EIGENMANN: THE FRESHWATER FISHES OF BRITISH GUIANA 



41 



" On the way home we stopped on some rocks, dikes that run across the river, and secured 

 crabs, and another Loricaria. 



" I ate dinner with a somewhat better feeling, but determined to use our big hundred-and-fifty- 

 foot net at the sand-bank after dinner. The porters were all gone when we got to the station, but 

 I was able to pick up a couple of negroes, and took one of our Indians. Mr. Kingsland, the agent 

 at Wismar, went along. The crew played the most interesting tunes with their paddles. When- 

 ever he felt like it, the leader, by a peculiar stroke with the paddle, would get all of them to hit the 

 boat during a definite part of the stroke. It produced surprising results and varied the monotony 

 of the long row. After we had gone what I thought twice the distance, we discovered that by staying 

 on the wrong side of the river we had overshot our mark and had to go back. Soon our boat got 

 stuck in the mud at the upper end of the bank, but finally landed on a place that must have been 

 made for us. It was a shallow bay on the upper end of the sand bank, a hundred and fifty feet 

 across with a sandy bottom. We stretched the big net across and hauled out at the head of the bay. 



Fig. 11. Small stream on Gluck Island dammed by Indian women before putting in the poisonous leaf-pulp. 



Fish flopped in every direction, dozens went over the net, one of them went at one of the men and 

 made him jump. At the critical moment the enthusiasm got the better of even our Indian, and he 

 ran ashore with the top of the net and let half the catch out. As it was we had two buckets full of 

 specimens. I gave Mr. Kingsland a luckananee weighing seven pounds, and the crew had enough 

 to make the haul historic for all time to come. We got home at 12:30 A.M." 13 



13 1 recognized seventy-one species on the day following. The number was probably nearer ninety, for 

 in the final examination I found I had taken sixty species in two or three hours out of the small brook on Gluck 

 Island. 



