no danger; but, nevertheless, at sunset, near the pass of Don Cristoval, we preferred to lie at anchor.

The first part of the night was beautifully serene: we saw an incalculable number of falling-stars, all following one direction, opposite to that from whence the wind blew in the low regions of the atmosphere. The most absolute solitude prevails in this spot, which, in the time of Columbus, was inhabited and frequented by great numbers of fishermen. The inhabitants of Cuba then employed a small fish to take the great sea turtles; they fastened a long cord to the tail of the reves (the name given by the Spaniards to that species of Echeneis*). (* To the sucet or guaican of the natives of Cuba the Spaniards have given the characteristic name of reves, that is, placed on its back, or reversed. In fact, at first sight, the position of the back and the abdomen is confounded. Anghiera says: Nostrates reversum appellant, quia versus venatur. I examined a remora of the South Sea during the passage from Lima to Acapulco. As he lived a long time out of the water, I tried experiments on the weight he could carry before the blades of the disk loosened from the plank to which the animal was fixed; but I lost that part of my journal. It is doubtless the fear of danger that causes the remora not to loose his hold when he feels that he is pulled by a cord or by the hand of man. The sucet spoken of by Columbus and Martin d'Anghiera was probably the Echeneis naucrates and not the Echeneis remora.) The fisher-fish, formerly employed by the Cubans by means of the flattened disc on his head, furnished with suckers, fixed himself on the shell of the sea-turtle, which is so common in the narrow and winding channels of the Jardinillos. "The reves," says Christopher Columbus, "will sooner suffer himself to be cut in pieces than let go the body to which he adheres." The Indians drew to the shore by the same cord the fisher-fish and the turtle. When Gomara and the learned secretary of the emperor Charles V, Peter Martyr d'Anghiera, promulgated in Europe this fact which they had learnt from the companions of Columbus, it was received as a traveller's tale. There is indeed an air of the marvellous in the recital of d'Anghiera, which begins in these words: Non aliter ac nos canibus gallicis per aequora campi lepores insectamur, incolae [Cubae insulae] venatorio pisce pisces alios capiebant. (Exactly as we follow hares with greyhounds in the fields, so do the natives [of Cuba] take fishes with other fish trained for that purpose). We now know, from the united testimony of Rogers, Dampier and Commerson, that the artifice resorted to in the Jardinillos to catch turtles is employed by the inhabitants of the eastern coast of Africa, near Cape Natal, at Mozambique and at Madagascar.

Enter page number Go  Previous Next
Page 144 of 332
Words from 75038 to 75554 of 174507